TWENTY-SEVEN
As I was driving the kids back to the airport, Zoe asked me what I was going to do with the house in Oak Valley. I confessed I wasn’t sure. Financially, selling it made the most sense; if I didn’t have a full-time job come the following January, then I would at least have extra savings to cover the health insurance policy I would need to secure for myself at the start of the new year.
“Okay, but how do you feel about it?” pressed Zoe. “Not financially. Emotionally.”
Emotionally? While it had been a place of love, the house no longer symbolized that or security for me, and I didn’t want to move back there. Trouble was, I hadn’t settled on staying in Ann Arbor—or anywhere else. With just over a month before Jean’s return, the walls were closing in quick, but I kept standing there, a woman paralyzed by her own options.
“Ditch it, Mom,” said Jack from the back seat. “We’re not waiting to inherit it.”
“It was your childhood home,” I said as I switched lanes.
“And it always will be,” said Zoe, reaching across from the passenger seat to pat my shoulder. “We’re not going to forget the memories we had there just because we can’t go back.” She began to laugh and swiveled to face Jack. “Do you remember when you sledded down the stairs on your flamingo pool float?”
“You told me to!” he said indignantly, but then he started to laugh, too.
“I did not,” said Zoe.
“Either way, it was a very bad idea,” I said. “Jack, remember the two black eyes you had after you hit the wall headfirst? I was so worried people would think me or your father had hit you.”
“You two? Yeah, right,” he scoffed.
“Or what about the time you almost set fire to the kitchen trying to make muffins?” I said to Zoe. She had been maybe seven at the time and had been convinced that she could follow instructions out of a recipe book. I had come downstairs just in time to pull out the fire extinguisher and coat the oven and everything near it with white foam.
“I still owe you for that one,” she conceded. “But sell the house, Mom. It’s weighing you down.”
What I needed, I decided after I returned from the airport, was clarity about whether I was going to stay in Ann Arbor after Jean’s return. Though I would have preferred warmer weather, I had grown to like it there. The townies, as the year-round residents called themselves, were both nice and interesting. I liked my coffee shop and going to the farmers’ market on Saturday mornings and the river that roped through the city. There were far worse places to live.
The next day I began looking at rentals to get a sense of what my options were. I checked out a quirky one-bedroom with cupboards customized for a professional basketball player, and a new-construction condo within walking distance of downtown. The latter piqued my interest, but the lease revealed dozens of hidden fees. The next half a dozen other places I saw were just as problematic for different reasons.
Then a rental agent showed me a small yellow craftsman on the west side of town, about a mile from Jean’s place. It was not quite as charming as Jean’s, and instead of a view of the woods, bungalows and backyards greeted me when I looked out the windows. The neighborhood, however, was a friendly mix of young families and those who had lived there for decades.
The house itself had two bedrooms, a spacious kitchen that opened into a dining nook, and a yard with a verdant vegetable garden and fresh lavender and rosemary bushes, whose scent filled the air.
“What do you think?” asked the agent eagerly as we were standing in the garden.
It was nearly ninety degrees, and I wiped sweat from my brow. “I think it’s perfect,” I said.
“Would you like to fill out a rental application?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
The agent looked at me like I had sprouted a second head.
“I’m not ready to make a decision,” I explained.
“It’ll be gone by tomorrow,” he said.
So be it, I thought. I wasn’t sure where my indecision was coming from, but I had begun to realize it was having an unexpected effect. Rather than exacerbating my anxiety, embracing uncertainty was bringing me peace.
Crystal did not show up for our second meeting, but the following week she landed back in my office. Not at her scheduled meeting time—or even on Wednesday, her scheduled day. Instead, she showed up on a Monday afternoon. I had just sat down at my desk and was gearing up for a busy afternoon. “Can we talk?” she said, sticking her head in the door.
I had managed to raise two children without murdering them during their teen years, and that was largely because I had allowed them to learn the law of natural consequences. If it had worked for them, it could work for Crystal, too.
“You’ll have to come back at six,” I told her.
“Six?” Her eyes bulged. “I’ve got Jade then,” she said, referring to her daughter.
“Bring her. I have a box full of toys and art supplies she can play with while we talk. But right now,” I said, pointing toward the clock on the wall, “I have another client. And then another, and another, until six.”
“Really?”
“I’m sorry.” I shrugged. “But lucky for you, I don’t have plans tonight, and I’ll stay late. That’s the best I can offer.”
She eyed me suspiciously. “Thanks, I think.”
I smiled at her. “You’re welcome, I think.”
Six came and went. Just when I started wondering if I had given Crystal too much credit, a small child with bright blue eyes stuck her head in my door. A second later, Crystal appeared behind her, red-faced and out of breath. “Bus trouble,” she huffed. “Me and Jade got here as fast as we could. I’m sorry.”
An apology? All was forgiven. “It’s fine,” I told her. “Come on in.”
I pulled the box of toys out from under my desk and handed them to Jade. She looked at them solemnly, then back at me, then at my door. “Can I take them into the hallway?”
I had been accustomed to keeping to myself as a child, and I saw a glimpse of that girl in Jade. “Sure, love. But you’re also welcome to come in here with us if the hallway gets boring.”
Jade glanced at her mother, and Crystal nodded at her.
“You’re trying to pull your life together for her,” I said once Jade was settled in the hall. “I admire that.”
“I’m out of work, and I’m doing a crap job,” she said miserably. “Jade’s jammed into a tiny room with me and my brother’s girls. They don’t like having us there, and we all know it.” She lowered her voice. “Things were better for Jade when I was locked up. At least then she had a whole bed to herself.”
“That can’t possibly be how she really feels,” I said. “You love her, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Yes, it’s obvious to me. And it’s obvious to Jade, too.”
Crystal gnawed at a cuticle. When she realized what she was doing, she wedged her hands underneath her thin thighs. “Love won’t undo the last two years. She’s constantly worrying that I’m going to disappear. She cries when I put her to bed at night, and I don’t even like taking her to school, because she makes a scene when I have to leave her at her locker. I can’t blame her for feeling like I’ll go missing, either. That’s exactly what happened when I got put away.”
I was almost afraid to open my mouth again for fear I would unintentionally silence her. “Maybe getting a steady job would show her that you’re going to stick around.”
“I never kept a job longer than a few months.”
“I’m sure it sounds overwhelming, but let’s find the right job for you and then make a goal. Maybe you can aim to stay for six months?”
“That sounds like a long time.”
“Yes and no,” I said, thinking of how my six months in Ann Arbor would soon be up.
Crystal looked toward the hallway, where Jade was playing, before turning back to me. “Okay. So you want to tell me what’s available?”
“You know I do,” I said, turning my computer monitor toward her so we could look together.
“You’re good,” said Felicia, appearing in the doorway shortly after Crystal left.
I had been working my way through a pile of paperwork. I lifted my head and smiled. “You eavesdropping?”
“Just a little.” Felicia motioned to the chair in front of me. “Mind if I sit for a minute?”
“Please do.”
She crossed her legs and leaned back in the plastic bucket chair. “You’ve been putting in at least twelve hours a week.”
“I know,” I said, looking at Crystal’s file on the table in front of me. “Sorry. It’s hard to get what needs to be done accomplished in ten. But I can cut back.”
“Cut back?” She hooted. “Girl, please. I’m not asking you to do less if you want to do more. I love having you here.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m really enjoying it.”
“I can tell. You put any thought into going back into social work? Officially, I mean.” Felicia and I went to lunch often enough that she now knew how up in the air my life was at the moment.
I bit my lip, considering this. “I mean, I’d have to pick someplace to live, then go through the certification process and land a position where they’d be willing to supervise me until I had the hours I needed in order to be licensed . . .” Then I stopped myself. When I helped Elizabeth get a job at a mission run by nuns and she cried, I was so happy you would think I had just found the answer to world peace. I awoke in the middle of the night, thinking about my clients and their problems—but unlike the insomnia I had suffered after Adam’s departure, this kind wasn’t a nuisance. Working at Second Chance lit me from within. “Other than the finding someplace to live part, that actually doesn’t sound so awful.”
Felicia smacked a hand on her thigh. “That’s the spirit. You let me know when you start looking for jobs, because I’ll have a big fat recommendation letter waiting for you. A lot of people out there could use your help, Maggie.”
Could they? Good. Because I was ready for them.
Felicia and I said goodnight, and I headed outside. Second Chance’s driveway was reserved for clients, so as usual I had parked on a side street. The street I had chosen earlier that day was a dark, tree-canopied dead end; I had left my car next to an abandoned lot and across from a house that I had yet to see a single person enter or exit. It was not the kind of place where I would normally park, but the area was now familiar to me.
I had just approached my car and pulled my keys from my bag when a voice came vaulting toward me. “Lady!”
I spun around and saw a young man standing a few feet away at the edge of the abandoned lot.
“Can I borrow your phone?” asked the man. He had greasy hair and gray teeth, and he wore a strange expression, which I initially interpreted as distress. “I locked mine in my car, and I’m stuck out here in the cold.”
On a ninety-degree day in July, I barely remembered what cold was, and the car the man referred to was nowhere to be seen. Yet my instinct was to give him the benefit of the doubt and say yes.
Then I looked at him again and saw that something in his eyes broadcast that I was in danger.
My heart was racing so fast I wondered if I, too, would have a heart attack. If I ran, could I make it the several hundred feet back to Second Chance before the man caught me? If I did, would Felicia still be there? Should I run to the house that seemed to be unoccupied, or try to find another?
“Smile,” the man said as his eyes twitched. “I’m just asking for a favor.”
And telling me what to do with my lips, I thought with disgust. I started for the street, but the man, anticipating my move, grabbed me by the wrist.
My galloping heart was threatening to breach my chest as his nails sank into my flesh. Did he want all the money I didn’t actually have on me—or was he planning to take me to an underground bunker and rape and torture me? Oh God, I thought. Though it had been more than half a lifetime ago, I could still vividly recall the knife my client had held to my neck; I could almost feel Jack shifting in my womb and the simultaneous trickle of blood on my throat and urine down the side of my leg as I waited to find out if my child and I would live.
“If I was you, I wouldn’t do anything stupid,” said the man in a low voice.
If he were I, he would know that I did all kinds of stupid things, I thought suddenly. And some of them—not most, but some—worked out for me. I stared into his bloodshot eyes and, summoning what must have been the strength of every single one of my ancestors, screamed at the top of my lungs.
Whatever the man had been expecting, it wasn’t my bloodcurdling screech, and he immediately loosened his grip. That was my cue: I ran toward the street and blessedly spotted two men walking a large German shepherd right in front of Second Chance.
“You ugly old bitch!” the man hollered, disappearing through the alley behind the house. “You’re not worth my time!”
One of the two men walking the dog let me use his phone to call the police while the other stood guard with the dog. The man who had assaulted me was long gone when the police arrived, and I offered a shaky recollection of the event before they escorted me home.
When we arrived at Jean’s, I could barely steady my hand to unlock the door, and even though the police searched the house quickly to calm me, I continued to tremble long after they left.
I had worked with many decent but desperate people early in my career—people who made bad choices because they were under the impression there were no others. The man who had assaulted me was hurting, for reasons that would never be known to me. Tomorrow I would try to wish him well. But on this evening, I wished I had stuck my keys right into his jugular.
Smile. I got into bed, pulled the duvet to my chin, and cried as the assault came flashing back to me. You ugly old bitch.
For a few minutes, I considered that maybe I would not return to Second Chance; I even entertained the idea that this attack, like the last one, was a sign indicating I should take a different direction.
Then I thought about what Jean had said about how bad things were simply bad things. I would continue showing up at Second Chance, though I would park somewhere else. And when I moved to wherever it was I was headed, I would pursue a career in social work. Because I would be damned if I let another person’s bad choice dictate my decisions.