“What would be the point? I suppose she will do a little wandering. From what I remember, you and Val did some wandering when you were kids.”

“That was different. We were teenagers and it was a safer time.”

“Pfft,” Grandma said.

“Think of your health, Helen,” Dad said.

“You haven’t been as strong since the chemo, Mom.”

Grandma blew out a big puff of air, the same way she used to exhale cigarette smoke, and shook her head. “Tell me your solution. Foster care? Send her to live with strangers?”

“We’ll keep her,” Mom said.

“No, we won’t.” Dad stood up and blocked my view, so I’ll never know what look passed between him and Mom, but when he went to the counter to pour himself more coffee, Mom nodded.

“She might as well come home with me today,” Grandma said.

I sat on Wavy’s bed while Grandma packed her suitcase. There wasn’t much to pack. A dozen dresses that had survived the Great Unraveling. Some socks and underwear. The hairbrush that she sometimes let me run through her silky, fine hair. The last thing into the suitcase was Dust Bunny, the baby doll.

Grandma put it in the suitcase. Wavy took it out. Mom put it in. Wavy took it out. It was the only toy Wavy had. “Nothing belongs to you,” she told me once when Leslie and I fought over a favorite Barbie that later disappeared.

Wavy took Dust Bunny out of the suitcase and handed it to me. A gift? Then it was time for her to go. Grandma hugged us all, while Wavy stood near the door. Mom tried to hug her, too, but she skittered away, slipping past my mother to hug me. Not close enough for our bodies to touch, she rested her hands on my shoulders, and sniffed my hair. When she released me, she ran out the front door.

“You see how it is,” Mom said.

“She’s her own girl. You were, too.” Grandma smiled and picked up Wavy’s bag.

After Thanksgiving, I found the real gift Wavy had left me in the closet under the stairs. When Mom pulled out the boxes of Christmas decorations, I crawled in to sweep up loose tinsel and a broken ornament. Tucked in the very back was the stolen book: Salome.

2

GRANDMA

October 1975

Irv and I raised one daughter who turned out fine. Brenda married a good man, had nice kids, kept a clean house, and worked hard. Valerie, our youngest, I don’t know what happened.

I suppose nowadays, she would be diagnosed with something, but at the time, we lived with her behavior. For example, her germ problem. There was a time when she washed her hands a hundred times a day, until the skin cracked and bled. I made her wear gloves to help her feel clean. Two dozen pairs of white gloves that I washed and ironed every day.

Then her junior year in high school, she got pregnant and ran away with Liam Quinn. We didn’t like him, but we’d never tried to keep her away from him. He was a troublemaker and I didn’t feel he treated Valerie right. The sort of boy who thinks he’s the center of the universe.

Later I found out he was worse than just a selfish boy. I found out he’d gotten her mixed up with the sorts of things that put her in prison. As for that whole mess, it wearied my heart. I hoped Brenda wouldn’t hate me when she found out how much of Irv’s pension I cashed out to pay for Valerie’s lawyers. I’d hoped to do college money for Amy and Leslie, but there was nothing left for that.

The first day I took Wavonna home with me, she didn’t speak. To be honest, she didn’t talk for weeks. That’s harder on your nerves than you might think, having another person in the room who won’t speak. It turned me into a real chatterbox. I narrated everything I did, the way I had for Irv when he got bad at the end.

The first night, Wavonna didn’t eat dinner. The next morning, no breakfast. By lunch the next day, I started to get a taste of why Brenda looked so broken. Three days of worrying, before I had the sense to count things in the fridge and cupboard to tell what she was eating. At bedtime, I had six cheese slices in cellophane, nine apricots in the crisper, thirteen saltines in the open tube. In the morning, only five cheese slices, seven apricots, ten saltines. Not enough to keep a mouse alive, but she managed on it.

The second day, I set out some new toys I’d bought her on the coffee table in the den. It had out-of-fashion pine paneling and shag carpet, but we’d used it as our family room when Irv was alive, so it was full of mostly happy memories. I spent the day piecing a quilt for a church fundraiser and watching the TV. Wavonna sat on the sofa, staring at the wall or the TV or nothing. The girl had a hundred-yard stare like Irv had when he came back from the war. Once she got up, and I thought, Finally, she’s bored. She’ll do something. Play with her toys.

She went to the powder room. The toilet flushed and the sink ran. Back she came to the couch. The Barbie, the stuffed elephant, and the Lincoln Logs stayed in their packages and eventually they disappeared.

After two weeks, I did what I should have done first. I bought some flash cards—letters, colors, shapes, numbers—the kind of thing they use in kindergarten classes. The next morning, I made her a nice bowl of oatmeal and went out of the kitchen for a good fifteen minutes. I spent the time calling the gals in my bridge club to tell them I wasn’t coming that afternoon. When I went back to the kitchen, sure enough, there was less oatmeal. I cleared the table and got out the alphabet cards.

“A is for Apple.” I knew she wasn’t going to parrot back what I said, but at least she’d be seeing and hearing them.