Chapter 3
Last times were no time for anything fancy. McQueen stripped her naked, put her on her back in the bed and kissed every inch of her like he was kissing every inch goodbye. Allison sighed with pleasure when he entered her. It was either sigh or cry and she refused to give in to her tears again. McQueen kissed her neck and said into her ear, “And to think I always thought I was the first rich son of a bitch to take you in from the cold.”
“Oh, you were,” she said, almost smiling. “Dr. Capello wasn’t a son of a bitch.”
Dr. Capello was, in fact, an angel. At least, that’s how she’d once thought of him. Until age seven, Allison had lived in a little town called Red, where even the trees in spring were a dull shade of brown. High desert, they called it, past the Cascades, which might as well have been a sky-high wall for how well they trapped the rain on the other side of the mountains. Although Allison’s teachers had said they lived an hour’s drive away from mossy green forests and three hours from the ocean, she had never believed them. The whole world was high desert to her until that day the man with the brown beard came to the house where they’d taken her because she had nowhere else to go.
Allison lived in the single-story house with siding the color of desert sand, and shared a room with three other girls, all of them older. Older and terrifying. All three of them resented the intrusion of a “little girl” into their tween kingdom. It was 1997 and she had no idea who those boys were in the posters on the wall and not knowing who the Backstreet Boys were was apparently enough of a crime to render Allison unworthy of friendship or even basic kindnesses from anyone but Miss Whitney.
She’d gone to find Miss Whitney that day, because one of the girls—Melissa, the biggest one who called all the shots—had slapped Allison for daring to sit in the wrong chair. Allison had taken her tearstained red face to Miss Whitney’s tiny office in the hopes of being allowed to hide there and read all day. Miss Whitney had let her do that a time or two. Apparently Allison was “adjusting poorly” and suffering from “profound stress,” and she needed a “more nurturing environment.” Allison wasn’t sure what all that meant, but she’d heard Miss Whitney saying that on the phone to someone the day before. What Allison really wanted was her mother back, but Miss Whitney had reminded her—kindly and more than once—that her mother was never coming back. They’d been trying to find her long-gone father instead, or another relative for her to live with. No luck yet, except an aunt deemed too old to handle a seven-year-old girl.
The first time she’d seen the man with the beard he’d been hugging Miss Whitney in her office. Allison stood in the doorway and stared at the man who was tall and dressed in what looked to her like blue pajamas. He patted Miss Whitney’s back very hard as he hugged her, which made Miss Whitney laugh and wince, wince and laugh.
“My God,” the bearded man said as he pulled back from the hug. He’d seen her lurking in the doorway. “Is this her?” He turned to Miss Whitney, his brown eyes wide.
“That’s her. That’s our Allison.”
Immediately, he squatted on the floor to meet Allison eye to eye.
Allison took a step back, afraid she’d broken a rule.
“It’s all right,” the man said, and his beard split apart in a big smile that showed a row of bright white teeth. “Don’t be scared.”
“I’m not scared,” Allison said. “Are you?”
He grinned at that. “Surprised. You look a little like another girl I used to know.”
“I thought the same thing when I saw her,” Miss Whitney said. “Cousins at least. Should I not have called?”
“No, no...” the bearded man said. “It’s fine.”
“Why are you wearing pajamas?” Allison asked the bearded man. She knew they were pajamas because the pants had a drawstring on them like her pajamas. Zipper meant outdoor pants. No zipper meant indoor pants. That’s how her mother had explained it.
The bearded man laughed and it was a nice laugh and he had nice eyes. Nice, not like pretty, but nice like kind.
“These are called scrubs,” he said. “They’re not pajamas. Doctors wear them.”
“Are you a doctor?” Allison asked.
“I am.”
“Is somebody sick?”
“You tell me,” the bearded man said. “You don’t look too good.”
“I got hit.”
“Hit?” the bearded man said, and looked up at Miss Whitney.
“Melissa?” Miss Whitney asked.
Tears welled up in Allison’s eyes again and she nodded.
“I’ll be back,” Miss Whitney said with a put-upon groan.
“You go jerk a knot in Melissa’s tail,” the bearded man said. “I’ll get Allison here back in working order.”
He stood up straight and Miss Whitney patted him on the arm as she left the office. They were alone together now, Allison and the bearded man.
“Does it hurt?” he asked, his hand on his chin.
“A little.”
“It’s okay if you cry,” he said. “I can tell you want to.”
“Katie said I shouldn’t cry.”
“Why not?”
“They don’t want you if you cry too much.”
“They?”
“People who take kids home with them,” she said.
The bearded man cupped his hand by his mouth and whispered, “I don’t mind if you cry. No skin off my rosy nose.”
That made her feel better, so much better she didn’t want to cry anymore.
“Let’s go find a bathroom,” he said.
Allison showed him where it was. He put her on the counter, wetted a washcloth and pressed it to her cheek.
“How’s that now?” he asked. “Better?”
“Lots.”
“Fantastic,” he said. “Another patient cured. That’ll cost you two bits.”
“What’s a bit?”
“I have no idea,” the bearded man said. “Used to hear it on TV all the time—shave and a haircut, two bits. Never did figure out how much two bits was.”
Allison looked around, saw a tissue box and ripped two pieces off one tissue.
“Here,” she said, holding them up in front of his face. “Two bits.”
“Are you sure?”
“You said you didn’t know what they are,” Allison said. “So how do you know those aren’t bits?”
The bearded man looked at the two tissues in his hand, stuck his lips out and nodded.
“You’re a very smart little girl,” he said. “I accept your payment. And I give you a clean bill of health. Now tell me, what’s going on with you and this Melissa?”
“I sat in her chair. She didn’t like that.”
“And she hit you?”
Allison said nothing.
“You know,” the man said, “sometimes kids learn to hit from their parents. Their parents hit them and then they don’t know any better.”
“I know not to hit,” Allison said.
“That’s because you’re so smart,” he whispered again. A whisper, then a wink. She didn’t know why he was whispering. Everyone in the house was a shouter. Melissa shouted and the other two girls shouted and Miss Whitney shouted at them all to stop shouting. Allison didn’t shout. She cried. She hid. She slept. But she never shouted.
“How’s the patient?”
Allison turned to see Miss Whitney coming into the bathroom.
“She’s on track to make a full recovery,” the bearded man said. “If we can keep her out of the path of slappers.”
“That’s not going to happen in this house,” Miss Whitney said with a sigh.
“No word on the father?” he asked.
“No father on the birth certificate. Sole living relative is a great-aunt who would take her if nobody else turns up. But she’s seventy, lives in Indiana, and she’s been sick.”
The bearded man harrumphed. Allison hadn’t ever met her great-aunt, a lady named Frankie who lived really far away, though she’d seen Christmas cards from her.
“I gotta figure something out here,” Miss Whitney said. “Allison weighed forty-seven pounds when she got here. Yesterday she weighed forty-two. One month.”
The bearded man harrumphed and whistled this time.
“Let me talk to her,” he said.
“You are talking to me,” Allison said.
“She’s very bright,” the bearded man said to Miss Whitney.
“Told you so. Reads on a fifth-grade level. Eats like a toddler.” Miss Whitney patted Allison on her knee. “Sweetheart, this is a good friend of mine. Vincent Capello. He’s a brain surgeon. We used to work together at a hospital in Portland. He was nice enough to come all the way out here to check on you. Brain surgeons usually don’t make house calls, so you should feel very special.”
“She is very special,” the man said. Allison grinned, happy to have someone being nice to her for the first time that day. She was still sitting on the bathroom counter. She wasn’t tall enough to be able to jump down without help yet and the bearded man, the doctor, had left her up there.
Miss Whitney left her alone again with the man who didn’t do anything at first but tug his beard hairs.
“Do you like it here, Allison?” he asked.
Allison’s mother had taught her not to complain, ever. Not so much out of politeness but because it never helped anything.
“I like Miss Whitney,” Allison said.
“She is a very nice lady.” The man nodded in agreement. “Do you like the girls here?”
Allison didn’t answer.
“Allison? Do you like the other girls here?”
“I’m not supposed to say.”
“Why not?” The bearded man furrowed his brow.
“If you can’t say something nice, you shouldn’t say anything at all.”
He laughed.
“I guess I have my answer. You have quite the moral compass, young lady,” he said. “Adults could learn from you.”
She smiled broadly. She didn’t know what a moral compass was, but she knew a compliment when she heard it.
“Miss Whitney says you aren’t eating. Want to tell me why?” he asked.
Allison had dropped her chin to her chest. “Not hungry.”
“Does your stomach hurt?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“No?” he said. Allison stopped talking and hoped he would, too.
“Have you ever seen the ocean?” he asked her. That was not the question she’d been expecting.
“No.”
“You know what it looks like?”
“I saw pictures,” she said.
“We can do better than that.” That’s when he plucked her off the counter and set her on her feet. He took her by the hand and led her out to the back porch. There was nothing back there but a slab of concrete where a few old chairs sat looking at a yard of scrubby dirt backed by a hill of scrubby dirt. Everywhere she looked out there she saw nothing but scrubby dirt.
“See all that?” the doctor said, pointing from one end of the hill to the other.
“I see dirt,” she said.
“Okay. Now imagine everything you see is water,” he said.
Allison’s eyes went wide. She stared at the dirt and in her mind’s eye it started to change color from brown to gray to blue. The hills turned to waves, the raw wind became an ocean breeze and the concrete slab they stood on became a raft, bobbing and floating on an endless sea.
“I see it,” she said, grinning up at him.
“That’s the ocean,” he said.
“It’s lovely,” she said.
“Lovely? Yes, it is lovely, isn’t it?” he said, laughing. “That’s where I live, you know. On the ocean.”
“In a boat?”
He laughed again. “No, in a house. But the house is right on the beach and you can see the ocean from almost all the rooms.”
Allison couldn’t imagine that. She never even looked out the windows in this house. Nothing to see but dirt out the back windows and other sand-colored houses out the front.
“Can you swim in it?”
He stroked his beard. “You can swim in it. Might not want to. It’s kind of cold, but my son swims in it a lot.”
“You have a son?”
“I have two sons,” he said, smiling with pride. “And a daughter. They’re all kids like you. Some bad things happened in their lives so now they live with me in my house by the ocean.”
“Is it pretty?”
“The ocean?”
“The house.”
“If I told you it looked like a dragon, would you believe me?”
“No,” she said, laughing. That was the silliest thing she ever heard. “Dragons have wings. They have fire in their noses.”
“I promise it looks like a dragon.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not,” he said, and looked hurt. Then he grinned. She liked him so much when he smiled like that. “It’s a sea monster, I swear.”
“I know a water poem,” she said. “Do you want to hear it?”
“I want to hear your poem. Go for it.”
Allison recited for him.
“The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright—
And that was odd because it was
The middle of the night.”
The man laughed heartily, a Santa Claus laugh, though he didn’t have a Santa Claus belly.
“That’s wonderful, Allison. Did you learn that in school?”
“I taught it to myself,” she said. That was true but she didn’t tell him why she’d taught it to herself. He’d probably laugh at her. “Can I come to your house and see the ocean for real?”
He squatted down low again so they were the same height, and while he wasn’t smiling with his mouth, he was smiling with his eyes.
“I would take you to see it,” he said, “but we have a rule at my house—everybody has to eat every single day.”
She gave that a good long think and then made up her mind.
“If I could see the ocean, I would eat,” she said.
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Every single day?”
“Every single day.”
“Good,” he said. He stood up again. “It’s a deal. Let’s go get you packed.”
“You mean it?” She couldn’t believe it, but she couldn’t believe this smiling man who wore pajamas to work would lie to her, either.
“I mean it.”
She raced to her room and found her suitcase. She didn’t have much to pack but one suitcase of her clothes and one bag of her books. Miss Whitney hugged her for a long time and kissed her cheek and told her she was a lucky little girl, because she was going to a wonderful home. Over Allison’s shoulder, Miss Whitney winked at Dr. Capello. When Allison started out the door, her small hand in Dr. Capello’s big strong hand, the other girls did nothing but wave half-heartedly from the couch where they sat playing a dumb video game on a too-small television.
The next thing Allison knew, she was sitting in the shiny smooth back seat of a big black car. A fancy car, fancier than any one she’d ever seen, and they were driving through the desert.
The big black car started up a hill, except it wasn’t a hill because hills weren’t nearly this tall. The man with the beard—he told her to call him Dr. Capello for now—told her it was actually a volcano named Mount Hood, but she didn’t believe him. She’d seen volcanoes in her science book. They had fire coming out of the top and they didn’t have trees everywhere. Then they were going down the other side of the big mountain and it was green, green, green everywhere she looked. The desert had turned into a forest so green and big she expected to see the Jolly Green Giant from the TV commercials wander onto the road and wave as they passed by. She was looking for him when something hit the car window hard enough to make her jump.
Water, a big fat drop of it.
“Just rain,” Dr. Capello said. “It’ll be raining at home, too.” That morning she’d woken up in a desert and now she was being taken to a place where it rained so hard it rained on the ocean.
“What’s your son’s name?” Allison asked.
“Which one?” Dr. Capello asked from the front seat.
“The one you said swims a lot.”
“That’s Roland. He’s twelve.”
“Is he nice?”
Dr. Capello kept his face forward but even looking at his profile she could see him smile.
“Let me tell you a little something about my son,” he said. “Roland Capello is the nicest boy in the world.”
* * *
“You’re smiling again,” McQueen said as he quickly dressed. Allison was still in bed, still naked. Let him leave her this way. Let this be the last image of her in his memory. “Told you that would help.”
She rolled onto her side and watched him put on his shoes.
“It helped, all right,” she said, and kept it to herself she’d been lost in the past the entire time he’d been inside her. He stood up.
“You’ll be okay?” he asked.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, already feeling the first stirrings of panic again. “I am fine.”
He bent over the bed to kiss her lips, and she gave him her cheek instead. He didn’t argue.
On his way out of her bedroom, he paused and looked back.
“Will you let me give you one piece of advice?” he asked.
“Do I have to?” she asked.
“I have been on this earth twenty years longer than you.”
“All right, tell me,” she said.
“When distant relatives contact you out of nowhere, it’s never good. Never. Never,” he said.
“Never?”
“Never. They either want money or they want something from you more valuable than money. The more I think about it, the more I think you should let me take that package down to the Dumpster.”
“This was my family, McQueen.”
“Was,” McQueen said. “Thirteen years ago and they haven’t contacted you in all that time? What’s the lady’s name who opened her box and screwed us all over?”
“Pandora?”
“Right.” He pointed at her and nodded. “Don’t be like her.”
“You’re telling me that’s Pandora’s padded envelope?” Allison asked.
“Pandora’s box sounds a lot better,” he said. “I have to go. Meeting in half an hour. You’ll at least think about it?”
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “Have a good life.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You, too, darlin’.”
She waited for him to leave. He didn’t.
“I never thought it would end like this,” he said, still looking at her. “I’ve been waiting six years for you to get shed of me. I thought any day now you’d tell me it was over, that you’d met someone, that you’d fallen in love.”
There was nothing safe Allison could say to that so she said nothing at all. McQueen waited. She kept her silence. He turned and then, at last, he was gone.
The door shut behind him and Allison sat on the bed, her chin to her chest. She didn’t cry. She wanted to but she couldn’t find her tears. What she wanted was a shoulder to cry on but she had none. The last shoulders in her life that weren’t her own had just walked out of the door.
She was twenty-five and college-educated. She had a roof over her head and she had money. She had food and she had clothes. She had a car and she had a letter of recommendation from the wealthiest man in the state she could use to get a job pretty much anywhere. She was fine. She was fine. She was fine. She told herself a thousand times she was fine.
She wasn’t fine.
She was alone.
Alone on her bed, she was a seven-year-old girl again, staring at the front door waiting for someone to come through it and knowing, deep down, that no one ever would.
Her worst nightmare. She was all alone.
Or was she?
Allison grabbed her robe, pulled it on and went into the kitchen again. She stood by the table, looking at the envelope. Allison told herself she was doing it to spite McQueen, but even she knew she wasn’t telling herself the truth.
She picked up the envelope and ripped it open.