Juno's Daughters (30 page)

She followed the numbers of the avenues to 97th and then took a right, keeping her eyes open for the four-story brick building that Lilly had described. Jenny walked with her hands in her pockets. She tried to picture Lilly traveling this same sidewalk a year or two before. Would she have brought someone with her? Probably not. She would have come alone.

She followed Lilly's directions to the corner of the building where she'd said Monroe lived. The carpet in the hallway was inky with grime and beer and other liquids too vile to contemplate. She could hear a TV set playing loudly behind one of the doors as she passed. On the door that might have been Monroe's she saw a drawing of some kind of African queen: long profile, headdress, soft, full lips. Underneath the drawing was the stenciled name Alicia. Jenny stood and stared at it for a long time before knocking. This was the first floor, far right corner, facing the street, which is what Lilly had described. Could this Alicia be a girlfriend of Monroe's, she wondered? A wife? It had not occurred to her until now that he might have other children. She wiped her palms on her jeans and knocked.

She was just about to turn away when she heard some shuffling from inside. A young black woman in a bathrobe opened the door just a crack. Her hair was covered by a shower cap.

“Hi.” Jenny smiled, but the woman's expression did not change. “I'm looking for Monroe? Monroe Alexander? Does he still live here?”

“Cross the hall,” the woman mumbled, and closed the door.

“Thank you.” Jenny swallowed and turned around.

Monroe's door was unmarked. She stood in front of it for what seemed like a long time but was really only a few minutes. The door she had first knocked on cracked open again and the woman peeked out.

“He's in there,” she said. “You got to knock loud, you know, cause he takes some shit to get to sleep. Those tweakers upstairs are just too damn noisy.”

With the other woman watching, Jenny knocked hard,
one two three
.

She started to turn away, her heart thumping hard in her chest, when the door opened. Suddenly, there stood Monroe in front of her, close enough to touch, his hair shorter than she remembered it and tousled from sleep. He still stood slouched forward as if he was trying to protect his heart with his shoulders, but his arms and chest were padded with muscles he had neither cultivated nor needed as a guitarist in a rock band. He was wearing a thin white T-shirt and loose green army pants that were buttoned but not zipped, the belt hanging open as if he had just thrown them on to answer the door. She did not say anything while he looked at her. She watched recognition creep over his features in a trajectory that went from half-asleep, to disbelief, to surprise.

“Jennifer?” He rubbed the hair on the back of his head with his palm, mussing it up further. “What the fuck?”

“Sorry to barge in on you,” said Jenny.
Sorry
? She remembered what Ariel had said and cleared her throat. “Frankie is in Seattle somewhere and I'm trying to find her. I thought she might have been here.”

“Fra . . . Come in.” He stepped aside for her to enter the apartment.

Jenny ducked past him into the room. There was a sagging blue couch and a leather chair. A small coffee table. A television. The kitchen took up about a fourth of the front room. She stood with her arms crossed on her chest.

“Sit down.” Monroe dropped onto the couch and pointed at the leather chair.

Jenny lowered herself down into the chair. There were a few magazines on the table, a can of beer, a plate with some crumbs. No cigarettes. No ashtrays.

“Did you quit smoking?”

He nodded. “About two years ago. I had a heart attack, can you believe it? At forty-five? I almost bought the farm.”

Jenny couldn't take her eyes away from his face. The arch of his eyebrows. The blue eyes beneath. His jaw, nose, mouth. How had she misremembered his face so completely? It wasn't Lilly he resembled, but Frankie. He, or rather she, was the mirror image.

“So what's up with the kid then? Did she run away?”

“Not really.” Jenny pressed her eyes with the pads of her fingers. “I mean, she's here in the city somewhere, but I don't think she wants to stay away.” She glanced up and couldn't help but get lost for a second in the pools of his eyes. They were so, so familiar. She said softly, “I don't understand why she hasn't called.”

He stood up. “Do you want a drink of water? A soda?”

When Jenny shook her head no, he came back with a small white cardboard box and set it on the table next to her. “A scone or something? A cookie? I work at the bakery on Twelfth. Shift starts at one in the morning, but I get to take home pastries that are more than a day old.”

She was prepared to say no, but as soon as the pastries were set beside her Jenny realized she had not eaten anything since the night before. It was almost three in the afternoon and she was starving. She bit into a scone. “Have you seen her, then?” she asked through a mouthful. “Have you seen Frankie?” She held her hand under her chin to catch the crumbs.

Monroe stood up and walked into the kitchen. “Don't you think I would have told you right away if I had?” His voice held a touch of irritation. “Here.” He handed her a plate and sat back down on the couch. “Have you called the cops? There are a lot of street kids in this city and some of them, man, they are bad news.”

Jenny wiped her mouth. “I was there this morning.”

“Want something to drink?” asked Monroe again. “I've got some Sunny D in the fridge.” He gave her a sheepish look. “Wouldn't make you drink the water in this dump. Who knows what the pipes are made of.”

“Sunny D would be great. Thanks.”

She brushed the crumbs off her fingers and looked around the apartment. The paint was chipping in places and the Formica on the counters looked a bit warped, but it was better than some places she'd seen. The couch was draped with a bright Mexican blanket. There was even a struggling house-plant in the corner. Monroe was clearly making an effort. She called, “Did Lilly ever come to see you?”

His back was turned so she could not see if his face registered any surprise at the question. By the time he appeared next to her chair with a glass, his expression was mild and friendly.

“Yeah. Bout a year and a half ago, actually.” He handed her the drink. “Good-looking girl,” he said. “Like her mom.” The spot he chose on the couch was closer to her chair, and when he leaned forward his face was less than a couple feet away from her own. “Has a mouth on her, though, that one.” He rubbed the whiskers on his jaw. “Can't say I blame her. I've been a pretty shitty father.” When he glanced up at Jenny, his eyes were shadowed with the same thick lashes that Frankie had. “Wish I could've done better.”

“She's a smart girl,” said Jenny. “Funny, too.”

He nodded. “You're a good mother, I bet.”

Jenny focused her eyes on the wall behind his head.
You will not
, she told herself.
You will not cry
.

“You look great, Jen.” Monroe rested his hand ever so gently on her thigh. It could have been a gesture designed to comfort her. Or not. “I'm glad you came by in person, though. I'm not sure I would have recognized your voice if you called.”

“It's been a long time,” whispered Jenny. She dropped her gaze to stare at his hand. It was about the weight of a child's folded-up sweatshirt, but deeply foreign after all the time that had passed. Strange, but not altogether without an element of comfort. “And these last twenty-four hours have been . . . Well, I've cried so much I've made myself hoarse, I guess . . .”

He gave her an appraising look. “You always did cry a lot.”

Around Jenny's body, the temperature dropped. Where moments before her senses had been groggy they now started to pelt her with information. She could hear the cars outside on the busy avenue. The carpet smelled of mold. The leather seat was sticky against her back. Her skin prickled with goose bumps and her stomach twisted in rejection of the scone and the syrupy liquid she had drunk. It was as if a spirit had floated through the room, or perhaps even Juno, goddess of marriage, and stroked her on the cheek. Though long
melted into air, into thin air
, she still had enough power in her touch to wake Jenny from her reverie.

Jenny stood up and reached for her bag. Monroe drew his hand, his whole body back, and looked at her with surprise.

She looked down on him as if from a great distance away. “Take care of yourself, Monroe.”

He jumped up and followed. “What's your number, then? Where are you staying? How am I supposed to get a hold of you if I find Frankie?”

She took in his rough, whiskered jaw, the lips she had once kissed and allowed to kiss her, the thick black hair and wide-set blue eyes. She looked hard at his face for one last time, and this time she did not see Frankie or Lilly. She saw only Monroe.

“Here,” she said, fishing in her pocket and handing him the business card of one Skip Arnold, detective with the Seattle Police Department. “Call this number if you find her.”

She left him reading the name on the card and walked out into the bright sunlight.

J
enny drove back toward downtown and found a parking space out in front of a Victorian house on Queen Anne. She sat on the curb with her feet in the gutter and dialed Officer Arnold's number, which she had memorized before handing the card to Monroe.

“Well, Mrs. Alexander, your daughter was definitely on the ferry that arrived last night from Friday Harbor into Pier 69.
The Clipper
, as you'd suspected. Apparently she bought a round-trip ticket, which, in my view, is excellent news.”

Jenny lifted the hem of her T-shirt to wipe her eyes.

“Are you there? Mrs. Alexander?”

“Yes.” Her voice was more of a croak. “I'm here.”

“Okay. Well, that's the good news. The bad news is that she hasn't tried to use the second half of the ticket yet. We can tell that from the security tapes. So, she's still here in the city somewhere.”

“There's a chance . . .” Jenny cleared her throat before continuing, “that my ex-husband might call. I gave him your number. His name is Monroe.”

“He lives here in Seattle?”

“Yes.”

She did not need to see his face to know that he was putting that information together with what she had said to him earlier about there being no other friends or family members in the city.

“Okay,” he said finally. “We'll watch for his call.”

A silver-haired man in a Lexus stopped to look at Jenny's old farm truck before heading slowly down the street. Jenny stood up.

“Oh, Mrs. Alexander? One last thing.”

Jenny's heart leaped. “Yes?”

“Frankie wouldn't have cut her hair, would she?”

“I don't think so. Why?”

“There were some reports of a new girl at one of the squats in the University District, where a lot of the street kids hang out. She had short hair and a scar over her left eye.”

“Frankie doesn't have a scar.”

“I'll call you if we turn up anything else.”

“Thank you.”

The airport was packed with travelers in shorts and flip-flops dragging huge wheeled suitcases behind them. An exhausted-looking woman with a shoulder bag walked toward security leading two small children by the hand. Jenny watched her until she could no longer see her or the kids.

And then suddenly, there was Lilly. One beloved girl in a stream of anonymous travelers, walking fast, the straps of her backpack covering the straps of her tank top, her skirt brushing the ground. She saw Jenny before Jenny could lift her hand or make a move toward her. She wrapped her arms around her mother before Jenny's knees buckled and she could fall.

“We will so totally find her, Mom.” Lilly rested her hand on her mother's shoulder. “I promise.”

Jenny wanted so badly to believe her. They walked arm and arm to the truck. “We can go drop off your stuff and then I don't know if it's a good idea,” Jenny stopped at the light and glanced over at Lilly, “or a really bad one, to walk downtown where a lot of the kids are.” She couldn't say the word
street
. Just kids.

“I thought we were going to go see Monroe.” Lilly, Jenny noticed, did not say going to see
Dad
, or even
my father
. Just
Monroe
.

“I did that already.”

“Mom! You promised.”

“It's done, Lil.” She glanced over at her daughter. She was not surprised to see in Lilly's face a touch of relief. “He hadn't seen her.”