Little Mercies (17 page)

Chapter 26

L
ater that afternoon, even after Ellen and her husband had returned from the courthouse to their home, where Maudene was watching Lucas and Leah, Jenny knew that bad things were still happening. First, it was not finding her grandmother at the house on Hickory Street and then Ellen getting arrested. But Jenny knew there was more just around the corner. Jenny always knew when her father was going to lose a job, lose an apartment, lose a friend-girl, even before he did. When her father was working at a restaurant that specialized in chicken wings in a staggering array of flavors, he would bring home bags of frozen wings that he stuffed into an ancient deep freezer that he bought for fifteen dollars. The freezer took up most of the living room and each night, when her father came home from work, he would retrieve a bag of wings from the freezer for their supper. Jenny knew there was going to be trouble when each night her father kept bringing home the wings along with other frozen appetizers: mozzarella sticks, onion rings, French fries. People started showing up at their apartment with small wads of cash that they would hand to her father, and in return he would send them on their way with a pack of frozen teriyaki chicken wings and fried pickles.

One day while walking home from the bus stop, Jenny dug some coins out of her backpack and stopped at a convenience store and bought a newspaper. Jenny wasn’t much of a reader, but she knew that newspapers had sections just for people looking for jobs, and sooner rather than later Billy would be looking for a new job. Sure enough, when she arrived home, paper in hand, her father was there. “Time for a new adventure, Jenny Penny,” he proclaimed. She handed him the newspaper, went into the bathroom and slammed the door.

Even though Maudene didn’t tell her much about what was happening, Jenny could tell by the look on Maudene’s face that she was thinking hard about all that had been going on. Maudene also had to be thinking about what she was going to do with Jenny now that there was no grandmother to give her to. She couldn’t keep hauling Jenny around town in her little yellow car and letting her stay in the white bedroom forever. Maybe Maudene was going to call the police or Ruth from DHS again and let someone else worry about what happened to her. Jenny couldn’t really blame her.

Jenny knew enough to fade into the background and stay quiet. She’d learned how to do that with her mother’s boyfriend, with nosy teachers, with her father’s friend-girls.

Now they were just waiting—and waiting was the worst. When you were waiting for something, Jenny thought, your mind always went to the bad.

“Are you coming home with us?” Maudene asked Ellen as she pulled her car keys from her purse.

“No, no.” Ellen shook her head. “We’re staying right here tonight. We all need to sleep in our own beds tonight.”

“Are you sure?” Maudene asked. “It’s no bother, is it, Jenny?”

Jenny looked up in surprise at being consulted. Maybe Maudene wasn’t going to dump her just yet. “No, it doesn’t bother me a bit.” She cast a glance over at Leah, whose eyes were fixed on her mother.

“Thanks, Mom. But I think we need to just stay home. Come on, guys, give Grandma a hug and say goodbye.” Leah and Lucas both stood and gave their grandmother a perfunctory hug. Jenny couldn’t help notice the hurt in Maudene’s face. Maybe it wasn’t hurt exactly, maybe more it was the feeling you get when you realize you aren’t really needed. Jenny knew what that felt like.

Before she could stop herself, Jenny said, “Maudene and I can make supper for you all and bring it over tonight.” Everyone’s eyes swung toward Jenny who self-consciously tried to tuck her t-shirt into her shorts.

Ellen looked over at Maudene, who nodded in agreement. “That would be really, really nice. Thanks, Jenny.” Jenny blushed and fingered her French braid. “Thanks, Mom,” Ellen said, drawing her mother into a tight hug.

Once they were outside Ellen’s home and again sitting in the car, Jenny asked, “What do you think we should make?”

“Comfort food,” Maudene said and smiled without hesitation as she pulled away from the curb.

They drove in silence for several minutes until Jenny spoke. “What’s comfort food?” Jenny asked, wrinkling up her nose.

“It’s food that makes you forget what you’re so worried about, at least for a while.” At Jenny’s perplexed expression, Maudene went on. “Food that tastes so good that all your concentration goes into eating. Like fried chicken and mashed potatoes. That’s comfort food.”

“Couldn’t we just go to KFC and pick up a bucket?” Jenny asked, running her fingers up and down the ridges of her French braid. She wondered if the braid would come undone during the night and if Maudene would braid it again for her in the morning.

“KFC has its place,” Maudene said sagely, “but comfort food is best if it’s made from scratch.”

“Does it have to be chicken, can’t it be something else?” Jenny asked, moving her face close to the vent pushing out cool air.

“Sure,” Maudene said as she turned onto her street. “It just has to be homemade and taste really good. We’ll read through some cookbooks and you can pick out what we should make.”

Anxiety pinched at Jenny, just as it did each time she was asked to read something that might be too hard for her, but quickly eased after they arrived at the house and Maudene set three large cookbooks in front of Jenny. She was relieved to see that the cookbooks were filled with photographs of delicious, brightly colored food, lots of numbers. There were lots of words, but she just asked Maudene and she told her what they said. Jenny finally settled on a menu consisting of pot roast, garlic mashed potatoes, buttered corn and rhubarb crisp, and they spent the next few hours grocery shopping, slicing, measuring and stirring.

“Whew,” Maudene said, looking around at the piles of pots and pans, the dirtied spoons and knives, the countertops splattered with oil and dusted flour and brown sugar.

“I’m sorry.” Jenny hastily reached for a damp rag and began scrubbing at the counter.

Maudene laughed. “No sorries needed. This is what a kitchen is supposed to look like when you’re making comfort food.” She took off her glasses and rubbed at her eyes.

“I’ll clean up. I do it all the time for my dad,” Jenny said automatically.

“Nonsense.” Maudene waved her hand dismissively. “We’ll do it together.”

“No, really, I want to. I
like
cleaning up,” Jenny insisted. She glanced slyly at Maudene out of the corner of her eye. “I promise not to steal anything.”

“Silly girl,” Maudene said, smiling fondly down at her. “I’m tired though. If you don’t mind I will go and lie down for a bit. And when I get up, I’m going to do
you
a favor.”

“What kind of favor?” Jenny paused in her scrubbing, not accustomed to people offering such random kindnesses.

“Let’s just say, you and Dolly are going to become friends once and for all.”

Jenny scowled. “That doesn’t sound like much of a favor.”

“Trust me,” Maudene said before exiting the kitchen. And Jenny, to her surprise, found that she did.

Jenny tackled the pots and pans first, scraped carrot and potato peels into the garbage and used hot soapy water and a long-handled scrub brush to wash away the sticky bits. For a brief moment she guiltily thought of Connie, sitting by her phone back in Benton, waiting for Jenny to call her back. She hoped she wasn’t too worried about her and vowed to call her a little bit later.

Jenny heard a tapping noise and first thought it was Dolly’s toenails clacking against the hardwood floors. The noise became more insistent and she realized someone was knocking at the front door. She wiped her wet hands on a dish towel and, feeling very grown up, peeked through the curtains to see who was there. She found Ellen, Leah and Lucas on the front porch. Ellen looked scared, casting furtive looks over her shoulder and Jenny quickly opened the door.

“We had to leave,” Lucas said excitedly. “The TV people came. They were all over! We snuck out the back and ended up going over to Kelly’s house,” he added.

“Jenny, where’s my mom?” Ellen asked, looking around.

“She’s upstairs. Sleeping,” Jenny said. “Do you want me to go get her?”

Leah, near tears, shook her head. “Why are you even still here?” she spat at Jenny, and stomped out of the room and into the kitchen.

Jenny looked down at the floor, her face burning with embarrassment.

Ellen paced around the living room, pausing only to peer through the sheers. “She’s just upset about her sister and the reporters, Jenny. She doesn’t mean it. I think we are going to have to stay here, at least for tonight.”

Jenny had joined Ellen at the window, keeping an eye out for reporters, when the house phone rang. Absentmindedly, Ellen answered. She was silent for a moment and then held the phone out toward Jenny.

“It’s for you,” Ellen said, unable to keep the surprise from her voice. “It’s your father.”

Chapter 27

I
decide to give Jenny some privacy to talk to her father, climb the stairs and pause outside my brothers’ old bedroom, the one that my mother redesigned after they had grown up and moved away. It was her respite during my father’s illness, the only place my mother could get any sleep after spending long days tending to my father’s many needs. I push open the door and see that this is the room where Jenny is staying. Small plastic figurines line the dresser and there is a neatly folded pile of clothes belonging to a little girl sitting on a chair. The bed is made but rumpled in places. I walk over to straighten one of the pillows leaning askew at the head of the bed and find deposited beneath it a box of chocolate-covered snack cakes. I shake my head at the strange little girl who my mother has taken into her home and return the box to its hiding spot. On a hunch, I open the bedside table and find it filled with bags of chips and cookies. I get down on my knees, lift the bed skirt, peer beneath the bed and pull out several bars of baking chocolate and a box of cereal. Jenny’s a food hoarder. I’ve seen it before. Children who don’t get enough to eat will gather and hide food, much like a squirrel does when preparing for winter. I replace Jenny’s stash, move to the hallway and vow to have a serious talk with my mother about exactly what’s going on with this little girl.

I tap quietly on my mother’s bedroom door. There is no response and I figure she must be sleeping. I turn to leave, then stop. Never have I remembered needing my mother as much as I do right now. Growing up she was one of those mothers who moved along in the wake of her family, following behind quietly, always there, watchful, but never really a participant. Our dad was the one who got down on the ground to wrestle with us, play touch football in the yard, the one who yelled and delegated, the one who grounded us and took the car keys away. But my mother was the one I went to when I fell down and scraped my knee, failed a test, and when I came home in tears because someone had been inexplicably cruel to me. She didn’t judge, she rarely scolded. She listened, hugged and always left me with a few words that I never realized was advice until later.
“I guess that tree wasn’t meant to be climbed
.
I wonder what Mr. Hansen would say if you asked him to go over the test with you? When someone is cruel, it usually means that something hard and horrible is going on in their own lives.”

I know I should let my mother sleep, but instead, I quietly tiptoe into the darkened room. She is lying on her side beneath the covers, her face slack in sleep, one hand curled beneath her chin in the same way that Lucas does when he sleeps. She looks so old and I try not to think about how many days I might have left with her.

“It’s okay, I’m awake,” my mother says blearily, rising to one elbow. “Is everything okay?”

I slip off my shoes and ease myself next to her on the bed and lie down. I close my eyes, willing my brain to stop whirring, but it won’t. “I’m sorry, Mom,” I say. “I’m sorry you have to be part of this whole mess.”

“Life can be a mess,” she says simply.

“There are reporters outside my house. They all of a sudden showed up in droves. They must have heard that I turned myself in this morning. They were talking to the neighbors.” My voice rises with the improbability of it all.

“Did they see you?” my mother asks, her voice still gravelly with sleep.

“I don’t think so. We went out the back.” I put my face in my hands. It is all feeling like way too much. Avery, the protection order, being arrested and now the press. “I have never been so humiliated in my life. Jail was horrible. I was strip-searched. Can you believe it? Exactly what do they think I was going to smuggle into jail with me?” My mother has no answer for this. “What am I going to do? What if I end up having to go to jail?” I cover my face with a pillow in shame.

I expect my mother to just pat my hand and tell me that things have a way of working out and I’ll just have to trust that everything is going to be okay. But she doesn’t. She sits up, plumps her pillow and leans back against the headboard. “You’re already doing it. You’ve got the best lawyer and you’re fighting. You keep fighting so you can be with Avery.”

We sit in silence for a few moments and I wonder if she has fallen asleep again, but then she speaks. “You’ll stay with us for as long as you need to. And if the reporters find us here, we’ll go to a hotel.”

I notice that my mother used the collective
us
in her invitation. Us being she and Jenny, I assume. “Jenny’s on the phone with her father. What exactly is going on here? I thought that Ruth would have this taken care of by now.”

“I haven’t told you the full story about Jenny,” she says contritely, as if she’s a child caught in a lie.

“She’s a runaway, isn’t she?” I say. “I knew it.”

“No.” My mother shakes her head back and forth, causing the headboard to rattle. “It’s much more complicated than that.” She goes on to describe once again how she met Jenny and, in my mind, the dubious story of how she ended up in Cedar City.

“You’ve told me this already. Jenny gets separated from her father, takes a bus across Nebraska and Iowa by herself, gets off in Cedar City to reunite with a grandmother she never met, and you meet her at the Happy Pancake.” We sit in silence for a moment. “I’m still not sure how she ended up in your extra bedroom.” I’m trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice, but it’s there and my mother hears it, too.

“I know I should have called someone right away, but I really thought I would be able to find her grandmother.” I can’t help smiling. My mother has always taken in strays. Stray cats and dogs that would stay with us until my father had had enough and insisted she find homes for them. Even the neighbors’ kids would find reasons to come over to our house to hang out, and while I’d like to think it was due to my winning personality, I know my mother’s bottomless cookie jar and kindness played a big part. “I tried to handle it without worrying you,” she says. “Ruth called and is planning on taking Jenny back to Benton next Monday. She’ll be in foster care until they work things out with her father, but at least she’ll be near him.”

“That’s good news. I would think Jenny would be happy to be back in the same town with her dad,” I say, glad that at least one of our lives is starting to get settled.

“For some reason Jenny is deathly afraid of going into a foster care,” my mother explains. “I’m afraid to tell her.”

“I think it’s for the best. Ruth will be able to find Jenny a good foster home, at least until they figure out where her family is.”

“Jenny trusts me, though,” Maudene says sadly.

“I don’t think we have much of a choice.” I shake my head. “What a mess.”

“There’s more,” my mother says guiltily, and I groan. “When I took Jenny to the address we had for her grandmother, I left her in the car while I went to the door. A woman answered, and I asked if a Margie Flanagan lived there. She said no, Margie had passed about a year ago.”

“Okay, Jenny’s grandmother died and her father is in jail. So we have to find out if there are any other relatives we can find. I’m sure Ruth can do that for us.”

“No, no,” my mother says, her voice tinged with impatience. “I’m not finished. The woman who answered the door was the spitting image of Jenny. She told me that Margie Flanagan was her mother. That woman is Jenny’s mother, I know it. And Ellen, I saw pictures of what that woman did to Jenny.” My mother’s voice broke slightly and she continued with a steely resolve that I don’t think I’ve heard from her. “Jenny cannot know that her mother is living in this town and that woman cannot know that Jenny is here.”