Orphan Train (11 page)
Authors: Christina Baker Kline
Vivian spreads a hand across her chest, her pink-tinged fingernails as delicate seeming as a baby’s. “I can tell that you feel things. Deeply.”
Molly makes a face.
Vivian presses the book into Molly’s hand. “No doubt you’ll find this old-fashioned and sentimental, but I want you to have it.”
“You’re giving it to me?”
“Why not?”
To her surprise Molly feels a lump in her throat. She swallows, pushing it down. How ridiculous—an old lady gives her a moldy book she has no use for, and she chokes up. She must be getting her period.
She fights to keep her expression neutral. “Well, thanks,” she says nonchalantly. “But does this mean I have to read it?”
“Absolutely. There will be a quiz,” Vivian says.
For a while they work in near silence, Molly holding up an item—a sky-blue cardigan with stained and yellowed flowers, a brown dress with several missing buttons, a periwinkle scarf and one matching mitten—and Vivian sighing, “I suppose there’s no reason to keep that,” then inevitably adding, “Let’s put it in the ‘maybe’ pile.” At one point, apropos of nothing, Vivian says, “So where is that mother of yours, anyway?”
Molly has gotten used to this kind of non sequitur. Vivian tends to pick up discussions they started a few days earlier right where they left off, as if it’s perfectly natural to do so.
“Oh, who knows.” She’s just opened a box that, to her delight, looks easy to dispose of—dozens of dusty store ledgers from the 1940s and ’50s. Surely Vivian has no reason to hang on to them. “These can go, don’t you think?” she says, holding up a slim black book.
Vivian takes it from her and flips through it. “Well . . .” Her voice trails off. She looks up. “Have you looked for her?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Molly gives Vivian a sharp look. She’s not used to people asking such blunt questions—asking any questions at all, really. The only other person who speaks this bluntly to her is Lori the social worker, and she already knows the details of her story. (And anyway, Lori doesn’t ask “why” questions. She’s only interested in cause, effect, and a lecture.) But Molly can’t snap at Vivian, who has, after all, given her a get-out-of-jail-free card. If “free” means fifty hours of pointed questions. She brushes the hair out of her eyes. “I haven’t looked for her because I don’t care.”
“Really.”
“Really.”
“You’re not curious at all.”
“Nope.”
“I’m not sure I believe that.”
Molly shrugs.
“Hmm. Because actually, you seem kind of . . . angry.”
“I’m not angry. I just don’t care.” Molly lifts a stack of ledgers out of the box and thumps it on the floor. “Can we recycle these?”
Vivian pats her hand. “I think maybe I’ll hang on to this box,” she says, as if she hasn’t said that about everything they’ve gone through so far.
“S
HE
’
S ALL UP IN MY BUSINESS
!” M
OLLY SAYS
,
BURYING HER FACE IN
Jack’s neck. They’re in his Saturn, and she’s straddling him in the pushed-back front seat.
Laughing, his stubble rough against her cheek, he says, “What do you mean?” He slips his hands under her shirt and strokes her ribs with his fingers.
“That tickles,” she says, squirming.
“I like it when you move like that.”
She kisses his neck, the dark patch on his chin, the corner of his lip, a thick eyebrow, and he pulls her closer, running his hands up her sides and under her small breasts, cupping them.
“I don’t know a damn thing about her life—not that I care! But she expects me to tell her everything about mine.”
“Oh, come on, what can it hurt? If she knows a little more about you, maybe she’s nicer to you. Maybe the hours go a little faster. She’s probably lonely. Just wants someone to talk to.”
Molly screws up her face.
“Try a little tenderness,” Jack croons.
She sighs. “I don’t need to entertain her with stories about my shitty life. We can’t all be rich as hell and live in a mansion.”
He kisses her shoulder. “So turn it around. Ask her questions.”
“Do I care?” She sighs, tracing her finger along his ear until he turns his head and bites it, takes it in his mouth.
He reaches down and grabs the lever, and the seat falls back with a jolt. Molly lands sloppily on top of him and they both start to laugh. Sliding over to make room for her in the bucket seat, Jack says, “Just do what it takes to get those hours over with, right?” Turning sideways, he runs his fingers along the waistband of her black leggings. “If you can’t stick it out, I might have to figure out a way to go to juvie with you. And that would suck for both of us.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad to me.”
Pushing her waistband down over her hip, he says, “That’s what I’m looking for.” He traces the inky black lines of the turtle on her hip. Its shell is a pointy oval, bisected at an angle, like a shield with a daisy on one side and a tribal flourish on the other, its flippers extending in pointy arcs. “What’s this little guy’s name again?”
“It doesn’t have a name.”
Leaning down and kissing her hip, he says, “I’m going to call him Carlos.”
“Why?”
“He looks like a Carlos. Right? See his little head? He’s kind of wagging it, like ‘What’s up?’ Hey, Carlos,” he says in a Dominican-accented falsetto, tapping the turtle with his index finger. “What’s happening, man?”
“It’s not a Carlos. It’s an Indian symbol,” she says, a little irritated, pushing his hand away.
“Oh, come on, admit it—you were drunk and got this random-ass turtle. It could just as easily have been a heart dripping blood or some fake Chinese words.”
“That’s not true! Turtles mean something very specific in my culture.”
“Oh yeah, warrior princess?” he says. “Like what?”
“Turtles carry their homes on their backs.” Running her finger over the tattoo, she tells him what her dad told her: “They’re exposed and hidden at the same time. They’re a symbol of strength and perseverance.”
“That’s very deep.”
“You know why? Because I’m very deep.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” she says, kissing him on the mouth. “Actually, I did it because when we lived on Indian Island we had this turtle named Shelly.”
“Hah, Shelly. I get it.”
“Yup. Anyway, I don’t know what happened to it.”
Jack curls his hand around her hip bone. “I’m sure it’s fine,” he says. “Don’t turtles live, like, a hundred years?”
“Not in a tank with no one to feed them they don’t.”
He doesn’t say anything, just puts his arm around her shoulder and kisses her hair.
She settles in beside him on the bucket seat. The windshield is fogged and the night is dark, and in Jack’s hard-domed little Saturn she feels cocooned, protected. Yeah, that’s right. Like a turtle in a shell.
No one comes to the door when Molly rings the buzzer. The house is quiet.
She looks at her phone: 9:45
A.M
. It’s a teacher enrichment day and there’s no school, so she figured, why not knock out some hours?
Molly rubs her arms and tries to decide what to do. It’s an unseasonably cool and misty morning, and she forgot to bring a sweater. She took the Island Explorer, the free bus that makes a continuous loop of the island, and got off at the closest stop to Vivian’s, about a ten-minute walk. If no one’s home, she’ll have to go back to the stop and wait for the next bus, which could take a while. But despite the goose bumps, Molly has always liked days like this. The stark gray sky and bare tree limbs feel more suited to her than the uncomplicated promise of sunny spring days.
In the little notebook she carries around, Molly has carefully recorded her time: four hours one day, two the next. Twenty-three so far. She made an Excel spreadsheet on her laptop that lays it all out. Jack would laugh if he knew, but she’s been in the system long enough to understand that it all comes down to documentation. Get your papers in order, with the right signatures and record keeping, and the charges will be dropped, money released, whatever. If you’re disorganized, you risk losing everything.
Molly figures she can kill at least five hours today. That’ll be twenty-eight, and she’ll be more than half finished.
She rings the bell again, cups her hands against the glass to peer into the dim hallway. Trying the doorknob, she finds that it turns and the door opens.
“Hello?” she says as she steps inside, and, when she gets no response, tries again, a bit louder, as she walks down the hall.
Yesterday, before she left, Molly told Vivian that she’d be coming early today, but she hadn’t given a time. Now, standing in the living room with the shades drawn, she wonders if she should leave. The old house is full of noises. Its pine floors creak, windowpanes rattle, flies buzz near the ceiling, curtains flap. Without the distraction of human voices, Molly imagines she can hear sounds in other rooms: bedsprings groaning, faucets dripping, fluorescent lights humming, pull chains rattling.
She takes a moment to look around—at the ornate mantelpiece above the fireplace, the decorated oak moldings and brass chandelier. Out of the four large windows facing the water she can see the sine curve of the coastline, the serrated firs in the distance, the glittery amethyst sea. The room smells of old books and last night’s fire and, faintly, something savory from the kitchen—it’s Friday; Terry must be cooking for the weekend.
Molly is gazing at the old hardcovers on the tall bookshelves when the door to the kitchen opens and Terry bustles in.
Molly turns. “Hi there.”
“Ack!” Terry shrieks, clutching the rag she’s holding to her chest. “You scared the hell out of me! What are you doing here?”
“Umm, well,” Molly stammers, beginning to wonder the same thing, “I rang the buzzer a few times and then I just let myself in.”
“Vivian knew you were coming?”
Did she? “I’m not sure that we settled on an exact—”
Terry narrows her eyes and frowns. “You can’t just show up when you feel like it. She’s not available any old time.”
“I know,” Molly says, her face warming. “I’m sorry.”
“Vivian would never have agreed to start this early. She has a routine. Gets up at eight or nine, comes downstairs at ten.”
“I thought old people got up early,” Molly mumbles.
“Not all old people.” Terry puts her hands on her hips. “But that’s not the point. You broke in.”
“Well, I didn’t—”
Sighing, Terry says, “Jack may have told you I wasn’t crazy about this idea. About you doing your hours this way.”
Molly nods. Here comes the lecture.
“He went out on a limb for you, don’t ask me why.”
“I know, and I appreciate it.” Molly is aware that it’s when she’s defensive that she gets in trouble. But she can’t resist saying, “And I hope I’m proving worthy of that trust.”
“Not by showing up unannounced like this, you’re not.”
All right, she deserved that. What was it the teacher in her Legal Issues class said the other day? Never bring up a point you don’t have an answer for.
“And another thing,” Terry continues. “I was in the attic this morning. I can’t tell what you’re doing up there.”
Molly bounces on the balls of her feet, pissed that she’s being called out for this thing she can’t control and even more pissed at herself for not convincing Vivian to get rid of things. Of course it looks to Terry like Molly is just twiddling her thumbs, letting the time slide like a government worker punching a clock.
“Vivian doesn’t want to get rid of anything,” she says. “I’m cleaning out the boxes and labeling them.”
“Let me give you some advice,” Terry says. “Vivian is torn between her heart”—and here she again holds the wadded-up rag to her heart—“and her head.” As if Molly might not make the connection, she moves the rag to her head. “Letting go of her stuff is like saying good-bye to her life. And that’s tough for anybody to do. So your job is to make her. Because I promise you this: I will not be happy if you spend fifty hours up there shuffling things around with nothing to show for it. I love Jack, but . . .” She shakes her head. “Honestly, enough is enough.” At this point Terry seems to be talking to herself, or possibly to Jack, and there’s little Molly can do but bite her lip and nod to show she gets it.
After Terry grudgingly allows that it might actually be a good idea to get going earlier today, and that if Vivian doesn’t show up in half an hour maybe she’ll go up and rouse her, she tells Molly to make herself at home; she has work to do. “You’ve got something to occupy yourself with, right?” she says before heading back to the kitchen.
The book Vivian gave Molly is in her backpack. She hasn’t bothered to crack it yet, mainly because it seems like homework for a job that’s already punishment, but also because she’s rereading
Jane Eyre
for English class (ironically, the teacher, Mrs. Tate, handed out school-issued copies the week after Molly tried to pilfer it) and that book is huge. It’s always a shock to the system to reenter it; just to read a chapter she finds she has to slow down her breathing and go into a trance, like a hibernating bear. All her classmates are complaining about it—Brontë’s protracted digressions about human nature, the subplots about Jane’s friends at Lowood School, the long-winded, “unrealistic” dialogue. “Why can’t she just tell the freaking story?” Tyler Baldwin grumbled in class. “I fall asleep every time I start to read it. What’s that called, narcolopsy?”
This complaint evinced a chorus of agreement, but Molly was silent. And Mrs. Tate—on alert, no doubt, for the slightest spark in the damp woodpile of her class—noticed.
“So what do
you
think, Molly?”
Molly shrugged, not wanting to appear overeager. “I like the book.”
“What do you like about it?”
“I don’t know. I just like it.”
“What’s your favorite part?”
Feeling the eyes of the class on her, Molly shrank a little in her chair. “I don’t know.”
“It’s just a boring romance novel,” Tyler said.
“No, it isn’t,” she blurted.
“Why not?” Mrs. Tate pressed.
“Because . . .” She thought for a moment. “Jane’s kind of an outlaw. She’s passionate and determined and says exactly what she thinks.”
