The boys were playing a video game on their Xbox when I hauled my suitcase in the front door with one hand, holding Dandy’s leash with the other. Behind me in the hallway, Josh and Edesa were tromping up the stairs to the third floor with Gracie.
“I’m home!” I called out, which was totally unnecessary because Dandy bounced in like he hadn’t seen Paul in a month of Sundays instead of just half an hour.
“Dandy! You’re back!” Paul dropped his game controller and rolled on the living room floor with the yellow dog. “Hey, Mom, how come you brought Dandy back?”
“Well, hello to you, too, kiddo. C’mon, give me a hug and then I’ll tell you. You, too, P.J.! I’ve missed you guys!” I stole hugs from both boys and dropped into the rocking chair. “Lucy sprained her ankle so I said we’d keep Dandy for another day or so. Josh said he left you two doing your homework. Did you—?”
“Done!” the boys chimed in unison, grabbing up their controllers and sending their cursors flying on the TV screen. Dandy flopped on the floor beside Paul, panting happily.
“How was your weekend? Did you have fun with your dad?”
“Uh-huh . . .” Zap! Zap! Zing! “Got him!”
“Yeah, it was good . . . Argh! Where’d those robots come from?” Zing! Pow! Pow!
O-kaaay. Maybe later. I got up and pulled my suitcase down the hall to unpack and think about supper. I was suddenly ravenous. What could I make fast . . . quesadillas?
I stopped in the doorway of my bedroom. Philip’s leather overnight bag sat on the floor beside the bed. I gulped. He had slept in my room. We’d never talked about where he would sleep. I should have! Paul had a bunk bed. He could’ve slept there.
A wave of annoyance lapped at my senses. Why did he leave his bag here? Was he leaving me a message, like I did the time I left a lipstick smudge on a glass in the penthouse kitchen after he’d kicked me out? “You-know-who was here . . .”
I picked up his bag and set it out in the dining room. Okay, Gabby, don’t do the knee-jerk thing. After all, Josh said they went to church— don’t forget that—then to his parents’ house for lunch, and then Mr. B took him home. Philip probably didn’t realize he’d be gone all day.
Besides, it gave me a good excuse to call him and get Philip’s version of the weekend.
I cradled the phone in the crook of my shoulder as I coated a frying pan with cooking spray and tossed in a tortilla, covered it with grated cheese, and topped it with another tortilla. After a few rings, the phone picked up on the other end. “Philip? Hi, it’s Gabby. Wanted to tell you I’m home—”
“Oh, hi, Gabby. Uh, could we talk later? Harry Bentley’s here and we’re in the middle of something.”
What? Mr. Bentley was still there? “Oh. Well, sure, I can call back later. Or you can call me. Just wanted to let you know you left your bag here.”
“Right. Sorry about that. I thought I’d be back to pick it up. I’ll try to get it soon.”
“No, no, don’t bother. I’ll drop it off tomorrow after work. Okay? Bye.”
I took the phone off my shoulder and stared at it. Mr. Bentley was still at Philip’s place? Wasn’t he just going to take him home, make sure he got there safely? What was going on?
I flipped the quesadilla, took it out of the pan, made two more, and cut them into wedges—all the while trying to imagine what in the world Harry and Philip would be talking about. Neither one seemed to think much of the other—though Philip had thanked our ex-doorman/retired cop for sending aid when Fagan had cornered him in the alley a few weeks ago.
I poured milk and set out a jar of salsa to eat with the quesadillas, then yelled, “Boys! Come and get it!” toward the front of the house. No response. I finally marched into the living room and shut off the TV.
“Mo-om! Can’t we eat in here?”
“Nope. Supper’s on the kitchen table and you haven’t said ten words to me since I got home. Now, skedaddle, before I give your supper to Dandy.”
To their credit, the boys cheered up at the sight of food and, once I got them started, talked with their mouths full about the weekend with their father. “Will Nissan came over Friday night.” . . . “He was gonna take Dad to a movie, but he brought a DVD of Pirates of the Caribbean over here instead.” . . . “Yeah, the new one. It was really cool!” . . . “Dad ordered pizza . . .”
Will Nissan again. How come this college kid always seemed to show up on the weekend? He needed to get a life! Though . . . I had to remember he lived with his grandmother. Maybe Philip and the boys were his excuse to get out of the apartment.
I kept prodding. “How did the cross country meet go?”
“Cool! Mr. Josh drove us. It was at the lakefront. Kind of windy. But they let me take Dandy.”
“And guess what? Josh’s dad came to see me run too! We picked him up when we dropped off Gracie with her grandma.”
Yes, that was the plan, for Josh and Denny to hang out with Philip just in case Fagan’s goons followed him with mischief in mind.
“Did Lane Tech qualify for State?”
“Nah. But Dad said I ran great.” The smile in P.J.’s eyes told me that was as good, maybe better, than going to State.
According to the boys, “the guys” hung around the lakefront till mid-afternoon, then went back to the Baxters’ house and grilled steaks in the backyard. I’d seen that backyard. About as big as a postage stamp, but the boys talked about the cookout like it was the greatest thing since the Xbox. Guess it was the company that mattered.
“So you came back here Saturday evening and . . . ?”
Paul shrugged. “Nothin’ much. We just watched TV. Dad talked to Nana and Granddad on the phone. Dad seemed upset about somethin’, but he didn’t say what. But Mr. Josh offered to take us to SouledOut in the morning and invited Dad too.”
“Yeah. Tell you the truth, Mom,” P.J. said, stuffing his mouth with another wedge of quesadilla, “I didn’t think he’d come. But he did. He seemed kinda surprised when we got there. It’s not much like Nana and Granddad’s church back in Petersburg, you know, meeting in that store in the mall and everything. But he was impressed that I got to work the soundboard by myself.”
“That’s great, honey. What did Dad say about, you know, the worship service?”
Both boys shrugged. “I dunno,” Paul said. “Didn’t really say anything. But Josh’s parents invited us back to their house for lunch, and Mr. Harry and Miss Estelle came too. Dad said he didn’t want to impose, but P.J. and me wanted to go, so he kinda gave in. It was fun. We played Monopoly with Dad and Mr. Harry all afternoon.”
“Yeah, but never again with those two.” P.J. shook his head. “They, like, took it so seriously! Like they were playing for real money or something.”
I almost snorted. Out of the mouth of babes. “Who won?” I asked.
“Dad did.” P.J. got up, his plate empty. “Can we go finish our video game now?”
I let them go, but before I took care of the supper dishes, I got the Manna House staff phone list and dialed another number. Delores Enriquez, the nurse who came to the shelter one morning a week, listened to my tale of woe about Lucy’s twisted ankle but interrupted when I said Lucy didn’t want to see a doctor. “Sister Gabby, take that stubborn old woman to the clinic first thing tomorrow morning. Tell her I said so! She needs to have that ankle x-rayed. Broken or sprained, doesn’t matter. It needs to be treated. At her age, an injury like that could set her back permanently. And, Gabby—call an ambulance if she won’t go!”
We didn’t have to call an ambulance to get Lucy to the clinic, but it did take Mabel and me and Estelle, and even Tina Torres and a few of the other shelter residents, to convince her on Monday morning that she needed to see a doctor. I’d brought Dandy to work with me and that cheered Lucy some, and finally she let several of us help her out the door and into Moby Van. It meant missing staff meeting, but Mabel told me to just go!
Unfortunately, a visit to the walk-in clinic at Stroger Hospital, Cook County’s state-of-the-art new hospital, still meant waiting. I found a machine that dispensed coffee and snacks, and finally Lucy’s name was called around two o’clock.
I insisted on going with her while she was processed.
“What is your full name, ma’am?” The intake staffer was politely professional.
“It’s ‘miss,’ not ‘ma’am,’ ” Lucy sniffed. “I ain’t married.”
“All right. Your full name?”
“Lucinda Tucker.”
“Age?”
Lucy frowned. “Kinda lost track.”
“Well, your birthdate then.”
Lucy pursed her lips. Finally she said, “November three, nineteen hunnerd an’ twenty-something . . . um, slips my mind right now. Twenty-six, I think.” My ears perked up. Did she actually give a birth date? I quickly figured in my head. If Lucy hadn’t just pulled a date out of the air, that made her eighty years old. Or would, on November third, which was . . .
Oh my goodness! Lucy’s birthday is next Friday!
I was so amazed at this bit of information that I didn’t pay much attention to the rest of the intake process—blood pressure, temp, and more questions about her general health, raising Lucy’s aggravation—though they didn’t try to put her on the scale because of her injured foot. But I stuck with her when they took her for x-rays, then we waited in the small examining room for the results.
My cell phone rang as the minutes ticked by. Estelle Williams. She knew I was at the clinic with Lucy—was something wrong? I went out into the hallway to take the call.
“Thought you’d want to know,” Estelle said. “Just got a call from Harry. The jury came back with a verdict. Guilty! Matty Fagan’s goin’ away for a long time.”
“Oh, Estelle! That’s such good news. I want to hear all about it—but I just saw one of the radiologists go into Lucy’s room. Talk to you later!”
I closed the phone. Hallelujah! Couldn’t wait to tell Philip. But I hustled back into the small room in time to hear the youngish doctor say, “. . . a severe sprain.” A week on crutches, six weeks with an air cast, and maybe six months for the ankle to fully heal. “Too bad you didn’t break it,” he joked. “Might’ve healed faster.”
Oh great. Real funny.
Lucy’s foot was expertly wrapped and she was given a prescription for pain meds and a pair of crutches to be returned when she came back in a week. We practiced with the crutches down one of the hospital’s wide hallways, though Lucy kept muttering, “How’m I ’sposed to pull my cart around if I gotta hol’ on to these things with both hands?”
She wasn’t the only one with questions about how she was going to manage. Once we got back to Manna House about four thirty and got Lucy resettled in Shepherd’s Fold with her foot elevated, Mabel called an emergency staff meeting. Not many of us were around at that time of day, but Estelle had just finished her sewing class, and she, Angela, and I crowded into Mabel’s office.
“What Lucy needs is a nursing home!” Angela was adamant. “She’s in her seventies, for heaven’s sake! She can’t live out on the street like this.”
“Seventy-nine to be exact,” I put in. “Her birthday’s Friday.”
“See? My point exactly!”
“I don’t think a nursing home will take her, because she’s theoretically ambulatory,” Mabel pointed out. “I guess she could stay here for a week or so if she’ll use the service elevator. Do we have room on the bed list, Angela?”
Angela shook her head. “Full up. Several came in over the weekend while we were on our Fall Getaway—which was great, by the way. Sorry you missed the staff meeting this morning, Gabby. They had to rely on a report from me, and I’m sure I don’t know the half of it. You and Edesa did most of the planning.”
“Yes, we want to hear Gabby’s report,” Mabel said impatiently, “but right now we need to decide what to do about Lucy. Estelle? Any ideas?”
Estelle shook her head. “Wish I could take care of her. Home care for the elderly is what I’m trained for, but that’s presuming the elderly person has a home.” She wagged her head. “Can’t take her in at my place. Stu and I live on the second floor.”
My place? I thought. I’m on the first floor. But I’d have to kick P.J. out of his room, which didn’t seem a good idea at this point. No, my family life was complicated enough as it was. Even the empty apartment at the House of Hope—empty for another five days, that is—was on the second floor. And no elevator.
I sighed. “Well, I can solve one problem. I’ll keep Dandy until Lucy’s off those crutches. If she stays here, I can bring him to work with me like I did before. That ought to keep her somewhat happy, anyway.”
We finally decided Lucy could stay at Manna House, on a couch in Shepherd’s Fold if need be, and give her the first bed that became available. Estelle would take her on as a “patient” in addition to her other work at the shelter, and Delores could give her weekly checkups between clinic visits. Lucy’s precious wire cart would stay under lock and key in Mabel’s office. Dandy would stay with me.
“Oh, one more thing,” I said, stealing Mabel’s usual line. Angela and Estelle both snickered. Guess I wasn’t the only one she used it on. Grinning, I said, “Found out today that Lucy’s birthday is next Friday. What do you say we plan a surprise party for her? I mean, a really big surprise party. It may be the first birthday party she’s had since she ran away from home as a teenager.”
The others thought that was a great idea.
“Banana cake,” I added. “Her birthday cake has to be banana. She says it’s her favorite.”
But I was in the car an hour later on the way to Richmond Towers with Philip’s leather bag—after taking Paul and Dandy home—when something I’d said in Mabel’s office niggled at my brain.
“. . . since she ran away from home as a teenager.”
Where had I heard that recently? Not from Lucy. Somebody else . . .