After the wedding party Sabrina treated me in a whole different way. The pushy, ballsy woman morphed into a humble devotee who stared at me awestruck.
When she finally pounced on me in the staffroom at lunchtime, she couldn’t restrain herself another minute. She leaned towards me, her fork hovering in the air above her kale and quinoa salad, and spoke in a confidential whisper, as if we were members of an exclusive club.
“That place was to die for. Right out of a soap opera,” she said, checking that Daphne and her crew hadn’t heard. “And the bathroom. Like a luxury spa. I was afraid to pee in their fricking toilet.”
When I told her Nancy had a spray in the washroom that neutralized poo smell she almost fell off her chair laughing. “But your father-in-law. Sorry to say it, he’s a tool. Said he didn’t remember me from that conference I told you about, when I know for sure I had my knee against his crotch for at least thirty seconds.”
“Can’t say I know him well enough yet to make a judgment,” I said, munching on the smoked salmon bagel Guy had made me. He’d been so sweet since the wedding. “Besides, I’m not married to him, am I?”
“You marry someone, you’re married to their family. Believe me. I know. I’ve turned down a couple of hot, ripped guys because their parents were major assholes.”
“Sometimes you gotta put up with shit to get shit,” I said, pulling a container of fresh raspberries from my lunch bag.
Sabrina lowered her fork and narrowed her eyes. She smiled a slow, knowing grin. “You, Anna Holt, are one materialistic little bitch,” she said, her face cracking into a blinding smile. “But don’t you forget to introduce me to any eligible relatives or friends of the family. Single, widowed, newly divorced, weird, nerdy. Don’t matter. I’m very flexible.”
I smiled, knowing with absolute certainty I had no intention of allowing her near Guy or any member of his family. “Will do,” I said, spearing a plump berry and watching the juice spread like fresh blood onto the white plastic.
Carla still hadn’t shown up at school. Only Dane and two other buddies of his came to class every day. Sabo with the sable-black Mohawk and ripped trench coat held together with safety pins and Martin with the purple tipped hair and tongue piercing.
But Dane was the only one who actually talked to me. The others drifted in, wrote their journals and read a lot.
I asked Dane if he’d seen Carla.
He shook his head. “Nah – but some kid said she might’ve met some guy at the mall who promised to get her into modeling.”
A wave of nausea rolled through my gut. That was the oldest con trick in the book. “Which guy?”
“From the mall. Downtown. He owns a record store. Told her he’d seen her around and thought she’d be great for promo work.”
“You know where?”
“I think it’s Toonz. By the gamer store. But like I said – I haven’t seen her. It’s maybe just a rumor.”
“Thanks, Dane. I appreciate the info.”
He shrugged and took his journal from my desk.
On the way home I drove towards the downtown mall. News about Carla was a swift reminder that even the mall wasn’t a safe place for lost kids. One time, Birdie told me about the guys who hung out there trying to pick up kids nobody cared about. They’d drift up with their crooked smiles, hands stuck into the pockets of their fake leather bomber jackets, paunch straining the front of their polo shirts. They’d offer cigarettes or chocolate and tell little girls how pretty they were and ask them to model for some photo shoot or video.
At first Birdie said she’d gotten all starry-eyed and almost fell for it, thinking it would be the way to launch her dream career as a famous movie actress, but Loni put her straight. She barreled right in between Birdie and the middle-aged loser and told him to go screw your dog instead. For once I said a silent thank you to Loni for protecting Birdie who, left to her own devices, would probably hold out her hand and let any weasel-faced perv lead her away to porn land.
I parked the car in a side street and sat nursing my coffee and gazing at the dark brown buildings linked by glassed-in crosswalks. Some city planner had introduced fancy streetlamps and colored street banners in an effort to brighten the place up, but all I could feel was a sense of brooding darkness. An absence of sunlight and air.
This place was very important to Birdie and me. Bad things had happened here. I knew because I felt that familiar sense of dread squeezing my gut. We’d started coming here when we were still at the group home. A place where we’d begun to feel settled. But as usual, nothing was ever permanent in our lives. Some well-meaning person always moved us on, whether we wanted to go or not. I remember the day they took us away from there. It was a muddy spring afternoon. Dirty, half-thawed snow flecked the sidewalks and I’d skipped school, faking a stomachache.
Tammie, the supervisor didn’t care if I stayed away from school. She was in her final year of nursing and exams loomed on the horizon followed by the prospect of a raunchy spring break week in Fort Lauderdale if she passed. She came around and checked on us every few hours, mostly to see we weren’t shooting up or hanging ourselves from a coat hook. But she was a major pushover. We were into our teens by then, and didn’t give a damn. If we didn’t want to follow orders, we just got right up into her face and lipped off at her. She usually shrugged and backed down.
I was enjoying a rare moment of peace and quiet, lying on the couch in the TV room, sipping tea and polishing off a pack of white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies. The Young and the Restless chugged along at a snail’s pace. I loved that show. The expensive clothes, every room with a giant arrangement of cut flowers, every woman made up to the teeth and sporting chunky, glittering jewelry and rhinestone encrusted earrings that they only took off to answer the phone. People fell in and out of love, plotted, connived, cried, died, got possessed by demons, ran away then returned to big, comfy fortunes. It was all there in glorious color. An hour of pure escapism every day.
I was just nodding off to sleep when the front door burst open and Marian, our social worker of the moment, marched in holding Birdie by the arm. Birdie mouthed I’m fucked to me and I jerked upright, spilling the last of the cookies on the floor.
“Shit,” I said, reaching to catch them.
“Sit,” snapped Marian, pushing Birdie towards the couch and reaching into her black briefcase for her notebook. She flipped through it and directed her pale blue eyes onto me. “Why aren’t you at school?”
“I’m sick,” I said, wondering how the irises of her eyes could be almost the same color as the whites. It gave her face a weird, zombie look.
“Well at least you aren’t out committing felonies like your sister. I guess that’s something in your favor.” She bustled around the place, looking for staff, finally spotting Tammie, hunched over the pile of books at the kitchen table. She marched over leaving Birdie and me alone.
“Pass me one of them macadamia cookies,” said Birdie. “I’m starving.”
“Those,” I said. “And they’ve been on the floor.”
“Don’t care.” She reached for them. “Haven’t eaten since yesterday lunch.”
“Where’d she find you?”
“At the mall. I went with Loni and Duane. Loni jacked some lipgloss in the drug store. Cameras caught her. I wasn’t doing nothing.”
“Anything,” I said, taking a cookie and chewing it slowly.
“’Scuse me. Anything,” she said, sticking her face into mine. “It was an ugly color anyway. Some black color. Squid Ink they called it.”
I pushed her away. “You stink. Why don’t you go take a shower?”
“Bathroom’s gross. I found pubic hairs on the tub.”
“Clean it.”
She shrugged and I tried to concentrate on the TV again.
Nikki and Victor were getting dressed for a big dinner dance. Victor zipped up Nikki’s red satin dress and kissed the back of her neck.
“Horny old perv,” said Birdie, reaching for another cookie.
“He’s what you call suave or distinguished. Doesn’t matter that he’s old. He’s got money and nice clothes and he smells nice. Unlike you.”
“Yech. You can keep him. I like them young and smooth. Old ones are too hairy.”
“What do you know about that?”
She nibbled round the edge of a cookie. “Enough. I kissed Duane and Loni told me about the old ones.”
“What does she know?”
“They pay her to do things. You’d puke if you knew so I’m not gonna tell you.”
I was just about to twist her arm back until she told me, when Marian stormed back in.
“Go upstairs and pack your stuff. I’m taking you out of here. Supervision’s too slack for minors like you.”
Birdie sat back on the couch, mouth filled with cookie, tears flooding her eyes. “I like it here. I have friends.”
Marian’s eyes flared, her lips pressed together and she threw back her shoulders. “You call them friends. Taking you on shoplifting trips, feeding you drugs. It’s in your best interests that you’re removed from their destructive peer influence.”
I hated it when Birdie blubbered. Her nose got all snotty, strings of saliva dripped from her mouth and her face turned red and puffy. She looked way worse because she’d plucked all her eyebrows off. Me, I just sat there mute and still, a frozen lump of ice where my heart once was. I didn’t care about anything. Even Birdie had turned away from me since she met Loni. But I felt a faint tremor of hope. Maybe this move could be a chance to win her back – to rip her away from Loni. I touched her arm.
“She’s right. We have to go,” I whispered. “You can call Loni and Duane from wherever we end up.”
Her thin body still shuddering, she allowed me to lead her up to our room and help her pack our usual garbage bags. Marian patted my head and said, “You’re a calm and positive influence, Anna. I see a bright future for a girl like you.”
I smiled and said nothing.
Marian drove us to a small bungalow on a street about half a mile away from the mall. A foster home run by Donna Inglewood, a single mom in her mid-thirties, gaunt-faced and squinty with a cascade of curly black hair and a headful of manic ambition that would eventually send her to jail.
But Donna introduced me to the real wonders of the mall.
It was a seamless transition from the soap operas I gorged on at the group home. A perfumed world of plenty where everyone smiled as they strolled up and down the gleaming hallways, their eyes filled with the promise of bigger, better and nicer things to buy. I learned that the mall promised everything. Magic, plenty and perfection. Time was erased here. Poverty wiped out. My edginess gone.
Too bad Donna never had enough money to satisfy her shopping habit and Dayton’s just happened to be crawling with undercover security the day she decided to lift a pair of diamond earrings that turned out to be cubic zirconias.
I finally left the safety of my car and entered the mall, but felt no urge to buy more clothes. Thoughts of Donna had dampened my enthusiasm and my closet was full to bursting, the overflow spread to the guest room. Instead I lingered at a jewelry store, picking up a pair of overpriced turquoise earrings and a sleek Scandinavian watch. I followed up with a couple of weightless silk scarves and a pale beige handbag from another store. Soon I was on a roll again, memories of Birdie, Donna, and Carla gradually receding from my mind with the thrill of each new purchase.
Two doors up from there was Essentique Salon. Hair, makeup and nails all in one sparkling beauty palace. Suddenly the idea of a mani-pedi was the most appealing idea in the world, so I grabbed a smoothie from a nearby health food bar then surrendered myself to the sharp chemical cocktail of shampoo, nail polish and hair spray.
As I leaned back and set the massage chair to full back rolling and gliding motion, I vowed to treat myself more often. My mind had been racing lately, buzzing like a fly from one strand of thought to another, and since the wedding I’d barely had time to consider my new status as a married woman.
The tiny, ponytailed girl filed away at my toenails and I closed my eyes, drifting into thoughts of Guy. How he held me at night, one arm wound around my waist, the other cradling the top of my head. How he remembered the way I liked my coffee – three sugars, light on the cream. How he always stopped his work to turn his face and kiss me, even when I interrupted him. How he never pressured me with questions about my past.
I supposed that having such an overbearing father had made him a more sensitive man. One who waited patiently for the right moment to intervene, who never bullied or dominated, who truly listened and never feigned interest.
A warm glow of happiness spread through me and I must’ve drifted off into a half sleep, dreaming of Guy’s lean body silhouetted against our sunlit window, stretching his arms upwards to yawn, his back arched and his head thrown back. Only the dull rasp of the pumice on my heel kept me hovering at the edge of consciousness. Aware enough to hear a sudden wave of giggling. Squinting through lowered eyelashes I spied a knot of girls crowding into the empty spa. Most likely a bachelorette party, I thought, judging by the high intensity shrieks, giggles and chatter. They settled down on the opposite side of the salon and soon the plinking of text messages and the fractured music of YouTube videos accompanied their nonstop babble. My neck muscles tensed up again, the calming effects of the foot massage wasted.
“You wait five minutes for drying,” said the girl and I blinked my eyes open to view my freshly painted tangerine toenails. I thanked her, glanced over at the girls and did a double take. Carla sat in the center of a group of girls at least five to ten years older than her. Her hair was cut, styled and expensively streaked, her face barely recognizable with its mask of thick makeup. The hoodie and jeans were gone. In their place a tight, pink top and designer jeans. I recognized them as mid-priced clothes. Not H&M or Forever 21. I sat forward and tried to catch her eye, but she caught one glance, then turned her head and body away so her back was all I could see. She wanted nothing to do with me or what I represented. I ached to rush over and confront her, but I feared she was already lost. Gone. Moved on.
I felt a rushing in my head that forced me up and out of the chair. I’d been through this with Birdie. Had the same helpless feeling that she was slipping away from me. I threw on my shoes, oblivious to the protests of the tiny manicurist who kept repeating Careful, don’t wreck the polish.
I flung on my jacket, grabbed my purse and packages, then shoved a few twenties at the receptionist who arched her brows at the sizeable tip and tried to offer me change and a receipt, but I was gone. Out the door where I almost mowed down the guy standing directly outside, leaning against the window talking into his phone.
“So sorry,” I gasped. He looked straight through me with eyes that were cool and green against his coffee-colored skin. His full lips curved sweetly. It was a mouth made more kissable by the small mole at the left corner of his upper lip. And the way he kept glancing back into the spa, I was absolutely certain he was waiting for Carla and her friends. That he was the person who’d paid for the beauty treatment.
But something deeper was stirring inside me. I already knew this man. Birdie knew him. Somehow, somewhere, we’d met him in that messed up time fifteen years ago.
He put down his phone, stared at me, then shrugged. “Got a problem?” he grunted. I shook my head and pulled my coat around my shoulders, then ran off in the direction of the parking lot.