LEXI BLUM

The telephone call from her mother’s new friend Gloria—whoever she was, and whatever she wanted—came about ten thirty Saturday evening. Lexi had put her phone on vibrate so the call wouldn’t wake her father.

“This is Lexi.”

“I’m Gloria. Your mother’s friend. She asked me to call.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s fine. But she needs a warm place to sleep tonight.”

Lexi interrupted her. “She can stay at my apartment.”

“Not a good idea,” Gloria said. “We don’t know if the police are watching your place and my, well, my place isn’t safe either.”

Lexi wondered about that. If she had never heard of this Gloria friend, why would the police know about her and be keeping an eye on her house too? “What can I do? How can I help?”

“Do you have the blankets ready? And pillows, sleeping bags?”

“Yes. Two garbage bags full, in my car.”

“Don’t bring your car,” Gloria said. “Leave it parked at your parents’ house. Grab the warm stuff and plenty of hot tea and meet us at the Haskell Building. The entrance in back, near the loading dock.”

“Haskell? Why?” Lexi asked.

Gloria hung up.

Lexi heated water and added tea bags. Impulsively, she rummaged in the closet for the jewelry box of things her mother never wore but couldn’t bear to part with and found the locket. Lexi had loved to play with it as a child, opening and closing the minute mechanism, removing and replacing the curls. Her mother never told her whose hair was in the tarnished silver heart, just said it belonged to a dear friend from childhood. But now Lexi understood that it must be hers. Harriet’s.

She listened at her father’s bedroom door. Snores. Then she slipped out the back door of Number Two Azalea Court carrying two thermoses and a flashlight. No sign of surveillance around the circle, but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t watching. Keeping to the shadows at the edge of the road, she grabbed the garbage bags from her car and hurried down Prince Street to the Haskell Building. Brick, institutional, and cold, it was not a welcoming place to spend the night. Even with the industrial-sized light, the back of the building was dark and shadowy. She felt eyes on the back of her head as she walked toward the double metal doors.

Her mother and another woman stood in the shadows at the foot of the loading dock. The other woman held a yellow cat wrapped in a ratty comforter. Lexi hugged her mother hard, struggling to hold in the sobs. How long had it been since she really hugged Iris? How long since she thought of her as a mother, as a woman? Lexi had always wished that her mother had been warmer, or more involved, or more independent, or more fierce? But she had almost lost this imperfect mother and now she couldn’t let her go.

“It’s all right,” Iris said, patting Lexi’s shoulder. Iris pulled back and offered her daughter a slightly soiled hanky. Who still used handkerchiefs? Lexi dabbed her eyes and cheeks.

“This is my friend Gloria,” her mother said, and Lexi turned to the other shape in the shadow. The friend looked about Lexi’s own age. Gloria smiled and put her finger to her lips.

“This is Canary,” she whispered, scratching the cat behind the ears.

Who was going to hear us? Lexi wondered. No one was around, although she still had the sensation of being watched. She tried to shake off the feeling. Just nerves.

“Let’s get inside before someone sees us.” Gloria shifted the cat in her arms and pulled a key from her pocket.

“How did you get a key?” Lexi asked.

“The hospital wasn’t very careful about getting keys back from employees when they left,” Gloria said. “A guy I know used to work here.”

The door was heavy, opening with reluctance and creaking on rusty hinges. Once inside the dark hallway, Gloria switched on a flashlight, and Lexi did the same.

Lexi hadn’t been inside since the state hospital was closed, over a quarter-century earlier. They were on the first floor, in the wing where the “female elderly chronics” were once housed. The old chest-high half walls now extended to the ceiling, blocking their view into those rooms, but Lexi remembered them clearly from her unauthorized visits as a child and teenager. The walls were tiled, easy to hose down the bodily fluids that seeped or spewed from miserable women with no privacy and no power. Lexi grabbed her mother’s hand, glad that Iris couldn’t see through the walls into those rooms, just like the one where her friend Harriet might have been kept.

“Where are we going?” Lexi asked.

“The basement,” Gloria said.