Zoe stands in the kitchen, eyeing her cell phone on the counter. She jumps when I come bumbling through the door, as if caught red-handed doing something wrong. She ebbs slowly away, one step at a time, before Heidi can see her proximity to the phone.
Heidi greets me with, “I thought you were going to be home sooner.” She barely raises her eyes from the baby, who she inundates with all sorts of shrill baby talk and overblown facial expressions, but for me, nothing.
It’s nearly seven o’clock.
“Can I speak to you, Heidi?” I ask as I hang a jacket on the hook by the door. Her eyes graze mine as she lifts that baby from the floor and hands her to the girl who handles her so maladroitly that for a split second I think the baby may fall. And then that stupid woolly mammoth is on the TV, Aloysius Snuffleupagus, and the girl stares, dumbstruck, and it occurs to me that Zoe hasn’t watched Sesame Street since she was about two years old.
Heidi follows me into the bedroom, her feet light as air on the hardwood floors. Mine, in contrast, are heavy, clobbering the floor as if I have something to prove. The cats scamper away, so I won’t step on their tails, and hide under the bed. While I change out of my work shirt and into a white and maroon sweatshirt—my old alma mater, of course, Go, Phoenix, go!—I tell her about the road show. About how I’ll be in New York for a day or two, followed by Denver for a few days. How I’m leaving in the morning.
I’m expecting a lashing—fingers wagging and eyes rolling—some dismissive comment about Cassidy Knudsen, a grilling about whether or not that floozy will accompany me on this trip...and yet, none of it comes.
She’s quiet for a split second, and then Heidi simply shrugs her shoulders and says, “Okay,” and goes so far as to heave the laundry basket downstairs to make sure I have plenty of clean undies for my trip.
I should be concerned. I know that. But not being reprimanded like a ten-year-old boy is pure bliss.
I pack. I warm up leftover pizza for dinner while Heidi gathers quarters and excuses herself to throw the laundry in the dryer. Zoe is in her bedroom, working on earth science, or so she claims. But I see her instead, on her bed, with that yellow notebook across her lap. The one where she keeps her intimate thoughts about how her father’s a doofus, her mother loony. Or maybe in that notebook she writes about Austin, or maybe Willow. How would I know? Maybe, just maybe, she’s a closet poet, filling the pages with limericks and odes.
In the room with Willow and me, there’s nothing but dead air.
And baby noises: coos and squeals and grunts and such.
I find myself staring at the palms of her hands for evidence of a tattoo, the butterfly with its black and yellow wings. I wonder: if she’d had it removed, would there be a scar? Bleached out skin? Leftover remnants of the tattoo?
But on her hands there is nothing, nada. And yet there are those earrings, the very same earrings as in the Twitter profile. How could that be?
I peek to make sure Willow isn’t paying attention, and then I check my Twitter account stealthily to see if @LostWithoutU ever responded to my Tweet. No such luck. But I have eight new followers, a fact that I let go to my head.
How would Willow ever reply, I wonder, if she doesn’t have access to a computer? Does she have access to a computer? I think about that nasty old suitcase she lugged into our home, the one perched in the corner of my office, the leather cracked and brittle, losing shape. Is there a laptop inside, some smartphone with Wi-Fi where she could respond to tweets? I’ve never seen her on it, never heard it ring.
The girl has enough trouble handling a remote control. I find it hard to believe she’s got a smartphone or a computer. But I don’t know. Mine and Heidi’s are both password protected; there’s no way she’s getting on them at night.
The girl is staring lifelessly at the TV. I’ve changed the channel to the news. A roundup of the day’s baseball games. It’s opening day. I’m guessing she doesn’t give a hoot about baseball, but she stares at the TV so she doesn’t have to talk to me. She sits far away, as far as she can get, hugging the far end of the sofa though I’m at the kitchen table, a good ten feet away or more. She sips from a glass of water and I watch the way her hand, the water, how they shake, ripples forming on the surface of the glass.
“Where are you from anyway?” I ask. I hate the silence. But more than that, I’m reminded that I’m the only one in this house intent on figuring this girl out. And this—two minutes or so alone with Willow, my interrogation uninterrupted by Heidi’s watchful eye and regulations—may be my only chance at doing just that.
She stares at me. It’s not a nervy kind of stare. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Meek. Timid.
But she says nothing.
“You don’t want to tell me?” I ask.
She’s slow to respond. But then she shakes her head, a movement so subtle, if I blinked, I would’ve missed it.
“No, sir,” she whispers. I like that she calls me sir.
“And why’s that?” I ask. I listen to her response, try to decipher a dialect but come up empty. She sounds like a standard Midwesterner. Like me. Standard American English.
Willow says cautiously, her voice so quiet I have to lean in to hear her over the baby’s babble, “You might make me go home.”
And I ask, treading lightly, “Is there a reason you don’t want to go home?”
The news blares from the TV, opening day games giving way to the day’s top stories. A brutal home invasion and stabbing on South Ashland that instantly catches the girl’s attention. I grope for the remote control and change the channel just as body bags are ushered out of the home on stretchers. I land on home shopping.
“Willow,” I say again, hoping the accuracy of her name will earn me bonus points. “Is there a reason you don’t want to go home, Willow?”
“Yes, sir,” she admits, picking at the fringe on the edge of a throw pillow. She isn’t looking at me.
“Why’s that?”
“It’s just—” She stutters. “It’s just—that...”
I think she’ll never finish that thought, and then she says, “I don’t like it very much, is all.”
An inadequate response if there ever was one.
“Why not?” I prod. There’s no response and so I ask again, “Willow?” this time with a jagged edge to my voice. I’m losing my patience.
Heidi will be back soon.
An invisible wall goes up around the girl. She doesn’t do well with impatience. She needs to be prepped first. Like flower seeds needing to be soaked in water overnight for faster germination. She isn’t going to open up until we penetrate that outer hull.
I lower my voice, and turn on the charm. I smile and try again. “Was somebody mean to you?” I ask instead, my voice as comforting as it can be. I’m not known for my compassion. But I try.
Her eyes rise to mine. Blue eyes that carry much too much baggage for someone her age, the blood vessels swollen, sagging tissue around the eyes, blood pooling under the skin, causing dark circles to form. I’m on the edge of my seat. Waiting. Desperate to hear what she has to say. She opens her mouth to speak. To tell me. “It’s okay,” I say. “You can tell me.”
But then I hear the sound of Heidi’s keys jiggling in the lock and I silently will her back downstairs to the laundry room, in vain. Willow jumps at the sound, scared to death by the harmless tinny sound of keys. I see the fear take over her eyes, as the water glass slips from her hand, tumbling to the ground below. The glass doesn’t break against the shag rug, and yet, water spills. Everywhere. She drops frantically to her knees and begins to clean up the mess, to spot the water with the edge of her shirt, her eyes darting between Heidi and me as if she thinks she might be punished for this little blunder.