“Yes, now that you mention it, he called and talked to someone named…let’s see, what was it?” She murmured to herself for a moment. “Ed? No, Edison!”
“His last name was Edison?”
“No, his first name. I don’t know what his last name was. But Lucas called him when he was at my place. I remember because Lucas insisted on leaving some money for the call. He had spent twenty dollars to ride out to see me, didn’t hardly have a nickel to his name, but he left money for that call.”
“Was he working?”
“Nothing too steady. But he told me he took on odd jobs from the shelter-mostly handyman work-painting, carpentry, things like that. I think he was a little embarrassed to tell me that was what he was doing, but I told him, if carpentry was good enough work for the Lord, it was good enough for him.”
I wondered about the suit I had seen in the hotel room. I doubted even Jesus wore a suit to a carpentry job. I needed to talk to someone who had seen Lucas more recently.
“Do me a favor,” I said. “Go over your phone bill. Try to find the number he called, the one for this Edison.”
She smiled. “Youare going to help, aren’t you?”
“I would have anyway.”
I figured she already knew that, but she seemed relieved all the same.
SHE DIDN’T SAY MUCHafter that, just kept looking out the car window. Soon I realized she was studying the street people. She was watching a man huddled in the entry way of a jeweler’s shop; a bone-thin woman picking at her matted hair as she sat at a bus stop, talking to herself. At one stoplight, June stared at a sleeping figure-a man in a knit cap, curled up in a ragged sleeping bag on a wooden pallet. A man about Lucas’s size. She turned to me and asked, “Where did he live?”
She meant Lucas, of course. There were so many answers to that question. I picked what I supposed was the best answer of the not-so-great alternatives. “Would you like me to take you by the shelter?”
She nodded.
IHADN ’T ESPECIALLYwanted to run into Roberta, but as it happened, she was one of the first people we saw. She had her arm around a teenager. The teenager held a pale, sleepy toddler, one child seeming not much larger than the other. Roberta was walking to the door with them when we opened it from the other side, in time to hear her say, “The clinic is just three blocks away. They’ll take good care of your son-” When Roberta saw me, her arm tightened on the young mother’s shoulder, causing the woman to eye me warily.
“Irene,” Roberta said, then surprised the hell out of me by bursting into tears.
“What’s wrong?” the young woman said with sharp concern, but Roberta only moved to embrace me. I held her a little woodenly, my own exhaustion and emotional state making it hard for me not to start crying myself. The toddler beat me to it-June and the teenager were left staring at us as the boy began to wail in sympathy.
That, fortunately, brought out Roberta’s caretaker instincts. “Oh, I’m sorry!” she said, straightening and pulling tissues out of a pocket. With reassuring words she sent mother and child on their way, and I finally got a chance to introduce June Monroe.
“Lucas’s mother?” Roberta asked in a strained voice.
June nodded.
Tears welled up in Roberta’s eyes, but she kept them in check this time. Roberta swallowed hard and motioned us to follow her, her face a mask of misery. We walked past a roomful of people who stood in small groups, people who were chatting amiably until the kid had started howling. We were watched with curious eyes, but no one approached us as we made our way to a staircase.
That common room was the warmest-looking of the ones we passed through. The shelter had been converted from an abandoned military warehouse and office building. The living quarters had been divided into roughly two sections, one for women and children, the other for men. A food bank, job training, and other services were carried out in common areas. There were Alcoholics Anonymous and groups for dealing with other addictions and problems meeting several times a day-you couldn’t stay at the shelter unless you were clean and sober.
The shelter had the look of most institutional buildings: cinder block painted over with thick coats of bargain colors, concrete floors occasionally covered with gray carpet that was not much softer, harsh lighting sporadically relieved by skylights and high windows, metal doors with shiny round doorknobs and scuffed kickplates.
And yet, here and there, someone had tried to make this fortress yield a little. Painted a mural on a wall. Put an artificial ficus tree in a corner. Taped up posters, some of which bore images of faraway vistas, though most were commercial reproductions of inspirational messages in pastel scrawls.
We turned down a hallway. Two men at the far end of it nodded and smiled at Roberta. “Tree planting tomorrow, Robbie,” one called out. “Guy from the nursery came through.”
“Great,” Roberta said. “We have some people working on improving the playground for the family center,” she explained to us.
As we passed a couple of open offices, I noticed the carpeting in them was thicker and less worn, but the furniture had the mix-and-match look of donated goods. A secretary looked up from a computer that sat on a battered wooden desk, saw Roberta, said “No messages,” and went back to her keyboard.
Roberta unlocked one of the metal doors and let us into her office. Neat but crowded, it had won the struggle against starkness. Fresh-cut flowers, four big chairs, a bright blue file cabinet, and a bookcase-all helped to draw my attention from the orange sherbet walls. But not much of the walls showed anyway; they were covered with drawings by children.
A range of ages and skills were represented, in colors dark and bright-as were the subjects depicted. I was first struck by the drawings of houses. Roberta saw me studying one and said, “Yes, children without homes draw houses.” Some of the houses were drawn with bars on the windows-safety or a prison? I wondered. There was a picture of a boy being stretched between a woman and a man, another of a tiny girl surrounded by four huge adults; there were pictures of Godzilla, of sharks with teeth, of boats on the water, of gravestones, of trees with big holes in them. Some depicted small figures crying big tears. Others were of hearts, flowers, smiling faces. More than one said “I love Robbie,”R’s andb ’s facing whichever way they pleased.
In one corner, an easel and paints stood next to a set of shelves full of toys.
“Sit down, please,” Roberta said. She seemed to have regained her composure. “Mrs. Monroe, we were all very sad to hear of Lucas’s death. It there any way in which I can be of help?”
“I just wanted to see where he lived.”
“Of course. I’d be happy to show you around the shelter. It’s come a long way from what we started with, but there’s still a lot of work to be done.” She looked down at her hands folded in her lap, then said, “I will miss Lucas. I admired him.”
You’ve changed your tune, I thought, then became angry at myself for being so critical of her. She had actually helped Lucas, while I had only run from him.
“Admired him? Why?” June asked.
Roberta looked taken aback.
“I mean,” June said, “what made him any different from any other drunk that came walking in here looking for a handout? He was just another man that couldn’t make it out there, right?”
While I sat wondering why June Monroe had decided to lower the temperature in the room, Roberta said, “He was not a failure. He spent six weeks sober before he died. Maybe that doesn’t mean much to anybody who can pass up a drink, but to people like your son, Mrs. Monroe, that was a life-” Roberta stopped, color rising to her cheeks.