Blind Acorn Page 12

  “Well,” he sounded calmer now, “when you didn’t answer, and I didn’t know why, I called the police. They’re on the way to the house now.”

  “What? How could you do that? Never mind, I’ll call them back.” I hung up quickly and called the local police station. Yes, they’d dispatched a squad car to that location and, no, they couldn’t recall it. Now that a situation had been reported, they were required to investigate. Great. I drove faster, thinking that if I was stopped for speeding, I’d just invite them along.

  I pulled into the driveway as Mitch and two police officers were walking toward the front door. They waited for me before entering.

  Once inside, I led them all to the blood on the floor. I explained that I had looked around the house and found nothing amiss. One of the officers smiled at me and said, “Good. That’s good. Now would you mind if we look around ourselves a bit?”

  “Of course not,” I replied. “I’d really like to know what happened here. It apparently didn’t involve anyone in our family, but I want to know.”

  He smiled again, and said reassuringly, “Of course. I’d want to know if this was my home, too. Let’s see what we can find.”

  Mitch and I stood in silence as they explored the house without us. Mitch was looking at the blood and finally said, “You must have been alarmed when you found this.”

  “Well, yes, I was. I still am, Mitch. That’s why I called you.”

  He nodded. “I know. I’m sorry I was so short with you. It’s just— ”

  I held my hand up. “No need. Don’t apologize.” That stopped the conversation.

  Officer Reassurance returned shaking his head. “This is really baffling,” he said. “It’s clearly blood,” nodding to me, “as you thought. But it doesn’t appear that there was any forced entry. And, you’re sure your children know nothing about this?”

  As if on cue, Dylan walked in from school. “What’s going on?” he looked from me to Mitch and back.

  Mitch explained an abbreviated version and Dylan confirmed that he knew nothing about it.

  I turned to Officer Reassurance and asked what would happen next. He told us that he had already called a detective into the case and he should be joining us shortly. Moments later the doorbell rang, and Mitch brought the detective into the hallway, which was now getting pretty crowded.

  The detective was very serious, and he went through the same searches that both I and the officers had already done. When he returned to us, he was writing in a small notebook. Without looking up, he asked, “Anyone else have a key?”

  “My parents have one,” I told him, “and we have an occasional housekeeper who has one. Anyone else?” I turned to Mitch. He shook his head.

  Detective Serious asked if we had confirmed that they had not come into the house that day. I explained that I knew the whereabouts of my parents for the day, and they didn’t include our house. We hadn’t used any cleaning services in months, either. He continued to write in his notebook.

  Officer Reassurance was looking again at the blood. “You know,” he mused, “this almost looks like toe prints—” his voice trailed off. His gaze swung toward the group standing in the hall and shifted across our feet. I followed his eyes downward and noticed that everyone wore shoes except me. It was my habit to slip my shoes off as I came in the door (the dog brings in enough dirt for all of us). “Ma’am,” he said slowly, “would you mind looking at the bottom of your feet?”

  I scoffed. “I think I’d know if I was bleeding,” I began as I lifted my foot. But I stopped talking when I saw that the bottom of my sock was darker than it should have been. Just to be sure, I checked the other foot, as well. But just one sock was dark and stiff. I looked at Officer Reassurance in my confusion and he smiled, reassuringly.

  “Mystery solved,” he said, looking pleased with himself. Detective Serious snapped his notebook closed and walked toward the door without a word.

  Mitch shook his head and didn’t even look at me. He also walked out the door and I heard his car start moments later.

  “I don’t suppose,” I finally managed when Officer Reassurance went to the door, “that we can keep this just between us?”

  He smiled again before saying, “Not a chance.” And he was gone.

  Dylan walked up the stairs and I could still hear him laughing from his room, as I removed my sock to see what had been bleeding.

  Thirty-Nine

  I had just arrived at my apartment, late afternoon on a July Thursday. I’d planned to stay for an hour or so and then head home to make dinner. But first, I thought I had time for a hot cup of tea and a mini pedicure. I left my tote bag on the couch and walked to the kitchen, removing my shoes as I walked. A brisk knock on the door stopped me cold.

  Who could that be? No one has ever come to the door when I was here before, I thought. I debated with myself whether to ignore it and not answer. The idea had some merit. Whoever it was had to be a stranger since no one knew I was here —ever. Quietly ignoring it made sense until the knock came again. Insistent, nothing tentative about it. Still wondering what I wanted to do it about it, I tiptoed toward the door. And then, the knocking again. Maybe it was Nellie Harrop. Okay. Someone knows I’m in here and I’ll have to answer it.

  I went to the door and cautiously opened it a few inches. A smirking teenage face greeted me and said, “Hi, Mom. Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  Feeling a little sick, I stepped back and opened the door wider. “Come in, Lucy. What are you doing here?”

  “I might ask you the same question,” Lucy sauntered in, smirk intact. She looked around, her gaze settling on me, saying, “I like what you’ve done with the place. I think.”

  I sighed. Classic Lucy. “How did you know? I’m making tea; do you want some?” I walked to the kitchen as I asked.

  “That’s it? That’s all you have to say? ‘I’m making tea.’ That’s it?”

  “Oh, Lucy, stop being a drama queen. I’m an adult, you know. I don’t owe you any explanations. Although I’ll give you one. Just sit down and give me a minute. As you probably know, I just walked in myself.”

  But Lucy followed me into the kitchen, hands on her hips, chin jutting forward. “So, what’s going on here, Mom? What is this place and why are you even here?” Although she was mainly angry, I could hear an edge of confusion, and maybe fear, in her voice.

  “Honey, will you just sit down? I’ll join you and we can talk,” I tried to be calm, not let myself get irritated by Lucy before we even began. I pulled a chair out from the little dinette and held it until Lucy finally sat, arms crossed over her chest. Her anger was a tangible thing, holding me in place across the table.

  Lucy’s eyes flashed with accusation as she looked at me. “Well?”

  “Luce, I’m kind of perplexed,” I started. “Yes, I have —had —a secret. But why are you so angry?”

  “I’m angry,” she shifted in the little chair, “because you haven’t told me what’s going on. Why are you here? Are you moving out or something?” I couldn’t help but notice the slight quiver to Lucy’s lower lip at the last question.

  “No!” I exclaimed. “Of course not! Why would you think that?”

  “Why would I think that? Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you have an apartment here on the other side of town without the rest of your family knowing about it. Or, does Dad know? Is that it? He knows already, and you guys are separating?”

  Vehemently shaking my head, I replied, “No, Lucy. You’ve got it all wrong. It isn’t like that at all. Dad doesn’t even know. At least not yet. I plan to tell him about it soon. It has nothing to do with you, there was no reason to tell you about it.” Not strictly true, but close enough.

  “Then why? What is going on here?”

  After a pause, I asked, “Have you ever wanted, needed, to get away from your life for a little bit, Lucy? Have you ev
er just wanted to walk out of the moment and gather yourself without an audience? Does that make any sense to you?”

  Lucy looked perplexed for a few seconds, but then the anger returned. “Sorry. I don’t get it. What is so wrong with your life that you need an escape, anyway? You’re in charge of everything. There’s nothing for you to run away from. You designed it all, after all. You call all the shots.”

  I laughed heartily, and Lucy looked even more angry. “That’s what you think? You think my life is perfect because I’m ‘in charge’ of it? Wow! Do you have a lot to learn!” I got out of my chair and walked to the window, looking out. “You’ve no idea,” I said with a shake of my head.

  “Oh, right! I forgot! Poor you! Carrying the world on your shoulders! My mom, the martyr!”

  “That’s not what I meant. I mean, you don’t know what it’s like yet because you’re young. You don’t have the responsibilities you’ll have as an adult. I’ve been in your shoes, but you haven’t been in mine yet, that’s all.”

  “I hate to break it to you, mom, but you’ll always be older than I am. Your life will always be ahead of mine. So, you’ll forever be able to tell me I don’t understand anything —yet. How convenient for you.”

  I considered that, but we were getting off track. “Lucy, I don’t want to fight with you. I know that you have your responsibilities, just as I have mine. I was only trying to explain this,” with a wave of my arm to encompass the room and more, “to you.”

  “Well, I don’t think you’re doing a very good job of it.”

  Sighing, I said, “No. I guess we can agree on that. I share this place with Gina. We each use it when we feel the need to be left alone, to get away from our lives for a little while. You know how you feel when you’re annoyed with me and just want to get away from me? You go to your room, right? And close the door? Loudly, usually. I don’t feel like I can do that at home. So —here we are. This is where I come to ‘go to my room and slam the door.’”

  Lucy examined her nails and exhaled loudly before asking, “Are we that bad? Is life at home so awful that you really need to run away from us?”

  “No! Of course not!” I returned to my seat and reached across that table to pat Lucy’s hand. “No,” I said again. “You know what? In doing this, I’ve learned some things. One of those things is that it isn’t about home or my family or anything external. It’s me, just me. I think I was trying to escape myself by coming here. And, of course, that doesn’t, can’t, work.”

  “And yet,” Lucy said, “you’re here.”

  “I know,” I replied, nodding in agreement. “I know. I’m working it out. I expect I won’t be coming here much longer. I think, as I said, I’ve learned things and realize that it’s less helpful than I thought it would be. Unnecessary, it seems.”

  Lucy was beginning to look bored. “As long as you learned something…” she said, sounding more like her mother than either of us realized at first.

  I grinned. “Blind acorn,” I said, more to myself than to Lucy.

  Lucy glared. “Why,” she asked, “do I feel like I never know what you’re talking about? What does that mean?”

  “Oh, it’s just something your dad and I say to each other. It began with something your grandfather used to say. When something went right despite the odds —a great putt at the end of a terrible round of golf or a fixed faucet despite a lack of plumbing skills, for example —he’d say that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn sometimes. It became shorthand for dad and me to refer to blind squirrel and know what we meant by it. One time —and I don’t even know which one of us did it —we mistakenly referred to a blind acorn. Once we stopped laughing, it became the new shorthand.”

  “Lame.”

  “Probably. It’s just one of our things.”

  “You know that the two of you can be pretty nauseating with your things, right?” but she was actually smiling.

  “It’s my purpose in life to nauseate my children.” I smiled back.

  “See you at home,” Lucy said as she headed to the door.

  “Okay.”

  Forty

  I left the PTA meeting on the third Thursday night in August feeling exasperated with myself for letting Lila talk me into this. In my opinion, there were already way too many of these fundraisers and I didn’t blame people for feeling abused by one more ask. Yet, I was heading home with a list of potential corporate sponsors to call and ask. I’d be glad when both kids had graduated from high school and I wouldn’t feel obliged to support it in this fashion. Who are you kidding, I thought. Don’t you think this continues through college? And beyond.

  It was already dark as I put my solicitation materials in my trunk and slid into the driver’s seat. I pulled the seatbelt strap over myself and glanced around me before starting the car. Angry dark eyes looked back at me from the car parked to my right. What is Rona doing here? I thought. Her daughter is much too young for high school.

  The car was, as it had been when I last saw it, full. The seats were piled with what looked like debris. There was clothing and cardboard boxes and tote bags of all sizes. Everything was a riotous jumble except for a section of the back seat. It held a stack of folded blankets and fabric, atop of which was a sleeping child. There was just about enough room for Jazz; she looked like she was in a little nest. But why were they in this lot and why was Rona just sitting there while her daughter slept? It didn’t make sense to me and I released my seatbelt and started to get out of the car. Rona’s expression got even darker and she shook her head in anger, in warning. I hesitated, and she again used her head to suggest that I should go. Now. I slowly re-buckled the seatbelt and started my car. As I pulled away, I looked once more at Rona. She was staring forward, stony faced and unmoving.

  I became angry myself on the way home. It was not right, I thought, that she seemed to be living in that car with her daughter. It was one thing to decide to live like that herself, but wrong to expose a child to that life. There had to be a better way for her. There had to be help she could get. At the very least, there must be a relative who would keep the child. It was selfish and irresponsible of her. And I was going to make sure she knew it at my earliest convenience.

  By the time I arrived at work Friday morning, I was ready to take her on. And she was ready for me.

  We made eye contact, and both knew that this wouldn’t be good. “Rona,” I asked, trying to sound casual, “do you have a minute?” I inclined my head toward my office door. In our relationship, if anyone held authority, it was me. At some point, she’d have to comply.

  “Not really,” was all she said, and she kept working furiously on taking chairs from a dolly where they’d been loaded in a flat stack.

  “It won’t take long; we’ll still have time to set up.” I hoped I sounded insistent to her, still nonchalant to anyone else in earshot. It must have worked, because she stomped toward my office and no one else seemed to notice. We were all used to her drama.

  I closed the door and suggested that she have a seat. She continued to stand so I leaned against my desk and faced her and her folded arms. “Rona,” I began, “what is going on? Why does your daughter seem to be living in a car?”

  She inhaled sharply, and all of the air seemed to leave the room. “Let me see if I have this right,” she leaned a little closer to me, menacingly I thought. “You are about to criticize me for keeping my daughter safe and dry and fed in the best way I can right now. Is that about right?” She waited for my answer, her eyes boring holes into me. It was making me nervous. She was suddenly momma bear, and my concern for her daughter was tiny in comparison. I went to the other side of my desk and sat, if only to put some distance between us.

  Rona nodded and began to pace around my small office. “You think you know what’s best, right? You think you know what my daughter needs, and you think that if you tell me about that you can fix it for her. And you can
go home to your nice house and feel good about what you did for that poor little girl whose mother doesn’t even know how to take care of her. That about sum it up?” She was angrier than I had ever seen a person be. I hadn’t said another word.

  Her voice got low and quiet; her eyes flashed with danger. “Let me tell you something,” she continued, “because you think you know us, but you have no idea. You don’t know anything about us. And you never will. You cannot begin to imagine our life. You prance around here in your seasonally appropriate shoes and clothes, worried about what to make for dinner for your friends on Sunday and what to give your mother for her birthday. Those are your headaches. Getting the curtains cleaned and the oil changed in your car. Stopping on the way home for laundry detergent. Deciding what to wear to that concert, that restaurant, that meeting. That is what fills your thoughts.” She laughed, shaking her head. There was no mirth in the laugh or the gesture.

  Finally, she sat, looking deflated now, all of that energy expelled in a rush. Her eyes now looked sadder than imaginable. “You think,” she said, “that I want my daughter to live in the car? You think this is what I chose for us? You just do not get it.” She looked into her lap, picking at her nails, shaking her head again.

  I didn’t know what to say to all that anger and despair. I cleared my throat and said, “Well, of course that isn’t what you want. I’m sorry if I sounded critical—” She looked up at me, the anger again sparking in her eyes. “Okay,” I said. “Okay. I’m sorry that I was critical. I just thought that there must be some better answer for her. If you’re having a difficult time, maybe there’s someone she could stay with until you get on your feet.” My voice drifted off.

  With infinite sadness, she repeated, “You just don’t get it. You don’t know what life is like when every little thing is a big thing. You get up in the morning and brush your teeth, right?” She didn’t wait for the obvious answer. “Well, for us, we make the same toothbrush last well beyond its real usefulness. And toothpaste? We can’t afford to buy toothpaste. Do you know how expensive it is to buy toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo? Ever wonder why some people on the street seem to smell so bad? It’s because they can’t afford fancy soaps and detergents. Ever try to get a job interview when you know you smell bad? That one is okay, though. You can’t get the actual job when you have no permanent address. Vitamins for my kid? Moisturizer? Sunscreen? Pipedreams, all of it. Just leave us alone. We’re doing fine without your help. Stay out of my life. Don’t talk to me about this ever again.”