Of course, I was as naive as a bale of hay; I didn’t think about the fact that the FBI would have been all over a kidnapping like white on rice, within hours, and that in all likelihood they would have found Juliet and me, if Scott Early didn’t find me first. I would have been charged with a federal crime and gone to prison—facing a fate that Scott Early never had. But as my thoughts corkscrewed and drifted, it seemed then that no one would ask questions, or even locate me, since I’d be long gone, back to Utah, my hair again its normal color, my soul its normal viscosity. I thought I’d leave Juliet’s pram in Belleview Park so it would look as though someone had taken her and me. Smart thinking! That I was registered at school under my own name, and that any idiot would connect Scott Early and me in about ten seconds, didn’t occur to me. I was almost seventeen, but ever so much older and younger. I didn’t know anything about how the world worked. And I supposed I didn’t want to think too hard about it.
When the forewarning of Kelly’s heartbreak crossed my mind, as it did sometimes, such as when I did her laundry (for which she was so grateful), hanging up T-shirts that read JULIET’S MOMMY!, I’d turn my mind’s eye to the paint on the shed, and the other black paint, that pooled on the ground and sprayed the picnic table.
Juliet wouldn’t be dead, her life cut off in a moment, like my sisters.
She’d be free, free of Scott Early and the taint of his vicious presence.
But had his presence ever been vicious? Or his disease the only part of him that was terrifying? Whenever I saw him, he was all gentleness and kind humor, but couldn’t that change? I knew that mentally ill people sometimes felt so good that they simply stopped taking their meds; and Scott Early could do that, too. Otherwise, why did Kelly have that huge, sheathed hunting knife? There had to be a reason. I knew she would stop at nothing to save Juliet. But what if she couldn’t? What if only I could? As it said in the Bible, there was a way for me, I reassured myself, and I had to walk in it. A path for me set forth by our Lord.
Still, I looked forward to the breaks, the times when I didn’t have to think about it, when I could “play normal” and do all the things other girls did.
Kevin and I met before our bones exam at L.M.N.O. Tea, a little shop near Belleview Park—which was walking distance from Kelly and Scott Early’s house. He picked Juliet up easily and held her and said he had about ten little cousins. “What a cutie!” he said. “I can’t wait to have one of these.” He got a whiff of her then and said, “On the other hand, I can wait. Speaking of . . . Ronnie, what did you do to your hair?”
“It fell out,” I told him, grinning.
“You, like, colored it. My girlfriend says all the time she’d give her left pinkie for curly red hair, and you . . . what did you do?”
“I wanted a change,” I said. “New state. New job. New life.”
“Maybe I should dye my hair red,” Kevin said.
“Maybe you should tell me the main bones of the head. How many temporal? How many occipital?”
“I know that hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul—”
“Be serious! What are you going to do when she asks about your ethmoid?”
“I’ll say I’m Chinese American.”
“Ouch,” I said, and socked him. It was as though a fly had landed on his forearm. “Kevin! Come on!”
“Do you mean the paired facial bones?” Kevin asked. “Those would be the lacrimals, nasals, zygomatics, the maxillae, the palatins, the inferior—”
“You knew them all!”
“You know Asian people are smarter. Don’t you watch TV? The Chinese guy always figures it out.” Kevin made me feel like a kid again. Why was that? I was a kid. I just . . . hadn’t felt that way for so long.
One night when I came home after classes, Mrs. Desmond handed me a letter. I took it, shocked. The only letters I ever got were cards from Clare in Boston and Emma back home and big fat packages from my parents, with drawings Rafe made of me.
There was no name on the return, only an address, also in Boston. I read:
Dear Annie Oakley,
I just found out that my sister hasn’t written you one time since you left! Leaker! Well, I’m no writer, but I thought I would drop you a note. Maybe you could write back. Medical school is nothing like college, I can tell you. I don’t have time for the brewskies and the babes (except one, more about that later). I have to hit the books every night. It is Boston University, so I’m not complaining. I’m not what you would call a natural. I was out at the pier the other day, and you’ll never guess who I saw. Clare! She was in town for just three days, doing a concert with her vocal chorus from Juilliard! How could two people from the middle of nowhere end up bumping into each other in Boston? She was the one who gave me your address. She’s looking beautiful, not that she was ever anything but. I guess all her time is taken up with lessons and musical theory and stuff, too. We had some coffee. Don’t worry! She had lemonade. She said you were pretty lonely. Why don’t you take up surfing? Afraid a shark will eat you? I’m dating a girl. I guess it’s pretty serious. She moved here from Colorado just to be with me. We don’t exactly live together. But she works near where I live. She wants to get engaged. I’m not sure I can take that on right now. I’m thinking, maybe, ten years! But I really like her. Serena is good. She’s going to Cape Cod Community College, because my parents won’t pay for her to go to a real college until she figures out what she’s going to do. Clare said you’re studying to be a firefighter? That’s weird. But I can see you driving a fire engine! Well, here’s my number if you ever want to talk. Or you can drop me a line sometime. I’m working on my fade-away jump shot.
Your old friend,
Miko S.
I crumpled up the letter and felt like I might start to cry.
But why?
Miko was happy. He was in love. I was sure Clare had told him that I was studying to be an EMT, not a firefighter, and that he just wasn’t paying attention, probably because he was too busy staring at Clare, who I knew was already practically engaged to Dr. Pratt’s son, just like I’d teased her when we were . . . little girls. Well, not little girls. Just a few years ago. Why did it seem like a century? I was the only one still . . . stuck. I smoothed out Miko’s letter and nicked the address off with my fingernail. I ran to the corner and bought a card picturing the beach. “Here’s where I spend most of my time! I’ll call! Maybe after my surfing lessons! Later . . . Ronnie Swan,” I wrote.
On Thursday night, after class, I met Kevin’s girlfriend, Shira. I guess I expected her to be Chinese, too, but she was a teeny-weeny little Jewish girl. She was making a film, and she had decided to shoot footage of the restaurant. It was called Americas and was supposed to be images of immigrants. “So they’re not really immigrants, so what?” she told me. “Neither are my grandparents, but they look it. Good enough!” She had long wavy hair, but ashy brown. Kevin had told her about my hair.
“Excuse my asking, but why did you cut it?” she asked as we shared an order of vegetable subgum, since Shira was a vegetarian.
“Just for something new,” I said.
“With those green eyes?” She tapped her chopsticks on her plate. “Kevin told me it was killer. The way he sounded, I was jealous!”
“You’re jealous of everybody!” Kevin broke in.
“Well, I’m two hours away, buddy!” He picked her up like she was made of feathers, and she kicked until he put her down. “One of the demerits of being small. That and having to shop in the section of the store where the shirts have kitty cats on them! I was so grateful when the Gap started having size two. But it turned out that two is really six and six is really eight! Back to the kids section.” She smiled at me, and even though she’d just made me feel like a tanker truck, I couldn’t help but smile back. “Listen, girlfriend. The hair. Let it grow out.”
But I couldn’t let it grow out. Every few weeks, I dabbed the roots with peroxide and some henna Mrs. Desmond told me about, better for the hair than dye.
>
The other reason besides her movie that Shira was in town was to see Kevin’s hockey game. He played semipro for the San Diego Sailors. Every time we’d studied, all the way past bones and into the circulatory system, into the heart and its functions and malfunctions, he’d invited me to come to a game with his friends and some of the other younger people from class; but I always said I didn’t have time. The truth was, I wouldn’t have known a hockey stick from a pogo stick, and I didn’t want to look like an idiot. This time, they asked me again. I thought through what I had to study: ischemia, angina pectoris, AMI, ventricular fibrillation, tachycardia, asystole.
Then I said, “Sure, why not?” With Shira there, I thought I would be okay. If she could understand it, I could, too. There were two ends to the rink, that much I knew, and a net at each end. How complex could it be? Shira explained the basics, and though I never got the hang of icing, it seemed pretty similar to a breakaway, although it was evidently illegal. By the end of the first period, I was standing up and yelling every time Kevin knocked the other team’s shot out of the goal and dancing to “Surfin’ USA” every time they scored. A person had to be amazed at the strength and agility of Kevin’s legs and reflexes, as time after time he knelt and dodged and threw himself on the puck. “I couldn’t do what they do walking,” I told Shira. “I don’t see how they can do it on ice!”
“He’s played hockey since he was three,” Shira said. “It is like walking to him.”
“You wouldn’t think, with no ice around . . .”
“Yeah, but his father played in college. In New York. His father went to college in New York. He was going to be a doctor.”
“Kevin said there were no medical people in his family.”
“Well, Kevin’s grandfather died. He was hit by a drunk driver. And his grandmother had the restaurant. And that was that. Chinese are like Jewish people. Family comes before anything else.”
“It explains a lot of things. Kevin loved English—”
“But he’s going to do this instead. It’s complicated, but I guess it makes sense. Like playing hockey in California,” Shira said with a shrug.
“I suppose. Where I grew up, everyone knows how to ski before they know how to read, but it’s usually seventy degrees in the winter, except up in the mountains.”
“Now that, I could never do. Ski,” Shira said.
“It’s easy,” I told her. “All you do is crouch down and let gravity take over.”
“It’s easy if you grew up in Idaho or wherever, not Brooklyn.”
“Do they . . . approve of you? The Chans? Not being . . . Methodist?”
Shira burst out laughing. “I thought you were going to say not being Chinese! They were a little weird at first, but Jenny said finally it all comes down to the same thing. . . .” My shoulders drooped a little. “What? What?” Shira asked.
“I don’t know. Nothing. I got a letter from a guy. He grew up where I did, but he’s Catholic, and I’m a Mormon. And it’s ridiculous anyhow. He always thought of me as the little kid down the road who had a horse. . . .”
“But you thought something else.”
“Not really.”
“I can tell you did,” Shira insisted.
“He’s in love with somebody. He’s totally happy.”
“You wish it was you. So, why don’t you . . . whatever? Tell him.”
“I could never do that. Anyhow, I can’t . . . We don’t usually . . .”
“Marry out? Neither do Jews. Kevin would have to convert.”
“Would he do that?”
“He says so. We’ll see. . . .”
“Well, this guy is Italian, he’s so Catholic. And he doesn’t think of me that way.” I remembered the picture of me on Jade, coiling up my long hair.
“I’m not convinced, pardon me,” said Shira.
The Sailors beat the Coronado Corsairs three-zip. We went out afterward for beers and one 7-Up.
“No alcohol?”
“I’m underage,” I said.
“And if she wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter. She can’t have tea or coffee,” Kevin put in.
“Kevin’s become an expert on the Word of Wisdom,” I told Shira with a smirk.
“You can’t do anything!” he practically shouted.
“I can do anything I need to. Nobody needs to put crap in their head to rob their brains!” I said, pointing at Kevin’s stein of beer. Everybody laughed then, and Kevin blushed.
“She can have Coke, though, and it has caffeine. . . .”
“But it has to be specially blessed,” I said. Everyone laughed again.
“I give up,” Kevin said.
Shira said, “I would. Quit while you’re behind.”
I liked Shira. In little more than a month, I’d made two friends, plus a handful of acquaintances from class, and Mrs. Desmond, who somehow made an extra portion of dinner every night but kept forgetting to charge me the extra five dollars. And so far I’d successfully avoided anything but the most passing contact with Scott Early. Kelly left my money in an envelope propped against the lamp, and Scott usually went out rowing on Fridays and then to a church group he ran for the children of homeless people. So we hardly ever saw each other.
Then, one afternoon, he asked me to bring Juliet to the library where he was volunteering. I couldn’t say no. All the ladies there made dove noises over the baby, passing her from arm to arm like a special piece of rare embroidery.
“And you must be Kelly!” one older woman said.
“No!” I shouted so loudly that library patrons turned their heads. I stammered, “I mean, I mean, how could a kid like me be this sweet baby’s mother? I’m just the baby-sitter. Kelly is just as pretty as Juliet.” It was a natural mistake, given that I had brown hair, the same as the baby’s, though Kelly was so blond.
Scott Early apologized after the ladies drifted away. He was helping decorate the children’s section of the library for Halloween. He held Juliet on his lap and tried to get her to slap at a little paper bat.
“You wouldn’t believe the stuff I see here, Rachel,” he told me softly. “There was a mother in here, and obviously she was hurrying home from work, and her little girl was having trouble deciding on a book, and she slapped her! Maybe she was just stressed out. But I couldn’t believe she could do that to a little kid. I can’t imagine slapping Juliet just for being slow, you know? Or slapping her for anything, for that matter.” He held Juliet close to him. “Sometimes I don’t know who’s under more stress, the stay-home moms and dads who come in here or the ones running by on the way home from the office. No doubt about it, being a parent is stressful in a world like this, everyone in such a hurry. . . .”
He went on, but I didn’t hear.
My hands went cold, so cold that I had to jam them into the sleeves of the hoodie I’d bought for a few bucks at Goodwill. Scott Early was absolutely sincere. He really thought that his having witnessed a woman slap a child was horrible and wanted to share this with me. I shook my head and murmured something. I told him I had to get home; my day was finished, and I had class. Then I ran all the way back to the apartment, arriving just as Kelly pulled up. “I didn’t know that was a jogging stroller,” she said, laughing.
I hid in the safety of my car, freezing in the late afternoon lavage of San Diego sun, until I could stop shivering enough to drive safely. And for the first and only time, I skipped class. My car seemed to want to drive to the back of the purple Victorian. I cut the engine and fell asleep in the seat, still shivering. The tap on the window sounded like a firecracker. I nearly jumped out of my skin, and I hit the horn.
“Veronica!” Mrs. Desmond scolded me. “I saw you out here, and I thought you were sick.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Maybe I am. A touch of something.”
“Better come inside. I’ll give you some tea.” I didn’t even care if it had caffeine. I didn’t ask. “I must say, you look like you’ve lost your best friend,” Mrs. Desmond said.
“No
, I just felt under the weather. Too tired for my class. With it, and my job . . .”
“Your job. You take care of a baby?”
“Yes.”
“Is that difficult for you?”
“Why?”
“Because of your loss.”
“No. I do have little brothers.”
“But it must make you think of—”
“I try not to.”
“The man who did this thing. Is he still in prison?”
“He never went to prison. He was incompetent. He was mentally ill.”
“So he’s in an institution,” Mrs. Desmond prodded, oddly persistent.
“No, he’s not. He got out after a few years.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“No. But that was the judge’s decision.”
“And does your family know where he is?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever feel the need to see him?”
“No,” I said honestly, “I never feel the need to see him.”
Mrs. Desmond looked right through me. “I would have taken you for someone who’d want to know.”
“Know what?”
“Everything, I suppose. Where he went. What he did. What he was like, now.”
“I sometimes feel . . . I sometimes feel I already know more than I ever wanted to know.” Mrs. Desmond nodded. And I went up to my room and took three Tylenol and slept until morning.
The next day in class, I was working with Kevin and Shelley—a tall black girl with beaded braids who made me think of how an African princess would look—studying the workings of the defibrillator. Those of us who wouldn’t do cadaver training were working on a life-size rubber dummy.
“Imagine having to really use one of these,” I said.
“I’ve seen one used,” she said.
“You have?”
“On my mother. She had a heart attack.”
“Did she survive?” Kevin asked.
“No,” Shelley said.
“I’m so sorry,” I said just a half second before Kevin said the same thing.
“All of you,” Shelley said, “you’re like little kids playing doctor. You have no idea what the real world is like.” I felt my scalp tighten.