I guess Caroline had no idea how bad I’d felt about taking that money. I felt like accepting it from my mom should have come with forgiving her, but I couldn’t forgive her, so I felt like I shouldn’t have taken it. But it was my first and last months’ rent, and security deposit. I had no idea how to get by without it. So I’d pushed my feelings of guilt down into a sort of indigestion in my gut. And I’d cashed the check. But I sure as hell wasn’t going back to her and asking for more, then walking away and offering nothing in return. Not even a softening of my feelings.
I had reached the end of my patience with Caroline, even though I recognized her good intentions. I have a sore spot—I’m not big on people who want to wrap up all your problems neatly with their simple suggestions. How do people like that think anything became a problem in the first place if its solution was so simple?
Why can’t people just listen and then say something like “Yeah, that’s hard” in response? Why do they have to try to fix you before they can walk away?
I wanted to ask Caroline, “And then after those first couple of months, what? Go beg off her again? And then again? The idea was to stop leaning on her.”
But Etta and I were guests in her home. And it was kind of her to let us stay. So I said nothing.
“Besides,” Caroline added, “it’s not really fair to ask this Molly to babysit.”
“Where Molly?” Etta asked.
“She adores Etta,” I said to Caroline. Shamefully ignoring the actual Etta.
“But she’d need to go to school.”
It’s not as though I hadn’t thought of that.
“I was thinking I could use evenings to help her study for her GED.”
“A GED is not as good as a high school diploma.”
“Well . . . it’s almost as good. It’s a hell of a lot better than what she’s doing now.”
“Well, anyway,” she said, “she’s gone. So you’ll just have to make your plans without her.”
“Etta and I are going to relax and have a little playtime,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind. It’s been a long day. We’ll be out of your hair soon.”
“No problem. Don’t worry.” She handed the baby back to me. Etta looked relieved. She might have had her doubts about the conversation, too. “Sounds like you have everything pretty well worked out.”
Which was a stunningly out-of-touch statement after what I’d just told her. But I tried to just stick with the idea that she saw me as fixed because she wanted that for me.
I didn’t challenge it. I just let her walk away.
I only responded within myself, by vowing never to live in anybody else’s house again.
I was a grown woman. I had to get my life into my own hands. Possibly for the first time ever.
In the morning I went to see that odd boy again. In prison. For what I figured would be the last time.
I didn’t really believe it would be helpful. But I was running out of time. By Monday I would be working all day. And my actual physical search for Molly—which mostly entailed talking to homeless people who might have seen her—had been a fool’s errand anyway.
I had to take one last shot.
When an armed guard walked Denver Patterson into the visiting room, I almost thought he’d brought me the wrong guy. He looked so different. His cheeks were full and soft. He wasn’t as thin and agile as a whippet anymore. His eyes looked calm and not particularly searching. He no longer seemed interested in conquering the world.
“Oh,” he said, and sat down across from me at the table. “You. I guess Molly was wrong about you.”
He reached out to Etta. In a lazy way. She was sitting on my lap, and he just extended a finger and waved it up and down. She smiled and grabbed at it.
“Where Molly?” Etta asked.
I had no attention to spare, so I held her closer as a substitute for answering her.
“Wrong about me? About what? What did she say about me? You’ve seen her since last time I was here?”
“Yeah. She came in once.”
“Did she say where she was living?”
“More or less. But not in a whole lot of detail. She just said it was between the freeway and the river that’s not really a river. You know. They call it the LA River, but it’s usually just a dry concrete . . . what do you call that? Like a spillway.”
He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. Or scratched it. I’m not sure which. The movement seemed oddly slow. Like I was watching a sloth move its limbs. I wondered if the prison people had him sedated. Or if he’d found a way to do it on his own.
“That might help,” I said.
“Well, good luck with that. Because there are quite a few miles of river. And quite a few miles of freeway.”
I felt all the air come out of me. I felt like a punctured tire.
He was right. She had disappeared into the fabric of the city. I was a fool to think I’d ever see her again.
Etta noticed the drop in my mood and fidgeted on my lap. Just on the edge of crying. I held her even more closely in the hope I could prevent it.
“So what did she say about me?” I asked.
I figured it would hurt. But I still needed to know.
“Say about you?” He asked it almost sleepily. As if he’d dozed off for a second. Forgotten we were talking.
“You said she was wrong about me. Wrong about what?”
“Oh. That. Yeah. She said you don’t really care about her. You just don’t want to feel guilty.”
I was right. It hurt.
He must have seen that on my face, because he rushed to soften the message.
“I mean, she didn’t say it like you were
