Sienna poked me in the shoulder. Her voice was thick.
“I need you to go for me today.”
I’d woken in the night to her feverish, nonsensical murmurings and flailing arms crossing the few feet between our thin pallets. Still, I turned onto my stomach and hoped she would rally.
“Moira, we need the money.”
I groaned and flipped back to face her. The blanket prickled my skin where it was bare, and my toes widened the holes around its bottom edges until they reached the cold concrete. Of course, I would go. I would clomp through wet streets with too-small shoes coming apart at their sides and be thankful for the day’s pay. Sienna struggled up to one elbow and dug through her backpack. She pulled out a pen and started writing on a scrap of paper found on the floor of the abandoned warehouse we called home.
People came and went at all hours here. Cardboard taped over broken windows never held, and birds occasionally flew around the ceiling beams. Mice jockeyed with us for every square foot of shelter. I went to dress behind a makeshift screen someone had constructed from placing sheets over a metal equipment cage left by the previous, legitimate occupants. When I returned, she pushed the paper in my hand and fell back onto the pile of blankets.
I walked toward the exit, stepping around those still sleeping. The piercing air blitzed my face when I emerged. On the street, frost covered cars and storefront windows. I looked at the address on the slip of paper and crammed it into my back pocket. My stomach moaned, but the address was more than ten blocks away—too far to detour over to the bakery and see what they’d thrown out last night. I’d try to sneak a bite at the event.
Temp work with the catering company suited our condition. Besides offering the chance to leave with leftovers, the attire was available at any thrift store: dark pants, white button up shirt, dark shoes. Shoes were the most expensive, but the black tape I had found to patch the holes would hold for a few more weeks. The warehouse also had a physical address in the off chance someone ever checked. Sienna and I kept our cell phones on the cheapest service, and we picked up our pay at the office after each job.
Most of the assignments were receptions or business conferences held in hotels. Today, I walked toward a residential area. The first houses I came across were clustered close together, but that changed as I headed north. Large brick homes sat far back on lush yards with impeccably clipped hedges. The streets were smoothly paved, and even the curbs looked scrubbed clean.
Cars filled the circular driveway in front of the house where I was due five minutes earlier. I gathered my hair into a topknot and hurried toward the catering van parked on a side drive. A door to the house was propped open and I groaned, recognizing the girl who was standing in the kitchen separating covered trays. I had worked with Joyce on a few other jobs and remembered her as someone who liked to appoint herself the boss without the slightest encouragement from anyone else. I went inside and ignored the way she looked me over.
“Where’s Sienna?”
“Sick.”
“Well, you’re late.”
“Sorry.” My hands were crossed in front of me, and I pinched my wrist hard to make the words ring true.
The kitchen belonged in one of those decorating magazines that my mother loved to buy. Gleaming appliances surrounded a butcher block island. A basket overflowing with fruit sat in the center, and I longed to enjoy a bit of apple juice running down my chin or the rind of an orange trapped under my nail as I peeled it, leaving its scent on my finger. Joyce cleared her throat. I began uncovering food, squashing the foil wrapping with extra force to conceal the noises coming from my tight belly.
Laughter rang from a nearby room. An untroubled, Every Day’s a Cause for Celebration, kind of laughter that echoed down the halls and around the corners. A boy came to work next to me, moving layers of cheese and crackers to plates. He pulled on the collar of his t-shirt and smiled in a way that could have meant more in another life or even if I was a different person. Lots of people coupled up in the warehouse. Street life didn’t break human nature. I just had no desire to pull anyone into the churning maelstrom.
“Can you believe someone throws a party to choose a china pattern?” Joyce whispered to us. “Not a bridal shower—we catered that last month. This is just so she and her friends can decide which cup and saucer set will keep her marriage from falling apart over the next thirty years.”
I swallowed my dislike at the dig and walked away, reminding myself that I was here in Sienna’s place. Tray in hand, I stood at the entrance of the living room and thought, as big as the space was, it could not contain the noise and glamour of the girls. Their dresses burst in splendid colors and reminded me of a picture I’d once seen of the sky during a hot air balloon festival. I circled the room offering sandwiches and accepting crumpled napkins from their hands to mine.
Without warning, a slight pounding in my head hitched itself to my stomachache. I wanted to rub my temples while lounging on the long velvet sofa, a jungle green that matched my mother’s eyes. Instead, I left the tray on a small table and retreated to the kitchen. Plates piled up, their contents half eaten. I looked around for something to wrap up, but the boy who had worked next to me returned and made quick work of dumping all the food into a large trash bag.
I saw another chance when we started to serve dessert, and instead of waiting for scraps, I grabbed a tray of chocolates and pastries and went purposefully down a long hall in the wrong direction. One after another, I shoved three of the sweets into my mouth and chewed ferociously, then walked slowly back to the kitchen. No one noticed. I wiped my mouth with a paper towel, refilled my tray and headed into the den.
They stood in groups, scrutinizing plates and bowls. I stopped in front of two girls. One reached for a napkin and a chocolate croissant. The other held a plate in each hand out to me.
“What do you think,” she asked, “gilded or flowered?”
The other girl held the pastry that she was about to pop into her mouth in mid-air and laughed.
“Lauren, she’s a server!”
Maybe she thought her friend couldn’t tell who I was? Or maybe she was just callous.
I considered the plates and pointed to one edged in olive-gold, accented with ovals in varying shades of turquoise.
“That one’s interesting.”
An older woman came to stand by the girl holding the plates. “Very nice.”
I realized this was the bride-to-be and her mother. Everything about them was similar, the way it is in some families. I picked up a discarded wine glass from the nearby table.
“Good eye,” Lauren said. “What’s your name?”
“Moira.”
Her mother repeated my name under her breath. Not in a way that bothered me, rather that she liked the way it sounded.
“Well, good eye, Moira,” Lauren said, before turning to join the others.
After the guests left, Lauren and her mother came into the kitchen to thank us. They stood close to one another, barely a sliver of space between them. I concentrated on a spot above their heads and missed everything I didn’t have. Outside, I pretended to talk on my phone while the others got in their cars to leave. The boy reappeared. He shrugged and lit a cigarette when I refused his offer of a ride home. I normally put off returning to the warehouse for as long as possible each day, but I wanted to check on Sienna. I also wanted to sleep and dream about the girls at the party. Besides, some days were best spent waiting for the next.
Sienna was nowhere in sight. I dug a can of tuna out of my pack and peeled back the tin cover. As I scooped out the flakes with my finger, I wondered if it would taste better on a turquoise-embellished plate.
###
I slept hard and didn’t wake until the next morning. Daylight was fighting to cut through the grimy windows, and I couldn’t remember if I’d dreamed of the girls. Next to me, Sienna’s mattress was empty. Only a few kids remained, along with some of the older residents who banded together to limit their trips outside when it was cold. The older ones especially reminded me of the apocalyptic novels I use to read—clans of people living unsanctioned lives, surviving only a little bit at a time.
A boy around my age walked by. I didn’t know his name, but I’d seen him talking to Sienna a few times.
“Hey, did you see Sienna last night?”
He only shook his head and mumbled something as he continued on toward the front of the building.
“Wait, what?” I yelled, but the heavy door clanged behind him.
A woman came towards me, her open-toed sandals scuffling across the floor. Thin, stringy hair fell in her face. As she got closer, I saw that the whites of her eyes were yellowed. She looked like a character from a horror movie who children crossed the street to avoid. The first time I’d seen her, I didn’t think she’d live through the week. But she did, and I’d done my best to dodge her ever since—just like those kids in the movie.
“She never came back last night.”
“She was sick,” I argued. “She wouldn’t have gone out in this weather.”
“Well she did. I saw her. She won’t be back.”
I slanted my body away from the woman, anger budding because she could be right. A certain inherent risk existed for all of us, but for Sienna, it was harder. I knew she struggled with things I had no experience with. She may have even slipped a time or two, but it wasn’t for me to judge. I pulled my backpack over my coat and left, walking toward the park. People stood in groups, blowing into hands cupped around cigarettes. Some lay on benches with blankets or just their arms across their faces, both useless shields against the cold. A few industrious women made cardboard signs soliciting money. I scanned the crowd. The boy from the warehouse stood with two others around his age. When he saw me, he turned and said something that made them laugh. I texted Sienna and waited a few minutes for a reply. I called her number. No answer. I texted her again and said I was going to pick up our pay.
The light turned as I reached a corner a few blocks beyond the park. While I waited to cross the street, I looked up and saw my past. The building sat like a well-worn but stately sentry at this end of the city. People talk about libraries becoming extinct, an unimaginable thought to my child-self who made weekly trips here with my mother. On the first day of summer vacation, I ran to discover the reading challenge she taped to the refrigerator. While other kids yelled Marco Polo back and forth across the community pool during the hottest months, I read from the cool comfort of my four-poster bed, delighting in each blue star that tracked my progress. When I wasn’t a child any longer, I returned on my own to research the illness feasting on my mother. I turned pages until my fingers were numb, trying to make sense of how one day I had my mother, and the next, only a look-alike who slept most of the time and didn’t always recognize me.
I climbed the stairs and held the door for an elderly man carrying several books. I followed in behind him thinking, I wouldn’t stay long. Behind the circulation desk, computers lined two tables. I sat at one and pressed the spacebar to enter my last name and the library card number that had been mine forever. I typed into the search field as if I’d planned the trip.
Rows of tableware appeared on the screen. I scrolled the images and was surprised how many of their names sounded like romantic countryside villages. Some designs were simple, borders of delicate trailing vines connecting softly hued buds. Others told a story. The center of one blue and white plate detailed Italian ruins under a cloud-filled sky. I pictured the dishes in the cupboards from my childhood telling a story of their own, sometimes mismatched or chipped after being dropped into the sink by slippery hands.
When the pictures finally began to blur. I picked up my phone from the table. Still no message from Sienna. I left the computer and walked outside to sit on one of the benches that bordered a path around the river. Green paint flaked as I ran my hand along the armrest.
I looked over to where I’d first seen the kids last spring, camping on the river’s sloped bank. I knew my mother wasn’t going to get better, and I wanted to find people who didn’t know me or my life. They ignored my attempts at conversation, but it was where I returned a week after the funeral, skipping my graduation and leaving my aunt’s address for the school to mail my diploma. This time, they seemed to recognize my desolation and accepted me into their narrow stretch of life. The temperatures dropped quickly once winter descended, and the kids drifted—a few to the warehouse, the rest I didn’t know where. I followed Sienna, whose ash colored hair stuck out at odd angles and whose wide-set green eyes reminded me of a favorite doll.
Now it was winter again. A woman walked by, bundled in a heavy red coat and pushing a carriage. I couldn’t see the baby under the canopy and layers of blankets, but I heard her faint cooing. The woman smiled, and it comforted me that for some, the world carried on in a normal, unremarkable way.
###
I couldn’t say exactly why I ended up in the cul-de-sac where Lauren lived. I did know that this wasn’t a street where people went unnoticed for long, but instead of getting back on schedule, which meant going to get my money, I stood glued to the sidewalk in front of the house facing hers. Before long, she appeared at the foot of the circular driveway and got into a dark SUV. She backed all the way down into the road and stopped in front of me.
She lowered the passenger window. “Moira, is that you?”
I stared at her perfectly flamingo-colored lips, in wonderment that she remembered my name.
“It is you. Do you need a ride? It’s freezing.”
The lock clicked open, and she gestured me to get in. Something dropped—my heart, stomach—whatever drops when bad judgment rears its head. I reached for the door.
###
She believed me when I told her that my car had broken down a couple of blocks away.
“You can just drop me at the bus stop up the street. I’ll deal with the car later. I was actually on my way to pick up the check from working your party yesterday.”
Her head spun sideways. “How crazy is that?”
“What?”
“I’m headed there to go over some details for our wedding reception. You can ride with me, and then I’ll drop you at home.”
“No, that’s okay. I can go later today or tomorrow, after I get my car back.”
“Nonsense.”
I bet her mother used that word, and that this was one of those moments when a daughter sounded just like her mother without trying. I’d had them too.
“. . . going to go to the china shop, but I can do that later,” she was saying.
This is what I’d come for. I pushed the words out casually. “Oh, did you decide on a pattern?”
“I did. It’s a bit of an outdated tradition though, don’t you think? Something our mothers and grandmothers did. You should come with me if you don’t have to get your car right away.”
Without a pause, I watered the lie, and watched it bloom. “Sounds fun. I’ll have my brother get it later.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I was in a car as nice as Lauren’s, or if I ever had been. The heated seats tempered the cold weather. Female indie rock played what I imagined as the perfect soundtrack to her life. She drove fast. We came to a stop light, and she lowered her visor to reapply a bit of the pink lipstick that had smudged.
“You have a lot of friends,” I blurted out.
Her manicured index finger lowered the sound system’s volume from the steering wheel.
“I guess. Wait, do you mean the party?”
I nodded. She laughed, and I wanted to join my mother in the earth. Her hands twisted on the wheel like she was figuring something out in her mind.
“I didn’t know all those people. My mom has a lot of friends. And Paul—that’s my fiancé—he has two sisters, and one brought her girlfriend.”
“But most of them were your friends,” I insisted.
She looked back at the road. “Sure, I guess most of them.”
We pulled into the parking lot of the building where the catering company had its offices. In the elevator, a woman with two children may have thought Lauren and I were friends, sisters even. But the girl behind the receptionist desk detected the differences. The space between her eyebrows looked angry, like it hurt to unravel why we were there together. She spirited Lauren away and told me to wait where I was. Lauren glanced back at me a few steps down the hall and rolled her eyes when the receptionist tugged her arm towards what was obviously a no-fly zone for me.
Leaving crossed my mind, but I hesitated, and the decision was made for me when the receptionist returned. She narrowed her eyes and straightened the nameplate on the desk that I had tampered with in her absence.
“Weber,” she said to herself, clicking a keyboard.
Weber was the name Sienna had scribbled on the scrap paper yesterday. Lauren Weber. The girl finished typing and looked up at me as if I’d just arrived.
“Name?”
“Sienna Rhodes.” It felt odd saying her name when I didn’t know where she was.
“Check or cash?”
“Cash,” I said, matching the tedium in her voice.
I signed Sienna’s name on a receipt and reached for the bills she counted out loud. I was embarrassed that she knew how little my day was worth. My sneakers squeaked on the polished floors as I walked back the way we came. At the end of the hall, I turned around.
“Can I ask you a question?”
She jumped, and I liked that I had startled her.
“How did you know I was here for a paycheck? I could have come to book an event.”
Her only answer came in the sides of her mouth curving upward. I shoved open a door next to the elevator. It slammed against the wall, and the echo followed me down two flights of stairs. By the time I got outside, my palm throbbed where the fate and life lines intersect.
The cold did nothing to soothe my face, hot with humiliation, equal parts the receptionist’s parting smile and my shame in returning to Lauren’s house at all. I walked to a row of shops that sat on the backside of the building. People came toward me on the sidewalk, and I moved over to give them more room. My foot caught the corner of a menu chalkboard outside a cafe. In the moment it took to adjust my backpack, I caught the reflection of an uncombed and ill-dressed girl in the window. Through the glass, a waitress set two steaming bowls in front of a couple. I patted the cash in my pocket. After giving half to Sienna, I could afford a meal and a trip to the store for a few items to carry me over the next few days.
A sign near the cash register instructed me to seat myself, so I chose a table behind the couple near the window. The same server handed me a menu, and I read the meal descriptions as if they were the opening lines of a bestseller. The last time I’d been in a real restaurant had been with Aunt Helen a week before my mother died. She was the youngest of the siblings and not faring much better than me those last few days.
“Moira, what happened to you?”
Lauren looked down at me with her face scrunched up in a way I decided didn’t happen often.
“I came back to the lobby and you weren’t there. I walked halfway up the block, then came back and saw you through the window.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m sorry it took me so long. Did you get your money?”
I nodded. She sat down and picked up the menu.
We were having lunch together.
After the waitress took our order, Lauren tried to make small talk about a concert she’d been to recently, but I didn’t know the group or their songs.
The meal arrived and saved us from looking for other commonalities.The bowls of food were like the arms of a first love. My hollow stomach expanded in relief as I devoured the chicken salad. Tart cranberries and crunchy walnuts and apples reminded me that food was so much more than sustenance. The soup was generous with pasta, beans and tomatoes. Each warm spoonful made me impatient for the next.
“How is it . . . ” she started, and I assumed she meant the food.
“How is it to have a job?” Lauren asked.
Her cheeks rivaled the shade of her lips. She bent her head down over the plate and waited for me to share proletarian secrets.
“It’s good,” I answered. “I’m looking for something better, but this year has been crazy.”
Before she could ask for specifics, I asked, “You’ve never had a job?”
A strand of hair dropped into her dish. She quickly brushed it away and pulled together a makeshift bun using the black elastic band from around her wrist.
“I really haven’t had the chance. Paul proposed after I graduated last semester, and since then, it’s been nothing but wedding planning.”
“Why did you go to college?”
Aloud, the words were wrong, accusing. She didn’t answer right away, and when she did, her voice lost a bit of its lilt. She began to tear a roll into pieces, buttering each chunk and dropping it back onto the plate.
“Marketing. I actually had an internship offer in Seattle. Paul wants to have a family right away though, and so do I.”
I remembered a night not too long after I had turned sixteen. My mother came into my room. She was still healthy then—no, not healthy, just not yet diagnosed. She sat next to me on the bed and picked up my brush from the nightstand. I relaxed into her as she loosened my hair out of its ponytail. When the brush caught a tangle, she worked through it gently. After she finished, she stroked the top of my ear back and forth like she was bringing a wave forward and then sending it back out to sea.
“You’re stronger than you may feel sometimes,” she said. “It’s nice to fall in love, but make sure you can always take care of yourself.”
Her words embarrassed my adolescent sensibilities, uttered by someone whose heart had closed with the door my father shut behind him soon after I was born. I wanted to squirm free, but she took my face between her hands and spoke again, this time as if she were setting a charm upon me.
“Ask for help when you need it, but don’t sacrifice yourself to the illusion that love equals security.”
A manifesto for some future battle I was sure I’d never have to fight.
Looking at Lauren now, wiping the excess butter from her knife, I wondered if she hadn’t already derailed herself in the hours spent picking china and bridesmaid dresses. I reached for words that might matter.
“You’ll be a great mom. And there’s no reason why you can’t do both.”
“Of course I can,” she agreed. “Even if I have a baby next year, I can go back for my master’s when she starts kindergarten.”
She reached in her purse for the lipstick and reapplied it. I envied how easily her world righted itself.
“My friend manages the store where I’m ordering the china. She told me she was looking for some part-time help. What do you think? I could mention it when we get there.”
“Oh, I don’t have the clothes for that kind of job.”
I regretted the words as soon as they tumbled out of my mouth. They put me on display, the wear of my clothes and the dollar-store makeup that didn’t quite disguise the sallowing skin. I thought her lips turned slightly inward, no doubt wondering who sat across from her—who she’d allowed into her comfortable, sound-stoked car.
“I’m sure I have some outfits that would be great on you,” she said. “I need to go through my clothes anyway. Paul’s apartment isn’t very big.”
“That’s really nice of you, Lauren.”
I meant it. In another life, I tried on clothes she tossed to me from her walk-in closet while we considered what to do later that night.
I looked at my phone and pretended there was a message. “You know, I really should skip the shop and grab a bus home. There’s someone who’s waiting for me.”
She understood then. Not everything of course, but enough. She reached into her purse and unfolded a piece of paper. Among a group of pictures, ink circled a pattern edged in olive-gold and adorned with turquoise spheres.
“It really was the loveliest one,” she said.
I saw a dinner party in the not-too-distant future: Lauren and Paul with friends. A beautifully set table. The callous girl from the party picking up one of the plates, sensing something familiar about its origins. Lauren watching her and remembering me.
She grabbed the bill the server had left on the table. I didn’t object.
We stood outside the restaurant for only a moment.
“Sure you won’t come?”
“No. I have to make a call and then go look for a friend.”
Lauren stepped in and kissed my cheek, whispering to take care of myself. The car pulled away from the curb, and I held my breath until it was out of sight. My hand reached up and felt her sticky pink stamp.
I would go back to the warehouse and check if anyone had seen Sienna. Speak to the boy again, even the old woman if I had to. Maybe she was gone for good, but I would at least try. I leaned against the brick wall and unzipped the front pocket of my pack, wiggling my fingers until I felt the tiny notebook. I pulled up my hood and turned to block the cold. More than a year had passed since I’d almost tossed the address book into a trash can that a couple of kids were trying to set on fire in the park. A boy poured rum on the blaze, and a flame leapt, threatening to burn my hand. I yanked my arm back and tossed the notebook in my bag.
The phone number was recorded in my mom’s spirally handwriting. The cross stroke on the H fanned out all the way across Aunt Helen’s name. I wasn’t sure whether one of the numbers was a three or an eight. I took out my phone and made a guess.
It was a three.
“Hello?”
The similarity of her voice to my mother’s reminded me that’s the way it is in some families.
“Hello, is anyone there?”
“Hi, it’s Moira.”
For more on Vicki Roberts, please see our Authors page.
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