Bursting Bubbles (25 page)

Asher moves less than a tree. “So why didn’t you call me and tell me to stay home if you told everybody else?”

“Asher, please. Just come in the back, will you? Sometimes you’re as stubborn as the Lord himself.” With which she grabs his arm and leads him down the hall.

She takes his coat. She hangs it up. She makes him a cup of coffee. She offers him one of the day-old doughnuts donated by the bakery down the street the day before. She asks him if he had any trouble driving in the snow. And all the while she’s talking, her eyes are on his ear, or his forehead, or his chin.

Asher takes a large swallow of coffee without even sniffing at it first. “OK, Mrs Dunbar. What’s going on? What’s ‘kind of a stalker but not exactly’?”

She gives him her trust-in-God smile. “A state marshal.”

Possibly because his brain was slightly chilled, standing outside waiting for her to let him in, it takes Asher a second or two for these words to settle in his mind. “A what?”

“A state marshal. You probably haven’t had too much to do with them, but take it from me they tend to be pretty persistent.”

Asher takes another slug of coffee. “A state marshal? Are you saying you have the place all locked up because you’re expecting a state marshal? What’s he going to do? Arrest you?”

“That’s right.” Mrs Dunbar nods. “The township wants to evict us. They’re serving us with one of those Summary things.”

“Summary and Complaints.”

“That’s it. Summary and Complaints. I knew you’d know all about this.”

“I don’t know all about it,” says Asher. “But I did intern in the mayor’s office, and I know they can’t do that. First they have to give you a Notice to Quit.”

Mrs Dunbar waves a dismissive hand. “Oh, they did that. They’ve been doing that for months.”

Asher laughs, not because he thinks Mrs Dunbar is making a joke but because she never ceases to amaze him. The only reason he believes she’s real and not some kind of elaborate hoax is because he doesn’t think anyone could make her up.

“Notice to Quit? They’ve been giving you them for
months
?”

She half fidgets, half shrugs. “Well, maybe not
months
. But I’m sure we’ve had a couple. I didn’t actually count them.”

“And you didn’t do anything else about them, either? You know, like reply?”

She smiles again, still trusting in God. “I was hoping that they’d stop.”

So one of her prayers has been answered.

“And did you tell anybody else about the notices? Your husband maybe?”

“Oh, no.” She shakes her head, and something falls out of her hair. “Not Archie.”

Of course not. The organized Reverend Archibald Dunbar would have made sure she answered the first one right away.

“Well, what about Carlin? Or the other volunteers?”

“Oh no, not them, either.” She shakes her head again, and spills coffee over the desk. “We’ve had such a hard time this last year or two. So many problems. And no money. Everything’s been such a struggle. I didn’t want the others to worry.”

“That was really thoughtful of you, Mrs Dunbar, but don’t you think they might worry anyway – when they find themselves standing out on the street?”

“I have been praying,” Mrs Dunbar assures him. “I really didn’t think it would come to this.”

Asher resists the urge to sigh. “I’m assuming that the township wants to evict us because we owe them rent.”

“That’s only an excuse,” says Mrs Dunbar.

Besides the township’s own problems with deficits and debt, federal and state funding has been cut and is going to be cut again. The township needs to save millions of dollars. To do this it is reducing school staff and slashing after-school and remedial programmes; closing two libraries, two parks, two beaches and the municipal pool; and selling assets. Among the assets it’s selling are the buildings that house the two women’s refuges, the homeless shelter and the community centre.

“They’ve already put the shelter over on Sullivan up for sale,” says Mrs Dunbar. “Which is why we have these desperate women coming here. They have nowhere else to go. What’s going to happen when we’re all gone and there’s no one to help the poor and the unlucky? It’s like dominoes, isn’t it? You knock over one, and that knocks over the next one until everything’s collapsed.”

“I see your point,” says Asher. “But the fact is that if we’re behind with the rent—”

“Fiddlesticks,” says Mrs Dunbar. “It was only a token rent. Because the building’s falling down around our ears. That was the deal. Peppercorn rent and no maintenance.”

“Only we haven’t been paying it.” The law, of course, relies on logic.

But so, in her way, does Mrs Dunbar.

“Well, how could we?” she demands. If her voice were a glass it would be about to break. “We don’t have any money. The little bit of funding we’ve been able to scrounge has got smaller and smaller, while more and more people have to come to us for help. We have a greater need than ever and even less to give.”

He can’t exactly argue with that, can he? They don’t have any money. He has no idea how she manages to pay for the phone or the electricity. And she’s right about things going from bad to worse and then really worse. It
is
like knocking down a line of dominos by pushing over the first one.
Clunkclunkclunk
.

“Be that as it may,” says Asher. “We have a legal responsibility—”

“Legal responsibility, my grandmother’s garters. What about our moral responsibility?” And now her voice breaks like a Venetian goblet thrown from the roof. “These aren’t the people who caused this crisis. These are the victims. The ones who are paying for someone else’s crimes. What are they supposed to do if there’s nowhere to turn? Just disappear?” She puts her head in her hands. Her shoulders start to heave.

“Mrs Dunbar? Mrs Dunbar, are you crying?” Asher hasn’t had much experience with tears. He must have cried himself when he was little, but he doesn’t remember that. He has seen people cry, but aside from the occasional outburst from one of the girls and the time Will fell from the climbing wall and broke his foot, the tears Asher has seen shed have been mainly in movies and on TV. Lawyers don’t cry, and corporate lawyers cry even less. Asher doesn’t know what to do. “Mrs Dunbar, please don’t cry.”

Mrs Dunbar’s response to this plea is to sob even harder. “What are we going to do?” she wails. “Not just the centre, but all of us. The women’s shelter. The food bank. The church groups that have been doing what they can—”

Asher gets up and stands next to her, patting her shoulder. “Mrs Dunbar, please try to calm down.”

She raises her head, snuffling and wiping the tears with her sleeve. “But what are we going to do?”

Asher knows that she isn’t really asking him, but he feels compelled to answer. “Well, what if we all get together? You know, all the charities and organizations and groups. Maybe even the people who are losing their jobs in the cuts. If we presented, you know, a united front—”

“Asher!” He watches her expression change from hopeless despair to hope-filled joy. “Asher! You’ve found the solution. That’s it!” Mrs Dunbar pulls him to her in a hug that nearly lifts him off the ground. “You’re a genius. I knew the Lord sent you to us for a reason! That’s exactly what we have to do!”

Asher steps back, straightening his shirt. “Well, I’m glad you—”

“We’ll make them listen to us. Them and everyone. We’ll bring the issues to the attention of the nation. Maybe the world.” She is so excited she jumps to her feet. “We’ll get everyone together and we’ll occupy the town hall!”

It’s just as well Asher isn’t drinking coffee now, or he’d choke.

“We’ll do what?”

“Like the ninety-eight per cent did! Like Occupy Wall Street! You’re so right. There’s strength in numbers. Nobody listens to one voice. But if it’s all of us… That’s what Martin Luther King taught. And Gandhi. Civil disobedience. Passive resistance. No change happens if you don’t force it to happen.”

This, of course, isn’t what Asher meant. He meant a petition. Or possibly a letter in the local paper. Not every do-gooder in the township camping out in the mayor’s office.

“Maybe you shouldn’t get too excited,” says Asher. “I mean it might not be so easy to—”

“No, this is the right thing to do.” She hits her chest. “I feel it here! I’m sure it’s what Jesus himself would do. He always stood up to authority.” She gets to her feet and makes another lunge for him. “Thank you, Asher. What would I do without you?”

Asher is saved from answering by being smothered in another hug.

“And don’t you worry,” says Mrs Dunbar. “If it’s the right thing to do, the Lord will help us.”

Asher certainly hopes so.

After
their last session together, Marigold dreams about Sadie for the next two nights.

In the first dream, Sadie arrives in the tutor room dressed in the uniform of a New York City patrolman. The uniform is a little big for her; she has the sleeves rolled back and the hat keeps sliding down over her eyes. She says she only came to tell Marigold that she can’t stay because she has to go on duty. “Law and order must be maintained and justice must prevail,” says Sadie – using at least two words Marigold has never heard her say in reality because she probably doesn’t know them. “But what about the book we’re reading?” asks Marigold. “I thought you wanted to find out what happens next.” Sadie pushes her hat back up on her head, and says they’ll have to read it another time. “Duty calls louder than pleasure,” says Sadie. She waves a pair of handcuffs over her head and disappears.

In the second dream, Marigold leaves the school to find Officer Sadie Hawkle on the street outside, arresting Justine Hawkle. She has her handcuffed to the railing and is reciting the Miranda Act while Justine cries and pleads to be released. Marigold hurries over to ask Sadie why she’s arresting her mother. Sadie turns her fish-on-ice eyes on her. “Because she’s always yelling at me,” says Sadie.

Marigold is not a qualified psychologist, of course, but she has a pretty good idea why she’s having these dreams. She has started to understand the Sadie Hawkle signs. It used to be that if Sadie was having a hard time at school or at home and was feeling vulnerable she’d be quiet and withdrawn at their sessions. Some might even describe her as sullen, staring at you silently with that small-animal-about-to-be-squashed-by-a-truck expression. But now it’s different. Now if Sadie’s miserable she talks about her father. This week when they met, it seemed as if Sadie mentioned her father every five minutes. He’d finished making her new bed. He wanted her to come and pick out the paint for her room. He was thinking of getting a cat. Then there was a very long story about how he found a little boy who was missing for a week. Everyone thought he’d been kidnapped or killed. The family was afraid they’d never see him again. The parents cried on TV. It was really sad because even though the cops kept on looking, they didn’t think they had much hope of finding the missing boy alive. Only Sadie’s dad thought he’d run away on purpose. Because he was always being yelled at for doing everything wrong. It was Sadie’s father who talked to everybody in the neighbourhood – even other kids – and figured out where the little boy was. When he brought the boy home everybody said that Sadie’s dad was a real hero. He had his picture in the paper and got a special medal and for once he wasn’t in trouble with his boss. When this epic finally ended, Marigold asked how Sadie’s mother was. Sadie’s gaze went straight to the floor. “She’s OK. She gets tired.”

Marigold wakes up on Saturday morning, still thinking about Sadie. She’s getting ready to meet Byron to go shopping for an anniversary present for his parents when Bonnie Kupferberg phones.

Although Marigold always assumes the best, this is such an unprecedented occurrence that she doesn’t greet her with a cheery
Hi, Bonnie!
She says, “Bonnie? What’s wrong?”

Bonnie doesn’t waste time on pleasantries, either. “I just had a call from Justine Hawkle. It seems that Sadie’s gone missing.”

“What?” Marigold is standing at the basin, checking her make-up with nowhere to sit down, but she feels as though she’s collapsed into a chair. Or been knocked into it. “When?”

“Justine said she wasn’t in the apartment when she got up this morning. At first she figured Sadie’d gone to the store for a bag of chips or a candy bar. She does that. So she waited, and when she didn’t come back, Justine went after her. There was no sign of Sadie and nobody’d seen her.”

But the habit of hope is hard to break. “Maybe they just didn’t notice her,” Marigold suggests. “You know if they were busy with other customers or something, they might not.”

“That doesn’t answer the question of where she is, though,” says Bonnie.

“So I guess Mrs Hawkle checked everywhere.” This is a question.

“Of course she did. She said sometimes Sadie hides just to make her worry. You know, if they had a fight or she yelled at her about something. Usually she’s in a closet or under the bed. And one time she found her in the cellar. Last time she pulled this, she was in the garage at the back of the house.”

And that, of course, is Marigold’s silver lining in this particular cloud. “Well, that’s probably it, isn’t it?” Nothing awful has happened to Sadie. She’s done this before. They obviously had a fight last night, or Justine yelled at her about something, and Sadie went into a sulk and hid somewhere.

“Only her mom hasn’t found her.” Bonnie never expects the best. “She searched every inch of the apartment, the house, the grounds and the garage, and all she came up with was the pair of new sneakers Sadie lost last summer. She was hoping Sadie was with you. Or that you heard from her.”

“Me? Why me?”

“Because Sadie’s so fond of you.”

“But she doesn’t know where I live or have my phone number.” She probably doesn’t even know Marigold’s last name.

“Well, it was worth a shot. Her mother says she doesn’t really have any other friends. Not someone she might go to like this.”

“Is there anything I can do?”
Everything will be all right
, Marigold tells herself.
Sadie wasn’t abducted. She can’t have gone far
. “Maybe if I talked to Mrs Hawkle?”