Connections (27 page)

As soon as Yolanda Santiago came home, she sat down, untied her laces, and pushed her shoes off. She stood up, reached under the white skirt, and yanked down her pantyhose. Then, with a loud “Dios,” she pulled them off and flexed her toes. Señora Sanchez offered to bring her a cold papaya juice, but Yolanda was too tired and too hot to decide if she wanted one. The overtime for doing a double-shift went right into her furniture fund for when they moved—if they moved—but it was hell on her feet. And her back, which ached constantly; the tip of her spine was sore even when she got out of bed in the morning.

Staying for the last meal at Mount Sinai meant she got home just after her own kids’ supper, although it was a relief sometimes to miss the clamor of chattering and squabbling at the table. And the dishes. Yolanda tried to fix dinner before she left at 4:30 a.m., but it was hard to think of meat and rice before she ate breakfast. Fortunately, Señora Sanchez didn’t mind cooking and had even taken to sleeping on the couch on those nights that Yolanda was going to be late, because it was easier for her than going home and coming back.

Yolanda finally got up and went to her bedroom. The side of the double bed that Maria shared with Elena was mussed up, but six-year-old Maria was sitting on the floor between it and the twin bed Yolanda slept in, coloring. “Mama! Mama!” She jumped up, arms open for a hug.

Yolanda picked her up and kissed her cheek loudly. “Why aren’t you asleep, mija?”

“I wanted to finish. Put me down.” Maria rushed to hold up her coloring book. “Look at Cinderella, Mama. Isn’t she beautiful?”

Yolanda was hanging up her uniform but turned absently, and trying to sound enthusiastic, she complimented Maria on the colors of the gown and the neatness of the strokes inside the black outline. She put on her nightgown and slippers and asked, “Where’s everybody?”

“They’re playing a game on the Wii.”

“Oh, your brother’s going to kill them.”

“Uh. Ah.” She shook her head once to each side as she enunciated two distinct words in her favorite expression.

“How d’ya know?”

“’Cause he’s in the bedroom too.”

“Ricky’s home tonight?”

“Uh-ha-ah.” Maria used her second favorite expression.

“Okay, that’s enough for you. Into bed. Hurry.” She patted her behind and slipped on a housecoat. The buttons on the housecoat had long ago fallen off, and Yolanda held it closed with her hand. She bent to tuck in Maria, switched on the nightlight in the floor socket so she and Elena would be able to find their way to bed, turned off the overhead fixture, and blew a kiss to Maria before she slipped out.

She hesitated outside the smaller bedroom, on the other side of the kitchen, her hand on the knob, listening. There was a lot of noise from mechanical television voices and those of children, all talking at the same time.

“No, stop, ooh, don’t.” As soon as she heard Elena wail, her maternal instinct made her open the door quickly. Her oldest daughter was sitting on the foot of the bed, her eyes closed, rocking sideways.

Yolanda breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever it was, it wasn’t as bad as her imagination, as her worst fear. Having a son with no father around, a teenager who was always testing his manhood and trying to prove to his friends how macho he was, as well as having a young daughter…Dios, she didn’t know how she’d survive until they were adults. When the twins were small and slept with her, there was no choice but for Elena and Ricardo Jr. to share a room. But they were much younger then, anyway. Some of her friends thought she was lucky; some of them didn’t have two bedrooms. But she thought she’d be better off if they’d all had to be in the same room. At least she’d be able to watch everything that was going on. She was so glad when the little ones were old enough and she could split them up and put the two boys together and the girls in with her. But even that didn’t stop her from worrying. Señora Sanchez was too old, too deaf, maybe even too naïve to ever be able to notice something fishy going on.

“What’s wrong?” Yolanda asked, stepping into the room. She felt guilty at her relief, at her lack of real concern for whatever had happened, as long as it wasn’t that. God forgive her for even thinking it.

“Hi, Mama.” Elena came over to her and stood on her toes to plant a kiss on her mother’s lips.

“Ricky’s scaring us,” Michael said. He was on the floor in front of the TV, concentrating on a Mr. Potato Head in the circle of his crossed legs.

“Don’t I get a kiss hello?” She smiled at Maria’s twin, knowing he couldn’t have cared less who had come in, as long as it was somebody he could report his brother to.

“In a minute,” Michael answered. “Ricky’s trying to give us nightmares again. After you told him not to.”

Ricky clicked the remote control and the sound abruptly stopped. “Hi, Ma. Don’t listen to them.”

“You’re not scaring them, are you? You know how easily you frighten them with your horror stories.”

“Yeah, he does it on purpose,” Michael reported.

“C’mon. Nuthin’ like that.” Her firstborn lounged on his pillow in a T-shirt and jockey shorts.

Elena shouted. “Gross! It’s worse than monsters and ghosts. He was making up these things, Mama.” She scrunched up her face in disgust.

“I was only telling ’em about—”

Elena covered her ears with her hands. “No, no, don’t say it again. Mama, tell him not to.”

“Ma, honest,” Ricky insisted. “I was telling them about work—that’s all.”

The sun squeezed through the tightly shut blinds and like a shiny scythe, it left a swatch of light in the darkness. It cut across Laurie’s face, waking her. She didn’t move, because Oscar was fast asleep, burrowed into her armpit, and half of Felix’s body was over her chest, his head just touching Oscar’s side. She tried not to disturb them as she reached her hand over and pulled the shorter cord on the blinds to angle the slats. Her bedroom brightened with morning.

From where she lay, the branch of the tree in front of her building waved in and out of her view. A breeze. She moved gently, and the two cats did their wake-up exercises, stretching their backs and their paws to their very ends, pleasure rattling in their rib cages and echoing against her. She turned off the air conditioner and switched on the radio. She listened to the end of a song and part of the news, waiting to hear the weather forecast. The humidity had dropped to 30 percent and it was only 68 degrees outside. The forecast was for a pleasant day with a high in the eighties. Laurie nuzzled her furry friends for a few minutes and then got up. She struggled with the window and once it opened, she stuck her head out to breathe the fresh air and feel its current on her skin. Then she closed it all but a few inches so the cats couldn’t fall out.

She quickly washed up and put on a pair of old jeans and a one-size-fits-all shirt that tented her figure. She went out to pick up a coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts and the newspaper. Once on the street, she was invigorated by the gentle wind that carried a promise of autumn. She gulped its freshness and decided the weather was too beautiful to go right back. She walked down Woodhaven to the corner where it met Queens Boulevard and, on the spur of the moment, she went into the diner to have her breakfast instead of heading to Dunkin’ Donuts. She skimmed the
News
, read the picture captions, and headed back to her apartment.

As she casually strolled home, looking at seemingly abandoned apartment houses, she tried to decide what she could do with a day as perfect as this one. She wished she had a car so she could take a ride to the country and just drive on narrow roads, smell the grass, and watch the trees whiz past. She could always take a bus to the beach. But she hated the beach. She could catch up on her housework, a word she associated with her grandmother, but the weather was too wonderful to stay indoors. No matter what, she would not—absolutely not—go to the office. Lightning should strike her dead if she broke her oath. Laurie smiled to herself, imagining a bolt of electricity leaving the summer sky to hit her and the headlines announcing FREAK STORM IN ELMHURST KILLS 1.

Surely she could find something to do with herself. Or with someone. She had neglected her old friends in the past few years. Except for holidays and birthdays, she hardly bothered with anyone. Maybe nobody would want to see her anymore. If she was having this much trouble deciding what to do with herself today, what would she do next weekend when she had three days off? Then everything would surely be deserted, everybody away for Labor Day. It was depressing to think of the end of summer, even though she didn’t care about it very much. It was more like she hadn’t noticed its coming. And now it was leaving, closing…her final chance to enjoy the season.

She hadn’t even been on a real vacation in…she strained her memory…probably six or seven years. Not counting the week she took off when she moved from her last apartment in Brooklyn. Or when she flew to Scottsdale, Arizona, right after her parents retired. Before she had the fight with them. And now all the time was lost. Of course, if she really needed the time off or wanted it for a special trip, she was sure Dr. Pomalee would let her take some of it and add it on to the current three weeks she was entitled to. But she never would ask or want it.

The sun was getting stronger and it beat on her shoulders and the back of her neck as she walked. Even with her dark glasses, she squinted against the white glare. The breeze had long since evaporated, and she was uncomfortably hot. She walked as if on an endless desert, toward a mirage. She checked her wallet, just in case a bus came along, to make sure her MetroCard was there. Her lips puckered into a scowl, and she quickened her pace, anxious now to return to…she didn’t know.

When Laurie finally got home, she rushed past Felix, waiting by the door to be greeted, to throw herself across her bed. She grabbed the pillow as she fell and let her grief explode in sobs.

Children of all sizes and ethnic backgrounds clustered outside the entrance to the zoo, in groups according to age and the bright matching shirts with the name of the day care or community center or church they belonged to ironed onto both the front and back. They darted in and out between the same color-coded adults. Some wandered off and intermingled, so one blue shirt stood out in a mass of orange; two red shirts were spotted in the green group. Their escorts shouted at them and chased them, sounding more like drill sergeants than day-camp counselors. It was virtually impossible for a child to get lost, but there was always one, sometimes two, who found a way—especially the youngest, who were easily distracted by a balloon, a squirrel, a pigeon, or a paralyzing fullness in the bladder.

So they were lined up by the counselors and counted and re-counted to make sure no one was missing. This was the first time since the subway platform when they got off the train, before walking hand in hand up Fifth Avenue to 64
^th
Street where, still attached to each other, they undulated down the wide stairs like a gaudy Oriental paper snake.

Clifford watched casually as some of them scrambled to find room on the long wooden benches while their leftover mates talked and laughed and played silly tricks on each other. Each day the children were different; the shirts were different, as were the organizations and the leaders. What remained the same was some kind of roll call and a consultation by the sergeants to plan their strategy for maneuvers inside. Since the Central Park Zoo had been redesigned long ago, and the big animals moved to more humane habitats in the Bronx, the zoo seemed much smaller. And, except for the youngest visitors, who were fascinated by everything, the older kids seemed disappointed by not seeing elephants and tigers and giraffes. That was on the way out. On the way in, they were excited and hyper and eager to get on with their day trip. This was the time they started munching their snacks.

Clifford had become adept at his scam. He nonchalantly wandered toward the kids about his height so that even though his shirt didn’t match, he wouldn’t be very noticeable. Most days, he’d see an occasional white shirt like his on somebody whose mother had forgotten it was the trip day. Of course, all the kids made a fuss over Kola, pushing one another to get close enough to pet her. And Clifford, between answering what her name was and what kind of dog she was and how old she was, would point to the kids’ snacks and blatantly ask, “Can I have a few of those?” The kids were eager to exchange a few pretzels or Goldfish or a cookie or popcorn for an extra chance to touch the massive dog—the first real animal they’d seen since arriving at the zoo. Clifford usually mooched enough to satisfy his mid-morning hunger, and sometimes he was even offered a whole bag to take with him for later.

Now, as the counselors urged the children to assemble, Clifford walked over to the iron railing opposite them and wiped his hands on his denim-clad thighs. “Good girl,” he told Kola, as she sat on her waving tail. They watched the assorted children pounce through the turnstile, shouting happily.

Clifford imagined them going home and chattering to their parents about everything they’d done and seen, about the big, beautiful white dog with golden spots who licked their hands. Maybe their parents would tell them to sit down and eat or get into their pajamas or wash up or brush their teeth, before being snuggled into bed. Clifford missed his bed. He missed home. And he missed his mother more than anything. But he could never go back, and he would probably never see her again. As long as he lived. He didn’t have to worry anymore about being asked to choose between his parents, or about living with his father, or about Kola being sent away. Since she’d bitten that man, he knew that if they ever found her, they’d take her away. Kill her. Maybe even arrest him! No, they’d have to hide forever.

“C’mon, Kola. Let’s go, girl.” Clifford swiped his nose with the back of his hand and led his dog back into the depths of the park.

Louise usually ate at her desk. It was too hot to wander around or sit outside on a bench or a step or a ledge, like all the other clerical picnickers. The streets were a smorgasbord of vendors, and it was more comfortable to pick up something and come back to the air conditioning, even if the office was noisy and distracting. It gave her a chance to catch up on a few personal chores, like writing a long overdue e-mail to her aunt and reading a few pages of a magazine while she nibbled at her salad.

Ken had surprised her the other day when he was downtown for a meeting by calling her for lunch. He’d insisted on picking her up in her office, even after she’d suggested meeting in a restaurant or in her lobby. She’d acted like an adolescent, blushing when the receptionist escorted him down the maze of hallways to point out the doorway of her cubicle and then waited to see how they greeted each other. Louise showed him around a little, trying to disregard the questioning looks from coworkers as she took him on a tour. When she’d occasionally had to make an introduction, she’d felt awkward. She didn’t know what to call him—my friend, my boyfriend. My lover. Silly. She had shared some very personal moments with this man, and she was afraid, she realized now, she might embarrass him by calling him her boyfriend. Didn’t want to make him feel that she had assumed they had a thing going. She must really need to have her head examined.

Louise opened the right-hand middle drawer enough to use as a footrest and pushed her chair back to a reclining position. She took a sip of soda and draped the
People
open across her thighs. She wasn’t going to answer the phone until her lunch hour was over, but the ringing was annoying, so she looked at the caller ID and picked it up. It was Ken, and he was very excited. He’d just spoken to the father of a runaway boy and even though the man wouldn’t talk about it, Ken knew he had also received a ransom note about their dog. Seemed to be a sore point between the man and his wife, and the man didn’t want to have anything to do with it. But he did tell Ken he could call back when she was home and discuss it with her.

“I feel I’m on to something. Something bigger than a scheme against the old lady. Maybe more widespread.”

“Nobody would ever believe it of you. You’re so…deceiving. A nice, kind, gentle man. A nice, kind,
Jewish
man. They don’t go in for cops-and-robbers things.”

“You haven’t seen the rest of my wardrobe.”

“What d’ya mean?”

“You’ve only known me in mild weather. You don’t know…I have a rumpled-up dirty trench coat. Like Colombo’s.”

“See, you’re in the wrong profession. You oughta become a detective.”

“Wouldn’t work. Wanna hear the story of my life? Perry Mason had Della Street. Superman had Lois Lane. James Bond had…a whole menagerie. All the great investigators have beautiful secretaries or assistants. With my record, I’d come home to my beautiful, bachelor penthouse, with its high-tech electronic marvels and latest seduction equipment, and turn the light on over my circular, rotating mirrored bed with the built-in bar and movie screen in the footboard. I’d pull back the exotic silk sheets and find—ta-da—someone like Rosa Bassetti waiting for me in her flannel nightie.”

Louise howled. “C’mon, it could be worse.”

“How could it be worse?”

“I don’t know. I suppose what would be worse would be finding Rosa Bassetti
without
her flannel nightgown.”

This time Ken laughed loudly. “She’s not really that bad, you know. In fact, I kinda think you’d like her. Maybe when I visit her this week, you’d like to meet her.”

“I think I would. I wanna make sure you’re not pulling my leg, and she’s not some gorgeous blonde.”

“With a name like Bassetti? A blonde Italian?”

“Oh, right. Let me rephrase that. I meant some gorgeous lady…with blonde hair under her arms.” Louise couldn’t believe she’d said that. Blurted her idiotic response as if she were talking to a teenage girlfriend or trying to get laughs from her coworkers, as she often did. She tried too hard. The silence stung her. Oh, God, she was really a jerk.

Then Ken guffawed and it was all right. “I’m going to give her a call today, because I want to see her before Labor Day. Matter of fact, I’d like to get the whole thing resolved before the weekend.”

A whoosh of air rushed into Louise’s lungs, inflated them, pushed them against her ribs. “Ken…”

“What? What’s the matter? Louise, are you there?”

“Yes. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Tell me what? Hey, don’t do this to me. Tell me.”

“I can’t go to Connecticut.”

“What? I don’t believe it! Why in hell not? What happened?” Ken’s voice was more disappointed than angry.

“I want to meet your parents, honest. It’s just that ever since you asked me, as much as I want to go, I’m sick—just sick—about having to put Honda somewhere for three days. I’m sorry. I know it’s foolish, but I can’t help it. I love that dog, and I die, thinking of what it would do to him, being in a cage. I’d have to take him on Thursday night so we could leave on Friday, and I wouldn’t be able to pick him up until Tuesday because they’d be closed Monday night—and I’ve been nauseated with the worry and—”

“It’s okay.”

“What?” The last of her words had sucked the air out, leaving a hollowness in her chest.

Ken’s voice was as soft and sweet as the look Louise tried to envision. “I know how you feel. I’m just surprised you didn’t decide before now.”

“Actually I did. I just didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Please don’t ever be afraid to tell me anything. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Louise answered almost shyly.

“There’s no way I’m going to tell my mother, though. She’d kill me. And probably you too. She’s been planning this, you know, for a few weeks, and she’s really excited about meeting you. Tell you what. Let’s leave early Saturday morning, spend the day up there, have dinner with them, come back to the city, pick up the dog, drive out to my house, and stay there on Sunday. Then, Monday morning, we can drop Honda back at home and go back to my parents again. I think they’re planning a barbecue party on Labor Day. How’s that sound?”

“Oh, Ken, it sounds fantastic. But what about all the driving? I’m sure it’s at least two hours each way. You won’t mind?”

“Of course I’ll mind. But not as much as I’d mind not being with you.”

Tears trickled down Louise’s cheek.

“Hey, you there?” he asked.

“Yes.” Her voice cracked with static.

“You crying?”

“Yes, of course I’m crying.”

“But I thought you
liked
my idea.”

“I do.”

“Then why are you crying, for Chrissake?”

“That’s why. Because I like your idea. And because”—she blew her nose loudly into the receiver—“you’re so wonderful.”

“Are all women as crazy as you?”

“Who knows? I just know I’m crazy about you.” There.

She’d said it.