Invisible Ellen (6 page)

Unable to adequately explain the situation, she produced the letter and slid it across to Justice. “This is my address, and what looks like my apartment number too, but I didn't recognize the name on the front. I thought, well, I didn't know what to think. So I opened it. Was that okay?”

Justice read the short letter out loud while Temerity listened eagerly. Then Ellen explained about Cindy's pregnancy and the meeting with the married legal team of Newland and Newland. She ended with a short description of how Cindy cried all the time and the fact that she didn't even have a job.

“Give her the letter,” Temerity said after a short deliberation. “It's her decision.”

“Hold on,” Justice put in. “On the one hand, the letter was meant for her, but it's from someone she didn't even know existed and it will make her decision and her right to give the baby up more difficult, I would think. If it's true that the father's family has a claim to the baby, which is what the lawyers said, right?”

“Yeah,” Ellen agreed.

“That's a serious complication. I think, if the letter wasn't delivered to Cindy and she never got it, there's no moral dilemma for her as far as the deceased father is concerned. It sounds to me like she's got enough to deal with and she's made her decision.”

“But we don't have any right to mess with someone else's fate,” his sister argued.

Justice rolled his eyes, for Ellen's benefit, obviously. “Oh please, it
happens every day, every second of every day. Fate delivered the letter to Ellen instead of Cindy. Ellen is here tonight, and maybe so are you, because she ‘messed with' your fate.”

“Too true,” Temerity said, and finished the last swallow of her wine. “Fine, negate my argument with a single rebuttal. Okay, so don't tell Cindy about the dead father's sister, then what?”

Ellen summarized. “She gives the baby to the rich couple and it'll be better off. Right?”

“First of all, you don't know that the lawyers are richer than the sister, or that the sister would want the baby. And second, it's not necessarily true, anthropologically speaking, that money creates happiness. Often the opposite,” Justice reasoned. “Statistically, provided basic needs are met, the presence of money is not an indicator of proportionate happiness. In fact, worldwide, people with lower to average incomes tend to be happier, suffer less anxiety and illness, report more satisfaction with their children, and remain in marriages longer than their wealthier counterparts. It's interesting.”

“But there's the dead boy's family to consider. How would you feel if I died and you didn't know I'd left you a niece or nephew?” Temerity asked her brother.

“I'd rather you left me money.”

Temerity reached over and smacked his arm with unexpected accuracy.

“Ouch! Okay, I know. I would not like that, but I'm not the one pregnant who would be stuck with a baby that represents past debilitating loss and future hardship to me.”

Temerity sat back and sighed. Then she stood up and pushed in her chair. “I still say give her the letter,” she said. “It's her life,” she added, though with less certainty. She walked a few feet, stopped and turned back as though a boardroom full of second thoughts
were clearing their throats and coughing to get her attention. “It's not really our business,” she insisted, but not very convincingly.

“So you're saying,” Justice asked, as he stacked the dishes, “we should never interfere in someone else's business? Isn't that like saying that we should never help anyone no matter what? Because . . . why? If it's not our business, it's not our problem? Kind of blows the hell out of the entire institution of charity, not to mention kindness and compassion. And don't forget that if Ellen here had thought that you and your admirers were none of her business, I'd be eating out tonight.”

Temerity's face twisted with a mischievous smile and she flung her arms out in surrender. “Okay, fine. Do whatever you think is best. And I don't care if it's our business or not, I want to hear what happens.”

Leaving Ellen alone at the table, Justice started off to the kitchen area. “Do you want coffee?” he called out.

“Um, yes, please,” Ellen said, hoping for dessert too. She'd finished off two large bowls of pasta to each of their single portions, and she'd tried to eat slowly, but it had only been half of what she would normally call a fulfilling dining experience.

“None for me, Just,” Temerity called back.

“I wasn't asking you,” Justice said.

“Nice.” Temerity snorted. Then to Ellen, she added from the side of her mouth, “Brothers, such a pain in the ass.” She swung a hand at the sofa area. “I'll get my instrument. Why don't you move over there, but be careful, the rug is slippery.”

Picking up the ice pack from next to her plate, Ellen pressed it back to her tender forehead. “Thanks for the heads-up,” she said.

Temerity twisted back. “Funny,” she said approvingly. “That was very clever, Ellen.” She gave a little grunt of amusement and then
went on her way across the big room. “Be right back for a short performance.”

Ellen had never had someone play an instrument for her before. There was a vague memory of an out-of-tune piano in a music room at school, but she'd always associated the instrument with acute fear that she would be called on to sing. As she stuffed herself into a corner of the sofa, she tried to steady herself to endure an uncomfortable affront.

When Temerity returned, she was holding a violin in one hand and a bow in the other. Justice came out from behind the kitchen counter and set a cup of coffee on the low table in front of Ellen. On the saucer were several fat cookies. She sipped the coffee. It was light with cream, sweet with sugar, and hot. Ellen smiled. Just how she liked it.

“That okay?” Justice asked.

“Good, thanks.”

Meanwhile, Temerity had placed the instrument under her chin and was tuning it by plucking at the strings and adjusting the keys. This was all Chinese to Ellen.

And when Temerity raised the bow, Ellen grasped the sofa fabric and clenched, her fingers pressing into the cushions. Temerity held the bow, poised and ready, above the instrument, Ellen cringed inwardly, pursing her mouth tightly. Temerity drew the bow bravely across the strings, Ellen's mouth dropped open.

A strain of magnificence filled the space, followed by another and another until notes danced and sustained and flickered and pulled at every exhausted emotion in Ellen. The melody struck directly through her as though her body were an open chamber that resonated with each draw of the bow. She leaned forward, trembling, watching Temerity's face, alight with intense expression, and for
the first time since she could remember, she felt something. For twenty-four years Ellen had watched, listened, and documented, but never, never, never had Ellen experienced such a thing. This wasn't the flat, recorded violin music she'd heard played on the single speaker of her cheap radio. This music moved all around her and changed, tinting everything with its moody pigment, like watercolors brushed in bold strokes through the air, softening as they faded, blending and shaping, dripping down into her, taking her from melancholy to elation to longing, and back again. It went on, telling its enchanted story with a long, sustained note, the vibrato shivering through Ellen so that she trembled with it—then it faded, lingering and haunting, from the air.

Ellen exhaled, spent.

“I like that one,” Justice said. “That the new piece you've been working on?”

“The Mozart, yeah,” Temerity said. “What'd you think, Ellen. Did I bore you?”

“What do I think?” Ellen repeated breathlessly. She was baffled, searching for the words that might begin to express the fireworks that had exploded inside and left her tingling: that if she didn't hear this music again, she would wither and die. What she said was, “I think that I was the opposite of bored.” The words were sadly inadequate; they were puny and wrong. She hung her head.

But both Justice and Temerity were smiling broadly. Justice said, “I believe, sis, that we have witnessed the birth of an aficionado.”

Though she wasn't sure what that was, Ellen could tell from his tone that it must be a good thing. “I've never heard anything like that,” Ellen breathed. “I mean, I've heard music on my portable radio and on TV, which is nice, but it's so much . . . smaller that way. That was . . . alive. It's a story, isn't it?”

Temerity agreed enthusiastically. “A journey, yes, the composers write them to take the audience through an experience, to make them feel something. The good ones anyway. Most people don't get that.”

Oversaturated with feelings and overloaded with stimuli, Ellen desperately needed to get away, to think and absorb—or repel—what had happened. She said her awkward good-byes and made a hasty exit.

Out on the street, she breathed deeply, closed her eyes and swayed to the strains of remembered melody.

“I got it,” she whispered, tingling and excited.
Most people don't,
Temerity had said. Suddenly everything was a little brighter and more frenetic, the buzzing light at the end of the alley had a living voice, the murmur of traffic was its own conversation. They were no longer indistinct noises, absent of meaning.

Though she didn't yet understand it, somewhere in the inner distance, submerged far away in her murky, sleeping consciousness, a bell was ringing, calling her to wake up.

A
rriving less than her usual hour early meant that the women's locker room was not empty when Ellen got to work, though, of course, none of the three women already there took any notice of her as she slid in and sat in the familiar, darkest corner. A more than usually despondent Irena was slumped on the end of a bench, staring down at her hands in her lap. Two of the other cleaners whom Ellen had nicknamed “the Crows” were hovering over her. Ellen had assigned the name of the large black birds to these two because of their habit of poking their beaks into other people's business, and their arrogant disinclination to be shooed away from any scene of emotional carnage.

Though she'd never spoken to either of them, Ellen had learned many things from listening to their conversations. They both wore the sated expressions of women who had just partaken of their daily bread, several loaves of it.

Watching them, Ellen wondered what scraps they had pecked from Irena's bony hide that had left her so depleted. The Crows were both in their fifties. Kiki, an inappropriately youthful moniker in Ellen's opinion, was tall and pale with steel-gray hair and deep jowly
lines that dragged her face down around her mouth. Her crony, Rosa, was short and stocky.

As Ellen watched, Kiki patted Irena on the shoulder smugly and said, “Now, don't you feel better? You can always talk to us, you know that.” But the Russian woman, beyond caring, did not acknowledge the insincere sentiment. Exchanging a knowing glance with Rosa, Kiki cocked her head and the Crows moved away, around the far side of the lockers where Ellen could hear them whispering. Ellen slid along the bench until she could see down the other side of the square block of lockers and was within earshot.

“. . . poor thing,” Rosa intoned in the way that people do when they are disguising their invasive behavior as concern. “What bad luck. She comes with him to a new country and he deserts her with his baby and goes back to Russia.”

“Well,” Kiki contributed, “I'm sorry, but if you're going to run off with a married man, you can't expect him to treat you any better than he did the last one.” She gave a superior sniff.

Rosa raised an admonishing finger. “She was desperate to get out of that horrible place. He must have seemed like the answer to all her prayers. And how would she know he'd leave her and the baby?”

“Oh please.” The sardonic Kiki snorted. “I'm sure it was pretty clear what kind of person he was. I saw him talking to the Boss at the company picnic and the second he was ready to leave, he gave Irena a jerk of his head and she went all pale and sweaty. I don't think I've ever seen a woman look so frightened.”

Caught up in the rush of gossip, Rosa added, “Because he beats her, I'm sure of it. I told you about those bruises I saw on her arms, and remember that black eye she had about a month ago, right before he took off? Ran into a shelf, my foot!” She made a sound like a raspberry.

Kiki pursed her mouth, deepening the lines around it. “Why would she keep the baby if it's not hers? That's suspicious.”

Rosa exhaled impatiently. “Because he said he's coming back for it, and she's scared of him. And I think she has reason to be. I have a niece who married a Russian man who turned out to be a criminal. She divorced him and he sent her death threats from prison, saying he would take back his child, until she moved and changed her name. It'll be the same for Irena.” She nodded and sighed. “It's a tough spot.”

“Irena said the real mother died,” Kiki said, earning a shushing from her friend, who glanced nervously toward the corner of the lockers, on the other side of which Irena sat. Kiki leaned in and whispered, “I'll bet he killed her!” Then, jerking a long bony thumb in Irena's general direction, she said, “She's lucky he took off.”

“I wouldn't call her lucky. She's stuck with someone else's baby, no husband, and no friends in a strange country where she's not welcome.”

Kiki sniffed again, more subdued this time. “If it's not her baby, then it's not her problem. She should hand it over to social services.” She made this statement as though suggesting that Irena should return an ill-fitting skirt to a department store.

“He told Irena he's coming back for him,” Rosa repeated. “You heard what she said. Plus, if there's a dad somewhere, they can't put the kid up for adoption. They have to wait for his permission, so it's foster care for that baby.” Ellen shivered involuntarily at the mention of the black hole in her past. There were good foster parents, she had heard, but she had known none.

Kiki slammed her locker and, having exhausted her interest in Irena's problems, changed subjects as easily as flipping to a new article in
People
magazine. “Did you hear about the Boss's marriage?
Oh, you'll love this. I heard . . .” The Crows began to move away, their heads still close together, and the only thing Ellen caught as they passed her was “. . . apparently, she's fed up . . . don't mess with . . .”

Ellen waited until they were gone and then she went back to her locker, only three down from where Irena was still slumped despondently. The Russian woman, of course, did not acknowledge Ellen's existence, but that was nothing unusual. As she prepared for work, Ellen watched Irena and thought that she had never seen anyone who was still alive look so dead. There seemed to be almost no animation in the thin woman's body, no hope, no will. Ellen was tempted to poke her just to see if she would move, but she didn't. After a few moments, Irena roused herself almost without seeming to engage any muscles and sort of seeped out of the locker room.

It was then that Ellen noticed Irena had left her locker open a crack. Probably the latch hadn't caught when she closed it, or maybe she had just been too weary to push it home.

Sliding down the bench, Ellen slid one finger in behind the thin metal door and swung it outward.

The contents of the locker were sparse. Ellen was not surprised to see that, since being molested, Irena had left the beat-up CD player behind. In addition there was a bottle of water, refilled so many times that the lettering had worn off the plastic, a hairbrush with half of the bristles missing, and a cheap vinyl handbag with a frayed strap. Sticking out of the top of the purse was a worn piece of paper, folded and refolded neatly into three sections. Before she realized she'd reached out for it, the paper was in Ellen's hand.

The letterhead identified it as correspondence from the desk of some small-time immigration attorney. It stated in a few curt sentences that unless she paid him in advance in full, he would not file
the final paperwork to complete her case. The amount she owed for the opportunity to remain in the country was four hundred dollars.

Ellen refolded the single sheet and left it where she'd found it, careful not to close the locker all the way. Then she made her way out to begin her shift.

Checking the assignment chart, Ellen saw that she had general cleaning in books and music first, followed by the staff restrooms. After collecting her cart, she headed out onto the vast floor, the enormity of which was offset for Ellen somewhat by the segmented aisles and the high-stacked racks that rose to the ceiling, creating the illusion of smaller spaces. Open areas of the floor were crowded with displays and stacks of product, making the monolithic warehouse bearable for Ellen. It was also mandatory to never, under any circumstances, look up.

Hugging the shelving, she pushed her cart to the music section and began to dust across the tops of the stacked CD cases. One of them caught her eye. Holding the fluffy duster over it, she slid it out of the stack with her back to the aisle's camera and pocketed the item, making a mental note of the price and computing it into the amount of unpaid overtime she would spend to pay for it, then continued working her way through the section.

The memory of Temerity's playing haunted Ellen, floating in and out of her conscious thoughts, and as the first two hours of her shift went by, she found she was tuned in to the sounds around her in a different way. They were no longer just background static to be ignored. In particular, the floor-buffing machine, driven by a tiny man who had to endure the nickname of “Squirt,” imposed on him by his insensitive coworkers, passed her four times as she worked. It made a high-pitched, discordant whine that made Ellen wish Temerity was there to tune it.

Near the end of the CD section, she noticed a spill on the floor that spread up under the bottom shelf. Getting down on her hands and knees, she tested it with a dry cloth, but it had already solidified to a sticky, hard mass adhered to the floor.
Time to employ the industrial stuff,
she thought. Ellen pulled out a spray bottle of toxic green liquid and liberally saturated the mess, careful not to let any of the cleanser make contact with her skin. With a sense of power, she watched the oxidizer foam and bubble as it went to work on the mystery goo. She imagined that she was dispatching an enemy.
You will not escape your fate, vile spot. You have trespassed into my domain and I will destroy you,
she thought as she watched it froth and lather. Turning her head to escape the caustic fumes, she found herself looking through an open space between the boxes, all the way into the electronics section in the next aisle.

Standing against the far shelving was the Boss, which was weird, like seeing a shark fin cut through the surface of an urban pond. The Boss never came out onto the floor unless it was to work off his anxiety on some poor employee, or when there was a problem, such as a major spill or inventory loss, and procedure demanded it. Seeing the man here alone and without spittle flying from his furious mouth onto an underling's unprotected face was highly unusual. He had his back to the merchandise and was looking furtively around him. Intrigued, Ellen sat back on her butt and watched, keeping a clean rag against her nose to filter the evil vapors, which, even from a few feet away, made her eyes water.

The Boss was a bully, and bullies, Ellen had noted again and again, were not brave. He was transparent and he was up to something. Ellen had studied his habits well enough to see that. As she watched, he fidgeted nervously and licked his lips. His eyes darted constantly, glancing repeatedly around him, as he reached into his
pocket and pulled out what looked like a store receipt. He read it, checked to see that he was alone again, and then studied the locked Plexiglas case of high-end cell phones until he located what he was looking for. Taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked the case, removed a package, slipped it into a shopping bag he took from his pocket, relocked the case, and slunk away.

Ellen looked down at the boiling mess on the floor; it could wait. Leaving her cart, she stayed level with the Boss until he came to the end of the parallel aisle, then she stopped, watching while he crossed to the registers. The general manager was there, a balding man with a horseshoe of thin red hair reaching from one ear to the other, checking the day's receipts against the register totals and pulling the cash for deposit in the safe. Two checkers were not yet counted out. One was a middle-aged man and the other, a young woman, recently hired. The Boss honed in on the newbie. He approached her and produced both the receipt and the box. The words “. . . wife didn't like it . . .” floated across to Ellen's position just at the corner of the aisles. The woman checked the receipt against the product and then counted out several hundred dollars in cash, handed the bills to the Boss and tossed the cell phone into a bin marked
RETURNS
. The Boss folded the money and slipped it into the inside pocket of his shiny jacket with a smarmy smile.

Interesting,
Ellen thought. She pulled out her notebook and recorded the incident, then returned to her station and scrubbed up the stain. The harshness of the chemicals that had attacked it left a bleached spot on the flooring, a small island of lighter but still dull gray in a sea of grime-marinated, sealed cement.

Her break came at one a.m. Caffeine and sugar being mandatory, Ellen went to the break room a few minutes early and poured a cup of coffee, filling a third of her oversized thermal mug with artificial
vanilla coffee creamer. She took it into the restroom and sat in a stall to drink it, washing down a packet of Twinkies and a chocolate PowerBar with the lukewarm beverage. The safety of the small, contained area and the stimulants revived her so that, at the end of her “lunch,” she was fortified enough to return to work.

Still intrigued by the Boss's dubious return policy, she chose a route back to the floor that passed the lower-management offices. This took her down a long hallway, lined on her right side by a wall of glass, behind which were a series of small, fully visible cubicles allotted to the lesser administration. The general manager and the supervising floor manager used a more spacious office in the front of the store. Most of the lights were off at this hour, the occupants of these hamster cages being supervisors of the diurnal variety, and the dark glass reflected the blank wall on Ellen's left. But in the lone illuminated office, the Boss was seated at his desk, looking over paperwork that she recognized as time sheets. As she hurried past, he patted his jacket's bulging breast pocket as though to reassure himself.