The Odds (38 page)

“I hope Alison doesn’t show,” Christie mutters. They all sit on the predictably hard wooden benches, waiting for the judge to get back from lunch.

“Boss,” Potocki warns in a low voice, “they’re going to say having a thirteen-year-old in the house was enough.” He rolls and unrolls the phone records he pulled.

“Not with no money, no food, and the youngest one seven years old. It isn’t okay.”

“I know that.”

“This judge, Gorcelik, worries me. Always conservative. I guess I want a visionary.” Christie scratches his neck. “Whatever a visionary is. Marina’s word.”

Potocki smiles.

Finally Alison arrives. The appearance she makes is modest, girlish—even in a trendy retro way, a tad fashionable. The hairstyle, Colleen wonders, or the way she holds her handbag? What is it? She looks utterly calm.

Christie asks Alison to sit on the other side of him, away from the kids. She does, but she winks and waves at them. Susannah waves back, and the others follow suit, exhibiting little real enthusiasm.

Christie sets his jaw.

Colleen and Potocki look at each other.

   GORCELIK, A WOMAN OF ABOUT sixty, a seasoned judge in this court, isn’t interested in anybody else’s testimony, only Christie’s. Colleen certainly feels like a fifth wheel. Potocki concentrates on the proceedings with patient dignity.

Christie makes his points efficiently: “Evidence at the house indicates the stepmother did not intend to come back; the children were on their own without enough food in the house for ten days; they needed or wanted an adult around, and so took in a man who was in trouble with the police and who had a criminal element looking for him; Alison Philips called only twice during that time—this was at the end of the ten days when she had decided to come back.”

Gorcelik looks long at Christie before turning to the children.

“Who can answer me? Did all of you attend school during the ten days?”

“Yes,” Meg answers.

“Did your grades suffer? I see in front of me that you seem to get … well, A and A-plus. Quite a record.”

“All of us are still getting A’s. Joel is going to be awarded. He skipped a grade. They want me to go to Advanced Placement, but I haven’t decided.”

“Why haven’t you decided?”

“I don’t know enough about it, where I’d go, how much extra travel time.”

“But the grades haven’t suffered?”

“No.”

“What did you eat while your stepmother was gone? Why was she gone, by the way?”

“Looking for a job.”

“She didn’t have one here?”

“She did. But it doesn’t pay much. Waitressing at the Park House.”

“I see. Well, tell me a couple of meals.”

“Roast chicken with potatoes and green beans. Hamburgers. Stew, pasta.”

“Where did you get the money for food?”

“Alison left us some. We have little jobs. Babysitting and things. And we get lunch at school.”

“What about this man you took in?”

“We knew him from the pizza shop. He needed a place to stay, and we knew him.”

Judge Gorcelik pauses for a moment, looks straight at Christie, and says, “Let me talk to Alison Philips.”

Alison approaches her.

“Ms. Philips. These are good kids.”

“I know. I couldn’t have gone to look for work if they weren’t.”

“How successful was your attempt?”

“Well, I could have gotten something, but the prices for everything were so high that I wouldn’t be better off in the end.”

“You looked where?”

“Manhattan and the Bronx.”

“Golly. You didn’t know about prices in New York?”

“I didn’t know about housing prices.”

“Kind of in a bubble, aren’t you?”

“Sometimes I am.”

“Do you love these kids?”

“Yes.”

“Did you intend to come back?”

“Yes. I always intended to come back.”

“Yet you quit your job.”

“I can get my job back,” Alison says quietly.

“These kids— It turns out they’re a bit special. In the brain department.”

Alison acknowledges that with a simple nod.

“Are you afraid of them?”

“In what way?”

“I mean intimidated.”

“I think lots of people would be.”

“I’m going to tell you a couple of things here. Now, you listen. Kids need a lot of plain hugging; they need compliments. The girls need stylish haircuts. See, these kids should have things—what other kids have. Clothes, computers, you know what I mean. You don’t have much in the way of finances.”

“Not at the moment.”

“Hmm. That’s one big problem. Please sit.” She consults the papers before her. “Commander Christie? What’s this you’re trying to tell me about foster care?”

“That if we could find the right people, a match, the kids—who care about school a lot—could be better off in a steadier environment. I know a couple who might be a possibility. But they’re in Europe at the moment, back sometime this week. I’m asking for time to look into it. The kids aren’t safe in their present home. The man they took in is being hunted.”

The judge takes a long time looking at all of them. She calls Christie back to her. In a not-completely-private voice, she says, “You know what kind of thing I see here all the time? Your idea about crashing the foster care system is pie in the sky; if I take these kids from their stepmother, they’re going to be separated and put with people far worse than Ms. Philips.”

“We can fight it.”

“I have a lot of other things I have to fight for. I’m ruling for parenting classes for Ms. Philips, two full days of counseling for her right now, a family service worker assigned to the home, and I insist this family get finances in order—we can see to that. Finances are a major part of the problem here. You have a place the kids could stay for a couple of days? This Pocusset House?”

Christie says, “Yes.” But he looks completely whipped.

“Commander? If you still assess the situation as dangerous, let’s work together to find another place for them to live or get a policeman on duty at their home.” She looks at the kids. “You want to go back home? Stay together?”

They all say yes with no uncertainty at all.

Seconds later, Alison is hugging the kids. It’s a false hug; even the judge can see it if she cares to. “In a couple of days you get to come home,” Alison says. “Happy?”

“I hope she takes a powder again,” Christie mutters.

Colleen’s phone rings. It’s Dolan saying, “Found your bus driver. He identified Nick Banks. Took him to Johnstown.”

“He’s sure?”

“Absolutely sure. Helped him off the bus.”

“You have the driver there now?”

“Yes.”

“Could I—if I come right down?”

“Don’t trust me, Greer?”

“Of course I—”

“I’ll hold on to him.”

The kids are urging Janet Littlefield to get them back to school.

“I feel like a mama again,” Littlefield says. “Chauffeur.”

Christie takes Meg aside. “I want you to call me or Detective Greer if there is anything you need. Anybody bothers you, you need food in the house, anything. You understand? You have my card?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go,” Littlefield says.

Colleen looks at her watch. After she talks to the driver, she’ll pack a bag, take her own car into Johnstown, work the evening, and stay overnight with her parents, who live only twenty minutes farther on. That way, if she hasn’t found Nick yet, she’ll be ready to start at seven the next morning.

   NICK CAN SCRAMBLE AN EGG as well as anyone can, but he’s had to get used to how to move in the little kitchen. Business was slow this morning—which helped. The gruff owner brought him a desk chair from the nook he uses as an office, so Nick wheels back and forth in the kitchen, standing when he needs to. The owner works the counter. Dmitri Colouris is his name.

“Dmitri,” Nick repeated when they were introduced.

“Means Jim.”

“Charles Philips,” Nick said, holding out a hand. Dmitri’s calloused hand shook it. “How do you know Mo Weaver?”

“I’m in AA. She’s a good soul.”

An order comes in. A chicken salad sandwich is something he can make. A hamburger with fries—he can do it. He moves more and more rapidly, but his ribs and his armpits still cry out in pain from yesterday’s exertions. The Greyhound terminal in Pittsburgh was like a joke. Once the city bus let him off, he had to walk another quarter mile to it, up impossible wooden ramps. It was a joke played on him; he took it, he survived it.

Mo Weaver
is
a good soul. Maureen. She’s looking for a place for him to stay.

A lot of people have seen him over these two days. More will see him if he goes to a meeting. Yet he’s come this far.

He works throughout the afternoon for Dmitri. It’s strange. The man never smiles or cracks a joke, and yet Nick isn’t uncomfortable around him. He even feels cared for by him.

Mo Weaver appears at the diner at five, just when Dmitri’s son comes in to take over in the kitchen. “Got it,” she says quietly to Nick. “Room for rent. You get kitchen privileges. You want to eat something here before I take you?”

“I had soup and a burger.”

“Will it hold you?”

“Yeah. Would you believe I used to have a lot of money? Used to eat fancy dinners.”

“No trouble believing that.”

“I used to have nice things.”

“I get it. It shows on you somehow. Not that it matters. We’re all naked babies. That’s just the dressing. You sure you had enough to eat?”

“I’m sure.”

“It’s just a room I’m taking you to. Nothing fancy. Fellow who’s a friend of mine has rooms to rent. Don’t stiff him.”

“I won’t.”

“It’s raining out.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“Plants needed it.”

   GREYHOUND USES A SHOP—MR. Simon’s Barber Shop—as a depot. Next door is the doughnut shop the driver talked about.

Colleen takes a deep breath, goes into the doughnut shop, and takes a seat at the counter. “Apple pie looks good,” she says, “and I’ll have a coffee.” A young man behind the counter nods and busies about bringing her order.

She’d rather go somewhere down the street for a stiff scotch, truth be told. Her parents expect her for dinner tonight.

The other customers in the shop eye her curiously.

She eats slowly, letting them know she likes the pie. When she finally presents Nick’s picture to the man behind the counter, he shakes his head nervously. “Guy in trouble?”

“He could be helpful to us is all. I’m going to have to show the picture around some.”

There are about twenty-five people eating or ordering. She shifts easily from seat to seat.
Hello. That taste good? Oh, well, I grew up close by. Seen this fellow?
By the time she gets to all of them, they appear to be used to her. But she leaves the shop without anything to go on.

For a while she just drives, getting a sense of the city, where a man might go.

At about seven, she goes into a bar and orders the scotch she wants. She shows the picture around again, but lets in the depressing thought that Nick Banks could well have hitched a ride out of town.

“Where do people go in this town when they’re homeless,” she asks the bartender.

“Catholic Charities? Salvation Army? The park?”

The first place she visits after the bar is the Salvation Army, where she gets good and bad news, a split second apart, delivered by a slender Calvinistic sort, a man who says simply, “Oh, he was here. Left this morning.”

“He might come back?”

“Could. Might.”

“Will you call me if he does? And call no one else. It’s in his interest.” She gives the man her number. “Any time. He knocks on your door at three in the morning, it’s okay to call.”

   COLLEEN’S PARENTS ARE WATCHING television by the time she gets in. “We ate. We couldn’t wait,” her mother tells her before she is the whole way in the door. “But we have some dinner ready to zap for you.”

“I had work. Give me a hug.”

“I don’t like this work you do.”

“I know.”

“Where’s Ronnie?”

“He’s waiting for us to call him. He’ll be here soon as we do. You hungry?”

“Starved.”

“Atta girl,” her father says. He doesn’t look good. He’s pale. He has a drink going.

Both parents are thin.
Frail
isn’t quite the word, just … a hollowed-out version of thin. Metabolism. Some trick of sugar-burning their bodies learned a long time ago.

Colleen kisses each of them on the forehead. They blink up at the benediction.

“Come, eat.”

Her parents hold on to her—skirt, shoulder, hands, whatever they can make contact with. It’s true they neglected her most of her life, it’s true they weren’t looking while she and her brother grew up, and it’s true that, in spite of that neglect, they love her. And vice versa. “Sit, sit,” they say.

Colleen can hear the whir of the microwave.

Her father carries the bistro glass of whiskey and stands next to her, but he’s interested in the program on the television, so he cranes his head to see it. Her mother brings a plate from the microwave. Her parents have their routine lives—they get ready for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; then they clean up after those meals; and, in between, they keep up on things by reading the paper cover to cover and watching the television news.

She’s
how they got here. They had her in the oven before they had degrees, money, or lives in order. They were both smart in college, but they had to drop out. Or wanted to. Blame me, she thinks, tucking into the meat loaf and mashed potatoes.
Blame me for it
.

They are still in love; they hardly ever argue. Instead they offer kindness to each other in a myriad of small ways. “Need that salve for your hands. I’ll go find it.” “I’ll take your glass, save you a trip.”

“I
hope
you’re not doing anything dangerous,” her mother says.

“Nah. Just routine work. Looking for some guy.”

“Aha,” her father says.

“Look, honey. If you have an appetite, we still have some chili left over from lunch. We had it with cheese and onions.”