Every Last Cuckoo (27 page)

“Yeah, I asked. They said it was okay but to get off it as soon as I can. Which will be now. I'm not going to take any more.”

Sarah examined her. She had a long scratch down her right cheek and scrapes and bruises on her forearms and neck and around her mouth. Her lower lip was puffy. Her left eye would probably be swollen shut by morning. Still, she was sharply pretty, with a strong square jaw, straight eyebrows, and a wide, thin-lipped mouth. She had short, spiky, very dark hair, and flawless olive skin, just now muddy from shock. She looked harder than Sarah remembered. After her near fatal walk in the cold, she'd been abashed, mocking her own carelessness as she admired the yarn Sarah had brought her. Sarah could see no humor in her now, but that was not surprising under the circumstances. Josie was too thin, except for her breasts. The baby was probably due
for a feeding. Andrew. The child had the name Sarah had given her own son, the stillborn little boy whose birth and death had woven a single, seamless patch of cloth.

“Well,” said Sarah, getting back to her feet. “Let's show you where you two will sleep.” She hefted the baby bag while Sandy gave Andrew back to his mother and struggled with the duffel. “Sandy, wait till Angelo gets home, why don't you?”

“It's okay, Sarah,” she answered. “Maybe Josie could use a few things out of here.”

“Thanks,” Josie said dully, jouncing her baby in her uninjured arm.

Sarah thrust the baby bag at her and motioned for her to take the strap onto her shoulder. “Can you manage this? I'll help Sandy with the duffel.”

Thus burdened, the three of them climbed the stairs, Sandy and Sarah huffing, Josie following silently behind them, and Andrew still wailing, but less hysterically. His cries were subsiding into monotonous drones punctuated by hiccups.

Sandy and Tyler's things were piled neatly on the bed, but there hadn't yet been time to move them down to Sarah's office. It was clear to anyone with eyes that Josie was displacing Sandy, but she said nothing, just dropped the baby bag on the floor beside the bed. She looked around the big room, then down at the bed. “Can I push this against the wall?” she asked. “So Andrew won't roll off?”

Sarah pointed to the small daybed across the room, where Tyler had been sleeping. “Don't you want to put him there?”

Josie shook her head. “He's used to sleeping with us . . . me. He'll cry all night over there.”

It was a reasonable request, which Sarah nevertheless resented.

Sandy said, “Sure, let's move the bed. That's all right, isn't it, Sarah?” Without waiting for an answer, she took the baby from Josie, plunked him into Sarah's reluctant arms, and started shoving the heavy bedstead. “Give me a hand, Josie.”

Josie put her hip to the task instead, and together she and Sandy managed to move the bed. There wasn't a speck of dust on the carpet where it had stood, just four dents left in the nap by the casters. Sandy was meticulous about this room, and Sarah hoped Josie would follow her example.

Raucous laughter drifted up from the driveway, followed by the slam of the front door. Angelo, Lottie, and Jordan came trooping up to their rooms to drop their backpacks before heading for the refrigerator. Sandy stepped into the hall to intercept them and explain the situation.

“Thought I heard something yowling,” Angelo said. “Knew it couldn't be one of the kittens.”

“Big lungs for such a little guy.” Sandy lowered her voice, but Sarah still heard. “Thank God he's quiet now. I thought Sarah might throttle him.”

“You mean my Nana didn't googoo-eye the wittle snuggums?” Lottie asked. Sarah snorted, glad Andrew was still making enough noise that Josie wouldn't overhear.

Jordan nudged Lottie and giggled. “Let's go see. Might as well say hello to the new castaways.”

During the introductions, though, Jordan sobered and looked away from Josie's injuries. Sarah hustled the teenagers out of the room, her hand on Jordan's arm. “Let's let Josie and Andrew get settled,” she said, following them. Andrew had finally fallen
asleep against his mother's shoulder. Sandy stayed behind to help Josie ease him onto the big bed, with the wall on one side of him and the duffel on the other. He looked as if he'd sleep for hours. Sarah hoped Josie would sleep too, so the baby wouldn't wake in a strange place alone.

T
EN PEOPLE SAT AROUND
the dining table that night, including Mordechai and Tony. The group had outgrown the kitchen table, which sat six if they rubbed elbows. Andrew nuzzled sleepily at Josie's breast. He was propped on pillows while she attempted to eat one-handed and balance the baby with her other arm, in its cast. Angelo intently averted his eyes from this maternal tableau, even though only a modest inch or so of Josie's breast was exposed. Tony, on the other hand, seemed entirely at ease, talking eagerly to Josie about people they knew in common. Her mother lived only half a mile from Tony's parents, and they were well acquainted. When he asked about her injuries, and she told him about Roger, he said, “Jeez, I'm sorry. That totally sucks.”

Tony's questions gave Josie a chance to open up. She blamed herself for losing control of her situation. She knew about the rate of domestic violence in Vermont, and she had been wary of Roger in the wake of a layoff and his growing dependency on booze. Drinking gave rise to quiet, menacing self-pity in which Roger steeped until he could stand it no longer. Then he would yell, break things, turn on Josie, blame the world for his disappointments. But today was the first time he'd ever hit her, and she'd told him it would be the last. No second chances. She had left him on the spot, grabbing the baby and running to a neighbor's house for help.

J
OSIE RELAXED A LITTLE
more each day, largely because of Sandy's persistent, gentle overtures and Tyler's fascination with Andrew. Tyler was a born nurturer. He was faithful about feeding Neo and Retro, just as he had promised, and he seemed to have limitless patience with Andrew. The first time he made Andrew laugh, he was hooked. From then on, he did everything in his power to repeat the effect. Andrew cooperated, with a baby's dawning delight in an older child. He threw his toys on the floor again and again, as if he could not believe his good fortune when Tyler obediently picked them up and gave them back. Sandy saw the glint of infant power dawn in Andrew's eyes. “Oh, Josie, you're in for it with this one!” she said.

Josie regained her color and managed her pain as best she could with over-the-counter medications. Her black eye gradually faded to purple, then yellow. The swelling around her mouth disappeared. Her arm was mending, though the cast would stay on for several more weeks, and then she would need physical therapy.

Josie's anger was the slowest of her injuries to heal. In only the two months since Roger's layoff, her life had been torn apart and all her assumptions had disintegrated. She was worried about Andrew and their future and thrown by her misjudgment of Roger. She had thought him incapable of violence; she had thought he loved her. But when Roger broke her arm, he forever shattered her illusions and her affection for him. She did not want family counseling; she did not want to be with him at all. She had loved a fantasy.

Sandy indoctrinated Josie to the ways of the household, soliciting her help instead of waiting for Josie to offer it. She gave her tasks that would not strain her arm or aggravate the slight
limp left by her lost, frostbitten toes. In return, she helped with Andrew—especially with bathing and changing him—but she also expected Josie to help with Tyler. Josie would never have joined the household fully without Sandy to pull her along. Sarah wondered at first why Sandy bothered but soon saw that the two women needed each other. Sandy had few friends, none of them close. Josie had a handful of friends, but she couldn't tell anyone where she was staying, and she couldn't safely go out.

T
HREE WEEKS AFTER
Josie and Andrew moved in and a week before Roger was due in court, Rose Koval called in a panic to say that he'd jumped bail and disappeared. She called from a pay phone in town, and Sarah felt a little guilty that Rose had taken her so seriously about the phone records. “I
knew,
” she wailed into the phone. “I
knew
they should have kept him locked up.”

Sarah reassured Rose that Josie and Andrew could stay. There was no safer place for them. No one knew they were here except the members of the household and Sarah's own family. The teenagers had no reason to tell anyone and were, besides, too involved in their own lives to think of mentioning it. Mordechai, of course, was as trustworthy as a vault, and Sandy would be the last person to reveal Josie's whereabouts. Sarah reassured Rose with all of this. Nothing had changed really. Roger might look for Josie, but he would not find her.

To her own surprise, Sarah didn't worry much. There would always be reason for dread, but that only hardened the imperative for inward steadiness. She had thought, once, that her fears would automatically dissipate as she established a new life, but Mordechai had taught her that it took work and focus.

The solitary life Sarah had anticipated as a widow had filled up with pleasures and frustrations. She had allowed people to move in, and they had brought their baggage, some of which was heavy. Now Josie had brought new trouble. It wasn't her fault that Roger was loose, that he might come looking for her. Josie formally asked Sarah to let her stay at least until her arm healed. She even thought out loud about getting a gun, but Sarah wouldn't hear of it. Then Josie had shrugged off her own worries. “I'm overreacting,” she confessed. “I know Roger, and he's long gone by now.”

J
OSIE'S CONFIDENCE WAVERED
and Jordan nearly panicked when a rash of thefts broke out in the Rockhill area. The general store and several remote, well-hidden homes were broken into. The small crime wave soon spread to Montpelier and other towns. Lottie's friend Jenna Sterling was mugged getting into her car one night, right in front of the library. This was unheard of. The newspaper said police suspected drug-seeking teenagers, but Jordan was sure it was Roger. At least some of it was Roger; how else would he get money and food? Jordan worried almost as much as Rose did, while Josie kept uttering her frayed assurances.

These gave way entirely when Sandy told Josie that someone had stolen at least a bushel of produce from the garden. “But it couldn't be Roger,” Sandy said. “He wouldn't be so stupid, not with so many other gardens around. Why ours?”

“To scare us,” said Josie, gone white. “He's trying to scare us.”

Everyone in the house adopted edgy new habits. They locked their cars. They locked the doors when the last of them went
to bed. The girls, especially, came and went with a buddy after dark. They reminded each other of these safety measures, unused to thinking of such things and resenting the need. They didn't blame Josie, but they were all nervous.

September gave way to October and the first hard frost. Sandy, Josie, Sarah, and Mordechai hurriedly gathered the last yield from the garden while the others were in school. Josie's cast was finally off. Her arm was weak, but she could use it, and she helped Sandy can a mountain of vegetables.

There was no sign of Roger. The thefts and muggings dropped away. Everyone breathed more easily in the autumn air and forgot to be quite so careful. Lottie and her friends came and went more freely. They studied, ate voraciously, squabbled like siblings, and invited troops of their schoolmates to the house. No one seemed curious about Josie. Introductions never went beyond first names.

Sandy began going out more often than she had since moving in. She still visited Bob nearly every day, but she also saw one or two new friends—a nurse from the hospital, another mother she'd met at the library. Sometimes she and Josie went all the way to Burlington together, out of the likely range in which Roger might lurk. They ate at inexpensive ethnic restaurants or went to movies when someone at home was willing to babysit. More often, though, they rented videos, creating a new household pastime. Once Tyler and Andrew were asleep, whoever else was at home would gather in the great room with popcorn, ice cream, or sandwiches. They often missed dialogue amid arguments over the plot or performances, the directing or the script. They judged films against the books they were based on.

One night, when Andrew wailed over Josie's portable intercom,
interrupting
The Sheltering Sky,
Sarah went up to comfort him. She'd been distracted during the movie, and besides, she liked sitting with the baby in the rocker she had moved into Josie's room. He was still inclined to be fussy when overtired, but he was gregarious and clearly liked having a lot of people around. He willingly went to any of them.

Andrew was seven and a half months old. He had changed rapidly in the weeks since his arrival at Sarah's. It was easy to forget the blink-of-an-eye progress from infancy to babyhood. Just in the past week, he'd been getting ready to crawl. From a prone position he could stick his butt into the air, then push up onto his hands. He would rock and wobble, then fall into a heap and rest before trying again. He had begun to utter syllabic sounds, which he inflected with passion and meaning, waving his hands in the air. At dinner, in the high chair Sarah had dragged in from the barn, he held forth with glee, egged on when Jordan mimicked his gestures and tones and everyone laughed.

When Sarah went in to Andrew now, though, he was sitting up in the big bed, bolstered by pillows, snotty and aggrieved. When he saw Sarah, he reached up for her, and her heart turned over. He felt feverish when she picked him up. His crying sounded like sick-baby sorrow, not anger or fear, not hunger or wetness. He did need changing, though, and Sarah tended to that before giving him a dose of PediaCare. Then she rocked him and thought about her own Andrew, as she often did these days, but since she'd let herself fall in love with Josie's child, she had finally stopped aching for her own.