Every Waking Moment (15 page)

MIRIAM TOSSED
and turned, dozed awhile, then finally gave up before daylight and rose to make coffee. She couldn’t get Treha or Desert Gardens off her mind. The scene with Jillian Millstone after Mrs. Williams was taken away haunted her.

She called TMC to check on their conditions and found that Ardeth Williams had a broken hip. No change with Dr. Crenshaw. Miriam wondered about the man’s family, but that was out of her hands now.

Charlie shuffled into the kitchen, seeming oblivious to her struggle. He poured a cup of coffee and flipped on the television, and she couldn’t take the noise, so she got dressed and told him she was going for a walk.

“Where you going?” he said, still staring at the TV.

“I don’t know. Around the block.”

Maybe she should get a dog. That would force her to exercise more. But the prospect of feeding it and cleaning up after it made her think again. After all, she had Charlie.

The streets were busy. Neighbors hustling off to work and school, mothers busy with children, men with honey-do lists on pads by their steering wheels and fiddling with cell phones.

The ground was flat here and she set out a good pace to get
her heart rate going. Step by step, she thought of Treha. What would her life be like a year down the road? Her job skills were limited and she had even fewer relational skills. How would she find her way?

Perhaps this path Devin offered was a good one. Miriam had asked Treha about her life, about her history, and the conversations always led to walls. It wasn’t that the girl didn’t want to talk. She would gladly dive into her past, but it was a dive into an empty lake, so she borrowed water from other cisterns and filled her life with theirs. It was like asking Charlie a question about his feelings. He had lived his entire life trying not to have feelings. Treha really didn’t know about her past, and this pushed Miriam’s walking pace, as if the energy expended here could propel her closer to the girl.

In their first meeting, Treha had almost wandered in off the street with the application. For some reason Miriam had seen more than the shifting eyes and head movement and dirty scrubs. There was intelligence here
 
—she could tell by the way Treha filled out the application for the low-level janitorial position. Most applicants got stuck somewhere between lines ten and twenty. But Treha wasn’t fazed by the task. Her writing skills, spelling, and comprehension surprised Miriam. She had an excellent vocabulary and tiny but legible handwriting, though she grasped the pen in an awkward way, sticking it between the third and fourth fingers of her left hand and steadying it with her thumb.

Miriam stopped at the corner and glanced at her watch, realizing she had been walking longer and farther than she expected. A half block away was a park with a paved walkway that ringed the property. Artificial turf on an empty field near the phantom playground equipment. The picnic tables under
the gazebo were also empty of all signs of life, painted an off-yellow that made the whole area seem bright.

She picked up her pace and her breathing evened. The air this close to the mountains felt clean and pure, part of why they had wanted to move to this side of town. When she passed the baseball field, she was at full steam and feeling good, actually breaking a sweat, surprised at the way her body was working. She wouldn’t win any marathons, but the neck- and backaches she sometimes felt this early weren’t there. Perhaps if she spent less time in the car, her muscles wouldn’t tense. Maybe the exercise would help her sleep as well. If she could get Charlie out here, it might mean a resurgence to their sex life.

She smiled. There was only so much exercise one could do.

Perhaps it was the movement, the increased blood flow or oxygen to the brain, but in a flash Miriam again saw Treha clutching the application. She had given one paltry reference and Miriam hadn’t checked it. . . . No, she had
 
—she had called the number but hadn’t connected with the woman Treha had listed. And it didn’t matter; there had been something about Treha, something she intuitively trusted.

Now she wanted to open that personnel file and fish it out. Of course, she couldn’t do that, and her memory wasn’t good enough to recall the reference.

Why was she so consumed with this girl? Why would her thoughts not turn toward something or someone else? Was it the impending boredom bearing down on her? The repressed mothering instincts dormant for so long?

She turned toward home, bits and pieces of conversations she’d had with Treha running through her mind. Questions that filtered through as she showered and cleaned the dirty dishes Charlie had left in the sink and put a load of laundry in and
stripped the bed. She wasn’t averse to domestic work
 
—she had been doing this her whole married life
 
—but the feeling she had at noon was that there was something more important to do.

She wanted to call Treha, but the girl had no phone. She was lucky to have an apartment of her own. Miriam decided to pay her a visit.

She could have just stuck her head in the office door and told Charlie where she was going, but that felt like giving him too much control. She didn’t want to send the message that he had a right to know everything she was doing and thinking every minute. So she jotted a note and put a magnet over it on the refrigerator.

He would call if he needed something. They were both going to have to learn this dance, this new-normal setting on life.

She drove to Treha’s apartment from memory, taking a wrong turn and reaching a dead end at an ancient brick house with iron bars on the windows. She made a U-turn and backtracked to find the correct street and finally saw the apartment in the distance. As she parked, she heard a noise she thought at first might be her car, then saw the boy tossing what was left of a tennis ball against a concrete wall. He watched her warily as if he were the security guard.

“You looking for somebody?”
Thwop-smack
, the ball against the wall and in his hand again.

Miriam got out. “I’m here to see Treha.”

“Oh, I remember you were here the other night dropping her off.”
Thwop-smack.
“She ain’t here.”
Thwop-smack.

“Do you know where she is?”

“Maybe. Who’s asking?”

She held out a hand. “I’m Mrs. Howard. I work with her.”

“You mean you used to,” he said. “She got fired.”

“You must be Du’Relle.”

He shook her hand vigorously, as if he’d been trained by someone in the military to do so, and looked at her with wide brown eyes. “We look out for each other, me and Treha. I watch her back; she watches mine.”

Precocious child.
“I just need to talk with her.”

Thwop-tick-tick.
He missed the ball and ran into the parking lot after it. As he crawled under an old Camaro, he said, “She told me she was going to Goodwill. Try to find another bike. Hers got stolen.”

Thwop-smack.

“Do you know what’s wrong with her eyes?” he said. “They move all around and I don’t want to ask her because my mama says it’s not polite to ask people stuff like that.”

“Your mother is a kind woman.”
Not very present, but kind.

“I ain’t never seen her smile. One time I had her come over to my house and we watched this comedy movie. Man, it’s the funniest thing I ever seen. I about bust a gut every time I watch it. But she sits there and her face is frozen. Not even a twitch of a grin
 
—I watched her the whole time. She just looked at the TV like it was some
CSI
show. But I’ve seen her stand up to gangbangers. She don’t take nothing from nobody.”

“I’m not sure why Treha is the way she is. That’s a good question.”

Thwop-smack.

“Well, my mama says everybody’s different in their own way and you can either try to make them into who you want them to be or you can accept them and deal with what you got.”

“Your mama sounds like a philosopher.”

“She’s pretty smart.”

“Could you tell me where Goodwill is from here?”

Thwop-smack.

“Go down that way to . . . Aww, it’d be easier for me to show you. It’s not that far.” He moved toward her car.

“You shouldn’t get in cars with people you meet for the first time.”

Thwop-smack.

“Fine. Suit yourself.” He pointed the ball with a long, gangly arm. “You go down about, I don’t know, seven or eight streets, and go left. Then there’s a Walgreens on the corner. I think it’s two
 
—no, that’s a CVS and then there’s a Walgreens. Anyway, you turn there . . .”

The rest of the directions were incomprehensible. A series of turns marked by fast-food restaurants and a Fry’s near a Dollar Tree and a check-cashing place and the Goodwill was in the next plaza.

Thwop-smack-shrug.

“Hope you find her, ma’am.”

Miriam stopped at a Kwik Mart to get directions and finally found the Goodwill in an area Du’Relle had not described. It
was
near a Walgreens, but what in the world isn’t?

The store was a cornucopia of clothing and cast-off items on racks. There was an odor of mildew and dust and a smell she could only associate with a childhood memory of her grandfather’s house, a Proustian moment when she could close her eyes and see the old man at the stove cooking eggs and onions and then wandering onto the front porch for a game of ringtoss, the rings made of heavy rope. He had seemed ancient then, but she realized he was no older than she was now.

Along the front wall of the store were bookshelves filled with paperbacks and some hardcovers. Romance novels, mostly, but some mysteries and popular nonfiction. It was clear many wanted nothing more to do with Tom Clancy, John Grisham, and Nora Roberts, though the books seemed to have been well read.

In the far back corner was what was loosely termed
Sporting Goods
, but Treha wasn’t there. The only bicycles were for children, and they were in surprisingly good condition.

Miriam found a woman wearing a blue vest with a name tag and asked if she’d seen someone fitting Treha’s description. The woman shook her head. Miriam asked where else in the area she could buy a used bike and the woman told her about a secondhand sports store four blocks away, pointing like Du’Relle.

“Across from the Walgreens,” the woman said.

Miriam found bikes chained outside in a line and spotted Treha checking tags, gesturing and speaking to a portly man with a mustache and shaved head. She wore her greenish-blue scrubs. Her skin was milky white and ghostlike, and from this vantage point, the curious shape of her ears was accentuated. The man behind her seemed disinterested at best.

“You know that’s twice as much as you should charge,” Treha said. “I could buy a new one for that.”

“Be my guest,” the man said. “If you can find a new one for $225, snag it. I’ll go $200, but that’s it. I’d lose money if I go lower.”

“You could be arrested for that.”

“For what?” the man said.

“Robbery. I don’t know who is worse, the person who cut my chain and rode off or you. I think you may be worse because you see me.”

Bald Guy looked up at Miriam. “Can I help you with something?”

Miriam shook her head. “Treha, I’d like to speak with you.”

Treha turned and froze like a farm animal might notice a human in the pasture and fix a gaze. If there was emotion behind the stare, Miriam couldn’t detect it. It took the girl a moment to process Miriam standing there, but she turned and spoke again to Bald Guy.

“I told you, my bike was stolen. The one I bought here last year. You should give me a break on the price.”

“You’re right; I should. Just because you had your bike stolen. I’ve had seven bikes stolen from here in the last month. Now am I supposed to charge you more because I’ve had some bad luck? I’ll go $200.”

Treha looked back at Miriam. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to talk. See how you were doing. Are you looking for a new bike?”

Stupid question. Of course she was.

“You need more time; that’s fine,” the man said.

“Do you have the money?” Miriam said. She thought she would have been able to read the look on the face of anyone else on the planet, but she couldn’t discern Treha’s response.

“I have money, but not what they’re asking for these.”

“All right, I’ll have pity on you and give you the returning-customer discount,” the man behind her said. “I’ll go $190, but that’s it. That’s as low as I can go.”

“Have you had lunch yet?” Miriam said.

Treha shook her head.

“They have a deal at the sub place. Let’s go there.”

Treha looked at the man and then nodded. He called after her in the parking lot that the price would go back up if they walked away, but they kept going.

They ordered two six-inch sub sandwiches with soda and
chips and sat in a booth in the room that looked like it had been taken over by someone who only knew how to paint in yellow and black.

“How did you find me?” Treha said.

“Du’Relle. He’s something. Seems to like you quite a bit.”

Treha chewed her food, her head swaying, fingers working on the sandwich. “He asks too many questions.”

“I’ll bet that’s what you say to Du’Relle about me.”

Anyone else would have smiled, but Treha stared.

Miriam nodded. She hoped Treha wouldn’t think the same of her when they were through. “Are you interested in the bike at the store?”

“He’s charging twice as much as he should,” she said. “I could buy a new one for what he is asking.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because the new ones don’t last. They’re not made as well.”

“We have neighbors who have garage sales, children that are grown who leave behind bikes. I might be able to find you one for much less. Free, even.”

They ate in silence for a moment, Treha staring at the table. “I would like that.”

Miriam didn’t know how to broach what she had come to ask. Was it enough to have simply found Treha, to spend time with her?