Intentions (23 page)

OK. This is so stupid. I should leave. What was I thinking?

“You’re not going to run away, are you?”

I shake my head. “Tired of that,” I say, and all of a sudden I am so tired. I wish I could put my head on the counter, take a nap. I start to do that—put my head on the counter—I really do, but then there is a man standing next to me, and a woman, too. The man is dressed in a suit, the woman in blue jeans and a polo shirt, carrying a purse, dressed to look like a shopper, I guess. But I can see she has a little earpiece in, and so does he.

“OK,” he says. “What have we here?”

The woman has taken my upper arm and is holding it gently but firmly enough that I know if I started to bolt, I would not have a chance.

The three of us start to walk away, and I look at Mrs. Elliot. “Thank you,” I say. And “I’m sorry.”

She nods briskly and starts rearranging things on the counter. Or is she looking to make sure I didn’t swipe anything?

The store detectives, or whoever they are, are the same two as before, the ones who grabbed Alexis, I’m pretty sure. They walk me to the escalator, and we go up one flight, walk through
women’s clothing, past the restrooms, and down a hall I’ve never noticed before. We go through some double doors, and then we are in a regular work kind of hallway with offices on both sides. We walk into one of the offices. It has a beat-up wooden table with chairs around it. We all sit down.

“So?” the woman says. I’m sitting on one side of the table, the two of them are facing me. He’s got a yellow legal pad in front of him, a pencil in his hand.

Kavanah
.

“My name is Rachel Greenberg,” I say. I wait for them to tell me their names, but they don’t. His is Sam. Sam Lawrence, I guess. Hers I have no idea. But they just stare at me.

OK. “A few weeks ago I was in here with my friend Alexis.” I hear myself say the word
friend
and want to correct it, but I don’t.

“Huh,” he says, and he asks for her last name.

“Bloom,” I tell him.

He writes it down, and nods. He remembers who she is.

“So,” I continue, “you”—I look at him, Sam—“caught her shoplifting and, I think, took her to the police or called the police and they had her fingerprinted and stuff? And now she can’t ever come in here again and—”

He nods. “I definitely know who she is, believe me. We had
caught
her twice before, though I know there were times when she lifted stuff but we didn’t catch her. Anyways, we have a three strikes and you’re out policy.”

“Yeah, well,” I say, “she didn’t do it that time. I did.”

Sam looks at me, shakes his head. “It’s not going to work, Miss Greenberg.”

“What? What’s not going to work?”

“You can’t take the fall for her. I’m not letting her back into this store. I’m not undoing what was done just because you come in, what, three weeks, a month later and say you did it? Fuhgetaboutit.”

“No, I—” I hadn’t thought of this possibility. Shit, shit, shittity shit. I get up, walk around the room. I can tell they think I’m going to bolt, so I walk over to the window that faces the street and look out. I can see the diner from here. What was that waitress’s name? Damn. I can’t get it. Leslie? Laurie? Joanne?

“I know what you’re thinking,” I say, turning around. I go and sit back down. “But I’m telling the TRUTH, I swear. I took a bracelet and two pairs of earrings. From Mrs. Elliot’s counter.”

Sam gets up and walks out of the room. Woman and I sit there without saying anything until finally I ask, “What’s your name?”

She shakes her head.

After about five minutes of Very Awkward Silence, Sam walks back in. I was about to ask if I could go to the bathroom, but too late for that now. I have to pee. Bad.

“Well, Rachel, that
is
what we caught her with, but how do I know she didn’t tell you to come in here and say this? That she didn’t prime you with all the details? There isn’t even a record of her being with another girl. Why should we believe you?”

“Look at the tapes. You’ll see me there, I swear!”

“We tape over those things,” Sam says, “once a case is resolved.”

“But it’s not resolved!”

What am I going to do? I put my head in my hands and try to think. There’s got to be something. Finally I get it.

I pick up my head. “Call her mother,” I say. “Not her, but her mother. See if she’ll come in. Alexis probably told her mother that I did it, and she didn’t believe her.”

They look at each other.

“Call my mother, too,” I say. “Or both my parents. I’ll tell all of you at once. No way would I do that if I weren’t telling the truth, right? My grandmother is in the hospital right now. She’s in the ICU and she’s probably going to die.” The words catch in my throat. I can’t believe I said that out loud. “Trust me, this is not a good time—it’s an awful time—but I can’t stand it anymore.” My mother is going to kill me.

Sam and no-name woman stare at me.

“Please?” I say. “Please.”

Sam grunts. “OK. Give us the phone numbers.”

CHAPTER 33

BURSTING

They leave the room to make the calls. I am left alone. If I don’t get to the bathroom soon, I’m going to burst.

If I go look for a bathroom, one of two things will happen: either they will tackle me, thinking I’m running away, or I
will
run away. So I stay in the room, pacing until I can’t stand it anymore, sure that the pee is going to start coming out—I don’t think that would be a good move on my part—and so I sit down, with my legs crossed tight. Praying someone walks in soon.

My prayers finally are answered, the door opening with a bang.

“Rachel, WHAT is going on? I was at the hospital with your GRANDmother, for God’s sake, and then I get this call, and what am I to think?”

“Hi, Mom. Listen, I have to go to the bathroom. I am bursting.”

Mom looks at me like I’m nuts, shakes her head, exasperated. “Rachel, as if I don’t have enough to deal with right now! First my car, and now this. What were you thinking?”

“Mom, Mom, I know, but could you help me find a place to pee, please?”

Mom looks at me, and I guess her mother instincts kick in, because she leaves the room and a zillion bladder-bursting minutes later she comes back with a key with a wooden L dangling from it.

“Come on,” she says.

We walk down the hall, away from the door to the main part of the store, away from my easy exit, and she opens a small one-person bathroom for me.

I pull down my pants and experience heavenly relief. I swear to God, I can’t remember what I drank, but I pee a bathtub.

“Yeah, I’m here,” I hear Mom say outside the door. “No, I don’t think you have to come down. OK, come. Good. Thank you. Please, could you do me a favor and check the home messages, make sure the hospital hasn’t called there? I know but … Thanks, honey. No, no idea. I don’t know if it’s a plea for attention or what. Yeah, OK. OK. Uh-huh.”

In spite of what I’m in the middle of, of what I’m about to go through, I’m hanging on every word, and I almost smile when I hear the
honey
.

My phone vibrates; I have a text. It’s from Jake. Is he psychic? I haven’t heard from him in so long.

I click to open it, my heart racing.

Rachel, how is your grandmother? I’m thinking of you. Jake
.

I text him back.

I’m at Morrison’s, Jake. But Grandma very sick. Thank you
.

He texts me right back.

Good for you
.

And then,

I am so sorry about your grandma
.

Wow. Maybe everything will be OK between us. Wouldn’t that be nice? More than nice.

I walk out of the bathroom thinking about Jake, and possibilities. I must have a smile on my face, because my mother stares daggers at me.

As we get closer to the room, I hear Alexis’s mother’s voice. It’s going to happen. I breathe a sigh of relief. Finally.

But when I see Alexis’s mom, I start to cry. I can’t help it. I used to love Ginny, being at their house. The tears start rolling down my cheeks, and I can’t stop them. I don’t know how I’m going to get any words out. Mom takes me by the elbow and sits me down, kind of hard. Sam sits down next to Ginny, across the table from me and Mom. Woman sits at the head of the table. Shouldn’t they put a tape recorder in the middle of the table?

It is perfectly quiet in the room. Then Sam clears his throat.

“Well?” he says.

I force myself to stop crying.

I look at Ginny. “You know when you got a call from Morrison’s and had to come pick Alexis up because she shoplifted?”

“Which time?” she says angrily.

“The last time.”

“How could I forget? It was one of my worst moments as a mother. Thanks, I’m gathering, to you?”

I nod. “What did Alexis tell you back then? Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember! She said she didn’t do it. But I didn’t believe her!”

“Did she say I did it?” Of course she did.

“No. She had some lame excuse like somehow that stuff must’ve gotten in her bag but she had no idea how.”

Are you kidding me? Had she not figured it out? Or was she protecting me? Could she have been? What about—what about after I told her?

“Did she ever tell you that I did it? That I planted that stuff on her?”

Alexis’s mom shakes her head.

“Are you serious?” I didn’t know I could feel worse about this than I already did. “Why wouldn’t she tell you? She hates me. Why wouldn’t she tell you the truth?”

Ginny starts to cry. “Because she knew I wouldn’t believe her. She knew I thought you were such a good girl and she was a lost cause.…”

I put my head in my hands. I wonder if I will ever have a child.

Sacrifice your son, your only son, God said to Abraham
.

“Hee-nay-nee,”
said Abraham. “Here I am.”

Here I am.

And when God calls out to Adam in the Garden of Eden (not to Eve, of course), but when God does that, God
must
know where Adam is. God knows everything, right? But it’s up to Adam to show himself.

I look up. Everyone is staring at me.

“I should have done this much sooner. Right away. I didn’t, and I’m really sorry about that. But I am here now. I’m really, really sorry. I hope you will forgive me, but I won’t blame you if you don’t.”

“Why don’t you tell us what happened?” Sam says.

And so I do. I leave out the part about Alexis calling me a fat slut. I leave out the part about her being nasty to Mrs. Elliot. I leave out the fact that Alexis fooled around with my boyfriend, that I had been traumatized by the rabbi having sex on the
bima
, that I was in a state because my parents’ marriage was in the toilet. I don’t say any of that. All I say is “Well, Alexis and I were having kind of a fight.”

I tell them with
kavanah
exactly what I did, how I did it, and the order in which I did it. The
keva
of my shoplifting experience. As I recite the details of the day, I realize I never gave Grandma the perfume I bought her. And now it’s probably too late. I grab on to the edge of the table so I don’t lose it, and I finish the story with my slow walk to the diner. I don’t mention the lavender lady. I don’t mention my grilled cheese and fries. Luanne! That was her name. Luanne.

I’ve been staring at my hands on the table. When I am finished, I look up. But I can’t look at anyone. I look at the door.

No one speaks. For the longest time.

Finally Sam says, “Miss Greenberg, I just have to ask, if this is all true—and I’m still not sure it is—why are you coming forth now?”

How can I explain it without sounding ditzy or preachy or phony? Or nuts?

Just then my father comes in.

“Anything from the hospital?” Mom asks, her voice frantic.

“No,” says my father. “Everything’s the same.” He looks sad. Boy do I feel like shit. But seeing my dad, and remembering how he cried in the auto-repair shop, and thinking about that stupid rabbi, I feel strong.

“Back when I was a kid,” I say, “I could do stuff and not take responsibility. You know? When you’re a kid, they say, ‘She’s just a kid.’ But I’m almost sixteen now, and—” I was supposed to take responsibility from the time I had my bat mitzvah on. That’s what the rabbi said the day of my service. I remember it clearly. I shake my head. The rabbi.

“Anyway. Look. There’s so much sadness in the world, people who do bad things, and I don’t want to be one of them. I don’t want to add to the sadness. That’s all. And I can’t keep hating myself.”

Again no one says anything.

“Can you please expunge Alexis’s record, or whatever it is you do? It’s not fair. I did it. She didn’t! Make it right, please!”

“OK,” says Sam, “I will take it under consideration. I believe you are telling the truth.” His voice is soft, almost kind. I can’t stop myself. I start to cry again.

I want my mother to hold me to her, to hug me. I expect her to. But she doesn’t.

I wait for her to put her arm around me or for Dad to come pat my back. But she doesn’t. He doesn’t. They don’t.

And so I put my head down on the table and cry by myself.

CHAPTER 34

OUT OF BREATH

They have not said a word to me or to each other since we left the store.

I don’t know what I expected. I thought maybe they’d yell at me, or maybe even, God forbid, praise me for doing the right thing. But they are utterly and completely silent. I hate silence.

Well,
I’m
proud of myself. I am.

When we get home, my parents continue the silent treatment. They go straight into their bedroom and slam the door.

I hide in the corner of the living room so I can hear what they say. The wall is right up against their bedroom wall.

“It’s our fault,” I hear my mother say. I can hear her crying.

“No it’s not,” says Dad. And more soft murmurs from him that sound like he’s comforting her.