Rose Madder (7 page)

She felt a touch of panic, then made herself think of the people who slept here on the floor, with their arms around their taped garbage bags of possessions.
There's always that,
she thought.

“Do
you
have any ideas?” she asked.

He looked at her for a moment, tapping his lower lip with the barrel of a ballpoint pen, a plain-faced little man with watery eyes who had nevertheless seen her and spoken to her—who hadn't just told her to get lost.
And, of course, he didn't tell me to lean forward so he could talk to me up close,
she thought.

Slowik seemed to come to a decision. He opened his coat (an off-the-rack polyester that had seen better days), felt around in his inside pocket, and brought out a business card. On the side where his name and the Travelers Aid logo were displayed, he carefully printed an address. Then he turned the card over and signed the blank side, writing in letters that struck her as comically large. His oversized signature made her think of something her American History teacher had told her class back in high school, about why John Hancock had written his name in especially large letters on the Declaration of Independence. “So King George can read it without his spectacles,” Hancock was supposed to have said.

“Can you make out the address?” he asked, handing her the card.

“Yes,” she said. “251 Durham Avenue.”

“Good. Put the card in your purse and don't lose it. Someone will probably want a look at it when you get there. I'm sending you to a place called Daughters and Sisters. It's a
shelter for battered women. Rather unique. Based on your story, I'd say you qualify.”

“How long will they let me stay?”

He shrugged. “I believe that varies from case to case.”

So that's what I am now,
she thought.
A case.

He seemed to read her thought, because he smiled. There was nothing very lovely about the teeth the smile revealed, but it looked honest enough. He patted her hand. It was a quick touch, awkward and a bit timid. “If your husband beat you as badly as you say, Ms. McClendon, you've bettered your situation wherever you end up.”

“Yes,” she said. “I think so, too. And if all else fails, there's always the floor here, isn't there?”

He looked taken aback. “Oh, I don't think it will come to that.”

“It might. It could.” She nodded at two of the homeless people, sleeping side by side on their spread coats at the end of a bench. One of them had a dirty orange cap pulled down over his face to block out the relentless light.

Slowik looked at them for a moment, then back at her. “It won't come to that,” he repeated, this time sounding more sure of himself. “The city buses stop right outside the main doors; turn to your left and you'll see where. Various parts of the curb are painted to correspond with the various bus routes. You want an Orange Line bus, so you'll stand on the orange part of the curb. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“It costs a buck, and the driver will want exact change. He's apt to be impatient with you if you don't have it.”

“I've got plenty of change.”

“Good. Get off at the corner of Dearborn and Elk, then walk up Elk two blocks . . . or maybe it's three, I can't remember for sure. Anyway, you'll come to Durham Avenue. You'll want to make a left. It's about four blocks up, but they're short blocks. A big white frame house. I'd tell you it looks like it needs to be painted, but they might have gotten around to that by now. Can you remember all that?”

“Yes.”

“One more thing. Stay in the bus terminal until it's daylight. Don't go out anywhere—not even to the city bus stop—until then.”

“I wasn't planning to,” she said.

S
he had gotten only two or three hours' worth of broken sleep on the Continental Express which had brought her here, and so what happened after she stepped off the Orange Line bus really wasn't surprising: she got lost. Rosie decided later that she must have started by going the wrong way on Elk Street, but the result—almost three hours of wandering in a strange neighborhood—was much more important than the reason. She trudged around block after block, looking for Durham Avenue and not finding it. Her feet hurt. Her lower back throbbed. She began to get a headache. And there were certainly no Peter Slowiks in this neighborhood; the faces which did not ignore her completely regarded her with mistrust, suspicion, or outright disdain.

Not long after getting off the bus she passed a dirty, secretive-looking bar called The Wee Nip. The shades were down, the beer signs were dark, and a grate had been pulled across the door. When she came back to the same bar some twenty minutes later (not realizing she was re-covering ground she'd already walked until she saw it; the houses all looked the same), the shades were still down but the beer signs were on and the grate had been rolled back. A man in chino workclothes leaned in the doorway with a half-empty beer-stein in his hand. She looked at her watch and saw it was not quite six-thirty in the morning.

Rosie lowered her head until she could see the man only from the corner of one eye, held the strap of her purse a little tighter, and walked a little faster. She guessed the man in the doorway would know where Durham Avenue was, but she had no intention of asking him for directions. He had the look of a guy who liked to talk to people—women, especially—up close.

“Hey baby hey baby,” he said as she passed The Wee Nip. His voice was absolutely uninflected, almost the voice of a robot. And although she didn't want to look at him, she couldn't help shooting a single terrified glance back at him over her shoulder. He had a receding hairline, pale skin on which a number of blemishes stood out like partially healed burns, and a dark red walrus moustache that made her think
of David Crosby. There were little dots of beer-foam in it. “Hey baby wanna get it on you don't look too bad priddy good in fact nice tits whaddaya say wanna get it on do some low ridin wanna get it on wanna do the dog whaddaya say?”

She turned away from him and forced herself to walk at a steady pace, her head now bent, like a Muslim woman on her way to market; forced herself not to acknowledge him further in any way. If she did that, he might come after her.

“Hey baby let's put all four on the floor whaddaya say? Let's get down let's do the dog let's get it on get it on get it
on.”

She turned the corner and let out a long breath that pulsed like a living thing with the frantic, frightened beat of her heart. Until that moment she hadn't missed her old town or neighborhood in the slightest, but now her fear of the man in the bar doorway and her disorientation—
why
did all the houses have to look so much the same,
why?
—combined in a feeling that was close to homesickness. She had never felt so horribly alone, or so convinced that things were going to turn out badly. It occurred to her that perhaps she would never escape this nightmare, that perhaps this was just a preview of what the rest of her life was going to be like. She even began to speculate that there
was
no Durham Avenue; that Mr. Slowik in Travelers Aid, who had seemed so nice, was actually a sadistic sicko who delighted in turning people who were already lost even further around.

At quarter past eight by her watch—long after the sun had come up on what promised to be an unseasonably hot day—she approached a fat woman in a housedress who was at the foot of her driveway, loading empty garbage cans onto a dolly with slow, stylized movements.

Rosie took off her sunglasses. “Beg pardon?”

The woman wheeled around at once. Her head was lowered and she wore the truculent expression of a lady who has frequently been called fatty-fatty-two-by-four from across the street or perhaps from passing cars. “Whatchoo want?”

“I'm looking for 251 Durham Avenue,” Rosie said. “It's a place called Daughters and Sisters. I had directions, but I guess—”

“What, the welfare lesbians? You ast the wrong chicken, baby girl. I got no use for crack-snackers. Get lost. The fuck outta here.” With that she turned back to her dolly and began to push the rattling cans up the driveway in the same slow,
ceremonial manner, holding them on with one plump white hand. Her buttocks jiggled freely beneath her faded housedress. When she reached the steps she turned and looked back at the sidewalk. “Didn't you hear me? Get the fuck
outta
here. 'Fore I call the cops.”

That last word felt like a sharp pinch in a sensitive place. Rosie put her sunglasses back on and walked quickly away. Cops? No thank you. She wanted nothing to do with the cops.
Any
cops. But after she had put a little distance between herself and the fat lady, Rosie realized she actually felt a little better. She had at least made sure that Daughters and Sisters (known in some quarters as the welfare lesbians) actually existed, and that was a step in the right direction.

Two blocks farther down, she came to a mom-and-pop store with a bike rack in front and a sign reading
OVEN-FRESH ROLLS
in the window. She went in, bought a roll—it was still warm and made Rosie think of her mother—and asked the old man behind the counter if he could direct her to Durham Avenue.

“You come a little out of your way,” he said.

“Oh? How much?”

“Two mile or so. C'mere.”

He settled a bony hand on her shoulder, led her back to the door, and pointed to a busy intersection only a block away. “That there's Dearborn Avenue.”

“Oh God, is it?” Rosie wasn't sure if she needed to laugh or cry.

“Yessum. Only trouble with findin things by way of Big D is that she run mostway across the city. You see that shutdown movie tee-ayter?”

“Yes.”

“You want to turn right onto Dearborn there. You have to go sixteen-eighteen blocks. It's a bit of a heel n toe. You'd best take the bus.”

“I suppose,” Rosie said, knowing she wouldn't. Her quarters were gone, and if a bus driver gave her a hard time about breaking a dollar bill, she would burst into tears. (The thought that the man she was talking to would have happily given her change for a buck never crossed her tired, confused mind.)

“Eventually you'll come to—”

“—Elk Street.”

He gave her a look of exasperation. “Lady! If you knew how to go, why'd you ask?”

“I
didn't
know how to go,” she said, and although there had been nothing particularly unkind in the old man's voice, she could feel the tears threatening. “I don't know
anything
! I've been wandering around for hours, I'm
tired,
and—”

“Okay, okay,” he said, “that's all right, don't get your water hot, you'll be just fine. Get off the bus at Elk. Durham is just two or three blocks up. Easy as pie. You got a street address?”

She nodded her head.

“All right, there you go,” he said. “Should be no problem.”

“Thank you.”

He pulled a wrinkled but clean handkerchief from his back pocket. He held it out to her with one gnarled hand. “Wipe you face a li'l bit, dear,” he said. “You leakin.”

S
he walked slowly up Dearborn Avenue, barely noticing the buses that snored past her, resting every block or two on bus stop benches. Her headache, which had come mostly from the stress of being lost, was gone, but her feet and back hurt worse than ever. It took her an hour to get to Elk Street. She turned right on it and asked the first person she saw—a young pregnant woman—if she was headed toward Durham Avenue.

“Buzz off,” the young pregnant woman said, her face so instantly wrathful that Rosie took two quick steps backward.

“I'm sorry,” Rosie said.

“Sorry, schmorry. Who ast you to speak to me in the first place, that's what
I'd
like to know! Get outta my way!” And she pushed by Rosie so violently she almost knocked her into the gutter. Rosie watched her go with a kind of stupefied amazement, then turned and went on her way.

S
he walked more slowly than ever up Elk, a street of small shops—dry-cleaning establishments, florists, delis with fruit displays out front on the sidewalk, stationers'. She was now so tired she didn't know how long she would be able to remain on her feet, let alone keep walking. She felt a lift when she came to Durham Avenue, but it was only temporary. Had Mr. Slowik told her to turn right or left on Durham? She couldn't remember. She tried right and found the numbers going up from the mid-four hundreds.

“Par for the course,” she muttered, and turned around again. Ten minutes later she was standing in front of a very large white frame house (which was indeed in serious need of paint), three stories high and set back behind a big, well-kept lawn. The shades were pulled. There were wicker chairs on the porch, almost a dozen of them, but none was currently occupied. There was no sign reading Daughters and Sisters, but the street-number on the column to the left of the steps leading to the porch was 251. She made her way slowly up the flagged walk and then the steps, her purse now hanging at her side.

They're going to send you away,
a voice whispered.
They'll send you away, then you can head on back to the bus station. You'll want to get there early, so you can stake out a nice piece of floor.

The doorbell had been covered over with layers of electrician's tape, and the keyhole had been plugged with metal. To the left of the door was a keycard slot that looked brand-new, and an intercom box above it. Below the box was a small sign which read
VISITORS PRESS AND SPEAK.

Rosie pressed. In the course of her long morning's tramp she had rehearsed several things she might say, several ways she might introduce herself, but now that she was actually here, even the least clever and most straightforward of her possible opening gambits had gone out of her head. Her mind was a total blank. She simply let go of the button and waited. The seconds passed, each one like a little chunk of lead. She was reaching for the button again when a woman's
voice came out of the speaker. It sounded tinny and emotionless.