The Tiger's Child (24 page)

“California’s a pretty big place. One newspaper won’t cover much of it.”

“Well, yeah, I know. But as I get more money, I’ll take out more ads,” Sheila said. “She’ll see one of them, I’m sure.”

I regarded her. “And then what?”

“Well, I can talk to her then, can’t I? And maybe I can go live with her.”

“Sheil, I don’t think …”

She grimaced at me. “You’re going to say fuck it, aren’t you? I knew you would.”

“No, I’m not. I’m just saying go kind of slow on this.”

“I know what I’m doing,” she replied. “She’s probably going to be really grateful I’ve tried to find her. You hear about this all the time with kids who’ve been adopted and how their real parents are always so glad when they contact them.”

“
Almost
always.”

“And she’ll be settled and my brother will be there and …”

“Don’t get your hopes up too high, Sheil.”

Her shoulders dropped in an expression of exasperation. “I shouldn’t have told you. I
knew
I shouldn’t have told you. You
are
going to say fuck it.”

“I’m not, Sheila. I’m just saying—”

“I do know, Torey, but it’s not going to be like you think. Shit, I don’t want to stay with my father. And I sure as hell don’t want to stay here. I want to be with her. She probably will be grateful I’ve gone to the trouble to find her. That was a long time ago. It might even have been an accident. I might just have fallen out of the car. Maybe she didn’t notice until it was too late. She’s probably going to be happy to know I’m okay.”

Dear Mom,

I want to live with you. I’m fed up living with Dad. It’s not that anything bad’s happened, because nothing bad’s happened for a long time, it’s just I get so sick of his ways. Of worrying about him and worrying about the booze and worrying about the stuff and worrying what’s going to happen to our money and worrying about if he’s going to get in trouble again and worrying what’s going to happen to me, if he does. I want to be with you and Jimmie. Please, couldn’t it be that way for a while?

“Can you get me out of here?” Sheila asked when I arrived for my usual Saturday visit. “I’m going nuts in this place.”

“You mean find you another group home?” I asked.

“No. God, no. Just get me out. Take me out. I haven’t been off the grounds in, like, about three months,” she replied. “I want to go to your house. Will you take me?”

“I’m not sure if Jane will let me. You haven’t got a very good track record.”

“Hah!” she said with delight. “I’ve got a
very
good track record. I can run faster than any of them.” She snickered at the pun.

“Yes, well, I’m afraid that’s just what I mean. And Jane won’t be conned into giving you another opportunity.”

Sheila gave a low, exasperated moan. “I wouldn’t run away from
you
, Torey. You know that.”

I didn’t know that, to be honest. Not that I thought Sheila was lying. Of all the tricks I knew Sheila to be capable of, she had always been remarkably truthful with me. I had no reason to doubt her honesty now; however, she was a born opportunist. Whether or not she could resist the temptation of running away when the chance presented itself, I wouldn’t like to judge.

“Come on. Please? Won’t you just try?” she pleaded. “I’m so sick of it in here.” A brief pause and she brightened. “I could cook for you. Remember? Like I did the last time? You liked that, didn’t you? Please?”

“If I do ask, you know what it’s going to mean?” I replied.

“What?”

“The point system. You’re going to have to earn points.”

With a dramatic swing of her arm over her eyes, Sheila fell back on her bed. “Oh, shit, not you too.
God
, Torey.”

“You’ve got to cooperate, Sheila. You could have probably been out of here months ago, if you’d done what you were supposed to.”

“God. Played their stupid game? Collected shitty little—what are they? Fucking golf tees or something? You think I’m going to let someone regulate my life with
golf tees
, for God’s sake?”

I eyed her. “You will if you want to come home with me.”

“Shit, Torey. I thought there was more to you than that.” An angry frown on her face, she fell back on the bed again.

The tiger was stirring. Quite abruptly, I realized Sheila was fighting back. Delighted, I egged her on. “We’ll get Jane in here. We can set up a point program and as soon as you’ve completed it, we’ll arrange a weekend at my place. How does that sound?”

“Shitty.”

“Very well. Have it your way.”

Sheila sat up. “I didn’t mean
that.
God, you’re in a mood today. What’s the matter? You on the rag or something?”

I smiled blandly.

She bared her teeth at me in an expression of irritation before crawling to the end of the bed to
snag a piece of paper. “Okay, so get Jane then. Let’s get this fucking thing out of the way.”

Her mind applied to the project, Sheila earned her points swiftly. Jane was stunned, which, I suspect, was just the reaction Sheila was hoping to elicit. Indeed, as her depression lifted and Sheila increasingly became a force to be reckoned with around the group home, Jane appeared a little bit alarmed by what had been awakened.

Two Saturdays later found me in the car with Sheila, tooling back to the city. “God, this is great,” Sheila kept saying. “Trees. Look at all these trees. That’s what I miss so much out there. It’s like a desert there.”

Back in my apartment, Sheila went through it room by room. “Geez, it’s weird being back here. Know when I was last here? That night with that little boy. Alejo. Geez, like déjà vu. No, no, that wasn’t the last night, was it? I came over and cooked for you. That was afterward. God, Torey, it feels like a lifetime ago.” She paused and looked back at me. “Remember how I was telling you the other week how I could sort of shut off parts of my life? Make them feel like they happened to someone else?”

I nodded.

“That’s what happened here. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t try to forget this, but now that I’m back, that’s how it feels. Like
really
déjà vu. Like I’m visiting some former incarnation, because … like I don’t think I’ve ever gone back to a place where
everyone else is still carrying on their life, just the way I left them.”

Wandering into the kitchen, Sheila caught sight of a group of photographs stuck up on my refrigerator with magnets. Pausing in front of them, she examined them carefully. “Those are pictures from my camping trip,” I said. “Look. I caught the largest trout.”

“Who’s this guy you’re with?”

“Hugh. You’ll meet him later on, because he’s taking us out to dinner tonight.”

“So, he’s the current fuck, is he?”

“Not quite the way I’d put it,” I replied.

“You
do
fuck him, I trust.” She was still studying the pictures.

“That’s one of those questions, Sheila, that falls into the ‘personal’ category.”

She turned. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Well, yes …”

“So, there’s nothing wrong with telling me that, is there? You do fuck him, don’t you?”

“Fuck, no. Make love, yes. There’s a difference.”

She shrugged. “It’s all fucking to me.”

I had planned to take Sheila out to the shopping mall for the afternoon. Shut away for so many months, she was keen to enjoy the sights and sounds of crowded places and there weren’t many more crowded than a mall on Saturday afternoon. We ate a quick lunch, then I popped into the bathroom to brush my teeth before we left.

Still brushing my teeth, I wandered out of the bathroom to hear a soft tappy sound. Rounding the corner into the living room, I saw Sheila with the telephone in her hand. “Who are you calling?” I asked in surprise.

“No one.”

This seemed highly unlikely to me and I must have looked it.

Sheila got a silly look on her face. “Sorry. I was playing. Just messing around. I’m sorry. But, see, you can play tunes with these pushbutton phones. And I just wanted to try it …”

I still regarded her skeptically.

“Yeah, come here. I’ll play ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ for you.”

I was slightly unsettled by the phone incident. Perhaps she was doing no more than playing with the push buttons and I was being needlessly wary, but intuition told me otherwise. Throughout the afternoon I was gnawed by the questions it brought up. Whom had she been calling? Why? And why didn’t she want me to know?

The afternoon was a fairly tense one for me generally. With Sheila’s history of running away, I knew the mall was a chancy place to take her. I had wanted to give her a happy, carefree time reminiscent of our old times together. Equally, I felt it was important for her to believe I trusted her, but the hard, cold truth was, I didn’t really. I had been in business with these kids too long to be anything other than incredulous, and the secret phone call had only served to sharpen my wariness.

As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. Sheila was delighted with the trip to the shopping center. She went into each and every shop, handled most of what she could get her hands on, tried on endless clothes and hats and jewelry and consumed a nightmarish assortment of doughnuts, caramel corn, cookies, pizza slices and ice cream, all washed down with gallons of Orange Julius. She fell in love with a funky little number made from what appeared to be someone’s ready-for-the-trash-can jeans. The top was pretorn and came with its own supply of safety pins conveniently attached. The skirt barely covered her bottom. She had already bought a very rude T-shirt with her own money, so I offered to get her the dress. For a glimpse again of her wacky fashion sense, it seemed a reasonable price to pay.

By the time we got home, Hugh was already there. This startled Sheila. She had taken the key to my apartment from me to open the door and clearly had not expected to find someone on the other side. She screamed in surprise and ran back into the hall where I was.

Hugh, the eternal joker, waited until Sheila and I came through the door. Then he took one look at her, threw his arms up and gave an identical startled scream and ran off into the bedroom.

Sheila’s jaw dropped. “God, who’s he?”

“I’m a burglar. Go away,” came a little voice from the bedroom.

“Is this for real?” she asked.

“That’s Hugh,” I said with enough exasperation in my voice to let him know we’d just about had enough.

Hugh appeared around the corner with a little floral hat I’d worn to a wedding the previous week perched on his head, but his expression funereal. “Yes,” he said, bringing his voice way down into a deep double bass, “I’m Torey’s friend, Hugh.”

Sheila’s eyes had widened to the very edges of her face. “And I thought Jeff was bad,” she murmured. “God, Torey, where do you find them?”

The evening was delightful. Sheila spent hours in the bathroom getting ready. She kitted herself out in her new clothes, rude T-shirt and all, and then helped herself liberally to my makeup. Afterward Hugh took us out to a Japanese restaurant where the chef, wielding his knife with artistic precision, prepared our meal right at the table. Sheila, who had never used chopsticks, fumbled and laughed and fumbled again, repeatedly dropping food into her lap. In normal circumstances, Sheila was not inclined toward humor. Her dignity, her sense of self were still too fragile to stand up to hearty laughter. However, on this particular evening she was able to see the funny side of her clumsy efforts and, more crucially, able to tolerate and even join in with Hugh’s silly remarks. Indeed, Hugh’s comments were so absurd that soon all three of us were convulsed with hilarity to the point that Sheila was not the only one unable to work chopsticks.

Afterward we took in a science-fiction movie. Hugh bought us a humongous container of popcorn and then sat between Sheila and me so we could share it. While waiting for the film to begin, the two of them amused themselves throwing popcorn into the air and trying to catch it in their mouths. I was starting to feel just a little uncomfortable with all this merriment, because I could sense we were getting on other people’s nerves and I was worried that someone might complain. Yes, we better settle down, Hugh acknowledged. In a rare display of affection, Sheila clutched hold of Hugh’s arm and pressed against him in a half-hug.

That evening after Hugh had left, Sheila and I sorted out our sleeping arrangements in my apartment. She was getting the couch in the living room and I pulled the back cushions off to make it roomier.

“Was he high on something?” Sheila asked, as we worked.

“Who? Hugh? No, he’s always like that.”

“Wow.” She paused to straighten the sheet over the cushions. “You’re sure he’s not high? He doesn’t, like, take something and you don’t know about it?”

“No. That’s just Hugh,” I replied. “I think it’s one of the things that attracts me to him so much. I love a good laugh.”

She nodded. “I guess I never knew people could be like that if they weren’t high. Or drunk or something. I didn’t know you could make yourself so happy.”

Once Sheila was settled on the couch, I got ready for bed myself. I cleaned up, said good night and then disappeared into my bedroom. It was quite late and I was tired, so within moments of turning out the light, I was asleep.

I awoke with a start. The room was dark. Turning to see my bedside clock, I noticed it was only about an hour and a half after I’d gone to bed and I had that hair-raising sensation of no longer being alone in the room. Rolling over in the bed, I raised myself up. “Sheila?” I whispered into the darkness.

For a moment or two there was no response, then she stepped out of the shadows by the door. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“What are you doing?”

She didn’t answer immediately, so I reached to turn on the light. “Don’t!” she pleaded, so I didn’t.

I leaned over the side of the bed to see that her blanket from the couch was on the floor. She came forward and lay her pillow down on top of it.

“What are you doing?” I asked again.

“I can’t sleep.” Her voice was small and childlike. “It’s strange out there. I’m not much used to sleeping all on my own. Angel, like, snores and I’m used to her noise. Do you mind if I’m in here?”

“I don’t think I snore.”

She giggled. “That’s all right.”

Sheila lay down on the floor and pulled the blanket up over her. Silence descended then. Sleepy, I dozed.

“I liked tonight,” Sheila said softly into the darkness. “I like Hugh. You’re lucky.”

“Yes.”

“I had a really good time. That’s about the most I can remember laughing in a long, long time,” she said.

“Hmmm.”

“I hope I get a boyfriend like Hugh someday.”