Who Do I Talk To? (23 page)

“Glad you stopped in, Gabby. Shut the door and sit a minute.” Mabel pulled out a file with my name on it. “Stephanie Cooper says she met with you yesterday about housing options.”

I nodded, pursing my lips. That had been a little weird. The housing programs Stephanie usually worked with—Theresa's Place, Sanctuary Place, Deborah's Place, and others—typically targeted specific people groups: ex-cons trying to reenter society, addicts going through recovery, alcoholics doing AA, or the mentally challenged, though she'd also given me a list of shelters for victims of domestic violence, several out in the burbs and a couple in Wisconsin.

Mabel must have guessed my thoughts. “I know a case management meeting might feel a bit awkward, Gabby, since you're also on staff here. But neither you nor I want you here for long, right? If you and your mother are on the bed list, Stephanie needs to help you set priorities and goals for getting back on your feet. You've got a job. Now get yourself on some housing lists.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I know. My lawyer is bugging me about getting an apartment, too, though he's talking about a regular apartment, not the housing programs Stephanie deals with. I don't even qualify for half of them, since I'm not an ex-con or a drug addict. And not that many take kids—just ask Tanya! The ones that do have lists from here to New York and back.”

Mabel nodded, eyes sympathetic. “I know, Gabby. Look, all of us will do whatever we—”

“Why doesn't Manna House add an option like that for homeless single moms like Tanya—you know, a building with separate apartments, where women can make a real home for their kids, but with services that prepare them to make a go of it alone?” I stood up and started to pace. “Even Precious is about to lose her—”

“Gabby! Gabby.” Mabel's tone pulled me up short. “That's a wonderful idea, and one of these days—years—we'd love to do something like that when some philanthropic billionaire floats us a nice fat donation. But right now,
your
reality is looking for an apartment, okay?” She came around her desk and softened her words with a quick hug.

I returned the hug. “Okay. Thanks again for putting us back on the bed list. Dandy too, right? Denny Baxter said he'd drive us down tomorrow morning, so getting Mom and Dandy squared away might take most of the day. But I'll hit the streets on Monday, I promise.
After
the staff meeting.”

I left her office and almost made it out the front doors when I heard, “Oh, Gabby! One more thing.” I turned, shaking my head and laughing.

Mabel was standing at her office door. “What?”

“Mabel. You always have ‘one more thing.'”

“Oh. Well, I do have one more thing. All that dog food and doggy stuff, remember? It's got to go.”

I had talked my mother into staying at the house with Jodi Baxter the last two days, due to a recurrence of that nasty headache during the knitting club on Wednesday. Since I was out, Estelle had helped her lie down in the multipurpose room, where she'd slept again for several hours. And when I got back to the house Friday evening, dragging from the rising humidity, Jodi said my mom had had another one that afternoon, so bad it made her cry. She was still asleep.

“When was the last time your mom saw a doctor?” Jodi asked, handing me a cold iced tea as I collapsed on their back porch swing, then settling herself on the top step leading down into the postage-stamp yard. I nudged Dandy on his dog bed with my toe, but he just flopped his tail a few times. Too hot for woman and beast alike.

“Mm . . . don't really know. She had a fall Mother's Day weekend, and my aunt Mercy took her to the hospital to get her checked out. And another fall when the boys and I were visiting her in North Dakota earlier this month. She tripped over Dandy, and we had to ice a knot on her head, but she said she was fine.” I shrugged. “Have no idea when her last physical was.”

“You might think about getting her checked out.”

“Yeah, good idea, Jodi.” I heard the slight sarcasm in my tone but couldn't stop. “I don't even have a family doctor yet! And in case you haven't noticed, my life has been a
little
crazy lately, what with getting thrown out of my house by my own husband, losing my sons overnight, and my mother and an injured dog dropped in my lap!” I threw up my hands, sloshing my iced tea. “When was I supposed to see a doctor?”

Jodi winced, but to her credit she didn't walk back into the kitchen, leaving me to wallow in my own frustration. “I know. Just . . . when you can.”

We sat in silence for a long minute, with just the
squeak squeak
of the swing and the drone of traffic several streets over as background. Jodi picked up a stray nail and chipped at the loose paint on one of the railing posts. Finally I said, “Sorry, Jodi. I know you care. You and Denny have been super. Can't thank you enough for hosting us this whole week and giving us a respite from the shelter. Even dog-sitting! Not many people would do that—especially when we were virtually strangers.”

Jodi glanced up through her brown bangs, looking girlish in her shoulder-length bob. “It's been fun, Gabby—really. It gets a little lonely around here with the kids gone.”

“Well, but Amanda will be back tomorrow, right? And she'll be here the rest of the summer, till it's time to go back to college. She sounds like a neat kid.”

“Yeah, she is . . . when she's not driving me crazy.” Jodi made a face. “She's got this boyfriend, José, a really nice young man, but 'Manda can't decide if he's ‘just a friend' or if she's in love . . . oh wait! You know his mother. Delores Enriques, the nurse at Manna House. And she's one of our Yada Yada sisters.”

Delores's son? I grinned. It was fun getting “inside information” on the staff at Manna House. José and Amanda,
hmm
. . .

“Gabby.” Jodi suddenly sounded serious. “I feel awful thinking about you and your mom going back to a homeless shelter. It doesn't feel . . . right. Don't get me wrong. I love Manna House, I think they do a terrific job, and I'm enjoying teaching the typing class—all two weeks of it so far. But . . . I'd hate to be living there—in a bunk room, no less. Sheesh!”

I shrugged. “It's better than some shelters I've heard about, where they've got one huge room housing thirty to sixty women, like Katrina victims wall to wall in the Superdome.”

Jodi glanced at Dandy, snoring peacefully in the dog bed. “It's been nice having a dog around again. Dandy's a sweetheart—right, buddy?” She reached over and gave Dandy's ears a scratch.

He rewarded her with a few more tail thumps. “Mm. Wish Amanda could meet him. She'd go bonkers! You'd have to sneak him away when she wasn't looking.”

Still scratching the dog's ears, Jodi looked at me sideways. “It can't be easy having a dog at the shelter—no yard to romp in, all those stairs to climb—and he's still stiff from those stitches. What would you think about us keeping Dandy, at least until things settle down for you, you know, find a place of your own, get the boys back . . .”

I couldn't believe my ears. In a heartbeat!
Okay, God, where was this option when I really needed it, like
before
Philip got fed up with having Dandy underfoot? Don't You have Your timing a little screwed up?
But even now it would solve so many problems—like who was going to walk him if Lucy didn't come back. And the problem of getting him up and down two flights of stairs each day . . . not to mention those media hounds who were sure to sniff him out once we got back to Manna House.

The Baxters would be a perfect family for Dandy!

But I reluctantly shook my head. “My mom wouldn't hear of it. That dog means the world to her. She turned down a perfectly good retirement home I found here in Rogers Park because she couldn't keep Dandy with her.”

Jodi's eyes brightened. “Well . . . your mom could stay here too! I mean, even when Amanda comes back, we still have Josh's old room. Really! She wouldn't be alone, because I'm off for the summer. And Estelle lives right upstairs. She could take her on like one of her in-home-care seniors.”

I gaped at Jodi. “Are you serious?” I felt as if gold from heaven were pouring down into my lap. A safe place for my mom with people who like dogs . . . “Just until I find an apartment, though. Actually, she's got some money. We could pay, you know, for room and board.”

“Oh, don't worry about that. She eats like a bird.”

I was so excited, I could hardly think straight. “Oh, Jodi. This is wonderful. It's like the answers to all my prayers. Let me go talk to my mom. You think she's awake yet?”

Martha Shepherd was packing, and Martha Shepherd wouldn't budge. “No, Celeste. We have to go home. I promised Lucy that I'd be back.”

“Mom! The Baxters are inviting you
and
Dandy to stay here for a while. Isn't that what you wanted? And it's just until I find an apartment for us—or until your name comes up for assisted living back in Minot. Then you can go home.”

“The Baxters have been very nice, Celeste. But I promised Lu—”

Mom!
Lucy isn't
at
Manna House right now. She's been gone “all week. Maybe she's not coming back.” I hated to do it, but my mother was being totally unreasonable.

My mother calmly folded her nightgown and put it in the small suitcase. “She'll be back. She said she'd look after Dandy. And besides, I promised . . . Hand me those underthings, would you, Celeste?”

chapter 24

I tossed all night, snatching bits of sleep here and there, but waking every hour or so, wound up in the sheet. The fact that it was hot and muggy and the Baxters didn't have central air didn't help either. But mainly I was angry. The perfect solution for my mom and Dandy had been handed to me on a silver platter—and my mom said
no
?!

Argh!
I mean, she “promised Lucy”? How did
that
weigh in on the grand scheme of things when I was trying to get my family back together and take care of her and Dandy too?!
Lucy
was totally unpredictable. Here today, gone tomorrow. Couldn't my mother understand that?

I kicked off the sheet, got up, and turned the fan in the window up another speed before flopping back onto the bed, my thoughts as wilted as the cotton camisole I'd worn to bed . . . Should I
make
my mother stay here? It made so much sense! She might pout a day or two, but she'd get over it, wouldn't she?

I reran my list of arguments. For one thing, there were all those stairs. “I'm not dead yet,” my mom had said, pooh-poohing my concern. “And Manna House has an elevator.” Which she had yet to use.

Another thing: A homeless shelter was no place for a dog. True, they'd adopted him last weekend as their official “watchdog”— but who really cared? Lucy, maybe. Sure, she'd gotten attached to my mom and Dandy, and her disappearance was probably a royal snit because I'd whisked them away right under her nose. But I couldn't believe we'd let
Lucy
, of all people—a bag lady who'd been living on the street most of her life—determine what happened with
my
life!

I squeezed my eyes shut, remembering the day I'd first met her. Tripped over her was more like it—or rather, tripped over her cart sticking out from the bushes while I was running in the sudden rain shower, trying to get back to our penthouse before Philip showed up with his new business partner. This old bag lady came out from under the bush, hacking and coughing, with only a garbage bag for protection, fussing over
me
because I'd cut my bare foot.

I started to giggle in spite of myself just thinking about it now.

And then! The
look
on Philip's face when the two of us came in the front door of the penthouse, Lucy in her layers of mismatched clothes and smelling rather, er, stale, both of us dripping wet . . .

Ohhh!
I stuffed my face into the pillow, shoulders shaking with laughter.

I finally threw off the pillow and wiped my soggy face with the sheet. Okay, Lucy had impacted my life big-time. If it wasn't for her, I never would have visited Manna House, never would have been offered a job as their program director. And I had to admit, in her own odd way, she'd been a real friend. She'd kept my mom company when I had to bring my mom to work . . . she'd taken Dandy for walks when I had to bring
him
to work . . . she'd gone hunting for Dandy when Philip “lost” the dog on purpose . . . and Lucy had found Dandy and found
me
when the tables turned and
I
was the one homeless with nowhere to go . . .

My anger slowly evaporated as the first morning light bathed the Baxters' guest bedroom in hazy blues in spite of the closed blinds and whirring fan in the window. A chest of drawers, a bookshelf, a desk—Josh Baxter's boyhood furnishings—gradually took shape in my vision.