For five or six minutes she takes in each sculpture, their menacing shapes, like bodies mid-attack, until the front door flies open. Someone shouts, words lost to her as she gets her feet on the pedals, fumbles, turns her tire onto the grass, slides, regains her grip and pedals off, heart like a crack of thunder against her ribs.
“The other kids sense something’s off. It’s because he’s angry all the time. Abused kids are always angry.” Sarah overhears Melanie saying this to someone on the phone.
She has come home mid-conversation, Bluetooth earpiece in place, waved to the kids and Sarah in the sunroom and slid into the kitchen. Sarah strains to hear the rest of the conversation while helping Beatrice finish a Lego princess castle.
“So he walked home today, and I watched out the window. He’s always alone, always, then today these other kids ran up to him and for a second I thought he’d made friends, you know? Then suddenly he slaps one of them across the face. They all stopped, but Ethan never even paused. Just kept walking. There’s something wrong there, don’t you think?”
Melanie’s voice is hard. “I’m sure it’s his mother. I talked to her. She doesn’t care. Too busy with her boyfriend, or her bongs, or something.
“Believe me, I know,” she says, in a tone that makes it sound as though whomever she’s talking to may be questioning how she can be so sure. “She’s skinny, too skinny.”
Melanie considers being too skinny the same thing as being too fat: suspect. “Drugs,” she says. “Maybe alcohol, but I bet drugs.”
A few days before Christmas, Melanie asks about Sarah’s plans. “I take it you aren’t going to Florida? Is your mother coming here?”
Sarah claims her mother is in town staying with an old friend. “I’ll go over there Christmas Day.”
“Okay, then I’m going to give you your present now.”
It’s a gift certificate to Williams-Sonoma.
“You’re such a great cook. I’m sure you can find something you’ll love there.”
Christmas morning Bea shakes Sarah, who pretends to be groggy, though in fact she’s been lying awake for an hour.
“Come on, Santa came! Santa came!” Bea pulls at her arm, but Sarah sends her off.
“I’ll be down. I have to go to the bathroom.”
She listens to the baby’s cry, Bea’s cheerful shouts and Melanie and Aaron’s muttered permissions. The scent of pancakes and bacon, the only two things Aaron can cook, reach her.
At eight Sarah dresses quietly and slips out of the house. First the bus to the Catholic church on Cornish, two warm Masses, then two rides around town, switching every twenty minutes so the driver doesn’t get suspicious, and an early dinner at the Chinese restaurant on Passe Road, the only place open on Christmas Day. From there it’s a two-mile walk back to the Cuppernell’s.
The house is dark, as Sarah expected, Aaron, Melanie and the kids having gone to her parents’ for dinner.
Sarah gets out the pan she bought at Williams-Sonoma, the important one. Her mother owned its twin, the words “All-Clad” engraved on the handle. She had the small saucepan and a stockpot too, but these were indulgences. “The only pan that really has to be top quality is the large sauté,” her mother explained, “so your meat and fish sear evenly and you can scrape the fond off with a metal spatula. Never use non-stick for this. No good. You can’t get the fond.” Her mother showed her how to polish the pans with a white powder and hang them on a rack above the sink in their mint-green kitchen.
Sarah isn’t hungry, but defrosts a chicken breast anyway and while it sizzles, wonders where the pans ended up. She never thought to ask for them. Then again, she was ten when her mother died and a month passed before her foster parents said anything. By that time, the pans were probably long gone.
The chicken is perfect, browned without burning, juicy in the middle. Sarah wraps it up, then polishes her pan with the powder the saleswoman recommended. She hadn’t recalled its name or what the label looked like. She knows this is the right stuff, though, because the pan shines, brand-new again.
The Saturday after New Year’s Sarah has an appointment to see an apartment and Melanie insists on driving her. She’s long since discovered Sarah has no car.
Stained tan carpeting, white walls. It’s another holding cell, like the bedrooms she slept in as a foster child, but it’s partially furnished with a leather couch, bedframe, table and chairs, and the rent is the same as her old place.
“Furnished?” Melanie sneers, turning to Sarah. “Did you want furnished?”
The landlord, a skinny guy wearing yellow pants, loses interest. No sale here.
On the drive home Melanie pulls into another place with a “Units Available” sign out front. Much newer, the complex is set back from the road behind a rolling lawn. The cars line up, protected from the light snow by a long peaked roof. White numbers reserve each spot.
They look at a one-bedroom. It has floors Sarah thinks are wood, but Melanie informs her it’s “just laminate. Looks nice for an apartment, though.”
The pan could hang here. And she’d keep her laundry quarters in a bag in this drawer. Except it costs three times her old place.
Sarah says she’ll think about it. Feeling the need to justify her delay, she claims to be saving for a car.
On the way home Melanie asks if she knows anything about cars.
“No,” Sarah admits.
Melanie smiles. “I’ve got just the man for you, then.”
Within a week Judge Cuppernell has found a used Civic thirty miles away and he’s coming to get Melanie and Sarah to look at it. They ride south on a blustery Sunday in the Judge’s Suburban. Melanie is laughing because Aaron has never been alone for this long with both kids. “Can you believe it? He’s just going to die.”
Her father seems to find this just as funny. “That poor guy. Fathers really have it tough these days.”
Melanie slaps him playfully on the arm. “Oh right, tough. Really tough. How about grandfathers? Have you ever even changed a diaper?”
The Judge laughs. “Avoiding that is one of my main goals in life.”
The Judge looks under the hood and examines the tires, asks questions of the owner, a Hispanic man with a goatee, then has Sarah start up the car and gun the engine. “No blue smoke,” he says, taking her place in the driver’s seat. “Let’s take it for a spin.” As they drive the Judge explains what he’s testing for — alignment, noisy brakes, stopping distance — then pulls over and tells Sarah to take the wheel. “Let’s get on the expressway. See if you feel comfortable with the acceleration.”
As they pull back into the seller’s driveway, the Judge says, “It seems pretty solid to me, and these have good safety crash ratings, for their age anyway. I want you to take it in, though, and make sure the airbags check out.” He gives her the name of a mechanic he trusts.
Sarah swallows hard as she writes the check. Five thousand dollars. Nearly her entire life’s savings. She’s close to tears, but that’s not why.
She doesn’t go back to the furnished place Melanie sneered at or the complex with the rolling lawn. She finds a place with carpet not as stained and nothing by way of furnishings except a smelly chair in the bedroom. Sarah moves in early February, taking delivery of a brand-new mattress which she puts on a metal frame scored at Goodwill, where she also bought sheets, a blanket, dishes, and silverware. She’s started from scratch before, knows the priorities.