Maravelle comes to sit next to her. “What do you really think?” Shelby is brutally honest. That’s why Maravelle likes her. Maravelle is brutally honest too. You can’t have many friends if you act that way, but you can depend on the ones you have.
“I’d kill myself if I lived here,” Shelby says. “But I’m proud of you.”
Maravelle leaps up, arms out, and twirls on her tiptoes. “Suburbia, I love you!” she shouts.
The last few leaves are falling from a grapevine that grows along the side of the garage. Shelby can’t help but imagine what a mess it’s going to be when the grapes are overripe and scattering everywhere and angry bees buzz through the air, drunk on the juice. Maravelle won’t be dancing around then.
“You did good,” Shelby says. “Your kids will be safe and everyone will live happily ever after.”
“Will you go furniture shopping with me?” Maravelle is really excited about this home ownership situation.
“Not on your life. But I’ll visit you and bring Chinese food from the city because it’s probably terrible out here.”
They get back into Maravelle’s car and head for Queens along Sunrise Highway. There’s a lot of traffic in Valley Stream, especially around the mall. The fact that it’s called Green Acres is a joke. Parking lots, cars, chain stores filled with stuff no one needs. Shelby hates malls. She hasn’t been in one in years. She sighs and gazes out the window. She thinks about the town where she grew up and how excited she and Helene were that they’d be moving to New York City when they graduated.
As if she could read her friend’s mind, Maravelle says, “Don’t say anything negative. Don’t tell me this isn’t my dream come true.”
Maravelle was Shelby’s friend when Shelby was bald and smoking pot four times a day. She was Shelby’s friend through bad breakups with two boyfriends. More important and for reasons Shelby will never understand, Maravelle trusts Shelby with her children. Why should Shelby ruin her day by telling her that a teenage girl who doesn’t want to be in suburbia can put her mother through hell? She did it, after all. It was easy.
It happens two weeks later, on the eve of the move. Maravelle calls Shelby at ten o’clock at night, frantic. The boxes are all packed, the movers are coming in the morning, and Jasmine has taken off.
“Wait until midnight to get hysterical,” Shelby advises. The witching hour, the time of night that scares parents most. Jasmine will be back by then.
Except that she’s not.
Maravelle calls all of Jasmine’s friends, waking some of their parents, but Jasmine isn’t with any of them. Maravelle then races through the quiet neighborhood, searching the park, a place no one with any sense would go after dark. She calls Shelby on her cell phone from the corner deli near the school bus stop. Shelby can barely understand her over all the crying.
“She’s trying to scare you,” Shelby says.
Shelby certainly wouldn’t wish the scares she gave her own mother on anyone.
“Well, she’s doing a damn good job of it,” Maravelle says. “I’m going to kill her when I get hold of her.”
Shelby is on the couch with big Pablo snoring beside her, hoping to be phoned with good news. She has always considered the view from her window to be beautiful, a mix of tar, cobblestones, rooftops, water towers, but now the outside world looks wicked. While she waits to hear from Maravelle, Shelby is drinking green tea and smoking a cigarette. She figures the habit that’s good for her will cancel out the one that’s bad. The police have told Maravelle they can’t do anything until twenty-four hours have passed from the time her daughter is reported missing. Just long enough for a murder or kidnapping. Long enough for Jasmine to wind up stuffed into a green garbage bag and dumped onto the Grand Central Parkway. Shelby can’t imagine what Maravelle must be going through. The responsibility of loving someone is too much for anyone to take, which is why she’s done her best to avoid it.
Not long after midnight, a cab pulls up to Shelby’s building. Pablo starts barking, which revs up the other dogs. Shelby hushes them. She perches on the back of the couch and spies a young woman with a backpack getting out of the taxi. It’s Jasmine.
Shelby phones Maravelle, pronto. As soon as she answers, Shelby says, “Forget the police. She’s here.”
“Oh, my God! I’m driving over there right now.”
“She’ll run if you do.” Jasmine rings the bell downstairs. Shelby darts to the wall so she can buzz open the door. “She needs to feel like some outside adult will listen to her. So I’ll pretend to be an adult. You know she’ll tell me stuff she won’t tell you.”
“Okay, Shelby, but understand this: I’m leaving the most precious thing in my world in your hands.”
Fuck it, Shelby thinks as she hangs up. She has never wanted to be involved with people. People are dangerous, unreliable, stupid, greedy, needy, breakable. Look what happened to Helene, to Ben Mink, to Harper Levy’s wife. The dogs go nuts when there’s a knock on the door. Fortunately the upstairs neighbor is a waiter who doesn’t get home till dawn, and the couple beneath her have such huge drunken fights they’re in no position to complain about noise.
Shelby tries to plan a great opening remark, but when she sees Jasmine’s tearstained face, she simply puts her arms around the girl and hugs her.
“I hate my mother,” Jasmine says.
It’s as good a beginning as any. The dogs are thrilled to have company, especially Blinkie, whom Jasmine used to think of as creepy and scary. He leaps around until she picks him up. “Oh, Blinkie,” Jasmine says, as if he’s the only one in the world who could ever understand her. She hides her face in his fur and sobs.
“You must be starving. I have Chinese food,” Shelby says.
Shelby always has Chinese food. She now stores her unread fortune cookies in a plastic container she keeps on the kitchen counter, behind the toaster.
“Why don’t you ever eat those?” Jasmine asks.
“No one should know the future,” Shelby says. “What if it’s horrible?”
“What if it’s great?”
“Like life on Long Island?” Shelby jokes.
Jasmine groans and throws herself onto the couch while Shelby reheats broccoli with black bean sauce and General Tso’s chicken. “I don’t know if I can eat,” Jasmine says when the plates are brought out.
Shelby starts right in on her food. How did she come to be responsible for the well-being of someone’s child?
“The taxi driver was so creepy,” Jasmine says. “He told me if I didn’t have a place to stay I could stay with him. He made me sick to my stomach.” All the same, she has begun to eat, daintily at first and then as if she were starving. “Do you have soy sauce?”
Shelby gets some soy sauce. She starts the discussion gingerly. “Let me guess. You hate Long Island.”
“You try living there.”
“I did until I was nineteen. How do you think I got this way?”
They both laugh, but Jasmine doesn’t stop laughing. It’s the kind of laughter that quickly becomes hysterical. Shelby can tell it’s going to turn into crying before it does.
“I have a life,” Jasmine sobs. “I have friends.”
“As in the creepy boyfriend?”
“Marcus is not creepy. And he loves me.”
“Love is for when you’re older,” Shelby says.
“Like your age?”
“I am not the love expert,” Shelby admits. “Learn from my mistakes.”
“My mother thinks she’s the expert. She thinks she rules the world.”
“Well, I hate to tell you, but she does rule your world. You’ll make new friends on Long Island.”
“Oh yeah, sure. Now you sound like my mother.”
A mistake. Shelby tries another tactic. She’s best as bad-girl sister who knows the score. “Don’t you get it? You’ll be the new hot
girl everyone wants to date. People are so bored with the friends they have, you’ll be a queen. Queen Jasmine from Queens. You’ll meet other guys. Better ones.”
“Hah,” Jasmine says, but Shelby can tell from the look on her face, she’s begun to make a dent.
“I bet you a hundred bucks you get asked out the first day you’re in school there.”
Jasmine is eating in earnest now. Shelby fetches them two Diet Cokes. The apartment is so small a person sitting on the couch can see every inch of the place, including the kitchen and the sleeping alcove that’s entirely taken up by Shelby’s bed.
“We could go to Pier 1 and get some awesome stuff for your new room. Red silk curtains.”
“I like blue,” Jasmine says. “Aqua.”
Shelby tries not to smile. She’s hooked Jasmine with shop therapy. “There’s a huge mall near your house. Green Acres.”
Shelby hates shopping. Most of the things in her apartment are castoffs—the couch is from some ex-neighbors who skipped on their rent, the table and chairs belonged to Ben Mink’s great-aunt. True, she got the rug at Pier 1, but only because there was an eighty-percent-off sale and the rug was fluffy and white, the perfect accessory to go with dog hair.
“Would you go shopping with me?” Jasmine asks. “My mother likes everything to match.”
Shelby brings out an extra quilt and some sheets so they can make up the couch. This means tying Pablo to the dining room table with his leash so he won’t try to share the couch with Jasmine in the middle of the night.
“Thank you for understanding.” Jasmine hugs Shelby tight. She’s still a little girl even though she looks like a grown woman. She’s five foot seven with perfect coffee-colored skin and high cheekbones. Maybe she’s relieved to get away from her neighborhood and her jealous boyfriend.
Shelby goes to the bathroom and runs the water full blast so she can phone Maravelle without being overheard.
“What the hell took you so long?” Maravelle has had a pot of coffee, and her nerves are shot. “Put her on.” Now that Maravelle knows her daughter is safe, she can allow herself to be furious. “I’m going to punish the crap out of her.”
“I’ll get her there in the morning,” Shelby whispers.
“I can’t even hear you!”
“I don’t want her to know I’m talking to you. She’ll feel betrayed.”
“She’ll feel betrayed! She likes you better than she likes me.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not her mother. And I used to be bald, therefore I can’t be a full-fledged adult.” Shelby gazes at herself in the mirror. She thinks of what Ben said long ago, how Helene’s hair was still long, how it was still the color of roses.
Maravelle laughs. “Well, I love you anyway, bald or not. Just don’t lose my daughter.”
The funny thing is, Shelby can’t sleep. She keeps getting up and checking on Jasmine. Jasmine is curled up with Blinkie beside her, but Shelby still feels anxious. Someone could climb up the fire escape and grab Jasmine. Shelby stays up all night so she can save her if need be. At seven, she makes coffee and feeds the dogs.
Jasmine lifts her head. “Hey,” she says sleepily. “I dreamed I lived in a castle.”
“Was it in Valley Stream?”
Jasmine grins and throws a pillow at Shelby. “There was a white horse in my dream. See if you can find me one of those. Then I’ll be happy.”
They take the train out to the island, then grab a taxi to the mall, where they have the driver wait while they shop. When they arrive at the new house, they’re carrying two huge shopping bags. They have cornered the market on candles, velvet pillows, wall hangings.
Maravelle must have ESP because she’s waiting on the lawn when they arrive, no coat, no sweater, nothing, even though it’s chilly. There are empty boxes from the move stacked by the curb, ready for the trash pickup in the morning.
“You finally made it,” Maravelle says, her hand on her hip.
“We had to go shopping,” Shelby informs her.
“Why don’t you bring all that inside?” Maravelle tells Jasmine, and Jasmine, grateful not to be confronted, dashes into the house.
“You rewarded her for running away?”
“Yep. And now you owe me two hundred and twenty-four dollars.”
“Good luck collecting.” Maravelle hugs Shelby. “Thank God for you, crazy girl.”
“How do you do all this, Mimi? I was so worried I couldn’t sleep all night. Why does anyone become someone’s mother?”
“Sometimes I think I’m messing the whole thing up.” The shock of the evening has taken a toll.
“You’re not.” Shelby is very sure about this. “What Jasmine really wanted was a horse, so you should be thankful I just let her get pillows and vanilla candles. You could have a palomino in your backyard.”
“What would I ever do if something happened to her?” Maravelle says.
“Let’s order Chinese food,” Shelby suggests. It’s her answer to everything. She doesn’t want to think about any what-ifs. She just wants hot and sour soup, and then she wants to get back on the train and get the hell out of Long Island. “You can treat.”
The experience of Jasmine’s running away lingers. Shelby feels haunted by her own ragged emotions. Is this what love does to you? Makes you feel accountable for things you can’t control? All week she wakes in the middle of the night, worried about the future. She opens the closet door and looks at the jar of fortune cookies. She takes one, then quickly tosses it back in the jar.
One afternoon when a cold rain is falling, Shelby heads for the deli in Union Square. Since she quit work, she’s missed the place. There’s a chill in the air, so Shelby orders a container of chicken noodle soup.
“Make it two,” she decides at the last minute. Maybe that tattooed girl is out there; maybe she’s hungry and cold.
It’s the time of year when the trees are still bare. Shelby is wearing a heavy sweatshirt and boots. The brown paper deli bag is threatening to tear under the weight of the two containers of soup. The tattooed girl is indeed there, huddled beneath the overhang near the subway. She’s got on striped leggings and an army jacket. As Shelby approaches, she spies a little white cat perched on the girl’s shoulder, just sitting there, as if it weren’t raining. Shelby’s allergic to cats, she doesn’t even like them, she’s a dog person, but she feels something inside her that is like an electric shock.
“Hey, I brought you something,” Shelby says to the girl. She crouches down and takes out one of the containers of soup; the cardboard is burning hot. She places it on the cement while she fishes around in the bag for a plastic spoon. The air is foggy and gray. The cat is most likely drugged. That’s why it ignores the rain. It’s tiny and drenched.
“Is that a kitten?” Shelby asks.
The tattooed girl grabs the soup and opens it. Some hot liquid spills on her hands. “Shit. Why is this so hot?”
“Does that kitten belong to you?” Shelby feels the breaking thing inside her that always leads to trouble.
“Why don’t you kiss my ass, bitch?” the tattooed girl sneers. “One cup of soup doesn’t buy you anything.”
That’s it. Shelby grabs the kitten and runs. She runs so hard and so fast she nearly slips on the wet pavement. Her pulse is pumping and there’s a thud inside her ears. She hears the tattooed girl screaming at her, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care that she’ll be so allergic from having the cat tucked inside her sweatshirt she’ll have to get herself a bottle of Benadryl. There is nothing that could stop her, really. Not a bullet, not a police car, and certainly not a beggar girl.
Shelby runs to Seventh Avenue, to Penn Station. You rescue something and you’re responsible for it. But maybe that’s what love is. Maybe it’s like a hit-and-run accident; it smashes you before you can think. You do it no matter the cost and you keep on running. It’s dusk now
, and the puddles are filled with neon. It’s only thirty minutes by train to Valley Stream. Don’t make a noise, Shelby whispers to the cat when the conductor comes around. Soon you’ll be sleeping on a velvet pillow. You’ll be looking at the rain from behind the window where there are blue silk curtains. You’ll be glad there was a thief like me.
CHAPTER
7
It’s May and the world is green and lush, even in Valley Stream. There are daffodils in the gardens and birds in the willow trees. Shelby takes the train out for Sunday dinner, even though Maravelle’s mother, Alba Diaz, hates her. Shelby knows this because whenever she walks in the house Mrs. Diaz, an opinionated, no-nonsense widow in her fifties, hightails it into another room. She’ll come out for dinner, but she won’t speak. Not in English at any rate. Not when Shelby’s there.
“Come on, Abuela,” Jasmine always says to her grandmother on these occasions. “Shelby won’t bite you.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid of that,” Mrs. Diaz says, her glance burning through Shelby. “If anything I’ll bite her.”
Maybe she hates Shelby because she thinks Shelby is a bad influence, or maybe it’s because Shelby gave Jasmine the cat, Snowball. Mrs. Diaz hates cats as much as she does Shelby.
“Mami, please,” Maravelle always says. “Behave yourself.”
As for Shelby, she keeps her mouth shut until Mrs. Diaz retires to her room.
“Geez Louise,” Shelby says. “She is tough.”
“You have no idea,” Maravelle says. “I couldn’t go on a date so I did it behind her back. I went crazy wild.”
So of course Maravelle worries about the beautiful Jasmine, closing in on seventeen. That’s why Shelby has been summoned out to Long Island on a Saturday rather than for the usual Sunday dinner and why she can’t take the train back to the city until Maravelle returns from her first date in nearly ten years. Mrs. Diaz works evenings at the intake desk in the ER at the local hospital, and Maravelle doesn’t want the kids home alone. She found evidence of a romance. First there was the gold necklace, then gifts of perfume and cologne. Then she found a man’s sweatshirt in Jasmine’s bureau drawer. She’s afraid of what she’ll find next.