At a nearby deli I ordered the cheapest meal I could find — a bagel with cream cheese and a glass of ice water. The sweet-faced college-age waitress wore a crisp blue uniform and smiled as she took my order; I wanted to throw my arms around her as though she were a long-lost friend. Instead, I asked if the restaurant had a phone book I could look at. She brought it with my bagel. “Here you go. Take as long as you want.”
I turned to the Yellow Pages and looked up youth hostel, finding not one entry. Next, I tried boardinghouses. There were five of those, but none in New Haven proper. I looked up motels and found pages of listings, but a few phone calls reinforced my earlier notion that the cost of a few nights in one of them would devour my whole bank account.
By then, I’d exhausted every idea I could think of except one. I looked up homeless shelter and came up with nothing but a low-income housing complex — maybe useful for the future but not much help for the quickly approaching night. So I tried human service organizations. If that failed me, the next best options on my shrinking list of possibilities would be sneaking into a campus library to sleep sitting up in a study carrel or maybe stretching out under some shrubbery. Or crawling back to Thornfield Park, returning to Nico out of need and desperation. No, it would have to be the library or the shrubbery, unless I could find one helpful agency in the long list of soup kitchens and Head Start programs. But the list yielded nothing that sounded remotely like a shelter.
As I sat in the booth clutching my phone, a new worry occurred to me. Could Nico use my cell phone to track my whereabouts? Since we’d been in each other’s company almost the whole time that we’d been a couple, I’d never had a reason to give him my phone number, but my phone bill was on its way to Thornfield Park and might be in the mailbox there already. Even if Nico couldn’t track me down, he could call me once the bill arrived and he had my number. Would I really have the strength not to go back to him if he called? Especially if I were sleeping among the homeless? No, I would have to ditch my phone somewhere. But then how would I ever get a job?
Another troubling thought slapped me across the face. If I tried to withdraw money from my savings account back in Old Lyme, Nico might be able to track me down. Maybe this was a paranoid notion; I had no way of knowing for sure. I could close my account at the First National Bank of Old Lyme, but wouldn’t I have to go all the way back there to do it? Suddenly I felt exhausted by logistics. If I took another cab back toward Thornfield Park, I doubted I’d have the strength to leave again. I took out my wallet and thumbed through it. I had about twenty-seven dollars and change left, not enough for a night in even the cheapest hotel. And then I remembered my pearl earrings. My parents had given them to me on my sixteenth birthday. My father’s eyes had lit up when I kissed him on the cheek and thanked him, though as usual he’d been hard-pressed for words.
But I couldn’t think of that now. I looked up pawn shops in the Yellow Pages. There were hundreds, but I had no way of knowing which ones were within walking distance. I rifled through the pages, my eyes glazing over.
“Can I get you anything else?”
“Just the check, please,” I told the sweet-faced waitress. “But maybe you could help me?” I pushed the phone book toward her. “Do you recognize any of these addresses? Are any of these shops near here?”
“I’ll take this out back and ask the manager,” she said. “He’ll know.”
A few minutes later she came back with a list jotted in pencil on the back of a piece of scrap paper. “He says this one’s just a few blocks in that direction.” She pointed. “And these two aren’t much farther.”
I thanked her profusely, paid the check, left a tip, and started down the road. The gray-faced old man behind the counter of the dimly lit pawn shop offered me just fifty dollars for my earrings.
“But they’re worth much more than that,” I protested.
He shrugged. What could I do? I took the money. According to the slip he gave me, I had three months to come back and retrieve them. But when I tried to imagine where I would be living and what I would be doing in three months, my mind began spinning. The thought of my future made my limbs feel heavy and my mind numb. All I wanted was a quiet place to lie down.
As darkness fell that night, I kept to the edges of campus, trying to come up with a plan. One thing seemed certain: I couldn’t spend the cash in my wallet until I’d figured out a way to bring in more; I would need that money to eat. As streetlights switched on, I walked across a well-tended lawn past a small stampede of young men playing touch football; just before me on the path, a trio of carefully dressed young women seemed headed somewhere festive. High heels clattering against the sidewalk, they shrieked with laughter and talked loudly about somebody named Smedley. At one point, caught up in their conversation, they stopped completely, blocking my way. As I walked around them, I felt invisible. Then I wished I were a ghost, able to walk through walls and get into the library — a warm, quiet place to hide until dawn. Entering through the front door was out of the question; when I tried, a guard asked me for my ID card, and I had to apologize and retreat. Similar guards sat stationed at the entrance of each dormitory I passed. I stood a moment before each welcoming facade, looking up at the brightly lit rooms above. Some windows were cheerily decorated. One had been strung with tiny lights shaped like red chili peppers; a rainbow banner hung from another. Music seeped from the closed windows — reggae from one, death metal from another. I hesitated a long moment. If I were a better liar, I could probably bluff my way in, but I’d never been able to lie without blushing and stammering. And even if I did get in, I’d have to sit up in the lounge, pretending to belong there all night long. The very idea exhausted me.
I kept walking, hoping for some opportunity for rest to present itself. The full moon had risen. Hanging just above the skyline, it looked enormous and pumpkin orange. I noticed a few benches I could stretch out on, but I didn’t want to be that obvious. Then I passed a wall of shrubs with a person-sized space under the bottommost branches. Could I bring myself to sleep down there, and would darkness and those branches camouflage me from those who might want to do me harm or arrest me for vagrancy? I thought of the cobwebbed attic crawl space where my brother had forced me to spend that long and terrifying night. Though my shoes were chafing the backs of my heels, I kept slogging along, retracing my steps from earlier that day. I reached the edge of campus, crossed several streets, and wound up in front of the diner where I’d eaten earlier. This time, I noticed a small red neon sign that said OPEN 24 HOURS.
I went in and took a seat in a booth, the one nearest the kitchen. A few other patrons were scattered around the room, but the place was mostly empty. My waitress this time was an older, irritable-looking woman who smelled not so faintly of cigarette smoke. I ordered a glass of ice water and another bagel with cream cheese. I hadn’t realized I was hungry, but when my order came, I ate it very quickly and still wanted more. I ordered a second, and took just a bite, determined to make this one last so that I could prolong my stay in the most comfortable place I’d been that whole day. I scooted over until I was up against the wall, crossed my arms on the table before me and, just for a moment, rested my head on them. I’m not sure how much time passed — ten minutes? twenty? — but an angry voice cut into my sleep. “Hey. You can’t do that here.” I sat bolt upright. “You’d better pay and get out.”
“But I haven’t finished my food,” I protested.
“You’d better not go to sleep again. Hurry up and eat.” She glared at me. Because I had committed the crime of nodding off in a public place, in her eyes I had suddenly changed to a deadbeat. I was too tired to be outraged, too woozy with sleep to take another bite of my bagel. I sat there for a long while, trying to wake up all the way, to become alert enough to figure out what I should do when I’d finished the last crumb on my plate. Every so often, the waitress passed by again and eyed me with contempt.
“You gonna finish that?” she asked on her third trip past my t
able.
“Yes,” I said, “in a moment.”
“There’s a time limit on these booths.”
“There are plenty of empty tables,” I pointed out. “Nobody’s waiting for this one.”
“I don’t care. Eat, pay, and go.”
My next bite was sodden, almost unchewable. I spit it into a napkin and tucked the mess under my plate. I couldn’t help what happened next. Tears started slipping down my face, but I wouldn’t let that horrible waitress see my distress. I pulled napkin after napkin out of the metal dispenser, trying to wipe away my storm of self-pity and frustration. A sudden bout of sobbing must have given me away.
“Hey. What’s this about?” a familiar voice said. “Oh, it’s you.” It was my waitress from earlier, the only friendly person I had spoken to all day long. She plunked herself into the seat across from mine and put a finger to her lips. “Shhh. I can’t let my boss see me sitting here. So tell me fast: what’s wrong?” Her long, straight hair, tied back in a ponytail, was the color of honey; her name tag read DIANA.
“I don’t have any place to sleep tonight,” I told her, all pride and reticence gone. “I hardly have any money, and I don’t know how I’ll find a job if I don’t even have an address to put on the application, and my cell phone…” But I couldn’t trust myself to say another word.
Diana looked around, checking to see who was watching. Then she ducked her head and whispered, “Don’t cry. I’ll help you. Can you come on over to my station and sit there until my shift’s over? I get off at midnight — about forty-five minutes.”
“I can sit here all night and pretty much the rest of my life.”
“Good. Do you like coffee? I’ll bring you some.” She looked around to make sure nobody was listening. “On the house.”
After her shift, Diana swooped by my table to spirit me away. She still wore her blue uniform and smelled slightly of fried things. “C’mon,” she said. “What are you waiting for?”
“The check?” I asked.
“No problem. It’s taken care of.” When I tried to object, she waved me off. “Listen, I live with my sister and brother. You can stay on our couch tonight. It’s old and a little smelly, and we have a cat. Are you okay with that?”
Was I okay with that? It took all my restraint not to throw my arms around her neck and weep with relief. “You’re saving my life.”
“Well, it’s not the Ritz. We live off campus… way off.”
“It sounds perfect,” I said.
I followed her out the door and up the street to a small blue Hyundai parked at an expired meter. “Look at that: no ticket. This must be my lucky day.” She got in and leaned over to unlock my door. “What’s your name? And what’s your story?”
“Jane Martin.” The made-up last name slipped off my tongue. “And I’d rather not tell my story.”
“Oh, really?” She shrugged. “We’ll get it out of you.”
She drove out of the lush green area around the university, past streets of redbrick row houses, and before long we were in an area with fewer trees, the darkened storefronts shielded by metal grates. As she drove, Diana cheerfully filled me in on her own background, so there was no need for me to talk about myself. She had recently graduated from UConn and was living with her sister Maria, also a UConn graduate, and their brother River, a seminary student at Yale Divinity School. They had family back in Greenwich, but none of them particularly wanted to move back to the suburbs. “Too smug,” Diana said. “Too safe. We wound up out here with River because he needs us. He’s socially hopeless and can’t cook or keep house to save his life — you’ll see — but he’s kind of an idiot savant, and we love him to pieces.”
She pulled up in front of a white house that pitched slightly to one side. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was one of the better-kept houses on the fairly bedraggled street. “We’ve got the second floor,” she said. “Above the illegal aliens and below the junkies.” I followed her up the dark, narrow staircase, and she unlatched three locks before opening the door. “Maria!” she shouted. “We’ve got a visitor.”
From a lit-up room beyond the darkened kitchen in which we stood, a woman, clearly Diana’s sister, swept in. “Well, turn the light on,” Maria said, and flicked a switch to reveal a clean, old-fashioned kitchen, with harvest-gold appliances that must have predated both women who lived there. Maria was thinner and taller than her sister, but she had the same round, clear-skinned face and wide brown eyes. “Who’s this?” She took my suitcase from me and stowed it in the hallway.
“Jane Martin,” Diana said. “She needs a couch to crash on. You mind?”
“Why would I mind? Where are you from, Jane? Are you a student?”
“She’s a woman of mystery,” Diana answered for me. “Let’s ply her with beer and get her secrets out of her.” She opened the fridge. “We’ve got Rolling Rock. River doesn’t want us to buy anything fancier. He’s such a dweeb.”
“But he’s our dweeb,” Maria said fondly. Then she turned to her sister. “He’ll be late tonight. Of course.”
“Of course. Here, Jane. Sit down and drink up.” Diana set a sweating green bottle on the table in front of me.
“I shouldn’t,” I said. “I can’t.” I was conscious of an aching in my joints that hadn’t been there a moment ago. “I don’t feel right.”
Diana’s cool hand felt my forehead. “You’ve got a fever. Do we have a thermometer?”
“I dropped it,” Maria said. “Glass everywhere.”
“She’s like an oven.” Diana turned to her sister. “I’ll set up the couch for her. You run interference with River when he gets here. Do we have any ibuprofen left?”
Before long, I was stretched out on a slightly lumpy couch in the darkened living room. My head felt like a balloon filled with damp sand. I slept awhile, then woke shivering in what must have been the middle of the night, unsure where I was for a long time. The apartment was silent. I could feel a weight on my feet. When I tried to move them, it shifted; the disgruntled cat jumped down from the couch and ran off. When my eyes adjusted, I saw that a glass of water had been set on the coffee table beside me; I took a sip. The events of the past forty-eight hours came back to me slowly. Despite the sheet and blankets Diana had spread over me, I couldn’t stop trembling with cold. I lay there a long time, utterly miserable, but then I must have fallen back asleep. The next thing I knew the room was filled with daylight; voices murmured from the kitchen. A bit later, Maria brought me more ibuprofen, a fresh glass of water, and a plate of toast I couldn’t bring myself to touch.
“Go back to sleep,” she said, spreading another blanket over me. “Sleep as long as you need to.” So I did, for what must have been hours. When I finally woke again, I felt well enough to sit up, but when I did, the room swam around me. The sky beyond the small square living room window was darkening. I lay back down, trying not to think too hard. Wondering where I would go when I was well enough to leave the couch made me nauseous, so I pushed all those worries away and let sleep come again.
It must have been another twenty-four hours before I was well enough to get up, brush my teeth, take a shower, and change into fresh clothes. I ventured into the kitchen and found Maria and Diana there.
“Look who’s up!” Diana exclaimed. “We were beginning to think we’d have to sling you over our shoulders and carry you off to the clinic. How do you feel?”
I assured them that I was starting to feel better. Maria offered to make me some tea, and I let her.
“You’ve been asleep for days,” Diana told me. “Seriously, we were starting to worry about you.”
“We’re trying to figure out what’s for dinner,” Maria told me. “Do you think you could eat?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’d like to try.”
Diana started pulling out produce from the crisper. “Carrots. Broccoli. Green pepper. What’s this?”
“Ew. Throw that out,” Maria directed. “We’ve got tofu. Chicken’s all gon
e; I didn’t make it to the food co-op today.”
“Looks like stir-fry,” Diana said. “Jane, put your feet up.” She pulled out one of the three wooden chairs around the small kitchen table.
I took a sip of the orange zinger tea Maria had set before me. “Please let me help,” I said. “I’m feeling well enough now.”
“Tonight you just sit there.” Diana pulled a chef’s knife out of a drawer and went to work at a thick chopping block on the Formica counter. Though they wouldn’t let me help, it felt good to sit near them while they bustled around, readying the garlic, broccoli, and scallions. It felt like a million years since I’d listened to easy, companionable conversation between friends. Maria put rice on to boil, and Diana manned the wok.
Just as the kitchen was starting to smell really good, a key rattled in the locks. A young man in a windbreaker came in carrying a bicycle. His blond hair was tousled, his cheeks flushed. He took instant note of me — the stranger at his kitchen table. “She’s still here?” he asked.
“Manners, nimrod.” Diana spoke without looking up from her stir-fry. “Put that bicycle away, and we’ll talk.”
He disappeared and soon returned. “We’ll need an extra chair,” he observed.
“Go get the one from your desk,” Diana told him. Then, to me, she said, “Don’t mind River. You’ll see. He’s worth the effort.”
He returned and held out his hand for me to shake. “I’m River St. John,” he said, a bit stiffly.
I introduced myself as Jane Martin.
“Diana likes to bring home strays,” River said.
Diana gave him a playful punch on the arm. “That’s not a very nice way to talk about our dinner guest,” she said. “Jane’s new in town, and she just needs a leg up.”
“Are you a student?” River asked. “Do you have a job?”