A Constellation of Roses Page 2

  MS. TROY IS AS KIND as she has ever been, even though there’s a ziplock bag of stolen wallets from my burn can sitting between us. We’re sitting in a small office in the police station that smells like old coffee. I wonder if the cops found my stash of money in the toilet tank, too. I’d ask, but I don’t suppose they’d give it back to me if they had.

  “I can see that those other homes didn’t work out for you, Trix. But I’ve been looking for you for six months. Why didn’t you call me?” Ms. Troy was fresh out of college when she took my case the first time, back when I was still a kid. Somehow, despite the years she’s spent trying to fix a broken system, she still manages to seem young and optimistic.

  “Bad signal, I guess.” I shrug, like it puzzles me too. Pushing people away is my specialty, even people like Ms. Troy who sincerely want to help. But what she doesn’t understand is that I’m tired of being placed with foster families, sick of being a burden to people who either think they can fix my seventeen years of shit or are just waiting for my support check, and I’m definitely not going back to a group home.

  “I’ve talked with the local precinct and a judge. I explained your unique circumstances.” She neatly avoids saying troubled past, which I’ve taken offense to before. “Since you have no previous record, they’re willing to make a bargain.”

  “And what’s that?” I ask, thinking of my mom and all the bargains she’d made with dealers and johns before she disappeared.

  “The judge will drop the charges if you go into the custody of your aunt and agree to stay in school until graduation.”

  “Is this a joke?” I ask, leaning back in the chair. “I don’t have an aunt.”

  “Your mother maintained since your first stay in foster care that you had no family other than her, but since she hasn’t yet returned to claim you, we did some more digging, and it seems that you do have some family on your father’s side who are still alive,” Ms. Troy says, shifting the papers around on the table. “They were difficult to find since your father is deceased, and they don’t reside in the city. But we got in touch, and your aunt agreed to let you live with her. As long as you stay in school and get your diploma,” she repeats.

  I barely know my father’s name other than the McCabe part that’s been tacked on to mine. His name was Connor, Mom said once. And that was it. Nothing else. No reason for why there was never a visit or a birthday card shoved under the door. We never talked about him, the same way we never mentioned my scars or the Good Year after everything that happened. Communication, you could say, was not our strong suit.

  “I don’t need to stay with some old lady I don’t know. Just let me be on my own. Can’t I apply for my emancipation? I’ll finish high school on my own if that’s the deal.”

  “The parameters of the agreement with the judge are very clear, Trix. You stay with your aunt and graduate from high school, and no charges will be filed against you for theft. Stray from that, and you’ll be prosecuted. As an adult. That means no juvenile detention center. You could go to prison if you’re found guilty.”

  I visited Shane in prison, and that was sufficient to convince me that I didn’t want to go there. The walls, the guards, the eyes on you all the time. For someone like me, who thrives on her ability to blend in and drift away at a moment’s notice, taking what she wants with whisper-quick hands, prison would be a nightmare of bright-orange visibility.

  “Fine,” I tell Ms. Troy. “Set it up. Take me to my long-lost aunt.” I can do this for a year, I tell myself. And if I can’t, well, screw it. I can run away as easily as I have all the times before. I slipped up going back to the Starlite. I won’t make that mistake again.

  On Saturday, Ms. Troy picks me up from the county child welfare office in her red Toyota Camry. We leave the city, cruise two hours down the interstate, exit onto a highway, and then continue on progressively smaller roads until we’re bumping along a dirt lane that’s barely a step up from a footpath. “We’re almost there,” Ms. Troy tells me. “They are so excited to meet you.”

  “You didn’t tell me we were leaving civilization,” I reply. Either side of the dirt road is lined with rusty barbed-wire fences, endless open fields occasionally studded with stunted cedars, and black cows placidly observing our journey. They may be the only beings living out here besides this aunt of mine.

  Ms. Troy continues to smile. “There’s an adorable town only a mile away. Rocksaw. That’s where the school and your aunt’s business are located.”

  I let Ms. Troy babble on as I reach back between my seat and the passenger door and slide my hand into her purse that sits on the floor behind me. She’d given me a pained smile when she put it back there, as if she didn’t want to mention that leaving it on the console between us would be a mistake, given my history. She underestimates me. With my eyes still on the road, I slide a bill out of her wallet. And a stick of gum. Then I slip my hand up, take a swift peek at my loot, and stuff the Jackson into the pocket of my hoodie. I never got my stash back from the motel room. I have to build it up again, just in case I need to hit the road sooner than expected. I unwrap the stick of gum slowly and take a hesitant sniff at its lime-green color before I pop it in my mouth.

  Soon enough, an old, battered mailbox comes into sight at the end of the road. It reads 1173 McCabe. We turn left into the driveway, and immediately a huge, rambling farmhouse and a faded red barn fill the horizon. Roses climb the pillars of the open porch that spans the front of the gray house, and thick, thorny vines wrap themselves around nearly everything in the farmyard.

  As we drive closer, three figures emerge from the front door to stand on the porch. I suppose a car coming up the driveway is pretty exciting out here. It deserves an audience.

  Ms. Troy parks behind an old blue Suburban with rust creeping up along the wheel wells. There’s no garage, just a dirt loop in front of the farmhouse. I catch a glimpse of what looks like a fat red chicken pecking in the dirt near the corner of the barn. Then a rooster crows, filling the silence as Ms. Troy and I stare at the three women on the porch. The first is an old woman whose chin barely reaches the railing, at least from this angle. She’s stout with silvery gray hair in a messy bun. The other woman is tall and lanky, and her hair is brilliantly red, even in the shadows. The last figure is a teenage girl, and she stands close to the last pillar on the far end of the porch. She’s average height with girlish curves shrouded in a loose green dress. Her skin is light brown, and her black, curly hair is a cloud around her face but for one twisted braid that she’s pinned up like a headband.

  Together, they stare down at me from their house of roses.

  I imagine what it would be like to sketch them there, a study on perspective and the human body through the years with the contrast of light and shadow and the blooms around them.

  Ms. Troy interrupts my imagined strokes of charcoal on paper. “Looks like they’ve all come out to greet you.”

  “I thought I was living with one old lady.”

  “Mia has custody of you. That’s her with the red hair next to your great-aunt, and the girl is Mia’s daughter, who, um . . .” She digs in her purse for my case file, nudging aside her open wallet that is twenty dollars lighter than it was when we got in the car. “Yes, her name is Ember. She’s a year younger than you. Sweet girl, your aunt says.”

  I hate to break it to Ms. Troy, but girls who find their position in a house challenged by an interloper are rarely sweet. I bounced around a few foster homes the year Mom lost custody of me when I was ten, and then again after she disappeared, before I decided to strike out on my own. I can tell you that none of them had sweet daughters, foster or no.

  “Why didn’t you tell me there were other people living here?” I ask Ms. Troy.

  “I didn’t want to overwhelm you. I know you haven’t had much success with foster care in the past. Even though I really thought you’d take to the Willards.” She adds that last part wistfully. There were good foster families mixed in with the crappy ones, of
course. People who truly wanted to help me. The Willards were a nice young couple with a little boy they’d adopted out of foster care. They were eager and optimistic, and if I hadn’t been so hollowed out by the time I reached them, maybe I wouldn’t have pissed that chance away.

  But I did. So it was group homes after that.

  Ms. Troy reaches over and gives me a pat on the shoulder. “But this is your actual family, Trix. It’s amazing that we found them. You’re getting a second chance with your real family. It’s so rare to have a story with a happily-ever-after like this.”

  I don’t know what Ms. Troy sees as a happily-ever-after here. Rundown farmhouse. Being forced to go back to school with whatever hicks live this far out from civilization. Not to mention the fact that I’ll be staying with relatives of the man who contributed half my DNA but then never came back to say hi or anything.

  I answer, “I don’t like surprises.”

  Ms. Troy sighs. But she unbuckles herself and grabs my file, so I know she’s serious about leaving me here.

  I have no choice but to unbuckle my seat belt, too, and fling open the car door. I get out and slam it shut behind me with more force than necessary and circle back to the trunk, waiting impatiently as Ms. Troy finds the latch to pop it. The air is thick and sweet with the scent of roses. When the trunk opens, I get out the donated backpack handed out to everyone leaving for a new home. It’s got my sketchbook that Ms. Troy recovered from my room at the Starlite, a package of clean underwear, a new toothbrush, and a box of tampons. Everything a girl like me needs to survive.

  “Good morning!” Ms. Troy says, waving at the women on the porch. “It’s so lovely to see you again! Goodness, but your roses are gorgeous. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many before.”

  The old woman is descending the stairs with far more speed than I expected from someone her age. She’s got to be at least eighty. Maybe a hundred. She takes the hand Ms. Troy offers, but not in a handshake. Instead, the old woman flips Ms. Troy’s hand over and examines her palm, running gnarled fingers over it.

  Ms. Troy is clearly taken aback, and she shoots a glance up at the other woman on the porch, Mia, who looks to be somewhere in her late thirties. “Don’t mind Auntie,” Mia says, coming down to join us. “She’s just saying hello.”

  “I can see you’ve had a difficult road,” my newfound great-aunt pronounces, her nose nearly in Ms. Troy’s palm as she scrutinizes it. “No roses yet, only thorns. But this seedling’s roots are strong, and soon the whole garden will be in bloom.”

  “I, uh,” Ms. Troy mumbles, pulling her hand away.

  Oh, good. I’m being left in the care of a bunch of freaks.

  “And Trixie,” the great-aunt says, coming to me next with open arms. I wonder if she’s going to read my palm, too, but instead she claps her withered hands on either side of my face and squeezes, like she’s trying to pop my face. “You look like Connor.” She glances over her shoulder at Mia. “Doesn’t she, Mia?”

  Mia’s hand is on her chest, her mouth open. “I can’t believe it, but she does. Look at those eyes. Connor’s eyes.” She tears up and sniffs a little. “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice quavering. “It’s just, my goodness. I can’t believe it.”

  I don’t tell them that I look almost identical to my mother. There’s a chance looking like my dead father will work out to my advantage.

  “I’m so happy that we were able to connect you with Trix since you lost her father in . . . an accident of some kind?” Ms. Troy fumbles through her file on me like she might be able to find the answer.

  “His fighter jet crashed in the desert. Boom. Dead,” the great-aunt woman says, remarkably unfazed by this spectacular ending.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” Ms. Troy says, because she has enough manners for the both of us. “How tragic. We weren’t able to find much information on Mr. McCabe, other than that he was deceased.”

  “What you hear all depends on who you ask,” Mia answers, tossing her hair. She shoots a half smile to the old woman, some gruesome joke that I don’t get.

  Ms. Troy doesn’t seem to know what to say to that, so she turns to me. “You have everything, right? And you have my phone number. Be sure to call if you need anything. Otherwise, I’ll be returning for a home visit in a few weeks, okay?” She puts a hand on my shoulder that’s meant to be reassuring. I shrug it off. She’s just another in a long line of people who have abandoned me at one time or another. “Could I have a few words with you privately?” Ms. Troy asks Mia, who nods.

  They wander over by the fence, talking, and it isn’t hard for me to make out the words Ms. Troy is whispering when there’s no sounds other than the lowing of cows in the distance. A history of running. Trust issues. Theft.

  Mia just nods, still smiling, as if Ms. Troy is telling her that I’m a Girl Scout who likes to bake cookies and read to the blind.

  When they’ve finished talking, I stand between Mia and my great-aunt, and we watch as Ms. Troy leaves us in the rose-lined driveway.

  The great-aunt swears. “I thought she would never leave,” she says to me. “Come on, Trixie. We have work to do. You can call me Auntie, by the way. Everyone does.”

  “I’m your aunt Mia. But you can call me Mia, or . . . whatever you feel comfortable with,” Mia says.

  I narrow my eyes, waiting for her to cross an invisible boundary. Something that shows me she’s like all the others who have taken me in at one time or another. I don’t know this woman, and unless something changes dramatically, I doubt I’ll be here long. Mia puts her arm around my shoulders and leads me up the porch steps. I try to shrug her off as we climb them, but she’s like superglue. “And this,” Mia says when we reach the teenage girl who is half hiding behind one of the rose-covered pillars, “is my daughter, Ember.” When Ember peeks out, I notice she has a scattering of freckles on her cheeks, and her eyes are a brilliant green like her mother’s. “Ember, meet your cousin, Trixie.” Ember gives me a barely fluttering wave.

  “It’s Trix,” I tell them. “Just Trix.”

  “That’s a little better,” Auntie says with a sigh of relief. “Trixie sounds like a hooker name.”

  “Auntie,” Mia groans. “Please.”

  “What? It is. It’s a hooker name.”

  For once, I’m actually at a loss for words.

  “Let’s just get you changed, and then we’ll head to the shop. I put up a sign saying we’d be late, but I know Mrs. Gunderson said she was worried we wouldn’t be open in time for her to pick up the pies for her horseshoe tournament,” Mia says. “Her team needs all the Lucky Lime it can get.”

  Auntie grunts, “Yeah, well, people in hell want ice water. Take your time.” She herds me inside the front door, which creaks when she opens it.

  The first thing I notice is the smell. It’s pies and bread with faint undertones of lemon. Then I adjust to the rest. Everything in the farmhouse is worn. Dusty light falls in from big front windows, whose calico curtains are pulled back like the McCabe women have been watching for me all morning. The front door opens directly into the living room, which has a couple of couches that are covered in mounds of colorful afghans and quilts. The TV looks like it’s at least twenty years old, and the dark wood floors are scarred in paths where they must have the highest traffic. There’s a massive stone fireplace with a wooden mantel above it, which is covered in small, framed pictures of Ember at various ages. It looks like a damn shrine. I can’t help but think about how there are no pictures of me in the world other than the ones I’ve drawn myself and the one the cops used when they picked me up. Mom had a few, but we’d left them in a hurry one night when she couldn’t come up with rent money.

  From the entryway, I can see the dining room and the kitchen to the left. The kitchen has old white appliances that look like they might have lived through several wars, and the cupboards are fronted with a glass so ancient it’s wavy, revealing dishes and bowls of varying colors and origins. There’s a heavy, scarred wooden
work table in the middle of the kitchen holding various baking pans and a mixer. The dining room has a table long enough for ten people, and it’s littered with novels and magazines and empty teacups. A fat, fluffy orange cat is sprawled across the middle of it, bathing in a pool of sunshine. To my right is a huge staircase, which Mia leads me toward.

  Every stair creaks as Mia continues the herding, and soon I find myself in what must be Mia’s bedroom, a lavender room that smells of furniture polish and vanilla. Mia continues babbling as we go. “I’m sorry that we have to go to work. I should’ve just closed the shop for the whole day. I want to hear everything about you as soon as you get settled.” She beams at me, her eyes still tracing the features she thinks belong to her dead brother. “You would have loved Connor. He was amazing, you know.”

  She looks at me again, like I’m supposed to agree, but who the hell am I to say? I never knew him. He might have been a real dick.

  “We grew up here,” Mia continues. “I was six and he was seven when our parents died in a car accident. So we moved in with Auntie and Uncle Javier.” She beams at me, then looks at Ember, who is trailing behind us at a safe distance. “Go find those jeans. The ones we picked up at Rory’s Treasures. They’re too long for you, but if you haven’t hemmed them yet, I bet they’ll fit Trix.” Without a sound, Ember retreats into the dark hallway, and Mia ducks into a small closet. She sings softly to herself as she sorts through shirts on hangers. Finally she pulls out a faded orange-and-gray henley that says Rocksaw Tigers across the front. “Here,” she says. “This is perfect. And you won’t cry if it gets messy.”

  I barely manage to catch it as she throws it at my face. “I can wear what I have,” I tell her. “I don’t need your clothes.”

  Mia eyes my baggy black hoodie and jeans. Ms. Troy washed them in extra-hot water with lots of detergent, far better than what I was able to pull off in a motel bathroom sink on my own, but they’re admittedly stained and torn in places. “Please, honey. People would come into the shop, see you, and turn right back around.”