Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (10 page)

She was up when I got back from taking Desmond to school the next morning, so I recommended breakfast and some quiet time on the side porch before the day turned into a steam bath. She walked around out there with a bowl of cornflakes until Owen came over and said Miz Vernell, my neighbor on the porch side, had called him to tell him that a girl was locked out of my house and needed a bathroom.

When I offered Foxy my laptop to write down some of her thoughts she lasted about ten minutes and then proceeded to pace around the house, peeking out the windows and closing the blinds. The place was a veritable tomb by noon.

Despite my shriveled entertainment budget, I even suggested we take a walk down to O. C. White’s and have lunch. After an interrogation about where it was (two blocks away) and who was likely to be there (tourists and business people), she declined. We had turkey sandwiches at the bistro table and she talked nonstop about nothing. I felt like I was in an episode of
Seinfeld.

By the time I left to pick up Desmond, I was sure of only one thing: Foxy couldn’t stand to be alone with herself. It was time to stop trying to relieve the symptoms and get to the root. And the sooner the better, because the further I went with this one, the further God kept telling me to go, in one-mile increments. I had the undeniable urge to Nudge back.

When I pulled up to the curb at the school, Desmond was not accompanied by his—what did that Mosquito woman call it? His harem? He just shrugged on his jacket and said, “How’s Foxy?”

“Antsy,” I said.

“She still at our house?”

“Uh-huh.”

And now that he was going to be there, too, I had no idea what I was going to do with her. It wasn’t like I could call Leighanne or Nita and get her started in NA.

To my surprise Foxy had a plan when we got back to Palm Row.

“There’s an art fair going on,” she said, in lieu of hello.

“You talkin’ ’bout my work on the walls?” Desmond said, chest puffing. “That ain’t no art fair. It’s there all the time. I’m thinking a addin’ more. I could even do one of—”

“What are you talking about?” she said. “I meant the one going on down by the Information Center. I got bored so I turned on the radio and they were advertising it.” She shook her hair back. “You said I should think about what I wanted to do and that’s it.”

I put aside the urge to smack her for deflating Desmond like yesterday’s party balloon and said, “All right then. But first there’s the matter of what you’re going to wear. Not so much with the pajamas down on St. George Street.”

“Where are the clothes I had on when I came?”

I hadn’t seen the attire Zelda and Sherry had found her in but I suspected Mercedes had probably disposed of them by now. She was in charge of doing away with the working girl uniform soon after an initiate’s arrival. Foxy could make a pair of sweat pants look seductive. I hated to think what she looked like when she was dressed for work.

“Let’s go with one of my tops and a belt for now. I know we have flip-flops in your size.”

“Are you
serious
?
”

“We’ll get you something else first thing.”

I secretly hoped Ophelia was around when we hit Second Chances. I’d give her a hundred bucks and tell her to take Foxy and go for it. I could hear my bank account circling the drain.

The scowl on Foxy’s face when she’d donned the outfit was so deep Owen could have planted potatoes in the furrows of her brow. I didn’t have to look at it for long. She requested sunglasses and a hat that covered not only the disgusted expression, but her mane of curls as well. We had to drop Gigi and Rochelle off at an NA meeting first, and I asked Rochelle to sit up front with me in the van so I could make my twenty-fifth attempt at having a conversation with her.

“How’s everything going?” I said.

“Okay.”

“Just okay?”

A nod in my peripheral vision.

“I guess that’s better than horrible, huh?”

Another nod.

“Have you spoken during any of your meetings at all?”

“Hi, I’m Rochelle, and I’m a recovering addict.”

Hope lived. That was the most I’d ever heard her say at one time.

“Found anybody you want for a sponsor?”

Head shake, punctuated with a hiss from Gigi in the seat behind me.

“What was that, Geege?” I said.

“We already been turned down by two women and a dog.”

“A dog?”

“That’s what he look like. All smellin’ and slobberin’.”

“He wearin’ a collar too?” Desmond said.

I caught his grin in the rearview mirror, but Gigi was miles from a smile. When I pulled up to Grace Methodist Church, Rochelle grunted getting out of the van and Gigi climbed unceremoniously over Desmond and slammed the sliding door behind her. I jumped when her face appeared in the open passenger side window.

“Some of them people stole from they own mama to buy drugs,” she said. “But I guess sellin’ your body is a worse sin.” She shrugged the shrug of the disheartened and followed Rochelle up the walkway lined with rosebushes.

I felt pretty disheartened myself and added a sponsor crisis to the Things I Have To Take Care Of pile. Although when I was going to get back to that was anybody’s guess. I’d only had Foxy for twenty-four hours and already it felt like she’d siphoned about a year out of me.

“You know
I
don’t need to go to a twelve-step program, right?” Foxy said as we drove toward the Visitor Center.

“You talkin’ ’bout NA,” Desmond said.

I caught a glimpse in the mirror of Foxy lifting her lip at him. “You’re pure genius. Yes, I’m talking about NA. And since I’m not a junkie, I don’t need it.”

“We don’t usually refer to it as a twelve-step program,” I said. “That’s why he didn’t know.”

Desmond didn’t say anything. At least, not until we got out of the van in the parking lot and he muttered between his molars, “Big Al, you don’t got to be speakin’ for me.”

“Did I do that?” I said, although I knew perfectly well that I had. Little Miss Foxy-ness could act like
I
was a moron, but she wasn’t getting away with it with my kid.

I watched as the kid in question loped off and caught up with the girl who had just treated him like an insufferable boy creature. She didn’t look at him as she reached up to tuck some escaped curls back under the hat. Her lifted arms raised the top-turned-dress almost to the bottom of her black underwear.

“Second Chances, Desmond,” I called out.

“That’s not the art show,” Foxy said.

“I know,” I said. We were going to stop the show
she
was putting on first.

I hoped Ophelia would be there, but we were greeted instead by India. Even better. She took one look at Foxy and simply said, “Oh, my.” I could see the possibilities going down the runway in her mind.

“She made me dress like this,” Foxy said, pointing to me.

Desmond nodded soberly. “That’s true, Miss Indiana.”

It struck me as he followed Foxy down the skirt aisle that there had been a definite shift in loyalty.

“I don’t think we have anything here for you,” India said, exchanging a significant big-eyed glance with me.

“No doubt,” Foxy said from the other side of the rack. “My mother wouldn’t even shop here.”

The air went dead.

Her mother?
India mouthed.

“She’s, like, forty,” Foxy said.

“She old, then.” I had never heard that voice come out of Desmond’s vocal cords. It sounded like a male version of hers.

India widened her eyes at me one more time. “So, Foxy, is it?”

“
Yes.
”

“Let’s do this. I’ll go down to my other shop and pick up a few things that will do you until we can get you to Old Navy.”

“Is it at the mall?” Foxy said, still from the other side of the skirt rack.

“Foxy don’t like the mall, now,” Desmond said.

A hanger scraped the pole. “Look at this. Who wears this?”

“Somebody grandma.”

“If she’s going on
Biggest Loser
, yeah.”

Desmond gave an unnatural laugh. I was hung up on the fact that Foxy had access to TV as well as cell phone and English class.

“I’ll be back,” India said to me as she positioned an enormous sun hat on her head. It was her summer signature. She could be seen all the way down Cathedral Place in that thing. “Mercedes should be done with her break. I’ll send her up.” Then she added in a whisper, “Are you sure about this one?”

I didn’t answer because in truth I wasn’t. God was peculiarly silent at the moment. Foxy was not.

As soon as India was gone Foxy poked her head around the end of the rack and pulled in an incredulous chin. “She looks way too hip to be running a shop like this.”

“She got another real shop,” Desmond said.

I waited for him to explain about
this
shop, but he didn’t. None of his usual Sister pride expanded his chest. All he seemed to be able to do was look at Foxy like a puppy and wait for her next nonverbal command. I wanted to pick him up by the scruff of the neck and shake him.

I might have if Mercedes hadn’t come in. She had a smile and a hug for me, a coldly courteous nod for Foxy. She started to wrap her arm around Desmond’s neck but he sidestepped her and joined Foxy at the scarf table.

“
Great
grandmother,” Foxy said to him, holding up a shades-of-purple one I’d seen on Ms. Willa.

“You got that right,” Desmond said.

Mercedes pulled her head almost to the ceiling. “Boy? You too good for a hug from me, I’m too good for a batch of biscuits next time you come around beggin’.”

Desmond looked at Foxy. She continued to smirk at the scarf collection. Only then did he sneak a grin at Mercedes.

“Mmm-
mm
,” Mercedes said.

She gave Foxy’s back a long look and motioned me with her head toward the tiny dressing room. We both squeezed in with the door shut, which gave me a close-up view of Mercedes’s nose hairs.

“I’m going to get these two out of here,” I whispered. “Will you have India call me on my cell when she gets back? She went to get some clothes for Foxy.”

“She gon’ get her a muzzle too?”

I stifled a guffaw.

“That girl got a mouth on her.”

“She’s covering up her stuff, Merc, you know that. It’s only been a day.”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

I nodded and twisted to face the door, which was no easy task. No wonder nobody tried anything on up here. You had to be Foxy’s size just to move around in the fitting room.

I finally managed to get the door open, already saying, “Okay, let’s check out that art fair.”

That was met with a guilty silence.

“Desmond?” I said.

Nothing.

“Foxy?”

By then Mercedes had squeezed out behind me and was charging through the shop shaking her head.

“They gone, Miss Angel.”

I pointed down. “Three guesses where. Desmond could probably taste the sugar through the floorboards. You okay here by yourself?”

“I think I can handle all these customers.”

The sarcasm in her voice was a thin veil for the defeat in her shoulders, and it sent the pile into a precarious lean.

I made a promise to … somebody … to deal with it all as soon as I located my son and his nemesis and took the stairs two at a time. Desmond and Foxy weren’t on the porch of Sacred Grounds, which meant Desmond was currently trying to talk Patrice into putting a couple of whitechocolateamorettomacadamianut coffees on his tab, which didn’t exist.

“What has he talked you out of, Patrice?” I said as I pushed through the door into the coffee shop.

She raised her hippie-esque head from a table across the crowded room and look at me blankly. “Who?”

“Desmond.”

“He didn’t come in. He was standing on the porch with some girl so I got out the whipped cream, but then I looked up and they were gone.”

“Did you see which way—”

She shook her head.

There was no reason for the panic already squeezing my insides as I burst through the door and leaned out over the porch railing to look first up St. George and then down. The air was too hot for any but the heartiest of postseason tourists so the crowd was thin. I saw three girls, who weren’t Foxy but could have been, wearing the shortest shorts they could get away with, hair pulled up off their necks, looking as if the sun were a personal affront. A large family passed with two high-maintenance teenage daughters walking with their hands on their hips. Foxy would have fit right in with them, too. But she and my son were nowhere to be seen.

I took off to the north, the dew on my skin quickly turning to downward-running streams of sweat. I darted into one of the shady piazzas and called out to Desmond, but only the cicadas answered. I stopped in front of Pizza Tyme and asked the old guy hawking pepperoni by the slice if he’d seen a mocha-skinned boy and a redhaired girl. He just looked at me like I was delirious, or maybe he was. Incense wafted from one open doorway, Celtic music from another, but none produced Desmond or Foxy. I fought back the fear and focused on being justifiably ticked off.

I tried the Bunnery, although as far as I knew neither of them had any money. I was headed for the Harley Davidson shop, certain Desmond had lured her there to impress her with his knowledge of all things motorcycle, before I remembered that was the last place where Foxy would darken a door.

I was fighting back the urge to call Nicholas Kent when my phone rang and jangled my nerves up ten more notches. It was India.

“Forget the clothes,” I said. “I can’t find Desmond and Foxy.”

“I know, honey. They’re here.”

“At the shop?”

“Downstairs, and darlin’, I think you’d better come right quick.”

I didn’t bother to end the call on my phone. Nearly taking out a cranky toddler in a stroller, I ran against the foot traffic back to Sacred Grounds. Rehearsals of the various ways I could approach Desmond played out in my head, until I found them both on the outside steps. Foxy was sobbing in Desmond’s arms. He barely glanced at me when I joined them and crouched on the step below.

“What’s happening?” I said.