Becoming Ellen Page 9

  Billy was holding a purchase order, and with a grim shake of his head he said, “I see here that we had another accident last night, lost a couple crates of ketchup. And it was Daniel again. This is the fourth or fifth time he’s damaged merchandise.”

  “Well”—Eric held out his hands like he was checking for rainfall—“stuff happens sometimes.”

  “Yeah, I know, but here’s the thing . . .” The timbre of the general manager’s voice dropped. “It seems to be happening almost entirely on your watch.”

  Eric stepped back like he’d been slapped, and his mouth fell open. “Are you holding me responsible? That’s not cool, man.” He did some headshaking of his own. “I can’t control everything.” He rubbed his eyes, and Ellen thought she could detect a quaver in his voice as he added, “It’s been hard since my mom passed, but I’ve really made an extra effort to get in here and help out.”

  Billy put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know your mom died. That’s tough. I’m sorry. Maybe you need to take some vacation time?”

  “No.” Eric wiped at his face and made a show of straightening his spine. “Thanks, but it’s better if I, you know, stay busy.”

  Billy nodded. “All right, try to stay on top of things, and if you do need some time off, you let me know.”

  “Thanks, man, I really appreciate it.”

  “We need to go over the time sheets,” Billy said, opening the door to the office.

  As soon as the door closed behind Eric, Ellen went back to the boxes that he had hidden and read the labels. GOURMET FOOD ITEMS.

  From her fanny pack, Ellen pulled out a box cutter and some packing tape that she used to open and repair packages from which she wanted to “borrow.” She flipped a box upside down and slit the tape open. Inside she found shredded paper, and nestled in that, three fist-size plastic baggies filled with whitish powder.

  Interesting, she thought. She wasn’t sure what the bags of powder were exactly. “Gourmet” they might be, but food they were not.

  Ellen resealed the box with her packing tape, and then hurried back into the shadows. Eric reappeared, now wearing a jacket with large pockets he must have put on in the office. As Ellen watched, he slit open each of the boxes and she could see a glimpse of the baggies as they were furtively stuffed into the pockets. As soon as all the boxes had been emptied, Eric hurried to the restrooms. As he got to the men’s room and reached for the handle, the door opened suddenly. Squirt was coming out, and Eric jumped so sharply that, for a second, Ellen thought the handle of the door had electrified him.

  “Watch where you’re going, you gnome,” Eric snapped at him, then waved a dismissive hand and went in.

  Ellen watched Johnson seethe for a moment, until finally he swore quietly and went on his way.

  In another minute, Eric emerged, still wearing the coat, but when he crossed to the now empty boxes, he took it off, draping it over the handcart. Then he quickly broke down the four small GOURMET FOOD ITEMS boxes and carried them to the box crusher.

  As quickly as she could move, Ellen scooted out of her hiding place and checked the pockets of the jacket. They were empty.

  Ellen retreated, taking a shortcut by way of the management offices, a long hallway flanked on one side by small glassed-in cubicles, and headed to the floor.

  The lights in the long hallway were on their night setting. Only one fluorescent out of six or eight was lit. The solitary tubes flickered feebly, inadequate wattage for the high, wide hallway, reflecting a watery, algae-colored light in the glass of the office partitions. About halfway down the hall, a sole office was brightly lit, and the door was partially open. As Ellen passed it, the contrast of the darkened hallway and the illuminated cubicle made the office’s interior look like a department store’s show window. Staying in the deepest of the shadows, Ellen went on past a few feet and then paused when she heard crying. She realized that this was not the night manager, as she had expected, but Thelma.

  Hugging the far wall, Ellen looked in. Thelma was leaning over a woman in a chair with an arm around her shoulders. The woman was wearing green scrubs and Ellen wondered if she was a nurse, or a doctor even.

  “It’s okay, honey,” Thelma was saying. “We knew this was a possibility.”

  “I know,” said the seated woman. She raised her head and dabbed at her eyes with a crumpled tissue. “It’s just hard to hear.”

  Tenderly, Thelma brushed the woman’s bangs out of her eyes. “Look at me, Beth.” Beth turned her tear-streaked face up to Thelma, who placed a gentle palm on Beth’s cheek and smiled down at her. “Listen, this isn’t the end of the world. Do you trust me?”

  Beth smiled sadly and two big plump tears ran down her flushed cheeks. “You know I do. I’m just sad.”

  “I know. So tell me exactly what Dr. Patterson said.” Thelma sat on the edge of the desk, facing Beth.

  “She said that the fibroid tumors would pretty much make it impossible for me to keep a pregnancy.” Beth showed her strength of character by smiling through her tears. “Bad luck.”

  “I know. But I have you, and you have me. I call that pretty lucky,” Thelma said. “You know what? That’s gotten us through a lot, and we are going to get through this, too.”

  Beth was beaming up at Thelma even though the pain in her expression was still evident. It was like layers, the love being the deeper base color, and the pain, a wash of tint over it. “I love you,” Beth said, and standing up, the two women embraced, rocking each other for mutual comfort.

  Ellen hurried on down the hallway. She did not like dwelling on the unfairness and misery that were so prevalent in the world. In fact, she diligently avoided them, which was the only way to move among the chaos without being crushed by it. But her life was changing, opening up, and she began not only to observe and consider, but to question, the injustice she observed. The shell of detachment she had worked so hard to construct around her was beginning to show cracks. This had a petrifying effect on Ellen that threatened to incapacitate her. Caring—in Ellen’s world—had led only to a sucking whirlpool of despair and loss. Disconnecting from emotional response was the key, and the secret, to her survival.

  Or it had been. Ellen thought about Temerity patting her back when she was worried about her and Justice telling her not to forget her umbrella when rain was impending. She was no longer completely alone, and somehow that offset the crunchier bits of nastiness. It insulated her, the way only food had once done, from the meanness of life.

  She collected her cart and spent the next three hours cleaning furiously, scrubbing and wiping and sweating the hulking mass of wrong from her conscious brain. In between her assault on grime and greasy fingerprints, she found the items she had listed for her recipe—brown sugar, baking soda, and cinnamon. With each acquisition, she felt a tiny bit safer. Carefully noting the cost, she did some quick math for how much overtime she would work off-the-clock to “pay” for her borrowing. It came to roughly twenty-five minutes, but she’d give it a half hour, just to be fair.

  At six a.m., Ellen punched her time card and then went back to work for the promised thirty minutes. As she mopped a particularly sticky portion of the sea of sealed concrete floor, she thought about the boy in the basement. If the boy thought someone was watching him, he might very well leave. He hadn’t chosen to live in that moldy place for any good reason, and she could easily guess what the bad reason might be. She knew Temerity would want to help him, to get him home. But Ellen wasn’t sure that Temerity knew that “home,” for some children, could be worse than the street.

  No one raised on love and fairy tales could fathom the depths of fear in which too many kids lived, suffered, and sometimes died. Ellen personally had known three children in her foster homes who had not made it through. One, a teenager, had taken his own life, and two younger children had died, one from beatings, and the other of negle
ct when he’d been ill.

  As she pushed the heavy mop, Ellen also pushed away these thoughts, replacing them with the burn in her shoulders, the mind-numbing comfort of manual labor, and the quieting effect of repetitive movement. The thick, dried-up stain of what had possibly been syrup resisted her attack, but she persisted, thinking, I will wash you away. You will not defeat me.

  10

  As Ellen rounded the last corner for home at about seven a.m., she caught a movement at the end of the alley in her highly developed peripheral vision. Stopping in her tracks and shifting backward in a single, programmed response, she held her breath and peered around the brick.

  At first she saw nothing. But if she listened intently, she could hear coughing. And then she noticed that the lid to the dumpster was open. As she watched, a head covered in a dark stocking cap bobbed up, and then a bag came flying out, and the someone in the dumpster climbed out after it.

  He was smaller than he had looked through the grating, sleeping under the dirty blanket. So thin that he might have been ten years old or even fifteen, but it was impossible to tell. Before he opened the loosely knotted grocery bag and began rooting inside, the boy scanned the alley once more. He gave no indication of sighting Ellen, who had blended seamlessly into the shadow of the city-smudged building.

  The boy rummaged in the bag and pulled something out. He sniffed at it, and then held it up almost triumphantly. It was an unopened can, Ellen could make that out, but she couldn’t see of what. Next came a loaf of bread and then a bottle of juice. They all looked unopened.

  She waited patiently as the boy placed the whole bag in a flimsy backpack, then climbed up on the side of the bin and with a shove let the heavy rubber lid fall closed with a whoosh and a thud. With another furtive glance to be sure the sound had not attracted attention, he started in Ellen’s direction.

  She turned her back, walked a few steps to a sheltered doorway, and slipped into the slight recess. When the boy passed in front of her, his body was shaken with a throaty cough. It was so powerful that it brought him to a stop, and he doubled over, coughing phlegmatically until tears streamed down his cheeks, and he spit out some greenish mucus onto the sidewalk. He rested with his hands on his knees for half a minute, gasping for air. Ellen could hear the wheeze of his labored attempts to draw air into his soggy lungs.

  In a moment he had recovered, and, wiping his mouth with the back of his jacket sleeves, which were too short for his gangly arms, he straightened up and went on his way, his blue eyes darting left to right with the practiced, nonchalant posturing of unwilling prey. Ellen knew the need for that facade as well as she knew anything.

  Show weakness—be eaten.

  She kept her eyes on him until he crossed the street and disappeared down the next alley, on his way, no doubt, to the next unlocked dumpster.

  Slowly, she turned back to the alley and her own door. After she collected the mail from the box, it was a long climb to the fourth floor, but Ellen hardly noticed it this time. She was thinking.

  She went in the apartment and carried her bag with its bounty of baking supplies over to the kitchen area. As she set the mail down on the counter, she noticed an envelope with no address, only the handwritten words Runt owner.

  Ellen picked it up again, perplexed, and flipped it over. It wasn’t even sealed. Temerity came into the room, rubbing her palms briskly against each other. “So . . . did you get the baking stuff?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Ellen said, tearing her eyes away from the curious communication. “I think this is for you,” she said. “It’s addressed to ‘Runt owner.’” Ellen put the envelope in Temerity’s hands. Temerity flipped it, feeling the unsealed flap. She removed the single sheet of paper, unfolded it, and then handed it back to Ellen.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Ellen looked at the few lines, neatly handwritten, and the signature at the bottom. “It’s a note.”

  “No way,” Temerity drawled, “a note! I would never have guessed from its flatness.” She looked thoughtful for a moment and then added, “I don’t suppose you’d like to use your ability to process light and read it to me, just for giggles.”

  So Ellen read.

  “Dear Runt owner, I hope you don’t mind the presumption, but I believe that it is the mellifluous strains of your instrument that I hear stealing through my kitchen vent. I was wondering if sometime you might like to meet on the landing for a chat, or a sonata or two. Right now, only 22 stairs separate us. If we both brave 11, we can meet in the middle. If not, I will continue to savor the sound of your playing and my curiosity for the handsome lady behind the music.

  “Harmoniously yours, Piano guy, two floors down.”

  Ellen’s face flushed as she read, but she made herself finish, though she felt as if she’d stumbled into a private moment that did not belong to her. The irony of this struck her, since, of course, for her whole life that had been the extent of her contact with others.

  When she did look up, Temerity was chewing her lower lip, her brow slightly creased. “Nicely written,” she said, but beyond that she did not comment. Though Ellen could tell that she was pleased.

  “It must be that guy who we saw on the stairs the other day.” Ellen didn’t know what else to say.

  “No, he’s the guy you saw on the stairs,” Temerity corrected her. “I just heard him. He seemed nice enough. But obviously he didn’t notice this.” She pointed to her eyes and shook her head.

  “Why do you think he didn’t?” Ellen asked. Temerity’s blindness was so second nature to Ellen that she couldn’t imagine anyone minding it.

  “Because . . . he apologized for how he looked?” Temerity suggested.

  “What was he supposed to do?” Ellen asked. She put the note in Temerity’s hands again. “By the way, he looked pretty good.” Ellen flushed, thinking of his shirtless chest, but that wasn’t what she’d meant. “I mean, he looked like he was . . . you know . . . a good person.” She bit her lip, unclear of how to explain that the way he had watched Temerity—admiring, but with respect—had reminded Ellen of the way Justice looked at Amanda.

  “Well, whatever, it doesn’t matter.” Temerity began to busy herself around the kitchen, though Ellen didn’t think there was any purpose in the action, and she saw Temerity slip the note into her pocket. It was the first time she had seen her friend look flustered, and it was as if someone had painted the loft a garish color that was just wrong.

  “‘Mellifluous’ is a nice word,” Ellen said. “You could just talk to him.”

  “I could.” Temerity frowned. “But why disappoint us both?”

  Ellen couldn’t fathom this. Who would be disappointed in Temerity? “Well, at least you could play some music together,” she suggested.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that tune before,” Temerity joked. “There’s a bassoonist who apparently bathes in aftershave who is always inviting me to ‘make music.’ He’s slept with every woman in the orchestra who will have him. And he’s really hairy.”

  In spite of her embarrassment at this proclamation, Ellen couldn’t help asking, “How do you know he’s hairy?”

  “I’ve been warned,” Temerity said, grinning.

  “Do, uh, lots of your friends ‘sleep with’ someone, just once?”

  “Don’t go thinking they have one-night stands. Think of it this way: This guy has had multiple ‘auditions’ and never made the cut, if you know what I’m saying.”

  Ellen didn’t, exactly, but all she said was “Oh.”

  “Okay,” Temerity said, “back to reality. I have to tell you that I’m not much of a baker. An enthusiastic eater of bakery goods . . . yes. A baker . . . no. But I do know someone who’s really good at it and can help you learn the basics. They’ll be here later this afternoon, when you get up.”

  The shock of this announcement hit Ellen like an air-raid siren. She stuttered, “Wh-what?
B-but I don’t want to . . . I mean, uh . . .” What had Temerity done? Ellen didn’t want to learn about baking from someone new, she didn’t want to meet someone new. It was too much. Her panicked brain hurled itself into conniption fits, trying to find a way out. “It’s . . . no. I mean . . . uh, it’s nice of you, but it’s, well, not something I can . . . it’s not what I . . . it’s . . .”

  “It’s Rupert,” said Temerity. “He’s an excellent baker, makes cakes for everybody’s birthdays in the orchestra. He loves it. You going to make some breakfast?”

  Breakfast? Ellen almost laughed out loud. After that fright, she could eat two breakfasts and dinner.

  “Sure,” she said, catching her breath. “In a minute. I want to change first.” What she really wanted was for her heart to stop pounding out a military march.

  Ellen was already at the door to the hallway when she remembered with a lesser—but also traumatic—spasm what Temerity had told her about Rupert and his last visit. The blaring alarm immediately resumed. “But wait,” Ellen said, turning back. “What about him, uh, asking me . . . you know.”

  “Oh, right.” Temerity paused, standing in the open refrigerator door. “The vaguely possible date.” She pretended to consider. Ellen could tell she was pretending because she was grinning. Temerity sometimes had trouble faking expressions, which was understandable. She raised one finger and her eyebrows as though struck with a revolutionary thought. “Here’s an idea. Don’t worry about it. It’s you and Rupert,” she pronounced emphatically. “For the two of you, an afternoon mixer—by which I mean the electric one with beaters—and a hot hour or two—by which I mean the oven—is highly unlikely to end at the Happily Ever After wedding chapel in Niagara Falls.”

  With a burst of giggles that she tried to disguise as a cough, Temerity ducked down and pretended to forage in the refrigerator, her laughter following Ellen. As she reached the bottom of the stairs up to her room, Ellen heard Temerity break into song.