Barefoot Girls (2 page)

Keeley reached over and ran her hand over her daughter’s silky chocolate-brown waves that were so rich in color compared to her own pale blond hair. “You have been the best girl in the entire universe, there is no doubt. Santa just might have a question about one of the things on the list and I wanted to be able to answer his questions in case he asks me.”

“What?”

“This magic wand you wanted-“

“Oh, yes, that’s the most important! A
real
one!”

“Hannah, he might not be able to get you a magic wand, even if you are the best girl in the world, even in the entire universe.”

Hannah blinked. “But Santa can do anything.”

“Well, he can do most anything. But he can’t do everything.” Keeley took one of Hannah’s small hands in her own. “He would if he could, though.”

“But,” Hannah said, her voice growing very small, “How did Tinker Bell get hers?”

“Well, as you know, Tinker Bell is a fairy and she was born with hers in the heart of a pure-white rose. It’s all part of being a fairy.”

Hannah’s brow knitted as she thought about this.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“What if Santa could get Tinker Bell just to
lended
it to me for Christmas?”

Keeley’s eyebrows went up. “Well, I hadn’t thought about that. That might be a tall order. Maybe Tinker Bell might do that.”

Keeley was quiet then, looking out the window at the birds clinging to the bird-feeder and making it sway. She turned back to Hannah. “How about this: we don’t know when Tinker Bell has a vacation and can lend us her wand, so Christmas may be out. So let’s take it off of the list. But I’ll talk personally with Santa to see if he can talk to Tinker Bell.”

Hannah clapped her hands together. “Yay!”

“Now, no promises.”

But, of course, her mother had come through. Not on Christmas but six months later on a balmy Sunday evening in June with the Barefooters.

There had been the wands – they reminded Hannah of the sparklers from Fourth of July. There had been dancing around the yard in the softening twilight with all of the Barefooters waving their sparkling wands in circles and figure-eights and leaving miniature white starbursts in their wake. There had been a big ice-cream cake with Tinker Bell on it and extra “crunchies” in the middle from Carvel. There had even been presents from each of the Barefooters. There was a beautiful pink fairy dress from Aunt Amy, sparkly wings from Aunt Pam, and fairy dust - a bag of gold glitter that Hannah could only use outside - from Aunt Zo.

It had been a golden evening, pure magic glimmering in the gentle June air and laughter bubbling out of the beautiful mouths of her mother and her mother’s best friends. The drinks flowed, as usual, and the Barefooters had talked for hours while Hannah danced around the patio and yard in her fairy dress and wings. Then it was late and each of the Barefooters had to go home finally. Each had a very big day the next day.

Aunt Amy had her first day at a new job as an office manager at a local insurance company. She said looked like it might be a decent job this time, with good pay and benefits and everything. Aunt Pam had an appointment at the bank to get a business loan to start her own public relations company. Hannah had never seen her down-to-earth Aunt Pam as childishly giddy as she was that night, thrilled to finally be her own boss. Aunt Zo had an appointment at a very high-end wedding dress store in New York City where you had to book six months in advance to even look at the dresses. Zo had said to the others that afternoon, “It’s a good thing Phillip is willing to wait or I’d be wearing off-the-rack!”

So finally it was just Hannah and Keeley lying on their backs on a blanket in the yard counting shooting stars when the phone rang inside the house. Keeley had gotten up unsteadily, stumbled a bit and giggled before running for the house. The screen door slammed behind her and Hannah heard the distant “Heyah!” Keeley called out, assuming it was one of the Barefooters calling to talk some more.

The yard was quiet except for the peepers that lived in the small marshy area at the bottom of the yard and the occasional swoosh of a passing car from the street. Hannah’s eyes were growing heavy. They kept closing even though she wanted them to stay open. She reached up and held them open with her fingers.

Another shooting star flew across the deep blue sky. “Twelve!” Hannah yelled in the direction of the house, proud she could count that high.

The house was quiet. Too quiet. She couldn’t hear her mother at all. When one of the Barefooters called, her mother’s voice always lifted higher and louder, their conversation broken by intermittent bursts of laughter.

Whoever had called was not one of the Barefooters.

Hannah’s eyes were getting even heavier, too heavy for even her fingers. She let them shut. A single early cricket started singing nearby in the grass. The back screen door opened with a squeak and then slammed shut. Hannah rolled over and sat up, rubbing her pesky sleepy eyes hard to make them wake up. “Momma?”

Her mothers’ shuffling feet grew closer. Hannah finally got her eyes to open. Sitting up helped. When she looked up at her mother who was approaching the blanket, she was completely different.

Before her mother had been jubilant, nearly dancing on her toes all day, a wide grin never far from her lips. She had those she loved most, her best friends and her beautiful baby girl, and she had been able to answer a magical wish, one involving Tinker Bell’s help. Add to that wine and margaritas and the Amaretto Sours she and the Barefooters drank after dessert, and she was feeling more than fine.

This new mother’s hair stood up in chunks, as if she’d been pulling it. Even in the dark, Hannah could see something was different about her mother’s beautiful face, something askew. Keeley was walking like one of those zombies in the movie on television Aunt Pam let Hannah watch one time when she was babysitting while Keeley was out on a date with another maybe-father.

“Baby?” Keeley’s voice wobbled.

Who had been on the phone? What happened?

“What, Mommy?” Hannah asked, and then heard the wiggly fear in her own voice.

“Baby, honey baby…, I have to go out for a little while. I’ll be back real quick, I promise. I just need to try to talk to your grandma and…oh, God.  I just need to try to – I’ll try. And if she sees you, that’ll be it. Game over. I lose. Again. Can you…can you take care of yourself for a little bit? Oh!”

Then Keeley broke and bent over, huge sobs bursting out and making her whole body convulse.

Hannah jumped up and ran to her mother, wrapping her arms around her legs. “It’s okay, Mommy! I’ll be okay! You can go.” She twisted her neck to look up at her mother. “All my Aunties and my babysitters do is play with me when they watch me and… and we watch TV, that’s all. And if I get hungry, there’s SpaghettiOs and bread and peanut butter and lots of stuff. I can do it. I can!” She wasn’t really sure about the SpaghettiOs – in fact she was sure she had already eaten them earlier that week as a snack – and the Barefooters and her babysitters did more to take care of Hannah than just play with her and watch TV, but she knew what her mother needed to hear.

Keeley stumbled away from her daughter’s embrace and over to the buffet, still crying. She picked up the bottle of Amaretto, twisted off the top, and took long swigs between gasping sobs. Then she looked up at the starry sky and said, “Oh, Daddy. Why did you have to die? Why? You were a piss-poor father most of the time…but at least you helped us, paid for stuff. Why you? Why not
her
? What’re we going to do?” She moaned the last words.

Keeley sat down at the patio table, holding on to the bottle with both hands. Hannah went over and sat down on the ground next to her and put her head on her mother’s knee. “Mommy? I’ll be okay, I promise! Memember Pippi? I’ll be like Pippi,” Hannah said, referring to their latest bedtime story of
Pippi Longstocking
, one Hannah adored for its feisty independent main character.

Finally, after staring off into space for a while, her mother nodded slowly and looked down at Hannah. “Well, we’re putting you to bed right now. When you get up tomorrow, if I’m not home, have some cereal and watch TV, okay? Okay?”

They went inside and upstairs and Keeley tucked her daughter into bed, letting her sleep in her fairy dress from Aunt Amy, but making her take off her wings. “You’ll crush ‘em, sweetie,” she slurred.

Then her mother covered her with a light blanket, kissed her and left the room. A few minutes later their old Volkswagen Jetta clattered to life in the driveway, and her mother backed the car out and drove off, the chattering and grinding of the car ricocheting off the houses as it went down the street. The empty house the next morning was fine, because Hannah almost-knew that her mom would be back. She was a little afraid because Keeley had disappeared before and had also acted in ways from time to time that had scared Hannah, so there was
that mom
, the one she didn’t like to think about.

But Keeley wasn’t gone for one morning or even one day, she was gone for two. And Hannah knew where her mother had gone: to her grandparent’s house. Her mother said her grandfather had died. Hannah didn’t know what that meant, but she did know that when they went to Keeley’s parents’ house something usually went wrong, especially when her grandfather was away when they arrived. It was like Grandma hated Mommy. The hard way Grandma looked at her daughter, assuming she would look at her at all, was scary. Many times when they went to visit, Grandma shut the door in their face after seeing it was them. Grandma never touched, acknowledged, or even looked at Hannah, only glancing down at her and then looking away as fast as she could.

 Grandpa was different. He was the reason they visited. Grandpa picked Hannah up and hugged her tight when he saw her, smelling of sharp whisky and lime-scented cologne, saying, “Who is this little girl? Who is this sweet girl? Is this my granddaughter? Is this my Hannah?”

After he put her back down, they’d get in his car and go to the High Ridge Country Club and have lunch or dinner, depending on the time of day, usually going to the bar there first. He was clearly well-known there, everyone waving and smiling and nodding. He’d lift Hannah up and put her on a stool at the bar and tell Frank the bartender his granddaughter wanted a “Shirley Temple straight up, heavy on the cherries.” Keeley and he would have drinks too, sitting on either side of Hannah and talking over her. After they went to the dining room and had their meal, he’d pull out his checkbook and say, “Okay, Keeley, how much do you need?” with his pen poised. Her mother would lower her head and say a number and he would scribble it out, signing his name with a flick of his wrist.

Something bad must have happened at Grandma and Grandpa’s. That must have been it. But what? And what was dying, exactly? Was it like the coyote in Road Runner? Was Grandpa all black and smoking, blown away by dynamite? Hannah waited and wandered the house, looking out the windows facing the driveway, waiting to see the Jetta pull in. And it kept not happening, making her cry with fear, a little hiccup-y sobbing that trembled in her throat.

But Mommy was home now. That was all that mattered.

Hannah stood in the cooling darkness looking over the scene of the party of two nights before. The ghost-town empty-echoing feeling that had plagued her yesterday was gone. Hannah closed her hot swollen eyes, tears refilling them, and said softly, “Thank you, God. Thank you for bringing my mommy home.” She put her palms together and looked up at the sky. There were no stars tonight.

She had to celebrate and
show
God her thanks, so that He would really know.

Hannah ran over to the cluttered patio table where the magic-wands lay next to a pack of matches. Hannah pulled a wand out and lit it with a match. The lit wand scattered off sparks right away, suddenly a live thing in her hot and very sticky hand that still had jelly on it from the day before.

She ran in circles around the yard holding it, scattering sparks and thanking God as hard as she could, her heart feeling like, if it burst, it would shoot white burning stars into the night.

Chapter 1

Hannah sat at one of the tables in the back room of the restaurant doing her least favorite side job at Bella Via: prying the bases of melted candles out of the votives that sat on every table using a butter knife. She’d chop at the wax and try to wiggle the knife along the edge the way that Jennifer, her waitressing idol, had shown her, but she could never achieve that easy pop that she had seen Jennifer perform with the knife, the disk of wax coming out neatly in one piece.

As she worked, her mind returned again to the conversation she’d had with her landlord, Mr. Harris, that morning. She still couldn’t believe it. She felt as if she had been slapped, a hand flying at her face out of the blue.

He called her and that had been the first clue that something was up, as he usually walked across the lawn from the big house where he and Mrs. Harris lived, stopping by for a quick visit about some small favor they needed or to let her know about something that was going on at their house, a party or a group of workmen who would be on the property doing renovations. Often, it was to see what new improvement she had made on the old carriage house that she rented from them on their property in Greenwich, Connecticut.