Resting her chin on her hand, she returned her attention to her doodle—a pencil sketch of a rose. “Yeah, right.”
“And not with some hoodlum like that DeRon character, either.” I recalled the boy sauntering into the principal’s office with his coach in tow, then hooking one leg over the principal’s credenza, regarding me through half-mast eyes, attempting to silently cast a threat across the room.
Epiphany bent over her paper, embarrassed. She quickly changed the subject. “So what happened when the thing . . . the lander didn’t sink into the moon? Did everybody cheer or what?”
Without thinking, I reached across the space between us, slipped a curled, crooked hand, the hand of an old man, under her chin, turned her face my way. “You wait, Epiphany. Don’t be in such a hurry for a boy. Wait for that young man who knows what a treasure you are, who shows you respect.” The moment seemed to slow and stretch then. I thought of Annalee. She was the most beautiful thing in the world to me when we met. Over the years, I hadn’t told her that nearly enough.
I pulled my hand away, folded it over the other. “She was studying to be a teacher, my Annalee. She was from a small town in south Texas, and her dream was to return there and teach in a public school, but we met and . . .” A connection blazed in my mind, like a circuit suddenly going live, illuminating an area that had been dark.
Eyeing me quizzically, Epiphany sat back in her chair. “J. Norm?” When I didn’t answer, she leaned close and waved a hand in front of my face. “You eat too much barbecue? You need one of your pills or something?”
“The sister worked in a school,” I muttered, long-lost details rushing back to me. “The cousin who lived with us, Frances, her older sister was a teacher. The sister came to visit and brought some books to me—grade-school readers, an alphabet book, an arithmetic book, and a social studies text with maps and pictures. They were things that the school was discarding, and she thought I might like to have them. My mother had decided to keep me home for another year, rather than starting me in grade school, and I remember that Frances’s sister—her name started with an F, as well . . . Flora . . . no . . . Faye—talked to Mother about the school where she’d just accepted a teaching job. Faye wanted my mother to send me there, but my mother was reluctant to let me go. In the end, I continued with tutoring at home and didn’t start in a formal school until I was nine years old. I always thought it was because I was a late-in-life child, but maybe there was something more. I think the truth could be that I was adopted, and she didn’t want me to know it. But even that doesn’t explain her fear of letting me out of the house. I suspect there was some secret involved—some scandal.” The past swirled and dipped in the corner of my mind, tantalizing, alluring, a dancer slowly shedding veils. I closed my eyes, saw my hands, small and pale, turning the pages in the first-grade reader as I sat on the floor. “My mother argued with Faye during that visit. Faye said she would watch over me if Mother would send me to her school.”
I heard Faye’s voice, quiet, calm, attempting to placate my mother. Frances had left the room to go after tea. I was watching the door for her to return. Even though Faye had brought the books to me, I was nervous about her being there. She smiled, as if to reassure me. I looked away. “I’ll have a close eye on him, Aunt Phoebe. You can’t keep him hidden away here forever. He’s a bright boy. He needs to be out in the world, around people, around other children.”
“Not enough time has passed.” My mother’s voice was frayed, and she was uncharacteristically close to tears. “It’s too big a risk. His red hair, for one thing.”
“Many children have red hair, Aunt Phoebe. You’re putting up excuses.”
“He’s afraid,” my mother protested. “Even when neighbors come here, or when we entertain, he’s terribly shy of strangers.”
“And he will be forever,” Faye replied. “He’ll never improve if he isn’t allowed to move into the world, to begin to see that he can trust people. St. Clare’s is a very small and nurturing school. There are only fourteen children in my class. I’ll be there with him.”
My mother stiffened, sat forward on the parlor sofa, her spine ramrod straight, her hands folded in her lap one over the other, her neck stretching upward, giving her the posture of the regal springer spaniels in the portrait over the fireplace. I understood the meaning of that posture. I wouldn’t be going off to school, to Faye’s classroom or any other. Not this year.
I was relieved. Sitting very still with the books, I endeavored to go unnoticed, hoping the discussion was over. I didn’t like being the topic. I was afraid of it.
“No. Absolutely not. Not now. It isn’t time yet.” Mother shifted forward on the sofa, the decision made. “In another year or two, when he’s grown and matured somewhat.”
Faye stood abruptly, placing her teacup into the saucer and setting it loudly on the table. “It’s been almost two years. Two years of your keeping him closeted. You’re only teaching him greater fear; don’t you see that? He’s worse, not better. Look at him over there, in his own world. He hasn’t heard a word we’re saying.”
My mother remained seated. “You have no way of knowing what he hears. You don’t see the progress he’s made. You are not here on a daily basis.”
“What you’re doing is wrong, Aunt Phoebe,” Faye protested. “I don’t want my sister to be around it any longer. I won’t have Frances learning any more about it than she already knows. I’ve taken a house near the school, and I’ll be moving her there to live with me. She can pursue her education at St. Clare’s. Perhaps even attain a teaching certificate of her own, when she’s older.”
Frances entered the room with a tea tray, and the conversation ended abruptly. I slid closer to my mother, leaving the books behind, and wedged myself into the comfortable space between her leg and the front of the divan. Laying my head on her knee, I took in her scent, a safe scent. Her hand slid tenderly over my hair, the red hair that was a bad thing, I concluded. A reason the other children would not like me at school. A reason not to go.
Frances left our home shortly after that. Because of my red hair. Because it prevented me from going to school with Faye . . .
I turned to Epiphany, my mind whirling with new details. “Frances’s sister was a teacher. I think Frances may have become one, as well. Faye taught at a private school. St. Clare’s. It couldn’t have been too terribly far away. My mother would never have considered sending me a long distance.”
Epiphany’s face brightened with interest. “You just remembered all that?”
“I think so,” I replied. “Faye argued with my mother over sending me to school. Their conversation didn’t end well. Faye would surely have passed away by now, but Frances was younger, not so many years older than me.”
Epiphany slid the computer closer, touched the keyboard. The screen blinked on. “Maybe that’ll help narrow down our people.” She typed Frances’s name into the computer again, then added,
St. Clare School
.
Within moments, her search had produced something. A Web site filled with history, the history of St. Clare’s School. Among the pages was a faded photograph of smiling children and their teacher, a bright-eyed, round-faced young woman with her blond hair pulled back in a bow. I knew her. “That’s her. That’s Frances.” I pointed. “Is there anything more?”
“Hang on.” Epiphany scrolled down the page, her slim finger touching the screen now and again, pointing out images of Frances working with children, cleaning a blackboard, sitting at a writing desk. “There’s a link under this one. Something about a hundredth anniversary of the school.” Epiphany brought up a new page, and the screen was suddenly filled by a newspaper article, a copy like a microfiche in very small print.
I squinted, trying to read the blurry text.
Fortunately, Epiphany’s eyes were young. “She wrote this for the hundredth anniversary of the school.” She pointed to the byline underneath the title. “She was married by then. Look at the name. Frances Lynne Wilson.”
Epiphany’s fingers flew over the keyboard, the screen changed again, then again, and my cohort sat back in her chair, her mouth hanging open. “Whoa, she’s got an address just north of Dallas in McKinney. There’s even a phone number. Geez, J. Norm, we could call her right now.”
Chapter 14
Epiphany Jones
The phone call to Frances Wilson connected us to a guy who’d had that number only a couple months. Since then, he’d had about a million calls for Mrs. Wilson. From what he could tell, she’d moved to the nursing home there in McKinney. We called the nursing home, but the front desk wouldn’t give out any resident information.
By then, I had to leave to catch the bus home. J. Norm wouldn’t admit it, but while I was packing up the computer, he was thinking about going to that nursing home tomorrow. When he thought I was upstairs, he pulled a map out of the stereo cabinet in the living room. I watched him trace the roads with his finger. He didn’t know it, but the car key was still in my pocket. I kept it when I headed out the door, just in case he got some wild idea. If he was going to McKinney to look for Frances Wilson, I was going, too. No way I was letting him drive across town by himself, for one thing, and besides, I was deep into the mystery, and I didn’t want him solving it without me. We were a team now, J. Norm and me.
On the way back to Mama’s house, I made plans for ducking school tomorrow. Turned out it wasn’t even hard, really. I went home and told Russ and Mama I was sick, and the next morning I got Russ to call the school. Like usual, he was fine with it. He was headed out to do a motorcycle escort thing at a soldier’s funeral. He asked if I wanted to go along.
“Thanks, but I don’t feel good enough, okay?” I put a hand over my stomach and looked pukey. “You gonna be home for dinner?”
Russ’s tongue snaked out and caught the corner of his mustache. He chewed it a minute. “You got some plan to have that black boy over here?”
A weird vibe went between Russ and me. “Geez, Russ. No. It’s
that
time of the month, okay? I’ve got cramps. That’s why I don’t feel good.”
That shut Russ up, but the suspicious look got deeper, sort of hard and cold. “I ever come home and find you in my house with that boy, somebody’ll wind up with lead poisoning.”
The way Russ looked at me made my skin itch, and I crossed my arms, rubbing the itch away. “Look, I just need to take a couple Midol and go back to bed awhile, and then I’m gonna go to work. I told J. Norm I’d be there.”
Russ rubbed his beer gut, his head tipping back and to one side. “That old man payin’ you good? Because you could come work for me. Springtime business is looking pretty good. I got a bunch of shows lined up.”
I tried to look like I really believed that Russ would have money to actually pay me—money that didn’t get turned right around into beer, flea market finds, his Harley, and poker games with his buddies. “He pays great,” I said. “And it’s, like, the easiest job in the world. I just sit and do my homework. Once the mess at the church is paid for, I’m gonna save for a car, for whenever
somebody
takes me to get my driver’s license.”
That wasn’t true about the church, of course, but I
was
saving my money—for however long I could get away with it. I stashed it under my bed and added to it every time Deborah left my pay in the envelope on J. Norm’s counter. Once I had enough, I’d pick one of those weekends when Russ and Mama went away to a biker rally or a gun show, and I’d head out to find those women in the shoe box pictures—in Florida, or wherever they were. Sooner or later, I’d turn up the right clue to find them, and when I did, I’d be ready.
Russ grinned and slapped me on the shoulder, then grabbed his keys. “Keep outta trouble. You see that boy, you tell him again to quit drivin’ by this house. He rolled by here at least a half dozen times yesterday. You tell him he thinks he’s so bad, he can stop on in. We’ll see who’s bad.”
My throat went tight, and I just nodded.
Russ headed for the door. “I won’t be home till late again. Pass that on to the old lady, if you see her. Looks like that trip to Oklahoma’s gonna work out, too. Gotta leave Friday morning, so she better get her houses cleaned ahead.”
“Okay, I’ll tell her.” I hung around the living room, waiting for him to get his trailer hooked up and pull out of the driveway. By the time he left and I caught the bus over to J. Norm’s house, I was worried. I hoped there weren’t any more hidden keys to J. Norm’s car, or he’d be gone by now.
J. Norm didn’t answer when I rang the doorbell, so I got the key out of the hiding spot and let myself in. The house was dark, but the TV was blaring. In the living room, J. Norm’s chair was empty, and for a minute I was afraid he’d taken off, but then I heard him thumping around in the kitchen. When I turned the corner, I slipped on the wrapper off a stick of butter. There was trash everywhere.
“What’re you
doing
?” I asked, and J. Norm nearly jumped out of his skin.
He stumbled back from the pantry, trash still in his hands. He was sweating, and his face was red. “You are supposed to be in school.”
I kicked some of the mess out of the way. “If you’re going to McKinney, I’m going to McKinney. You need someone who can drive, for one thing. Somebody who can go over twenty-five and not hit a curb.”