A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [149]
“Hey, Gordon! Gordon!”
He closed the door, then through the curtain watched her struggle to get the rug onto the porch. Every time she got it halfway up, it slipped back down. Now she was trying to push it up, but she was too skinny, the rug too bulky. Watching her shove her bony shoulder up against the coarse, unyielding rug filled him with a terrible anger. He closed his eyes, trying to will away the pain, then shuddered as it tore through him. He would not do this. He could not. He would not feel this. Would not, but there it was, her, all the pain and futility he’d ever steeled himself against, not just loose in the world, but in this place, here, where he’d sought refuge.
A dusty white car was coming down the street, antenna bent, windshield smudged, and, flapping out from under one door, the ruffled red hem of Delores’s skirt. “Yes,” he said softly, with more longing than he had ever known before. She got out and hurried across the street to help Jada. Together they wrestled the rug onto the porch.
“She didn’t want me to come inside,” Delores told him when she finally came in. Gordon offered her a bandage, but she kept sucking her bloody knuckle. She’d cut it helping Jada. “She said her mother was sick. But I think Jada’s the sick one. She looks awful, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” he said as she opened the envelope, getting a little blood on the back of the photograph she was removing. She held it against her chest.
“She said you were just out there.”
“I was picking up some trash.”
“And you didn’t see her?” she said with a bewildered edge to her voice.
“Not really.”
“You didn’t see her trying to get that big rug up on the porch?”
“Yes, I saw her.” He met her gaze.
“And you didn’t help her?”
“No. I didn’t.”
Biting her lip, she looked at him a moment more, as if to comprehend what he’d said. He asked to see the picture, and she handed it to him hesitantly. The agency had sent it. It had just come in the mail, and she wanted to share it with someone. Someone—not her family, but him, he realized.
“She’s pretty.” He looked closely. May Loo’s stern little face intrigued him with its self-containment. “It’s almost as if she’s trying to send some kind of message or something.”
“I thought the same thing! I’ll bet they told her to smile, but she wouldn’t. It looks like that, doesn’t it? As if it’s her life and, damn it, she’s going to be in charge,” she said with tender pride.
“Look at her eyes. How they’re staring straight into the camera.” His own eyes burned with the press of Delores’s arm as she leaned closer.
“I know. It’s almost scary, isn’t it?”
“Think she’ll like it here?”
“What’s not to like? Except me, of course,” she added with an uneasy laugh, and suddenly the moment had changed again. She was complaining about her family. It wasn’t just May Loo they were critical of, but adoption itself. Especially by an unmarried woman not making much money who lived in a tenement in one of the poorest cities in the state. Even her pregnant, twenty-year-old, unmarried-but-engaged niece had weighed in with a warning about single motherhood. “And every single e-mail, that’s the bottom line,” she continued. Her oldest sister had been bombarding her with stories about adoptions that turned out badly. “The worst one was the boy that stabbed his mother to death while she was playing the piano.”
“Maybe it was her playing. Maybe it was that bad.” He grinned with Delores’s quick laugh.
“That’s exactly what I said, too, but Linda, she has no sense of humor.”
The doorbell rang and he jumped up. His pizza was here, his third in less than a week. He had worked up the courage to place an order when he saw one being delivered down the street. He usually saved two slices for work the next day. That way he wouldn’t have to pack a lunch. “Thank you,” he said, giving the delivery boy the exact change.
“Yeah, right.” The boy clomped down the steps.
“What’s his problem?” Delores said as his car peeled down the street.
“I don’t think he likes his job. He was like that last time, too.”
“Did you tip him?