My Name Is Venus Black(50)

Then I realize I have made progress. I’m not blaming Raymond or Inez. Sharon would be so proud.



* * *



—

ONE WEDNESDAY IN early January, Julie goes home sick and I get off work extra late. When I get home, it’s almost four. I call out for Piper, but there’s no answer. She’s supposed to leave me a note on the front door if she goes somewhere—to her friend Amy’s, or out riding her bike.

I strip off my wet windbreaker. My hands are red. I wish we had a fireplace. The house is too cold. The wood floors too bare. I wish we could find a huge, warm rug at a garage sale.



Felix follows me, rubbing up against my legs. Curtis has left his coat here. It’s hanging on the back of the couch. I pick it up and put both it and mine in the coat closet just inside the front door. For some reason, the closet looks less full than usual.

I go into the kitchen and I’m getting a drink of water when I notice that the side door to the garage is open. It’s flapping in the wind. I go out and shut it. When I come back in, I feel like something is wrong. I go upstairs to double-check for Piper, and her room looks bare. The few stuffed animals on her dresser are gone. I open a drawer—it’s empty. I open the closet door—the few dresses Piper owns are missing.

I fly down the stairs and call Mike at work. He sounds like he’s expecting my call. “I’m sorry, Annette. It’s about Piper.”

“Duh!” I say. “Where the hell is she?” My legs grow weak, and my mind races.

“I’ll explain when I get home.”

“What the hell?”

But he hangs up. By the time he gets home, I’m stalking around the house, swearing, conjuring worst-case scenarios.

“You need to sit down,” he says. I stubbornly refuse.

Despite his Rocky Balboa build, Mike suddenly looks shrunken, diminished. And it scares me to death. There is no sign of the cheerful Olan Mills photographer.

“Is Piper okay?” I can hear the fear in my voice. “What’s going on?”

“Sit on the couch, Annette,” he orders.

This time, I obediently sit down. He pulls his recliner halfway across the room so he can sit across from me, which is somehow the scariest thing he could have done. “I was going to tell you sooner,” he starts. “I just didn’t expect…I thought she’d give me a few more days. At least a heads-up. I’m so sorry that you didn’t get to—”



“What the fuck, Mike?” Now I’m angry as well as scared. “What are you telling me?”

“Piper is gone. She went to live with her aunt Sue, in Spokane. I couldn’t help it. I told Sue that you two were attached now and Piper seemed happy here. It wasn’t supposed to happen until next Saturday, and I was going to tell you, but then Sue had business in Seattle today and she didn’t want to make the drive twice….”

“Oh my God!” I screech. “For how long? What are you saying?”

Mike looks up at me, his eyes full of tears. “You don’t get it. Didn’t you hear when I told you Sue has custody? This whole arrangement was never going to be permanent. I told you that when you first moved in here. I guess I didn’t make it clear to you. And maybe not clear enough to Piper, either.”

I stand up, because I’m way too upset to stay sitting. I can’t take this in. “So you’re telling me Piper has already moved to Spokane, so my services as her babysitter are no longer necessary and who knows if or when I’ll ever see her again? And I don’t even get to say goodbye?” I yell this last line, because I can’t imagine this could be true.

Mike keeps talking. “Sue came early. She didn’t care about you because she doesn’t understand your connection to Piper. You don’t have to move out. You can still stay here. And Piper will come visit me on some weekends and you can see her then. She’ll be back, I promise. And I won’t even raise the rent back up.”

“Oh my God! How generous of you.” I slam out the front door and start walking, tears streaming, trying to absorb what just happened. With every step, I remember the sound of Piper pedaling behind me.



* * *



—

AFTER PIPER GOES, I am too furious to stay at Mike’s, but I’m too cheap to move right away—not with rent being so reasonable. I decide to stay until I can save enough to put down money on a junky car and move to California. That’s always been the plan anyway, right? To be in a warm place where the chance of being recognized would be so much slimmer.



Of course, I talk to Piper on the phone several times a week. The first time, she cried a lot, because she missed Mike and me. Plus, she was devastated when Aunt Sue refused to let her bring Felix. “Cats and babies don’t mix,” she’d told Piper. After a few weeks pass, though, Piper begins to sound like she’s adjusting, partly because she is so in love with her twin baby cousins. Isn’t that every girl’s dream? To have real babies to take care of?

Every time we talk, she tells me she is praying for Leo. Apparently, Aunt Sue is some kind of Christian. “I’m praying for Leo to come home so you won’t be alone,” she says. I want him to come home, too. But the surprising truth is that Piper left a space in my heart only she can fill. Why did I let that happen? I should have seen this coming.