The Wrong Family(13)

“They have a very hard time, Samuel,” she offered gently. “Discussing their medical history is highly inappropriate.” But he was giving her that look that made her feel stupid.

“That was like fifteen years ago,” he said. “But it’s fine.”

“Thirteen,” Winnie corrected with a frown. “Don’t age me.” Samuel glanced up to check her face and seemed to relax at the joke. Winnie was sweating beneath her shirt. She hadn’t realized how hard this would be—parenting. People, for some reason, chose only to highlight the good parts: the cute chubby cheeks and cute little socks—not the temper tantrums and lollipop bribery it took to get them in the socks. Winnie tried to relax, softening her voice. “And you’re right. Adam was mentally ill. He also had PTSD from an incident in prison—” Winnie didn’t tell Samuel how violent the incident had actually been “—and he had a personality disorder and a bunch of other stuff.”

“Why did you stop working there?”

“I had you, silly. I wanted to be a mom.”

“Why couldn’t you have done both?” He almost sounded accusatory. She tried to bat the feeling away. She was projecting her own feelings onto her son.

“I...well...I didn’t want to. You remember that Bible story about Hannah you learned in religious studies a few years ago?”

“Yeah, the one where she begs God for a baby because she’s barren and his other wife is having all the kids.”

Barren, Winnie thought. What a word. “Yeah, that one. I felt like Hannah, I guess. I’d been waiting for a baby for so long, praying for one, and then I got you.” Her own simplistic answer irritated her, like things were ever that easy; but Samuel seemed to accept it.

“You could go back,” he said.

Winnie managed a thin smile. She hated talking about Illuminations. She had no feelings of nostalgia when it came to her former workplace. It had been full on relief when she left, and not just because of what had gone down. Counselors at mental health facilities were overworked and underpaid. The thought of taking Samuel’s suggestion made her want to throw up. She remembered running into one of the other case workers, Dan Repper, shortly after she quit. She’d been browsing the stands at the farmers’ market when she’d seen him approach her out the corner of her eye. Winnie had immediately tried to extract herself from the berry-buying, shoving a twenty into the seller’s hand just as Dan’s nasal voice called out to her.

They started speaking just as Winnie propped the crate of blueberries on her hip, and she felt like she moved it from right hip to left at least a dozen times before the conversation was over. Dan told her he’d taken over half of her caseload when she left, split it with Dee since Illuminations was short on counselors. He’d sounded accusatory so Winnie had apologized immediately; she would have sung the apology if it meant getting out of there. But Dan had more to say.

“There’s a woman coming around the office asking for you. She says you were her counselor but won’t give us her name.”

“What does she want?” Winnie tried to keep her voice neutral, smiling at a golden retriever as it paused to sniff the crate she was balancing.

“Your home address.” Dan’s words sank into her brain with cold teeth. Winnie was so shaken she felt like she was shivering in the mid-August heat, and he was going to notice.

“Anyway, Beula at the desk—you remember Beula?” He didn’t wait for her to reply. “She told her that under no circumstances could we give out counselors’ home addresses. The woman said she’d find you herself and walked out.”

Now, Winnie mentally shook herself before answering Samuel’s question. “I have a job, silly—being a mom.”

Samuel shrugged. “It would be cool to help people.”

“Well, I help them now,” she said quickly. “Just in a different way.” She hated the defensiveness in her voice, hated that Samuel heard it, too.

“Chill out, Mom, I get it. You plan parties now, right? To raise money for the homeless.”

“Well, no,” Winnie said tightly. “I sometimes help with the charity events, but now I manage the people who...manage the people. If that makes sense.”

The server unloaded five plates onto the table in quick succession, and in the face of imminent sugar, Samuel stopped asking questions. He was still a kid and she could control some situations, but how long would it be before he started asking questions about why his dad never really looked his wife in the eye?





      6


JUNO

For one brief and awful year, Juno and Kregger had lived in Alaska. It was the seventies, and in America, lust was on the menu for the decade. Juno and Kregger were wet for adventure, hard for travel. They sold everything in their little studio apartment, gave their parrots and cacti away to friends, and bought two one-way tickets to Anchorage. The pull was the Wild West, and they were young enough to still want to play. When Juno remembered the cold and isolation she experienced that year, she would shiver. But back then, back in grand ol’ 1977 when they arrived at the meager airport, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline had just been completed and oil was flowing. Kregger planned to work the oil, and Juno planned on getting a job wherever they’d have her. She was working on her thesis, and Anchorage had seemed like the place to buckle down and get it done. So while Kregger worked those grueling hours, Juno shriveled in the Alaskan winter like a cock in the cold. It wasn’t at all what she’d pictured; Anchorage was a muddy little place with gambling dens, drug houses, and street walkers, as Juno’s nan called them. Half wild and half civilized. Late at night, men would shoot guns into the sky to blow off steam. She’d be so afraid on the nights Kregger was gone that she’d carry her blanket and pillow to the closet and sleep on the floor under the sweeping hems of their clothes. When summer came, things got moderately better. She was able to walk to the city center without fear of losing her nose to the cold and got a part-time job at the Piggly Wiggly.