The Wrong Family(27)
There was a bowl of chips next to the cake (Juno didn’t dare eat those; they would crunch too loudly) and a tray of sandwiches sliced into little triangles. She took a plate, piled as many on as she could, and carried them back to the closet to wait.
No one opened the closet the next morning; she was so sure that Nigel Crouch would come to retrieve his golf clubs or Sam would get the itch to play one of the board games stacked on the shelves above her head. But no one came. The boys noisily ate breakfast, and they were picked up promptly at ten o’ clock by mothers who didn’t push their luck. Juno lay hidden behind the ski suits and winter coats as each of the boys said goodbye, her head resting on one of those airplane pillows. If someone were to open the door to her little hideout and really look, they’d spot her easily, but no one was looking. Her pain wasn’t any better, but her comfort was. She was ashamed to admit that lying on the freshly carpeted floor of the Crouches’ closet was the most comfortable place she’d slept in over a year.
After all of Sam’s little friends were gone, the family collected their shoes from the foyer.
“Will Grandma wait ’til the end of the night to give me my present or will she just let me open it right away?”
Juno didn’t get to hear the answer; the Crouches were out the door and heading to what Juno presumed was a family celebration for Sam. Before the door slammed behind them and the key turned in the lock, she heard Nigel punching the code into the alarm box.
Sure enough, when Juno opened the closet door five minutes later, the little screen read ARMED. The red light glowed above the word like an all-seeing red eye, mocking her. She shouted every curse word she could think of, shaking her fist at it. Had she really thought she was going to be able to just walk out of here? And then her arm fell uselessly at her side and hung there. Where did she have to be? Nowhere, Juno, you dumbbitch. She’d graduated from calling herself an idiot to a dumbbitch.
Things were going downhill fast. She wondered if the house was armed with motion sensors. Well, she’d soon find out. She took two steps forward, two steps sideways...then she shimmied to the kitchen door and back. Nothing happened. Juno laughed. She went straight to the bathroom, but this time she climbed the stairs to Winnie and Nigel’s, lowering herself over their toilet. And as she sat with her head resting on her fist, she looked around at lush towels and bottles that clearly hadn’t been bought at the drugstore.
Why not? Juno thought, flushing. There had been so many “why nots” lately; maybe the fact that she hadn’t been caught made her take such a big risk. First things first. She swung open the door to the medicine cabinet and her eyes scanned the bottles. When she found what she was looking for, she popped the lid and poured six of the pills into her palm. She replaced the bottle and popped two of the pills between her lips, pressing them to the roof of her mouth with her tongue.
Blessed relief. They hadn’t even melted into her yet, but it was comforting just to know she’d taken them. She had the vague sense that she was floating as the sour powder of the pills coated the inside of her mouth. Juno worked harder, warming it up with her spit and her tongue. Who had taught her to do this? Bless them, she thought swallowing the glue. It was bitter, but it would get into her system faster this way. Whomever had taught her the trick was temporarily forgotten as she stepped out of her clothes and into the bath.
She could avoid the mirror all she wanted, but there were her feet—filthy, the nails jagged and yellow—resting on the spotless floor of the tub. She wriggled her toes and reached for the faucet. When was the last time she’d had a bath? Sometimes she got into the shelter early enough to use their shower, and sometimes she just cleaned herself over the sink in any random, unoccupied bathroom she could find. But a real bath? They’d had a tub in the Albuquerque house, the one on which the bank had foreclosed...when? Five years ago? It wasn’t the time or the place to summon the desert into her current state of bliss. She dismissed the thought because she could, because that was one thing she was great at in her old lady days—forgetting.
The water rushed around her, and Juno sank into it. A noise came somewhere from the back of her throat; she didn’t know if it was from pain or pleasure, but she allowed herself to lie back until her ears were submerged and her hair wafted around her face. There were bottles lined up along the lip of the tub; she selected one at random and poured it into her hair. The smells were clean and fresh, reminding Juno of her childhood, when her grandparents had owned a laundromat. She scrubbed herself, using Winnie’s nail brush to clean every speck of grime from her hands.
When Juno finally climbed out of the bath and the water drained away, there was a rim of grime where the water had leveled. She found a sponge and powdered Clorox and scrubbed at the filth her body had left behind. When it was spotless, she found a towel at the bottom of the hamper and dried the bathtub before shoving the towel down to the bottom again.
Now for the problem of clothes. Her own lay in a pile at her feet in different shades of filthy. Juno was still naked, and her less-filthy clothes were in her pack, shoved underneath a bush in the park. She carried her clothes downstairs, walking to the closet opposite the one she’d found herself hiding in, and opened the door. There was a garbage bag tied and sitting at the ready, a pink Post-it stuck on the front with the words DONATIONS scrawled in Sharpie. Juno quickly worked at the knot, and then the bag was open. She lifted things out quickly: a sweatshirt that had Baywatch printed on the front, a pair of women’s yoga pants, and there were shoes, New Balance, nicer than anything she’d owned in years. She even fished out a pair of Thanksgiving-themed socks before shoving her own filthy clothes to the bottom of the bag and reknotting the red drawstring. The Post-it note repositioned, Juno closed the door firmly and began to dress.