The Wrong Family(28)

The clock above the back door ticked its slow circle; it had been two hours since the Crouches had left. Juno wanted to be back in the closet long before they got home. Long after they could smell her moving through the rooms of their house. She’d considered looking for a safer place, but none provided the quick exit she would need. In her new clothes, Juno walked to the kitchen feeling both 100 percent better and 100 percent worse. Her shame was magnified by her hunger. In the pantry was a loaf of bread and peanut butter. Juno made herself two sandwiches, cleaning as she went. She ate one as she used the facilities for the last time and tucked the other into a paper towel in her pocket. Making one last trip to the pantry, she found some boxes of L?rabars and took one of each flavor, a can of peel-top SpaghettiOs, a can of green beans, and a jug of apple juice she hoped they wouldn’t miss. Oh, what did she care? She was already squatting in their junk closet. She carried it all back to the space behind the coats and snowsuits, stacking everything in the corner.

Juno made one last run-through of the house, keeping her eyes on the street whenever she was in view of a window. They’d be back any minute, she just knew it. Call it a sixth sense. Animals had it, too—they knew when a predator was near. And that’s all people were, really, wasn’t it? Animals dressed up. She found a small puddle of water on the bathroom floor that she’d missed before, soaking it up with a wad of toilet paper. She dropped it in the toilet and flushed. Good as new. In the kitchen she dried the sink with a piece of paper towel and replaced the knife she’d used for the peanut butter in the drawer. No crumbs, no errant wrappers, no wiry gray hairs. Everything was as it should be.





      12


JUNO

Ten minutes after Juno rested her head on her airplane pillow and closed her eyes, the front door opened and the Crouches returned. They walked into the house laughing, wrapping paper and gifts bags crackling in their arms. She was clean and comfortable, her belly was full, and most importantly, she was warm.

She slept.

It carried on like that for the weekend. She knew her best shot at leaving the house was on Monday when the Crouches went back to their weekday schedules. So she rested, listening to the voices of the family she had been watching for months while lying beneath the hems of their abandoned winter gear and Halloween costumes. It was comforting to lie on the new carpet, her back pressed against the wall, which was always warm. To herself, she’d started referring to the closet as Hems Corner. It was a safe space, comfortable and warm and familiar.

She turned from her side to her back to her other side, listening to Sam ask his mother if she could make bacon and eggs for breakfast, and then to Nigel rapping along with Eminem as he washed the dishes from the bacon and egg breakfast. She heard Winnie on the phone with someone from work as she opened the door for a delivery. “If we have to, we can replace her with Joanne from—yes I said replace—”

Her voice was indignant. There were two sides to Winnie, indignant and vulnerable.

Juno had eaten her second sandwich for dinner on Saturday night along with a few large swigs of apple juice straight from the jug. And then at night, while the Crouches slept off their Saturday, Juno snuck out during the early morning hours to use the bathroom. She wasn’t as stiff as she thought she’d be and was in an exceptionally good mood. Safety and a good night’s sleep and a family to nose around in. She’d become a true geriatric. Kregger would have howled.

On Sunday morning she ate a cherry pie L?rabar for breakfast and drank more apple juice. She figured it was early since the Crouches had yet to come downstairs. In the two days she’d slept in their closet, she’d come to decipher the way each of their footsteps sounded on the hardwood. She strained to hear even the muffled sound of footsteps, but the house seemed fully asleep—aside from Juno, the closet mouse, that was.

Suddenly, she felt like taking a risk. She rolled out from her hiding spot and got to her feet. The ceiling of her closet was surprisingly high. She stretched her arms above her head and did the yoga poses of her youth to try to ease out some of her stiffness. She’d been taking the Crouches’ Advil—two pills every four hours—and it had staved off the worst of the pain through the day. She stretched out her neck, rolling it back as she breathed deeply and opened her eyes to the ceiling. But then she heard someone stirring upstairs, the sound of running water. She stretched once more—Tadasana, mountain pose—before crawling back to Hems Corner.

Juno was anxious. She rubbed a spot behind her ear, staring into the darkness. Even in the closet she could hear the sound of the rain outside. What would happen if they caught her? You know what would happen, she thought. They’ll haul you back to your favorite place in the whole world. Juno didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to die in prison, either. And the truth of the matter was that she was dying. She could feel the rot; her kidneys like two old fists that were losing their grasp.

The spot behind her ear was stinging, but her fingers kept their back-and-forth rhythm. Be present, be grateful. She lifted her old mantras from her other life and tried them on for size. Where would I normally be? A series of images flashed through her mind, and she flinched from them. The more accurate question was probably where had she not slept? For a while Juno had had a blue tent. Wherever she pitched it, the police would eventually tell her to move in their deadpan way that made her feel less...and less...and less. The humiliation brought by those hard-faced men in uniforms, their faces stoic but their impatience loud. Go, you can’t be here. Leave, you have to move. You can’t squat here. She had nowhere to go and still she was commanded to leave.