The Wrong Family(29)

It became easier to sleep in the day. Juno took naps on benches, in the grass, sometimes in a coffee shop where they thought she was just a shabby old lady dozing with her morning joe.

You’d be in the park, she told herself, turning toward the wall. The park itself was good, peaceful, but having to live there was not. She pulled the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head and, tucking her palms between her knees, began to shiver. She had a master’s degree in psychology, she knew about Pavlov’s dogs, and she knew that the sound of the rain made her cold and afraid because it had become an enemy—something that threatened her safety and comfort. And wasn’t safety a basic human need? Of course it was. As was shelter. And you are safe. Her mouth formed the words, though she didn’t dare say them aloud. You’re safe...you’re safe...you’re safe...

When she woke there was music playing. Juno rolled onto her back, carefully tenting her knees. If she stayed still for too long her hands and feet would swell up like puffer fish. She breathed deeply, trying to make out the melody. She smiled as she caught a few of the lyrics. Dale had liked that song. Dale, her youngest, sweetest son. She mouthed his name, Dale... Dale... Dale...and felt better for doing it. Dale with his wiry brown curls; he had a bend in his nose, and long bony fingers that could play the piano more nimbly than hers. She missed him so deeply that the missing had become an organ. A throbbing, volatile organ. She curled into herself, into the pain. She deserved to feel it, and so when it came, she allowed it in, like a woman in labor.

Failure as a mother should hurt. It should feel flat and dull and never-ending. Juno would take all the pain in the world, carry every single bit of it, for one chance to see Dale again and tell him how sorry she was.

The song changed, and now she could hear the individual voices of the family singing along—Winnie off-key and Sam with his unbroken voice that would soon start cracking. Nigel, who was a good singer, sang around them, harmonizing with their squeaks and squawks in good humor.

She ate the canned beans for lunch, listening along with the Crouches’ movie: Sense and Sensibility (Winnie had won at rock paper scissors). That evening, Nigel opened the door for the pizza they’d ordered, and Juno heard the rain really coming down.

“Is that thunder?” Nigel’s voice was incredulous. She could picture him peering over the pizza guy’s shoulder toward the flashing in the sky.

“Yeah, there’s a lightning storm. Pretty cool.”

Pizza girl, Juno corrected herself. When she’d first come to Seattle it had surprised her that thunder did not often accompany the watery days. In her old life, she would have told anyone that she liked the sound of the clouds colliding, but in this life, it scared the shit out of her.

An awful memory bloomed as she lay on the closet floor. The first time she’d not had the money to pay for her dirty little room at the Motel Palm she’d slept in her car, pushing the seats down and laying an old comforter across the trunk space. The lightning had woken her from an alcohol-induced sleep. And five seconds after she opened her eyes, Juno had thought a semi was rolling over her car. Thunder bellowed from nearby, and then the rain had come in fat, fast drops. Bullet rain being shot from some heavenly AK47.

Realizing that she wasn’t in immediate danger had done little to soothe the fear and despair that had woken up with her. She wasn’t going to die right now, but her ticket had been expedited with her disease. It was up in the air how—if hunger or cold or being hit by lightning could outrace the lupus, but she was fine with that. It was all talk; she was a small woman without options, without friends. Regardless, it had rained for three days while Juno lay huddled in her gasless Prius, stranded in a Walmart parking lot. She’d run in for food and to use the restroom, but had otherwise remained sedentary, frightened, and in shock.

What now? What now? That thought marched through her head, demanding to be heard. She didn’t know what happened now. She’d given answers to people during her career, and yet here she was as answerless and lost as any of them had been.

She smelled the pizza, wanted it. They were in the kitchen now, opening cans of soda. They were happy, and there had been a time when Juno’s family had been happy, as well. Humans had a way of uprooting happiness. They found flaws in it, picked at it until the whole system unraveled. Juno had been bored with her life once upon a time. Instead of being professionally distant, she’d festooned her life with the stories of her patients. She’d become too involved; she knew that now. An idle mind leads to mischief, her mother had said. And she’d paid, oh had she paid. She’d lost everything.

Pizza was over; the Crouches were heading upstairs. Juno was glad to be rid of them; she’d be even more glad tomorrow when she could leave. She peed into the empty apple juice jug, took three of the Crouches’ Advil, and drifted off to sleep.





      13


JUNO

Monday came; Sam was the first to leave, slipping out the door before the sun had fully woken up. Juno could smell the nutty, sweet aroma of the waffle he carried out the door, and she registered hunger for the first time in days. The desire to eat would pass, though the need for it would not. She pulled a handful of oyster crackers from her pocket, placing one on her tongue with extreme concentration. She couldn’t afford to eat something and then get sick in Hems Corner. Thirty minutes later Nigel and Winnie left together, stopping at the back door to check that the first of the workers had arrived. Juno listened to them have a brief conversation, jiggling her hips in her desperation to pee.