Counting by 7s(35)

I find myself always waiting for bad news now.

So it’s almost a relief to get some.



I walk to the front counter. I hear Pattie saying: “A woman called from child services. They are doing a home visitation. Today.”

Once I’m close, she shoots me a look and then hits a button and suddenly Dell Duke’s voice is on speakerphone.

“Well, it’s pretty obvious you don’t live at my place!”

Pattie only shrugs and says:

“It’s temporary.”

He says:

“Why did we use my address? What’s wrong with where you live?”

Pattie ignores the question. She says:

“Let’s start by taking a look at your apartment.”

I hear Dell slamming something. His fist into a file cabinet? His head onto his desk?

“I can’t just leave. I mean, I’d have to take a sick day or—”

Pattie hits the speakerphone release button and Dell’s voice is cut off. She then says: “Come get us. We’ll be here waiting.”

She puts the receiver back into the cradle and returns to her work. She says again, to no one in particular: “Temporary.”





Chapter 32





It isn’t long before Dell’s Ford swerves into the parking lot. He gets out of his car as if his hair is on fire.

I should be freaking out like Dell, but I find myself mimicking Pattie’s attitude.

My edges are gone.

I’m sea glass.

If you look hard, you can see right through me.



There isn’t much discussion.

Pattie and I get in Dell’s car and we drive across town.

Ten minutes later we arrive at 257 Heptad Lane.

I look up at the apartment house. It appears to be a building constructed by a blind contractor who didn’t use an architect.

The proportions of the place are all off, and not in a provocative way.

It looks like someone took an enormous box, painted it the color of serratia marcescens (which is a rod-shaped, pink bacterium that grows in showers) and cut holes in the sides.

I’m somehow not surprised that Dell Duke lives here.

We follow the counselor up a dark stairwell to the second floor, where he opens a door. He’s mumbling now:

“I wasn’t expecting company. I’m not prepared for visitors. I need to put a few things away . . .”

He then quickly shoots like a trained hamster through a crazy maze of stuff.

We hear a door shut in an unseen hallway.

I wonder what he needs to hide, because there is enough here in his living room that should mortify him.

Dell Duke is obviously one of those people who have issues throwing things away.

Maybe he doesn’t have full-blown disposophobia, which is hoarding, but he’s on the same playing field.

The Old Me would have taken a lot of pleasure in a firsthand look at such a complex emotional condition.

But not now.

Pattie and I stand in the entry and stare at the stacks of newspapers, magazines, and mail surrounding the discount lawn furniture, which I decide is the exact color of a white rabbit’s eyes.

Pink with a drop of yellow mixed in.

The complete patio set—called “masculine salmon” on a manufacturer’s tag sticking out from one of the cheap metal chairs—has cut distinct circles in the wall-to-wall carpeting.

I step deeper into the room so that Pattie can close the door, and I find myself next to an outdoor umbrella still encased in cloudy plastic.

It is propped against the wall.

I feel its sadness.

I trail behind Pattie down a narrow path to the kitchen.

Towers of sloppily rinsed microwave trays are on most of the counters. Off to the side, I see teetering columns of red disposable cups.

I realize that I have not had great exposure to other people’s ways of living.

I had never seen the kind of garage setup that the Nguyens have going, and looking at this place, I understand that there are clearly whole lifestyles that have been kept from me.

Dell Duke is charting a different course.

If this is what he has in the open, I’m now curious to look in one of his closets.



Pattie must have the same thought, because she moves out of the kitchen, through the clutter of the living room, back to the tight hallway.

I follow.

But with some caution.

This looks like the kind of place where an unexpected exotic animal might appear—the illegal kind that people buy on a whim in the back rooms of pet stores, but then later set free in an alley because they can’t control the razor-sharp claws or the eating demands.

The door to the first bedroom is closed but that doesn’t stop Pattie from turning the knob and opening it.

We both now see Dell stuffing an oily-looking sleeping bag into a nylon sack.

But there are no dead bodies or anything.

At least not in plain sight.

It’s just a super-messy room.

Comic books and magazines are strewn next to the bed, which doesn’t have sheets or a mattress pad.

The necks of empty wine bottles poke out of a metal garbage can (the sort that should be outside) in the corner.

It only takes an instant for Pattie to find the handle on the closet door.

Dell shouts: