Polly watched as the hits came back: Suburban Madam Arrested, said headline after headline. So this is what has become of my daughter, she thought. She scanned a few articles, enough to get the gist of what Norah had been charged with, before calling Allen back. The phone rang twice before he picked it up, the tension and anxiety in his voice apparent with the simple word, “Hello?”
How did you get my number? Polly wanted to ask him, but she didn’t. She wondered if perhaps he had kept tabs on her all these years just in case he needed parenting backup, a grandmother, like a fairy godmother, dropping in to rescue him from his plight. She pictured herself like Mary Poppins coming out of the clouds holding that umbrella, a beatific smile on her face as her feet met the ground, and she saw her granddaughter waiting there for her. She could be a hero now, she thought.
“What’s going on?” she asked Allen.
“Norah was arrested this morning. Did you look up the charges?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. How like Allen to be unable to utter them.
“Well. So. She’s in jail now.”
“Right,” Polly said, already losing patience with him. She’d liked Allen when Norah had introduced them. But Allen had changed, Norah had told her, when she was pregnant with Violet. “They all change,” she’d told her daughter. “That’s what happens.”
“And she sent Violet to stay with neighbors. Violet’s best friend, from what I understand. But I guess the girls had some sort of falling out, and now Violet is asking to come stay here, which I don’t understand, because she’s basically refused to see me lately. I’m, um, remarried and my wife and I have two children—babies, I mean. You know, toddlers. So it’s kind of, you know, not her scene with all the crying and toys everywhere . . .” He trailed off, as if waiting for Polly to fill in the blanks.
Unable to let him off the hook, Polly said, “From what I recall, it wasn’t really your scene, either.”
“Yeah,” Allen laughed as if she’d made a joke. “Well, my wife, Tish, that’s her name, wanted to be a mom and I, uh, well, I went along with it.”
Wasn’t that just like Allen, to go along with something he didn’t really want and hope it all worked out. She refrained from saying so out loud. “So what do you need from me, Allen?”
“Well, I mean, Violet’s fine to be here until they clear the house—I guess right now it’s being considered a crime scene or something—but I assume eventually she can go back there. Once that happens, I was just wondering if maybe you’d mind coming here and staying with her for . . . well . . . for as long as it takes?”
The thought occurred to Polly: What if Norah goes to jail for a long time? What kind of commitment is he asking for here? She wondered if Norah had any idea he was contacting her. She would hate this idea. Polly thought of the last time she had seen Violet. The child had been toddling around, gnawing on a graham cracker. Polly and Norah had been speculating over what Violet should call her: Gigi, Mimi, Grammy. They’d agreed she wasn’t a normal grandmother and would therefore not have a typical grandmother name. Certainly not Grandma or Granny. They’d laughed and it had felt—for a moment—normal.
Polly had been dressed to go out on a date, newly divorced from yet another of Norah’s stepfathers. Violet had grabbed the leg of her white pants, leaving a gummy brown handprint. Polly had shrieked in response and drew her leg—which Violet had been using to balance—back, accidentally knocking the baby to the floor. A fight had ensued. Both she and Norah had said things, ugly things, with raised voices. Things they meant but usually refrained from saying aloud. Norah had scooped Violet up, balanced her on her hip, and wiped away her tears. The two of them had looked at Polly accusingly, a unit, with her on the outside.
She’d left the house angry, yes, but assuming one day she’d go back. They’d make things right eventually. This was how they were. But one day had bled into the other, and here they were with so many years gone by. Her daughter was accused of running a prostitution ring, and her granddaughter was a complete stranger. They’d never come up with her grandmother name, because her granddaughter had never had cause to call on her. But she could change that now. She could take the scraps of their lives and try her best to make a quilt that would cover them all somehow.
Allen was rambling in her ear about how hard his life was and how much a disruption his own flesh and blood was going to be, when she interrupted him. “Find out when the house will be released. Tell them you need it back as soon as possible so that the minor involved can continue her routine, go to school, all that. Lay it on thick, Allen. Sounds like you need her back in that house pretty bad.”
“So . . . you’ll do it?” The relief in his voice made her despise him all the more.
Polly sighed. She wondered what it was she’d seen in him when Norah had brought him to meet her that first time. Why had she considered him a prize? Maybe because he was brave enough to take on her daughter, when she herself had always been slightly afraid of her. Or maybe because he, like Calvin, had just known the right things to say to sway her. Whatever her impression was at the time, it had been the wrong one. Allen Ramsey was no prize. But Polly was betting her granddaughter was.
Violet
September 27
She hovered just outside the doorway, trying her best to listen to the discussion between her father and Tish. It was hard to hear over the gurgling baby Tish bounced and patted. The baby’s name was Sienna, and she was, as best Violet could tell, the only daughter her dad really needed. There just wasn’t room in his life for two of them. Sienna also had an older brother, the son her father had always wanted. His name was Allen Junior, but they called him A. J. Whenever he was around, her father got this big, wide smile. He called him “Son” a lot, like he still couldn’t believe he’d gotten one.
Sometimes her father would walk into a room and look startled, and maybe even a little afraid, to see Violet there, like she was an intruder who’d snuck in. That was exactly what she’d felt like these past three days—an intrusion, barging in on their happy home, uninvited and unwelcome. She’d made a mistake in coming here, and they all knew it. Which was why she was trying to hear what the two adults were saying to each other as they decided her fate. No other letters had come from her mother since the one short one Jim Sheridan had delivered. When he’d called to make sure she’d received it, he’d told her not to expect any more. He didn’t want her mother to write anything that could be used against her later. Though Violet wanted to hear from her mother more than anything, she didn’t want that.
She wondered if she should just announce that she was going back to the Stricklands. But of course, they didn’t want her any more than her father and Tish did. At least Nicole didn’t. And apparently Nicole, in Casey’s absence, had garnered the deciding vote as to what happened in their house. Violet tried not to think about the void in her life where Nicole had once been, how much harder this situation was without someone to talk to about it all. The two people she used to talk to—her mother and her best friend—had both, for reasons she couldn’t comprehend, left her.
She stood there, eavesdropping in her father’s hallway, and wished not only for her mother to come home, but to have a place where she belonged again. A place where she could walk right in and not feel like she needed to apologize for having done so. A place where she could call out, “I’m home!” and mean it. She’d had that just days ago, but already it felt like years. Tears pricked her eyes, and she swallowed hard against them.