night.
She stared down into the street and watched couples stroll in the balmy evening air, envying them. She could understand why Carla preferred the street to the family room, dominated by a blaring TV and the constant bickering of youngsters. On summer nights in the city, the streets were alive with excitement, anticipation.
Kate let the venetian blind drop, hiding the night away. Loneliness overwhelmed her. Thinking she’d be busy doing things with Joanna, she’d turned down a chance to travel out West with a friend and colleague at her school. Now, except for outings with Carla, the summer loomed empty and unpromising.
She wandered around the room, pausing before the mirror above her dresser. Her chin-length, damp, reddish-brown hair framed her face in limp tendrils, making her look like a waif out in a storm.
Kate moved away from her reflection—no comfort there—and slumped onto the edge of the bed. Too early for sleep. Too wound up for television. Ginny, the tenant downstairs and also a friend, was visiting her parents for a few days.
Maybe she ought to go down to the streets and look for Carla. Her quick smile vanished just as abruptly. No, she warned herself. Worrying about Carla, making sure she was all right, could be a full-time job if she was foolish enough to make it one. Both she and Rita Santos had already come to that conclusion.
Thoughts drifted back to the afternoon. Joanna’s casket. The flowers. Had Joanna liked lilies? So much she didn’t know and now, no possibility of ever learning. Impulsively, Kate went to the closet, drawn there by a need to find some clue, some hint in the few letters she’d received from Joanna Barnes over the past nineteen years. Why, Joanna? Why?
The album sat on the shelf above the clothes rack. Kate carried it to the bed, stacked the pillows against the headboard and made herself comfortable. Then she opened the first page.
August 15, 1982. Today is my birthday and I got my first real birthday card in the mail. It was from Joanna! She’s kept her promise and I’m going to keep mine. The one I made to myself the last night of camp. Not to get in trouble anymore. Not to ruin my life.
Taped beneath the scrawled entry was the card from Joanna. Its message read simply:
Happy Birthday, twelve-year-old! Don’t celebrate too much. Manhattan’s amazing and I’m loving it. Watch for my byline in the papers—whenever. Have a great year and see you in eighteen!
Joanna
Kate passed her hand along the card’s glossy surface. She’d read the card more than a dozen times the day it arrived. It had been the first piece of personal mail ever to be delivered to her. She remembered, too, the way her foster parents and their children had stood openmouthed in surprise as she read the card. And the questions that had followed.
Who is this person, Kate? Where did you meet her? What’s this all about, anyway?
She’d been afraid then that somehow the whole thing—the cards and the promised reunion with Joanna—would be snatched away from her. But in the end, her partial explanation had satisfied her foster mother, who’d only muttered a last warning—I just don’t want you to get your hopes up. Kate hadn’t appreciated the irony of that comment until many years later.
Kate sighed and quickly flipped the page. This one—a postcard from Paris—had caused a real stir in the household because no one else had even known anyone who’d gone to Europe. Weeks before its arrival Kate had rushed to check the mail every day. She might forget. Don’t get your hopes up. But Kate had had the blind faith of a child. And she’d never been disappointed.
Suddenly she couldn’t take any more. Her only memories of Joanna Barnes were now permanently sealed behind plastic in an ordinary photo album. She’d never have the chance to transform all those bits of paper into a real person. Kate closed the album, sank back onto the bed and stretched out her arm to click off the table lamp. Street light dappled the room with a pale rainbow of color. But Kate closed her eyes to the summer night, turned her head into the pillow and cried.
KATE DIDN’T HEAR from Carla until two days after Joanna’s funeral, but she suspected the girl had tried several times to call her. There’d been a few hang-ups on her answering machine. She figured Carla had already been read the riot act from Rita and Kim, so she kept her voice light and neutral.
“Hi, Carly! What’s up?”
There was the slightest of pauses, as if Carla had been expecting another response.
“Uh, not too much. Guess you heard I got grounded.”
“Yes.”
Carla cleared her throat. “Well, I don’t know why everyone was so ticked off at me. I was okay. Not in any trouble or nothing—until I got home, anyway.”
“Maybe they were worried, Carla.”
“Yeah, right!” she scoffed. “More like Rita was thinkin’ she’d lose that check every month.”
Kate sighed. She’d heard the line before. “Is that fair? I don’t think Rita’s in this for the money.”
A longer pause this time. Then Carla mumbled, “Maybe not. But I wasn’t doing nothin’. Just hangin’ with my buddies.”
Kate counted mentally to ten. She’d had this conversation with Carla so many times she felt like screaming. Why aren’t you getting this, Carly? What does it take from all of us? Finally she said, “It’s all about communicating, Carla. Let people know where you are and when you’re coming home. Call, for heaven’s sake.”
A hoarse laugh drifted through the line. “If I’d’a called, Rita would’ve told me to get home. And I was having a good time—you know, with my buds.”
Kate knew better than to malign Carla’s friends. She’d seen Rita do it and it always brought Carla rushing emotionally to their defense. Besides, she’d heard all the excuses. Carla could pull them out of the air like a magician popping rabbits from a hat.
“So now what?” Kate asked, softening her voice.
“My last chance. Kim said next time she’ll have to send me to a group home. Out in the suburbs!”
Kate might have laughed at this final indignity, obviously a fate worse than death, were it not for the catch in Carla’s voice. The threat of a group home was now suddenly very clear to her. Kate sighed again. It had taken six months of “last chances” for that sober reality to register with Carla.
“Carla, be cool, okay? Look, my plans for the summer have altered a bit. I’ll have more time than I thought. We can do some things together.”
“Like go shopping?”
Kate smiled at Carla’s raised inflection on the last word. “Sure. Things like that. Maybe check out a museum or art gallery, too.”
“Yeah,” Carla murmured, less enthusiastic now.
“I’ll call you tomorrow about two and we’ll set a definite time and place. All right?”
Carla agreed and hung up quickly. Before I changed my mind? Kate wondered. Or because she had an incoming call? Kate shook her head as she set the receiver down. In spite of Carla’s attitude, she hadn’t yet crossed the line into serious trouble. Kate just hoped
