Rocky Road (5 page)

That was it. No call home and no detention. I’d gotten off easy, and I knew it. I thanked Mr. Godfrey and gave him my best “this won’t happen again” face, and then I bolted.

Back in the hallway I actually got my locker open on the first try. The secret was to pull hard. Really hard, as if your life depended on it. But by then I didn’t have to worry about finding a seat near Ellie in the cafeteria. Lunch was over.

A
fter school I returned to discover the apartment door locked, with no sign of Ma or Jordan. My eyes were tearing from the wind, my nose felt like a frozen cherry tomato, and my big ears felt as if they’d snap off and shatter on the ground like china plates. More than anything, I wanted to jump onto the futon with a bowl of chips and salsa and click the remote to the Home and Garden Channel.

But I couldn’t, so I went back downstairs to the lobby.
It was deserted, with staticky music playing and washing machines rumbling in the nearby laundry room, sending a bleach smell floating through the air. I sat on the love seat and dug into my backpack for something to eat, only to realize that I’d left my lunch in my locker after I’d gotten in trouble. Sure wished I had my crocheting so I could work on Jordan’s scarf.

I pulled out my math homework, which took all of two minutes. So much for Ms. Hockley saying out-of-staters couldn’t hang. Then I read a chapter in my social studies text about the Erie Canal. When I finished, I put my feet up on the coffee table and looked around.

Yuck. Who decorated this place? Wicker furniture typically gives a breezy tropical feel. But upholstered in brown corduroy and up against faded, red-striped wallpaper, this wicker only made the room feel Jekyll-and-Hyde weird! The windows were smudgy and the garbage can was overflowing. On the floor by my feet, somebody had dumped a tray of fast-food trash. Greasy fries and ketchup smells lingered.

With nothing else to do, I played my favorite mind game. Tess the Fashion Fairy Godmother, that’s who I became. I imagined all the ways I would transform this room with my mighty invisible wand into something extraordinary, worthy of elegant people. A modern skirted sofa covered with ivory heart pillows and a set of triangular mirrors mounted behind it. Stiffel lamps with antiquey shades and a bamboo rack stacked with magazines—with
Vogue
front and center, of course.

Wham!
In the midst of my magic makeover, the automatic doors flew open. In shuffled an old man with a limp. A gust of frosty air followed.

The man wore a fur-lined hooded parka, zipped up to his chin. Watching him reminded me who lived here: old people.
Really
old. And if Ms. Hockley was the tallest woman in Schenectady, he was one of the smallest. Almost as small as Ma, and she says she’s two pinkies short of five feet.

The man sure had a strange walk. His right leg was stiff and swung in a small circle with every step. As soon as he got through the doors, he picked a wrapper off the floor.

When he saw me, his eyes darted down to the messy tray. “This place sure could use a field day,” he said sternly.

“Field day?” I asked.

“That’s navy lingo for scrubbing and cleaning up your mess here on deck,” he said, pointing to the floor.

“I didn’t leave that,” I said.

He glared at me like I’d cursed. “What if we all ignored trash, young lady? This place would be crawling with roaches and spreading germs to folks who already have weak immune systems!”

He pushed down his hood. His hair was buzzed in a crew cut, the color of a dull coin. He started reaching for the trash, but I bent down and grabbed it first. “I’ll clean it up, but it’s not mine. I swear.”

“Thank you kindly,” he said, sounding neither grateful nor kind. “Who are you here to visit?”

“I live here,” I mumbled. Even I still had a hard time believing it.

With that, he twisted his face and walked over to the mailboxes, swinging his bad leg with each step.

An hour later Ma and Jordan still hadn’t returned. I started writing a letter to Juanita, describing the bumpy trip to New York and my first day in school (equipped with a tall prison warden, a lousy locker, and a bigmouth redhead). But Juanita was sunshine in sneakers. I could just see her shiny lips beaming as she ripped open the envelope, and I didn’t have the heart to deliver gloomy news about the car accident and my embarrassing trip to the assistant principal’s office. I stuffed the letter in my backpack.

That’s when I looked up and saw them. White Hairs. Talking loud, laughing, teasing each other, and sporting trendy coats and accessories like they shopped in the juniors’ section at Target. One woman with glasses was wearing a glittery gold pompom hat and matching mittens. A thin Hispanic lady had on a sporty tweed peacoat with disco-style boots that came past her knees. Yet another old lady clomped in wearing a beret and the longest fake eyelashes I’d ever seen. That grouchy old guy with the limp was back, holding the door open as more of them arrived.

As I took in this senior fashion parade, a hefty black woman in a cheetah-print coat squeezed beside me on the love seat.

“Love those bracelets!”

I looked up. She was staring at the trio of brightly colored lanyard braids on my left wrist. I smiled. “Thanks. I made them.”

“Then you’ve got talent
and
good taste,” she said in a husky voice, like we’d been chatting for hours. “I heard Chief fussing at you before, from down the hall. Don’t mind him—that military stuff flows in his veins. Old nurses like me would code him a PIA, a pain in the—oh, you know what I mean.”

She had wide-set eyes that took everything in like a camera. Her plump cheeks were dusted with freckles.

“Chief?”

“Senior Chief Petty Officer Fred Morrow. Retired U.S. Navy. But just shout, ‘Yo, Chief!’ and he’ll hobble in your direction. He lost a leg in a snowmobile accident ten years back, not that it slows his step much.”

“Does he work here?”

She grinned. “You’d think so, wouldn’t ya? No, they’ve got staff, all right, though never when you need them. Chief just likes to help. Volunteering is in his blood, I guess. If he’s not picking up trash, he’s planting daffodil bulbs by the parking lot or running errands for neighbors. Stubborn as a rusty pump, but he means well.”

The lobby doors flew open again, and in came a man wearing a white smock, pushing a woman in a wheelchair who was holding a sleeping cat on her lap. The woman handed a key to Chief, who walked over to the mail center.

“Isn’t she a beauty?” the lady beside me whispered, pointing toward the wheelchair. “That’s Catherine. She’s over in Assisted
Living, and that’s her aide, Jack. Thirty years ago Catherine was hot stuff on Broadway. But with the MS eating away at her muscles, well, she’s trapped in that wheelchair, poor soul.”

The lady stood up and called, “Over here. What’s shakin’, girlfriend?”

Catherine smiled and waved. She had a milky, thin face with high cheekbones. Her hair was pulled back crisply in a bun. The cat on her lap opened its eyes and purred. Loud too. I could hear it from across the room. Right away I thought of Jordan.

“Are pets allowed here?” I asked. Back home Jordan had a turtle named Bandito. But Ma wouldn’t let him come along to New York. She’d read somewhere that officials didn’t take kindly to crossing state lines with reptiles that could carry diseases not native to the region. So the day before we left, we drove up to the Texas Hill Country and set Bandito free by a creek. Jordan cried and kicked the back of Ma’s seat the whole ride home.

“Official policy says no pets allowed. I say what harm is it for an old lady who can’t walk? Besides, if the manager made Catherine get rid of Rudy, why, he’d have a mutiny on his hands. Folks at Mohawk Valley Village aren’t your zipped-lips, rocking-chair kind of seniors.” She pointed toward two women and a man in the far end of the lobby. “Cal over there runs Tuesday-night poker in the lobby after the staff goes home. And Jessie and Veronica beside him lead a kickboxing class in the community room on Thursday afternoons. I hear it’s a real gut buster, not that I go. I’ve usually got an appointment with a bowl of ice cream around that time.”

I smiled. Ma would enjoy hearing about her passion for ice cream.

Maybe it was the lady’s pillowy body spread beside me, or the crowd filling up the lobby, but for the first time all day, I felt warm. She smelled cinnamon-sweet too. Like potpourri.

She lightly touched my knee. “What’s your name, pretty girl?”

“Tess Dobson. Just Tess.”

“Pleasure to meet you, then, Just Tess. I’m Winnie Lincoln. No relation to the president, but I like his politics,” she said, grinning. “You waiting for a relative?”

“No, ma’am. We just moved in. From San Antonio. My ma and my little brother and me.”

“You moved in
here
?” she said, shaking her head and making her purple earrings bobble.

I frowned.

“Forgive me, Tess, didn’t mean to make you feel bad. We’re delighted to have you and your family. And you’ll grow to enjoy this place.”

“You like it here?” I asked, staring at a thin crack in the window.

“I’d vote to knock this sorry old building down and build a new one, but the residents here, they’re good as gold. I’ve called the Mohawk Valley Village home since I retired from nursing twelve years ago, and there hasn’t been one dull day. Hollywood could make a reality show smack-dab in this lobby, with all the quirky characters we’ve got. Bet it would get high ratings, too!” she said, winking.

I wanted a place to call home too. But not this drab one decorated with zero style—and not with that Chief character as a neighbor.

Suddenly Winnie stood up, stuck her pinkie fingers to her mouth, and whistled.

“Listen up, gang! This sweet face belongs to Tess Dobson. Her family just moved in, and don’t anybody give ’em any grief. We’ll take a hearty welcome, though!”

Dozens of old folks looked over at me with curious expressions. Then they started clapping: soft, thumping claps on account of their gloves and mittens.

“What, you want to give Tess the impression that we’ve got low blood sugar or hypertension? Try that again, but with feeling!”

After a few laughs the lobby filled with applause. And cheers. And a loud, ear-piercing whistle like you hear at a rock concert—that came from Winnie.

I waved back, like a celebrity on a parade float.

Only one person didn’t clap. That crazy Chief.

A shrill gears-grinding sound came from outside, and soon all the seniors shuffled through the lobby doors.

“Better go. That’s the five o’clock Burger King–and–bingo bus. Last week’s winner took home an iPod Touch. Week before it was a giant plasma TV.” Winnie smiled and pulled her purple pocketbook strap over her shoulder. “Remember, Tess, old Winnie lives in number 132. Should you ever get locked out—well, you just buzz me.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Lincoln,” I said.

“It’s Winnie. The only person I made call me Mrs. Lincoln was a pesky HMO administrator. And Lord knows I can’t say what I called him.”

“Okay. Winnie,” I said softly with a grin.

Through the window I watched Chief help the bus driver load Catherine’s wheelchair, all the while swinging his artificial leg in circles.