Who Do I Lean On? (14 page)

“Um, speaking of Harry, I missed you guys at church yesterday. Jodi said something about you needing to check up on your son.” I stirred some more powdered creamer into my coffee, trying to be casual. “I didn't realize you had a son. Is everything okay?”

For a few moments, Estelle busied herself banging trays around and pulling condiments out of the refrigerator. Then she sighed and came back to her coffee. “Oh, he's grown. Usually takes care of himself. But he's . . . where's that sugar?” She dumped twice as much sugar into her coffee as she normally used.

“What's his name?” I prompted.

“Leroy. After his daddy. But his daddy left when the doctors diagnosed the boy as schizophrenic
and
bipolar.” She reached for the sugar again, but I grabbed her hand. “Oh, right,” she said. “Already did that.” Estelle's chest rose and fell as she heaved a big sigh.

“So . . . is he okay?”

She shrugged. “As long as he takes his meds. But he's on disability and can't work. So he has too much time on his hands. Sometimes he gets rebellious, doesn't take his meds, and then . . . well.” She wagged her head. “Just help me pray for Leroy, Gabby.”

I wasn't going to let her off that easily. “And yesterday?”

She gave me a look. “You sure are nosy this morning.”

“Ha. Got a right to be. You know all
my
business, but turns out there's a whole lot about Estelle Williams I don't know. Like why you ended up here at Manna House in the first place.”

“Sometimes,” she murmured, “you just gotta keep goin' forward, not lookin' back . . .”

My own eyes caught the wall clock behind her head. “Rats! It's ten already. Staff meeting!” I grabbed my coffee and headed for the stairs. “You coming?”

Unlike the Manna House board meeting, where the pastors and businesspeople sat in a neat circle of chairs, the staff—both paid and volunteer—were sitting helter-skelter on any available surface in the schoolroom. I squeezed into a school desk. Josh Baxter jumped up and offered his chair to Estelle and leaned against the computer table. I saw him wink at Edesa across the room.

Huh. Newlyweds
.

Attendance at the Monday staff meeting usually fluctuated, depending on who was around that day. Today the room was surprisingly full—even Sarge, the blustery night manager who usually left when Mabel arrived, had stayed. When I raised my eyebrows at her, she threw up her hands. “Got to put in my two bits about the name for the multipurpose room, no?”

Naming the multipurpose room! I'd forgotten that was coming up today.

“Which is first on the agenda today,” Mabel said. “Everybody here?” She offered an opening prayer, surprisingly short for Mabel, and got down to business. “As you all know from last week, several people have suggested we name the multipurpose room in memory of Martha Shepherd, known to most of our residents as ‘Gramma Shep.'”

Chuckles and nods skipped around the room.

“Do I take that as agreement for naming the room in memory of Gabby's mother?” Mabel asked.

This time there was a chorus of “Aye!” and “Yes!” Precious, there as a volunteer, piped up, “Better be, or we gonna have a mutiny on our hands among the residents.” Everyone laughed.

“All right. Suggestions for the actual name?”

Ideas flew. Everyone liked the idea of including my mom's last name—
Shepherd
—in the name, because of its double meaning of Jesus being the Good Shepherd. But then the discussion got sticky.
The Martha Shepherd Room
? Too formal. “What about Shepherd's Crook?” Precious said. “Ain't that the stick thing the Good Shepherd carries, ya know, with that hook thing on the end?”

Estelle wagged her head. “Uh-uh. You know whatever name we come up with, it's gonna get shortened to something. You want us to be calling that room ‘The Crook'?”

That got a laugh.

“Could call it The Crook an' Cranny,” Sarged quipped. “That's how we shoehorn people in here, into every crook and cranny!”

“That's ‘Nook and Cranny,' Sarge,” someone snickered, amid general laughter.

Shepherd's Nook
? Some people liked that one. “It sounds cozy,” Angela Kwon said, twirling a lock of straight black hair around a finger. Others protested that “Nook” didn't have any connection to “Shepherd.”

“What about Shepherd's Fold, then?” Edesa Baxter suggested. “
Mi tío—
my uncle—in Honduras raises sheep. That is what he calls the sheds where he pens the sheep safely for the night. Kind of like a shelter.”

I liked that. A shelter for the sheep. So did several others— though “The Fold” for short didn't have the snappy ring to it that “The Nook” did.

A few other suggestions were made, but we kept coming back to Shepherd's Fold. Josh raised his hand. “We could have a little plaque on the wall that says, ‘Shepherd's Fold . . . In Memory of Martha Shepherd' or something.”

Heads nodded. Mabel said, “Everyone agreed?”

“Bueno! Bueno!
” Sarge gloated. “Though could somebody get me one of those shepherd's crooks to use on the pesky stragglers that keep comin' in at ten past eight every night.
Capiche
?”

The room broke into laughter. But my eyes misted as Mabel prayed a prayer of blessing on the new name for the multipurpose room. I couldn't wait to tell Aunt Mercy and my sisters. I hoped my sisters would be pleased. I knew my mother would be.

Mabel stood after her “Amen.” “I hope you all don't mind cutting staff meeting short today. I have a dentist appointment.” She made a face and pointed to her cheek. “Cracked my tooth yesterday eating caramel corn with Jermaine.”

“Works for me.” I wiggled my way out of the tight school desk. “I have to go pick up P.J. at Lane Tech. But this is the next-to-last time, I promise! School starts in two weeks!”

I managed to get out the door right on the heels of Mabel and Estelle just before traffic snarled behind me as everyone tried to scoot out the schoolroom door at the same time. But that's how I overheard Mabel murmur to Estelle, “Is Leroy all right? Did the fire damage your house too much?”

chapter 12

Fire
? At Estelle's house? Estelle had
a house
?

I had to run out to pick up P.J., or I would have followed Estelle then and there. What was Mabel talking about? None of this computed. If Estelle had a house, why had she ended up a resident at Manna House? And now she was sharing an apartment with Leslie Stuart on the second floor of the Baxters' two-flat.

I hurried back to the shelter after picking up P.J. from cross-country practice, hoping to talk to Estelle before the lunch crunch hit. But by the time I checked on Paul, who was doing his volunteer thing playing Ping-Pong with a handful of kids in the rec room, Estelle was hollering orders at her two assistants who had pulled lunch prep on the residents' chore chart. “Tawny! Turn those burgers over! No, no, not with a fork . . . Wanda, show that girl where the spatula is!”

“Mi? Mi? How do mi know where dat ting is? . . . Ohh.
Dat
ting.”

Decided this wasn't a good time to have a heart-to-heart with Estelle. I'd catch her later. But I felt a tad sorry for the new girl, Tawny, who scurried like a mouse trying to stay out of the way of the big cats. Both Wanda and Estelle were large women, and Wanda's Jamaican
patois
wasn't so easy to understand.

Unlocking my office door, I glanced back at the girl in the kitchen, now flipping burgers on the hot stove-top grill.
Tawny
. . . she'd been aptly named. The teenager's skin was fawn-colored, her long bushy hair—barely covered by the ugly hairnet—a fusion of brown, tan, and gold rivulets. Hard to tell what her ethnicity was. Mabel said she'd been dumped out of the foster-care system when she turned eighteen, even though she didn't have her high school diploma yet. But the girl had
chutzpah
, turning up at Jodi's typing class twice now, saying she wanted to get her GED, maybe even go to college.

I slipped into my office and turned on the computer.
Still, she's just a kid . . . a kid with no home, no parents apparently .
. . As I waited for the computer to boot up, I looked around at the excess of stuffed toy dogs still piled on every available surface in my office, left at the shelter after Dandy had made himself a “hero dog” by attacking a burglar and getting himself knife-wounded in the process. Chicago loved heroes, even dog heroes. We'd given away most of the stuff left by well-wishers, but kept the stuffed animals to give to children who ended up in the shelter.

I picked up a soft black dog with floppy ears and a pink ribbon around its neck.
Would Tawny . .
. ?

I never did get a chance to talk to Estelle that Monday. Forgot she taught a sewing class on Mondays, even though I'd donated my one and only sewing machine to the effort. She was busy at the far end of the dining room helping the three ladies who showed up how to lay out a pattern for a simple apron when I left with Paul at two o'clock. And I took the boys shopping that afternoon for school clothes at Woodfield Mall, “Chicago's Largest Shopping Center.” I figured a big mall with lots of stores would be a safe bet to find what the boys needed for school, and we'd be back in time for supper and a quiet evening when I could call Estelle.

What I didn't figure on was just how long it took to get to “Chicago's Largest Shopping Center” from the north side. Schaumberg, it turned out, was way out past O'Hare Airport, past a half-dozen suburbs, past a huge forest preserve, and traffic on I-90 was already starting to creep with homebound traffic. It was almost four o'clock by the time we parked and found our way around the mall.

As far as I was concerned, one big department store should've been able to cough up the necessary gym shoes, socks, jeans, shirts, and underwear for two boys. But no, they wanted to check out all the specialty teen shops too. P.J. had shot up at least three inches in the past year, faster than he could wear out his clothes. They'd probably be just right for Paul, I mused, as the boys tried on the latest Gap jeans . . . but it didn't seem fair for P.J. to get all the new clothes while Paul wore hand-me-downs. And both boys were going to need winter jackets and boots, though I held off on those. Good grief, it was still eighty degrees outside! Chicago's deep freeze would definitely be different from Virginia's mild winters, but maybe Philip could help buy some of the big-ticket items for the boys. Something to talk about when we talked . . .

If
we talked.

Which reminded me, maybe I should talk to Estelle about Philip, get a second opinion about whether I should talk to him. Then maybe I wouldn't seem so nosy if I said, oh by the way, I heard Mabel say something about your son and a fire at your house?

I parked myself on a bench when the boys got diverted by a video game arcade and called Estelle's cell, but only got voice mail and had to leave a brief message.

The boys wanted to eat at the Rainforest Cafe at the mall, billed as “A Wild Place to Shop & Eat.” It was wild all right, and I don't mean just the simulated rainstorms with thunder, lightning, rainbows, and animated wildlife in the “trees” hanging over the tables that punctuated our supper of Lava Nachos, Rainforest Burgers (the boys), Rasta Pasta (me), and lemonade. A gazillion other families must have had the same idea to “shop Woodfield” that day, and the place was full of kids on too much sugar.

By the time we got back to the car with our bulging packages, I had a splitting headache and a bulging balance on my new Visa card. The light was blinking on the answering machine when we walked in the door of the apartment, but I didn't bother to listen to the messages before falling into bed. Probably Estelle calling back. Right now I didn't want to talk about Philip or anything. Whatever it was could wait.

I should have listened to the messages.

Prying my eyes open with my first cup of coffee the next morning, I pushed the Play button and got the first beep. “Hey, Gabby. Jodi here. Just checking in to see if you're okay. I want you to know I'm praying for wisdom about you-know-what. And a sense of peace too. Love you!”
Sweet
. At least she wasn't mad at me for walking out on her at church on Sunday. And smart enough not to mention what she was praying about in case the boys checked the messages before I did. I should've called her first . . . well, I'd do it today.

Philip's voice caught me up short as the next message beeped. “Gabrielle, please pick up if you're there. Can we get together like I mentioned last Saturday? What about four o'clock this Friday? Before I pick up the boys. Can we meet somewhere? Let me know.”

Now my eyes were wide open. I quickly glanced at the boys' bedroom doors that opened on the hallway, hoping they hadn't heard. Both still closed. I hit Delete before the next message played. Didn't want the boys to know Philip had asked me to talk in case I decided not to. What did he
want
? He was polite enough on the phone message. Actually, he'd been pretty decent when he dropped the boys off on Saturday. Even offered to follow me so I could take the rental car back and have a ride home. Or was that a first attempt to have “the talk”? Just him and me in the Lexus on the way back from the rental car place—