Almost Crimson Read online

  Two stops later, CeCe finally stood in a checkout lane, frustrated that she hadn’t driven out to the fabric store in the first place. As she left the register, her cell phone chimed. Looking down at the display screen, CeCe smiled for the first time all day.

  “Doris!” she said, slipping sideways past two women blocking the automatic door with their baskets and chatter.

  “Kiddo!” Doris replied, the edges of her voice still crumbling from decades of menthol cigarettes. CeCe had met Doris in the smoker’s garden, a landscaped corner exclusively for mall employees. CeCe’s smoking habit lasted less than three months, but her enchantment with Doris, a spirited middle-aged Jewish woman, would last beyond the years they worked at the mall. Even with Doris all the way in Florida, CeCe felt a welcome, comforting warmth at the sound of her friend’s voice.

  CeCe had worked at Hip Pocket, selling designer jeans to bony teenage girls and metrosexual college boys. At the other end of the mall, Doris hawked dishwashers and deep freezers at Sears. The two adopted each other straightaway, shifting their midpoint meetings from the smokers’ garden to the food court. They ate lunch together every day for four years. A year after CeCe had left Hip Pocket and landed her current job, Doris had announced her move to Florida.

  “You’re taking a break from your sexy senior singles bingo game to call me?” CeCe teased, angling her car key into its lock.

  “Honey, I told you I’m only hanging with the cool old ladies,” Doris replied with a laugh, “and we do not do bingo.”

  CeCe could imagine Doris’ head tilting back to let that enormous laugh escape, her eyeglass chain glinting in the sunlight. Doris once confessed that her silver chain gave her an edge over the other sales reps because it implied “grandmotherly wisdom.”

  “My bad,” CeCe said, attaching her Bluetooth before turning over the Lincoln’s engine. “How are the cool grannies doing? Did Maddie get her driver’s license back?”

  Doris told CeCe about the gossip and shenanigans of her retirement community and CeCe told Doris about wanting to lock Margolis in the copy room. CeCe drove the long way home as they talked. They still were chatting incessantly by the time CeCe snaked through the labyrinth of duplexes and four-unit apartments buildings and stretched her car beneath the carport.

  “What were you doing out?” Doris asked.

  “Mama needed green yarn,” CeCe said.

  Doris let out another laugh, smaller this time. “Of course she did,” she said. “Hey, can you get me from the airport tomorrow around ten forty-five?”

  CeCe agreed, and the day’s irritations melted away.

  FOUR

  THURSDAYS

  CECE PLAYED IN THE COURTYARD while the lady with scuffed brown shoes talked inside with her mother. She lay on the wrought-iron bench, the front of her body dimpled by the hard lattice pattern. CeCe hung her head over the end of the bench to watch her sundress pucker through the spaces. Shuffling and scooting to align the print patterns on her dress with the crosshatch of the bench, CeCe didn’t hear the screen door or the brown shoe footsteps. Just a voice.

  “Do you mind if I join you?”

  CeCe raised herself with a jump. She knew better than to let a stranger get so close to her. Snapping upright, CeCe could see that the voice belonged to Scuff Shoes. She relaxed a little. Scuff Shoes was technically a stranger, but had been talking with her mother for a long time now. CeCe edged to one side of the bench and smoothed the front of her dress. She watched the woman cautiously.

  “What were you looking at?” she asked CeCe.

  “My dress.”

  “What does is look like under there?” Scuff looked down to assess the bench.

  “Waffles,” CeCe said matter-of-factly.

  “Waffles?” Scuff repeated, raising her eyebrows. “Clever girl, Crimson. Clever girl.”

  Scuff was a stocky woman, sausaged into a maroon skirt suit. CeCe could see the bulge of her trying to leap from behind the buttoned shirt and blazer. Scuff introduced herself as Tanya Boylin, a social services agent who came to make sure CeCe would be enrolled for school.

  “Like the big kids?” CeCe asked, wrinkling her nose and letting her heavy plaits pull her head to one side. She was the youngest person in the complex, but watched the older kids head off with their books and satchels.

  “Crimson,” Boylin continued, with a chuckle. “You are a big kid. That means you get to go to school, too.”

  CeCe felt her insides tingle. Some lost inner layer begin to warm.

  School.

  “Am I going to school tomorrow?” CeCe asked, hopping down from the bench.

  “Not tomorrow,” Boylin said, smiling as she hoisted one thick leg over the other. “School isn’t open yet, Crimson, but it will be soon. We want to make sure you’re ready for the first day.”

  “How many Thursdays?” CeCe asked.

  “Thursdays?” Boylin repeated, her cheery smile fading. “Do you mean how many weeks?”

  “Thursdays,” CeCe corrected, pulling her own short legs onto the bench and crossing her ankles into a pretzel. After a moment, CeCe remembered Mrs. Castellanos and tugged at her sundress to cover her panties. “I don’t want to miss school when it opens, so I have to count my Thursday tabs.”

  Boylin regarded CeCe for a long time, reading her rounded, pecan features as if doing some kind of ancient calculations. Finally she asked, “Would you mind showing me your tabs, Crimson?”

  Without another word, CeCe returned her sneakered feet to the dusty ground and headed toward the apartment door. Boylin followed. Carla sat with her arms folded atop their kitchen table, staring into a cup of coffee. She didn’t look up when CeCe and Boylin walked by, but CeCe hadn’t expected her to.

  In the bedroom CeCe and Carla shared, she moved to stand beside a wall calendar from a neighborhood deli. “If you want the best, buy your meat from Burgess!” was scripted across the top with a photo of the butcher store’s front window. Boylin commented that she passed the shop all the time when she came to visit other little kids in CeCe’s neighborhood.

  The complimentary calendar, with tear-pad sheets for each month, was from the previous year. December 1975 was the only square sheet still fastened to the thick cardboard. The rigid calendar sat on a slim strip of wall between the bed and the tall chest of drawers. Dangling from the same single nail holding the outdated calendar was a long chain of soda can tabs.

  There was a blue milk crate on the floor in the corner. Boylin slowly entered the room as CeCe pulled out the crate and climbed on top. She still had to stretch her arms to reach a handle-less coffee cup resting on the otherwise bare dresser top. CeCe hooked her tiny wrists to the edge of this mammoth pine chest, her hands patient and relaxed as Boylin moved in closer.

  “I have this many Thursdays,” CeCe said, tipping the coffee cup toward Boylin to show its content of soda can pull tabs.

  “Can you tell me about this cup and the Thursdays, Crimson?” Boylin asked, perplexed.

  CeCe teetered on the blue crate to turn and face the nail in the wall, holding its outdated calendar and chain of soda pop tabs. CeCe was careful as a schoolteacher as she explained how she moved the tabs from the cup to the wall every Thursday, after walking with Mrs. Castellanos to the store for her lottery tickets and small groceries.

  “When I have only one left, then I’ll know to get ready for Santa,” CeCe said, tapping the chain absently. Watching it swing, CeCe turned to Boylin, eyes wide with a sudden realization. “Do you know about Santa Claus?”

  Boylin smiled and confirmed that, indeed, she knew all about Santa Claus.

  “How did you hear about him?” Boylin asked.

  “Ms. Cas-teanose.”

  “Mrs. Castellanos?”

  CeCe nodded.

  “She told me all about Santa after I missed him last time.”

  “You missed him, honey?” Boylin asked, amusement fading from her eyes.

  “Mmmhmm,” Cece replied, giving a small nod. “And he only comes
one time every year, y’know.”

  “You make sure you ask for your mama’s permission before you eat this, dulce,” Mrs. Castellanos said each week before handing CeCe her weekly salary of fruit punch soda and a Chick-O-Stick for helping with her grocery bags.

  “OK,” CeCe said. They both knew CeCe’s mother never heard about the treats.

  CeCe enjoyed Mrs. Castellanos. She knew lots of songs and made up smart games. She had sat next to CeCe one day in the courtyard when she was four and stayed her friend ever since. CeCe didn’t have any other friends, since the other kids were so much older and she and her mother didn’t know any other kids. CeCe only waved at Mrs. Castellanos for a long time. When she introduced herself to CeCe, offering to read her a story the next day, CeCe had been thrilled.

  Mrs. Castellanos read stories in her decorated accent, still waxed heavy with Puerto Rican roots. Sometimes, CeCe would play quietly on the bench next to her while Mrs. Castellanos read a newspaper. One week she didn’t meet CeCe out in the courtyard and CeCe thought she had somehow made her friend angry.

  “Last Thursday was Christmas,dulce,” Mrs. Castellanos said, squatting next to CeCe on the dusty ground next to the bench. “Don’t you remember when Santa came to visit?”

  CeCe pinched her face together trying to remember a visit.

  Mrs. Castellanos gasped a little. “Dulce CeCe, you didn’t get anything from Santa for Christmas?” she asked.

  CeCe shook her head slowly, beginning to wonder if she was in trouble somehow. She didn’t know anything about this Claus.

  CeCe sat with her friend until lunchtime, until CeCe’s stomach was empty and her mind full of images of happy, fat men hauling around gifts with her name on them. Mrs. Castellanos told her good little girls were allowed to send their wishes to Santa, too. Having her mother back was CeCe’s number one wish. Roller skates was her second.

  “When is he coming back?” CeCe asked.

  “We’ve got a ways to go, dulce,” Mrs. Castellanos said, watching the cloud fill the child’s face. “Christmas is always December twenty-fifth and that was only one week ago. We have to wait until next year.”

  CeCe considered.

  “How long is that?”

  “A year?” Mrs. Castellanos asked. “One year is the same as fifty-two weeks, dulce.”

  CeCe thought some more.

  “Is that soon?”

  Mrs. Castellanos took in a breath and thought. She crossed arms across her massive breasts and drummed her fingertips until an idea came to her.

  “On Thursday when we walk to the store, that will be one week,” she had said. “And the next Thursday will be another week—”

  “—And after . . . fifty-two Thursdays Santa will come back?” CeCe chimed.

  Mrs. Castellanos beamed. “Yes, dulce.”

  “Is fifty-two a long time?”

  “It can feel like a long time sometimes, dulce,” Mrs. Castellanos laughed.

  Ms. Boylin now sat on the hard, square bed, facing CeCe and her rudimentary calendar. She could see now that December 25, 1975, had been circled.

  “Did you do this, Crimson?”

  “No,” she said, unsettling her thick plaits with a shake. “Mama showed me where Christmas was after I told her about Santa. I don’t think she knew about him either, because she cried about missing him, too.”

  “And, so, you count the Thursdays with this chain so you and your mama won’t miss Santa, is that right, Crimson?”

  Another rattle of braids.

  “How many Thursdays are left in the cup?

  “Thirty-three.”

  “How many Thursdays are on the chain?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “That was a lot of fruit punch, huh?” Boylin said, with a wink.

  CeCe ducked her head with a grin.

  “You’re a very bright girl to have figured this out all by yourself,” Ms. Boylin said.

  CeCe released her second broad smile of the morning. “Ms. Cas-teanose calls me ‘bright,’ too,” she said. “I like it. Makes me feel like I have magic inside.”

  “Sweetheart, you do have magic inside you. You absolutely do.”

  CeCe returned to the courtyard bench while Ms. Boylin spoke with her mother again. She tried to press all of Ms. Boylin’s words against her memory: bus stop, state law, gifted class, private school, scholarship, development, future, foster care. CeCe could tell these were all serious words, but she knew her mother wouldn’t hear any of them. She had to remember.

  Ms. Boylin came outside and walked to Cece on the bench. When she spoke, Cece was taken in by the warmth of her hazel eyes. Her lashes were long and her lips glistened pink. She had a tiny mole on her left temple, which CeCe hadn’t noticed before. She wondered if all the extra nice grown-ups had moles.

  “It was very nice to meet you, Crimson,” she said. “I’m going to see you again in a week to make sure you’re all ready for school, and then I’m going to see you again the week after that to tell you all about your class. We’ll even make sure you have a new dress. How do you like that?”

  CeCe beamed her approval.

  “Will Mama get a new dress, too?” she asked after a moment.

  “No, Crimson,” Ms. Boylin said. “Only big kids like you can go to kindergarten. Grown-ups like me and your mama aren’t allowed anymore.”

  CeCe’s face began to cloud with a realization.

  “She’s gonna be all by herself?” CeCe asked. “The Sad doesn’t let her remember stuff so good.”

  “Your mama’s sad a lot, isn’t she, Crimson?”

  CeCe’s braids rocked forward and back slowly.

  “Does that make you scared?”

  Side to side with the braids. Boylin grinned a little.

  “You’re a brave girl, Crimson. I tell you what, though, things are going to get better around here for you and your mother, OK? We’re going to get you into school with other bright children, and we’re also going to get someone to help your mother get rid of her sadness. How does that sound?”

  CeCe felt a slow smile stretch between her ears.

  “Like Christmas,” she said.

  FIVE

  SQUISH

  DORIS STOOD OUT LIKE A neon light amid the crowd of travelers jockeying for curb space. She was easy to spot, with her inflated ash-streaked hair, Christmas-red lips, and a face-eating brooch that Doris had pinned high on her shoulder instead of her lapel. She had always reveled in becoming a caricature of herself.

  They embraced, young woman and old, before CeCe lowered Doris’ overnight bag into the trunk.

  “That’s all?” CeCe said, standing by Doris’ passenger door.

  “I only needed my thong and a toothbrush,” Doris said.

  “No,” CeCe laughed. “No. I do not approve.”

  “Stop being a hater,” Doris said.

  They cruised along the expressway, chatting about Doris’ twins, now married, and CeCe’s mother, now compelled by crafts projects at the independent living center. Dr. Harper told CeCe her mother responded well to the mixed company of the center, not just depressives. CeCe was about to ask for any updates on mall gossip when Doris interrupted.

  “Get off on Parker,” she said.

  “What? No dim sum from the Emperor’s Throne?” CeCe said.

  Doris smiled. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  Doris’ turn-by-turn directions carried them beyond the shopping center to a residential neighborhood of bungalows. CeCe parked in front of a gray house with lavender trim.

  “Cute house,” CeCe said. “You used to live out here, right?”

  “Yep, right here,” Doris said, looking past CeCe at the house.

  CeCe parked on the curb and followed Doris up the walkway of flat granite circles. A black sedan was parked in the driveway and Doris stooped to brazenly peer inside. They continued past the empty car and reached the porch. CeCe was surprised when Doris pushed open the front door without even ringing the bell first.

  CeCe hadn’t expected to
find the house empty. She knew Doris had always hated the idea of renting this little house to strangers, and remembered listening to her friend complain about the “trolls and cavemen” she’d been interviewing as tenants. She had asked CeCe to move in, but CeCe couldn’t afford the rent and hadn’t had transportation to get herself and her mother around from this end of the city. Now, her friend’s tenant had skipped out on her. CeCe had witnessed plenty of couches, lamps, and laundry baskets filled with clothes sneaking away in the middle of the night in the final years at her and her mother’s old apartment.

  CeCe closed the door behind them as Doris’ soft-sole shoes squished across the hardwood floor to the oversized window overlooking the back yard. CeCe knew how much Doris loved this little house. It had been a victory for her in every possible way: engineering a divorce from her philandering husband of nearly twenty years, and stumbling into an intimate clique of socialites who paid her handsomely to clean their condos and, ultimately, provide a bit of homespun therapy while they hunted for the next prenuptial agreement. Doris had bought this house, her first, with part of what she earned from the Ladies, as she called them. She never gave CeCe hard numbers, but CeCe had long estimated that Doris’ job at Sears was simply for insurance and rainy-day money. She’d purchased other properties, her condo in Florida and homes for her sons, but this one was special, and CeCe was saddened for her friend.

  CeCe fiddled awkwardly with her keys, not sure if Doris would want space or a hug. She watched Doris take in a slow, deep breath before turning around. Her face was full of light and whimsy.

  “Take a look around, kiddo,” Doris said with a smile. “I gotta go see a man about a horse.”

  “I’m a ranch hand now?” a man’s voice called from the kitchen.