The more she compromises, the less any of those tenets can last.
She did something illegal today. They have all her information.
She might as well enjoy a nice meal before she has to start worrying about that.
She hurries home, the scent of hot fries and oil so tempting that she eats a fistful right out of the bag. Back when she worked at the diner, she’d bring home food every night, save her lunch to bring home for Chelsea, too. The taste of fries melting on her tongue takes her back to a life of few resources and fewer pleasures, where every day was a fight and it felt like she was constantly losing ground.
It feels like that again.
First Randall, then the money, and one day soon the house and possibly her freedom.
How low the mighty have fallen.
She barks a laugh as she pulls into the garage. The thing about having nothing is that you have nothing to lose and therefore you don’t really give a shit about anything. She can’t imagine what she might say if Karen called about the auction now—
No, wait. She can. It would be magnificent.
There would be exquisite usage of the word fuck and explicit descriptions of where Karen could shove her cellophane and ribbons. Good thing they already kicked her out.
This time when she enters the house, Patricia doesn’t just bustle into the kitchen with her hands full of bags and her mind elsewhere. This time, she leaves the bags in the front seat of her car and opens the door cautiously, calling, “Brooklyn?”
“Hi, Nana!” Brooklyn runs over from the couch. “I was so, so good. What did you bring me?”
Just a few weeks ago, Patricia would’ve considered this rude and assumptive, even for a five-year-old. Now she’s just grateful the kid is conscious and not trying to take another chunk out of her leg. And, to be fair, every time she’s left, she’s brought back something her granddaughter wanted.
“I went to McDonald’s. Do you like—”
“A Happy Meal? That’s my favorite!” Brooklyn screeches. This time when she runs at Patricia, it’s to throw her arms around her waist and hug her, hard. “I haven’t had a Happy Meal in a million years!”
Hyperbole, Patricia thinks.
She’s just a kid, Patty snaps, vicious even as an interior voice. Let her enjoy something, for chrissakes.
Funny that Patty’s voice would favor the child when Patty herself never liked children and wouldn’t have defended Chelsea in the same manner. That’s one thing both sides of her can agree on, at least: Brooklyn is to be protected at all costs.
She fetches the bags from the car, then sneaks off to her bathroom for a Percocet to dull the pain, as her anesthetic has completely worn off. They eat together at the kitchen table in a bright patch of sun. It’s wonderful. Patricia has had meals that cost as much as an entire year’s pay at the diner, including tips. She’s had wine that’s older than some countries and that costs more than her car. And it was lovely, certainly. But it can’t really compete with warm, oily, salty food now that she’s hit bottom, so depleted and reduced.
Brooklyn eats her nuggets and plays with the little plastic doodad that came in the box and jabbers on about her television show, and, too exhausted to protest, Patricia actually…listens. She realizes she’s never listened to her own granddaughter before, just viewed her as an interruption, an abstract annoyance to be corrected and guided. She watches Brooklyn as she chatters, notes that the little girl is wearing a plastic tiara with a corner broken off and a velvet dance costume with a spangled skirt.
“Do you like to dance?” she asks.
Brooklyn stops mid-sentence and cocks her head like a little bird. “Yes, Nana! I told you—I was watching Vampirina, and she was doing ballet, and she got stage fright, so I wanted to dance, too, because I’m not scared of anything, so I went to get my costume.”
Motes of dust—dust? In her house? Yes, fuck it, because there’s no one else to do the dusting—just that thought tells her the Percocet is kicking in—dance in the sun as she stares at this tiny, glowing, golden being as if for the first time. She wishes she could count the child’s fingers and toes like she did when she was first born, inhale that sweet baby scent and pause to appreciate the preciousness unfurling. She’s barely seen Brooklyn, all these years, has somehow missed out on baby laughs and rolling over and first steps and first parade and the chance to sneak a spoonful of ice cream into an open baby bird mouth and watch her face explode in understanding of how sweet the world can be. She wasn’t able to appreciate all that with Chelsea—she was too busy making the money to keep them from being homeless, told herself she was doing the more important work—and now she’s somehow managed to let it pass by with both of her granddaughters.
What the hell was she so busy with all that time, anyway?
All the money in the world, no reason to work, and yet when anyone asked her how she was, she proudly answered, “Busy.”
Like it was a badge of honor. Like it meant something.
“Do you know how to dance?” Brooklyn asks her.
Lord, that takes her back.
“No, but I wish I did,” she answers with perfect honesty.
She asked her mother for ballet lessons when she was little, after seeing ballerinas in a library book on The Nutcracker, and Mama told her dance was the devil’s way of getting into little girls’ bodies. She hasn’t thought about that in years. She’s always had an excuse for Randall regarding why she refused to use their yearly subscription tickets to The Nutcracker at the local theater, but she’s never really poked around too hard under that rock to figure out why she never wanted to go.
“Come on, I’ll show you!”
Brooklyn seems to talk entirely in exclamation points, as if everything that’s happening is the best thing that’s ever happened. It’s gotten on Patricia’s nerves before, but now she sees it as a boon. How lovely it must be, to walk through life like that, constantly delighted by whatever is happening. Not that the child can’t be persnickety—heaven help everyone around her if she gets bored or too hungry—but what else could anyone expect from a little thing like her? Her natural state is delight.
As Patricia stands and takes the hand Brooklyn holds out to her, not flinching at the grains of salt and light stickiness of ketchup, she tries to remember Chelsea at this age. It’s hard—that year was tricky. She was too old for baby classes and slightly too young for kindergarten, which meant preschool was far too expensive and nobody wanted to watch her all day and answer all her questions. They went through several daycares, but even Patricia had to acknowledge that her daughter wasn’t treated well in them; something about this age almost invites abuse, as the child’s constant questions and need for attention tends to infuriate adults who don’t have a reason to care. Chelsea was a serious child, as if she was always thinking of something. She was an old soul in a young body, mature and quiet and responsible for her age.