“What kind of name is Willow anyway?” I ask as the room drifts into silence. The TV is on: a roundup of the day’s basketball games, but as is always the case during dinnertime, it’s on mute. I see scores flash by, replays of bank shots and alley-oops.
“Chris,” Heidi barks, as if I’d asked some kind of inappropriate question: her bra size or political affiliation. No one ever accused me of being shy. The irony, of course, is Heidi’s practice of interrogating me on my day, and yet allowing this stranger to sit at our kitchen table without knowing her vital statistics, a surname, whether or not she’s an escaped con.
“It’s just a question. I’m curious, that’s all. I’ve never heard the name. Not for a girl anyway.”
Maybe a tree.
“It’s a beautiful name. Like a Willow tree,” Heidi says, “graceful and lithe.”
“There’s a Willow in my earth science class,” Zoe states, her arrival in the conversation astounding us all. Almost as unexpected as if Willow herself opened her mouth and said something. “Willow Toler.” And then Zoe adds, “The boys call her Pussy,” and an awkward silence takes over the room. Again. All but for the damn black cat who attacks the exposed brick wall as if there are roaches living inside it.
“You have a last name, Willow?” I ask, and again with Heidi’s, “Chris!”
“Yes, sir,” she says quietly. There’s a kind of Arcadian simplicity to her, hidden there under the tough disguise. I can’t quite put my finger on it. A twang in her voice, or maybe it’s the fact that she said sir. I stare at her, plunging forkfuls of chicken potpie into her mouth, too much food in each bite. She nearly licks the plate clean and, without asking, Heidi dishes up another slice. She eats the insides of the pie first, saving the crust for the very end. Her favorite part. The part Heidi pulled from a box. Store bought.
She’s not eighteen. I know that much. But I don’t know how old she is. I tell myself she’s eighteen because that way, when the authorities show up at our front door, I can claim ignorance. But, sir, she told me she was eighteen. She smells better than she did hours ago, cleaned up and wearing Zoe’s castoff clothing. But she still looks like a vagabond, the messy eyeliner she painted on following her shower, the ersatz color of her hair. An earring hole, or two, that look infected, fingernails bitten to the quick. Eyes that are erratic, trying hard to escape my probe. The bruise that looms from behind the mantle of dyed hair.
“Care to share?”
“Chris. Please.”
The girl mutters something cryptic beneath her breath. I imagine words of a religious nature, trust and God. But when I ask her to repeat herself, she breathes out, “Greer.”
“What’s that?” I ask. A car alarm starts squawking out the still open window.
She repeats, louder this time, “My name is Willow Greer.”
Later, after we’re through with dinner and the dishes have been cleared, I write it down on the back of a receipt I pull from my wallet. So I won’t forget.
*
When I awake in the morning, there is sun. After days and days of clouds and rain, there’s something perplexing about the sun. It’s bright. Too bright.
My entire body is stiff. Like an old man’s. I can barely feel my hip. I roll over, onto my back, my right hand smacking the metal edge of the bed frame. All sorts of expletives run through my mind as I try to remember why I’m on the floor to begin with, why my now-aching hand is even close enough to accost the bed frame. I find myself on the not-so-soft boucle rug that lines Heidi’s and my bedroom floor, wrapped up in Zoe’s magenta sleeping bag.
And then I remember: sleeping on the floor at my own insistence that Zoe not be left alone in her bedroom for the night. Not when we had an outsider in the home. Heidi told me I was being ridiculous and offered to swap places with Zoe. But I said no. I wanted my flock where I could see them. All of them. Even the cats were allowed to stay, sealed in a locked bedroom across the hall from that girl, an extra chair buttressed beneath the door’s handle in case she tried to force her way in.