“Yes. He’s blond. I have no idea who stopped by in an Audi.”
“So did her dad apologize for blaming you?” I said.
“No. He just shook Tanner and asked him why he hadn’t said anything earlier.”
The hospital wanted to let Izzy out after she was “stabilized.” Izzy’s parents convinced them she was a danger to herself and if anything happened to her, they’d sue the hell out of every doctor, nurse, and roll of toilet paper in the building. Then Izzy’s mom called all the residential rehab places on Long Island, trying to bribe them to open up a bed for her daughter.
“It’s easier to find a friggin’ trap house on Long Island than a rehab bed,” Alice said.
She was probably right.
Jean brought brownies to Gordie’s basement, where Alice sat in a movie theater chair with a washcloth on her head. Val had laid it there, insisting her mother cured everything with a damp washcloth.
“I cannot deal with the lying and bullshitting anymore,” Alice said. She took off the washcloth and bit into the brownie Val was holding up to her mouth. “It makes me sick. It’s so obvious that the more normal she acts, the more full of shit she is.”
“She’s going to be okay now, Alice,” Val said. “They just need to get her into a rehab place. They’re gonna know how to help her.”
Alice laughed.
“Hector checked Izzy’s drug buddy out of rehab and escorted her right back to the trap house. He’s quite the gentleman, that Hector.”
Val repositioned the cool washcloth on Alice’s forehead and covered her with a Princeton blanket, one of the many Ivy League fleece throws Gordie’s family had collected from the older Harris brothers.
We settled into our designated chairs with the brownies, lattes from the latte machine, and a list of potential NeighborCare candidates.
Gordie pulled up NeighborCare.com. We started with Ella. Her fund-raising had stalled permanently. Even with the local Alabama news story, they hadn’t reached $200.
“She’s so cute I want to cry,” Val said. “Look at her two bottom teeth sticking out.” Alice lifted the washcloth to check out baby Ella.
“I don’t get how people always say ‘pray for us,’ like prayers are going to help,” mumbled Alice.
I leaned over and whispered, “Okay, voodoo priestess.” Alice glared.
“What?” Val said, looking back and forth between Alice and me in confusion. We pretended not to notice.
“Prayers help, I promise you that,” Jean said.
“Okay, guys, can we figure this out? I feel like we’ve been dragging our asses so much we’re going to be ninety-seven when we decide what to do with the canaries,” I said.
First on the list: Ella, baby, Alabama, child of lizard. Next was Jean’s suggestion, a Haitian mother of six from Boynton Beach, Florida, who found space in her heart and home for special-needs foster children. Then came Marigold, a five-year-old with a rare form of bone cancer. And Mrs. K, a teacher from Alaska who was trying to raise $20,000 to start a safe home for teen prostitutes.
It was hard to explain how we landed on the pages and unanimously voted yes, over and over again. When I was home, searching through hundreds of NeighborCare.com profiles, trying to find the people Mr. Upton would have approved of, it was nearly impossible. But with Jean and Gordie and Val and Alice—as out of sorts as she was—it was swift and harmonious. It was as if Mr. Upton was there to guide us from beyond the grave.
We decided four was enough for our pilot run.
“Okay, we have our list. Gordie, work your magic,” I said, dusting crumbs off my cramped legs.
We sat for hours, vetting each person by stalking them, their friends, their families on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other websites. Gordie did his computer genius investigating, dug out valid addresses, made sure all the candidates were airtight, or as airtight as anyone could be through the murky portals of cyberspace.
We ate our weight in brownies, popcorn, and leftover three-bean salad from the main kitchen. We drank volumes of lattes.
And then we were done, and I felt at peace with our plan.
We sat for a minute, wondering what to do with ourselves now that the burden had been lifted.
“I think we should dump the lizard’s suitcase,” Gordie said.
“Why?” I said, surprised.
“I don’t know. It’s sitting there in your closet for what? Why are we keeping the creepy silk bathrobe and shit?”
I felt unsettled. I hadn’t thought about throwing away any of it. It seemed sacred in some strange, twisted way. But maybe Gordie was right. Maybe Mr. Upton should have dumped the suitcase a long time ago. Maybe it would have given him closure.
“We should bury it somewhere. Or burn it. That would be fun,” Jean said.
“Why are we wasting our time on this?” Gordie said, marching over to the basement kitchen. He rummaged around under the sink and pulled out a box of heavy-duty trash bags. “Come on. Let’s do this.”
We caravanned to my house and parked out front. Val and I tiptoed up to my room, took out the contents of the suitcase, piece by piece, feeling the seams and the pockets to make sure we hadn’t missed any stray canaries. Then we dumped it all into trash bags. His expensive dapper suits. His robe. His collection of women’s hairpins.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t smoke one of the cigarettes? Just to see what an antique cigarette tastes like?” Jean said as we loaded the garbage bags and the empty suitcase into the backseat of the Range Rover. Val made a face, grabbed the cigarettes out of his hand, and dumped them in the bag.
I secured Andy and his canaries in the garment bag, then rode with Gordie to the dumpster behind the supermarket, where he hurled in the empty suitcase with the Nova Scotia stickers and the two heaping trash bags, and we drove away. I thought about my original plan, to donate the suitcase to the Smithsonian, but Gordie was right. That suitcase and all the memories it carried felt creepy. It belonged in a dumpster.
That night I hid the letter to Mr. Upton’s lover in a Spanish folder under my window seat and lay in bed staring at the origami garlands hanging from the ceiling. The moon cast filtered light on the mismatched paper cranes.
Let’s make Izzy an origami crane chain, I texted everybody.
I don’t like birds, Jean texted back.
It’s not about you, Jean, I wrote. The other Unlikelies must have already been asleep.
NINETEEN
ALICE FACETIMED IN the morning to tell me that the police called her mom out of the blue, and her mom collapsed into a howling heap, fearing Alice was dead from drugs. But it turned out they were just calling because they were in possession of some stolen property they believed belonged to Alice’s family: a ring forged out of rare white gold and embedded with rubies, a diamond tennis bracelet, and a strand of priceless pearls.
Alice’s mom had fired their cleaning lady, Olga, a lovely Polish woman with five kids, when her jewelry went missing. That started a chain reaction, and Olga lost all of her East End clients.