Glass in hand, Kate strolled to the living room to check her voice mail. She quickly punched in her password when the beeper indicated a message. Carla’s piping tones unspooled from the tape.
“Hi—Kate? I know tomorrow’s our day, but something’s come up so, uh, I can’t make it. Talk to you later. Bye.”
Kate frowned. She called Carla’s foster home and, after several rings, finally reached Rita Santos, the teen’s foster mother.
“Nope, she isn’t here, Kate. Took off about an hour ago. Didn’t say where she was headed. As usual.”
There was a moment’s silence. Thoughts of Carla filled the void. Kate felt more annoyed than worried. Carla’s street sense was twice what hers had been at the same age. Of course, by thirteen Kate had already met Joanna and was working on her goal to get out of Queens.
“No doubt she’ll turn up with some excuse,” Rita said. “If not, guess I’ll have to call her worker again. Sorry she let you down, Kate.”
“No no, don’t say that. Carla’s not letting anyone down—except maybe herself. I’ll call back in the morning, but if…you know, there’s a problem, please call me. Even if it’s the middle of the night.”
“Sure. Meantime, I wouldn’t sit up worrying, I was you.”
“Okay, Rita. Talk to you soon.” Kate hung on to the receiver a few moments longer, thinking about the ominous turn Carla’s behavior had taken over the past few months. Rita had had about as much as she could take from the girl, who’d been with her for almost a year.
The pity of it was that Kate knew Carla really liked her current foster home. Only she liked her gang of friends more. Keeping Carla away from that gang had been an ongoing project for Rita, Kate and Carla’s social worker, Kim, for several months.
Kate still remembered vividly her own desperate efforts to be part of a group that wasn’t controlled by adults. Fortunately for her, the vow to make good and show Joanna Barnes that she could, had supplanted her need to be a gang member. It was a goal that took her off the streets. She was determined to do the same for Carla.
For now, though, she could do little but hope that Carla would have the sense to go home. Kate prowled around her small apartment. It was barely past nine and the city was just now succumbing to the cooling embrace of dusk. She’d eaten a fast-food dinner on the way home from dropping off the rental car, so didn’t have to worry about conjuring up a meal from the meager contents of her refrigerator. Still, she was restless.
She peered out the bedroom window through the geometric frieze of the fire escape on the other side of the glass, over the treetops and row houses of SoHo. Last summer she’d flung open the window and lain awake most nights in fear of intruders taking advantage of the heat wave to climb to her second-story flat. But now, thanks to her air-conditioning, she was both safe and cool. Except that she felt like a prisoner, barricaded against the heat and the night.
She stared down into the street and watched couples stroll in the balmy evening air, envying them. She could understand why Carla preferred the street to the family room, dominated by a blaring TV and the constant bickering of youngsters. On summer nights in the city, the streets were alive with excitement, anticipation.
Kate let the venetian blind drop, hiding the night away. Loneliness overwhelmed her. Thinking she’d be busy doing things with Joanna, she’d turned down a chance to travel out West with a friend and colleague at her school. Now, except for outings with Carla, the summer loomed empty and unpromising.
She wandered around the room, pausing before the mirror above her dresser. Her chin-length, damp, reddish-brown hair framed her face in limp tendrils, making her look like a waif out in a storm.
Kate moved away from her reflection—no comfort there—and slumped onto the edge of the bed. Too early for sleep. Too wound up for television. Ginny, the tenant downstairs and also a friend, was visiting her parents for a few days.
Maybe she ought to go down to the streets and look for Carla. Her quick smile vanished just as abruptly. No, she warned herself. Worrying about Carla, making sure she was all right, could be a full-time job if she was foolish enough to make it one. Both she and Rita Santos had already come to that conclusion.
Thoughts drifted back to the afternoon. Joanna’s casket. The flowers. Had Joanna liked lilies? So much she didn’t know and now, no possibility of ever learning. Impulsively, Kate went to the closet, drawn there by a need to find some clue, some hint in the few letters she’d received from Joanna Barnes over the past nineteen years. Why, Joanna? Why?
The album sat on the shelf above the clothes rack. Kate carried it to the bed, stacked the pillows against the headboard and made herself comfortable. Then she opened the first page.
August 15, 1982. Today is my birthday and I got my first real birthday card in the mail. It was from Joanna! She’s kept her promise and I’m going to keep mine. The one I made to myself the last night of camp. Not to get in trouble anymore. Not to ruin my life.
Taped beneath the scrawled entry was the card from Joanna. Its message read simply:
Happy Birthday, twelve-year-old! Don’t celebrate too much. Manhattan’s amazing and I’m loving it. Watch for my byline in the papers—whenever. Have a great year and see you in eighteen!
Joanna
Kate passed her hand along the card’s glossy surface. She’d read the card more than a dozen times the day it arrived. It had been the first piece of personal mail ever to be delivered to her. She remembered, too, the way her foster parents and their children had stood openmouthed in surprise as she read the card. And the questions that had followed.
Who is this person, Kate? Where did you meet her? What’s this all about, anyway?
She’d been afraid then that somehow the whole thing—the cards and the promised reunion with Joanna—would be snatched away from her. But in the end, her partial explanation had satisfied her foster mother, who’d only muttered a last warning—I just don’t want you to get your hopes up. Kate hadn’t appreciated the irony of that comment until many years later.
Kate sighed and quickly flipped the page. This one—a postcard from Paris—had caused a real stir in the household because no one else had even known anyone who’d gone to Europe. Weeks before its arrival Kate had rushed to check the mail every day. She might forget. Don’t get your hopes up. But Kate had had the blind faith of a child. And she’d never been disappointed.
Suddenly she couldn’t take any more. Her only memories of Joanna Barnes were now permanently sealed behind plastic in an ordinary photo album. She’d never have the chance to transform all those bits of paper into a real person. Kate closed the album, sank back onto the bed and stretched out her arm to click off the table lamp. Street light dappled the room with a pale rainbow of color. But Kate closed her eyes to the summer night, turned her head into the pillow and cried.
KATE DIDN’T HEAR from Carla until two days after Joanna’s funeral, but she suspected the girl had tried several times to call her. There’d been a few hang-ups on her answering machine. She figured Carla had already been read the riot act from Rita and Kim, so she kept her voice light and neutral.
“Hi, Carly! What’s up?”
There was the slightest of pauses, as if Carla had been expecting another response.
“Uh, not too much. Guess you heard I got grounded.”
“Yes.”
Carla cleared her throat. “Well, I don’t know why everyone was so ticked off at me. I was okay. Not in any trouble or nothing—until I got home, anyway.”
“Maybe they were worried, Carla.”
“Yeah, right!” she scoffed. “More like Rita was thinkin’ she’d lose that check