“Oh, I get what you’re saying.” She turned toward the door. “But you don’t even know us. Cody’s smart but he can’t just go off to college. He helps support his mom. There’s no jobs here that pay even close to the oil patch. Up north, he can still send her money and get his own start. And he loves me. He’ll take care of me if I ever need him to, which I won’t. We were just asking for some temporary help, that’s all. A little bit to get us started. I really thought you’d understand.”
Oh, the days when love mattered more than anything, when immortality seemed more likely than failure. “No. I’m sorry, but no. The money is for college, not…”
There was no reason to complete the homily. Meg’s big sister act had rarely worked, and now she was sounding like a mother. The girl was right. Meg did not know her, certainly not from the application process, her color-shifting hair or the venturesome rendition of one song. Who was she to say how Pandora should pursue her dream? Even good decisions contained a kernel of risk. Pandora was approaching the age when she had a right to choose badly. This choice didn’t necessarily mean abandoning music, but Meg didn’t have to endorse it.
Pandora retreated down the walk. The girl’s shape shrank in the cloudy glass of the closing front door, warping and then dissolving. The truck’s door slammed and its headlight haloes lurched away.
Meg rediscovered the picture in her hands. Her house was too full of things coupled to other lives, including the one she no longer led. When she sold it, she would winnow the books, read and unread, sweep out the plants and sell the furnishings. Vestiges of current ownership were almost always a negative, even a source of mirth. Prospective buyers didn’t respond to houses that remembered. They needed to project themselves onto an idealized blankness. They were Pandora on the road to Williston.
She brought the leaping sisters back into the living room. The end table bore a darker, ghosted smudge where the frame had sheltered the sun-blasted finish. She replaced the picture exactly. Everything fades, she thought. It’s the price of being in the light.
It’s easy to form a bad impression of a good neighborhood.
—“Home” with Meg Mogrin, Grand Junction Style
Promoting the potential of spaces, the beauty of landscapes and the vitality of communities was Meg’s livelihood. Homelessness didn’t exactly fit her brand. It didn’t fit anyone’s brand, unless you were Catholic Outreach. But Eve had told her, You’ll be fine. For a time, she had been. Not a cause she would have chosen except as a favor for a friend, the Homeless Coalition was just another civic duty that might someday pay her back. Oh, she felt sorry for the people who had to scramble for shelter and food each day. She was proud of the town’s efforts to help them find housing. But the coalition’s charge was to end homelessness in ten years. End it here in Grand Junction, as if no tentacles of hardship could ever again penetrate this happy valley once the magic spell had been cast. Ten years was a lifetime in the business cycle. Even presidents weren’t expected to serve that long. New construction had showed its cracks by then. In that span, newlyweds went searching for bigger houses and first graders started driving to school. It was foolhardy to believe thousands of lives would change for the better and none would change for the worse.
But the unreachable goal was not what burdened Meg’s climb to the second-floor conference room. The sight of Amy Hostetter on the ground in the tamarisk had rendered suspect her instincts about familiar places. Her hometown’s darker fringes became foreground. If squatters could appear at the Reiner house, where else might they lurk? A week ago, Yoga Man’s sugar packet forest would have enchanted her; now it struck her as a symptom of downtown littering. Meg had even sensed something sinister about Pandora’s boyfriend waiting for her in his truck. This was not how she wanted to think or feel about her town.
The coalition met in a former church cinder-blocked and subdivided into a hive for secular do-gooders. The groups listed in the office directory were homegrown and locally funded, at levels ranging from a bootstrap to a shoestring. Their building served as neutral territory, away from the outsized authority of city politics, government human services agencies and the Catholic Church—although not beyond the influence of Sister Rose Lavelle, director of Catholic Outreach and chair of the coalition.
Sister Rose appeared, sparrow-like, next to Meg as if alighting from some higher branch. Her eyes were bright and penetrating. “I always enjoy your articles in the magazine. What will you be writing about next?”
Her close-cropped grey head inclined toward the answer.
It had never occurred to Meg that Sister might read her “Home” column. Grand Junction Style did not target those who’d taken a vow of poverty.
“It’s about ways to expand your home without major remodeling—multiuse rooms, taking advantage of outdoor spaces, that less-is-more kind of thing.” It sounded so trivial when she said it to a nun. Maybe she should add a few lines about being content with what you have.
“I look forward to it.” A half bow and Sister Rose resumed her glide of inquiry around the room.
Not a bird, Meg thought, a queen who had renounced her crown.
Sister Rose settled in a chair at the large conference table. As if a bell had rung, the pre-meeting shuffling halted and Meg joined the committee members finding their places: mental health and social case workers, social justice advocates, shelter and housing officials, representatives from the library, the school district, the hospitals, legal services and veterans affairs. No members of the City Council’s Vagrancy Committee appeared this time, and Meg sensed a growing void between them and the rest of the coalition. Two visitors, neither of whom Meg recognized, occupied the outer ring of chairs against the wall. Meg felt a new affinity with Zack Nicolai after their experience on the river, and she took a seat between him and Tony Martin, Amy Hostetter’s partner on the police outreach team. Sister Rose unclasped her hands, and without further declaration, the meeting came to order.
Tony Martin offered a brief update on his partner’s condition. Amy was ready to go home, he said, still annoyed at herself for missing the tripwire and eager to start rehab. So mild and considerate, he scarely seemed like a cop, even in uniform. He would make an excellent undercover officer, should the department ever have to investigate an accounting firm or a ring of flight attendants.
Sister Rose introduced one of the guests, co-founder of a group called Rescue Our Parks. Jennifer Barnes appeared capable of rescuing parks all on her own. Probably a business major who’d aced her courses, found the right man and planned to resume playing professional beach volleyball after her kids started school. When Jennifer stepped to the front of the room she seemed to Meg prepared to spike something.
Jennifer began by acknowledging that the Rescue Our Parks Facebook page featuring a fake homeless man and his bottle sprawled next to a playground reinforced an unfair stereotype, and she promised to take down the image. “Our group is not anti-homeless. The name Rescue Our Parks is meant to provoke discussion about objectionable activities in the parks.”
“Great!” Zack Nicolai didn’t speak for the coalition but the others at the table were happy to let him take the lead here. “Let’s start with a discussion about this statement: Our parks are being used as personal living rooms by people who scorn society. You realize that people who live in a shelter don’t have personal living rooms—so they sort of have to do their personal living in public.”
Jennifer retained her cool. “I get that this is a tough, multidimensional issue. We have nothing against those who are homeless through no fault of their own. My heart breaks for people who don’t deserve to be in that situation.”
“That’s wonderful. My question is how you can tell the difference between a person who scorns society and a person society scorns? Or does your ability to detect undeserving homeless people only work in the park?”
“Excuse me?”
“If I get laid off and lose my apartment, it sounds like I’m a deserving homeless person.