“The house.”
“If I told you it looked like a dragon, would you believe me?”
“No,” she said, laughing. That was the silliest thing she ever heard. “Dragons have wings. They have fire in their noses.”
“I promise it looks like a dragon.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not,” he said, and looked hurt. Then he grinned. She liked him so much when he smiled like that. “It’s a sea monster, I swear.”
“I know a water poem,” she said. “Do you want to hear it?”
“I want to hear your poem. Go for it.”
Allison recited for him.
“The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright—
And that was odd because it was
The middle of the night.”
The man laughed heartily, a Santa Claus laugh, though he didn’t have a Santa Claus belly.
“That’s wonderful, Allison. Did you learn that in school?”
“I taught it to myself,” she said. That was true but she didn’t tell him why she’d taught it to herself. He’d probably laugh at her. “Can I come to your house and see the ocean for real?”
He squatted down low again so they were the same height, and while he wasn’t smiling with his mouth, he was smiling with his eyes.
“I would take you to see it,” he said, “but we have a rule at my house—everybody has to eat every single day.”
She gave that a good long think and then made up her mind.
“If I could see the ocean, I would eat,” she said.
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Every single day?”
“Every single day.”
“Good,” he said. He stood up again. “It’s a deal. Let’s go get you packed.”
“You mean it?” She couldn’t believe it, but she couldn’t believe this smiling man who wore pajamas to work would lie to her, either.
“I mean it.”
She raced to her room and found her suitcase. She didn’t have much to pack but one suitcase of her clothes and one bag of her books. Miss Whitney hugged her for a long time and kissed her cheek and told her she was a lucky little girl, because she was going to a wonderful home. Over Allison’s shoulder, Miss Whitney winked at Dr. Capello. When Allison started out the door, her small hand in Dr. Capello’s big strong hand, the other girls did nothing but wave half-heartedly from the couch where they sat playing a dumb video game on a too-small television.
The next thing Allison knew, she was sitting in the shiny smooth back seat of a big black car. A fancy car, fancier than any one she’d ever seen, and they were driving through the desert.
The big black car started up a hill, except it wasn’t a hill because hills weren’t nearly this tall. The man with the beard—he told her to call him Dr. Capello for now—told her it was actually a volcano named Mount Hood, but she didn’t believe him. She’d seen volcanoes in her science book. They had fire coming out of the top and they didn’t have trees everywhere. Then they were going down the other side of the big mountain and it was green, green, green everywhere she looked. The desert had turned into a forest so green and big she expected to see the Jolly Green Giant from the TV commercials wander onto the road and wave as they passed by. She was looking for him when something hit the car window hard enough to make her jump.
Water, a big fat drop of it.
“Just rain,” Dr. Capello said. “It’ll be raining at home, too.” That morning she’d woken up in a desert and now she was being taken to a place where it rained so hard it rained on the ocean.
“What’s your son’s name?” Allison asked.
“Which one?” Dr. Capello asked from the front seat.
“The one you said swims a lot.”
“That’s Roland. He’s twelve.”
“Is he nice?”
Dr. Capello kept his face forward but even looking at his profile she could see him smile.
“Let me tell you a little something about my son,” he said. “Roland Capello is the nicest boy in the world.”
* * *
“You’re smiling again,” McQueen said as he quickly dressed. Allison was still in bed, still naked. Let him leave her this way. Let this be the last image of her in his memory. “Told you that would help.”
She rolled onto her side and watched him put on his shoes.
“It helped, all right,” she said, and kept it to herself she’d been lost in the past the entire time he’d been inside her. He stood up.
“You’ll be okay?” he asked.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, already feeling the first stirrings of panic again. “I am fine.”
He bent over the bed to kiss her lips, and she gave him her cheek instead. He didn’t argue.
On his way out of her bedroom, he paused and looked back.
“Will you let me give you one piece of advice?” he asked.
“Do I have to?” she asked.
“I have been on this earth twenty years longer than you.”
“All right, tell me,” she said.
“When distant relatives contact you out of nowhere, it’s never good. Never. Never,” he said.
“Never?”
“Never. They either want money or they want something from you more valuable than money. The more I think about it, the more I think you should let me take that package down to the Dumpster.”
“This was my family, McQueen.”
“Was,” McQueen said. “Thirteen years ago and they haven’t contacted you in all that time? What’s the lady’s name who opened her box and screwed us all over?”
“Pandora?”
“Right.” He pointed at her and nodded. “Don’t be like her.”
“You’re telling me that’s Pandora’s padded envelope?” Allison asked.
“Pandora’s box sounds a lot better,” he said. “I have to go. Meeting in half an hour. You’ll at least think about it?”
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “Have a good life.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You, too, darlin’.”
She waited for him to leave. He didn’t.
“I never thought it would end like this,” he said, still looking at her. “I’ve been waiting six years for you to get shed of me. I thought any day now you’d tell me it was over, that you’d met someone, that you’d fallen in love.”
There was nothing safe Allison could say to that so she said nothing at all. McQueen waited. She kept her silence. He turned and then, at last, he was gone.
The door shut behind him and Allison sat on the bed, her chin to her chest. She didn’t cry. She wanted to but she couldn’t find her tears. What she wanted was a shoulder to cry on