Page 18 of The Wrong Family

Things were going downhill fast. She wondered if the house was armed with motion sensors. Well, she’d soon find out. She took two steps forward, two steps sideways…then she shimmied to the kitchen door and back. Nothing happened. Juno laughed. She went straight to the bathroom, but this time she climbed the stairs to Winnie and Nigel’s, lowering herself over their toilet. And as she sat with her head resting on her fist, she looked around at lush towels and bottles that clearly hadn’t been bought at the drugstore.

Why not?Juno thought, flushing. There had been so many “why nots” lately; maybe the fact that she hadn’t been caught made her take such a big risk. First things first. She swung open the door to the medicine cabinet and her eyes scanned the bottles. When she found what she was looking for, she popped the lid and poured six of the pills into her palm. She replaced the bottle and popped two of the pills between her lips, pressing them to the roof of her mouth with her tongue.

Blessed relief. They hadn’t even melted into her yet, but it was comforting just to know she’d taken them. She had the vague sense that she was floating as the sour powder of the pills coated the inside of her mouth. Juno worked harder, warming it up with her spit and her tongue. Who had taught her to do this? Bless them, she thought swallowing the glue. It was bitter, but it would get into her system faster this way. Whomever had taught her the trick was temporarily forgotten as she stepped out of her clothes and into the bath.

She could avoid the mirror all she wanted, but there were her feet—filthy, the nails jagged and yellow—resting on the spotless floor of the tub. She wriggled her toes and reached for the faucet. When was the last time she’d had a bath? Sometimes she got into the shelter early enough to use their shower, and sometimes she just cleaned herself over the sink in any random, unoccupied bathroom she could find. But a real bath? They’d had a tub in the Albuquerque house, the one on which the bank had foreclosed…when? Five years ago? It wasn’t the time or the place to summon the desert into her current state of bliss. She dismissed the thought because she could, because that was one thing she was great at in her old lady days—forgetting.

The water rushed around her, and Juno sank into it. A noise came somewhere from the back of her throat; she didn’t know if it was from pain or pleasure, but she allowed herself to lie back until her ears were submerged and her hair wafted around her face. There were bottles lined up along the lip of the tub; she selected one at random and poured it into her hair. The smells were clean and fresh, reminding Juno of her childhood, when her grandparents had owned a laundromat. She scrubbed herself, using Winnie’s nail brush to clean every speck of grime from her hands.

When Juno finally climbed out of the bath and the water drained away, there was a rim of grime where the water had leveled. She found a sponge and powdered Clorox and scrubbed at the filth her body had left behind. When it was spotless, she found a towel at the bottom of the hamper and dried the bathtub before shoving the towel down to the bottom again.

Now for the problem of clothes. Her own lay in a pile at her feet in different shades of filthy. Juno was still naked, and her less-filthy clothes were in her pack, shoved underneath a bush in the park. She carried her clothes downstairs, walking to the closet opposite the one she’d found herself hiding in, and opened the door. There was a garbage bag tied and sitting at the ready, a pink Post-it stuck on the front with the words DONATIONS scrawled in Sharpie. Juno quickly worked at the knot, and then the bag was open. She lifted things out quickly: a sweatshirt that hadBaywatchprinted on the front, a pair of women’s yoga pants, and there were shoes, New Balance, nicer than anything she’d owned in years. She even fished out a pair of Thanksgiving-themed socks before shoving her own filthy clothes to the bottom of the bag and reknotting the red drawstring. The Post-it note repositioned, Juno closed the door firmly and began to dress.

The clock above the back door ticked its slow circle; it had been two hours since the Crouches had left. Juno wanted to be back in the closet long before they got home. Long after they could smell her moving through the rooms of their house. She’d considered looking for a safer place, but none provided the quick exit she would need. In her new clothes, Juno walked to the kitchen feeling both 100 percent better and 100 percent worse. Her shame was magnified by her hunger. In the pantry was a loaf of bread and peanut butter. Juno made herself two sandwiches, cleaning as she went. She ate one as she used the facilities for the last time and tucked the other into a paper towel in her pocket. Making one last trip to the pantry, she found some boxes of Lärabars and took one of each flavor, a can of peel-top SpaghettiOs, a can of green beans, and a jug of apple juice she hoped they wouldn’t miss. Oh, what did she care? She was already squatting in their junk closet. She carried it all back to the space behind the coats and snowsuits, stacking everything in the corner.

Juno made one last run-through of the house, keeping her eyes on the street whenever she was in view of a window. They’d be back any minute, she just knew it. Call it a sixth sense. Animals had it, too—they knew when a predator was near. And that’s all people were, really, wasn’t it? Animals dressed up. She found a small puddle of water on the bathroom floor that she’d missed before, soaking it up with a wad of toilet paper. She dropped it in the toilet and flushed. Good as new. In the kitchen she dried the sink with a piece of paper towel and replaced the knife she’d used for the peanut butter in the drawer. No crumbs, no errant wrappers, no wiry gray hairs. Everything was as it should be.

12

JUNO

Ten minutes after Juno rested her head on her airplane pillow and closed her eyes, the front door opened and the Crouches returned. They walked into the house laughing, wrapping paper and gifts bags crackling in their arms. She was clean and comfortable, her belly was full, and most importantly, she was warm.

She slept.

It carried on like that for the weekend. She knew her best shot at leaving the house was on Monday when the Crouches went back to their weekday schedules. So she rested, listening to the voices of the family she had been watching for months while lying beneath the hems of their abandoned winter gear and Halloween costumes. It was comforting to lie on the new carpet, her back pressed against the wall, which was always warm. To herself, she’d started referring to the closet as Hems Corner. It was a safe space, comfortable and warm and familiar.

She turned from her side to her back to her other side, listening to Sam ask his mother if she could make bacon and eggs for breakfast, and then to Nigel rapping along with Eminem as he washed the dishes from the bacon and egg breakfast. She heard Winnie on the phone with someone from work as she opened the door for a delivery. “If we have to, we can replace her with Joanne from—yes I said replace—”

Her voice was indignant. There were two sides to Winnie, indignant and vulnerable.

Juno had eaten her second sandwich for dinner on Saturday night along with a few large swigs of apple juice straight from the jug. And then at night, while the Crouches slept off their Saturday, Juno snuck out during the early morning hours to use the bathroom. She wasn’t as stiff as she thought she’d be and was in an exceptionally good mood. Safety and a good night’s sleep and a family to nose around in. She’d become a true geriatric. Kregger would have howled.

On Sunday morning she ate a cherry pie Lärabar for breakfast and drank more apple juice. She figured it was early since the Crouches had yet to come downstairs. In the two days she’d slept in their closet, she’d come to decipher the way each of their footsteps sounded on the hardwood. She strained to hear even the muffled sound of footsteps, but the house seemed fully asleep—aside from Juno, the closet mouse, that was.

Suddenly, she felt like taking a risk. She rolled out from her hiding spot and got to her feet. The ceiling of her closet was surprisingly high. She stretched her arms above her head and did the yoga poses of her youth to try to ease out some of her stiffness. She’d been taking the Crouches’ Advil—two pills every four hours—and it had staved off the worst of the pain through the day. She stretched out her neck, rolling it back as she breathed deeply and opened her eyes to the ceiling. But then she heard someone stirring upstairs, the sound of running water. She stretched once more—Tadasana, mountain pose—before crawling back to Hems Corner.

Juno was anxious. She rubbed a spot behind her ear, staring into the darkness. Even in the closet she could hear the sound of the rain outside. What would happen if they caught her?You know what would happen, she thought.They’ll haul you back to your favorite place in the whole world. Juno didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to die in prison, either. And the truth of the matter was that shewasdying. She could feel the rot; her kidneys like two old fists that were losing their grasp.

The spot behind her ear was stinging, but her fingers kept their back-and-forth rhythm.Be present, be grateful. She lifted her old mantras from her other life and tried them on for size.Where would I normally be?A series of images flashed through her mind, and she flinched from them. The more accurate question was probably where had she not slept? For a while Juno had had a blue tent. Wherever she pitched it, the police would eventually tell her to move in their deadpan way that made her feel less…and less…and less. The humiliation brought by those hard-faced men in uniforms, their faces stoic but their impatience loud.Go, you can’t be here. Leave, you have to move. You can’t squat here.She had nowhere to go and still she was commanded to leave.

It became easier to sleep in the day. Juno took naps on benches, in the grass, sometimes in a coffee shop where they thought she was just a shabby old lady dozing with her morning joe.

You’d be in the park, she told herself, turning toward the wall. The park itself was good, peaceful, but having to live there was not. She pulled the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head and, tucking her palms between her knees, began to shiver. She had a master’s degree in psychology, she knew about Pavlov’s dogs, and she knew that the sound of the rain made her cold and afraid because it had become an enemy—something that threatened her safety and comfort. And wasn’t safety a basic human need? Of course it was. As was shelter.And you are safe.Her mouth formed the words, though she didn’t dare say them aloud.You’re safe…you’re safe…you’re safe…

When she woke there was music playing. Juno rolled onto her back, carefully tenting her knees. If she stayed still for too long her hands and feet would swell up like puffer fish. She breathed deeply, trying to make out the melody. She smiled as she caught a few of the lyrics. Dale had liked that song. Dale, her youngest, sweetest son. She mouthed his name,Dale… Dale… Dale…and felt better for doing it. Dale with his wiry brown curls; he had a bend in his nose, and long bony fingers that could play the piano more nimbly than hers. She missed him so deeply that the missing had become an organ. A throbbing, volatile organ. She curled into herself, into the pain. She deserved to feel it, and so when it came, she allowed it in, like a woman in labor.

Failure as a mother should hurt. It should feel flat and dull and never-ending. Juno would take all the pain in the world, carry every single bit of it, for one chance to see Dale again and tell him how sorry she was.

The song changed, and now she could hear the individual voices of the family singing along—Winnie off-key and Sam with his unbroken voice that would soon start cracking. Nigel, who was a good singer, sang around them, harmonizing with their squeaks and squawks in good humor.

She ate the canned beans for lunch, listening along with the Crouches’ movie:Sense and Sensibility(Winnie had won at rock paper scissors). That evening, Nigel opened the door for the pizza they’d ordered, and Juno heard the rain really coming down.

“Is that thunder?” Nigel’s voice was incredulous. She could picture him peering over the pizza guy’s shoulder toward the flashing in the sky.

“Yeah, there’s a lightning storm. Pretty cool.”

Pizza girl,Juno corrected herself. When she’d first come to Seattle it had surprised her that thunder did not often accompany the watery days. In her old life, she would have told anyone that she liked the sound of the clouds colliding, but in this life, it scared the shit out of her.

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