Shelby goes to the window and gazes into the yard. It reminds her of where she grew up, out in Huntington. There’s even a picnic table.
Jasmine is going to hate it.
Maravelle comes to stand beside her. “Pinch me,” she says. Shelby does, and Maravelle squeals. “Hey, bitch!” Maravelle rubs her arm and grins. “This house is due to you, you know.”
Shelby gives her friend a look. She refuses to take responsibility for Valley Stream.
“You made them give me the manager’s job,” Maravelle says gleefully.
That’s true, but Shelby won’t admit it. They go out the kitchen door to the patio. It smells like rain and grass.
“You know Jasmine’s not going to want to move here, right?” Shelby says.
“She’ll get used to it. The high school is three blocks away. I don’t have to worry about the kids taking the bus. My mother can walk to the supermarket.”
Shelby sits cross-legged on a retaining wall and lights a cigarette. She knows there’s no safety in this world, even if you’re on Long Island. What happens in Queens can happen here too. Still, she keeps her opinions to herself.
Maravelle comes to sit next to her. “What do you really think?” Shelby is brutally honest. That’s why Maravelle likes her. Maravelle is brutally honest too. You can’t have many friends if you act that way, but you can depend on the ones you have.
“I’d kill myself if I lived here,” Shelby says. “But I’m proud of you.”
Maravelle leaps up, arms out, and twirls on her tiptoes. “Suburbia, I love you!” she shouts.
The last few leaves are falling from a grapevine that grows along the side of the garage. Shelby can’t help but imagine what a mess it’s going to be when the grapes are overripe and scattering everywhere and angry bees buzz through the air, drunk on the juice. Maravelle won’t be dancing around then.
“You did good,” Shelby says. “Your kids will be safe and everyone will live happily ever after.”
“Will you go furniture shopping with me?” Maravelle is really excited about this home ownership situation.
“Not on your life. But I’ll visit you and bring Chinese food from the city because it’s probably terrible out here.”
They get back into Maravelle’s car and head for Queens along Sunrise Highway. There’s a lot of traffic in Valley Stream, especially around the mall. The fact that it’s called Green Acres is a joke. Parking lots, cars, chain stores filled with stuff no one needs. Shelby hates malls. She hasn’t been in one in years. She sighs and gazes out the window. She thinks about the town where she grew up and how excited she and Helene were that they’d be moving to New York City when they graduated.
As if she could read her friend’s mind, Maravelle says, “Don’t say anything negative. Don’t tell me this isn’t my dream come true.”
Maravelle was Shelby’s friend when Shelby was bald and smoking pot four times a day. She was Shelby’s friend through bad breakups with two boyfriends. More important and for reasons Shelby will never understand, Maravelle trusts Shelby with her children. Why should Shelby ruin her day by telling her that a teenage girl who doesn’t want to be in suburbia can put her mother through hell? She did it, after all. It was easy.
It happens two weeks later, on the eve of the move. Maravelle calls Shelby at ten o’clock at night, frantic. The boxes are all packed, the movers are coming in the morning, and Jasmine has taken off.
“Wait until midnight to get hysterical,” Shelby advises. The witching hour, the time of night that scares parents most. Jasmine will be back by then.
Except that she’s not.
Maravelle calls all of Jasmine’s friends, waking some of their parents, but Jasmine isn’t with any of them. Maravelle then races through the quiet neighborhood, searching the park, a place no one with any sense would go after dark. She calls Shelby on her cell phone from the corner deli near the school bus stop. Shelby can barely understand her over all the crying.
“She’s trying to scare you,” Shelby says.
Shelby certainly wouldn’t wish the scares she gave her own mother on anyone.
“Well, she’s doing a damn good job of it,” Maravelle says. “I’m going to kill her when I get hold of her.”
Shelby is on the couch with big Pablo snoring beside her, hoping to be phoned with good news. She has always considered the view from her window to be beautiful, a mix of tar, cobblestones, rooftops, water towers, but now the outside world looks wicked. While she waits to hear from Maravelle, Shelby is drinking green tea and smoking a cigarette. She figures the habit that’s good for her will cancel out the one that’s bad. The police have told Maravelle they can’t do anything until twenty-four hours have passed from the time her daughter is reported missing. Just long enough for a murder or kidnapping. Long enough for Jasmine to wind up stuffed into a green garbage bag and dumped onto the Grand Central Parkway. Shelby can’t imagine what Maravelle must be going through. The responsibility of loving someone is too much for anyone to take, which is why she’s done her best to avoid it.
Not long after midnight, a cab pulls up to Shelby’s building. Pablo starts barking, which revs up the other dogs. Shelby hushes them. She perches on the back of the couch and spies a young woman with a backpack getting out of the taxi. It’s Jasmine.
Shelby phones Maravelle, pronto. As soon as she answers, Shelby says, “Forget the police. She’s here.”
“Oh, my God! I’m driving over there right now.”
“She’ll run if you do.” Jasmine rings the bell downstairs. Shelby darts to the wall so she can buzz open the door. “She needs to feel like some outside adult will listen to her. So I’ll pretend to be an adult. You know she’ll tell me stuff she won’t tell you.”
“Okay, Shelby, but understand this: I’m leaving the most precious thing in my world in your hands.”
Fuck it, Shelby thinks as she hangs up. She has never wanted to be involved with people. People are dangerous, unreliable, stupid, greedy, needy, breakable. Look what happened to Helene, to Ben Mink, to Harper Levy’s wife. The dogs go nuts when there’s a knock on the door. Fortunately the upstairs neighbor is a waiter who doesn’t get home till dawn, and the couple beneath her have such huge drunken fights they’re in no position to complain about noise.