“All right,” Kenny said.
“But that’s the problem,” Haydee said. “How do you learn all that stuff? And I think some people have parents who already know it and so they learn it growing up just because they do, you know. Just because it’s stuff their parents talk about. But then what happens to the rest of us? Have you ever thought about that? What happens to the rest of us who don’t have parents who already know? How do we find out about all that? Shouldn’t they be teaching that in school? But they don’t teach it in school.”
They were pulling into the front entrance of Mattatuck–Harvey Community College. The billboard was still there, the one with Chester Morton on it. Haydee hadn’t realized they’d left the place with the signs.
“It’s like that thing you were telling me,” Haydee said. “About the tree, the Judas tree—”
“The flowering Judas,” Kenny said.
“I didn’t even know who Judas was until about three weeks ago. We didn’t go to church. My mother didn’t care about religion. I wouldn’t have known what you were talking about. But that’s not stupid. That’s just ignorant. And that’s the thing, you see. That’s the thing.”
They were pulling into the Frasier Hall parking lot. Students were not allowed to park in the Frasier Hall lot until after five.
“You’ll get a ticket,” Haydee said.
“I’ll drop you off and then go park in C lot,” Kenny said. “This way, you won’t have to walk too far. I still don’t think you’re okay.”
“I keep thinking that it might have been different. She might have been different. My mother, I mean. If her parents had known things like that, you know, so that school was easier for her. I don’t know. I don’t know. You can’t just ignore the things she decided to do. I didn’t get any of that stuff and I didn’t get pregnant in high school. I didn’t drop out at sixteen and then just—just. I don’t know. You can’t ignore the fact that she made choices, it’s just that if things had been different she might have made other choices. I’m not making any sense. I’m not making any sense at all.”
“You’re making perfect sense,” Kenny said.
Haydee bent over and put her forehead on the dashboard. The air conditioner was on in the truck. The dashboard felt cold.
“I’ve got brothers,” she said. “Did you know that? I’ve got three older brothers, at least, and I may have one younger one. I don’t know. They all disappeared a long time ago. How am I going to find them? How am I going to find them and tell them? Do they even want to know?”
“Haydee—”
“I have to go to class,” she said. “Thank you for the ride. Thank you for the lunch. Thank you for everything, I guess.”
Then she opened the truck’s door and slipped out.
2
Darvelle Haymes did not go into the office the way most people did. That wasn’t the way a real estate office worked, and besides, there was very little to do at a desk if there wasn’t a client on the horizon. Darvelle did not have a client today. She did not have paperwork to prepare for other clients. She did not have cold calls to make. She did not have anything to do at all. She went into the office anyway, because it was better than sitting alone in her house waiting for the ax to fall.
Waiting for the ax to fall. That was the way Darvelle’s mind put it when she tried to think and even when she did it. The phrase seemed to be swirling around and around inside her skull as if she had a ping-pong ball up there. It bounced and rattled. It made her want to bend over double and cry.
Her desk was the closest one to the big front window that looked out on West Main Street, and she had always liked it like that. In fact, years ago, when she was very new to this firm, she had done a lot of wrangling to get this desk for herself. She’d had to wait until old Miss Fanshaw was out of the way. She’d expected the old biddy to retire, but instead she’d had a heart attack at this very desk, and been carted away in an ambulance to St. Mary’s.
There was coffee at the back of the room. It was a big room, long and open, taking up almost the entire first floor of the building. There was a bathroom in the back, and a little place to store records, and a big sink. Darvelle got herself coffee when she first came in. Then she sat down at her computer and bent over it as if she had a lot to do. Then she played Solitaire, and FreeCell, and Spider Solitaire, and even Hearts, with herself. Then she got on the Internet and went to PopCap Games and played Dynomite and Zuma and Alchemy and TipTop and Bejeweled in three different versions. She kept the sound off. She made predictions for herself. If she got to thirty-three thousand points on Dynomite, everything would be all right. If she got thirteen coins in Zuma, everything would be all right. If she won three Solitaire games in a row, everything would be all right.