Chapter 2 - The Weight of Bread
The girls did not eat like children who had missed lunch. They ate like creatures who had bargained with the concept of tomorrow and lost.
Emma used her spoon until she discovered that dipping the dense brioche Dennis had brought was faster. Lily chewed with her eyes closed, her narrow shoulders dropping an inch with every swallow, as if the calories were ballast keeping her from drifting off into the Pacific fog. Scarlet ate mechanically—one spoonful for herself, then two slices of bread buttered and wrapped neatly in a linen napkin she had quietly folded and laid beside her lap.
"That's for later?" Michael asked, gesturing toward the napkin.
Scarlet’s hand hovered over the bundle protectively. "For Mama. She only had two crackers this morning because she said her teeth hurt. But her teeth don't hurt. She just wanted us to have the peanut butter."
Michael looked at the girl's face. The bone structure was delicate, the skin translucent beneath the hairline where the pale braids were secured with rubber bands meant for office documents. "What is your mother's name?"
"Eleanor," Lily offered. "Eleanor Vance. She used to work at the library where they have the big stone lions outside, but then the library closed that branch, and we had to move into the building with the elevator that smelled like gasoline."
"And then?" Michael asked.
"And then the man with the yellow teeth changed the locks," Scarlet said flatly. She had finished her bowl. She sat back, wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist before remembering where she was and self-consciously dropping her arm to her lap. "He threw our suitcases into the alley. Mama carried two, and I carried Emma's clothes in a garbage bag. We've been in the car for four weeks. It was fine when the heater worked. But on Tuesday, the white smoke came out from the front, and the car wouldn't go up the hill anymore."
Michael leaned his elbows on the table, folding his hands. His signet ring, an unadorned band of platinum, tapped once against the china saucer. "San Francisco has shelters, Scarlet. Have you been to the family center on Geary?"
Scarlet’s eyes hardened with an adult bitterness that looked grotesque on an eight-year-old face. "They took Mrs. Miller’s boys away," she said. "At the shelter near the freeway. They told her she didn't have a stable environment, so they put the boys in a van and Mrs. Miller sat on the curb and screamed until the police told her to move. Mama said nobody puts us in three different vans. We stay together or we don't go inside."
The terrace had grown quiet around them. The three venture capitalists had paid their bill and departed without finishing their entrees, unnerved by the contrast between their four-hundred-dollar Napa Cabernets and the three dirty children devouring bread like castaways. Dennis stood by the waiter station, hovering nervously, unsure whether he was witnessing a kidnapping, an adoption, or an impending corporate catastrophe.
Michael stood up. "Dennis."
The manager scurried forward. "Yes, Mr. Willoughby?"
"Pack twelve of these loaves," Michael instructed. "Pack roast beef, sliced thin. Pack four bottles of water, three cartons of milk, and two of those wool blankets you keep in the terrace wardrobe for the ladies who find the breeze too aggressive."
"Right now, sir?"
"No, Dennis, three weeks ago," Michael snapped, his patience evaporating. "Of course right now. Put it in heavy bags. Put my dinner on my house account, along with an eighty-percent gratuity for the waitstaff whose evening we've disrupted."
Dennis bowed, his hostility entirely dissolved by the mention of the gratuity. "Immediately, Mr. Willoughby."
Michael looked down at the triplets. Emma had fallen into a food coma, her forehead resting against the pristine white linen, breathing with the heavy, rhythmic wheeze of an exhausted toddler. Lily was carefully gathering every fallen crumb from the tabletop, pressing them into her palm and eating them one by one.
"Scarlet," Michael said softly.
"Yes, sir?"
"Where is the car parked?"
Scarlet looked down toward the bay, toward the industrial shadows stretching between the piers and the old rail yards behind the Embarcadero. "Behind the grain silos where the asphalt is cracked. Mama said nobody looks for cars down there because the signs say Tow-Away Zone, but the tow trucks are too big to turn around between the dumpsters."
Michael closed his eyes for a three-second count. He remembered the smell of cold exhaust. He remembered sleeping in the backseat of a 1978 Buick Regal with his sister, their breath freezing on the inside of the windshield into patterns that looked like fern leaves, while his mother worked a double shift at an all-night diner three miles away.
He opened his eyes. The city lights were flickering on across the hills like an indifferent constellation.
May you like
"Let's go get your mother," he said.
***
