Page 7 of Crossroads Magic
How was I going to find a better job when I was too old and too invisible?
After a while, when an answer didn’t occur to me, I went back inside.
?
The next day, I stopped at the markets on the way home from work and winced as I paid for fresh vegetables and actual meat. I only bought enough for one day, because the bar fridge simply wouldn’t hold much more.
In the back of my mind, the realization was starting to form that the apartment simply wasn’t suitable for two adults, and later, maybe, with a lot of luck, a child, too. But that was a problem for later, I told myself firmly, whenever the thought tried to fully form. And I would push it onto the pile of other problems I refused to worry about right now.
When I got back to the apartment, Ghaliya was curled up on the loveseat, dozing.
I measured her white face. “Eat anything?” I asked. I’d left her with a box of old crackers, the rest of the pecan pie slice she hadn’t eaten last night, and some even older cheese. I’d felt guilty about the inadequate supplies, which had driven me to the markets.
“I ate the crackers,” Ghaliya said. She sat up and pushed the blanket aside.
“Did they stay down?”
“The second lot did.”
Well, it was something. I put the bag of veggies on the table, and fished out the ground beef. “Meatballs and onion gravy for dinner,” I told her. “And salad.”
“Mmm…” she murmured. Meatballs had been her favourite all through high school. I’d ply her with all her favourite meals, if it helped her eat a little more. And maybe decent food would help her hold onto it better.
I got busy making the meatballs. That started with chopping onions, which I did at the table, because the one foot of counter space between the sink and the two-ring electric range had Ghaliya’s dirty dishes on it.
Ghaliya wandered over to the table, pulled out her chair and settled in it. “You have a lot of books.”
“Did you read today?”
“A bit. Mostly, I slept.”
I thought sleeping would do her good. Her face had been cleaned of makeup, but darkness had remained under her eyes. She should really be checked over by an Ob-Gyn, but I didn’t have insurance. I was pretty sure Ghaliya didn’t, either.
I slid that worry bead over to join the others, but it prompted me to ask a question that had been nagging me all day. “Ghaliya….”
“Yeah?” She reached over and snagged a few fragments of onion and ate them.
“You’ve been pretty pissed at me for years.”
She sighed. “Yeah.”
“So why didn’t you go and find your father, yesterday?” And I looked up from the chopping board to catch her reaction.
Ghaliya’s jaw flexed. Her face closed in. Her eyes grew flinty. “You left your new address with Finesse.”
I’dhatedhaving to give them my new address. Just the name of the neighborhood spoke volumes about how well I wasnotdoing. But I’d worked for Finesse for a long time and in the back of my mind, I had wondered if some of their clients, when they heard I was gone, might seek me out. Offer me a job, perhaps. They had direct experience with my skills.
I hadn’t for a moment thought that sucking up the humiliation of leaving my new, seedy address with Finesse might reap such a different outcome.
Then therealmeaning of Ghaliya’s statement hit me. “Wait…your father didn’t give you his new address?”
“And he’s changed his phone number,” Ghaliya added. She sighed, then looked at me. “Guess I know how much I mean to him, now.”
I kept chopping, even though the onion was already sufficiently fine. Fury was trying to grip my throat. “Did you try Oscar? Surely, he has the address?” I hadn’t spoken to Oscar in a couple of weeks. He lived in Labrador, now, and was stupefyingly busy with his alternative energy company and his new wife, Jennifer.
“He had it, but not on his phone. He was going to phone me back, but he didn’t.” Ghaliya shrugged. “By then, I’d pretty much decided I didn’t want the address, even if he had it.”
“So you came here.” I’d been her second choice, but that didn’t bother me as much as it might have a few years ago. “Does that mean I’m forgiven?” This time, I didn’t look at her face. I scraped the chopped onion into the bowl, cracked an egg into it, then dropped in the beef.
