not?”
His smile faltered. He stretched it back quick, though it didn’t carry through to his eyes. “I think you’re talking too loud,” he said, then took a bite of turkey bacon and chewed it like cud.
I set my fork down, so that I didn’t accidently stab him, and lowered my voice. “Her father then. Phone him.”
After a sour-faced swallow, Carl said, “He’s absentee.”
“Oh? That sounds fancy. Is it a nice way of saying Josie’s a bastard?”
“Duffy,” Carl reprimanded, as if our biggest problem at the moment was my lack of civility.
I said, “Fine. He’s absentee. So who else can return her to wherever she came from?”
Carl sipped his coffee and gave bald, Bible-beating Sherri Linley a wave from afar with his spare hand. He then plucked a sugar packet from the holder and raised it up as an offering to her, even though she had her own.
I banged the table with my palm. All the dishes clattered, and the conversations nearest us quieted. The outburst was stupid of me, I realize, but I’d had it. This was not something to be trifled with. He’d heard Nora, same as me. If borrowing a little oxygen therapy from Janelle Pratt was borderline cause for eviction, then running a hostel from inside Centennial seemed like a surefire bet.
I waited for the ripple in my water glass to settle before daring to look up. Thankfully, Nora had disappeared on some unknown errand. My next-door neighbor Charles, sitting one table over, stared at me.
“Something wrong?” I barked at him. The man was stone-deaf, narcoleptic, obese, and destructive with his motor scooter. We’d never gotten on, because I spent most of my time yelling at him, either to wake him up or so he could hear.
He turned back to his meal without answering.
I whispered at Carl, “I nearly solved this problem ten minutes ago, but you told me to wait. ‘Wait,’ you said. So I did, thinking we’d have an intelligent conversation, and now here you are, acting as if . . . as if . . .”
Carl set his coffee cup down, taking care that his shaking hand didn’t cause it to spill. He wiped the corners of his mouth with his napkin, pushed his plate away, and looked at me hard. “I want to keep her.”
I snorted. “She’s not a pet, Carl.”
“I want her to stay here for the week, like she planned. She looks like she might be in between places right now.”
I readjusted in my chair, glanced around, then leaned in. “Have you had a stroke?”
“Why would you say something like that?”
“Maybe your hearing aids are broken.”
“I can hear you just fine.”
“Really? Then did you hear Nora this morning talking about Sharon? Remember that lady? She kind of looks like a hornet. Been around for a few months. Keeps busy by handing out pink slips to anyone who coughs wrong. Sound familiar?”
After a reluctant pause, his chin dipped. I’d left out some of the more choice adjectives I had for Centennial’s new owner, but he could fill them in on his own.
I said, “Well, that’s good news. You must just have low blood sugar then. Why don’t you eat something, and when Nora gets back we’ll tell her what’s happened. I’m sure she’ll—”
“You don’t understand,” Carl said.
“No, you don’t understand.” My pointer was suddenly at the tip of his nose, and my next words roiled in my throat like bile before I spat them out. “I don’t care if your granddaughter’s homeless. I don’t care if her name’s Josie or Jesus. I’ll be damned if one of your handouts lands me in Simmons.”
My voice cracked open and bled on that last word, like always. That’s why I tried to never say it. Simmons Home for the Aged was the only other old folks’ home in Everton, Texas, and the moment its name passed my lips, I saw the hellhole in detail. There was my uncle, lying in that bed, looking up at me like he was a dog I’d accidently clipped on the highway.
This