tees, some khaki shorts, and a couple of old, white, men's dress shirts with frayed cuffs and collars, along with her underwear and night things made up most of her wardrobe. Pitiful enough for a girl her age.
Maybe her mother had held some back as she had the coats and shoes, he thought for a moment. But no, he decided, she probably never had them. This was all of it, what shabby, little there was. He could not imagine that mother of hers spending her time and money outfitting her daughter only to have the result be additional temptation for her scurrilous husband.
Dutifully reminding himself that the purpose for this busy work was the imposing of structure on the chaos of his emotions, he forced down his rising temper and continued with his task. The clothes were soon arrayed on hangers by category or folded in neat stacks in the drawer. He left out a pair of pajamas for her and lay them with a clean towel and washcloth on the bench at the foot of the bed.
He placed her schoolbooks on his desk and her ancient, battered record player on the dresser top. The record player's electrical cord was frayed and dangled from the broken pegs where it used to coil for storage. Another compartment when opened revealed a set of corroded batteries. Nicholas removed them and tossed them in the waste can. Tomorrow, he decided, he would have to ask Roger to check out the player and replace the cord and batteries if it were worth salvaging. If anybody could save it, Roger could.
Popping open the lid, he found a small cache of old forty-fives inside, representing, he supposed, the accumulated investment of many a week's allowance. It was a rather eclectic collection, more than odd for a girl of her age in these Beatles-crazy days. He wouldn't expect her to know, much less to own, the likes of Elvis Presley, Johnny Mathis, Harry Belafonte, Rosemary Clooney, and Patsy Kline. He shuffled through them, smoothing out the yellowed paper sleeves, and arranging them in alphabetical order.
A rectangle of white obstructed the label of "Heartbreak Hotel." He reached in to push it out of the way and discovered it to be a photograph.
The snapshot was of a very young Trissa, skinny and pigtailed, an inner tube around her middle, two teeth missing in the front of her smile. Standing next to her was a good-looking man in swim trunks with a towel draped over his shoulder. Her father. Nicholas was certain of it. There was something in the way her face angled up at him as if her squint was caused by the glare of his presence and not the sun that struck them both in the face. He felt a bitter surge of resentment that her father's eyes adored only the camera. The man seemed oblivious of the child who stood so wistfully in his shadow.
Nicholas shoved the picture into his pocket, neatened the stack of records and propped them between an old shaving mug he used to hold combs, pencils, and nail files and the brass Indian head Janey had given him on his birthday.
He collected Trissa's suede pumps from her bedside, her scuffed loafers, navy leather flats, and pair of dilapidated sneakers from the grocery bag in which her mother had stuffed them all. In the circle of light from the desk lamp, he applied polish to the loafers and flats, then buffed them to a shine. With a shoe brush, he rubbed the flat spots out of the suede pumps until they almost looked new.
The shoes were soon in their place next to her sneakers and her slippers on the floor of his closet. There was a satisfying sense of permanency to see them all there in a row, and he removed his own shoes and placed them beside hers.
*****
Trissa choked back the wave of nausea that woke her and lurched upward, blinking in the dim but sudden light. She shuddered as the remnants of a dream slithered away from her, back under the rock from where it would arise to taunt her some other night. She was confused to feel the soft bed beneath her and not the hard floor of her closet cushioned with just her rumpled quilt. Not until she saw Nicholas at her bedside, his tired and injured face lined with worry, did she remember where she was. "Nicholas, I think I'm going to be sick."