Anna would either hand to Rosie or start filling in herself, but the woman only went on looking at her over the strenuous topography of her desk. It was unnerving. “Now tell me about it. Tell me everything.”
Rosie drew a deep breath and told Anna about the drop of blood on the sheet. She didn’t want to give Anna the idea that she was so lazy—or so crazy—that she had left her husband of fourteen years because she didn’t want to change the bed-linen, but she was terribly afraid that was how it must sound. She wasn’t able to explain the complex feelings that spot had aroused in her, and she wasn’t able to admit to the anger she had felt—anger which had seemed simultaneously new and like an old friend—but she did tell Anna that she had rocked so hard she had been afraid she might break Pooh’s Chair.
“That’s what I call my rocker,” she said, blushing so hard that her cheeks felt as if they might be on the verge of smoking. “I know it’s stupid—”
Anna Stevenson waved it off. “What did you do after you made your mind up to go? Tell me that.”
Rosie told her about the ATM card, and how she had been sure that Norman would have a hunch about what she was doing and either call or come home. She couldn’t bring herself to tell this severely handsome woman that she had been so scared she’d gone into someone’s back yard to pee, but she told about using the ATM card, and how much she’d drawn out, and how she’d come to this city because it seemed far enough away and the bus would be leaving soon. The words came out of her in bursts surrounded by periods of silence in which she tried to think of what to say next and contemplated with amazement and near-disbelief what she had done. She finished by telling Anna about how she’d gotten lost that morning, and showing her Peter Slowik’s card. Anna handed it back after a single quick glance.
“Do you know him very well?” Rosie asked. “Mr. Slowik?”
Anna smiled—to Rosie it looked like it had a bitter edge. “Oh yes,” she said. “He is a friend of mine. An old friend. Indeed he is. And a friend of women like you, as well.”
“Anyway, I finally got here,” Rosie finished. “I don’t know what comes next, but at least I got this far.”
A ghost of a smile touched the comers of Anna Stevenson’s mouth. “Yes. And made a good job of it, too.”
Gathering all her remaining courage—the last thirty-six hours had taken a great deal of it—Rosie asked if she could spend the night at Daughters and Sisters.
“Quite a bit longer than that, if you need to,” Anna replied. “Technically speaking, this is a shelter—a privately endowed halfway house. You can stay up to eight weeks, and even that is an arbitrary number. We are quite flexible here at Daughters and Sisters.” She preened slightly (and probably unconsciously) as she said this, and Rosie found herself remembering something she had learned about a thousand years ago, in French II: L‘état, c’est moi. Then the thought was swept away by amazement as she really realized what the woman was saying.
“Eight ... eight ...”
She thought of the pale young man who had been sitting outside the entrance to the Poitside terminal, the one with the sign in his lap reading HOMELESS & HAVE AIDS, and suddenly knew how he would feel if a passing stranger for some reason dropped a hundred-dollar bill into his cigar-box.
“Pardon me, did you say up to eight weeks?”
Dig out your ears, little lady, Anna Stevenson would say briskly. Days, I said—eight days. Do you think we’d let the likes of you stay here for eight weeks? Let’s be sensible, shall we?
Instead, Anna nodded. “Although very few of the women who come to us end up having to stay so long. That’s a point of pride with us. And you’ll eventually pay for your room and board, although we like to think the prices here are very reasonable.” She smiled that brief, preening smile again. “You should be aware that the accommodations are a long way from fancy. Most of the second floor has been turned into a dormitory. There are thirty beds—well, cots—and one of them just happens to be vacant, which is why we are able to take you in. The room you slept in today belongs to one of the