With Josh back in Philadelphia, I found myself with a lot of free time on my hands. I realized I hadn't seen Maya in forever and I felt guilty about it. I wasn't in the mood to talk after we wrapped filming on most days. Aside from Farkle and my one last face-to-face with Charlie Gardner, I hadn't really been in touch with anyone. I didn't even notice until I had to scroll through my text messages to find our last conversation. Ordinarily she would've been at the very top. So I texted her and we arranged to get coffee the next day after school let out.
"How's work?" I asked Maya as soon as I sat down across from her.
Her fingers were smudged with bits of charcoal, and I could see faint fingerprints on her cream-colored blouse from where she'd touched the fabric during the day.
She let out a short laugh and shook some of the hair from her face."Really? You're the one who just started a new job that you've barely told me anything about, and you're asking me how work is?"
"Did Hannah paint any more purple cats?"
"Hannah only paints purple cats," Maya answered, taking a sip from her cup. The rim was stained with her lipstick when she pulled it away. "But they're getting better with each attempt. So tell me about your new job! Tell me about the film project."
"What about Tasha? How's she doing?" At this point, I wasn't sure if I was resisting telling her because I wanted to tease her or because I really didn't want to talk about the homes we'd visited and the families we'd seen.
Maya rolled her eyes and humored me. "Tasha is doing great. She's exhibiting three pieces in the school art show. Now," she said, shifting her cup to one side and folding her arms in front of her, "I played your game, Pumpkin. But Hannah and Tasha are the only students of mine that you know. You're out of stall tactics. So you have to tell me about your job now." There was a gleam in Maya's eyes and I knew she had me.
I sighed. "I mean it's interesting," I began.
"What do you do?"
"Whatever Josh needs me to do. Carry camera cases, help with lighting, file documents, set up shots. That sort of thing."
"What's it like going out in the field?" she asked.
"It's...interesting," I picked my words carefully.
"Not anything like what you imagined, is it?" she asked softly.
"Not at all," I admitted.
"I had a feeling," Maya said. "I don't have that much experience with social workers. Just my students. But from what I've seen, TV shows and newspapers never do it justice."
I let out something between a laugh and a scoff. Justice was hardly the word I'd use to describe any of what I'd seen. "It's terrible, Maya. The work is easy but the things we cover are horrible. The first home we went to, the family didn't even have enough money to pay the water bill all the time. And the second one… They took the baby away."
"I'm sorry, Riles."
"Me too."
"Are you going to stay with it?" she asked.
"Of course I am." There was no question. Beyond the simple fact that I needed a job, I was invested in the families we had profiled so far. And as draining as it was, I had to know what became of them and who would come our way next.
"That's good, Riley," Maya said. "I hope a lot of people will see this documentary. I hope it will make them decide to help."
"People help people," I smiled.
"Secret of life."
We were quiet for a bit. Maya sipped her coffee. I nibbled a scone.
"Riles, can I ask you for a favor?" she asked.
"Anything, Peaches."
"This is going to sound dumb," Maya said. "But Lucas is going to Chicago next weekend. Some vet convention or something. And I don't really want to be all alone in the house. Would you mind coming to stay for the weekend?"
I smiled. "Of course I wouldn't mind."
The day we resumed filming, we met Cassie at a housing projects in West Harlem around noon. The street was eerily empty. Few people walked the sidewalks, and the ones that did made no noise. It was as if the sound of their footsteps was being swallowed up by the sidewalk. A single taxi trundled past us. The slow oil leak that normally dripped from Josh's Volvo was quiet now, forming a slow and silent pool under the front bumper.
We had the loading and unloading of equipment down to a science. Josh would pull the cases out and pass them to Nick and me. Nick would unpack his own camera and I would help Josh with his. Once they'd been set up with cameras and mics, I would rig up Cassie's mic and put the one portable lighting unit together. Then I'd close up the cases and lock them back in the car. We could do it in twenty minutes, sometimes fifteen if we really moved.
It took us somewhere in between fifteen and twenty minutes. Josh did a camera check and tested the mics.
"Okay, Cassie, can you give us some details about this case?"
Cassie took a minute, adjusted her hair when a cold wind blew it across her face. Her nose was turning redder by the minute. "There aren't many details, actually," she said. "The file's barely a page and I got it this morning. A neighbor called to say they haven't seen the mother in a while but they've heard the baby crying from time-to-time."
We took the elevator up to the fifteenth floor. Cassie got out first. We knew the drill. Hang back until she makes contact. We stayed about three doors down from the apartment and Cassie knocked. No answer. She knocked again and received no response. She frowned.
"What happens now?" Josh asked.
Cassie pulled a paper from her file folder. "Well, I have a court order to enter the premises, but I'll need police to actually let me in. Let me make a call."
A half hour later, two NYPD officers were standing outside the door to apartment 15D, partially blocking our view. Cassie stood behind them, armed with her legal pad, a pen, and the court order in case someone was home. The police officers knocked several times, then tried the doorknob. The door gave immediately.
"Police!" the first officer called as he entered the apartment, his partner following behind him, then Cassie. Josh and Nick moved up with the cameras and I brought up the rear. We were almost into the apartment when we heard the first officer shout, "Jesus!"
And then Cassie was shoving us back out of the apartment, the two officers right behind her. "Move back! Get back!" I wasn't sure who was talking. My head was spinning. Was someone home? Did someone have a weapon? And then the smell hit me: putrid, noxious, like something rotting. I felt nauseous. Josh gagged and pulled his shirt collar up around his nose as we made for the elevator.
The police officers were calling for backup. For crime scene units. For a coroner.
We gathered across the street from the apartment building. The police had ordered us to stay away from the scene. Cassie stood by the building entrance, giving a statement to two police officers. Nick shot some b-roll, then packed the camera and began pacing up and down the block.
"He used to do that in college, too," Josh told me, watching Nick's back-and-forth path. "Anytime he was nervous or agitated." Josh wrung his hands. "It's times like this that make me wish I hadn't quit smoking," he said with a wry smile.
I wasn't aware he had ever taken up smoking in the first place. I couldn't picture him with a cigarette in his mouth, but at the same time I could. Like his fast way of speaking and his penchant for black coffee. Things that were different about my uncle, but that I would have to accept. "Does it bother you, Uncle Josh? All of...this?"
Josh shook his head and let out a puff of breath. In the cold air, it looked almost like he'd taken a drag of a cigarette. "Not really," he admitted. "Not as much as when they took that baby away the other day." We watched the coroner's van pull up to the curb. The police had put up barriers at either end of the block. Some officers stood on the sidewalks, keeping the gathering crowd back.
"I don't see how it couldn't bother you," I said. We had no details, no information at all about what Cassie and the police had found inside that apartment. But it didn't take a psychic or a genius to figure it out. Coroners only showed up if someone was dead. The sight of the van brought back the smell, and a fresh wave of nausea with it.
"I've seen dead things before," Josh said. "Animals, mostly. People rarely." I thought of every place Josh had been on an assignment. Places across Africa and Asia and South America. A lot of jungles, and sometimes war zones. I wondered whose bodies he'd seen, and why they'd died, and what he had done when he first found them.
"It sounds callous to say, Riley, but it's just a body. It's just the shell that used to contain the person. The person isn't there anymore. I guess that's why it doesn't bother me so much. But a living person who's suffering, now that gets to me. With a living person, you can still help if you want to."
"Like Marie-Cecille and her baby?"
"Exactly."
I tried to focus on what Josh said. About a body being just a shell. Ukrainians didn't see it that way. I learned that when Mrs. Svorski passed. They believed that the soul stayed with the body for three days. My mom and Auggie went every night of those three days to keep Mrs. Svorski company so that she wouldn't be alone in the dark.
Mr. Feeny's funeral was different. An open casket funeral in a big church, with hundreds of mourners. It was the only time I'd seen a body up close. Mr. Feeny looked so peaceful and so gray in that casket, his hands folded over one another, and when I leaned down to kiss his forehead, the skin was cold against my lips. I felt the bite of that cold for hours after. Just a shell that had once contained all the wisdom my parents were raised on.
When I flushed Chelsea, when her glimmering orange body vanished down the tubes, was she still there? Or had she gone away sometime in the night, leaving just a relic of her existence behind?
The coroners emerged after a small eternity. My fingers were stiff and cold, the tip of my nose tingling and red. They wheeled out a stretcher with a black body bag on top. Then a second, much smaller one, only taking up a fraction of the stretcher. Josh's expression was grim as we watched them load the two body bags into the back of the van and drive away.
Nick went home after that. Josh wanted to interview Cassie to get her reaction and I stayed to help, but I couldn't bring myself to hear all the details.
All I heard was Cassie telling Josh, "I wish I'd gotten there sooner. But the case didn't even hit my desk until today. There's just too many cases in the system and not enough social workers to respond to them all. And this is the consequence when the system is so overburdened. The consequence is death."
I wouldn't discover what happened until days later, when the story broke on the news. OCFS received a call the week prior from a concerned neighbor who hadn't seen the mother in days. They reported that she had a two year-old son that lived in the apartment as well. OCFS opened a file on the case, but did not have any available social workers to follow up until Monday, when we accompanied Cassie to the apartment. The autopsy report estimated that the mother had died of an accidental overdose on Thursday night or Friday morning, and that the already-malnourished toddler either dehydrated or starved to death in his crib.
I shut the TV off and cried myself to sleep that night, and every night for almost a week after. The toddler's name was Cody and every newspiece ran photos of him. Big, brown eyes. Button nose. A full, curly head of jet-black hair. He was the kind of baby anybody would want to have. The kind they put on diaper boxes. His face would stay with me for years afterwards.
My parents always hosted Thanksgiving. Christmas used to be my grandparents' until my mother convinced them to take turns, but Thanksgiving was always the domain of Cory and Topanga Matthews. No arguments. No exceptions. This year was no different. In that sense anyway.
I arrived the morning of Thanksgiving, extra early because I knew my mother would need help and Auggie definitely wasn't going to be awake until at least 10 AM. To my surprise, it was my little brother in the kitchen when I walked through the door at 7:30, oven mitts on and hair a lopsided tangle of bedhead.
"Auggie?" I did a double-take.
"Riley?" he mimicked my tone.
"Didn't think you'd be up," I said, going to hug him. He'd grown ever taller, towering over both of my parents now. I could no longer rest my chin on his shoulder, even on tiptoe.
"Mom needed help with the stuffing," he said. "And you know how much I love stuffing."
I had to laugh. Same old Auggie.
We set about prepping the stuffing and the turkey, and were nearly done by the time my parents came out of their room around 9.
"My two favorite kitchen helpers," Mom beamed, kissing each of us on the cheek like we were kids.
Farkle texted me later in the morning. A simple "Happy Thanksgiving" and a turkey emoji.
Happy Thanksgiving! I wrote back. What are you doing to celebrate?
The parade was playing on the TV in the living room.
"Auggie!" Dad crowed from his seat on the couch. "Look! The Mr. Googly balloon!" Auggie rolled his eyes good-naturedly and left the kitchen to join him in belting out the theme song.
My phone buzzed.
FARKLE MINKUS: Not much. Parents are in Tuscany so I'm probably just gonna order in.
I frowned. I forgot that unlike me, Farkle had no siblings, no big family that got together for the holidays. It hadn't mattered when we were kids. He'd spend the mornings at home and by afternoon, all of us would gather at the bakery or at someone's house. The thought of anyone being by themselves, ordering in for Thanksgiving was unbearable. Especially when it was Farkle.
No! You're not going to be alone for Thanksgiving! Come to my parents' house. 5 PM sharp.
FARKLE MINKUS: Are you sure?
You better!
Maya and Lucas showed up around 4:30. Their presence at Thanksgiving was unquestionable, inviolable tradition. Lucas's family had gone back to Texas a few years ago after his dad's work assignment was up. And since Uncle Shawn and Katy came to our family Thanksgiving, Maya and Lucas were inducted as members of the Matthews family. In truth, they'd been part of the family all along.
Maya swept in with a loaf of pumpkin bread and a broad smile, wearing a loose-fitting orange blouse and accepting hugs and kisses on the cheek from my relatives, addressing each by name as if she, too, were related to them by blood. Lucas brought up the rear, smiling modestly, clad in a brown hooded sweater and carrying both of their coats.
Maya presented the loaf of bread to me. "Pumpkin bread for my pumpkin!" she declared. I grinned quizzically.
"Maya! You're so...full of spirit," I said, setting the loaf on the counter.
"I'm just really happy. I guess I have a lot to be thankful for," she shrugged, throwing her arms around me. I briefly wondered if she'd had something to drink before coming. It wasn't that Maya didn't do holiday spirit. It was that she didn't do it this exuberantly. And honestly, nobody was ever this enthused about Thanksgiving anyway. I decided to let the matter drop. If my best friend was full of Thanksgiving spirit, I wasn't going to rain on her parade.
Lucas folded me into a tight hug, radiating more warmth than a space heater. I took the coats from him and draped them over the back of the couch because there was no room left in the coat closet.
"Thanks for keeping Maya company while I'm at the conference next weekend," he said.
I smiled. "Well someone has to take care of her in your absence." Maya used to be the one to take care of me, so much so that she used to joke she couldn't ever take a sick day. It was my turn to return the favor.
I offered Maya a pumpkin ale that Josh had bought. "Pumpkin ale from your Pumpkin?" I offered.
She laughed. "No thanks, Riles. I'll just have water."
Farkle arrived at 5 PM sharp, just as I instructed, much to the delight of my parents. And Maya and Lucas, who enveloped him in a three-way hug that bordered on suffocating.
"I'm glad you could make it," I said to him after he'd managed to pry himself free of them.
"Thank you for inviting me," he said.
"Of course," I took his coat. "You're part of our family too, Farkle. And families should be together on Thanksgiving."
Aunt Morgan was the last to arrive at just past 5. She had to take the train in from Washington, D.C. But once she got there, the real festivities could begin. Starting with the annual tradition of going around the room and saying what we were thankful for.
Everyone's answers were pretty generic. Dad was thankful that his class field trip to the Cloisters was approved. Mom was thankful they'd finally made her managing partner of the New York office. Uncle Josh was thankful he had secured funding for the film project, Auggie for being invited to an elite STEM conference in Seattle over winter break, Maya for keeping her job, and Lucas for being so close to finishing veterinary school.
And then it was my turn. I didn't know what to say at first. So much had changed in the last month, and not all of it was exactly worthy of giving thanks. "I'm grateful we're all gathered here. And I'm grateful for new beginnings," I finally said. I looked around the table and caught Farkle smiling to himself.
After dinner, everyone gathered in the living room, crowding the couches and the window seat. Maya was turned sideways, her back against the sofa arm and her legs draped across Lucas's knees. My mother pressed styrofoam cups of coffee into everyone's hands. I perched myself on the arm of the sofa and Maya moved over so I could sit beside her. Lucas and Farkle were talking. Probably about work or maybe just catching up, but I wasn't paying too close attention.
The house was so full. Of people. Of noise. Of laughter. I usually lived for holiday gatherings, where I could see my entire family in one place. They always filled the house with such warmth. But the din became unbearable the longer I sat there. My head began to pound. I turned to Maya and when we caught each other's eyes, she knew something was wrong.
"Riles, you okay?" she asked, sitting up straighter and rotating herself to face me.
"Yeah," I said. "I'll be back in a minute."
I had to get out. I rose quickly. Maya's eyes followed me across the room but nobody else seemed to notice I had gone.
I did what I always did when I was in my childhood home. When I needed time to think. I went to the bay window. My mother had insisted on leaving it undisturbed when I moved out. Even when I said it would be alright to redo the space, to convert it into a home office so my mother wouldn't have to work at the kitchen table or the home theater my dad had always dreamed about. Or a guest room so that Uncle Josh wouldn't have to crash on the couch like he was currently doing. But Mom was adamant. I needed a thinking place. A happy place. The bakery was hers, and the bay window had always been mine.
Outside, I could hear my parents and Uncle Eric and Uncle Josh and Aunt Morgan, all laughing about something that my grandfather had said. They would probably break out the board game soon, or a deck of cards and some poker chips. But all I could see was Lupita and her kids, who probably had no Thanksgiving feast this year. And Marie-Cecille, in her cold, lonely apartment without her daughter. Cody's face on the news and the apartment that probably stood empty with crime scene tape across the door. How many more cases were unfolding across the city right now while people like me gorged ourselves on turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes? How many families weren't complete right now like mine was because kids were taken or help had arrived too late?
There was a knock on the door and Farkle entered a moment later.
"Hey," he said softly, shutting the door behind him. "Can I join you?"
I slid over silently and patted the empty cushion beside me. He eased down next to me.
"What's wrong, Riley?" Farkle asked.
I shook my head. "Just...thinking," I said.
"You seem anxious," he noted.
"I guess I am," I admitted.
"Is it all the people?" he asked after a moment.
I shook my head. "Not exactly. At least not the people here." I turned to face him and found him staring at me intently. "It's the people out there," I sighed, jerking my head toward the window.
"The ones you encountered during filming," he filled in.
I nodded. "I've been thinking about what you said. About the butterfly effect and people helping people and all of that. And it makes sense, but when we get to a location, I just feel so helpless. We went to an apartment Monday and the mom and baby were dead, Farkle. Dead! Because there weren't enough social workers and nobody got there until it was too late. How do you help that, Farkle?"
He looked just as helpless as I felt. "I-I don't know," he said after a moment. "I'm sorry, Riley. I know that probably doesn't help much…"
I felt like I could cry. I'd been doing that a lot lately. I felt like I could cry because of everything I'd seen, and because despite everything, Farkle was sitting here with me and somehow that made me feel much better. Even if he didn't have answers for me, for once.
I sniffed, then forced a smile. "You'll never guess who I got coffee with the other day."
"Who?" Farkle arched an eyebrow.
"Charlie Gardner," I replied.
"Oh," he frowned.
"What?"
"Nothing," Farkle shook his head. "Just...I thought you guys broke up? Like years ago."
"We did," I sighed. "But not exactly on the best of terms. Anyway, Maya tried to trick us into meeting to talk things out and it didn't go exactly as planned. But we decided to meet up and talk a couple days ago."
"How'd it go?" he asked, almost hesitantly.
"About as well as it could have," I answered. "I mean, it's not like we just broke up or anything. It was five years ago, Farkle. I thought I was over him that whole time but I guess some part of me was still holding on. It's stupid, I know."
"Not stupid," Farkle replied. "Futile, maybe. But not stupid. Did I ever tell you what happened when Isadora and I broke up?" he asked.
I shook my head.
"It was just after New Years. I took the train from Harvard down to Princeton to see her because I knew something was different. I could tell by the way she was texting. So we walked around downtown Princeton, and finally she told me that she felt it wasn't working out. That she still loved me, but that we seemed to be going down different paths. And she was right, I guess. I was going to get my MBA and come back to New York to take over the company but she wanted to continue her studies in Europe. London, or Zurich, or Amsterdam. I still remember the exact words she used when we parted ways."
"What did she say?" My interest was piqued. Farkle had never told me about the breakup. All of my information came from Maya, and even hers was secondhand. Lucas had been the one to tell her.
Farkle smiled. It wasn't exactly a sad smile. It looked more like the kind of smile my father got whenever someone reminded him of Feeny. "She said, 'Our love was perhaps my greatest experiment.' And I asked her what the results were. She told me, 'That I know how to feel and how to love. I don't know if I'll ever feel this way about someone again, but I'm glad to have felt it, and to have felt it for you.' It was probably the most Isadora thing she could've said."
I furrowed my brow. "Then why didn't you stay together?" They clearly still loved each other when they broke up, and clearly there wasn't anything wrong with their relationship.
"I tried to convince her at first, but she had a point, Riley. When she left to study in Europe, she had no idea when she'd be coming back to the States. If ever. And she didn't want me to wait for her forever. It wouldn't have been fair to either of us."
I thought about all the times I'd strung Charlie along. All of the time I spent knowing we weren't right for each other and still holding onto him anyway. "Did you hold onto her?" I asked.
"For a while," Farkle replied. "When we broke up, there was always this sense that maybe it would work out down the line. So for a while, I thought of it as being temporarily single. But you know. Time passes. Isadora was doing really well in London and I started to realize she probably wasn't going to come back. So I did hold on. But I've let go now."
"But you haven't dated anyone since."
Farkle smiled softly. "When the right person comes along, I will."
There was another knock on the door, and this time it was Maya and Lucas that entered.
"Feeling better?" Lucas asked.
"I am now," I smiled.
I don't know exactly when everyone left that night. I just know that I fell asleep on my childhood bed around 4 AM and when I woke up, everyone was gone but someone had tucked me in.
We must have sat in the bay window and talked for hours like we did when we were kids. We used to talk about everything there, and we talked about everything that night. Farkle's travel mishaps. The time an iguana got loose in the veterinary clinic and Lucas had to wrangle it. We joked. We laughed. And, for a while at least, everything was okay.