Stolen Hope

I stood in the white clam shelled driveway with my duffle bag and single suitcase, taking in the building that was going to be my new home. I had been in this spot many times before, being bounced from foster home to foster home for the last four years. But this was the first time I had a pit in my stomach and felt the anxiety of being and outsider.

It was my first time seeing it. My interview two weeks ago was at my social worker’s office. I had met with Jean McMann who had decided to “step up my charity work this year” and take on an aging out foster child as an assistant – a six month trial run to build my resume. Apparently I was selected because I didn’t steal or destroy my foster homes. Pretty low bar. And I accepted cause I needed a place to live when I turned 18. Didn’t think too much else about it. But now I was standing here taking in the weathered cedar siding and white trim of the coastal magazine house wondering what I was thinking.

Leaving the foster home wasn’t what scared me. It wasn’t even the idea of being alone. In reality I had been on my own since I was 14 when the carefully hidden away secret of my mother’s alcoholism came exploding out for the world to see. What scared me was not being alone, not being invisible. I have always blended in with the surroundings of my fucked up world. How was I going to wallflower myself big beautiful house and not be the obvious charity experiment?

“Buck up, Slo. Get it together” I thought to myself as I brought my head back to the ground and took a breath. I walked up the large wide granite steps with blue hydrangea plants bleeding over the sides, counting as I went in an effort to ground myself. It was the one technique from therapy that stuck with me.

Six steps up. 8 paces to the front door. One ring of the door bell.

“McMann residence” a voice said.

Puzzled, I looked around confused about where the voice was coming from.

“What is your business here, Miss?” the voice said again.

“ugh, what? I’m Sloane Alexander. I’m here for the assistant position. Mrs. McMann hired me.” I responded to the air while starting at the mahogany front door with ornate carved arches and flowers swirled through out it.

“Please wait just a moment Ms. Alexander. Someone will be right with you.”

Still puzzled about where the voice emanated from, I turned around looking for a Ring camera but saw none. Instead I found myself on a front porch that was as wide as my old bedroom at my last foster home that I shared with two other girls. White rocking chairs lined the porch with striped pillows on them and white side tables between each one.

I sat in one of the chairs, figuring it may be a while. It usually was with charity services. When someone thinks they are doing you a favor out of the goodness of their heart, they don’t really have the same respect for your time as someone one they see as being on their level. Beyond the hydrangeas I had walked by was perfectly manicured grass, cut with a diagonal pattern and no sign clover, dandelion or other undesirable.

I guess that is what money can buy you, I thought. Life with only the desirable. So that was my task – to be desirable, to be useful, to fit into this molded out life, and eliminate the chaos of my reality. “Don’t be a weed” I said to myself.

Just then the front door opened and Mrs. McMann walked about. For the second time, she reminded me of Daine Keaton in some Nancy Meyers movie. White canvas espadrille shoes, white tailored slacks, a navy polo shirt with the horse emblem, and a striped sweater draped over her shoulders with the arms tied in the front. Her grey-blonde hair was bobbed at the jawline, highlighted by the gold and tortoise shell hoop earrings she wore. She had pushed glasses up on her head, showing a face of only light makeup with glowing skin, that although aged, required no foundation and blue eyes highlighted by simple mascara.

“Sloane, it’s so nice to see you again.” She said walking over. I stood up to meet her, raising my hand. But she moved faster than I expected and came right in for a hung before I could initiate my intended greeting. Before I could say anything in response, she added “Let me get someone to take your bags to your room and we can go inside for some tea.”

Putting her hand on my upper back she lead me past my old life in those two bags sitting on the porch and into my new life at 147 Lawerence Drive.

…

The first few months went pretty smoothly. I was successfully avoiding being a weed. My pay was good and since I was given a room, I didn’t have any real expenses. Step one to not being a weed was not looking like one. The first thing I spent money on was a new wardrobe, shopping at consignment stores in on Thames street and sites like Poshmark, to slowly replace my closet with brands like J.Crew, Ralph Lauren, and Vineyard Vines.

As I blended into this world, my job became easier as well. I would stopped getting asked a second time who I was and if I was on the pick up list when I do errands for Mrs. McMann. The worst was when the laundry mat didn’t want to release her dry cleaning to me my first week. They called the house to confirm I actually worked there. But I guess I can’t blame them. I was in cut off jean shorts, knock-off Crocs and a halter top while picking up a Chanel suit and Tom Ford evening dress.

Mrs. McMann seemed pleased with me as well. She was always pleasant and courtesy at our morning meetings when she would delegate my tasks for the day. But as my appearance changed, she seemed to be more relaxed around me. Our meetings, which at first had been in the formal parlor room at the front of the house, were moved to her office next to her bedroom upstairs.

However, along with her increased comfortability with my presence, came the increased curiosity about the poor foster kid she was taking pity on and propelling into a different life.

“Sloane, darling.” She said as I was walking out of her office last week. “I would love it if you could join me for tea this afternoon. It doesn’t feel right that you do so much for me and I don’t know anything about you.” She tries to make it like we’re friends and it’s an option. But we’re not, and it’s not. I played along though, and gushed over how great that would be. In away it was great. An invite into her daily afternoon tea seemed like validation that my presence was no longer in jarring contrast to this home and the world it orbited in. But I also had learned a long time ago that no true relationships come out of being a charity case. The kindness you receive isn’t from a mutual respect or affection, but from the internal gratification they receive from their perceived generosity, and as soon as they don’t received the expected gratitude, you are reminded of exactly where you stand.

That afternoon’s tea the conversations mainly focused on how I was liking Newport and if the other staff in the house were being kind to me. She discussed some upcoming events she had and my need my help planning. It was a pleasant surprise that this tea to get to know me actually did have anything to do with me. However, I must of preformed as desired because after that day, our morning meetings ended with a “Thank you Sloane, I’ll see you for tea” and my afternoons were no longer my own. Instead my afternoons were now taken up by Darjeeling, Madeline cookies and cucumber sandwiches

On the third day the pretneses fell and our tea conversations when exactly where I had been expecting them to go and direction to call her Jean, rather than Mrs. McMann. She asked the predictable questions, her probing curiosity masked by caring. “How has the adjustment been?” really meant “Do you still feel poor, or did I save you?” Then came the more direct questions about my past, always accompanied by a look of petty and reaction about how tough that had to be. She asked me about my mother and her alcoholism, my father’s death, and our old apartment in a Providence tenement building. She asked about high school and foster homes.

I didn’t want to talk about anything she asked about and she certainly didn’t want to hear the truth. The truth was my mom was great. She was smart and funny and loving. She had been an artist and had a degree in art history. I didn’t even remember my father’s death from construction accident when I was 18 months old. The workmen’s comp payout lasted a while so life wasn’t too bad at first. Mom’s drinking was more under control. But the money ran out when I was 10 and we had to move. The financial stress made the drinking worse, but the drinking made the financial stress worse – and so started the downward spiral. We moved four times before the state removed me from my mom. Our last apartment was in a tenement building with cockroaches. But it was also full my mom’s art, her painting from before she spent all the money on booze, and her pencil drawings from when that’s all the supplies she could afford. We didn’t have a television, but we had stacks of books filled with pictures and stories of the world’s revered artists. My mom taught me that art was everywhere, even in the instant mash potato volcano or the pattern of the noodles that came out of the Ramen packet. I was happy with my mom. I took care of her and myself. She took care of me with her love and her art, bringing happiness and beauty into our dank apartment. Everything would have been fine if I didn’t get hurt at school and she didn’t go to school drunk.

But I didn’t tell Jean that. I told her what all the do-gooders what to hear. I told her that my father’s death caused my mom to go into a depression and turn to alcohol. I told her that our apartment was in terrible condition and our slum lord wouldn’t do anything to improve the conditions. I told her that I cooked dinner and cleaned and did laundry. That my mom was now institutionalized for Bipolar and so heavily medicated she couldn’t hold a conversation. Everything I said was true, just not the whole truth. I told her what she wanted to hear so she could stay in the reality that she thought was saving me.

Sometimes I chastised myself for complaining. Jean definitely was the same “white savior” that I had been experiencing since going into state custody. Pity and words meant to make me feel better about my shitty life. But she was the first one to take action. She opened her home to me, paid me well and was allowing me to see a path to a different life. Despite my rule to not get emotionally attached to these types of people, I found myself no longer wishing to be invisible.

As the six month mark approached, I found myself holding my breath at the end of each conversation I had with Jean. I didn’t want to leave. I liked it here. I don’t know that I was happy exactly, but I saw a path to being happy. I missed my mom, but this job and living here meant I had so many options. With guarded optimism, I started to hope that maybe this was a little different. Maybe she saw me not as a vagabond child that she could use for her own piety. Maybe she saw me for what I could become.

Finally, it happened at tea on exactly 6 months to the day of my arrival.

“Sloane, you know, I’ve really enjoyed this time you’ve spent here. You are such a bright girl and you’ve just fit in so nicely into the mix here. But don’t you want to have plans for you future?” she said.

My heart sank. There it is, I thought. The typical you’ve had enough help, time to fly poor little chick, the same ending that all charity cases get.

“Yeah. I guess. Thank you for the experience here. I learned a lot.” I said as I started to raise myself up out of the chair to leave the room.

“Ohh no no no. You misunderstood me. I’m not firing you.” She said. “I meant what do you want to do with your life? You don’t want to me my assistant your whole life do you? I want to help you as much as you help me Sloane.”

“Well I have been saving while I’ve been here. Hopefully next year I’ll have enough to take some night classes at the community college.” The shock of the turn in conversation caused me to actually tell her the truth, dropping my guard.

“That’s great, Sloane! What do you want to study?”

“I like to read, so I was thinking of taking some literature classes. Maybe a writing course.”

“You never mentioned that in all the times we’ve talked. Why not?”

I sighed feeling uncomfortable that I had been so unintentionally forthcoming. “Sometimes in my world, saying things like that out loud feels foolish. Because it’s probably never going to happen. Something always goes wrong.”

“I’ll tell you what Sloane. In my world, when we want something, we take it.” She said. “Come with me.” She stood up from behind her desk motioning for me to follow her.

As we left the room, we walked through the upstairs hallway, down the stairs to the foyer.

She linked her arm in mine, leaning into me and saying slightly above a whisper, “You see Sloane, my father used to teach at the university in town. You can dream bigger than community college. And you can read more than the thrift store paperbacks I see you carrying around. And I’m going to help you make those dreams happen.”

I was flabbergasted, speechless with from the words I was hearing. I apparently hadn’t been as invisible as I thought. She had been analyzing me and trying listening. Somehow within five minutes, I went from thinking this as all over, to being offered an open book of opportunity – being offered the permission to hope.

“You have never been to the library in this house, have you?” she said as we approached a large wooden door at the end of the hall.

“I didn’t even know there was a library” I responded.

“Well there is. And it’s fantastic. The perfect spot for you to read to your hearts content and work from once we get you into some summer classes next month.” she said as she pushed the door open.

I took one step in with her and stopped. My jaw hit the floor.

It was a library like I had only seen in movies. Dark wood bookshelves, each full to capacity with books, some appearing to be old and classic but also some modern novels interspersed. There was a fireplace with a leather couch and two wingback armchairs, inviting pillows and blankets on each, were positioned adjacent to one another. On the other side of the room, there was a large table with the classic green shaded desk light that you see in movies. A plush rug under the table protecting the gleaming wood floors.

But none of this is what made me freeze in the door way.

Between the built-in book shelves there was artwork adorning the walls all over the room. Not just any artwork. Straight ahead of the entrance was Landscape with Obelisk by Flinck. Above the fireplace, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt stared down. To the left, was A Lady and Gentleman in Black, another Rembrandt. To the right was The Concert by Vermeer. Then I saw large arrangement of smaller works all framed and displayed. I recognized all of them from my mother’s books. I was starring at the loot from the most famous art heist in modern history. They had been missing 1990 when they were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

My head swirled with emotions and contemplation.

“Well, what do you think?” Jean said. “Do you think you can spend some time in here?”

I started at her, searching words, any word, as she waited for a response. Finally I said the only thing that came to mind that wasn’t, my boss is a theft.

“Fuck.”