Taking the Heat

Gabrielle noted the chugging of her air conditioner, knowing it had probably been on all day, and shuddered at the thought of opening her next utility bill. “August in the Arizona desert. We don’t get much of a break from the heat.”

“Yeah. My folks are sick of it. They’re talking about moving to Idaho,” she said, setting the bottle in the drainer.

Gabrielle felt a stab of worry and paused in her digging. “The winters here more than make up for the summer heat. We have months and months of beautiful, perfect weather.”

“I know. After living here most of their lives, they’re not thrilled about encountering snow. But they’re convinced they want to live where it’s green for a change.”

Though Gabrielle had spent the first seven years of her life in the Phoenix area, she’d moved with her adoptive family to the Oregon coast and knew all about green. She’d met Allie’s father while waiting tables in Portland. But a few years after she and David were married, she’d begged him to take her to the hot dry place she remembered from her childhood, trading the rolling, misty hills, forests and picturesque valleys of Oregon for the rugged, harsher beauty of the desert. Because his parents were already living in Phoenix during the winters, he was familiar with the area and agreed easily enough. Phoenix was growing; the economy was good. He’d felt confident that he’d be able to start his own mortgage company here, and his business had flourished almost immediately. Five years ago, his only brother had moved to Arizona, as well. So for most of the year his entire family lived in the valley.

Gabrielle had no family. Though her adoptive parents and their two daughters remained in Oregon, she didn’t miss them. They stayed in loose contact, but they’d always treated her more like a guest than a part of the family. She certainly wasn’t close to them.

“Would you go with your parents?” she asked Felicia, tensing as she waited for the girl’s answer. Gabrielle was finally establishing her independence. She’d moved far enough from David that she couldn’t lean on him too much. She had a steady job, a healthy baby-sitting situation for Allie and was just starting to find herself, to decide who and what she wanted to be. She couldn’t lose Felicia now.

Felicia folded her arms and leaned against the counter as Gabrielle discovered some frozen peas that Allie, at least, would enjoy.

“No, I’d stay. All my friends are here,” she said. “I’m going to live with my cousin and save up for school. But I doubt my parents will really move, anyway. They say they’re going to Idaho every time we have a monsoon.”

Gabrielle breathed a sigh of relief as she put the peas on the counter and pulled two pans out of the cupboard. Dust storms hit Arizona every August, usually out of nowhere, often accompanied by thunder and rain. Once, a monsoon broke several large branches off the old olive tree she and David had in their backyard in Phoenix and swept the limbs and a bunch of dirt and leaves into the pool. But the storms were so dramatic and such a startling change from the constant heat that she actually liked them. “The last one we had was pretty bad,” she said.

“That’s what got them talking about moving again,” Felicia responded.

“I hope that’s all it is, talk. In any case, I’m glad you’ll be staying.” Gabrielle gestured at the neat kitchen. “Thanks for cleaning up, by the way.”

Felicia glanced around and smiled as though proud of the job she’d done. “You bet. I opened the bottom drawer, the one with all the plastic icebox dishes and measuring cups, and let Allie toss them out while I cleaned. She played for at least thirty minutes without a whimper.” She checked her watch and shoved off from the counter. “But I guess I’d better go. I’ve got a date tonight. You want me at four-thirty again tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah. I have to be to work by five.” In a little more than twelve hours. Gabrielle couldn’t face the thought of returning to the prison so soon.

Telling herself she’d let tomorrow take care of itself, she trailed Felicia into the living room and watched as the girl slipped on her sandals and gathered her purse.

“See ya tomorrow.” Felicia gave Allie a quick kiss on the cheek and hurried out.

“Have fun tonight,” Gabrielle called as the door banged shut. Then she and Allie were alone, with the whole night ahead of them and nothing much to do.

“Are you hungry, babe?” she asked.

Allie made another grab for her earring, and Gabrielle caught her hand just in time.

“I hope that’s a yes,” she said, but before she could return to their dinner prospects, the telephone rang.

“Gabby? It’s me, David.”

Her ex-husband. Gabrielle smiled. She and David didn’t work as marriage partners—she didn’t love him in the right way—but they made great friends. “You always seem to know when I need to hear from you. How are you?”

“Fine. Busy. Is something wrong? Did you have a bad day?”

Gabrielle hesitated. David had never liked the idea of her leaving Phoenix to move to Florence, an hour and a half to the southeast. He’d liked the idea of her becoming a prison officer even less. It wasn’t exactly most men’s number-one job choice for the mother of their children. But then, he didn’t understand what was driving her, didn’t understand why she needed to support herself, why this strange, rather barren place somehow felt like home to her.

“Come on,” he coaxed. “I’m not going to say anything. You’ve already heard all my arguments against what you’re doing.”

Gabrielle handed Allie a toy and set her in the middle of the floor, then sank onto the couch. She generally told David everything. Holding out now was only delaying the inevitable. But when she finished relating the day’s events, he didn’t react as she’d expected. He was completely quiet at the other end of the line.

“David? You said you weren’t going to say anything but I didn’t think you meant it quite so literally.”

“I’m thinking,” he said, “and I’m fighting my natural tendency to beg you to get the hell out of there and come back to Phoenix.”

“You know I can’t do that. I came here for a reason.”

“And have you done anything about that reason? Have you spoken to your mother, at least?”

Gabrielle closed her eyes. She didn’t want to have this conversation. “No, not yet.”

“Gabby, the investigator found her weeks ago. How long is it going to take to summon the nerve to let her know you’re there?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll do it someday. It’s not that easy, David. She abandoned me when I was three.”

“I know that was rough, but it isn’t as if you weren’t adopted within months by a good family.”

Gabrielle had no concrete complaints about the Pattersons. Her adoptive parents, Phil and Bev, owned a successful sandwich shop by the wharf in Newport, Oregon, and had, for the most part, provided for her physical needs. They’d never been abusive or overtly neglectful. They’d just never really embraced her as their own. They doted on their twin girls, who were only eighteen months older than Gabrielle. And the natural affinity between Tiffany and Cher had always made Gabrielle feel like an unwanted tag-along. She felt as though the whole family tolerated her presence, but didn’t really want her. Especially when she’d reached her teens and begun to rebel. Then she could definitely sense a limit to the Pattersons’s acceptance. They’d taken her in to do a good deed and had felt it highly unfair that she’d give them any trouble at all.

But she hadn’t been trying to give anyone trouble. She’d only been searching for a place where she would truly belong.

“It wasn’t the same,” she said, knowing from past experience how hard it was to describe the subtle difference in the way the Pattersons had treated her compared to their own children. David had met them a few times and couldn’t see anything wrong with them. The Pattersons had come to their wedding and been polite, grateful she was “settling down.” But Gabrielle and David had paid for everything, and David hadn’t really had a chance to get to know them. Since then, Gabrielle had gone back for Tiffany’s wedding, but David had been too busy with work, so she went alone and returned the next day.

“It’s in the past, Gabby,” he said. “You’ve got to let it all go at some point.”

“I will when I’m ready.”

“Then introduce yourself to your birth mother, if that’s what it’s going to take.”

“I will eventually. I’m just hesitant, okay? I’ve never known my father. He wasn’t around when I was little, so she’s all I’ve got. And she obviously didn’t want me to disrupt her life twenty-five years ago. She probably doesn’t want me to disrupt it now.”

“I don’t want to sound hard-hearted, but if she’s not interested in getting to know you, that’s her loss. Face it and get over it. Then you can leave Florence and that damn prison and come back to Phoenix where—”

“David, I’m not coming back,” Gabrielle interrupted. “You know that. I want to be here, at least for now. I want to build my life on my own, see where I can go with it. Besides, I could have sisters, aunts, uncles, a whole family here in Florence. You don’t know how much that means to someone who’s never felt connected.”

He sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to get into an argument. I grew up with both my parents, so I can’t pretend to know what being adopted means to you. I only know that I don’t like having you and Allie so far away. I don’t like you working such a dangerous job. I—”

“We’re less than two hours away. That’s not far. And it’s not as if what I do is anything unusual. Thousands of people have the same job. Someone’s got to do it. Besides, I thought you didn’t want to argue.”

“I don’t.”

“So ease up, okay?”

Silence, then, “What do you plan to do? About the problem at the prison, I mean?”

Gabrielle let her hair down from its ponytail and ran a hand through it. “I’m thinking I have to report it to the warden.”

“That’s what I was afraid you’d say. Why don’t you file a complaint with Hansen’s boss?”