Metamorphosis

Aldous was on Zoom with his parents when the words appeared in a window on his laptop screen: There’s a backpack in the alley between our houses.

“I have to take care of a situation,” Aldous abruptly alerted his parents. “Do you want to keep talking to Eli?”

Eli was 3, but could keep up a conversation. He liked to tell his grandparents about his toys – the trolley he’d fill with Daniel Tiger and Margaret – or show his Baby Shark coloring book. Orange was Eli’s favorite crayon and he’d make every shark the color of the desert sun.

Aldous and Kaylee moved to the desert five years earlier. There had been job offers, but they also liked hiking in the canyons, visiting Tohono O’odham sites, and the culinary diversity that made Tucson a Unesco World Heritage Site. What had surprised them were the numbers of encampments along the Rillito River. At first Aldous had thought it was campers out there, until he saw some of the evidence that these were their homes. 

Since moving into their adobe ranch, where Eli was conceived and born, they had spoken few times with their next-door-neighbor, mostly about the weather or droppings from the mesquite trees. Pete’s wife – Aldous didn’t even know her name – passed from house to car in the garage, and Aldous wasn’t sure he’d recognize her if he ran into her.

Pete was already there in the alley. Both Aldous and Pete were vigilant about keeping the aggressive weeds from taking over in that space between their houses. The alley had the scent of dry desert sand and seemed to give life to the most vicious of plants such as datura, a deadly hallucinogen.

There sat the backpack, a green JanSport.

It looked familiar – Aldous remembered he’d had one like it in college, and had used it for hiking and for toting books. It was well-made, but after years of use had become frayed and had to be replaced. In fact the old one might still be in his garage. Or was this his backpack? At first he’d wondered if Pete thought it was his. As he got closer he saw that it held a keychain from which dangled items that were decidedly not his – lip balm, hand sanitizer. There was a flashlight that at first looked like his but was scuffed up in a way that his was not. Aldous knelt to inspect it.

“Stand back,” warned Pete. “Don’t touch it.”

Aldous, a runner, thought of the backpacks that had detonated at the Boston Marathon. “What do you think is in there?”

“I have no idea where it came from – I thought maybe you would.”

Aldous was not about to let on that its soft body reminded him of an earlier time in his life.

“I think we should call the police.”

Two patrol officers drove up in a white Road Runner with ghosted lettering on the door. They examined the backpack and determined it must have been left by a person from one of the encampments. They did not detect explosives. With gloved hands and a large prodder, the patrolwoman worked with her partner to place it in a heavy black plastic bag they loaded into their vehicle.

“But what if the person comes back looking for the bag?” Aldous’s mother wondered, when he returned to the Zoom call. That was the unfortunate part about having this happen during a family call—now she’d be asking about it for weeks. This was just the sort of thing to pique his mother’s curiosity. Once, while visiting, passing the encampments, she remarked that the people seemed like some of the hippies of her generation who’d gone camping but never returned home.

Eli didn’t like when they talked about things that were not related to his toys, so he spoke louder, reading from one of his truck books. “This is a forklift,” he said, holding up the picture.

“Ooh, and it’s orange—your favorite,” said his grandmother.

“Yes, I love orange,” said Eli.

“Are there homeless people in your neighborhood?” Aldous’s mother persisted. “Did you check the woods at the end of your cul de sac? Could there be an encampment there?”

Kaylee usually stayed off-screen so she could avoid all the questions.

It was Kaylee who answered the front door a week later when a woman showed up asking for water. In the desert, you never deny anyone water. The stranger held out an empty Nalgene bottle.

Aldous came to the door with a large plastic jug and poured it into the woman’s bottle. It was fairly beat up—Aldous remembered he’d had one like that years ago, when he’d hiked a portion of the Appalachian Trail. It had been a good water bottle, made to last, and he might still have it packed away somewhere—his was equally beat up.

“Thank you,” said the woman in a somewhat husky voice. Aldous looked up at her. She appeared to be his age, maybe several years older. With strawberry blond hair tied in a braid, she reminded him, a bit, of his girlfriend in grad school. Mariah, tall and graceful, with that striking head of hair, had been in his life for a year, and while you could check all the boxes on her qualifications as romantic partner, Aldous didn’t feel like she was the one. Not like what he felt when he eventually met Kaylee. As far as Aldous knew, Mariah had met someone else and was still in the Northeast.

“Will that be enough? I can give you another bottle,” offered Aldous.

The woman smiled. There were small holes in her T-shirt, her hair was escaping its braid, and her skin looked as if it hadn’t been washed. “I’ll let you know,” she said, then turned and walked back down the pathway.

“Don’t tell your mom,” said Kaylee. “She’ll want to know if it’s the same person who left the backpack.”

“Could it be?” Her clothing looked as if it could have been bought from the same camping goods supplier.

Later that day, while Kaylee took Eli to Costco, Aldous looked up Mariah on Facebook. She was, indeed, still living in the Northeast. With a husband and a little boy the same age as Eli. There were pictures of her just after the birth of her son, holding him, and then there were mostly photos of the baby. In the postpartum photos, Aldous saw she was still wearing the pendant he’d given her, a tree of life carved into an ancient bronze coin.  It seemed she was working with a team creating solutions for affordable living. She had written her thesis on housing solutions for the unhoused.

Not that Kaylee would examine his search history, but Aldous cleared his cache. He rarely thought about Mariah, only needed to assure himself that the woman who’d shown up for water could absolutely and positively not be her.

Several days later, Aldous and Kaylee set up the pool in their courtyard for Eli. Aldous put up the beach umbrella to provide shade, and he and Kaylee sat on the patio chairs while Eli poured water from one vessel to another and talked about his toys and their colors and shapes. “One-two-three-four-six,” he said of the five little boats he put on the water. Kaylee was grading papers and Aldous was catching up on the news when they heard a knock at the courtyard door.

Aldous rose to crack the door ajar. It was the woman with the strawberry blond hair. She looked dirtier than she had the other day. “I can clean your house,” she offered in a small voice.

“No thanks,” said Aldous, about to close the door.

“Ask if she has a business card,” called Kaylee.

The stranger shook her head.

Kaylee got up and came to the door. “We have to think about it,” she said. “Can you give my husband your name and your number and we’ll get back to you.”

“My name is Maria,” said the stranger.

Aldous opened his notes app and keyed in the phone number she gave. He saw that she had a gold cross around her neck—definitely not Mariah.

“We’ll give you a call,” said Kaylee and shut the door on Maria.

“Would you want her to clean our house?” asked Aldous.

“Definitely not,” said Kaylee, then added, “well, maybe it would help her out.”

When returning from a run, Aldous checked the cul de sac. There was no sign of an  encampment. A neighbor out for a walk with binoculars around his neck told Aldous that a javelina family had taken up residence in the woody area. On other morning runs, Aldous saw coyotes prowling. There were tarantulas that dug holes in the desert sand. Aldous had lived most of his life in suburbs of the Northeast, and he liked that Tucson, a city, had so much wildlife.

Eli’s interests in vehicles evolved into an interest in dinosaurs, and he began to identify them as tyrannosaurus Rex, stegosaurus, triceratops and all the rest. Orange was still his favorite color. For a present, his grandmother sent him caterpillars that would turn into painted lady butterflies.

Aldous was invited to give a talk at Palomar. It was a hot afternoon, and Kaylee set up the pool for Eli in the courtyard. The water was running from the hose into the pool, and Eli, in his swimsuit, was putting toys in the water. Kaylee remembered she’d left her phone inside the house and said to Eli, “I’ll be right back. Don’t go into the pool until I’m back.” She quickly went in the front door, looking for her phone. It wasn’t where she had thought she’d left it on the counter. She peeked out the front door—Eli was quietly putting his water toys into the pool and obediently remaining outside of it as the water filled, about two inches high. She ran into the bedroom to look for her phone.

Back at the front door, Kaylee saw Maria squatting, helping Eli put toys in the pool. Eli was smiling at her.

“Hello!” shouted Kaylee.

Maria looked up. “Hello. Your boy is so smart.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“My son is about the same age.”

“Oh?”

“But I haven’t seen him in a while.”

Kaylee gripped her phone. “Can I get you some water?”

“OK.”

Kaylee opened the door. “Eli, can you go inside and get one of those water bottles from the refrigerator.”

Eli looked up at Maria, and then at his mother, then back to Maria. “I have caterpillars,” he told her. “They will turn into butterflies.”

“Eli, please get one of those bottles.” She was trying to sustain the little voice she used when speaking to Eli. “Can you please get it, sweetie?”

Eli ran into the house and came back with the bottle. “But first they have to turn into chrysalises.”

“Good boy,” said Kaylee, taking the bottle and handing it to Maria.

“Thank you,” said Maria, also adopting the little voice.

“We don’t need our house cleaned,” said Kaylee.

“OK,” said Maria. She opened the bottle and closed her eyes, taking a sip that seemed to go all the way into her soul.

Eli grasped the hose and held it up so that he could drink from it.

“No, Eli, no,” said Kaylee. “We told you not to drink the hose water.”

Not happy to be reprimanded in front of a visitor, Eli continued drinking.

“OK, that’s it; no more pool today,” said Kaylee. “Time for a time out.” She turned off the hose, grabbed Eli around his ribcage, carried him inside and slammed the front door. Eli wailed as Kaylee went to the front window and saw that Maria had vanished.

“What happened to the lady with the orange hair?” Eli asked through a whimper.

Kaylee didn’t tell Aldous about the incident until he returned home. They talked about putting a lock on the courtyard gate. They talked about getting a surveillance camera. But what would a surveillance camera do? Pete had a surveillance camera. It showed a shadowy figure walking around the night the backpack was left. It hadn’t proved useful to the police.

Pete’s wife, they learned, was a critical care nurse who often came home in the wee hours. One night, upon arriving, she discovered the battery in her electric garage door opener had died. She left the car in the driveway, entering through the front door. And that was the night that someone went into her car and took her wallet. Again, the security camera picked up a shadowy figure going into the car and leaving, but it was of no use to the police.

A few weeks later, Aldous went out the front door, through the courtyard, to get the mail. Lying in the courtyard was a brown quilted sleeping bag. It reminded him of one he’d had as a teenager. He looked around and didn’t see anyone. He slowly approached the sleeping bag, wondering if there was someone inside. No, it was too flat. He saw a gecko crawl away, and then he noticed a glint just before the crevice the gecko slipped into. It was, Aldous saw, a gold chain with a cross.

The patrol car came again to examine the sleeping bag. There was no identifying information. Aldous pointed to the gold cross, and one of the officers picked it up and put it in an envelope she put inside the black plastic sack with the sleeping bag. “Probably a homeless person,” the officer said, though not the same officer who had come the last time. Aldous wondered if they’d kept a record of the backpack, if they connected the two. And the person who took the wallet.

“There’s a woman who’s been showing up around here,” Aldous said. “She asked for water once, and another time she said she wanted to clean my house.” Aldous thumbed through his apps and found the phone number, repeating it to the officer.

“Not a working number,” the officer said after trying it, then drove off with the other officer who’d remained inside the vehicle the whole time.

Pete came out just as the patrol car drove off. “Something happen?”

Aldous explained about the sleeping bag. Pete said he’d check his surveillance video. As if a mirage, a woman appeared in Pete’s garden, pulling weeds. From under a wide-brimmed hat, strawberry blond hair cascaded down her shoulders. She looked as if she were freshly showered, and in new clothes. “There she is,” Aldous said.

Pete turned and looked at her. “I know, she hardly ever comes out of the house,” Pete said. “My wife has such fair skin.” The woman turned her head and looked at them.

When Aldous went back inside, Eli was running around, excitedly. “The chrysalis turned into a butterfly!” he said. “It’s orange!” Together, Aldous and Eli went outside and released the butterfly. The orange-haired woman working in her garden looked up and watched the painted lady attempt to fly. It would take some time before the butterfly would disappear into the sky.

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About the author:
Ilene Dube is a writer, producer, curator, and artist. Her short fiction has appeared in more than a dozen literary journals and anthologies. Kelsey Review has published nine.