Dirty

by Megan Hart

  “How many children do you have?” I headed for the pail, which wasn’t overflowing but needed emptying just the same. I pulled the bag from the can and tied it shut as Mrs. Pease came forward with a fresh trash bag.

  “Just two now,” she said. “We lost our daughter Jenny in a car accident back in ’86. But I see her children from time to time. They’re in college now. Their dad remarried a long time ago.”

  I replaced the trash bag and asked to wash my hands at her sink, using soap that smelled of green apples. “And you have a son Mark.”

  “Oh, yes. My Mark. And Kevin.”

  “Do they live close by?” I wiped my hands dry on a soft dish towel and turned to see Mrs. Pease looking so sad it made me sad, too.

  “Kevin’s moved away,” she said. “And Mark lives here in the city, but…I don’t see much of him. He’s very busy, my Mark. He’s very busy.”

  Too busy to visit his mother and make sure her garbage was taken care of, I thought meanly. Guilt pricked me in the next minute. At least he visited her sometimes. I was an awful daughter.

  “Thank you, dear,” Mrs. Pease told me. “You’re so helpful.”

  “You know, Mrs. Pease. I’m right next door, if you ever need anything at all. I’m happy to come and give you a hand.”

  She shook her head, her soft white hair looking like white cotton around her apple-doll face. “I don’t want to trouble you, Miss Kavanagh.”

  “It’s really not any trouble at all. Really.” Nothing quite like a guilty conscience to prompt unsolicited and slightly desperate offers to elderly next-door neighbors.

  She bustled around her kitchen for a few seconds and pulled out a small tin of cookies. “Have a cookie?”

  “Thank you.” Sugar. They were good, still soft. “I’ve never learned to bake.”

  She gave a small, trilling laugh. “Oh, my dear! Every girl should learn to bake!”

  I nibbled the cookie. “My mother wasn’t particularly interested in domesticity.”

  Mrs. Pease might be feeling under the weather, but it hadn’t dulled her perceptions. “You don’t see her often, do you?”

  I shook my head. I thought she might judge or lecture me, but Mrs. Pease gave a soft sigh instead. “Have another cookie, dear. And it’s never to late to learn to bake.”

  I helped myself to another cookie, and she put away the tin. She wiped up some crumbs with a dishcloth and folded it on the sink. The second cookie was as delicious as the first had been, and when I finished I lifted her garbage.

  “I’ll take this out to the curb. Do you anything else to take? Anything from upstairs?”

  “No,” she said. “Though I might, next week, if you’re able to stop by. I’ll be baking cookies, Miss Kavanagh. You could watch, if you like.”

  We shared a smile. “I think I’d like that, Mrs. Pease.”

  I took her garbage out to the can and dragged it to the curb next to mine. I turned to wave goodbye to her before heading into my house, when a police car stopped next to me. I jumped a little, wondering instantly if I’d broken some ordinance or something, but the officer who got out of the vehicle didn’t do more than nod at me before opening the back door.

  Gavin got out. Not in handcuffs, as least, though he didn’t look any happier for being unshackled than if they’d had him bound. He looked up and met my gaze, then dropped it immediately as the cop pulled him by the elbow toward his house.

  This wasn’t my business any more than anything else had been, but I stood frozen next to the garbage as the Ossleys’ door opened and Gavin was yanked inside by his mother. I overheard raised voices from inside, though the officer who brought him home kept his voice pitched low and professional. He didn’t go into the house. He and Mrs. Ossley spoke for a minute or so, words I couldn’t make out, and then he left.

  He gave me another nod as he got back in his car. “Evening.”

  “Evening,” I said, pulled away from staring at the Ossley house by his greeting.

  I couldn’t ask him what had happened with Gavin. I looked back toward the house. Then I put the lids on the garbage cans and intended to go home, but my feet instead found the four concrete steps leading up to the house next door.

  Mrs. Ossley opened the door, her frown becoming a grimace of fury when she saw it was me. “What the hell do you want?”

  I refused to allow her hostility to take me aback. “I came to see if Gavin was all right.”

  She looked me up and down, her expression getting tighter and harder. She looked as though she’d bitten into an apple and discovered only half a worm. Even though she wore a pair of high heels, I stood over her by about two inches, and this seemed to irritate her further as she crossed her arms and looked up at my face.

  “He’s fine. You can go back home, now.”

  “Mrs. Ossley, I’m not really sure what I’ve done to offend you, but I can assure you, I’m only concerned about Gavin’s welfare.” I retreated a step under the force of her glare.

  She laughed, the sound like barking, and then pulled a cigarette from the pack I hadn’t noticed in her hands. She lit it and blew a runner of smoke directly into my face. I waved it away.

  “I bet you are,” she said. “I just bet you are.”

  Her obvious dislike and antagonism toward me tied my stomach into knots, but the memory of precise and self-administered wounds kept me from fleeing. “Can I come in?”

  “You cannot!” She seemed aghast at the suggestion. “Go mind your own business!”

  I looked over her shoulder to the sight of a man silhouetted in the hall. Dennis. A flutter of movement on the stairs caught my gaze, and she turned to see what I was looking at.

  “Gavin! Get up to your room! Right now!” She turned back to me. “We’ll deal with him, Miss Kavanagh. Go play with someone else’s son.”

  She made to close the door in my face, but I put out a hand to stop her. Her words had made a nasty noise in my head. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Oh,” she said with another gust of smoke. “He told me all about you.”

  “He did?”

  Again, she looked me up and down. I wondered what she saw. I wore work clothes, a mid-calf black skirt and a simple white blouse with buttons. Shoes with sensible heels. Compared to her outfit of a teal, low-cut lingerie-style top spangled with sequins, flowered short skirt and matching stiletto sandals, I wouldn’t win any prizes in a fashion show. The outfit was staid and comfortable, but didn’t deserve her look of disgust.

  “Oh, yes, he did. He sure did. Told me how he helped paint your dining room.” Her fingers hooked quotation marks in the air around the work paint.

  “He did help me paint my dining room. He’s been a big help, as a matter of fact. He’s done a lot of work for me.”

  She snorted. This close, I could see the faint acne scars on her cheeks. She’d covered them with makeup, but they still shadowed her face here and there. I had no idea how old she was. Old enough to have a fifteen-year-old son, but maybe not that much older than me, after all.

  “Yes, he’s spent a lot of time over there. With you.” More smoke. She had red-painted nails and red lipstick to match. It left crimson stains on the end of her cigarette. “I can’t get him to clean up his goddamn bedroom, but he’s got time to hang around over there painting your walls.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ossley. I told Gavin he needed to make sure he did his chores at home.”

  The hostility still flowing off her in waves made me want to step back again, but I stopped myself with a hand on her railing. Unlike mine, which I sanded and painted every spring, hers scratched my hand with its bumps and lumps of pitted rust. When I took away my hand, a red stain dotted the palm.

  “Well, Miss Kavanagh,” she said my name with a sneer that wouldn’t have been out of place had she been calling me a worse sort of name. “I’m awfully glad to hear you’re so concerned about my son that you have him doing your dirty work for you, but you telling him he should be a good boy and clean up his mess doe
sn’t seem to matter much, does it?”

  I still didn’t quite know what had gotten her so upset, unless it had been my witnessing her bad behavior with the books. It was one thing to holler at your child. Another to pelt him with books. I’d have been embarrassed, too, if it were me.

  “I have always appreciated Gavin’s help,” I told her. “And I’ve offered to pay him for his time, but he’s never wanted to take any money for it. However, I understand if his helping me has caused problems in your house—”

  “Oh, you understand!” she cried. “I’m sure you did want to pay him. Sure you did. Yeah, he told me all about that, too.”

  “He did?” I blinked, uncertain where this was going, but knowing at once it was going to end badly. “Mrs. Ossley, please believe me, I’m just concerned about Gavin. I think there are some things you should know—”

  She cut me off again. “Don’t you tell me what I should know about my own son!”

  From over her shoulder, I saw again the flutter of motion on the stairs. A figure in a dark, hooded sweatshirt hovered halfway up, halfway down. Mrs. Ossley advanced on me a step, and I countered with another back. Now with me on the lower steps she stood taller than I, and it seemed to give her fuel for her outburst.

  “Mrs. Ossley,” I said sharply. “Your son’s been—”

  The sight of Gavin’s face, a pale blur in the shadows of the stairs, stopped me. This wasn’t my business. But was it my responsibility?

  “Gavin’s been cutting himself,” I told her with a lift of my chin to show her I wasn’t going to let her nastiness stop me from trying to help. “I thought you should know.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, he told me all about that, too. About how you asked him to take his shirt off. What were you doing, asking a fifteen-year-old boy to take off his shirt? Can you answer that for me?”

  Her accusation, not quite spelled out, but obvious just the same sent me back down the rest of her steps.

  “Yeah, I’m asking you,” she said. “All those nights he spent over there, doing work for you. How’d you pay him back? Huh? You get off on contaminating kids?”

  “No.” I had to take the time and forcible effort to swallow just to squeeze out that one word from my suddenly constricted throat. “Absolutely not. It wasn’t like that.”

  “No? What was it like, then? You’re a little old to be playing doctor, aren’t you? What do you think a kid his age is gonna do when it’s put out right there for him?”

  I shook my head. “Mrs. Ossley, you are mistaken—”

  Mrs. Ossley never seemed to have learned interrupting was rude. “‘Mrs. Ossley, you are mistaken,’” she mimicked in a high-pitched voice. “Are you calling my son a liar?”

  “Did Gavin tell you I’d been…inappropriate?”

  Inappropriate. The word didn’t even begin to describe what it would have been for me to behave toward Gavin the way she was intimating I had. I tried to see his face again, but he’d retreated so far up the stairs I could no longer see him.

  The other woman laughed cruelly. “He told me you wanted his help with a special project. That you offered him something to drink—”

  It was my turn to interrupt, damn the rudeness. “He said I offered him alcohol?”

  “Does it make you feel good to corrupt minors? Get them drunk, show off your body? Boys’ll do anything for a glimpse of titty, won’t they? I bet you thought you had a nice little thing going on!”

  Her statement so boggled me I couldn’t reply. It didn’t stop her from continuing. Her voice got louder, cutting through the hot summer air.

  “Bet you thought you could get him to do just about anything you wanted, huh? Get him to take off his shirt. Get him drunk. My son was a good kid until you got ahold of him!” Her voice rose on the last words and echoed down our street.

  “What happens at home stays at home,” I murmured without thinking. I wanted to beg her not to say anything more. Plead with her to keep quiet, to stop, to stop embarrassing me. I imagined curtains twitching aside and neighbors peering out to witness the lies.

  “What? What did you say? You’re lucky I don’t press charges! But honestly, who’d do anything about it? He’s a teenage boy, of course he’s going to fuck a woman who—”

  “I did not behave inappropriately with your son, Mrs. Ossley.” My voice froze the air between us. It backed her up a step, but only for a moment. She was too full of her own self-righteous accusations to pay attention to my defense. “I did ask him to take off his shirt, but that was because I was worried about the cuts on his stomach. And yes, we’ve spent a lot of time together, but I have never…I’ve never…”

  I couldn’t go on. She took the chance to shake her finger at me. Gavin looked like her, I saw, even though her face had twisted and become ugly in her anger.

  “I could have you brought up on charges of giving alcohol to minors! And for the other stuff, too.” She crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Just because he went along with it doesn’t mean you have the right to molest him!”

  “Nobody deserves that,” I told her.

  She seemed to be waiting for more from me, but I said nothing. I couldn’t. The things she’d said had sickened me. I backed up further and went to my own porch. She swiveled her body to follow me with her eyes as she lit another cigarette.

  “You stay away from my son!” She shouted. “Or I will call the cops on you!”

  I paused, my hand on my own smoothly painted railing. The curtains I’d imagined twitching all along the street seemed to be remaining closed. All except for one. The one on their second floor shifted, and I caught a glimpse of a white face shadowed by a black hood. It ducked out of sight as soon as it saw me looking.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Ossley,” I told her. “I will.”

  Chapter 15

  I didn’t emerge from the cocoon of my past to become an uninhibited, emotionally healthy butterfly. Nothing is ever that easy. Sometimes grief is a comfort we grant ourselves because it’s less terrifying than trying for joy. Nobody wants to admit it. We’d all declare we want to be happy, if we could. So why, then, is pain the one thing we most often hold on to? Why are slights and griefs the memories on which we choose to dwell? Is it because joy doesn’t last but grief does?

  The confrontation with Gavin’s mother had left me shaken and determined to mind my own business from now on. Instead of tackling a new painting project, I enjoyed learning to bake cookies with Mrs. Pease, whose son did visit, eventually, if not as often as she’d have liked. And, I made an effort, a real effort, with Dan.Since the extent of my cooking extended no further than sugar cookies at this point, Dan invited me to dinner at his place. I knocked on his door with a bottle of good wine in my hand, and the smile he gave me when he opened the door made me smile back. We did an awkward little dance for a moment before he took the lead and pulled me into his arms for a hug brief enough to remain casual but full of meaning just the same.

  I felt a different kind of nervous around him. More anticipatory than anxious. I didn’t mind it. I followed him to the kitchen and we opened the wine as we chatted.

  “Pasta à la Dan,” he said from the stove, where steam had wreathed his face. He turned, grinning. “My own special recipe.”

  I cast a pointed glance to the empty jar of expensive spaghetti sauce he’d left in clear view on the counter. “Uh-huh.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You doubt me?”

  I held up my hands and sat at the table. “Hey, anything I don’t have to cook is fine with me.”

  He laughed and poured the pasta into a strainer, ladled it onto plates, layered the sauce over it and added a sprig of parsley. He slid the plate in front of me and sat down with his.

  “Cheese?”

  “That’s a nifty gadget.” I watched him shred Parmesan cheese in a minigrater like the kind they have in restaurants.

  “Pampered Chef.”

  I blinked. “You really do like Pampered Chef?”

  “Hell, yeah.” Dan
set the grater down and reached for the bottle of wine to refill our glasses. “Their stuff is excellent.”

  “I don’t cook, so I guess I wouldn’t know.” That was true. “My domestic gene is broken.”

  He looked up. “Seriously?”

  I smiled. “Seriously.”

  He pushed the basket of garlic bread toward me. “Damn. Here I thought I’d finally found me a woman who’d cook and clean for me.”

  I rolled my eyes and took some bread. “Whatever.”

  He twirled some pasta on his fork and blew on it, then tucked it into his mouth and sighed in contentment. I watched him eat. It was nice to see someone take such enjoyment out of something so simple. That impressed me about him. He was just as happy eating home-made pasta as he’d been at La Belle Fleur. It was refreshing and a little paradoxical, that the man who put me up against a wall could be the same as the one now cooing over spaghetti.

  “Not hungry?”

  He’d caught me staring, and I looked down at my plate. “Oh, yes…this looks great.”

  “Tell me something, Elle.”

  “Like what?” I looked up from the bread I’d been tearing into small pieces.

  Dan smiled. “Anything.”

  I sipped some red wine and studied his face. “The sum of the squares of the shorter sides of a right-angled triangle will equal the square of the hypotenuse.”

  “The sum of the what will equal the what of the what-what?” He shook his head. “What’s that?”

  “Pythagorean Theorem,” I told him. “You said anything.”

  “How about something about yourself?” He poured us both more wine. I’d barely realized my glass was empty.

  “I wear a size seven glove.”

  “Really?” He made a show of looking at my hand. “I’d have said an eight, easily.”

  “You make a habit of guessing women’s glove sizes?”

  He looked up with a grin. “I’m better at guessing bra sizes.”

  Another man saying the same words would have made me frown, but Dan…Dan got me to giggle. I put my hand over my mouth to cover it, but the sound slipped free. He looked pleased.