Chapter Six
Lois had gone alone the last time. They’d been watching the latest subject for a while now. It had been October and Indian-summer weather, windy and warm. They’d mapped out Smallwood’s routine. The two best places for the hit were also the worst. He went to a neighborhood park around noon and sat on the same bench watching the same small children play, and then in the afternoon he stopped at the schoolyard.
The client had told them that he prowled around at night, and Sophie and Lois worked out a plan to follow him. Sometimes he used his car and sometimes he went on foot. But the destination was always the same, Carpenter Park. They’d watched him from the far reaches of the parking lot. Usually alone, he’d sat on the bank smoking cigarettes. A few times another man joined him. Twice it was a female—a young female—probably a prostitute. After money changed hands, she’d quickly gotten down to business. They didn’t observe a pattern with the girl. Sometimes she was there, sometimes she wasn’t.
Because they couldn’t count on him being alone, Lois had to wait for the right moment. She’d gone out there twice with the rifle and returned with it unused. Sophie found the change of pace, the mystery and intrigue of their new business, stimulating. Lois found it less so.
Several days after the kill, Lois said, “We need to talk.”
Sophie looked at her carefully then. Lois appeared tired. Historically, whenever Lois said, “We need to talk,” the news was not good. “Let’s sit in the kitchen,” Sophie said. “I’m hungry.”
Only after Sophie had poured two glasses of milk and set a half-empty package of Fig Newtons on the table did she ask, “What is it?”
Lois left the milk untouched, folded her hands in her lap, and nodded. “The last job. There’s a complication.”
“What?”
“He wasn’t alone.”
“And you shot him anyway?”
“I didn’t know it,” Lois said. “I waited for over a half hour and he just sat on the bank and smoked one cigarette off the end of the other. I was positive no one was coming.”
“Oh, dear.”
“By the time I had the rifle in place, he was standing, looking toward the river—away from the road. I should have stopped right there. My gut told me to, but I just didn’t want to have to go back again the next night.” Lois let out her breath slowly. “I’m tired. I remember how to handle the rifle, and I’m still a good shot, but I’m an old woman. The cold and dampness make my joints ache. I usually have to pee at least once during the wait.” Lois shoved a whole cookie in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, then said, “You try that some time without leaving any evidence.”
“I’m sorry,” Sophie said.
Lois went on. “From where I was, I couldn’t see anyone else. So I aimed and fired. Hit him in the head and he went down. Then I heard a scream.” Lois whispered, “A woman’s scream.”
Sophie exhaled. “Damn.”
“He must have been standing in front of her. I only got a glimpse as she ran, but I’m pretty sure it was the hooker.” Lois picked up another cookie and stared at it. “She probably had blood and brains all over her. Anyway, she ran.”
“Maybe she thought she would be next.”
“If I were in her place, I’d just get the hell out of there,” Lois said. “Of course, she’d need to be killed too, with your standard contract killer.” She set the cookie on a napkin.
“We won’t hunt her down,” Sophie assured her. “I doubt if she’ll be any trouble unless someone offers a reward for information. I don’t think anyone will for this guy.”
“What if she saw me?”
Sophie closed the cookie package, stood, pulled Lois’s head to her breast, and held her that way. She kept her voice calm. “Then we’ll have three meals a day and free medical as guests of the state of Illinois.”
Lois put her arms around Sophie. “I love you. I’d do anything for you.”
“You don’t have to do a thing to earn my love.”
“We should lay low for a while. Just until things settle down.”
“We could quit if you want. We’d manage somehow.”
Lois looked up at her and shook her head. “No. I don’t want to. I’m sick of feeling helpless. I’m sick of being swept along in poverty. This empowers me.”
The dimly lit kitchen breathed around them.
*
That night Sophie lay awake long after Lois had fallen asleep, wondering how she could tell Lois about visiting Ruby in prison. In the morning darkness, she got out of bed and crept to the kitchen. There, she put a cup with water and a tea bag into the microwave. Chamomile might help. Retirement was nice because, when she had a night like this, she could sleep in. She carried the cup to the table and sat down. Outside the kitchen window, the sky was turning gray. The early mail train rumbled as it passed Tenth Street, two blocks away. The whistle blew at every intersection. She was close enough to hear the clacking of the rails. This night her mind wouldn’t shut down, and worrying about Ruby didn’t help.
The visit with her had been two weeks ago. While she was worried about helping Ruby again, she felt obliged to. Telling Lois would take some finesse. Lois was still angry with Ruby, not only about the money she stole, but she blamed Ruby for Matt’s death. She’d tell Lois that money can be replaced, but people can’t. Of course, it was easier to say money could be replaced now that they had some.
The last time Ruby had stayed with them, it took her three months to clean out their savings account. Sophie thought that showed a little restraint; Lois didn’t buy it.
Yet one thing that first attracted Sophie to Lois had been her fierce love for the girl. Although Sophie had loved children all her life, she had accepted that she would never have her own long before the day she and Lois met. But as it turned out, she helped Lois raise two children, and she felt they were as much hers as Lois’s.
Ruby had been a sensitive and intelligent child. One day when she was eight, she’d come home from school in tears. She tossed her Cinderella lunch bucket on the counter and headed straight for her upstairs room. Sophie found her there, her face buried in a pillow, sobbing.
Sophie crossed the room and sat on the bed next to her. “What is the matter?”
“Go away,” Ruby had said.
Sophie stroked Ruby’s smooth, dark hair. “What could be so bad?”
Ruby raised her head, took the tissue that Sophie offered, then said, “We’re awfully alone in this world, aren’t we?”
Sophie was astonished to hear this from an eight-year-old. The students in her fifth-grade class weren’t that articulate. Admittedly Ruby was a bit more mature than the average, but the “alone in this world” might have come from a much older person—if it came at all. Sophie told her, “You’re not alone, babyluv. You’ve got a family that loves you and cares for you.”
“But nobody at school likes me.”
There. That was a statement from an eight-year-old. “Sugar, a good family trumps all the kids at school because a family is for always. No matter what happens, your family, your mother and me, well, we’ve got your back.”
Ruby embraced her then; her moist cheeks were warm against Sophie’s throat as the child made a long, shuddering sound. Sophie was fairly certain that some snot was saturating her dry-clean-only cardigan, but that didn’t matter. Sophie then said the thing that had reached across all those years to her. “Here’s the deal. When you have a family, home is a place you can come, and no matter what, we’ll always take you in.”
Sophie stood then, lifting Ruby with her. Ruby’s quick heart beat next to her own. Her daughter, whose slender body was as light as a paper kite, clung to Sophie’s neck while she wrapped her legs around Sophie’s hips. That day, a cup of lemon-and-honey tea had defused the crisis.
But Ruby began to ask the hard questions. Why does everyone else have a father? Do I have a real father? Who was my real mother? What were my real parents like? Lois had concocted a story that satisfied Ruby for a while. It was a
curious weaving of facts and fiction. She was born in a medic tent on the outskirts of Saigon. Her mother was a beautiful Vietnamese woman, who worked as a nurse there, and her father was a soldier (as he probably was), and they were both killed by a mortar attack when Ruby was a week old.
Yet no matter how many times Ruby heard the story and how much love she was given at home, when she went out into the big world, she learned a new truth. She was different and her family was different. As the time passed, she learned to keep quiet about her mothers. But she couldn’t hide her race. In the years following the war, the Vietnamese were hated. All through grade school, she’d been the only nonwhite student.
Lois and Sophie had been living together for over a year on the day of the honey- and-lemon tea. They had already decided that when Ruby reached the fifth grade, she would transfer to public school. Sophie couldn’t risk drawing attention to the fact that she lived with Ruby and her mother, and they couldn’t put the burden of that lie on a child. When the time came, Ruby made the transition easily. Her new teacher read a chapter or two every morning from the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Lots of nonwhite children attended the public school. Ruby made a few good friends. But while public school made her happy, it was also the reason they lost her.
Sitting in her kitchen, cupping the Greatest Mom mug to keep her fingers warm, Sophie smiled as her thoughts drifted to the first time she met Lois and her daughter. That story had become part of the family mythology and was repeated often. It took Sophie a long time to consider it as funny as Lois and Ruby did. It had occurred the first day of school in 1973, or was it ’74? She never could remember exactly. Sophie’s aunt, who’d been a school teacher too, had died that summer and left her three thousand dollars. Sophie had immediately replaced her worn-out 1956 Chevy. She’d traded it and the three thousand in on a new, bright-red Impala. The car was longer than her ’56, and she was still having trouble parking—especially parallel parking.
Sophie was running late that day. When she let Caesar, her eleven-year-old Lab/collie mix, out in the morning, he’d jumped the fence. She never lost sight of him, but every time she was close enough to put her hands on his collar, he ran away. Finally she’d gotten his leash and called, “Caesar. You want to go for a walk?” He came immediately. She walked him (she was sure if she didn’t, that trick would never work again) and put him in the breezeway, where he spent his days. So it was ten minutes before the last bell when she pulled up to the school.
The only parking spaces were on the side streets—parallel. Sophie selected what looked like the largest one and pulled in. The rear of the car was still out in the street, and she didn’t have any room to maneuver. She backed out and pulled up next to the car in front of the space, then craned her neck and slowly backed in. Now the front of the car was at an angle. She thanked God for power steering as she backed up and pulled forward several times.
At last the car was straight, but when she got out, she discovered she was four feet from the curb. She got in the car again, pulled out, tried a sharper angle, and clipped the bumper of the car ahead of her. In the distance she heard the final bell. Thirty-five fifth graders would be waiting for her. She held her head in her hands.
A tap at her driver’s side window startled her. A woman motioned for her to roll it down.
Sophie complied.
“Watch me and I’ll help you.”
Sophie agreed.
The woman walked up in front of the car and circled with her left hand, motioning for Sophie to pull forward. Sophie pulled out of the space.
The woman came to the window again. “I meant for you to turn your wheels before you moved forward.”
“Sorry. I’m so upset.”
“Do you want me to do it for you?”
Sophie sighed. Sweat was running down her forehead. “I’m late already. I might as well learn this.”
The woman walked back to the spot in front of the car and circled her hand in a clockwise motion. Sophie cut the steering wheel as far as it would go. The woman indicated that Sophie should back up. Sophie did. The woman held up her hand and said “Stop” when Sophie was halfway into the parking space, then motioned for Sophie to turn the wheel counterclockwise and keep backing. Sophie did.
Suddenly her front tires hit the curb. She was in. That was when she noticed that she’d drawn a crowd—including the school janitor and Sister Anne, the school principal. Several people from the coffee shop across the street cheered and clapped. Sophie blushed.
By the time Sophie got out of the car, the woman had moved to the sidewalk and was standing next to a little Asian girl. She extended her hand to shake and said, “I’m Lois Burnett. This is my daughter Ruby. It’s her first day of kindergarten, and I’m afraid I’ve made her late.”
“I made her late,” Sophie said. “Come with me. I’ll help you explain to Sister Mary Margaret.”
Sophie and Lois had been different in a lot of ways. But like old married couples, between them they functioned well. One or the other of them had a talent for just about everything they needed to survive—and a few totally unnecessary skills. Sophie remembered her parents telling her two things when she was a child that turned out to be dead-on accurate. Her father said, “You never get something for nothing,” and her mother told her, “Love is being comfortable with someone.”
It turned out her mother was right. Love was the peaceful feeling Sophie had when she and Lois sat across from each other over dinner, not talking. It was knowing what would happen when she threw away an empty coffee can—Lois kept them all. Sophie would sacrifice anything—as she learned when her family abandoned her; she would do anything for Lois.
Before Lois, something had been missing in Sophie’s life, but she hadn’t known what it was. She’d seen her college friends, one by one, get married and start families, and she wondered why that hadn’t happened to her. The day she met Lois Burnett, she understood everything.
But her father’s advice turned out to be right too. Everything had a price.
Sophie yawned and set the cup in the sink. For some reason she wasn’t worried about the witness to Woods’s killing. She was more worried about broaching the subject of Ruby with Lois. She headed down the dark hallway to their bedroom, kicked off her slippers, and climbed in bed. Lois rolled toward her, throwing an arm across her chest.
Sophie stared at the ceiling and the light fixture. How much time had she spent doing just that over the years? Next to her, Lois snored softly. Sophie’s mind jumped from one thing to the next. She reviewed what she would say. An argument would ensue. Sophie hated conflict, so it would be bad for a while. She wasn’t aware she’d fallen asleep until she woke the next morning.
*
The changing season found Morgan Holiday with her back to the dresser mirror pulling on a wool blazer. It was tight across the shoulders, but she was used to that. The fact that it barely buttoned in front was new. The waistline of her wool pants seemed to be cutting her in half. She’d outgrown her largest winter clothes.
Morgan had started the year with a resolution to lose twenty-five pounds. She’d gone on a high-protein diet and lost twelve pounds in a month, but ended up so constipated and miserable that she bought a half gallon of sugar-free ice cream (she always got gas from the artificial sweetener) and ate her way through most of it in a single day, then finished the last big dish for breakfast the next morning. It took a second half gallon to get her bowels moving again. By then the diet was over. But by the time she found the courage to get on the scales to weigh, she’d gained the twelve pounds back, plus another four.
That morning at work Henry said, “You’re pushing the season, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re going to freeze your ass the first time you walk out of here.”
“My wool suit’s at the cleaners.”
Henry cocked his head and looked at her.
Morgan said, “Maybe it’ll be a slow day.”
Henry
nodded.
“If we have to go out, I have my leather Bulls jacket.”
“Picked up a few pounds?”
“Fuck you, Henry.”
At eleven o’clock, the gunmetal clouds had armored the sky, and one of the file clerks turned on the lights in the office. Morgan pulled out her lunch bag, opened a thermos of black coffee, and began to peel a boiled egg. She usually waited until one to have lunch, but today she couldn’t.
“That all you eating?” Henry asked.
Morgan eyed him while trying to chew her egg twenty times.
“I’m going to Joe’s, want me to bring you something?”
“No. Thank you.”
Then he was gone, and she was left alone with eggshells and bitter black coffee, sleepily watching large snowflakes start to fall. Despite the caffeine, she was tired. She yawned and laid her head on her desk. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep when she dreamed the whole room smelled of roast beef. Her stomach made a noise that woke her.
Henry set a greasy bag where her head had been. “Beef poor boy. Lots of protein in that.”
Morgan looked in the bag. “Did you get the chips?”
“They’re free. Of course I got them.”
She smiled.
“I thought that protein diet didn’t work for you,” Henry said, pulling his chair up to his desk and opening his own lunch. “You acted like a wounded bear last January. I can’t go through it again.”
Morgan’s mouth was full. As she chewed, she mumbled, “Yeah, well, I quit because I got constipated.”
Henry laughed. “Wait until you’re older. You don’t know nothing about constipation.”
They chewed silently until Morgan had finished eating. Then she sighed and said, “I’ve got to find a way to eat more and lose weight. I just can’t let my body go to hell like this.”
Retirement Plan Page 7
