by Patti Abbott
But she disappeared and Father Ryan showed up. A bevy of nuns moved his crucifix, altar clothes, and bibles in and hung around longer than the average family does. Nuns know how to flutter over priests. Maybe that’s why the straight ones never feel a need to marry.
I would’ve thought priests had their own special old-age homes. Places where attractive boys in holy attire see to their every need. Or nubile nuns, if that’s their fancy. Not the middle-aged women with spotty hands who take care of us.
Father Ryan was interested in women—but for his own reasons. He couldn’t talk, was on oxygen, couldn’t hear, but he understood how to attract attention. He only had to raise his hand like the Queen of England and one of the aides would be there.
“What do you need, Father Ryan?”
They consulted the doctors, called the rectory where he used to say Mass, twittered like birds, only to find out he wanted tea and not coffee, to find he needed hypo-allergenic bedding.
I listened through the vent every night, the aides and nurses oohing and aahing over pictures of his trip to the Vatican, his stints in Germany, Canada and Connecticut, his graduating class from the seminary in Galway. And I always thought priests took a vow of poverty.
It occurred to me his behavior might be calculated. I’d tried that sort of thing myself once, seeing what attention I would get if I couldn’t walk or seemed a bit dotty. Risky business. Go too far and you’re on the third floor or over in nursing care where they sit you in front of the nurses’ station all day. Or they’ll give you the sort of drugs that suck every bit of gumption and juice out of you. So I became “the lively one” instead. The favored one. Until now.
I gave him every chance. Passed him sugar for his tea. Moved obstacles when he was coming down the hallway. Sat next to him at the bingo table, covering the right letters with colored markers. But the bugger hated my guts. I could feel it, and I could also feel my power and favored status waning at Laurel Springs.
Father Ryan reminded me of my wife, looked at me like she once had. Well, she met her maker on a vacation that she forced on me.
“Let’s go without the children,” she said. Good idea that.
I first got the idea Ryan was putting on a show when I heard a grumbling sound coming through the wall at night. The piker was saying his rosary! Leave it to a priest to be a mute all day but say his prayers before bed.
I pondered a method of demise for a day or two. I had little access to the instruments of death. They guard the drugs and medical instruments because half of us would gulp down a bottle of pills or inject ourselves with cyanide given a chance. The kitchen, with its knives, was locked. Windows and doors locked too. We’re in permanent lockdown here. I considered strangling him, but the thought of curling my arthritic fingers around his scrawny neck seemed iffy. It would have to be a pillow then.
Father Ryan slept on that spongy stuff—can’t remember the name just now. I needed something that would sink into his face. Muffle any sound, stifle any air. It would have to be my favorite down pillow. I hoped he wasn’t a drooler, that his nose didn’t bleed, that he wouldn’t vomit. Telltale signs and a ruined pillow.
Father Ryan takes a nap after chair aerobics. He wheels down to his room and climbs right into bed unlike the rest who doze in their chairs. I placed my pillow in his room while he was down at breakfast eating his prunes and oatmeal— the food of the self-righteous. I crept around his room, looking in his closet, checking out the medicine chest, pressing the buttons on his tape player.
The tape came on suddenly and I heard a deep voice intoning a prayer. The voice I’d heard every night for the last few weeks was not Father Ryan’s. Well, it was too late to alter my plan. Nothing important has changed. With only lifting that finger, he commands the respect I so arduously earned. He has to lift a finger all right, but only the one. So I put that pillow behind the door and went to breakfast.
No one will autopsy a ninety-year old man in his shape. No one will give it a minute’s thought. I can already picture the flyer announcing his death in the common room, the date of his Mass listed in bold letters.
The door to his room is open. I hear his labored breathing as I close it. As I move through his room, picking up the pillow from its resting place, I keep repeating to myself: Don’t leave your pillow behind. Don’t leave your pillow behind. Only memory can harm me now.
THE SQUATTER
The squatter was standing just to the left of her garage when Annette pulled in after work. He had been living next door for several months, but before today they’d only traded half-hearted nods. She didn’t know which of them was warier. She could try turning him in, of course, provided the authorities followed up on her call—an unlikely event in Detroit. And he could— well—he could do a lot of things. Didn’t bear thinking about what they might be.
A sudden bark gave her a start, and she busied herself with removing Jump’s cage from the front seat. Newly released, the dog ran over to the squatter and began sniffing him. From the looks of Jump’s swishing butt nothing seemed amiss to the dog, although she hadn’t proved overly wise about men in the past. She was all over the squatter now, undeterred by his somewhat untidy appearance, wiggling like the randy, middle-aged female she was.
“Down, Jump,” she said in a firm voice, clapping her hands. Jump backed away, disappointed to have interested the man so little. Not even a pat on the head. She looked at Annette expectantly, like she was thinking, what do you make of him?
“Looks like she’s been groomed recently,” he said.
She nodded. “Just back from there now.”
“Looks to be part poodle. Had a poodle once upon a time. Smart dogs.”
He didn’t elaborate, and in the twilight, it was hard to see whether he was being friendly or just stating a fact. He had flirty eyes though, she thought, watching silently as he lit a cigarette and tossed the match in the general direction of his house. Despite his general scruffiness, there was a quality—an attractiveness about him—and he carried himself like he knew it.
“Is there something I can do?” she finally asked.
But before he could respond, Jump, deciding further overtures were useless, took off for the house. They both watched as Cookie opened the door to his bark and let him in.
“Mom?” Her daughter’s voice was indistinct over the whine of a lawnmower. “Are you still out there? Is everything okay?”
“Right there, honey,” Annette shouted, sounding calmer than she felt. She jingled the car keys, wondering why her chest seemed to be home to a butterfly.
“Wonder if I could use your phone,” he said at last, removing his baseball cap and rotating it in his hands like a medieval supplicant. “I don’t have one—just now.” He nodded toward the house. When she didn’t move, he added, “Or you could make the call for me. It’s a local number. Melvindale.”
“I have a cordless phone you can use,” she admitted reluctantly. She didn’t want him to think she was rich, or that she had things worth money inside her house. He nodded, replacing his cap and straightening his back incrementally—meekness gone. Picking up the cage, she walked to the house, letting the screen slam behind her.
Inside, Cookie, and Billy were watching cartoons in the living room. A box of cereal sat on the counter, a carton of milk beside it. Resisting the urge to put them away first, she grabbed the phone and headed back out the door.
“That you, Mom?” Cookie shouted from the next room. “We’re all out of Cheerios.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she muttered. “Just a sec.”
Outside again, she crossed the lawn, noticing the squatter had moved closer during her absence. He was inside the back gate now, leaning cockily against the fence.
“Here you go. My sister gave it to me for Christmas,” she explained unnecessarily. “Sometimes these things work, but sometimes….” Stepping away, she busied herself with a section of fence that had come loose. Jump’s handiwork, no doubt.
“Thanks.” He t
ook the phone and made a quick call, but was at her elbow a minute later, pressing the phone against her arm, his hand rough on her skin. He had the oddest scent, she realized. Where had she smelled it before? It certainly didn’t come out of a bottle unless it was one of motor oil. No, not quite that. She flinched slightly.
“I’m Annette Mueller.”
“Gerry Upson.” He stuck out a hand, waiting patiently while she shifted the phone. “I moved in last winter. Been waiting for the right time to say hi.” He had the earnest tone of a fellow parent at “back to school night” even if his clothes belied it. “You don’t usually look like you’re in the mood for talking, Nettie. Rushing around like—Well, I don’t know what.” He smiled a little. “But tonight—tonight I had some business to do so I took a chance.”
She remembered the day he came. It took him and a younger man—probably his son— less than thirty minutes to unload the borrowed van. She wouldn’t have noticed the move at all if she hadn’t been outside shoveling snow.
“Cold month for moving. February,” she clarified. No harm in letting him know she was watching things. What sort of man moves in to a house like he’s entitled to and not in the dark of night. She has wondered this before.
He shrugged. “Don’t notice the cold much.”
A good thing, she thought to herself. Would there be any heat in that house? Water? Yet he had made it through the winter. None of the boards had come down from the windows in all this time, big X-like slashes of wood at every opening, probably letting in scant light; a doubled-up piece of heavy plastic, now yellowish gray, still covered the hole in the front door. Kicked in, she remembered.
“If there’s nothing else….” She stood there waiting. He shook his head and they both turned to go.
“I can fix that porch step for you,” he offered suddenly, eyeing the cement block that had shifted over winter. “A woman alone can use some help. My way of saying thanks.”
“I’m not alone, and it seems like an awfully big thank you.”
“May need to use your phone again. Either that or something else. A neighbor’s right, isn’t it?” He looked at her open mouth, and then laughed. “To borrow things, I mean. Little stuff.”
He moved away still chuckling, not waiting for her response.
The step had been repaired when she got home from work the next Monday. He had moved it up a few inches and cemented it in. A neat job. Was she supposed to go over and thank him? She was curious to see if the inside of his house was any better than the outside. Except it wasn’t his place, was it—even if he had her calling it that. It was nice to have the step fixed without paying for it though. Making ends meet on her salary was tough a lot of months. It’d been hard enough before Cookie and Billy moved back in. Now….
The house next door had sat empty since before she rented hers—five years, at least. She’d been hoping the city would tear it down, but the list of buildings to bulldoze grew longer each year. At least this one had never attracted the crack trade. The sole, criminal incident so far was the removal of every saleable fixture by some kids that first spring. She called the cops that day, but the kids must have had radar, disappearing in a ratty-assed old van as the cruiser turned the corner. The cop had come out of the house shaking his head.
“Even took the fuses out of the electrical box,” he told her, brushing a cobweb from his starched slacks. “Said they were kids?”
She waited until Billy was asleep and Cookie had disappeared with her girlfriend, and then went out on the porch with a newspaper, taking a seat on the glider, propping her feet on the lower rail. If he turned up, she’d thank him for his work, not making too much of it, indicating firmly their transaction was complete. She had to consider the four-year old child asleep upstairs, his attractive twenty-four year old mother, who slept in the bed next to his. The squatter didn’t seem like a rapist or a child molester, but who knew what he was up to? What clean-living man of forty-five squatted?
He showed up about eight-thirty, just as it grew too dark to read the print.
She put the paper aside and rose. “Step looks great…Gerry. Good as new.” Despite her intentions, a flirtatious tone had crept into her voice.
“Porch looks like it needs some work, too.” Reaching up from the sidewalk, he shook the railing harder than he needed to demonstrate. His shirtsleeve slid up, revealing a muscular arm and a partly obscured tattoo of a dragon.
Reaching out a hand to steady the railing, she said, “I can’t really afford to hire someone just now. There’s a million other things—you know how it is.”
“I could do it. Or show you.” He put a foot on the first step. “Not like I got a lot to do lately.”
She glanced at his house and he followed her gaze. “Right,” he laughed a little. “Well, I won’t be making any more improvements over there— until I buy it, that is.” He patted himself down, looking for a cigarette. “Jerry-rigged electricity, of course. And no one ever bothered to turn off the water. Detroit, you know.” She nodded. “But other than that….”
The night was so still that the fresh smoke hung in the air between them for several seconds. “Doing anything more wouldn’t be prudent,” he said, imitating George Bush. “Besides I’m the lazy sort.” His eyes shone despite the fading light.
She beat back a laugh. “Gonna to buy it then?” They both squinted through the cigarette smoke at the house.
“When it comes up at auction. Inside isn’t too bad.” His foot hit the second step. “I got lots of ideas for the place. Once it’s mine, that is.” He paused. “Hate having to pay for it at all.”
“When it comes up? I didn’t know the city planned to sell it.” She paused and then added. “Sure you got the right place?”
He nodded. “It’ll go just for the back taxes. It’s on the schedule. A few thousand should do it.”
“That’s why they haven’t knocked it down then.” She pushed off on the wooden pillar and began to swing lightly, wondering how he’d get even the few thousand if he were the lazy sort.
He nodded, up on her porch now. “That tea sure looks good.”
Stopping the glider with her foot, she rose. “I’ll get you a glass.” She started for the door and then turned her head. “Better wait here.”
He nodded. Inside she felt like kicking herself. It was that old itch again. That old flutter.
This became their routine: it grew dark, she came out on the porch, and he showed up. It wasn’t every night— maybe two or three times a week. He kept his distance until Cookie had gone out and Billy was in bed, until Annette was sitting on the glider or fooling around in the garden or garage. He never offered to fix much of anything again, but once he borrowed her Phillips screwdriver, saying his had disappeared. She comforted herself with the idea it was her companionship he was after, not her phone or her tools.
And, oh yes, he was wildly handsome. It was the kind of handsome you didn’t see at first—when you were still looking at the state of his clothes or his poorly cut hair. Or noticing his odd smell. He looked like one of those guys who played cowboys on television in the fifties. Rory Calhoun, maybe.
“I do some welding when I need cash, Nettie,” he admitted once. “Kind of job that don’t need a license. Auto shops mostly.”
She could picture him brandishing that fire-breathing welding gun, the muscles in his arms flexing and relaxing as he soldered—whatever it was he soldered. If he talked at all, it was about how he hated the government.
“You sound like those guys that live up in the mountains planning stuff,” she told him.
“Nothing as fancy as that,” he said. “It don’t change me.”
In June, Cookie came home unexpectedly and found him sitting on the rail. Both pretended it was his first visit, easing into this deception as if it were planned. He was almost too good at it, making believe he didn’t even know Annette’s last name, putting on an awkwardness they had long outgrown. Cookie gave them both a dark look before she swept into the ho
use. They began to giggle as soon as she was gone.
At breakfast the next morning, she reassured Cookie. “Never put so much as a toe inside this house.”
Cookie put down the juice carton. “Your call, Mom, but he seems pretty damned sleazy. Catch his boots? It’s ninety-five degrees out, for God’s sake!”
“Ones with the lizards?”
“Where are the lizards?” Billy asked, shaken out of his morning daze. He looked around the room suspiciously.
“Not real ones, Sleepyhead. Just something on someone’s boots. He’s been talking about snakes and lizards ever since we went inside the Reptile House at the zoo—” Cookie started to tell Annette.
“Those little red guys on Gerry’s boots?” Billy asked, shoveling a spoonful of Wheaties into his mouth. “Are those lizards?”
“How do you know Gerry, Billy?” Annette asked, whipping around before Cookie could even open her mouth.
“He talks to me sometimes…. When I’m playing trucks,” he said warily. Billy had a sandbox in the backyard with a fleet of trucks to go over the sand hills.
“Does he come into our yard?” Cookie interjected, her tone too disapproving to successfully cull information from a four-year old.
“No.” He stirred his cereal worriedly. The women looked at each other unconvinced.
Annette tried a different tact. “What do Gerry and you talk about when you’re playing trucks?”
Billy resumed eating. “He told me how he used to drive real trucks— like some of mine. Eighteen-wheelers.” He looked off into space, considering his words. “Another time, last week, I think, he said he might have some old trucks he could give me. Ones his kid used to play with.” He looked at Annette. “But he never did, Grandma.”
“I guess he forgot.”
“You can ask him, Grandma. When he comes on our porch tonight.”
Annette flushed, avoiding Cookie’s eyes. “Where was he when he told you about the trucks?”
