Providence Noir

by Ann Hood

  Joy put down her wineglass. Earlier, she had cajoled him into going to the pool for a swim, so now their bathing suits were draped over the railing, drying. Charlie watched them rustle in the warm breeze behind her, worrying they might blow away and be lost to the night, before she sighed and asked, “What do you mean, dear?”

  Increasingly, following that doctor’s visit a few winters before, Joy had developed a way of speaking to Charlie that irked him. It was as though she was talking to one of her students from Central High, and not a very bright one at that. Each morning, when she asked if he had taken his medicine, it was this tone she used. When explaining her need to sleep in a separate bed for the first time in their thirty-seven years of marriage, because of his newfound habit of tossing and turning, which kept her awake, it was this tone she used. And only days before that night on the terrace, when she sat Charlie down to inform him that it was time to take away the keys to the Oldsmobile, now that his little mental slips were becoming more worrisome, it was this same tone she used then as well.

  “Stop talking to me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’m a kid.”

  “Well, I don’t mean to, Charlie. But I don’t understand what you’re saying about not wanting this life anymore.”

  “You know what I mean,” he said over the sound of that driver’s clattering. He had made his delivery and was now rolling down the enormous back door then climbing into the truck, slamming the door shut. “You tricked me into living this life.”

  “Charlie, you’re not making sense. I didn’t trick you. We planned for this. It was our dream to be snowbirds.”

  “Well, I want to be a person again. Not some stupid fucking bird. Not any other animal either.”

  Joy looked at him, tilting her head. The candlelight had a way of erasing her wrinkles and making her appear younger, more like the woman he first saw when he took that job at Central High School years before and noticed her lifting boxes from her trunk and asked if she could use a hand. Behind her, those bathing suits still rustled on the railing while down below that truck was backing up to leave, releasing a series of automated warning beeps as it went.

  “I know you can’t help forgetting,” Joy said, her pale eyes going damp with tears, “but we’ve had this conversation before, Charlie. Dozens of times, in fact. Last time, it ended with you screaming and breaking things. I found it quite frightening, all that pent-up rage I never knew you had, so I don’t want to go through that again. Now, I need you to try hard and keep this thought in your head instead, because it will make things easier and be more pleasant for you than those other thoughts: I like being a snowbird—and you like it too.”

  “No more driving for me,” he told Tünde as she stood before him still in Joy’s art room at the house on Arnold Street. He shook his head and sent that memory sailing away like those bathing suits had done later that night when the wind picked up and blew them from the railing so they seemed to dance in the air a moment before falling to the parking lot below. “Can you sit with me for a bit?”

  “Sit? No. You pay me to clean. Now I must do, then go to other jobs.”

  Tünde left the room, and Charlie lingered behind for a while until he could not bear the silence any longer. That’s when he carried The Pig to the kitchen and set it on the table. He began picking through the bags of groceries, ultimately making himself a roast beef sandwich with mayo, then swallowing the pills Tünde had dumped in his Tuesday compartment, chasing them with a sugary soda he did not recall writing on the list of things for her to buy. After that, he went in search of her, with the notion that he may as well take advantage of the company while there was another person in the house.

  The narrow bathroom beneath the stairs—that’s where he found her. She wore Joy’s yellow cleaning gloves, which made her hands appear daintier than he knew them to be. Kneeling before the toilet, Tünde scrubbed with the same brute-force she brought to the kitchen table earlier. The woman did not so much as lift her head when he appeared in the doorway. Still, Charlie asked if she minded his sticking close by while she cleaned.

  “You worry I break something?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “You worry I steal something, like your wife thought me to do?”

  “It’s not that.” And then, once more, he found himself admitting to something he had only ever told The Pig: “I’m just lonely without her around. She was the only person I ever loved. She took care of me. She understood me, at least until the last few years.”

  If Tünde had taken in those words spoken from the deep well of his broken heart, she didn’t indicate as much. She gave a slight shrug, and then flushed the sudsy water down the toilet before turning her attention to the floor. And when she was done with the floor, she clomped up the stairs to the bathroom there. Next came the bedroom, where she ripped the sheets from the bed and carried them to the wash, before remaking it with fresh linens. At last came the dusting, which took her and Charlie all over the house and required a great deal of time since things were dirty after so many months with nobody home. Eventually, the wash was done and folded and the furniture polished and the air smelled like ammonia and bleach and all clean things. Tünde carted the smaller rugs to the patio out back, and Charlie watched from a window as she used a broom to beat them with the hardest of wallops. The rugs released what sounded like a pained grunt with each and every whack. After she returned inside to put them back in their places, she unpacked the last of the groceries, and then tackled her final bit of work: mopping the kitchen floor. As Charlie watched, he couldn’t help but think it was just like the old days, with Tünde in her trancelike state pushing the dirty gray strings of that mop around.

  “You were always so good at ignoring those kids,” Charlie said after a long while, speaking his thoughts out loud without quite meaning to do so.

  “What is this you are saying now?” Tünde asked.

  She had finished mopping by then and was peeling off the yellow gloves, exposing her big, knuckly hands and chewed fingernails.

  “I was watching you clean and thinking how you used to shut out those kids and all the bullshit they would pull back at that school. Like calling you that stupid name.”

  Tünde draped Joy’s yellow gloves on the sides of the bucket she had just emptied. “They had name for you too,” she said.

  “I know they did. But unlike you, I could never tune it out. Their nastiness used to eat away at me. I think that’s why I let a lot of anger build up inside over the years without even realizing it. Anyway, like I said, you handled them better than me.”

  “Maybe not so much as you think,” she told Charlie. “Reason I was fired was for finally teaching one his lesson.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I guess you don’t read Providence newspaper. Big story few years back. I was like celebrity in this city. Well, bad celebrity. I choked one of those kids.”

  “Choked? Did you—”

  “No. I did not kill him. I wanted to, but instead I just scared him plenty.”

  Charlie was quiet, staring at Joy’s gloves clinging limply to the edge of the bucket. “Well, good for you. I’m sure the little bastard deserved it.”

  Tünde shrugged. “In the moment, yes. But now I have lawsuit. Which is why I need money. To leave town before they make me pay. Anyway, I must go to other job.”

  Charlie reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, carefully counting out the money he had agreed to pay her when they’d spoken on the phone the night before. When he handed it over, Tünde counted the bills again then pulled on her coat and scarf and walked to the back door. Things might have ended between them right then and there, but that’s when she stopped. “Oh,” she said, reaching into her pocket and turning around, holding something out to him. “I almost forgot. Receipt for groceries from the Whole Foods.”

  “Thanks,” he said when she came closer again and he took it from her.

  “You are welcome.
But I think now you are the one forgetting something, yes?”

  Charlie stared at her, then stared down at the receipt, trying to figure out what she meant. And then, all at once, he realized and reached into his wallet again, pulling out the amount equal to what it said on the receipt, rounding up a few dollars for change. When he handed the bills to Tünde, she smiled then turned again and walked to the door, pulling it open. At the sight of her about to leave, he braced himself for the silence and loneliness to follow, except there came a cloud of thought drifting through the blank blue sky of his mind just then. It made him say, “Wait.”

  She turned to look at Charlie. “Yes?”

  “I think . . . No, I know that I already gave you the money for groceries before you left for the store.”

  “Of course you did not. I would remember.”

  “Well, you should remember. Because we stood right here in this kitchen, I’m sure of it, and I took out my wallet and handed you the money. So you need to give it back.”

  “You said yourself your head is not working in right way. I help you to straighten out your medicines. You swallow few pills and like that you have brain of Einstein. I don’t think so. Now, I must go.”

  “No,” Charlie told her.

  “You are just like your wife,” she said in a disgusted voice. “She accused me of stealing too. Then fired me. I did not steal then. I did not steal now.”

  The thunderbolt, the squiggly line—those things flashed in his mind, but Charlie tried not to get distracted. He glanced at the face of The Pig silently watching the moment unfold.

  “I don’t know what my wife accused you of stealing, but I know I gave you the money. Give it back now and we’ll both walk away. And I don’t think you should come here anymore either.”

  Tünde closed the door. She walked slowly across the kitchen until she was standing impossibly close to him. Charlie looked up into those deep inset eyes of hers. His heart pounded in his chest. A buzzing rang in his ears until he heard those kids screaming in some long-ago memory: In this corner, we have the Hungarian Barbarian! Standing at a hulking six-feet-one and built like a brick shit-house, the other ladies in the ring better get ready for an ass-whooping like they’ve never seen!

  “So,” she said, “I ask you, Mr. Charlie Webster, are you calling me thief?”

  “All I’m saying is that I already gave you the money. Maybe it was a simple mix-up. But I know that I did. My mind is not totally gone, after all. So you can’t just—”

  “Funny how you have so much to say now. But you never did then.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Back at that school. Never once did you protect me from those kids. You just stood there. Watching like idiot. Doing nothing like coward. Those kids, they called you The Pig. And why? Because you were supposed to be cop of that school. But you were just coward. And then I come here and I think what joke is this that the man they called The Pig is carrying around pig with his dead wife inside! I laughed in my head at you! Laughed and laughed! But same time, I need money, so I keep quiet. I do what you ask. Clean. Shop. Fix pills. All that and now you make accusation at me. Well, let me tell you that I do not think you are very smart, Mr. Webster. No—Mr. Pig. No one knows you are here. No one knows I am here. And I have just cleaned this shit-house top to bottom with gloves on, so there is no trace of fingerprints from me anywhere but on door, which I can wipe off on way out. So, Mr. Pig, since you are making me to be thief, I will be thief.”

  With that, she reached out and snatched the wallet from his hand, turning quickly and stomping back across the kitchen to the door. It was all happening too fast, and for an instant, Charlie just stared down at his empty hand. Those things she had said about him being an idiot and a coward all those years roiled inside him. He thought of the way he had lived his life, doing nothing but swallowing shit from a bunch of teenagers year after year after year, all the while biding his time and dreaming of some distant future life as a fucking snowbird. What a waste it had been since living that dream had not made him truly happy in the end! The only thing to ever make Charlie Webster happy had been Joy: her love, her kindness, her gentle laugh, the way she kissed his forehead every morning and every night. But now Joy was gone, all because of what he had done to her that night on the terrace—what his rage had led him to do—because with each passing day the disease rubbed away more memories and more brain capacity and even his ability to do simple things like drive a fucking car! Round and round those thoughts whipped in Charlie’s mind until he looked up from his empty hand to see Tünde about to open the back door and walk away with his wallet.

  The tiles were wet and slippery from all her mopping and when he charged across the floor his feet slid this way and that, but he managed to keep his balance. Charlie caught up with her. Her back was turned, and he lifted both hands, same as he remembered doing that night on the terrace in Florida, and shoved Tünde with all the strength he never used those years back at Central High. So tall and solid was the woman that what happened next was not unlike watching a tree come crashing down in one fell swoop after someone hacked away at it with an ax. There was no time for her to brace herself and her face struck the floor with the loudest of cracks. When she lifted her head, turning to look up at him, Charlie saw blood glistening on her lip and forehead. He didn’t allow the sight to distract him and instead reached down and thrust his hands into her coat pockets even as her arms and legs thrashed about. When he felt his wallet, Charlie yanked it free. But that’s when Tünde rolled onto her side and reached up to grab hold of his neck, doing her damnedest to pull him down with her. She might have succeeded if he hadn’t managed to swing a leg around and mule-kick her with as much force as she brought to the beating of those rugs, and probably the choking of that student. When the heel of his foot landed on her stomach, Tünde released a surprised yelp and loosened her grip. Charlie slipped away, stumbling back as his feet slipped and slid on those slick tiles, until he grabbed hold of the table.

  “Now get the fuck out of here, you crazy bitch!” he yelled, making his way to the phone on the wall. “I’m calling the police.”

  Tünde just watched him from her crumpled position on the floor, wiping that blood from her face with one hand while pressing the other to her stomach where he had kicked it. She gulped in air and said, “Good luck making call to other pigs. You don’t think I know phone is not working. I discover that when I pick up to wipe earlier.”

  Charlie pressed the receiver to his ear, listening to all that nothingness shrieking back at him. How had he forgotten that it was disconnected? How had he forgotten so many things? He dropped the phone and let it fall to the floor. At the same instant, Tünde scrambled to her feet and came after him. Before she could close the distance between them, he darted to the opposite side of the table. Same as that morning, they stood across it, eyeing one another, but this time, Tünde reached out and grabbed the only remaining thing on that table: she grabbed The Pig.

  As she raised it in both hands high above her head, there was a single frozen moment on that chilly March morning on Arnold Street in Providence, Rhode Island, when all the faces in the kitchen—The Pig’s face, Tünde’s face, and Charlie Webster’s face too—were wild with gaping eyes and flared nostrils and mouths full of gritted teeth. In that instant, as The Pig paused in the air above Charlie, he did his best to brace himself for the sight and feel of his wife’s remains—her ashes, her tiny bits of bone, everything but her soul—raining down upon him. But really, how could anyone prepare for such a thing? And in the end, when The Pig hurtled in his direction and bashed against his skull, shattering instantly and sending Charlie’s body slumping to the floor, it didn’t matter because he saw and felt none of what he expected. Rather, Charlie heard what sounded like the heaviest of hailstorms pelting the roof of a car. It was a sound that amplified all around as he blinked open his eyes to see—not ash, not chips and slivers of bones—golf balls spilling from the shattered hull of The Pig.
Dozens of them—in oranges and reds and blues and greens and whites—thudded against the wet kitchen floor, rolling away in all directions. When they came to a stop at last, the only thing he heard was the thumping of Tünde’s boots moving away and the slamming of the door.

  * * *

  Early in Charlie and Joy Webster’s retirement, back when they first signed the deed on their new apartment in Fort Lauderdale, they had not much more than a mattress ordered from an 800 number and a few stray pieces of furniture they’d managed to haul south in the Oldsmobile. A great deal of time during those initial weeks and months were spent shopping for a sofa and chairs and nightstands and lamps and all the many possessions people acquire to fill up a place and make it a home. Since they were always careful to stay within a budget, the couple took to exploring consignment shops in and around their new city. Something about hunting through those old things with the idea of putting them to new use gave them an unexpected thrill. If they had thought much about it, Charlie and Joy might have realized that so much of the cast-off furniture had likely belonged to other couples who came to the Sunshine State with the dream of making a fresh beginning in their later years. But when that beginning turned into an inevitable end, the things they owned wound up in those drab shops with colorful names like The Prissy Hen and Shades of the Past.