Lola looked up at the accusation, then bobbed her head back down to her chocolate bar.
“No,” Markie said, “it was me. I came out. I wanted to thank Ronda for the muffins and the little house.”
“Totem,” Patty corrected, and Ronda blushed.
“Oh yes. Totem. Of course.” Markie turned to Ronda. “Sorry.”
Ronda waved the apology away. “It’s fine. Really. I know Mrs. Saint probably already told you she has no use for—”
“I loved it,” Markie said. “The little . . .” She struggled to recall if Mrs. Saint had used a special term for the dolls. “Figures? Of me and Jesse? They’re adorable. I can’t tell you what it meant to me that you took the time to make it. I don’t think I’ve ever received such a thoughtful gift before.”
Ronda beamed, and Patty gave Markie a grateful smile and said, “Wasn’t it incredible? Ronda spent hours.” She turned to the other woman. “How many, do you think?”
“Oh, I didn’t keep track,” Ronda said. “I was just happy to do it. I hope it brings . . .” She tilted her head toward Mrs. Saint’s house, as though reluctant to say the next thing, in case her boss overheard. “Luck,” she whispered.
“I’m sure it will,” Patty said. “Don’t you think it will, Markie?”
“It already has. I’ve met the two of you today. And Lola.”
Patty scratched out a laugh. “She meant it to bring good luck.” Putting a hand on Ronda’s shoulder, she said, “Frédéric wanted me to remind you that you were going to get dinner started early tonight. He has to go out for a while.”
“Oh yes, that’s right,” Ronda said.
“So, where’s Frédéric off to after dinner?” Markie asked.
One of the many unusual things she had noticed about the daily schedule on the other side of the fence was the fact that most weekday afternoons at a little before two, Frédéric left, returning about an hour later. They were all aware that he left, calling goodbye and greeting him when he returned, but as with Patty’s evening activities, the details of Frédéric’s daily sojourn went unmentioned. Markie had spent more time than she wanted to admit watching, trying to sort out where it was that he went every day. And equally weird, why it was that the only time Patty’s mother, Carol, seemed to come over was during that precise hour when Frédéric was gone. The two things didn’t seem to have any connection, yet they only ever occurred in tandem.
Patty took the time to stub out her cigarette, light a new one, and blow a long curl of smoke above her before looking directly at Markie and saying, “Who knows?”
Markie felt her cheeks flush as though she had been caught doing something lewd.
She opened her mouth to apologize for treading where she wasn’t welcome, but Patty turned to Ronda and spoke before Markie could. “He says you can leave the dishes. He’ll do them when he gets back. That way, he can drive you and Bruce home right after dinner, on his way.”
“Oh, that’s very nice,” Ronda said, still looking at Lola. “I’ll stay and finish, though. He shouldn’t have to.”
“As long as you don’t take too long, I think,” Patty said. “Frédéric wants Mrs. Saint to lie down after you eat, and she won’t if people are still here.”
“Is she ill?” Markie asked.
“No!” Ronda said.
It was the first time Markie had heard the cook speak loudly, and she might have concluded it was a reflexive, head-in-the-ground response by an employee unwilling to admit her boss was sick, but Patty said, “She’s just tired, and he suggested she should take a nap, and she said she had too much to do before dinner, so he said fine, take one right after dinner, and she promised him she would.”
Patty stared expectantly at Ronda, who was still languishing against the fence, watching Lola. Finally, Patty put a hand on the cook’s arm and in a gentle voice said, “So? Can you get dinner started early, you think?”
“Oh yes, yes, of course!” Ronda said, laughing. “I lost my train of thought for a few minutes there, didn’t I? Yes!” She pushed herself off the fence and walked to the side door. “I just need to think about what I should make,” she said, possibly to herself, as she reached the door.
“I think you’ve got a recipe on the counter,” Patty called after her. “Something with pork chops?”
“Oh yes, that’s right. The pork with the . . . what was I going to do with it?”
“Mushroom soup,” Patty said. “Can’s on the counter. Sounds real good. If there’s any left, save some for my lunch tomorrow?”
Ronda turned and beamed. “I’ll be sure to.”
“And that,” Patty whispered to Markie as they watched Ronda go, “is one of the reasons Mrs. Saint has too much to do before dinner. Getting the simplest meal on the table takes forever. If we’re not reminding her she’s got something on the stove, we’re helping her clean it all up after it boils over.”
Patty laughed and shook her head at Ronda’s receding form. “I love the woman, I do, but sometimes she takes more getting after than that one.” She pointed to Lola, still eating, in her chair. “You about done?” Patty asked her daughter. “Because we really got to bounce in a minute here. Mrs. S said Carol could swing by and get us today, but our window won’t be open too long.”
It was then that Markie realized she hadn’t seen or heard Frédéric the entire time she had been outside. Given how tight-lipped Patty had been about the man’s evening destination, Markie knew better than to ask about the Carol/Frédéric coincidence. She would have to solve that mystery another time. Or better yet, she would try harder to ignore it.
“What if you go with Carol and I stay with Frédéric?” Lola asked between bites.
Markie waited for Patty to chastise her daughter for saying “Carol” instead of “Grandma,” but Patty only laughed and said, “Nice try.”
Then again, Patty hadn’t referred to Carol as “Mom.” They were an intriguing pair, this decidedly nontraditional mother and daughter, though Markie tried to deny to herself how interesting she found them.
“Finish up and then go pack up your stuff,” Patty told Lola. “You’ll have to get that reading or math or whatever done at home. You know Mrs. Saint’s going to ask about it tomorrow.”
Turning back to Markie, Patty said, “Why they’ve got to bore them all day with it and then send it all home to bore them some more, I don’t understand. But then, I’m not a shining example of a scholar. For starters, I’m not supposed to use the word ‘boring’ when I’m talking about school and homework. Or so I’m told.”
She rolled her eyes dramatically, arcing her head in the direction of Mrs. Saint’s house to make it clear where the instruction had come from. “She thinks I should hire someone. Not to help her actually do it, just to remind her. She’s smarter than Carol and me together. She could do all the work if she had someone who kept on her about it. And it ain’t about to be me.”
Markie feared the conversation was heading in the same place Mrs. Saint had hinted at some time ago, with Jesse being hired as Lola’s tutor. “Maybe Carol can remind her tonight while you’re out,” she said to Patty.
“Ha!” Patty barked. “By eight, someone will have to remind Carol that Lola’s in the apartment with her. And who the kid even is.” She curved her fingers and thumb in a circle as though she held a bottle, then tilted the invisible object to her mouth.
Markie’s mouth dropped open as a car horn sounded from the front of Mrs. Saint’s house, unviewable from where they stood.
“That’s her,” Patty called to Lola. “Scoot! Quick!” She pointed to the corner of the house. “You run around that way and tell her I’m coming, and I’ll grab your bag on my way through. Don’t let her take off without me!”
She gave Markie a quick wave and jogged to the screened porch, depositing her cigarette butt in a tin can near the steps before she raced up them, into the porch, and through the sliding doors to the house. Lola watched her mother disappear, then gazed plaintively at what was left of he
r chocolate bar. Sighing, she popped the last bit into her mouth, jumped to her feet, and ran to the front yard, wiping her fingers on her dress as she went.
Markie had her solitary dinner in the family room while Jesse ate his downstairs in front of a video game. Setting her plate aside, she picked up the novel she had been trying for weeks to read, but two pages in, she found herself distracted by the sounds of machine guns and explosions coming from below. Giving up on the book, she went to the basement door. “Jesse?” she called. He didn’t answer, so she tried again.
The gunfire stopped. “Yeah,” he said, in the way of someone hoping the conversation would be short so he could go back to what he was doing.
She had been thinking of asking him if he felt like going out for ice cream, but it seemed like a silly idea, suddenly. He was fourteen, not ten. She tried to think of an alternative—a slice of pie at the sandwich shop? A walk around the block?—but talked herself out of each.
“Mom?” Jesse called, and his impatience was obvious. “My game will reset if I don’t—”
“I was just going to say I’m going up to bed,” she said.
He laughed. “It’s seven thirty.”
“I’m taking my book. I’m going to read for a while.”
“Night,” he called, returning to his game so quickly that her own “Good night, Jesse,” was drowned out by warfare.
Upstairs, she lay, fully clothed, on her bed and stared at the ceiling. The muffled sounds of gunfire rose through the heat vents, reminding her of the impotent effort she had just made to connect with her son. God, she had made a mess of their lives. She opened her novel, scanned a few paragraphs without taking them in, and let it fall to the floor. Nowhere in her teenage diaries had she written that one day she planned to be incapable of making a single relationship function properly, including with her own child. She shut off the light, closed her eyes, and willed a blanket of sleep to spare her from having to spend another conscious minute with herself.
Chapter Fourteen
“So out with these ones again,” Markie heard from the other side of the fence as she sat in her patio chair one afternoon, work files on her lap. She had just said goodbye to Jesse after he had raced into the patio after school to dump his backpack and ask if he could hang out with Trevorandtheguys, to go “likely nowhere” and do “pretty much nothing.” She turned toward the fence, a cavity-inducing smile on her lips. Your disapproval doesn’t faze me.
“At least no driving these days,” Mrs. Saint said. She must have seen them waiting for Jesse on the sidewalk. “Not that boys cannot chase after the trouble on their own foot.”
“Brian’s car has been in the shop,” Markie said, ashamed at how proud she was to show off her knowledge, not only of the driver’s name, but the fact that his car was having troubles. She stopped herself from repeating what Jesse had told her a few days earlier, that it might be something with the transmission. But she did permit herself to add, “It’s a Ford Fusion, by the way. Very common around here.”
“It is only that Frédéric and Bruce are finding things hidden near the trees,” Mrs. Saint said, lengthening her neck to peer at the wooded area behind her garage. “And so it seems maybe they have been back there.”
Markie laughed. “I think Jesse and his friends are a little old to be playing with toys in the woods. Whatever Frédéric and Bruce found, I’m guessing Lola’s the one who left it.”
“Och, but it is not toys. It is cans of . . .” The old woman held up a hand, and with her index finger she pressed an imaginary nozzle. “The spraying kind of paint. Also the ends of cigarettes. They have found these things in the morning time when they did not see them the evening before, and so it seems they are being left there very late.”
“Jesse’s home by ten every night,” Markie said, feeling her voice stiffen. Mrs. Saint craned her head to stare pointedly at the egress window, and Markie felt herself arch up as something inside her snapped. She could not have made it more clear that what she wanted above all was to be left alone, yet other than those first three weeks of blissful silence, she had been intruded on almost daily by this woman! And on every occasion, although Markie had desired desperately to turn her unwanted visitor away at the fence, she had instead forced herself to be polite—friendly, even—despite the fact that on most days she could barely summon the emotional energy to carry on a conversation with her own child.
And what had she gotten from Mrs. Saint in return? Not respect or time alone, but only “Ochs!” and head shakes and criticisms and accusations. It would have been excruciating enough for her to have to deal with a neighbor who was nonjudgmental and uncritical; to have to bear someone so nosy and opinionated was torture. Why had she made herself suffer through this?
“Look,” she said, her voice low, her eyes boring a hole into the old woman, “I am done with your accusations. He’s smoking, his friends are up to no good, he’s sneaking out late at night to play with spray paint? I mean, what else—”
Mrs. Saint chuckled and shook her head as though Markie were a peevish child complaining about things she didn’t understand. “Non, non, but I am for Chessie, of course, not against. I like him very much. And the same is for Frédéric. He feels very worried. Le pauvre, with no father around—”
Markie popped out of her chair and stood ramrod straight. “He has a father!” she heard herself screech as her hands balled into tight fists. Mrs. Saint flinched at the noise and opened her mouth to speak, but Markie beat her to it. “They had a misunderstanding that time you saw his dad drive away without him! A simple misunderstanding, like people have! It wasn’t some big trauma that caused my son to go from perfectly well-behaved boy to sneaky, smoking, spray-painting hoodlum! You’ve blown it all way out of proportion!”
The old woman moved to speak again, but Markie held up a hand and went on. “I don’t know what your problem with me is. Maybe you don’t like single mothers, or maybe you don’t trust teenage boys, or maybe you’re just bored. And obviously, you didn’t get the message when I said it the first time, but I don’t want . . .” She waved her hand at Mrs. Saint and the fence. “All of this! So you need to take your . . . whatever it is . . . somewhere else. And leave me and my kid alone!”
She waited a beat for emphasis before marching to the door and yanking it open. As she stepped inside, she allowed herself a brief glance toward the fence, and to her delight, her neighbor appeared completely cowed—head down, hands clasped together. Markie fought the urge to throw her head back and cackle. She was stepping inside when she heard the woman clear her throat. She froze and waited—she couldn’t wait to hear this apology.
“Of course, a dog would bark if someone was trying to sneak out the special window.”
Markie ground her teeth, stomped inside, and slammed the door.
She woke in the night to a thud and the sound of voices. At first she thought she must have left the TV on, but when she opened her eyes, the room was dark. The clock read 11:40 p.m. Instinctively, she reached for Kyle.
She hadn’t sobbed, night after night, at the sight of his empty spot in her bed. Nor had she fallen asleep clutching his pillow, or stared miserably into her closet, gripped by regret over the lack of men’s shirts and pants and shoes. The absence of aftershave in the bathroom didn’t depress her. But she had missed him desperately when it was late at night and a lightbulb flickered and then burned out, or the fridge motor kicked on suddenly, waking her. Or when the house creaked—or, like now, thumped.
And lately she had noticed the void when she wanted to complain to someone about Jesse’s bad-temperedness. Many times she had reflexively turned sideways to roll her eyes to Kyle after a particularly rude glare or grunt from her son and had been surprised and saddened to find he wasn’t there. That was her own doing, though, as was the fact that there was no girlfriend she could call and vent to anymore, either. Her mother may or may not have risen to fill the role of confidante, but Markie hadn’t given her the chance. The thing about s
etting your life up so you could be completely alone was that you ended up completely alone. And while most of the time that suited Markie just fine, there were times when she wondered if it had been the right thing to do. Like when her kid was acting terrible. Or when she was blaming herself for being the reason her kid acted terrible. Or when her house was making noises in the night.
Markie expected that if Kyle missed anything about her, it was probably something equally bland and passionless, like her organizational skills or the way she folded laundry. It made her feel disappointed in both of them, and she vowed to encourage Jesse to hold out for a partner whose absence would cause the complete annihilation of his soul. He should never settle for someone who could be replaced by a good home alarm system or a dry cleaner. She listened for another minute and then, hearing nothing, pulled her hand back from the empty space, rolled over, and drifted back to sleep.
Hours later, a loud knock woke her, and now she was truly frightened. The clock read 3:30 a.m. There was another knock, and she wondered suddenly if it was Mrs. Saint. Maybe she had hurt herself somehow and needed a ride to the hospital. Or lost power. She tiptoed to the window overlooking Mrs. Saint’s house and looked out. There was a light on in her neighbor’s sitting room. Had the old woman left it on before making her way across the yard in the dark?
A louder sound rang out—they were banging now, not just knocking—and Markie realized it was coming from the front door. It couldn’t be her neighbor, then—she would never walk around the house when there was an entry much closer. Kyle wouldn’t show up without texting first, especially at this hour, and Jesse’s friends surely wouldn’t choose three thirty in the morning to make their first appearance. It couldn’t be anyone they knew. Whoever it was must be at the wrong house—a drunken neighbor, maybe.
She realized she had never talked to Jesse about what to do if there was a thud in the night, voices, a knock on the door. Specifically, she had never told him that whatever he did, he shouldn’t answer. It could be some crazed criminal who gained entry into unsuspecting homes by knocking at an hour when people were too tired to question and instead just opened up.
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