Mrs. Saint and the Defectives: A Novel

by Julie Lawson Timmer

  Inside, Jesse and Patty were standing at the kitchen window, trying to figure out where the fire might have started, what rooms it had reached, and whether Mrs. Saint, Simone, and Frédéric had been injured trying to get out. A frantic Angel, aware that all was not right, raced circles around the kitchen, barking. Lola had come downstairs—whether under her own power or in her mother’s arms, Markie wasn’t sure—but miraculously, the girl was sleeping through it all, huddled under her blankets on the family room couch.

  Jesse wanted to stand on the corner across from Mrs. Saint’s and watch with the other neighbors from a better vantage point, but Markie was against it. There was a difference between concern and gawking, she told him. Plus, she didn’t know what he might witness. It would be wonderful if he got there in time to watch Mrs. Saint, Simone, and Frédéric all walking out under their own power. But what if he saw something else?

  Two hours later, Bruce appeared at the door. Patty and Markie were on the couch, Lola snuggled beside her mother, and Jesse and Angel lay together on the area rug. Everyone but the still-sleeping Lola jumped up when Bruce knocked. He stepped inside but wouldn’t take the spot on the couch Markie offered or the chair Jesse fetched from the dining room. Angel tried to lick Bruce’s hands, but he held them high, out of her reach.

  It was clear he wasn’t in the mood.

  “Jesse,” Markie said, nodding to the dog.

  Jesse grabbed the animal by her collar and pulled her to the middle of the rug, making her lie down. He sat on the floor beside the dog and looked up at Bruce expectantly. Markie and Patty, back on the couch now, did the same.

  Bruce shifted from one foot to the other and cleared his throat. He removed his ball cap, something Markie had never seen him do before, and ran a hand over his head. Gripping the cap between the fingers of both hands, he bent his head down, and as he began to speak, he watched his fingers as they worked to rotate the cap in circles as though it were a rosary, the words he was uttering a prayer.

  Frédéric had called him, he said. From the hospital. The older man had been short of breath around eleven the night before, and because Mrs. Saint was already in bed asleep, Simone had insisted on driving him to the ER. The doctors wanted to keep him a few hours for observation, and he told Simone to go home without him, but she insisted on waiting. She was nodding off in a plastic chair when Frédéric’s phone, which Simone had offered to hang on to for him, rang: it was the battalion chief from the fire scene, calling in search of Mrs. Saint’s next of kin. Frédéric’s was the only number she had set on speed dial.

  Bruce looked up from his cap, and Markie had time to see his eyes welling up and to feel her chest go cold before he bent his head down again.

  “We lost her,” he cried, his voice breaking, and when he lifted his eyes from his cap again, they were overflowing.

  “What?” Patty cried, leaping to her feet again. “No! That can’t be right! It was only a house fire!”

  It was a nonsensical thing to say, of course, but Markie, who stood and put her arms around the sobbing Patty and whispered, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” knew what she meant. It had been more horror than they could bear for a night, watching the house burn, seeing the clouds of smoke surround it, the flashing lights and the running shadows and the first responders taking over the property. They had assumed that would be the most terrible part because the alternative, that it could get so much worse, had been too dreadful to consider.

  Markie felt Patty sag in her arms, too devastated to hold herself upright. Over Patty’s shoulder, Markie watched Bruce as he stood motionless—in shock, no doubt—staring blindly at his cap. What would they do now? To Patty, Bruce, and Ronda, Mrs. Saint was not only employer, mother figure, job coach, and sage, but the fiery ball of energy around which they orbited every day. It was unthinkable that she wouldn’t be there for them anymore. Markie felt a hard lump form in her throat as she imagined Bruce, Patty, and Ronda sitting on their own in their apartments in the morning, drinking coffee and trying to decide how to spend the hours, the days, the weeks, the months that stretched before them.

  And as for Frédéric . . . Markie inhaled sharply as a jagged pain lodged in her chest at the thought of him trying to soldier through a single morning, let alone the rest of his life, without his beloved Angeline. She remembered how he had stood in the bungalow’s living room on move-in day, gazing like a puppy at Mrs. Saint as he explained so proudly that her accent, one he clearly adored, hadn’t been decimated like his. And later, how he had dropped the dog crate and run to her at the fence after seeing how emotional she was about watching Angel and Jesse together.

  Mrs. Saint had let him comfort her that day, Markie remembered, and years earlier, she had even let him move into her basement because he wanted to protect her. And he had let her take care of him, too, drinking every drop of the water she forced upon him, “knocking off” for the day at her appointed hour of four. It may not have been the relationship Frédéric wanted, but it didn’t seem completely unrequited, at least. Maybe, with more time, he would have won her over entirely. The thought made Markie’s eyes sting, and she turned her head and pressed her thumb and forefinger against the bridge of her nose to keep her tears, waiting at the bottom edges of her eyes, from spilling over.

  Lola, who had stirred at the sound of her mother’s reaction, was moving now, and Markie watched as Jesse took Patty’s place on the couch, letting the girl climb onto his lap and curl her body against his waist, her arms tight around him. He smoothed a hand from the top of her head to the middle of her back, then repeated the motion over and over until she drifted back to sleep. He stared vacantly, miserably, ahead, one hand on Lola’s sleeping back, his legs stretched out over the dog lying at his feet.

  He had seen Mrs. Saint as a grandmother, the way Lola had, and she had treated him like a grandson. The bossiness and snoopiness that had annoyed Markie so much had merely amused Jesse, and Markie was aware that for all the old woman’s faults, she had also been wildly generous to him, starting with the furry creature who lay panting on the floor at his feet.

  Jesse had begun hinting that maybe their neighbor was right, that they should extend their lease after all. He wasn’t ready to leave yet—not Lola, not Frédéric, and not Mrs. Saint.

  Markie felt a tear slide down her cheek. She had told herself she couldn’t stand the woman’s pushiness, but the truth was, she had come to take that pushiness for granted, had come to expect the woman’s daily trips across the yard, the insistent rapping at the side door, the baskets of badly baked goods and store-bought replacements and totems. On days they didn’t happen, Markie noticed. She had told herself any day without an unannounced visit from the Frenchwoman was a reprieve, but now she wasn’t so sure she had meant it. Annoying or not, Mrs. Saint had provided texture to a life that had, because of Markie’s apathy, become flat.

  Markie had only to look around the small family room to see what the woman had added to her daily existence: walls filled with art and the woman who had hung it all—a woman Markie held on to now, who was returning the embrace. The child, now folded around her son’s waist, who had reintroduced the family dinners and holiday decorations and board game nights Markie hadn’t realized her son still needed. The dog at Jesse’s feet, a royal pain, to be sure, but also responsible for bringing the boy’s laughter back, for providing him something to cling to during a time in his life when he most needed it. The man shifting uncomfortably inside her side door, clutching his hat, wishing he knew what to say and completely willing, Markie knew, to do anything in the world for each one of them.

  More tears escaped as she watched Bruce twist his cap in his hands, trying to hold himself together, the look on his face one of sheer despondence. This was precisely what Mrs. Saint had worried about, Markie thought: that something would happen to her and the others would be lost. At the time, Markie had found the subject infuriating, since she was the solution her neighbor had decided upon, and she wanted nothing to do with it. Sh
e had batted off an idea about a job-training program, unaware if such a thing actually existed, and tried to change the subject.

  Now she wished she had taken the old woman more seriously, for the sake of the people who had come to rely on her to direct their days, supply their meals, provide them with a purpose: Ronda, Bruce, Patty, Frédéric. And for Mrs. Saint’s sake, too. Pushy or not, the woman had cared enough to take them all in and worry about their futures, while Markie’s only concern had been to spare herself from involvement. More tears tracked down her cheeks as she now saw, too late, that Mrs. Saint had been more good than bad all along, and Markie had simply been too self-involved to recognize it.

  Crying openly now, Markie hugged Patty tighter. The feeling of Patty’s thin frame against her own soft body made her feel like a giant, but when Patty realized she wasn’t the only one weeping, she adjusted her long, sinewy arms and held Markie tighter. Amazingly, Patty’s bony embrace, her gravelly smoker’s voice as she repeated the same “It’s okay, it’s okay” that Markie had whispered to her a moment ago, the now-familiar nicotine scent of her, brought more comfort to Markie than she remembered ever feeling in Kyle’s big, strong arms.

  Bruce’s face collapsed at the sight of the tearful women, and he took a half step toward the pair, reaching his arm out, and then he froze.

  “It’s okay,” Markie whispered again, her mouth near Patty’s ear but her eyes on Bruce. He stepped back to his original place, and she nodded to him and rubbed Patty’s back—the same big, firm circles Patty was making on hers. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “Ronda’s on her way,” Bruce offered, as though the cook’s arrival would heal them all, and Markie gave him a grateful smile, letting him believe the news was the relief he intended it to be.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Ronda had arrived at the bungalow. It was almost noon, and Frédéric had called Bruce to say he and Simone would be there any moment.

  “Imagine her allowing someone else to take him to the hospital!” Bruce whispered to Markie in the living room, where she was draping Ronda’s jacket over the spindle-leg love seat. That should have triggered something in Frédéric, Bruce said. Something should have fired in his head, warning him. If she wasn’t well enough to go with him, she wasn’t well enough to be left alone. He would never say as much to Frédéric, of course, he told her. “The guilt’s got to be eating him alive already.”

  She had fallen asleep with a cigarette in her hand. Frédéric had let Bruce know this. She must have gotten up after Frédéric and Simone left. That itself wasn’t significant; she had risen in the middle of the night to smoke before. But always—always, Bruce repeated emphatically—she had sat in her armchair to smoke it, her ashtray balanced at her elbow. She was aware of the dangers of smoking in bed. The only explanation, he said, was that she had been feeling too sick to sit upright or to think straight.

  Markie couldn’t imagine how Frédéric must feel. All those years, never leaving her alone for a night, and the one time he does, this? While he was gone with her estranged sister, no less? Not that a trip to the ER was a night on the town, but still. Would he torture himself forever, imagining her last thoughts, thinking about that fact that she was alone, and he and Simone were together?

  They were crowded into the family room. Lola, awake and weeping, was draped over Ronda’s legs on the couch, asking questions no one had answers to or energy for. Why didn’t she get out of the house? Who called the fire department? Why didn’t they get there faster? When would they be able to go back inside? Who would make sure the house got fixed the way she would want?

  Jesse and Bruce sat in the wooden chairs they had carried in from the dining room. Markie made preposterous amounts of tea that no one drank and set out cookies no one ate. Patty paced, pausing every minute or so at the couch long enough to stroke Lola’s hair or rub Ronda’s heaving back and to repeat, without conviction, “It’ll be okay. Everything will be fine.”

  They had managed to get the flames under control before the kitchen was destroyed, Ronda whispered to Markie after she had extricated herself from under Lola and made her way to the kitchen to help with the tea. But what consolation was that? It made her feel guilty, she said. Why would the kitchen be spared?

  Frédéric and Simone arrived, and Markie ordered food. She had run out of patience for dealing with Ronda, who lacked the energy to cook but felt it was her duty to do it, so she kept making listless offers to “rustle up some things” while whispering to Markie that she hoped there would be no takers.

  “Not your responsibility anymore,” Markie told her. Stupidly. She had meant for it to be a nice thing, and only after Ronda burst into tears did Markie realize her mistake. What was Ronda to do now, if not cook for Mrs. Saint?

  Frédéric stood near the door. Every few minutes he peered out the window, as though maybe the old Frenchwoman would be walking over just then and heading for the bungalow. He refused to sit, take a sip of tea, eat a cookie. He would have refused to breathe, Markie thought, if he weren’t too polite to put the others through more trauma.

  Simone was on the couch now, Ronda beside her. Lola lay with her head in Simone’s lap, her feet in Ronda’s, the cook rubbing the girl’s legs while Simone stroked her hair.

  “Where will I do my homework?” Lola whispered to Markie when she brought her a glass of water.

  “You’ll do it here,” Markie said.

  “But she won’t be checking.”

  “I’ll check.”

  “Thanks,” Lola said, but Markie could see in the girl’s expression exactly what she was thinking: It won’t be the same.

  Patty motioned for Markie to follow her to the dining room.

  “I’m worried about Ronda and Bruce,” she said. She gestured toward Mrs. Saint’s house, not visible from the bungalow anymore since Markie had pulled all the blinds. “What do they do, if they don’t go there?”

  Markie reached for Patty’s hand and held it in both of hers. “They come here, I think?”

  “What about you, though? And your work? They’re not quiet, you know.”

  “I can work downtown.”

  “No! Absolutely not! I could keep them in the family room, maybe? You could work in here.”

  “Frédéric will likely be in there,” Markie said. “I think he’ll sleep on the couch, so I’m guessing he’ll take over the room. And I imagine he’ll want to be alone, at least for a while.”

  “Did you and him already talk about that?” Patty asked. “I didn’t hear.”

  “No. But . . .”

  “Right,” Patty said. “Where else?”

  Kyle arrived with two grocery bags in his arms. “Jesse told me you’ve got a houseful of people, and it might be that way for a while,” he said. “I thought you could probably use some extra coffee and toilet paper and . . . well, there’s a lot of stuff in here. I hope it helps.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  He told her he was happy to help. He knew what Mrs. Saint had meant to her and Jesse. And he offered to take Angel off their hands for a few days if she was getting in the way.

  “I am worried about him,” Simone whispered to Markie as they tossed paper plates into the garbage, wrapped the leftover pizza, and rinsed the teacups.

  Markie nodded. Frédéric still wouldn’t sit. “I think he feels it’s disrespectful to her if he relaxes,” she whispered back. “I’m concerned he might faint.”

  “Yes,” Simone said. Turning to the family room, she said, “Frédéric, darling. I must insist again that you take a seat. You are worrying Mark—”

  “No!” Markie interjected. “Don’t tell him that! He has enough on his mind.”

  But Frédéric had taken the chair beside Bruce. Jesse and Lola were on the floor now, their arms around Angel.

  “Sometimes it is good he feels so responsible for everyone else,” Simone whispered. “He will not sit for himself, but he does it for you. Anyway, I am going to stay on for some days, I have
decided. I can get a hotel room. Perhaps he will want to do the same, though I expect he would be happier here, if you have room for him. He will want to be closer to her.” Her voice broke. “To her house, I mean.”

  “Why don’t you stay, too?” Markie said, rubbing Simone’s arm. “You can take my room. I’ll sleep on the love seat in the living room.”

  “I could not.”

  “I think everyone would like it better if you were here with us,” Markie said. Simone widened her eyes, and Markie nodded. “It would make them feel more . . . complete, I think. To have all of us together.”

  “If you are quite sure,” Simone said. “In truth, it would be nicer for me, too.”

  “Listen,” Markie said, “I hope this isn’t too soon, but while we’re alone, I wanted to say how sorry I am that your final hours with your sister weren’t better. She told me she doesn’t believe in forgiveness, but I’m certain she—”

  “Yes,” Simone nodded. “You are right. She knew I forgave her. She stopped me every time I tried to say it last night, but I know she knew that is why I came. To tell her that.”

  Markie’s head snapped back. Simone came to forgive Angeline? “Wait,” she started. “That’s not what she—”

  But Simone reached for Markie’s hand, squeezed it, and continued. “It is a blessing, I feel. Who knows when I might have come, if ever, if Frédéric had not called to tell me about her heart and how it had gotten so much worse. That they were not sure if the new medication would help, and they could not guarantee how long . . .” She let her sentence trail off as she dropped Markie’s hand, reached into the cuff of her sweater sleeve for a tissue, and pressed it to her eyes.

  Markie turned away, pretending to wipe the counter another time. Mrs. Saint had a heart condition, and it had gotten much worse? New medication? Things were so dire—“no guarantee”—that he had called her estranged sister? And meanwhile, Mrs. Saint had merely said, “Oh, it’s only old age. The doctors are being dramatic. Frédéric’s worrying about nothing.”