by Leslie Glass
Alison's hand flopped on her wrist. "That's it. That's all she wrote."
"Okay," Lynn said automatically. She wasn't going to argue with Alison when she was like this. Half the time she didn't know what she was doing anyway. Even if she meant to fire Lynn now, there was a good chance that she wouldn't remember it later. In any case, Lynn was afraid to take her at her word. She hesitated. "The girls are waiting. Are you going to take them?" she asked.
Alison's eyelids drooped. "You take them. I'm just going to nap for a few minutes. You can pack up when you get back."
"Are you sure?" This wasn't right. The last time she'd been fired, the mother had said, "Get out now." Rational people didn't fire nannies, then tell them to take their kids to school so they could sleep off their hangover.
Alison didn't answer, though, so Lynn had no choice. She had to take the children to a place where they would be safe. She muttered to herself as she left with them. Alison's an alcoholic. Remy's acting stupid. Everybody's crazy. They all push me around. I have no power to fix things. Damn, she was- stuck in a mess again. Her chest felt too tight, the way it did whenever she was treated unfairly.
Soon she was hurrying down the street, pushing the stroller because Jill still refused to walk. For once, Jessica didn't complain about going too fast. Both girls seemed to sense that something was up and were unusually quiet. Lynn dropped them off with the other kids and didn't stay a second longer than she had to. She knew that she would not be seeing Remy there today. Remy had told her that the boys' grandmother was flying in to be with them. She folded the stroller and left it for the return trip. Then, as she always did after taking the kids to school, she walked up to Barnes & Noble in the Citicorp building and sat in the Starbucks, sipping a latte and turning the pages of her favorite tabloids.
Twenty-six
That morning Alison was in a rage at her husband for leaving her, at Leah for walking in on her, at Lynn for disobeying her. At Maddy for stealing her lover and stupidly getting herself killed. Everything unbearable was happening at the same time. After firing Lynn, though, the tension left her body and she drifted off to her favorite place. Oblivion. She slept with one hand on each dog, snoring gently, and the Chihuahua, with all four paws in the air, snored with her.
For a short while the house was quiet, and peace prevailed. Then from down the stairs came a soft whistle. The poodle lifted its large head, knocking Alison's hand to the sheet. Roxie rolled over and barked, escaping from under the other hand. The contact with their mistress was broken, but Alison slept on.
After a minute, the whistle came again, this time in three short bursts. Fully alert, the dogs turned their eyes and ears toward the door as they waited for the command to come again. Seconds passed and nothing more happened. The deep . silence of the house was broken only by Alison's breathing.
Then it came. Three short whistles. The tense dogs remained where they were until the chain rattled on Floyd's leash. At that moment they knew for sure what was up, and they heard the word that put it all together. "Walkies!"
Asusual, the call came from downstairs, soft and far away—always a welcome summons. They jumped off the bed to obey and ran down the stairs to the door. It didn't matter to them who took them out. Minutes later a maid came into Alison's room carrying a bucket filled with spray disinfectants on one arm, pushing a vacuum cleaner with her other hand. She was wearing a formal uniform, a gray dress with white collar and cuffs and a white apron over it, and thin rubber gloves. Her hair was hidden under a paisley turban. She didn't look at the sleeping woman on the bed as she went about her business.
She moved quickly, as if this was only one of many rooms she had to do that morning. She gathered up the clothes on the floor and threw them into the hamper in the bathroom, humming as she worked. When the bedroom was all picked up and tidy, she moved to the bathroom, washing out the shower, drying the floor. She put the cosmetics away and lingered over Alison's diamond engagement and wedding rings. After a few seconds, she took off one of the rubber gloves and put them on. She studied the way they looked on her hand, pulled the glove back over them, and went into the bedroom, where she turned on the vacuum cleaner. It roared into life.
Alison's body was still relaxed, but her eyes slowly opened and rolled around at the ceiling above her as if trying to locate the source of the offending noise. She turned her head to the side and her eyes connected with the hose of the vacuum cleaner as it entered her field of vision. Then she was awake and seething. She wanted that noise to stop.
"Fuck!" She raised herself up on an elbow. "Cut that out."
The maid paid no attention to her. She went on vacuuming vigorously, moving back and forth across the carpet and around the bed as if Alison weren't there.
Alison pulled herself into a sitting position. "Get the fuck out of here," she screamed.
The maid reached onto the bed for a pillow and smacked it so hard a few delicate feathers escaped from the pillowcase and flew into the air. She took another and smacked that one, too. The vacuum cleaner ran on as she busied herself at the bed, plumping pillows as if no one were yelling at her to stop it.
A pillow hit Alison in the face as the maid tossed it down on the bed. Alison pushed it away, and the maid grabbed it from her. She couldn't see much without her contacts, certainly not a clear view of the features of her tormentor. But she did catch a glimpse of sparkling diamonds on the wrist of the woman's hand as she pelted her almost playfully with the pillows.
Alison couldn't figure out what .was happening. She made an effort to get up and force the devil out of her house but not very effectively. The vacuum was roaring, and the pillows became a shell game with her face lost in the middle. She had that wild, panicked feeling that none of this 'was real and she was hallucinating, making nightmares out of common events, as had happened several times before. Each foot felt like it weighed a thousand pounds and her hands were helpless to fight off her own covers. Then diamonds sparkled in front of her eyes one last time and she had an odd thought, That's my bracelet, before her pillows silenced her screams.
Twenty-seven
L
ynn wished Remy would show up at Starbucks.
She didn't want to go back to the Perkins house and have to deal with Alison. But her wish didn't come true. She had another latte and finished reading Us. Then she returned to the house as usual. When she ducked under the stairs, she saw that the kitchen door wasn't shut all the way. She knew she hadn't left it open.
Her first thought was to call Alison on her cell to make sure everything was all right upstairs. Her second thought was to run away, but she had nowhere to go. Her third thought was to go in and fix whatever was wrong. Fixing things had been her role all her life. She was a helper, programmed to clean up the messes the impaired people in her life always seemed to make. Pushing away a strong feeling of martyrdom at one more unfair burden, she went into the unguarded house.
The very instant she was inside, she knew she'd made a big mistake. The dogs were barking, locked up somewhere. Alison never locked the dogs up. Every instinct told Lynn to get out of the house and call for help. But whom could she call? Maddy was gone. Remy was no longer two blocks away.
She didn't think of Andrew. He never helped. She could think only of Jo Ellen, and Jo Ellen would not be her friend in a situation like this. There was no one to call, and the dogs were in a frenzy trying to get out.
With her heart pounding almost painfully, Lynn went into the front hall and called upstairs. "Alison?" For once she would have given anything to hear the familiar angry voice shouting at her to shut up.
"Alison, are you okay?" No answer.
"Shit," she muttered. The house just didn't feel right. She hoped Leah hadn't done anything loony. "Shit," she said again. She blew air out of her mouth and started climbing the stairs, making as much noise as possible. "Alison, it's me."
No answer. Lynn walked slowly down the hall to the master bedroom. The door was open, so why were the dogs lock
ed up? She didn't like it, and then she stopped short when she saw Alison's distorted face. "Oh, no."
She didn't have to go in to know that her boss was dead. She started screaming and couldn't stop as she ran down two flights of stairs, out the kitchen door, and into the street. Her hands were shaking so badly that it was several minutes before she could hit the numbers 911 on her cell phone. By then a crowd had gathered.
Twenty-eight
One small thing April missed in Westchester was the wide-open sky and the view looking west to the Manhattan skyline from Mike's twenty-second-floor apartment in Forest Hills, Queens, where they used to live. On the rare occasions when they were around to see it, she and Mike used to watch the sun go down over the city. Both felt a deep connection to it.
The loss of city view in Hastings-on-Hudson, however, was more than compensated for by the mighty oak tree that stood guard outside their bedroom window. The tree brought them closer to nature than they'd ever been. Before she'd had the tree to watch, April had followed the weather only because of the impact it had on the city's infrastructure—the subways and trains, the streets and highways. And on crime. Rain, fog, snow, and hail were bad for traffic, but had the silver lining of keeping criminals indoors.
The tree, however, gave April a reason to pay attention to the seasons. It was an ever-changing art show. In winter, snow piled up on its bare branches, beautiful and white. The snow melted and froze again, forming long spiky icicles. In
spring the tree took the abuse of the rain that lashed it and the wind that whisked the new leaves' into dance. Every day the tree was a little different. Something was always going on, and it had a way of telling her when to get up.
The day after Maddy Wilson's murder April was deep in a dream when the birds started stirring in the tree. It was an old nightmare she didn't have much anymore. Her teeth were being extracted from her mouth by a great wad of caramel. It was a scary dream because her father had a story of torture long ago in China to account for the two solid gold teeth placed in the front of his mouth where no one could fail to see them. As the sun announced morning, she rolled into a fetal position to protect herself against his ancient injury.
Mike was already awake, nestling closer. "Everything is okay. You're okay." It was his job as a husband to say these things and her job as a wife to believe him. Today she had trouble.
From deep inside the dream, she heard the scraping of one branch against another. She heard the birds chatter, felt Mike's reassuring touch, and willed herself awake. She wanted to go on her honeymoon, and instantly she smelled something funny. "What's going on?"
He made a small laugh and whispered, "Your mother's cooking. Don't worry about it."
Then his hands began to travel the curves of her body with the light touch that always aroused her. Mike had his own plan. His fingers skimmed her bottom and the hollow between her buttocks, then reversed direction. He nuzzled her neck, kissing her softly as he always did in the morning—their" one quiet time together. After a few moments, he began to explore more intimate places. April sighed. Today, she was torn between pleasure and duty. Should she get up and find out what her mother was up to? Should she call Sergeant Gelo and find out what last night's little foray into the Spirit world had accomplished? Should she forget them for just a little while? Outside, birds carried on in their different voices. A finch warbled; doves and morning called. She pulled away, listening.
"What?" Mike murmured. He was ready for love, nudging her with a fine erection.
She debated for all of two seconds and decided not to waste a good thing. "Nothing," she murmured.
Some time later, feeling sated and drowsy again, April suddenly realized much was wrong in her house. For one thing, the "TV was blaring. World news in Chinese was trying to blast through the closed door of the bedroom. Furthermore, the house no longer smelled like vanilla candles and potpourri. The odor that emanated from downstairs was highly reminiscent of the Chinatown tenement apartment of her childhood. Mike was definitely right. Her mother had commandeered the kitchen.
April quickly ducked into the shower. When she came out, the first thing she saw was the black luggage and brightly colored summer clothes she'd bought for her cruise. It was Tuesday. Only three days of work left. The clothes were piled on a chair and hanging from a hook on the closet door. She put them out of her mind, dressed, and hurried downstairs with her hair still wet. There was no sign of her father, but Skinny was busy at the stove.
"Hi, Ma. How are you?" April wanted her mother gone, but she had to step carefully because she didn't want any dire repercussions from hurt feelings complicating her life right now.
"Didn't sleep at all," Skinny replied. She turned around to peer at April through dime-store reading glasses she claimed she didn't need. Then she approached her daughter, not to kiss her, but to smell her like Chinese doctors did to diagnose their patients.
It was her way of saying "Hello, how are you?" She sniffed April to see if she'd been near a dead person, or had sex, or otherwise been doing something Skinny Dragon didn't want her doing. April dodged the encounter, even though she was married and now had a state-sanctioned right to sex anytime she wanted it. "You didn't sleep because you're happier in your own bed," April murmured.
"Worm daughter's health more important than happiness."
April had never enjoyed being called a worm, and right then the reference to her health was ominous. "My health is great," she countered.
Skinny grunted. She was a- small woman with a shrewd expression, no excess flesh anywhere on her body. Her short hair was dyed jet-black and permed into a curly frizz that looked as fake as it was. It was impossible to tell how old she was. This morning she was dressed in loose black Chinese pants and a multicolored knockoff blouse probably made in Taiwan that was supposed to look like an expensive designer silk but didn't come close. Over the blouse was a buttoned-up knitted vest of multicolored yarn that didn't match a single color in the blouse. She could look pretty good when she wanted to, but clearly this wasn't one of those occasions.
"Your happiness is - number one to me, Ma," April said soothingly.
Skinny shook her head. "Worm's health more important than my comfort." That was the theme of the, day.
Oh, God, don't rise to the dig, April told herself. Her mother was an uninvited guest. She'd wheedled a ride. from their tenant, Gao Wan, all the way up here to Hastings, and then he'd left her parents there. They had no way of getting home, so that must have been part of her plan. Now she was insulting the lovely guest room that had two windows, its own bathroom, good feng shui, and brand-new twin beds that didn't sag or squeak like Skinny's terrible old ones at home. But the accommodation wasn't the point. The point was Skinny was meddling again, and April had to put a stop to it.
"What's all this?" she asked, wrinkling her nose at the unusual breakfast. Her mother certainly had been busy. On the counter were bowls of steamed sweet potatoes, golden-fried bean curd, and some kind of hot cereal that looked as gluey as sludge. There vyas also a steaming mug of some milky potion.
"Yin food," Skinny said proudly.
"Yin food?" April was alarmed. If she got any more yin, she wouldn't be able to get out of bed.
"Good for fluid in womb."
April was horrified. It made her weak and queasy just hearing the words, and after all her admonitions to herself to keep calm, she erupted. "You have to stop this. I can take care of myself. I told you that last night. When I'm pregnant, I'll let you know."
"Let me see your tongue," Skinny demanded.
"No, you can't see my tongue. You have to go home."
Skinny ticked off on her fingers the number of months April and Mike had been married,. then moved closer to punch her daughter in the arm.
"Ow." April particularly hated it when she did that.
"No go home. You have too much yang, ni. Too much bossy. Too much get-up-and-go. Never get pregnant like that."
Since April had just not gotten up and
gone, and now was late because of it, she vibrated with fury. She couldn't believe her mother had come over to help her get pregnant. "I can't take this," she said in Chinese. She wanted her privacy.
She and Mike weren't exactly working on having a baby, but they weren't trying to avoid it, either. They just didn't want to make a big thing about it, have everyone get in their faces. No wonder she had nightmares. She heard her husband's happy, post-sex feet skip down the stairs.
"Mamita, how did you sleep?" Mike, too, had the good sense not to try to kiss her.
"Bu hao. Here—" She slapped the mug with the milky potion in his hand. "Drink this."
He looked at it blankly. "This isn't coffee."
"Good for you," she said. In Chinese she added, "No more premature ejaculation."
"Ma!" April's eyes popped in horror. She'd never heard her mother talk sex like this. Womb fluid! Premature ejaculation! Was she nuts?
Skinny Dragon ignored her. She shook her finger at Mike. "Just soy milk, good for strength. You need it for honeymoon."
Dutifully, Mike took a sip. "No me gusta,"' he murmured to April. He didn't like it.
"He loves it, Ma," April translated.
Skinny nodded triumphantly and explained that slow sticky sweet potato and sludgy unpolished wheat-bran cereal would lubricate April, while the bean curd and soy milk would energize Mike. Yin and yang foods necessary to fix their problem. Mike got a funny look on his face. He was Spanish, after all, mucho macho in his own gentle way.
"Gotta go, Ma," April said quickly.
"Murder?" Skinny asked cheerfully.
"Big murder. A young mother was killed. Gao will come and get you. Thank you for the wonderful visit. I'm sure it will help."
