A Dangerous Woman

by Mary McGarry Morris

  At first Martha’s feelings were hurt, until she realized it was because Getso was there. He made Birdy nervous when he came upstairs into the Cleaners. Getso had recently totaled one of the laundry trucks, and Birdy was always trying to cover up for him to John.

  Birdy had made a point of reminding the women at work that Carol got ten percent of everything sold here tonight. The most expensive item was this forty-five-piece matched set, the DeluxeWare, its clear plastic bowls sprigged with flowers of the same bright blue as the lids. There were juice jars, nested freezer-and-refrigerator containers, an eight-piece canister set, napkin and paper-towel holders, graduated mixing bowls with handles and lips for pouring, a ring of six blue measuring spoons, a measuring cup, salt and pepper shakers, two flowerpots, a bathroom wastebasket, and a tissue-box cover.

  Martha’s heart swelled with each new item added to the display. How lovely they were, how perfect. A set like that meant order and peace and her own kitchen, her own life with Billy Chelsea, the widower who lived with his two young daughters in the white cottage down the road from her Aunt Frances’s house. Her eyes glazed and her face flushed with the familiar daydream of his strong rough hand cupping the back of her head, his hot mouth crushing hers.

  “… the last DeluxeWare set left, but ordering only takes ten days parcel post,” he was saying.

  It was hers. Of course it was.

  “I’ll take it,” came Mercy Reardon’s girlish voice. Mercy attended these parties all the time. She already had a husband, three children, one side of a duplex, and her own car. She had curly bleached hair that she swore was naturally blonde, and she told people that Birdy was her best friend, which was a lie, and now she was up at the table opening her checkbook to take this away from Martha when she already possessed everything a woman could ever want.

  “It’s mine. I already said.” She jabbed Mercy’s arm.

  “What?” Mercy glanced down at her.

  “What?” echoed the startled demonstrator.

  A hum pervaded the room full of chattering women. As if drawn by it, Birdy came out of the kitchen with a dish of brownie squares in flattened silver-foil cups. Her sister followed with a tray of rattling cups and saucers that she slid onto the table in the dining alcove of the stuffy, green-walled room. For a fraction of a second, from the cellar, the saw buzzed, then held like a throb in the hard blue swell of a vein.

  “I’m buying this set. I told you I was!”

  “I didn’t hear you.” The demonstrator’s smile quivered.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Martha. You don’t even need this stuff.” Mercy glanced back at the demonstrator. “She lives in a room! In a boarding-house!” She wrote out her check, chiding in a low voice, “Martha, Birdy doesn’t expect you to buy the most expensive thing here!” She scribbled her name, then held out the check. Martha snatched it away from her. “Martha!” Mercy cried, reaching for it. “Martha!”

  She was tearing it into such tiny pieces the blue-and-white confetti fluttered onto her lap and shoes. Birdy and her sister loomed over her. The room had grown very still. The DeluxeWare set was hers. She had spoken first and everyone knew it. The women stared at her.

  “That’s ridiculous!” Mercy sputtered.

  “Drop it,” Birdy warned Mercy, her eyes holding Martha’s.

  “Maybe I could get another one even quicker. Maybe by Wednesday,” the demonstrator said.

  She wrung her hands and stared at the floor. That was her set, but all Birdy cared about right now was that Martha not cause any trouble. Oh, she had to get out of here before anything else happened. She lurched past them. With a cry of astonishment, Birdy’s sister staggered heavily out of her way.

  “Martha!” Birdy called after her.

  She had made it to the door, and when it opened she plunged not into the starlit night, but into the suffocating closeness of this tiny bathroom that reeked of dried rose petals. She sat on the cool toilet lid, sneezing and sobbing.

  At first they tapped lightly, calling to her in the gentle, coaxing tones they probably used on their children. Then they knocked and demanded she open the door. Finally they returned to their visiting and ordering. They ignored her. She winced with each peal of laughter and, every few minutes, shivered with the swell of the saw downstairs. She arched her feet against the sweaty toilet bowl now as the bright tide of their voices seeped in under the door. They were leaving.

  “Tell Thorny I said hi,” a woman said, her breathy happiness like a slap in Martha’s face.

  “Tell Thorny I said hi,” echoed Martha’s singsong whisper.

  “Oh, he was a riot!”

  “Oh, he was a riot.”

  “Good night!”

  “Good night.”

  “Thank you, Carol.”

  “Thank you, Carol.”

  “Goodbye!”

  “Goodbye.”

  “I’ve got a ride.”

  “I’ve got a ride. Oh, aren’t you lucky, you’ve got a ride. You’ve got a friend. You’ve got someone who likes you, someone who cares about you.” She sobbed.

  There was a knock on the door. “Martha?” Birdy called. “Everyone’s gone now.”

  She unlocked the door and rushed past Birdy.

  With the shade drawn and the curtains closed in the stifling attic room, she sat in bed watching the staticky little black-and-white television that had become hers after Gert from the first floor rear died.

  The stairs creaked. This morning Claire Mayo had called in sick for her at the Cleaners and now this was her third trip to the third floor to see if Martha was feeling any better.

  “I thought I’d make stew,” the old woman said, pausing hopefully, and now Martha realized the real purpose of each arduous climb was to see if she felt well enough to cook dinner. Claire sighed. “Or maybe I’ll just heat up some hash.”

  “My head hurts,” she called back dully, leaning against the heat-filled eave over her bed. Sometimes in the winter the same wall furred with frost.

  “You should eat,” the old woman called, with a rising note of panic on the word “eat.” Martha had been doing just about all of the cooking in the house. For the most part she enjoyed it, but lately she was bewildered by the way Claire’s increasing dependence on her was accelerating into a volatile possessiveness. She never knew when the old woman would fly into a tirade.

  “I’ll get crackers or something later,” she said.

  “Hiding out never solved anything, you know,” Claire said.

  “I’m sick. I’m not hiding out.” She glared at the door.

  “Your boss wants to know if you’re coming in tomorrow.”

  “Birdy?” she asked, throwing back the sheet.

  “No, that rude John.”

  She closed her eyes. Tomorrow was Saturday, the Cleaners’ busiest day. As much as she missed Birdy, she still couldn’t face her. Not yet. How could she have done that to her best friend, who had hired her, who made her laugh, who last week had chased the two boys who had hounded her all the way from the bank to the Cleaners, mimicking her headlong stride and the long swing of her arms, chanting “Marthorgan! Marthorgan!” until they had gotten her so riled up she kept skidding to a stop every few feet to scoop up stones, which she pegged back, sending the boys into giddy dives behind trees and parked cars. Birdy charged out of the Cleaners, calling them by name as she threatened to call their parents, their principals, and even the police if she had to. “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves,” she had called down the street as they fled. “Picking on Martha Horgan like that.” Birdy had come inside, trembling, and for the rest of the day hardly spoke to anyone, including Martha.

  She buried her face in her hands. Picking on Martha Horgan like that. Thirty-two years old. A grown woman pegging stones at boys. She was the one ashamed.

  “I can’t go in tomorrow. Will you tell him I’m still sick?”

  “I can’t do everything around here, you know.” Claire said. “Cooking and checking on people and making phone
calls for everyone all the time.”

  “I’ll make the stew,” Martha sighed, swinging her legs over the side of the bed as Claire headed downstairs to call the Cleaners for her.

  By Sunday she felt much better. It was one of those late-May twilights in a world so suddenly, tenderly green that every time someone walked through the park Martha thought she could see each blade of grass spring back into place. The sweetness of lilacs and lilies of the valley drifted from yard to yard, with a fine yellow dust that coated every roof, porch, and windowsill, and all the passing cars. Tracing her finger through it on the porch railing, she could tell this was no common dust, not at all the particles of atrophy and blight, but proof of all this living, this aliveness she felt charging the night.

  Dinner was long over. She sat with the five elderly women on the wide veranda in rocking chairs, watching the park across the street fill up with people. The weekly band concert would be starting soon. Ann McNulty and Suzanne Griggs were knitting. They sat on Martha’s left, and on her right were Mrs. Hess, Loiselle Evans, and Claire Mayo. Across Main Street, at the center of the park, in the round stone bandstand, the musicians tuned their instruments in a grating skirmish of screeches and riffs, and now, in rude interjection that made the white-faced women blink and blink, the rat-tat-a-tat-tat-tat of the drum. A car horn tooted as a young man in white pants darted across the street.

  A few stars glimmered in the thin night sky. Knots of people hurried by the porch, hugging blankets and carrying babies. Some Martha recognized from the Cleaners, but they pretended not to see her. She kept watching for Birdy. Wouldn’t that be something, to go over there and have someone to sit with on a blanket? The very thought of it raised a dry lump in her throat.

  “Oh, look—there’s the Massinneault boy. Yoohoo! Arthur! Arthur Massinneault!” called Miss Griggs.

  “Hello, Miss Griggs,” the blonde young man called as he came by with three other young men. Miss Griggs had been secretary for the Recreation Department for forty-five years. “Hello, Miss Griggs. Hello, Miss Griggs. Hello, Miss Griggs …” The voices passed in echo. She smiled sweetly, her soft voice abridging each person’s history: “Helena’s stepson … the boy that set the Tarsey fire … the Minzner girl, she eats lard … little Billy Sullivan, his mother and sister both born without a single eyelash between them …”

  “Marthorgan!” came a cracked voice.

  Her toes clenched. Her nails dug into her palms. Her eyes widened.

  Claire Mayo stationed herself at the top step, arms folded as she scanned the shadows for the adolescent taunter. After a minute, she eased watchfully back into her rocking chair, and for a brief but painful time, no one spoke or moved.

  “Oh! Now, doesn’t Wesley Mount look good?” Loiselle Evans observed too eagerly of the tall man coming slowly down the street. Mount’s funeral home was just a block away. Mount wore his customary dark suit and crisp white shirt. His snug vest glittered with a thick gold watch-chain. Because of his long face and wide shoulders, Wesley Mount seemed art enormous presence, but he was actually so thin that as he came briskly along his suit could be heard flapping on his bony frame.

  “Sickly little boy,” Suzanne Griggs said. “Afraid of his own shadow.”

  “Well, who wouldn’t be,” Mrs. Hess allowed through a clenched smile as he neared the porch, “your whole life involved with death.”

  “Never fit right,” Suzanne Griggs continued, after each stitch giving two quick twirls of yellow yarn around her long red needle. “Kids all thought he was weird.”

  “Bet they’re laughing up their sleeve now,” said Ann McNulty with her customary bitterness. After twenty-nine years of marriage, her husband, Willis, had left her for a handsome young cabaña boy they’d both taken such a shine to their one time in Clearwater, Florida, inviting him up here to ski and stay with them any chance he got.

  “Good evening, ladies,” Wesley Mount said, his large white face tilted over the railing, his voice the same whispered mellifluence that could soothe the most distraught mourner. The ladies leaned forward in a flutter of greetings. Wesley had seen them through enough friends’ and relatives’ funerals that they sensed a kinship with him. Martha peered toward the bandstand as if she were looking for someone.

  On Saturday mornings in the Cleaners, customers lined up to be waited on. Birdy said that for twenty years Wesley Mount had been bringing in his laundry on Saturdays and the only reason he had switched over to Mondays was so he could be sure of having Martha service him, and Birdy meant that just as lewdly as anyone cared to take it. Every time she said it, Mercy and Barbara laughed themselves weak. That bothered Martha, because she had told Birdy about his embrace in the funeral home, but she knew Birdy would never tell anyone. Birdy said all Martha had to do was look at Wesley and his ears and the back of his neck would turn beet-red.

  “You’re out and about early tonight,” Claire Mayo said with a glance at her watch.

  “I am,” said Mount. “But, you know, it’s the strangest thing—for three days there has not been one single death in Rutland County.”

  “Lord have mercy.… Imagine that.… That must be some kind of record …” the women murmured.

  The band had just begun to play “The Camptown Races,” their first song of the concert season. Martha stared at the park, wishing he’d leave.

  “Well,” Wesley Mount said, then gave a little cough and cleared his throat politely behind his hand. She was conscious of his uneasiness now as he spoke to her, and the ladies’ curious bemusement.

  “Are you feeling better,” and it seemed the longest pause before he uttered her name, “Martha?” said with such gentle trepidation that the old women looked on with weak tender smiles, their faces just sad enough to confuse her. Oh, she didn’t want to hear any talk from them after he left.

  “I’m fine, thank you,” she snapped, squinting toward the Chinese lanterns strung in intersecting lines of color across the park. Why had she come out here? She hated it when people talked to her in front of other people, singling her out like this. At least in the Cleaners she knew what to say. But out in the world like this … the air thinned and her heart lurched as the bandstand lifted up through the treetops like a great stone blimp, hovering against the stars while the band exploded into a gusto of galloping beats to end the song … she had to be very, very careful. So many things could happen. Sometimes she had to hold her breath just to stop it all from turning too fast. But in these last few months away from home, she was getting better and better at living out here, in the world, with everyone else. There. It always settled into place if she sat very, very still and did not breathe. Did not blink. The moment returned itself, falling as a scarf falls, soft settling folds.…

  “They said you were sick,” Wesley Mount said.

  She was motionless in the rocking chair, her reply just the slightest nod. The drape of patched hair sagged over her eye.

  “She had the flu,” Loiselle Evans said dreamily. A soft-haired, soft-eyed woman, Loiselle lived for love, any kind of love. Dogs. Cats. Man. Soap operas. God. Even the tale of Willis McNulty’s fling with the nut-brown cabaña boy stirred her.

  “It’s been going around,” Wesley Mount said.

  “Yes, it has,” Loiselle averred in a tremble that seemed to lift the Chinese lanterns in a ripple of colored light through the tall dark trees.

  “Leaves you feeling real punk,” Wesley Mount sighed.

  “Well, she’s on the mend now. In fact,” Loiselle said with a coquettish wag of her finger, “Martha made us all just the tastiest meatloaf today. Crispy onions on top, and just the fluffiest mash potatoes you ever saw. She’s quite the young cook!”

  Wesley glanced shyly at Martha, then as instantly reeled in his attention to the beaming ladies. He wished them all a good night and continued on his splay-footed way.

  “Martha,” Loiselle whispered in a tone of pure wonder, “I think Wesley Mount has got his eye on you.”

  “Hmph,” she said, her
eyes hot with blushing. “The Grim Reaper. That’s what John calls him. He comes in on Mondays now and picks up on Fridays.” That made no sense, but who could think with a heart beating this loudly?

  “Well, he’s quite a gentleman,” Loiselle sighed. “And let me tell you, there aren’t many of those left.” Loiselle patted her hand. “Nossir.” Her hairy little chin quivered.

  “It makes you wonder,” Mrs. Hess said, as he disappeared in the distant shadows, “successful young man like that never getting married.”

  “He diddles the stiffs,” Martha said.

  “What?”

  “Martha!”

  “What she say?”

  “What’s a diddle?”

  “Loiselle!”

  Miserably, she closed her eyes. Birdy could get away with saying things like that, but she couldn’t. Across the way, in the park, young couples sat on blankets in the dark grass, shoulders touching, heads bent close. How did they get there, she wondered, the old yearning like a beak at her ribs. How did they manage to know what clothes to wear, what conversations to have, which friends to choose, lovers to take? What invisible rudders steered them through waters as unnavigable for her by daylight as by night?

  Did she have a blankness where others possessed that code of information necessary to guide them through dinner conversation and the proper way to comb their hair or simply say hello to a stranger without having to thump their chest and cough and clear their throat—until she would be not only choking, but starting to veer so much off course that the sudden realization that she’d never belong, that there’d never be a place for her, could either enrage or paralyze her.