A Dangerous Woman

by Mary McGarry Morris

  No. She had to keep reminding herself how much better she had gotten with so many little things.

  The ladies’ knitting needles froze.

  “Look at that,” Claire Mayo muttered as a tiny woman in baggy gray pants and a man’s wrinkled plaid shirt teetered drunkenly on the opposite curb before stepping heedlessly into the double lane of traffic. She was Anita Bell, Steve Bell’s alcoholic wife. Steve Bell and Martha’s aunt Frances had been lovers since Martha’s childhood. Steve continued to live here in town with Anita while halfway up Beecham’s Mountain Frances maintained her status as widow of Horace Beecham, at one time the wealthiest man in southern Vermont.

  Suddenly two southbound cars squealed to a stop, just inches away from the startled woman. With her hand shielding her eyes from the headlights’ glare, she turned in a jerky little circle. The traffic had clogged all the way up Main Street, past the corner lights and gas stations. Horns honked. The band continued to play.

  Anita Bell held up her middle finger and roared, “Bastards, you no good son-of-a-bitching bastards!” She pointed to the northbound traffic that still crept past. “Stop! I said stop!” she commanded. And it did.

  She crossed, lurched onto the curb, where she reeled for a few feet, then caught herself on the old granite hitching post at the end of Mayo’s weedy, frost-heaved brick walk. Glancing up, her eyes snared Martha’s, and she pointed at her. “Don’t you look at me like that, you crazy slut. I know what you did with those boys. I know,” she called, her husky voice careening down the street, startling dogs and scraping houses and gouging the bark off trees. Martha cringed as twigs and chips and little stones flew back at her.

  “Just don’t say anything,” Claire Mayo hissed, her hand steadying the arm of the rocker. “Let her go.”

  “Poor Steve Bell,” Loiselle Evans said.

  “The way he’s stuck by her all these years,” Mrs. Hess said.

  Ann McNulty, her mouth puckered and thin, said, “Yes, and if one pot’s cold, he’s always got the other to cook in.”

  Four

  Monday morning, she was the first one at work. She had come early to get fig squares and sugar doughnuts before the bakery sold out. Birdy loved fig squares. It was twenty minutes past opening, and Martha was still waiting on the front steps when Birdy finally arrived, with Getso driving her car. Birdy had been giving him a ride ever since his car had broken down last month.

  She wondered how Birdy could stand him. He had been a boxer as a very young man, and his nose was crooked, and there was a thick scar over one eyebrow so crudely stitched the right eye had been pulled up higher than the left. His mouth was red and full—lewd, she thought. His ex-wives used to come by the Cleaners with their children for their support money until a fight broke out one payday between the two women. John said Getso was through if either woman so much as stepped a foot on his property again.

  A vague nausea like motion sickness always overtook her when Getso came near. It was as if he exuded poisons that she alone could sense. She would only speak to him when she had to, and then with her head down, eyes averted, breath held.

  After getting out of the car, Birdy tucked in her blouse and tugged her skirt band straight. Late as she was, she waited by the car while Getso locked it.

  Martha’s throat tightened at their approach. She coughed. She needed to be alone with Birdy so she could apologize for the way she had acted at the party.

  Birdy’s eyes were red and puffy, obviously from crying. Avoiding Martha’s stare, Birdy looked at her watch and then at Getso. “I told you we were late,” she said, hurrying past Martha to unlock the dusty glass door.

  “No, she’s early,” Getso called after her. He braced one scuffed boot against the step Martha sat on and, with both hands on his waist, leaned in, stretching his left leg behind him. “It’s Monday, and Martha can’t wait to see her man,” he grunted, switching feet, now stretching back the other leg with a series of grunts. He laughed, then looked up at her, squinting in the early sun. “You know, I know Mr. Mount pretty well. I’ll bet if I said something he might, you know, ask you out or something. Would you go? Well, would you?” he persisted when she didn’t answer.

  “No!” she said, wishing she had gone right in with Birdy.

  “You ever had a date before?” He angled his face near hers.

  She grabbed the pastry bag and jumped up, but he was blocking her way.

  “Hey! Now, don’t go flipping out on me or anything. I didn’t mean nothing personal or like, you know, what happened that time, them guys, you know. Like I was just saying to Birdy, you know, in this life we’re all poor bastards.”

  She tried to get by him, but he held the door. She couldn’t believe that, just moments after causing Birdy’s tears, he would make a pass at her best friend.

  “Just remember. No matter what happens, we’re all in this together.” His red lips trembled. “I know. I got feelings.…”

  Horrified, she pushed past him into the stale heat of the Cleaners.

  “You’re late. I’ve been waiting for a half hour,” she said, and followed Birdy through her routine of turning on the lights and fans, and unlocking the register and storage rooms. “Here. I got these for you,” she said, shaking the bag after her from task to task. “I got there early and I got you the figs before they sold out. You know how fast the figs sell out.” And now it poured out of her. “I’m sorry for what happened. Really, Birdy. I really am. You’ve been so good to me and so patient, and every time I mess up, you always act like nothing happened—but this time …”

  Without a word, Birdy turned from the safe and set the cash drawer on the counter. Suddenly Martha threw her arms around her soft shoulders. “Oh, Birdy, I’m so sorry. I’m so ashamed. You’ve been so good to me. You treat me better than anybody ever …”

  “Martha!” Birdy gasped, struggling back. “Stop that. Don’t do that.” She looked toward the doorway, where Getso leaned.

  “Hey, whatever comes natural you know,” he said with a smirk.

  Birdy grabbed a cellophaned pad of new laundry slips and threw it. He ducked, laughing. She stalked into the back room and called for Martha to follow. “Sit down,” she ordered, continuing to point even after Martha sat at the wobbly break table. “First of all, I’m not mad at you. Personally, as far as I’m concerned, the other night’s gone, past tense. It’s history,” Birdy said.

  She attempted a smile, but Birdy’s weariness was too sobering.

  “But …” Birdy shook her finger. She seemed troubled. “I’ve got to tell you … just so you’ll know where it’s coming from …” She closed her eyes and sighed. “I hate having it just sprung on you.…” She sighed again and patted Martha’s shoulder. The loading-dock buzzer rang insistently. “Look, when John comes in, let me talk to …” She looked toward the stairway. “Damn, damn, damn,” Birdy muttered and she ran downstairs.

  Martha could tell from the kidding voices and the rush of truck exhaust up the stairs that the rest of the drivers had arrived and were getting their delivery slips from Birdy. She got up quickly to put the bag out front, in Birdy’s basket under the counter. Left back here on the table, the fig squares would be gone before Birdy got a one. The drivers were the worst. They ate everything in sight and never brought pastry in themselves. Birdy said they counted on the women for that.

  Seeing Getso at the counter, Martha froze in the doorway. Leaning over the cash drawer, he slipped out two bills, then folded them with a flip of his fingers down the front of his tight jeans.

  She raced back to the table and sat down with the bag on her lap just as he came into the back room. “She still down there?” he called irritably on his way past. His boots hammered down the wooden stairs.

  She jumped up and put the bag into Birdy’s basket. In her own basket she found a pint-sized PlastiqueWare container. Birdy must have bought it for her. Smiling, she snapped the blue lid on and off Also in the basket was a small white envelope with her name printed on the front.
Her heart raced as she held the envelope up to the fluorescent light. It must be an invitation to another party. Of course; this would be Birdy’s way of setting things straight without a lot of embarrassing talk. Grinning, she pressed the envelope to her chest and shook her head. Birdy had to be the kindest, most considerate person she had ever known. Hearing Birdy’s voice now in the back room, she slipped the envelope back into her basket. She would open it later. Right now she had to tell Birdy about Getso.

  She winced, hearing Mercy and Barbara in the back room. Their laughter caught in the sudden trawl of Birdy’s low, anxious voice.

  “Oh God,” Barbara groaned. “Why couldn’t it happen on my day …”

  “Shh,” Birdy said.

  The strap of bells rang on the opening door as Wesley Mount entered with two grocery bags stuffed with laundry. “Oh, good morning.” He smiled, relieved to see her back. Birdy had come out of the back room, followed by Mercy and Barb. They didn’t want to miss this, she could tell.

  “Wasn’t that quite a concert last night?” he asked, and she heard Barbara stifle a little squeal.

  Birdy wet her thumb and began to count the money in the cash drawer.

  “I heard it all the way home and in the house too. I don’t usually. But last night I heard it as clearly as if … as if I’d been on Claire Mayo’s front porch,” he said pulling his balled-up shirts from the bag.

  She shook out each shirt. The white one had a red smear on its front.

  He paused, his hand in the bag. “You know what I think it was,” he said, cocking his large head. “I think it was one of those perfect, perfect nights when every single aspect of the universe, every star in the constellations …”

  From the corner of her eye she saw Birdy’s head jerk up. She had discovered the shortage.

  “Blood or lipstick?” she interrupted in her practiced drone, raising only her eyelids to look at him, the way she’d learned from Birdy.

  Birdy stared at her, then wet her thumb and began to re-count the bills.

  “Well … well, blood,” he stammered, and she dropped the shirt. “But it’s my blood,” he assured her. “I cut myself.”

  “Oh God,” Mercy groaned, and Barb giggled. They had just begun pressing shirts. Their machines hissed and flapped as each woman raced to finish first.

  BLOOD, she printed on the slip. “Heavy starch, folded?” she asked, marking an “X” in the box before he answered.

  “Yes!” he said, flattered that this time she had remembered.

  Birdy slid the cash drawer into the register. The door bells jangled and John entered, looking so pale and sweaty Martha thought he must be sick. She tagged and bundled Wesley Mount’s shirts while the two men exchanged greetings. Wesley stood close to John, and each time John, who was a head shorter, stepped back, Wesley moved closer. Birdy said this came from years of Wesley’s listening to the whispered secrets of the bereaved. Wesley was telling John about a disagreement he was having with some of the Chamber members. It was, he explained, his property, for which he had paid good money—top dollar, in fact—and no one was going to put that kind of pressure on him. And besides, Grolier, who owned the nursing home next to Wesley’s property, was way off the mark. Seeing the hearse parked in the lot wasn’t going to depress Grolier’s nursing-home patients. In fact, just the opposite would be true.

  “It’ll give them a good feeling. I know how they are. They tell me. John, they look forward to dying,” Wesley Mount whispered.

  Rubbing his neck, John smirked at Birdy. For the rest of the week they would all be imitating Mount and shooting her looks, as if she cared, as if it bothered her in the least. She wheeled out one of the huge canvas carts for his shirts. They must think she was stupid, that all the secret little smiles and quick remarks went right over her head. She looked up sharply, but the two men were talking about the potholes on Main Street.

  It had taken her a long time to get used to John’s vulgarities and sarcasm whenever she made a mistake. All he had to do was look at her the wrong way and she was certain to drop things, mislabel bundles, count back the wrong change, bump into people, lose her temper, and end up in one of those miserable choking spasms that people who knew her would ignore but that had more than a few times sent strangers running to thump her back while they inquired in panicky voices if she was all right. All right? How could anyone be all right whose existence was fueled by this terrible, self-consuming energy, this frenzy of fear and anger, a crippling power, driving her … driving her … She had never been all right. Never. No—always the butt of everyone’s jokes perfect strangers children were the worst nipping at her heels like savage dogs all the way along the streets calling her name so that it had become a NAME, a bad word, MARTHORGAN a taunt synonymous with bogeymen and bums and crazed old women in unpainted, crooked houses.

  She jammed the cart against the wall, and it rolled, so she jammed it again, then again, until it finally stayed. When she turned, they were staring at her.

  “My bags,” Wesley Mount said softly.

  She had thrown away his bags, his stupid bags. “Imagine saving paper bags like an old lady, and won’t they all have a good laugh over that too when he leaves,” she muttered as she fished them out of the barrel. She handed him the bags, and no one said anything.

  “Well. Well, I’m off,” Mount said uneasily. He folded the bags into tight squares and put one into each jacket pocket. “Have a good day,” he said at the door.

  “You too,” she said, her voice sludged with thickness. One by one she swung the weekend’s laundry bundles into a cart. The bells gave the briefest little jingle as Wesley Mount closed the door softly behind him. Under John’s scrutiny, she worked faster and faster. The minute the cart was full, she ran it out to the huge machines, then returned so quickly she was panting. She loaded the second cart.

  “Well?” John said. He kept tapping a pencil against his palm.

  Birdy stepped back against the curtained doorway.

  “So what’s the story?” he asked. Watching her, he unwrapped a powdery stick of gum and chewed it to folds on his front teeth.

  “I was sick Saturday,” she said, her head down.

  “Yah, well.” He waved impatiently. “I mean the notice. The notice!” He gestured at the counter.

  What notice? She lifted the metal slip-box and pushed aside the plastic-coated price sheets, but she didn’t see any notice. “You want Birdy?” She looked back. The curtain wafted in and out of the empty doorway. She thumped her chest and swallowed hard. Had some procedure changed without anyone telling her? Behind her the steam plates rose and fell with a hiss as the two women kept pressing shirts.

  He shrugged and held out his ringed hands with a look of bewilderment. “The notice! What do you think I mean? The notice—didn’t you read the notice? In your basket. The notice!” He raced around the counter and from her basket snatched the envelope with her name on it. “Here.” He thrust it at her. “It’s a layoff notice. I gotta let you go. Nothing personal.” He rubbed his hands together, then blew into them as if they were cold in this swelling wet heat. “It just gets slow now.”

  “No,” she moaned, unable to break her gaze. The envelope trembled in her hand. “No!”

  He rolled his eyes. “Shit,” he muttered. “I should’ve gone with the Grim Reaper there,” he said, gesturing back at the door.

  The flat lids of the machines flew up and down with each shirt’s continuous readjustment, collar up, front, back, sleeve, cuffs, then collar again under the plate of steam, while the women looked on dully.

  “I’m not the one you should fire!” she blurted. “I’m a good worker. It’s Getso you should fire.”

  “Not firing, now, Martha—but laying off. There’s a difference,” John said.

  “I saw him take money right out of the cash drawer. I did! Right before you got here! I was going to tell Birdy. She should know! Birdy! Birdy!” Breathlessly, she yanked open the curtain and was startled to find Birdy right there, sta
ring back at her. “You counted it! How much is gone? How much did he take? I saw him!”

  Birdy’s blank look puzzled her. Didn’t she care? Martha ran to the register and, with the pen she kept nearby—oh, she couldn’t bear the cold, hard touch of metal, the way it made her skin crawl—she stabbed the cash key to open the drawer. “Count it! Count it! You’ll see!” she demanded, slapping the counter.

  John wouldn’t look at her. “Talk to her. Do something,” he said to Birdy.

  “Count it! Go ahead! Count it!”

  “Calm down! You just settle down!” Birdy ordered.

  “I saw Getso take it right from there,” she said pointing. “Right out of the drawer. Count it! You’ll see! I saw him take it.” This wasn’t the way she wanted to tell Birdy. But at least it was all out in the open now, she thought, trying to smile as Birdy hugged her.

  “Just drop it. John’s trying to make it easy for you. Okay?” Birdy said at her ear. “At least this way you get benefits.”

  She broke free of Birdy’s hold. “Don’t you even care? That’s why money’s missing all the time. It’s Getso! I saw him take two bills and go like this down the front of his pants.” She grabbed John’s arm and shook it.

  John looked at Birdy. He bit his lip, then nodded. “Call him up here.”

  “He’s right out there,” she said, lifting back the curtain.

  Getso stepped out, squinting. With his back to her, he spoke to John in a low voice. Her head throbbed. He wasn’t going to get away with this. She rocked back and forth, trying to calm down. He wasn’t going to take advantage of Birdy anymore. Birdy would never have to come to work again with tears in her eyes.

  “Tell her,” John said. “Tell her to her face.”

  Getso turned. He shuffled his feet. “I saw you take them two tens out of the cash drawer.”

  At first she nodded. She could barely hear him. It wasn’t sinking in. “No!” She looked at Birdy. “No!”