She swallowed the last string of cold runny egg. As a child she had yearned to live in this beautiful house and not in the drab oily-smelling garage apartment that was stifling by summer and drafty and damp every winter. It had always seemed selfish of Frances not to have shared her home with them. Now she realized it didn’t matter in the least, because as soon as she talked to Birdy she would be back in her job, in her old room. She would be back in her own life. Birdy always told her to give people more space, not to smother them so. She would. She would wait a few more days and give Birdy time to think things through, time to miss her. Smiling, she washed the egg cup and set it in the drainer while Frances called her ad in to the paper.
As she crossed the yard to the garage, lightning flashed, and she hunched forward and ran up the outside wooden stairs. Thunder crashed like an underground explosion that made the steps tremble. She closed the door just as the downpour began.
The usually dreary brown slipcovers and flat, stale rug deepened into a cocoon of shadows and hollows, with a comforting sense of her father’s somber presence.
She filled the tub with warm water and bubble bath. She put the kitchen radio on the toilet tank and turned it to her favorite country-music station. She set a candle on the closed toilet lid and lit it. She took off her glasses and now, as she pulled her nightgown over her head, she glanced in the mirror, stirred by the sight of her wide, nip-pled breasts. Stepping into the tub, she slid through the bubbles’ cool dry fizz into the hot water. From the radio there came the wail of a jilted man.
… she’s cut the strings from my heart
… and tied me all up in a knot of misery …
A guitar and harmonica tore into each other like bickering lovers. Goosebumps rose on the back of her neck. The candle’s long yellow flame thinned to a taper of soot. Waves of rain poured down the dark windowpane. She lay with her knees apart, her hands cupping her hard, slippery breasts. Smiling, she closed her eyes, waiting for the heat to seep inside, but it was Getso’s blade-boned face she kept seeing. No! Not him, not that pig, that thief. No, it was Billy Chelsea she always pictured. Billy Chelsea’s tanned face squinting at her through the door screen, apologizing in a shy, faltering voice. “I lost my head,” he’d say. “No, no,” she’d say; she was the one who should apologize. She’d insist he come in, and he would, head down in that uneasy shuffle. Well, he’d say, turning to explain, turning so suddenly they’d bump into each other, her hard breasts jammed into his muscular chest, his hands catching her shoulders, as if to push apart, but then pulling her in to him, his eyes closing as his soft wet mouth met hers.…
Head back, her neck pressed against the hard cold rim of the tub, her lips parted in a little moan, her hips rocking in a crest of rhythmic splashes, when the ceiling light flared on. The radio died in a glare of silence. She gasped with the shock of Frances’s looming shadow.
“Oh my God!” Frances said, staring down at her. Most of the bubbles had dissolved. “Oh for Godssakes!” she said, turning away in disgust.
“You get out,” Martha roared, ineffectually swinging a wet arm, then bringing it back to cover herself. “You get out, you bitch, you bitch, you dirty bitch!”
“Telephone!” Frances screamed back at her. “I’ve been buzzing you, but …”
“Get out!” Martha bellowed into the wet mask of her shriveled palms. “Get out! Get out! Get out!”
“It’s Wesley Mount! He wants to talk to you,” Frances said with utter contempt.
Wesley Mount called back later that day. He had just found out that she had left the Cleaners and he wanted to see how she was doing.
“I’m doing fine,” she said, her face reddening. This was the second time his concern had caused trouble with Frances.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” he said in that strained formal voice she remembered from the funeral home. There was a pause. He cleared his throat. “So … so, does this mean you’ll no longer be living in town?”
“Yes.” Why did he pester her? Couldn’t he tell how miserable he made her feel?
“Well, then, I’d like to come see you sometime, if you’re at all … at all amenable to such a … a pro … a possibility. If you don’t mind. If you’d like me to, that is.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t?” He laughed nervously into the silence. “Well, I didn’t mean right now. Or even today. Maybe …”
Her throat constricted. “I have to go. Bye,” she said, and hung up. She looked down at the phone. “Will you leave me alone!”
For the past few days, she had managed to avoid Frances, who was busy with the yearly compilation of all her bills, receipts, and statements for her accountants. The handyman ad had run in last night’s paper, and so far this morning Frances had received two phone calls. The first man hadn’t shown up for his eleven o’clock appointment, and now the second was due at one.
At one-twenty an old dusty pickup truck, in a smoky rattle of metal and combustion, churned up the road and into the driveway. A skinny blonde man with small pinkish eyes got out and came to the door. He reeked of kerosene and sweat. When he said he had an appointment with Mrs. Beecham, Martha told him to wait in the driveway. She dawdled a few moments in the kitchen, counting on the truck’s noise to summon Frances. They had not spoken since the other morning.
“For the ad,” she said, pointing. Frances went outside to speak with him, and Martha watched from the window. In the truck sat a moonfaced young woman, her hair skinned back in a thin dull ponytail. Beside her, standing on the seat, sucking his thumb, was a pot-bellied little boy in a tight undershirt and sagging diapers. The woman watched alertly as Frances and the young man moved quickly from one end of the deck to the other. Frances was shouting to be heard over the engine. The young man turned with a frantic signal for the woman to shut off the ignition. The woman gestured reluctantly and he signaled again, his rigid jaw set until she reached over and turned the key. The engine rattled, then died with a whine. The woman shook her head as she pulled down one side of her shirt and lifted the other, shifting the infant she had been nursing.
The young man knelt by the collapsed steps and turned over a board. He flipped it back onto the heap.
“Some’re still good. Most of your cost’d be lumber. We need a place—so, I mean, you could pay me what’s fair. You know,” he said with a dismal gesture toward the truck, “enough for food and diapers.”
“I’m sorry,” Frances said, shaking her head. “But I can’t have a whole family.”
“They’re just babies,” he said with a vapid smile. “Just two little babies.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, turning resolutely toward the house.
“YOU don’t understand!” he cried, lurching after her, his unlaced work boots riding up and down his skinny legs. He reminded Martha of a boy. “I’m desperate. We don’t have no place to stay.”
“I’m sorry. But this isn’t what I want!”
“Okay! Okay! I wasn’t gonna say it ’less I had to, but I’m Binky Herebonde.” Grinning, he offered his hand, which she ignored. “I’m Adolph’s son and Lyle’s grandson-in-law,” he said with a smart nod.
“I know who you are,” she said, stepping along the planks Steve Bell had propped to bridge the black muck.
“You and Velma’s grandpa are first cousins. You used to live with him and Velma’s grandma,” he said, moving beside her through the mud, his proud smile fading as she hurried along the board.
“That has nothing to do with this,” she said, climbing nimbly into the kitchen. She closed the screen door and, with a quick fumble, latched the hook into its eye. “This is business, young man. Purely business.”
“But we’re related. I wouldn’t never do a bad job for family, Miz Beecham, and you can ask around. I’m a hell of a hard worker,” he said, his face taut at the screen, and added, “And Velma too. She don’t look it, but she’s stronger’n I am.” He tried to laugh, but his voice splintered and seemed to snag on everythi
ng.
“I’m sorry,” Frances said, stepping back, her own face revealing nothing.
An hour later, the truck was still in the driveway. With the woman steering, the young man had pushed it off to the side. Now the hood was raised in the boiling sun as he bent over the engine. He kept reaching into his back pocket for his screwdriver, then his wrench.
Dozing in the shade, the woman sat against the beech tree’s scar-ruptured trunk. Between her legs, as if newly expelled onto the open diaper, lay the sleeping infant. Next to her, with his head on her thin white thigh, was the older child, his knees to his chin, his mouth pumping some milkless hunger from thumbs Martha knew must be filthy and gritty. Just before he fell asleep, he had been sifting dirt from fist to fist.
Earlier, staring grimly ahead, Frances had driven off on some invented errand. “One hour,” she had hissed to Martha. “And if they’re still out there, call the police.”
Martha watched through the window, fascinated that they were her relatives living only a few miles away and she had never met them. There were still sleepless nights when she felt so empty and alone since her father’s death that every sound reverberated inside her. She blinked now with the urgent clankclankclank of the young man’s wrench on his engine. How was it, she wondered, stirred by the woman’s hand capping her young son’s skull, that some people, this woman, this man, had found love and she never had? What charm did they possess, what knowledge? As a girl, she had thought that the missing element was simply someone who would love her, someone time would provide. But now it seemed more and more evident that there were people in this world who were the Unloved, and she was one of them. That it might be just that simple, that immutable, was, in a strange way, almost a relief.
“Ma’am?” he called, scowling behind the screen. “’Scuse me, ma’am, but my wife’d like to use the … the ladies’ room, if you don’t mind.”
His wife stood behind him with the baby and the toddler in her arms, her face squinched in pain. This close, she appeared to be only fifteen or sixteen years old. “I’ll only be a minute,” she said with a little groan as she padded after Martha on flattened rubber sandals. “Thanks,” she gasped, hurrying into the bathroom with both babies. “I got the runs real bad today,” she grunted on the other side of the door.
After a few minutes, Herebonde squinted through the door screen. “All fixed! She still in there?” he asked, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. The toilet flushed, sending a clangor through the water pipes. “Them damn runs again,” he said, shaking his head. “She’s been so sick. Makes her real weak.”
Martha nodded. She had heard of the Herebondes when she had lived in town, drinkers and fighters and dirt poor. It was hard enough to imagine her father related to any of them, much less Frances.
“Maybe I oughta go check on her,” he said with a gesture of his rag. “If you don’t mind. You know, get the babies.”
She led him to the bathroom, then stood back.
“Velma?” He tapped on the door. “You okay in there?” he called so tenderly that Martha glanced away.
There was a faint moan.
“Want me to take ’em?” he asked, listening, eyes closed, at the jamb.
The door opened onto a stripe of bare knees and the woman’s shorts ringing her ankles. Embarrassed, Martha went up the hall.
“She’s in a bad way,” he called after Martha, as he carried the babies. “We’re both in a bad way.” He followed her into the kitchen. “You think there’s any chance she might change her mind?” He regarded her with those raw, almost lashless eyes. “I do real good work. Real good.” As if for solace, he drew his chin over his boy’s head.
She cleared her throat and rubbed her arm. “She said, if you weren’t gone in an hour, I’m supposed to call the police.”
He glanced up at the brass clock over the stove. “Did you call ’em?”
She shook her head.
“Are you Martha?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I heard about you.” He looked at her. “But you’re a nice person, I can tell.” He worked out a hand from behind the clinging child and she shook it.
Again the toilet flushed. The infant began to cry.
“Shit,” he muttered, setting the child down so he could prop the infant to his shoulder, then jiggled him up and down as he spoke over its catlike cry. “They said she was a real bitch. They said, don’t bother, you know, but, Christ, I’m desperate. Velma’s grandma said, if she fell down dead in front of her, she’d just step right on over her, she’s that way.”
A car had pulled into the driveway. The toilet was flushing again.
“Oh Jesus,” he muttered, scooping up the child. “I’ll get Vel.”
The man climbing out of the old blue Ford was tall and unshaven. With all his stretching and yawning, he appeared to be working out the kinks of a long trip. Or a long night. He wore a lettered T-shirt inside out, and his pants rolled up over bare ankles. Laces dangled from his scuffed brown shoes, as if he had just stepped into them.
“Hi,” he said at the door with the tip of an imaginary cap. “The name’s Mack. You Mrs. Beecham?”
“She’s not here,” Martha said. Behind her, both babies wailed as the Herebondes hurried into the kitchen.
“When’ll she be back?” the man called.
“Soon,” she told him, and with another tip of his hand he left, saying he would catch her later.
“Here,” Binky Herebonde said, handing her a grocery register slip. “On the back,” he said of the clumsy lettering. “My name and my brother’s number, case she changes her mind.”
“Thanks,” whispered the scrap of a woman, a girl, her eyes deep in her head, her thin shoulders curled against cramps. “Wait a while,” she cautioned, gesturing back. “Smells kinda gross in there.”
“What city, please?”
“Atkinson,” Martha said. “You see, I have a new number. It’s unlisted, and I’m trying to call the new number at home, my home, but I can’t remember what it is. I know the old number. That’s 723-7682. But if you could give me my new number, I’ll write it down this time, and that way I won’t forget it again.” She tried to laugh, but her throat was so dry she coughed. “Excuse me,” she gasped.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not allowed to give out an unlisted number to anyone.”
“But I have to call! What am I supposed to do? How do I get the number?”
“Come into the main office with proper identification and a supervisor will be glad to assist you.”
“What’s proper identification?”
“A driver’s license will do.”
“But I don’t drive.” Her eye fell on Frances’s stationery on the table. “What about a letter saying who I am?”
“I’m sorry. It has to be some primary means of identification, like a birth certificate or a license.”
“But I don’t have those with me right now, and I’m in a terrible situation here! You don’t understand! This is very, very important! I mean, this could affect someone’s whole life! In fact, it does! A terrible, terrible thing has happened, and I have to get it straightened out!” She was banging her fist on the table.
“Just a moment, please, and I’ll put you through to a supervisor!”
“Hello, this is Jane Martin, may I help you.”
Again Martha explained her dilemma, stressing the fact that this was an emergency.
“Give me your name and the number you’re calling from, and I will advise the unlisted party of the emergency nature of this call.”
She couldn’t very well say she was Birdy Dusser. “Martha Horgan,” she said giving the rest of the information in a small hopeful voice. She waited.
The operator came back on. “Yes, Miss Horgan. The unlisted party has been apprised of your situation.”
“So will you put me through?”
“I’m sorry. I’m not able to do that.”
“Well, is Birdy going to call me, then?”
“As I said, someone at the unlisted number has been apprised of your situation.”
“Someone? Who?” It had been Getso. She just knew it. “Who did you tell?”
“I’m sorry, but I …”
Suddenly the door opened, and she hung up the phone. Frances rushed in, throwing aside her purse, bags, a large folder. “I’ve been trying to call for an hour and the line’s been busy. Did Steve call?”
She opened the freezer and began to crack the ice trays over a bowl. She filled the trays with water. “We’re supposed to go out to dinner with the Pierces for Julia’s birthday and I don’t know what time to tell everyone to come.” She put the trays back into the freezer. “Steve must know if I wait much longer I’ll never get reservations. Damn! He’s been out of the office all day. Something’s wrong. I can feel it. It’s been one thing after another ever since his daughters came back. God! The two of them, emotional shipwrecks, always turning up in their father’s life.” Both of Steve’s daughters had recently gone through divorces.
Frances went down the hallway, then came running back. “What’s wrong with the toilet? It sounds funny. And what’re these?” She pointed at the soiled diapers jammed into the trash. “You let them in here, didn’t you?” she asked, glowering.
“Here,” Martha said, holding out Herebonde’s strip of paper. “If you change your mind, he said.”
Frances balled the paper and flung it onto the table.
“Oh. There was this other man that came,” she said as Frances turned to go. “He said his name was Mack and that he’d catch you later.”
“Oh God, that ad,” Frances groaned. “I’ll have every fool in town up here.”
It was early evening, and everyone was in Frances’s living room, where for the past hour and a half they had been waiting for Steve. He was on the phone now, urging Frances to go on without him. Anita was “in a bad way.” He and Jan, his older daughter, were trying to get her admitted to Peaceview, an exclusive sanitarium in upstate New York.
“Why can’t it wait till morning?” Frances asked. She was in the study. “I’m sure SHE’S in no rush.”
A Dangerous Woman Page 8
