A Dangerous Woman

by Mary McGarry Morris

  She knew by the sun’s glare on the dirty windshield that Birdy wouldn’t be able to see her right away. When the back door to the Cleaners finally opened, she sat forward eagerly, but it was Mercy who stepped onto the loading platform. She wore black shorts and a black halter top. She must have changed after work to go somewhere, Martha thought. John would never allow an employee to dress like that.

  Maybe Mercy and Birdy were on their way to another PlastiqueWare party, she thought as the door opened. She closed her eyes, praying that Birdy wouldn’t still be mad. She covered her mouth and squealed into the muzzle of her palm, “Don’t be mad. Don’t be mad. Please, Birdy, don’t be mad.”

  She opened her eyes. Getso and Mercy were up on the platform, kissing. He pressed against her, grinding his pelvis into hers.

  Her hand inched up to the hot door handle, but it was too late. With Mercy in the lead, they raced down the stairs, Getso’s bootsteps on the metal treads echoing like gunshots through the narrow lot. Getso grabbed Mercy’s wrist and, with a squeal, she broke free and ran toward the car. He snagged her by the waistband of her shorts and dragged her, laughing, back into his arms. Inches from Martha’s face by the open window, they squirmed together, the car sagging and creaking. She closed her eyes, sickened by the smell of Mercy’s sweet perfume.

  “Oh … oh, Gets,” Mercy sighed.

  “Let’s go back in,” he moaned.

  “Oh God. I’m so wicked sore.”

  He laughed.

  The door on her right opened. Mercy started to climb in, then jerked back, screaming, when she saw Martha. Getso hollered and banged his fist on the hood. Martha scrambled out of the car and ran, emerging from the alley just as the northbound bus turned the corner. Panting, she ran alongside and kept hitting the door until the bus squealed to a stop.

  “For Chrissakes,” the red-faced driver groaned, pleating open the door. “Don’t you ever do that again, Martha Horgan!” he gasped as she lurched past him to a seat. She was the only one on the bus.

  “You scared the hell outta me!” he called, glaring at her through the mirror.

  She buried her face in her hands. Poor Birdy. Poor dear Birdy. Now this betrayal. She had to tell her. She had no choice. She looked up. Her bags! She’d left everything, her dresses, shoes, and makeup, in Birdy’s car. All she had was Mack’s book.

  The joke was that, of the 123 people Frances had invited to the birthday party, only 158 had accepted. Some of Steve’s Dartmouth buddies were coming, one all the way from Texas and one from Utah. Everyone they knew would be there, and yet Steve still hadn’t caught on; but now that Frances thought of it, that would be typical of his maddeningly selective myopia. Steve only saw what he chose to see. To look the other way had become such a personal beatitude for him that sometimes she just felt like shaking him, slapping some sense into him, screaming, anything to force him to face the folly of what his daughters were putting him through. Her pen rolled onto the floor. Her hands were trembling.

  Needing calm, she took up her list. She still had to deal with a dress and shoes for Martha and an appointment for her with Frances’s beautician. She crossed off ice sculpture; the caterer had finally located an ice sculptor in Burlington to do the scales of justice with Steve’s age in the higher scale. Check on linen rental.… There was a thud against the house and she looked up, startled. It was only Mack taking down the ladder. He had rehung the shutters. She got up and stood by the door, watching him carry the ladder back to the garage. Instead of a belt, a length of rope held up his shorts. The untied laces in his sneakers whipped the ground as he walked. For such a disorderly man he was certainly getting things into shape around here.

  It irritated her, though, the way he watched her. Accustomed to men’s stares, she usually enjoyed them, but somehow it was different with Colin Mackey. It was almost as if he were studying her, looking for something. Well, whatever it was, it seemed a small price to pay as long as she didn’t have to worry about loose boards and balky engines and strange sounds in the night.

  She could see someone coming up the road. It was Martha, with a green-and-pink scarf tied around her head. Once in the driveway, she hurried after Mack to the garage, and when he turned around she handed him something.

  “Here. I got this for you,” she called, panting.

  “Martha! It’s not my birthday,” he said. “I was kidding!”

  “Well, I’m not going to bring it back, so if you don’t want it just throw it away!” Martha sounded upset. Frances tensed. That’s all she needed was for Martha to fly off the handle and have Mack quit the way Billy Chelsea had.

  “Of course I want it. I just feel guilty.” He reached out and put his hands on Martha’s shoulders.

  Frances couldn’t believe her eyes. What in God’s name was he thinking of? She threw open the kitchen door and stormed onto the deck. Martha turned and Frances was stunned to see her cheeks glazed in plum colored circles, her eyes circled with garish liner, and her hair … “What did you do to your hair?” she cried, rushing at Martha. She tore off the scarf. “My Lord! What did you ever do?”

  “I got it cut,” Martha said, chewing on her lip. She touched the side of her head.

  “Cut! Martha! You got shaved! Like a dog in the heat!” she cried. “How could you let someone do that to you? Do you have any idea what you look like?” She threw up her hands. “You couldn’t!”

  Martha turned stiffly and went into the house.

  Mack stared at her. “Why did you say that to her?” he asked.

  “She looks bizarre! She looks like something out of a cartoon!” Her voice quavered.

  “That was lousy!” He looked back at the house.

  “Whatever it was, it’s none of your business,” she snapped.

  He looked at her. “I don’t understand the way you treat her. It’s strange.… It’s cruel.”

  Her head came up, and for a moment she was too shocked to speak.

  “Did it ever occur to you that maybe what she needs is a little kindness?” he said.

  “Did it ever occur to you that you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about?”

  “Oooo!” He smiled. “That occurs to me just about all the time.”

  Look at him laughing, she thought. Judging her the way Julia did, thinking, if she had only done more, kept at it long enough, dragging Martha from doctor to doctor, then surely by now she would have found the right medicine or therapy, the magic cure. It was not for lack of kindness or love but, rather, that immutability people call bad luck or fate. Some cats were black and some were gray. Some men were short, some women tall, as Martha would always be Martha, immured in her own oddness and pain; and she knew enough by now, was absolutely convinced that the most, the best she could do was to keep Martha from harm.

  “Don’t encourage her,” she said. “Do you understand? Can’t you see what’s happening?”

  His face drained. “No. I guess not.”

  “She watches you. She can’t keep her eyes off you. She hangs on your every word with that foolish grin, and the pathetic thing is, she doesn’t even know how obvious it is, how … how sickening. I told you, she gets these crushes, these … these terrible attachments to people. Don’t you understand? That’s why she let someone butcher her hair like that. And that makeup! She did it for you.”

  “Then I’m flattered,” he said, staring at her.

  In his eyes there glimmered something, a hunger that was the next moment so quickly, so coldly hooded that she thought, Yes. Yes, he would be flattered. “If I were you, I’d be scared,” she said.

  “That too.” He smiled.

  And it came to her that, in his battered way, he was an appealing man, which made him all the more treacherous.

  He picked up the ladder and started toward the garage with it.

  “Wait, I need you to roll up three rugs and leave them in the hall. They’re being picked up early in the morning for cleaning,” she called.

  He kept walking, and she fo
llowed him into the garage. “Did you hear what I said?” she demanded.

  “I heard you.” Grunting, he hoisted the long wooden ladder onto the hooks Floyd had installed on the side wall.

  It pleased her that everything had its place. Here there was order and containment. “The waxer’s in the car,” she said. “I’d rather you did the floors tonight. I’ve got a girl coming to clean tomorrow, and I’d like the floors out of the way.”

  Squatting down, he emptied one paint can into another. His shorts pulled halfway down his backside, and she looked away from the hairy cleavage, offended that he made no effort to hitch them up.

  “I’ll wax your floors tomorrow,” he said, his hammer tapping the lid tight on the can. “They’ll get done.”

  “No! I need them done tonight!” she said, her voice rising. “I have it all worked out.”

  He stood up and squirted paint thinner into a rag and scrubbed his fingers, working the rag under each nail. “I told you. At night I write.”

  “I don’t think one night is too much to expect under the circumstances!”

  He threw down the rag. “Look, why don’t I do us both a favor and just get the hell out of here?”

  She smiled. “Fine, but the only problem is you owe me a week’s work!” She had advanced him a week’s pay.

  “No problem at all. You’ll get your week.” Now he was smiling.

  Fifteen

  The next morning, Martha was polishing all the silver in the house, urns and flatware, nut dishes, candy dishes, the tea-and-coffee service, so many pieces that the kitchen counters and table were covered. Dawn was on her hands and knees, washing woodwork. She was a tall slim high-school girl one of Frances’s friends had recommended.

  Mack opened the refrigerator. He had finally made it over to the house after another insistent call from Frances. He looked exhausted. Martha knew his light had stayed on most of the night, because she had been up herself, writing Birdy a ten-page letter about what she had seen in town yesterday.

  “Do you realize I’ve been waiting forty-five minutes for you?” Frances said.

  Mack’s eyes flicked coldly and, whatever he had been about to say, he swallowed in a smile. “Forty-five minutes, that’s nothing,” he scoffed. “Hell, some women have been waiting a lifetime,” he said, winking at Martha as he sat at the table with a glass of juice. He looked down at Dawn. “Now, this is what I call a work crew.” He leaned over and asked the girl her name.

  “Dawn,” came her soft voice.

  “Dawn, that burst of light that spawns this mighty thirst,” he said, holding up his glass.

  Dawn wrung out her rag in the bucket, and a wedge of her fine straight hair slipped over her red cheeks. Smiling, Mack sipped his juice while he watched her crouch down to scrub the black rubber baseboard under the cabinets.

  “If you don’t mind,” Frances said, glaring at him from the doorway.

  He jumped up and Dawn giggled nervously.

  In the hallway, Frances showed him how to run the floor polisher. She stepped aside now and gestured for him to turn it on. He did, and it skittered out of his hand.

  “Bear down!” she called, stalking him as he got hold of it again, letting it take him where it would, along the hallway, bumping off table legs and the brass umbrella stand. “Steer it!” she called, charging back up the hallway after him. “In a straight line!” She was still shouting when the machine died.

  “If you want this done, then leave me alone!” he said through clenched teeth.

  “I don’t just want it done. I want it done right,” Frances spat back.

  “Then I guess you better do it yourself!” He threw down the cord.

  “I don’t think so, Mr. Mackey!” she said, kicking the cord back at him.

  They glared at one another.

  Dawn watched from the dining room. Martha held her breath until she saw Mack smile and pick up the cord. Without a word he plugged it in and steered the polisher so expertly down the hallway that she knew it must have been an act.

  By mid-afternoon all the hardwood floors were glassy with wax. In the kitchen Martha and Dawn were cleaning the pictures and mirrors Frances had taken down before she left for Hanover with Steve. Martha turned her rag in the grimy whorls of this gold-leafed frame. No matter how hard she tried to put her mind on other things, images of Getso and Mercy kept seeping in, poisoning her thoughts. “Nothing but cheating liars. What do they care? They don’t care who they hurt. What do they care?”

  She realized Dawn was staring at her. The girl looked away.

  “I’m hot,” Martha tried to explain. “But I don’t care.”

  “You’re lucky your hair’s so short. Mine feels like there’s this hot towel on my head,” the girl said, her slender arm drawing the hair from her neck in the most fluid gesture Martha had ever seen.

  “Want some juice?” she asked, and Dawn eagerly said yes. When she had been this age, girls as pretty as Dawn had fascinated her. She still remembered the little wrinkles that formed at the corners of Katie Holt’s eyes when she smiled or the pink dabs of Sylvia Bredder’s tongue as she wet her lips. Once a group of girls complained to the principal that they could not concentrate in class with Martha Horgan always staring at them. She never looked at one of those girls again, and if they came anywhere near her, she turned her back on them.

  “Is that Mrs. Beecham’s husband?” Dawn asked as Mack passed the doorway with a roll of musty jute padding slung over his shoulder.

  “No!” Martha said, so emphatically that Dawn glanced at her. “He just works here.”

  “He’s kinda cute,” Dawn said, licking pulp off the glass rim. “You know, for an old guy.”

  On this trip down the hall, Mack stopped. “When’s Mrs. Bitchum coming back?” he asked.

  Ignoring Dawn’s giggle, Martha told him not until later tonight. She sniffed, certain she smelled liquor on him.

  “When she does, tell her I did everything on her list. Tell her I’m done for the day and if she doesn’t like it …” He winked at Dawn who blushed. “… please tell her I love her,” he sang, “please tell her I care,” he crooned with his arms up, swaying in a little dance around Dawn, who couldn’t stop giggling. “Hey!” he said, peering at her shiny red face. “You find this amusing? You think a man’s humiliation and servitude are funny? Do you?” he demanded, scowling.

  Martha was shocked that he would speak to Dawn like this. She hadn’t done anything. Sometimes she felt as if she were watching two different personalities fighting to be one man.

  “Well … no, I …” Dawn stammered.

  “You do! Of course you do!” Head down, he paced around her. “Everyone needs a victim. But some of us need to BE victims. Case in point, myself. Now, if you don’t believe me, ask Martha. She has witnessed the depths of my suffering and degradation.”

  Martha stared at him, her glasses askew, mouth slack.

  “She knows what I am, don’t you, Martha?” he said, turning with a smile so lethal she felt the nick of its blade at her heart.

  After Dawn went home, Mack dove into the pool and swam for a long time. Martha watched from her window. She had heard him tell Dawn he was going into town, and she wanted to catch him before he left. As soon as she saw him climb out of the pool, she hurried outside with the envelope. He sat on the edge of the pool with his legs dangling in the water. The warm wet patio smelled of sweet alyssum and chlorine.

  “The floors look nice,” she said, coming up behind him.

  “You think so, huh,” he said, then squinted up at her. “That Dawn was something,” he said, laughing, shading his eyes. “Wonder how old she is.”

  “Sixteen!” he groaned when she told him. “See, that’s my problem. I forget how old I am. It’s a real shock some days to look in the mirror and see this mug staring back. It’s depressing.” He swung a leg out of the water and stood up. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing. “Not another letter!” He looked at her. “Why do you keep doing this? Don’t
you think it’s kind of weird?”

  “No, you don’t understand!” She told him about seeing Getso with Mercy, and how much Birdy trusted them. “I have to make her see the truth …”

  “Martha!”

  “… to see what a liar he is …”

  “Martha!”

  “… how evil.…”

  “The truth is,” he roared, “SHE DOESN’T CARE!”

  “Well, I care!” she said, hitting her chest. “I care!”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m sick of people’s lies about me!” She looked away. “You don’t understand.”

  “No, I guess not. Here, give me the letter,” he said, taking it from her. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “You’ll mail it in town?”

  “I’ll mail it in town.”

  “It’s already stamped.”

  “Already stamped.”

  “I put two on. It’s so thick, and I wasn’t sure.”

  “Two! Great! Now, starting right now, let’s get into a new program here.” He popped open a beer, took a long guzzle, then wiped his mouth. “First of all, I want to tell you how nice you look.”

  Her mouth careened into a crooked smile and she shrugged self-consciously.

  “You do. You look real nice. And I like your hair. I do. I like it like that. It’s different, which is okay. It’s okay to be different.” Water dripped down his legs and puddled at his feet. “You got it done for the party, right?”

  “Not really. I don’t like parties.”

  “What don’t you like about them?” he asked, toweling himself off.

  “The whole thing. Just parties.”

  He finished his beer and opened another can, offering her one. She shook her head no. “What if you went with someone? You might like it better if you had someone to be with. Someone to talk to?”