Faithful

by Alice Hoffman

  “Don’t worry. There’s nothing to taking care of kids,” Ben assures her.

  But Ben has nephews and nieces and is kindhearted. Shelby is nasty and ill-tempered. She shudders at the thought of babysitting. “I don’t even know how to talk to a child.”

  “Talk to them like you talk to me,” Ben advises. “But without the curse words. They repeat what you say, like parrots.”

  She’s agreed to three days with Maravelle’s children. And in Queens, a place she only travels through by train when visiting her parents. Because she has the dogs, Shelby takes a cab out to Astoria, which costs a fortune. It takes forty minutes with the meter ticking before the cab reaches the street of triple-deckers where Maravelle rents a ground-floor apartment. Shelby gets out and stands on the sidewalk, then walks up a weedy path. The bell doesn’t work and she has to bang on the door. Maravelle appears and embraces her. “You made it to Queens!”

  The boys have ducked behind the door and peer out. Jasmine, a pretty girl who resembles her mother, clearly disapproves as soon as she gets a look at Shelby. “She can’t take care of us!” Jasmine declares. “She’s bald! I’m not going to be seen with her.”

  Shelby really doesn’t care how she looks, but Jasmine’s reaction reminds her of how concerned she’d been about her appearance back in high school. She used to get up in the dark so she’d have time to brush her hair a hundred strokes and apply her makeup. Nowadays, she doesn’t even look in a mirror. She’s afraid no one will be staring back at her.

  Maravelle shows Shelby around, but since it’s a one-bedroom apartment, there isn’t much to see. The bathroom is so overstuffed with towels and toiletries that things keep falling off the shelves. Maravelle sleeps on a foldout couch in the living room, and the three kids share the bedroom.

  “You literally have no privacy,” Shelby says.

  “Well, for the next three days, neither do you.”

  Shelby unpacks, which takes about two minutes. She’s got underwear, T-shirts, and a whole lot of kibble. The twins hang around staring at Shelby’s dogs. The surgery to remove Blinkie’s eye was a success; at a thousand bucks it should have been. He now has a permanent wink.

  “He looks creepy,” Teddy says after his initial study of the dog. Teddy is the take-charge twin. Sometimes his daring gets him into hot water at school and Maravelle is called in to the principal’s office.

  “That dog is none of your business,” Maravelle tells him before she turns to Shelby. “That other eye’s not going to drop out while you’re here, is it?”

  Shelby notices the kids are always getting something out of the refrigerator. It’s like they never stop eating. “Do I have to cook for them?”

  “No pizza and no junk,” Maravelle informs her. “I made out a menu for every day, and I already went grocery shopping. All you have to do is get them ready for school and on the bus, and be here waiting for them at two. Then make their supper.”

  “We don’t get home till three,” the quieter twin, Dorian, reminds his mom.

  “I want Shelby here at two, just in case you’re early. Don’t butt in,” Maravelle tells him. “Go out and play.”

  The twins do so. There’s a small yard out back, where they’ve set up a kind of swing. They’re pretty cute boys, Shelby thinks, if you liked children. But Jasmine is another story. She’s sitting at the kitchen table, sulking. Just one of the girls.

  “The kids can go in the yard and to the playground on the corner. No farther,” Maravelle continues with her rules. “And Jasmine has to come directly home. No friends. No hanging out. She’s got homework.”

  “Stop talking about me,” Jasmine says.

  “And no makeup,” Maravelle tells Shelby.

  Jasmine storms away. The back door slams.

  “You’re a hard-ass,” Shelby says, impressed.

  “What happened to me is not going to happen to Jasmine.”

  “Sex?” Shelby says.

  Maravelle throws her a look. “A baby at sixteen.”

  The responsibility of Maravelle’s life is mind-boggling. “I don’t think you should leave your kids with me.”

  “Well, I don’t have anyone else, so stop talking like that. You’ll be fine. You’ll probably wind up wanting kids of your own by the time you’re through.”

  Shelby tries to think of a way to get out of her promise, but before she knows it, Maravelle hugs her children, grabs her suitcase, and is gone. Now Shelby is in charge. She makes boxed macaroni and cheese that the kids say is inedible. After a single bite Shelby agrees and heats up a pizza she finds in the freezer. She lets them watch whatever they want on TV just so she can be alone. She goes out to the yard and lets her dogs sniff around. She takes one of the cigarettes she keeps with her for times of extreme anxiety. She can almost see the stars come out. Queens is not Manhattan, but it certainly isn’t the suburbs. Sirens blare in the distance. The back door opens and Jasmine comes out.

  “You smoke?” Jasmine says.

  “No.” Shelby stubs out the cigarette on the concrete steps.

  “You were too smoking. I saw you.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to go to bed soon?”

  “You don’t know anything about taking care of kids. And you’ll probably get lung cancer.”

  General Tso trots over to Jasmine, interested, but Jasmine shrinks from him.

  “He’s not the one with one eye.” Shelby claps her hands. Blinkie follows the sound and hops over. “This is Mr. One Eye.”

  “You’re weird and you have weird dogs,” Jasmine informs her.

  “You’re rude.”

  They don’t disagree with each other.

  “You have to wake us up at six o’clock tomorrow,” Jasmine tells Shelby. She knows an incompetent when she sees one. She’s got a big grin on her face because she can foresee how miserable Shelby will be.

  “Don’t you wake yourselves up?”

  “And just so you know, you’re going to have a lot of trouble getting my brother to go to school.”

  “Which one?” Shelby can’t tell the twins apart, except one is quieter. She and Jasmine go inside. Jasmine double-locks the door. One of the twins is sitting on a kitchen chair.

  “That one.” Jasmine points. “Dorian.”

  The kids trail off to the bedroom, and Shelby collapses on the couch. She doesn’t bother pulling it out into a bed as Maravelle told her to. She doesn’t bother to take off her clothes. She’s already realized that when the alarm rings in the morning, she had better be ready.

  Shelby doesn’t exactly follow Maravelle’s instructions. She’s not Martha Stewart. She can’t remember the last time she made breakfast for anyone. So she improvises, substituting toast for French toast, pouring glasses of soda instead of orange juice. So far, no complaints.

  “Now you’ve got to pack us a lunch,” Teddy says.

  Shelby still hasn’t let the dogs out in the yard or had a cup of coffee. She tosses juice boxes, apples, and string cheese into three paper bags.

  “Cookies,” Teddy reminds her.

  Shelby finds the Chips Ahoy! and throws in some of those too.

  “Five minutes,” she calls. “Then you’re out of here.”

  She’s a drill sergeant in dirty clothes. She fills the kettle, desperate for coffee. She thinks about her own mother, and how she tried to do everything right despite how difficult Shelby was. She wishes she could tell Jasmine she’ll regret all of her attitude.

  Jasmine exits the bedroom wearing her jacket and carrying her books.

  “See you later!” she calls.

  “Hey! Your lunch!” Shelby shouts.

  When Jasmine comes to grab her lunch bag, Shelby notices that she’s wearing eye shadow, blush, and lipstick. That was on the list. No makeup.

  “Wait a minute,” Shelby says.

  She and Jasmine stare at e
ach other. It’s like that moment in battle when you’re either going to start something up with an enemy soldier and have to kill him or look the other way and let him slink off into his foxhole.

  “Okay,” Shelby says after a moment’s reflection. “Have a nice day.”

  Jasmine flees from the apartment, waving good-bye as she runs out the door.

  Shelby has won over one of the enemy. Maybe everything will be fine. She’ll get rid of the kids and have coffee and laze around, maybe even go back to sleep.

  Teddy and Dorian have their backpacks and their jackets, but they haven’t left.

  “He won’t go,” Teddy informs Shelby with certainty. He’s got a twinkle in his eye, as if he’ll enjoy the difficulties Shelby will soon face.

  “Yeah, well, good-bye,” Shelby says to them both. “Be back here at three.”

  She escorts the twins out the front door and closes it behind them, then, alone at last, she takes her dogs into the yard to do their business. When she returns, the kettle is whistling. Shelby pours water through a filter full of coffee, extra-strong, and splits a can of dog food between the General and Blinkie. Only the General isn’t there anymore.

  “Hey, General,” Shelby shouts. “Breakfast!”

  He’s in the front hall.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Usually he’s a chowhound, but now the General gazes at her, then barks at the closet. He has a soulful, meaningful bark.

  Shelby opens the closet. There’s Dorian.

  “You’re kidding me! Now you’ve missed the school bus.”

  Shelby heads into the kitchen to have her coffee and think over what she’s supposed to do. She still hasn’t changed her clothes or taken a shower. Dorian trails into the kitchen, followed by the General.

  “His food is in a bowl on the counter,” Shelby says.

  Dorian gives the General his breakfast, then gets in a few tentative pets while the bulldog eats.

  “I think he likes me,” Dorian says.

  “Didn’t you hear your mother say I was in charge and you had to go to school? Now what am I supposed to do?”

  Dorian takes a bowl of cereal for himself and sits at the table. He eats the cereal without milk.

  Shelby can tell she’ll have to interrogate him. If she doesn’t do it carefully he’ll clam up for good.

  “Do you like school?” Personally, Shelby had hated school, but Dorian nods yes.

  “Is somebody bullying you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you feel sick?” Shelby asks, even though he’s eating a huge bowl of Frosted Flakes that Maravelle had said was only for the weekend.

  “Nope.”

  “Well, if you don’t want to tell me what the problem is, tell the General.”

  The General is at Dorian’s feet, wagging his butt, hoping for a Frosted Flake or two. Dorian gazes into his eyes.

  “To get to the bus we have to walk past a monster,” he tells the General.

  Shelby pours another cup of coffee. Someone else would have told Dorian there were no monsters and insisted he stop being such a baby and get his ass to school. But Shelby gulps her coffee, then grabs her sweatshirt. “Come on,” she says. She isn’t like most people. She opens the silverware drawer and takes out a butcher knife.

  “What are you going to do?” he asks.

  Dorian is a skinny, serious boy who can eat a bowl of cereal in no time flat and is still young enough to tell his secrets to a dog.

  “I’m going to kill the monster.”

  They walk two blocks, then take a right. They’re nearly to the bus stop when Dorian hesitates.

  “Is that where he lives?” Shelby asks.

  Dorian nods.

  There’s a deli and a gas station and an auto parts shop and a yard that looks like a dumping ground for old cars. The traffic on the avenue is so noisy Shelby leans close in order to be heard.

  “I don’t see him.”

  Dorian nods to a high chain-link fence on the other side of the street, circling the junkyard filled with tires and the rusted-out hulls of cars.

  “You want to wait here while I go kill him?” Shelby says.

  “Are you going to kill him with the knife?” Dorian holds tight to his paper bag lunch. Something about him makes Shelby want to cry.

  “I might and I might not,” she tells him.

  Shelby runs across the street. She can’t wait to get the kid to school and go home and go back to bed. If she pretends the monster is real and kills it, maybe Dorian will cut the crap and take the school bus. It’s up to Maravelle to get him to a therapist. Shelby turns back to the kid to wave, just to let him know everything is okay.

  Then she hears the monster.

  The snarling makes her think of a bear growling deep down in its throat. The thing facing her is the size of a small bear too, only it’s white; filthy and bloody, but white. It’s chained to a pole, so as it runs toward her, it’s stopped short when it reaches the end of its chain. It’s up on its hind legs, and she swears it’s taller than she is. The kid is right.

  Shelby’s heart is pounding as she runs back across the street.

  “Did you kill it?” Dorian’s got his hands over his eyes.

  “Not yet,” Shelby says.

  Dorian slips his hands down and stares across the street. A shiver passes over his face.

  “Give me your lunch,” Shelby says. Every beast has a soft spot after all.

  Dorian hands over the bag, and Shelby runs back across the street. She’s getting more exercise than usual due to this monster. He’s still barking when she takes out a cookie and pitches it over the fence. The monster backs away, as if she’s thrown a stone, so she tosses over another Chips Ahoy! He catches that one and swallows it whole. Shelby unwraps the string cheese and sends that over the fence. The monster gobbles it. He’s no longer barking. He’s staring at her. Shelby sees that he’s a Great Pyrenees.

  She runs back across the street. More exercise when she’d planned to spend the morning sleeping.

  “Is he dead?” Dorian asks.

  “As it turns out he’s not a monster. He’s a dog.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Dorian seems poised to run. He is convinced that a monster will get him if he takes another step.

  “Dorian, I know about dogs. Come on. I’ll show you.”

  It takes a while, but Dorian is finally convinced to cross the street with Shelby. He stops at the curb.

  “He’s just a dog that they keep chained up,” Shelby explains. “When you chain something up, you turn him into something he shouldn’t be.”

  Dorian nods. “You’re right. He looks like he’s broken.” All at once, with that one sentence, Shelby understands how you could fall in love with a kid. “Look at his foot,” Dorian whispers.

  In fact, the dog is limping. Shelby can see how skinny he is. He’s being starved.

  “I’m going to walk you to school,” she tells Dorian. “You don’t have to worry about anything being broken.”

  She does so, but instead of going back to the apartment, Shelby heads to the deli and sits near the window. She has a cup of coffee and a buttered roll. She’s staring at the junkyard, thinking about how the kids pointed and laughed at her when she took Dorian to his classroom. Someone shouted out “Baldy!” She usually doesn’t care if people insult her, but now she’s worried that Dorian may be ridiculed and embarrassed because of her.

  When she’s done with her breakfast, Shelby goes to stand outside so she can study the big dog on its chain. One of the guys from the deli is out having a cigarette break.

  “Hey.” He nods at Shelby.

  “Hey,” Shelby replies.

  The deli guy notices her gazing across the street.

  “It’s a damn crime,” he says. “I throw stuff over to
him. Like when I’m making chicken salad I throw over the bones.”

  “Chicken bones kill dogs,” Shelby informs him.

  “Yeah?” The guy might have said more if he hadn’t noticed the butcher knife stuck in Shelby’s waistband.

  “Chicken bones fragment,” she tells him. “They can pierce the esophagus and intestines.”

  “You a vet?”

  “I’m nothing.” Shelby has one of her last cigarettes. She’s decided she’s going to quit. She wants something all right. She wants everyone who has ever been cruel to a dog to be tied up on a chain for twenty-four hours, no food, no water.

  “One time I saw the guy over at the junkyard hit him with a metal pole when he wouldn’t stop barking. There was blood everywhere.”

  “Monster,” Shelby says before she stalks away.

  Jasmine doesn’t come home after school. Shelby is still wearing the same clothes she arrived in. Her shower never materialized. Teddy and Dorian are having a snack before they get to their homework. Shelby is doing her best to follow Maravelle’s schedule, which doesn’t include a missing girl who wears makeup when she isn’t supposed to and who, now that she’s gotten away with lipstick and rouge, probably figures she can do as she pleases with Shelby in charge. When asked where their sister is, the twins both shrug. They are clearly sworn to secrecy.

  At last the phone rings and Shelby jumps for it. She’s hoping it’s Jasmine, but it’s Maravelle.

  “How are my babies?” Maravelle wants to know.

  “Good,” Shelby lies. Real panic is setting in. “Doing homework. How the hell do you do all this, Mimi? Plus a full-time job? You’re super­­woman.”

  “Jasmine’s doing homework? Is that what you said? That doesn’t sound like her.”

  “I’m having some trouble with her.” Shelby backtracks. “She’s definitely not perfect.”

  “Put her on and I’ll let her have it.”