I sighed. Transitions are rough.
Ginger came out, dressed in her leather teddy. She rolled her eyes. “What a perv. OK, bag of feathers?” She tucked the Scrabble board under one arm, gathered a bouquet of feathers, and waited by the window for the chief, who was late as usual. “Firefighters are buffed, aren’t they? Hang around the station doing press-ups? I’m ready for a real man.” A moment of silence, then, “What’s this? Looks like a social worker.”
I put down my paint roller and glanced out the window at a woman with short dark hair, big sunglasses and a navy pantsuit, admiring my bed of annuals. She clacked the door knocker.
“Is Lilac here?” the woman asked, when I opened the door.
Lilac hadn’t mentioned that the fire chief was a woman.
“Bugger all.” Ginger dropped the bouquet of feathers and the Scrabble board. “I don’t roll that way. What kind of place is this? Where’s a normal man?”
I had to think a moment. “Define ‘normal.’ ” I sent the chief away, whispering that Lilac would be back next week.
What a huge mistake I’d made.“Ginger,” I said gently, “it’s not working. My clients are used to my girls. They don’t want anyone else.”
Ginger hissed, “You’re making big lolly here off twats and lezzies and I want five thousand dollars to keep my piehole shut. Or else I tell the coppers.”
“What?” I needed that money for a roof, siding repair, furniture, a fence. “Give me a week, honey. I’ll see what I can do.” I gave Ginger a little push out the door, gratified to see her lose her balance and nearly fall off her fuck-me shoes.
THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY, noontime, the girls waited for their regulars. Connie was knitting doggie booties out of gray heathery yarn, a complicated pattern with double-pointed needles. Fran offered me a piece of toffee topped with chocolate and almonds. So so good, but quite a jaw workout to dissolve it. Lilac was absorbed in a word list, muttering what sounded like drachms, klatsch, scarphs, schmalz, schnaps, sclaffs, scratch.
I told them Ginger would be along soon. “She wants severance pay to keep our little business a secret. So I’m off to the bank, to withdraw funds. When she shows up, ask her to wait.”
The girls exchanged looks. “Don’t worry, Reenie,” Connie said. “We’ll manage.”
A HALF HOUR later, back from the bank, I parked the Camry in the garage and entered my house through the laundry room. I passed the bedrooms, briefly listening at each door. I heard Connie barking orders, Fran’s directive to “Say ‘Ah,’ baby. . .” and the chief’s feather-induced giggles. All was back to normal, or near-normal, except for Ginger’s threat. I was thankful the girls forgave my mistake, relieved the clients came back. Now I only had to negotiate a more modest payment to Ginger.
But Ginger wasn’t waiting impatiently for her blackmail money.
She lay face down on the living room floor, her stiletto-clad feet splayed wide in a scatter of toffee candies and Scrabble tiles. She clutched to her neck a tangle of gray heathery yarn and double-pointed knitting needles. One of the needles had punctured her throat, and blood oozed from the wound into the shag carpet. My heart ratcheted into overdrive as I knelt and searched for a pulse. None. Ginger was surely dead, the body still so warm that Mango had wedged himself against her hip.
I pounded on the bedroom doors. “Get out here! Now!” As soon as the girls and their clients emerged, I questioned them. “What the hell happened?”
Fran clasped the professor to her bosom. “We didn’t hear anything,” she said.
“Me either.” Lilac looked frightened, and the chief patted her back.
All six denied hearing or seeing Ginger. “She must have come in while we were in the bedrooms,” Connie said. “Was it a break-in? Anything missing?”
My mind reeled as the girls, the clients, and I stared at each other in shock and mistrust. A burglary gone wrong? Had one of the girls killed her out of spite? Or to save me from blackmail? Or maybe one of the clients killed her, in the mistaken belief that Ginger was going to replace his favorite. Irrational motives, bizarre means. Alibis all around—or were they?
I called the police.
“LOOKS SUSPICIOUS, ALL right,” said the detective, solidly built in a snugly fitting tailored uniform, a sight that normally activated my flirt gene, but today I was angry at the official attention and very very worried. First and foremost, what happened to Ginger, in my house? Was this death going to destroy my brand-new business, drive my girls onto welfare rolls, disgrace my clients?
A forensic team booted us out. The three girls, their Friday clients, and I went to the police station to be interviewed separately, but we all had alibis and the clients were solid citizens. The detective brushed off the issue of three couples in my bedrooms.
“I’m investigating a death, not misdemeanors,” he said. “Everyone knew your aunt ran a lunchtime social club. No harm done.”
Whew. One less thing to worry about, and I mentally smacked my forehead—Ginger’s threat to tell the police had been empty.
After a few hours, they allowed us to return. Connie was annoyed because they’d confiscated her needles and yarn. Since they’d also gathered up the Scrabble tiles, Lilac would have to buy a new set. Fran shrugged; she could always make another batch of toffee. We gave each other hugs, and they departed, leaving me alone in a house with a blood-stained shag carpet.
I checked the locks on my doors and windows. It would be a long time before I could forget the picture of Ginger’s still body, posed as though she’d collapsed without a struggle, a size four double-pointed knitting needle piercing her throat. I’ll admit it—I was afraid. To distract myself from my fears, I began to spray the flocked wallpaper with water and peel it off the wall. Mango watched me work, the tip of his tail twitching. What did you see, Mango?
“IT WASN’T MURDER,” the detective declared, a statement I had trouble believing until he explained. “Forensics worked this case over good. Ginger’s fingerprints covered Connie’s on that needle, meaning no one else held it. And the ME found a big wad of toffee lodged in her throat, and cat hair on the toes of her shoes. So here’s a likely scenario. She was annoyed with you all, right?”
I nodded. “I’d promised her employment, but it didn’t work out.”
He nodded and smiled, a crooked smile showing white teeth, a nice contrast to his warm brown eyes. “She knocked the Scrabble tiles to the floor and stuffed three toffees in her mouth. Those toffees don’t dissolve easily; they turned into a sticky mass, making it difficult to swallow. She grabbed the knitting project, intending to pull it apart, but as she began to choke, she clutched her throat, tripped over the cat in those ridiculous shoes, slipped on the tiles, and fell onto one of the needles. She stabbed herself. Case closed.”
Sweet words. Case closed. I thought they only said that on TV.
WE WERE ALL so grateful to the detective, whose name was Jack. Fran gave him a tin of assorted toffee, Connie knitted a stylish black sweater for his bulldog, and Lilac—well, she offered a feather frolic that he gracefully declined, claiming an allergy.
One night, I cooked him dinner, and he was so appreciative that he came back the next morning with tools. Together we ripped up the bloodstained carpeting. A filthy job made tolerable by the way his shoulders moved under his tee shirt.
I offered Jack a beer. “We’re a sight,” I said. Visible grime coated his face and arms.
He tipped the can for a swallow, then another. “A shower would be nice.”
“Use mine, if you like,” I said, glad that I’d put out clean towels that morning.
“Ladies first,” Jack said. “Or, might I join you? You know, for lunch?”
And just like that, I realized that the fourth girl had been here all along.
No Falling Ribbons
THE WALLS ARE so thin Michael says he hears the neighbor fart, but I sleep through anything—yells in the hallway, TV next door, motorcycle revups in the parking lot. But this morning, the soft cl
ick of a closing door nudges me awake. Michael’s gone out.
It’s still dark, too early to get up. In an hour the light of day will wake the baby so I try to go back to sleep. I count my breaths and picture a flat sandy desert but fears about Michael whine about like mosquitoes and keep me awake. A headache starts up, an old familiar headache, no friend to me.
I don’t want to worry but can’t help it. Has he gone to work? Will he be on time and last the day? His job starts at seven so he should make it, he’s left early enough, though he’ll stop to get high because he can’t work sick. It’s his first real job in months, on the janitor crew at Holy Family Hospital in Methuen. It’s a good job, with benefits. My unfabulous job, waiting tables at Jerry’s Barbeque, has no benefits unless you count the free meal I always skip—I could puke just thinking about the grease. And these are only the everyday fears. Over them all, like a damp cloud of radioactive dust, hovers the nightmare of Michael curled up in a drain pipe, dead of an overdose.
I unclench my shoulders and roll my head back and forth across the pillow to get the knots out of my neck. Tomorrow is his birthday. Birthdays are important. No matter how sick, or strung out, or broke, you have to remember a birthday. For my nineteenth, he got take-out Indian and gave me a TV, and even though we couldn’t afford cable, it got decent reception, enough for my favorite shows.
He’s a poet; he’ll appreciate a birthday poem. I could write only a couple of silly lines. Blow up balloons, it’s Michael’s day. Light the candles, time to play. Fine for a three year old, pitiful for a real poet. He deserves a real poem. There’s probably one in his books I can copy. For his birthday dinner, some Southern cooking to remind him of home, like corn pudding, collards with bacon. I’ll fry some chicken. Sweet potato pie—he loves that more than any kind of cake. What is the recipe . . . two potatoes, two eggs, a cup of sugar. Cinnamon, nutmeg . . .
I MUST HAVE slept because Patty’s “Ma! Ma!” wakes me. When I open the door to her bedroom, she’s bouncing from foot to foot, showing all six of her teeth, her hair a fuzzy halo. Patty’s skin is warm, rosy. She reeks of pee. “Phew, you need a bath,” I say.
“Not? Not?” Her word for milk. She pats my face. She has Michael’s eyes, wide-set, dark blue. Clear, though, not hard stones like his.
I fix a bottle and take her to our bed where she sucks it down, kicking rhythmically against the mattress. She’s been doing that since she was born, practically, slamming her legs to make her crib mobile shimmy and dance. I couldn’t believe a little baby could be that smart. Now the kicking is a habit. Even one-year-olds can have a habit.
I boil water for her oatmeal and plop her into her high chair. She feeds herself, getting about half the oatmeal into her mouth and the rest on her hair, her red T-shirt. Then it’s bath time in the kitchen sink. She splashes, smacking the water until I’m soaked and we’re laughing. I love this time of day. Fooling around with a no-worries baby, I’m almost happy.
Patty is the only shiny new thing in our apartment. A sheet covers a used couch. Michael found our mattress at the Salvation Army, and I layered blankets over it because you never know who slept on it or what they did when they weren’t sleeping. He has sold everything else, most of his books and the TV he gave me for my birthday. Didn’t get good reception, he said.
I spread a sheet on the floor for Patty and her toys, and sit down to play with her. She loves to look at my photo album, a record of better days, back when I had hope and a camera. It opens to our wedding picture. I was pregnant, but didn’t show, and pretty enough, with shining hair and a dimpled smile. But Michael, he was gorgeous, with broad shoulders and intense blue eyes that flashed with a wicked wit. The two of us were like a pair of cardinals, the female a mousy brown, invisible next to the male’s gleaming scarlet and black trimmings. When we were together, no one looked at me, except to wonder how I caught him, how I held him.
I wondered the same, at first. He was an actor, a poet, a musician, far out of my league. I was working as a waitress at a pizzeria in Woburn when he came in for lunch. He carried a book by Seamus Heaney, District and Circle.
“A poet,” I said. “I’ve heard of him.” I slipped his pizza onto the table.
He looked surprised. “You’ve heard of Heaney?” He was cute but that look and that question were not compliments. I recognized belittlement. Fourteen years in foster care made sure of that. I slapped the check on the table. “Have a nice day.” I turned away.
He waited outside for me and invited me to a play the next night that he was acting in. “As You Like It, have you seen it? I know you’ve heard of it, I won’t make that mistake again.” He was brilliant on stage, funny, with great timing and a presence like he’d been born there. He asked me to the after-show party and introduced me all around. It was a night I’ll always remember, the energy of the people, the talk, Michael’s lively heat.
I turn the album page to a picture of his band mates, taken about the time they started up, playing gigs for free. They weren’t half bad, but not great, not exactly Guns ‘N Roses, except in the drugs department, where they competed on a level with Adler and Slash. The band broke up after a year and I wasn’t sorry—I was sick of them. Right before Patty was born, I fixed them all dinner, a dinner that ended with spaghetti everywhere as, one by one, they—including Michael—passed out and their plates slid to the floor. Then they took him off for a day to “practice,” but it was three days before he came home strung out and only wanting to sleep. After that, I locked the door when any of that miserable lot showed up.
I shove the album under the sofa. I can’t stand to remember my old self, aging out of foster care, shy and naive. I’d been eligible for college funds until I got pregnant. Knocked up at eighteen, sentenced to life.
If you deal with assholes, all you get is shit, Brandi would say. I close my eyes to hear the rough jokey voice of my only friend. Get it together, girl. You can’t polish a turd. Was she calling Michael a turd? I smile. Get it together, starting with the crap on the floor and the table. I can’t think straight in all this mess.
I sort our clothes into the laundry basket or the closet, then clear the dishes off the table and into a pan of soapy water. Pitch the empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, candy wrappers. I scoop up a stack of mail and sort through bills we can’t pay, the rest junk, except for a letter to Michael from the hospital.
Welcome to. The details of your employment etc. Your benefits are. Sick days, vacation, life insurance, health, dental. Sincerely. I read the letter twice. His job is a lifeline off a tilting shipwreck onto solid ground. If only he can keep it. He has a good attitude and can bullshit with the best of them. Showing up on time, going the distance—that’s his trouble.
A box beside our bed holds his books. He loves poetry, he reads it aloud to me, but still I’m surprised he hasn’t sold the books yet. I open them one by one—Larkin, Yeats, Frost, Heaney—leafing through for a birthday poem. Finally, in a collection by Sylvia Plath, I discover “A Birthday Present.” Perfect.
What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?
The speaker, making pastry, wants something for her birthday. I read the poem three times and can’t figure it out. Michael always says I am too literal. Does her cooking stand for the creation of the poem? I copy it onto blank paper. The ending is shivery:
There would be nobility then, there would be a birthday.
And the knife not carve, but enter
Pure and clean as the cry of a baby,
And the universe slide from my side.
Is that what she wants for her birthday, a knife?
AT NOON I carry Patty across the hall. The floor plan of Brandi’s two bedroom is identical to mine, but otherwise it’s a different world, with coffee-colored walls, chairs that match, and a cootie-free couch with a tapestry cover. Plants in the window and a lovely fresh smell. I sniff. “Mmm, what is it?”
“A cleaner
I mixed up—vinegar, water, and lemon juice,” Brandi says, her voice raspy and hoarse. It’s the voice that’s carried me through the past year, and it still works. Brandi has a book in front of her—she’s taking courses at Bunker Hill. “Have a seat, girl. I need grown-up talk. Evan? Patty’s here.” Brandi is pregnant, about five months, and it suits her—she is plump and calm, her skin fine and glowing. Her hair is in rollers to straighten it.
Evan tears himself away from Bob the Builder on TV and flings himself at Patty. “Boo! Boo!” he says and she reaches out and grabs his hair. “Yow!” he screams, delighted, bumping her belly with his head.
“Can you do me a big favor and watch Patty tomorrow night?” I ask. “It’s Michael’s birthday and I’m getting tickets to see Vinnie Paz at the Paradise.”
“Sure, no problem.”
“I’ll watch Evan Saturday morning for you. You can study. Going out?” I point to the rollers.
“Got a math test tonight. Wish me luck.” She rolls her eyes but I know she’ll ace it, she always does.
“I’d love to go back to school.”
“Someday.” Brandi squeezes my hand.
“Somewhere, rainbow, bluebirds.” I suddenly feel like crying and stand up before it happens. “I gotta catch the bus. Thanks, hon.” I drop two diapers on the table and kiss Patty, who ignores me, her crystal eyes glued to the screen, admitting all the mush, unfiltered. Spud is playing tricks on Scoop.
The bus is crowded and I stand the whole way, twenty minutes of jerky stop-and-go. My feet ache. My polyester uniform feels greasy, with a smoky smell that won’t wash out.
Jerry’s Barbeque has a limited menu—slaw, French fries, pie, and pulled pork—but plenty of people eat there, especially the ones who are allergic to anything green. I welcome the chat with regulars, refilling their coffee cups. After the dinner rush, I go into the storage room and start to count my tips. When Jerry comes in, I quickly shove the money into my apron pocket to free up my hands. He’s a goddam pest, always groping the girls from behind, leaning into them. He scatters us like a cat in a flock of juncos, but this time I’m alone and cornered.
Restless Dreams Page 4