by Patti Abbott
Billy closed his eyes. “He was standing near that funny stove. The outside one.”
Both women frowned, trying to decode Billy’s words. Remembering the old brick fireplace in the yard next door, they let go of their breath simultaneously.
“Not in our yard then?” Cookie said. “Gerry never comes inside our fence?”
Billy shook his head vehemently, understanding now what they wanted and eager to deliver it.
“Then how could you see his boots?” Annette asked suddenly.
“He put his foot up on the stove and I saw the little red guys,” Billy remembered. “He got his boots out where cowboys still live. Can I have boots like that, Mom?”
“We’ll see,” Cookie told him. “But I don’t want you to talk to him anymore, Bill. Not till we know him better. Promise?”
Billy nodded, closing his mouth on the obvious question. Then why does Grandma talk to him?
“He’s the one who fixed our step,” Annette told her daughter.
“Still seems off,” Cookie said shivering. “There’s something creepy….”
“I wish Gerry could come inside my yard someday,” Billy added. Both women’s heads swiveled and the boy ducked instinctively. “He might bring me those trucks of his kid’s.”
They had sex just the once. He’d brought some beer over on a Saturday night. Cookie was away for the weekend, taking Billy to visit his other grandma in Bay City. She hadn’t told Gerry that Billy wasn’t upstairs or that Cookie wouldn’t be home, but he knew somehow. They had nearly finished off the six-pack when it started to rain. The rain and the beer made it easier to let him inside. He walked around the small house, not saying much.
“You rent this place, right?” he finally asked. She nodded. “How long you lived here?”
“I moved in five years ago. The week Bush beat Dukakis.”
He made a face. “Eighty-eight?” She nodded. “Were things any better then?” She looked around the room, hurt. “No, not in your house, Nettie. In Detroit.”
She shook her head. “Things were never better in my time. Didn’t come north again until the mid-seventies though. Long after the riots.” She started to tell him about her dual childhoods in Detroit and Mississippi, but he’d lost interest and started drumming his hands on his thighs.
“Damn, it’s a hot night.” He adjusted the box fan until they sat directly in its sweep. “Got any music in here?” He opened the last beer. “Like a little music on a Saturday night.”
She stood up and put the radio on. It was a country station and before she could sit down again, he grabbed her around the waist and they began to dance—if you could call it that; his feet didn’t move much. He just stood there swaying, grinding his hips into hers; they were nearly the same height, she realized, and if you subtracted the large heels on his boots, she was taller. They stood there like that— getting horny— until an announcer came on to give the local weather.
“Rain, rain and more rain. Fall’s coming on,” she observed, stepping back and taking a deep breath. She felt giddy from lack of air. “Even when it’s hot, you can still feel it coming. Cold’s the natural condition. In Detroit, that is”
He nodded, and, with a groan pulled her over to the sofa before she could take another breath, putting his mouth entirely over hers, kissing her until she had no air left. Very quickly then, with no words, they were upstairs making love. If she had to sum it up, she’d call his lovemaking efficient: all the bases got covered but he didn’t linger fondly anywhere. He didn’t linger afterwards either. He wasn’t in her bed long enough to leave his scent—that strange yet seductive scent—behind. She would’ve let him stay the night, and that thought both shamed and excited her.
She’d been alone since the night she kicked Cookie’s father out of the house more than twenty years ago. Alberto had come after her with a knife when she threw his stash of coke in the toilet, managing to nick her twice before the cops came. He had spent several nights in jail before disappearing from their lives. One of his friends told her he was back in Mexico with a passel of kids, but she doubted it. Life was too hard there and Alberto didn’t like hard.
She expected things to change with Gerry after the sex, but he seemed to have either forgotten or regretted the one time, and they went back to meeting on the porch, although the shorter August then September days made their time together brief. His eyes seemed to wander when he leaned against the railing listening to her nonsense about Cookie and Billy, about her job for the city. Turning up at all seemed like a habit he was trying to break. If he;d talked little about himself in the past, he said even less now. He didn’t even rant about the government trying to run his life anymore. She knew no more about him than she had months ago.
In October he was waiting in the driveway when she pulled in alone; Cookie and Billy had gone to the mall in Dearborn for the Columbus Day sales. He flicked his cigarette over the fence and moved toward her looking angrier than she’d ever seen him. She recoiled instinctively, but got out of the car.
“Sold the house out from under me—way before the auction. I didn’t think they could do that! Fuckin’ city! Try to play by their rules and where does it get you?”
“Who bought it?” It was shocking that a second person was interested in the place after all this time.
“I don’t know,” he said, pacing the macadam. “It’ll be public record soon, but for now—Goddamned government. They make the rules and then break them.” He looked over toward the house. “Guess I’ll have to be out of here in a day or two. If they think….”
“What?”
“I put in a lot of time on that place. Scoped it out for weeks, making sure it was empty, unclaimed, that no one could toss me out. Put in the juice, fixed the worst of it.” He kicked a leaf hard and then looked at her. “I don’t guess I could stay with you a night or two. Just till I get sorted out. The sofa maybe….”
“I can’t—Cookie—” Her voice trailed off.
He nodded. “Guess I can stay with my son over in Melvindale for a few nights. If his girl will have me.” He shook his head. “His mother brought him up to—to—let women push him around.”
“What’re you going to do after that?” She felt sorry for him but, on the other hand, he could probably do again what he’d done here. Squat.
“Oh, I’ll do something all right.”
His lips hardened into a thin line and he turned away.
It was the smoke that woke her, a choking, airless burning in her lungs. Last night was Devil’s Night, and sirens, with the occasional gunshot, wailed all night. She went to bed later than usual, watching the melee on the late news with trepidation. Now it was close to dawn on All Saints Day, and she leaped from her bed, remembering after a second that Billy and Cookie were safe, spending Halloween at her girlfriend, Trudy’s house in Warren. Billy had gone off with Cookie at five last night—dressed like a ghost. It was safer to trick or treat over there.
When she looked out the front window, two fire trucks were blocking the street, throwing everything in their arsenal at the blaze next door—Gerry’s house. The hoses looked like tentacles, stretching between the house and the trucks with a line to the fire hydrant; even a green garden hose had been called into service. She couldn’t tell if the thumping sounds she heard were fire axes or the force of the water.
Wrapping a blanket around her and grabbing poor Jump, she burst through the front door carrying only the dog and the single photograph she found in her path. Later it turned out to be a framed print of her office picnic last summer, forced on her on Secretary’s Day by her boss. People always said, “Grab the picture albums and let the rest go.” But her albums sat in a closet upstairs, and she’d be damned if she’d climb those steps now.
Outside, she saw the fire had spread roof-to-roof. The fire fighters were busy taming the raging fire next door, but she rushed toward them, trying to tell them through a choking cough that her house was burning, too.
“We know,” one o
f them found time to tell her, patting her shoulder. “As soon as we—”
It was impossible to hear him over the wail of sirens, the whooshing sound of the fire, the shouts of the men trying to coordinate their efforts. The smell had begun to change too, the chemicals mixing with the flames and smoke and producing an even more noxious odor. She watched silently, Jump shivering in her arms, as they finished the mop-up on the house next-door and moved on to hers.
Suddenly she felt him—Gerry—watching. She looked around, taking in the growing crowd behind the rippling, plastic rope, the garage where her car sat, the line of bushes that blocked the view of her other neighbor’s house. He was watching; who knew where he might be hiding, who had let him in?
An arm went around her shoulders suddenly and she jumped. It was a woman pulling her back from the fire. “You don’t want to stand so close,” the woman, wearing official-looking clothing, said. “The wind’s picking up. Let’s get away from the fire ground.”
She let herself be led away, grateful to put Jump down in a neighbor’s fenced yard, realizing finally the dog had been barking for a very long time—so long that the poor thing was hoarse.
With the wind came rain, and the fire was soon extinguished although no one would let her back inside until after the fire marshal, the insurance agents, investigators and uniformed police showed up and took a look.
“You don’t want to go in there just now anyway,” the battalion chief told her. “Even with the salvage operators here from the get-go, it’ll be a mess. Come back tomorrow. Or the next day even. Just leave a number with someone.”
“Got somewhere to go?” people asked her again and again.
She nodded, and finally called a friend from a phone in the house across the street.
The chemicals and water used to fight the fire ruined much of what was inside the house, and what the chemicals and water didn’t ruin was full of smoke. The roof was half-gone although someone from the salvage operation had covered it with tarp when she returned the next day. Her friend, Dinah—not particularly close, but the first one to answer the phone at five o’clock in the morning— walked through the rooms with her when she was allowed to go back inside, making sympathetic sounds. She hadn’t even called Cookie yet, unsure of what to tell her.
“We can get the smell out of most of it,” the insurance agent told her. “You’ll be surprised.”
When the investigator showed up, she told him about Gerry, surprising herself with how few details she knew to give them. “He hates anything to do with government—licenses, taxes, laws,” she finished weakly. “Sorry I don’t know more.”
“Guess he kept his distance,” the young man said when the information she gave him proved so scant. “Probably a good thing for you.”
She blushed, remembering how she’d slept with him, how she desired him. “I think his son lives in Melvindale. You can probably pick him up there.”
He closed his book and looked up at her. “These houses aren’t worth much. And no one was hurt in the fire. Unless someone’s hurt—”
She was shocked silent—it felt like someone had socked her in the stomach. But then the chores took over for an hour or two. She gave the information to the insurance agent, the house’s owner, anyone who’d listen.
When there was no one else to tell, her mind returned to it. It didn’t seem fair or right that nobody cared—that he—Gerry— wouldn’t be arrested and thrown in jail for years. It was hard to let it go. And every time she closed her eyes, she was back in that house, running madly for the door, Jump in a death grip.
They moved to Dearborn a few weeks later, renting a house that sat at the rear of a treeless property. It was not on a line with its neighbors; you didn’t notice it at all from the street. She stationed her bed in the dining room for several months, where she could see both doors at the same time. Her new neighbors were mostly recent émigrés from the Middle East; few spoke English. The men kept their wives and daughters inside and she followed suit, only making eye contact with the older women, who moved like dark, mute ghosts through the suburban streets. When Billy played outside, she was right at his elbow.
When Cookie came in late, she was waiting by the door.
“Mom, how long you gonna do this?” her daughter asked. “He’s done with us.”
“We’ll see.”
His call came around Christmas. “I planned on wetting down your roof, Nettie, but Cookie and the kid hung around till dark. I had your garden hose ready….”
His voice had a self-pitying whine she didn’t remember. He was making excuses for burning down her house, expecting her sympathy.
“Then you came home. I couldn’t take a chance on you seeing me. I didn’t know what you’d do.”
“How did you get my new number?” Her voice shook with fear and rage.
He ignored her question. “Anyway, I’m sorry for what happened. That’s all I want to say.” He hung up, seeming miffed with her unwillingness to sanction his acts.
He didn’t call again until summer. The phone was ringing one day when she came inside at dusk. When she heard Gerry’s voice, she sent Billy into the other room.
“What is it now?” she asked impatiently. She had changed the number again, of course.
“I thought you’d want to know something.”
“Yes.” Her voice was calmer now than at Christmas, but her pulse still raced.
“I don’t live in Michigan anymore. Some pipsqueak prosecutor in Oakland County….”
“So I can rest easy,” she interrupted him. “Well, thanks for the call.” She couldn’t quite resist the natural question. “Another fire, was it?”
He chuckled, but didn’t respond.
“Do your people fight with fire instead of guns?”
“It doesn’t matter, Nettie. I just wanted to say you can take the bed out of the dining room. I thought it was only fair…..” He paused. “Look, I’m not even in that stinkin’ country anymore.”
Canada, she thought. “Am I supposed to be surprised you know about the bed? Well, I already moved it upstairs so you don’t know as much as you think. You’ve been gone for a while, Gerry. And I don’t really care what you did in Oakland County. It’ll always be something, won’t it?”
“Anyway, I won’t call you again, Nettie. I thought you deserved to know that.”
“Sure you will, Gerry,” she told him. “Sure you will.”
THE TROUBLE WITH TROLLS
Heading for the driveway on a Sunday morning, Denny noticed that the eight or ten cars outside his neighbor’s house the night before still lined the street. Did grown men routinely host sleepovers or should he risk embarrassment and check things out? He settled on removing Matt and Ralph’s Sunday Times from the yew where the direct hit of the irrigation system had already saturated it. Denny liked to be regarded favorably as long as the cost was low. The house was preternaturally quiet for nearly noon, the stillness broken only by the sprinkler’s hum.
He managed to beat Dad to the store by a full fifteen minutes and sat nervously eyeing the display of garden sculptures. More than once lately, he’d stumbled over an emancipated troll idling near the rear exit or guarding the bins of screws and nuts. They’d taken on the dusty, glazed look of objects that sat too long in stockrooms. For some reason, Dad found them comical and never failed to chuckle when he came on one unexpectedly. Once or twice, Denny smuggled one home, burying it in the backyard since he wasn’t sure of its recycling requirements. Thankfully, the decline in the store’s troll population had so far gone unnoticed.
His father arrived with the usual query, tossing his sweat-stained hat on the counter. “Have you heard from your brother lately? How’s the new project going?”
This was strictly a rhetorical question since as Patrick’s backer, Dad knew everything about his business.
“Listen, Den,” Dad continued, not even waiting for an answer, “I have a small errand for you boys.”
Denny fixed his eyes on the
dark computer screen. A small errand could mean anything from a trip to the bank to deposit funds to strong-arming one of Dad’s recalcitrant clients for non-payment of legal fees. Along with the hardware store, a flower shop, a small restaurant in Allen Park and the financial backing of his son’s aquarium business, Dad was an attorney with a practice in a section of the city populated by Eastern-European, Latin American, and Arab émigrés. More than once, Denny and Patrick were dispatched to collect delinquent fees from a Turk or Serbian immigrant wanting his child support burden lowered. Or, on one rather frightening occasion, to calm a Colombian drug czar, requesting that his ex-wife be deported or disposed of (“Whatever,” Quatro Velasquez told them obligingly, fingering the square-cut sapphire on his pinky). There’d been other errands, too, of course— tasks Denny would prefer to forget.
“All part of the show,” Dad had said to his sons more than once. “Get used to adult life.”
Michael Patterson had built an empire of sorts in just one generation, coming from a family of auto workers who never thought to do more than side their house in vinyl, drink a beer on Saturday night, and camp in July in the UP. Consequently, complaints from clients regarding his prices drew little sympathy.
“You should see the fuckin’ rates I pay in personal insurance,” he told anyone who questioned his prices or practices. “You want me to take risks, you gotta pay for it.” Despite his ever-decreasing height and flabby girth, Dad remained formidable. He had a strong and jutting chin, a persuasive left hook, and the mental acuity to back both up.
While Denny considered the possible nature of the small errand, Dad walked over to the wall and raised the setting on the thermostat. “You don’t need to cool the whole fucking place when you’re in here alone, Den. Turn on a fan, for Christ’s sake. Open a door.”
His father grabbed a stool from under the counter where the wallpaper sample books rested and sat down. “I’m talking about Tuesday night. She arrives at 6:45 p.m. Air Beirut.”