Mrs. Saint and the Defectives: A Novel

by Julie Lawson Timmer

  Plus, the place was more than she could afford and required a full-year commitment. She had been offered the Global Insurance job only that morning—she couldn’t be certain it would work out for an entire year, and even if she could be sure, a hefty rent payment was a big risk for someone who was paid piece rate instead of a guaranteed monthly wage. She listed her concerns in the “Notes” section of the rental application and reminded herself that things happen for a reason: if they rejected her because of her financial instability, it wasn’t meant to be.

  Within an hour, she heard back: they were willing to reduce the monthly rent by 10 percent, waive the security deposit, and shorten the lease term to six months with an option to extend. If those new terms appealed to her, all she had to do was send a check for the first month’s rent, and the place was hers. Having recently been hoodwinked on the financial front, Markie was suspicious. “That’s very generous,” she wrote back, “but would you mind telling me why you’re so willing to cut such a deal?” The place had been vacant for some time, the agent replied, and the landlord was eager to fill it. Satisfied, Markie put a check in her parents’ mailbox that night.

  “I’m afraid I’m not the help you were expecting,” Markie said, her voice firm, her position nonnegotiable. She indicated the stack of files beside her chair. “I have so much work. And . . .”

  “And a boy,” Mrs. Saint said.

  Markie couldn’t tell if the older woman was being understanding or if she was pointing out that with only one child, Markie had plenty of time to serve as the new outplacement coordinator. “And like I said, we’re moving soon, so there wouldn’t be time anyway.”

  “It is only that I worry,” Mrs. Saint said. “What would they do if anything happened to me?”

  She steepled her fingers, and as she bent her head to study her hands, Markie considered how endearing it was for Mrs. Saint to care so much. The woman might be nettlesome, but she was also selfless.

  “I’m sure you worry,” Markie said. She wasn’t getting involved, but she wasn’t without compassion. “Maybe there’s a community organization that could help. Some kind of job-skills training center or something.”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Saint looked up. “This is a good idea. I will look into.”

  “Good,” Markie said. “I hope you find something.” Eager to move the conversation away from the subject of her own involvement with Mrs. Saint’s employees, she said, “So you’ve been doing this for a long time, it sounds like. Hiring people to work around your house, coaching them, helping them get jobs?”

  “My Edouard has provided me with more money than I need. And we have all learned, have we not, that we are to help our neighbor? This is a way I could help.”

  “So it’s a religious calling?” Markie asked. Confusion registered on the older woman’s face, so Markie explained. “‘We are all to help our neighbor,’ you said. I thought maybe it was some sort of instruction from the Bible or something. And I guess I assumed you were Catholic, since you’re from Quebec. I’m sorry if that was—”

  “Mais oui,” Mrs. Saint said. “Catholic. Of course. But this is not something I have learned from a Bible anyway. Only something I have learned from life.”

  “Well, it’s a lovely idea, helping a neighbor,” Markie said. “And I’m sure there are plenty of people like you who do it for reasons other than religion. It’s a way of giving back, isn’t it? And that can be especially appealing to someone who received a great deal of help themselves once—”

  “Of course not!” Mrs. Saint dropped her hands and pressed so firmly on the arms of her chair that it seemed she was about to stand and leave. She didn’t move, though, and after a moment she composed herself. “Of course not,” she repeated, this time more quietly.

  Markie considered pointing out that she only meant her statement to be generic—she wasn’t suggesting this was the case for Mrs. Saint specifically. Given the violent reaction, though, it felt like the wiser choice to leave it alone, so instead she said, “Well, it’s extremely thoughtful of you. Lots of people have plenty of money, but they don’t use it on anyone but themselves.”

  Mrs. Saint swatted the compliment away and turned from Markie, pretending to examine the shrubs bordering the patio, while Markie added “humble” to the list of positive attributes she was starting to appreciate in the older woman. She would still prefer to avoid Mrs. Saint for the remainder of her time in the bungalow, but there was no denying the fact that the woman was doing a great amount of good in the world. More than Markie ever had.

  More than her parents had, too, as far as she knew. How many worthy causes could have been aided with the amount Clayton and Lydia spent on annual country club dues, she wondered, before she checked herself and her hypocrisy. Hadn’t she told herself only moments ago that with the kind of money Mrs. Saint had, her own investment would be in a swanky condo? And hadn’t she had that thought mere moments before she advised her neighbor in no uncertain terms that she would not be signing on to help?

  “Where did you meet them?” she asked. “Frédéric and Bruce and Ronda and Patty? And all the others over the years?”

  It wasn’t curiosity, she told herself. It was simply polite conversation. It was also a preferable focus for her attention than her own selfishness. From the way Mrs. Saint immediately interrupted her faux study of the shrubbery and turned to speak, Markie could tell it was also a more appealing topic to her neighbor than the subject of her generosity.

  “Bruce, I met when he is getting fired from the gardening and hardware store he is working at,” Mrs. Saint said. “I am walking out of the place with Frédéric, and the manager was giving some very rough words to Bruce, and then he opened the door and pointed him to the outside, like he was an unwanted cat!” She narrowed her eyes. “We never have gone back to that one.

  “And so, there were we, walking out at the same time with him. And Frédéric was having a struggle with a new wheelbarrow and many bags of things. So he took up a step with Bruce, and he pointed to the car, and he said, ‘This is my lucky day, monsieur, because I need someone strong to help me with some jobs, and it seems you are now available.’”

  “Frédéric hired him?” Markie asked. “But isn’t Frédéric one of—?”

  “He knew I was about to. And he knew it would feel better to Bruce if he is asked in such a way as that, by a man who needs help with some jobs, rather than an old woman who might only be having sorry feelings for him. And so he came with us, and he has done the garden and lawn ever since. Also now your lawn and garden, as you know, since the landlord of your house also hired him. He is a very . . . hard-working gardener.”

  She wouldn’t dare say he was a good gardener, Markie thought, or an efficient one. Over the past three weeks, she had seen Bruce plant, then dig up and replant elsewhere, about a dozen small shrubs, half a dozen taller bushes, and several armfuls of hostas. This after Frédéric or Mrs. Saint pointed out that, alas, he had put shade lovers in direct sun again or had forgotten that Mrs. Saint wanted taller things here, shorter ones over there.

  “And Frédéric?” Markie asked. “Where did you meet him?”

  “And then Ronda,” Mrs. Saint said, ignoring the question, “I saw her crying in a diner.”

  “You mean, she’d just been fired, too? You have some timing!”

  “Non. She was not being fired, but she was being yelled at for her whole shift because she is not enough fast on her feet. She tells me this when I sit beside her in the booth. I order tea, and I sit with her, and she tells me these things. Also that she is distracted often of times by this faith healing thing she has.

  “She thinks she sees visions and the such, and each time she stops to focus on that, even if there is something on the stove she should be giving her concentration to. Of course, she was not very good enough of a cook for them to tolerate when she is slow or distracted. And so, maybe she would be better at a place where it is not so important if she is this way. This is the part I told her.”
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  “And at your house, she doesn’t need to be fast or focused,” Markie said.

  “Or good!” Mrs. Saint whispered, her eyes almost disappearing in the wrinkled folds around them. She bent forward, her body shaking as she giggled noiselessly. “Oh, I should not,” she said, gasping for air. She straightened and covered her disobedient grin with a palm until it fell into an appropriately sober line, then cleared her throat. “Patty and her little Lola, I have met in a food pantry.”

  Younger than the others, Patty was tall and super skinny and pale and pockmarked and long-haired and gravelly voiced. Several times a day, Markie saw her slouching outside in the corner where the porch met the house, one hand in the back pocket of her painted-on jeans, the other holding a cigarette. Sometimes she carried an old metal lawn chair out of the garage and plunked herself down, stretching her long legs and tilting her face to the sun while her cigarette dangled from one hand, sometimes falling to the ground as she dozed off.

  Patty’s daughter, Lola, was in second grade this year, a fact Markie assumed the entire neighborhood was aware of, since the girl had spent three days shrieking with joy about it before school resumed. She was a shorter version of her mother—thin and pale, with stringy, dirty-looking hair always fighting to escape its messy ponytail. Each time Markie saw her, Lola was in some strange outfit—a dress on top of jeans, shorts over leggings, a long skirt matched with a bikini top.

  Also each time Markie saw Lola, the girl was alone, wandering aimlessly around the yard. It made Markie feel sad for her. Did she have no friends she could invite over, no toys to play with? A lonely child herself, overlooked by parents focused more on whether their daughter impressed their friends than whether she was happy, Markie had felt an instant connection to Lola, despite having seen her only from afar. One afternoon when Lola was digging with a stick in a patch of dirt behind Mrs. Saint’s garage, humming a forlorn-sounding tune, Markie had to force herself inside and up to her room to keep from inviting the girl over for lemonade and a round of one of Jesse’s old board games.

  It seemed to Markie that Patty regarded her daughter as more of an amusement than a responsibility. Several times Markie had seen Patty languishing on the metal lawn chair while inside the screened porch, Bruce or Ronda tried to cajole Lola into finishing her homework or having an apple instead of another handful of cookies.

  “Don’t you agree, Patty?” the others would call.

  “If you say so,” Patty would answer with a shrug and a flick of her cigarette, to show she really had no dog in the fight.

  “They came in at the end of my shift,” Mrs. Saint went on. “The moment I saw them, I knew—” She clamped her mouth shut, cutting off the rest of her sentence, and shook her head. Then she took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and muttered, “I am getting tired.”

  “You knew what?” Markie asked.

  Mrs. Saint looked down, suddenly very interested in whether she had gotten dirt on her shoes. “I knew they needed help. This is all.”

  It was clear that wasn’t what Mrs. Saint had known when she first saw Patty and Lola, but Markie decided not to press. It wasn’t like her neighbor would admit the truth anyway, given her track record of disclosure thus far, and accusing her of dishonesty hardly seemed like the right thing to do during their first real conversation.

  “The tables all were empty,” Mrs. Saint went on, “and there was not many food left, but they were happy for a place to sit. Patty was not in such a hurry to go back home. They live with her mother, and that woman has . . . challenges. Patty was telling to me all the list of where she was taking Lola every day, only to get a break from this mother. So I make the suggestion to spend time at my house instead of all these places they are going where a young child does not need to be so all the time. I already had the others to help, but you can always find more things, non? Vacuuming and the such?”

  Markie looked sideways. The only time she had heard the vacuum running inside, Patty was outside, smoking and sunning on the old metal lawn chair.

  “Or helping Ronda to remember to look at the pots so there is not so much boiling over every time,” Mrs. Saint said. “And cleaning up in the kitchen when things get spilled on the floor, which is a thing Ronda is doing always. And then later, I suggest maybe it would be very better in the school over here for Lola, not the one near their apartment, and Patty agreed. So, that is why those two.”

  “And then Frédéric?” Markie tried again. She was as annoyed with herself for asking again as she was with her neighbor for not answering the first time.

  “I have a special skill, you see,” Mrs. Saint said, “in finding what thing a person needs most in their life. Noticing what is their défaut, which is to mean their . . .” She turned her hands over and examined her veins for the English translation. “Flaw. I am good at seeing what is the flaw they have that needs to be fixed and then helping them to fix it. Sometimes people want to agree about this, and sometimes they do not. But this is a thing I am good at.”

  Mrs. Saint gazed around the patio, looking everywhere but at Markie, who was certain the woman was thinking of the many terrible failings her new neighbor possessed, starting with forcing her son, “le pauvre” Jesse, to suffer the deprivations of life without five daily servings of vegetables or a dog. Markie wanted to roll her eyes at the lack of subtlety, but instead, feeling defensive, she decided to attack from another angle.

  “Did you say défectueux?” she asked. “When you first started telling me about them? And does that mean what I think it does? Because, I have to say—”

  “Oui. Défectueux. Or to say in English, I think, day-fec-tif?”

  “De-fec-tive,” Markie corrected, dragging it out not to accentuate the correct pronunciation but to make clear how inappropriate a term it was.

  “Defective,” Mrs. Saint repeated, nodding her thanks for the English lesson and missing the rest of the point.

  “Don’t you think it’s a rather insulting label?” Markie said.

  “Och”—Mrs. Saint waved a hand—“I would never say it to them. Oh, and here comes Bruce with his mulch. I guess Frédéric has started on something else.”

  Markie, unwilling to let the matter drop, leaned closer and whispered, “But to even say it about them—”

  There was a loud noise behind her then, and Bruce said, “Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Mrs. Saint winced, and Markie turned in her chair to find the gardener standing beside an overturned wheelbarrow and looking glumly at an ugly swath of dark mulch that now covered two square feet of Mrs. Saint’s formerly pristine lawn. Muttering, he righted the wheelbarrow, dropped to his knees, cupped his hands, and started scooping the offending dirt back where it belonged. It was a finely mixed substance, though, and much of it sifted through his fingers. At the rate he was going, it would take him hours to clean it up.

  Markie swiveled back around, expecting her neighbor to be wincing still, or even jumping to her feet, ready to bark instructions for a faster cleanup. But all traces of displeasure were gone from the older woman’s face, and instead of leaping up and shouting, she sat still, watching him silently—almost, Markie thought, contentedly.

  After a moment, Mrs. Saint called, “Or a shovel?” She pointed to the side of the garage, where a shovel leaned against the outer wall. “Would it be more quickly, do you think?”

  There wasn’t a trace of annoyance in her tone, and she leaned forward, her expression eager, as though she had no idea if a shovel would be faster and was waiting for him to solve the dilemma for her.

  Bruce followed the aim of her finger to the shovel and considered it for a moment. “I think a shovel will be faster,” he announced. He retrieved the tool, and after he had deposited two shovels’ worth into the wheelbarrow, he faced his employer again. “I’ll have this cleaned up in no time. Don’t worry.”

  Mrs. Saint spread her arms wide, palms out. “Why would I worry?”

  Bruce beamed and resumed his work as Markie took in her neighbor’s pensive fac
e. She could almost hear Mrs. Saint’s internal plotting as the old woman constructed a plan involving Frédéric and a trip out to the yard after Bruce left—there would be a flashlight, Markie imagined, and possibly a pair of tweezers. She could almost hear the curse words Mrs. Saint must surely be thinking to herself, too. There was no way such an affront to her perfect grass wasn’t causing a significant degree of mental anguish.

  But if any of this was going on inside the older woman’s head, none of it was apparent from the outside. Rather, there was a softness around Mrs. Saint’s mouth and a brightness in her eyes as she watched Bruce work. It was the same expression Markie had noticed on move-in day when her neighbor stood under the oak tree, watching the two men unload the truck.

  “Look,” Markie said, her voice low, “it’s clear how much you care about all of them. You’ve given them jobs, you give them no end of second chances. You’re worried about their future without you. And all of that is really sweet. It’s just that it feels . . . not right, your calling them your defectives. I know it’s none of my business, but—”

  Mrs. Saint patted Markie’s knee. “I apologize. I am not one for . . .” She made a circular motion with her hand as she tried to recall the correct English phrase. “Making a mincemeat with my words. They need help, these ones, in different ways. That is all. Or even to say it a different way, they each have a break—they each are broken. And if a thing is broken, you say it is defective, non?”

  “Well, you say that about a thing, sure,” Markie said. “You don’t say it about a person.”

  Mrs. Saint pursed her lips and nodded, but not in the manner of someone conceding a point. “What is your way of helping people?” she asked.

  I leave them alone, Markie wanted to say. I don’t storm over within moments of their arrival and take over their move-in process, accuse their children of sneak smoking, criticize their TV-viewing habits, and suggest they need to improve their nutritional intake and get themselves “un chien.”