Mrs. Saint and the Defectives: A Novel

by Julie Lawson Timmer

  She went with a less confrontational truth instead. “I . . . I haven’t been big on volunteering recently. But I, uh, always helped with the school’s Earth Day project every year. And there were other, um, campus cleanup days and that sort of . . .” She gave up. “It’s not easy to find extra time, with a son and a divorce and . . .”

  “Of course.”

  Mrs. Saint’s smile and the tone of her voice let Markie know she owed her neither an explanation for her dismal record of community service nor an apology for jumping on her word choice. Markie felt something relax in her chest as the defenses she had instinctively kept up around her neighbor eased a little. Maybe it wouldn’t be terrible to get to know her a little better.

  “The first time I heard Lola’s voice in your yard,” Markie said, “I assumed she was your granddaughter. Do you have any? Did you and Edouard have children?”

  In an instant, Mrs. Saint’s smile disappeared. “Non.” She bowed her head and pretended to study the wicker weave of her armrest, her fingers tracing the ropy strands. Her anger was so palpable that Markie wanted to kick herself for asking such a personal question.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching to touch the older woman’s knee. “It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  Mrs. Saint snapped her head up, moved in her chair to escape Markie’s touch, and stretched her lips into an artificial smile. “Non, non. It is nothing. I am only, as I said, becoming tired. I think I should be returning home.” She stood, and Markie rose, too.

  Mrs. Saint pointed to the basket. “In some days, I will send Lola to fetch this. She has been very much wanting to meet Chessie. It would be nice for them to play outside together.”

  “Jesse’s in ninth grade,” Markie said. “Lola’s in second.”

  Mrs. Saint shrugged. “Homework together, then. Lola is needing help always, and the rest of us are not so good at all the maths and such. I am sure Chessie could do. This would be good for the both, I think.”

  Markie felt her cheeks begin to catch fire. First the woman wanted Markie to be her unpaid Assistant in Charge of Defectives, and now she wanted Jesse to tutor their offspring? And who did she think she was, telling Markie what was good for her own son?

  Markie lifted the basket and stepped to the door. “The best thing for Jesse is what he’s been doing—spending time with the kids at his new school, making friends. Ones his own age.”

  Mrs. Saint’s lips twisted sideways, and Markie could tell she was about to speak. She didn’t want to hear it.

  Pushing the side door open, Markie said, “I’d better get these muffins inside, out of this heat.”

  Mrs. Saint nodded and moved toward the fence. “And I will send Lola—”

  “No need. We’ll get the basket back to you.”

  “Oh yes. You could have Chessie—”

  “I will bring it to you,” Markie said firmly. “Thanks again. And please give my thanks to Ronda.”

  She stepped inside and closed the door before Mrs. Saint could say they would discuss it later.

  Chapter Eleven

  On Monday, Markie woke to the staccato sound of rain on the roof. She groaned—she would be confined to working inside—and after reading the clock on her bedside table, she swore. It was 7:09 a.m. She had overslept.

  “Bye, Mom!” Jesse called from the side door, and now she smiled, his cheery farewell enough to erase her annoyance at the weather and her oversleeping.

  She reached for her cell phone and texted him, apologizing for not being downstairs in time to say goodbye. She signed off xo, and for the first time in several weeks didn’t immediately regret having pushed her luck.

  Her phone dinged a moment later with his response: No worries. You too. xo

  On the weekend, they had finally gone on the deli-and-movie date she’d been planning. It hadn’t exactly been a chat-fest. Jesse didn’t say much about Trevor or the nameless “other guys.” He said even less about the fact that, as they were driving to the deli, Kyle had texted to cancel their plans for Sunday brunch. “It’s whatever. He’s really busy.” But they ate an entire meal at the same table, trading at least three dozen words, they laughed at all the same parts in the movie, and on the way home, when Markie said she’d had a great time and would love to do it again, he said, “Same.”

  Markie looked out her bedroom window and saw her son walking toward the curb, where a car idled. The driver, a boy who didn’t look much older than Jesse, jerked his chin in greeting and called something Markie couldn’t hear. Jesse returned the chin lift and climbed into the backseat beside two shadows she couldn’t make out, and they pulled away.

  Presumably, one of the other passengers was Trevor. Or was he the driver? She had assumed he and Jesse were the same age, but she hadn’t come out and asked the question. Should she have? And if Trevor was only a ninth grader, was that his older brother behind the wheel? Or a friend? Was it someone Jesse knew, maybe from past rides? He hadn’t complained about the walk home from school lately—was this why?

  She reached for her phone. She needed to remind him of their rule that he ask her before accepting a ride from someone she hadn’t met. But instead of typing a message, she set the device back down. The conversation could wait until he got home. She would hate for the kids in the back to see his “mommy’s” admonition on his phone screen.

  In the bathroom, she washed her face and studied her reflection in the mirror. Should she have the discussion with him after school? He was in high school now, so maybe the ask-before-getting-into-a-car rule should be retired. She could imagine a vehicle full of impatient teenagers rolling their eyes as he stood on the curb, pecking away at his cell phone and saying, “Just let me get clearance from my mom first.” She wanted him to have friends, to be close enough to a few kids that he could ask for a ride if it was raining, or even if it wasn’t. Maybe she should keep quiet.

  In the kitchen, she filled the kettle, ground five tablespoons of coffee, and dumped them into the French press. As she waited for the water to boil, she peeked out the window above the sink and wondered whether Mrs. Saint would hold her morning meeting inside the house, given the weather. She pressed her forehead against the window glass and peered into the porch, trying to discern whether the cushions on the porch chairs were cloth, in which case they would be too damp to sit on, or vinyl.

  The porch was in shadow, so she squinted harder, until the screaming kettle roused her, calling her attention not only to the boiled water, but also to the fact that she had been spying. She spun to face the stove top, pouring water into the press and crossing her arms as she waited for it to steep. She didn’t realize she had turned around again until she felt the cool glass of the window against her forehead.

  Cursing, she ordered herself into the dining room and reached for the curtain. Before she could pull it closed, she saw a tall, thin shadow cross the window in Mrs. Saint’s unlit living room, and she wondered why Frédéric would show up early on such a day. Surely there would be little for him to do, few outdoor tasks for him to supervise and correct, given the rain.

  At ten, she rose from the dining room table and her neat stacks of files and stretched her arms high, swiveling her head right, then left, to work out the kinks. In the kitchen, she transferred the remaining muffins from Mrs. Saint’s basket to a plastic container and peered outside. The rain hadn’t stopped, but it had let up significantly. Crossing the wet lawn, she forced herself to fix her gaze straight ahead, not allowing a sideways glance into the porch. If coffee hour had taken place out there while she was working on the other side of her dining room curtain, she didn’t need to know about it.

  Mrs. Saint answered the door. Markie was surprised—she had expected Ronda or Patty to answer.

  “Only the others are gone,” Mrs. Saint said, noticing the look on her neighbor’s face. “I sent them out on the errands.”

  Markie held out the basket. “I wanted to thank you again for this. And to thank Ronda.”

&n
bsp; “You could come in and wait for her. They might not be long.” She stepped backward and opened the door wider.

  Markie didn’t move, nor did she allow herself to peek inside. “Thank you, but I really have to get back to work,” she said. “And look, I forgot to do it when we talked the other day, but I also wanted to thank you for the idea to call about the cable. I checked with the leasing agent a few days after we moved in. You were right: it was included in the lease after all. Not in the actual document—I checked before I called. They somehow left it out. The leasing agent couldn’t say why. Anyway, Jesse was thrilled.”

  Mrs. Saint nodded. “Except that sometimes I think it was a mistake to tell it to you. Because too much TV is going on. I did not realize how it would be.”

  Markie cocked her head sideways, puzzled. “How would you know how much TV—?”

  The old woman pointed across the fence to the egress window that led from Jesse’s basement bedroom to the side yard. “The lights from the TV. They do the . . .” She opened and closed her hands twice. “Into the too-late hours.”

  Stop spying on him and you won’t have to be disappointed about how much TV he’s watching, Markie wanted to say. Instead, she went with, “Well, it’s only the first month of school, and they seem to be easing in pretty slowly. When his homework ramps up, the TV will go off. Although, like I’ve told him, the ability to work with noise in the background isn’t a bad one to have. TV, stereo, roommates talking, whatever. So even when his schoolwork starts getting harder, I can’t say I’ll be too strict about whether he keeps the set on, as long as he’s getting his assignments done.”

  Mrs. Saint pursed her lips at this, and Markie could tell the other woman was deciding whether to argue the point now or leave it for later. Markie decided for her, stepping away from the doorway and turning for home while she forced herself to remain calm. Why had she bothered to offer the woman an explanation?

  “Thanks again for the lovely basket,” she said with exaggerated cheer, raising her hand in a wave as she stepped lightly toward the bungalow. I will not storm across the lawn like an angry child.

  “And have you met the boys who picked him up this morning?” Mrs. Saint asked.

  “Nope,” Markie said, not turning, not stopping. “He’s in high school now. He doesn’t have to ask me every time he gets a ride from someone.”

  “It is only that Frédéric is seeing those ones before, in the downtown. He recognizes the car.”

  Markie refused to slow her pace. “I trust my son. He’s very responsible for his age, and he knows better than to—”

  She clamped her mouth shut. She was done explaining herself, done defending her child to this woman, to her parents, or to anyone.

  As she stepped inside the bungalow, she heard the creaking of Mrs. Saint’s door as the woman began to close it. Before Markie could congratulate herself for finally getting in the last word with her neighbor, Mrs. Saint said, “I am sure you already have rules for the special window.”

  When Jesse got home, Markie asked about the friends who had driven him.

  “Just Trevor and the guys.”

  “I’d love to meet them sometime.”

  He winced. “They’re not taking me to the prom, Mom.”

  “Kids don’t meet their friends’ parents these days?”

  “Uh, no.” He reached into the cupboard for a box of cereal.

  “Well, maybe you want to have them over sometime. Just to hang out, not to meet me, specifically.”

  He scanned the family room and kitchen and the doorway that led to the unfinished basement and his cramped bedroom. “Here?”

  She was shocked by how much his question hurt. Or was it an accusation? She decided to leave it alone. She wanted to leave Mrs. Saint’s comments alone, too, especially after the smoking-in-the-yard fiasco, but she couldn’t.

  “Mrs. Saint seems to have some concerns about them. Do you have any idea what she’s talking about?”

  Jesse thrust his hand into the cereal box and shoved a handful of honey-covered Os into his mouth. “None.”

  “She said Frédéric ran into them downtown, and, I don’t know, saw them doing something he didn’t like, maybe? She didn’t give any details except that he recognized the car.”

  He scoffed. “It’s a Ford Fusion. Do you have any idea how many of those there are around here? Wrong guys.” Carrying the box with him, he reached in for another handful as he walked to the basement door.

  “Oh, hey,” Markie said, pretending a thought had come to her out of the blue and had no relationship to his friends or her chat with their neighbor. “I was thinking, do we need to talk about the egress window? Like, when and why you’d open it?”

  Jesse stopped at the door. “What’s an egress window?”

  “In the basement? The big one, in your room?”

  “That thing opens?”

  Markie was torn between feeling like a great mom for having such an un-devious child and feeling like a negligent parent for going so long without telling him how to save himself in the event of a fire.

  Chapter Twelve

  It gave Markie no joy to know it, but Kyle had not risen to the occasion as a divorced dad. Instead of spending every other weekend with his son, as the parenting schedule allowed, he showed up late on the occasional Saturday or Sunday morning, took Jesse to lunch, sometimes (but rarely) adding a matinee or some other short excursion, and returned him before dinner. Most weeks, he didn’t show at all. Sometimes he texted to cancel, but not always, and Jesse had spent a lot of time standing in the driveway, a flat hand over his eyes like a visor, peering down the street for a car that never came.

  “It’s just that he’s really busy right now,” Jesse would tell Markie when he gave up waiting and returned to the house. “He wanted to come, but he got caught up with something.”

  The “something” changed often—Kyle was helping a buddy move or paint or put on a new roof or pave the driveway. Or he was focusing on his new job or traveling for work. Or getting ready for an interview, after he “decided to leave” his last position. The end result was always the same—another week gone by with Jesse not seeing his father.

  Markie wasn’t one of those divorced women who liked to nod, self-satisfied, as she listed for herself all the ways in which her ex was disappointing their son. She and Kyle were over, but Jesse and Kyle would never be. She wanted them to have a good relationship. She wanted her son to be able to count on his father. For that to happen, though, Kyle had to become reliable—not his strong suit.

  It had been endearing at first, his flightiness and the scatterbrained way he meandered through life. In college, she was his wake-up call during final exams, his external conscience when the bar beckoned more loudly to him than the library. Her friends made fun of their dynamic, calling her “little mother” and him “wayward son,” but she liked the roles they had fallen into. After a childhood of being deemed incompetent by perfection-seeking parents, it made her feel good to be the responsible one in the relationship, the person with the answers, the master plan. Plus, she assumed this must be the way of life for all beautiful people: as compensation for their good looks and charisma, they were allowed to let their far-less-captivating partner handle life’s boring details while they, unhindered by such trifling concerns, floated about, charming everyone. She was the backstage director who worked so hard to make the star shine and without whom there could be no show. She was needed. And that made her feel secure.

  Marriage didn’t change things. They would plan a dinner party, and when the appointed date arrived, Markie would be dashing madly around the house getting everything ready, while Kyle, having lost interest in place settings and wine pairings, would wander off to the gym. There would be frantic calls from her, sincere apologies from him, along with a last-minute shower and change of clothes as their guests were arriving, or often after they had already come.

  She would be frazzled and anxious and wondering if the entire night would be a
failure, and then he would burst into the room, hair still damp, smiling and laughing and greeting their friends as though it were perfectly natural for him to make such a late entrance. Within thirty seconds of his dazzling arrival, the party would be on its way. Markie would begin the night thinking she wanted to strangle him and end it gazing at him over the candlesticks and wondering how she had been so lucky to find such a man.

  In the early years, she’d refused to let it bother her. Some people were made to manage all the mundane details of life, she told herself, while the beautiful people like Kyle were meant to breathe animation into it. Markie was social enough, but she didn’t have a fraction of what Kyle had when it came to entertaining, whether it was adults for dinner or Jesse’s ten best friends for a sleepover or just the three of them at home on a weekend. She was invitations and polished silver and perfect place settings. Kyle was music and dancing and backyard bonfires and ice-cream sundaes for dinner. She could never take on his role. Why expect him to do hers?

  After she had collected more years, though, along with colleagues, bosses, and neighbors, some of them rivals with Kyle in the charm-and-sex-appeal department, she realized it wasn’t a Beautiful People Thing that prevented Kyle from participating in the tedious workings of their household; it was only a Kyle Thing. And whether because of learned helplessness or advanced age or a rebellion against the unceasing demands of adulthood, it got more pronounced over time, until a formerly endearing quirkiness started to look, to Markie, like unappealing flakiness. The more she pleaded with him to act his age, the more childish he seemed to become, and over time, the “trifling minutiae” he couldn’t be bothered to invest in went beyond events of little consequence like dinner parties or parent-teacher meetings and expanded to things like work deadlines, job interviews, and commitments he made to Jesse.