The inevitable ending to which it all led—Kyle’s ignoring the bills, their budget, their wedding vows—should have been something Markie saw coming. The fact that she had ignored the warning signs was completely on her. It should also have been, she thought, the nadir to which he allowed himself to sink, at least where Jesse was concerned. But unfortunately for Jesse, his father’s rock bottom was apparently still a few fathoms away. Even an event as sobering as divorce hadn’t convinced Kyle to deflakify, and that was on him.
Since their split, she had tried a few times to get him to see things from their son’s point of view and step it up in terms of regular phone calls and showing up on time (or at all). But his response was always the same: He and the kid were doing fine. They were men. They didn’t need hours together to gab. They sent texts every few days, had the odd meal together here or there. They were good.
She told him she wasn’t so sure, that texts and calls might be enough for Kyle, but Jesse needed more from his father. She had learned, though, that there was no person in the world a man was less likely to take advice from than his ex-wife. She had the feeling that when she discussed this topic with Kyle, her words sounded to him like those of Miss Othmar, the unintelligible teacher from Peanuts.
Despite her pleas, he had not increased his visitation with his son, nor had he increased the frequency of his texts and phone calls or gotten better at showing up when he said he would. This was why Markie was pretending to read a novel on the patio one Saturday morning in late September when really she was holding her breath, squeezing her eyes shut, and saying a prayer that this time Kyle would come through.
Moments earlier, Jesse had walked down to the driveway to wait for his dad, his backpack slung over a shoulder. “See you in the morning, Mom,” he had said, not making eye contact, and Markie, relieved he wasn’t looking at her when she spoke, called up her most confident voice and told him to have a great time. She heard a car pull into the driveway, and at the same time, Mrs. Saint’s side door opened.
“Hey, Dad,” Jesse called. He said more, but Markie couldn’t make out the words. A row of shrubs between the patio and the driveway muffled the sound and blocked her view. She rose and was tiptoeing over to snoop through the branches when she heard Mrs. Saint call out behind her.
“Good morning to you, Markie!”
Caught, Markie jumped away from the bushes and turned to face her neighbor, who stood in her doorway in an expensive-looking suede suit and matching shoes, examining with uncertainty the dew-dampened grass that lay between them. Markie called “Good morning” back and lifted a hand in greeting.
The gesture was lost on Mrs. Saint, who was now staring over Markie’s head. Her property was on a higher elevation, and from her vantage point, she could see over the top of the shrubs to Markie’s driveway beyond. Jesse must have looked up, because Mrs. Saint raised a hand to wave before directing her gaze back to Markie. Holding a finger in the air, she studied the wet grass again, and Markie, realizing the other woman must have something to tell her but didn’t want to yell or ruin her shoes, headed toward her. She was wearing her usual dollar-store flip-flops—she should be the one to make the trek. Mrs. Saint started at the same time, though, and they met at the fence.
“Today is a good time for you to meet Ronda,” Mrs. Saint said. “She has had not a nice week, and I think talking to someone quiet, like you—” She stopped speaking and craned to see over Markie’s head. “Oh! Chessie is arriving home, I see. I thought before that he was going.”
“He is going,” Markie said, not bothering to look. “His father’s taking him overnight.”
Mrs. Saint frowned. “Alors, I do not think this is so.”
Markie whipped her head around in time to see Kyle’s car backing out of the drive. His window was down, and he was saying something Markie couldn’t hear. Jesse, still standing in the driveway, nodded once, but she couldn’t make out his response. A second later, Kyle sped away. Long after the car was out of sight, Jesse stood there, unmoving, staring down the street. Then he wrenched the pack off his back, slammed it to the ground, and kicked it, sending it sailing several feet. Snatching it up by a single strap, he stomped toward the house, head down.
“Och,” Mrs. Saint whispered.
“Sweetheart,” Markie said, when Jesse reached the side door. “I’m so sorry.” She had learned to stop there.
Jesse, his hand on the doorknob, kept his head lowered. “It’s fine. It’s just that he has this all-day meeting in, like, an hour, and it’s really important. He tried to get out of it, but he couldn’t.”
“Do you want . . . something to eat, maybe?” Markie asked.
But he was through the door now, and she knew that by the time she made it inside, he would be in his room, lost in one of his video games, the volume turned up loud.
“The thing about a dog is, a boy will hug it.”
The words were whisper quiet, and because of the accent, and the fact that Markie was facing the opposite direction, it took her a second to figure them out.
“He will bury his face in its fur. And he will cry if he needs to. Even if he cannot allow himself to do this in front of another person.”
Markie didn’t have the energy to argue about it, especially now, so she decided to simply say goodbye and that meeting Ronda would have to wait for another day. “I think it’s best—” she began, spinning around to face her neighbor. To her amazement, the old woman’s eyes were shining, and she was holding two fingers to her lips to keep them still.
“I must go,” Mrs. Saint whispered. She turned and made her way back to her house, stepping through her side door and into her sitting room. A moment later, the sitting-room window lowered, and the curtains closed.
Markie marched into the bungalow, snatched her cell phone from the kitchen counter, and dialed her good-for-nothing ex-husband. It went to voice mail. Kyle made it a practice to never listen to voice-mail messages, but she didn’t care—she cursed at him until a beep informed her she had used up her allotted time.
Chapter Thirteen
Markie had been working in her dining room for the past two weeks, avoiding Mrs. Saint since the episode with Kyle in the driveway. She didn’t want to hear more about how Jesse needed a dog, and she didn’t want to have to lie, either, which was what she imagined it would take to get the woman to let the idea go. “Oh, everything’s fine—he and his father made up the same day.”
Everything wasn’t fine. Kyle hadn’t shown up since, and if he and Jesse had been texting or calling each other, Markie wasn’t aware of it. Kyle never responded to the voice mail she left, though she didn’t blame him. She had tried to talk to Jesse about it, but he only said, “It’s whatever,” and changed the subject.
Usually, the new subject involved his going out with Trevor and his other new friends. His phone dinged constantly with texts, and he now had plans every day after school and most evenings after dinner. Plans of the unspecified, teenage type: “Nothing. Nowhere. No one. Just Trevor and the guys.”
It was like the name of a band—Trevor and the Guys. Or a single entity, many-headed, multilimbed: Trevorandtheguys. She didn’t know if Trevor was the sole person named because Jesse was closest to him, or because Trevor was the leader, or for some other reason, and she didn’t want to blow it by asking. Jesse was annoyed with Kyle for once, not with her, and while she took no pleasure in the former, she found great relief in the latter and wasn’t interested in having it change.
Plus, the boy was home when he was supposed to be, and he was getting his homework done. So she kept her questions to herself and said, “Sure, sounds good.” “See you at six.” “See you at ten.” “Have a great time.” And because work was going well, she tried to add, “Here, take a ten,” as often as she could.
Markie was rinsing her lunch dishes at the sink when she spotted Ronda alone in the side yard, no boss in sight. This was her chance to thank the woman for the Popsicle-stick house and the muffins, and she tore towa
rd the fence to find the cook carrying Patty’s rickety old folding metal lawn chair out of the garage.
“Would you like one of these chairs?” Markie called, an arm extended behind her, toward her much more comfortable patio furniture. “It’s the least I can do after you sent that lovely house over.”
Ronda smiled broadly and lumbered over.
“Thank you for that, by the way,” Markie said as she waited for the woman to reach her. “I’m sorry I haven’t made it over before to thank you and to meet you. I was . . . well, there’s no excuse, really.” Finally, Ronda was at the fence, and Markie extended her hand. “I’m Markie. You’re Ronda, right? Or did I just thank the wrong person?”
“Nope, I’m the one,” Ronda said, and her voice was so quiet Markie had to lean closer to make out the words.
Ronda shook hands, hers thick and warm. It was soft, too, as were her flushed cheeks, and Markie thought of the Lycra-encased members of the Saint Mark’s Mothers’ Club, who spent countless hours and dollars in the quest for the dewy-pink glow Ronda had acquired for free by making a two-minute trip from the house to the garage to the fence. It made her love the fleshy cook instantly.
Holding on to Markie with one hand and fanning her face with the other, Ronda said, in her tiny voice, “Oh, land! Wrestling with that old chair!” It seemed an impossible incongruence, Markie thought, the largeness of Ronda’s body and the smallness of her voice. “But at least I won!” She pointed to her victim, sitting obediently open in the sun.
Finally releasing Markie’s hand, Ronda said, “We’ve all been so eager to meet you. And to meet your boy. Especially Lola. She’s so excited about having a playmate next door. You should’ve seen her when Mrs. Saint said she’d spoken to him a few times on his way home from school. She about blew her top! She wanted to leave school early so she could be standing out at the front, too.” She chuckled briefly, then leaned closer and, serious now, said, “She knows she’s not allowed to knock on your door and seek him out. Not until you’ve shown you were, you know . . . ready.”
Markie decided to ignore the part where Mrs. Saint had indeed been standing outside, waiting to intercept Jesse, not just once but “a few times,” and went straight to setting expectations for Lola’s interactions with him. “I hope someone will warn her that high school kids aren’t really into playing,” she said, striving for a tone that was as kind as it was firm. “I wouldn’t want her to get her hopes up.”
Ronda smiled, undaunted. “Too late for that, probably. And thanks for the offer of a chair, but it’s for Lola, not me. And I don’t think you want her smearing her chocolate into your new cushions.”
As if on cue, the door from the screened porch opened and Lola appeared, wearing a short, summery dress with jeans underneath and an old hooded sweatshirt, unzipped, over top. Holding something aloft in one hand, the girl jumped from the top step down to the grass, sailing over the four wooden steps that led down from the porch and landing with her bare feet planted together, both arms high in the air.
“Nice!” Ronda called. “I’d give it a nine point five.” To Markie, she said, “We let her watch the Olympics this summer. She’s been doing that ever since.”
Lola snapped her head toward the fence, her mouth open.
“You didn’t notice anyone else was out here?” Ronda laughed. “Why am I not surprised? Put a Hershey bar in your hand and watch the rest of the world disappear.”
At the mention of it, Lola gazed lovingly at the chocolate bar she held, then turning back to Ronda, pointed at the chair, her expression inquisitive.
“Yes, I put it there for you,” Ronda said. “Your mother says I should only give you fifteen minutes, though, and then herd you back in for homework. You want a glass of water?”
“No, thanks.” Lola shivered and pulled her sweatshirt closed.
“I thought your mom was going to fix that zipper,” Ronda said. Lola shot her a look, and Ronda said, “I know, but even a few safety pins would keep it closed. She doesn’t have to actually sew. Leave it here when you go, and I’ll see what I can do.”
Lola nodded and climbed into the chair, crossing her legs. Using her free hand, she brushed her stringy, dirty-looking hair out of her eyes, and Markie tried not to think of how much she could accomplish if the girl would let her take a damp cloth and a hairbrush over.
“Oh!” Ronda said. “Our manners! Lola, this is Mrs. Saint’s new neighbor, Ms. . . .” She peered at Markie and asked, “What should she call you?”
“Markie is good. Hi, Lola.”
Lola smiled shyly. “You have a boy.”
“Yes, I do. His name is Jesse. He’s older. He started ninth grade this year.”
“I started second.”
Markie almost said, “I know, I heard,” but caught herself, and instead asked how she liked school so far.
“I like after school better. Ronda gives me these sometimes.” She held up the chocolate bar. “And Frédéric lets me help him do stuff.”
“But not today,” Ronda said. “You have that reading work sheet, and then your mom needs to get going early. So there’s not much time.”
Lola didn’t need to be told twice, and in about two seconds, she had the candy wrapper torn off, rolled into a ball, and shoved into the pocket of her jeans.
“That girl would eat five of those bars if I let her,” Ronda said. “She once told me she’d had chocolate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner over the weekend. On both days! She doesn’t have too many rules at home. So I’ve got to be a bit strict with her here, keep her to a bar a week.”
“I wonder what her dentist thinks about her eating so much chocolate,” Markie whispered.
“That’s what Mrs. Saint’s always saying every time I give her some. But then Frédéric reminds her what it was to be a child with a rare piece of chocolate, and she backs down.” Ronda smiled.
“Mrs. Saint certainly has a lot of opinions,” Markie said, leaning toward Ronda conspiratorially. “I’m surprised to hear she ever concedes a point, to Frédéric or anyone. By the way, how did she meet him? I’ve asked her a few times, but she always acts like she can’t hear the question. For someone so interested in everyone else’s story, she’s certainly reluctant to reveal her own!”
Ronda’s smile sagged, and her eyes told Markie there was no point in anyone trying to get her to utter a negative word about her employer or in expecting her to reveal information the Frenchwoman didn’t want others to know.
“I imagine most people that age have a little mystery to them,” Ronda said lightly. “All that life! I know I’d find it hard to keep all the details straight, even if I wanted to let people know everything!”
Markie didn’t buy it, and Ronda must have been able to tell, because she gave an apologetic smile. But she didn’t offer anything further, and Markie could see it would be futile to push.
They were both quiet for a few minutes, and then Ronda said, “I can tell you this, though. She may come out swinging hard, but on the inside, she’s really an old softie.”
Markie pictured Mrs. Saint sliding into the diner booth beside the crying Ronda, putting an arm around her, tut-tutting as she brushed hair out of Ronda’s eyes and told her she needed to find a job that wasn’t so demanding. “I could use a cook myself,” she heard the old woman lie.
“She has really helped the others,” Ronda said. In response to Markie’s look of confusion, Ronda said, “Bruce, Frédéric, Patty, and Lola, I mean. They needed a place, and she made one for them. A job and a good salary. Even meals; that’s where I come in.” She jabbed a thick finger into her breastbone.
“She wanted to make sure they were eating three good squares. People on hard times, sometimes they let that go first, you know. But if someone just makes up a plate for them, they’ll eat it. So we serve a nice hot breakfast, a good lunch, and then dinner. To make sure they’re taking care of at least that part of things.”
“Right,” Markie whispered. She waited for Ronda to add the part w
here her cooking wasn’t all that good, where she was distracted so easily that she let pots boil over, so Mrs. Saint had to bring Patty in to help with the mess. The part where Ronda needed a place, too, where she was this close to losing her job and Mrs. Saint came to the rescue just in time. The part where she wasn’t merely cooking for Mrs. Saint’s Defectives but was one of them.
But Ronda was finished talking. The door from the house to the screened porch opened then, and Patty called through the screen, “Lola! We’ve got to bolt! I’m already running late!”
Seeing Markie and Ronda at the fence, she called, “So, there she is. Our reclusive neighbor.”
“Patty!” Ronda chastised. To Markie she said, “Sorry. No filter on that one.”
“It’s fine,” Markie said, waving to Patty, who was walking toward the fence. She wore skintight jeans and a low-cut blouse, and like her daughter, she was barefoot. Markie extended her hand. “I’m Markie. Neighborhood recluse.”
Patty shook with one hand while the other reached into her back pocket, extracting a pack of cigarettes. She pulled one out between her teeth, pushed the pack back into her pocket, fished a lighter out of another pocket, and then dropped Markie’s hand so she could cup the flame in both hands. Markie watched her, entranced—not by Patty’s simple act of lighting a cigarette, but by the authoritativeness of her movements. Everything about this woman seemed out of place, from her seventies-style feathered hair to her inappropriately sexy outfit, to the regularity with which she seemed to shirk her work duties and her child, yet she moved and spoke and carried herself as though she belonged exactly where she was and was conducting herself precisely as she should be.
“Just ribbing you,” Patty said, inhaling, then angling her face up to let a long trail of smoke out without blowing it into the other women’s faces. “Mrs. Saint told us you weren’t much for company just yet.” Jabbing a thumb over her shoulder where Lola sat, she said, “I hope she’s not the one who finally brung you out from under cover.”
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