Mrs. Saint and the Defectives: A Novel

by Julie Lawson Timmer

  She took another sip and looked at her waist, admiring the way her yoga pants now gaped there. Another few weeks of star-level file review like the two she had just completed, which would mean another few paychecks like the one she had received this week, and she might allow herself a new pair, one size smaller. Angel whined from her crate, and Markie smiled—smiled!—and told the dog she would be with her in a minute.

  “Let me just finish this, girl, and then I’ll get my runners on.”

  A couple of weeks earlier, after a few more mornings watching Jesse drag himself up from the basement to take the dog out before school, Markie had finally let him off the hook, telling him he could sleep until the last minute on weekdays, and she would take over the morning walks. His homework had started to pile up, and with his Lola-related obligations during the week and his Frédéric-directed ones on the weekends, he had been staying up later and later to get his schoolwork finished. The early walks were killing him. And killing his mood—gone were the mile-a-minute descriptions of the projects he was working on with Frédéric, and back were the grunting and stomping and slamming of doors.

  Spending her first two hours of the day walking a dog she never wanted wasn’t Markie’s idea of the good life, but forcing her son to do it at the expense of his health was even less appealing, as was forcing herself to deal with his irritability. And after two weeks, Markie had to admit that the new routine was, in the broken English of their neighbor, “shooting the single bird with the identical bullet”: Jesse was better rested and far more pleasant to be around; Angel was getting enough exercise to keep her quiet the rest of the day, allowing Markie to regain her position as leader of Gregory’s team; and her post-divorce pudge had started to fall away.

  She was avoiding her reflection in the mirror less and less. She was getting frequent e-mails from Gregory, congratulating her for her A-player status at Global Insurance. And she was getting regular thank-yous from Jesse, often with the added bonus of a full-on smile or a hug, rewards that, more than her ever-loosening clothes and the attaboys from her boss, kept her motivated to pull on her running shoes and snap on the dog’s leash every morning.

  It made her feel guilty, how surprised Jesse seemed that she had been willing to take on this chore for him. “The day we got her, you told me if I couldn’t manage it all by myself, she’d have to go back to the pound,” he said. “And you’re not exactly the kind of mom who makes empty threats.”

  One of the things she had gotten from Clayton and Lydia was follow-through. When Jesse was little and she started counting “One . . . two . . . ,” he knew better than to let her reach “three.” Markie wouldn’t have thought twice about whether Clayton and Lydia would have forced her to return a dog in the same situation. Hell yes. But she had thought far more than two times about her own threat, and she assumed Jesse knew that when it came down to it, she would never do something as extreme as that. Did her son believe she was as rigid as her parents?

  Something in the way he approached Angel’s afternoon walks made her think he did view her as that unbending. “I’m really sorry, Mom,” he told her after his first week trying to walk Angel with Lola alongside. “I don’t think it’s doing a lot of good. Lola’s so freaking slow, Angel could probably do an army crawl and still keep up.”

  The girl was like that on their walk to and from school, too, and it was driving him crazy. They had to leave much earlier than he wanted to in the mornings, and they were getting home so late in the afternoons that it was hard to fit in Angel’s walk and Lola’s homework before Patty rushed the girl home. “I’m going to ask Mrs. Saint to take the dog walking off my list,” he said. “I’ll just do it on my own after dinner every night.”

  But the following Monday afternoon, he was home from school as early as he used to be when he was walking alone. Markie asked how he’d finally managed to get his charge to walk faster.

  “I didn’t,” he said. “I piggybacked her.” She couldn’t believe it, and he saw it in her face. “Desperate times,” he said, shrugging, and before she could respond, he told her he would be back in a minute and raced inside. He returned sometime later with a cobweb-covered scooter and helmet he had dug out of a box of old toys in the basement. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner.”

  That afternoon, after their tutoring session was over, he attempted to teach Lola to ride the scooter. Markie could hear them from the patio, bickering like siblings as they went up and down the sidewalk, Angel running behind, yapping. “I’m not sure it’s going to save us any time,” he told Markie later. “She falls off every few feet, and then she spends about ten minutes griping, and I’ve got to practically beg her to give it another shot. She’s not nearly as into it as I thought she’d be. Which is weird. I’ve seen a bunch of kids her age ride scooters to school. You’d think she’d want in on that, but . . .” He sighed. “Guess we’ll be walking again tomorrow.”

  She didn’t have to ask him how the walk went the next day—he was stretching and rotating his neck as he walked in the door. “Maybe the scooter lessons will go better today,” she said, trying to cheer him up.

  “Guessing they will,” he said as he made his way to the basement door, “because I think I might have figured out what the problem is.” He was back upstairs soon after, stuffing a wad of bills in his jeans. “Leftover birthday money from Grandma and Grandpa,” he said, seeing her expression. “I’ll be back in a bit. I told Lola to let Mrs. Saint know I’d be there a few minutes late today.”

  He left, and when he returned, he was carrying a brand-new scooter—bright pink with white-and-yellow daisy decals; white, pink, and yellow streamers on the handlebars; and a matching helmet. “I took a closer look when we got to her school this morning,” he said. “She’d have been the only girl riding an old black scooter with a scuffed-up boys’ helmet.”

  “Jesse!” Markie said, standing. “You bought her—?”

  He put a finger to his lips and gestured across the fence. “I want to surprise her.”

  She watched as he carried them across the lawn and over the fence. When he was about five feet from Mrs. Saint’s side door, he stopped and put his arms behind his back, trying to conceal the gifts. He had only taken a single step forward when the door burst open and Lola came flying out.

  “I been waiting for you!” She threw herself at him, hugging him around his waist, and Jesse, laughing, dropped the surprises to the ground as he staggered backward, trying to regain his balance.

  “These are for me?” Lola said, falling to her knees. Not touching them, she looked up at Jesse, waiting, and the look of disbelief on her face made Markie lift both hands to her throat. Jesse nodded, and Lola dove for the scooter, clutching it to her chest as she rolled on the grass, kicking her feet and screeching.

  “Yeah, you’re nuts,” Jesse said, and Markie could see the corners of his mouth pull down as he tried not to smile. “And no going even six inches on that thing without wearing your helmet.”

  Lola stopped her rolling and screeching, let go of the scooter, and snatched up the helmet. She put it on, buckled it closed, and jumped to her feet. “I’m calling them Pinky!” she said. “The scooter and the helmet!”

  “Sounds like something you’d come up with.”

  She put a hand on her hip. “Or I could call them Jesse!”

  He brought a fist down gently on the top of her helmet, pretending to clobber her. “And I could take them both back to the store.”

  She squealed and clutched her helmet tightly to her head. “Let’s go show everyone!”

  Grabbing the scooter, she ran for the side door, but instead of turning the knob, she withdrew her hand from it, spun around, raced back to Jesse, and threw her arms around him again. “You are the very best one!” she said, before she released him and turned back for the door, a hand extended behind her.

  Shaking his head, he said, “And you are the very weirdest one.”

  But he took her hand and let her drag him to
the door, and when he turned back to Markie to wave goodbye, he was no longer trying not to smile.

  Markie swallowed her last luxurious sip of coffee and set her cup in the sink. She let Angel out of her crate, picked up the leash, and said the magic word—“Walk!”—before realizing she had dumbly forgotten to change out of her pajamas. Commanding the dog to stay put, she ran up to dress. Not surprisingly, Angel followed, amped up by the sound of her favorite word and not happy about the delay.

  “Okay, okay!” Markie told her, pushing the animal off her as Angel nudged. “I’m going! I’m going! Get off me!” she said as they approached the top of the stairs, and the next thing she said was, “Oh no!” as the dog pushed too hard, knocking Markie sideways and down.

  The first thing to hit the floor at the bottom was her left ankle. She heard a loud snap, and in the same instant, she felt a bolt of excruciating pain shoot from her leg to the top of her head. Crumpling, she howled in agony, cursed, then howled some more. The dog, sensing trouble, whimpered and sat nearby.

  “Now you decide to sit still?” Markie shouted.

  She was launching into a second round of cursing when there was a knock at the side door. The French accent came shortly after. “Markie? Is everything okay? We have heard a lot of noise!”

  Angel made a move for the door, but Markie shot her hand out and grabbed the dog’s collar, holding her in place. “Shhhh!”

  Mrs. Saint knocked again, louder this time, and Markie gripped the collar tighter and pressed her other hand over her own mouth to keep herself from crying out as the pain in her ankle went from unbearable to torturous. Finally, the knocking stopped, and moments later came the sound of the neighbor’s side door opening then closing.

  Slowly, and with a new and ever-fouler swear word at each step, Markie limped her way into the family room, trapped the dog in her crate, and retrieved her purse and keys from the kitchen. At the last second, she grabbed the broom, too, and used it as a crutch to help her hobble to the kitchen window. Coffee hour was still in full swing. If she limped out to her driveway now, they would see her through the screen and come running over.

  So she waited, fighting her tears and watching her ankle get bigger and purpler until finally, after what felt like an entire day, the group on the porch stood, collected their dishes, and made their way inside. It was a shorter walk to the car from the side door, but that route was in plain view of Mrs. Saint’s house, so Markie snuck out through the front, taking her broom-crutch with her. Thanking God the break was in her left ankle and not her right, she tossed the broom and her purse into the car, lowered herself in, and drove as fast as she could to the hospital.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Her ankle wasn’t broken, but that wasn’t much consolation. With a sprain so extreme, the treatment was almost the same: crutches, a splint, a prescription for painkillers, and orders to stay off her feet as much as possible for the next several weeks. Markie slept the rest of the day in a pharmaceutically enhanced daze. When she woke, it was dusk, and Jesse was sitting on the floor at her feet, a basket beside him.

  Inside was a get-well card, signed by everyone next door.

  “Lola drew you a picture, too,” he said. “It’s on the fridge. And Ronda sent over a casserole. She wants me to take her back a list of your favorite meals, and she’ll make those next, starting tomorrow.” He rummaged in the basket for a notepad and a pen and handed them to Markie.

  She pushed them aside. “I can manage to get from the freezer to the microwave to zap pizza.”

  He brought a large bell out of the depths of the basket and set it beside her. “From Mrs. Saint. She says as long as you keep the kitchen window open, she’ll be able to hear if you ring this, and someone’ll come right over.” Markie tried to push the bell away, too, but he shoved it back. “Come on, Mom. I’m gone all day. What if there’s an emergency?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I don’t want to sit in school wondering about it, either. Just keep this handy, and ring it if something comes up.” She made a face, and he made her promise.

  “Patty says she can come over and walk Angel in the mornings,” he said, and before Markie could protest, he added, “but I told her I’d take that over. Already set my phone alarm.”

  He slept through his chiming phone on eight of the next nine weekdays, though, so Markie spent the better part of two weeks trying to figure out how to maneuver on crutches with a thick plastic boot strapped around her left ankle, how to balance her pain medication so it was enough to keep her leg from throbbing but not so much that it would prevent her from working, and how to bribe an underexercised dog into lying quietly so Markie could maintain her A-player status at Global and the paycheck that went with it.

  She succeeded at none of these, which was why on the following Friday, her last file-swap trip of October, she was hobbling feebly on her crutches toward the exit doors on the fortieth floor, praying she would make it out without running into Gregory. She was halfway down the hall when she heard his voice from deep in the middle of the cube prairie.

  “Markie?” She quickened her pace. “Wait! Was that Markie?” she heard him ask.

  She couldn’t fathom whom he was talking to, since she had managed, in her three months of employment, to avoid interacting with a single coworker outside of Gregory, the Log Sheet Lady, and the two guys in the loading bay.

  “Hey, Markie, hold up there a minute!”

  He was at the end of the hallway now, behind her. She was so close to the exit doors she could feel the cool metal handle against her palm. If her numbers for the past two weeks hadn’t been so pathetic, she might have kept going. Even with crutches and a splint, she could be safely behind the closed elevator doors by the time he made his way the length of the hallway. She couldn’t abide a pep talk from this man.

  But she couldn’t afford to get on his bad side, either, so she stopped, closed her eyes, and prayed it would be over fast.

  “How’re you doing, Gregory?” she asked, as he puffed his way closer.

  He held up a hand to indicate he couldn’t respond just yet, as all of his energies were going into moving his heft the final twenty feet. Reaching her, he took several gasping breaths and said, “I’m good. You? How’s that ankle coming along?”

  “Good,” she said. “Better every day.”

  “So . . . ,” he said, and when no other words came to him, he rocked on his heels and balled up his fists, holding them a foot or so apart. Stepping forward, he took what she believed was meant to be a golf swing. “I’ve been looking at your numbers from the past two weeks,” he said.

  He looked past her, pretending to watch his invisible ball land, then flattened a palm and used it as a visor to shield his eyes from the imaginary sun.

  “Ah, there it is,” he said. “Right near the, uh, cup . . . thing. With the, um, flag.”

  He pointed. Markie refused to turn and look. She didn’t want to be rude, though, so she smiled and nodded as though she were impressed with his shot.

  “So, yeah, anyway,” he said, “I’ve been looking at them, and I just wanted to ask, well . . .”

  He put his hand on the side of her arm. Gregory was big on human-resources training, and somewhere he had learned that side-of-the-arm touching was the safest.

  “I’m worried about you, is all. You’ve been my star for the past three months. Your numbers have pushed my team stats into the, you know”—he pointed to the ceiling—“up there. Makes me look good. Makes us all look good. But now . . .” He sighed. “I just want to know what we can do—what I can do—to get you back on track. I mean, can you think of any deliverable I could offer to assist with this derailment? Short of curing your ankle, that is. I can’t do that, though, and you’ve said it’ll be a good six weeks until it’s better, so we need to come up with, you know, something else.”

  She expected he thought there might be a poster he could send her for her wall to help her motivation, maybe
a close-up of a weight lifter struggling under a loaded barbell, with KEEP PUSHING! written in bold yellow underneath.

  “I’m here to help,” he said. “And I’m also here to listen.” He patted her arm once, then again. “In fact, why don’t we take this into my office right now? Huddle around the whiteboard for a full-on brainstorming session. List all the possible obstacles to your productivity, and talk about how we can, you know . . .”

  He brought two fists together, one on top of the other, as though gripping a baseball bat, and swung hard. The motion set him off balance, and he struggled to recover. “Bash them out,” he finished casually, as though the balance thing were all an intended part of the demonstration. “And get your numbers back up to where we all know they can be. Where we all want them to be. Need them to be.”

  Markie shook her head vigorously, only somewhat worried that the dramatic gesture might make her seem a bit deranged. She guessed Gregory’s managerial cheerleading services didn’t extend to dog walking. And she knew what he would suggest if she admitted to the four-legged productivity obstacle in her own home.

  “Nothing to discuss,” she said. “Just had a few glitches to work out.” She lifted her crutches: Exhibit A.

  “Are these glitches exacerbated by your work environs?” he asked. “Too many stairs to climb? Narrow spaces to squeeze through? Because you know, if the at-home situation is becoming a barrier to your success, we can swap that out for you.” He pointed to the cube prairie, squinting. “I think six forty-two is free. See? Ninth row from the end there, eighteenth cube down? On the left?

  “Could get you plugged in here with no problem. In fact”—he snapped his fingers—“let’s go call them down in the loading bay right now, have them hold off on putting the new boxes into your car. Get them sent up here instead. The guys can stock up your new work space while I take you around and introduce you to everyone.”