Mrs. Saint and the Defectives: A Novel

by Julie Lawson Timmer

  “Is something wrong with her heart?” Markie asked. “She told me it was only old age, and Ronda and Patty both said—”

  “Frédéric’s not convinced. That’s why he made her go in for the tests.”

  “Frédéric made her go?” Markie asked.

  But Bruce only looked at her vacantly, so she gave up that line of inquiry and asked, “Why would she have wanted to take that little case to the hospital? I’d be worried something like that would get lost there.”

  “Oh, she takes it anytime she goes anywhere overnight,” he said. “Always has. Not that she goes away much. But when she does, she always has that case.”

  Markie thought about her ancient neighbor, who was gruff so much of the time yet had also shown quite a bit of sentimentality. Her voice always got softer when she talked about “my Edouard” or watched her Defectives at work, and Markie had seen her eyes glisten more than once in connection with Jesse, a child she had known only since August. She might be cold, even caustic, about a lot of things, but when it came to relationships, Mrs. Saint was quite mushy.

  “She must be very upset about losing those family things,” Markie said.

  “Crushed,” Bruce said. “I’m hoping to have time to search for them out behind the garage later. Right now, there’s too much else to do.”

  He looked down, and they stood quietly for a few minutes. It was as though they were having a moment of silence for Mrs. Saint’s lost family heirlooms, Markie thought. It seemed crazy and right at the same time.

  “I’d better get back,” Bruce said finally. “See if Ronda needs any help. Frédéric’s going to get refills on all the prescriptions that are missing, but he asked me to move some things around in the cabinet so those shelves aren’t standing empty when she gets home. He said she won’t want the reminder.”

  Ten minutes later, Patty was at Markie’s door. “I wanted to thank you for taking Lola last night,” she said. “She couldn’t stop talking about it this morning. About Jesse and you and the costumes and the decorations, and on and on. It was her ‘best night ever’—I must’ve heard that phrase fifty times.”

  “No problem,” Markie said. “She was no trouble at all. She actually got me and Jesse excited about Halloween, which is something I didn’t think would be possible. He was thinking he was too cool for it this year, and I . . . wasn’t in the mood.”

  Patty looked past Markie, at the spiders and ghosts still suspended from the kitchen ceiling, the Halloween artwork on the fridge. “Looks like you were more in the mood for it than I’ve ever been.”

  “I only put those things up because of Lola,” Markie said.

  If it were Mrs. Saint at her door, she would never have admitted to any of this for fear the woman would consider it an opening to suggest she take Lola in again. She didn’t feel she had to be as careful around Patty. Maybe it was because Patty didn’t seem manipulative or pushy, or maybe it was because she didn’t seem all that interested in making arrangements for her daughter.

  “Still,” Patty said, “I told everyone Lola’d be fine with Carol. Mrs. S didn’t have to go to the fuss of finding her a different plan, and she sure didn’t need to drag you into it.”

  “It’s totally fine,” Markie said.

  “How’s Angel doing?” Patty asked, nodding toward the crate and the animal inside it, who was trying to squeeze herself out between the bars. “You want me to take her out for a bit so you can get some work done?”

  Markie narrowed her eyes. “Did Bruce send you over?”

  Patty shrugged. “I was going to thank you anyway. He mentioned the dog was driving you nuts, and it sped up my plan.”

  “Look,” Markie started, preparing to send Patty home with orders to inform Bruce to butt out. But then she recalled how vehemently she had opposed his suggestion that Patty become Angel’s regular dog walker. I can’t afford to pay her, and I won’t let her do it for free. Maybe being indebted to someone made Patty’s skin crawl, too.

  “You know,” Markie said, “yes. Thank you. That would be great.”

  Markie worked for two solid hours in pure, blissful silence, and when Patty returned, Angel walked straight into her crate and fell asleep.

  “This is the best gift I’ve gotten in ages!” Markie whispered, afraid to wake the dog. “But I feel bad. You were gone so long! What about your own job?”

  “Mrs. S won’t be home till close to dinnertime,” Patty said. “I only came over today to keep an eye on Bruce and Ronda. But I left them a list before I took Angel, and I’m pretty sure they’ll have gotten it all done. Or most of it.” She seemed to consider this. “Some of it. I’ll go back now and check.”

  “I’ve never seen her so wiped out,” Markie said, pointing to the now-snoring dog.

  “I’m faster than Jesse,” Patty said. “And a whole lot faster than him and Lola, even when she’s on that scooter. Angel could go all day at their pace. It’s the real quick walking that does her in.”

  “It sure did today,” Markie said.

  “You know, I could walk her every day.”

  Markie shook her head. “Absolutely not. Today was great, and thank you. But we’re all settled up now. One night with Lola, one long walk for Angel. If you took her another time, it would be too much.”

  Patty cocked her head. “I didn’t offer to take her because I thought I had to repay you for Lola.”

  “Oh,” Markie said, reddening. “I just assumed. I mean, I didn’t think you needed to repay me, either. It’s just that some people are funny about owing others. Like me. I’m funny about that stuff. I can’t afford to pay you, and I can’t let you do it for nothing, and there’s nothing more I can really do for you in exchange, so . . .” She shrugged. “It’s a great offer, though, and thanks, but I just can’t.”

  Patty squinted as though Markie had grown antennae. “I don’t really get it, but it’s cool.”

  Jesse came home later, looking ashen.

  “What?” Markie asked. She thought about Mrs. Saint and her heart condition. He had heard something? “Is it Mrs. Saint?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Oh my God! Did Frédéric call you? What happened? Should we go over there now?”

  “What?” Jesse asked. “No. Nobody called me. What are you talking about?”

  “Her heart. What are you talking about?”

  “I saw Bruce when I dropped Lola off, and he told me about last night. He said Frédéric thought some of the things from her case might be behind the garage, but no one’s had time to look. So I did, and he was right. I feel terrible. I mean, her most valuable possessions, and they just tossed them? She’s, like, eighty years old or whatever! All she’s ever done is be nice to people! And then some jerks go and do this to her?” His voice shook, and he swiped a hand across his eyes.

  It surprised Markie to see him so upset. Had he become that close to Mrs. Saint? “Anyway,” he said, “I’ve been behind the garage, looking, and . . .”

  He brought a hand out from behind his back. She hadn’t even noticed he was holding it there. In it, he held a small photograph, old, black-and-white, and creased. He held it up, and together they looked at two baby girls wearing matching dresses, sitting together in an old-fashioned pram. One had her hand on the other’s knee. They were twins, Markie guessed, about a year old.

  Behind the pram stood two other children, a boy of about fourteen and a girl slightly younger, maybe eleven or twelve. The boy smiled stiffly in a new-looking suit as he looked partly at the camera and partly at something out of the frame. The girl wore a dress with needlework similar to that in the babies’ dresses, and she smiled openly, looking directly at the camera, her hand resting on the boy’s forearm. Maybe she was trying to get him to look at the camera instead of whatever else had his attention.

  Markie turned the photo over to see if there were names written, or maybe a date or location, but there was nothing. Jesse took the photo back and brought his other hand from around his back and opened it,
revealing an ancient-looking ring, flat on the top with an etching on it. She took it from him and held it up to see if she could make out the markings.

  “I think it might be an S,” Jesse said. “For St. Denis, maybe? I don’t know.”

  “It was very good of you to look,” Markie said. “Do you want to take these over so she’ll see them as soon as she gets home?”

  He shook his head. “Frédéric called to say they’re coming now, and Bruce and Ronda went into a tailspin, so I came to get you.”

  “I’m proud of you for finding those things,” Markie said.

  A few minutes later, they rang the bell at Mrs. Saint’s house. “Welcome home!” Markie said when her neighbor answered the door. “How are you? I expected someone else to answer the door. Should you be up and around?”

  “Pffft,” Mrs. Saint said. “Worry, worry, worry. Why is it we are all supposed to worry so much? Why cannot we enjoy our lives and leave the worry alone? What does it get for you, the worrying?”

  “Well, I hope you’re feeling better,” Markie said. “Should we sit?”

  “Enough,” Mrs. Saint said. “I have a whole group of people here who want to do nothing but sit me down so they can stare at me and fret about me and ask if I have yet taken this pill or do I need a glass of water.”

  “Fair enough,” Markie said. “Look, I was so sorry to hear about the break-in.”

  Mrs. Saint looked to the ceiling and pressed lips together. “Oui.”

  “But I have a bit of good news,” Markie said. “Actually, it’s Jesse’s news.” She turned to her son and gestured for him to take over.

  Jesse handed Mrs. Saint the photograph. “I found this.” Mrs. Saint took it from him, and when she realized what it was, she pressed a hand against her heart. She looked at Jesse, and Markie saw tears in the old woman’s eyes. “Where?” she asked, her voice a whisper.

  “Behind the garage,” Jesse said. “In the woods. I found this, too.” He handed her the ring.

  Mrs. Saint took it and touched a finger to the flat top of the engraving.

  “What does it say?” Jesse asked.

  “S,” she said. “For Sabrine. It was my Edouard’s mother’s ring.”

  She looked away, not just a few feet off, but far, far away, and Markie wondered if she was thinking of Edouard’s mother or Edouard. She could see Mrs. Saint’s lips working to press themselves together so they wouldn’t quiver. She was trying not to break down in front of Jesse.

  Markie stepped closer and pointed to the photo, thinking a change of subject might help. “Is this you? Are you a twin?”

  “Och, non! Ce n’est pas moi. This is not me. I have no twin. No brothers and sisters at all. Only me.”

  “Oh, I just assumed, since you kept the photo all these years, that it must be—”

  “Relatives,” Mrs. Saint said. “Cousins. On my Edouard’s side. I hardly even knew them.”

  She flipped the photo over. I’ll show you how little these people mean to me, she seemed to be saying. Markie thought the tears she had seen in the woman’s eyes when Jesse first produced the picture told a different story. But Mrs. Saint had been released from the hospital only an hour earlier, and she had been robbed the night before. Today was not the day to press her.

  “Anyway, I must go,” Mrs. Saint said. “Before they all come to check me up.”

  “Can I walk you to your room?” Jesse asked, and to Markie’s surprise, Mrs. Saint agreed.

  He stepped to her, and she took his elbow and held out the ring and photograph. “Thank you for finding,” she said. “Now, on y va. Let us go. Frédéric will be having his own heart troubles if I am not back in my bed very soon.”

  Markie said goodbye and went home. An hour later, Jesse walked in.

  “I thought Lola left,” Markie said. “What were you doing over there for so long?”

  “Looking for more stuff.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  He held out another photograph. “I’m going back tomorrow, when it’s lighter. This was way back, about ten feet from the garage. Must’ve gotten blown by the wind. I’m thinking there might be more stuff where I found this.”

  “Why didn’t you take it right in the house to her?”

  “When I left, she told me she was going to take a nap. And, also, I thought you should see it.”

  “Why?”

  He held it out and she took it. The photo showed twin girls, about seven or eight, wearing matching dresses and birthday hats. They held hands and giggled, and one waved to someone outside the frame.

  Markie looked up at her son, then back to the picture. “The one waving,” she said as she studied the girls’ faces more carefully. “Don’t you think she’s a dead ringer for—?”

  “Read it,” he said. “The back.”

  She flipped the photo over: Angeline et Simone, 7ème anniversaire.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Frenchwoman was standing in the bungalow again, only a few days after Halloween, trying to convince Markie to keep Lola every evening while Patty was “out.” Lola hadn’t stopped talking about how much fun she’d had at the bungalow, Mrs. Saint said, and for her own part, she couldn’t stop thinking about how much better off the girl would be if she spent part of each night in a home that insisted on bathing and teeth brushing. Jesse had even read to the girl before bed! No one did that for her at Patty’s apartment.

  Markie stood in the middle of the family room, her feet planted wide, her arms crossed in front of her. If there were a mirror nearby, she was certain her reflection would show smoke coming out of her ears. She had told her neighbor twice, and not in a subtle way, what an inconvenience it had been for her and Jesse to be woken in the middle of the night in order to hand Lola back to her mother. How they had been too exhausted to think the next day, let alone complete the work they each had to do.

  None of this had registered with Mrs. Saint, evidently, so Markie repeated it for a third time now, adding for clarity that there was no way she was going to sign on for that kind of interruption on a nightly basis. Mrs. Saint only blinked uncomprehendingly, as though Markie was complaining about nothing. Yet when Markie tossed the issue back to her—“Why doesn’t Lola stay with you every evening?”—the old woman waved her hands as though it was out of the question.

  “Why?” Markie demanded. “Why are you standing there acting like it should be no trouble at all for me when you won’t even take her?”

  Her answer was a blank stare.

  It didn’t surprise Markie, but it aggravated her, and she stomped to the kitchen counter, plucked up the photo that Jesse had found the night before, and marched back to Mrs. Saint, shoving it in her face.

  “You are full of requests for things I should do to help your employees,” she said. “And you have no end of questions for me and my son about our lives. And yet anytime I ask you the simplest question about anything to do with your life, you have no answer!” Mrs. Saint reached for the photo, but Markie hung on to it, and with a dramatic flourish, she turned it over so the handwriting was in the old woman’s face, undeniable: Angeline et Simone, 7ème anniversaire .

  “‘Are you a twin?’ I asked you last night,” Markie said, still holding the photo out of Mrs. Saint’s reach. “‘Oh, non,’ you said. ‘I’m not a twin. In fact, I never even had siblings! Those twin girls in the pram in the other photo? Edouard’s cousins! Not me. Not my twin.’ When in fact, it was you! You and Simone, your twin sister! And my guess is that the kids in that other photo were an older brother and sister. So you have three siblings, in fact, not ‘none!’

  “That’s two lies from you this week alone! Who knows how many others you’ve told since we moved in! How many secrets you’ve kept, all while trying to get at all of mine! And now you’re standing here, in my house, asking me to look after a child whose mother disappears every night to somewhere you refuse to name! You can understand why I’m getting a little tired of this, can’t you?”

  Before the
other woman could answer, Markie said, “Never mind! Don’t answer that! I expect you won’t understand! But understand this: I am finished with your secrets and your nonsense! I’m not asking you any more questions about your life. There’s no point. But you need to be finished, too. Do not ask me anything more about me, and do not ask me to help your employees again!

  “Don’t ask my son, either. He can work for you until he has paid Mr. Levin. After that, he’s done. And when February comes and our half-year lease is up, he and I are leaving. I hear you’ve been hinting that he should ask me to extend the lease. You somehow know that the landlord would be willing to do that for us, even though my deadline for extending has passed. Of course, I’m sure you won’t tell me how you know that, so I’m not going to ask that, either.”

  Trembling, Markie offered the photo at last, and Mrs. Saint took it, staring for a long time at the inscription on the back before finally turning it over to see the two little girls at their birthday. Without waiting for the woman to react or explain, Markie marched to the door, opened it, and motioned with her hand for Mrs. Saint to leave.

  “I am sorry,” Mrs. Saint said softly, her eyes still on the photograph. “This is something I do not like to speak of. So I lie about it. I . . . pretend she never existed.”

  “Why?” Markie demanded.

  But she didn’t step away from the door, and she made another sweeping motion with her hand. Even if she were to get an answer, which she doubted, she preferred to hear it as the woman was on her way out.

  Mrs. Saint stepped toward the door, her back to Markie. “Because it is a very painful thing,” she said in a small voice. “She is dead.”

  Markie felt a wave of guilt wash over her. She had been entirely too harsh, especially considering the woman had a heart condition. She was still frustrated by all the secrets, but this was different. Her neighbor couldn’t be the first person to pretend away loved ones because it was easier than facing their absence.