I bite my tongue so I don’t laugh out loud and keep dusting. It occurs to me suddenly that Mr. Herron has had sex, an obvious fact, of course, since he has children, but one that settles along my shoulders curiously for a moment, as if I’m discovering something unusual about him. The china cabinet, an enormous, cherrywood monstrosity, still filled with all of Mrs. Herron’s china, needs to be wiped down and dusted. The dishes inside are white with a blue border, a picture of a house and a lake in the middle. Pretty stuff. I doubt Mr. Herron ever uses it now, but he expects me to dust it. I wonder if his wife pulled it out for special occasions—Christmas, maybe, or even Sunday dinners. Maybe Mr. Herron stood at the head of the table, the way Dad used to, slicing up a pork roast, while Mrs. Herron passed around bowls of glazed carrots and mashed potatoes.
Mr. Herron holds out his plate. “You want some salami? It’s the good kind—with all them peppercorns in the middle.”
“No thanks.” I finish dusting, keeping rhythm to the staccato burst of gunshot on the television. “It’s still pretty early for salami, Mr. Herron.”
Mr. Herron pops another piece into his mouth. “Never too early for salami, Bird. Never.”
“Well, I’ll stick with cereal before noon. Maybe an egg sandwich if I have a few minutes.”
“Man, I used to make a mean egg sandwich,” Mr. Herron says, chewing slowly. “My men used to go nuts over ’em.”
“Your men?”
“In the army. Korea—1950. I was the cook.”
I stop dusting. “You were a cook in the army?”
“You bet your ass I was. Damn good one, too. Boys said I could make an egg sandwich that brought tears to their eyes.”
How is it that things come out when they do? Who chooses how and when certain information is relayed between people? I’ve been cleaning Mr. Herron’s house for over a year. Every day now—except weekends—since January. And this is the first time he’s ever told me such a thing. “Wow” is all I can bring myself to say. “That’s kind of amazing.”
“What is? That I was in the Korean War, or that I can make an egg sandwich that’ll bring tears to your eyes?”
I smile then, maybe for the first time since leaving Angus this morning. “Both,” I say. “Both actually.”
Mr. Herron chews thoughtfully for a minute. “Maybe someday I’ll tell you ’bout it.” He nods. “Got a lot a stories from back then. A lot.”
“That’d be nice,” I say, although I don’t really mean it. As interesting as they probably are, I don’t have time to listen to fifty-year-old stories about Mr. Herron’s past. I barely get through the work I have to finish here before I have to rush over to my next job.
“You’d have to keep workin’, though,” Mr. Herron says. “I mean, while I’m talkin’ to you. Don’t expect to sit around here with your feet up while I’m telling you things.”
“Oh, I’d never do that.” I roll my eyes as I head for the basement, where I will start his laundry.
“And don’t think I didn’t see that little eye-roll, young lady.”
I stop short. “What?”
“Fine.” Mr. Herron pops another piece of salami into his mouth. “Maybe I didn’t see it. But I felt it.” He wags his finger in the air. “Don’t think you gettin’ nothin’ past me, Bird.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it, Mr. Herron,” I say, turning around again. “I know you better than that.”
Chapter 9
It’s noon when I leave Mr. Herron’s house, which means I have just enough time to stop at Rensack’s Deli to get a sandwich before heading over to Jane Livingston’s. My stomach is growling, and getting stuck at Jane’s house with a day’s worth of work and an empty stomach is not a good combination. I get mean when that happens.
In the car, I turn the radio on and flip through all the music stations. My heart skips a beat whenever I hear something that sounds like a newscaster, but everything comes up empty. Or at least there’s nothing on about James. The streets are still quiet, too—no sirens of any kind, no dogs or police officers running around. I don’t get it. How can people not be aware of what’s happened? Has James’s escape even been noticed yet? Is it still too early? Or does it just not matter? Could it be that it’s not really that big of a deal?
At Rensack’s, I order a large turkey sandwich with provolone cheese, tomato, and spicy mustard, grab an extralarge bottle of water out of the cooler, and toss in a bag of potato chips. “Eight dollars,” the woman behind the counter says, ringing me up. She’s tall, with an obscenely large chest and a sweet smile. “You interested in any lottery tickets today?”
I shake my head, scanning the stack of newspapers on the floor next to the register. There’s nothing on the front page about James’s arrest. Maybe inside. “Just this,” I say, putting one of the newspapers inside the bag. An elderly man gets in line behind me, holding a gallon of iced tea.
“Eight fifty,” the woman says, punching a few more buttons on the register. Her skin is oily, the cheeks pitted as if someone has taken an ice pick to them.
“Did you hear anything weird on the news today?” I ask, digging into my purse for my wallet. It just comes out, a blurt, before I can stop myself.
“Weird?” the woman repeats. “Weird, how?”
“Oh, you know. Anything that might’ve happened this morning.” I’m backpedaling now, furious at myself, but unable to stop. “I usually listen to the news, but I slept in today and missed it. I was just wondering if anything interesting happened today that I didn’t know about.” God, I sound like an idiot. A moron.
The woman nods slowly toward my newspaper, which is still sticking out of the bag. “You did just get a newspaper,” she says slowly. “Stuff’ll probably be in there.”
I laugh lightly. “Yeah. But just yesterday’s stuff.” I bite my bottom lip. “I was talking about today. You know. This morning.”
“Uh-huh.” She takes my money, glancing at the man behind me, and scratches the edge of her ear as the register dings open. There’s a tiny tattoo on the inside of her wrist: a roughly drawn diamond with a circle in the middle. It doesn’t look professionally drawn; I wonder briefly if she did it herself. “You know, now that you mention it,” she says, “I think I did hear something about one of Oprah’s dog’s passing away. Real early. On Good Morning America. I think they said it choked on a sandwich. Isn’t that sad? She got those real small dogs, you know? Them miniature ones. I don’t know why anyone in their right mind would be feeding it a sandwich, but that’s what—”
“I mean locally,” I interject. “Here. In New Haven. This morning.”
“Oh.” The woman hands me my change. “Locally? Well, no. But then, nothing ever happens here.” She pauses. “’Cept for maybe a few car accidents.”
“Yeah.” I nod in agreement. “Well, thanks.” I grab the bag, adjust my purse strap over my shoulder. “Have a good day now.”
“Try WALL radio,” the man with the iced tea says suddenly as I push the front door open. “It’s an AM station, on at noon every day. They’ve got an hourly update on things going on in New Haven. Mostly traffic and stuff, but—”
“Oh, yeah?” I clutch the paper bag more tightly, as if it might fly out of my arms if I don’t. “W-A-L-L?”
The man nods, slinging his gallon jug on the counter. He’s wearing a tweed cap turned backward, the visor just barely brushing the back of his neck. “AM,” he says. “Not FM. I got it on all the time.”
THERE’S NOTHING IN the paper about James, but the guy at the deli was right about WALL. The station is right in the middle of a noon broadcast by the time I find it, and when I hear James’s name, uttered by a slightly frantic male voice, I almost drive off the road.
“. . . Rittenhouse, who just this morning was arrested on assault charges after the near fatal beating of another man, was being taken to the county jail where he was going to be arraigned. Police say that at around 8:05 A.M., while the cruiser was at a red light, Rittenhouse managed to kick his way
out of the back of the patrol car, not only injuring the police officer, but also absconding with his firearm. He was last seen on foot, running toward Interstate 81. An all-points bulletin has been set up and police are currently in the process of issuing a city-wide search, since Mr. Rittenhouse is armed and considered dangerous. Police have also advised that Rittenhouse may be injured as a result of the physical altercation and might be in need of medical attention. Anyone with information about his whereabouts is asked to call the New Haven Police Department immediately at 567-9043.”
My hands are gripping the steering wheel so hard that the knuckles are turning white. You can bet your ass he’s armed and dangerous. Three short hours ago, I was staring down the barrel of the gun he was holding. I guess I’m lucky to be alive, when I think about it. What if he hadn’t recognized me? Or what if he had shot first and then looked?
A car swerves past me on the left. The driver leans on his horn, reaches out his window, and holds up his middle finger.
I glance down, eyes scanning the numbers behind the wheel. The speedometer says thirty. I’m in a fifty-mile-an-hour zone. I speed up, trying to focus. An advertisement for a morning TV show fills a billboard on the side of the road. The woman is blond and impossibly gorgeous, a smile so wide across her face it looks as though something might break, while the man sitting next to her appears comfortable and sophisticated, his arms crossed across the front of his chest. Behind it is another billboard, this one for K-Y warming oil. The nearly naked couple is clutching each other; the woman’s leg, draped in purple silk, is raised across the man’s bare thigh, his hand positioned behind the small of her back.
For a while, that was all we did, Charlie and me. Sex, sex, and more sex. Mostly whenever Charlie wanted to, and always at his apartment. I never turned him away, but after a while, I found that I could have done without the actual physical part of things. Sex for me had just become a way to get to the company that came afterward. Or at least the company I dreamed of coming afterward. I had notions of lying there face-to-face, propped up on our pillows after the physical act was over. I would trace the outline of Charlie’s top lip, which was shaped like a slightly crooked parenthesis, and he would push the hair off my forehead. We would talk about our lives, our days, about things that had happened, people we had seen, until we drifted off to sleep.
But it never happened. Mostly because right after sex Charlie always fell asleep. I would come out of the bathroom after cleaning up, and find him snoring away, facedown in his favorite green pillow. I’d sit there for a while, waiting, hoping, and then I would wrap a blanket around my shoulders, and walk into the living room and sit in one of his windows. Staring out into the starless night, I would think about all the things I would have told him if he had stayed awake. Like how much I loved the bouquet of red roses he had brought to work the other day, just because. Or how grateful I was when he’d finally relented at the movies, agreeing to the one I’d been dying to see for weeks, instead of his first choice. We could have talked about how cold he got all the time, despite the fact that winter was still months away, and why, although he wore an extra T-shirt under his uniform at work, he still rubbed his hands together throughout the day to get warm.
I might have asked him why he thought the lady with the huge yellow hat who came into the Burger Barn every day and ordered the same double burger with extra pickles hadn’t come in yesterday. Was she sick? She coughed sometimes, sitting there in the corner booth all alone, bringing a handkerchief to her lips and blotting them gently. Did he think she’d died, maybe, the way I did? Or did he think she’d be back tomorrow? Maybe I would have told him that I was starting to save for a biology class at the community college so that I could apply to nursing school, or even about the last fight Ma and I had had on the phone, especially since it had been about him. Specifically, about my having sex with him. She’d asked me point-blank if we were sleeping together, and out of spite, because I knew it would hurt her more than anything else I had done up to that point, I told her the truth. “Of course we’re having sex, Ma. We’ve been dating for months now. That’s what adults do.” She’d caught her breath, the way I knew she would, and paused. I imagined her sitting on the old velour couch at home, the arms worn shiny with use, and pressing her fingertips against her lips, forcing back tears.
“Isn’t it bad enough that you’re wasting your time with this guy?” she said after finally finding her voice. “Do you think so little of yourself that you would go and sleep with him, too?”
“He’s not just a guy, Ma.” I stood up, stalking around the apartment as I talked. “He has dreams, you know. Real ones. He wants to open up his own restaurant. He wants to be someone.”
“What about you?” she asked. “Who do you want to be?”
The question was so blunt and I was so unprepared for it that I stopped midstride and just stood there looking out the window. I could have told her about wanting to be a nurse, but I didn’t. Maybe I wanted to keep it to myself. Or maybe I was afraid she’d say something like, “A nurse? Really?” Something she would insist later had been an innocent question, but one in which I had only heard uncertainty, especially since I’d never mentioned it before and my grades in high school had been so terrible. “Leave me alone, Ma,” I said finally before plunking the phone back down in the cradle.
Later, when the prep mornings started with James, along with my strange, inexplicable feelings for him, these silent conversations I imagined in Charlie’s living room turned to him. I could not imagine James falling asleep after sex, and although I did not let myself envision the two of us engaging in the actual, physical act, I felt my skin growing heated and the familiar stirring of pleasure as I pictured him stretched out naked in bed next to me. Maybe he would give me a factoid; maybe, more likely, he would not say anything at all, running the tip of his finger along the curve of my eyebrow instead, and then drawing it down along the edge of my hairline, tracing the outline of my ear. I closed my eyes, thinking of it, feeling something in me fill and pulse and hold, and when I opened my eyes again, whatever it was had emptied, and tears slid down the side of my face because I knew such a thing would never happen, at least not in this lifetime, not to someone like me.
BEHIND ME, ANOTHER horn blows. A woman leans out the window, her brown hair whipping around her face. “Get off the damn road if you can’t drive!” she screams.
I speed up again, pull onto a side street with no traffic, and then position the car on the side of the road.
Leaning forward, I let my head rest against the middle part of the steering wheel, close my eyes.
I have to stop this.
I have to put this whole thing out of my mind, forget it ever happened.
I do.
I have a little boy who is depending on me. I am depending on me. I’ve had a rough go of it, a few false starts. I’ve wasted enough time screwing around, making bad choices, messing up the game. I’m sorry things happened the way they did back then, and I’m sorrier still that James has found himself in a bad place right now; I truly, truly am. But enough is enough. I pulled myself back up out of a bad time. And not just once either. If I can do it, then so can he.
And that’s the end of it.
Chapter 10
Jane Livingston became a daily client of ours just a few months ago, after giving birth to her fourth baby. Ma and I had been switching off, one of us coming to clean her place every two weeks, until Jane’s husband took us aside and admitted that he was afraid Jane was starting to feel a little overwhelmed, especially since Genevieve, the nanny who supervised the three older children, did not do a very good job keeping house. “Jane likes it clean,” Mr. Livingston said, fiddling with a large gold watch on his wrist. “She needs it clean. Every day. Having things ordered and neat really seems to calm her down.”
The Livingston house is on the opposite side of the river in the wealthy section of New Haven. It’s one of those two-story English Tudor monstrosities with a pale stucco ext
erior, wood trim, and steeply pitched roofs. Inside there are six bedrooms, three bathrooms—one with a steam room and sunken marble tub—and a fully furnished basement. A brick path winds its way up to the front, and there is always some sort of seasonal wreath on the door: maple leaves for fall, dried sunflowers for summer. The three older kids are usually gone when I arrive, whisked off to whatever afternoon activity Genevieve has taken them on, but Jane is always home. Always.
Today, she greets me at the front door, the baby tightly swaddled in a blue gingham sack across the front of her chest. “Hiiiii, Bird! How are you?” Jane is blond and pretty, even with no makeup, although every time I come over, the circles under her eyes look a little darker. Despite having given birth so recently, she is achingly thin, as if she has been subsisting on air. I would guess she is in her early thirties, although she could be older. I’ve never seen her dressed in anything but the same black leggings, shiny ballet flats, and starched, button-down white shirt. The requisite pearl studs are in her ears, a thin gold Rolex on her left wrist.
“Hey, Jane.” I always call her by her first name, since she had a fit the first time I addressed her as Mrs. Livingston—“Oh God, don’t call me that! It makes me sound so old!” I peek inside the little baby hammock, touch the edge of the baby’s fist with my fingertip. “How’s Olivia doing?”
“Oh, fine now.” Jane sighs, stepping back to let me into the black-and-white tiled foyer. “She was up most of the night, though. I swear I don’t even know what day it is anymore.” She watches me take off my shoes (her rules) and set them neatly next to the doormat. I get the weird feeling that she is studying me again, looking for something. It makes me nervous.
“Is there anything special you need done today?” I always start by asking this, since Jane’s cleaning requests are so erratic. Some days she just wants me to do the older kids’ rooms—other days, only the basement. Once, I spent three hours cleaning every single crystal on the large chandelier in the dining room. Today, it could be the outdoor patio, or even the two-car garage. I never know.
The Odds of You and Me Page 8