by Julia Stoops
Franky grinned. “She’s better.”
“Good. Now get some sleep.” I went back to my paper.
“Really?” said Nelson. He stood up and adjusted his tie.
“For chrissake, let her get some sleep too,” I said.
But we did go down to say hi. She lay there smiling in the bunched greasy sheets, and her hand squeezing mine was small and weak.
“Thank you,” she said with the staring gratitude of the convalescent. “All of you.”
She slept through dinner. Later Nelson took a pillow and a blanket down to the basement.
“Going to crash on the sofa,” he said, “in case she relapses.”
It made me stop halfway up the stairs, wondering if he knew. Nelson arranged his pillow on the vinyl sofa below. That sofa had a straight back and metal arms. It was clammy, hard, and crap to sleep on, but Nelson’s capacity for self-sacrifice was mighty. He looked up, gave me a crinkle-eyed smile, and I was reminded why women find him attractive.
“She’s not heading for a relapse,” I said.
Silence from behind Deirdre’s curtain. Nelson spread the blanket along the sofa, gave the pillow a couple of light punches. He glanced over at her curtain and then it struck me: he wasn’t just being his usual uber-gracious self. He liked her.
I headed up to the kitchen, then up to the top bathroom. That bathroom drove me nuts. We’ve had it renovated since then, but there used to be this one little mirror above the sink. It was the right height for Nelson and Jen, but I had to stand on my toes if I wanted to see anything below my nose. So I was ignoring the mirror and scrubbing my molars and wondering what to do. I’d told Deirdre she was under our roof on one condition: she had to be one hundred percent honest and one hundred percent clean. “One fuckup,” I told her, “of any kind, and you’re out.”
She’d taken my hands in both of hers and told me she wasn’t that person anymore. And I felt proud of her. Wanted her to succeed.
But now I was worried about Nelson. The guy’d had lousy luck with women since he'd left his wife to join us six years earlier. He’d dated a little, but it was always women with some agenda other than him, and sooner or later things fell apart. So now I was intrigued, but torn. He’d grown isolated, and Deirdre, well, she was the first woman he'd shown any interest in for a long while. And she was newly clean in a strange town, away from whatever bad scene she’d fallen into. And there was something different about her, different from my ’Nam buddy Ron, the way she smiled so hard, so full of a humble kind of joy. And she’d be on her way, soon. Maybe a quick fling would be a distraction, I told myself. Enough to take Nelson’s mind off the suffering world, I told myself.
That bathroom had this hundred-year-old sink, the whole thing a network of gray cracks. They looked lacy on a good day, unhygienic the rest of the time, and I used to whack my toothbrush on the edge of that sink more than just to get the water off, because I wanted to see the whole thing collapse. Just the right angle, just the right pressure, and maybe that sink would drop into a pile of little cubes at my feet the way things fall apart in cartoons.
7: NELSON
“. . . time OF DAY it is with the bleedin’ windows covered up?”
Nelson jolts awake. Vinyl sofa. Basement. Deirdre.
“Sorry,” she says. “You were yakking away. Thought you were awake.”
Her curtain is open and she’s sitting on the edge of the camp cot. “I mean, it’s so dark in here it’s fierce hard to tell if it’s morning or evening.”
“It’s morning,” says Nelson. Lise used to complain about his sleep talking. The taste of a dream falls into a hole and is gone. He sits up, puts on his glasses, and the basement comes into focus. The concrete floor is inhospitably cold under his feet. Deirdre’s wearing Jen’s big red Stumps of Mystery T-shirt—Fetz must have snuck it out of Jen’s room.
Public persona. He straightens his back and smiles. “You look better.”
She smiles back. It gives her a mischievously starving look. The green LED equipment lights dot the dark corners of the basement. His lost dream is like a word on the tip of his tongue.
“Those are grand pajamas,” she says.
Behind Nelson’s eyes strings of tension pull tight. “My pajamas?” He looks down at his legs. Fine blue and white stripes. His only pair. Rarely worn. But sleeping down here in underwear wasn’t an option. He shrugs. “They’re just ordinary pajamas.”
Her smile stretches on. “They’re delightful.”
He has never considered his pajamas delightful.
“Nelson, more than anything I want to get cleaned up.”
“Of course. Yes.” He slides his feet into his slippers. “Thing is—”
She’s going to have to come upstairs sooner or later. But if he takes her to the top bathroom and she bumps into Jen . . . she looks so happy. Now’s not the time to start a fight.
“Would you mind using the shower down here?” he says. “Oh, but you’ll need things.” He gets up from the vinyl sofa, heads past the dehumidifier, past the copier and the server rack, past the maps, up the narrow basement stairs—there’s no one in the kitchen yet—and up the main stairs.
When he comes back down, she’s leaning against the clippings cabinet. The red T-shirt hangs off her like a caftan.
He hands her his old navy-blue robe and a gray towel. “It was folded, so it should be clean. And here’s some soap. Sorry it’s a little small, I couldn’t find a fresh bar.”
The piece of wet soap slides around in the jar lid. That smile again, making a V in her face. Her eyes are a light, light brown.
“It’ll do the job,” she says.
The bathroom’s tiny window is caked with grime. The toilet bowl is mottled with gray and ochre stains. He can smell mildew off the shower curtain.
Deirdre brushes off his mumbled apology. But it’s truly gross. He and Lise once had an en-suite bathroom with celadon-green ceramic faucets, with matching soap dish and mirror. And through a second door was the nursery. They’d painted it pale yellow with white trim, and spent the year before he left trying to get pregnant.
He backs out of the little bathroom. “Oh, and we did your laundry. I hope you don’t mind.”
Her eyes slide away. “You’re a thoughtful lot, aren’t you.” She lays the robe and the towel across the sink, then closes the door.
On his way upstairs he wonders if she was being sarcastic just now. The Irish accent makes it hard to tell.
Still no one in the kitchen, and no sounds from the top floor. He likes being up before everyone else. Before the bickering and the distractions.
He fills the kettle at the sink, puts it on the stove.
Last week when Deirdre was lying sick and in pain, Jen had the nerve to say, “Even if she’s not an infiltrator, she could still do something stupid, like leave a window open.” Then Jen walked off, adding, “There’s people seriously trusting us not to compromise their identities.”
Nelson had retorted with, “I think if we explain the delicacy of our situation she’ll understand and behave appropriately.”
“Based on what?” Fetzer had said.
Nelson had almost replied, Instinct, but he wasn’t sure, and then Jen came back with Deirdre’s day pack. “Asleep. No clue.”
“This is nuts,” Nelson had said. “How can we expect her to be trustworthy when we go snooping through her stuff?”
“Dude,” said Jen, and she squished her heavy face into that sneer. “Be honest, we don’t know a thing about her.”
And Nelson had to admit Jen was right.
Jen unzipped the daypack and pulled out a battered notebook held together with a rubber band. She dangled it by a corner. It looked like a diary. There were others in there just like it.
Fetzer took the notebook, flipped off the rubber band and thumbed through pages. Nelson yelled, “Hey!” and grabbed it off him.
In his hands the diary’s cardboard corners were swollen and eroded to rounds. He picked the rubber band of
f the floor, stretched it back over the cover. Deirdre’s private thoughts in there.
Jen then scooped out a ball of clothes, and Fetzer went through each item, holding it up, shaking it out. Nelson had protested, but when Fetzer suggested they do her laundry, it seemed like a considerate thing to do.
Then Jen pulled out a three-ring binder. Large black-and-white photos in plastic sleeves. Fetzer had put down a blouse and Nelson had put down the diary and they’d stood either side of Jen while she turned the stiff pages. Photos of people in streets, people in cafés, in bedrooms. Sad people, laughing people, tired people. They didn’t look like strangers; they knew her. Deirdre’s life.
“These are good,” Fetzer had said. He pointed at a girl sitting on stone steps. She stared back, hugging her knees, and Nelson realized the girl was missing two fingers.
Jen had quickly lost interest, so Nelson took the binder and turned more pages. There was something dark about the people. Even the smiling ones looked like they were on the edge and didn’t want to look down. He’d almost said, Interesting, but that’s a cop-out when you’re talking about art. He’d tried to think of something more intelligent to say, but nothing came.
The kettle whistles, and Nelson swings it from the stove and pours his cup full. The tea bag struggles and brown swirls from it like dye. He isn’t sure if he likes Deirdre’s work. Landscapes are more his thing. He should dig out his Ansel Adams prints and put them up. He never bothered after this last move, but maybe it’s time to decorate a little.
Nelson dunks the tea bag. He was so irritated when Jen had looked around at Deirdre’s strewn possessions and said, “Least she ain’t no counter-hacker babe.”
But he was curious when Fetzer found her passport. When he opened it, a credit card clattered on the floor. Nelson had picked it up. The bank was called Westpac. Deirdre A. Sutton was embossed in the red plastic.
Fetzer turned the passport sideways. “Deirdre Assumpta O’Carroll.” He raised an eyebrow at them. “Would it be possible to have a name that was more Irish Catholic?”
“But here it’s different,” said Nelson, and he held up the credit card. “Here it’s Sutton.”
Fetzer shrugged. “Married. Not married.” And Nelson knew, because he had checked, that she wasn’t wearing a ring.
Fetzer kept reading. “Born Edenderry, Republic of Ireland, April 1972. So she’s thirty.”
It had been a surprise. She seemed younger.
Fetzer flipped pages. “Huh. Traveled some. Really was in India. Australia, too, for a few years. And her US visa expired three months ago.” Fetzer had snapped the passport shut and dropped it in the daypack.
And when Deirdre’s laundry was done, Nelson looked through the binder again. The photos made him anxious. And they made him want to know her.
So now Deirdre has clean clothes. Nelson sips his tea in the quiet kitchen and watches red-breasted house finches out the window. They’re making a home again under the eaves. They’re pretty birds.
He should shower, get dressed, and go back down to see how Deirdre’s doing.
8: JEN
*** THEJENERATOR HAS JOINED #rezist
Well isn’t this just great. That’s Sylvia’s car pulling up outside.
I can hear Nelson downstairs, undoing the million locks to let Sylvia in.
*** TheJenerator has left #rezist
Sylvia says, “Good morning, Jennifer,” right behind me, and I slam the laptop closed and stand up.
“Sylvia.”
Her hair’s close-cropped and she’s all done up in a dark red suit. Her eyebrows are plucked tight. Women like her make me feel shaggy. “We had an appointment?” she says.
“Nope, don’t think so.”
Sylvia raises those tightbrows.
“Jen.” Fetzer has his hand up. “I asked her to come by to share what she knows about the Bluebird timber sale, then I forgot.”
“Well that’s just great,” I mutter. But I have to admit, I am curious about Bluebird.
Sylvia murmurs, “That’s not like you to forget, Irving,” and I snicker at his first name.
She looks around the living room like there’s nowhere clean enough to sit. “Let’s talk in your sunny parlor,” she says, and clacks her high heels on over to the kitchen table.
“What’s with the scary outfit?” I say.
“I had a breakfast meeting,” she says. In those shoes she’s my height.
“Who with, Donald Trump?”
She puts on a simpery smile. “Entrepreneurs who eat vegans for breakfast.”
Fetzer comes between us. “Cool it, ladies.” He sets two coffees on the table. Asks Sylvia if she saw Nelson downstairs, and has she met Deirdre yet?
Sylvia sits at the table and crosses her pantyhose legs. Sunlight off the green Formica makes her face glow like a hologram. “Indeed I did. She seems charming.”
I can’t help the snort.
Sylvia sips her coffee. “You don’t think so?” she says, more curious than arguing, and I sit down.
“I just don’t get it. Franky literally found her on the street. I mean, I’m all for saving the world, but not one indigent at a time.”
Sylvia pouts like I said something mean.
“This is seriously eroding our security culture,” I say.
Her eyes widen. “Oooh. Security culture.”
“You’re not helping,” Fetzer mutters, and he sits down with us. Right then Nelson and Deirdre appear at the top of the basement stairs.
“Hey!” I say, “I thought we agreed she wasn’t—” But Fetz is grinning, and everybody’s going “Hi!” like it’s some damn reunion, and I know I won’t win this one. They come over, and Nelson holds the back of a chair like a waiter, and Deirdre sits down between me and Fetz. Table’s crowded with Sylvia here too. But for once chicks outnumber dudes—three to two.
Nelson heads for the fridge and starts rummaging. Deirdre gazes around like she’s arrived at some tourist destination.
“The light’s gorgeous,” she says. “So bright. So different from downstairs.”
Except she says “brate” and “daff-rint” and “doan-stairs.”
She seems thrilled to hear from Fetzer how we moved in a year and a half ago, how it was a commune in the sixties and they took out the walls to make it open plan. And he seems thrilled to be telling her. Now that’s she’s cleaned up she’s almost what people call pretty. Fragile, though. Just the kind of woman guys get all chivalrous over.
She turns to Sylvia. “It’s me first day out of bed, you see. Was sick
as a small hospital.” Before Sylvia can reply, Deirdre swings her gaze around again. “And it’s so tidy compared with your basement.”
Sylvia smirks.
Deirdre points across the living room to the main stairs. “And you sleep up there?”
Fetzer says, “Yep. Four bedrooms and a bathroom.”
“Is that Franky still asleep?” she says, playful like she’s caught him out.
Fetz says, “Franky’s gone home. He just house-sits now and again. Stayed a few extra days this time.”
She doesn’t even register that it was for her. Instead she looks at the sunlight on the floor and murmurs, “It’s so bright it’s singing. Resurrection and the light.”
It’s just our crappy old kitchen. Countertop and sink under the window, white cabinets, old stove, roll-cart full of dishes and plates. Not sure what she’s seeing. Maybe she’s clinically insane. Great.
She nods at the jars of beans and rice and flour. “Those shouldn’t be sitting in the sun.”
“Write that down, will you?” I say to Fetz, and get up for more coffee.
“Your hair!” says Deirdre. “It’s on fire!”
“Huh?” I grab my hair but no one’s exactly throwing a blanket over me. Deirdre stares. “Most gorgeous hair I’ve ever seen.” Except she pronounces it “garr-jiss.” Girl’s giving me the creeps.
“It does look extraordinary in the sunlight,” says Nelson, and Sylvia’s nodding, too.
“Whatever.” Time for another cup of joe.
Nelson says, “Deirdre, how about eggs?” He holds one between finger and thumb as if she wouldn’t know an egg unless he showed it to her.
Sylvia watches like it’s theater.
I pour myself more coffee and murmur, “Pretty sure they’re called eggs in Ireland, dude.”
“Eggs would be lovely,” says Deirdre, and Nelson starts whirling around the kitchen like an ice skater, getting a frying pan from the cupboard, a plate from the roll-cart, and spiraling the end of a stick of butter around the pan. Gross. God, I wish they’d all just go vegan.