A Dangerous Woman

by Mary McGarry Morris

  “I wanna get out,” CeeCee cried. “It’s too hot!”

  “I wanna get out,” Martha mimicked under her breath. “Brat. Little brat,” she whispered.

  Billy Chelsea climbed into the truck and started it. Frances hurried out of the house, staring as he moved the truck into the shade of the beech tree. He jumped down and swung open the back gate and quickly spread a blanket in the truck bed for the girls to sit on. “They were getting too hot,” he explained sheepishly.

  Sticking out of her shirt pocket was the spiral notepad in which she recorded his hours. “This is unbelievable!” she said, surveying the mess.

  “Carpenter ants did most of it,” Billy said with a grunt, making sure he worked as he spoke. “Musta been a huge nest to do all this damage.” He jiggled another board, then pulled it out, its ends exploding in a puff of fine reddish powder as it hit the pile.

  “What do you mean, must’ve been?” Frances asked.

  “Well, they’re gone now,” Billy said.

  “Gone? Gone where?” Her voice rose.

  “They just go.” He looked back at her. “They just, like, move on.”

  “Move on!” Frances cried, bearing down on him. The children watched wide-eyed. “Where? Are they someplace else now? In the walls? In the floors?” She gestured back at the house. “Where?”

  “No,” Chelsea assured her. “The walls’re brick. They go in dead trees. In fence posts.”

  Martha rinsed off the last breakfast dish and set it in the plastic drainer. She let the water run as she sponged the sink clean. The vibrant whack whack whack of Chelsea’s hammer shot through the house. She was picturing herself working the counter with Birdy, just the two of them on a busy Saturday, and gradually, in her focused way, she would get everyone waited on. Then she and Birdy would have a nice long visit over coffee and fig squares, and she would explain what Getso had done, and then Birdy would finally see him for the scum he was, compared to Martha, who would never take advantage of a friend oh Birdy must know that. “She must,” Martha gasped, rubbing her eyes with the dish towel.

  “Here she is! Here’s Martha! Martha, turn the water off! Look who’s here!” called Frances with such strained gaiety that Martha spun around with a grin, expecting to see Birdy.

  Frances gripped Annie and CeeCee Chelsea’s hands. “I told the girls they could play in here. That you’d keep an eye on them.” Smiling wearily, she phrased everything like an emphatic question. “Maybe get them some lunch? Billy was going to bring them home to eat, but this’ll be better.” She leaned close and through clenched teeth said, “Keep them away from him! For every five minutes of work, it’s ten with them!” She drew back from the girls. “I have some errands to run. Okay?” As she left, she flashed a bright smile.

  “Okay,” Annie Chelsea said with an uneasy glance at Martha.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” she panted, looking everywhere but at them. She felt hot. She touched her cheek. She was no good at this. You had to be good at small talk to be good with children. She never knew where to start. They stared up at her. She wiped her hands on the sides of her baggy pants and folded the dish towel into a small careful square; first she set it behind the faucet, then, changing her mind with a mutter, shook it out and bent over the sink to rub it dry, every inch of it dry, dry, dry. She couldn’t face them until every single drop was gone. There. She refolded the towel into the same tight square and, turning, took a deep breath and, with three hollow thumps of her collarbone, said, “Do you like ham? I got some cheese here too.” Fenced by the open refrigerator door, she stared in at the bright sweating pitcher of orange juice.

  “I like ham,” the older girl said behind her. “And so does CeeCee.”

  “You like cheese?” Martha asked without turning.

  “We like everything,” the older girl said. “My father said we got no business being fussy. He said beggars can’t be choosers.”

  “I’m not a beggar!” CeeCee protested.

  “I didn’t say you were!” Annie snapped back.

  Her arms loaded with bread, cheese, ham, and the mustard jar, she kneed the refrigerator door closed. The two little girls followed her to the glass table and watched her make the sandwiches.

  They looked at each other. Whatever CeeCee whispered made the older girl frown. Maybe they didn’t like mustard. Was that it? Well, if they didn’t, too bad. It was their tough luck. The sandwiches were all made, and she wasn’t throwing them out to make more. Brats. Spoiled brats.

  “Can we sit down?” Annie asked.

  “Oh yah!” she said, thumping her chest and nodding too earnestly, relieved that it had nothing to do with mustard. They couldn’t keep their eyes off her. Such rude girls staring like that, didn’t anyone ever teach them manners? Probably not, she thought with a sudden sense that they might be as unmoored on this earth as she was. “Sure! You sit down! You both can. Right there in the chair. Sure! Go ahead!”

  Halfway through the silence of eating, CeeCee, looking at her sister, said, “I’m thirsty.”

  “She’s thirsty,” Annie said.

  “Oh yah, sure!” Martha jumped up and offered them milk, juice, water. They both wanted milk. “Here. Here’s your milk,” she said, placing a glass in front of each girl. “I like milk. It’s good for you. I like milk a lot. Makes your bones strong. Makes your teeth strong too.” She blinked, alarmingly adrift in the realization that there was nothing more to say about milk—about anything, for that matter. If she told all she knew about milk, that it came from cows, was white, creamy, pasteurized, homogenized, they wouldn’t care. So what was the sense? Why not just set the bottle on the table and let that be that? She wasn’t going to talk just to fill up dead air. Why should she? She fiddled with the brass napkin-holder, conscious of their uneasy glances as they chewed. Setting her feet squarely together on the floor, she removed the blue cloth napkins and refolded them, placed them so precisely in the gleaming brass swan that their edges were perfectly aligned, like sails, like bright-blue wings. There, there, she thought, letting it out, taking another breath with three quick taps on her chest. Now what? In all the world there were so many things to talk about, but what were they? And if she could think of even a single one, would they even care, these hard-eyed children, who made her squirm, made her hate herself, them, all things?

  “Do you have a husband?” CeeCee asked, letting fall the last of her uneaten crusts, curled like a rind.

  “No,” she answered, barely able to expel the word.

  “How come?” CeeCee asked.

  “’Cause she’s not married,” Annie said too quickly, obviously anticipating some gaffe from her sister.

  “How come?” CeeCee asked, looking at Martha.

  “’Cause she’s not!” Annie said. She grabbed her sister’s wrist and squeezed it. “Now, shut up!”

  “I didn’t say anything!” CeeCee’s voice quavered.

  “No, but you were gonna,” Annie said, her freckles pale with tension.

  “You got cable?” CeeCee asked, jerking her hand away and rubbing it.

  “No. Do you?” Martha got up and rinsed off their dishes while CeeCee listed her favorite television shows. Annie had excused herself to go to the bathroom.

  “My daddy said the kids were mean to you in school,” CeeCee said in a sudden veer off course. “What’d they do?” she rushed on. “They hit you? They throw things at you? They ever spit at you?”

  “They …”

  “CeeCee!” Annie gasped from the doorway.

  “They were just mean,” Martha said at the sink. She was folding the towel.

  “I don’t want to go to school!” CeeCee said. “If they be mean to me, I’m going home and I’m never going back!”

  “They won’t be mean to you,” Martha said, turning to find CeeCee’s eyes bulging with tears. Poor thing. Poor little thing. “You’re so pretty and so nice.”

  CeeCee sniffed. “Is that why they were mean …”

  Annie pounced too late.
<
br />   “… you’re pretty, but my daddy says you’re not nice.”

  Martha stared as the two girls wrestled with each other. Outside, the hammer blows struck the hard flat sheen of noon in an agitation of heat and blinding light. She had a headache. Both girls were crying. Annie had slapped her sister and then been bitten on the upper arm with such ferocity that the deep black imprint of sharp little teeth seemed permanently embedded in her soft flesh. Their rage spent, the girls sagged against one another. They asked to go into the living room.

  She followed them from window to window, shelf to shelf, table to table.

  “Look,” CeeCee said, pointing to the tiered collection of cut-glass dogs that had been Mr. Beecham’s.

  “Don’t touch,” Martha warned, and CeeCee drew back her hand. Through the window she glimpsed Billy Chelsea, still shirtless, with a saw at his side, heading doggedly toward the garage. Anger flared through her. Why had he discussed her with his children? What right did he have to perpetuate her miseries? None. He had no right. None at all! No one did! They should leave her alone, she thought in a welter of throbbing temples and the girls’ nettlesome voices. Just the way she left them alone. They had no right. That was the trouble. People should leave other people alone.…

  First came the crash on the marble tabletop, and then, turning, she saw the shattered porcelain pieces fly up in countless, irrecoverable pale slivers. Mr. Beecham’s porcelain cabbage rose had been destroyed. They had broken it, these nasty sweaty children.…

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” she screamed. “I told you not to touch! I did! You know I did! And what am I supposed to tell her? Do you know what she’ll say? Do you have any idea what she’s going to say?” She had been shaking the older girl’s arm and now she flung it away. “You shouldn’t have done that! You shouldn’t have,” she gasped to the weeping girl, breathless herself now and wet-eyed. She hadn’t realized the younger girl had run outside until this moment.

  Billy Chelsea ran into the room and swept up Annie. Sobbing, she buried her face in his neck.

  “She broke the cabbage rose!” Martha said, her voice piercingly sharp. She was out of control, but now there was no stopping, no way back. There was only this spew of monstrous rage, stupid and repetitive and unstoppable, volcanic and so all-consuming that in school they would goad her to it, then stand back to watch with wonder and giddy fear.

  “That was Mr. Beecham’s rose! And look what she did! Look what she did!” she panted, holding out a palmful of the pink-and-white-and-green pieces.

  “I don’t care what happened or what she broke, goddamn it!” he roared. “You had no right to lay a hand on her! No right! Do you hear me?”

  Head hung, she nodded. There was so little air to breathe. She was ashamed. Her brain reeled with apology, but he had already stormed outside, carrying both girls. She buried her face in her hands. “Stupid, Martha, so damn stupid, can’t do anything right,” she groaned.

  He had just thrown the last tool into his truck when Frances drove into the driveway. She jumped out of her car and followed him around the side of the truck.

  “Nobody touches my kids,” he hollered from the driver’s seat. “I don’t care what the hell’s wrong.”

  Frances’s pleading voice rose and fell.

  “But she did and I’m not putting up with it.”

  Again Frances’s voice.

  “I told you. I said this was the only way I could do it. That I had to bring them with me.”

  Frances’s voice.

  “Yah, but you don’t like it and it shows and my kids can feel it. Plus I told you before I even started I had no idea how much rot I’d find, and now, every board, you act like I’m tryna pull something on you. I don’t need this, Mrs. Beecham! I don’t need this job! I don’t need this shit!” The truck door slammed. “I don’t need anything from anybody!”

  “Your first day home! That was good,” Frances said, her lips white and drawn. “That was very good. Now what do I do? Because you have absolutely no self-control, I am left with that mess out there.” She shook her head. “And, you know, he asked me about hiring you to babysit this summer and now that’s gone too. This is so typical.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “I wish I could!”

  “Don’t talk to me like that.”

  “Martha, the way you act … you … you … Why did you hit that little girl? My God! I mean, I could be sued.”

  “I didn’t hit her! I shook her arm.” Head throbbing, she sat with her hand over her eyes.

  “You shouldn’t have touched her. You shouldn’t have screamed. You shouldn’t have acted like that.”

  “She broke the cabbage rose!” Martha stared so fiercely that her head trembled.

  “So? She broke the cabbage rose! I would have dealt with it. I …”

  “You would have screamed at me! You would have blamed it on me. Like you blame everything on me. Like everything I do is wrong! Well, I’m going to tell you something—I DO act right. I do! When I’m not around you I do!”

  “Yes, you certainly do act right, don’t you? Locking yourself in a bathroom for two hours and then stealing from your boss. Oh yes, that’s very normal behavior, Martha. Just like your … your obsessions with people, that’s just the way everyone acts.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It’s true. It’s ridiculous. It’s bizarre. It’s disgusting. Depressing. Disappointing. What else? Did I leave anything out?” Frances screamed.

  In the next few days, Frances had met with five different carpenters, whose estimates were all so similar she was convinced of their collusion, their treachery, their jealousy, their dislike—no, their hatred, yes, hatred that Frances Horgan had come this far, had risen above what anyone had ever expected or predicted of her.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Steve Bell said. He kicked aside a splintered board.

  “It was written all over their faces,” Frances said. “They were gloating.”

  “Frannie.” He looked over his glasses at her. “You don’t mean to tell me that five separate carpenters—and two of them don’t even live around here—that all five got together and conspired to set a ridiculously high price …” He leaned toward her. “Because they don’t like you?”

  “I just can’t stand this mess anymore! It’s driving me crazy. The whole house is falling apart!” She paced back and forth under the beech tree.

  “Well, you know what my next words are.”

  “Please,” she warned. She was sick of hearing it, from him, from everyone.

  “But with Floyd gone it doesn’t make a bit of sense to hold on to this big ark anymore. It’s just too much of a drain. Sell this place. Do something with your money. Have some fun, Frannie!”

  Her head shot up. “I am perfectly content with my life.”

  He looked at her. “Really? Because lately I …” He shook his head and swallowed hard. “I worry about you, Frannie. I do.”

  “Then help me find someone!” she said quickly, to avoid the banter that had seesawed them through the years: him wanting to leave his family, her not wanting his daughters to hate her, him insisting he couldn’t abandon Anita in a crisis, her pointing out that Anita’s existence was rooted in crisis. Patience, each would counsel the other. Patience. Their time together would come soon enough.

  “All right, look, I’ve got this client. A builder. I’ll send him up.”

  Six

  Steve’s contractor arrived early on a morning dark with the threat of rain. Martha was in Frances’s kitchen, chipping open the hot shell of a soft-boiled egg. She had to eat over here, because there wasn’t any food in the apartment, but that didn’t matter, because all she really needed, all she cared about right now, was talking to Birdy. Every time she called the Cleaners, Mercy or Barbara answered, so she would hang up. Last night she had dialed Birdy’s home number every fifteen minutes, only to hear the jarring throb of the busy signal. Finally, at one in the morning, the phone actually rang,
and she let out a squeal. But then a recording clicked on to say Birdy’s number was now unlisted. Stunned, she continued to dial, praying with each ring that there had been a mistake. She had tried again first thing this morning, only to be tormented by the recording’s crisp voice. Getso was behind this; to protect himself from the truth, he had to keep Birdy away from her.

  The contractor nudged the side of the steps with his boot, then grimaced as the bottom step collapsed. Spotting her at the window, he gestured for her to open the door.

  “Three days’ work for a three-man crew plus materials,” he told her through the screen. He slid his pencil back and forth over his ear, calculating. “Twenty-eight hundred. It’s a monster deck, and the steps’re gone.” He took a few steps back and, shading his eyes, looked up. “Roof’s curling, and them gutters don’t look so hot. Steve said to look around.”

  “I’ll get my …”

  “How the hell do you figure twenty-eight hundred?” Frances called out, tying her robe and combing her fingers through her hair as she opened the door. “I’ve had five estimates, and not one of them was that high!”

  “Then you better grab one fast, ma’am. I’m only here as a favor to Steve. I don’t go around begging for work. I got a hell of a lot more than I want. Believe me!” he said with a curt nod before climbing into his truck.

  Frances came inside and flopped down in the chair. “What am I going to do?” she sighed.

  “Claire Mayo gets people out of the want ads,” Martha said, realizing those were the first words she had spoken in days.

  Frances looked at her. “Maybe I could find somebody. Somebody to keep things up. Maybe somebody older. Not too old—but settled.” She took a pad of paper from the telephone stand. “‘Wanted,’” she said, starting to write, “‘caretaker for large house and grounds’ … No.” She scratched out a word and above it wrote, “‘Handyman.’ Sounds cheaper. I’ll put ‘housing a possibility.’” She glanced up. “But he certainly couldn’t live in the house.” Her gaze narrowed on Martha. “He’d be in the apartment. Do you understand?”