A Dangerous Woman

by Mary McGarry Morris

  “Mr. Mackey?” she said, and his eyes opened.

  “Birdy! Whoever heard of Birdy,” he muttered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  She was afraid if he didn’t keep talking he was going to fall asleep right here in her kitchen. “See?” She showed him the plastic bowl she kept on the table. “Birdy gave me this,” she said, snapping the blue lid off, then sealing it back on.

  He took it and peered dully at it. “What’s this Birdy?” His eyes closed, and the bowl rolled onto the floor.

  She picked it up. “Well, they had all sizes, and I almost got the DeluxeWare set, but they said I didn’t really need it living alone, well, where I was living. In the boardinghouse, that is.” She took a breath. “I really wanted that set. I really did.” She kept nodding. She was getting upset. Why was she telling him about the PlastiqueWare and snapping this lid off and on, off and on? Now he was awake and looking up at her with a kind of horror. “She was so nice. Her mother’s a crossing guard at a school I used to go by on my way to work. Once she stopped all the cars and made them wait for me to cross and I was so embarrassed,” she said, her face flaming even now with the memory, “I thought I was going to faint. I did,” she said, rubbing her arm and shrugging. “I was halfway across and all the drivers on both sides were all staring at me and it felt like I couldn’t breathe or swallow. It was awful. It felt like I was way high up, with everyone down there watching me, and then finally I made it to the other side and later Birdy came up to me and she said how her mother had called and asked if I was sick. And I said, ‘Tell her not to ever do that again.’ That I’d cross myself. That she should tell her mother to leave me alone!” She looked at him and he stared back with glazed eyes. “I shouldn’t have said that to her,” she tried to explain. “I mean, it was my fault.” This was awful. What was she talking about what was she talking about what was she talking about. Oh God. She cleared her throat. Sweat trickled down her sides.

  Muttering, he put both hands on the table and tried to get up, but he slid back into the chair. Drool shone on a corner of his mouth as he held his head back to focus his bleary eyes. He managed to move the chair back and stand up. “You’ve been very kind,” he said, leaning his long marred fingers along the tabletop, to feel his way. “I’ll just sit here a minute,” he said, and sighed himself onto the hard brown couch. “And then I’ll be gone and will not pass this way again. Ever,” he said, his head bobbing. “I promise,” he whispered as his eyes closed.

  She waited ten minutes, then bent and gently prodded his arm. “Mr. Mackey. Wake up, Mr. Mackey. You have to go. You have to wake up. It’s one in the morning, Mr.…”

  His eyes flared open. “Get your fucking hand off me, bitch,” he snarled.

  “You get out of here!” she shrieked.

  He reached up and snatched off her glasses and tucked them under his arm. “Good night,” he sighed, and sank into a deep flaccid-faced sleep.

  She closed the door softly behind her. She tiptoed quickly down the stairs and let herself into the house, careful not to turn on a light or make a sound that might rouse Frances. She went straight to the study and curled up on the cool leather sofa.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

  The room was blurred with sunshine. Jumping up, she stubbed her toe on the massive claw base of the oak coffee table then limped blindly into the kitchen. He was outside, hammering boards onto the deck. Without her glasses she couldn’t see what time it was. She stood directly under the clock, tilting her head and squinting, but its face seemed handless. She pulled a chair from the table over to the wall and climbed up and peered at its face.

  “What’re you doing?” Frances groaned from the doorway.

  Startled, she teetered, bracing herself against the wall. “Just trying to see what time it is. I don’t have my glasses.” She gestured toward the garage. “I forgot them.”

  Frances was at the window. “It’s seven o’clock.” She yawned, leaning over the sink. “And look at him out there. Where’s his car? My Lord, he must have walked.” She began to make the coffee. “At least he’s reliable.”

  Her glasses were crooked, the right lens riding higher than the left, giving her a startled, contorted look. She couldn’t bend them any more than she already had; the wrenched hinge was barely attached. She had found them in the apartment, wedged behind the sofa cushion.

  It was mid-afternoon and she had cleaned all the bathrooms in the house. Before leaving for the club this morning, Frances had asked her to clean the bathrooms and mop the kitchen floor.

  She wrung out the mop in the bucket of warm water and ammonia. She had started to draw the mop back and forth when there was a hard rap at the door.

  “Martha? Martha, it’s me, Mack. Martha, I’d like to talk to you. I want to apologize,” he said after a pause. “I feel really lousy about how I acted.… Martha?”

  He told her through the latched screen that, while he wasn’t exactly sure what he’d said last night, he knew he had acted like an ass.

  “I’m very sorry. I really am. Will you forgive me for every stupid, insensitive, asinine thing I’m sure I said?” He brought his unshaven face close to the screen. “What happened to your glasses?” He winced. “Oh. I did that, didn’t I?”

  Because he insisted he could fix them, she let him in. As he hunched over the table, working on the hinge with tweezers and a pen knife, he thanked her for not saying anything to Frances. “She thinks I couldn’t wait to get back on the job. What she doesn’t know is, that’s my penance. It’s how I prove I’m not a bum—not yet.” He glanced up at her. “Not as long as I can get up the next morning and kill myself working. Here,” he said, his hands shaking, as he held out the glasses.

  They were tighter, but still crooked.

  Standing in front of her, he studied them, dipping his knees to be eye level with her. “They’re still off. The right’s up too high. But I’m afraid I’ll snap the hinge if I tighten it any more.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, turning from his anxious scrutiny when she realized she had been staring at his mouth. The mouth that had been on hers.

  A long black limousine pulled into the driveway. The driver wore black pants, a short-sleeved white shirt, and a black tie. He got out and put on his suit jacket. He tightened the knot on his tie with a nervous glance up at the house, then reached onto the seat for something that was long and bright yellow and hung on a coat hanger. As he walked toward the house, she recognized Wesley Mount. Mack stopped hammering and stood up.

  “Can I help you?” he called, wiping sweat from his eyes.

  “Uh, yes. If you would, please. My name is Wesley Mount, and I’m looking for Martha Horgan.”

  “You delivering something?”

  “Well, in a manner of speaking, yes,” Wesley said, raising her raincoat.

  She ducked back from the window.

  “I’ll see that she gets it,” Mack said, wiping his hands on his pants. He reached for the coat, and Mount drew it back.

  “Actually, I’d like to see Martha, if I could. If that wouldn’t be any kind of imposition.” He gestured apologetically with the raincoat. “Particularly since I see you’re right square in the middle of quite a project here. Quite a project!”

  Mack tilted his head and chuckled. “Well, I certainly am,” he said, managing to sound just like Mount. “But you wait here and I’ll see if Martha’s around.”

  “Thank you! I do appreciate it!” Wesley Mount nodded.

  Mack returned the nod with equal vigor. “I’m sure you do!” He grinned.

  “Martha!” Wesley smiled, his cheeks reddening, when he saw her in the doorway. Mack jumped off the skeletal deck and dumped a can of nails onto a flat paper bag, to sort through them.

  “I ran into Loiselle Evans,” Wesley said, “and when I asked if she or any of the ladies had heard from you, she informed me they hadn’t. She was quite concerned about your raincoat still being there. She reminded me that we’ve had quite a few storms alr
eady, with one predicted tonight, as a matter of fact. So I told her, no problem, I’d run it right on up to you.” He held up the raincoat again, and Mack took it and passed it to her.

  “Thank you,” she said, wetting her finger and rubbing intently at a spot on the sleeve to avoid the look of amusement on Mack’s face.

  “You’re welcome.” Wesley nodded. He started to turn, then looked back at her. “Oh! Careless of me,” he said, tapping his temple. “I almost forgot. I don’t know if you’re at all familiar with the Atkinson Choral Society, of which I’m a longtime member, but, in any event, we’re having our annual dinner-dance and installation of officers this week. Saturday night, as a matter of fact. And though I quite understand that this invitation is proffered on extremely short notice, I’d be honored if you’d accompany me.” He blinked and licked his dry, quivering lips.

  Neither one spoke. She hugged the raincoat. Mack looked back and forth between the two of them. “She have to buy her own ticket?” he asked.

  “Oh my Lord, no!” Wesley said, flustered, addressing Mack. “All Martha has to do is have a good time.”

  Mack nodded. “Sounds like a good deal. Free eats. Good time. Good music?”

  “Oh yes! There’s a few of us doing a brief Handel presentation. Actually,” Wesley said, leaning forward and lowering his voice, “it’s an absolute surprise. The presentation, that is.”

  “You’re kidding!” Mack said.

  “No, I am not!” Wesley said with an eager shiver. “We’ve been preparing for weeks now.”

  “I can’t,” Martha said, and she swallowed hard. “Thank you for my raincoat. I have to go in now.” She closed the door and fled into the study, where she turned the television up high. “Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone,” she pleaded under her breath.

  “Excuse me,” Mack said, opening the door. “This isn’t any of my business. But who was that?”

  She told him, and he seemed to be struggling not to laugh.

  “So you do know him? It’s not like you never knew him or anything.” He shrugged. “So why not go? I mean, the Choral Society, Handel, dinner, it’s not like the Hell’s Angels or anything. You should go!”

  “I don’t want to go!” Arms folded, she stared at the television.

  “But you’d probably have a good time! A few drinks, a lotta laughs … Well, scratch that, maybe with him a lotta drinks and just a few laughs. But either way you’d have a good time.”

  She glanced at him. “I don’t go out on dates!”

  “Why?” he said with a laugh.

  “I just don’t!”

  He was quiet for a moment, studying her again. “You mean, you’ve never gone on a date?”

  “Yes!” she lied. “I’ve gone on dates. I just don’t go on them anymore.”

  “Why? Did you have a bad experience, or some long relationship or something that didn’t work out?”

  “No. Well, I guess so.” She looked right at him. “Yes.”

  “Who’d you go with?”

  “You don’t know him, so never mind!” She thumped her chest.

  He chuckled. “That’s right, so tell me! What difference does it make?”

  The girls in high school used to talk like this. And if they caught her listening, they’d ask her, Who do you like, Martha? Come on now, you can tell us.

  “None of your business,” she said, which was just what she used to tell them.

  “C’mon! I spilled my guts to you last night and now you won’t even trust me enough to tell me who you went out with?”

  “His name’s Billy Chelsea.” Her face flushed at the mention of last night.

  “I met him! That’s the guy down the road, with the little girls. Nice guy.”

  She looked up and could barely see him, her eyes burned so. “That’s not true. I hate to lie. I hate liars! I never went out with him.”

  Mack looked at her sadly. “Well, then, maybe he’s not such a nice guy.”

  Eleven

  Tonight she felt very sad. She lay in the tub with her eyes closed. It was almost midnight. The candle on the back of the toilet had burned itself out, and she hugged herself under the still, cold water. She had tried picturing herself with Mack, but it wouldn’t work. All she could think of was Birdy. She shouldn’t have spoken to Birdy the way she had. The poor thing had enough troubles. Birdy must have known all along that Getso was stealing. Maybe she wasn’t protecting him. Maybe she had been too afraid of him to defend Martha. Maybe she was afraid of what he might do to Martha. That was it. Of course. He was probably still stealing, but Birdy was trying to protect her. Suddenly it was all coming clear. Getso was planning to set Birdy up the same way he had set her up. That was it. Of course. Oh, poor poor Birdy, being lured into that snake’s nest.

  She was climbing out of the tub when she remembered the names of Birdy’s next-door neighbors. George and Lee Penny. “PennyPennyPenny,” she kept saying as she wrapped a towel around herself and ran to the phone book. Their number was right at the top of the page.

  “Hello!” a woman answered anxiously on the first ring.

  “Hello,” Martha said, as calmly as she could manage. She had to keep swallowing. A clock had begun to tick in her head. “I was wondering if you could help me. I’m a friend of Birdy Dusser’s and I don’t have her new number and I have to talk to her right away. It’s an emergency.”

  “Who is this?”

  “I told you! A friend of Birdy’s.”

  There was a pause. “Birdy’s friends all know her new number.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t, and I’m a really close friend of hers and this is a very, very important phone call. I mean, this is serious! Someone wants to hurt her very much and I’ve got to tell her before it’s too late!”

  “Who is this? Tell me your name, and I’ll give you the number.”

  “Martha Horgan.”

  The phone went dead. When she dialed again, the line was busy. She slumped against the refrigerator, numb with the realization that Getso had even turned Birdy’s neighbors against her. That such a cruel, vile man could be so powerful was terrifying.

  She looked up. Outside, the stairs creaked. They creaked again, and she darted into the bathroom and put on her nightgown and robe. There were three faint taps on the door. She came out of the bathroom to find Mack, staring dismally through the glass at her. She opened the door the length of the chain.

  “Sorry to bother you so late,” he whispered, “but the guy I’ve been staying with, his wife won’t let me in.”

  “You can’t stay here!”

  “Listen, I wouldn’t have bothered you, but I’m in a real bind here. I parked way behind this old factory, and just as I’m falling asleep, a cruiser pulls in and the cop says, if I don’t have a place to stay, he’s got one for me—jail.”

  “Then go ask Frances!” She started to close the door, but he stuck his arm in, and she pulled the door back quickly, afraid she had hurt him.

  “She already said no the other day. Look, I was really drunk last night. I was way out of line. But I’m stone-cold sober now. I’d just as soon sleep in the car, but I can’t end up in jail again. I can’t get a room and I haven’t even got gas money to get the hell out of here. She won’t pay me until the job’s done. Martha, I’m like some kind of prisoner here, with this windshield thing. I can’t leave. I can’t stay. It’s like this weird trap I’m caught in.” He looked as panicky as he sounded.

  She closed the door to release the chain. When she opened it, he had gone down to the bottom step. He looked back, then ran up the stairs, grinning.

  She gave him sheets and a pillow for the couch, and a towel and a face cloth. He came out of the bathroom smelling of soap and toothpaste, and she hung up the phone. The Pennys’ line was still busy. She stood in front of the cupboards, moving around the few cans and boxes left in there. “Would you like some iced tea or fruit cocktail or anything?”

  “No thanks,” he said, whipping op
en the sheet onto the couch. “I’ll be asleep in no time. I’m beat,” he sighed, lying down. He stretched out his arms and legs.

  “There’s a little box of raisins here.”

  “No thanks.”

  She pushed aside a can of crackers. Her hand jerked back at the touch of dry mouse-droppings on the shelf and she slammed the cupboard door. She opened the refrigerator. “Want some apple juice?” she asked, needing to linger by the phone just a while longer. Maybe the Pennys’ line was busy because Lee Penny was relaying her warning to Birdy right now.

  “No thanks.”

  She closed the refrigerator and dialed the Pennys’ number again. Still busy. She said good night and went into the bedroom and closed her door, but every time she closed her eyes she saw Getso’s sly face slide over the cash drawer. She got out of bed and tiptoed past Mack, snoring on the couch.

  The Pennys’ number was still busy. She kept hanging up, then dialing again, faster and faster, because now the busy signals sounded different, fainter, briefer, as if she were actually penetrating some barrier, as if she were working her way into Birdy’s consciousness, getting so close now that she was sure she could hear their voices beyond the incessant signal. “Birdy!” she whispered into the phone. “Birdy! Birdy, it’s me, Martha!”

  “Martha?” answered a man’s voice, and she turned, startled to see Mack up on one elbow, watching her through the darkness. “What’s wrong?”

  She tried to explain it to him.

  “You’re obsessed with this, aren’t you?” he said.

  “I’m not obsessed!” she said angrily. “I just want the truth to come out, and I don’t want Birdy to get in trouble.”

  “But she obviously doesn’t want to hear it, Martha, and that’s something you can’t force. The truth’s right in front of her, but you can’t force her to see it.”

  “No, you don’t understand. I’m the only one who knows what he’s up to, and he’s got it so I can’t see her or call her.”

  Mack yawned. “Then write her a letter.”

  When she woke up the next morning, he was already working on the deck. She sat down at the table in the hot little apartment and began her letter. She told Birdy the whole story, relating every detail: the weather that morning, and how Getso’s shirt had been yellow and Birdy had worn red flats and her heart pendant. Birdy would see what a reliable witness she was.