A Dangerous Woman

by Mary McGarry Morris

  “I told you. My word is good!”

  “And I believe you. That’s why I’m giving you this choice.”

  “Choice?” Mack said with a high, bitter laugh. “What choice?” He looked in disbelief between Sonny and Frances. “My choice of jailers?”

  “Well,” Sonny said thoughtfully. “You see, I’m trying to be fair as I can.” He leaned in closer. “To Mrs. Beecham here. And to the Geres.”

  Sixteen

  From her bedroom window, Martha watched him spray glistening white paint onto the wicker chairs and tables and the sagging settee, which were spread all over the side lawn on spattered drop cloths. When he was done, he headed toward the house, wiping his hands on a rag. She ran down the back stairs, slid into a chair at the kitchen table, and smiled as he came through the door. “Hot enough for you?” She bit her lip; such a lame thing to say.

  “Mmmm, hot,” he muttered, opening and closing drawers until he came to the junk drawer, where he fumbled through tangled skeins of string, small tools, and odd utensils, which he kept putting on the counter.

  “Watch out for knives,” she warned just as a melon baller hit the floor. It rolled by her feet, and she grabbed it. “Here!” she said, grinning. His hand shook, and in the moment’s hesitation he seemed about to say something. He turned quickly back to the drawer.

  “Your bandage is off! Does it hurt?” She held her glasses and walked around him, straining to see the thin purple line that creased his cheek.

  His reply was lost in the clatter of everything being swept back into the drawer.

  “What?” she asked, stepping closer. “I didn’t hear you,” she called at his shoulder. “What?” The room was quiet. She didn’t have to yell. Now she felt even more stupid.

  “The cut’s fine,” he said, glancing uneasily at the door, then back to her. “Martha, I know we have to talk. But not right now.”

  “When?”

  “Maybe later.”

  “I just remembered!” Frances called as she strode across the deck. She came into the kitchen to tell Mack the razor blades he needed were in the cigar box at the top of the cellar stairs.

  With an ache in the pit of her stomach, Martha watched him look through the cigar box and, after finding the red box of blades, slide one into his paint scraper. Tonight. He wanted to see her tonight.

  “Martha!” Frances said, so sharply that she jumped. “Go up and count the packages of paper plates.”

  She had no sooner entered the cool spare room that was filled with cartons of paper goods and bags of linen than Frances stepped in and closed the door behind her. Her lips were thin and gray.

  “For Godssakes, don’t ever stare at the front of a man’s pants like that!”

  “What are you talking about? Don’t you talk to me like that,” she warned, her face red. But it was true. She couldn’t help it. Loving him was all she ever thought of now. In the middle of the night, she would wake up sweating and writhing with desire.

  “Martha, you are so obvious. It’s written all over your face.” She looked at her. “Oh, would I love to know what happened here the night he left.”

  “I told you, nothing!”

  “Did something get you mad? Did he say something?” Her voice fell. “Did he do anything, Martha?” Her eyes narrowed and she whispered, “Did he do anything to you? I won’t be mad, I promise, but I should know.”

  “No!” she insisted, noting Frances’s obvious sigh of relief.

  It was early evening when Frances burst into her room with two shopping bags, which she flung to the floor. “What are these?”

  “They’re mine! Where’d you get them?” She searched through the bags for a note. Birdy must have found them in her car. “Is she here?” She ran to the window, then started for the door. “She didn’t leave, did she?”

  “That man,” Frances said with a contemptuous gesture toward the driveway. “Getso. He said they’re yours.”

  “He’s here?” She was stunned.

  “No. He was leaving them down by the mailbox and I came along.” Frances looked down at her. “He was a nervous wreck. He said you’d left them in his car. Martha, what in God’s name were you doing in his car? I mean, someone like that!” Frances shuddered.

  “It’s Birdy’s car!” she said indignantly.

  “But you were in it with him!”

  “No! I was waiting for Birdy, and then he came out.”

  “You were, waiting for Birdy, and then he came out,” Frances repeated, starting to nod. “Oh! Now this is all making sense.” She sagged against the door. “It was another one of your crushes, wasn’t it? And then, when everything went haywire, you accused him of stealing. Just like that night with the boys.” Frances looked as if she were going to throw up.

  “Don’t say that! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Oh God! And that’s just what happened the other night with Mack, isn’t it? Of course!” Frances threw up her hands. “It’s so obvious!”

  “Get out! Just get out! You don’t know what you’re talking about! You think you know everything about me! You don’t know anything!” she said, trembling with the need to tell Frances that she had been loved, that it was so much more than Frances even imagined.

  “I know one thing! You pester people and you pursue them and you haunt them and you’ve got to stop it before something terrible happens like that night in the woods.”

  “I told you, don’t talk about that!” she warned, rushing at her. But Frances ran out, slamming the door behind her. She could hear Frances down in the back hallway, talking to Mack. “I’ll kill her,” Martha muttered against the door. “If she tells him, I’ll kill her.”

  At eleven o’clock she woke up, moaning. She had been dreaming of Getso kissing her, his tongue slimy with phlegm. She jumped out of bed and scrubbed her teeth until her gums bled. She rinsed out her mouth with so much peroxide it continued to foam between her teeth as she stood at her window. The lights were still on in the apartment, and the steady click of Mack’s typing carried through the still, warm night. Outside her door, the floorboards creaked, and Frances’s bedroom door opened and closed. Martha washed her face and underarms, changed into a skirt and blouse, then doused herself with perfume. She waited ten more minutes, before she ran around the back of the house, staying on the grass to avoid the crunching stones of the driveway gravel.

  “Mack!” she called, tapping lightly on the door. He was typing at the kitchen table.

  “You said you wanted to talk to me,” she said when he came to the door. She bit her lip to keep from grinning. He glanced toward the house, and she assured him Frances was asleep. “We can talk!”

  “This isn’t a good time,” he said, gesturing back at the table. “I’m right in the middle of something.”

  “I’ll wait, or I can come back. I’ll go set my alarm.”

  “No!” He stepped closer to the screen. “I’ll tell you now. I’m sorry. I am so sorry. For the things I said and what I did. And now I’m sitting on a time bomb here. She keeps asking me about that night. What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing!” She smiled proudly.

  “Don’t.” He stared at her. “Please don’t.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, Mack.” She laughed and pressed her hands to the screen, against his chest. “Honest! I love you so much. I love you more …”

  “No! Don’t say that!” he hissed against the screen. “Don’t talk like that! Don’t think like that!”

  “I can’t help it! I think about you all the time. I ache inside for you. When you left, I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die! I need you so much, Mack!”

  He opened the door and pulled her in, out of the light. He put his hands on her shoulders. “You need a friend and I’m your friend. That’s all I am. Your friend. That’s all I can be. I’ll be your friend. I promise I won’t hurt you ever again. I’ll be your friend. I’m your friend and I’ll be a good friend. I promise. Do you understand? Do you?” he
demanded.

  Dazed, she nodded. Yes, she understood. Understood that she had never felt this way for another human being.

  It was the day before the party. A heat wave was predicted, so Frances and Dawn were testing small oscillating fans in strategic positions on mantels and tabletops. They had been delivered this morning by Frances’s friend Bert, who owned the appliance store.

  “Looks like an old-fashioned summer hotel out there,” Mack said, coming into the living room. He had just finished staking the yellow canopy that would extend over the serving tables. He had been up since early morning assembling the umbrella tables Frances had rented. “Hey, kitten, c’mere,” he called up to Dawn, who was perched on top of the stepladder. “I need a hand out there.”

  “I’m so tired,” Dawn sighed.

  The piano keys plinked as Martha wiped them with a damp cloth. “I’ll help you,” she said. His declaration of friendship had only made him more distant.

  “That’s okay,” Mack said, grabbing one of the fan cartons and flattening it. “I need a break from the sun a while anyway.” He reached for another carton.

  “Don’t!” Frances said.

  “Just take me a minute,” he said.

  “No! Bert can’t sell them without the boxes.”

  “He’s going to sell them?” Martha asked.

  “Yes,” Frances said, with a look. “He’s going to sell them.” She set a fan on top of the piano.

  “That’s not right, unless he marks them down. They’ll be used.” She kept looking at Mack.

  “Well, that’s Bert’s problem, not mine,” Frances sighed, rolling her eyes.

  “Yes, it is your problem,” Martha snapped, determined not to be humiliated in front of Mack and this high-school girl, especially by Frances. She could feel their eyes on her. “It’s a question of right and wrong! It’s not right to use an appliance and then go sell it like it’s brand new!” She hit her open hand with her fist. The world was filling up with people like Bert. Bend the rules, turn things just the slightest bit this way or that, until nothing anyone said or did could set things straight. Liars and thieves, like Getso. But not her. She was an honorable woman, someone Mack could trust and depend on. Someone he could love.

  “Dawn, that one’s not doing anything,” Frances called in a strained voice, trying to ignore her.

  “Which one?” Mack asked, looking around.

  “Just like that time at the Cleaners. Same thing,” Martha continued, determined to make her point.

  “The one on the top shelf,” Frances said.

  “Oh, I did that,” Dawn said. “Here, I’ll move it.”

  “This man came in for his blazer and it wasn’t even cleaned yet. So John told Mercy, ‘Just pre-spot it and give it to him. He won’t know.’ But I told him! I marched right out there and I said, ‘Excuse me, sir, this isn’t right. They’re lying to you. This blazer has only been prespotted. This blazer has not been dry-cleaned and I do not think it’s fair. Not at all. Not fair at all!’”

  They stared at her—Dawn from atop the ladder; Mack with the reshaped carton against his chest; and Frances with her mouth agape.

  “You didn’t really?” Frances asked.

  “Yes, I did! And I’m glad I did! And if Bert tries to sell these like new fans, I’ll stand right there, right next to them, and I’ll tell people.” She looked at Mack with a surge of triumph. “I will!”

  He looked away.

  “Oh, Martha,” Frances sighed. “What do you care?”

  “I care! I care about a lot of things!”

  The door closed, and she realized that Mack had slipped outside.

  She felt better down here in the cool dark cellar. She was exhausted and jittery. Every time she blinked, she heard pinging sounds inside her head. Every noise made her jump, and her hands tingled with numbness as she wiped out the freezer chest and plugged it in. Unused for years, it had mildewed and still gave off a dank, brackish odor, even though she had already washed it three times with soapy bleach water. Now she began to clean the old refrigerator, with its small round motor set on top like a robotic head. Mack’s legs kept passing the narrow mud-spattered cellar window as he carried out stacks of plastic chairs to the tables. She could hear Julia’s voice upstairs. She and Frances were hanging new dotted-swiss curtains in the kitchen.

  A truck swung into the driveway, then pulled close by the open cellar door. Mack told the driver the ice went down to the freezer.

  “I deliver,” the driver said. “I don’t set up.”

  “There’s someone down there,” Mack said.

  “Who?”

  “Who? What do you mean, who? Just bring it down.”

  The dolly’s thick wheels banged down onto each stone step. The truck driver peered through the glare of the doorway into the dim cellar. “Anybody down here?” he called. “I got five more of these.”

  “Five more what?” she asked, turning. He stared at her. She felt flushed and short of breath. This stocky balding man in white coveralls was Harold DeLong, whom she hadn’t seen since high school.

  “Pallets,” he said, then nodded at the freezer when she did not respond. DeLong waited by the door while she shoved the bags into the freezer.

  “Here,” she said, thumping her chest and walking away from the dolly, which he dragged back up the stairs. She wheeled around. She had to get out of here before he came back. From overhead, through the black floorboards, there was a crash, then running footsteps. She cringed as Frances chided Dawn. “No! I never told you to put them there. Now look what you’ve done!” A broom whisked across the floor, sweeping up the clinking glass pieces.

  At the sound of DeLong’s voice, she backed away from the door and wedged herself into the narrow cobwebbed space between the refrigerator and the flaking chimney. She blinked as the loaded dolly banged heavily down the steps.

  “Here we …” DeLong said, then called out nervously: “Hey! Where’d she go? What the hell … Jesus Christ, I was afraid of this,” he muttered, bounding back up the stairs. He came back with Mack, who squinted in the shadows. “Martha? Martha!” he called. He walked past her twice, returning each time to the freezer, where DeLong waited with his arms folded. Mack began to unload the ice himself.

  Cobwebs stuck to her hair and her back.

  “You a relative or something?” DeLong asked.

  “I just work here.”

  “Where do you think she went?” DeLong asked, looking around.

  “I don’t know,” Mack grunted as he swung the bags into the freezer.

  “I know her. We went to the same high school.”

  “Yah?”

  “She’s still pretty good-looking, you know, considering.”

  “Yah.”

  “She seem … weird? You know, a little strange?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Strange! You know, like mental.” DeLong said, stepping closer. “I used to feel bad, the way she got treated, but then, after what happened to my buddies, I mean, Christ, try and be nice and, the next thing you know, rape charges.”

  She bit her lip and sucked in the blood.

  “What do you mean, rape charges?” Mack asked.

  “Well, that’s how it started. But then, you know, the truth always submerges, so everybody backed way off, because she …” DeLong made a lewd jabbing motion with his fist. “Hey, she knew. She was always begging for it. And then, what the hell, alone in the woods, partying with twelve guys. I mean, you know.”

  “What happened?” Mack asked, staring at him.

  “Basically, she took ’em all on and then, after, she freaked out.”

  Mack kept staring. “That’s impossible. No. That couldn’t be true.”

  “Hey,” DeLong said, his fingertips at his chest. “Why would I lie? It’s commonly knowledge. Not only that, I know this guy Getso, he goes with Birdy Dusser. Gets is one hell of a tough guy, and he’s scared shitless of her, him and Birdy both. Look, take my advice and just watch your step.
Seriously, for what it’s worth.”

  “It ain’t worth shit now, buddy,” Mack said under his breath, watching DeLong pull the dolly back up the stairs. As the ice truck started out of the driveway, Mack paced back and forth, then came to a sudden stop and yanked aside a large cardboard box, scraping it over the gritty floor. “Martha?” he called softly, then, taking the steps two at a time, bounded up the stairs into the kitchen. He opened the door and asked if she had come up there.

  “No. Not up here,” both Julia and Frances answered.

  “You sure? She didn’t come outside,” he said.

  “Oh for Godssake,” Frances groaned, coming to the top step. “She’s not going to start this again. Not now! Martha!” she ordered shrilly. “Damn it, Martha! If you do this to me now …”

  “Damn it, Martha. Damn it, Martha. Damn it, Martha,” she whispered, her head rigid against the flaking whitewash of the fieldstones. Their footsteps moved closer. Just go away. Just go away. Just go away. Go away. Go away. Go away.

  “Martha!” Frances gasped and grabbed her wrist, wrenching her from the tight space. Cobwebs spun out dryly from her hair, and little stones and chips of paint fell onto the floor. Frances’s nails dug into her flesh. “What happened?” she demanded, shaking Martha. “Tell me what happened!” She turned to Mack, whose face was gaunt. “Did something happen?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know,” he said, staring at Martha.

  Julia came down and walked her up to her room. “You’re shaking. You’re afraid, aren’t you?” Her eyes flickered toward the stairs. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

  “Oh no,” she said, meeting Julia’s troubled gaze. “I could never be afraid of Mack.”

  Frances waited for Mack to put his dishes in the dishwasher, so she could lock up. It was only ten-thirty, but she had to go to bed. Everything was ready for the party. Tomorrow would be devoted to getting herself ready; she had a noon hair appointment, and then she would get her nails done.

  He closed the dishwasher and she followed him to the door. He opened it, then shut it and turned back to her. “I keep thinking what a nightmare that must have been for Martha that night in the woods. I keep picturing it, how horrible it must have been.” He shook his head. “And then for them all to get off scot-free like that!”