The Devil She Knows

by Bill Loehfelm

  Maureen wanted to be angry, but what she felt was betrayed. She’d counted on Molly’s being a woman to make her a natural ally. Surely she understood Maureen’s situation. Strange men who might want to hurt her had invaded her house, her bedroom. Molly had certainly seemed to understand it yesterday morning. Then Maureen realized she’d forgotten a crucial point. Molly was a woman, sure, but she was a woman in love. There were limits to her patience with other females in her boyfriend’s orbit. Her loyalty was to her mate and her nest; her teeth and claws came out for them only.

  Goddamn. What would it be like, Maureen wondered, to love like that?

  “You think any of this mess was my idea?” Maureen said, dropping her hands into her lap. “That I have any control over this? That I’m somehow enjoying this? I’m the victim here.” She gripped the edge of the table, dug her nails into the wood. “All I had was my job and my apartment and now they’re both ruined. I’m in this bar because I got nowhere else to go, Molly. I’m not like you. I have no boyfriend. I have no friends. There, I said it. You happy?”

  Molly heaved out a heavy sigh. Like that, the hardness had gone out of her eyes, out of her posture. “I’m sorry. I’m not looking to throw you to the wolves or out in the street.” She put up her hands. “I just—I didn’t know you were so—”

  “Hard up?”

  “Alone.”

  “Thanks for the reminder,” Maureen said. She pulled on her coat and grabbed her bag, sliding out of the booth. She dug some cash from her pocket and tossed it on the table. “Dinner is on me.”

  “Wait, Maureen,” Molly said. “Please don’t go. This wasn’t supposed to be a fight.”

  Maureen slung her bag over shoulder. “Molly, fight’s what I’ve got left.”

  After the long, cold bus ride, wishing she had a couple of Tanya’s pills in her pocket, standing in a pool of yellow porch light on the concrete stoop, Maureen turned the key in her mother’s front door. She wanted sleep. Sleep, sleep, and more sleep. On the bus, exhaustion had crushed her like an avalanche, leaving her eyelids fluttering, her forehead bouncing gently against the cold window. Pushing open the front door, her arms weighed a hundred pounds each and her back ached as if she’d worked a week of doubles.

  Maureen dropped her bag to the floor in the foyer. Light shone from the kitchen up the stairs. Maureen blinked at it. If the light was on, her mom was up there. Her mom didn’t call down to her. There was no Is that you, honey? Who didn’t question someone walking through their front door after midnight? Amber Coughlin, that’s who. Because she knew it could only be Maureen walking through the door. There was no husband, no boyfriend, and no other kids to do it.

  She had hoped her mom would be asleep when she arrived. That way, she could crawl downstairs into the basement and pass out on the couch. But Maureen had heard the bored sigh and the gurgle of wine into a glass from where she stood. Her mom was letting her stay. The least she could do was say hello. Have a glass with her.

  She hung her coat on the rack by the door and trudged up the stairs.

  Her mom sat at the kitchen table, reading a furniture catalog that Maureen knew she’d kept at her elbow just to flip through when she showed up, because Amber wasn’t waiting up, she happened to be awake. Her thin hair, the color of her name, was clipped in a tangle atop her head. White wine in a dirty glass stood at her other elbow.

  Maureen got a glass from the cabinet. She held it up to the light and rubbed at the dishwasher spots with the sleeve of her sweater. She wondered if anything but wineglasses got run through that washer anymore—the washer her father had left unfixed, unfinished, and pulled to pieces when he decided to go ahead and disappear. In high school, she’d hatched the idea that he’d torn the machine apart on purpose, as some kind of final symbolic commentary on his marriage. By graduation, though, she’d decided that while this gesture was typical of people in books and plays, her father’s talent for commentary had been limited to statements such as: Would you please throw a goddamn strike already! and Chicken? Again? Maureen eventually admitted to herself that she’d simply been searching for anything, even years after his departure, that might function as a good-bye.

  Thinking of her father, Maureen realized she’d forgotten to check the staircase wall for his picture, the one her mother had left hanging for nearly twenty years. Every time she came back home, Maureen hoped her mom had finally taken it down. Every time Maureen was disappointed. It was a picture of her father alone, no Maureen, no Amber. Fitting, Maureen had always figured. It certainly seemed to match the way her dad saw the world. Maureen reached into the fridge for the bottle of wine. She poured a glass and pulled out the chair opposite her mother at the table. There were still three chairs.

  “I thought you’d be over earlier,” her mother said, studying the catalog. “Lucky for you I’m awake. Have some wine, while you’re at it.”

  “Sorry. Thanks,” Maureen said. Why did those two words always go together around her mother?

  Amber looked up, her mouth pinched, dark circles of sleeplessness two decades old under her green eyes. “I think there’s half a hero in the fridge.” She didn’t move to get up. “Italian. Help yourself.” She looked down at her catalog.

  “Maybe later,” Maureen said, watching as her mother lifted a thin finger to her mouth, licked it, and flipped a page. “I ate before I came over.”

  “Wise,” her mother said.

  Amber wore a wrinkled, shapeless white dress shirt, the sleeves frayed at the buttonless cuffs. One of my father’s, Maureen thought. Why does she do that? It can’t possibly feel or smell anything like him anymore. There can’t be anything left of him in that shirt. She couldn’t recall the last time her mom had bought new clothes. She still wore her wedding ring, a thin dull band of gold that slipped on her finger when she moved her hand.

  Ten years ago, on the anniversary of her father’s departure, thinking she might help her mother finally start to close the door on her grief, nineteen-year-old Maureen had pooled a month’s worth of tips from her first waitressing gig and bought her mom a pretty gold chain. With a chain, Amber could wear the ring around her neck and get it off her finger. Amber slapped her daughter’s face and kept the chain. Maureen had never seen her wear it, and the ring stayed where her father had put it. Maureen had moved out of the house two weeks later.

  Sometimes, like now, watching her mother turn the ring on her finger, Maureen felt she’d never earned back the cash she’d spent on that chain. She felt she’d never catch up; she’d never recover, no matter how hard she worked, what she’d given away a long time ago.

  Her mom glanced up at her. “Tell me you’re not pregnant.”

  “No,” Maureen said. “I don’t even have a boyfriend.”

  “Don’t complain about it to me. Living like a vampire won’t find you one, neither.”

  “I told you,” Maureen said. “Landlord’s fumigating the building.”

  Amber squinted. “That thing in your nose won’t help, either. No matter what those magazines say.”

  “I like it. I think it’s cute.” Good Lord, how many times had they already had this conversation? Would having it face-to-face finally put it to bed? “I got it for me, not for boys.”

  Amber scrunched her lips. “Like that’s a better reason. Pretty girl like you, punching holes in her nose. God gave you two, that’s not enough? Like anyone in this family needs more holes in their head.”

  Family? Maureen wanted to ask, what family? It’s just me and you, Mom, and this is the best we can do.

  “If I get sick of it,” Maureen said, “I can take it out. Hole’ll disappear in no time.”

  “Makes you look like Rudolph,” Amber said. Then she actually smiled. “In plenty of time for Christmas.”

  Amber gulped her wine. She watched her daughter over the top of her glass, waiting, Maureen knew, for her to say something. They both knew the wine, the multiple bottles Amber burned through every week, was Maureen’s one fail-safe shot at her mot
her. When Maureen held her peace, Amber took another swallow.

  Maureen touched the fake emerald in her nostril. It was sore and, she knew, red. She’d been so close, but then the coke had irritated it all over again. “Very funny, Miss Grinch. My nose will be its cute, perky, bejeweled self by Christmas, I’ll have you know.”

  She finished her wine, got up for more. Her mother slid her own mostly empty glass to the table’s edge for a refill. “You wear that thing to class?”

  “Believe me,” Maureen said, pouring them both more wine, “over at Richmond College I’m the tame one. No one will even notice.”

  “Then why even have it?”

  Maureen slammed the fridge closed. “Jesus, Ma, enough already. It’s just a goddamn nose ring.” She leaned against the fridge, wineglass in her fingers, tapping her head against the freezer. Here it comes. I walked right into it. Nothing got her mom going like a good goddamn.

  Amber raised a finger in the air. “Don’t you dare swear at me in my own kitchen. Save the sailor mouth for your friends at the bar.” She turned in her seat. “These places you work, these bars, they make you dirty. No matter what you do. Nothing good comes from them.”

  Maureen looked down at her mother, thinking of Sebastian. Ma, you have no idea, she wanted to say. But her mom did know what could happen in a bar. Maureen knew, too. Had learned before she ever delivered her first drink.

  Amber turned away, reached for her glass. “Look what they did to your father.”

  William Coughlin. Though most often found behind a desk or atop a bar stool instead of at home, he kept the bills paid and the gas tanks and the cupboards full. Dad. Never missed a Patty’s Day parade. Never missed Mass. Never missed parent-teacher night. Until the day he decided to miss the rest of his family’s life. Dad. Gone to collect his Super Bowl winnings at Clancy’s Pub twenty years ago and never heard from again. The only year he’d ever won. The first bet, he’d announced on his way out the door, that he’d won since scoring a date with Amber Fagan ten years earlier. On a Sunday. Dad. The trump card. But why not play it when it always worked? Cut Maureen’s knees right out from under her. It had cut the heart out of Amber, too.

  One month after William disappeared, a great big policeman informed Amber that the NYPD was closing the missing persons case. Along with William Coughlin and his car, a waitress from Clancy’s had also disappeared that night, taking with her three suitcases and her husband’s savings. The policeman handed Amber a photograph of the waitress and William standing on a beach somewhere, some tropical island, it looked like. The photo had arrived at the waitress’s former place of employment with no note, no return address. While missing warranted a continuing search, the cop explained, plain old gone did not. Problem was, Maureen thought, the missing part had never stopped for Amber. She reached out her hand and set it on her mother’s shoulder.

  “It’s not forever, Ma,” Maureen said. “And I’m careful.”

  She felt her mother turn to stone under her hand. They were done talking for the night. They had moved miles away from each other while standing in the same room.

  Maureen pulled her hand away. “Sheets and towels downstairs?” she asked. She swallowed the last of her wine, the sweet, cheap chardonnay on top of the vodka making her ill. She set her glass by the sink and headed for the stairs to retrieve her bag.

  “Wait a minute,” her mother said.

  Maureen stopped on the top step, looked into the kitchen. Amber had her fingers splayed on the tabletop, staring through her yellow wine at the gold band on her finger. “It’s cold down there. Heat’s expensive these days. I made up your old room.”

  Maureen came back to the doorway. “Thanks, Mom. Thanks for letting me stay.”

  “You’re welcome. Just don’t expect me to do your laundry.”

  “I got it, Ma. I’m a big girl.”

  In her old room, Maureen drew the shade against the streetlights and the moon. She left the light off. She didn’t need it. Even after ten years out of the house, she remembered every inch of her childhood space. Though she rarely came to visit and never stayed over, it wasn’t like she never thought about it. Besides, her ladybug night-light, a rare gift from her father, glowed against the dusty floorboards. It seemed it was only weeks, maybe even days, after giving her the night-light that he had vanished. Had that been the good-bye? His idea, maybe, of something to watch over her?

  As she undressed with a shiver, Maureen thought of her father’s picture hanging in the lightless foyer he had stopped caring about long ago, watching over the front door no one ever opened but Amber. What was her mom trying to prove, leaving that picture up there? Was she trying to send her husband a message? Did Amber think if he watched her walk through that door enough times he’d remember how to do it and come home? Well, it wasn’t that he’d forgotten, Maureen thought. He had chosen not to come home, had found a better offer. Was that Amber’s message for her daughter? Never forget, him or what he did. And all the things he never did.

  Naked, the sheets cold against her skin, Maureen pulled up the covers. The bed had felt a lot bigger and a lot warmer when she was a girl, just like the world and the people in it. Just like me, she thought. How’d that happen? That I got smaller as I got older? She could smell cigarette smoke in her hair, wine on her breath. An ambulance sped down a street not far away, a dog howling at the siren. Curled up tight in the blankets, inhaling the clean, empty scent of the sheets, Maureen watched the light from the kitchen glowing in a thin line under her bedroom door. It was still there when she fell asleep.

  12

  A little after nine the next morning, Maureen stepped into the cold sunshine sporting her high school track team sweats, one of her father’s old wool caps pulled down tight on her head, and a long-forgotten pair of her mother’s torn gloves on her hands. She knelt on the sidewalk in front of her mother’s house to retie her running shoes, her breath a white cloud over her shoe tops, the cold stinging her cheeks. She had her smokes tucked in the fold of her cap. It was about a mile, she figured, from her mom’s to Dennis’s house.

  She bent at the waist, reaching for her toes. Her hamstrings pulled her fingers up short on her shins. Her first run in weeks. No big deal. It was gonna hurt like hell. Starting over always did. She took a deep breath and hit the street at an easy pace, heading up Bovanizer Street toward Amboy Road. There she’d hook a left, then right onto Richmond Avenue and start uphill.

  Maureen couldn’t believe it, but Tanya had called. At 9 a.m. no less. Well, Tanya hadn’t called technically; she’d sent a text. Dennis’s address followed by the word soon. Lying in bed, reading the text, her limbs heavy as wet cement, Maureen had thought, Okay, then, let’s go. She’d kicked off the covers and hit the floor for push-ups. She got in twenty before her shoulders and wrists started to ache. An improvement. A couple days off from work had done her good. Two days ago she had barely been able to force herself through ten. And now here she was, out running through her old neighborhood.

  She hit the intersection of Amboy Road and Richmond Avenue at a good clip. She hung a right at the bank, passing the old Y as she crested the hill. Her aches and pains started falling away like old feathers, her legs rallying underneath her. Throughout her body, Maureen’s muscles scrambled awake under the push and stretch and the oxygen and hot blood her pounding heart shot through her. She picked up the pace heading downhill, forcing her breath through her nose, fighting against letting her feet slap down heavily. She’d always had a light step, each foot only glancing the ground before it kicked up and out behind her again. A light step and a long stride for a small woman. That’s what the track coach in high school had told her. Where had her step and her stride gone? I wore them out running laps, Maureen thought, back and forth from bar to table thousands of times in cheap black shoes. For years.

  Her lungs started burning as she passed her old preschool. With a glance across the street, she saw it had a different name now, something that ended in Institute. She missed th
e rest of the building’s new title. She was moving too fast. What had they called that place when she had gone there, fallen off the jungle gym and broken her wrist, and punched Timmy What’shisname for spitting on her? Suspended at five years old. She’d set a record and missed the trip to Turtleback Zoo.

  The old name had been fun and simple: Playland or Kiddietime. Something suited for an amusement park or a toy store. She looked back, over her shoulder. Well, so much for that. Playtime was long over at the institute, it seemed. No jungle gym in the yard anymore. Monday morning and no sign of kids at all. The place looked like a miniature community college. It looked—well, institutional. Maureen coughed up something thick from deep in her lungs, held it on her tongue for a moment, and then spat it over her shoulder. She refocused on the road ahead of her. Keep it moving. Stay fast.

  The traffic roared by just off her right hip, each car tailgating the one before it, creating a wind-tunnel pull like a passing train that threatened to suck her into the middle of the street. Every other car seemed the size of an ambulance. She had to pay attention. One stumble could land her in a wheelchair or worse. She could’ve moved onto the sidewalk, but the buckled concrete might send her flying. And moving over meant giving ground.

  As she ran, Maureen passed one white duplex after another, the curtains drawn, the driveways and yards empty. No one was home. With the kids safe at the institute, their parents roamed free in the rolling bubbles of their enormous cars, pumping out a steady stream of exhaust for Maureen to inhale. She didn’t pass a single person moving on foot. In a way, she had the streets to herself.

  She coughed again, hard enough to stagger her stride. Up ahead, Richmond ended at the intersection with Hylan Boulevard, only six blocks away. Maybe she’d take a breather there. Go ahead, Maureen, she thought, have another cigarette. No break at the turn, she thought, keep it going. You don’t know when you’ll be able to run like this again.