“Wow,” Maureen said, causing Tony to notice her for the first time.
He turned to Sebastian. “Who’s this?”
“I thought maybe you would know,” Sebastian said. He turned to Maureen. “I’m sorry, miss. In all the confusion I didn’t catch your name. Was there something we can help you with?”
Maureen looked from Sebastian to Tanya to Tony. Three blank faces stared back at her. “I, uh—forget it. I’m nobody.”
Fuck ’em. She turned her back and headed down the street. When she got as far as the corner, she pulled her crumpled pack of cigarettes from her hat and lit one up.
From there she watched as Sebastian and Tanya climbed into a nondescript sedan that didn’t suit either of them. No bodyguard, no hired muscle appeared. This really was private business. Sebastian didn’t want anyone near him knowing where he was or who he was with. And if Tanya had made up all that shit about the loan and the sex tapes, Maureen wondered, why did she come out of the house with the camera? Method acting? Probably not. Tanya had set her up on Sebastian’s orders, but Maureen believed Tanya had baited her trap with the truth.
After Sebastian and Tanya had driven away, Maureen, pacing in circles on the corner as she smoked, watched Tony help his fat, ugly wife out of the front of the SUV.
When they’d pulled up, hadn’t these people—the two women, at least—seen Maureen was in trouble? They should’ve sensed something. Old, married, it didn’t matter. You never forget the danger. Hadn’t they seen her trapped in the yard, a giant man pressing against her, poised to bite off her head? Could it have been any more obvious? What they see is one thing, she thought; what they care about is another thing entirely. They’d lost a brother, lost their son. Dennis was theirs one day and gone the next. Maureen knew how that felt. Loss like that, sudden as a gunshot, left you blind. And cold.
After her father left, Maureen knew she looked at people, for months, maybe for years, only as objects in her way, things to be moved and manipulated and put aside when they ran empty, like so many liquor bottles on a shelf. Yeah, and she’d shoved everyone aside, even her own mother, on her way to what, exactly? To standing alone in the street, breathless, petrified, and invisible. Maybe—probably—she still didn’t see people. Or she at least acted like she didn’t, and what was the difference between the two?
Maureen walked back toward Dennis’s house. She should say something to his family, something true. Something kind. That Dennis had been a decent man, and good to her. Dennis deserved it. His family did, too. But as Maureen approached the house, Mrs. Lacoste recoiled into her husband’s arms as if Maureen had snakes for hair. Tony pulled out his wallet and snatched out a bill, holding it in Maureen’s direction.
“Lemme guess,” he said, “you just need bus fare, right? Or diapers for your baby? And you promise not to spend it on beer.”
Maureen stopped in her tracks, staring at the dollar bill between Tony’s fat little fingers. The kindness in her heart hit the street and shattered like a dropped glass on a barroom floor.
“I don’t need to hear your bullshit story,” Tony said. “Just take the money and quit botherin’ us.”
Maureen leaned forward and spat in the street at Tony’s feet. Then she turned her back on Dennis’s family and started running.
13
Back at her mom’s, while Amber cooked breakfast, Maureen sneaked outside for a cigarette and a phone call to Waters. She got his voice mail. She asked him to call as soon as he could, but she offered no hint of her run-in with Sebastian. She was safe. No sense getting Waters excited. When she came back inside, the whole house smelled like bacon. Running home, Maureen had thought she might never eat again, the way her stomach was knotted after seeing Sebastian, but the scent and the sizzle of bacon and eggs had her mouth watering. Food first, she thought, heading up the stairs for the kitchen. Shower second. Who’s around here that I gotta impress?
After she showered and dressed, Maureen joined her mother at the kitchen sink and helped wash the breakfast dishes, the sleeves of her gold peasant blouse pushed up to her elbows. The blouse and her jeans were high school leftovers found in her old dresser. Rooting around that dresser, she’d also discovered some cheap, frilly K-Mart underwear that she’d worn in high school. She’d called it lingerie and worn it under her school uniform, a private effort to feel grown-up and sexy. She never wore the lingerie on dates, only to school. She’d bought the frilly things for herself, not for boys. It was the best answer she had to the hips and breasts bursting out on what seemed to be every female body but hers.
At the sink, Maureen handled the rinsing, passing the dishes to her mother for inspection before they got loaded into the dishwasher. Amber occasionally handed back a dish, grumbling a demand for another pass under the hot water. Maureen wondered who had finished the repairs on the dishwasher. It felt like something she should know. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever asked, but it was way too late to bring up now. Amber would say she didn’t remember, whether she did or not. Too close to Dad to talk about. Nice work, Dad, Maureen thought. You left Mom so brokenhearted she can’t even talk about the damn dishwasher. Sad.
It’s long past time I cut Mom some slack, Maureen thought. She’s a survivor. That counts for something—counts for a lot, in fact. She’d hung on to the only house she’d ever owned, had kept it clean and functioning, while at the same time putting herself through night school at Richmond. She’d parlayed a part-time accounting position at the Macy’s in the mall into a full-time management position, one with benefits and a retirement plan. One could say she had a career. And she’d raised a daughter from eleven to nineteen on her own. And what had that daughter accomplished with far less on her plate? Not much. She had bills and she had birds—not even pet birds, but wild birds that she couldn’t protect from the neighborhood felines.
Maureen handed over the last dish—two people didn’t make much of a mess—and pushed her palms into the small of her back, stretching the kinks that ran along her spine. They were stubborn. She straightened maybe half of them out. She was starting to fear that the rest were permanent. Grimacing, she hooked her finger through a belt loop, hitching up her jeans. They hung looser on her hips than they had ten years ago. Wasn’t the opposite supposed to happen? Shouldn’t she be bigger? She knew she oughtta consider herself lucky.
Leaning against the sink, Maureen watched her mother wipe down the kitchen table, rubbing hard at a spot of egg yolk. Amber’s bony elbows and shoulder blades pushed against her oversized T-shirt. That’s me, Maureen thought. That’s me wiping down a table at the Narrows, at Cargo, at the Haunted Café and the Bicycle Club. Back bent, elbows and shoulders churning, cleaning up again for and after someone else. She studied her hands, the fingertips wrinkled like the faces of old ladies, the backs red and raw. Ten years of bar work has put twenty years on my hands. If you put them side by side, she thought, could you tell my hands from my mother’s? Maureen slipped her hands inside the waistband of her jeans, clutching her bony hips.
What has it done to the rest of me?
Waters hadn’t called during breakfast. He was working, Maureen reminded herself. He was a city detective; her situation couldn’t be the only thing, or even the most important thing, commanding his attention. But it was tough not to feel abandoned, tough not to wonder what had happened between Waters and Sebastian in Brooklyn. Of course, it wasn’t out of the question that Sebastian was messing with her head; she’d watched him practically brainwash Tony Lacoste.
She grabbed a dish towel off the counter and dried her hands. She caught herself considering Sebastian’s advice and, when she heard from Waters, calling the whole thing off. Then she recalled the look on Sebastian’s face when he’d opened Dennis’s door to find her standing there, delivered to his doorstep like a mail-order bride. She didn’t know if her backing off the police would be enough for him anymore. It seemed to her that he wanted her at his fingertips more than he wanted her to go away.
To tell th
e truth, she didn’t know what to do.
Maybe Sebastian had been right about one thing: she didn’t know who she was dealing with. Maureen figured that if Sebastian knew plenty about Waters, as he claimed, maybe the opposite was true. Why not stick with the original plan? Lay out everything that had happened to Waters and see what he said about what to do next.
Groaning, Amber straightened, hitching up her jeans and pressing her hands into the small of her back. She wrapped the dishrag around one of her hands and sat at the kitchen table. “Do me a favor, get me a glass of water.”
Maureen grabbed a glass from the cabinet. “Ice?”
“I don’t need it too cold,” Amber said. “Just let it run for a minute.”
Maureen hit the tap and gave the glass a quick polish with her sleeve while she waited for the water to run cool.
“I got the craziest phone call,” Amber said, “while you were in the shower.”
“Did you win a trip to Costa Rica or a new car?”
“Don’t I wish,” Amber said. “You remember the Sebastians? From when you were little?”
The glass slipped from Maureen’s fingers. When it hit the sink, it cracked from the bottom halfway up, but didn’t break into pieces. “Shit.” How could he possibly know where she was? Not only where she was but also, if he’d found her mother, who she was. Not good, not good at all. She turned to Amber, waiting to see if she was going to catch hell for the curse, the broken glass, or both. “Sorry.”
Amber stayed tight-lipped and silent, staring at Maureen for a long moment before speaking. “Leave it by the sink. I’ll wrap it in newspaper before I put it in the trash.”
When Maureen picked up the glass, it went to pieces. She jerked her hand away and escaped with a small cut on the tip of her forefinger. She watched the pearl of blood form over the cut and then burst and seep into the wrinkles of her knuckles as she pressed her thumb hard against her finger. She heard her mother’s chair scrape across the kitchen floor. Her mother appeared beside her at the sink, taking Maureen’s injured hand in hers, studying it as if she’d never seen such a thing. Maureen tugged her hand away and stuck her finger under the running water.
“I hope you’re better than this at the bar,” Amber said, shaking her head, picking shards of glass from the sink with her fingertips. “Cost your boss more than you’re worth in glassware and Band-Aids.”
“Speaking of,” Maureen said.
“In the bathroom, in the medicine cabinet. Where else?”
Where else, indeed, Maureen thought. Why’d I even ask? Probably the same box of Band-Aids as when I was ten years old. She hoped the cut wouldn’t scar. She already had half a dozen tiny white marks on her hands. It really didn’t take much to leave a lasting mark; a small slice could do it.
“I think there’s some peroxide in there too,” Amber said.
I’d bet anything, Maureen thought. “Ma, it’s a tiny glass cut, it’s not a dog bite. I’m not maimed.”
“Well, then, quit crying about it to me like a bomb went off. But if you still feel you need major first aid, get to it. She’s going to be here any minute.”
Maureen turned off the tap. She held her injured hand against her shoulder. The cut had bled out plenty; time to settle it down and wrap it up. “And who’s coming over?”
“Gloria Sebastian,” Amber said, her voice breathy with exasperation. “Like I’ve been trying to tell you.” Maureen half expected her to throw a duh on the end. “Don’t you remember Frank and Gloria Sebastian from St. Stephen’s?”
Maureen just gaped.
“Maybe not,” Amber said. “You were really young and there were so many grown-ups around after Mass. We used to see them every Sunday, back before…”
Before Dad left, Maureen thought.
“Back when we still went,” Amber said.
Gloria Sebastian, Maureen thought. You gotta be kidding me. “Is it her husband that’s running for office?”
“Yeah, that’s her. Him I can see you forgetting, but are you sure you don’t remember Gloria? I think she taught you CCD one year. Maybe two. Third, fourth grade, maybe. She was close with the monsignor. I helped her with the Christmas Club. I used to see her all the time.”
“I don’t remember.”
Amber set her hands on her hips. “That’s so like you, Maureen. To forget the people that were nice to you. You need to treat people better. Now her husband’s going to be someone important, someone who can maybe help you get financial aid for school, or get a real job someday, and you can’t even be bothered to remember them.”
The doorbell chimed. Maureen’s throat went tight, and the blood rushed out of her face like it was desperate for somewhere to hide.
Amber glanced over her shoulder at the front door, then put out her hand. “Lemme see that cut again. You don’t look so good all of a sudden.”
“I’m fine. I’m not a huge fan of the sight of my own blood, that’s all. Go ahead and get the door. I’m gonna get that Band-Aid. It’ll just take a minute.”
“Suit yourself.” Amber shook her head, a bemused grin wrinkling the corners of her eyes. “I haven’t heard from Gloria for years, and then she calls out of the blue, no warning. It’s the strangest thing.”
Amber went to the front door as Maureen headed for the bathroom.
Standing at the sink, Maureen splashed peroxide over her fingertip, grateful for the head-clearing sting. She opened the medicine cabinet and found the old box of Band-Aids. Over the chemical sizzle of the peroxide, she tracked the voices coming up the stairs and into the kitchen. Two women and a man. Of course he’d come too. Showing Maureen he could reach her mom was the whole point of Gloria’s phone call, wasn’t it? Maureen picked apart the Band-Aid’s wrapper, doing her best to keep the sterile bandage clean. She fought back memories of hiding in the Narrows’s bathroom, afraid to come out. Now here he was in her mother’s own house.
She pressed her cut fingertip into the white pad, a stain of bright red blood creeping across it. She wrapped the rubber wings of the Band-Aid around her knuckle. She could hear Sebastian’s voice echoing back to her through the house. What was it with men? Always pushing. You slap their hand away from your blouse, so they reach for the front of your jeans. How does that add up? Maureen bit her lip and took a deep breath. Messing with her landlord and her apartment was one thing. Messing with her mom was another thing entirely.
She held tight to the air inside her as she headed down the hall toward the kitchen. Frank Sebastian sat at her mother’s small kitchen table in a dark suit, looking oddly gigantic, the coffee cup at his lips completing the image of a grown-up guest at a little girl’s tea party. She knew it was illusion, but Sebastian seemed bigger, felt bigger, every time she saw him. His silver hair was perfect. His too-made-up dark-haired wife sat to his right. Amber sat at the head of the table, in the third chair.
Maureen noticed there was no seat for her at the table. She leaned back against the counter, the utensil drawer and its set of ancient steak knives at her right hip. She willed herself to think of Clint Eastwood, standing in the middle of Main Street in some Western town, his fingers wiggling over his holster. She made mental notes locating knives, scissors, vegetable peelers—any and all sharp objects she could think of.
Sebastian rose in his seat, bent at the waist like he might bump his head on the ceiling. “Please, Maureen. Come sit. Take my chair.”
“I’m fine standing.” The coffeepot gurgled behind her. Now that would hurt. Hot coffee in the face. Or the lap. That would cut him down to size.
Amber turned in her seat and gave Maureen a tight smile, a silent warning to mind her manners. “Maureen.”
“I had a long run this morning,” Maureen said. “If I sit, my legs’ll tighten up and I’ll get sore. I’d rather stand. Helps me stay loose. It’s nothing personal.”
Gloria chuckled. “You must be close to thirty by now. So little has changed. You’re still a slip of a thing. I couldn’t get you to sit in CCD, eithe
r.” She sighed, shifting her eyes from Maureen to Amber. “It’s good to see you again, both of you. Lord, you could be sisters.”
Maureen wondered if that meant she looked old or that her mother looked young. Whichever way Gloria meant it, Maureen thought, at least mother and daughter looked human—unlike Gloria Sebastian, her skin pulled taut at the eyes, her lips puffy like lumpy pillows. And that ridiculous cleavage rising from her loud silk blouse. Boobs that big didn’t float that high when you were twenty, never mind on the south side of fifty, which Mrs. Sebastian had to be. Maureen tried pulling up memories of Gloria from the after-school religion classes she’d endured at St. Stephen’s. She got nowhere. Of course, who knew what Gloria had looked like twenty years ago? A slender blonde could be hiding under all that surgery, makeup, and hair dye, under all that money, and no one would ever know it.
“I thought the other night I knew you from somewhere,” Sebastian said, folding his hands in his lap, looking at Maureen. “There was something so familiar about you. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was killing me.”
“I hate when that happens,” Maureen said.
“She can be a thorn,” Amber said with a smile. “Even on her best days.”
“And then I remembered that we knew each other once,” Sebastian said. “More or less. When you were a little girl I used to see you at church every Sunday. You, your mom, your dad. All together. Back then your hair was long, all the way down your back. And it was redder then, darker, red like a sunrise.”
“I can’t say I remember you,” Maureen said. “I’m sorry.”
“My hair was darker then, too,” Sebastian said.
“It’s no big deal. You know how it is with kids,” Gloria said, talking to Maureen and then her husband. “Adults all look the same.”
Sebastian glanced over at his wife as if he’d only then noticed she was next to him. He looked back at Maureen. “Well, I remember you. Clear as a bell.” He glanced around the table. “You’re more memorable than you think.”
The Devil She Knows Page 14