Quick Study

by Maggie Barbieri

  Jose got his jacket out of the dining room and buttoned it up, ignoring Hernan’s disdainful look. He reached in the pocket of the jacket and took out a small dictionary, which he handed to Amalia. “Here.”

  She gave him a disappointed smile. “Finally. I thought you only needed it for a day. It’s been a week, Jose, and I needed that for my paper.”

  He smiled and shrugged, obviously used to getting by on his broad smile and not insignificant charm. Indeed, Amalia didn’t seem all that upset as they chatted while walking to the front door.

  “Will I see you both tonight?” I asked as I opened the front door for them.

  Jose nodded enthusiastically while Amalia responded. “We’ll both be there. What about you?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. Without going into any details, I said, “You’ll be seeing me for a long time.” Which, I had decided, would be true regardless of how many community service hours I had left.

  Amalia reached out and gave me a quick hug. “See you later.”

  I watched them go down the walk. “Thanks, Jose!” I called after him. He looked over his shoulder and gave me a big smile, and I was struck again by how young he looked.

  Three

  Nobody follows the rules better than I do.

  So, a little more detail on my conviction and my community service hours. How did I end up at the Lord’s Bounty? Well, it all stemmed from that run-in with those New York State Troopers in the fall. My lawyer, Jimmy Crawford, brother of my former boyfriend Detective Crawford—and yes, I’m jumping to conclusions—managed to get me out of my situation with a promise that I would be nice to animals, not speed or stalk my neighbors (long story), and generally be a good citizen. I thought I could do all that and still be helpful to others, which is why I chose a program called the Lord’s Bounty that was run out of a local church and whose participants served a Saturday night meal to the needy denizens of a town not far from me. It was perfect. It only took about two hours, it was close to my house, and I would be serving the meal rather than actually cooking it, which was a good thing for everyone concerned.

  When I spoke to the guy who ran the program on the phone to sign up, he assured me that he was a volunteer firefighter, so even if I did help cook and burned the church down, he could get every company in a five-town radius to respond.

  Funny.

  So I can’t cook. And apparently, I don’t do laundry, either. Because when I opened my drawers to find something appropriate to wear to dole out chili or lasagna to the guests, all I could come up with was a lovely T-shirt that Max had given me that had a map of Idaho and the following witticism printed on it: IDAHO? NO, YOU DA HO. I pulled it on, covering it with a hoodie from my college I found buried in the back of my closet; no one would be the wiser.

  The day had passed and I hadn’t spoken to Crawford yet; I was getting concerned. His work schedule is crazy but he always calls, even if it is just to find out what I had for lunch. I had offered up several Hail Marys and a few Our Fathers that he hadn’t watched the Rangers game. I was still in shock over hearing the entire Garden sing “Happy Birthday” to me and in awe of the Mark Messier jersey. On eBay those things go for a lot of money. Not that I would ever sell it. That jersey was staying in my possession for as long as I lived.

  While Hernan finished up the trim downstairs, I went back up to my office and wrote Jack a thank-you note that expressed my gratitude for his thoughtfulness. I guess if Crawford did see the game and decided that I had betrayed him in a terrible fashion, I could always use Jack as my “rebound man,” as Max likes to refer to guys you go to when your heart’s been broken. I didn’t want a rebound man. I wanted Crawford. But Jack had really shown him up, what with the autographed jersey and the Garden sing-a-long. If I were Crawford, I’d be really pissed off. I hoped that Crawford, being Irish American, didn’t have the jealous, passionate, crazy streak of my French Canadian forefathers.

  Hernan had left around two, which was perfect timing because I had to leave a bit after three to get to the Lord’s Bounty on time. He had cleaned up the dining room; all I had to do was vacuum the bits of dried paint that had fallen from the drop cloth after he had picked it up while trying desperately not to make a mess. He had offered to help me move the furniture back but I assured him that I would get Crawford to help me. I didn’t go into my hope that I still had a Crawford, and Hernan left, content that my big, giant boyfriend would come to the rescue.

  I had several Saturdays of community service under my belt and found that I was enjoying the work. The people who came to the meal were nice, for the most part, and I had actually grown close to a couple of them: Mrs. Dwyer, who was blind and came with her guide dog, Patty; Joey, a recent “guest of the state” who was the de facto leader of a table of ex-cons and who made sure everyone said grace before the meal and thank you before they left; and, of course, the extended Escalante family.

  I grabbed my keys and gave the dog a kiss good-bye. “Don’t eat any shoes while I’m gone, Trixie.” I thought all my shoes were up too high for her to get to, but I always liked to give her a warning. I hadn’t had her too long and I still had to remind myself to put things out of her grasp, so it was entirely possible that there was a pump or mule within chewing distance. She’s a gorgeous dog and a wonderful companion, but she’s sneaky. Fortunately, so am I. When I found a brown suede boot buried in my backyard, I knew she was a worthy adversary.

  I drove down the driveway and pulled up in front of my neighbor’s house. Once Jane had heard that I was doing good deeds for the community, she decided that it would be a good thing to have her teenage son Frankie join me. I wasn’t sure he agreed, but he came along just like a dutiful son should. He was my go-to dog walker and adored Trixie, but he always regarded me warily. After all, what kind of kid wants to hang around a woman who’s not his mom, much less do community service with her? I would have regarded me warily, too. I honked my horn and sang along to the radio as I waited for him to lope down the front walk.

  He got into the car, his white-blond hair wet and slicked back. “Hi, Mrs. Bergerson.”

  Not my name, or my marital status, but I have given up. “Hi, Frankie.” In my head and to Crawford, I refer to him as Accordion Boy, or AB for short, based on his kick-ass accordion playing, but I always use his name in his presence. His brother plays the bagpipes—that’s Bagpipe Kid to you—so they are a veritable one-family Irish band. “I read in the paper that you had three three-pointers in last night’s game,” I said, in an effort to bond. In addition to playing the accordion, he also played something more mundane—basketball—for his all-boys’ Catholic high school. Since I had met him, I had started following his career.

  My high-five hand hung in the air, and I reluctantly dropped it after a few seconds.

  He mumbled something that sounded like “mush only thin five thirty” and moved closer to the passenger’s side door in what appeared to be an effort to get away from me. OK, I’ve got it. No talking.

  I sang along with an old Duran Duran song on the radio. “And I’m hungry like the wolf,” I sang, looking at Frankie out of the corner of my eye. See, I’m hip! I wanted to tell him, but I refrained. The kid was doing time with me and nothing was going to cheer him up.

  He brightened momentarily. “Hey, I saw you on TV last night.”

  “Oh, that.”

  He readjusted his long legs. “It was your birthday, huh?” He paused for such a long time that I thought the conversation was officially over. No such luck. “Do they do that for everyone who turns fifty?”

  Fifty? I smiled. I guess, to him, fifty was a conservative estimate. “I’m not fifty. And I have a friend who works for the Rangers.”

  Even in the dark, I could see the flush rise up from his collar to his hairline. “Sorry.”

  Fortunately the ride north to the Lord’s Bounty didn’t take very long and we were at the church in about fifteen minutes. It was freezing outside. I wondered how many people would venture out on such a cold n
ight; never having allowed myself to feel a pang of true hunger, I couldn’t put myself in their shoes.

  Frankie and I went in through the kitchen door and were hit with the delicious smell of pot roast. I would have walked over hot coals to get to that pot roast, never mind make a trek in bitter cold weather. My mouth started to water and I had to remind myself that I had leftover Chinese food at home for my dinner. We said hello to my favorite cooking team: Kerry, a marathon-running mother of three and optometrist, and Rebecca, mother of two and a preschool teacher. These two made me look like a giant schlub; I had just me, my job, and my dog to deal with, yet I couldn’t seem to organize a thought, never mind a meal for fifty people. I flashed on the IDAHO? T-shirt under my hoodie; neither Kerry nor Rebecca would be caught dead in it. They had brought two of their combined five children with them, teenage girls who were a few years younger than Frankie. The girls were slicing bread and putting butter on plates to set on the tables in the dining room.

  “You remember Frankie?” I said, pulling an apron on over my head. Frankie had attended one other Saturday service with me, and Kerry and Rebecca had been cooking that night, too.

  Frankie mumbled a greeting and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. The girls gave him a sideways glance and the giggling commenced, making him flee the kitchen. I called after him to make sure the tables were set and that each place had a plate, fork, and knife.

  “Hey! I saw you on TV last night!” Kerry said, chopping up iceberg lettuce for the salad.

  Doesn’t anyone read anymore? Play board games? The NHL is always talking about declining ratings but, judging from my instant celebrity, it had nothing to fear.

  I made chitchat with Kerry and Rebecca and waited for the guests to arrive. They started streaming in right before five o’clock, the cold not keeping the majority of our usuals away. I saw Mrs. Dwyer and Patty take their usual seats at the front of the hall; Joey and five of his cohorts from the halfway house; and finally, around five fifteen, Hernan and Alba, with Amalia and a couple of other people in tow. I noticed Frankie, usually not one to display any kind of energy off the basketball court, make a beeline for their table. Nothing like a good shot of hormones to put the kid into action. When he delivered their sodas he actually smiled, and I saw that he had two nice, straight rows of teeth. (I had begun to have my doubts that he had any teeth at all because he never opened his mouth wide enough for me to see them.)

  The church hall was cavernous, with a peaked, beamed ceiling, wood wainscoting, and stained glass windows. Six tables that sat eight guests each were set up and covered with plastic tablecloths. A longer table at the front of the hall held sodas, water, and a big bowl of ice. A few steps led up to a room that was sectioned off by pocket doors, behind which were an array of desserts made by the older parishioners of the church in the next town up, which sponsored the dinner.

  I said hello to Mrs. Dwyer and Patty, asking Mrs. Dwyer if she had enough food to last her the week. She had confided in me a few weeks earlier that her monthly checks weren’t covering her grocery bill and she had started running out of food for herself at the end of the month. Patty, she assured me, always got enough food; she was Mrs. Dwyer’s priority.

  “Oh, Alison, thank you for asking. If you have an extra loaf of bread in the back, I’ll take it. I just started running low,” she said. Patty, who looked like Trixie’s twin, gazed up at me, and I gave her one of the treats that I’d stashed in my pocket for my dog. I told Mrs. Dwyer that I would pack a bag of food for her from the pantry and that Frankie and I would drive her home. I knew that she walked to and from the church and while it wasn’t a long walk, it was all uphill on the way home.

  Joey got my attention as I walked by his table. “Hey, the guys and I saw you on television last night,” he said, motioning to his dinner companions. Tiny, the ironically named hulking ex-convict to Joey’s right, stared at his salad plate while a small smile played on his lips. Guess he had seen the game, too.

  “Really?” I said. Why was I surprised? These guys had a curfew of six o’clock, so they watched every televised sporting event there was; with no women or other nighttime pursuits allowed them there wasn’t much else to do.

  “Yeah, I thought you looked pretty.” He looked down at the table, a little embarrassed by that admission. “You still dating the cop?”

  I hope so, I thought. “Yep.”

  “What did he think of you being on TV?”

  He’s used to it, I thought again, but kept it to myself. “Oh, he thought it was funny.” Not. I decided to throw an extra Hail Mary onto my nightly prayer schedule to compensate for lying. I changed the subject and filled the table in on the menu for the night. “And chocolate pudding for dessert!” I said, with extra enthusiasm to make sure that we were off the topic of the Rangers game for good.

  Joey and his crew broke out into applause. “We love chocolate pudding!” he exclaimed, high-fiving Tiny. I was a little perplexed by their enthusiasm for chocolate pudding, but, never having been denied life’s simple pleasures behind bars for any length of time, I had nothing to compare their reaction to.

  Frankie and I began serving the meals. By the time we had finished, there were thirty people in the room enjoying Rebecca’s pot roast and mashed potatoes. Frankie lingered for a few minutes at the Escalantes’ table, chatting with Amalia. Their family had been joined by another Ecuadorian family that I knew only slightly—a young woman, two young children, and an older woman. I moseyed over and sat down alongside Alba and Hernan. Hernan was still sporting some flecks of Tumbled Marble in his dark hair and a streak across one hand. He stood when I came over.

  “Hi, Hernan, Alba,” I said in greeting. I reached across the table and touched Amalia’s shoulder. “My dining room looks great. Thanks for coming over today,” I said.

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  I looked at the other guests at the table. “Where’s Jose?” I asked.

  Hernan looked down at his plate, most of his pot roast untouched. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.

  I looked at Amalia, but she gave nothing away. She shrugged slightly and averted her eyes, eventually going back to her conversation with Frankie.

  I thought back to the conversation that had gone on in my house between Hernan and Jose, but not knowing much Spanish I had had no idea what had really been said. I sat for a few more minutes, and when it was clear that we had nothing else to say to one another, I moved on to the front of the room to spend a little more time with Mrs. Dwyer and Patty.

  A few minutes later, I gave Frankie the high sign that we needed to start clearing the dishes. He was still hovering around the Escalantes’ table, uninterested in cleaning up after the dinner. I stopped by Joey’s table and announced the start of dessert. Rather than a joyous chorus singing the praises of chocolate pudding, the guys all got up abruptly and headed for the door.

  “Gotta go,” Joey said, pulling on his camouflage winter jacket.

  “Wait!” I called after them. “We have tons of chocolate pudding!” I cried, but one by one, they gave me a wave and practically ran to the front door, which closed with a loud thud that reverberated throughout the hall as Junior, the last to leave, made his hasty exit.

  I heard someone mutter “policía” and the scraping of chairs as they were pushed back from the tables. Policía? That was a new one at the Lord’s Bounty.

  I stood, facing the door, my hands on my hips, confused. “Wait,” I called out weakly one last time and then turned back to their table to clean up the Styrofoam dinner dishes that they had left. I wondered what had happened to make them leave en masse without even saying good-bye.

  It didn’t take long for me to figure it out. As I collected their dirty dishes, I spied a tall, thin shape by the stairs that led to the dessert room out of the corner of my eye. It was Crawford. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, regarding me while I cleaned up. He was still in his work attire: blazer, white shirt, striped tie, and black trousers. And,
of course, a huge gun sat in his shoulder holster. Even though I couldn’t see it, the bulge near his blazer pocket made it clear. He had probably worked a twelve-hour shift, but the only indication of that were the bags under his eyes and the stubble that lined his jaw. He was as clean and pressed as he had been that morning. You could take the boy out of Catholic school but you couldn’t take Catholic school out of the boy.

  I straightened up and walked toward him, flashing what I hoped was my most dazzling smile. He remained stone-faced.

  “Those your friends from Sing Sing?” he asked, motioning toward the front door. The room had gotten very quiet and even his normally low voice sounded loud and out of place in the large room.

  “They don’t live in Sing Sing anymore. It’s a halfway house,” I said, enunciating broadly to make sure he understood. I grabbed his arm. “Want to help me serve dessert?” I frog-marched him out of the dining hall and toward the back room. I passed Kerry on the way out of the dining room; she gave me a raised eyebrow and Crawford the once-over.

  We got into the back room and Crawford looked over the desserts after pawing at me for a few minutes behind the refrigerator in the dessert room. I pushed him away. “This is a church, you know.” I smoothed down my hoodie. “Want to see something?”

  He was entranced by the desserts on the table. “Chocolate pudding and brownies? You guys really throw a great party.”

  I unzipped my hoodie and flashed him.

  He did a classic double-take and broke out into a smile. “What did that say?”

  “You read it right,” I said, and grabbed a stack of plates.

  “You da ho?” He laughed. “Where the heck did you get that?”