“Hack!” She ran around the case to give him a hug. “What are you doing here?”
“Hi, princess.” He held her tight, then held her off at arm’s length. “Didn’t you call for a painter?”
“I know, but I didn’t think I’d see you. I left the house unlocked, didn’t I? You didn’t have trouble getting in?”
“Nah, I just wanted to see my girl. You look so grown up.”
Vinny smoothed her lab coat, blushing with pleasure.
“They still treating you good? Anyone’s chops I need to bust?”
“Not today, Guido.” He was Guido to her Vinny. He didn’t even remember which one of them had come up with that. “Actually they might be promoting me soon.”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah. Joanie told me that.”
“You’re a star, kiddo.”
“That’s me,” Vinny said, smiling. “So, have you even been to the house yet?”
“Nope, came right here to get my five minutes with you.”
“Ten—I’ll give you at least ten.”
“I’m a lucky guy. I’ve always said so,” he said.
“Can you stay tonight and buy me dinner?”
“Oh, I think I can probably do that. Someplace cheap, you know, McDonald’s or whatever.”
“Get out,” she said, pushing him lightly. He always took her to a nice place. “I’m off at six. You want me to meet you at the house?”
“You still taking the bus? Then I’ll come get you. I can’t believe you’ve turned into a big-city girl.”
“I know. I love it,” Vinny said, and he could tell she meant it. He couldn’t see it himself, but it was her life.
She dug around in a drawer behind the counter. “Call me if you need anything.” She handed him a business card: “Vini Neary, Sales Associate.”
He grinned. “Vini?”
She grinned too. “Hey, at least it’s not Linda.” She’d threatened to take back her original name, not that she’d ever really do it.
“Yeah. So listen, kiddo, I hear some paint calling my name. I’ll see you later, huh?”
“Okay,” she said. “I love you.”
The glow of her affection warmed him all the way out to the street. She did love him; she always had; it was part of her the way her lungs were part of her, or her heart. When she was little, she’d raced Bunny for the seat beside him at restaurants, had held his hand whether or not they were crossing a street. It was Hack she asked to put her to bed, partly because he knew all the good stories by heart: “Goodnight Moon,” “The Owl and the Pussycat,” “Rumpelstiltskin,” “Beauty and the Beast.” He never told her why he knew them, and it had never occurred to her to ask; to her, it was all a part of the personal treasure he brought along with him when he moved in, like his box of ball bearings and the pickle bucket of loose change he’d saved for years and let her count one day to put down on her first car. He never missed a school pageant, spelling bee, awards ceremony, open house. When the PTA elected officers, it was Hack they chose.
You’re a great man, she said to him at her high school graduation, smiling tearfully over a dozen and a half red roses. Really, Hack. I mean that.
Maybe she did, but she was wrong.
chapter six
Up in Tillamook, Shirl, Bunny, Anita, and Fanny sat around Fanny’s living room, tucking into plates of Shirl’s homemade triple chocolate fudge cake. Even though it was Fanny’s forty-eighth birthday, Bunny had poked in only four candles. It seemed kinder to round down, especially given Fanny’s current circumstances. The house looked the same—all blues and browns, plaid upholstery, sculpted shag carpet, her framed coastal lighthouse series in cross-stitch—but only because the divorce was still pending. Once it went through, Fanny would get to keep the house but almost nothing in it. The way she moved around the place, Bunny imagined she was already saying an extended farewell to her furniture. She touched everything, petting the upholstery, dusting a table, rearranging cushions.
“So will you at least keep your bedroom set?” Shirl asked, rubbing chocolate frosting off her dentures with a paper napkin. “You paid a lot for that furniture, hon, and I think you ought to keep it, seeing as how you picked it out.”
“I say let him have the stinking bed, you know?” Fanny snapped. “The whole time we slept in it he was cheating. Why would I want to have something around that reminded me?”
“Well, now that’s true,” Shirl admitted.
“No, I told my lawyer I want the sewing machine, my craft supplies, everything in the kitchen, and one sofa, one chair, and the bed in the guest bedroom.”
Shirl clucked. “Still don’t seem fair to me. You’ve made this house a home, honey. It should all stay with you.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Shirl shrugged. “I’m just saying it’s not right, Fanny. That’s all I’m saying.” To Anita, whose cake plate was empty, she said, “You want some more, Nita? I sure do.”
Shirl stood up with both plates. She was a tall woman and almost as heavy as Anita, but she carried her weight like a geological formation, soaring and rock solid. Her features were Bunny’s, only larger, as though she’d been drawn with Magic Marker to Bunny’s felt-tip pen—and with none of the softening overbite.
“I’ve always loved this recipe,” she said over her shoulder from the cake stand across the room. “They say to use one bag of chocolate chips in the frosting, but I always double it. Makes your arteries stand up and take notice, I’ll tell you that. And that’s without the Cool Whip.”
“It’s real good, Shirl,” Anita said.
“Thanks, hon.” Shirl handed her back a laden plate and dropped heavily onto the couch. “So what’s up with Danny now? Bunny said he was in some kind of trouble.”
“Yeah, he is,” Anita said. “They’re saying he’s been helping some friend make drugs.”
“And him with a young child.” Shirl clucked. “I call that a shame.”
Bunny spoke up. “He might not have done it, Mom. He’s a good kid, you know that.”
“Do I? I must be thinking of somebody else,” Shirl said airily. “You know who he reminds me of? He reminds me of my brother. Howard was always into something too, just like Anita’s boy.”
“Boy-in-law,” Bunny corrected her.
“Whatever,” said Shirl.
Anita said, “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“Yeah, well, we don’t talk about him much. He’s been locked up for the last thirty years. Bank robbery, manslaughter.” Shirl waved her hand dismissively. “I don’t remember what all.”
“Mom,” Bunny warned.
Shirl looked at her defiantly. “What? Howard was always a bad kid, had trouble written all over him from the get-go. Doreen’s Danny, now he’s probably a real nice boy who’s just got his directions mixed up. Once someone sets him straight, he’ll probably settle right down.”
“Yeah,” Anita said bitterly, taking a big mouthful of cake. “Right.”
Bunny, sitting beside her, squeezed Anita’s hand. She could just kill Shirl sometimes; the woman had the tact of a land mine. What Anita wasn’t saying was that Danny was most likely fucked, according to his free lawyer. Enough of his property and fingerprints had been found in the meth lab to hang him, plus they’d found a couple of people already who’d testify that Danny had sold them drugs on the street. It wasn’t looking good. The free lawyer said he expected Danny to be indicted by a grand jury next week.
“So how’s Doreen taking it, Nita?” Fanny asked her.
Anita shook her head, scraping the last of the frosting from her plate. “Hard. She’s pissed off that if Danny was doing the things they say he was doing, he could have at least brought home some of the money. Turns out the boy probably has a drug problem himself, and that’s where the money’s been going, right up his nose or whatever.” She shook her head again. “Here she’s been working as many hours as they’ll give her at the hospital, twenty cents above minimum wage, a
nd he’s doing that. You know what he told her? He told her he was real sorry and all, but that she was young and strong, and he was sure she’d figure something out. And of course there’s Crystal too, my little angel. Bob and me, we’re about ready to bring them both home to stay with us until we at least know what’s what. Even if Danny’s acquitted, he’s going to be in jail, at least until the trial’s over.”
“Well, you just be strong, honey,” Shirl said, belching. “You’re going to get through this.”
“I’m having another beer,” Fanny declared. “Anyone else want one? Mom?”
“You have any of those wine coolers left?” Shirl said.
“I think so.”
“I’ll have that.”
“I’m going to have another beer— Nita? You too?” Bunny said. “But you don’t have to wait on us, Fan.” She followed Fanny into the kitchen with her empty plate and beer bottle.
“So, Anita looks like shit,” Fanny whispered to her over the sink.
“Yeah. Bob’s acting strange again.”
“He’s never stopped acting strange, if you ask me. He disappear again, like that other time?”
“Not so much that.” There wasn’t any point in explaining that Bob had been disappearing right along. “He’s asking everyone in town if they have any work for him.”
“Doesn’t he work for Hack anymore?”
“Yeah, that’s the thing. This is for extra, after-work work.”
Fanny frowned. “Maybe the man’s finally discovering he has balls. Imagine, after all these years.” It was frankly acknowledged within the family that Bob was worthless as both a husband and a provider. Everyone knew that Anita’s working two jobs had been all that had stood between them and the street on more than one occasion.
Bunny snorted. “Anyway, Nita’s not complaining, but it’s still weird. She says she’s found him crying.”
“Crying?” Hubbard men didn’t cry unless someone died, and even then it had better be a close friend or relation.
“Crying,” Bunny confirmed. “And he won’t tell her why.”
“Huh. What does Hack think?”
“He doesn’t know.”
Fanny frowned, impressed. Hack usually had an angle on everything, and usually he was right. “Well, anyway, I’m glad you brought her along. Sounds like she was in need of a cat session with the girls.”
“Yeah.”
Fanny looked at Bunny out of the sides of her eyes. “So what about you—you doing okay?”
Bunny shrugged. “Yeah. No. You know. Hack’s got some little girl on the side, I think.”
“Again?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not.”
“You know her?”
“I saw her. She works for him.”
“And?” Fanny handed Bunny a cold beer from the refrigerator, set out another on the counter for Anita, then the wine cooler for Shirl.
“And what?” Bunny said.
“She slutty?”
“I don’t know. No. She was pretty, Fan. She was young, and she was pretty.” Bunny’s eyes teared up. “It’s been a long time since we looked like that. Maybe we never looked like that. Anyway, he said he wouldn’t see her anymore.”
“Yeah, right.”
Bunny slumped against the counter.
Fanny cracked the top to her beer and said, “I’ll tell you something, Sissy. You want it to get better, and they tell you it’s going to get better, so you think it’s going to get better, only it doesn’t. At least it didn’t with Frank. How many times did he tell me some girl was his last piece of ass, he never loved her, it didn’t mean a thing, she came after him first and what could he do?” Fanny laughed bitterly. “That right there is when your bullshit detector should kick in and say, Yeah, right.”
Bunny twisted her wedding ring around her finger.
“You think Hack doesn’t know what he’s doing is wrong?” Fanny said. “He knows. You can bet your ass he knows. They just don’t admit knowing because if they admit it, then you both have to do something about it. All those years Frank came home to a hot dinner and a clean house, you know? Shit. I’d get up every morning, Sissy, every morning, and say, please God don’t let me hear anything today. Because every day that I didn’t hear anything was one more day I could stay.”
Bunny dropped her head.
“You know what you end up asking yourself?” Fanny said. “How little can I live with? You ask yourself how little can I live with, and how much do I need. And the answer keeps getting smaller, and your marriage keeps shrinking. In the beginning it fits fine, you know, roomy enough to keep you warm, and you can move all around in it. Then you have the kids, and when your husband stays away from you, you’re mostly glad, because they just get in the way, and who gives a shit about sex when you haven’t had two minutes to yourself in five years? And all that time your marriage is getting smaller and smaller, except you don’t notice because it hasn’t occurred to you to notice, and why should you? You just pull it down and stretch it out, and if you feel a little draft now and then, you ignore it because you don’t have time to deal with it anyway. By the time you do, your marriage is this little tiny thing that doesn’t cover shit and you’re freezing to death out there in the cold.”
Bunny just looked at her.
“The thing is, I never knew anyone who could unshrink something once it got small,” Fanny said quietly. “And here’s the worst part. If Frank asked me to take him back today, I’d probably say yes.”
“You’re kidding.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway.” Fanny began to cry.
“Aw, Sissy, don’t,” Bunny said, wrapping her arms around her. “You can do better. You deserve better.”
“Yeah, right,” Fanny said, pulling away and wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
“What are you girls doing out there?” Shirl hollered from the living room. “You coming back, or do we have to come get you?”
“We’re coming back. Just hold your damn horses,” Bunny yelled, tearing a paper towel off the roll so Fanny could blow her nose, wipe down her face a little. She grabbed the extra beer and the wine cooler from the counter and brought them to Shirl and Anita in the living room.
“What were you talking about in there?” Shirl said. She turned to Anita. “Watch, she’s going to say ‘nothing.’ ”
“Nothing,” said Bunny.
“I bet you were talking about Frank,” Shirl said. “He’s got a new Cadillac, did Fanny tell you?”
“Let’s not talk about Frank anymore,” Bunny said, jerking her head in the direction of the kitchen, where Fanny was still collecting herself.
“Yeah? Well, you know best; she doesn’t tell me anything,” Shirl said.
“Well,” Anita said supportively, “Doreen doesn’t talk to me anymore either, unless she needs something.”
“Money,” Shirl said. “It’s usually money.”
“Yeah.” Anita chuckled. “It is.”
“How’s Vinny doing up there in Portland anyway?” Shirl asked Bunny, drinking her wine cooler from the bottle. She’d never learned to do it right, though; she inserted the whole neck into her mouth. It drove Bunny crazy. She’d never seen a wino before, but she thought a wino must drink like that. “You haven’t said boo about her lately,” Shirl said.
“She’s good, I guess,” Bunny said. “Hack went up to paint her kitchen this morning.”
“Those two,” said Shirl, shaking her head. “Thick as thieves all these years.”
“Hack thinks she should go to college.”
“I thought you ought to go to college,” Shirl said.
“Let’s not talk about me,” Bunny said.
“I’m just saying,” said Shirl.
“Well, Martin went to college, and he’s got a good job now with Georgia Pacific,” Fanny said, coming in from the kitchen. Martin was her oldest and the only college graduate in the family.
“See, now he’s done good,” Shirl said. “That’s all I’m saying.�
��
“Presents!” said Bunny. “Fanny hasn’t opened her presents yet. Come on, Fan.” She set down a small stack of wrapped boxes beside Fanny on the couch.
“The kids went in together and bought me a real nice color TV,” Fanny said.
“That was sweet,” said Shirl approvingly. “You raised those kids right, Fanny, I’ve said it before.”
Fanny opened Shirl’s gift first, a new pair of Dearfoam slippers. “They’re real nice, Mom,” Fanny said, giving her a peck on the cheek. “I haven’t had new slippers in forever.”
Anita gave her a pair of calico potholders. “It’s just something small,” Anita said apologetically. “I know you like blue.”
“Oh, Nita, did you make them? Well, that makes them special,” Fanny said. “Thank you, sweetie.”
Last she unwrapped Bunny’s present, pulling out a stuffed rabbit dressed in intricate silver cloth armor and carrying a sword. Fanny exclaimed, “Oh, Sissy, he’s too darling!”
“Your knight in shining armor,” Bunny said, watching Fanny closely in case she started to cry again, but Fanny just gave Bunny a hug and handed around the rabbit for closer inspection. Bunny unbuckled his armor to show that underneath he was dressed as a medieval peasant, and everyone gave her a round of applause. In a festive mood at last, they pulled out Bunny’s Pictionary game and played it hilariously until dinnertime.
When she got back from Tillamook Sunday afternoon, Bunny put on a roast and potatoes. Normally she didn’t cook big meals anymore, there being just the two of them, but it gave her something to do while she waited for Hack to come home. The trip had shaken her. She loved him; didn’t she love him? And didn’t he love her? Even if they weren’t as close as they used to be, who was? After so many years together there were things you’d needed to say at the beginning that you just didn’t anymore. I love you. You make me happy. I look forward to coming home because you are there. They didn’t say these things because they were obvious, not because they were untrue.
And what about all the wedding anniversaries, the Valentine’s Days, the Christmases and Mother’s Days, every one of which Hack faithfully acknowledged with presents? Could it really just be guilt stirred up by Wal-Mart and Zales? Could these be the things you did for someone you did not love? Bunny wouldn’t have believed it until yesterday. But Frank had given Fanny a new one-carat tennis bracelet for her birthday just last year. Before that, there had been a watch, a Las Vegas getaway, a car. Was it possible that all this time Hack, like Frank, had simply been buying Bunny off? If they didn’t talk much, they never had; Hack was a talker all right, but Bunny wasn’t. Even when they fought, it was mostly swift, a series of standoffs, raids, and surrenders. And they didn’t fight all that often; almost never, really. Frank and Fanny had fought all the time.
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