Mrs. Saint and the Defectives: A Novel Read online

  PRAISE FOR JULIE LAWSON TIMMER

  Five Days Left

  “An extremely talented writer.”

  —Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author

  “I sat down with this book after dinner, and when I looked up, it was 2 a.m. and I had turned the last page. My only regret was that there weren’t a hundred more pages.”

  —Jacquelyn Mitchard, New York Times bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean

  “An authentic and powerful story.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (Starred review)

  “Absorbing, deeply affecting, and ultimately uplifting, it heralds the arrival of an author to watch.”

  —Library Journal (Starred review)

  “Timmer handles delicate, controversial issues with deep insight into human nature, and ultimately renders a story that will stay with readers long after they reach the last page.”

  —Amy Hatvany, author of Heart Like Mine

  “A stunning debut about the impossible things we do for love. Heartbreaking yet uplifting, Five Days Left is a book I won’t ever forget.”

  —Sarah Pekkanen, bestselling author of Catching Air

  “This novel feels as true as life.”

  —Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train

  “Timmer’s novel is a heartbreaker but it is also a stunning debut.”

  —BookPage

  Untethered

  “If you’re inclined to gently strong-arm your book club, Timmer’s is a poignant page-turner worth going to the mat for.”

  —Liz Egan, author of A Window Opens

  “Untethered is a beautiful mosaic of love’s many fragments, no matter how shattered.”

  —Library Journal (Starred review)

  “[A] thoughtfully written and ultimately uplifting celebration of families that are not bound by blood or by law but by love.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “It’s so, so easy to ease into a novel by Julie Lawson Timmer. You know by the end of the first page that you’re in for a great story, one that’s rich in detail, plotline, and character development. Untethered won’t disappoint you on any of those things.”

  —Long Island PULSE

  ALSO BY JULIE LAWSON TIMMER

  Five Days Left

  Untethered

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Julie Lawson Timmer

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477819968

  ISBN-10: 1477819967

  Cover design by Kimberly Glyder

  For Elizabeth Lloyd, our “Mrs. Saint,” whom we loved and miss.

  And who was nothing like her fictional namesake, save for the generosity, the elegance, and the low wooden fence.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Epilogue

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chapter One

  It was only when Markie saw her husband’s hands clasped around another woman’s breasts that she finally acknowledged their problems weren’t ones she could hide any longer. Except that wasn’t completely true. Though it shamed her to confess it, the truth was that if she had seen them—his hands, the breasts that weren’t her own—in the privacy of their bedroom or in some tawdry motel room she had burst in on, she might not have admitted it still. There had been other women before, and since the only people who had known were Markie, Kyle, and his mistress-du-jour, it had always been an easy secret to keep. An easy reality for Markie to pretend away.

  Lipstick stains on collars, the smell of perfume she didn’t wear—why dwell on these things when they could be shoved aside instead, leaving her free to continue her charade as a happily married woman? An enviably married woman, in fact. Kyle couldn’t keep a vow or a job, and he spent more than he earned and borrowed more than he admitted to, but he was handsome and fit and sexy, and Markie could tell from the looks on the faces at the dinner parties and black-tie casino nights so popular with the private-school crowd they ran with that there wasn’t a mother at Saint Mark’s Prep who didn’t wish she could go home with him.

  But secrecy was no longer an option now. Markie had seen them—the hands, the breasts—on the screen of a phone held by one of the members of the Saint Mark’s Mothers’ Club, a phone being huddled over, ogled at, by five other members as they sat, spandex-encased and Botox-injected, at a booth in a swanky restaurant near the school, whispering and shushing and pointing and not-entirely-smiling-with-glee-but-sort-of. And she knew that by the time she had raced home, screamed up the driveway, stormed into the house, and finally confronted her husband, it would be all over Saint Mark’s and her workplace (which were one and the same). All through the ranks of the Mothers’ Club and the staff and the students, one of whom was Markie and Kyle’s eighth-grade son, Jesse.

  After that, it would be only a matter of time before the rest of the truths she had ignored—Kyle’s many other infidelities, his maxing out of credit cards Markie hadn’t even known they had, his emptying of their checking account, their savings account, Jesse’s private-school tuition fund, his college fund—surfaced. And even if that particular level of detail wasn’t shared around the Saint Mark’s campus, around their neighborhood, their town—Markie wasn’t about to reveal such facts, and surely Kyle wouldn’t air his complete list of sins—it would become clear, when Jesse didn’t show up on campus the next fall, that something had happened to them financially. And that whatever it was, it was as mortifying as the fact that the photo of Kyle’s hands, the other woman’s breasts, and their joining together had made its way through the phones of every person Markie would never be able to face again.

  Kyle left that night. It was right after Easter. Jesse had a q
uarter term to go before the end of the school year. Thanks to his father, they had no money to pay for it, so Markie had swallowed pride and bile and accepted a Loan of Many Attached Strings from her parents. The minute the Saint Mark’s school year ended, she listed their house, now deep underwater. To keep it in shape for showings and to fulfill one of the many conditions of her parents’ charity, she moved back into her childhood bedroom in her parents’ home, Jesse into the guest room, for the summer.

  She didn’t last a week. Her parents, Clayton and Lydia, had never approved of Kyle, who did nothing for their status at the club—no impressive letters after his name, no fancy alma mater for them to casually drop into conversation, no promotions to mention offhandedly over cocktails or golf or bridge. But they approved even less of divorce. There was a child involved now—their grandson. Not to mention all the years they had spent convincing their friends that Kyle was, in fact, worthy of their daughter. Now what were they supposed to tell everyone?

  “And it’s not as though we can say you’re doing so much better without him,” Lydia told Markie, eyeing her daughter’s recently added weight, her not-recently highlighted hair (“We don’t show our roots, dear, no matter how badly off we might be”), and the old yoga pants and baggy T-shirts she wore constantly, having no other items in her closet that fit anymore and no money to replace them. “We could do a little shopping trip, maybe,” Lydia offered. “Though I don’t know how much black we’ll find in the summer, and really, at this point, I think dark colors are your best friend, don’t you?”

  They approved only slightly more of their grandson, whose teenage ways they interpreted as just this side of criminal. “All this lying about,” Clayton sputtered. On their second day, he rapped on Jesse’s door at six thirty in the morning. “The sun’s up—why aren’t you? Ha ha ha.” Another rap. “I’m joking, son, but I’m also not. Up and at ’em. Your grandmother’s got breakfast on the table, and I’ve got a big lawn you can mow. Let’s give those muscles a shot at making an appearance, shall we?”

  “And the video games,” Lydia fretted. “Aren’t you worried he’ll turn into one of those, you know, Columbine-type kids? He already looks the part.” Jesse was as thin as their daughter was heavy. Clayton and Lydia took equal offense to both conditions.

  After dinner on their second day, Markie retreated to her bedroom, claiming exhaustion, and sat in the middle of the floor, a bottle of wine and a decade’s worth of diaries open beside her. She read, in loopy, purple handwriting, about the “amazing” career she saw herself in, the “perfect marriage” she planned to have with the “very successful, very hunky” man she was sure she would meet “after college, when I’ve already seen the world and figured myself out and decided what I really want in a husband.” The “gorgeous” house she would live in, which would be “even bigger and more beautiful than my parents’ place.”

  She woke the next morning with her face glued by tears and alcohol to the pages of one of her notebooks. When she dragged herself to the kitchen in search of coffee, Clayton was waiting, pacing. He took in her unbrushed hair, her puffy, bloodshot eyes, and her untied robe and cleared his throat. “I think we need to talk about the way the two of you are handling your . . . situation,” he said.

  On their fourth day, Markie, desperate, applied over the Internet for a job in a town about forty miles from their old house. The company was in a hurry to fill some new positions that sounded low-level and mind-numbing, but it meant that after the online application and a brief phone interview the next morning, the job was hers. Plus, it was a work-from-home position, perfect for someone so mortified about her fall from marital, societal, professional, and financial grace that it was difficult for her to face her own son, let alone the rest of the world.

  On the fifth day, she hunched over her laptop and scoured the listings for rentals she could afford on the measly piece-rate wage she would be making. Another loan from the First Condemnatory Bank of Clayton and Lydia Wofford would have killed her. To her surprise, she found a landlord willing to cut a deal. On the sixth day, she broke the news to her parents.

  And on the seventh, she loaded Jesse back into the car and sped away, to the promise of a town where no one knew her, a job she could do in seclusion, a house she planned to invite not one single guest to, and a life she could tread lightly on the emotionally safe surface of. She planned on going through the motions rather than becoming truly engaged, while she licked the wounds caused by her own bad decisions and waited for the shame that filled her from the top of her skull to her furthermost toenail to recede. Assuming it ever would.

  Chapter Two

  Jesse inched his way slowly down the wet truck ramp, sliding one foot back, then the other. Markie followed him carefully, trying to match her forward steps to his backward ones in both length and pace. At a different time, she might have suggested they call out their movements to make sure they were in sync—a simple “Right, left,” or “Now, now.” But he was rationing his words lately, and she knew if she asked him to blow a few dozen on Saturday morning, it could be Monday before he spoke again.

  They had managed to get all the smaller things into the house before the rain started. They were leaving the heaviest items for Kyle, who promised he would be there by nine. He had missed the loading process at the old house earlier. A “thing” suddenly came up, he told Jesse by text—they should get the neighbors to help put everything on the truck. He would catch them at the new place to help unload. Jesse wouldn’t admit he was upset with his dad for flaking out. For a while, he wouldn’t even admit Kyle wasn’t coming.

  But by ten, he had stopped looking down the street for signs of his father’s car, and at ten thirty, he climbed into the back of the truck, where Markie was studying her watch and trying to keep her anxiety in check. She had until noon to return it to the rental place or she would be out another hundred dollars for the late-return penalty. Since Kyle was as diligent about paying child support as he was about being places on time, every penny mattered.

  Jesse caught his mother’s worried expression and quickly turned away, and Markie braced herself for the scowl she knew she’d see when he faced her again, the narrowed eyes and curled lip that said, If you knew we couldn’t manage things on our own, why did you kick him out? The boy had become a master of disdainful looks, reproachful head shakes, and long, accusatory exhales.

  It would be so much easier, Markie thought, if he would voice his displeasure out loud, tell her precisely what his issue of the day was with her. She could stick up for herself then—not that she felt she had any defense, but there might be some hole in his argument that she could dig herself out of, some inaccuracy in his reporting of the facts that she could set him straight on. At the very least, she could bust him for using a disrespectful tone. What could she say in response to an aggrieved sigh?

  To her relief, when he turned back to her, his expression wasn’t reproachful but pensive, even sincere. Scanning the waiting bed frames and mattresses, the couches and armchairs and the large wooden table, Jesse clasped his long, thin fingers together and lifted his spindly, pale arms over his head in what he presumably thought was an athlete’s stretch. “No problem, Mom,” he said. “We can handle it. We’re, like, totally fine.”

  Markie let go of the breath she didn’t know she had been holding. This was the thing about Jesse: just when she thought he was going to incinerate her with a death stare or walk off in a huff, he would say something nice instead or smile at her, sometimes even pat her on the arm. He was like the little girl in the childhood poem, the one with the curl on her forehead—“When she was good, she was very good, and when she was bad, she was horrid.” Markie had a new respect for the fictitious little girl’s emotionally exhausted parents. The vacillations were so draining.

  She regarded Jesse sideways, a brow arched. The other thing about him was that he was fourteen, and over the prior twelve months, his body had done the bubble-gum thing, getting thinner as it stretched longer.
His arms were thicker at the elbows than the biceps, his legs wider at the knees than the quads. He was embarrassed to wear shorts, and the jeans he was sweating in on that humid first day of August sagged low, not because it was the fashion, but because there was no tush to hold them up. No belt, either: the last time Markie offered to buy him one, he declined, telling her in typical Jesse-ese, a language that allowed only short phrases and abhorred elaboration, “Belts aren’t a thing, Mom.”

  He wore small, round, wire-frame glasses, which, combined with his smooth, pale face, made him look a little like a young John Lennon. (When he was in elementary school, she was allowed to say Harry Potter.) His dark bangs would have completed the look if he weren’t tossing his head sideways every thirty seconds to keep them off his forehead. He was a kid who would be picked first for some kind of academic challenge, in other words—a geography bee, a who-can-name-the-kings-of-England-in-date-order contest. Maybe, in his coolest moments, a video-game competition. But something physical, like unloading a truck full of furniture? In the rain, in ninety minutes, with a fortysomething, sagging-in-the-middle mother for a teammate? Not a chance.

  But in addition to generously offering up seven words and the trace of a reassuring smile, Jesse gave Markie this certain look, one he had first used the day his father left. It was a push-pull of confidence and desperation, of let-me-take-care-of-you-Mom and please-don’t-doubt-me-or-I’ll-doubt-myself, of man of the house and frightened little boy. It made Markie’s heart simultaneously burst with pride and break with sadness each time she saw it.

  “Sure, we can handle it,” she told him.

  So there they were, saggy-middled mother and bubble-gum-limbed son, inching down the slippery ramp of the truck, their heavy wooden dining table suspended between them, both determined for different reasons to pretend that the weight of it wasn’t killing them. That the morning hadn’t added another mark in the long column of disappointments they had both suffered at the hands of Markie’s ex-husband and Jesse’s father. That lugging the rest of their heavy furniture off the truck and up the puddled walkway and through the narrow side door of the rented bungalow, on their own, in the rain, in an hour and a half, would be remotely possible.