Mrs. Saint and the Defectives: A Novel Page 4

  Before Markie could form the thought, Nope—definitely more annoying than charming, Mrs. Saint nodded once, turned, and bustled through the garden toward her own side door. Markie was tempted to stand on her tiptoes and peer over the fence to see if the flowers were parting to make way for the old woman as she went.

  Chapter Five

  Overnight, four wicker chairs appeared on Markie’s patio, along with a glass coffee table and a moveable umbrella on a stand. It was a beautiful set, far nicer than anything she could have afforded. She was admiring it when Mrs. Saint came out, and Markie ran to the fence to meet her.

  “It’s gorgeous,” Markie said. “You’re very generous. But it’s too much. I can’t accept it.”

  “Non, non. Not too much. Two for you and Chessie, and two to entertain.” Markie was about to explain what she meant by “too much” when Mrs. Saint added, “Anyway, I could not use. I already have.” She gestured to her three-season screened porch, crowded with two love seats, a large coffee table, and a number of chairs.

  There was no furniture in Mrs. Saint’s yard, though, Markie noticed, and following her gaze, Mrs. Saint said, “Only I don’t sit out from the porch. Because the sun.” She pointed to the sky and the round yellow enemy hanging there. “That is why the umbrella.” She wagged a finger. “You must make sure to stay under. And especially Chessie.”

  It didn’t add up, of course. If Jesse and Markie could avoid the sun with the umbrella, so could Mrs. Saint. And “could not use” was explained less by the crowded porch and more by the fact that there were still store tags on the table, umbrella, and chairs. Markie suspected her neighbor had sent Frédéric and Bruce out to buy it all right after they walked out the bungalow’s side door the day before.

  Mrs. Saint wouldn’t hear of sending the men back to take the furniture away, and Markie gave up for the moment, but later, she wondered if she should try again. What was the etiquette of returning a gift like that, though? If Mrs. Saint refused to send Frédéric and Bruce to collect it, should Markie and Jesse carry it back over the fence themselves?

  There was a difference between graciously declining a gift and unceremoniously depositing it at the giver’s doorstep. It was too expensive a present in Markie’s view, but then, she didn’t wear thousand-dollar suits on the weekend or keep an entire staff of people employed. Maybe, when it came to housewarming gifts, patio furniture was to Mrs. Saint what a small potted plant was to Markie.

  She penned a thank-you note that afternoon, had Jesse add his signature, and asked him to deliver it himself so he could add his in-person thanks as well. He returned to the patio with a dumbfounded expression and dropped into one of the other chairs.

  “She said we’re welcome. She said she gives all her new neighbors a gift.”

  “Nice,” Markie said.

  He held up a hand to let her know she hadn’t heard the rest of it. “She said she’s keeping herself and Bruce and Frédéric and the rest of them out of our way for a while. Giving us time to settle in. She said she’ll check on us later.”

  “Later today, you mean?”

  He shook his head. “Later, like in a few weeks.”

  “Wow.” Markie ran her hand over the wicker armrest of her chair, which suddenly seemed like an even more generous gift now that it came with three weeks of quiet rather than the daily storming of the fence she had been expecting.

  Jesse, gazing at Mrs. Saint’s house as though trying to figure out if he had really gone over there and heard the words he thought he had heard, or if it had been a dream, said, “Yeah. I know.”

  Markie walked downstairs around eight on Sunday night to find that Jesse had dutifully begun their Sunday-evening Skype call with her parents. Her son, knowing these conversations weren’t easy for her, had taken it upon himself to initiate them. Every week when she heard the bloop-bloop-bloop of the computer call starting, she reminded herself that this gift he was giving her was worth several days of one-word answers and contemptuous glares on his part.

  She loved her parents. She truly did. So much that for years she had dragged her husband and son to see them every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Mother’s and Father’s Day, to be greeted the same way each time: a knuckle-breaking handshake for Kyle as Clayton looked over his son-in-law’s shoulder at the car in the drive and said, “We were certain this would be the year you’d be able to spring for airline tickets. Well, maybe next year—but only after you take lessons from my daughter in how to hang on to a job. Ha ha ha. I mean, it’s only funny because it’s true, am I right?”

  A pat on the arm for Jesse, followed quickly by “Whoa there, mister! Shoes off before you take another step. Remember how things work here. Now tuck in your shirt before your grandma gets a view of you. No collar, huh? Well, we’ll have to make do for now, but Lydia will want to go buy you something better before we go to the club, of course.”

  A hug and kiss for Markie, along with a nod in Kyle’s direction, and “Still keeping this guy around, huh? Say, I figured out his secret to marrying up—having in-laws who live too far away to talk sense into their daughter.” Hardee-har-har. And welcome home.

  Clayton, whom Kyle had long ago dubbed “the Commander” (never to his face, of course), would then corner his son-in-law in the kitchen to pour drinks and pour on more insults, Jesse would tear upstairs to hide in the guest room with a book or handheld game, and Markie and her mother would settle in the living room to wait for the tray of cocktails, Markie in desperate need of hers and getting more desperate by the second.

  “Don’t let him destroy anything up there.”

  “He never has before, Mom.”

  “He’s a lot . . . ganglier now, though.” This with a frown, as though the boy were growing for the sole purpose of spiting his grandmother.

  “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  “But you’ll check on him in a few minutes. Or send Kyle up. Just to be sure.”

  “Fine, Mom.”

  “Now tell me. Are you still working?”

  “You know I am.”

  Heavy sigh. “But surely you wouldn’t choose to work if you had the option of staying home and being a mother?”

  This was some of Lydia’s best work—a single bullet that could splinter into multiple fragments and hit more than one target: Markie, for sacrificing her child’s delicate psyche by “dumping” him in one of those—shudder!—“daycare places,” and Kyle, for failing to earn enough money that his wife could stay home with their son.

  “I’m a mother even when I’m working, you know,” Markie would try.

  “Oh yes, I suppose that’s true, from a technical standpoint. But you know what I mean, dear. Real mothering.”

  Cocktails would finally be served, along with an assortment of cheeses and backhanded compliments. One of Lydia’s go-tos: “I always admire your generation, the way you’re not at all concerned about your appearance.”

  When Markie and Jesse were there for their miserable week right after Kyle left, her mother put a reassuring hand on Markie’s arm and said, “I think it’s just as well you’ve let yourself go, dear. This isn’t the time to be worried about how much weight you’ve gained or what your hair looks like.” That didn’t stop her from offering to get Markie in to see her stylist, though. “Only because we’ll be eating at the club while you’re here. If we weren’t going to see anyone we know, it would be fine.”

  Jesse also spent considerable time in the crosshairs of his grandparents’ criticism during that visit, making his initiation of the weekly calls all the more generous.

  “You can’t stay in the guest room all day, dear, with the door closed and the drapes pulled. It isn’t healthy.” Lydia to Jesse, when he emerged for a glass of milk.

  “It’s what teenagers do, Mom.” Markie, taking the carton from Jesse so he could escape the kitchen with his full glass.

  “It’s not what you did when you were his age.” Lydia.

  “That’s because no way would I let a kid of mine
hole up like that, all antisocial.” Clayton, clapping a heavy hand on Jesse’s shoulder and steering him toward the kitchen table. “Your grandmother doesn’t need a mess on the carpet in the guest room.” As if the boy were incapable of drinking without spilling or had plans to turn the glass upside down and watch its contents splash onto the floor while he cackled maniacally, his eyes glowing red.

  “Say, why don’t you sit right here and read the front page so you’ll have something to talk about when the McLarens and Wilsons come for dinner tonight.” Clayton again, indicating the newspaper lying open on the table. “You didn’t say boo at the club last night. I tried throwing you those softballs about the president, and you didn’t even swing. Let’s make a better showing this time.”

  “I’m not really into politics, Grandpa.” Jesse, paging through the paper until he found the comics section.

  “It’s all those video games he plays!” Clayton, to the McLarens and Wilsons at dinner later, after more failed attempts to get his grandson to sing for his supper. “They’ve melted his brain so much, the only part of the paper he can understand is the funnies! I’ll tell you what, he’s so addicted he had to bring his own gaming system!

  “God forbid he go a few weeks without it. We’ve got that great big pool at the club, the tennis courts, an award-winning golf course, and all he wants to do is sit inside in the dark and play on that blasted TV all by himself!” As he complained, he flashed his teeth at Jesse as though it were all a big, friendly joke between them.

  Later, when the guests were gone and Jesse was upstairs taking a shower, Markie asked her parents to lay off. “It’s a different world than when I was his age. There’s more pressure at school and everywhere else. Kids need space to unwind, escape. Especially ones who’re still reeling from their parents’ divorce.”

  “Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say,” Clayton said. “Surely the boy recognizes you’re both better off without the dead weight. Did you tell him where the rest of his private-school tuition went? And all his college money? Did you tell him about the . . .” He wrinkled his nose at the thought of having to say the words affairs or adultery out loud. “About the rest of it?”

  “Of course not, Dad. Jesse doesn’t need to know all of that about his own father.”

  “Still and all,” Clayton said. “It’s been a few months now, and you know my motto: ‘Chin up, move on.’ What the boy needs is more discipline, not more coddling. Tomorrow I’m taking him down to the club, see if I can set him up with a job for the summer. A couple of months washing dishes with the Hispanics will make him appreciate his station in life. You think those people have the luxury of moping in front of a PlayBox, or whatever it’s called, when things don’t go their way?”

  Markie had seethed the entire drive home while Jesse, from all appearances, had forgotten about it by the time they pulled onto the interstate. “They’re old,” he said. “You’ve gotta let them say some stupid stuff.” Now he was chatting with them over the Internet like his time with them in the summer had been filled with praise and hugs.

  Markie took a five-dollar bill out of her wallet and set it on the kitchen counter. The boy deserved to walk up to the sandwich place around the corner on Monday and treat himself to something better than microwaved pizza rolls. She watched in awe as he leaned against the kitchen counter, laptop in front of him, and laughed generously at another of Clayton’s jokes.

  She didn’t know if it was a teen thing or only a Jesse thing, but even on his grumpiest of days, he could always scrounge up some cheer for his grandparents, the same way he had morphed from tired and annoyed to charming and affectionate with Mrs. Saint the day before. She had seen him do the same with their former neighbors, and while her first feeling used to be resentment that he could smile for other people but not his own mother, she had been working on replacing that emotion with something else.

  She knew most teens broke out of their sullen phase at some point, but she wasn’t sure about the ones who, in addition to having to deal with the regular and painful-enough aspects of being a teenager, were also saddled with the humiliation and heartache of their parents’ very public breakup. She couldn’t tell herself with certainty that Jesse’s bitterness would be gone in six months, or a year, or by high school graduation, or ever. She didn’t want him to grow up to be one of those people who are permanently in a bad mood, and especially not because of something she had done. So when she saw him smiling, laughing, and offering words without the listener having to drag them out of him, she tried to feel grateful that someone was getting him to be sociable and tried not to care that the someone didn’t ever seem to be her anymore.

  Jesse chatted away as he walked around the house, holding his open laptop high in the air, facing away from him so its camera could feed his grandparents images of each room. It was their first tour of the bungalow, and if Markie could manage it, a virtual tour would be the only one they ever got. It would take her at least the duration of their half-year lease to build up enough emotional reserves to see them in person again.

  As her son worked his way from room to room, Markie could hear her father exclaiming in the overly cheerful, paternalistic way he reserved for the young and the elderly—and, she guessed, the Hispanics at the club. She could also hear him using words like tiny and cute and starter home. These words did not hold a complimentary place in Clayton Wofford’s vocabulary.

  Lydia’s tight “Mmm-hmm’s” let everyone know she was no more impressed than her husband. Jesse rounded the corner into the living room, and Markie heard her mother say, “Oh, and there’s mother’s spindle-leg furniture.” She punctuated the statement with a sigh, and Markie knew what it meant: while some parents might love the idea of their children making use of family heirlooms, Lydia saw it as a sign of failure.

  The Woffords had avoided cocktail hour at the club for a full month after Markie broke the news. “Imagine what that was like for us,” Lydia told Markie later. “Not that our reentry was a piece of cake. All the questions! You wouldn’t believe how critical some people can be.”

  “Is that my daughter in the corner of my screen?” Clayton asked. “Zoom in!” It was his latest joke, ever since Jesse explained that they didn’t need to put their faces up to the screen to be seen, and that when they did, the view from his end was “Um, a little more detailed than I think you want other people to see. As in, I can see right inside Grandma’s nose right now.”

  Lydia was horrified, but Clayton had tried to turn it into a “bit” that they’d all do together—you “zoom in” close to the camera and show me your nose hairs, I’ll zoom right back and show you mine, hardee-har-har. There can’t be tension as long as someone’s laughing, right?

  “In all seriousness, though, Markie,” Clayton said as Jesse stood beside his mother, leaving her no option but to join him in the frame. “You need to do a walk-through to check that everything’s as advertised—”

  “And if it’s not,” Lydia cut in, “you could use that as an excuse to back out. Take another look for something in a . . . different area.” She meant a better area. The bungalow’s zip code would impress no one. Plus, how would Markie show everyone in her old circle that she was doing just fine if she lived too far away for them to see? It was one thing to have them run you off, another altogether to let them keep you away.

  “All moved in, Mom,” Markie said. “And I dare you to tell Jesse he has to load and unload another rental truck sooner than six months from now.”

  Jesse shook his head, and Lydia smiled, nodded, and backed out of the frame to “go check on the tea.”

  “Like I was saying,” Clayton continued, “you need to make sure the tub drains okay, toilet doesn’t run, faucets don’t drip all night. The key is to assess it all now and make a list of anything that’s not up to par. In fact, Jesse, why don’t you take me around with the computer? We can have a look-see, come up with a punch list. It’s not something your mom needs to be bothered with anyway.”

  F
or a while, Markie had tried telling herself that her father’s belief that women didn’t, and shouldn’t, know about certain things was the explanation for how Kyle had been able to spend their entire savings and their son’s school fund without her noticing. Lydia had never once questioned Clayton about money—Markie was only acting the way she’d been brought up. But she had made her way through all the stages of How Did My Life Come to This? and she had passed finger-pointing long ago. She was standing in a minuscule, badly furnished rental house, sixty-eight dollars in her pocket and not much more than that in the bank, an angry boy beside her and newly disappointed parents in front of her, for one reason: her own willful blindness.

  “We should really give the fuse box a once-over, too,” her father told Jesse.

  “Actually, Grandpa, our neighbor already checked all that stuff for us,” Jesse said. And because he knew his grandfather, he added, “I mean, not our neighbor, but her friend—a man.”

  Markie leaned out of the sight of the laptop camera and lifted her brows with curiosity.

  “One sec, Grandpa.” Jesse lowered the computer screen to take himself out of the frame. “Frédéric,” he whispered. “Before you got back from the store, Mrs. Saint told him to make sure everything was set right. Tighten the fuses or something, and the kitchen sink sometimes leaks, and she wanted him to make sure it was better. That’s why he brought his toolbox over.”

  “How would she know about those things?” Markie asked.

  He shrugged. “Maybe the last person who lived here complained to her or whatever.”

  “I missed the dining room,” Lydia said, back now from fake-checking the fictional tea. “And your room, Jesse.”

  “Here, I’ll show you again, Grandma.” Jesse jogged back through the kitchen toward the archway, Clayton laughing too heartily at the way the picture jumped on their end.

  “Rough seas!” he called. Jesse laughed along, and Markie took the five-dollar bill off the counter and replaced it with a ten. Let the boy upgrade his lunch tomorrow—he could add chips and a soda.