“Anyway,” Mrs. Saint said, “Ronda has been having this sit in the kitchen, waiting. She wanted to leave it outside the screened porch so it would be closer to you and bring you luck sooner. But Patty reminded that Bruce might step on. This has happened many times with gardening totems she has made for him.”
“Well, it was very thoughtful of you,” Markie said. “And of Ronda. The muffins and the little house and the time to ourselves. We’re pretty introverted, Jesse and I. Not everyone understands that. You have more visitors in a day than we do in a month.”
Mrs. Saint craned her head to look at something on her side of the fence, and Markie suddenly heard Bruce and Frédéric behind her, discussing something about a wheelbarrow and mulch. She was tempted to ask Mrs. Saint to confirm the theory she had developed, that Frédéric played the role of general contractor rather than regular employee. But that would violate the rule she had set for herself: Stop being curious about them.
“It must be a nice thing to have so much help,” she said instead. “Keeping up with a house can be so physically tiring.”
“Och,” her neighbor said. She leaned close and whispered, “Sometimes I think the most tiring thing is to fix all their mistakes!” She indicated the basket, with Ronda’s muffins and the store-bought replacements.
Before Markie could stop herself, she leaned in, too, and whispered, “But if they’re not good at their jobs, then why—?” She clapped her lips together, trapping the rest of her question. She did not care. She could not. She would not.
The older woman had guessed, though, and tilted forward even more, beckoning for Markie to do the same. When their heads were almost touching, she whispered, “Mes défectueux, they are all in need of help. But who wants to be told this straight in the face? Or to be handed charity? So I give my help by asking for theirs. And by paying for honest work. Not always good, but honest.”
Markie heard the men’s voices receding as they walked to the end of the driveway for their first load of mulch. Keeping a watchful eye trained on her yard, Mrs. Saint, her voice still low, said, “In the past, with les autres, I was very strict, always demanding for them to learn to do it right the first time. I wanted them to move on, get real jobs, with bosses who would not allow for the repeating of so many things. Those ones, they worked for me only for one month, two months, before I push them out, to a better life, on their own.”
The men’s voices got louder, and Mrs. Saint put a finger to her lips, glancing casually around the patio to make it seem, in case Frédéric and Bruce looked over, that she was merely enjoying a pleasant morning at the neighbor’s and not talking about them. While they waited for the men to deliver the mulch and then retreat out of earshot for another load, Markie shifted in her chair and surveyed her neighbor’s house and yard, both understated yet immaculately maintained.
The house was a ranch of unimposing size, but its gray exterior walls were so rich, its white window trim so crisp, Markie suspected it must be repainted at least once a year, if not more often, and possibly hand-washed in between. The lawn rivaled the golf course at the Woffords’ club for flawlessness, and the garden beds along the fence and the side of the house, while filled with local plants and flowers rather than anything showy or exotic, were tended with the sort of care Markie would expect if Mrs. Saint’s home were open to the public.
Markie had no idea what Mrs. Saint was paying everyone, but if she had enough money to employ a staff for years, surely she could afford to live in a much nicer part of town where the homes were truly impressive. If it were Markie at seventy-five or eighty years old with that kind of wealth, she would upgrade immediately and cruise into her final chapters in a tony area with fancy new zero-lot-line condos—maintenance-free construction, no landscaping or yard to keep up, and neighbors who didn’t turn over with each lease term.
Behind her came the sound of shovels scraping the bottom of the wheelbarrow, then the squeaking wheel of the vessel as someone pushed it back to the driveway. Mrs. Saint watched them go, then leaned in again. “Now I am much too old for this, for pressing them to get better and find somewhere else to go. I am much too . . .” She tapped two gnarled fingers over her heart.
“Oh!” Markie said. “Are you ill?”
Mrs. Saint frowned at the fingers on her heart as though she hadn’t realized they were there, and then she dropped her hand, and her gaze, to her lap. “I get tired more easy, is the thing I mean. Because I am older. This is all.”
Markie doubted this was all, but she wasn’t about to push on a personal health matter despite her suspicion that if their roles were reversed, her neighbor surely wouldn’t allow her the same privacy. “Well, you and Frédéric get around pretty well, I’d say,” she said instead.
Mrs. Saint’s head snapped up, and her dark, narrowed eyes told Markie it would have been better to push about her health than comment on her age. “Och! But he is much older than I am!”
Markie managed to keep from saying, “Nice try!” or arching a skeptical brow, but the old woman must have detected her disbelief anyway, because she said, “Many people find it a surprise. But this is why smoking is a bad idea, I tell to Patty. Frédéric has never done, and I have all the years along. So this is what I get for that: people think me the same age, when I am a complete ten years younger.
“Can you believe there are even people who ask to me what it was like in the Second World War? As if I lived in that time?” She stared at Markie with practiced incredulity, waiting, it seemed, for Markie to verify the ridiculousness of such a notion. Or, more accurately, to indicate she had bought the charade.
“It takes a lot of work, to do the training of many people,” Mrs. Saint said, evidently eager to move off the topic of her age. “I have not the stamina for it now. Also, I am not so able anymore to keep up with all these details of who is looking for help, what are the skills they want, where the applications must go, and the such.
“Alors, these ones”—she gestured toward her house, indicating the helpers in and around it—“I think maybe they will never be able to leave me. Not unless they decide to teach themselves to do their things correctly and then find a new job on their own, locating the place and giving the application and all of it. But I do not think these are things that will happen.
“Frédéric tries to fill into my shoes, but he is not stern enough.” She shook her head, but there was more affection in the gesture than frustration, Markie thought. “Always he has been too forgiving, that man.”
Mrs. Saint’s left hand moved to her right, and she touched the wedding band she wore on her right ring finger, the universal sign for widowhood. Watching, Markie recalled the older woman talking about her “Edouard” and wondered if one of Frédéric’s too-forgiving acts had been to let Mrs. Saint know she was free to pine for her late husband forever and never return Frédéric’s affection.