More than her parents had, too, as far as she knew. How many worthy causes could have been aided with the amount Clayton and Lydia spent on annual country club dues, she wondered, before she checked herself and her hypocrisy. Hadn’t she told herself only moments ago that with the kind of money Mrs. Saint had, her own investment would be in a swanky condo? And hadn’t she had that thought mere moments before she advised her neighbor in no uncertain terms that she would not be signing on to help?
“Where did you meet them?” she asked. “Frédéric and Bruce and Ronda and Patty? And all the others over the years?”
It wasn’t curiosity, she told herself. It was simply polite conversation. It was also a preferable focus for her attention than her own selfishness. From the way Mrs. Saint immediately interrupted her faux study of the shrubbery and turned to speak, Markie could tell it was also a more appealing topic to her neighbor than the subject of her generosity.
“Bruce, I met when he is getting fired from the gardening and hardware store he is working at,” Mrs. Saint said. “I am walking out of the place with Frédéric, and the manager was giving some very rough words to Bruce, and then he opened the door and pointed him to the outside, like he was an unwanted cat!” She narrowed her eyes. “We never have gone back to that one.
“And so, there were we, walking out at the same time with him. And Frédéric was having a struggle with a new wheelbarrow and many bags of things. So he took up a step with Bruce, and he pointed to the car, and he said, ‘This is my lucky day, monsieur, because I need someone strong to help me with some jobs, and it seems you are now available.’”
“Frédéric hired him?” Markie asked. “But isn’t Frédéric one of—?”
“He knew I was about to. And he knew it would feel better to Bruce if he is asked in such a way as that, by a man who needs help with some jobs, rather than an old woman who might only be having sorry feelings for him. And so he came with us, and he has done the garden and lawn ever since. Also now your lawn and garden, as you know, since the landlord of your house also hired him. He is a very . . . hard-working gardener.”
She wouldn’t dare say he was a good gardener, Markie thought, or an efficient one. Over the past three weeks, she had seen Bruce plant, then dig up and replant elsewhere, about a dozen small shrubs, half a dozen taller bushes, and several armfuls of hostas. This after Frédéric or Mrs. Saint pointed out that, alas, he had put shade lovers in direct sun again or had forgotten that Mrs. Saint wanted taller things here, shorter ones over there.
“And Frédéric?” Markie asked. “Where did you meet him?”
“And then Ronda,” Mrs. Saint said, ignoring the question, “I saw her crying in a diner.”
“You mean, she’d just been fired, too? You have some timing!”
“Non. She was not being fired, but she was being yelled at for her whole shift because she is not enough fast on her feet. She tells me this when I sit beside her in the booth. I order tea, and I sit with her, and she tells me these things. Also that she is distracted often of times by this faith healing thing she has.
“She thinks she sees visions and the such, and each time she stops to focus on that, even if there is something on the stove she should be giving her concentration to. Of course, she was not very good enough of a cook for them to tolerate when she is slow or distracted. And so, maybe she would be better at a place where it is not so important if she is this way. This is the part I told her.”
“And at your house, she doesn’t need to be fast or focused,” Markie said.
“Or good!” Mrs. Saint whispered, her eyes almost disappearing in the wrinkled folds around them. She bent forward, her body shaking as she giggled noiselessly. “Oh, I should not,” she said, gasping for air. She straightened and covered her disobedient grin with a palm until it fell into an appropriately sober line, then cleared her throat. “Patty and her little Lola, I have met in a food pantry.”
Younger than the others, Patty was tall and super skinny and pale and pockmarked and long-haired and gravelly voiced. Several times a day, Markie saw her slouching outside in the corner where the porch met the house, one hand in the back pocket of her painted-on jeans, the other holding a cigarette. Sometimes she carried an old metal lawn chair out of the garage and plunked herself down, stretching her long legs and tilting her face to the sun while her cigarette dangled from one hand, sometimes falling to the ground as she dozed off.
Patty’s daughter, Lola, was in second grade this year, a fact Markie assumed the entire neighborhood was aware of, since the girl had spent three days shrieking with joy about it before school resumed. She was a shorter version of her mother—thin and pale, with stringy, dirty-looking hair always fighting to escape its messy ponytail. Each time Markie saw her, Lola was in some strange outfit—a dress on top of jeans, shorts over leggings, a long skirt matched with a bikini top.
Also each time Markie saw Lola, the girl was alone, wandering aimlessly around the yard. It made Markie feel sad for her. Did she have no friends she could invite over, no toys to play with? A lonely child herself, overlooked by parents focused more on whether their daughter impressed their friends than whether she was happy, Markie had felt an instant connection to Lola, despite having seen her only from afar. One afternoon when Lola was digging with a stick in a patch of dirt behind Mrs. Saint’s garage, humming a forlorn-sounding tune, Markie had to force herself inside and up to her room to keep from inviting the girl over for lemonade and a round of one of Jesse’s old board games.
It seemed to Markie that Patty regarded her daughter as more of an amusement than a responsibility. Several times Markie had seen Patty languishing on the metal lawn chair while inside the screened porch, Bruce or Ronda tried to cajole Lola into finishing her homework or having an apple instead of another handful of cookies.
“Don’t you agree, Patty?” the others would call.
“If you say so,” Patty would answer with a shrug and a flick of her cigarette, to show she really had no dog in the fight.
“They came in at the end of my shift,” Mrs. Saint went on. “The moment I saw them, I knew—” She clamped her mouth shut, cutting off the rest of her sentence, and shook her head. Then she took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and muttered, “I am getting tired.”
“You knew what?” Markie asked.
Mrs. Saint looked down, suddenly very interested in whether she had gotten dirt on her shoes. “I knew they needed help. This is all.”