“And that,” Patty whispered to Markie as they watched Ronda go, “is one of the reasons Mrs. Saint has too much to do before dinner. Getting the simplest meal on the table takes forever. If we’re not reminding her she’s got something on the stove, we’re helping her clean it all up after it boils over.”
Patty laughed and shook her head at Ronda’s receding form. “I love the woman, I do, but sometimes she takes more getting after than that one.” She pointed to Lola, still eating, in her chair. “You about done?” Patty asked her daughter. “Because we really got to bounce in a minute here. Mrs. S said Carol could swing by and get us today, but our window won’t be open too long.”
It was then that Markie realized she hadn’t seen or heard Frédéric the entire time she had been outside. Given how tight-lipped Patty had been about the man’s evening destination, Markie knew better than to ask about the Carol/Frédéric coincidence. She would have to solve that mystery another time. Or better yet, she would try harder to ignore it.
“What if you go with Carol and I stay with Frédéric?” Lola asked between bites.
Markie waited for Patty to chastise her daughter for saying “Carol” instead of “Grandma,” but Patty only laughed and said, “Nice try.”
Then again, Patty hadn’t referred to Carol as “Mom.” They were an intriguing pair, this decidedly nontraditional mother and daughter, though Markie tried to deny to herself how interesting she found them.
“Finish up and then go pack up your stuff,” Patty told Lola. “You’ll have to get that reading or math or whatever done at home. You know Mrs. Saint’s going to ask about it tomorrow.”
Turning back to Markie, Patty said, “Why they’ve got to bore them all day with it and then send it all home to bore them some more, I don’t understand. But then, I’m not a shining example of a scholar. For starters, I’m not supposed to use the word ‘boring’ when I’m talking about school and homework. Or so I’m told.”
She rolled her eyes dramatically, arcing her head in the direction of Mrs. Saint’s house to make it clear where the instruction had come from. “She thinks I should hire someone. Not to help her actually do it, just to remind her. She’s smarter than Carol and me together. She could do all the work if she had someone who kept on her about it. And it ain’t about to be me.”
Markie feared the conversation was heading in the same place Mrs. Saint had hinted at some time ago, with Jesse being hired as Lola’s tutor. “Maybe Carol can remind her tonight while you’re out,” she said to Patty.
“Ha!” Patty barked. “By eight, someone will have to remind Carol that Lola’s in the apartment with her. And who the kid even is.” She curved her fingers and thumb in a circle as though she held a bottle, then tilted the invisible object to her mouth.
Markie’s mouth dropped open as a car horn sounded from the front of Mrs. Saint’s house, unviewable from where they stood.
“That’s her,” Patty called to Lola. “Scoot! Quick!” She pointed to the corner of the house. “You run around that way and tell her I’m coming, and I’ll grab your bag on my way through. Don’t let her take off without me!”
She gave Markie a quick wave and jogged to the screened porch, depositing her cigarette butt in a tin can near the steps before she raced up them, into the porch, and through the sliding doors to the house. Lola watched her mother disappear, then gazed plaintively at what was left of her chocolate bar. Sighing, she popped the last bit into her mouth, jumped to her feet, and ran to the front yard, wiping her fingers on her dress as she went.
Markie had her solitary dinner in the family room while Jesse ate his downstairs in front of a video game. Setting her plate aside, she picked up the novel she had been trying for weeks to read, but two pages in, she found herself distracted by the sounds of machine guns and explosions coming from below. Giving up on the book, she went to the basement door. “Jesse?” she called. He didn’t answer, so she tried again.
The gunfire stopped. “Yeah,” he said, in the way of someone hoping the conversation would be short so he could go back to what he was doing.
She had been thinking of asking him if he felt like going out for ice cream, but it seemed like a silly idea, suddenly. He was fourteen, not ten. She tried to think of an alternative—a slice of pie at the sandwich shop? A walk around the block?—but talked herself out of each.
“Mom?” Jesse called, and his impatience was obvious. “My game will reset if I don’t—”
“I was just going to say I’m going up to bed,” she said.
He laughed. “It’s seven thirty.”
“I’m taking my book. I’m going to read for a while.”
“Night,” he called, returning to his game so quickly that her own “Good night, Jesse,” was drowned out by warfare.
Upstairs, she lay, fully clothed, on her bed and stared at the ceiling. The muffled sounds of gunfire rose through the heat vents, reminding her of the impotent effort she had just made to connect with her son. God, she had made a mess of their lives. She opened her novel, scanned a few paragraphs without taking them in, and let it fall to the floor. Nowhere in her teenage diaries had she written that one day she planned to be incapable of making a single relationship function properly, including with her own child. She shut off the light, closed her eyes, and willed a blanket of sleep to spare her from having to spend another conscious minute with herself.
Chapter Fourteen
“So out with these ones again,” Markie heard from the other side of the fence as she sat in her patio chair one afternoon, work files on her lap. She had just said goodbye to Jesse after he had raced into the patio after school to dump his backpack and ask if he could hang out with Trevorandtheguys, to go “likely nowhere” and do “pretty much nothing.” She turned toward the fence, a cavity-inducing smile on her lips. Your disapproval doesn’t faze me.
“At least no driving these days,” Mrs. Saint said. She must have seen them waiting for Jesse on the sidewalk. “Not that boys cannot chase after the trouble on their own foot.”
“Brian’s car has been in the shop,” Markie said, ashamed at how proud she was to show off her knowledge, not only of the driver’s name, but the fact that his car was having troubles. She stopped herself from repeating what Jesse had told her a few days earlier, that it might be something with the transmission. But she did permit herself to add, “It’s a Ford Fusion, by the way. Very common around here.”
“It is only that Frédéric and Bruce are finding things hidden near the trees,” Mrs. Saint said, lengthening her neck to peer at the wooded area behind her garage. “And so it seems maybe they have been back there.”
Markie laughed. “I think Jesse and his friends are a little old to be playing with toys in the woods. Whatever Frédéric and Bruce found, I’m guessing Lola’s the one who left it.”