Mrs. Saint and the Defectives

It was for the best, their clean break. New life, new start. She was doing it for both of them so they could move on. And she had moved on—from a passionless marriage, from the constant threat of financial destruction, from the lingering suspicion she was being lied to, cheated on, from the nauseating fear that at any moment she would be discovered for the poseur she was. Jesse, though, had merely moved.

Markie stood, sloshing white wine over the side of her mug. She set it on the floor, shook her hand to fling off the drops, and paced to the side door. She checked the lock, checked it again, and paced to the kitchen counter. What had she been thinking, pulling him away from his friends, his classmates, their neighbors, the world he knew? Away from his father, most of all. Things would have been miserable if she’d stayed with Kyle, but weren’t they miserable now anyway, especially for Jesse? Kyle might not have been Father of the Year while they were married, but he was there, at least, most of the time.

She stepped to the door again, turned right, stepped to the wall, right again, stepped to the couch, right again, lapping the room until she was back at the door. She had assumed she could do it on her own, play the role of father and mother. She thought she had such intuition, such a sense about how to handle him. They were so much alike, she had told herself. His needs would be teenaged versions of hers: solitude, quiet, a judgment-free zone, dinners on his own, TV in his room, no forced conversation.

Back off, she had told herself. Give him space. Don’t push, don’t coddle, don’t crowd. It was the wrong call. Obviously. He needed something else, something different, something more than she was providing. But she had no idea what. More of Kyle? She couldn’t fix that, not now. She could try—she had been rehearsing for some time the next torrent of curse words she would leave on his voice mail—but she knew better than to think it would help.

More discipline? She couldn’t bring herself to mimic her father, or even her mother, for that matter. Military school? She hadn’t had a child just to send him away, though, and it was the same concept her father followed: tear them down to build them up. She wouldn’t do that to Jesse.

She did another lap of the family room, then another. Should she eat more crow, borrow money from her parents, suck it up and move back to their old neighborhood, where the fathers of his friends could spend time with him, show him how men should act? Put him back into Saint Mark’s, where he already belonged and didn’t have to prove himself?

But did he belong there now? What if he had even more to prove after what had happened? Plus, did she want to uproot him again, so soon after doing it the first time? She had already run from their troubles once. Did she want to run a second time? Was that the kind of example she wanted to set for him?

She had no clue where to go from here. Her own strategies hadn’t worked, her parents’ tactics weren’t ones she was willing to attempt, and while she was certain there must be something between the two extremes, she had no idea what it was. She hadn’t thought it through enough before she told Kyle they were finished. She had seen red, blown up, pointed to the door, and told him not to come back. Everything else was just details.

She had not once considered whether she could actually pull off all those details. She hadn’t taken the time to think about what it would take for a single mother to raise a teenage boy. She had acted impulsively because she couldn’t stand pretending anymore. Because she wanted out, she wanted better. She, she, she. At what point, if ever, had she considered her son—what he wanted, what he needed?

Markie poured one more mug of wine and returned to the couch. She took a few sips, then set the cup on the floor, wrapped her arms around her waist, and rocked forward, then back. This is my fault, she told herself. All my fault. She curled onto her side, her arms still wrapped around her waist, and cried herself to sleep.





Chapter Sixteen


Sun through the window in the family room door woke Markie, and soon after, her throbbing skull let her know she wouldn’t be rolling over and drifting back to sleep. Her watch revealed what her head had already told her—it was almost eleven, she was hung over, and it was hours after she usually ingested her daily two cups of coffee. She would be paying for this all day.

She stood, stretched, and kicked over her half-full mug of wine as she stumbled toward the kitchen. Cursing, she wet some paper towels, carrying them back to the family room to dab up the spill. She was on her way back to the kitchen to dispose of the soggy, sour-smelling mess when there was a knock at the door. She turned slowly—her head wouldn’t allow sudden movement—to find Mrs. Saint peering in the door’s window.

Markie’s head pounded harder. She needed to hang a curtain there, she told herself, so she could pretend she wasn’t home when the neighbor knocked. Mrs. Saint motioned for her to hurry, then looked down at the ground, checking, it seemed, on whatever it was she had come to deliver. Markie told herself to get it over with fast: accept what the old woman was offering this time—partially uncooked cinnamon rolls from Ronda, a badly potted houseplant from Bruce, or some household item Mrs. Saint felt they couldn’t live without and had ordered Frédéric to go out and buy—say thank you, and send the woman on her way. After that, she could devote herself to starting the coffeemaker, locating the ibuprofen, and lying quietly until Jesse woke. She had an important conversation planned with him, and she would be of no use if she felt like her skull was about to shatter.

She opened the door, and before she or her neighbor could speak, a blur of black-and-white fur reared up, its huge paws hitting Markie in the chest. She stutter-stepped backward to maintain her balance, and her head, not happy with being jostled so fast and without warning, screamed at her. She gently pressed a palm to her temple as the dog, its front feet back on the floor now, pushed its rib cage into her legs and licked her other hand, her wrist, her forearm—its entire body wagging.

She pulled her hand away and held it out of the dog’s reach, but this only made it bark, a piercing sound that tore through her cranium. It jumped up, trying to reach her hand, and let out another excruciating bark as it rose onto its hind legs, planted its front feet on her chest again, and dove its snout into her armpit. Markie glared at Mrs. Saint, hoping the older woman would read Get this thing off me and out of my house in Markie’s eyes so she wouldn’t have to injure her head by saying the words out loud.

“She is the Australian kind of sheepdog,” Mrs. Saint said. “A pure one, even, which is rare for finding at a dog pound. But she arrived yesterday only, and because Frédéric has been very early this morning, before anyone else had a chance to see her, this is why he was able. They are very intelligent.”

Markie pushed the dog off her chest, and it barked, ran around her, barked again, and ran in the other direction. “And very active,” Mrs. Saint said. “So she will take a lot of Chessie’s time for training and exercising. A big responsibility.” She held a leash toward Markie.

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