There was no better enabler of a highly processed junk-food diet than a teenage boy, especially one with no desire to talk while he ate. If they were having proper meals together, actual sit-down, use-cutlery, discuss-the-day dinners like they used to have when it was still the three of them, she might have been inspired to carve up a roasted chicken from the grocery deli, at least. Rip up some iceberg lettuce, toss in some grape tomatoes. Maybe heat a can of corn.
But she had stopped trying to force words out of her son months ago, and while she was at it, she gave up pretending that “just being together” while they ate was helping their relationship. The biggest smile Jesse had given her in months came the night she suggested he might want to eat his pizza alone, in front of the TV, while she enjoyed hers with a book in another room. Their communication had sunk to the same pathetic level as their nutritional one, in other words, although if you counted “Have a good day/You too,” as conversation and pizza sauce as a vegetable, both of which parenting lows Markie had begun stooping to, they weren’t faring so badly.
At the bungalow’s side door, which was half wood (on the bottom) and half window (on the top), Markie was reaching for the knob when the French-speaking woman who had accosted them earlier suddenly appeared on the other side of the window. She smiled at Markie and held up a drinking glass.
“What—?” Markie began, stepping inside and into the small family room, where her neighbor had clearly found the boxes marked GLASSES/DISHES.
Markie couldn’t believe it. She had been able to laugh off the woman’s bossiness earlier, but seeing her here, inside the bungalow, rooting through their things, wasn’t funny. It had been a dreadful morning, loading what was left of her broken life into a rented moving truck, having to tear her son away from his only home, seeing him keep his faithful, fruitless lookout for his father. Sure, it was helpful to have the truck unloaded, and Markie was grateful, but for the past several hours, she had thought of nothing but sitting in the family room, alone, with her feet up, while Jesse hid out downstairs with his sandwich and his phone.
“Ah,” the woman said. “Vous êtes arrivée. You are back. We were . . .” She trailed off and glanced at the glass in her hand. “And then Fraydayrique needed water.” She pointed behind her, to the dining/living room combo on the other side of the kitchen. “Come.”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Markie said, “and I appreciate all your help earlier, but I’m afraid I’m really not in the mood for—”
But the woman appeared not to hear. She turned and headed toward the kitchen, which adjoined the family room, made a quick stop to fill the glass at the sink, and then continued through the archway that led from the kitchen to the dining room/living room combo. Markie heard some loud commands in French, followed by the supplicating voice of the older man, whose name was evidently “Frédéric.”
In the kitchen, Markie dropped her grocery bags on the counter and sighed.
Footsteps thundered on the basement stairs, then the basement door opened, and Jesse stepped through into the kitchen. He reeked of aftershave, which Markie pretended not to notice, the same way she had been pretending his weekly shaving routine was something more than wishful thinking. She used the task of unpacking the food as an excuse to turn away from him.
“What’s going on?” she whispered, nodding toward the living room.
“She wouldn’t leave, Mom,” he whispered back. The “Don’t blame me” was implied. “I told her we were going to take our time getting things organized, but she wasn’t having it.” He turned back to the living room. “Actually, it doesn’t look half bad. You should check it out.”
Markie glared at the archway. She wasn’t about to prance through it, gaze excitedly around, and praise the meddling Frenchwoman for her handiwork. She had moved here to be left alone, was desperate to be alone, not only today, but for the foreseeable future. She had a past to reconcile and a future to sort out, and she couldn’t do either without solitude. She wanted no intrusions—no new friends, no old ones, either, and certainly no overly helpful neighbors. She huffed and turned back to the groceries.
“What?” Jesse asked, in a voice casting her as the complaining child, him as the patience-strained parent.
“Nothing,” Markie said. “It’s been a long day.” She set her sandwich in the fridge, handed him his plate, and stepped toward the archway and the living/dining room beyond. “I thought we could use a break from pizza,” she said.
“I never need a break from pizza,” he said. “But this is super sweet. Thanks.”
She pointed to the pile of romaine beside his sandwich. “Eat all the lettuce.”
“Whoa,” he said, volunteering half a grin. “Health nut.”
“I’ll go thank them and send them on their way.”
She managed only half a step through the archway before running smack into her neighbor, who held the empty water glass aloft in victory, the creases around her mouth jumping back to make room for a wide smile.
“Fraydayrique had not had enough to drink,” she said, and the expectant way she beamed at Markie suggested he was a shared concern of theirs.
“I, uh . . . ,” Markie began.
The woman took Markie’s hand and pulled her back through the archway into the kitchen.
Markie extricated her hand and put it behind her back. She would brook no more gripping and tightening and holding in place from this woman. “Look,” she said, “it was very nice of you and your husband and son to help us. We’re extremely grateful. But we can take it from here—”
“Och.” The woman waved dismissively in the direction of the living room. “Those ones do not belong to me. That is not my boy. And my husband—my Edouard—he is dead to me.”
“Oh,” Markie said. “Then who—?”
But the old woman had turned to look at Jesse, who was sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter. Markie turned, too, and caught the perplexed look on his face.
“Qu’y a-t-il?” the woman asked. “What is it?”
Jesse studied his hands as he placed his palms flat on the counter, side by side, then slid them slowly away from each other. “I, uh . . .” He cleared his throat. “You said, ‘dead to me.’ I think you mean just ‘dead’ unless what you mean is that he did something to make you—”
“He is dead to me,” the woman said, punctuating her answer with a sharp nod, as though that took care of the issue.
“Yeah,” Jesse said, “but that still doesn’t really clarify the . . . thing . . .”
But she turned away from him, toward Markie, and Jesse shrugged and reached for his sandwich.
“Vous êtes Markie,” she said. “Chessie has told me.”
Markie glanced at her son, who pointed a finger to his chest and mouthed, “Chessie.” Markie smiled at him, and the woman snapped her head around to see what the boy was up to. He dropped his finger and looked at the floor.