“He tells me this is your actual name.” She looked at Markie through eyes narrowed by suspicion, waiting, it seemed, to hear the boy had been lying. When Markie only nodded, the woman clucked and patted her arm sympathetically. “Moi, je m’appelle Angeline St. Denis. This is S-A-I-N-T and then D-E-N-I-S. But you will call me ‘Mrs. Saint’ if you are not prepared to pronounce ‘St. Denis’ correctly. And since you are American, I assume you are not. So. Mrs. Saint, if you please.”
Markie opened her mouth to give “St. Denis” a try, and Jesse, who was fully aware of his mother’s stubborn refusal to be told she couldn’t do something—a trait he shared—shook his head and sliced a finger across his throat.
“Saint Dennis,” Markie said, ignoring him. He winced.
“Och! Non!” Mrs. Saint dropped Markie’s hand, set the empty glass on the counter, and shook two fists at the ceiling, as though cursing the universe for allowing such an imbecile to move in next door. She glared from mother to son in a way that made it clear Jesse had made the same attempt earlier.
Jesse lifted his hands above the counter, palms up, and mouthed, “I warned you.”
“Ce n’est pas Deh-niss,” Mrs. Saint said, dragging out the word in an overly American accent. “It is Duh-nee.” She paused dramatically and then repeated, “Duh-nee. And it is not Saynt, like the ones who go marching in. It is only San, with the t being a . . .” She tilted her head upward, searching for the English word in the kitchen ceiling. “Suggestion,” she said finally. “The t is a suggestion.” She looked at them each in turn again, daring them.
Jesse turned his hands so his palms faced the old woman. “I’m good with ‘Mrs. Saint.’”
Mrs. Saint beamed at him like he had just announced he got into Harvard, and they both turned to Markie, who was determined to try again. Now, with the pronunciation lesson, she was certain she could get closer. She had taken French in high school—her accent wasn’t bad. And she’d be damned if some four-foot-nothing Frenchwoman was going to stand in their kitchen and try to scare them out of trying to speak a language that didn’t belong to her any more than English belonged to Markie and Jesse.
She glanced at her son, ready to press her lips into a smirk in response to his having handed over his stubbornness badge so quickly. But her mouth fell open in disbelief instead. Mrs. Saint was rubbing her hand up and down his forearm in pride at his compliance, and Jesse, who wouldn’t let his own mother so much as tousle his hair anymore and claimed not to care what anyone thought of him, was smiling at her as though her approval was all he had ever wanted. He leaned toward her in a way that said, “Keep rubbing my arm,” and Markie was certain if she gave it another minute, he’d start to purr. She had been trying for the past five months to get this boy, so plainly in need of a hug, to accept any kind of physical affection.
“Mrs. Saint it is,” she said.
The old woman’s smile split her face in two, and with the hand not already assigned to Jesse, she took Markie’s and squeezed it again. Fine, Markie thought, I’ll allow this one last squeeze.
“Bienvenue!” Mrs. Saint said. “Welcome to the neighborhood!” She looked at them each in turn and smiled wider. But only for a split second, and then her expression of delight was gone, her formerly wide, bright eyes now turned narrow and dark. “Alors, Chessie tells me there is no dog.”
“We’re not a dog family,” Markie said.
Mrs. Saint pursed her lips in a We’ll see about that manner, then lifted Frédéric’s glass from the counter, filled it, and held it out to Jesse. “He should have another,” she said, nodding toward the archway.
If Markie were the one to hand him the glass and give the veiled instruction to take it to a man he barely knew, Jesse would stare dumbly at her until she realized her mistake and lowered it back to the counter. Alternatively, he might cock his head as though she were temporarily insane, giving him an order. Or snicker, finding humor in her delusion that he would ever obey. He would most definitely not smile, reach for the glass, say “No problem!” and make a beeline for the living room.
When he was gone, Mrs. Saint leaned toward Markie, motioning for her to bend down so they would be closer.
“Boys only wear that much cologne when they are trying to cover up something else,” she whispered. “While you were out to buy the lunch, he was outside in the back. Fraydayrique believes he . . .” She raised two fingers to her lips in a V, holding an imaginary cigarette.
Markie straightened, took a step back, and shook her head. “Absolutely not.”
“A dog will keep a boy out of trouble,” Mrs. Saint said. “The responsibility. Also to keep him company, non? He seems a lonely one.”
“He’s not in trouble,” Markie said, “and he’s not lonely. He has lots of friends in our old neighborhood.”
“Only these lots of friends are not here, in your new neighborhood,” Mrs. Saint said. She seemed about to say more when the sound of something being scraped across the wood floor came from the living room. “Attendez!” she called, bustling past Markie. When she was almost through the archway, she turned back and put a finger on the side of her nose. “We will discuss it later. The trouble. And the lonely. And also le chien—the dog.”
“I don’t think there’s anything to discuss—”
But Mrs. Saint nodded to herself, as though her own agreement were all that mattered, and tore off into the living room, doling out instructions in two languages as she went.
Chapter Four
Markie’s new living room was only slightly larger than her old master bathroom. She knew this, of course, from her walk-through a week earlier, but she hadn’t been too concerned about it at the time. Sure, it seemed a little cramped, but you don’t get a clear picture of a space when it’s empty, she told herself. It would seem bigger when it was furnished.
But now, her grandmother’s spindle-leg love seat, chair, and coffee table (the only valuable pieces of furniture she hadn’t sold) were arranged, and the room that had seemed small during her walk-through felt positively claustrophobic. She couldn’t breathe suddenly, and she thrust a hand out to grasp the back of the love seat while she coaxed her lungs to fill and her legs to rescind their threat of buckling. Mrs. Saint and her helpers rushed toward her, arms extended, but Markie waved them off.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, though her gasping betrayed her. “It’s just . . .” She shook her head. How could she explain it?
It was “just” that even the strongest conviction that she would be better off no longer married did not, it turned out, provide immunity against the shock she felt in realizing that she was, in fact, no longer married. And although there had been reminders around her all day—the rental truck, the boxes, the sight of their old house, their neighborhood, and then the entire city in her rearview mirror—it was the puny living room, so sad-looking compared to the cavernous, cathedral-ceilinged space in her old house, that punched her hardest in the gut.