Mrs. Saint and the Defectives

As offended as Markie was, she also felt vindicated, because not one food item had arrived from next door that any of them was actually willing to eat. Lola claimed she liked Ronda’s salad dressing, but Jesse and Markie were sure that was only because Ronda’s was the only dressing the girl had ever tasted. Jesse talked her into trying one of their store-bought kinds, and after that, although Lola obediently carried containers of dressing over anytime Ronda made some, Markie had seen her pouring it down the sink, then reaching into the fridge for a bottle from the store.

The kids had taken to spending half an hour after dinner on “kitchen experiments,” which basically consisted of their trying to come up with ways to make Ronda’s offerings edible. Maple syrup and chocolate sauce had become anchor tenants on Markie’s grocery list; there was almost nothing that couldn’t be made tolerable by drowning it in some form of liquid sugar.

Almost. One night, Markie heard Lola tell Jesse, “Maybe whipped cream would make the difference. Do you have any of that?”

To which Jesse responded, “I think we need to just give up on this one.”

Each night, after the food experiments were over and the three of them had cleaned the kitchen, Jesse spread his homework out on a card table he had carried up from the basement and set up in the family room. For at least an hour, he worked on his homework while Lola, having finished her work sheets before dinner at Mrs. Saint’s, sat with him, crayons and coloring books spread before her. Markie had taken to settling nearby on the family-room couch with a book.

Jesse had acted surprised to see his mother follow them into the family room on Lola’s first night. “I figured you’d want to hide from the noise,” he said, “in the living room or even way up in your room.”

“I’m prepared to retreat if you two get carried away,” she told him. “But I think it’s better for Lola to have me nearby. In case she feels homesick and wants a mom figure around.”

“You’re not exactly the mom figure she’s used to,” he said.

“Still,” she said.

Each time Lola finished coloring both sides of a page, she ripped it out of the book, carefully printed her name in the top right corner, and set it to the side. Most nights, she ended up with a considerable pile of finished pictures. When she was tired of coloring, she went through an elaborate process of examining the front and back sides of each finished page to decide which had turned out best. After that, she put herself through a seemingly heartrending task of deciding who would get each one.

Frédéric received the most, and also her best ones; no stray crayon marks outside the lines, no people with green faces or purple arms. The rejects went to everyone else. Mrs. Saint had a number on her fridge, Lola told Markie the first night she presented one to her, and Bruce and Ronda had assured the child that their fridges were covered in her artwork as well. Markie got the hint and clipped the picture to the front of the fridge with a magnet.

“And Frédéric takes all of his to the basement right away,” Lola said, beaming. “And he puts them on the walls.”

Markie recalled Jesse saying Frédéric had a workshop in the basement and asked Lola if that’s where her pictures were hanging.

“Some are,” the girl said. “And some are in his room.”

“What do you mean, ‘his room’?” Jesse said.

Lola’s brow furrowed as she regarded Jesse, the World’s Stupidest Boy. “His bedroom,” she said, leaving off “you idiot” but clearly thinking it.

“Frédéric lives there?” Jesse and Markie said at the same time.

“Mais oui,” Lola said. “Where else would he live?”

Jesse lifted his hands in a “Where do I begin?” way.

But he stopped himself before he blurted out his list of alternatives, and he angled his chin to one side, considering. Then he let his hands fall to his lap and bent back to his homework. Not, Markie assumed, because he had decided it wasn’t worth the effort to school an eight-year-old on the many living-arrangement options available to an adult man. But, because, after reflection, he had reached the same conclusion his mother had come to: Lola was right. Where else would Frédéric live if not at Mrs. Saint’s?

“Don’t forget Monopoly tonight,” Lola said. “Since I got those two math pages done without, you know . . .”

“Whining?” Jesse said, not looking up from his homework.

Lola kicked him under the table. “Monopoly,” she said. “You promised.”

If she did a good job with her homework after school and then colored quietly while he did his assignments, he let her choose a board game to play for fifteen minutes or so before her bath time. The two of them had traipsed down to the basement at first, choosing a game from one of the packing boxes, bringing it upstairs to play, and returning it to its box downstairs. Markie felt like she was reliving his childhood as they made their way from Sorry! and Connect Four to mancala and Apples to Apples and Clue Junior.

They had moved on to Monopoly a few nights earlier, and Jesse had told Lola that if she could grasp that one, they would pull out Settlers of Cataan next. The prospect of being promoted to such a “big kid game” had thrilled Lola, and she had been attacking Monopoly with a quiet ferocity, determined to earn her prize. They had tired of fetching and replacing one game at a time from the basement, and after about a week, Jesse carried up all three of their boxes of games and puzzles, plonking them down in a corner of the family room. After that, they decided it was a pain to have to dig through the boxes, so they stacked them, open side out, against the wall, and then they restacked the games into neat piles inside for easier viewing and access. It was a far cry from the walnut built-ins in their old house.

“Not bad, right?” Jesse had said one night as he and Markie regarded the makeshift shelving unit after Lola went to bed. “I thought it was going to really suck, but it doesn’t. I mean, it’s not perfect, but it’s, like, good enough.” At first she thought he was only remarking on the practicality of what he had done with the games. But he put an arm around her, pulled her close, and tipped his head sideways until it rested on hers, and suddenly she had the feeling he wasn’t commenting on the way he had arranged the games.

He was telling her he didn’t need walnut built-ins. Or cathedral ceilings. Or his private school. He was telling her he didn’t blame her anymore.





Chapter Twenty-Nine


Patty had been getting to the bungalow later and later: one, one thirty, two, two thirty. She was apologetic each time, but Markie had been waving her off, partly because at that hour she was too tired to engage in discussion, and partly because it wasn’t like having the entire household woken at two a.m. was appreciably different from having it happen at one thirty. She had yet to figure out how to get Lola downstairs from the guest room and out the door without Angel rousing, barking, and waking Jesse.

“I’m really sorry,” Patty said as Markie opened the door at three fifteen one night. Taking a whimpering Lola in her arms, she said, “I really wanted to turn down the . . . overtime. But I can’t afford it. Carol’s back to her old tricks again.”

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