Chapter 9 - The Anatomy of a Prairie Night
The red taillights of the crossover vanished around the curve of the retention pond at six minutes past eight.
The sound of the engine—that low, synthetic purr of a late-model four-cylinder—died away toward the highway, leaving behind only the rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum of the central air units along the foundations of Whispering Pines.
Evelyn was still standing on the asphalt.
She had set her grocery bag down on the hood of her LeSabre, her arms crossed over her polyester slacks, her green plastic visor tilted toward the darkening sky. When the crossover’s turn signal finally blinked out at the intersection of Route 59, she picked up her squash, walked across the eight feet of common grass, and stepped onto my porch.
She didn't knock. She looked at the brass key lying on the plastic turtle, picked it up, turned it over twice in her wrinkled palm, and dropped it into the pocket of her gardening slacks.
"Maggie?" she said through the screen.
I opened the storm door.
The evening air was hot, smelling of freshly cut fescue grass, damp asphalt, and the faint, swampy sweetness of the cattails along the drainage ditch.
"Come inside, Evelyn," I said. "The tea is cold, but I have some ginger ale in the pantry."
Evelyn walked into the narrow hallway. Her rubber-soled shoes made a small, sucking sound on the laminate. She set the yellow squash on the oak dining table, right beside the four printed pages of the Temporary Property Management Authorization that Tiffany had left behind three weeks ago.
She looked at the manila envelope.
"You showed him the Michigan paper," she said.
"I showed him," I replied, sitting down again in the blue high-backed chair.
My legs were shaking. The muscles in my calves were twitching with that fine, fibrillating tremor that comes from standing forty minutes too long on a surgical incision. I reached down, pulled the cotton binder tight around my waist, and let my head rest against the faded wool of the chair back.
Evelyn walked to the refrigerator, pulled out a green bottle of Canada Dry, and poured two inches into an old jelly glass that had a faded picture of Fred Flintstone on the side.
She brought it to me.
"He didn't know about the money, Maggie," she said, leaning her hip against the arm of the blue chair. "I could see it from the driveway. When she told him about the credit card debt, his knees went soft. That boy hasn't looked at his own bank statements since he was twenty years old."
"He knew enough to let her bring the bags, Evelyn," I said.
I took the glass. The ginger ale was cold, the bubbles biting into the roof of my mouth with a clean, sharp ginger burn that cleared the taste of stale chamomile from my tongue.
"He’s your boy," Evelyn said softly.
"Richard was my husband," I told her, looking at the black-and-white photograph in the silver frame on the small table—Richard at thirty-two, standing in front of his first blue gas company truck with his hard hat pushed back on his forehead, his sleeves rolled to the elbows, his fingers black with ditch clay. "Richard worked thirty-two years in the rain so we wouldn't have to ask anyone for forty dollars. He didn't work those shifts so his son could use our bedroom as an asset balance for a corporate lease."
Evelyn was quiet for a long time.
Outside, the streetlights flickered on, their orange sodium glow turning the gray concrete of the porch into a slab of dull, rusted iron. A June bug struck the storm door with a heavy, brittle tick, hung for two seconds from the aluminum mesh, and dropped into the juniper bush below.
"What are you going to do when July comes?" Evelyn asked. "They won't be able to stay at the Extended Stay for three months, Maggie. At two hundred and eighty dollars a night, that boy will be out of cash before the fourth of July."
"They have a four-bedroom house in Naperville," I said.
"They have renters in that house."
"Then they will have to break the lease," I said, set-ting the jelly glass down on the ceramic coaster. "And pay the three-thousand-dollar termination fee to the people from Michigan."
"Tiffany will never forgive you," Evelyn said.
I looked at the small pile of junk mail on the corner of the oak table—a coupon for five dollars off an oil change at the Firestone dealer, a notice from the water district about the summer sprinkling restrictions, and a postcard from Sophie’s middle school announcing the fall registration dates.
"Evelyn," I said, and my voice was as calm and clear as the well water Richard used to bring up from the pump on his father’s farm in Indiana. "Forgiveness is for people who are repenting. Tiffany is not repenting. Tiffany is currently calculating whether she can dispute the locksmith’s charge with American Express."
Evelyn let out a short, sharp bark that was half a laugh and half a cough.
She reached down, patted my shoulder with her hard, dry hand—a hand that had buried two husbands and three brothers in the clay south of Joliet—and walked toward the door.
"Lock the deadbolt, Maggie," she said from the threshold. "Terry didn't put those three-inch screws in so you could leave it on the latch."
"I will," I said.
She stepped out onto the porch.
I waited until I heard her screen door click shut next door, until the small terrier gave its final, muffled yip of recognition, and then I stood up.
I walked to the front door.
I looked through the safety glass. The porch was empty. The four silver suitcases were gone. The only thing left was the small, clean circle on the concrete where Leo’s wet palm had pressed against the glass, the moisture already evaporating in the dry, eighty-degree night air until it was nothing more than a faint, gray shadow shaped like five small seeds.
I turned the brass knob of the Schlage Primus.
The bolt slid into the steel strike plate with a deep, heavy, hydraulic chunk that resonated through the two-by-four studs of the wall.
It was eight-fifteen on a Friday night.
May you like
My house was sixty-eight degrees.
The tea was in the sink, the ginger ale was on the coaster, and nobody was measuring the floor.
