“So every day he comes by, you think he’s wondering what you’re thinking,” I said.
“Kinda, yeah.”
“When did the boy say this?”
“First time he mentioned it was around three, four weeks ago. He-the dad, Carl, I mean-seemed okay, but lately, he’s been kind of on edge, asking me, did I make any phone calls or anything?”
“Phone calls about what?”
“He didn’t say. But I wonder if someone might have called the police about him or something.”
“Did you?”
She shook her head very slowly. “No way. I mean, I thought about it, Glen. But the thing is, I can’t afford to lose a customer, you know what I’m saying? I need every one of those kids, at least till the money from the oil company comes through. I just don’t want Carl taking it out on me, if someone did put in a call to the police. And I thought, if he knew I had a strong man living next door to me, maybe he’d think twice before he did anything like that.”
I thought she put a little emphasis on “strong man.”
“Well, I’m glad I could help,” I said.
She tilted her head to one side and looked me in the eye. “It’s going to come in, you know. I mean, eventually. And it’s going to be a good settlement. I’ll be pretty well fixed.”
“That’s good,” I said. “It’s about time.”
She let that hang out there a moment. “Anyway, what I wondered was, you don’t think Sheila might have reported him, do you?”
“Sheila?”
“I was talking to her, I guess a few days before the accident and all, wondering what I should do about what Carlson said had happened to his mother, thinking it was kind of a bad thing, knowing some woman got her arm broke and not doing anything about it. I was saying, you think I should make an anonymous call kind of thing, and if they arrested him, did she think I’d still get to babysit Carlson?”
“You talked about this with Sheila?”
Joan nodded. “Just the once. Did she mention anything to you about this? That she was thinking of calling the police or anything?”
“No,” I said. “She never did.”
Joan nodded again. “She mentioned you were under a lot of stress, with that house you were building that burned down. Maybe she didn’t want to burden you with it.”
She sighed and slapped her hands on her thighs. “Anyway, look, I should go. What a joy, right? Your neighbor bringing her problems over late at night.” She slipped into a mocking voice. “Hey, neighbor, got a cup of sugar and by the way could you be my bodyguard?” She laughed, then stopped abruptly. “So, I’ll see you,” she said.
I watched her walk back to her house.
I decided not to call Ann Slocum that night. I would sleep on it. In the morning, I’d decide what to do.
When I went upstairs, Kelly was out cold in my room, curled up on her mother’s side of the bed.
Saturday morning, I let Kelly sleep in. I’d carried her back into her room the night before, and peeked in on her as I headed down to the kitchen to make coffee. She had her arm wrapped around Hoppy, her face buried into his (her?) furry ears.
I brought in the paper, scanned the headlines while I sat at the dining room table, sipping coffee and ignoring the shredded wheat I’d poured.
I wasn’t able to focus. I’d settle on a story and be four paragraphs in before I realized I wasn’t retaining anything, although one article interested me enough to read it to the end. When the country was going through a shortage of drywall-particularly in the post-Katrina building boom-hundreds of millions of square feet of the stuff that was brought in from China had turned out to be toxic. Drywall’s made from gypsum, which contains sulfur, which is filtered out in the manufacturing process. But this Chinese drywall was loaded with sulfur, and not only did it reek, it corroded copper pipes and did all sorts of other damage.
“Jesus,” I muttered. Something to be on the lookout for from now on.
I tossed the paper aside, cleaned up my dishes, went down to the study, came back upstairs, looked for something in the truck I didn’t need, came back indoors.
Stewing.
Around ten, I checked on Kelly again. Still asleep. Hoppy had fallen to the floor. Back in my office, sitting in my chair, I picked up the phone.
“Fuck it,” I said, under my breath.
No one locks my daughter in a bedroom and gets away with it. I dialed. It rang three times before someone picked up and said hello. A woman.
“Hello,” I said. “Ann?”
“No, this isn’t Ann.”
She could have fooled me. Sounded just like her.
“Could I speak to her please?”
“She’s not… who’s calling?”
“It’s Glen Garber, Kelly’s dad.”
“This isn’t a good time,” the woman said.
“Who’s this?” I asked.
“It’s Janice. Ann’s sister. I’m sorry, you’ll have to call back later.”
“Do you know when she’ll be in?”
“I’m sorry-we’re making arrangements. There’s a lot to do.”
“Arrangements? What do you mean, arrangements?”
“For the funeral,” she said. “Ann… passed away last night.”
She hung up before I could ask her anything else.
ELEVEN
Sheila’s mother, Fiona Kingston, was never a fan of mine. Sheila’s death only served to reinforce that opinion.
Right from the outset, she’d believed her daughter could have done better. Way better. Fiona never came right out and said it, at least not to me. But I was always aware she thought her daughter should have ended up with someone like her own husband-her first husband-the late Ronald Albert Gallant. Noted and successful lawyer. Respected member of the community. Sheila’s father.
Ron died when Sheila was only eleven, but his influence persisted. He was the gold standard by which all prospective suitors for Fiona’s daughter were measured. Even before she’d reached her twenties, when the boys she went out with were unlikely to become lifelong companions, Sheila was subjected to intense interrogations about them from Fiona. What did their parents do? What clubs did these boys belong to? How well were they doing in school? What were their SAT scores? What were their ambitions?
Sheila had only had her father for eleven years, but she knew what she remembered about him most. She remembered that there wasn’t much to remember. He was rarely home. He devoted his life to his work, not his family. When he was home, he was remote and distant.
Sheila wasn’t sure that was the kind of man she wanted. She loved her father, and was devastated to lose him at such a young age. But there wasn’t the void in her life she might have expected.
Once Fiona’s husband was dead-a heart attack at forty-whatever tenderness she might have had as a mother, and there was never that much to begin with, was displaced by the burden of running a household solo. Ronald Albert Gallant had left his wife and daughter well fixed, but Fiona had never managed the household finances and it took her a while, with the help of various lawyers and accountants and banking officials, to figure everything out. But once she had it all down, she became consumed with overseeing her business affairs, investing wisely, studying her quarterly financial statements.
She still had time, however, to run her daughter’s life.
Fiona didn’t take it well when her little girl, whom she’d sent to Yale to become a lawyer or a titan of industry, who with any luck should fall in love with some high-powered attorney-in-training, met the man of her dreams not in law class arguing the finer points of torts, but in the ivy-draped building’s hallways working for his father’s company, installing new windows. Maybe, had Sheila not met me, she would have completed her schooling, but I’m not so sure. Sheila liked to be out in the world, doing things, not sitting in a classroom listening to someone pontificate on matters she didn’t give a rat’s ass about.
The irony was, of the two of us, I was the one with the degree. My parents had sent me north to Bates, in Lewiston, Maine, where I’d majored in English for reasons that now elude me. It wasn’t exactly the sort of degree that had prospective employers begging you to submit a resume. When I graduated, I couldn’t think of a thing I wanted to do with my piece of paper. I didn’t want to teach. And while I liked to write, I didn’t have the Great American Novel in me. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to read another one, at least for a while. I’d had Faulkner and Hemingway and Melville up to here.