Dirty (21 page)

He nodded vigorously. “Good. Good. I’m glad to hear it.”

It was nice he’d noticed. That was all we said, but really, all we needed to. I watched him leave the room ahead of me. People really do care.

I’d carried my garbage out to the curb when I noticed that for the second week in a row, Mrs. Pease’s cans remained in the small alley between our houses. It wasn’t like her to forget garbage day, and I didn’t think she’d been gone because I saw different lights on in her windows every night. I peeked into her pail and saw nothing but a few scraps of paper at the bottom. They prompted me to knock on her door, something I’d only done once or twice before when we needed to exchange packages delivered incorrectly.

She answered the door after a few moments. She pulled her bathrobe tight around her neck as though the air chilled her, even though it was still summer and the night was warm enough to almost be uncomfortable. Her hair, normally styled in a perky set of tight curls, looked squashed.

“Oh, hello, Miss Kavanagh.” She blinked at me, looking tired and pale but smiling at me, anyway. “What can I do for you?”

“I noticed you hadn’t put your garbage out,” I told her. “I thought maybe I’d check in on you and see how you were doing.”

“Oh, aren’t you a dear.” She sounded sincere, too. “I’ve been a little under the weather lately, that’s all. Haven’t managed to have the strength to get around to taking out the trash, that’s all. I thought my son might be by to do it. But…” She gave a shrug.

“If you need help, I’d be happy to do it for you.”

She smiled again. “Oh, my dear, you really don’t have to. I’m sure Mark will be by sometime soon. This week. I’m sure he’ll be able to do it.”

“If you’re sure,” I said. “It’s really no trouble, Mrs. Pease. It won’t take more than a few minutes, and garbage collection is tomorrow. I’d hate for you to have to wait another whole week.”

She hesitated, looking torn, then nodded slowly as if admitting something to herself. She stood aside. “If you really don’t mind. I hope Mark comes by, but I really can’t be sure he will, after all.”

I’d never been inside Mrs. Pease’s house before, but like all the homes along this block, the layout was almost identical to mine. She had a closet where I didn’t, and her stairs had a landing instead of going straight up, but the rest was similar. I looked around her small, tidy living room, the television tuned to an old game show. Doilies decorated the arms of the overstuffed chair, and a knitted throw along the back of the couch reminded me of one my grandma had kept in her house. A lot of things about Mrs. Pease’s place reminded me of my grandma’s house. Cozy and warm.

“Come in, come in,” she said. “The kitchen garbage is back here. Though living alone, as I do, I don’t seem to make much trash.”

She led the way through the narrow hall toward the kitchen at the back of the house. Unlike mine, which had been refitted with new appliances, flooring and countertops, Mrs. Pease’s looked like it hadn’t changed since the fifties. She waved a hand toward the pail in the corner between the back door and the refrigerator.

“Of course, when the kids lived here at home we had to take out the garbage every few days or it was unbearable!” She chuckled. “That was quite some time ago, though.”

“How many children do you have?” I headed for the pail, which wasn’t overflowing but needed emptying just the same. I pulled the bag from the can and tied it shut as Mrs. Pease came forward with a fresh trash bag.

“Just two now,” she said. “We lost our daughter Jenny in a car accident back in ’86. But I see her children from time to time. They’re in college now. Their dad remarried a long time ago.”

I replaced the trash bag and asked to wash my hands at her sink, using soap that smelled of green apples. “And you have a son Mark.”

“Oh, yes. My Mark. And Kevin.”

“Do they live close by?” I wiped my hands dry on a soft dish towel and turned to see Mrs. Pease looking so sad it made me sad, too.

“Kevin’s moved away,” she said. “And Mark lives here in the city, but…I don’t see much of him. He’s very busy, my Mark. He’s very busy.”

Too busy to visit his mother and make sure her garbage was taken care of, I thought meanly. Guilt pricked me in the next minute. At least he visited her sometimes. I was an awful daughter.

“Thank you, dear,” Mrs. Pease told me. “You’re so helpful.”

“You know, Mrs. Pease. I’m right next door, if you ever need anything at all. I’m happy to come and give you a hand.”

She shook her head, her soft white hair looking like white cotton around her apple-doll face. “I don’t want to trouble you, Miss Kavanagh.”

“It’s really not any trouble at all. Really.” Nothing quite like a guilty conscience to prompt unsolicited and slightly desperate offers to elderly next-door neighbors.

She bustled around her kitchen for a few seconds and pulled out a small tin of cookies. “Have a cookie?”

“Thank you.” Sugar. They were good, still soft. “I’ve never learned to bake.”

She gave a small, trilling laugh. “Oh, my dear! Every girl should learn to bake!”

I nibbled the cookie. “My mother wasn’t particularly interested in domesticity.”

Mrs. Pease might be feeling under the weather, but it hadn’t dulled her perceptions. “You don’t see her often, do you?”

I shook my head. I thought she might judge or lecture me, but Mrs. Pease gave a soft sigh instead. “Have another cookie, dear. And it’s never to late to learn to bake.”

I helped myself to another cookie, and she put away the tin. She wiped up some crumbs with a dishcloth and folded it on the sink. The second cookie was as delicious as the first had been, and when I finished I lifted her garbage.

“I’ll take this out to the curb. Do you anything else to take? Anything from upstairs?”

“No,” she said. “Though I might, next week, if you’re able to stop by. I’ll be baking cookies, Miss Kavanagh. You could watch, if you like.”

We shared a smile. “I think I’d like that, Mrs. Pease.”

I took her garbage out to the can and dragged it to the curb next to mine. I turned to wave goodbye to her before heading into my house, when a police car stopped next to me. I jumped a little, wondering instantly if I’d broken some ordinance or something, but the officer who got out of the vehicle didn’t do more than nod at me before opening the back door.

Gavin got out. Not in handcuffs, as least, though he didn’t look any happier for being unshackled than if they’d had him bound. He looked up and met my gaze, then dropped it immediately as the cop pulled him by the elbow toward his house.

This wasn’t my business any more than anything else had been, but I stood frozen next to the garbage as the Ossleys’ door opened and Gavin was yanked inside by his mother. I overheard raised voices from inside, though the officer who brought him home kept his voice pitched low and professional. He didn’t go into the house. He and Mrs. Ossley spoke for a minute or so, words I couldn’t make out, and then he left.

He gave me another nod as he got back in his car. “Evening.”

“Evening,” I said, pulled away from staring at the Ossley house by his greeting.

I couldn’t ask him what had happened with Gavin. I looked back toward the house. Then I put the lids on the garbage cans and intended to go home, but my feet instead found the four concrete steps leading up to the house next door.

Mrs. Ossley opened the door, her frown becoming a grimace of fury when she saw it was me. “What the hell do you want?”

I refused to allow her hostility to take me aback. “I came to see if Gavin was all right.”

She looked me up and down, her expression getting tighter and harder. She looked as though she’d bitten into an apple and discovered only half a worm. Even though she wore a pair of high heels, I stood over her by about two inches, and this seemed to irritate her further as she crossed her arms and looked up at my face.

“He’s fine. You can go back home, now.”

“Mrs. Ossley, I’m not really sure what I’ve done to offend you, but I can assure you, I’m only concerned about Gavin’s welfare.” I retreated a step under the force of her glare.

She laughed, the sound like barking, and then pulled a cigarette from the pack I hadn’t noticed in her hands. She lit it and blew a runner of smoke directly into my face. I waved it away.

“I bet you are,” she said. “I just bet you are.”

Her obvious dislike and antagonism toward me tied my stomach into knots, but the memory of precise and self-administered wounds kept me from fleeing. “Can I come in?”

“You cannot!” She seemed aghast at the suggestion. “Go mind your own business!”

I looked over her shoulder to the sight of a man silhouetted in the hall. Dennis. A flutter of movement on the stairs caught my gaze, and she turned to see what I was looking at.

“Gavin! Get up to your room! Right now!” She turned back to me. “We’ll deal with him, Miss Kavanagh. Go play with someone else’s son.”

She made to close the door in my face, but I put out a hand to stop her. Her words had made a nasty noise in my head. “I beg your pardon?”

“Oh,” she said with another gust of smoke. “He told me all about you.”

“He did?”

Again, she looked me up and down. I wondered what she saw. I wore work clothes, a mid-calf black skirt and a simple white blouse with buttons. Shoes with sensible heels. Compared to her outfit of a teal, low-cut lingerie-style top spangled with sequins, flowered short skirt and matching stiletto sandals, I wouldn’t win any prizes in a fashion show. The outfit was staid and comfortable, but didn’t deserve her look of disgust.

“Oh, yes, he did. He sure did. Told me how he helped paint your dining room.” Her fingers hooked quotation marks in the air around the work
paint.

“He did help me paint my dining room. He’s been a big help, as a matter of fact. He’s done a lot of work for me.”

She snorted. This close, I could see the faint acne scars on her cheeks. She’d covered them with makeup, but they still shadowed her face here and there. I had no idea how old she was. Old enough to have a fifteen-year-old son, but maybe not that much older than me, after all.

“Yes, he’s spent a lot of time over there. With you.” More smoke. She had red-painted nails and red lipstick to match. It left crimson stains on the end of her cigarette. “I can’t get him to clean up his goddamn bedroom, but he’s got time to hang around over there painting your walls.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Ossley. I told Gavin he needed to make sure he did his chores at home.”

The hostility still flowing off her in waves made me want to step back again, but I stopped myself with a hand on her railing. Unlike mine, which I sanded and painted every spring, hers scratched my hand with its bumps and lumps of pitted rust. When I took away my hand, a red stain dotted the palm.

“Well, Miss Kavanagh,” she said my name with a sneer that wouldn’t have been out of place had she been calling me a worse sort of name. “I’m awfully glad to hear you’re so concerned about my son that you have him doing your dirty work for you, but you telling him he should be a good boy and clean up his mess doesn’t seem to matter much, does it?”

I still didn’t quite know what had gotten her so upset, unless it had been my witnessing her bad behavior with the books. It was one thing to holler at your child. Another to pelt him with books. I’d have been embarrassed, too, if it were me.

“I have always appreciated Gavin’s help,” I told her. “And I’ve offered to pay him for his time, but he’s never wanted to take any money for it. However, I understand if his helping me has caused problems in your house—”

“Oh, you
understand!
” she cried. “I’m sure you did want to pay him. Sure you did. Yeah, he told me all about that, too.”

“He did?” I blinked, uncertain where this was going, but knowing at once it was going to end badly. “Mrs. Ossley, please believe me, I’m just concerned about Gavin. I think there are some things you should know—”

She cut me off again. “Don’t you tell me what I should know about my own son!”

From over her shoulder, I saw again the flutter of motion on the stairs. A figure in a dark, hooded sweatshirt hovered halfway up, halfway down. Mrs. Ossley advanced on me a step, and I countered with another back. Now with me on the lower steps she stood taller than I, and it seemed to give her fuel for her outburst.

“Mrs. Ossley,” I said sharply. “Your son’s been—”

The sight of Gavin’s face, a pale blur in the shadows of the stairs, stopped me. This wasn’t my business. But was it my responsibility?

“Gavin’s been cutting himself,” I told her with a lift of my chin to show her I wasn’t going to let her nastiness stop me from trying to help. “I thought you should know.”

She snorted. “Yeah, he told me all about that, too. About how you asked him to take his shirt off. What were you doing, asking a fifteen-year-old boy to take off his shirt? Can you answer that for me?”

Her accusation, not quite spelled out, but obvious just the same sent me back down the rest of her steps.

“Yeah, I’m asking you,” she said. “All those nights he spent over there, doing work for you. How’d you pay him back? Huh? You get off on contaminating kids?”

“No.” I had to take the time and forcible effort to swallow just to squeeze out that one word from my suddenly constricted throat. “Absolutely not. It wasn’t like that.”

“No? What was it like, then? You’re a little old to be playing doctor, aren’t you? What do you think a kid his age is gonna do when it’s put out right there for him?”

I shook my head. “Mrs. Ossley, you are mistaken—”

Mrs. Ossley never seemed to have learned interrupting was rude.
“‘Mrs. Ossley, you are mistaken,’”
she mimicked in a high-pitched voice. “Are you calling my son a liar?”

“Did Gavin tell you I’d been…inappropriate?”

Inappropriate.
The word didn’t even begin to describe what it would have been for me to behave toward Gavin the way she was intimating I had. I tried to see his face again, but he’d retreated so far up the stairs I could no longer see him.

The other woman laughed cruelly. “He told me you wanted his help with a special project. That you offered him something to drink—”