In All Deep Places (6 page)

N
ell Janvik already lived in the house next door when my
parents moved to Halcyon in the early fall of 1972. She
had lived there since 1948, the year she and her husband, Karl, and
their son, Kenny, moved to town from the spare room at her par
ents’ farmhouse. She had married Karl Janvik at the age of twenty, four months after they realized she was carrying his child. They had lived with Nell’s parents for the first two years out of necessity since
Karl seemed to have bad luck when it came to keeping a job. At least that’s how he saw it.

When Nell’s Grandmother Brooten died, she left her enough
of an inheritance for a down payment on a small two-story house
in town. It was common knowledge that Nell and Karl got a good
deal on the house because it was in a mortgage foreclosure—the
previous occupants had fled from their debts in the middle of a
nameless night while Halcyon slept.

The following year, 1949, Nell and Karl had another son,
whom they named Darrel, and the year after that the paint factory
was built. Suddenly, there were jobs for everyone, even for unlucky
people like Karl Janvik. Nell got a job there, too. But that was the
last year friends and relatives remembered Nell Janvik being happy.
By the time we became her neighbors, she had spent
twenty-four years in the snot-green house on Seventh Avenue, most of them as a single mother. She had lived there longer than anyone
else on the block, which meant none of the neighbors had known her in better times.

The day the we moved in, my mom told me she was given a pan of lasagna by the family across the street, a plate of brownies by the retired couple who lived on the other side of her new house, and a loaf of homemade bread by the widow who lived three doors
down.

It was the widow, Ella Liekfisch, who warned my mother not to
expect much of a welcome from Nell Janvik.

“Nell’s had a rough life,” Ella had said in low tones, as if the walls in our new house were listening. “Her oldest son, Kenny, was killed in Vietnam last year.”

“Oh, that’s so sad!” my mother replied, telling me she instantly felt compassion for the woman named Nell she had not met yet.

“That’s not all, either,” Mrs. Liekfisch continued. “Her husband ran off on her when her boys were just kids. Never heard from him again. And the younger boy, Darrel, he’s been in and out of
trouble since the day his daddy left. He’s living in California with
some woman he’s not even married to. I’ve heard there’s a baby and everything. And usually one or the other is in jail for something.”

My mother must have shown on her face that she wondered how Mrs. Liekfisch knew all of this because the older woman suddenly
told her.

“Nell bowls. She’s in a league with a friend of mine. When
Nell’s drunk, she talks. Or so I’ve heard.”

“Sounds like she could use a friend,” Mom said.

“She could use
a friend, but she doesn’t want any more than the two or three she has, and she doesn’t attract any others, I can tell you that
. “I’ve never seen her smile unless she’s been drinking—and that’s the honest-to-God truth.”

“Well, thank you so much for the bread, Mrs. Liekfisch,” my mother replied. “It’s wonderful to be welcomed so warmly.”

“You just call me if you need anything, now,” Mrs. Liekfisch
said as she turned to go. “And I can sit for that sweet little one of
yours anytime!”

My mother said she stepped outside with her new neighbor and watched
her walk past the green house, following her with her eyes and
dodging the movers carrying in her sofa. Her eyes strayed from the retreating form of Mrs. Liekfisch and stayed on the green house for
several moments before she went back inside.

My parents had been in the house for nearly three weeks
before either one even saw Nell Janvik. Nell worked the swing shift at the paint factory and slept most mornings away. At
2
PM
her TV would come on, and it would stay on until a few min
utes before four when she left for work. When her windows were
open, the smoke of her cigarettes would waft across the yards and
drift into our kitchen. Apparently, my mom did not meet her face-to-face until they both happened to be on their porches at the same time one day, getting the day’s mail.

As my mother tells it, she had called out a cheery “hello!” And Nell seemed to
become instantly irritated at having been noticed. She glanced up with a peeved look on her face.

Nell was a few inches shorter than my mom but many
pounds heavier. She had let her hair begin to turn gray any way
it pleased. Mom supposed that Nell was in her early fifties, but the haunted expression on her face made her look older. She found out
later Nell was only forty-six.

“I’m MaryAnn Foxbourne,” Mom had said, as she closed the dis
tance between them.

“Nell Janvik,” Nell said without emotion, a cigarette dangling from one hand.

“Nell. That’s a nice name. Is it short for something?”

“Penelope,” Nell said gruffly, shoving her mail under her arm
and starting to open her screen door.

“Nice to have met you!” Mom said, hoping she sounded like she meant it.

Nell grunted a wordless reply and then disappeared inside her
house.

My dad did not meet Nell until a week later, when he
came home from a Saturday news event to see her struggling with a garage door that wouldn’t open all the way. She was bent over on her driveway, pounding on the lower edge of her garage door with
the flat of her hand—and cursing. He noticed for the first time
the tattered remains of a net in a basketball hoop attached to the roof of her garage, a tiny reminder that the cantankerous Nell was
someone’s mother.

“Can I give you a hand?” my Dad had asked, walking toward her.

She whipped around to look at him. Dad told me she had on a blue button-down shirt with her name embroidered on a patch. He figured she was on her way to the bowling alley. And was late.

“What?” she yelled back.

“I said, can I give you a hand with that?”

“Stupid thing won’t open all the way!” she grumbled.

Dad took that for a yes.

He studied the door, checked the springs, and noticed a piece of rusted metal had wedged itself into the hinge on one side. He
worked it loose and then raised the door the rest of the way.

“There you go.” My dad grabbed his camera bag and waited for her to say thanks. When she did not, he added, “I’m Jack Fox
bourne, by the way.”

“Nell Janvik,” she said through her teeth, looking at her mischievous garage door.

“Nice to meet you, Nell,” he said. She said nothing in return.

Dad turned to walk back to our house and just as his back was fully to her, he heard Nell say, “Thanks.”

He turned back around. “Anytime.”

When he went into the kitchen, he put the camera bag down and walked over to Mom, who was tearing up lettuce for a
salad. He put his arms around her from behind and kissed her neck.

“I met Nell,” he whispered.

She grinned. “I was right, wasn’t I? Tell me I was right.”

“You were right. She
does
make the Wicked Witch of the West seem as harmless as Auntie Em.”

My mother said she laughed and then shook her head. “Oh, I shouldn’t
say such things. She did lose her son last year, Jack. Ella Liekfisch told me his body was brought back in pieces. She must be hurting so bad to be so rude. It’s probably her way of handling grief.”

Dad tightened his embrace. “Maybe some day she’ll come around and the two of you can have coffee together!”

“Well, I seriously doubt that,
but perhaps she’ll get to the point where she doesn’t scowl when she
sees
me coming.”

I would spend my early childhood years in healthy fear of Nell Janvik. My parents knew I feared her, and they thought it was best that I continue to because then I would stay out of her
yard and out of her way. As I grew, though, my fear of Nell
Janvik morphed into something more akin to disgust. And eventu
ally, pity.

One late summer day, when I was eight and Ethan was
four, while the two of us were making chalk drawings on our driveway, a van with a holed-out muffler drove down our street
and turned into Nell Janvik’s driveway. A man with stringy hair and a bandanna for a headband got out, followed by a woman with long, dark, curls. She was wearing very short cutoffs and a tank top
that revealed too much. Even at eight, I knew enough to look
away from her. The man opened the side door and a little girl with blonde braids jumped out. A baby was crying in the backseat.

“What do you think he wants?” the man was saying to the woman, but he appeared to be looking at the baby.

“He’s probably hungry again,” the lady said, opening a mac
ramé purse and taking out a pack of cigarettes, “Here, I can take
him.”

I stole another look at the woman. She was wearing large hoop earrings and lots of makeup. Her nails were long and painted
purple.

“Nah, I got him, Bel,” the man said. “I want to show him to my mom.”

“I have to go potty,” the little girl said.

“Well, let’s go inside and see Grandma,” the man said, grabbing the crying infant out of the back of the van. “You can use her potty,
Norah.”

The man steadied the baby in one arm and slammed
the van door shut. He walked to the front door, and the little girl
trailed after him. The lady followed, stopping to cup her hand over
the cigarette she was trying to light.

The man didn’t knock on the door—he just opened it and yelled, “Ma! Are you home?” And then the four of them disappeared inside Nell’s house.

Ethan went back to drawing looping circles on the cement. I noticed that the van had California plates. I pretended to draw, but really I was listening to see if the open windows in the Janvik house would reveal what kind of reception the man would get. The man had to be Darrel, I thought—the son Mrs. Liekfisch had said was born to break a mother’s heart. Those little kids
must be her grandchildren. I had heard Mrs. Liekfisch tell my mother that Darrel had two kids with that woman he lived with,
so I knew Nell was somebody’s grandma—but I’d never really
thought of her as a grandmother until that moment. It didn’t seem
possible Nell Janvik would know how to act like a grandma.

I could hear noises inside the house, but I couldn’t tell if they were happy noises or sad noises. Then the front door opened and Darrel stepped out. Nell was right behind him. She looked mad. I quickly looked down at the driveway and drew a large
circle with my chalk, peering at the two of them with just my pe
ripheral vision.

“Would it have killed you to call first?” Nell said. She had her
hands on her hips.

“We wanted to surprise you. Ma,” Darrel said, putting his hands in the front pockets of his jeans.

“I hear nothin’ from you in two years—
two years
—and then
you just show up on my doorstep! That’s one heck of a surprise, Darrel. Are you in trouble? Is that why you came?”

“Come on, Ma! No, I’m not in trouble. Me and Belinda have been doin’ really good.”

“Congratulations.”

“I mean it. I’m startin’ a new job in two weeks, it’s a good job. Benefits and everything. We’re doin’ great, Ma. I just wanted to see you before I start this new job. I won’t get vacation time for a while. ’Sides, I thought you might want to see your
new grandson. You
know, we gave him Kenny’s initials.”

I heard Nell sigh.

“You could have at least called me, Darrel,” she said, in as gentle
a voice as I had ever heard her use.

Darrel stepped forward and put his arm around her. “But I wanted to surprise you! And I did!”

“Yeah, you did.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Nell was smiling.

“I would have washed the sheets in the guestroom if I had
known you were coming,” she said, and I heard the van door open again. Darrel was pulling some cardboard boxes out.

“Ah, that’s no big deal, Ma.”

Nell was looking at the boxes. So was I. The boxes were full
of clothes.

“Are those your clothes? Don’t they use suitcases in Cali
fornia?”

Darrel laughed heartily. “Well, I’m sure they do in Hollywood! But we just make do with boxes from the grocery store. Look! They
got handles!”

The two of them carried the boxes inside.

“I’m tired of drawing,” Ethan said, getting to his feet and walking toward the front door. After a few minutes alone on the cement, I got up and followed him inside.

That night, while Nell was at work, and while I tried to fall
asleep in my bedroom, Darrel and the lady named Belinda sat on
Nell’s porch, drinking beer and smoking. They were laughing, too,
and I couldn’t fall asleep. I got up and went downstairs to
announce my problem. My parents were sitting at the kitchen table
having ice cream. I stood at the foot of the stairs. They did not see me.