The Tolling of Mercedes Bell: A Novel (2 page)

Unfortunately, there were no paralegal job openings listed in any
of the papers, and she had no paralegal certificate. But at least she’d have the jump on her classmates, who wouldn’t be seeking jobs for another month. She smiled at the irony of that. She was hundreds of rejections ahead of them.

Germaine was the one saving grace of the whole fiasco. How such a sweet child could have been sired by the likes of Eddy was proof that anything was possible. How Mercedes could have been so blind about him, despite the ceaseless haranguing of her parents and the warnings of friends, was the haunting question of the decade.
Your gloves can just stay on the damn wood pile. They can lie there and rot,
she thought angrily.

Germaine would be home from school soon. She threw the apple core hard against the fence and went back into the kitchen. While she was making a snack for her little girl, she flicked on the radio and listened to the Journey song that was playing.

The back gate creaked, and Germaine climbed the wooden stairs to the kitchen. Her seven-year-old face was somber, with a pensive expression in her gray eyes. She made a beeline for her mother, put her arms around her waist, and pressed against her pink tee shirt, holding on tightly with eyes closed. Mercedes stroked her silky head, smoothed the Peter Pan collar on the flowered cotton dress, ran her hand down her little back, and felt her shoulder blades, thin and sharp. Mercedes knelt down and hugged her heart to heart.

“How was school today?”

“Okay,” Germaine sighed with resignation. Her whimsy had departed the day she learned her father had died. Many things that had been interesting, if not fun, were now a struggle. She was all business and rarely smiled.

“But Miss Prentiss gave me a harder book to read.” She wriggled out of her backpack, unzipped it, and pulled out a new book.

Mercedes looked at the book and nodded. Since age three, the
child had been an insatiable bookworm. Following Eddy’s death, reading was her primary escape.

“That looks very intriguing. You’re a great reader and I’m proud of you, Sweetness,” she said. “But we have a mysterious mission ahead of us before you start that book.”

Germaine’s eyes shone. Then she spied the peanut butter and graham crackers and put the book down.

A
SHORT WHILE LATER,
they exited their battered blue VW near the newsstand on Grand Avenue in Oakland and walked to the racks of newspapers. Mercedes read the headlines. The British and the Argentines were at each other’s throats in the Falklands; an unidentified sexually transmitted disease was causing many deaths. She pulled two legal newspapers off the rack and flipped to the job listings. Nothing for paralegals. She bought the evening
Tribune,
paid the wizened shopkeeper and turned around to find Germaine.

The girl’s attention was fixed on a friendly-looking black retriever with a red kerchief around his neck, who was waiting for his master to emerge from the café next door. She took a step toward the dog, but then hesitated and looked for her mother.

Mercedes came over to her with the newspaper under one arm and pulled four envelopes out of her purse. “Put your special mojo on those,” she said, “because one of them is going to hire your mama.”

Germaine knew what they were without asking and received them with both hands. Mercedes pulled down the handle of the corner mailbox and Germaine dropped the envelopes in, peering down the slot as they disappeared.

T
HAT EVENING THEY SAT ON
the sofa in the living room near the cold hearth. Germaine read aloud from her new book while Mercedes looked through the classifieds for housing and jobs, occasionally helping the child sound out a tough word.

Germaine stopped at the end of a sentence. “Why do we have to move, Mama?” she asked plaintively. “I like it here.” She looked at the dark print curtains Mercedes had made, the colorful pillows on the couch, and the Cézanne print on the wall. The house they rented was one of many fine middle-class homes in the well-groomed district of Piedmont.

“I know you do. So do I. But we can’t afford to stay here now that Daddy’s gone. We’ll find a nice little place for just the two of us. I’ll get a job and it’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

Even as she said it, she wondered:
Can anything be fine when your father has died and you have to move away from all your friends?

M
ERCEDES LAY IN BED STUDYING
the patterns the moonlight projected on her bedroom walls: shapes of branches and leaves swaying slowly in the breeze, the distorted outlines of windowpanes bent into trapezoids, the angle of the eaves. The branches seemed to be conversing with each other in an undulating language of whispers and gestures. There was no sound of traffic—only the rustling leaves, a dog barking in the distance, an owl hooting for its mate.

What will the solution look like? A phone call? An affordable place to live suddenly available?
She’d done the arithmetic a million times. The money she had was barely enough for a first and last month of very modest rent, with maybe a week’s groceries and gas. If the balance fell any lower, they would have to find a landlord willing to rent to them on faith or they would be out on the street. She dared not ask her parents for help. That would come with many strings attached
and invite further interference, which she had already sloughed off once before when she ran away with Eddy. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

Eddy, Eddy, why did you have to be so impossible?
She was sick of thinking about it, but she could scarcely think of anything else. The details of his death were on a looping tape that played endlessly in her thoughts. She saw the mischievous gleam in his pale green eyes, his dark tan and long ponytail. She recalled his hilarious banter, his brash tales, and his ability to charm. Then came his kisses, his confidences, and his promises. Her heart pounded and ached.

Long after those early days another Eddy emerged—the bad genie in the liquor bottle. The drunken one who bragged, picked fights, and criticized her relentlessly. As soon as Germaine was born, he seemed to think he could have his way not only with his wife but also with any other woman he fancied. The two faces of Eddy, both of them now dead. He had been reckless with her heart, reckless with their finances, and especially reckless behind the wheel.

Eight weeks earlier, on another full-moon night, the doorbell had rung at 3:45 a.m. She felt sick, remembering it all again. She had looked at the alarm clock and thought Eddy must be too plastered to get his key in the lock. Then she had padded downstairs in her bathrobe, switched on the porch light, and looked through the peephole to see two police officers. Was she the wife of Edward Lewellyn? They were very sorry to inform her that there had been an accident. Her husband’s car had collided with a telephone pole at high speed. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt and died instantly.

To top it off, he had left no life insurance and a mountain of debt. She turned and put a pillow over her eyes. What would solve this?

The solution will be simple and quiet and will come at the very last possible moment,
something inside her seemed to say. Hadn’t that been what Eddy’s death was? An unexpected solution to an impossible
situation? Now there could be no more mind games, no more verbal abuse, no more infidelities. She was free of him without a messy divorce, without a custody battle or years of having to share Germaine. What torture that would have been.

Something inside her relaxed with the realization of what she had been spared. She listened to the owl, hooting in the silent night. It was all in her hands, as she had so often wished it would be. She felt grateful for the comfort of her bed, the beauty of the moonlight, and this terrible gift of freedom.

C
ardboard boxes were scattered all around the house. Mercedes knelt on the living room floor, quickly packing books. Her faded blue work shirt was rolled up to the elbows, her hands rough and dry from packing and cleaning. She was going to start making trips to the new place in the morning.

Their new landlord, a small Jewish man who had recently returned from India, had answered his door wearing a
dhoti.
After taking a look at Mercedes and Germaine, who stood holding hands on his stoop, he bowed and invited them into his tiny white house, behind the larger pink one he was renting out.

Mercedes looked out the window onto the small yard where blossoming sweet peas climbed a fence. Germaine stood attentively at her side, intrigued by the mandala on the wall. It looked like a big, pretty puzzle.

Mr. Friedman continued the conversation from the previous evening’s phone call while Mercedes filled out the application. He read it over carefully and asked about her lack of employment.

“I’m changing careers and haven’t found a job yet,” Mercedes explained, “but I will.”

He noticed the pale line on her left ring-finger, where the sun had not shone in some time.

“If you’d consider taking a chance on us, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed,” she said earnestly. “I’ll take good care of the house and will never be late on the rent.”

He was quiet for a moment and then said, “Let’s see if it’s to your liking.”

They followed him out through the little yard into the pink house. Just inside the back door there was a small bedroom with windows facing the yard, followed by a bathroom and then a nook for a washing machine. The kitchen floor was covered with new linoleum. Just off the kitchen were a second bedroom and a small living room that faced the street. A minuscule front yard rife with weeds and rocks was surrounded by a freshly painted white picket fence.

Mercedes looked up and down the street. Litter was strewn in the gutters and unfenced yards. There were bars on most of the windows, and no trees or bushes to be seen. They were just off the freeway in East Oakland, near a convenience store that was robbed several times a year. The cars parked in the street were battle scarred; Mercedes’s rundown Beetle would fit right in.

She offered to pay the first month’s rent and asked if she could wait until she got her first paycheck to pay the last month’s and deposit. Mr. Friedman seemed unruffled by the request and agreed without hesitation. He smiled and handed her the keys. “Welcome to the neighborhood. I hope you and Germaine are happy in your new home,” he said.

When they shook hands, Mercedes’s eyes were moist. “I won’t forget your kindness,” she said.

M
ERCEDES FELT RELIEVED THAT THE
uncertainty was over as to where they would be living. Almost anything was better than weeks of not knowing where or when they would land before their money ran out.

Eddy was gone. The part of her that loved being married, loved his body heat in her bed, loved his laughter—the part of her that had risked everything on the sober Eddy—was in pain. She felt like a mother animal that had lost her mate and was forced to move her lair deeper into the jungle. She boxed up his clothes, hurrying to finish while she could still stand to do it.

The phone rang. A crisp female voice said, “Good morning. I’m calling to speak with Mercedes Bell.”