Broken for You (9 page)

It's a bad intersection,
they had said—

—red rover red rover send Daniel on over—

—
your husband probably didn't see the stop sign.

Stephen had been critically injured. Daniel was already dead. His small chest was crushed. And the heart within it. . . Daniel's heart. . .

There had never been time for anger; grief—and the fact that Stephen himself had almost died—dulled that knife. There was a brief time after
he was discharged from the hospital and came home (hardly whole, hardly recovered, but well enough, the doctors said) when the two of them made a sad attempt to find one another. But by then, of course, any value they had was compulsory. They looked for each other as if they were house keys.

And then at some point they stopped looking. They let themselves be lost, and invisible. Even on the few occasions they managed to inhabit the same room, it was as if they were made of watercolor, as if the molecules—or whatever it is that gives us a graspable substance—had come disjoined, and were floating in a fragile connectedness that was easy to sever. All Margaret had to do was sigh, send a soundless puff of air Stephen's way, and then sit back and watch as he came apart and dispersed harmlessly through the house: a pale, multicolored dust; a shower of glitter; wood smoke; or snow in one of those charming crystal globes. Nothing substantive. Nothing that could suffer pain or guilt or unbearable grief.

She wanted him gone, for his own sake. It was the only way he'd escape the curse.

Two years after Daniel was killed, Stephen left. And then everything was as it should be. The staff was let go and Margaret was alone, tending the sacraments, doing penance for the sins of her blood.

Six

Yin/Yang

Wanda' s day off was Monday.

"That's when the theatre is dark," she explained.

Margaret assumed that turning off the electricity one day a week was a way for nonprofit organizations to save money. "That's very smart of them," she said.

Wanda gave her a puzzled look, and then went on to explain that she'd be working from Tuesday through Sunday, from nine until seven.

So in the beginning, Margaret didn't see much of her. The whole arrangement was far less life-altering than she'd imagined. Wanda left the house early—helmetless, Margaret noticed with concern, on a Peugeot bicycle she'd apparently found at a yard sale—and came home after Margaret had eaten dinner. Sometimes she came home even later, after Margaret had read, or watched a bit of television, and gone to bed. Their exchanges were pleasant, cursory, and formal—the kind of interactions one would have with an exemplary salesperson at Frederick & Nelson's. There was no trace of the battered, vulnerable person who had confided to Margaret the story of her pilgrimage and hidden in the powder room. The girl had lost her fragility and gone steely and businesslike.

She's not a girl!
Margaret was constantly reminding herself.
She's a young woman.
Wanda also had an uncanny ability to make herself evaporate—that was really the best way to describe it. It wasn't that Margaret expected to hear stomping or loud music; she knew, or at least hoped, that Wanda was a sensitive and courteous person. But she had expected to feel more of a presence, a shift in the air currents passing through the house. She'd lived alone for so long; surely the presence of another person would cause some kind of agitation, a ripple,
something.
But Margaret felt no such stirrings. On the few occasions when they were both home and in different rooms, it was hard to believe that Wanda was really on the premises. The girl was that quiet. Margaret had to admit that perhaps she'd hoped for someone more intrusive.

How absurd,
she thought.
I've managed through sheer luc
k
to take in the perfect boarder. Why on earth would I want anyone else?

And then the answer came to her: What she desired deep down was someone who could whip up the stagnant currents in the house so thoroughly that they would never completely still. And only little boys could do that.

The first Monday after she moved in, Wanda offered to fix dinner.

"Sit," she said, pointing to the kitchen table. "Don't do anything."

Margaret obeyed instantly, feeling like one of those small, pink-eyed poodles that are always shaking with fear and/or infirmity.
She can cer
tainly be bossy for someone so small.

"I bought this today," Wanda said, handing Margaret a large cookbook. She began gathering ingredients and equipment. "I need to learn to eat better, and I thought this would be a good place to start."

"This is remarkable," Margaret said, thumbing through the beautiful pages. This particular cookbook had been written, and
illustrated,
Wanda pointed out, by the actor who'd played Henry VIII on that marvelous PBS series that aired several years ago.
There are so many wonderfully talented people in the world,
Margaret thought.
So many truly gifted people.

Wanda retrieved the cookbook and shrugged. "Actors," she said with authority, "—all actors—are obsessed with food."

The kitchen counter rapidly became a mess of exotic-looking boxes, bottles, herbs, and produce that Wanda had brought home from the International District.

While Wanda cooked, Margaret sat as commanded and did nothing except sip tea and pretend to read the most recent issue
of Art & Antiques.
She was remembering the last time anyone had cooked for her: Mother's Day, 1968. Daniel had made her chocolate chip pancakes, burnt toast, and watery scrambled eggs. The kitchen had looked a great deal like it did at this moment.

The telephone rang.

Margaret had only one phone, and it rang often now; that was the one tangible way in which life had changed since Wanda's arrival. It cheered her to have her telephone ringing so frequently. Although she still had little idea of the nature of Wanda's work, or why it required so many phone conversations, Margaret felt that her home had suddenly become vastly important. Phrases like "communication network," "center of operations," "transmission center," and "central hub" came into her mind when she thought about her house; she felt inexplicably, happily attached to the outside world in a new and significant way.

Of course, the phone sometimes did ring for Margaret; it was invariably her doctor's office. "Wrong number," she would lie, and hang up, her heart pounding. Lately, she'd stopped answering the phone during the day altogether.

Wanda picked up, snuggling the phone between her shoulder and her ear. "Hello. Hughes residence." She continued to slice uniformly wide ribbons from something that looked like a sheet of petrified pond scum.

"Just a minute please." Wanda walked the phone across the vast kitchen floor. "It's for you."

"Thank you." Margaret noticed that Wanda's shoulder continued to linger next to her ear, maintaining a kind of half-shrugging tension even after she handed off the phone. Margaret had a sudden, uncharacteristic impulse to lay hands on the girl.

Wanda resumed her efforts at the counter. She still looked tense. Margaret couldn't remember ever having seen anyone cook with such fierce concentration.

"Hello," Margaret said.

"Margaret? Who was that?"

"Oh. Hello, Marita. That was Wanda."

"Who?" Marita's voice rose in pitch. Margaret flinched.

"My new boarder."
"What are you talking about?" Marita emphasized words with a combination of overarticulation and volume, in much the same way that many misguided people speak to the profoundly deaf. Margaret held the phone several more inches away from her ear.

"I've taken in a boarder, Marita, and her name is Wanda."

"What's she doing there?"

"Well, right now she's cooking dinner."

Wanda looked up briefly.

"Why would you do such a thing? Does Stephen know about this?"

"It's nothing to do with Stephen."

"You've got a stranger living in the house? Cooking for you?

"She's not a stranger. She's been here a whole week." Wanda looked up; Margaret glanced at her and smiled. "She works for the Seattle Repertory Theatre."

"Stephen should hear about this, Margaret. You know how much we both care—and worry—about you."

Marita paused. Margaret knew that she was expected to make generic noises of the polite and grateful variety. She maintained an obstinate silence.

"Are you still there?"

Margaret sipped on her tea.

"Margaret!"

"Yes, Marita," Margaret said, "I'm still here." Margaret conjured a glossy color picture of Marita in her mind—she was wearing size-6 designer jeans and a hand-knit silk sweater with big hearts and flowers on it—and then, calmly and slowly, she began mentally tearing the picture into canape-sized pieces. "Where
is
Stephen?"

"He's in Boston on a business trip. I'm calling him as soon as I hang up.

"It will be rather late there, won't
it?"
"It doesn't matter, Margaret. He'll want to know." "Fine, Marita. Always nice talking with you."

"I can't believe you've got a stranger living there." Margaret had finished tearing up Marita's picture and was jettisoning the pieces to a very large, very remote landfill. "What's she cooking, by the way?"

Margaret hung up. She looked at Wanda, who was applying herself vigorously to chopping a brown, shriveled-looking tuber. "I've always wanted to hang up on that woman."

Wanda gave a small, commiserating hum, but didn't look up. "That was my husband's wife." Margaret continued. "She calls twice a month."

"Oh?" Wanda kept on chopping the mysterious tuber.

"His second wife, I mean, of course. Her name is Marita Kopplemeyer."

"I see." Wanda threw whatever-it-was into one of several pots on the stove and gave it a stir.

"She kept her maiden name." Margaret couldn't figure out if Wanda's terse responses came from a genuine disinterest or a desire to be polite.
Or maybe this kind of thing,
Margaret reasoned—
discussing one's husband's second wife
—
is de rigueur among theatre people.
"Her first name used to be Rita. She changed that, obviously."

Wanda hummed again, noncommittally, and then added, "Sometimes people need to reinvent themselves."

"Well, yes, I understand that. But why wouldn't she change her last name as well. Especially a name like Kopplemeyer."
Why am I talking so much?
Margaret wondered.
And about Marita, of all people.
"She's quite . . . loud, isn't she?"

"She was Stephen's secretary," Margaret continued, and then surprised herself by adding, "They had an affair for about two years before we divorced."

Wanda whirled around; her expression was no longer noncommittal. "And you actually
talk
to
her?”

She really is young,
Margaret thought. "Oh yes. It's all fairly amicable." Wanda picked up a head of garlic and began pulling apart the cloves. "That's very brave—and good—of you."

"Not really. I just decided, what's the point? Of being angry, I mean." "Anger is human."

"Oh, I know. But staying angry forever—what good does it do?" "I could never be that charitable to someone who hurt me." Margaret wondered who besides Peter had cleft this girl's heart. "You might surprise yourself."

"I doubt it." Wanda began smashing the garlic cloves with a meat tenderizer. It was a technique Margaret had not seen before. "When I was a little girl, I got so mad at a doll for getting lost" (smash) "that when I found her again" (smash) "I took her legs and arms off (Smash) "threw the legs away" (Smash!) "and put the arms" (SMASH!) "in
the leg holes." (SMASH!
SMASH!)
Wanda paused. She was a little out of breath. She spoke to the pulverized garlic cloves. "I figured she couldn't get too far if she had to walk on her hands." She peeled the garlic cloves and then threw them into the largest pot. She stared intently into its depths. She was perfectly still—so still that, after a few minutes had gone by, Margaret began to wonder if she'd had a petit mal.

I
never thought to ask
any
of the applicants about their health,
Margaret realized. She was just about to get up and see if Wanda was all right when the oven timer went off; Wanda startled slightly and turned it off.

"Dinner's ready," she said gloomily.

"I'll set the table, shall I?" Margaret offered.

Wanda turned to Margaret, blinking and rubbing her eyes as if she'd just been roused from a refreshing sleep. Suddenly her whole body perked up, coming back to life like a newly rewound toy, and she began to gather plates, bowls, and silverware. "Absolutely not! No way! Sit!"

The meal—which consisted of bonito soup, barley and burdock stew, millet and cauliflower mash ("I decided to do two vegetable courses," Wanda said proudly), boiled dulse salad, turkey croquettes with tofu sauce tartar, and carob-rice pudding—was terrible.

Margaret would never have said this, of course. She remained deeply touched by the fact that this relative stranger (Marita had been right about that) had spent hours laboring over this unusual cuisine.

At the start of the meal, Wanda happily identified the names of the dishes and their ingredients as she served them. As the dinner progressed, however, she grew quiet, and it became more and more difficult to engage her in any sort of conversation.
We haven't spent much time together since we met,
Margaret thought.
Maybe she's feeling shy. I know I am.

"How is your work going at the theatre?" Margaret asked.

"Okay." Wanda pushed her food around. "Good cast, good director . . ."

"And the play you're working on—what's it called?"

"A Touch of the Poet."

"Is it a good play?"

"Well, it's O'Neill," Wanda said heavily, by way of explanation. "Would you like to see
it?"

"I'd love to!"
She's disappearing again,
Margaret thought.
Right before my eyes, like Tinker Bell.
She fought the impulse to clap her hands together wildly and shout, "I believe in fairies! I do! I do!" Instead she said, "I haven't been to the theatre for years."

"You're welcome to use my comps," Wanda continued. "I get two for opening night. Someone should use them." She gazed into the depths of her millet mash.

"Thank you. That's very thoughtful."

"If you want to bring a friend, just be sure you warn them: It's O'Neill." Wanda scowled at a grayish piece of cauliflower. "This isn't very good, is it?" she said, finally.