Concrete Angel (18 page)

In Eve’s family, the jokes were almost always hurtful anecdotes about her thievery, incompetence, or acquisitiveness, so the Mackins’ camaraderie was refreshing. She smiled wanly, listening patiently as the four adults offered tips on how to light a gas stove. Feeling more confident, she sailed out the door, wondering whether Roy had given up on dinner and gone home. She’d bet anything he hadn’t touched her mother’s dime-store jewelry. He probably hadn’t left the orbit of the television set.

W
hen she got back to the house, Roy was sitting in the living room with Christine, wearing a pair of lavender shorty pajamas, perched on his lap. A bony leg draped each side of his thighs. Her head, sweaty from sleep, nestled in Roy’s neck.

It was disturbing, though Eve couldn’t say why. He did look a bit like Raymond Burr, for one thing. A name for certain men—what was it—played hide and seek in her head.

“She came rushing out of her room,” Roy said, placing Christine carefully on the floor and rising. “Bad dream, I guess.”

“Did you have a bad dream?”

I
remembered shrugging, noncommittal, unsure how to play this. I’d thought I was helping my mother by cuddling with Roy, but it was turning out badly.

“Christine doesn’t usually take to strangers,” Mother said, still sounding uncomfortable. “Christine, you go back to bed now. I’ll be in to check on you in a minute. I’m sorry I was gone so long, Roy. I meant to come right back but…”

“I didn’t know you had a daughter that age.”

“She’s only nine. I don’t know what she said, but I’m sor—”

“I have a niece about ten, but she’s a bigger girl. Stocky. I could fit Christine’s foot in the palm of my hand. Delicate.”

Could Christine be flirtatious with strange men? Eve wondered. Roy was still talking. Saying something about girls thinking they were adults before they were.

“So when she flounced into the room like a junior Scarlett O’Hara, I had to laugh.” He laughed now as if to show her.

Why was he still talking about Christine? Five minutes had passed and still he went on. A lone drop of perspiration made its way down the middle of Eve’s back. She looked at Roy closely. As he spotted her inspection, a guarded look crept over his face.

“She’s a kid and I’m not around kids much—I probably don’t know how to compliment them. What to say to their mothers.”

Eve could think of a lot of things, but none of them were the sentiments she just heard expressed. Roy stood in front of her, slumping and damp. He’d never appeared so unattractive. Maybe she should check the tray on Adele’s bureau, but she had the sense it wasn’t jewelry that interested Roy. A sharp needle pierced her brain with little stabbing pricks. He’d hardly laid a hand on her in the three weeks they dated. Only the preliminary and impressive kiss each time. Not a finger on her breast, a hand on her thigh. Not once. Had he asked about Christine before? Had he tried to get inside the house?

“Roy, I was about to tell you. Our oven’s broken so I won’t be able to cook dinner after all.” The words came out of her mouth fluidly. “I was hoping the oven could be fixed but…”

“We can go out, Eve” he offered. “I know a great spot—”

“I don’t have a babysitter tonight. You know—I thought we were staying in and wouldn’t need one.” Her voice had grown narrow, constricted. It was hard to get the words out.

“Well, let’s take the little doll with us. She’s wide awake.”

He was trying hard for the charm and confidence of ten minutes ago, but it was gone—for her at least. Did she imagine it or did he perk up, looking eagerly toward the bedroom door? His hands clenched and unclenched. Hers did too. He also had the slightly unfocused look men got after several drinks. Had he been drinking? He only smelled of cologne. And a little like some sort of animal—musky and wet-furred.

He leaned in for a kiss at the door, but she nudged him away. His face registering the brush-off as he turned to go.

“I think I hear Christine,” she said easing the door closed. “Coming, Honey.”

She pressed her back against the door until she heard his car start.

“I
like your new boyfriend, Mommy,” I said as soon as the door opened. “He laughed at the show—like Daddy used to. He’s got a funny laugh.”

I was still trying to stick my landing, as perky as I could pull off. I wasn’t the least bit tired, probably too old to be put to bed so early. Eight o’clock had been my grandmother’s idea of a suitable bedtime.

“Christine, you know better than to sit on a strange man’s lap. Whose idea was that?”

Did I know better? I didn’t remember being given this information. “Mine, I guess.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sort of. He was sitting on the sofa where I usually sit. I think he might have patted his knee,” I added suddenly. “Like with a horsy ride.” I was sweating now myself. I shouldn’t have tried this stunt. I was in way over my head.

Mother swallowed visibly. “A horsy ride? What did he do when you were sitting on his lap?”

“We watched the show.” I frowned, working hard to give Mother the right answer—the one that would end the questioning and make the tight look on her face go away.

“Nothing else?”

“Well, he bumped me up and down a couple times, like his leg was a bucking bronco. I’m too old for that, but I didn’t say it.” I paused, remembering. “It kind of hurt.” I pointed to the place it had hurt, and Mother’s face fell. I wasn’t sure whose fault this all was, but I wasn’t gonna take the blame. I’d tried my best.

“Do you want me to read to you?” she asked a few seconds later, either not willing or not able to ask the next question: the questions she’d raise with me a few years later, ask me when I was long past remembering.

Did you tell him it hurt? What did he do after that? Did he do it more? Did he offer to rub the sore place? Instead, that night my mother thought this: Roy may not have known nine-year olds don’t play horsy. It was possible.

“I’m too old to be read to. I like hearing the story in my head. Telling it to myself. I’m used to it now.”

“You are growing up, aren’t you? Well, don’t read too long. You’re up way past your bedtime already.”

“M
other?” Eve said softly into the receiver a minute later.

“Oven still won’t light?” Adele sounded tired.

“What? No, no, it’s not the oven. I sent him home anyway.”

Adele sighed. “He did do something awful, didn’t he? Grabbed you? Broke something?” Her voice was growing shrill. “If you’d let me find…”

Eve could picture her mother shaking her head, the downward turn of her mouth, the droop of her shoulders.

“Could you please come home?” she asked, breaking off a piece of the French bread on the counter and sticking it in her mouth. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“Is Christine okay?” The annoyance in her mother’s voice gave way to edginess.

“Fine. It’s me. I got the heebie-jeebies.”

“The heebie-jeebies! For Pete’s sake, Evelyn. You’re supposed to be an adult.” Adele sighed. “Heebie-jeebies. I’ll be along when we’re done this hand of rummy. I don’t like to disappoint Dottie. She planned her evening around me. I thought you could get along without me for a few hours. I guess you need a babysitter as much as your daughter.”

Eve couldn’t dispute this charge. “Come as soon as you can.”

She hung up and sat there quietly. The light under the bedroom door had gone out and the house was completely silent. Outside she could hear the sound of someone walking down the street. Someone with cleats on his shoes. Despite knowing in her heart it wasn’t Roy, she rose, pushed the heaviest chair in the room in front of the door and sat down on it. The cleats had receded before she was seated.

The next morning, she called Hank and they made a deal.

M
y parents had split more over mother’s refusal to agree to twice-weekly sessions with a therapist than the extortion money Daddy paid to the mailman. He went to considerable trouble to find a psychiatrist specializing in “acquisitive women.”

That’s what the mental health professionals labeled women like Mother back in the early seventies. Bored, rich women who compulsively shopped and shoplifted were endemic. And as stores began to step up their specialization in apprehending shoplifters, the psychiatric profession embraced sufferers of the newly named disorder. Mother’s “hoarding” obsession, her most basic problem, would not be recognized for years. And after it was labeled, unlike other obsessive-compulsive disorders, it was difficult to treat, being more tied to childhood trauma and less to brain chemistry malfunctions. Like the yo-yo I would be for several more years, I followed her home, brown plastic horse in hand.

“H
aven’t we been down this rabbit hole enough times?” Eve asked her first morning back. She’d already agreed to his demands in principle but for the moment, no plans had been made. “No one can cure me because there’s nothing to cure. I just like my junk.”

She stretched lazily, taking her first and only bite of egg. It’d been good to sleep in her own bed last night—no springs prodding her in the back, no odor of detergent, enough space in the bed to turn over. Another smell had greeted her in the bedroom, however—one she’d yet to identify. She decided to let the matter rest for the present.

Seeing me tucked into my own canopied bed also reassured her that things would quickly return to normal—even if her definition of normal was skewed.

Daddy read me a story—the first time I’d allowed it in months. The story was far too young for a nine-year old, but what did he know?

“Some of your junk’s pretty costly, Eve. Few would call Delftware junk.” Eve was jolted back to the present and the examination of her “problems” once again. Hank motioned toward a cabinet of shepherdesses and dogs. “This fellow at the club says this doctor’s been successful with other…collectors.”

“Clever word choice, Hank. I’m sure it’s a lucrative specialty. Avaricious women often have rich husbands—ones who can afford to pay the bills.” She looked at him smugly. “Acquisitive women must rank at the top of the list of faddish psychiatric disorders.” She blinked her eyes twice. “You only have to think of how many synonyms there are for greedy to get the gist.”

“You’re one sharp tack for a college dropout, Eve. Your insight into your condition is especially impressive. Except you don’t know how to stop wanting things—or taking them if the checkbook balance is low or you left your pocketbook at home. As long as you have to bring home every shiny thing your eyes light on, you need help.”

His fingers played obsessively with the crease in his slacks. He could step out of the house and into a magazine shoot, Eve thought with annoyance. Once, this attention to his appearance was a good thing. Now Eve wondered who it was requiring it.

The sharp crease especially irked her. Did he steam it in again at midday, perhaps hopping over to the drycleaners to revive it at lunch time? Because the crease never disappeared despite the soft material of the slacks.

“You need to lay every shiny woman your eyes light on, and nobody sends you off to the loony bin, Hank. Let’s compare notes on the costs of our activities. I’m sure the women you court don’t come cheap.”

Hank shook his head, but he didn’t deny it.

The smell in their bedroom: whose was it? Faint but not stale. Definitely expensive.

T
hose long months of exile at my grandmother’s house came about when my father found out how extensive the “return” business was too. He must’ve had an inkling of what was going on before the lid blew, but chose to look the other way—as he so often did. He wasn’t able to adhere to the notion that early intervention was important with his wife. Daddy was mostly relieved for a few months’ grace from time to time—more than happy to look the other way, hoping the problem would resolve itself.

It all came to a head when a new postman on our route proved unreasonably greedy on what his share of the take should be and blew the whistle—in Hank’s direction.

“I’ve found it necessary to see a chiropractor and get special arch supports,” he told Hank prissily in a registered letter—a doctor’s bill and a picture of the supports in question from the Sears Catalog enclosed. “I haven’t looked into the cost of spinal surgery, but it’s a definite possibility.” He made no specific demands in his first letter. Later he tossed out some pretty hefty numbers.