Seventh Heaven (7 page)

“Maybe her finger's swollen and her ring is on one of the hooks along with her coffee cups,” Lynne Wineman said.

“You think so?” Ellen Hennessy said. “Then where's her husband?”

They thought that one over carefully. They were sitting in Ellen Hennessy's living room and they had a perfect view of their new neighbor through Ellen's front window.

“Traveling salesman?” Donna Durgin said, but everyone knew Donna was extremely naïve, and they overlooked her innocence just as they did her excess weight.

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” Lynne Wineman asked Ellen Hennessy.

Ellen's boy, Stevie, was at school, and her little girl, Suzanne, was having a tea party in her room with Lynne Wineman's two little girls. Donna's eighteen-month-old, Melanie, was asleep on a blanket under the coffee table.

“You bet,” Ellen Hennessy said. “It's the only explanation.”

“What?” Donna Durgin said. “What is?”

But they couldn't answer her, they couldn't bring themselves to say the word
divorced
out loud, and yet there it was, across the street, a hand without a ring holding a Windex bottle. They were all so completely married, and they were in it together. Ellen Hennessy and Donna Durgin and Lynne Wineman saw each other nearly every day. In the summer they had picnics for their children in each other's backyards, with Hawaiian Punch and bologna sandwiches, they lent each other's children clothes theirs had outgrown, they went food shopping together, they played canasta while their children played with wooden blocks and left a carpet of graham cracker crumbs all over the floors.

The women decided to phone Marie McCarthy. And when she came over, they sat around her in a semicircle, eager to hear her opinion of their new neighbor. Marie's children were grown, and the other mothers didn't see her quite as much, but each of them knew you could always call Marie in the middle of the night when your littlest child was burning up with fever and she'd know exactly what to do. She would tell you to rub a little rum on your baby's gums when his molars were coming in and nothing the doctor had suggested would ease his crying; she had great recipes for lasagna and meatloaf with green onions and tomato sauce; she'd watch your kids if you had a dentist appointment, or if you desperately needed a new dress and didn't want to drag the kids with you to S. Klein or, if the dress was for a really special occasion, A&S. If you had a fight with your husband, one he might not have even noticed, you could sit in Marie's kitchen and she wouldn't bother you with questions. She'd just give you cookies and tea and let you sit there until you could find it in your heart to go home.

She'd been through it all, and that gave you hope, but even Marie had trouble with the idea of a divorced woman alone on their street. She should have already asked a newcomer over for coffee, she should have offered to sit for her kids. But she knew something wasn't right as soon as she saw that woman in that beat-up Volkswagen with just her two boys. Where was the man? That was what Marie asked the other mothers. “I think you've got a pretty good idea,” she whispered, so that even Donna Durgin, who had never met a divorced person in her entire life, figured out Nora's situation. No one had to say it, but the word was there, it had entered their vocabularies and now hung above them, a cloud over their coffee cups, and maybe that was why they didn't speak, and why Marie passed out some of the Tootsie Rolls she had brought over for the children to their mothers instead, even though candy couldn't begin to get rid of the sour taste in their mouths.

As usual, the men on the street noticed nothing. Oh, they saw the Volkswagen and they figured it needed its tires aligned. They saw that no one had fixed the broken shutters, and they themselves would have gotten a bucket of cement and fixed the steps leading to the stoop as soon as they'd moved in. As a detective, Joe Hennessy prided himself on picking up details no one else would bother with, but later that day, when he came home and put his gun in the night table, he didn't notice that his wife had bitten her fingernails down to the quick. He changed out of his sport coat, then filled up a plastic bucket with soapy water. It was still light enough in the evenings to get some work done around the house, so Hennessy went out to wash his car. When he carried the bucket out to the driveway, water spilled over the sides and left a trail behind him. He put down the bucket, and as he reached for a sponge he had that feeling along the back of his neck. He thought about moonlight, he thought about his neighbor up on her roof in the dark, he felt as if he needed to run somewhere, as fast as he could. The white Volkswagen parked in the Oliveras' driveway shone in the last of the day's light.

Hennessy shielded his eyes and looked across the street. There was the baby, out in its playpen in the front yard. Hennessy thought the baby might be waving at him, or maybe it was just grabbing for stray blades of grass, because there was a whirlwind of grass as Nora Silk came around the side of the house, pushing Olivera's old mower. She had all her weight behind the mower, which chugged like a locomotive and threw off black smoke. Right behind her was the boy, who dragged a tall wooden rake.

Hennessy wondered what kind of man let his wife work in the yard. A flower garden was an exception, women liked that kind of thing, but a well-kept lawn was a different story. And here was the wife, working like a dog, wearing leather gloves so she wouldn't get blisters on her hands, wobbling over the weeds in her sling-back pumps. Hennessy watched Nora struggle to make a turn in the grass. The mower got stuck in the tallest of the weeds, it wouldn't go backward or forward, and although the motor would start, it kept cutting out on her. Hennessy had been Olivera's neighbor for five years, but he had been inside the house only once, near the end, the old man's arthritis was acting up and Hennessy had gone over to bleed the radiators with a dime and check out the boiler in the basement, which, as it turned out, wasn't really necessary, since the old man had died right after Thanksgiving. Hennessy tossed his sponge into the bucket of water and walked across the street.

“Goddamn it,” she was saying, right in front of the boy. Or at least that's what Hennessy thought she was saying, but it was hard to hear over the roar of the old mower. There was grass everywhere, in the folds of her cotton shirt, in the baby's hair. Hennessy could taste the grass in his throat and it made him thirsty; his neck felt worse than ever.

“It's jammed,” Hennessy said—shouted, really—and Nora turned to him, startled. She wasn't quite as young as he'd thought, but her eyes were blacker than he could believe.

Hennessy reached down and turned off the mower.

“The grass is caked up,” he told her, and then for some reason he felt foolish. He reached down and pulled out some of the clippings that were stuck between the blades. The boy leaned against his rake and watched; the baby pulled himself up by the rim of his playpen.

“There you go,” Hennessy said. He stood up and clapped his hands together, but he couldn't get the grass off his sweaty palms. “That should do it.”

“Well, gee,” Nora said. She could feel her heart beating too fast. She reached up and fluffed out her bangs and wished she didn't have her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She tried to look away from Hennessy but couldn't; it was almost as if she had to look at him, as if something would break if she looked away. “Thanks a million,” she said.

“You should get your husband to spring for a new mower,” Hennessy said.

“A new mower,” Nora said, considering.

“Who's lazy?” the boy said.

“What?” Hennessy said.

“Really, thanks a million,” Nora said. “It's great to have neighbors.”

“Yeah,” Hennessy said.

The baby in the playpen was reaching up his arms and crowing. Nora managed to look away from Hennessy; she went over and picked James up, then balanced him on her hip. Across the street, Stevie had come outside to shout that if his father didn't come home for supper right now they'd be late for Little League.

“It's the last week of baseball,” Hennessy explained. “That's my boy. First base.”

“Nice boy,” Nora said. She came over and put one hand on Billy's shoulder. “I'll bet you kids will really hit it off,” she said hopefully.

Billy looked up at her as if she were crazy. Stevie had already begun to torment him in school; twice he'd stolen Billy's lunch and thrown it in the trash, he'd called Billy jerkface and fink and laughed hysterically when Billy couldn't climb the ropes in gym.

“That guy?” Billy said, incredulous. “You've got to be kidding.”

“Kids today,” Nora said as an apology to Hennessy. She gave Billy a little jab with the toe of one of her pumps. She had no idea why this neighbor of hers looked so good to her; he was tall, but he wasn't even handsome, he didn't have hypnotic eyes like Elvis, he didn't have a great smile like Roger. Roger's smile could drive you crazy, as if he knew what was inside of you. Maybe it was Hennessy's hands that got to her; they were wide and strong. She looked at his fingers and wondered what his touch would feel like on her shoulders, on her thigh.

“Little League,” Nora said, thoughtfully.

The baby gave a wail and dove for Nora's breasts, leaning his head into her shirt.

Jesus, Hennessy thought.

Nora quickly shifted the baby under her arm, but Hennessy had seen a flash of her skin.

“Billy would love Little League,” Nora said.

“Me?” Billy said.

I have to get out of here, Hennessy told himself.

“Sign-ups are in May,” Hennessy said, as he backed away toward the sidewalk.

“That's good to know,” Nora called after him. “I'd love to meet your wife sometime.”

“Yeah,” Hennessy agreed.

“Well, I would,” Nora said to Billy when she saw the look on his face.

Hennessy waved and kept on, across the street. Nora studied his back and bit her lip. She simply refused to think about men.

“I told you people were nice here,” Nora said to Billy. She jiggled James under her arm and rolled the mower back into the garage. “This is going to be great,” she told Billy.

Nora went inside to fix macaroni and cheese; she always had trouble with casseroles: they came out too watery—you had to eat the noodles with a spoon—and sometimes she just threw the whole thing out and served Frosted Flakes or beef jerky on white bread. Billy picked up the rake and went to work gathering the cut grass. The rake was too tall for him, and it hurt his shoulders to use it, but Billy didn't care. A few cars passed by, and although he heard them, he didn't bother to look up. He was practicing the blackout trick, and he was getting pretty good at it; if you didn't know better, you would swear a pair of jeans and a blue sweatshirt were raking the grass all on their own. If he worked really hard, gathering the grass into neat piles, then heaping armfuls into the silver garbage cans, he could make their house look just like everyone else's. So he stayed out until dark, and while the other children on the block were finishing their dinners or playing ball or getting ready for bed, Billy Silk was still raking grass, and by then he had forgotten how much his shoulders hurt.

3

ALL SOULS

O
N
J
AMES'S FIRST BIRTHDAY
Nora was pleased to find that he still didn't resemble anyone. There wasn't a trace of any family lineage when you studied his face; it was as if he'd just appeared one October day, without heritage or past, born out of labor and light rather than genes. Like all October babies, he was a good sleeper and liked the cold. He'd pull off his woolen socks and throw off his blanket at night. He'd point at the window and wail until Nora let him sleep with it open, and then he'd quiet down right away and stare at the stars that formed an arch above their house. He still smiled easily and amused himself, and although he'd taken a few steps, he was in no great hurry to walk. Whenever he stumbled into Nora's arms, she would think it wasn't possible for her to love him any more than she did, and yet each day she did; she loved him so much that she discovered that her hands and feet had grown a little larger to make room inside her for all that she felt, and because of this she had to go out and buy new boots and gloves and have her high heels stretched by the shoemaker up on the Turnpike.

Nora loved to celebrate birthdays, but because James's fell on a Saturday she didn't have time to make a cake from scratch; she didn't even have time for a mix, because Armand's was so busy she wound up staying till four when she should have been home by two thirty. The only plus about working overtime and having to pay her baby-sitter an extra dollar fifty was that she had that many more customers to whom she could pass out invitations to Tupperware parties.

“I'm not so certain I like this,” Armand said when he got hold of an invitation. He had left one of his best customers teased but not combed out so he could talk to Nora privately, over by the sinks.

“Actually, it's very classy,” Nora said, thankful that Armand had no idea she was also trying to sell her clients magazine subscriptions. “Salons in Manhattan have fashion shows. They give makeup demonstrations. I should bring my Tupperware right into the shop with me. I could start next week.”

Armand thought this over, and finally agreed to a ten percent cut of the profits. Since he'd have no real idea of what the profits were, Nora figured she would slip him a five and that would be that. And even if he found out she was stiffing him, he wouldn't fire her. Nora was good for business. She wore her hair in a French twist and she'd let her nails grow exceptionally long and had found a new shade of polish that suited her—Roman Red—and women who'd never had manicures before asked for the same color. The customers were crazy about her; they rearranged their schedules so they could come to the shop on Saturdays. She had one client who came by bus all the way from East Meadow.