The Things We Keep (15 page)

Her face is slick with tears. She's staring right at me, but unseeing, so I squat down in front of her and take her hands. “Anna?”

Finally she sees me. Her eyes go round, panicked. “They're having us followed.”

“Who is having you followed?”

She tips her head toward the doorway. “Them.”

I look at the doorway, which is empty. I shake my head. “No one is having you followed, Anna.”

“They
are,
” she says. Her hands are fists, pounding against her knees. Her face becomes twisted with frustration. “And soon, I'm going to forget him.”

She isn't making any sense. I glance around, looking for Carole or Trish or Eric, but they're nowhere to be seen.

“Anna, I promise you no one is—”

“They
are
!” In a sudden movement, she throws her hands up, and I lose my balance and tumble backwards onto the rug. I'm just getting up again as Carole and Eric come jogging in.

“See?” Anna says, pointing at them. Her face is almost victorious. “I told you! They're following us. Where's Jack?” she asks Eric snippily. “Where's your partner in crime?”

Eric runs over to me. “Are you all right?”

I stand upright. “I'm fine.”

“It's all right, sweetie,” Carole says to Anna. She approaches her quickly, getting right up in her face. “Everything is all right.”

“No, it's not!”

Unlike my push, which I think was unintentional, this time Anna gives Carole an almighty shove. Carole hits the ground with a thud, landing awkwardly on her elbow.

“We need to restrain her,” Eric says. “Trish?” he calls out.

“Oh no,” I say, “I don't think—”

But Trish is already jogging into the room.

“Anna is getting agitated,” Eric says. “She's just pushed Eve and Carole.”

“She didn't mean to push me,” I say. “It was an acciden—”

“Do you need a tranquilizer?” Trish asks.

“No!” I say at the same time as Eric says, “Probably best to be safe.”

I can't believe this is happening. Anna still seems agitated, but she's not exactly wielding a knife. She's just in her chair, looking at her lap, muttering quietly. I hear what she's saying, but it doesn't make any sense. It sounds like “beat the bomb, beat the bomb.”

Before I know what's happening, Trish is back with a syringe. She approaches Anna from the side, so she doesn't see it coming. When she drives the needle into her arm, Anna lets out a high-pitched, pained wail.

My hands find my mouth. I want to look away, but for some reason, perhaps out of solidarity with Anna, I can't.
Help me. They are following us. Beat the bomb.
I search her words for a common thread, a clue to what she's trying to tell me. But they just sound like the words of someone at a disconnect with reality. Someone with Alzheimer's.

“There you go, sweetie,” Trish says as Anna sinks back into her chair. Anna continues to stare at me for a few seconds with something like pleading in her eyes. But as the tranquilizer works its way into her system, her expression dulls away to nothing.

 

15

One of the best things about cooking is that, by and large, you can control it. If something is too spicy, you can counteract it with cream or yogurt. If something is too sour, add sugar. Dealing with real life is nowhere near so simple. Since Richard died, some days I get the feeling I'm falling down a hole with nothing to grasp on to. On those days, I grasp on to food. That's why, the afternoon after Anna is sedated, I go to the grocery store.

I don't know what it is about squeezing an avocado that fills my heart with song. My basket is full of sweet corn, butternut squash, Dutch carrots, and free-range eggs. At intervals, I raise my basket to my nose simply to inhale. It feels so good to be back at Houlihan's, my old grocery store. I've missed the organic produce, the high-end brands. In here, it's easy to forget the reality of my life as a widowed housekeeper—even for an hour.

It takes me a while to realize that I'm not shopping for two anymore and my basket isn't going to cut it. I'm on my way to the front to retrieve a shopping cart when a crisp iceberg lettuce catches my eye—perfect for a cold wedge salad starter. If I throw in some flat-leaf parsley, tomatoes, cucumber, and a couple of hard-boiled eggs, it will be lovely for this evening. Olive oil and cider vinaigrette for dressing. Even the residents with dentures could cope with that.

I reach for the top lettuce, the biggest one, still beaded with water from the mister. But before I can touch it, I feel a weight on my shoulder and I'm whipped around so fast, I drop my basket. There's a crunchy sound: eggs breaking. Before I can steady myself, a hand shoots out and
thwack
s against my cheek.

“You!”

I step back, away from the finger that is now thrust in my face, and grasp the cool metal rail behind me. What on earth? I don't recognize the woman standing before me. She's older than me, perhaps forty, with a neat brown haircut.

“Well?” she cries. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

The part of my cheek where the slap connected begins to throb. My ear is ringing in a long endless line, like a hospital beeper after someone has died.

“My parents invested their entire life's savings in your husband's scheme! They weren't those big-time investors who had money to burn, they were a hardworking couple who wanted to secure their future. Now their home is in foreclosure and they are broke.”

My mouth goes dry. Shoppers have hushed; people look up from their baskets, exchange glances by the potatoes. I can actually feel their eyes on me.
That's Eve Bennett. So much for her getting her comeuppance. She's a fraud. Just like her husband.

In the dead quiet, there's a sharp intake of breath. I see Andrea Heathmont peering around the end of the aisle. Another blonde is beside her, Romy Fisher maybe. My heart sinks further.

“Because of you,” the lady continues, “my parents have shopped at Bent and Dent these last few months! And you're shopping for organic produce at the most expensive food store around? Where's the justice?”

My eyes drop to my basket. “Oh! No. This isn't for me.”

“And why should I believe you? You're probably a liar and a swindler just like your husband. That man did the world a favor when he—”

“That's enough.”

From nowhere, Angus appears. He steals around me, positioning himself between me and the woman. The woman looks startled, but only for a moment. She starts to walk around Angus, but he blocks her way.

“Actually, it's not nearly enough, after what she's done!” she yells over his shoulder. “Do you know who this is?” she asks Angus.

I glance at Andrea, who is still watching. She whispers something to the other woman and I curse myself for coming to Houlihan's. What was I thinking?

“Yes, I know who she is,” Angus says quietly. “She's a woman, trying to get on with her job, cooking for the elderly. You've just assaulted her, which is a crime, and you've damaged this produce, which will cost the store money, unless you pay for it.”

“
I'm
not going to pay for it,” the woman says, but some of the heat has gone from her voice. Tears build in her eyes. “The only person who should have to pay is this bitch.” The woman stabs her finger in my direction, but that appears to be all she has left. She abandons her cart and scurries out of the store via a side door.

Immediately the bustle of the store resumes: a hushed voice, the roll of shopping cart wheels on linoleum. Andrea watches for another moment, then disappears, too.

I look at my upturned basket. A single egg rolls free, and by the look of the yellow spray around the edge of the carton, it's the sole survivor. I squat, bundling it all back into the basket. My cheek radiates with heat, like a nasty sunburn. The ringing continues in my ear.

Angus squats beside me. “My truck is out front.” He tucks a set of keys into my palm. “Go. I'll take care of this.”

I shake my head, blinking against tears. “I … I have to finish the shopping.”

“I'll finish it.”

“But … I don't have a list.”

I used to pride myself on never having a list. I found them creatively stifling, I'd tell people.
What if I planned to make French onion soup but then saw some impossibly delightful-looking artichokes?
Now the thought seems as frivolous as it does ridiculous.

Angus is looking at me. His face is a stark contrast to mine. Calm. In control. “I'll finish it,” he says again.

This time I don't protest. I can feed the residents hot dogs and frozen peas for a week, if that's what it comes to.

With his keys in my hand, I leave via the front door. Angus's truck, blessedly,
is
right out front. I recognize it from outside Rosalind House. I let myself in the passenger door and slide onto the vinyl, locking the door behind me.

*   *   *

I don't remember driving to pick up Clem from school the day Richard told me he was going to jail. I don't remember parking the car or walking through the gates or greeting any of the other mothers. But I
do
remember Clem's smile when she saw me. And I remember thinking:
I wonder when I will see Clem smile like that again.

The drive home had been filled with her usual random, fluttery chatter. I answered the odd question, made the odd
ooh
or
ahh
but my mind was miles away. I didn't have any intention of telling her what Richard had done. Richard would have to do that. The twenty or so minutes I'd taken to pick up Clem solidified my shock into something cold and hard. Richard hadn't just betrayed his investors; he'd betrayed us as well.

A truck was blocking the driveway when we got home. I'd ordered some plants for my new garden bed and some ornamental stones.
Ornamental stones!
How ridiculous it seemed to have ordered ornamental stones. The tradespeople who swarmed the house probably wouldn't get paid for the work they were doing. The ornamental stones would have to go back. The decent thing to do, I realized, would be to go around tapping them on the shoulder right now, telling them to stop work and go be with their families, but my cowardice, it turned out, was stronger than my righteousness.

Inside, I went straight to the kitchen and was surprised to find Richard wasn't there. After what he'd told me, the idea that he could get up and move around freely seemed preposterous somehow. But his barstool was empty, swiveled to the left as though he'd got off in a hurry. I put some shortbread and cut-up fruit on a plate for Clem and then went looking for him.

“Richard!” I called. I wandered back through the house, across the parquetry floor Richard had insisted we have, past the paintings he'd ostentatiously bought at auction.
“Richard?”
I knocked on the door to his study. Somehow the fact that he went in there, into that place where he'd caused all this trouble, felt like more of a betrayal. “Are you in there?”

There was no answer, so I barged inside, angry now.
How dare he ignore me after the bombshell he just dropped!
I took two steps into the room, and that's when I stopped. Dead.

*   *   *

Angus's truck is remarkably clean. It has one of those little plastic bags hanging from the glove compartment for rubbish. Like so many things about Angus, it isn't what I expected.

It's a short but uncomfortable drive home. Though it's warm, rainclouds curl in the gray sky, threatening but not delivering. Part of me yearns for the rain to start streaming down, a gray blanket to disappear into. The shopping bags, filled with Lord-knows-what, are in the back. Once he loaded them in, Angus got into the truck without so much as a word, and started driving.

About halfway home, I feel the need to say something. “I appreciate you stepping in like that, Angus.”

Angus shrugs, keeping his eyes on the road. If Mother was here, she'd say it was impolite not to respond when someone spoke to you, but in this case, she'd be wrong. A quiet shrug,
no big deal
, was the nicest response he could possibly give.

I try for a laugh. “I guess I'll have to start shopping at Bent & Dent.”

His eyebrows shoot up and his glance touches mine for a heartbeat. “Why? Because one woman who didn't have her facts straight assaulted you while you were trying to do your job?”

“Because,” I say to my lap, “I'm not strong enough to go through that every week.”

We crunch onto the driveway of Rosalind House. Angus shuts off the engine but doesn't get out. “I'm sorry about what I said the other day,” he says. “Of course your daughter has lost more than her home and her money. Obviously you have, too.”

Now I'm the one to shrug. Mostly because I don't trust myself to speak.

Angus lifts his hand, and for a second I think he's going to touch my cheek, but he stops a few inches short. “How's the face?”

“Fine,” I say, though it's starting to throb again. I glance in the mirror. There's a fairly distinct hand mark. “Nothing that won't heal.”

“Are you all right to go inside? I can take the groceries in if you'd rather hang out here for a while.”

“No,” I say. “Let's just go in.”

Angus insists on carrying the bags, and I follow him toward the house.

“What were you doing at Houlihan's, anyway?” I ask.

He raises his eyebrows. “You don't think a gardener could be interested in organic food?”

It is, I realize, exactly what I'd thought. Angus rolls his eyes but with a smile.

We arrive in the kitchen, and Angus sets the shopping bags on the counter.

“I needed saffron,” he says. “That's why I was at Houlihan's. I'm entertaining tonight, and I'm making paella.”