On Turpentine Lane(26)

“Wanna watch the Pats at Moose’s tonight?” Reggie asked him. “It’s the game of the week. We could pick up Chinese.”

Nick said, “I think I’ll pass.”

Reggie leaned over Nick’s desk to give one of his shoulders a squeeze. “Any time, bro. You have a place to crash?”

Nick said, “Thanks for asking.”

With a cocky salute, Reggie was gone.

“Do you have a place to crash?” I asked.

He said he was thinking of The Evermore—the drab school-owned guesthouse that alums booked for reunion weekends when the surrounding chains had no vacancies.

I asked if they had a weekly rate, an off-season rate, an Everton Country Day faculty and staff discount, a room not overlooking the landfill . . . ?

It was only chatter as I borrowed time to analyze the propriety of the idea that was slowly dawning. Single male and single female, colleagues by day, houseguest and hostess by night? Was that asking for unwarranted workplace gossip? But what kind of colleague wouldn’t invite a homeless coworker to bunk in her spare bedroom midcrisis? Especially one who’d championed her when she was in need.

“The Evermore wouldn’t be long-term, just until I find a place,” he said.

I told him I was going for that cappuccino after all. Could I bring one back for him?

“Thanks. Just coffee.”

I got as far as the outer office door then returned. “Listen . . . I have an extra bedroom. By which I mean you’d be very welcome to stay on Turpentine Lane until you get your bearings.”

“Wow,” he said. “That is extremely generous of you . . .”

“But?”

“No ‘but’! I accept. And I won’t be that houseguest you can’t get rid of. I’m combing the real estate ads already. Really, though—what a pal.”

I confessed that it wasn’t entirely altruistic. I needed the company. “The dead babies I’ve been talking about? I haven’t given you the full story because I don’t know what it is. But pictures of them posed on my kitchen counters—I mean it could be nothing—but then I heard about husbands dying there. Not that I think it’s haunted, but even if it’s just for a few days, it’ll get me over the hump . . . Silly, I know.”

“Not silly at all. And we have an expression for this, even if it sounds like something Reggie would say.”

I waited.

“Win-win,” he said.





19





I Apologize


I’D NEGOTIATED A two-hour window between my return home and Nick’s arrival, needing to wash three days of dirty dishes, scrub the tub, and, most important, furnish the room I’d been avoiding due to yet another unattractive chapter in the history of 10 Turp: the site of what might have been Mrs. Lavoie’s last minutes on earth. I’d run out on my lunch hour, bought a mattress and a platform bed, and enlisted my brother to pick them up from the loading dock—or else wait five business days till their overly casual delivery service kicked in.

Since there had been no word from my mother on her microfiche search, I called her before leaving school. She said she had nothing to report and couldn’t talk long now that her home number was a business line. But what she’d learned today was that newborns don’t get obituaries, at least not in the Everton Echo, and probably not anywhere in the 1950s.

“Dad didn’t go with you?”

“He was in a hurry to get back to his studio. Whoops, here’s a call. It might be him. Gotta go.”



I helped Joel unload the cargo and hoist it up to the second floor, then teamed up for the assembly—if reading the instructions aloud and supplying a Phillips screwdriver qualified as teamwork. He seemed to be studying me as I put linens and blankets on the new mattress, smoothing every layer in, apparently, too conscientious a fashion. “What are you all jittery about?” he asked.

I said I wasn’t, that I just wanted everything to look nice—this quilt was as old as I was. If you have wallpaper this busy do you need artwork? What about Dad’s old felt Everton Country Day pennant? Too corny? Did he think the room was too barren with only a bed and the scarred dresser I’d found curbside on big-item garbage day?

“Compared to what? Sleeping in his car?”

“Slight exaggeration,” I said. My next task was emptying the top two bureau drawers, which I’d been using as a substitute linen closet.

“He’s a guy,” Joel said. “He’s gonna live out of his suitcase.” He checked his phone. “If we’re done here, I’ll pack up this rubble and take off.”

“You don’t want to stick around and meet Nick?”

“Can’t. Sorry. Another time.”

I asked if he had plans.

“You could say that.”

“Is it a date?”

He took the pile of towels I was holding and walked it across the hall. “Here?” he asked at my bureau. “Or where?”

“Anywhere. Thanks. If it is a date, did you meet online?”

“Nope.”

“Did you meet . . . just out in the world?”

“Sort of. She called me.”

“That’s nice, don’t you think? I like hearing that a woman asked a man for a date.”