Alternate Side(26)
Nora had embarrassed that other Ricky, who was cool and loose, a swivel to his step, tight jeans and high-top sneakers. Ricky on her block didn’t dress that way, didn’t walk that way, didn’t even talk that way. He was all business, methodical and neat, or maybe that was just when he was on the job, the way his posture and clothes were different there. Nora remembered being at Charlie’s firm’s Christmas party and having one of the administrative assistants say that being married to Charlie must be a pleasure because he was so neat and organized. Nora had had to bite back a snort of incredulity. That Charlie apparently lived in the office with the big cherry desk, the matching credenza, the oatmeal-colored couch, the landscape on the wall. Perpetually messy Charlie lived in her house. Maybe it was the same with Ricky, no cap on the toothpaste, coffee cups with muddy dregs on the table, socks on the floor. Maybe that’s the Ricky Nita knew, but the one who worked for Nora never left a tool out, always used a dustpan and brush when he was done with a repair, even though Charity always stood there frowning, waving the DustBuster and breathing hard.
Now Nora had to add Ricky to the list of things going awry on the block. The ocher shadows under his brown-black eyes were darker and deeper, and he had the kind of graven marionette lines that many of the women Nora knew had had plumped by a dermatologist. He still said, “Good morning, missus,” whenever he saw her, but he’d lost his light. Usually when she gave him items the twins had outgrown, soccer shirts, picture books, passing them along for Ricky’s own children, he turned them over in his scarred hands and smiled. Now, no. When she told Linda Lessman she had watched him being ticketed, Linda sighed. “Please don’t ask me to fix the tickets,” Linda said.
“Of course not. But the poor guy. He’ll go out of business if this keeps up.”
Nora stopped to talk to him while she was walking Homer and he was leaving the Rizzolis’ later that evening. The Rizzoli oven had apparently gone kaput, but Ricky had cleaned out the automatic pilot, and heat had returned to the stove. Homer sniffed Ricky’s pants leg. Nora jerked him back, and Homer turned slowly and looked at her with reproach. The idea that he would ever urinate on a human leg was insulting.
“No problem, missus,” Ricky said, shifting his tool bag. “He just smells my dog. I got a pit bull mix, her name’s Rosie.”
“Rosie doesn’t sound like a pit bull name,” Nora said.
“Nah, she’s real sweet. Pit bulls get a bad rep.”
“His wife not doing so good,” Charity said later, shaking her head, and when she saw the confusion on Nora’s face, adding, “She got the cancer in the breast. They do—” Here she made a motion that Nora assumed was meant to mimic a scalpel.
Nora couldn’t help but remember the size of the breasts on the windowsill the day she’d brought the humidifier to the Bronx, or the fit Nita had thrown from her perch above them. It seemed unlikely she’d be a compliant patient.
“Maybe I can help with a doctor,” Nora said. “I know people on the board of the big cancer hospital.”
Charity shook her head, then burst out, “Help get people off his back with the parking! Mr. Fisk yelling at him, that stupid man across the street”—even Charity was contemptuous of George—“Mr. Nolan, too. He work so hard for everybody, night, day, weekends. He missed church for Mr. Lessman!”
There had not been such an outburst from Charity since Rachel had been denied the part of Dorothy in the school production of The Wizard of Oz. “The good witch has a beautiful costume,” Nora had said as her daughter sobbed into her side, and Charity had hollered, “Not the biggest part! Not what was for Judy Gartner when she was in the movie!”
Not for the first time, Nora wondered what would become of them if Charity were to quit. There were always rumors of poachers, newcomers to the high-rise buildings that had grown up around the block like a forbidding fence, women who trawled the parks and grocery stores for nannies and housekeepers who could be lured away with bigger salaries or lighter duties. Since part of Charity’s routine when she’d first started to work for them was to believe that Oliver and Rachel were the most remarkable children to ever be born in a New York hospital, Nora had been confident for years that she would not leave. When she had first started to think about the twins leaving for college, she had found herself poised on a dark chasm of sadness and uncertainty, because she would miss them so terribly and because she was convinced Charity would quit.
“No way, Mom,” Oliver said.
“Homer,” Rachel added. “Charity will stay until Homer dies.”
“Don’t say that!” yelled Oliver.
“Then she’ll come work for me,” Rachel continued.
“Can you afford Charity?” Nora said.
“No, but you can,” Rachel said with a smirk. “And maybe by that time I can afford her myself. Homer is going to live for a long, long time.”
“And Charity will stay for us, anyhow,” Oliver added while he was attacking a plate of jerk chicken. One of the reasons Charity loved cooking for the kids was that Oliver consumed vast quantities, often as though he were killing as well as eating his food. He had been a picky eater as a child, confining himself largely to rice, Cheerios, and bananas, and Charity took credit for the change. She insisted that both her sisters, whose names were of course Faith and Hope, said that she was the best cook of the three, which was a way to brag without seeming as though she were the one bragging. Vance apparently agreed. Vance was the only son, the golden child of the family, whose night-school college classes had culminated in a job juggling numbers in some city department. Vance’s opinion on any topic, from Middle East policy to the care of hardwood floors, was invoked by Charity and considered the last, best word on the subject. There seemed to be some concern that Vance had not yet found himself a woman, but there was also agreement that no woman, even the estimable Mavis Robertson, who played the organ at church, was truly worthy of his notice. At church they apparently used Vance’s full name, which was Perseverance, but Charity said he had thought that was too much to use at work.