What's Mine and Yours(7)
“It’s kinda hard when you haven’t worked in ten years. And all you’ve ever done is fry fries.” The receptionist spoke slowly, as if she didn’t expect Lacey to understand.
“I’ve been raising my girls,” Lacey said.
“I mean real work, out of the house. Employment.”
“I’m pretty sure I could answer the phone.”
“You don’t have any qualifications.”
Lacey wanted to hang up on her, or to insult her again, but she couldn’t risk ticking off the woman who could move her folder down to the bottom of the pile. So Lacey mentioned how she had earned decent grades in high school, was quick in the kitchen, better behind the wheel than most. The receptionist was quiet for a while, then said she’d add a note to Lacey’s file and hung up.
Later on, when she heard the school bus turn up the road, Lacey stationed herself at the door, her arms loaded with woolen things. The girls blazed in, chattering, their cheeks windblown, and Lacey handed them each a sweater and a pair of mittens, a scarf for Diane.
“It’s winter in our house!” she said, and the girls caught on quickly. They dropped their bags and swathed themselves in the new layers, made a big noise stomping around the living room. Soon they were all explorers, sliding across a stretch of ice in Alaska. Somehow, Lacey became a sled, and the girls scrambled on top of her. Margarita pretended to be one of those racing dogs, so she got down on all fours and howled, which made the real dog Jenkins dart behind the couch to hide.
They kept on their sweaters and scarves while they cooked grilled cheese, the yellow squares gobbled up faster than Lacey could set them in the pan. They were pleased when they were all allowed to lie down in bed with Lacey, and she didn’t make them crawl out from under the blankets to wash their hands. Jenkins dozed beneath them, and the girls watched their breath puff overhead.
“That’s oxygen,” Lacey said. “It’s what we breathe. You spell it O-X-Y—”
Her oldest, Noelle, was bright as a lamp, almost ten. She liked books about outer space and the ocean; she could be a scientist one day. Lacey considered her the one of her girls who could go the furthest. She was doing the spelling for her.
Noelle repeated after her mother: “G-E-N.” Diane and Margarita burst into applause.
The next morning the girls went off to school, all of them with pink noses and runny eyes. Lacey saw them down the hill, and she was jealous they were off to somewhere the thermostat was set much higher than fifty-five.
She took a shower to beat the cold, and it was the most pleasure she had felt since Robbie went away. Had water always been this warm and good? Her hands set to work on every inch of her, and the heat seemed to sink in deep, underneath the top layer of skin—what was it called? The epidermis? She had learned the name in high school. It was only these last few weeks, since the nurse moved in next door, that Lacey started remembering she hadn’t been half-bad at biology. She had seen the nurse driving down the road to her shift at the hospital and thought, I could have been you. Sure, the nurse was fat and had no husband and left her boy with a babysitter overnight, didn’t even bother with the leaves in the yard, but it was probably seventy, seventy-five degrees over in her bungalow, and wasn’t that worth something?
Lacey shivered, and wrapped her head in towels. She felt the sin of her wet hair. How much gas was she using now? How many percents did it take to heat the house every day?
She opened all the curtains to let in the sunshine, thinking some light might warm the place. Half an hour later, she went around drawing them all closed because maybe she was letting in a draft. She had lived in the house for four years, ever since Robbie moved them all up to the north of the county, and still she didn’t know how it all worked. When she went to get dressed, she had a sudden, terrible thought: How did the water get heated? Did that use up the gas, too?
She didn’t want to call Robbie’s old boss, but she did. There was nothing else to do.
“I’m worried it might be bad for the girls. All this cold.”
“Can’t you sell your food stamps?”
“We’ve got to eat, Annette.”
“Well, the cold never killed anybody. Take Robbie. He grew up in a tropical place, where it’s hot all the time, and look at how he turned out—”
“Annette, I’ve told you, it’s not his fault. He’s got…” Lacey searched for the words, tried to remember the lawyer’s exact phrase. “A chemical unbalanced.”
Annette sighed. “You played dumb for too long, Lacey May.”
“All we need is a little loan.”
“No, ma’am. Robbie already cleaned me out, remember?”
Lacey May didn’t like when Annette brought up the garage. After all his years of working for her so faithfully, Annette had nearly turned him in until Lacey May showed up at Beard Street and begged for her to look the other way, just this once. All he’d done was sell off a few spare parts.
“Anyway, aren’t you still getting those government checks?” Annette said. “How’d you burn through the money so quick?”
When Lacey said nothing, Annette cursed. “You’re as shit-rotten as he is,” she said. “You don’t love those little girls half as much as they deserve.”
Lacey put herself to bed, her hair leaking all over the pillows. The dog followed her into the room, whimpering. She drew three blankets up over herself and started talking out loud. Why’d you buy me this house if it was going to be so cold? Why’d you buy me this house if you were going to leave me alone?