THE FIRST TIME I met Sheila Laherty, she knocked on my door just as I had set the table for Sunday dinner. I was alone, but my mother and sisters always told me to treat each meal as if it was a celebration. My table was clean, with a linen tablecloth, and cutlery placed overtop of napkins on the right side. A spinning daisy in the center held the stew I’d made that morning. I added some wine to the table just before I answered the door.
“Hi,” Sheila said. She smiled and revealed slightly crooked teeth. “Mr. Crane?”
“Mr. Cane,” I corrected. I’d seen Sheila before in the apartment building. She lived down the hall, one of many neighbors I recognized by sight, but nothing beyond. I wondered how she’d known my name, but figured it was written on our mail slots in the foyer. “What can I do for you...?”
“Sheila. Sheila Laherty,” she introduced herself. After shaking my hand in a firm grip, she placed her palm around the swell of her stomach. It was only then that I noticed the bump. It had been fall, then winter, and the expanding clothing she’d adorned herself with I figured was for warmth, if I stopped more than three seconds to consider. “I know this is rather strange, but whatever you’re making smells fantastic. What is it?”
“Oh.” I sniffed the air, but had been in the kitchen all morning so I’d stopped smelling the spices I was blending for my Sunday meal. “Just a stew.”
“What is it, though? Maybe I can find a place that does takeout all the same. I’m not one for the kitchen, but wow.” She breathed in deep, her dark eyes popping with delight. “I mean... it just smells so good. I had to come out of my apartment and see what it was. You know, you get a super-nose when you’re pregnant. It’s sort of neat.”
“I didn’t know that, actually.” The life I’d shared with my mothers and sisters did not include that facet. And my life now mostly revolved around myself and other men. “Would you like some?”
Sheila’s dark eyes beamed. I should have seen the devilish way she curled a hand around her ear, tucking away her dark curls slyly, as if the idea had never occurred to her before—when that had probably been the exact reason she’d sought me out. “Are you sure? I don’t want to impose...”
“Please. I’ve made enough for the week. More than enough to share.”
I held my door open for her and shut it once she was inside. She took off her shoes next to my own, and revealed remarkably small feet. Everything about Sheila was small; she was barely five feet, her face was round and childish like a pixie, and her hands were no bigger than the feet she bore. She probably wore children’s sizes at the stores, until that growing belly of hers came along.
“Were you expecting someone?” she asked when she stepped into the living room. Her gaze flicked from my books to my entertainment center, then to the table that was decked out with a tablecloth and steaming stew and the wine.
“No,” I said. “My mother instilled good manners, though.”
“I can tell. She did a good job. Are you still in touch with her?”
I shook my head and gestured to the table again. “Please. Sit. I’ll grab you a bowl.”
She sat in my place setting. I set myself up on the other end of the table. I served us both. Sheila whispered praises about the meal and myself, but once the stew was in front of her, she drew silent and practically inhaled it as if she hadn’t eaten in days. Something stirred in my own gut that was not hunger. I should have realized then it was a warning of what was to come.
Instead, I thought it was pity.
“Please stop by any time,” I said as she put on her shoes an hour later. “I always have something on the stove.”
“If you’re sure,” she asked, but she was already smiling.
OVER THE NEXT three months, Sheila joined me for Sunday dinner. At first, she only ate what I served, asked questions about the recipes, and probed about my culture and lineage. Polite topics, especially when sharing a meal. She asked for recipes, which I tried to remember from years of memorization, and she wrote them down happily though she still insisted she was no good in the kitchen.
“I’m not sure how I’m going to feed this one. Maybe I’ll get good at warming, as Susan Sontag said she did.”
I was delighted at the mention of the cultural critic. We spoke about books and my job at the local college that day, but we always came back around to the food. Even when I was at work, as my business students struggled with passive voice, I’d often browse recipes online. It didn’t take long to find some that I believed Sheila would enjoy. I copied them on Sundays, and then she would copy them into a notebook she always had with her. Her writing was neat as she wrote them out, though I know she never made them for herself. I never smelled anything from her apartment, never even saw inside until much later. She always came to me, and eventually, she asked to take some food home.
“Just for tomorrow’s lunch. It’s hard to balance good meals with working all the time.”
“Where do you work?” I asked, realizing I had no idea what she did all day.
“Oh, I work from home. Temp work, mostly.”
“What kind?”
“I’m a private investigator, really,” she said as if it was nothing. “I find things for people. Mostly missing kids and the like. Cheating husbands are my bread and butter, so to speak.”
“Wow. I had no idea.”
She gestured to her growing belly. “I don’t fit the type, I know. It’s a little hard to do the legwork with the baby on the way, so I’ve taken to mostly doing computer research. I forget to eat, and then that’s not good for the baby.”
“No, it’s not,” I had to agree. I gave her leftovers. Then, eventually, I found myself giving her what was in my fridge and pantry. Just small items; oh, I bought some crackers I don’t like, would you take them? Some cookies, canned soup, much the same. She took them eagerly and genuinely thanked me.
“You know, you’re not like most men I meet in my line of work. Very giving. Thank you.”
I didn’t say anything to that. I just gave her more and more.
It was not long before she started to make subtle requests. “Have you ever heard of tiramisu? What about jerk chicken or anything with adobe? “ She would suggest items outside of both of our cultures and everyday lives, encouraging me to give it a try.
Then she’d take the leftovers without asking. She’d knock on the door at all hours of the day during the weekend requesting more food. She’d leave notes on the door when I was teaching class, notes that started off as kind requests but soon became thinly disguised shopping lists.
“Sheila,” I said after we had had one of our Sunday dinners that were growing more and more lengthy. “I can’t keep feeding you like this.”
“What do you mean?” She tilted her head to the side, her small face and youthful expression making her seem benign. She clasped her hands over her round belly, as if to make me feel guilty. “I thought we were friends.”
“We are. Or at least, I’d like to be. But I feel as if I’m being taken advantage of.”
“How?”
“The food. You’re not even asking me about my job or my life anymore. You’re simply making requests and expecting me to meet them.”
“How is teaching?” she asked. “You said you were having trouble with a student, right?”
I sighed. “That’s not the point.”
“I thought you wanted more conversation. I didn’t want to ask some things, you know, since I realized your real first name.”
“What?” I asked, then swallowed. My real first name, as she referred to it, was a deadname. It was an older version of me, a past I let go of when I moved here and left my family, and my lineage as one of three sisters in my mother’s kitchen, behind. The only part of that I’d taken with me were memories, memories I was now transcribing on recipe index cards to a woman who was also a private investigator.
I should have known this would happen.
“You know…” she said, narrowing her dark eyes.
While I focused on what she was about to say, her belly seemed to disappear. I saw what those cheating spouses must have seen when she showed them the telephoto lens, and those black and white images of them caught with their pants down.
“I didn’t even need to look you up in a database to find it. I saw the name on one of your letters. The rest was easy to figure out.”
“You read my mail?” I asked. I scoffed. “Even you should know that’s a—”
“I never opened it. I simply saw the name on the address.”
“How do you know it was me, then? There are a lot of people who live in this building—”
“I figured it was your sister. But now you’ve told me it’s you.” She rubbed her belly. She smiled in the way I knew the child inside her was moving. “It’s not a big deal. I don’t care who you were then.”
I remained quiet. I could feel the upcoming ‘but’ under her breath.
“I like your cooking,” she said. “Your recipes, both inherited and online experiments. And my baby likes it, too. I can name them after you. I don’t know the gender yet, but I suppose it won’t really matter. Either one, it’ll get a name.”
“Sheila,” I said. “I think my hospitality has worn out. I’d like you to leave.”
“Are you sure about that?”
I examined her. I didn’t understand how a small woman, a pregnant woman, could instill so much fear in me. It wasn’t just my past, or her nature at digging up dirt on others, either. I was well aware I had rights and could live however I wanted. I was living however I wanted. And there were rules she still had to follow even if she was a PI. But the fear still lingered, enough that I went to offer her the leftovers again, as a small parting gift.
“I didn’t like this dish as much,” she said. “It smelled good, but the texture was a bit off-putting. You keep it. I’ll come again next week.”
“Sheila,” I said.
“Gregory,” she mirrored. When I said nothing, only gestured towards the door, she went on. “You really should consider what you’re doing. In all cultures, no matter where you’re from, no matter what you serve on the table, you can’t deny a pregnant woman food. Or shelter. Or even books she wants to borrow from the shelf.”
I wondered what tome in my collection had caught her eye. What piece of furniture she’d asked about next, what part of my past she’d want in exchange for... what? I was getting absolutely nothing in this bargain.
“I thought you were my friend, Sheila,” I said. “I don’t know about that now.”
“Feeling used, Mr. Cane?”
I nodded.
“I get it. I feel like that now. You think I’m a bad neighbor, try having a roommate who’s kicking you in the middle of the night and stripping the calcium from your bones. God, I feel my teeth rotting because this beast is taking all of it.”
“It’s a child, a baby.”
“I never asked for it.”
“But you have it now,” I said, no longer sympathizing with her. “You could have done something, but you didn’t.”
Sheila gave me a sinister smile. “You’re right. I could have, but I didn’t. So now I’m merely asking for your hospitality, as you might say. Let me come here for more Sunday dinners. I promise, just Sundays now. And I’ll keep your secret.”
I sighed. I opened my apartment door. “I have nothing to hide, Sheila. I know who I am.”
“And I know who I am. Or at least, who I can become. And Mr. Cane, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
IT TOOK ABOUT a week for things to go wrong.
I chalked the leaky pipes, a broken hinge on my bedroom door, and the infernal beeping from a malfunctioning fire alarm to the building’s general deterioration. Each time I called the super, she came and fixed it all as soon as she could, though she did ask me a few times if I had tried to fix these items myself first. “There are marks on ‘em, that’s all,” she said when I became obstinate that I hadn’t touched a thing. “Just looks like you wanted to become a tool guy.”
“I’m not.”
“Okay, then.”
I tried not to let paranoia change my behavior. Even though I dreamed of Sheila slipping in my door, wrench under her arm, I had a hard time imagining her with a large belly getting under the sink and removing pipes. Or climbing a ladder to muck with the fire alarm. It was impossible, downright paranoid. She had better things to do.
But when I was fired at work, my contract terminated early due to a student accusation that I could not track down to prove or disprove, I started to believe something more sinister was occurring.
Finding Sheila’s online PI page only confirmed all my doubts. Cheating husbands were not simply her bread and butter, but part of an entire packaged deal she deemed “Revenge Served Cold”; she found cheating spouses and missing children from divorces, and then made the perpetrators pay in ever more creative and ever more elaborate ways. There were dozens of horror stories online about the havoc she had wreaked. This five foot elf, a man wrote on a message board. She ruined my fucking life.
I exited everything and wiped my computer clean. I knew that she could ruin my life, too. She was already in the process of doing so. The recipe was almost complete.
I paced up and down the apartment hallway, wondering if I should confront her. Would that make it better or worse? I was not a cheating spouse, but she’d still done irreversible damage in my career. What else did I have to lose, other than my apartment itself? My name was changed, my rights in place—for once I was not worried about my gender. But my home. My kitchen. The only family legacy I could keep as my own seemed precarious as the stained recipe cue cards she wrote on, but never used.
I went back to my apartment and tried to sleep. All I heard was the clattering of someone in the apartment above me. Cat screeches from outside. And a slow and unnerving smell that crept up from my toilet.
I called the emergency line for the super, waking her up at one in the morning. “Hello?” her sleep-filled voice answered.
“There’s something wrong with the pipes again. I think the sewage is backing up.”
“Okay, okay. You’re not the first person to mention the smell.”
“Am I not? Is it...” I didn’t finish. The super was already telling me the pregnant lady down the hall said something, too. “Just after she told me I needed to fix it, or else.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry about that.”
“Eh. She’s a persistent one. But I suppose she has a right to be, you know. Baby and all.”
I didn’t argue. I hung up the phone and barely slept. When the plumber came in the morning, I decided to make a meal in the kitchen. I’d make the first stew that had brought her to my door. I doubled the batch, and added extra spices to entice her. I cooked and cooked, filling the kitchen so much that even the plumber commented as he left. “Good for what ails ya, I suppose,” he said. “Good luck feeding the village.”
I waited another hour, the table set, until I decided Sheila wasn’t coming. I had to go to her this time around. I bundled up a large Tupperware container and headed down to her door. I knocked three times before the neighbor across from her answered.
“She’s gone,” the woman said. “Having the baby.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sure she’ll appreciate that when she gets back,” the woman said, gesturing to the stew. “Sure can smell it from down here.”
I was about to offer her some when she made a face. Too much curry, too much spice, I could see in her gaze. I started to feel almost bereft of someone to share it with. Back inside, alone at my table, I even started to long for Sheila. What had she done to me? She was ruining my life and all I wanted from her was another chance to set things in order. Not to serve cold revenge, but warm with stew and kindness.
Did cravings disappear once babies were born? I wondered. I looked it up and found out that yes, they often did. I didn’t know if she’d ever want to have dinner with me again.
I realized then she had truly cursed me, made me crazy for something that I had resented, and there was nothing I could do but watch my dinner go cold.
THREE DAYS LATER, when I knew that Sheila had returned with her baby boy, I knocked on her door. This time I brought the last of the stew, rather than the first of it. I also had flowers because, as my mother and sisters told me, when someone gets out of the hospital, for whatever reason, you bring them flowers.
“Mr. Cane,” she said. She smiled widely. “And some dahlias. My favorite. Would you like to come in?”
Sheila stepped aside and I entered without another word. She was back to being her petite self, though she’d just given birth. It was strange to see her without her large belly—but she was flat, as if she’d never been pregnant. Even her breasts had diminished, as if she was binding them like I’d done when I was in my teen years.
“Where’s your son?” I asked. “I heard you had a boy.”
“A shame, really.”
“A shame?”
“Yeah, all I had picked out were girls’ names. Alas.” She shrugged as if this was no big deal. “I guess I’ll have to resort to old case files to find one that fits the circumstance. He’s asleep, by the way. In the bedroom. Come, sit at the table with me.”
I followed her through her apartment, a mirror image of my own. Where I had bookshelves and an entertainment area, she had nothing. Or next to nothing. There was a long couch, worn thin on the arms, and some stacks of books that bore the marker of a local library. A small table was where mine was, but it was rickety. It leaned to one side as she added the Tupperware. She went to her kitchen to get something for the flowers, but all she had was a pitcher one would normally serve juice in.
“It’ll have to do.” She added the dahlias to the pitcher with some water and set it in the middle of the table. She had no real plates, only paper ones with plastic cutlery, taken from fast food places where she normally ate her meals.
I felt my stomach surge. Guilt. I’d kicked this woman out of my life, simply because she’d overstayed her welcome.
“Sheila, I wanted to say I’m sorry. I—”
“No need to apologize,” she said with a weary smile. “I was being, as some of my clients call me, a bitch. I’m going to blame pregnancy. Certainly made me act differently. I can’t wait to get back to normal now. Please.”
She gestured to a chair at the table. She sat down after I did, and served us both in paper bowls with plastic spoons. She made all the right noises over the stew, but I could also tell her palate had changed.
“Not the same?” I asked.
“No, not even close.” She was about to say something else when I heard a cry. Low and raspy, much different than I thought a baby would be. Her dark eyes seemed tired as she rose from the table. “I’ll be right back.”
“Let me,” I said. I didn’t know why I offered. I didn’t believe I was good with kids, despite having a teaching degree and many sisters to play dolls with while growing up. Maybe that was why I did offer. I wasn’t teaching. I didn’t have those sisters anymore. Seeing a young person would have been the next best thing to fulfilling an urge I knew I still had inside of me—not to be a mother, but to be something—no, someone kind.
“If you insist,” Sheila said. “I bet he’d love to set a familiar face to a familiar voice. You were around him just as much as anyone else.”
I had never thought of it that way before. A part inside of me glowed with recognition.
Once again, I should have realized it was another trick, another way of her working her way into my life for the long-term. “It’s always the food first,” my mother would tell me when I was younger. “That is how you win any man’s heart. You feed them, then you love them, and then they never leave.” I wondered how my mother would feel about Sheila’s bread and butter.
Sheila’s son was staying in the room I called my office in my own apartment. It looked to be Sheila’s office, too, since a desk was lined against one wall, an outline of a laptop still present in the dust. His crib was along the other side, a bare white cage-like place with no mobile. He was a fussing lump in the center of the big mattress. He wore a blue onesie and had a small hat on. His skin was the same shade as Sheila’s, though a little lighter like my own. Once I picked him up, and his dark eyes opened, they were his mother’s through and through.
“Ah, a natural,” Sheila said. She leaned in the doorframe. I hadn’t heard her come in. “I should name him after you.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. It means watchful. I looked it up a minute ago. And in general, I think most people should be more watchful.”
“That’s nice. I didn’t know that.”
“It’s your name, though. I assume you picked it.”
“I did. But I just liked the sound.”
She nodded. She said nothing else. I waited for her to ask more questions, to pry more into my previous life, but she didn’t. Instead, she snapped a photo on her phone of the two of us. “Just for a memory,” she said. Then she gasped like she’d forgotten the time. It was an act, and I saw through it, but I also didn’t want to see through it. “I have to pick up a prescription from the drugstore,” she said. “Do you mind staying with him?”
I told her no, not at all. I did not ask when she’d be back, and she didn’t offer a time. She left so easily, with nothing but a purse bulging with her laptop, it didn’t seem real.
But by the time three hours had passed, and I’d fed Gregory once from the bottles in the fridge, I knew she’d never return.
PEOPLE IN THE building called her a criminal. People called her other horrible names I’ll not repeat here. She was more hated after leaving Gregory than she’d ever been before, despite her business acumen, since only mothers who abandon their children receive worst treatment than people who truly are criminals. Or cheaters.
For once, though, I didn’t join in. I didn’t know her before she was pregnant, and even while she was, I still had a hard time seeing her as a bad person. Someone stuck in a bad place, a story I didn’t know and that she’d probably never tell anyway, but I understood in my own way. She wanted her body back, because it gave her the life she wanted. So she left behind the only part of that she could without guilt. And she only left him behind, because she knew she could count on me, her good neighbor. The only man she ever really liked.
I found out a week later that I’d been listed as the father on the birth certificate. Despite this impossibility, I knew it to be true. I’d fed that baby through her. I’d nurtured him through her. And when he smiled at my voice, Sheila’s lies may as well have been the truth.
So he lives with me now. In my apartment, with a better crib than what Sheila had. All the things that Sheila undid with her presence have mostly gone back to normal. A young couple lives in her place. The apartment building is no longer falling apart. And I have a different job at a new school, given to me in part by a stunning recommendation letter that came without asking.
All normal.
Except that I don’t have Sunday dinners alone anymore, and when Gregory is older, he’ll learn how to cook too, guided by my family memories written in his mother’s hand.