She had just finished throwing up when she heard the doorbell. Beverly reached for a hand towel from the built-in linen closet in her mother-in-law’s bathroom. The thick textured fabric rubbed roughly against her lips as she wiped her mouth. She ran water in the sink to wash down the bits of regurgitated grapefruit pith, toast and mucous, then rinsed the cloth and held it to her forehead. Her post-puke fog left her enervated yet relieved. The tension in her neck and shoulders had eased, the sour wedge in her gut had disappeared. Morning sickness — morning, noon and night. She felt best those few minutes right after vomiting.
The doorbell rang.
Beverly caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the sink, and was surprised at the reflection. Despite nausea, she looked good. Everyone said, you absolutely glow. Her short brown hair, although dishevelled, shone with a hint of a wave and body it hadn’t had before. Her complexion was clear and silky. Colour flashed on her cheeks. She looked terrific, but felt like shit. Six-and-a-half more months of this?
The doorbell rang.
She brushed her teeth. She was careful not to probe too deeply with the brush—that provoked a gag reaction. The roof of her mouth and the back of her throat felt like they were coated with a thick paste, and she suddenly retched—just once, bringing nothing up—thinking of wet papier-mâché.
The doorbell rang.
“Hold your horses or go away,” she muttered as she went downstairs.
The visitor stood close to the townhouse, inside the drip line of the eave. He was reaching to ring the bell again when Beverly opened the door. She said nothing, just looked at him through the screen. The rain had plastered his thinning white hair to his scalp. A few drops hung in his bushy brows. His skin was very pale. He looked fifty, maybe sixty years old. Beverly thought of a potato, and with his blue eyes swimming in his face, decided he should be Irish.
“Mary and Frank aren’t in,” the man said, nodding his head towards the front door of the neighbouring condominium, ten feet away. A pair of hedge clippers, red wooden handles opened like an X, and a long-handled spade were on the patch of grass that passed for lawn beside the shared sidewalk. The morning’s downpour had slackened to a drizzle, and the tools seemed varnished by wet. Beverly remembered the poem she had read in college about a wheelbarrow. So much depends.
She didn’t speak.
“Mary and Frank aren’t home,” he started again. “I sometimes go there for lunch when the weather’s bad.” He reached a hand inside his windbreaker—an old-fashioned one, Beverly noticed, probably rayon, collarless with frayed corduroy trim and a dulled brass zipper—and he pulled out a wrinkled brown paper sack. The shoulders of his jacket were dark with rain, even his lunch bag looked damp. “They let me use their microwave. For my lunch.”
Somewhere in the neighbourhood, a beep-beep-beep signalled that a truck was backing up, then it stopped. Beverly stared through the mesh of the screen, looking at a point over the man’s left shoulder, as if she were doing sums in her head. Finally, she said, “I don’t know why you’re telling me this.”
The man sidled over to invade her gaze, and looked at her with a real in-the-eye look. He smiled. “I thought I’d see if Gladys was in. She sometimes comes over when I eat with Mary and Frank.” There was a quaver in his voice, as if he were trying to prevent his teeth from chattering. He shrugged. “But I guess she’s not home either.”
“Gladys,” Beverly said. For a second she didn’t know who he was talking about, then it clicked. Nobody called her Gladys. She was Gaddie. Her mother-in-law, Colm’s mother. They were house-sitting for Gaddie while she spent six months in Africa with Christian Helpmates International.
The man’s khaki pants were faded to a gloss, his work boots scuffed and cracking. One steel toecap poked through a hole in the leather. She glanced at the spade and clippers. Had Gaddie said anything about the gardener? Beverly couldn’t remember—really, she had stopped paying attention to the woman. She and Colm had settled in only a week ago. It was Gaddie’s idea, cooked up when she found out Beverly was expecting. After all, she had said, Beverly and Colm were starting their family late, starting everything late (“Most of my friends had four or five babies by the time they were your age!”). They had all those student loans, had spent all that time in school and travelling everywhere, living in apartments. If they stayed until the baby came, paid off their debts, maybe they could save the down payment for a house of their own. Besides, someone had to look after the condo.
So they sold or gave away most of the things that they had acquired over the years as cast-offs or in garage sales, and moved in. The few good pieces of furniture were packed into Gaddie’s garage. Colm insisted on keeping his boxes of engineering textbooks. Beverly wouldn’t part with her bolts of fabric and rolling racks of clothes she had made. They kept a steamer trunk full of vinyl records because they didn’t have the time to sort through and separate Peter Frampton from Bob Dylan, then argue over what to keep and what to trash. Colm’s 1969 BSA Lightning motorcycle was scattered in several pieces. Gaddie had tut-tutted: “Where will you park my car?”
“There’s room outside on the apron,” Colm replied.
Before she boarded her plane to Washington, D.C., where the Christians were assembling for the assault on the dark continent, the three of them had spent two days in the townhouse. Gaddie had fussed non-stop.
By the phone in the kitchen she assembled a thick three-ring binder with a green cover, sectioned with stiff-tabbed dividers. She compiled phone lists of neighbours, missionary contacts, emergency numbers for fire, flood, pestilence and war. An itinerary of her African trip, complete with brochures about the places she would visit. Operations and maintenance instructions for the washer and dryer, fridge and stove, convection oven, microwave, freezer, televisions, stereos, the furnace. Insurance policies. Lots of insurance policies—the widow of the owner of an insurance agency believed in good coverage.
Gaddie talked her way through those two days. “That’s Mr. Gilford,” she would say as a car pulled into the little lane that wound through the units in her part of the complex. “He’s chair of the Risk Management Committee. You’ll need to call him if the roof leaks or a tree falls against the house.” “There’s Betty Peel, Snow Removal Task Force,” she said, pointing out an elderly woman power-walking in the early morning. “Don’t hesitate to call her in a blizzard.” (To offer assistance or demand service? Gaddie didn’t say.) About a silver-haired man who walked his poodle through the green commons twice a day: “Wife left two years ago.” Three women in saris, pushing a shopping cart from the supermarket down the road: “Never so much as a hello to us, just nattering away to themselves in their own gibberish.” Two clean-cut men riding matching bicycles, one with a white helmet, the other yellow: “Those two are gay! I know because they told me themselves, they tell everybody.” A young mother limping after her two boys as they kick a soccer ball through the parking lot: “Recovering from hip replacement.” A man who drove a panel van with the logo of a painting and decorating company: “Jewish.” A woman with her hair in curlers: “Alcoholic.” Beverly remembered Mary and Frank: “Daughter joined a cult.”
Beverly looked at the man again. His shoulders seemed hunched a little more, his shivering intensified, the look in his eyes now plainly miserable. She noticed a clump of wet clay on the blade of the spade. In her own little patio at the back, Gaddie had taken up all the annuals before she left, deadheaded the perennials, pruned and mulched the planters, and generally made the little garden fallow. She said she wouldn’t dream of foisting her chores on them, especially with Beverly in her condition. The meaning was clear—she didn’t trust them to do it to her standards. Beverly couldn’t remember if Gaddie had mentioned the gardener for the common areas of the complex.
It seemed Gaddie had exhausted in detail all the routines of the complex: trash collection on Tuesdays now, but the schedule slips a day after every statutory holiday, so by the time she gets back, it’ll be back to Tuesdays. Put the cans by the lane, not in the lane. Separate the paper and metal and glass. No visitor parking except in the designated lot, absolutely no stopping in fire lanes, use of the picnic pagoda by appointment only, 10:30 outside noise curfew.
A drop of water clung to the tip of the man’s nose. Beverly suddenly thought, This man is cold and wet and hungry. “What the hell,” she said, “Come on in.”
In the tiny vestibule, the man struggled with the laces on his boots. A toe showed through one sock. He slipped off his jacket, and held it in one hand slightly away from himself, reached for a hanger in the open front closet, and swept his eyes over the contents—Colm’s leather bomber, Beverly’s raw silk quilted jacket, Gaddie’s lambswool overcoat zipped in a plastic garment bag. Colm’s ancient golf clubs that had belonged to his father. He turned and hung the jacket on the doorknob, where it dripped onto the ceramic tiles.
Beverly led the man through the hall and up the half-flight of stairs to the kitchen. The townhouse was tall and narrow, the third unit in a building of four; that building in turn one of twenty-five or so arrayed on the condominium property. Each unit was a five-level split, the levels staggered front to back to maximize the use of space. The single-car garage occupied most of the main level, with the front entrance and matchbook lawn. On the second level, the kitchen and family room opened through a sliding glass door onto the compact patio.
Beverly had set up a long folding table in the middle of the family room, and piled it high with fabric, half-finished garments, and her sewing machine. She kept the long vertical blinds closed over the glass door, to shut out the patio and its orderliness. Interlocking colour-coordinated paving stones, scrubbed and swept. The rigid planters terraced in every nook and cranny. The barbecue with its insulated cover, covered again by a plastic sheet. Une place pour chaque chose et chaque chose à sa place. She had detested high school French.
The man plunked his sodden paper sack on the counter between the two rooms. “Nice place,” he said. He walked over and looked out between the slats of the blinds. “Neat yard,” he said. “Very nice indeed.”
Beverly stood by the stairs, watching as he moved through the space. His shivering seemed to have subsided. He ran a hand through the strands of his hair, then looked at his palm slick with the rain. “I’ll get a towel,” Beverly said. When she returned, the man was standing by the sound system console next to the fireplace. She watched as he ran a finger over the stacks of CDs. He pushed the Eject button and checked the disc that was cued.
“Here’s a towel,” Beverly said.
“Hmm,” the man said. He stayed by the stereo, pushed the CD platter closed, then punched Play. The first couple of bars played, then the voice. Tom Jones. “It’s not unusual to be …” The man cocked his head like the RCA Victor dog, and adjusted the volume up a couple of notches.
“Please,” Beverly said. She moved across the room to pick up the remote control from the worktable and turned off the music. The man shrugged and turned towards her. She flicked her wrist and tossed him the towel. Carefully, he dried his hands, the palms, the backs, between the fingers, wiped his face and brow, then drew it over his hair. He examined the items on the table. “Making clothes?” he said.
“Yes,” Beverly replied. “No, not exactly. Costumes.” It was an important distinction to her. Gaddie was always calling her a seamstress. “For a children’s theatre.” She moved so the table was between them. “That’s what I do. I sew costumes for theatre. Actually, I design and sew costumes. I’m making a mermaid costume.”
“Very admirable,” he replied. The man looked at her sewing machine. “Pfaff. Beautiful,” he said. He kept his eyes on the machine as he handed the used towel to Beverly. She snatched it.
“What about your lunch,” she said. She folded the towel in her hands. “The micro wave’s by the sink.”
He smiled, showing teeth brilliantly white and even. “Right,” he said. “To lunch.” He went to the kitchen, rummaged in his paper sack and pulled out an old margarine container.
Beverly sat at the worktable. She realized she was still kneading the towel, and let it drop to the carpet. She picked up the piece of cloth she had been working with. The play’s director had asked for flesh-coloured spandex. Whose flesh, she wondered. Not this man’s chalky flesh. Not the coffee-brown of the clerk at the fabric store where she had purchased it. She had tried to describe what she was looking for, tried not to describe it in terms of skin; finally the clerk had exclaimed, Oh by all means, we have lots of flesh-tone. Like flesh-coloured crayons, or the colour of dolls, not really the true colour of anyone’s flesh, but a colour that suggested a certain kind of flesh. She wished she hadn’t told him what she was doing. Very admirable, what was that supposed to mean?
Beverly made a few practice seams, working with scraps of fabric before she started to cut the pattern. A bodysuit for a mermaid’s costume. She had finally settled for a blend of cotton-poly reinforced with Lycra. She needed it ready for a fitting tomorrow. She fingered the shiny remnant, stretched it between her hands, and watched the man.
He put the food in the microwave, then stood, examining the panel. “How does this —” he said. She cut in on his question: “Hit Reheat, then enter a time, then hit Start.”
The appliance beeped, then whirred to life as he operated the controls. “These things are all a little different,” he said. He kept his back turned to her, staring through the little window as his food rotated on the platter. The aroma of canned beef stew filled the room. Beverly thought she could smell the salt, the fat, imagined the congealed gravy turning soft and corn-starch slippery. Her gorge rose. She bolted from her chair and ran up the three flights of stairs to the master bathroom. She dry-heaved. When she thought it was over, a vision of the worn plastic tub of stew popped into her head, and she had another round of spasms. Her throat was raw and constricted, as if she had swallowed hot stones.
Beverly sponged her face, then almost lost it again as she scooped a handful of water from the faucet to rinse her mouth. Her stomach muscles and diaphragm were cramping from the days upon days of morning sickness. In the mirror, she saw not exactly a stranger, but a different self. She spoke out loud and watched her mouth as it moved, as if she were reading her own lips: “What the hell is that man doing in my kitchen?” She grabbed the cordless phone from the bedroom and started down. Stopping on the stairs a couple of steps above the kitchen level, she crossed her arms to keep her hands from shaking. “You have to leave,” she said.
The man stood at the counter, shoveling stew into his mouth with one hand; with the other he poked around in her cupboard. He looked at Beverly, the phone. “Can I take the spoon? I found it in a drawer,” he said.
“Take the spoon, I don’t care. You have to go. Now.” The man licked the spoon, stuck it in his shirt pocket. He popped the lid onto the container, opened his mouth like he was going to speak, then closed it. She didn’t follow him to the door, only listened to the rustle as he donned his boots and jacket.
“I’ll leave it in the mailbox,” he called up to her.
“Just go,” she said. “Get out.” She wasn’t sure her voice was loud enough to be heard.
“The spoon,” he said. She heard the door open and close, waited for the sound of the screen door latching. She peeked around the corner, then hurried to the door and shot the bolt. She put her eye to the peephole. He was just a few steps from her, exactly where he had been standing when he rang the doorbell. He held the container under his chin, and spooned food into his mouth. He was looking at the door, at her. Beverly’s hand trembled as she slid the burglar chain into place, careful not to make a noise.
A rush of blood throbbed in her temples. She panted in short breaths, too fast and too shallow, until she started to feel faint. Hyperventilating. She knew the remedy: breathe into a bag. She tiptoed back to the kitchen, ignored the crumpled paper sack the man had left on the counter, and found another in a drawer. She cupped it around her face and concentrated on each inhalation and exhalation. She twitched when the phone began to howl with an off-the-hook alarm. She found it on the couch in the family room and pressed the Talk button to disconnect. She slid to the floor and buried herself in the bag. The crinkle of kraft paper marked the rhythm of her breathing.
When she looked through the peephole again, the man was gone. The spade and clippers still lay on the grass. She didn’t open the door to check the mailbox.
That evening, Colm made a sandwich for his supper. Ham and cheese, a bagel from the freezer. He zapped it in the microwave to thaw, halved it, then toasted and buttered it, careful to spread the butter evenly to the edges. He peeled the outer layers from a head of iceberg lettuce, tossing out those that were the least bit spotted with brown. “You’re sure you don’t want one?” he asked. “You have to eat something.”
“Oh god, don’t even mention food.” Beverly spoke around a mouthful of pins pressed between her lips. She had sketched a pattern for the mermaid suit on onionskin paper and laid it on the floor. She knelt down and pinned the fabric in place. Quiet jazz drifted from a Toots Thielman CD, turned low.
“You need to eat. You can’t expect to stay healthy if you don’t eat and then throw up all day. You or the baby.”
“I’ll have some cheese and crackers.”
“Cheese and crackers! For supper?” Colm spread a thick layer of mustard on one of the bagel halves. He was slightly disgusted by the bright yellow goop from the no-name jar. He had scoured his mother’s fridge, cupboards, and pantry shelf in the basement, hoping to find good mustard, but to no avail. He added Dijon mustard to the list he was keeping in his head, essentials that Gaddie’s house lacked: capers, fresh garlic and ginger, prosciutto, kalamata olives, feta and chèvre, sesame oil, fish sauce, three-ply toilet paper, citrus-oil household cleaner, decent candles—he couldn’t believe that he’d let Beverly and his mother talk him into giving all that stuff away. He’d had a good Dijon, and a fine Russian mustard dressing too, but they hadn’t kept any food when they moved. Nothing. The only time Beverly and Gaddie had ever agreed on anything. He was looking forward to shopping on Saturday.
“You need something more substantial than cheese and crackers.”
“Melba toast and cheese,” Beverly said.
“Green vegetables,” Colm said. “The foetus needs folates or it’ll be a spina bifida baby.” He’d been studying pregnancy, nutrition and prenatal health. I’ll do the theory, he said to Beverly, you do the practice. He put the lid on his sandwich and admired his handiwork. He found a box of melba toast and sliced several pieces of cheddar. “How about some broccoli?”
“Ugh. I can’t stand the sight of it. Don’t even say the word. Just visualizing how it’s spelled makes me sick. Yech.” Beverly stuck the last of her unused pins into a pincushion. “Is there any celery? Or pickles? It’s such a cliché, but I’d kill for pickles.”
“Cravings for salty and acidy foods are completely normal.” Colm arranged the melba toast and cheese on a plate, four stalks of celery and one of his mother’s huge home-made dills and some of her bread and butter pickles too. He brought Beverly’s snacks and his sandwich into the family room, and they settled onto the couch. “You didn’t get far,” he said, looking at the work spread on the carpet. “You said you’d be finished this afternoon.”
“I got distracted,” Beverly said. She nibbled at a pickle. “A man came to the door.”
“Hmm,” Colm said as he chewed a mouthful of ham and cheese. He swallowed and added: “Distracted by a man. I should be concerned.” He dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his finger, checking for mustard.
She crunched a bite of celery. “I let him in.” Beverly told Colm about the visitor. He listened, still at first, then slowly shaking his head. She kept her tone light and nonchalant, how much like a drowned rat the poor man looked, joking how the smell of his stew made her gag, how she chased him out on account of nausea. She left out the parts about her holding the phone with her thumb poised over the 911 speed-dial, bolting the door, breathing into a paper bag. She chased sweet pickles around the plate in her lap with a spear of melba toast.
Colm held his bagel in both hands, as if poised for another bite.
“I gave him an old spoon,” Beverly said. “I told him to leave it in the mailbox, but that he had to eat outside.” Colm stared. The sound of Toots bending his harmonica around “Take Five” filled the silence.
Finally Colm said, “Wow. I can’t believe you’d let him in.” Colm put his sandwich down. “I mean, it’s so dangerous. You thought he was the gardener, so you let him in, and gave him a spoon? Shouldn’t you have asked for ID or something?”
Beverly glanced at Colm. “Don’t give me that.”
“What. Give you what? What, exactly, am I giving you?”
“That look. That fucking voice. I can practically see the italics when you speak to me like that, your holier-than-thou voice. You suck at sarcasm. The poor bastard was soaking wet.”
Colm went outside to check the mailbox. The spoon was there. Back inside, he examined it under the bright kitchen light, looking for a clue to its user. “It’s not just some old spoon. It’s a piece of mother’s flatware.” He paced in the narrow strip between the mermaid costume and the coffee table.
“At least he gave it back,” she said.
Colm stopped in front of Beverly, pointing the utensil at her. “This would be worth three, maybe five dollars to somebody desperate.” Beverly turned her head away from him.
“You’re awfully worried about Gaddie’s flatware. What about me?”
“Well, what about you? Aren’t you responsible? How did you know he was a gardener? He could have been anybody. Did you check the book? No, not Beverly, the book’s too much like work. That’s how these gangs operate.”
“Gangs?” Beverly said. “What are you on about now? Who said anything about a gang? You’re doing it again, Colm.”
“That’s what they do.” Colm started pacing again. “They send someone in to case the joint.”
Beverly rolled her eyes.
“I saw that,” Colm continued. “They case the joint. Then they send eight-year-olds through the basement window, or down the chimney. You know how small those Vietnamese are.”
“Oh give me a break, eight-year-olds. Besides, he was closer to sixty-eight,” Beverly said. She tossed her plate aside and a pickle fell on the floor. “And who said anything about Vietnamese?”
“Well, was he?”
“Was he what?”
“Vietnamese?”
“He was white. He was a pasty-white, wet old man. White like a boiled potato. If he was anything, he was Irish, as if that matters.”
“White?” Colm pounced on the information. “Like a potato. Didn’t you think it odd that a gardener would be white like a potato in October? He’s been out in the sun all summer, gardening, getting whiter and whiter. Were his hands dirty? Did he have calluses?”
“We didn’t shake hands. He had work boots. Worn and dirty work boots,” Beverly shot back.
“Jailhouse pallor, that’s what he had,” Colm said. “The big-house tan.” He went into the kitchen, and scrubbed the spoon vigorously with a brush and detergent. “Tuberculosis and hepatitis are rampant in prisons.” He scrubbed his hands.
“Oh christ, don’t be stupid. You’re worse than your mother.”
“Don’t call me stupid. Or insult my mother. Did I call you stupid? Would she have let some man into her house? I think not.”
“Not bloody likely,” Beverly said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You think I did something stupid, but you won’t say so. So you end up saying really stupid things, Colm. Listen to yourself, for once. Gangs, Vietnamese, ‘the big-house tan.’ Where do you come up with this stuff?” Beverly rose, picked up her shears off the worktable and squatted down on the floor.
“Did you pick up that pickle?” Colm asked.
“What?”
“You dropped a pickle. Damn,” he said, lifting the shiny spoon up to the light.
Beverly hesitated before she cut the fabric. She knelt, back straight, scissors in hand. “Look, he was a nice man. He was wet and cold and needed to warm up his lunch. I let him do that and I threw up and he left. He had a nice smile. Perfect teeth. He said thank you. He returned the spoon. End of story.” She scissored deftly down the edge of the pattern.
“White potato skin and perfect teeth. They have free dental care in prisons, you know. Free. They all come out with perfect teeth.”
“I’m not listening to this anymore,” Beverly said. She found the remote control and hit the button to change the CD to the next platter. The Tragically Hip. She turned up the volume.
“Fine,” Colm said. He opened the fridge door and pulled out a can of Guinness Draught. He popped the top and listened as the button of nitrogen gas in the bottom of the can released with a hiss. He took comfort from the knowledge of the engineering that could go into something as simple as a can of beer. He drank a gulp. Nearly as good as the real thing in a Dublin pub. In fact, he liked his beer chilled, even his stout, so maybe better than a Dublin pub. “I’m calling the condo people,” he said.
“Go right ahead,” Beverly answered. She continued to trim the Lycra, her head bent.
“Fine,” Colm said. Tucking the green binder under his arm, and holding the beer and sandwich in either hand, he climbed the three short flights of stairs to the top level.
The upstairs portable handset for the telephone wasn’t in its charging cradle, and he got no answer when he used the locator button—the ringer was probably turned off anyway, the battery lasted at least four times as long if you left the ringer off. He sat down on the edge of the bed. He didn’t really want to call anyone. He needed to get away from Beverly before he said anything else to regret.
The master bedroom was a large space, with its own five-piece bath accessible through double French doors. He stared at where the ceiling vaulted upward to follow the line of the roof, which was buttressed by two outsized laminated beams. Colm had never been able to determine to his own satisfaction whether the beams were structural elements, or merely for design. Gaddie decorated sparsely here. The walls were a brilliant white. A queen bed with a goose down comforter. An escritoire that had belonged to Colm’s grandmother, now used as a dressing table. A simple cushioned chair without arms, draped in a slipcover. A massive white dresser like a slab of marble that she had hired a cabinetmaker to build. The only adornments in the room were an oversized urn filled with impossibly huge dried flowers, a bevelled plate-glass mirror installed on the wall over the dressing table, and a photograph of Colm’s father hung dead-centre on the wall above the bed. The expanse of the room seemed like a museum gallery awaiting an installation.
For Beverly, that would mean an installation of laundry, Colm thought. Three of her suitcases sprawled open on the creamy-white pile carpet, spilling clothes across the floor. Two half-full laundry baskets had been dropped by the bathroom door. One was for clean things, the other dirty, but Colm never knew which was which. Her shoes were piled in a heap outside the closet. A brassiere hung from the doorknob.
Looking at her clothes, Colm had a sudden rush of panic. It was typical of her to allow a stranger into the house, like a stray cat. She does these things. The Germans probably have a word for it, he thought. Not for her actions, but his panic. Almost-Grief, or Grief-Narrowly-Avoided or the Horror-That-Might-Have-Happened. He would cease to exist without her. It drives him crazy. It makes him say those things, he can’t stop himself. Convicts with perfect teeth. Did I actually say that? Colm thought. I don’t give a rat’s ass about a spoon or gangs.
Colm looked at his father’s photograph. A studio portrait, perhaps for an advertisement. Colm guessed that in the photo his father wasn’t any older than he was, probably younger. He had a sudden pang of embarrassment—of course his father was younger in the photo. Colm was older now than his father had been when he’d died. He felt his ears turn red, and looked about the room, as if he were afraid that someone had heard his thoughts. A son should remember when his father died. Even if he was too young when it happened to remember.
Glum now, he ate the last of his sandwich methodically, drank the beer in rapid sips. It was weird drinking beer here, in this house. He went down to the kitchen, rinsed the plate, put the beer can in the recycling bin. In the family room, he picked up the pickle from near the sofa. He sat down, looked at the pickle, then ate it. He felt something under his leg: the portable phone jammed between two cushions. Loose bits of threads littered the carpet, he could see the glint of straight pins lost in the cut pile. They’ll never clean it all up by the time Gaddie comes home.
Beverly worked at the machine now, sewing the seams of the costume. Holding the phone in his hands, he asked: “Are you okay?” Beverly continued her work. “We can get a dog,” Colm said. “For when you’re alone.”
Beverly comes to bed late, long after midnight. Colm snores lightly, but wakes when she gags on her toothbrush. She moves into the room, shedding her clothes as she stumbles through the near darkness, leaving a trail of sweater, blouse, bra, slacks and panties, socks. Colm holds open the bedclothes and she slips in naked beside him. Together, they slide their bodies into a familiar nighttime embrace, Beverly on her side, facing away from Colm as he nestles like a spoon behind her. His long lean arm wraps around her and his hand cups the plumpness of her belly below her navel. There is no quickening yet, the round curves of her abdomen do not yet show the changes occurring inside her. Beneath Colm’s hand, in Beverly’s uterus, cells divide and re-divide, growing and aligning according to their genetic code, with her every breath, her every heartbeat.
“Your bum is cold,” Colm says into the nape of her neck.
“You’re warm,” Beverly answers. “Hug me.”
He presses even closer. “You worked late.”
“It’s done,” she says. “One mermaid costume ready for fitting. Except for the seaweed.” Colm passes his hand slowly over her stomach, caresses her breast, then glides it across the valley of her waist and up the generous swale of her hip. “That feels nice,” Beverly murmurs. His thumb brushes against her pubis. “Mmmm,” Beverly responds. He tries to move his fingers between her thighs, gently, but she keeps her knees together. “No,” Beverly mumbles. “It’s late.”
Colm shifts his body, lifts a leg over hers. He nibbles behind her ear. His thumb and forefinger tug at her nipple.
“No Colm. What are you doing.”
He lifts himself a little higher, kisses her shoulder. “Please let me in,” Colm says. “Please let me in,” he says again, his voice now inflected with an Irish lilt. “I’m cold and I’m wet and I’m hungry. I’m just a poor gardener from Limerick who needs a wee bit of comfort.”
Beverly tenses. “Stop it, Colm. That’s not funny.” She grabs his hand and tries to roll away. He begins to kiss her madly on her back as she wriggles. His words are muffled: “Oh, please missus. I’m just a poor man of the soil what needs some warmth and a little solace.”
“It’s not funny.” Beverly pulls away, but Colm tickles her under the ribcage. “Stop. Stop it now.” Colm wraps her in a bear hug. She tosses from side to side, jerks back suddenly, catching him in the forehead with her occiput.
“Frisky lass,” Colm says, accent now firmly Scots. He presses some of his weight against her. His penis is stiff.
“Shhhh,” Beverly whispers, and she stops resisting. “Mmmm,” Colm says, but she hushes him again. “No, Colm. I mean it. Listen. Do you hear that?”
“What?”
They lie still. Beverly turns her head and raises it slightly from the pillow. Colm holds her tightly, but quiets. Finally, after a dozen heartbeats, he says, “I don’t hear—”
“Shhh,” Beverly cuts him off. “There it was again.” She pushes his leg away and sits up. “That.”
“What?” They both hold their breath.
“That.” They both say it at once. Colm sits upright. “Sounded like it was in the kitchen,” Beverly whispers. Colm bolts from the bed and scoots in a crouch towards the door. He pulls on a pair of pants he finds on the floor and grabs a stout wooden hanger from the closet. “You stay here,” he says, and moves commando-like out of the room.
On the stairs, he looks over his shoulder. Beverly is right behind him. She has slipped on one of his shirts, which covers her almost to her knees. She holds a high-heeled shoe by the toe. “I’m not staying by myself,” she says in a whisper. Colm nods.
They make their way down through the levels of the condo to the kitchen, stopping like spooked deer to listen, turning on every light as they go, looking in the bedrooms, the other bathroom, the living and dining areas. The kitchen is empty. Beverly stands where she did at noon, two steps up, clutching her shoe. Colm walks to the sink and puts the hanger down on the counter. “It’s just noises. Expansion and contraction of the joists,” Colm says. He pours a glass of water from the sink and drinks it off in a draught. Then he looks to where Beverly’s work is still scattered.
He goes into the family room to the blinds, and picks up a long wooden dowel that is lying on the carpet. It is usually placed in the door track to block the door closed, to prevent it from being forced open. “Did you take this out?” Colm says.
Beverly stares at the piece of wood. “Wasn’t it in the door?” she says. “I haven’t been out that door since Gaddie left.” Colm pulls the blind back and tries to peer into the night through the reflections on the glass. He checks the latch. “It’s locked,” he says. He pulls at the door and rocks it, trying to lift it out of the lock.
“That’s it,” Beverly says. “That’s the sound. I heard it. That’s the sound.”
“It’s all right,” Colm says. He rocks the door again. “It won’t budge. I can’t get it open. It’s secure.” He sets the stick into the channel of the sliding door.
“You can’t, but what if he can?”
“Who?” Colm says.
“The man. It was him. I know it. He called her Gladys, not Gaddie. He was pretending.” Beverly’s voice is quiet. “He’s trying to get in. What if he did get in? He left the lock open when he took the stick out. And now he’s in and he locks the door behind him. He’s in here, now, waiting. I know it.” She sits down on the stair and twists the shoe in her hands. “Colm?” she says, looking at her husband.
An hour later, they are in bed again. At Colm’s suggestion and to Beverly’s relief, they have searched the condo from top to bottom, they have looked in every closet and cupboard, under every bed, behind every curtain. They have peered into crawlspaces, climbed in the attic, searched the garage. They have shone flashlights into every dark corner. They are alone. Colm lies on his back with his hands interlocked behind his head, staring at the skylight. The phone is beside his pillow. Beverly is pressed against him. They listen to the ticks and creaks, a gust of wind in the rafters, a squall of rain beating against the windows. Appliances click and hum, turning off and on in their duty cycles. Beverly rubs her tummy. She asks, “When will the baby move?”