Too rattled to go back to work, I went straight to my car after getting off the El at the Sheridan station, picked up Paul from Sunnyside, and took him out to McDonald’s for burgers and shakes. I said, “Uh-huh” and “Really?” as Paul burbled nonstop about an annoying kid who played first-chair trumpet in the band, but I kept seeing Philip’s face as we left the courtroom. For a split second, our eyes had met. He could have been gloating—Lee was angry about the deal we’d made, letting Philip get off scot-free financially—but to me, Philip seemed . . . tired. Sad.
But hanging out with Paul managed to keep me distracted until it was time to pick up P.J. and Jermaine. Paul scooted over in the backseat to make room for Jermaine and bombarded him with questions. “Hey, ’member that smokin’ piece you played at my birthday party? Could you teach those chords to me? What else you been doin’?”
P.J. said nothing in the front seat, but he did look my way, questions in his eyes about the custody hearing. I tried to give him a reassuring smile. “It’s all okay,” I murmured. “Nothing has changed.”
Philip pulled up right at six to pick up the boys, giving a quick toot of the horn outside. I was just as glad he didn’t come to the door. We hadn’t spoken at the hearing either. What was there to say? The judge had given me custody of our sons and Philip had pleaded “no contest” in exchange for “no consequences” for kicking me out. Who won? I did, I guess. Except . . . for some reason, I wanted to cry.
Which I did on and off all that evening, using up the last box of tissues and half a roll of toilet paper, feeling that something was terribly wrong. I’d just secured legal custody of the boys— “temporary custody,” the judge reminded me, since we were just separated, not divorced—and yet here I was, alone, the rest of my family off doing something without me. Lee had tried to ask me out, wanted to take me to dinner “to celebrate,” he said, but I’d turned him down. What was there to celebrate? My marriage was in the pits, my sons had to straddle two households, had to divide themselves between mom and dad, and whatever had been good about my marriage with Philip had somehow been lost in a tsunami of . . . of what? Each of us pulling our own way until the bond that held us together had stretched too far and snapped.
Jodi Baxter called to find out how it went and said, “Praise God!” when I told her the judge had granted both petitions. So why didn’t I feel like praising God?
Between sniffles, I managed to sort the boys’ dirty laundry and lug it down to the basement where two ancient washing machines and one beat-up dryer sat mostly unused, but I didn’t feel like going out to the Laundromat. Even as I stuffed jeans and towels into the largest top-loader, Philip’s complaint to the judge and Mabel’s concerns she’d shared in her office seemed to drip down on me from the musty walls. “Without consulting me” . . . “You didn’t talk it over with your husband” . . . “No marriage can tolerate that kind of behind-the-back decision making for long.”
Frustrated, I poured laundry detergent on top of the clothes without bothering to measure and banged the washer lid down as it started to fill. Hadn’t Mabel apologized for making me feel I was to blame for ending up in the shelter? And she’d called Philip’s actions “emotional abuse.”
But a quiet Voice somewhere in my spirit whispered, That doesn’t make her concerns any less true.
I couldn’t deal with this! Pawing through the boys’ collection of DVDs in the living room, I stuck Napoleon Dynamite into the DVD player and zoned out in front of the TV . . . at least until I went downstairs to switch laundry loads, only to find suds had poured out of the washer and all over the floor, and the load had shut down somewhere in the middle of the rinse cycle.
Loud knocking in the front foyer the next morning sent me scurrying into the building hallway wondering who was making such a racket at eight in the morning. But I had to grin seeing Josh and Edesa Baxter on the other side of the glass-paneled door, loaded down with cans of primer and spackle, sandpaper, spackling tape, and paint rollers and brushes. I yanked the door open. “Sorry! The buzzer doesn’t seem to work. Aren’t you guys up kinda early?”
Josh dumped his armload in the hallway. “Unnh. Gracie woke up at five . . . Do I smell fresh coffee? Make you a deal. I’ll look at what’s wrong with the buzzer if you’ll bring me a really big mug of joe—just black.” He propped open the foyer door with a can of primer. “Do the other buzzers work?”
“I think so—at least for the two empty apartments.” I headed for the kitchen, Edesa on my heels. “Wait until I tell him I flooded the washing machine in the basement,” I murmured, pulling out two more mugs. “Maybe he won’t want this job as property manager after all . . . Where’s Gracie?”
“Grandma Jodi agreed to babysit so we could actually get some work done. She and Denny are taking care of DaShawn too. Gracie adores DaShawn! Hopefully she’ll keep him distracted so he doesn’t worry about his Grandpa Harry too much.”
Harry! I’d almost forgotten about his eye surgery. I poured the coffee. “How’s Mr. B doing? Did his procedure go okay?”
Edesa shrugged. “Sí, I think so. I don’t really understand what they did. I just know he has to lie still for several more days—on his side, I think—and it’s driving him loco.” She circled her finger in the air. “Or maybe he’s driving Estelle loco, not sure which.”
I laughed. “I can just imagine . . . Wait a sec, let me take Josh his coffee.”
Josh had the buzzer assembly dismantled, peering into the tangle of wires, and only grunted when I set his coffee on the floor, so I turned to go. But he called me back. “Mrs. Fairbanks? I was just thinking . . . if Precious and Tanya would like to come over today, I could get them started spackling the walls in the first-floor apartment too. I think we’ve got enough to do both apartments.”
“Which I need to reimburse you for, by the way. I’ll call Manna House and see if they can come over. But when are you going to stop calling me Mrs. Fairbanks? Edesa calls me Gabby, why not you?”
Josh actually blushed. “Ah, see, it’s a little awkward for me, because you’re my mother’s friend, and she always taught me . . . well, you know, it’s rude to call adults by their first name. And I’m still in college, you know. But Edesa got to know my mom in that Yada Yada Prayer Group, so Edesa has always called her Jodi . . .”
I laughed. “You are so funny, Josh Baxter. You’re a married man and a daddy—I think that qualifies you as an adult, college or no college. So call me Gabby, okay?”
He shrugged, giving me a shy grin. “Okay. I’ll try. And thanks for the coffee.” He took his first sip gratefully. “Somebody needs to tell the Little People that the Big People want to sleep in on weekends—especially when this Big People had to stay up late last night writing a paper.”
I left him to tinker with the buzzer . . . but that’s how I ended up driving over to Manna House and picking up Precious and Tanya, who were eager to get to work on their apartment. I tied a big bandana over my hair and joined in, at which point we all decided to work on the third-floor apartment first, and then all work together on the first-floor apartment, since Precious, Tanya, and I didn’t really know what we were doing, though I remembered hating the sanding part the time Philip and I repainted our big old house back in Petersburg.
I made sandwiches for everybody at noon, and then excused myself for an hour or so after lunch to go see how Harry Bentley was doing. “By the time you get back, the spackle will be dry enough for sanding,” Josh teased.
“Oh great. My favorite part,” I moaned, wondering if I should change my clothes, then deciding it wasn’t worth the effort to change back again.
I didn’t plan to stay long visiting Mr. B—frankly, I’d never been to his apartment before and it felt a little strange to get this intimate look behind the man I’d first known as the doorman of Richmond Towers—but I was surprised to hear laughter and childish voices when Estelle opened the door. “Jodi and Denny brought Gracie and DaShawn over,” she explained, but put her finger to her mouth as she led me into the small living room. “Shh, the kids are doing a ‘smelling game’ for Harry.”
“A what?” Mr. Bentley sat on the old-fashioned couch, head bowed forward, chin on his chest. White gauze patches covered both eyes. For the first time it hit me what it must be like for him not to be able to see a thing . . . no, on second thought, I couldn’t really imagine it, only knew it must be frightening.
But at the moment, the retired cop was grinning as DaShawn held a jar lid under his nose. “Guess what this one is, Grandpa!”
“Uhh . . . cinnamon?”
“Aw, that was too easy. You’ll never guess this one!” DaShawn picked another lid out of a box and waved it under his grandfather’s nose.
Jodi sidled up to me, a big smile on her face. “Isn’t that cute? DaShawn invented this smelling game since his grandpa can’t see, spent all morning at our house putting it together.”
“What all does he have in those lids?” I whispered.
“Well, Harry did not guess Estelle’s lilac perfume—he’s in the doghouse over that one—but so far he guessed garlic and coffee grounds and bacon grease. And the cinnamon. Not sure what’s left . . . oh, apple shampoo is another one. Can’t remember the rest.”
“Okay, kids, that’s all.” Estelle clapped her hands like a schoolteacher. “Mr. Harry’s got another visitor, so why don’t we go out to the kitchen and get a snack. Jodi girl, bring that baby with you. Harry’s probably got pickled pigs’ feet up in there somewhere . . . you like pickled pigs’ feet, DaShawn?”
“Yuck!” the boy yelled as they disappeared out of the room.
“Don’t let her pull your leg, DaShawn!” Harry hollered after them from the couch. Then, “Did she say I’ve got another visitor?”
“Right here, Mr. B.”
“That you, Firecracker? Come here.” The man reached out, feeling the air.
I pulled up a hassock next to the couch and put my hand in his. “I’m really sorry about all this eye stuff you’re going through.
What did they—”
“Never mind that. I gotta ask what you know about your man Philip’s association with Matty Fagan.”
I was taken aback. “I—I don’t really know, Mr. B. Just that one time when he was on the phone, I heard him talking in the background to some guy named Fagan. That’s it.”
“Humph,” he muttered. “It’s never just ‘one time’ with Fagan.” He suddenly swore under his breath and almost got up, then sagged back down on the couch. “Sorry, Gabby. I’m just so frustrated to be laid up with these stupid eye patches right now. If this Fagan is who I think he is, whatever’s going down with Philip can’t be good—and could be downright dangerous. The man’s always got some racket going on.”
“But who is he, Mr. B?”
I couldn’t believe it when Mr. Bentley told me Matty Fagan used to be his boss in the elite Anti-Drug and Gang Unit of the Chicago Police Department. Harry had blown the whistle on Fagan and his cronies a year or so ago for shaking down drug dealers and gangbangers, then reselling the drugs and weapons they’d confiscated back on the street. Internal Affairs had suggested Harry quietly retire early—he already had more than twenty years on the force—until they’d built a solid case and brought an indictment against Fagan. “Which they did several weeks ago,” Harry said, “but of course he posted bail and is out on bond until time for his trial. But knowing Fagan, that wouldn’t stop him from finding some other marks to go after. You think your husband is using?”
“Using? You mean drugs? No!” Whatever Philip was, he wasn’t a druggie. “Only vice I know about is his gambling, which I told you about, and now he’s in debt up to his eyeballs. That’s why he came to me, trying to borrow money to pay it off . . .”
I suddenly had an awful thought—and it must’ve occurred to Mr. Bentley at the same moment, because he grabbed for my wrist and said, “That’s it.”
“Oh, Mr. Bentley, you don’t think—!”
“That’s exactly what I think. Fagan’s got himself a new racket, loaning easy money to people like your husband—upstanding business types who’ve got themselves in trouble at the gaming tables.”
“But where would this Matty Fagan get that kind of money?”
Mr. Bentley snorted a mirthless laugh. “Ha. You’d be surprised how easy it is for someone like Fagan to get his hands on fifty grand, even a hundred or two hundred—mostly payoffs from the big drug dealers in exchange for his cops looking the other way. And you can be sure the ‘interest’ he’s charging will set your man back even more.”
“So why would Philip do that?”
“Quick money, no questions asked, no check into assets, all the stuff that banks do. But it’s risky, because Fagan doesn’t take kindly to people who cross him.”
I was dumbfounded. Should I warn Philip about this Fagan guy? Did he know the man was under indictment by a grand jury for fraud and illegal sale of weapons and stuff ?
My skin crawled, not wanting to think about what Philip had gotten himself into. If Mr. Bentley was right, no wonder he’d looked so stressed at the courthouse yesterday. “But if Philip pays it back . . .”
“I hope he does, Firecracker, I truly hope he does. Because Fagan isn’t a patient man.”