Dirty Read online

  “How many children do you have?” I headed for the pail, which wasn’t overflowing but needed emptying just the same. I pulled the bag from the can and tied it shut as Mrs. Pease came forward with a fresh trash bag.

  “Just two now,” she said. “We lost our daughter Jenny in a car accident back in ’86. But I see her children from time to time. They’re in college now. Their dad remarried a long time ago.”

  I replaced the trash bag and asked to wash my hands at her sink, using soap that smelled of green apples. “And you have a son Mark.”

  “Oh, yes. My Mark. And Kevin.”

  “Do they live close by?” I wiped my hands dry on a soft dish towel and turned to see Mrs. Pease looking so sad it made me sad, too.

  “Kevin’s moved away,” she said. “And Mark lives here in the city, but…I don’t see much of him. He’s very busy, my Mark. He’s very busy.”

  Too busy to visit his mother and make sure her garbage was taken care of, I thought meanly. Guilt pricked me in the next minute. At least he visited her sometimes. I was an awful daughter.

  “Thank you, dear,” Mrs. Pease told me. “You’re so helpful.”

  “You know, Mrs. Pease. I’m right next door, if you ever need anything at all. I’m happy to come and give you a hand.”

  She shook her head, her soft white hair looking like white cotton around her apple-doll face. “I don’t want to trouble you, Miss Kavanagh.”

  “It’s really not any trouble at all. Really.” Nothing quite like a guilty conscience to prompt unsolicited and slightly desperate offers to elderly next-door neighbors.

  She bustled around her kitchen for a few seconds and pulled out a small tin of cookies. “Have a cookie?”

  “Thank you.” Sugar. They were good, still soft. “I’ve never learned to bake.”

  She gave a small, trilling laugh. “Oh, my dear! Every girl should learn to bake!”

  I nibbled the cookie. “My mother wasn’t particularly interested in domesticity.”

  Mrs. Pease might be feeling under the weather, but it hadn’t dulled her perceptions. “You don’t see her often, do you?”

  I shook my head. I thought she might judge or lecture me, but Mrs. Pease gave a soft sigh instead. “Have another cookie, dear. And it’s never to late to learn to bake.”

  I helped myself to another cookie, and she put away the tin. She wiped up some crumbs with a dishcloth and folded it on the sink. The second cookie was as delicious as the first had been, and when I finished I lifted her garbage.

  “I’ll take this out to the curb. Do you anything else to take? Anything from upstairs?”

  “No,” she said. “Though I might, next week, if you’re able to stop by. I’ll be baking cookies, Miss Kavanagh. You could watch, if you like.”

  We shared a smile. “I think I’d like that, Mrs. Pease.”

  I took her garbage out to the can and dragged it to the curb next to mine. I turned to wave goodbye to her before heading into my house, when a police car stopped next to me. I jumped a little, wondering instantly if I’d broken some ordinance or something, but the officer who got out of the vehicle didn’t do more than nod at me before opening the back door.

  Gavin got out. Not in handcuffs, as least, though he didn’t look any happier for being unshackled than if they’d had him bound. He looked up and met my gaze, then dropped it immediately as the cop pulled him by the elbow toward his house.

  This wasn’t my business any more than anything else had been, but I stood frozen next to the garbage as the Ossleys’ door opened and Gavin was yanked inside by his mother. I overheard raised voices from inside, though the officer who brought him home kept his voice pitched low and professional. He didn’t go into the house. He and Mrs. Ossley spoke for a minute or so, words I couldn’t make out, and then he left.

  He gave me another nod as he got back in his car. “Evening.”

  “Evening,” I said, pulled away from staring at the Ossley house by his greeting.

  I couldn’t ask him what had happened with Gavin. I looked back toward the house. Then I put the lids on the garbage cans and intended to go home, but my feet instead found the four concrete steps leading up to the house next door.

  Mrs. Ossley opened the door, her frown becoming a grimace of fury when she saw it was me. “What the hell do you want?”

  I refused to allow her hostility to take me aback. “I came to see if Gavin was all right.”

  She looked me up and down, her expression getting tighter and harder. She looked as though she’d bitten into an apple and discovered only half a worm. Even though she wore a pair of high heels, I stood over her by about two inches, and this seemed to irritate her further as she crossed her arms and looked up at my face.

  “He’s fine. You can go back home, now.”

  “Mrs. Ossley, I’m not really sure what I’ve done to offend you, but I can assure you, I’m only concerned about Gavin’s welfare.” I retreated a step under the force of her glare.

  She laughed, the sound like barking, and then pulled a cigarette from the pack I hadn’t noticed in her hands. She lit it and blew a runner of smoke directly into my face. I waved it away.

  “I bet you are,” she said. “I just bet you are.”

  Her obvious dislike and antagonism toward me tied my stomach into knots, but the memory of precise and self-administered wounds kept me from fleeing. “Can I come in?”

  “You cannot!” She seemed aghast at the suggestion. “Go mind your own business!”

  I looked over her shoulder to the sight of a man silhouetted in the hall. Dennis. A flutter of movement on the stairs caught my gaze, and she turned to see what I was looking at.

  “Gavin! Get up to your room! Right now!” She turned back to me. “We’ll deal with him, Miss Kavanagh. Go play with someone else’s son.”

  She made to close the door in my face, but I put out a hand to stop her. Her words had made a nasty noise in my head. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Oh,” she said with another gust of smoke. “He told me all about you.”

  “He did?”

  Again, she looked me up and down. I wondered what she saw. I wore work clothes, a mid-calf black skirt and a simple white blouse with buttons. Shoes with sensible heels. Compared to her outfit of a teal, low-cut lingerie-style top spangled with sequins, flowered short skirt and matching stiletto sandals, I wouldn’t win any prizes in a fashion show. The outfit was staid and comfortable, but didn’t deserve her look of disgust.

  “Oh, yes, he did. He sure did. Told me how he helped paint your dining room.” Her fingers hooked quotation marks in the air around the work paint.

  “He did help me paint my dining room. He’s been a big help, as a matter of fact. He’s done a lot of work for me.”

  She snorted. This close, I could see the faint acne scars on her cheeks. She’d covered them with makeup, but they still shadowed her face here and there. I had no idea how old she was. Old enough to have a fifteen-year-old son, but maybe not that much older than me, after all.

  “Yes, he’s spent a lot of time over there. With you.” More smoke. She had red-painted nails and red lipstick to match. It left crimson stains on the end of her cigarette. “I can’t get him to clean up his goddamn bedroom, but he’s got time to hang around over there painting your walls.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ossley. I told Gavin he needed to make sure he did his chores at home.”

  The hostility still flowing off her in waves made me want to step back again, but I stopped myself with a hand on her railing. Unlike mine, which I sanded and painted every spring, hers scratched my hand with its bumps and lumps of pitted rust. When I took away my hand, a red stain dotted the palm.

  “Well, Miss Kavanagh,” she said my name with a sneer that wouldn’t have been out of place had she been calling me a worse sort of name. “I’m awfully glad to hear you’re so concerned about my son that you have him doing your dirty work for you, but you telling him he should be a good boy and clean up his mess doe