He fell’asleep and woke up in the hard
darkness of late night, feeling thick and stupid. He went to bed and didn’t sleep well and got up at daylight with a hangover.
like summer except that the kids were back to school.
Jesse was glad he wasn’t a kid as he walked past Paradise Junior High School on his way to Carole Genest’s house. Every once in a while one or two leaves on an otherwise green tree would sho’w yellow as he walked along Main Street.
There were adults, mostly female, moving about in front of the shopping center, and there was a back-to- business quality that seemed to settle in on a town once school was in session. Jesse had hated school, always. It had something to do with hating to be told what to do, he supposed. On the other hand he’d liked playing baseball and being in the Marines and being a cop in L.A., all of which entailed being told what to do. Maybe he didn’t like being told what to do indoors. Or maybe he didn’t like being instructed.
But he didn’t mind being
coached… He couldn’t figure it out, but it was not a problem he needed to solve, so he put it aside. The big oak tree that loomed over Carolc Genest’s driveway was entirely green.
Jesse paused under it and looked at the bright lawn that rolled down to Main Street from the big white house. Ten rooms maybe, and a big yard in the middle of town.
Only the youngest Genest kid was home when Carole let Jesse in. He was in the den with some coloring books and some crayons and some little wooden figures scattered about, watching a home shopping show as if it were a performance of King Lear.
“Want some coffee?” Carole said.
“Sure.”
Jesse followed her through the long formal dining room into the big kitchen, paneled in pine, with shiny copper pots hanging from a rack over the stove. The big window at the back of the room looked out at more land behind the house, planted with flowering shrubs and shielded by white pine trees.
“Nice property,” Jesse said.
“How much land you got?”
“Three-quarters of an acre,”
Carole said. She put coffee into the gold filter basket of a bright blue coffeemaker and added water and turned it 0n, and sat down at the kitchen table opposite Jesse. She was a pretty woman, with an empty face and wide eyes which always looked a little star-tied.
“Been here long?”
“Ten years,” she said.
The kid came from the. dencarrying a ratty-looking stuffed animal by the ear. It was too dilapidated for Jesse to tell what it had been. The child laid the upper half of himself over his mother’s lap and, holding the stuffed animal tightly , started to suck his thumb. Carole patted his head absently.
“You get it as part of the
divorce?”
“Yes. And he’s supposed to pay me
alimony every month but he doesn’t.”
“Must be tough to keep the payments
up,” Jesse said.
“I got to pay taxes quarterly, but at least there’s no mortgage.”
“No mortgage?”
“No. Jo Jo bought it for cash, when we got married.”
“Cash? Really? When was that.”
“Nineteen eighty-six,” she said.
“House cost a hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars.
Probably worth five now.”
“I should think so,” Jesse said.
“Where’d Jo Jo get the cash?”
Carole shook her head. The coffeemaker had stopped gurgling. She raised the kid from her lap and got up and poured them coffee.
“You take anything?” she said.
“Cream and sugar, please. Two
sugars.”
“Skim milk okay?”
“SUre.”
She put the coffee down on the table and sat back down.
The kid plopped back in her lap and sucked his thumb some more.
