“And now, with the fire-”
“Enough,” Sheila said.
“Sheila, one of my goddamn houses burned down. Please don’t tell me everything’s going to be fine.”
She sat up in bed and crossed her arms across her breasts. “I’m not going to let you get all negative on me. This is what you do.”
“I’m just telling you how it is.”
“And I’m going to tell you how it will be,” she said. “We will be okay. Because this is what we do. You and I. We get through things. We find a way.” She looked away for a moment, like there was something she wanted to say but wasn’t sure how to say it. Finally, she said, “I have ideas.”
“What ideas?”
“Ideas to help us. To get us through the rough patches.”
I stood there, my arms open, waiting.
“You’re so busy, so wrapped up in your own problems-and I’m not saying that they aren’t big problems-that you haven’t even noticed.”
“Noticed what?” I asked.
She shook her head and smiled. “I got Kelly new outfits for school.”
“Okay.”
“Nice ones.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What are you getting at?”
“I’ve made some money.”
I thought I already knew that. Sheila had her part-time job at Hardware Depot-about twenty hours a week- working the checkout. They’d recently installed these new self-checkout stations people couldn’t figure out, so there was still work there for Sheila until they did. And since the early summer, Sheila had been helping our next-door neighbor-Joan Mueller-with her own books for a business she was running from her home. Joan’s husband, Ely, had been killed on that oil rig off the coast of Newfoundland when it blew up about a year back. She’d been getting jerked around by the oil company on her settlement, and in the meantime had started running a daycare operation. Every morning four or five preschoolers got dropped off at her door. And on school days when Sheila was working, Kelly went to Joan’s until one of us got home. Sheila had helped Joan organize a bookkeeping system to keep track of what everyone owed and had paid. Joan loved kids, but could barely finger count.
“I know you’ve been making some money,” I said. “Joan, and the store. Everything helps.”
“Those two jobs together don’t keep us in Hamburger Helper. I’m talking about better money than that.”
My eyebrows went up. Then I got worried. “Tell me you’re not taking money from Fiona.” Her mother. “You know how I feel about that.”
She looked insulted. “Jesus, Glen, you know I would never-”
“I’m just saying. I’d rather you were a drug dealer than taking money from your mother.”
She blinked, threw back the covers abruptly, got out of bed, and stalked into the bathroom. The door closed firmly behind her.
“Aw, come on,” I said.
By the time we reached the kitchen, I didn’t think she was angry with me anymore. I’d apologized twice, and tried to coax from Sheila details of what her idea was to bring more money into the house.
“We can talk about it tonight,” she said.
We hadn’t washed the dishes from the night before. There were a couple of coffee cups, my scotch glass, and Sheila’s wine goblet, with a dark red residue at the bottom, sitting in the sink. I lifted the goblet onto the counter, worried the stem might break if other things got tossed into the sink alongside it.
The wineglass made me think of Sheila’s friends.
“You seeing Ann for lunch or anything?” I asked.
“No.”
“I thought you had something set up.”
“Maybe later this week. Belinda and Ann and me might get together, although every time we do that I have to get a cab home and my head hurts for a week. Anyway, I think Ann’s got some physical or something today, an insurance thing.”
“She okay?”
“She’s fine.” A pause. “More or less.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I don’t know. I think there’s some kind of tension there, between her and Darren. And between Belinda and George, for that matter.”
“What’s going on?”
“Who knows,” she said.
“So then, what are you doing today? You don’t have a shift today, right? If I can slip away, you want to get lunch? I was thinking something fancy, like that guy who sells hot dogs by the park.”
“I’ve got my course tonight,” she said. “Some errands to run, and I might visit Mom.” She shot me a look. “Not to ask her for money.”
“Okay.” I decided to ask nothing further. She’d tell me when she was ready.
Kelly walked into the room at the tail end of the conversation. “What’s for breakfast?”
“You want cereal, cereal, or cereal?” Sheila asked.
Kelly appeared to ponder her choices. “I’ll take cereal,” she said, and sat at the table.
At our house, breakfast wasn’t a sit-down family meal like dinner. Actually, dinner often wasn’t, either, especially when I got held up at a construction site, or Sheila was at work, or heading off to her class. But we at least tried to make that a family event. Breakfast was a lost cause, however. I had my toast and coffee standing, usually flattening the morning Register on the countertop and scanning the headlines as I turned the pages. Sheila was spooning in fruit and yogurt at the same time as Kelly shoveled in her Cheerios, trying to get them into herself before any of them had a chance to get soggy.
Between spoonfuls she asked, “Why would anyone go to school at night when they’re grown up and don’t have to go?”
“When I finish this course,” Sheila told her, “I’ll be able to help your father more, and that helps the family, and that helps you.”
“How does that help me?” she wanted to know.
I stepped in. “Because if my company is run well, it makes more money, and that helps you.”
“So you can buy me more stuff?”
“Not necessarily.”
Kelly took a gulp of orange juice. “I’d never go to school at night. Or summer. You’d have to kill me to get me to go to summer school.”
“If you get really good marks, that won’t happen,” I said, a hint of warning in my voice. We’d already had a call from her teacher that she wasn’t completing all her homework.
Kelly had nothing to say to that and concentrated on her cereal. On the way out the door, she gave her mother a hug, but all I got was a wave. Sheila caught me noticing the perceived slight and said, “It’s because you’re a meanie.”
I called the house from work mid-morning.
“Hey,” Sheila said.
“You’re home. I didn’t know whether I’d catch you or not.”
“Still here. What’s up?”
“Sally’s dad.”
“What?”
“She was calling home from the office and when he didn’t answer she took off. I just called to see how he was and he’s gone.”
“He’s dead?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh jeez. How old was he?”
