House Wrecking Page 16

  “Smells divine, Mary,” Emily said.

  “I’m roasting you and your new friend a nice chicken – the one I made for your mama and grandpa a few weeks ago. Be ready in an hour.”

  “Shhhh,” Emily said, nodding her head toward Sarah’s room. She didn’t want Sarah to know Steven was helping her clean her grandfather’s apartment and she definitely didn’t want her to know he was staying for dinner. She knew Sarah would never approve. “Thank you Mary, but he’s not my friend, he works at the store and I’m thanking him for helping me out. He won’t take any pay for it.”

  “Ummm Huuum.”

  Emily walked downstairs thinking to herself how much Steven would like the apartment when she was done with it. She made the bed and dragged the remaining rug from the basement, laying it on the floor in her grandfather’s old bedroom. When she was done, she joined Steven in the yard to watch the last embers die out. She was glad to miss the sight of her grandfather’s things burning, but could smell the lingering odor of the old man in the yard. Emily and Steven stood side by side, closer to each other than they would have a week ago.

  “I saved this for you,” Steven said, handing Emily a white linen handkerchief with the letters PLM embroidered with navy thread in the corner.

  Emily took the handkerchief from him and examined it.

  “Not for me to say, but seems a fancy item for your grandfather to keep. I couldn’t throw it in.”

  “Yes, you’re right. Grandpa was more likely to use an old rag on his nose, then something nice like this. Perhaps it was a gift. My grandmother died when my father was a young boy, but he had a few lady friends who may have given it to him.”

  “Sounds like an interesting man. I wish I had gotten to know him,” Steven said.

  “Actually, it looks old. Perhaps my grandmother made it for him before she died. My father said she was quite a seamstress.” She held it to her own nose. “Smells like him.” They remained rooted in front of the flames another moment until Emily said, “Mary said dinner will be ready in an hour. There’s a pitcher of cool water on the kitchen counter. I’m going upstairs to bathe. I’ll be right back down. Please make yourself at home,” Emily headed into the house.

  She took the stairs two at a time, anxious to restore herself, and get back to her house guest. In the few weeks since her grandfather had passed, the simultaneous experience of loss and love descending on her at the same time had rendered Emily without an appetite. She’d lost ten pounds, which had the effect of increasing the sharpness of her features, transforming her into a more striking version of the same woman than before. She loved her new leaner figure and chose a black slim skirt she’d relegated to the bottom of the pile years earlier when her expanding figure had made it unwearable. She pulled it on without a struggle and smoothed it over the newly revealed bones of her hips and pelvis. She slipped on stockings and a short-sleeve gray cotton sweater with pearls sewn into the collar. She washed her face and tried on a few expressions while applying lipstick. Passing on her sturdy brown shoes with the buckles, she slipped into the black pumps she’d purchased from the Sears Catalog years earlier when she hoped for such a night. She took one more look at herself and smiled contentedly before she flipped off the light and left the room.

  Mary had set the first floor dining room table for two with their best linens, china, crystal, and silver. The chicken and vegetables lay cooling under a covered casserole in the center of the table next to a fresh bunch of hydrangeas and a bottle of red wine. “God bless Mary!” Emily said to herself, but Steven Jackson was nowhere to be found – not in the kitchen, front parlor or porch. The door to the back bedroom was open a crack, but she knocked before opening it wider. There lay Mr. Jackson on her grandfather’s old bed, sound asleep. Emily stood fixated from her position in the doorway, a self-satisfied smile spreading across her face. He must have sensed her presence, because he opened his eyes and returned her smile.

  “You’ve taken my advice and made yourself quite at home.” Emily said, allowing a little bit of flirtation into her words for the first time. “Dinner’s ready.”

  Steven pulled out the chair for Emily and poured them each a glass of wine. He held up his glass. “To you, Miss Emily and your hard work today. You’ve made this place shine like the sun.”

  “Well, thank you Mr. Jackson.”

  Steven carved the chicken and served her first, offering her a spoonful of potatoes and vegetables and the bread basket before he served himself. When their plates were both full of Mary’s delicious chicken dinner, they dug in.

  “What are you planning on doing with this place now that it’s clean?” he asked.

  “Well, I suppose I’ll have to get a tenant. I think the police must’ve taken all the cash they found during the raid. Mama and Mary and I can get by on what the store brings in alright, but it doesn’t leave much for home repairs. We were planning on painting this summer, the place needs it, but there’s not enough money now.”

  “I see,” Steven returned to his dinner.

  Emily gazed at him a moment longer.

  “You know, I could use a place to live. I ain’t got much money, but I’m pretty handy and perhaps we can make an arrangement where I work off part of my rent by fixing things around here. I can even paint this house if you like. What about renting this place to me?”

  “Rent to you, Mr. Jackson? Why, I hadn’t considered that,” Emily said in as surprised manner as she could muster. Pouring them each another glass of wine, she said, “you don’t play the radio loudly, do you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “You don’t have a wife and seven children you plan on moving in with you?

  The shift in his eyes was so swift, Emily missed it. “No Ma’am.”

  “Well, I suppose you couldn’t be any messier than my grandfather.”

  They both laughed.

  “When would you be available to move?”

  “How’s tonight?”

  Emily smiled again. “Well, it’s clearly vacant. There’s just thing. My mother wouldn’t approve of the arrangement. She’s a troubled woman - easily anxious and upset. I’m sorry. She wouldn’t want you down here. I, well… I’ll tell her we have a tenant, but…She doesn’t get out of bed. You’ll never encounter her. As long as you’re quiet, she won’t have any reason to suspect….She looks out the front window all day. Can you enter through the side door? She won’t be able to see you from there.”

  “Oh boy, you do have a lot to manage, Miss Emily. I understand. No loud radio-playing and enter through the back door. I got it. It’s alright. I’ve been going in back doors for a while now.”

  She smiled back at him. “Can I ask one other thing? Please stop calling me, Miss Emily. Emily is fine.”

  “On one condition – please stop calling me Mr. Jackson.”

  “I think we have a deal Mr. Jackson – I mean Steven,” Emily said, holding out her hand to shake.

  He took her hand and brought it to his lips for a kiss. He kissed her hand, moving his lips back and forth against the smooth skin– soft like the wings of a butterfly. With a faint smile on her face, Emily allowed the aroma of the wine to fill her. Assured of her complicity, he suggested “Shall we take this wine into my new front parlor?”

  She nodded and led him to the parlor, standing aside to allow him to pass.

  “Would you excuse me for a moment?” she asked

  He appeared confused, but nodded assent.

  She backed out of the room, brushing the door jam with her black skirt and raced up the stairs. She tiptoed passed Sarah’s room than lunged into her own. Opening the dresser drawer, she riffled among her few undergarments and opened to one of the many dog-eared pages of the banned Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. She located the necessary information, dropped the book on the bed and flew back downstairs.

  Steven was sitting on the sofa where she left him and shifted slightly to make room for her, patting the seat next to him. She sat as directed and he edged a little
closer. She rested her head on his shoulder, then lifted it. The odor from his armpit assaulted her; virile, yet not unpleasant.

  “Sorry I didn’t have time to bathe before dinner. I could do it now, if you want.”

  “No, no, it’s alright. I got a crick in my neck is all.”

  She could feel the warmth of his thigh next to hers through the black skirt, burning like the backyard fire. She crossed her legs to gain distance, than uncrossed them again. His hand approached her thigh. Now or never, she thought, dodging his hand and depositing her own too forcefully on his stiff penis, bending her fingers to encase it as instructed.

  “Bloody…”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Emily withdrew her hand. A blush crept over her neck and overtook her pale face. “I thought you might…”

  “No, No… I do. I was just surprised.

  She nodded.

  He paused for a moment before she felt his dry lips draw across hers. He pressed his harder against hers, and she pursed hers tighter.

  “Maybe you could open them a little?” He asked.

  She nodded again and his lips were back on hers. She relaxed her lips to allow his moist, thick tongue to enter. His lips and tongue probed long and deep, licking at her lips and moving in and around her mouth. She liked the salty taste of his mouth. Perhaps I should do this tongue thing back, she thought. She kept her tongue in her mouth to avoid disrupting the plucking and plodding she was beginning to enjoy - like her first taste of alcohol. From her position on the sofa she could see the remnants of their dinner, abandoned in such haste.

  He touched her face and loosened her hair from the knot tied in back. She continued to sit still on the sofa, both feet planted firmly on the floor. Come on Emily – think! What would Fanny Hill do? With a burst of courage, she rested her hands squarely on his biceps. Bigger than imagined she thought, continuing her explorations over his strong back and broad chest.

  His hands were brave and he untangled them from her hair, resting them on her chest, right below her neck. He rubbed one hand over the substantial mounds of her cashmere sweater, testing the feel of her breasts, swollen in his fist. He continued down her sweater, resting his hands on her belly. Her eyes remained closed, the faint smile of pleasure on her lips. He reached under her sweater, feeling the skin and ran his fingers over the bones of her pelvis and abdomen causing her to giggle. “Ticklish are you?” he asked.

  She nodded again, willing him to continue. He ran his hand along her back and deftly unhooked her bra, loosening it around her breasts, but leaving it in place. He brought his hand around the front again, cupping first the right breast, then left, taking each nipple between two fingers.

  “Shall we go into my new bedroom, Miss Emily? I mean Emily?” he asked.

  She was quiet a moment. Voices converged in her head, Fanny Hill on one shoulder, mother on the other. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it?

  “No Steven. I think we’ve had enough for tonight.” She fastened her bra, stood, straightened her skirt and started out of the front parlor. “Good night,” she said flirtatiously. She crept with shoes in hand out the apartment up the stairs and into her bed, leaving Steven alone on the sofa to finish what she’d started.

  Getting to Know You

  Upstairs in the dining room, Lauren and Ben counted the bills in the box which totaled seventy three thousand, nine hundred and eight dollars. Lauren directed Ben to the living room. It was probably close to eighty degrees in the room and summer sun was still high in the sky, even though it was close to five-thirty. The window fan did little to cool the room.

  Rather than pouring from the box in her refrigerator, she grabbed a bottle of merlot from the dining room. When she returned, Ben was standing at the mantle staring at the picture of her Jeff and the kids taken last summer at Sunset Beach.

  “You have a beautiful family,” Jeff said.

  Lauren handed him the wine glass. “Thanks, but it’s a bit of a messy family these days.”

  “Sorry to hear that, is everyone ok.”

  “Oh yes, thank God I have two healthy kids. My husband, I mean Jeff and I are… Well we’re getting a divorce.”

  “Been there – it sucks.”

  “I’m learning that the hard way. Do you have any children?”

  “No. Fortunately, we figured out that it wasn’t going to last before we had kids. I can only imagine it complicates things.”

  Ben stayed late. They finished a bottle of wine and opened another while they discussed the house and the money, paintings and other artifacts they’d found in the basement. Lauren filled him in on the history of the place; from what she’d learned from the realtor to the connection they’d recently realized between Beverly and the house.

  Ben in turn told a little about his life. He’d married young, right out of NYU to another artist. They stayed in the city for ten years after school. His wife got a part-time job at a gallery; but Ben was never able to land a steady artist position. He’d worked two, sometimes three jobs, apprenticing, waiting tables, driving cabs, anything to make ends meet. They returned to New Haven for his wife to attend graduate school at Yale, but their marriage didn’t last. He’d been divorced three years. He had a girlfriend, but said it wasn’t serious.

  “You know I ‘ve seen you before. When my ex and I were having dinner with his parents downtown.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Fortunately it was toward the end of my marriage and Crystal didn’t mind when I stared at other women. My father noticed though – called you his doctor-nurse. He didn’t want you to see him, because he was eating steak and thought you’d hell at him.”

  Lauren laughed

  They said goodnight at eleven. On his way out the door, Ben said, “Listen Lauren, I apologize if this is inappropriate, and I know you’re going through a lot right now, but when you’re ready to date, I’d love to be the first one you go out with.”

  Lauren smiled at him. “Thanks Ben. I can’t promise when that will be. I don’t know if it’s appropriate to date when you’re separated, or whether I need to wait for the divorce to be final. If you don’t mind waiting around a little, you got yourself a deal.”

  Sarah

  Sarah settled on her back with her head propped on pillows and scanned the room as if it would offer new clues to where she was. From her position in the bed, centered between the five windows of the tower, appeared the tops of the hastily constructed new multi-families through the window on her left. Her view afforded her a sliver of Phyllis Braverman’s house on Burton Street to the right. Jewish bitch, she thought turning away from the window; or was she the sweet one?

  Her contemplations were broken by the sound of children getting off the bus on the corner. Who was she waiting for? Emily? No. It was Thomas, her first born. He’d gone off to school this morning wearing the black pants that were growing too short for him. She would have Mary lengthen them. Or Charles could pick up a new pair at the children’s shop downtown. Better yet, she could order a new pair from the Sears catalog and they would come in the mail.

  The carved knobs of the footboard reminded her of something, but she couldn’t recall what. Her eyes toured the magazines and papers stacked on the floor and the bedside tables, the trunk at the foot of the bed, the dresser across the room next to the door. She loved getting packages in the mail. She found the catalog and what she thought might be an order form and pen on the table next to her. She gripped the pen tightly scratching “new pants for Thomas.” Her attention wandered to the birthday party featured on the catalog’s cover. Had she missed her father’s birthday?

  “Mary!” she shouted.

  If it was father’s birthday, it must be close to her birthday too. Sarah was born on March eighth and her father on the tenth and they’d always celebrated collectively. The cook had made them a cake each year, on the ninth. Perhaps father would buy her a new hat for her birthday, or a scarf? He’d probably already purchased it on his last trip to New York, where he got most of her gifts.
Sometimes she convinced him to give her the gift early. She smiled until her thoughts turned black and her stomach flip-flopped, as it often did. She squeezed her eyes shut tight.

  The box of chocolates was lying near her feet. How had it gotten down there? She reached for the box, but it was out of reach. With her two hands set firmly on the mattress next to her, she propped herself higher in the bed. She managed to add an inch or two to her position. This was sufficient to lean over and grasp the far edge of the box. She pinched it tightly and pulled it toward her, snatching the last four chocolates and stuffing them into her mouth.

  She chewed for a long time, swishing the chocolate cud in her mouth before swallowing. She upended the magazines, catalogs, tissues, candy wrappers and chip bags scattered over the old Louis IVX bed, searching for more. Finding none, she inched closer to the edge of the bed. She lay quiet for a minute; with her eyes closed while the late afternoon sun sank lower, darkening the room. The children had long since scattered and the streets outside were once again quiet. Well, I best get up and see to the children, she said out loud, moving herself further to the edge of the bed. Realizing what she’d done, she grasped the bed sheets. The bedraggled linens were of no help. As if in slow motion, the weight of her torso tipped her over with a thud to the floor.

  From her twisted position on the hardwood floor, Sarah was surprised to feel nothing at first, but then the pain arrived in earnest, as if its earlier absence were to spite her. She didn’t try to understand it, only to get away from it. She used her left hand to push her weight off her right hip then laid her head back on the floor and began to cry. Please, why won’t someone help me… she repeated over and over again, until her plea became a screech – “Mary, help me!”