Valley of Ashes (21 page)

Setsuko must have taken off on her own lunch break, but the little red wagon was still safely stowed behind the reception counter.

I wrote a thank-you note on one of her pink Post-its, fixing it firmly to the desk’s prairie of speckled Formica.

I bumped a hip against her wheelie chair as I stood up, making it roll about ten inches to the right. Stowed neatly in front of its former position was a tote bag filled with ball after ball of pink and pale blue angora wool, edged by a stripy fringed triangle she was apparently constructing out of the yarn.

Good God, she’s crocheting a poncho. Or knitting it. Or something.

Now, here was a woman who’d make the
perfect
home, down to the last insipid hand-loomed fuzzy toilet seat cover.

I shivered, the chill of claustrophobia trickling down the nape of my neck, drawing my shoulders tight.

Poor oppressed bitch.

I thought about what Cary had told me concerning Setsuko’s predicament for the entire walk home, wondering if there might be some way Dean could help her stay in the country.

Probably because I didn’t want to think about my marriage. Or what an asshole Dean was being. Or what the hell I should do about it if he didn’t get the fuck over himself in a big fat hurry.

Well, to be honest I was thinking about
that
at the same time. It was just all mashed up together in my head.

Because Cary’s response was identical to what I’d felt when I’d had to watch Seamus tear Ellis a new asshole over the bottle of Elmer’s Glue. And I wondered at myself for being able to be more pissed off on my friend’s behalf than my own.

Not to mention angrier on Setsuko’s behalf, during that complete turd-fest of a business dinner. And I didn’t even really
like
her.

Yeah, solidarity. Even though I had to admit I’d spent that evening
distracting myself from Dean’s having been a jerk with the idea that some other chick had it worse than I did.

Same shit, different hill.

I mean, not like Setsuko was facing suttee or genital mutilation or whatever back in Tokyo—I wasn’t that naive and ignorant a cultural chauvinist—and God knows I would’ve given my eyeteeth for the kind of subsidized health insurance and day care available in Japan. It was just… okay, yes… solidarity on the gender front mattered.

Sisters in arms.

Glass houses.

And like Arlo used to say, “You want to end the war and stuff, you gotta sing loud.”

I should ask Dean if there was any way he could help her out.

That would be the right thing to do.

Fuck me, though, what the hell was
I
supposed to do? Start giving my husband ultimatums? Dump his ass if he didn’t shape up?

Follow in Mom’s footsteps?

I’d already lost my father, did I really have to lose my best friend, too? Not just temporarily, but forever.

I wished I could shine a flashlight into Dean’s eye sockets and send up a couple of flares to see if my real husband was still
inside
there somewhere.

I
was back home with the girls and on the phone with McNally.

It didn’t look like I’d be getting down to the paper in person anytime soon—Parrish was sound asleep in her crib upstairs but India was careening around the giant playpen like a one-toddler roller derby, still totally jacked up on my iced coffee and laughing her head off.

I’d called him about the Alice’s Restaurant review. But then he started talking arson.

There’d been two more fires. Stores near Pearl Street this time.

“Check with Mimi,” McNally said. “They’re holding a community meeting tomorrow night at some church. It would be great if you covered it for us. Write up what the fire department recommends people do to stay safe. You know the drill.”

“Listen, I have to—” and then I couldn’t figure out what to tell him.

I have to check with my husband, make sure I have his permission to write about anything but food?

“Have to what?” asked McNally, sounding testy. “Find a babysitter?”

“Something like that.”

“You
do
have a husband lying around somewhere, don’t you?”

I laughed. “Are you even allowed to ask me that, as my employer?”

“I didn’t mean…”

“Relax, McNally. Yes, I have a husband. He just travels a lot for work.”

“Look, all I wanted to say is that I understand perfectly well that men can be selfish shitheads—especially husbands. I should know, I am one.”

“A husband?”

“A
guy
.”

“I was actually aware of your gender, McNally.”

“Smart woman. No wonder you went into journalism.”

“Smart women go into advertising.”

“Is he traveling right now?”

“Who?”

“Your husband.”

“No.”

“So, can’t
he
watch your kids for a couple of hours?”

“Have you ever been a husband?”

“Once. Briefly. She wanted me to go into advertising.”

“I thought you used to be in petroleum.”

“This was later. And briefer.”

“Well, McNally, here’s the thing… my husband would like me to avoid the crime beat. Something about how I’m the mother of small children and dangerous assignments should therefore be verboten, considering. Stuff like that.”

“Did you tell him to get his head out of his ass?”

“Not exactly.”

“Madeline, I’m asking you to cover a
community
meeting.”

“Which happens to be about a string of arsons.”

“If you want to be all
exact
about it.”

“So, basically,” I said, “you’re suggesting I leave the whole string-of-arsons deal out of the discussion, when I ask him to babysit.”

“What are the chances he’ll actually
read
the article? Husbands are notoriously crappy at that kind of thing. Especially when their wives write about community meetings.”

“Or he might be, you know,
traveling
. When it actually gets published.”

“See, I knew you were smart.”

“And you, McNally, are a terrible influence.”

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

“Yeah, whatever. Did Mimi get the Mapleton-fire lab results back yet?”

“You’d be wasted in advertising,” he said.

“So would you. Answer the question.”

“You want to know what the accelerant was, I take it?”

“Obviously.”

“Find a babysitter and call me back.”

“Or I could call Mimi.”

“You could, if she weren’t in Denver today.”

India took her shirt off and started swinging it around her head, shrieking.

“What
is
that?” asked McNally. “A car alarm, or did they have another nuke spill up at Rocky Flats?”

“Um. That would be one of my daughters. The one who drank a liter of Thai iced coffee at lunch today while I was trying to review the restaurant.”

“Tell that husband of yours that you
deserve
a babysitter,” he said. “Then call me back.”

I took the phone into the bathroom and tried calling Mimi, just to see whether he’d been bullshitting me.

She didn’t pick up at home or at work so I left her messages on both machines, asking her whether she’d gotten the lab results, and when and where this meeting was to be held, and to please call me back whenever she had a minute.

India was no longer shrieking so I edged back out of the bathroom and sat down beside the playpen.

She waddled over and patted me on the head.

“Hey there, my cutie,” I said.

“Mummie Mummie Mummie. Hey,” she said back, then sat down and started piling up some wooden blocks.

I briefly considered calling Dean at work. Like, for a nanosecond. Or possibly less.

I leaned back against the wall and dialed Ellis, instead.

T
he asshole actually
said
‘homemaker’?” asked Ellis. “You’re fucking with me, right?”

“Direct quote,” I said.

“Hold on a second…” I heard the palm of her hand smush over the phone’s mouthpiece, then her slightly muffled voice. “Perry, give me those scissors
right now
. You are
not
giving your sister another haircut…”

I laughed.

“Jesus,” she said, voice clear again. “Where were we?”

“Homemaker.”

“Exactly. What is
wrong
with him? Why’s he being such a dick?”

“Well, it’s not like I’m the greatest roommate in the world. I mean, you’ve lived with me…”

“And this comes to him as a fucking
surprise
? You guys lived together for a solid chunk of time before you got married. I’d say his
caveat
was entirely
emptored
.”

“I guess it’s wearing thin.”

“Let me call the rat bastard at his goddamn office, tell him to hire a goddamn
maid
already…”

“Then it will be my fault he has to spend money on a maid, and it will be worse.”

“Okay, then I’ll just fly out there and slap him around a little. He’s lucky to have you. I think he needs a little reminding.”

“He basically rescued me from being homeless,” I said. “Who the hell else would’ve married me?”

“
I
shouldn’t have to remind you of this: Dean got a gorgeous woman who’s brilliant and funny and an amazing cook and who likes to fuck.
Plus
you did three years’ hard time in Syracuse for him. More than he deserves. All of it.”

“Thank you for hating my husband for me.”

“Anytime,” she said, and we agreed to hang up.

Upstairs, Parrish resurfaced from her nap and started weeping—just as India was finally winding down in the playpen, eyelids already at half-mast.

I reached across the little wooden fence to pick up India and started for the staircase, relishing the warmth of her sweet weight in my arms as she drifted fully off to sleep.

When I’d tucked India into her crib and carried Parrish downstairs, I got walloped by my daily midafternoon wave of exhaustion.

It came on hard as a Jones Beach breaker, the kind that smacks the wind out of your chest and then scours you, tumbling, across the green-lit underwater sand.

I tucked Parrish into her booster seat and started slicing up a small red apple, sleep deprivation’s bone-deep illogic making me wonder yet again why I always had to stay awake with the conscious twin when at that moment I ached with such visceral longing to abscond into the luxuriant bliss of her sister’s nap, right there on the kitchen floor.

While I was arranging the apple slices into a happy face on the chrome-yellow plastic of Parrish’s chair tray, the phone rang.

I shoved the last slice into my mouth on the way to the phone.

So it was a one-eyed happy face, who’d know? And if my child remembered this when she grew up and felt deprived, I’d tell her Mr. Happy Apple had been winking.

“Yo,” I said into the phone, hoping that might be a quasi-intelligible salutation through my juicy mouthful of Red Delicious chunks.

“Acetone,” said Mimi. “That and using a cigarette for a fuse, I’d say it was definitely the same guy.”

M
y love for you is untrammeled and pure,
chère
Mimi. Among all the world’s questioners of things
flambé
, you are and shall remain my one and only heart’s forensic desire,
ma petite chou-fleur
.”