I waited for the nonexistent kids to retreat to their nonexistent rooms and turned back in to lean against the door and shut it with a fake smile.
It worked. Or Fannie
pretended it did.
“You’d make a good father.” She beamed.
“No, I’d be like all fathers, out of mind and out of patience. Those kids should have been doped with beer and slugged into their cots hours ago. Feeling better, Fannie?”
“Better,” she sighed, and shut her eyes.
I went and circled her with my arms, like Lindbergh going around the earth and the crowds yelling.
“It will work itself out,” she said. “You go now. Everything’s all right. Like you said, those kids have gone to bed.”
The kids? I almost said, but stopped myself. Oh, yes, the kids.
“So Fannie’s safe, and you go home. Poor baby. Tell Constance thanks but no thanks, and she can come visit, yes? Mrs. Gutierrez has promised to come up and stay tonight, on that bed I haven’t used in thirty years, can you imagine? I can’t sleep on my back, I can’t breathe, well, Mrs. Gutierrez is coming up, and you were so kind to come visit, dear child. I see now how kind you are, you only want to save me the sadness of our friends downstairs.”
“That’s true, Fannie.”
“There’s nothing unusual about their passing on, is there?”
“No, Fannie,” I lied, “only foolishness and failed beauty and sadness.”
“God,” she said, “you talk like Butterfly’s lieutenant.”
“That’s why the guys at school beat me up.”
I went to the door. Fannie took a deep breath and at last said, “If anything does happen to me. Not that it will. But if it does, look in the icebox.”
“Look where?”
“Icebox,” said Fannie, enigmatically. “Don’t.”
But I had jerked the icebox open already. I stared in at the light. I saw lots of jams, sauces, jellies, and mayonnaise. I shut the door after a long moment.
“You shouldn’t have looked,” protested Fannie.
“I don’t want to wait, I’ve got to know.”
“Now, I won’t tell you,” she said, indignantly. “You shouldn’t have peeked. I’m just willing to admit maybe it’s my fault it came into the house.”
“It, Fannie? It, it!”
“All the bad things I thought you dragged in on your shoes. But maybe Fannie was responsible. Maybe I’m guilty. Maybe I called that thing off the streets.”
“Well, did you, or didn’t you?” I yelled, leaning toward her.
“Don’t you love me any more?”
“Love you, hell, I’m trying to get you out of here and you won’t come. You accuse me of poisoning the toilets, and now tell me to look in iceboxes. Jesus God, Fannie.”
“Now the lieutenant is mad with Butterfly.” But her eyes were starting to well over.
I couldn’t stand any more of that.
I opened the door.