“I’m not going to yell at anyone,” I say. “Eddie, I will see you soon. Jessie, call me later tonight please.”
She looks horrified. “In front of all my friends? Please Mom, no, I can’t.”
“Then I will call you. Go on now.”
Eddie kisses me and gives me one of his neck-strangling hugs that I love so much. Jessie presses her lips to my cheek so quickly, we barely make contact. Betty loads the children into the car and drives away.
I am left alone with Louis Leary. All I can think when I look at him is that he was the one who was with my husband when he died. I feel surprisingly calm. “Did you fix the railing on the front steps too?” I ask. “Is that why it doesn’t wriggle anymore?”
“Um, yes,” he says. “I didn’t want you or the kids to fall. And I would like the chance to check the wiring inside the house. If you’ll just let me know when it’s convenient for me to stop by . . .”
“I don’t want you to stop by.”
“Oh.” Louis looks uncomfortable. He glances at my face. “You’re not going to quit, are you? Catharine needs you.”
An idea occurs to me. “She didn’t know, did she? Does Mrs. McLaughlin know why you hired me? And that you were snooping around my house?”
“No! I wasn’t . . . She has no idea. Nobody knew, except for me. It was all me. And I never meant to invade your privacy. It was just a little exterior work. I thought that it must be difficult raising two children on your own. And I owe—Eddie meant a lot to me.” Louis takes his hands out of his pockets. They are huge and callused from years outside in all weather on building sites. “I needed to help.”
I raise my voice slightly, to make sure this man hears me. I can’t believe he is making me say this. “You don’t need to do anything. You don’t have to help us. You’re not responsible for my husband’s death.”
Louis’s face freezes for a second, then he turns his head away.
My calm is beginning to break apart. I feel myself splitting into large pieces, like a volcano exploding from deep within. I wanted it to be Eddie. I wanted, magically, impossibly, for my husband to be the one caring for my family. I know Louis meant well. But he watched my husband—my heart—die and then dragged his ill mother-in-law and the rest of his family with him into what remained of my life. Then Mrs. McLaughlin made me believe that I should open myself up again. That I should relax my grip on my children and my husband. And I let myself be changed by these people. It is too late to stop that. I have been changed.
I watch, as if from the other side of this big lawn, as I split open, all the different pieces of my self afloat in boiling lava. I don’t know what the answers are. Jessie is probably in her friend’s bedroom by now doing things I don’t allow her to do in her own room, like jump on the bed and listen to music too loud. Eddie is probably knee deep in an ice cream sundae at Dairy Queen because Betty has no sense of nutrition and reveres junk food as if it were a religion. I grasp for something to say. I talk to hear my own voice, to make sure I am still here.
“You don’t think you’re in love with me, do you?”
“No,” Louis says, looking pained. “I love my wife.”
I hug my cardigan to my chest. “Then, thank you.” The words are hard to say. They are powerful words. “I won’t quit, but you don’t need to help me anymore. I don’t want you near my house or my children unless I’m there. Okay? Do we have a deal?”
I look from his face down to my hands. I need to see the shape of my fingers and my wedding ring. The ring is a simple circle of gold Eddie put on my left hand in a church ten years ago, which I have taken off only during the late months of each of my pregnancies when my fingers swelled so badly that the ring no longer fit. I flex my fingers now. These are hands that mother, and hands that nurse. My hands have always been strong and capable. They have never