Mary and O'Neil Page 0,38
tipped her head toward his cast. “Does it hurt?”
“You’re the first person to ask me that,” O’Neil replied. “It did, thank you, for a while.”
She moved her hand through the air toward him, stopping just shy of his face. “There’s paint in your hair,” Patrice said.
The three of them made their way to the front yard, to get a better look at the roof. From where they stood, O’Neil could see a broad splash, marking the spot where he had first made impact, and below it a wide ribbon of paint that traced his course down the sloping roof to the ground below.
“I feel just terrible about this,” O’Neil said. “This is completely my fault. Also, I never thanked you for driving me to the hospital.”
Patrice looked sweetly at Henry, who smiled back into her face. “What else could we do, Henry?” she said. “Leave this poor man in the yard?”
She helped O’Neil cover his crew kit with a tarp and store the rest of the equipment, in case it rained. She seemed to have no expectation at all for when the work on her house would resume, and O’Neil didn’t know what to say about this. Probably it wouldn’t.
“What will you do?” she asked him, when the time had come to go.
“It’s hard to say. I’m thinking maybe law school.”
She smiled at this answer. “I meant about your hair, O’Neil.”
Then, for just a moment, they exchanged a deep regard. Patrice’s eyelashes, O’Neil saw, were long and thick and, though she wore no mascara, seemed braided. Such a small thing, but that was what he saw. His mind took hold of this image, pushing aside all other thoughts, and he imagined what her eyelashes would feel like, brushing against his cheek. He thought it would be nice to kiss her—more than nice. But sad too, and in a way he had not felt before. They held one another’s gaze a second more, and then Patrice looked past him to the Volvo parked at the curb, where Kay and Jack were reading the newspaper.
“Who’s that now?” she said. “You’ve brought someone.”
O’Neil followed her eyes to the car. “That’s my sister and her husband. They’re Kay and Jack.”
Patrice turned with her hip so Henry could see and lifted his little arm to help him wave. “I’m really sorry about your leg, O’Neil,” she said. “It’s not the same without you around here.”
They said their good-byes, and Jack took O’Neil home in the Buick, with Kay following in the Volvo. As they turned the corner onto Post Road, O’Neil lifted his eyes to find Jack looking at him through the rearview mirror.
“Nice-looking woman,” Jack said, and winked knowingly. “What do you say, O’Neil? Maybe I should take up house painting.”
O’Neil said nothing. This was when he realized he’d never seen Patrice’s husband because she didn’t have one. His assumption that this man existed was just that—an assumption. Or perhaps Joe had led him to believe this. Either way, there was no such person. It was just Patrice and Henry, and their big empty house that no one was painting for them.
O’Neil tried to wash the paint from his hair, but it was no use, and the next week he finally asked Kay to cut it. Using a pair of sewing scissors from the kitchen junk drawer, Kay snipped off most of his hair, while O’Neil sat wrapped in a plastic tablecloth and Jack swept up the trimmings with a whisk broom. The good news was that Joe had finally called O’Neil back, and after dinner he picked him up in the company van and drove him to a bar in Port Chester where they used to go after work. The bar was called the Moosehead, and was owned by some Canadians who, like Joe, seemed imprisoned in a sentimental exile. A Canadian flag hung over the bar, there were maps of Canada and travel photos of Canadian destinations on the paneled walls, and if they stayed long enough, O’Neil knew, the bartender would ring a bell and lead everyone in a chorus of “O Canada.”
“About the money,” Joe said regretfully, after they had taken a table. He had a weight lifter’s body, square and solid, and a blond moustache that he liked to stroke with thumb and forefinger. “We may have a tiny problem there.”
“Don’t tell me that,” O’Neil said.
“The situation is,” Joe continued, “the status of the company is a little tenuous at the moment. Technically, I have no employees at all,