No Safe House

Three Terry

Just because Cynthia was no longer living with Grace and me didn’t mean we were strangers to each other. We spoke daily, sometimes met for lunch. Her first week away, the three of us went out to Bistro Basque, over on River Street, for dinner. The girls both had the salmon and I went with the chicken stuffed with spinach and mushrooms. We were all on our best behavior. Not a word about our visit to the hospital, even though Cynthia couldn’t keep her eyes off Grace’s bandaged hand. The unreality of the meal was exceeded only by the end of the evening, when Grace and I dropped Cynthia off at her place and we drove on home alone.

She really lucked into the apartment. Cynthia had a friend at work who was leaving the last week of June for a trip to Brazil and not planning to return until August, or maybe even September. Cynthia remembered her saying she’d tried to sublet the place for the summer, get someone who could take over the rent while she was away. She’d found no takers. A day before her friend was to fly out, Cynthia said she’d take the apartment. The friend cleared it with the landlord, an old guy named Barney, and then it was a go.

I hadn’t expected her to be gone until Labor Day, but as each day passed, and Cynthia showed no inclination to return, I was starting to wonder. At times I lay awake at night, half the bed empty next to me, wondering whether Cynthia would look for another place if this dragged on until early September when her friend returned.

About a week and a half after she’d left, I dropped by her place around five, figuring by then she’d be home from her job with the Milford Department of Public Health, where she was involved in everything from restaurant inspections to promoting good nutrition in the schools.

I was right. I saw her car first, parked between a sporty-looking Cadillac and an old blue pickup I recognized as Barney’s. He was cutting the grass down the side of the house, limping with each step, almost as if one leg was shorter than the other. Cynthia was sitting on the front porch, feet propped up on the railing, nursing a beer, when I pulled up out front of the house.

It was, I had to admit, a pretty nice place, an old colonial house on North Street, just south of the Boston Post Road. It no doubt belonged to some prominent Milford family years ago before Barney bought it and converted it into four apartments. Two on the ground floor and two upstairs.

Before I could say hello to my wife, Barney spotted me and killed his mower.

“Hey, how ya doin’?” he called out. Barney viewed Cynthia and me as minor celebrities, although ours was not the kind of fame anyone would want, and he seemed to enjoy brushing up against us.

“I’m good,” I said. “Don’t let me keep you from your work there.”

“I got two more houses to do after this one,” he said, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. Barney owned at least a dozen homes that he’d turned into rental units between New Haven and Bridgeport, although, from what he’d told me in previous conversations, I’d learned this was one of the nicer ones and he spent more time on its upkeep. I wondered whether he was planning to put it on the market before long. “Your missus is right up there on the porch,” he said.

“I see her,” I said. “You look like you could use a cool drink.”

“I’m good. Hope things are working out.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Between you and the wife.” He gave me a wink, then turned and went back to his mower.

Cynthia rested her beer on the railing and stood out of her chair as I came up the porch steps.

“Hey,” she said. I was expecting her to offer me a cold one, and when she didn’t I wondered whether I’d come at a bad time. Worry washed over her face. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” I said.

“Grace is okay?” she asked.

“I told you, everything’s fine.”

Reassured, she sat back down and put her feet back up on the railing. I noticed that her phone was facedown on the arm of the wooden chair, holding down a health department flyer headlined, “Does Your Home Have Mold?”

“May I sit?”

She tipped her head toward the chair next to her.

I pointed to the flyer. “Problems with your new place? You show that to Barney and he’ll flip out.”

Cynthia glanced down at the flyer, shook her head. “It’s a new awareness campaign we’re doing. I’ve been talking about household mold so much lately I’m having nightmares where I’m being chased by fungus.”

“Like that movie,” I said. “The Blob.”

“Was that fungus?”

“Fungus from outer space.”

She rested her head on the back of the chair, kept her feet perched on the railing. She sighed. “I never did this at home. Just decompressed at the end of the day.”

“That’s probably because we don’t have a porch with a railing,” I said. “I’ll build you one if you want.”

That prompted a chuckle. “You?”

Construction was not one of the manly arts at which I excelled. “Well, I could have someone build it. What I lack in hammering skills I make up for in writing checks.”

“I just — at home, there’s always something I have to do, right then. But here, when I get home from work, I sit here and watch the cars go by. That’s it. It gives me time to think. You know?”

“I guess.”

“I mean, you’ve got the summer to chill out.” She had me there. As a teacher, I had July and August to recharge my batteries. Cynthia had been working for the city only long enough to get a couple of weeks off every year. “So my holiday is an hour at the end of every day, where I sit here and do nothing.”

“Good,” I said. “If this is working for you, then I’m happy.”

She turned and looked at me. “No, you’re not.”

“I just want what’s good for you.”

“I don’t know anymore what’s good for me. I sit here thinking I’ve removed myself from the source of my anxiety, all the fighting and nonsense at home with Grace, and then I realize I’m the source of my anxiety and I can’t get away from myself.”

“There’s a Garrison Keillor story,” I said, “about the old couple who can’t get along, wondering whether to take a vacation, and the man says, ‘Why pay good money to be miserable someplace else when I can be perfectly miserable at home.’”

She frowned. “You think we’re an old couple?”

“That wasn’t the point of the story.”

“I won’t stay here forever,” Cynthia said, having to raise her voice some as Barney shifted his mowing activity to the front yard. The smell of freshly cut grass wafted our way. “I’m taking it a day at a time.”

As much as I wanted her to come home, I wasn’t going to beg her. She had to do it when she was good and ready.

“What have you told Teresa?” Cynthia asked. Teresa Moretti, the woman who came in to clean our place once a week. Four or five years ago, when Cynthia and I found ourselves so busy we couldn’t seem to get to the most basic household chores, we’d asked around about a cleaning lady and found Teresa. Even though I was off for the summer and possessed the requisite skills to tidy a house, Cynthia thought it was unfair to Teresa to lay her off for July and August.

“She needs that money,” Cynthia’d said at the time.

Normally, I wouldn’t even see Teresa. I’d be at school. But six days ago I was there when she let herself in with the key we provided her. She didn’t miss a trick. After noticing that Cynthia’s makeup and other items were not in evidence, that her robe was not thrown over the chair in our bedroom, she’d asked if Cynthia was away.

Now on the porch with my wife, I said, “I told her you were enjoying a little time on your own. Thought that would do it, but then she wanted to know where you’d gone, whether I’d be joining you, was Grace going, how long would we be gone...”

“She’s just worried we’re going to cut her back to every other week or once a month.”

I nodded. “She comes tomorrow. I’ll put her mind at ease.”

Cynthia tipped the bottle up to her lips. “Did you know those teachers?” she asked.

Those two retired schoolteachers who had been killed in their home a few days ago, not more than a mile from here.

From what I’d read and seen on the TV news, the cops were baffled. Rona Wedmore, the police detective we’d been involved with seven years ago, was the lead investigator and had as much as said they couldn’t come up with a motive and there were no suspects. At least none the local police would talk about.

The idea that a couple of retired folks, with no known connections to any criminal activity whatsoever, could be slaughtered in their own home had led to a sense of unease in Milford. Some — particularly the news shows — were calling this the “Summer of Fear” in this community.

“We never crossed paths,” I told Cynthia. “We didn’t teach in the same schools.”

“It’s a horrible thing,” she said. “Senseless.”

“There’s always a reason,” I said. “Maybe not one that makes much sense, but a reason nonetheless.”

There were beads of sweat on Cynthia’s beer bottle. “Hot one today,” I said. “Wonder if it’s going to be nice this weekend. Maybe we could all do something together.”

I went to reach for her phone so I could open the weather app, check the forecast, the sort of thing I did at home all the time if my phone wasn’t nearby. But before I could grab it, Cynthia moved the phone to the other arm of the chair, beyond my reach.

“I heard it’s going to be nice,” she said. “Why don’t we talk on Saturday.”

Barney went down the other side with the gas mower.

“He said he hopes we work things out,” I said.

Cynthia closed her eyes for two seconds and sighed. “I swear, I really haven’t said a thing. But he puts things together, sees you coming over but not staying. Likes to offer advice. Seize the day, that kind of thing.”

“What’s his story?”

“I don’t know. Mid-sixties, never married, lives alone. Likes to tell everyone how his leg got busted up in a car accident back in the seventies, hasn’t walked right since. He’s kind of sad, actually. He’s okay. I listen to him talk, try not to hurt his feelings. I might have a plugged toilet one night and need him to come over.”

“Does he live here?”

Cynthia shook her head. “No. There’s a young guy across the hall from me — there’s a hell of a story there I’ll tell you sometime. And on the first floor, there’s Winnifred — swear to God, Winnifred — who works for the library, and across the hall from her another sad sack named Orland. Older than Barney, lives alone, hardly anyone ever comes to see him.” She forced a grin. “It’s the House of the Damned, I tell you. They’re all here living alone. They’ve got no one.”

“You do,” I said.

Cynthia looked away. “I didn’t mean it that—”

There was a sudden noise from the house. Someone coming down a flight of stairs, fast.

The door swung open and a man, late twenties to early thirties, slim, dark hair, stepped out. He spotted Cynthia before noticing me.

“Hey, good-lookin’,” he said. “What’s shakin’?”

“Hi, Nate,” Cynthia said, an awkward smile on her face. “I’d like you to meet someone.”

“Oh, hey,” he said, his eyes landing on me. “Another friend dropping by?”

“This is Terry. My husband. Terry, this is Nathaniel. My across-the-hall neighbor.” Her eyebrows popped up briefly as she looked at me. This was the guy there was a hell of a story about.

His face quickly flushed, and it took him maybe a tenth of a second to decide to extend a hand. “Good to meet you. Heard a lot about you.”

I glanced at Cynthia, but she wasn’t looking at me.

“Where you off to?” Cynthia asked. “You don’t walk dogs this late in the day, do you? Isn’t everyone home by now?”

“Just going out for something to eat,” Nathaniel said.

“You have dogs?” I asked.

He smiled sheepishly. “Not here, and they’re not mine. That’s what I do. I’ve got a dog-walking business. Go from house to house through the day, take my clients’ mutts out for a stroll while their owners are at work.” He shrugged. “I’ve had a small career change. But I’m sure Cyn — I’m sure your wife has told you all about that.”

I looked at Cynthia again, expectantly this time.

“I haven’t,” Cynthia said. “Don’t let us hold you up.”

“Again, nice to meet you,” he said to me, then trotted down the stairs, got behind the wheel of the Caddy, and took off on North Street.

“A dog walker with a Cadillac?” I said.

“Long story. Short version goes like this. Hit it big in the phone app business, market went south for a while, lost it all, had a nervous breakdown, now walks dogs for people every day while he gets his life back together.”

I nodded. This house seemed to be a place where people came to regroup.

“Well,” I said.

Neither of us spoke for the better part of a minute. Cynthia watched the street the entire time.

Finally, she said, “I’m ashamed.”

“It was an accident,” I said. “It was just a crazy accident. You never meant for that to happen.”

“I do everything I can to protect her and I’m the one who ends up sending her to the hospital.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“You probably need to get home and make Grace dinner,” Cynthia said. “Give her a hug for me.” She paused. “Tell her I love her.”

“She knows,” I said, getting up. “But I’ll do it.”

She walked me to the car. The smell of freshly mown grass wafted up my nostrils.

“If there was anything going on, if Grace were in trouble, you’d let me know,” Cynthia said. “Right?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t have to tiptoe around me. I can take it.”

“Everything’s fine.” I grinned. “Mostly she watches me to keep me out of trouble. I try to throw any wild parties, she nips that right in the bud.”

Cynthia rested her palm on my chest. “I’m coming back. I just need a little more time.”

“I know.”

“You just keep an eye on her. This thing, about those teachers being killed, it’s got my mind going all kinds of places it shouldn’t.”

I forced a smile. “Maybe it’s some former student, years later, getting even with teachers who gave him a hard time for not doing his homework. I better watch my back.”

“Don’t even joke.”

I lost the smile. I realized I hadn’t been funny. “I’m sorry. We’re okay. We are. We’ll be better when you come back, but we’re getting by. And I’m watching her like a hawk.”

“You better.”

I got in my Ford Escape, keyed the ignition. Driving home, I couldn’t get out of my head two things Nathaniel had said.

Hey, good-lookin’ was the first.

And the second was: Another friend dropping by?