(LB2) Shakespeare's Landlord (18 page)

“I have to shower,” I said. “Out.”

“Keep the tape dry. Turn that side away from the water.”

“Yes, sensei.”

“I’m sleeping on your couch tonight.”

“It’s a love seat. You’ll get cramped.”

“Sleeping bag?”

“Nope. Don’t like camping.”

“Floor.”

“You can sleep with me. It’s queen-sized.”

I could tell he wanted to ask me why I’d left his bed earlier in the night. I was glad he was too decent to badger me when I was so exhausted. He helped me off with the rest of my clothes and then just left, without saying a word. I felt immense gratitude and relief. I turned on the shower and as soon as the water ran warm enough, I stepped in, pulled the curtain closed, and just let the water run over me. After a few seconds, I got the soap and shampoo and made as thorough a job of it as I could with Marshall’s strictures. I even shaved under my arms, though bending over for my legs was too difficult.

When I stepped out into the steamy room and brushed my teeth, I felt much more like myself. My nightgown was hanging on the hook on the back of the door, and I pulled it over my head after my automatic deodorant, skin cream, and cuticle remover routine. I’d almost forgotten Marshall was there until I went in my bedroom. It was a shock to see the black hair on the pillow next to mine. He’d civilly taken the inside of the bed and left me the outside by the night table, and he’d left the bedside lamp switched on. He was sound asleep, on his left side, turned away from me.

Moving as silently as I could, I checked the front and back doors and all the windows—my nightly routine—and turned off the lamp. I slid into bed cautiously, turned on my right side, my unbandaged side, so my back was to his, and despite the strangeness of having someone in my house and bed, I was sucked down into sleep like water circling around the drain in my sink.

My eyes flew open at eight o’clock. The digital clock on the bedside table was right in front of me. I tried to think what was so different…. Then I remembered the night before. My back felt very warm; it was pressed against Marshall’s. Then I felt him move behind me, and his arm wrapped around my chest. My nightgown was thin and I could feel him pressing against me.

“How are you?” he asked quietly.

“Haven’t moved yet,” I murmured back.

“Want to move some?”

“You have something specific in mind?” I asked as I felt his body respond to contact with me.

“Only if it won’t hurt you….”

I arched harder against him and felt him press against me fiercely in response.

“We’ll just have to try it out, see if it hurts,” I whispered.

“You sure?”

I turned over to face him. “Sure,” I said.

His strength enabled him to hold his weight off me, and his eyes showed nothing but pleasure. In view of my scratched face and the black bruises on my side, I found this touching and amazing. I realized I’d already gotten used to his acceptance of the scars. So it was doubly dismaying to me, after we had finished lovemaking and were lying side by side holding hands, when he said, “Lily, I’ve got to talk to you about something.” His voice was serious, too serious.

I felt my heart shrivel.

“What?” I asked, trying to sound casual. I pulled the sheet up.

“It’s your quads, Lily.”

“My…
quadriceps?
” I said incredulously.

“You really need to work on them,” Marshall told me.

I turned to stare at him. “I have scars all over my abdomen, I have scratches across my face, I have a huge bruise on my ribs, and your only remark about my body is that I need to work on my quads?”

“You’re perfect except for your quads.”

“You…jerk!” Torn between amusement and disbelief, I pulled the pillow from under my head and hit him with it, which immediately activated the pain. I couldn’t hold back my exclamation of dismay, and clapped my hand to my side.

“Lean back,” Marshall urged me, sitting up to help. “Lean back, slowly…there. Raise your head a little.” He slid my pillow back under my head.

“Lily,” he said when he could tell the worst had passed. “Lily, I was teasing.”

“Oh.” I felt abruptly and totally like a fool.

“Well, I guess I’m hardly social anymore,” I said after a moment.

“Lily. Why’d you leave last night?”

“I just felt restless. I’m not used to sharing time, or space, with anyone. I’m not used to visiting people’s homes as a guest. You’re still married. You’re used to having someone else around. Probably you and Thea were invited places, right? But I’m not. I don’t date. I’m just…” I hesitated, not sure how to characterize my life of the past few years.

“Coasting?”

I considered. “Existing,” I said. “Going from day to day safely. Doing my work, paying my way, not attracting any attention. Left alone.”

“Not lonely?”

“Not often,” I admitted. “There are not that many people I like or have respect for, so I hardly want their company.”

Marshall was propped up on one elbow, his muscular chest a treat for my eyes. And I thought of it that way, as a treat: a seldom-achieved, rare thing that might not happen again. “Who do you like?” he asked me.

I thought about it. “I like Mrs. Hofstettler. I like Claude Friedrich, I think, in spite of everything. I like you. I like most of the people in the karate class, though I’m not partial to Janet Shook. I like the new doctor, the woman. But I don’t know any of those people that well.”

“Do you have any friends you don’t know through work or karate class, anyone your own age that you…go shopping with, go to eat in Little Rock with?”

“No,” I said, my voice flat and verging on anger.

“Okay, okay.” He raised a placating hand. “I’m just asking. I want to know how uphill this is going to be.”

“Pretty uphill, I’m afraid.” I relaxed with an effort. I glanced at the clock again. “Marshall, I don’t want to leave, but I have to work.”

“Are you just having a flash of antisocializing, or do you really have to work this morning?”

“I really have to work. I have to clean the doctor’s office this morning, visit Mrs. Hofstettler, go to the police station, and do my own shopping this afternoon.” I keep grocery expenses down by making a careful list and following it to the letter on my one visit to the grocery store a week.

“How are you going to manage with your ribs?”

“I’ll just do what I have to do,” I said with some surprise. “It’s my job. If I don’t work, I don’t get paid. If I don’t get paid, I go down the drain.”

“I have to open up the gym, too,” he said reluctantly. “At least it opens late on Saturday, but I don’t have anyone to work until one today, so I do have to get there.”

“We have to start moving,” I suggested, but I was suddenly reluctant to crawl out of the warm bed with its odor of him and sex.

“Can I take you out to supper tonight?”

I had that pressed feeling again. I almost balked, said no. But I told myself sternly that I’d be cutting my own throat. Marshall was throwing out a lifeline and I was refusing to grasp it.

“Sure,” I said, aware that I sounded stiff and anxious.

Marshall studied me.

“You pick the place,” he suggested. “What do you like?”

I had not eaten in a restaurant in longer than I cared to add up. On nights I decide I don’t want to cook, which isn’t that often, since I enjoy cooking and it is cheaper than eating out, I pick up food and bring it home.

“Um,” I said, drawing on an old memory, “I like Mexican food.”

“Great, so do I. We’ll go to El Paso Grande in Montrose.”

Montrose was the nearest large town to Shakespeare, and the one where Shakespeare residents did most of their shopping when they didn’t want to drive the hour and a half to Little Rock.

“All right.” I carefully sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I bit my lip and I stayed there, trying to feel like getting up and brushing my teeth. I wanted Marshall to ignore my struggle, and miraculously he did, letting me take my time and rise on my own, then walk stiffly to the bathroom for a quick sponge bath and a meticulous brushing of my teeth and hair. I applied makeup quickly and thoroughly, hoping the scratches would be less conspicuous. I turned my face from side to side, checking it in the mirror, and decided I looked much better.

But I still looked just like a woman who’d been in a fight.

I walked out, still holding myself stiffly upright, to let Marshall have his turn.

By the time he emerged, having showered and used a toothbrush in a plastic wrapper I’d put out for him on my sink (the dentist gives me a new one every time he cleans my teeth, but it is a brand I don’t like), I’d managed to dress myself in the cheap clothes I wore to work: loose-leg blue jeans and an old dark red college sweatshirt with lopped-off arms. I hadn’t been able to cope with pulling on socks, so I’d slid my feet into loafers instead of my usual cross-trainers.

Marshall started to speak, stopped, thought the better of it, and finally settled with saying, “Pick you up at six?”

I approved of his skipping all the “Are you sure you can do it? Why don’t you call in sick today? Let me help you” stuff I’d been afraid he was going to put us through.

“Sure,” I said, showing him gratitude with my smile.

“See you then,” he said briefly, and went out to his car, which was still parked rather crookedly in front of the house.

Moving slowly but keeping going, I gathered together what I needed for the day and drove over to the doctor’s office. As usual, I parked in the paved area behind the building, intended for the doctor and staff. I noticed without much interest that Dr. Thrush’s car was there, too. Dr. Thrush is new in town and I had just started cleaning for her three weeks ago.

I used my key and stepped uncomfortably over the high threshold. Carrie Thrush was sticking her head out of her office, her brows drawn together with anxiety.

“Oh, thank goodness it’s you, Lily!” the doctor exclaimed. “I forgot it was time for you to come.” Then, as I moved down the hall, the relieved smile gave way to concern. “Good God, woman, what happened to you?”

“I had a fight last night,” I said.

“In a bar?” The young doctor looked amazed, her dark brown eyebrows raised above eyes just as dark and brown.

“No, a guy jumped me in my yard,” I said briefly, explaining only because she’d asked with so much concern.

I didn’t have much energy to spare today, so I had to focus on the job at hand. I opened the door of the patients’ bathroom in the hall. That was the worst place, so that was where I always started. I had a strong feeling that between my own scheduled cleaning times, Dr. Thrush came in every morning and gave it a light going-over herself. That bathroom would be even dirtier otherwise. I pulled on my gloves and started in.

I cleaned the little double-doored space where patients put their urine samples, then wiped off the knob of the little door into the lab. I laid a fresh paper towel down for the next patient’s sample. I remembered I hadn’t tested this pair of rubber gloves for leaks, and reminded myself to do that when I got home. The last thing I needed was to catch a bug here.

I became aware that Dr. Thrush was standing in the bathroom doorway staring at me.

“You surely can’t work in that condition!” Carrie Thrush said.

She has a firm voice that I believe she assumes to keep people mindful she is indeed a doctor. Carrie Thrush is shorter than I am and pigeon-plump. She has a round face with a determined jaw, unplucked eyebrows, and acne scars. She wears her chin-length black hair parted and brushed back behind her ears. Her dark brown eyes are round and clear, all that saves the doctor from plainness. I set her age at about my own, early thirties.

“Well, yes I can,” I said, since she was waiting for a response. I was not in the mood for arguing. I sprinkled powdered cleanser in the sink and wet the sponge to scour it. I compressed my lips in what I hoped was a determined line.

“Could I just look at your ribs? That’s your problem, right? Listen, you’re in a doctor’s office.”

I kept on scrubbing, but my good sense conquered my pride. I laid down the sponge, pulled off my gloves, and pulled up my shirt.

“Oh, someone taped you, I see. Well, let me just take this off….” I had to endure all the probing again, to hear abona fide doctor tell me just as Marshall had that none of my ribs were broken but that the bruise and pain would last for a while. Of course Carrie Thrush saw the scars, and her lips pursed, but she didn’t ask any questions.

“You shouldn’t be working,” the doctor said. “But I can tell that nothing I could say would stop you, so work away.”

I blinked. That was refreshing. I began to like Carrie Thrush more and more.

Cleaning the Shakespeare Clinic was an exasperating task because of paper. Paper was the curse of the doctor’s office. Forms in triplicate, billing forms, patient health histories, reports from labs, insurance forms, Medicare, Medicaid—they were stacked everywhere. I had to respect each stack as an entity, lift it to dust and put it down in the same spot; so the office shared by the receptionist and the clerk was in and of itself a land mine. Compared with the office, the waiting room and examining rooms were cakewalks.

For the first time, it struck me that someone must also be cleaning those more often than once a week. As I vacuumed, I mulled this thought over. Nita Tyree, the receptionist? I couldn’t picture Nita agreeing to that as part of her job. I barely know Nita, but I do know she has four children, two of whom are young enough to be in day care at SCC. So Nita leaves when the last patient walks out the front door, no matter what is sitting on her desk.

Gennette Jinks, the nurse, was out of the picture. I’d been behind the fiftyish Gennette in line at the Superette Food Mart only the week before and had heard (as had everyone else in a five-foot radius) about how hard it was to work for a woman, how young Dr. Thrush wasn’t accepting the wisdom she (Gennette) had attained with years of experience, at which point I had tuned out and read the headlines on the tabloids instead, since they had more entertainment value.

So the surreptitious weekday cleaner had to be the good doctor herself. I had stacked up the bills. Without wanting to, I knew how much Carrie Thrush still owed for her education, and I had a feeling that some weeks it was hard for Carrie to pay even me, much less Gennette and Nita.