PART II
2
THE DAILY PAPER that once landed on his porch in the morning, rolled up and slapping the porchboards in the dark as if to announce the new day, as if no new day could begin without that sound, had been stopped years ago, and still the days came, and the day’s news too by and by, though the only news he took with his morning coffee these days was the national weather from the TV, and that just so he’d know what to expect out there, though it rarely changed his plans or even how he dressed, and so he didn’t learn about the accident, those two young women in the river, those college girls, until much later in the day, when he made his way at last to Eileen Lindeman’s house to see about the smell she said was coming from the downstairs bathroom.
The winter sun down by then, the end of a long day of small jobs, some in town, some out. Eileen Lindeman’s house was in town, on the east side of the river, and once upon a time he might’ve taken more care, might’ve parked the van a block away from the house, although it wouldn’t have stopped people from talking.
Another lifetime, all that business, and anyone who saw Gordon Burke’s van in Eileen Lindeman’s driveway these days would know that Gordon was there to fix something in the house and nothing more. His story had changed too much for any other interpretation.
The trouble was the seal—he told her that right off, showing her by rocking the toilet in his hands. The floor tiles had not been set level and so the porcelain base did not sit cleanly all the way around, and so the gasket never stood a chance. Just the slightest corruption to the wax and you had sewer gas leaking into your house.
Brad, she told him—her ex—had set the tiles himself in one of his fits of home improvement. “Looked it up online,” she said. “Said anybody who could read could do it.”
Twelve, thirteen years ago, that would’ve been. Brad Lindeman, the lawyer, had left her for a young woman lawyer up in Saint Paul, and of course Gordon’s wife had pulled pretty much the same stunt at about the same time—a banker, in her case—leaving him to raise a teenage daughter mostly on his own. Which, truth be told, was a relief at the time. Was a godsend to that house.
He stood looking at the toilet, the tiles. Eileen standing just behind him in the small bathroom, her face framed in the vanity mirror.
“You know what I’m gonna find when I lift this toilet?” he said.
“A leprechaun?”
“No, a two-dollar gasket about this thick that’s not even squashed. I’m surprised it lasted this long.”
She was watching him in the mirror, the hand he raised to demonstrate thickness, and when he met her eyes he saw what was still there, if he wanted it—just a note, a reminder, just in case. She’d been the first, after Meredith moved out. Four years without a woman’s touch, including the last two years of marriage, unless you counted a woman’s fists as touching, a wife’s crazy little blows at two in the morning—your fault, always your fault that she was drunk. That she was sleeping with another man.
He’d not been looking for it, not missing it; he had his work, his business, a sixteen-year-old daughter to raise. But Eileen had Brad’s money to spend: new water heater downstairs, new kitchen sink upstairs, new fixtures in the master bath… until finally there was no other reason to come over but one.
You can park in the driveway, Gordon. There’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing. Is there?
People talk, Eileen.
So let them talk.
What he meant was: they’d talked about Meredith. They’d talked about Brad Lindeman, and now they would talk about Gordon and Eileen, the two cheated-on leftovers running into each other’s arms, for Christ’s sake.
He looked at the toilet again and said, “Shouldn’t be more than an hour, give or take,” and Eileen told him to take his time. She offered him coffee, a beer? but he thanked her no, he’d best get to it, and she smiled at him in the mirror and left him to it.
THE OLD WAX ring came up with the toilet and peeled easily from the porcelain—greasy black but otherwise not much altered from its original shape and thickness, which was one-half inch, as predicted. He replaced it with a Harvey’s No-Seep #5, walked the bowl back into place, felt the wax compressing under it, tightened down the nuts, reconnected the water line and stood watching the tank fill, then watched the water flush down.
He checked his watch. One hour, soup to nuts.
He climbed the snowy risers to the driveway and got his tools stowed away. The stars were out, bright and thick. The temperature had dropped ten, fifteen degrees.
At the front door he stomped his boots and let himself in, then stood on the small rug waiting for her to appear. She’d turned on the lamps in the living room. A light in the kitchen. The house was full of furniture, as if she was expecting a big crowd any second. She and Brad had never had any kids. There’d been a miscarriage or two, people said. Anyway it was now the house of a woman in her fifties who lived alone. Everything in its place.
He took a step and poked his head into the kitchen. “Eileen?”
A TV playing somewhere. Not downstairs, and not in the living room. The only other set he knew of was in the bedroom. He said her name again, louder. He didn’t want to cross the carpet in his boots but he would not take them off. He pawed the soles once more over the rug and crossed the living room and took the two steps up to the landing where the master bedroom was. The smell there was partly her perfume and partly some other scent that was in her skin, in her hair, that made you think of the back of a supermarket where boxes of fruit were stacked and waiting. Or maybe it was because she day-managed the supermarket that made you think that. Anyway the smell was there… stronger when she unzipped her dress, when she stepped out of the dress in the lamplight, years ago, and stepped into your arms.
He would not stay the night, he’d told her back then, because of his daughter. Because of what she’d gone through with her mother, and Eileen understood. But then one night when Holly had gone up to her mother’s for the weekend—Meredith sober then, supposedly, and living with some new man who was not the banker but a contractor with a young daughter of his own—that night Gordon had drunk too much wine and was just falling asleep when Eileen said she wanted to tell him something, something she’d never told anyone, not even Brad. And then she told him about the man who’d given her a ride. Fifteen, she’d been, and the man wore a tie and his car looked like her father’s silver Buick and he wore a wedding band and so when he pulled over she’d gotten in. But when they reached the turnoff for her house the man kept going, fast. Don’t, she said. You’re a nice man. She could tell by his face he hadn’t planned it, didn’t know what he was doing, or even where to take her. She knew it was his first time. You’ve seen me now, the man said, and she said, No, I never did. I never saw this car either, I swear to God. He looked at her and said, Do you believe in God? and she said, crying now, Yes, sir, I do, and the man slowed down. He pulled over and stopped the car. Sat there with his hands on the wheel, looking straight ahead. After a while, Eileen simply got out of the car, shut the door, and walked home.
And you never told anyone? Gordon said after a long silence, lying there in the dark. His heart drumming.
Not a soul, she said. She’d watched the news to see if some other girl would go missing, but none did, not around there.