Femur he uttered in a growl of disgust as feeeemur.
Rebecca took the pages from him, her face smarting.
Tignor laughed. “Like some high school kid, eh? How the hell old are you, anyway?”
Rebecca said nothing. She was confused, thinking he’d taken the dictionary from her too, and thrown it into the stove.
Her dictionary! It was her most secret possession.
Grunting, Tignor stooped to pick something fallen onto the floor. This was a sheet of paper upon which Rebecca had written, in a lazy sloping script floating down the page-
“Who’re these? Friends of yours?”
Now Rebecca was stricken with fear. The way Tignor was glaring at her.
“No. They’re no one, Tignor. Just…names.”
Tignor snorted in derision, crumpled the page and tossed it at Rebecca, striking her chest. It was a harmless blow with no weight behind it yet it left her breathless as if he’d punched her.
Yet he wasn’t in a really mean mood. Rebecca heard him laughing to himself, whistling on the stairs.
“Mommy, what’s wrong?”
Niley saw her pressing both her fists against her forehead. Her eyes reddened, shut tight.
“Mommy is ashamed.”
“”Shamed‘…?“
Niley came to stroke Mommy’s heated forehead. Niley was frowning, that old-young look to his face.
God damn why hadn’t she hidden her papers from Tignor! Better yet, thrown them away.
Now that Tignor was home, she needed to keep the run-down old house clean and neat and “sparkly” as possible. As much like the rooms of a good hotel as she could manage.
No mess. No clothes tossed about. (Tignor’s clothes and things, Rebecca put away without a word.)
The irony was, she’d stopped thinking about Hazel Jones. The man in the panama hat. The look of urgency in his face. All that seemed long ago now, remote and improbable as something in one of Niley’s picture books.
Why’d anybody give a shit about you, girl!
A man’s scornful voice. She wasn’t sure whose.
Niley was sick. A bad cold, and now flu.
Rebecca tried to take his temperature: 101° F?
Her hand trembled, holding the thermometer to the light.
“Tignor? Niley needs to see a doctor.”
“A doctor where?”
It was a question that made no sense. Tignor seemed confused, shaken.
Yet he carried Niley, wrapped in a blanket, out to his car. He drove Niley and Rebecca into Chautauqua Falls and waited in the car in the parking lot outside the doctor’s office, smoking. He’d given Rebecca a fifty-dollar bill for the doctor but had not offered to come inside. Rebecca thought He’s afraid. Of sickness, of any kind of weakness.
She was angry with him, in that instant. Shoving a fifty-dollar bill at her, the mother of the sick child. She would not give him change from the fifty dollars, she would hide it away in her closet.
Tignor was away from home often. But never more than two or three days at a stretch. Rebecca was coming to see he’d lost his job with the brewery. Yet she could not ask him, he’d have been furious with her. She could not plead with him What has happened to you? Why can’t you talk to me?
When Rebecca returned to the car with Niley, an hour later, she saw Tignor on his feet, leaning against a front fender, smoking. In the instant before he glanced up at her she thought That man! He is no one I know.
Quickly she said, “Niley just has a touch of the flu, Tignor. The doctor says not to worry. He says-”
“Did he give you a prescription?”
“He says just to give Niley some children’s aspirin. I have some at home, I’ve been giving him.”
Tignor frowned. “Nothing stronger?”
“It’s just flu, Tignor. This aspirin is supposed to be strong enough.”
“It better be, honey. If it ain’t, this ”peedy-trician‘ is gonna get his head broke.“
Tignor spoke with defiance, bravado. Rebecca stooped to kiss Niley’s warm forehead in consolation.
They drove back to Four Corners. Rebecca held Niley on her lap in the passenger’s seat, beside Tignor who was silent and brooding as if he’d been obscurely insulted. “I’d think you would be relieved, Tignor, like me. The doctor was very nice.”
Rebecca leaned against Tignor, just slightly. The contact with the man’s warm, somehow aggrieved skin gave her pleasure. A small jolt of pleasure she hadn’t felt in some time.
“The doctor says that Niley is very healthy, overall. His growth. His ”reflexes.“ Listening through a stethoscope to his heart and lungs.” She paused, knowing that Tignor was listening, and that this was good news.
Tignor drove for another few minutes in silence but he was softening, melting. Glancing down at Rebecca, his girl. His Gypsy-girl. At last he squeezed Rebecca’s thigh, hard enough to hurt. He reached over to tousle Niley’s damp hair.
“Hey you two: love ya.”
Love ya. It was the first time Tignor had ever said such a thing to them.
And so she thought I will never leave him.
“He loves us. He loves his son. He would never hurt us. He is only just…Sometimes…”
Waiting? Was Tignor waiting?
But for what was Tignor waiting?
He’d ceased to shave every day. His clothes were not so stylish as they’d been. He no longer had his hair trimmed regularly by a hotel barber. He no longer had his clothes laundered and dry cleaned in hotels. He’d spent money to look good though he’d never been overly fastidious, fussy. Now he wore the same shirt for several days in a row. He slept in his underwear. Kicked dirty socks into a corner of the bedroom for his wife to discover.
Of course, Rebecca was expected to launder and iron most of Tignor’s clothes now. What required dry cleaning, he didn’t trouble to have cleaned.
The damned old washing machine Rebecca was expected to use-! Almost as bad as her mother’s had been. It broke down often, spilling soapy water onto the linoleum floor of the washroom. And then Rebecca had to iron, or try to iron, Tignor’s white cotton shirts.
The iron was heavy, her wrist ached. Bad as Niagara Tubing except the smells weren’t so sickening. Ma had taught her to iron but only just flat things, sheets, towels. Pa’s few shirts she’d ironed herself taking care frowning over the ironing board as if all of her life, her female yearning, had been bound up in a man’s shirt spread out before her.
“Jesus. A blind cripple could do better than this.”
It was Tignor, examining one of his shirts. The iron had made creases at the collar. Ma had told her The collar is the hardest part, next are the shoulders. Front, back, and sleeves are easy.
“Oh, Tignor. I’m sorry.”
“I can’t wear this shit! You’ll have to wash it again, and iron it again.”
Rebecca took the shirt from him. It was a white cotton dress shirt with long sleeves. Still warm from the iron. She would not re-wash it, only just soak it and hang it to dry and try ironing it again in the morning.
In fact she stood mute, sullen. After Tignor went away. God damn she worked eight hours five days a week at fucking Niagara Tubing, did all the housework, took care of Niley and him and why wasn’t that enough?
“This factory job. What’s it pay?”
Out of nowhere came Tignor’s question. But Rebecca had the idea Tignor had wanted to ask for a long time.
She hesitated. Then told him.
(If she lied, and he found out. He would know then that she was trying to save money out of the salary.)
“That little? For a forty-hour week? Christ.”
Tignor was personally hurt, insulted.
“Tignor, it’s just the machine shop. I didn’t have any experience. They don’t want women.”
It was nearing the end of October. The sky was a hard steely knife-blade-blue. By midday the air was still cold, begrudging. Rebecca had not wished to think How will we endure the winter together in this old house!
She’d missed Tignor, in his absences. Now that Tignor was living with them, she missed her old loneliness.