of Shelby’s book wedged under my sofa, the initial hope and subsequent disappointment triggered by her vision of the inadequate, offending crock pot. I had to hand it to her; she did not give up easily. Eight dates, each a particularly excruciating endeavor, though of course I kept the gory details to myself. These were, after all, the daughters of her friends and I was the common denominator in an equation that persistently equaled disaster. My mother just wanted me to be happy. Maybe it was my fault, this dating purgatory, for thwarting Shelby’s blind date so long ago. Maybe I’d kept her from meeting the man who would have bought her the perfect gifts, supported her literary endeavors, drawn her fully into his life. The man she had not given me the chance to become. I sipped my beer. I cringed as I considered the name Sally Sitterly and the type of woman who might own a daycare center: merry, serene, hearing-impaired. What the hell, I thought. Kids are all right.
“Sorry I’m late!”
I looked up as the familiar voice registered, and there she was, all smiles and sequins, the fruit of my mother’s most recent effort: Shelby.
falling forward
Faith was sipping organic aloe juice and munching Skinny Chips when she was summoned, via telephone, to spring Ed from jail for the third time that month. What had he done now? she wondered. The sheriff wouldn’t say, but he did tell her that she had better bring $500 because this time it was bad.
She clamped down the receiver, slid her feet into the salted water churning in her footbath, and tried to put Ed out of her mind. When the phone rang again fifteen minutes later, she was elbow-deep in the chip bag sopping crumbs with her wet fingertips, her toes raking the hard plastic nubs on the floor of the Vibra-Matic.
“It’ll do him good to wait,” she said. “Let him think about what he’s done, whatever that is.”
She heard a ruckus in the background—the clanging of pots and pans, like the sound of a hubcap skittering down the road—and then Sheriff Waldon’s weary voice: “Get him out of here, Faith.”
By the time she arrived at the jail—really just a room with a desk and four cells—smelling of ginger-peach spray and fingering a small bump that had sprouted suddenly just above her left wrist, Ed was asleep.
“Well,” said Faith to Sheriff Waldon, “I guess I’ll do some shopping. I’m all out of yogurt and echinacea.”
“He was cursin’ up a white storm all night.” The sheriff glanced over at Ed’s cell. “I don’t want a replay when he comes to. Please. Let’s just get him up.”
Faith frowned. “Well, what’d he do this time?”
Sheriff Waldon gave her a defeated look, then jerked his head derisively toward the row of cells. “Ask him.”
FAITH AND ED HAD BEEN neighbors going on two years, and although they were nearly the same age—fifty-six and sixty-one, respectively—Faith felt she was a paragon of health next to Ed, a creased and rumpled man with doom etched in his face. She shook her head in sad disapproval of Ed’s health regimen when she glanced over the fence to see him passed out in a lawn chair, the sun baking his pale flesh, or when she saw the cases of empty beer bottles stacked in his garage like a wall, one that sealed him off from the good things in life: early morning walks, the happy cries of grandchildren, the smell of Protose-loaf and Nuttola streaming from the oven after having been placed there by the loving hands of a health-conscious wife bent on prolonging her time with him. Ed wasn’t a bad man, Faith thought, just a selfish one. She’d heard his wife had emptied the bank account and stolen off with the adorable twins, and Faith felt bad about that, no question. But didn’t a part of her feel he deserved it? Couldn’t she tell by the way he dropped off mowing the lawn halfway through or launched his Buick into the driveway, its fender nosed deep into the hedge after swerving home from the Tap Shoe, that he’d had it coming? Still, when Ed approached her that scalding day last month to request a favor, brushing her hand with his as it rested on the fence between them, her legs trembled slightly. Close up, he looked a little like Marvin, who’d been dead going on twenty years.
“Can you hold this for me?” he asked, passing a worn leather shaving case over the fence. Faith had once told Ed to stop by if he needed anything—Really, she’d said, nodding her head like a dime-store dog—and was glad he’d finally felt comfortable enough to do it, to break free, if even temporarily, of his self-imposed isolation. She stared at the bag for a moment, thinking drugs, jewels, the severed digits of his former wife’s right hand.
“It’s money,” Ed shrugged. “For when I get in trouble, which seems to be more and more these days. I appreciate it.” He smiled at her, shyly, then looked away as if her gaze would wound him.
“I don’t understand,” said Faith. “What am I supposed to do with it?”
Ed turned to her, and she thought he looked confused, as if she’d just cracked a bad joke or asked him how to make a soya fritter.
“Right,” he said, “Sheriff Waldon’ll call you. I gave him your number. I appreciate it, Faith.” And with that he walked off purposefully, as if late for a shareholders’ meeting.
Faith took the bag inside and made a cup of tea—there was no need to rush it. She moved through the kitchen methodically, reaching for the china cup, drawing a silver spoon from the dish rack, sliding the kettle from the burner, her poker-straight spine tingling with anticipation. When she was finally perched atop the Dr. Zielbach Ergonomi-Stool, she thought about waiting to open it. Maybe tomorrow. Faith lived for moments like this: a scandalous peek into a neighbor’s life. She stared at the bag, thinking. Or, more accurately, imagining. Maybe there was a love note. Or a suicide note. Who could tell with Ed? You’re pathetic is what she finally said to herself. She then tore it open and found that Ed, who may have been a slovenly, unhealthy drunk, wasn’t a liar. The case contained money, only money—$1,250.00, to be exact—and Faith was disappointed. At first she considered hiding it with her own valuables in her underwear drawer, but the thought of the rough edges of flaking leather tearing into her cotton briefs made her neck go stiff. She finally threw it onto her closet floor and refused to think about its interaction with her shoes. She would help Ed, sure. Why not? She would gain his trust; maybe she would even save him from the things he didn’t know were killing him.
MARVIN HAD BEEN A ROMANTIC when Faith met him more than thirty years before at the Blue Goose, where she’d go for the occasional grasshopper before she discovered herbal tea and Dr. Zielbach. He’d sing Smokey Robinson songs to her, fold bar napkins into roses and insects, ignore the welts that would suddenly flame red on her face and arms when he spun her around the dance floor. No man had ever had this type of physiological effect on Faith, had excited her to the point of eruption, and she imagined each red splotch was the shape of a heart, or a wedding ring, or a part of the anatomy that would turn her face crimson. They were married three months after they met—Faith wasn’t getting any younger, her mother always said—and shortly afterward Faith realized that she remained welt and hive free when Marvin licked the back of her knee or slid his fingers over her breasts. She wondered why she had been cured—she still loved him, after all—and ultimately determined that she was now content rather than happy, in love rather than in lust. But the more she eased into the comforts that a long-time relationship provided, the more Marvin wanted to recapture what Faith felt was no longer required. He wanted to take her to the Blue Goose and sing to her, though she felt silly when he reembarked on a courtship ritual that had already been successful, and she felt he was sullying the memory with this bad, albeit unwitting, parody. She just wanted to go home and read a book while Marvin watched the news.
But the
