“There’s Duncan’s pension and life insurance. We’d get by.”
“Getting by is all right for a while. You wouldn’t like it in the long run. I can tell you for sure from now until he’s grown up and settled into his own job you’ll always need more cash.”
Iris would know. She had longer experience than Gwyn at raising a child alone. There wasn’t an ex-husband in the wings, no child support check, no pension. An aunt who lived on a farm not far from the city helped out with fresh produce and a place for free holidays, but that was all.
“How do you do it, Iris?”
“Do what?”
“Work full-time, take care of the house, raise Molly.”
Iris shrugged. “Badly?”
Gwyn gave a snort. “You’d better not do it badly. You’re my role model.”
“Uh-oh.” They both smiled, then Iris added, “You can’t fix everything for him. It wouldn’t be good for him even if you tried.”
Gwyn nodded. The urge to make everything better was there, though, along with the terrible feeling of falling short when she saw him struggle. Next year he’d be in school morning and afternoon. That would help, but it brought its own worries. School could be an uncaring place to leave a child for so many hours of the day.
She watched Chris pull Molly back from the imagined precipice again. “He was calming down until he saw the hurricane coverage yesterday. The weather channel should come with an R rating.” After churning over the tip of Florida Elton had gathered strength before hitting the coast of Mexico. Their TV screen had been full of shattered houses and drowned livestock.
An idea struck her and she turned back to Iris. “How old is Molly?”
“Twelve, why?”
“I thought she was about ten.” Ten forever.
“Ten would be fine. That was a good year. The next one I’m looking forward to is, I don’t know, twenty-five?”
It was a spur-of-the-moment idea. She should probably wait and think it through, but it seemed like a perfect solution. A pretty good solution, at least. “Would you mind if I offered her a summer job?”
Iris looked at Gwyn blankly for a second, then started shaking her head. “Oh, no.”
“No?”
“You need someone reliable. A grandmother. Remember?”
“This is the happiest Chris has been for days.”
“I don’t know.” Iris’s head was still going back and forth. “It’s up to you, I guess.”
That seemed to be as close as she was going to get to permission. Gwyn hurried outside, Iris right behind her. The kids stopped playing when they saw their parents. Chris lay on his back, cardboard rolls held to his stomach.
“We saved the ice core samples, Mom.”
“I noticed, well done. How’s the bite?” She meant the one on his forearm. It had been giving him the most trouble.
“Good.”
“Let’s see.” A scab had started to form over the top, so at least she knew he’d stopped scratching. A large area around the bite was pink, swollen and warm to touch. “I bought some ointment that’s going to help it feel better.”
Chris pulled his arm away. “I hate ointment.”
She turned to his fellow scientist. “Your mom told me you’re twelve.”
Molly dropped her cardboard roll, discarding all appearance of childhood as she rose from the ground. “Nearly thirteen.”
“Twelve,” Iris said firmly.
“Not for long.”
“You’re twelve, and you’ll be twelve for another four months.”
Gwyn sidestepped the brewing squabble. “Are you interested in having a summer job? I need a babysitter who’s willing to play with Chris, someone who’ll remember bug spray and sunscreen. It would be about twenty hours a week, for July and August. Usually five hours at a time, sometimes more like nine. And if that worked for all of us, in the fall we could talk about evenings.”
“I’d love to do it! I can start right now.”
“You can start after exams,” Iris said.
“Next week, then. How much would I make, Mrs. Sinclair?”
“Molly! She’ll do it as a favor, Gwyn. What are neighbors for?”
“I’m paying five dollars an hour now.”
“No way, no way.” Iris reached into her pocket for her cigarettes again. “She doesn’t need five dollars an hour. If you insist on paying her, pay her something reasonable. Two dollars. That’s plenty.”
“Five times twenty,” Molly said softly. She got a faraway look while she did the math. “That’s… that’s eighty dollars a week! Oh, I’m so going shopping.” She gave a little jump. “I can get a new dress for the year-end dance!”
“You see why I want her to study? It’s one hundred dollars, Molly. Five times two and move the decimal, for heaven’s sake.” Iris tapped Gwyn’s arm. “Four dollars, and that’s final.”
Gwyn tried not to listen to Molly and Iris negotiating how much Molly should be paid and whether she should get a bank account and how much she should put away for her education. She hoped this was a good idea. As hard as it was going to be to call Mrs. Henderson with the news, it would be even harder to make the same kind of call to Molly.
AFTER WASHING DIRT from Chris’s bites and applying a first dose of antibiotic ointment Gwyn took store-bought salad and a ready-cooked chicken from the fridge and arranged them on the table, moving aside all the cardboard ice core samples he’d brought with him.
“Is Molly instead of Mrs. Henderson?” he asked as he pulled out his chair and climbed onto it. “Or would Mrs. Henderson still come sometimes?”
“Instead of.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“I don’t like Mrs. Henderson.”
“You never told me that before. Why don’t you like her?”
He shrugged, lifting far more lettuce onto his plate than he would ever eat. Gwyn watched, thinking about nanny cams and horror stories she’d read in the paper. She repeated, “Why don’t you like Mrs. Henderson?”
“She’s grumpy.”
Gwyn couldn’t deny that. “Grumpy, how?”
He started putting some of the lettuce back in the salad bowl.
“You
