Three hours later, she’d finished the kitchen, to the sounds of game shows, the news, and the strains of big voices singing pop songs she didn’t recognize. Funny that Ms. Lloyd was probably more up on whatever the kids were watching today than she was. Uma couldn’t remember the last time she’d sat down and watched TV. Other than the first week in the shelter, she hadn’t had the luxury of a television in six months, and before that…before that, she’d been cajoled into watching shows. But that was different. Usually football or cop shows. Joey, “the expert,” always talked through everything, criticizing the inconsistencies.
Only ten o’clock. Uma took another look around. Was it worth continuing on to the next room? The clean gleam was so satisfying, she would almost have liked to go on all night. Little grunts emerged from the sleeping form on the sofa, making her decision for her. She put the cleaning things away and turned off the television, then took a deep breath and gently shook the woman.
“Ms. Lloyd?” she said quietly. “Ma’am?”
“Huh? Wha—?” Her boss looked almost like a baby, blinking the sleep out of her huge eyes. A fat baby owl.
“It’s ten o’clock, and you fell asleep.” Uma’s hand remained on the woman’s arm, oddly protective.
“Of course I didn’t.” Ms. Lloyd pushed the hand away, an irritable, old-lady shove, and stood up on her own. “You been cleaning the bathroom this whole time?”
“No. I cleaned the kitchen too. Would you like some help getting upstairs?”
“Of cour… What’s that stench?”
“Stench?”
“It smells like… Did you usebleach?” She ended on a shrill note, nearly a screech.
“Just in there.”
“How in God’s name am I supposed to get to sleep with that smell? What were you thinking, girl?”
Uma refrained from mentioning that the stench hadn’t stopped her from snoring through hours of scintillating programming. “I could open some windows.”
Ms. Lloyd gasped as if Uma had suggested killing her firstborn. “Are you insane? Anyone could get in! You make sure you check the windows and doors every night before bed. Go on. Do it!” Ms. Lloyd shuffled to the back door, unlocked and relocked it, throwing the dead bolt four times, with a belated fifth. Her eyes followed Uma as she moved to the windows and tested locks. “You missed one. Look again.”
No. Uma hadn’t missed any windows, but she did as requested. “Do it twice if you have to.” Every window, every door was locked, relocked, bolted, and double-checked.
Again, Uma caught herself feeling sorry for Ms. Lloyd, finally understanding the extent to which she’d made herself a prisoner in her own home. She wondered what had happened to make the woman need this level of protection, this shell. At first, she’d doubted there was truly a need for live-in help, when a cook or a cleaner would do just as well. It had seemed like a bit of vanity: a minion to do the crappy jobs, someone to push around. But Uma saw how badly Ms. Lloyd needed someone. In exchange for food, a roof over her head, and a few hundred dollars a month, Uma very well might be providing Ms. Lloyd’s sole connection to the outside world.
How very, very tragic to be stuck all alone in this frozen, desiccated place.
In the upstairs hall, Ms. Lloyd stopped in front of the first door and said, “I need you awake tomorrow mornin’ at five o’clock sharp. Any lateness will be docked from your pay. Now help me to bed.”
* * *
Uma had always been very sensitive to place. Anything remotely off, and she’d lie stewing for hours. The house, with its crammed decorations, dust, and gaping holes where memories should be, was an overwhelming presence, like an overdecorated wedding cake left stale and hulking in a corner long after the big event was canceled. Nothing but a badge of shame to be hidden away.
Uma closed her eyes, trying to force her mind to still. She always envied people who found sleep easily. Joey had been like that. He’d lie down, clamp one arm tightly around Uma’s waist, and immediately fall into a deep, perfectly civilized sleep. No tossing or turning for him. Nothing to stain his pristine conscience. For Uma, the quiet, still night was like a vacuum, waiting to be filled with every doubt and worry her brain could offer up.
Insomnia greeted her in that minuscule room, the same as it did anywhere else: racing around her own brain, replaying events, wondering how it all could have come out differently. The dark ate at her, stole her breath, poisoned her thoughts. She wondered if she might die there.
Uma practiced her breathing exercises, teeth clamped tightly onto the meaty part of her thumb, and forced her brain to seek out something good, something positive.
After what must have been hours, she arose from the single bed and pulled a straight-backed chair up to the window.
Although they weren’t visible, the foothills of the Blue Ridge were just past the woods and the grassy field out back. This and the place next door were the last homes before the lush, green ground moved gently but inexorably up and up. Beyond the hills were the violet-crested mountains. Country songs and anthems of yore ran through her head as she stared out at the dark. Songs her parents had sung when they were still together. Loving John Denver was one of the few things they’d agreed on.
Her window looked out on the next-door neighbor’s house. Ive. Ivan. Ivan the Terrible. Ivan Denisovich? What was that? Maybe something she’d read in high school. Or Ivanhoe. Thoughts of Russia and England ran circles through her brain: a bearded man grimacing and an old film her dad had let her watch, illicitly, while her mom was away on one of her retreats. There were vague images of jousting, aggression, and blood, which fit in nicely with the face she couldn’t stop picturing.
It was good, thinking of him. So much better than the alternative.
She imagined the sound of his name in his oddly rough voice. It had crackled when he spoke, like spitting logs in a fire. Ive. Burl Ives and Christmas, children skating, and Norman Rockwell. She pictured the red tricycle in his driveway—something else she would probably never have. She huffed out an annoyed breath at herself.
What do I want anyway? A tricycle in front of a picture-perfect house? A big, scarred lumberjack man with intense eyes and a sweet dog to welcome me home at night?
Who the hell was she kidding? That wasn’t even Uma’s fantasy, anyway.
