Locals like her in-laws complained about the colleges. They caused too much traffic; they were full of self-important academics who looked down on regular people. But whatever money those students and their parents pumped into restaurants and hotels and gas stations and grocery stores was the only thing keeping this corner of the world afloat. Each campus was abutted by a few blocks of pretty houses and a downtown full of quirky shops and music venues and vegan cafés. Then, abruptly, things dropped off.
Years ago, George had told her, the area boomed with mills that produced lumber and paper. There was a soda-bottling plant, a toothbrush factory. But when these places closed, nothing came along to replace them. Now half the towns around here were all but abandoned. Stores and bars and restaurants were few and far between, only their signs left behind to remind you of what had once been and was no more.
Immigrants from El Salvador and Mexico and a large Puerto Rican population had settled in certain towns, out where there were still working dairy farms and fruit orchards. In Weaverville, you might go to the old five-and-dime and hear nothing but Spanish spoken. The place sold Mexican spices and sodas and candies.
Elisabeth liked this—the classic architecture, populated with people and things one wouldn’t expect. But the town was otherwise depressing. Empty storefronts, houses no one wanted to buy. Not even a school anymore. The kids got bused elsewhere.
Faye, who was raised there, shook her head whenever Weaverville came up in conversation and said, “That town used to be something.”
* * *
—
The baby was asleep in the back seat when they arrived.
“Maybe I should stay out here with him,” Elisabeth said. “You can bring me a plate.”
“Ha,” Andrew said. “Nice try.”
Gil was alert and craning his neck to take in the new surroundings by the time they reached the back door.
The door opened straight into the kitchen, which hadn’t been renovated since the seventies. A yellow linoleum floor, wood-paneled cabinets, and, above them, a border of purple tulips, hand-stenciled by Faye.
She raced over from the stove and took Gil from Andrew’s arms.
“Hello, baby,” Faye said, raising him to the light.
The dog came in, howling.
“Duke, don’t be jealous,” Faye said. “You know I love you too.”
She looked at Andrew and Elisabeth as if just noticing them.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” she said. “Beef stroganoff.”
“Yum,” Andrew said, even though he hated beef stroganoff.
He had wanted to be a chef when he was young, but he was afraid he’d never make any money. Instead, Andrew made cooking a hobby. Elisabeth had often wondered how he got so good at it, growing up with a mother whose recipes all seemed to include Hamburger Helper.
Faye handed the baby back to Andrew, sated by her thirty seconds of quality time. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “We got another notice from our friends at Citibank. We have ninety days to make the payment, or we’re out. Your father refuses to care. Like he’s going to call the bank’s bluff. I try to make him talk to me about a plan, and he says he’s busy.”
Elisabeth pretended to be looking for something in the diaper bag. Whenever Faye mentioned their finances, she wanted to bury the uncomfortable conversation, to squelch it, to make it disappear.
In the last year, she had realized that George and Faye were homeowners only in the loosest sense. They had refinanced and borrowed against this house so many times that they now owed more on it than they’d paid in the first place.
A thump came from George’s office, the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.
Faye straightened, and said, “Anyhow. What’s new with you?”
“Elisabeth found us a great babysitter today,” Andrew said. “Now she can finally get back to work.”
A strange pause as she pondered whether to be offended. He made it sound like she’d been floating on a pool raft drinking piña coladas for four months.
“She’s a student at the college,” Elisabeth said.
“That’s young to be in charge of an infant, isn’t it?” Faye asked.
“I thought so too at first. But her references were great. Gil seemed to adore her. And she has tons of experience with babies. Much more than I do.”
Faye frowned. “Be careful. I saw on the news this terrible thing. A babysitter killed three children. Drowned them in the bathtub.”
She only mouthed the words killed and drowned, didn’t say them out loud, to shield Gil from the horror.
“She did it with her bare hands,” Faye continued.
“This happened around here?” Andrew said.
“No, it was in Ohio or someplace.”
Faye glowed as she said it. She thrived on the mere suggestion of tragedy. She had once diagnosed Gil as autistic because he stared at a light bulb. “That’s one of the signs,” she said. “I think that’s one of the signs.”
For each life stage, there existed cautionary tales meant to keep women in their place. Every female in New York was haunted by a story. Not some urban myth, but whatever was on the cover of the Post the day she arrived. A girl who stayed late at a bar and ended up raped, her body rolled in a carpet, tossed in a dumpster. A girl who was pushed in front of an oncoming train by some lunatic for no reason. A girl whose roommate came home drunk one night, stabbed her to death, and didn’t remember any of it in the morning.
So it was with new mothers. The air was full of threats. On the news: the exhausted, overwhelmed woman who left her baby to suffocate in a hot car. Online: the day-care worker who dosed the kids with Benadryl to make them sleep, accidentally killing them all. Overheard in the produce aisle at the grocery store: the one about the parents who kept putting off that first-aid class, and then watched helplessly as their child choked to death on a grape.
Elisabeth heard George’s heavy footsteps coming toward them now. A happy-making sound that drove away all thoughts of small lifeless bodies floating in a tub.
“Lizzy!” he said when he saw her.
He was the only person who had ever called her that, the only one who could get away with it.
George still wore the same uniform he had worn to work for the past thirty-five years: a black suit, the jacket hanging on a hook in the mudroom now, to be slipped into again tomorrow. He had taken off his patent leather shoes. On his feet were black socks with a bright burst of gold at the toe.
Before he shut down the car service, it was George’s habit to be out the door by seven at the latest each morning, sometimes four or five if he had to make an early trip to the airport. He started every day by polishing his Town Car’s black exterior, vacuuming the floor mats, placing new bottles of water in the cup holders built into the back-seat console, filling a bowl with peppermints. He still went through the motions, even though, as an Uber driver, he could work in sweatpants and drive a beat-up Mazda and no one would care. Something about this pulled at Elisabeth’s heart.