Stay Home, Stay Safe

Even before the stay-at-home order that spring, Jen’s latest pregnancy had threatened to lock her down. She’d thought stress and fatigue were bringing on her headaches, but her twenty-six week check-up revealed her blood pressure was high. If it continued to spike, she’d have to go on bedrest. She couldn’t very well deliver groceries from her mattress, she’d pointed out. Her doctor thought Jen was joking, but this little guy had exhausted her sense of humor. Now that the pandemic was forcing her to sit around most of the day helping the kids with remote schooling, it was harder to distract herself from the baby’s constant kicking. Her headaches were better, but he never settled down for a moment. What felt like perfect somersaults pushed acid up her throat every few minutes. Plus, she’d never stopped spotting after about week seven, when she’d braced for a miscarriage. So, maybe she had it backwards? Maybe her body was a danger to this baby, and here she was, some mother, blaming him for battling to be born.

To make it all worse, Michael, who was really Robert’s dog and barely gave Jen the time of day outside of mealtimes, had turned clingy since the lockdown. He’d leap in her lap while she helped the kids fill out the worksheets their teachers had assigned during the morning’s Zoom sessions. As she colored shapes with Daniel, formed letters with Rebekah, watched Rosemary work her algebra, since Jen couldn’t help out with any math more advanced than long division, Michael would plop his full Labrador weight on her knees and lick her silly. No amount of pushing him off and no, Michaels, and banishments to the back yard, where he promptly set to barking at the snotty neighbor woman with the unpronounceable last name, would make him leave her alone.

Maybe her stomach acid smelled like raw wieners.

Or maybe, she thought as she leaned in to guide Rebekah in a cursive h and Michael slathered a kiss, he was trying to get her to lighten up.

“Why does my name end in h?” Rebekah asked. “I can’t even hear it.”

Before Jen could answer, Rosemary looked up from a string of mysterious alphanumerics. “It’s Biblical.”

“Does the Bible say why we can’t hear it?”

Rosemary deadpanned, “Yes, it does.”

This from the daughter who’d declared herself an atheist last month. “Your sister is just kidding. I thought your name looked pretty with an h. An extra special something you don’t have to hear to know is there.”

“Like God. Which is Biblical.” With a quick glance back down at the problem, Rosemary easily solved for x.

“I can’t hear any h in God.” Daniel looked up from the triangles he was supposed to be coloring with primary shades. Burnt sienna wasn’t primary. Neither was raw umber. Would his teacher mark him down? Why were they giving kindergarteners marks, anyway, especially now?

“There isn’t, honey,” Jen told him. “What your sister means is that you don’t have to hear God to know He’s there. Like Rebekah’s h.”

“But you have to see Him, right?” Rebekah was outlining her name with a blue crayon. “I can see my h.”

Rosemary looked at her mother as if daring her to answer for faith on that one. “You just have to see Him once,” Jen answered. Without thinking, obviously. Rosemary’s brows shot up.

“If I draw Him then I can see Him.” Daniel grabbed the Crayon box.

Rebekah stared at her mother anxiously. “When will I see Him, Mom?”

Michael snuggled against her belly. The pressure was calming the baby’s tumbles. For a brief moment, she didn’t feel sick, or panicked. She had no idea why she was being literal about God to her literal-minded young kids. Still, she said, “You will, honey. Everybody does, eventually.”

“But when?”

“Soon.”

Rosemary might have muttered Jesus Christ when she grabbed Rebekah’s crayon. “Hey, look. What’s God spelled backwards?” She spelled the answer out in enormous letters that crossed every line on the cursive worksheet.

Rebekah read, “Dog!” She and Daniel burst into giggles.

Rosemary bent back over her algebra. The younger kids flipped their papers over, fought for their favorite Crayons. Not for the first time did Jen contemplate telling Rosemary to join the study bubble the neighbor kids had formed. Before the stay-at-home order, Rosemary had rejected any attempt to make friends in her new school. She complained she didn’t fit in. Jen couldn’t very well say that none of them fit in. After a shooting on their old street, Robert had moved the family into the low end of a high-end neighborhood. Their former house had been a decent one in a so-called crappy neighborhood the next town over, known for its so-called crappy schools. Rosemary and Rebekah—Daniel was still too young—had done well in those schools, which weren’t crappy, just underfunded. But Robert had insisted they move to the richer town, a safe neighborhood, and well-funded schools. Not that it was fair to blame Robert for the family’s isolation. Jen hadn’t objected to the move. How could she? The shooting had unsettled her, too, and anyway wasn’t she supposed to want her kids to have all the advantages she and Robert never had growing up?

But the house they’d been able to afford was so tiny that, before the weather turned cold, they’d spent much of their time kicking plastic bottles filled with pennies around the front lawn, attracting the stares of their one-child neighbors. The rare two kid families shopped as if they were maintaining an enormous household. Weekly grocery deliveries from the service Jen worked for far outstripped her own monthly haul from Walmart. Ten-seater Savanas dwarfed her decade-old Honda Civic. Jen’s family of three, with another on the way, apparently branded them as hicks who refused to curb their procreation and shrink their carbon footprint. The childless woman next door, who never seemed to leave her house even before the pandemic, used to poke her head outside to stare down Jen whenever she sat on the front stoop minding that Daniel and Rebekah didn’t chase their bottle into the street. The woman’s eyeballing became worse when Jen asked Rosemary to watch the kids, as if asking an older child to babysit rather than gear up for a travel soccer team was child abuse. Now that the lockdown and the cold Michigan early spring kept them indoors all the time, the kids and the dog rattled around the place like those pennies trapped in the plastic bottle.

Before the pandemic, Rosemary had still hung out with her old crowd. Jen pretended she didn’t know Rosemary was sneaking back home because she was a perfect daughter, especially now. When Jen was at work, Rosemary helped the kids with their Zoom sessions, fed them and tucked them in for the night. With Robert stranded in Canada—the oil sands camp in Alberta where he worked was under quarantine—Jen needed the help. Rosemary never complained about the extra duties the pandemic had dumped on her. Maybe when school resumed in a few weeks, after this whole thing was over, Rosemary would give her new life another shot.

Daniel was tugging at Jen’s sleeve. “Mom. Look.” He thrust his drawing at her. He’d drawn Michael in bold black lines, with a Jesus beard in place of whiskers. “I drew God.”

“That’s God backwards,” Rebekah corrected him.

Jen’s cellphone flashed, Dad. Her digital label for Robert was meant to prompt the kids to pick up the phone when Jen wasn’t around to answer. Accurate for the younger two kids, but he was actually Rosemary’s stepdad. Which might be why Rosemary always looked put out when he called.

When she answered, his voice rose and fell with the dodgy connection like he knew exactly where the dead air lay. “How are things?” he said.

Rosemary set down her pencil and turned off her calculator. “I’m going to check the mail,” she mouthed. “Here boy.” Michael leaped off Jen’s lap. She belched into the phone. The kids giggled. Rosemary rolled her eyes and went to fetch Michael’s leash from the foyer. “Sorry,” Jen told Robert.

“The baby upsetting your stomach?”

Robert didn’t know half of what the baby was doing to her. No use making him worry about her. “I’m fine. Just finishing up the morning school session before I head out.”

“Don’t you think you should quit? Especially with the virus?”

The front door slammed. Jen moved to the foyer to watch Rosemary walk Michael up the street. Narrow, sparkling streams from an early morning storm still flowed along the curb. Across the street, impeccable paint jobs on manicured homes glimmered like they’d been run through a car wash. Already in late April, all the lawns except her brown, stunted patch were green.

What could she tell him? Robert’s recent promotion had bumped his salary enough to cover this new mortgage, but not the bump in expenses that went with their lifestyle upgrade. “Haven’t you heard? I’m an essential worker now.”

“I’m serious, Jen. Stay home.”

Next, like her doctor, he’d be telling her to take to her bed. Her phone vibrated. Another batch notification. Since the lockdown, delivery demand had skyrocketed. While her husband was urging her to quit, her manager was demanding she pick up extra orders. “It’s ok, really. Most of the cases are in Detroit. What about up there?”

He reassured her, as she had reassured him. Not a lot of cases, not that they were testing, or telling the workers much. They mused about the usual things. Maybe they were asymptomatic and had already had it. Neither knew anyone personally who was sick, but had heard that a young cousin of an old friend was vented, and somebody’s uncle, a marathon runner just shy of fifty, had died last week. No, Robert hadn’t been told when, or if, he would be allowed to come home.

Rosemary disappeared around the lazy bend like she’d been swallowed up by the manses on the sub’s ritzier end. Those houses boasted pillars and carvings like they were airlifted from the classical period and dumped in this southeast Michigan exurb by mistake. Rosemary had been tugging Michael’s leash impatiently. She’d been restless all day, clicking through websites when she was supposed to be watching a lecture.

In the kitchen, Rebekah was sounding out words with Daniel. Barnyard was one. Awl was another, or maybe she was saying owl. Which one made more sense to farm life? Next door, the snotty neighbor emerged on her front porch, wrestling a mattress. Mona Bo-something, the something being Slavic, maybe, although the woman appeared to be ordinary Midwestern white bread. She tripped on the last step and nearly fell. Jen’s phone buzzed again. Robert’s voice cut out for a moment.

“Sweetheart, I have to go,” she told him.

“Jen, you need to take this virus seriously,” Robert admonished. As if she weren’t.

The neighbor had dumped the mattress at the curb and was now dragging an oak bedframe down the sidewalk. Rebekah drawled out a line about the awl or owl poking a ferret. What kind of curriculum used barnyard stabbings to teach kids the fundamentals? She’d have to review what the teacher was sending them more carefully.

The neighbor arranged the frame neatly by the mattress and high tailed it back to her house as if being out on her own lawn was a transmission risk. The bed was smaller than a twin. Perfect for Daniel, who was still in the crib that in a few weeks would belong to this new child. No way could they afford a new bed, and the local Goodwill didn’t have any at the moment. Jen had been planning to transition Daniel to an air mattress in Rebekah and Rosemary’s room, but here was a nice alternative. She checked her phone for new delivery batches. She added a few to her already full schedule, a mix of new customers and her regulars.

The lazy bend gave her back Rosemary and Michael, one straining at the leash, eager to reach home, the other clutching a stack of letters and dragging her sneakers. Rosemary’s sway was a woman’s, Jen realized. Her round face still skewed so young, the chub in her cheeks and chin, the wide-eyed gaze, but, without Jen noticing, her daughter’s body had ditched girlhood.

The neighbor slipped through her front door with a sheet of paper and a roll of bright blue duct tape. Rosemary stopped, checked Michael with a hard tug, as if he’d leap on the woman from several yards away. The neighbor attached the sign to the oak headboard, Free!!!. Messy black scrawl, the F and e’s all loops and hooks, and what was with all the exclamation points? Maybe nothing in this neighborhood had ever been free before, so she had to proclaim the bargain. Rosemary watched her warily. Jen watched Rosemary, glad that someone else in the household disliked the snotty neighbor as much as Jen did.

Still, Free!!! exactly matched Jen’s price point. When the neighbor had disappeared inside and Rosemary pushed the door open, Jen said, “Honey, can you help me a sec?”

Although Jen was standing next to the door’s side window in full view, Rosemary jumped. She tucked the mail under her arm and unleashed Michael. “Are you spying on me?”

“Can I play I Spy?” Rebekah was in the kitchen doorway, pushing Michael’s snout away.

“I’m not spying on your sister,” Jen said.

“We’re not playing a game,” Rosemary told her. “Michael, off! Go lie down.”

Michael lay down on Jen’s slippers. Daniel ran into the foyer waving a worksheet. “What’s a ferret?” he asked Rosemary.

“It’s like a weasel. Only cute,” she explained.

“Then why does the owl want to get him?”

“Because ferrets taste good.”

Rebekah burst into tears. Daniel said, “What’s a weasel?”

“Hey, Rose. That’s not nice.” Jen pushed Michael off her slippers and stroked Rebekah’s hair.

“Spying isn’t, either.” Rosemary picked up the mail and slunk to the den.

I Spy Something Grumpy. Jen bit back the words. “Hey,” she said to Rosemary’s back, also looking very womanly as it marched stiffly away. She dried Rebekah’s tears with the tiny slack the baby allowed her blouse and sent the kids “back to school”: the kitchen table strewn with snapped Crayons and broken pencils and scribbles on worksheets and Jen’s failure to educate between Zoom sessions. Jen peered in the den with a choice before her, demand to know what’s wrong with you or hug Rosemary tight. But the den was empty. Rosemary must have gone to her room.

Jen told Michael to stay and went to the curb. She half expected the neighbor to fly out her front door the moment Jen touched her bed, as if Free!!! was reserved for the neighbors who didn’t need a break. Still, when Jen hoisted the headboard, it was a shock when the woman actually threw the door open and leaped off her porch. “Hey!”

Mona-something skidded to a stop exactly six feet from Jen, wearing a bright cloth mask smattered with sunflowers. She stared at Jen’s belly, her latest rude habit. It didn’t help that the baby was flipping around like a gymnast on the rings. “Hi. Well. Are you taking the bed?” A sunflower’s head was centered on her mouth. Peppy yellow petals undulated as she spoke. At least she’d managed to raise her eyes a tick to the old milk stains and the button-popping boobs underneath the stains. Terrific. The fuzzy slippers weren’t helping her image, either. The woman herself was dressed as if she’d just stepped out of a business casual meeting downtown, right down to the neutral leather Naturalizers. Even her jeans looked pressed.

“May I?” Jen asked, and then added, “It says free.”

“Of course!!! Only, in your condition…” Mona glanced at Jen’s bare mouth uneasily. Although she masked up and added a face shield while on the job, Jen didn’t see the point of wearing a mask outdoors. But the woman was staring at her if she were one of those anti-maskers now bearing arms at the state Capitol building. “Let me help you carry it. It’s heavy, so. I mean, if you’re ok having me step in your house. We can social distance while we carry, lol, right?”

Mona hoisted the frame and was walking up Jen’s drive before Jen could put a stop to her. Jen dragged the mattress after her. Once inside, Mona leaned the frame carefully against the foyer wall and turned to help Jen heave the mattress through the door. The little kids crowded in the kitchen doorway, wide eyed at the strange vision of a neighbor being neighborly for the first time since they’d moved here. Even Michael, ears perked, tail thumping, stared from his bed in the den, too surprised to cavort.

The woman took in the toys littering the den, the messy kitchen table, the dishes piled in the sink. The house was so small, every bit of the home’s chaos was obvious from the front door. She stared at a pile of Legos like she’d never seen a castle-in-progress before. “Can I help you set this up?” A thin-skinned voice, masking dismay. But Jen was worrying about the same thing the woman was judging. This bed wouldn’t fit in the girls’ room, and what passed for the nursery was already a renovated walk-in closet. She had no idea where to put Daniel.

Jen crossed her arms over her stains and tatters, wished she could sink right through the cheap vinyl floor the kids had succeeded in scuffing as if it were real wood. “Oh, thanks. But no. My husband will take care of it.”

Rebekah said, “Why are you wearing a mask?”

“To protect you from me,” Mona explained.

“Your flowers are pretty,” Rebekah said.

Daniel inched towards Jen. Mona inched towards the door, maintaining her six feet from Jen’s kid. “F-r-e-e,” he sounded out. “Free.” His drawling pronunciation left off the exclamation points. Jen turned to see the sign dangling from the headboard. He’d read the word backwards and upside-down. Maybe the remote schooling wasn’t a total disaster. She peeled the sign off the headboard and gave it to Daniel. Behind her, Mona pressed her hand to the mattress and closed her eyes.

“That’s good, sweetheart,” Jen told Daniel. “Why don’t you go color this?”

Daniel took the paper and looked at the neighbor. “I know what dog spells backwards,” he told her.

Mona-something opened her eyes and cleared something in her throat. She stepped out onto the porch.

“Thanks again,” Jen told her.

Mona said, “Actually, thank you. I’m glad you took it in.”

Took it in. As if her cast-offs were ne’er do well kin. Was Jen supposed to thank her yet again? Instead she shut the door and hoped the pressure in her head was from exasperation, not another headache about to pop. Rosemary was now hovering in the den doorway, watching through the side windows as the woman shuffled home, head lowered, shoulders slumped. “What did she want?”

“Nothing. She was helping me carry this bed.”

“It was free,” Daniel told Rosemary.

Rebekah was old enough to put first things first. “Who gets to sleep in it?”

Jen ruffled Daniel’s hair. “You do, little man. It’s time you had a big boy bed.”

Both kids raised a ruckus, then, over all the fair and unfair reasons why he gets the new bed. The baby bumped her diaphragm. Dizzy, Jen leaned against the mattress. Rosemary stared at her, and then dropped her gaze to her belly. “So we need charity now?” she asked quietly.

Now that you’re pregnant again. Now that we moved from the place where we were happy. Now that we’re stuck in this house because of a novel virus. Jen closed her eyes against Rosemary’s accusing gaze, but, really, who could blame her for seeing things this way?

 

#

 

Her mother banished her to her room for the charity remark, even though Rosemary hadn’t said it to be mean. She’d been genuinely curious about how bad off the family really was, which had everything to do with what she was about to do. Being grounded was a pointless punishment anyway, given that the governor had grounded the entire effing state two weeks ago, but so what? She had a few minutes alone to go into business for herself. Sure, she’d turn over the credit card that had arrived for Mrs. Mona-whatever to the good-looking boy and his groupies. Any temptation Rosemary had to keep the card for herself had evaporated when she’d come home to find Mrs. Mona snooping around the house. Just a few minutes earlier and the woman would have seen her own name on the envelopes Rosemary was carrying. Plus a lot of other names on a lot of other mail. Rosemary had memorized the addresses of the biggest homes so she could nab the best mail. Now she sat on her bed and ripped open urgent offers for cards and cash that her neighbors had to act now to get.

Well, act now they would. Right now.

Rosemary opened her laptop and pulled up the Postal Service’s website. The good-looking boy had shown her how to sign up for a bogus Informed Delivery account. Before the lockdown, Rosemary had swiped offers from Mona-whatever’s box at the neighborhood mailbox stand. With Informed Delivery, Mona’s mail would be photographed before it was delivered. If the USPS meant this to be a security perk, it sure was a dumb one if it was this easy to open an account in someone else’s name and spy on their mail. The boy then applied for a credit card in Mona’s name. Her mother hated the neighbor woman, although that wasn’t the reason Rosemary had chosen to steal her stuff. Mona-whatever didn’t seem any worse than the other women on their uptight street. Rosemary had only taken hers because, when she snooped through all the neighbors’ boxes, she and her husband happened to have the most credit card offers. Then again, maybe her mother had a point. It was easy to hate someone who could get a six thousand dollar cash advance and twenty-five thousand dollars of credit just by opening a letter.

Once the boy was done with the sign-up, he explained that he’d keep an eye on Informed Delivery and text her when the card came. All she had to do was grab it before Mona-whatever did and hand it off. His reassuring tone implied he’d be doing the real dirty work, which was to charge wide screen tvs and digital cameras to fence, just one or two large purchases before shredding the card. Rosemary had the easy job, went the implication. How chivalrous; although, it hadn’t been that easy to figure out which envelope she should take. Several felt like they had plastic inside. So she’d snatched a bunch. Well, the first one she’d opened had been the jackpot. Now that she had Mrs. Mona’s card, she was about to cement friendships with the seriously popular crowd. Her mother had been bugging her to make friends at her new school. The joke was on her, for sure. Also on the popular crowd, since Rosemary was going solo using their scam. She planned to replace Dan’s and Bek’s crappy laptops, which were too old and slow for reliable Zoom connections. Obviously this family couldn’t afford new ones, or her mother would have replaced them by now. Rosemary decided not to think about whether she’d have the guts to use the cards when they came.

After setting up Informed Delivery for her neighbors, she applied for the cards. From the kitchen she heard Beks and Dan cleaning up from lunch, ready to start the afternoon session. Soon her mother would go to work, which meant Rosemary would be released to watch the kids. She’d finished her own schoolwork for the day before checking the mail. Easy stuff, the basics—algebra, earth science, The Scarlet Letter. She should scorn Hester’s lack of agency and Dimmesdale’s lack of balls—slap an A for Asshole on that preacher while you’re at it—but so what, she loved them. Best book she’d read in a while. She didn’t mind school, even this remote stuff. In fact, she kind of liked seeing her classmates on a screen rather than in the snooty flesh. But now, applying for these cards with soaring limits, she understood why the loser kids hated hitting books. As theories of how to live your life, the quadratic equation didn’t cut it the way ripping off the neighbors did. This was a goal worth something besides solve for x and discuss the impact on y and whatever you do don’t sleep with the Puritan. Worth that dared your family and your crummy neighbors and the new kids you hung out with to look past whatever letter they’d sewn on your chest.

 

#

 

How Rosemary found herself drawn into the scheme had come down to a lame joke. A week before the lockdown, a boy in her Gov class ignored the day’s lesson on civil disobedience to send her flirty texts. After class, he’d asked if she’d be at the bonfire that night at the abandoned Boy Scout camp just down the road from her neighborhood. Not exactly a cool hangout spot, not like the old-fashioned soda shop where she used to meet Jeremy and Alicia for milkshakes and then duck out back to smoke, but so what? Her new neighborhood was out in the township sticks, so maybe a bunch of cabins in the woods was where the cool exurban kids went to smoke. Anyway, the boy was good-looking. Rosemary hated that this new school was full of spoiled white kids, but although she’d rather die than admit it, she was lonely enough to be flattered.

Her mom had the evening off and might have been so relieved to think that Rosemary was finally fitting in that she would, for once, give her permission to be out after dark. But why chance a no? After Beks was sound asleep, Rosemary snuck out the window and jogged out of the sub. She hiked up the road towards the camp, a bit freaked out by how quickly darkness fell out here in the boonies. Five minutes out and the sidewalk gave way to a narrow gravel strip. Tall pines and maples blocked the moonlight. Thistles and ferns brushed her legs as if she was hiking the woods instead of a roadside. Thank goodness she’d thought to grab a flashlight.

When Rosemary reached the camp’s drive, she found the entrance gated and locked, but the fence was an easy hop. The boy had told her to look for the hill past the parking lot and a run-down ranger’s cabin. Rosemary crested the slope and there they were, a bunch of kids huddled half-way down the other side. The good-looking boy and his chums were kindling a fire. The girls were watching steel strike flint, even though they were using matches to light up cigarettes and weed.

The good-looking boy struck up a spark. The char cloth caught, a flame flared, and the boy threw it on the kindling. The other guys whooped. The girls pulled marshmallows and tongs out of the darkness at their backs. Someone made a crack about cub scouting that flintstone, another joked about Fred and Wilma. Rosemary squatted next to the good-looking boy. Her coat was unzipped. Her blouse might have fallen open as she bent down. She refused a marshmallow. A different boy, who might have checked out what was under her fallen blouse, which wasn’t much—Rosemary looked twelve, although she was fifteen—asked if she was afraid the marshmallows were spiked. She gave the boy a cool look and said something about him being the only cub in his troop to earn the lame badge.

The good-looking boy laughed and told her she was a stitch. The girls who weren’t jealous tittered. But Rosemary didn’t hear them because her hand piecing, the perfectly even stitches her mother always praised, sprang absurdly to her mind. Her mother’s pride in such an old-fashioned skill always struck Rosemary as sort of anti-feminist. So was getting pregnant again when you didn’t have room for another kid, labeling your husband Dad on your phone, and uprooting your whole family just because said husband wanted you to. She never praised Rose’s math chops. If her mother had actually studied her math, maybe she wouldn’t now be delivering other people’s groceries.

Of course, if she was going to hate on her mother, Rosemary had to admit that sewing was sort of retro, too. Like a girl better know how to stitch her own scarlet letter on her chest.

The good-looking boy moved to light the cigarette he’d slipped between her lips. One hand cupped the match flame. He was assuming she was a newbie but guess what? Rosemary was a smoker. A funny smoker, as the boy now knew, watching her take a draw deep into her seasoned lungs.

The boy she’d mocked poked at the fire grimly with his marshmallow, which promptly shriveled to ash and goo. Rosemary said something to the good-looking boy about using his flint to spark her up next, an innuendo that sealed the deal with him and made the other girls jealous. The flames flickered and waned. The good-looking boy reached for a stack of paper that wasn’t newsprint, since no one in this town offered any information anymore that didn’t glow from a screen. The papers caught fire. Names in their legal form—last, first, middle initial—and long strings of numbers blackened to ash. The boy heaved another wad of papers into the fire’s searing heart. She asked him what he was burning.

“Mail.” He shrugged like it was no big deal, and why should it be, when there was little else to burn these days? He watched her flick the glowing cigarette butt into the fire. “Where do you live, anyway?” he asked, and when she pointed in the general direction of the way she’d come, he glanced at his buddies.

Later, on the run-down ranger’s cabin porch, his warm, curious hands warned Rosemary she’d better stop the kissing. The boy respected her no at once and, like a gentleman, asked if he could drive her home.

#

 

Rosemary finished applying for Visas for her unsuspecting neighbors. Her mother tapped lightly on her door to tell her she was taking off to work. She gathered up the offers, with her notes on what she’d applied for and when detailed in the margins like the neat, perfect stitches on her covers, and Beks’, too. Rosemary had hand pieced both quilts, purple and yellow pinwheels spinning on a light beige background. She was working on one for Dan, a bear claw design in browns and oranges. Yucky colors, but they were his favorites, and fit the bear theme, she supposed. She was making a twin size, which would now be too big for the daybed her mother had snagged from Mona-whatever. Next she’d have to make one for the new baby and who knew what size to plan on, crib, twin, or something in between. Really she should stop wasting her time being craftsy. Even Alicia, her oldest friend, had given up beading ankle bracelets in middle school.

The front door slammed. Rosemary tapped out a text, she’s gone, and hit send. Beks was yelling for her, probably because the Zoom session had crapped out again. Rosemary went to stash the mail in her nightstand. Mona-whatever’s new card, a Chase Sapphire Visa a shade darker than the actual gem, was on top. Rosemary paused to rifle through the woman’s other mail, stared at Mona-whatever’s address. One digit different from her own family’s, a world apart on the credit line front. Where was her mother going to put that new bed, anyway? What passed for the nursery was already tiny, and Robert had made it clear that kids belonged in their own room, not their parents’. Rosemary still resented how he’d literally pushed her out of bed when she’d tried to snuggle with her mother when they were first married. No, that bed was destined for this room.

Beks yelled for her again. Rosemary flung the Sapphire down on her bed and ripped open the woman’s other mail. One for lawn fertilizing services, with a plastic card promising a free application. The next promised that Mona’s next oil change would be on the house, too. Every letter this woman received promised something for free. All Rosemary ever saw her parents tear into were bills.

She slit the final letter without noticing the script on the lavender envelope was real handwriting, not a mass-produced fake. Behind her, the window slid open. The cool breeze on her back bore the only people on earth she ever really wanted to see. Jeremy climbed in first and turned to help Alicia through. Screw the stay home, stay safe crap. Kids all over were skipping Zoom school to hang out. Three of Jeremy’s cousins had tested positive and done ok. Jeremy’s uncle was in the hospital for a while but even he was home now, so why play prisoner just because some old people with underlying conditions, people they didn’t even know, had died?

Jeremy would spy the new credit card right away. He grabbed the Visa card and flipped it over to read Mona’s name etched on the back. “What’s this?”

Alicia wasn’t wasting any time lighting up the joint she always seemed to have with her these days. Rosemary ignored Jeremy’s question. “Hey. You can’t smoke in here.”

“I’m right by the window,” Alicia pointed out. But pot smoke still filled the room. “Besides, it’s legal now.”

“Seriously? You’re underage.” Her mother’s nose was sharper than Michael’s. And, not to be a total square, but Rosemary didn’t want her quilts smelling like a head shop. Alicia had started smoking to ease her anxiety after she’d witnessed the drive-by that had driven Robert to uproot the whole family. Robert probably meant to cut her off from her friends, even though Alicia had been helping a woman move into her new house, hardly a bad influence.

Plus the guy who’d fired the shots, the woman’s crummy ex, wasn’t even from their neighborhood.

Plus he hadn’t actually hit anyone. But Alicia’s dad had heard the shots and rushed to his daughter at the same time the cops pulled up. They’d tackled him even though Alicia and the woman screamed that he wasn’t the guy, he was a dad. Alicia filmed her dad’s head hitting the concrete and the footage went semi-viral. The neighbors held a protest that turned into a big deal. Folks from all around joined in a peaceful march across town. After that, protests sparked up more often. Not long after they moved, Rosemary went back home to march for a local mother who was punched by a cop when she tried to reach her son, who was being arrested for shoplifting. Just before the lockdown, she’d joined the march for Breonna Taylor. But no matter how many incidents proved him wrong, Robert continued to blame his former neighbors, not the cops, for making their old street unsafe.

After he’d taken her away from her friends, Rosemary couldn’t stand how Robert cuddled with the little kids and praised Michael’s every cuteness. Robert’s favorite game was tug. Michael would bare his teeth and growl like crazy over his tatty, slimy rope. Beks and Dan always giggled themselves silly. Robert would laugh his head off and swoop them up in a hug. While Rosemary sat on the couch solving equations for extra credit she didn’t need because there was nothing else to do. Lately, just to be mean, she’d been playing tug with Michael on their walks and giving him a treat every time he growled. Just last week she’d even made him snarl just by shouting “Tug!” Not that she would ever really do it, but if she could order Robert’s own dog to growl at him, he’d know just how it felt to have someone who was supposed to love you turn on you.

Jeremy was snooping through the tatters of Mona-whatever’s letters. “Why do you have someone else’s mail?”

“I’m housesitting for a neighbor.”

Alicia, the sharper of the two tacks, gave her the you’re full of it look. Jeremy took a bit longer to catch on. “So you opened it all?”

“I’m organizing it.”

Jeremy ran a hand along a ragged edge of the lawn care offer. “Doesn’t look very organized.”

Although she hadn’t given it any thought before they arrived, Rosemary realized she wanted to tell them all about the scheme. Of the three buddies, she was the one with the fewest adventures. Alicia volunteered at a women’s shelter, which was why she’d been helping that woman move. Jeremy often snuck off to party with his older cousins, filmmakers and food activists and teachers. They both had funny stories about wacky aunts and uncles, adventuresome cousins, hovering grandparents. Rosemary’s mother never talked about her real father, and none of them had met Robert’s family, if he even had any. Her mother wouldn’t speak to her own parents. Uncle Larry lived someplace so much hipper than Michigan he couldn’t be bothered to visit.

But the good-looking boy, Informed Delivery, a real-life con; that made for a good story. Her story.

She started to say, Guess what, guys, but Jeremy interrupted her. “Who died?”

“What?”

He was looking at her hands. “Who died?” he repeated like she was the dull tack.

Rosemary glanced at the letter she was still holding, which was not a letter but a card. In Sympathy unfurled along the top. Under the fancy script lay a sprig of lavender tied with a white ribbon. One of those fancy cards that cost seven bucks a pop, so the ribbon was soft and shiny like actual satin. Rosemary opened the card and skimmed the message. So sorry. Little Steven. Thinking of you.

A chill seized her. That bed in their foyer. Bigger than a crib. Not as big as a twin.

Rosemary blinked, just in case the sudden itch in her eyes ended up being tears, and closed the card. “No one,” she said. “I mean, who knows?” She gathered up Mona-whatever’s mail and the Chase Sapphire, pushed past Jeremy to stash it all in the nightstand drawer.

Alicia held out the joint. “Are you crying?”

“Why would I be crying?” Rosemary took a deep drag. Pot wasn’t her thing, except when it was. She tried to push away what she’d seen earlier, after she’d stashed the mail in her room. Mona-whatever in the foyer, stroking the little bed’s mattress like she was hoping a coil would spring out to take her hand.

Just as she was exhaling, Dan and Beks flung open the door. Michael bounded in and flew to Jeremy to lick him silly. Rosemary couldn’t yell at Beks to knock first, since this was her room, too. She flicked the joint out the window. Alicia gave her a look. Jeremy laughed and bent to pet Michael.

“Rosie, I can’t get back on school,” Beks whined, and then wrinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?” Dan was staring at Alicia and Jeremy. He probably didn’t even remember who they were.

“Yeah, sis – what’s that smell?” Alicia grinned. Jeremy sniggered. Rosemary should be annoyed with them both. She was the one who was going to have to bribe the kids to keep their mouths shut. But seeing her friends’ faces, hearing their voices, felt so like things used to feel before the move and the pandemic made everything strange, that she was only half joking when she told Beks, “It’s God.”

“God doesn’t smell,” Beks argued.

“Yes, He does,” Rosemary said. “Don’t tell Mom. Now go back to school.”

“We can’t,” Beks reminded her. “Zoom won’t let us.”

Dan sniffed and rubbed his nose. “I’m very glad to see You, God,” he said to the air. Mistaking seeing for sensing, Rosemary thought, which was kind of getting belief in something backwards, but at least their mother wouldn’t know what on earth he was talking about if he did tell.

 

#

 

Before her shifts, Jen always suited up in the car outside Meijer so the kids didn’t see her leaving the house looking like a Star Wars stormtrooper. Face shield strapped to her brow, surgical mask secured underneath. Non-latex gloves, bright blue. These days you couldn’t miss what your hands got up to. Before the pandemic, her tiny Honda had been filled with the typical Mom-ride junk—crackers and juice boxes, tissues and wipes. Legos and crumbs were jammed between the seats. Mud and leaves caked the grooves of the floor mats. Now the car looked like a survivalist’s pit stop. Lysol spray and paper towels, stockpiled early on, were piled in the hatch. High protein nut pouches and Gatorade for evenings like tonight when she’d miss dinner filled the passenger seat. Spare masks and gloves were organized in the back seat, freed, for the moment, from the kids’ car seats. The floor mats, like the rest of the car, were now squeaky clean. The steering wheel and the clutch knob glistened, she wiped them down so much. The virus had wreaked havoc on every possible aspect of her life, but her Honda hadn’t looked this good in years. It was a tiny car, but it beat the house on the claustrophobia front. In fact, it was the first space in years she thought of as her own.

Jen self-reported her symptoms on the company’s phone survey and stepped out of her car. A line of masked shoppers spaced six feet apart stretched from the store’s lobby all the way to the bus stop near the loading dock. Store greeters waved a shopper in as one left like a turnstile at an amusement park. If the Thrifty Acres had exceeded safe capacity, Jen’s clients were about to be disappointed yet again on the essentials they were hoping would have been restocked after the pandemic’s first shortages. Toilet paper, paper towels, and napkins. Same deal with flour, and yeast, and milk. Wipes and sanitizer, Lysol and Clorox. Whiskey, gin, and wine.

Antacids were flying off the shelves.

The line reserved for the delivery service shoppers moved briskly. She’d snagged so many batches during the kids’ school that morning she’d have to shop two orders at a time to fulfill them all. Once inside, she nabbed two carts, stowed her insulated bags under one, wiped down the handles. She pushed one, pulled another, hummed the wheels on the cart go round and round. One benefit to this job; the baby loved to shop. Once the carts started rolling, the baby cooled his jets. She could almost enjoy this pregnancy as she stretched on tiptoe to nab a tiny jar of organic sun-dried tomatoes for a client’s latest pandemic cooking project.

Despite the store’s limited entry policy, the aisles were crowded. Maintaining distance was the usual dance. Two steps towards the chicken breasts, five steps back when some beefy dude in a camo mask shoulder-checked her to grab the wings. Pregnant women didn’t get the consideration they used to before the virus hit. Then again, wings were gold to a guy who didn’t understand the mask was supposed to cover the nose, too. It wasn’t long before she was texting her clients for substitutions. Besides the usual shortages, pie crusts were wiped out as if Thanksgiving were the next day. Ditto asparagus, avocados, and garlic. When Jen informed a client that toilet paper was a no-go, which shouldn’t have been any surprise, the client begged her to find any paper she could. By then Jen’s mask was musty with her own breath. She’d tussled with a teen over the last gallon of whole milk, triumphed in a war of glares with a pushy old man over instant oatmeal. She was sick of constant texting and fielding impossible requests. She took a photo of a pack of college-ruled paper and almost hit send, then caught herself in time.

She checked out and made her delivery runs. Since the move to contactless delivery, her clients had lapsed along clear fault lines. Her regulars, usually the mothers, still opened the door for a socially distanced chat. The newer clients, who’d turned to delivery because COVID freaked them out, were masked and gloved shadows through a door’s side window, eager for Jen to take her germs off their property. No doubt they had an arsenal of hoarded wipes at the ready to sponge down their gin and capers.

Then there were the thoughtless suburban teens reeking of weed who flung open the door to reveal unmasked grins, delighted that Jen, not the thoughtless teen, now ran to the store for Mom and Pop. Her downtown clients—old hippies, abashed yet frightened liberal academics, techie shut-ins—offered to help her carry her bags and were visibly relieved when she cheerfully refused. One techie had rigged up a robot with a platform for Jen to load curbside. One ex-hippie tipped her in home-grown herbal supplements, smokables and edibles and even some wearables.

At least the anti-maskers out in the sticks still did their own shopping, so Jen never had to deal with scoffs at her face shield and outrageous claims that the virus was a hoax. As for her own neighbors, she had no idea how they shopped these days. She refused to deliver to any address too close to home.

On her second to last run of the evening, after she’d piled boxes of chickpea pasta and jars of organic tomato basil sauce on the robot’s platform, she texted Rosemary to ask how the evening was going. Fine, she learned. Dinner was boxed spaghetti and frozen meatballs. Their father called to say good night. Beks and Dan had video chatted while Rosemary drew their bath. They were soon to be in bed, and so was Rosemary. She was exhausted. Could you not check on us, Mom? The hall light always wakes me up.

Of course, honey. Sleep tight. Jen watched the robot bump the condo’s front door and wondered for the umpteenth time what to do about Rosemary and Robert dodging one another. The techie, a young man sporting ripped jeans and a skimpy t-shirt, opened the door and grinned at the robot. A pat for his pet machine, but no thank-you wave to Jen as she wiped down her phone and pulled away from the curb.

Her last batches of the night should have been easier than they turned out to be. Neither client whined over the lack of toilet paper. One of Jen’s well-meaning professor regulars texted to get baking powder when the yeast proved, again, to be missing in action. The client made a quip about whipping up powdermilk biscuits instead of bread Jen didn’t get but emoji’d the heck out of anyway, Lol! toothy smiley. But it seemed that every other item was just out of Jen’s reach. She was short, it was true, but tonight the endless stretching threatened to bring on another headache. Most floor employees were social distancing themselves right into the stockroom, so there was never any help anymore. And the baby must be bored, because he was again kicking her vital organs. Her little bruiser, her featherweight champ. Jen imagined stout shoulders, fists like ramrods, feet hard and hot like her grandmother’s old sad iron. She was convinced that only a boy could throw such punches, but what if it were a girl?

She’d be as tough as they come, that’s what. Just like Rosemary.

Chocolate chips were the last item on the professor’s list. Chocolate was on everyone’s list, and the pillage proved it. The toilet paper shelves were downright civilized compared to the ripped, scattered boxes Jen was poking through now to see if any bag remained standing. Only butterscotch and maple remained, cloying flavors absolutely no one caught in this pandemic craved. Jen was about to send the usual text, the store does not have the requested product, but as she stepped back to snap a photo of the lesser chips she could substitute upon request, she spied an overstock of the bright yellow bags of the real thing stashed on the upper shelf. Jen put away her phone and stretched to pinch one. The baby butted her diaphragm. Jen doubled over and belched. The bag of chips hit the tile and burst open. Now her mask reeked of stomach acid and she was ankle deep in chocolate. She was glad the aisle was empty so no one would see her sweeping the chips under the bottom shelf’s lip.

As she straightened from hiding her mess, a wave of dizziness hit her. Jen grasped the shelf to steady herself. A flash of upbeat colors lit her face shield.

“Oh, hey! Are you all right?”

Daisies graced today’s mask, locked in a jubilant chain right across Mona-something’s mouth. Her anxious tone skidded right up to Jen, but the woman herself maintained a dutiful six-foot distance that still felt invasive.

“Oh yes! I’m just fine!” Jen bubbled. Of course Miss Daisy there wouldn’t view a mask as liberation from make-up and perfect hair, like every other woman did these days. She’d fixed her bob to sweep neatly behind the elastic straps. Her eyes were perfectly lined and shadowed. Rouge peeked from the mask’s wings. The colors on her face matched the colors on her mask, all copper and gold. Jen wondered if she was smearing earth-toned lipstick on the wrong side of her covering. And she was wearing the Naturalizers to shop, too. Jen’s comfortable shopping-blitz outfit—ripped padded jacket bleeding stuffing tufts, jeans stained with strained peas from Daniel’s baby days, Keds with the floppy tongues—now seemed hopelessly Podunk.

Mona-something’s gaze took in Jen’s overflowing carts and her insulated bags. Her own cart had all of six items in it, none of them essential or in short supply. She was clearly honoring the anti-hoarding requests the store had posted at every aisle. Her stare dropped to Jen’s belly. Peace out, Jen wanted to snap. It really is just a baby in there.

Mona-something stuttered, “Are you…working?”

Geez. Hadn’t this woman ever held a job? Jen sized her up. Mona easily had four inches on her. “Yes, I am. Do you think you can reach these chocolate chips?”

Mona shrank from her, but maybe distance, not reluctance, was the problem. Jen put her back to the tuna fish section. She must be eight feet away now. Mona nabbed a bag, no tiptoes necessary, darn her, and placed it gingerly into Jen’s lead cart. She stepped back to her own cart, slipped sanitizer from a side pocket of her Coach purse, and squirted her hands. Jen’s handbag, hand sewn by Rosemary years ago, flopped in the seat of her cart. At least, since it was cloth, it was virus proof. As far as anyone knew.

“Thanks.” Jen took hold of both carts to trundle to the registers.

Mona raised her glistening hands. “But…hey! Can I help you with those?”

Jen sighed. “Really, I’m fine. But thanks. Again.”

“I mean. Can I help you? Deliver that stuff?”

Jen would have turned her back right then and stalk-rolled down the aisle. Enough was enough. Except that Mona-something’s eye liner was smudged. Under both eyes. In fact, it was gooey. The daisy chain across her mouth sagged.

An employee turned a dolly into the aisle, piled with boxes of chicken broth. He spied Mona’s tears from six feet away. “Can I help you?” he asked anxiously. Glanced at dry-eyed Jen nervously. Dropped his gaze to her belly, and then to the chips she’d concealed, which from his distance would not be hidden at all.

“Just look at this mess,” Jen told him. “Like, it’s bad enough that we can’t get any toilet paper and now this? I mean, we’re really freaking out about this chocolate situation. You know?”

Mona’s daisies perked back up.

No, the stock guy didn’t know just how freaked out a pregnant woman and her well-heeled neighbor might become over a run on chocolate and he didn’t want to find out. He hustled the dolly towards the soup section. He didn’t even call for a clean-up on aisle six.

Jen grinned back at Mona, a smile Mona would sense, not see, behind the shield and the mask. No way was Jen going to let this woman do her job for her, but she did swap carts. Mona wrestled the two carts all the way to the register like a newbie waitress learning to balance all those plates on the tray. Jen enjoyed pushing Mona’s mini cart with the six circumspect items; what shopping used to look like before she was feeding her husband, then her kids, and, before she knew it, her whole community.

 

#

 

After she’d fixed Zoom for the kids, Rosemary, with a pang of remorse she brushed off as nerves, had texted the good-looking boy to come get Mona-whatever’s card. She’d assumed the lockdown meant another bonfire was off. But after a long delay, he’d texted back to tell her to come to the camp. Now that Michael was dragging her over the hill’s crest, she couldn’t shake those pesky nerves. The kids had already lit the fire. Seeing them clumped in their smug group, smoking and surfing their phones, Rosemary almost turned to head home.

Not that she was afraid of being caught. Her mother wouldn’t be home until late, and Rosemary had begged her to skip checking on Beks and her just in case. She’d had a bad moment when she slipped on her coat and Michael, eager to come with her, had knocked over the little bed’s oak headboard, but the kids hadn’t woken up. She’d taken pity on the dog and grabbed the leash. No, she wasn’t afraid; but who needed these glassbowls anyway, when no amount of clever jokes or mail fraud would ever make up for her Walmart clothes and Supercuts hair? But before she could reject these snotty losers, the good-looking boy had her by the arm. The other girls were staring, maybe jealous, maybe daring her to surrender to him. Soon enough her back was against the ranger’s cabin wall, out of the sight of stupid envy and pointless dares. Michael’s tail thumped against her thigh as he licked the boy’s hand on her jeans. She paused the kissing and unzipping to tie Michael to a porch post and ordered him to sit. For once he obeyed without whining, although at this moment she wouldn’t have minded hearing his voice. The boy hadn’t even asked for Mona-whatever’s Chase Sapphire.

Maybe he’d forgotten about it, the way he was pumping his smoky breath into her, lips being kind of beside the point the way he was devouring her. Rosemary prodded him away and gazed into his good-looking eyes, blue as a limitless credit card. He was handsome. Sandy hair, square jaw, a brilliant smile, perfect teeth. The boy interpreted her gaze not as a break in the action, but a signal to take further action. He slipped off his jacket and laid it on the porch planks. She shook her head.

He mistook her rejection as concern for her comfort. “We could go inside,” he said, “but there are rats. And we’d be on the floor anyway.”

“Plenty of rats out here, too, I’ll bet.” She zipped her coat right up to the chin.

“But I like you,” he complained, as if this lame declaration would convince her. When he moved on her, she pushed him hard enough to cause a handsome fall flat on his handsome buns. Maybe that grim expression he was floating was hurt feelings. Maybe he wasn’t used to girls sticking up for themselves.

“Thanks anyway,” she said, which bummed him out more. He picked up his jacket. She went to untie Michael. On the way back, she didn’t offer up her hand but he took it anyway. The other kids watched their approach as if they were the night’s main feature flick. A few kids were playing Euchre. As Rosemary and the good-looking boy sat down, they earned plenty of glances. Jealousy from the girls, but from the boys, the sly looks seemed to confirm that bets had been won or lost.

The girl sitting on the other side of the boy handed him a beer. He didn’t let go of Rosemary’s hand as he reached for the can, a nice touch. Then again, he didn’t hand her the beer.

“Your dog is cute,” the girl said. Michael wagged and showed off the good side of a profile that could look noble in the right light.

“Don’t pet him,” Rosemary said as the girl stretched out a hand. “He bites.”

Michael’s thumping tail and slobbery grin called out Rosemary’s lie, but the girl snatched her hand back anyway. After taking the first swig, the boy handed the beer to Rosemary. Cheap label, but she took a drink and tried not to gag.

The boy squeezed Rosemary’s hand and took the beer back. “So,” he said. “Let’s have it.”

For a moment, she thought he meant another kiss. Then she remembered why she was even there. She slid her other hand inside her jacket pocket. The Chase Sapphire felt as smooth as Rosemary imagined the real gem must feel. A guy sniggered, Fresh blood. Which turned Rosemary’s stomach, like those nerves she’d dismissed before heading here.

“I left it at home.” Rosemary took her hand out of her pocket and grabbed the beer from him. “Sorry about that.”

The good-looking boy narrowed his handsome eyes and let go of her hand. “Yeah?”

She nodded. Took a chug. Maybe her blood wasn’t so fresh.

“Or maybe you gave it to those kids,” he said quietly.

“What kids?”

“Those kids who snuck in through your window this afternoon.” The boy took his beer back. “I saw them when I swung by your place to get the card. They don’t exactly belong in your neighborhood, do they.”

Rosemary flushed. She hadn’t counted on being spied on.

“They were hanging around the mailboxes after they left you,” the boy continued. “I talked to them for a while. Actually the girl tried to sell me some weed. Alicia, right? One of your neighbors came out and threatened to call the cops. Anyway, we had to take off kind of quick. I gave them a lift home, so I know right where they live.”

Stupid Alicia. Maybe this boy was just messing with her, but if he was telling the truth, at least Alicia really needed the money. What did these kids need with more flat screens and gadgets? They were just ripping off other rich people for kicks. And slap an S for Sheep on her own chest for having anything to do with these losers.

“I mean, I know where you hang out,” Rosemary said. “Maybe I’ll give the card to the cops.”

The boy shrugged. “Whatever. You’re the one who stole it. So anyway. Got that card?”

“Sure I do,” Rosemary said evenly. “Where no one can find it. Kind of like your dick.”

One of the girls laughed. The boy dug a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it up. “Speaking of police, my uncle’s a cop. He had to deal with a shooting in that crappy neighborhood a while back. He knows right where to find your druggy friends.”

Rosemary stood up. Michael, the numbskull, licked the boy silly and knocked the cigarette out of his mouth. The boy giggled and wiped his face. Rosemary yanked him away.

“I thought you said he bites,” the girl accused.

Rosemary glared at her, and then grinned. “Michael. Tug!”

When Michael bared his teeth and growled like he meant it, Rosemary was as impressed as these loser kids were. She hoped no one noticed how Michael’s tail was wagging itself silly. The boy scrabbled backwards on his handsome backside and looked like a scared dork doing it.

Rosemary said, “Good boy.” Michael sat down and looked up at her for his treat. The boy made a lame crack about what a tease she was, and her dog too. No one laughed. He took out his cell phone and punched in a number.

Well, Rosemary wasn’t going to let him get away with that. She took out her cell phone and called Alicia. Who didn’t pick up. The boy’s call connected, or at least he said “hey!” to whomever he was using to scare her.

When Jeremy didn’t answer either, Rosemary turned and ran up the hill towards home. Bullies were always making threats to get what they wanted, but no way could she take the chance that this would turn out to be an empty one.

 

#

 

Jen had made it clear that help stopped at check out, but Mona had followed her to the Honda anyway. She’d social distanced right there in the parking lot to load Jen up, which meant that half the groceries ended up on the front passenger seat. Mona then tailed her all the way to the professor’s West Side Victorian. Jen had to admit Mona was a whiz at deliveries. She made half as many trips to the stoop as Jen. She was just as efficient for delivery number two, to a new client on a back road just past the abandoned Boy Scout camp. Jen’s headlights exposed dirt washboards and the glassy eyes of shadowy scavengers and not much else. The homeowner hadn’t even switched on a porchlight. Mona hauled the groceries up the darkened driveway without a stumble.

On the way home, Jen passed the camp’s entrance. Some teens were hopping the gate and heading to a row of cars parked across the road. She could understand young people dodging the stay-at-home order—at least they were keeping to the outdoors, which was safer than a house party—but thank goodness Rosemary had sense enough to shelve her teen rebellion for the greater good. As far as Jen knew, Rosemary hadn’t snuck out to her old friends since the lockdown began.

A few minutes later, Jen pulled into her driveway. Mona pulled into hers. Jen tried to wait out Mona’s flight from car to house, but Mona appeared to be waiting for Jen to make a move. Jen sighed and threw open her door. Mona stepped out and came to the edge of the juniper bushes separating their drives.

“Well, thank you,” Jen said. “But it really wasn’t necessary.”

“I’m happy to do it.” The present tense didn’t bode well for future offers to help. Jen couldn’t wait for this baby to be born. She turned to reach into the car for her handbag and protein bar wrappers. She couldn’t see her Thermos. Mona must have tossed it aside to make room for the groceries. She felt around on the floor. Metal bumped against her hand. She still couldn’t see it, and realized then that the porch light was off. How many times had she asked Rosemary to switch it on before bed?

When she straightened, she was startled to see Mona standing on Jen’s side of the junipers, not two feet away. “I hope you’re taking care of yourself during…all of this.”

“Oh, I am!”

Jen’s chirpy tone made the daisies sag. “It seems like your husband is away a lot?” Mona said carefully. “That maybe you could use some, um, support?”

From down the street, a dog barked. The light from the streetlamps cast a glow on exactly what Jen didn’t need to see: Mona’s pity.

“I don’t need your charity,” Jen snapped.

The dog barked again, and she must have been mistaken about the sound coming from the street, because that half-howl-half-yelp belonged to Michael, so shouldn’t it be coming from inside the house? She turned away from Mona’s protests, that of course Jen didn’t, only think of how much her precious baby deserved to come into the world healthy and strong. Which just proved that Mona had no idea about how this precious baby intended to come into this world.

And there was Michael, bounding down the street. This time around, her daughter definitely wasn’t being tugged reluctantly home.

In fact, Rosemary was running.

The dark house. Rosemary’s frantic flight. Jen had no idea whether to rush to her eldest or to her little ones. “Oh my God. The kids.”

Mona said, “What’s wrong?” as Michael and Rose loped up the drive.

Her daughter reeked of sweat and cheap beer. “Mom, you have to take me home. Right now!”

Maybe Rosemary was too drunk to realize she was home. “Are the kids in the house alone?” Jen cried.

“Mom, the kids are fine! They’re always fine! I need to see Alicia.”

“You’ve left them alone before?” Jen took off towards the house.

Rosemary burst into tears. “I need my friends!”

Jen stopped short on the porch at the sound of her daughter, who rarely cried, puddling into hysterics. Mona moved close to Rosemary and touched her shoulder. “Hey! It’s ok.” She looked at Jen. “Why don’t I stay and watch the kids while you go?”

Rosemary was staring at the woman like she was actually grateful. Mona, who hadn’t even been a mother and didn’t know what it was like to be stranded between your sobbing daughter by one man and your dark house holding your hopefully-sleeping-through-this-entire-mess tykes by another man, and there you were, carrying another life destined to flummox you in his own stubborn and maddening and utterly essential way.

Jen turned and went into the house. Rosemary hoped her mother would hurry. The boy’s cop uncle might already be pounding on Alicia’s door. What would happen if he recognized her as the girl who had filmed her dad’s bogus arrest, posted it on internet, sparked a protest?

“Are you ok?” The woman squeezed Rosemary’s shoulder.

Rosemary sniffled, “Aren’t you Mrs. Mona-um…?”

Mona nodded.

“I didn’t recognize you. With the mask.” Rosemary wiped her tears and plunged the hand that wasn’t trying to keep Michael from licking Mona silly into her pocket. She held out the Chase card. “This must be yours.”

Mona stared at the card. “No, it isn’t.”

“Are you sure? It was in our box by mistake. Sorry I opened it.”

Mona took the card from her. Mumbled that maybe her husband had applied for it. Rosemary studied what she could see of her face behind the mask. She didn’t look like a grieving mother. Maybe she hid her sadness well. Rosemary said softly, “Hey, should we…I mean, shouldn’t we give you back your bed?”

“Sorry?” Mona tucked the card into her coat pocket.

“The little bed we um borrowed. Didn’t it belong to…I mean, there was more of your mail in our box. Like…a sympathy card.”

Mona stared at her for a moment before tears filled her eyes. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, no. That’s ok. It’s so kind of you to check in with me, though.”

At least she didn’t ask whether Rosemary had opened the card by mistake, too. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“No, it’s fine.” Mona wiped her eyes. “My baby nephew died a few weeks ago. He had a heart condition and was going to have surgery, but then he caught a cold and…well.”

“Was it the virus?” The question popped out before Rosemary could consider whether it was rude.

Mona’s steady reply struck Rosemary as relieved, not offended. “This was back in February, before anyone was testing. My sister got really sick, too. It’s only lately that we’ve wondered whether they had Covid. Anyway, I’m glad you have the bed. It was going to be a gift, something for Steven to grow into. My sister doesn’t want it now. And, now that I’m stuck at home all the time, well. I just didn’t want to look at it anymore. But it makes me happy that your family can use it.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss.” Rosemary had never seriously thought that she might end up knowing someone who’d lost someone to the virus. On the news, the pandemic always seemed like it was raging in far off places like big cities and other countries, places that had nothing to do with her. “I’m making a quilt for my brother,” she told Mona. “I’m using all his favorite colors. It’s going to look really nice on the bed.”

Mona smiled, or at least the mask crinkled at the edges. “Thank you for doing that, and for telling me. I’d love to see it when it’s done.”

The porch lights flickered on. Rosemary’s cell buzzed. A text from Alicia, telling her she couldn’t talk now, something was going on down the street, she was going out to check. What’s happening? Rosemary wrote back. Hope flashed through her, that while she was hanging with those loser kids, she’d missed something in the news that had sparked another protest. Maybe if there was trouble, it wouldn’t be her fault after all. Then she felt mean, stooping to such a wish. Don’t go out! she texted. Alicia didn’t answer.

The front door opened and Jen stepped out on the porch. “I feel for your mom,” Mona said. “She must be a nervous wreck, worrying about you all, and the baby, too.”

Rosemary handed Michael over to Mona and watched her mother spring down the porch steps as if her big belly was just another accessory, car keys jingling in her hand. Did she look like a nervous wreck? Rosemary didn’t think so. She looked like she always did. In a hurry, barely looking around her on the way to getting done whatever needed doing, no questions asked. When the virus hit, she’d turned their whole kitchen into a school and stocked her car full of the gear she needed to do her effing job. Rosemary never thought she’d want to slap a scarlet B for Badass on her own mother. And what had Rosemary been doing? Stealing mail that might have the virus on it. Hanging with other kids, sharing smokes and kisses. Even letting the family dog lick everyone silly. What if she made her whole family sick now?

Jen smiled reassuringly at Rose and exchanged cell phone numbers with Mona. Mona cheerfully reminded them to mask up! Jen nodded, headed to the car, and stood by the driver’s side door. But Rosemary could only stare at her mother and wait for her let’s go, honey. Maybe it was too risky to go to her friends, find out whether she had caused the trouble this time around, march with her community if it came to that. Then again, maybe staying home and staying safe was getting the real danger backwards.