“The coffee table and the television,” Jenny whispers.
He clutches her arms and hoists her forcefully to her feet. “We’re going now. C’mon.” She sniffles. Leans heavily against him. He wraps his arms around her, embraces her. She smells of warm, spicy perfume and nervous sweat.
“Don’t be afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s over. He’s dead, it’s all over. We don’t need to worry about anything.”
“Oh,” she moans, “oh, oh, oh. I’m so tired. I’m so tired.” Thomas guides Jenny through the living room, where several wilted cacti with long, gnarled limbs are collecting dust on the windowsill. Now he notices an armchair lying on its side. It’s been slashed, and he can see the gray lining inside. In the stacks of paper on the floor is a photograph of their mother. “The toaster,” Jenny says, tottering out to the hallway. He picks up the photograph and puts it in his pocket. Jenny’s already in the kitchen. He follows her. A swarm of tiny flies buzz lethargically in the sink. The smell is unbearable. Something indefinable and gelatinous has formed a green stain on the kitchen table. Jenny braces the toaster under her arm and gets to her feet. She stares at the floor as though turned to stone. Thomas shakes his head. “No. Don’t do that. C’mon,” he says, brusquely. “You’re coming with me.” And she actually follows him, but when they reach the hallway, she pauses again and slides her hand along the dark brown wall. “See,” she says. “Here it is.” She takes his hand and guides it across the cracked paint, and he can feel the inscription that Jenny etched into the wall the evening he’d gone to the emergency room. Thomas is stupid. She laughs suddenly and loudly. Then she slides to the floor with a thump and begins to sob. He doesn’t have the energy to console her. He leaves her there and returns to the bedroom, where the smell is less offensive. He rights the overturned dresser and opens the drawer, the one with the shirtsleeve poking out. Inside he finds their father’s threadbare sweaters, his socks bundled in pairs, and a few pairs of underwear. The air is thick with dust and stale, stuffy heat, combined with the stink from the kitchen, sour and abominable. He checks the other bedroom, still furnished with bunk beds plastered in stickers, the ones they’d slept in as kids and also when they were older, when he was much too tall to sleep in it and had to curl into a fetal position. Standing stock-still, he regards the fading green wallpaper and its minute white vines. All the sleepless nights he laid waiting for their father to come home. Jenny’s uneasy sleep, her getting up and pawing around on the floor looking for her pacifier whenever she’d dropped it. Her whimpering. And then the relief he felt when he finally heard the key in the door, and Jacques’s heavy footfalls crossing the wooden floorboards, on the way to the kitchen for a beer. This was followed by the smell of cigarette smoke billowing through the apartment. He can almost smell it now, can almost hear their father rummaging in the living room. Then he’s overcome with dizziness. He staggers across the room and parks himself on the lower bunk, dropping his head between his knees. “What are you doing?” Jenny stands in the doorway, her raised eyes moist with tears. After a moment she sits beside him. The thin, stained mattress slumps under her weight. She begins to hum. Then she says, “Look, my little goldheart!” She sounds like a five year old. She runs her index finger over the sticker. “And the angel and the purple smiley face Aunt Kristin gave me . . .” Something seems to move at the outer edge of his vision, but when he turns his head there’s nothing. He stands. “Let’s go,” he says, panic-stricken, grabbing Jenny and towing her along, but she won’t come with him, she wants to return to the bunk bed. She says, “Stop it, Thomas,” and goes limp, holding onto first the bedpost and then the doorjamb. But he tugs, pulling her all the way into the hallway. Just as she’s about to stumble over the doorstep, he punches the door and kicks it. “Fucking hell,” he shouts, “Fucking piece of fucking shit!” He kicks at the door again. “Piece of shit!” Kicking harder, the wood snapping. He yells, “I hate this shitassfucking place!” He’s hot now, he wants to set fire to the entire building, he wants to choke the life out of Jenny; he kicks the door again, buckling the frame, anger thundering through him.
“Thomas,” Jenny whispers.
“FUCK!” Thomas roars. The neighbor’s door opens and an old woman sticks her head out. “I’m calling the police!” she cries in a shrill, thin voice. Jenny steps toward her. “But it’s just us, Mrs. Krantz. Thomas and Jenny, Jacques’s children, you remember us, don’t you?” Thomas balls his fists and breathes heavily, clenching his teeth. Mrs. Krantz hesitates.
“You scared me.”
“Jacques is dead,” Jenny says.
“Jacques is dead? Jacques O’Mally?”
Thomas starts down the stairs. He hears Jenny speaking in a low voice, suddenly clear and normal, almost ingratiating. “Mrs. Krantz, have you heard any strange sounds coming from the apartment recently? It looks like it’s been burgled. Have you heard anything suspicious?”
“Burglars?” Mrs. Krantz stutters nervously. Jenny continues, “Yes, it’s awful. Have you heard anything? Can you remember seeing or hearing anything?” Thomas can’t stand Jenny constantly repeating herself. Mrs. Krantz, he notices, has come all the way out into the hallway. She’s wearing a hairnet over her wispy, curly hair.
“Have you heard anything coming from my father’s apartment?”
“I don’t hear so well,” Mrs. Krantz says, tugging on her long earlobes. “Everything gets worse over time, everything, everything. It’s hopeless . . .” She squints and points down the stairs at Thomas. “Is that your brother? I remember him.”
“But you haven’t heard anything?”
Mrs. Krantz shakes her head. Thomas’s legs itch. If Jenny says “have you heard anything” one more time he’ll scream. Then he’ll murder her.
“We need to go right now, we have things to do,” he says curtly. “C’mon, Jenny.”
“It was so nice to see you again,” Jenny says, offering her hand to the old woman.
At last Jenny totters down the stairs, the toaster under her arm. Mrs. Krantz waves her bony gray hand, and Jenny waves back. Thomas is already outside in the sunlight, his cigarette lit. His pulse gallops. A thin layer of cold sweat covers his back and belly. Instantly he’s drained. The sun hammers down through a blue sky, blinding them; they sit side by side on the stoop, overwhelmed by discouragement and exhaustion. Jenny steals the cigarette from Thomas and takes a deep drag. “You don’t smoke,” he says, grabbing it back. “Can you believe Mrs. Krantz is still alive?” Jenny says. “She was such a loathsome bitch, a mean, nasty, wicked bitch. Remember that time she claimed we’d tortured her ugly mutt?” Thomas nods, but Jenny continues, agitated. “Just because we were friendly enough to walk the dog when she was sick!”
“I remember, Jenny.”
“Remember how he beat us that night? And now here she is, being all nice to us. The loathsome bitch! I should have punched that pig right in her face.” Thomas looks at Jenny. She looks angry. Then comes a faint smile and a moment’s life in her green eyes. He smiles tiredly. She squeezes his arm. A bus drives past, spraying them with dirty gutter water, but they remain seated. The afternoon sun is getting lower. For some time, they are quiet. School’s out and kids are scurrying cheerfully down the street. The boys tease the girls, the girls tease the boys. Bodies hopping and dancing and running and jabbing and slapping and pinching and gesticulating. A red-haired girl leaps onto the back of a skinny boy. Thomas suddenly feels rinsed and cleansed by the loud and happy cries of laughter from the herd. Then he remembers they’re not allowed to be here. They don’t have access to the estate. When he stands, his left foot’s asleep and his knees are stiff. Only now does he notice how cold the air is. “Don’t tell anyone we were here,” he says, squeezing Jenny’s arm.
He walks with Jenny to the station and takes the bus back to the store. It’s almost completely dark now. Maloney’s done with the accounting. The shipment arrived today after all, and now it’s in place. The chandelier’s yellow light makes the store seem smaller and cozier. Annie’s on