We All Live Here

Chapter Ten

Penelope Stockbridge is wearing hairclips with little green and turquoise glass butterflies. They are the kind you might normally see on a small girl, but Penelope Stockbridge doesn’t seem to follow the normal codes for sixty-plus dressing, and every time she brings a tuna-pasta bake—and this will be the thirteenth tuna-pasta bake she has brought this year—there is some slightly off-kilter element of her dress that Lila always finds oddly compelling. Two weeks ago it was floral wellingtons, once a mohair scarf in pink and purple that came down to her knees, and occasionally—to Violet’s delight—she wears a small cross-body bag in the shape of a kitten’s face.

“It’s for Bill,” she says, in her soft, precise voice, as she always does. “I wondered if he was eating properly. You know, without Francesca around.” She always whispers Francesca’s name, as if the mere sound of it might be too distressing.

“That’s very kind of you, Penelope,” Lila says, accepting the large white rectangular dish covered with a neat lid of foil. It is still warm at its base. “I’m sure he’ll be thrilled. Shall I get him for you?”

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t want to be any trouble,” she says, then stands expectantly on the doorstep, her smile painfully hopeful.

Lila calls Bill, who has been hanging an alternative picture over the television where Naked Francesca was once situated. He walks down the hallway still clutching his hammer in his broad fist, and when she sees it, this apparent display of unfettered masculinity causes Penelope to go a little trembly. “Penelope,” he says politely. “How lovely to see you.”

Her head tilts to one side so that the butterflies catch the light. Lila picks up a faint spray of scent, something floral and sweet. “I just…It’s nothing. Just thought I’d drop this round. In case you were hungry.”

“That’s terribly kind,” he says. “I’m very honored. But, really, Lila looks after me very well here. I don’t want to put you to any trouble.” He smiles at Lila, as if she does anything domestic to take care of him at all.

“It’s no bother. No bother at all. I see you’re busy,” she says, nodding at the hammer. “Making anything interesting?”

“Oh, this and that.” Lila stands between them, wondering if she should exit. But Bill still finds casual conversation difficult, especially with neighbors bringing gifts, so she feels obliged to stay.

“And how are the pupils?” he says, when the silence grows too long.

Penelope Stockbridge is the local piano teacher. Lila had once tried to sign up Celie but the wails of daily protest had proven too much for her and she had given up the fight after six lessons.

“Oh, mostly thinking up reasons why they haven’t done any practice. Sometimes I find their excuses rather entertaining. I had one last week who said she couldn’t find time because her goldfish needed daily skin treatments. Can you imagine?”

“Skin treatments for goldfish,” says Bill. “That’s inventive.”

Penelope’s glance flickers between them and then to her feet, in the manner of someone who is permanently concerned about outstaying her welcome. She has a narrow, grave face with large, expressive eyes. She had been married once, she’d told Lila. He had died before they could have children. Leukemia. She still remembered the devastation of those early months of widowhood as if it were yesterday. She gives a brief, flickering smile. “Anyway. I don’t want to hold you up. I just…you know. I hope it’s useful. Do say if you’d rather I didn’t.”

“Of course not,” says Bill, gently. “It’s so very kind of you. And very gratifying to be thought of so generously.”

That brings a pink flush to Penelope Stockbridge’s ears.

“I’ll drop the dish back when we’ve eaten,” says Lila. “Thank you.”

“No hurry for the dish,” she says, waving a slender hand. “You can keep it till next time, if you like.”

Next time. Sometimes Lila thinks of Penelope’s hopeful expression at each doorstep drop, the tentative adoration implicit in these tuna-pasta bakes—which Bill doesn’t really like—and her heart aches. Will this be her in twenty years? So desperate for contact, or affection, that she is reduced to leaving culinary gifts on near-strangers’ doorsteps?

“Bye, then,” Penelope says. She brings a finger to one of the hairclips, perhaps checking that it is still in place. Lila wonders suddenly whether these eccentricities are not just a woman who dresses as she likes but tiny bids for attention, and her heart aches even more.

“Lovely to see you,” Bill says politely, and as soon as she heads back down the path, he turns and walks the pasta dish resignedly to the kitchen. He will feel obliged to serve it this evening. The girls will love it. It has saved them from fish and lentils for another day.

···

She is waiting for Gene when he emerges from the bathroom at eleven thirty. She has sat in her study, on the edge of the sofa-bed, whose rumpled sheets and crisps crumbs speak of a restless, post-weed-and-alcohol sleep, and he startles when he sees her. He is wearing a towel around his waist which is too small for the broad trunk of him, and she registers his tattooed, slightly sagging body, and the way he suddenly sucks in his stomach as if he cannot bear to be seen like that even by his daughter.

“So,” she says.

He lets out a vague sigh, as if he is braced for a telling-off, and walks past her into the room. She sees him casting his eyes around for clean clothes and points wordlessly to the Grateful Dead T-shirt she has laundered, ironed, and hung on the back of the door.

“I’ve washed everything that was in your bag,” she says. “The woodlice had got in. And there were a lot of crisps crumbs.”

“Thanks,” he mutters, and turns his back to her while he dresses.

“Look,” he says, when he’s finished. He sits down on the other side of the bed. “I—I know it was kinda stupid for me to crash in there, but like I said, I had some problems with the hotel and I can’t find my credit card, so it just seemed like a good solution for a couple of days. It’s just till I get paid by the production and you know how these things are. They always take forever to pay up—”

“What’s the production?” she says.

“What?”

“The production. That you’re starring in. I’d like to come and see it.”

It is the swiftest of hesitations, but it tells her everything she needs to know. She places her hands on her knees and lets out a deep breath. “There is no production, is there, Gene?”

“Sure—sure there is—”

“Please don’t. You’ve barely said a true thing since you arrived. I think the least you owe me is an explanation for what you’re doing here.”

Gene swallows. When he looks up, he attempts a smile. It falls slightly when he sees her expression. “It’s not like there’s no actual production . It’s just—”

“Gene.”

“Okay. Okay.” He puts up his palms as if to stop her. “Things got a little tricky for me at home. Nadira threw me out—and I owed these guys some money and they started to get real pissy about it. I thought I’d be better off working over here for a while, you know, with the whole dual citizenship and everything, until it all cooled down, so I just needed—”

“How much money?”

“What?”

“How much money do you owe? And to whom?”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“How much?”

“About fifty K.” He looks up at her. “But only dollars, not pounds. So it’s not so bad.”

“Fifty thousand dollars?”

“They’re not great guys. They’re from Florida. This crazy trip I went on to a casino back in May. I think they must have slipped a Mickey into my drink. And work-wise things have been kinda quiet. There’s not been a lot of jobs around, and I had this part on a low-budget production but the director was kind of a dick and we fell out and the guy fired me. And because of that car wreck I had to pay up for this guy’s hospital bills even though I swear there was nothing wrong with him, and I had forgotten to renew the car insurance, and even though it was just a stupid little ding, the guy was threatening to sue me and then Nadira needed money for her kid to go to school and—”

“Nadira. I haven’t heard about this one. Don’t tell me. Under thirty?”

“No!”

“Thirty-five.”

He rocks his head from one side to the other. “Okay, so she was thirty-four. But she was an old soul! We were great together!”

Lila’s head sinks into her hands. “What do you want, Gene?”

“Just somewhere to crash for a week. Maybe two weeks.”

“I’m going to ask that question again.”

“Okay. A month. Give me a month. That should land me some auditions, let me remind the casting guys over here what I’m made of, and then I can get another place and…”

Lila lets her head rest in her palms for some time, long enough for Gene to tail off. He adds, “I’ll help with the kids. I won’t be in your hair. I just need to cut a break.”

She can feel his eyes on her. She lifts her head wearily. “You really think you can get work over here?”

“I know I can. I have a meeting with an agent on Friday. He says there are a lot of openings for a guy like me. And with my history on Star Squadron Zero …”

Every cell in her body is telling her to say no. Bill will be furious. It will not be a month. She is not sure he is telling the truth about his work opportunities. But he is a seventy-five-year-old man desperate enough to sleep in a shed. And he is her father. Dammit.

She takes a long, deep breath, and then lets it out. “You can stay for now,” she says. “And we’ll see how it works out.”

“Really? Sweetheart, you are the greatest. You won’t even know I’m here—”

She holds up a hand, cutting him off. “There is no drinking in my house, and no smoking weed. If I suspect you’re doing either of those things, I will throw you out immediately, and I won’t care where you end up, because I have two vulnerable daughters.” It’s at this point that she remembers she had to stop Violet merrily singing “Smack My Bitch Up” on the walk to school that morning, and squashes the thought. “You are to be immaculately behaved around them. And you are to be nice to Bill, who is still grieving.”

“Hey, he’s not the only one who—”

“Properly nice. They were happily married a long time and he is a good man. And you are to put the sofa back every day in here so I can still use my workspace, and you are to help around the house when you’re not out looking for work. Those are my rules.”

“I’ll take ’em,” he says, beaming, and goes to give her a big bear hug before she can sidestep. Lila accepts it stiffly. “Lila,” he says, “you’re a mensch.”

I’m an idiot , she thinks, and heads downstairs with a heavy heart to tell Bill.