More Than Words-Chapter 11
Sunday night, Chris retreated to his room without supper, telling Gwen he was still thinking about his father. Gwen spent the evening sitting at the table thinking about Mr. Harrow. She couldn't help her constant fear that he was going to kill Chris...every thing about him seemed menacing. She felt guilty for the thought, but his appearance: the mask, the scars, the way he stood so tall and looming; and his raspy, broken voice! They were frightening. She was a bad person for judging him for such things, she knew this and wished that she didn't have the thoughts! But they were there and she wasn't a good enough person to move past them.
She tried very hard to think about what he might be like when he wasn't working; bootleggers and mobsters had lives, didn't they? Because she had thought so many vile things about him, she felt she had to balance that by at least trying to think of him as normal, to picture him doing things she could relate to. But try as she might, she couldn't do it. Her mind would not place the man in conventional domestic routine; she could not see him coming home to a wife, kissing her cheek as she handed him a drink...how could he drink anyway, with the mask? That sent Gwen through a five minute experiment at the sink with a glass of water and her hand held over half her face as she tried to work out how he might manage something she did without thinking. All she accomplished was soaking her blouse, and she chided herself for being as nosey as Chris. She stripped her blouse and set it aside to be washed, then walked to the couch and pulled her nightgown from under the pillow, slipping it over her head before she took down her skirt and hung it over the back of a kitchen chair; it was clean enough to wear later in the week. She tried to sleep but never succeeded in getting any deeper than the lightest doze. She worked extra hard on focusing the next morning, acutely aware of Mr. Fazio's hawkish gaze on her the entire time. By the time her shift was over, there was a dull headache throbbing behind her eyes that soon took the same rhythm of the sewing machines surrounding her. She was ready to crawl home and bury her head under a pillw for a day or two, but she still had cleaning to do at Mrs. Mazetti's; which she did while the older woman, who didn't want to seem like a nagging mother, lectured Gwen about how absolutely foolish it had been to leave Jeff alone with Chris and money. (Chris had told his sitter all about that fiasco, of course) She didn't say anything Gwen hadn't already berated herself with, but the added recriminations did nothing to help Gwen's bruised conscious; by the time she was done and managed to get Chris bundled and out the door she would have gladly buried herself for a week if she could have but she needed to make dinner and draw Chris a bath, then do up some laundry after Chris was in bed.
Chris didn't eat much, which concerned her; and his bath didn't involve as much splashing as usual, which also concerned her. She tried striking up a conversation, but neither one really had the heart for it. She felt like she owed him an apology, for what she wasn't entirely certain; the entire miserable life he led because he had the misfortune of being the offspring of an irresponsible man and a woman who was too stupid to do anything right?
She was up most of the night doing laundry, and Tuesday was a repeat of Monday, only with a more intense headache. By Wednesday, she was so exhausted she couldn't see straight and she ended up jamming her sewing machine; the verbal reaming she received from her supervisor almost had her in tears. She could only stammer an apology and promise to be more careful. Luckily she didn't lose her job, but her pay was docked for the forty minutes it took to get her machine fixed.
She managed some sleep that night, although it was plagued with nightmares that tossed everything stressful in her life in to one horrific jumbled mess.
Chris was still very quiet Wednesday morning; he assured Gwen he was fine but had a lot of things to think about and he was trying to figure them out. Gwen asked Mrs. Mazetti to see if she could get anything out of Chris, thinking maybe it was something he couldn't discuss with his mother.
Mr. Fazio was in a horrible mood and took it out on Gwen from the moment she walked in, and the headache that had mostly retreated came back with a vengance. No matter what she did or how she did it, it was wrong; she was afraid to breathe for fear of being fired.
As she hurried from one job to the next, she once again had that odd feeling of being watched. She put it down to stress and exhaustion catching up to her; her life had never been easy but the past week had just been insane, plus with worry over Chris added in it was really a wonder she wasn't having full blown hallucinations, as opposed to just imagining someone was watching her. And really, who would watch her? Who would even notice little old her?
Thursday happened, Gwen assumed, although she didn't notice it passing. The only reason she knew it was Friday was because Mr. Fazio had her straightening the stock room and that was a Friday thing. She felt like shit, she looked like shit (not that she ever thought she looked otherwise) and she was really having problems keeping her mind focused on anything. Luckily, Friday meant payday at her second job; if she hadn't lost too much pay the other day, she might be able to scrap up enough spare money that she could get Chris a bit of cheese to cheer him up.
*My God...the biggest treat for my son is cheese. Not a new toy, not a trip to Coney Island...cheese. How awful am I as a mother? I've never taken him any place interesting or exciting...or further than ten blocks from home. Thank goodness Mrs. Mazetti was willing to help some of the neighborhood kids with basic sign or else he would have no one his age to play with! It's not fair to him! I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I never thought it would get this bad. I wonder if my hair is long enough to sell again. I can get a few bucks for that, and with some careful saving, maybe I can surprise him by taking him to a baseball game? He would love that! I can't say anything though...I won't get his hopes up only to have it turn bad. But if it works? He'll be happier than he's ever been.*
That little thought helped get her through the day, but when she got her pay, all good cheer evaporated when she saw how much had been docked for the down time earlier in the week. She wasn't going to have anything left after rent to spare for food, much less a special treat.
She walked to Mrs. Mazetti's very slowly that night, heart heavy and utterly exhausted in every way. She had always held a faint hope that some day, some how, things would get better; she knew she would never wake up one morning in one of those posh Manhattan penthouses, but she held out hope that there would be a week where they ate something other than thin soup that got more watery each day, or where they could afford to take the subway out and spend a fun day in Manhattan or at Coney Island. But not this week, not next week...probably not ever. She didn't want to lose hope, but it was getting very hard to be even wistfully optomistic.