Grime and Punishment

them.
    Those children need a father, a voice inside her said.
    “Damn you, Steve!“ she said out loud to the bathroom she’d shared with him until a few months ago. “What gave you the right to do this to us?”
    And you need a man, the voice added slyly.
    “I’ve had one husband. I don’t want another one.”
    Not a husband. A man, the voice intoned patiently.
    Jane closed her eyes and sank down further in the hot, scented water.

Twenty-one

    It had been five clays now since Ramona Thurgood had been murdered, and Jane was getting desperate for life to return to normal. Tuesday, however, promised to be outstanding as one of the most boring days of her life. Of course, anything would have paled in comparison to the events and revelations of Monday. The contrast was increased by Uncle Jim’s watchful presence. He wasn’t about to let her out of his protective range without good reason.
    At least he, unlike the kids, appreciated the gigantic breakfast she fixed. Willard, who had his big brown eyes peeled for leftovers, was disappointed in the slim pickings. After riding along while Mike drove his car to school, Jim let Jane leave with Katie and again with Todd, apparently feeling there was minimal danger at that hour of the morning.
    “I think I’d rather figure out the schedules for the New York subway system than try to unravel your itinerary,“ he said when she returned from the last morning run.
    “It’s not so bad when you get used to it. Todd’s in a car pool with five kids and five drivers, so each of us does both back and forth one day a week. Every Tuesday all year is mine. Mike’s in with three band members, so I drive his every third week, except today was someone else’s turn I had to take and we’ll make it up next time it’s my week—“
    “You’ll all remember this driving debt?“
    “You bet. It’s like a Mafia vendetta. Now, Katie’s car pools this year are a little more complicated. She’s in with four girls, but two of them are sisters, so I drive three mornings a week, another mother drives three afternoons and the mother of the two drives morning and afternoon on Thursdays and Fridays. Of course, while cheerleading practice is going on the first month, I drive her myself and the other two mothers share equally, except when—“
    “Stop! It’s as bad as I thought. Worse! Now, is there anything you need done around here? I might as well be useful.“
    “Good Lord, it’s good enough of you to come. I can’t put you to work besides.“ She paused. “I do wonder, however, about the furnace. Do you know anything about furnaces? I have a man coming Friday, but—”
    He disappeared to the basement with a final warning that she wasn’t to leave the house. Jane got busy with housework that had been neglected since the week before. Four loads of laundry and a clean refrigerator later, she detected the faint burnt-dust odor that signified the furnace had kicked on for the first time in the season. She’d always liked that smell. It meant sweaters and leaf-burning and Christmas shopping and roast pork on Sundays.
    Jim emerged from the basement with soot on his face and grease on his fingers. Humming, Jane fixed him coffee and warmed up a cinnamon roll snack while he went out to his car to bring in a briefcase full of paperwork. As soon as he was settled in the living room, she went to her bedroom and made a duty call to Thelma. As she talked with the phone clamped between her ear and shoulder, she went through her lingerie drawer, culling the worst of the dingy white-cotton atrocities.
    The day dragged on. Jane got out to run across the street with the recipe card she had promised to return to Mary Ellen, but even that wasn’t easy. “Take it back some other time,“ Uncle Jim advised.
    “I have a premonition that this is the last time I’ll ever see it. Things like this evaporate in my kitchen. Besides, I won’t be in any danger.“
    “What makes you think that?“
    “You tell me how somebody with the use of only one arm could strangle someone with a vacuum cleaner cord and I’ll stay home.“
    “It’s not what might happen to you there that worries me. It’s the getting there!“
    “Uncle Jim!“
    “All right! Go!”
    She sensed that he was watching her through the front window, so she made it a short visit. She was amused to have caught Mary Ellen, one of the neatest people she knew, with a newspaper and scraps of paper all over the coffee table. Probably