Curled in the Bed of Love

Honor Among Thieves

honor among thieves Three days after Daniel left Carrie, a tree came down against her house in a terrible rainstorm, crushing the front stairs and puncturing the roof. Carrie and her daughter, Anya, got up from bed and set out buckets, every last pot and pan in the kitchen, even piles of rags, to catch the water sluicing down the walls, dripping from cracks in the ceiling. Yanking the sofa and armchair away from the seeping walls, Carrie thought that it was just as well that Daniel had taken a lot of the furniture. In the morning she ripped the heavy water-soaked curtains from the living-room windows, sending the curtain hooks pinging across the bare wood floor, and bundled the curtains into the trash. She was glad to strip the house, toss ruined rugs, empty the mantel of her collection of Talavera pottery, survey the water stains on the walls as if they were destruction’s bold scrawl, writ large. For two weeks she and Anya have been stepping over the bowls and pots and pans on the floor, curling together in Carrie’s bed, the only place in the house that stays dry when it rains. The landlord has cleared away the fallen tree but made excuses about repairing the roof and the front steps, claiming that every roofing contractor he calls is busy because of all the rain this winter. He 54 has left the house in disrepair for years, hoping to force Carrie out so he can jack up the rent. When Foster brings Anya home on Sunday night, he climbs in the window after her—they can’t use the front steps. Carrie has spent the day in her robe, left her hair in a tangled spill down her back. She wasn’t expecting him to come in with Anya. Foster lifts a corner of the drop cloth she’s thrown over the furniture huddled in the middle of the room. “You’ve got to snap out of this,” he says. He is perfectly confident, as Carrie is, that the damage is her doing. Anya must report to her father and stepmother when she spends the weekend with them: Mom’s not cooking, she’s living on candy bars, she’s not sleeping. Carrie can live with Foster thinking she is crazy. But her eyes cross at the thought of another lecture from him on the needs of a teenager. Carrie shrugs. “I can’t help this mess.” “You’re wallowing in it,” Foster says. “There’ll be someone else soon enough.” “Dad,” Anya scolds automatically. Should Carrie be flattered or dismayed at Foster’s expectation? She’s been thinking that there won’t be another someone for a while. When she split up with Foster twelve years ago, she was so certain of what she was leaving him for. Yes, she was going to fall in love, desperately, pursue her dream of working as an artist, live in a neighborhood that offered noise and struggle, not hushed, propertied order. She’s had one adventure after another since she left Foster, scrabbling together waitressing jobs until she found the job at the frame shop, falling in and out of love so many times, fighting the landlord because if she had to pay higher rent, she couldn’t afford to sublet studio space two days a week. “You should move out,” Foster says. “The roofer is supposed to come next week,” Carrie says. “That’s what you said last weekend.” Honor among Thieves 55 She gives him a look. But Foster persists. “I know a good handyman . I could get him in here to fix those front steps for you—” “We like going in and out the window,” Carrie says. “Anya just calls for me when she gets home from school. ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel , let down your hair.’ ” “Look, my daughter has to live here,” Foster says. “Don’t put me in the middle,” Anya says. But her voice has an impish lilt; she likes to best them at the game of being a grown-up. “Oh, Foster,” Carrie says. “Will you just relax? After the roofer gets here, I’ll paint the walls. We’ll just be so shipshape and middle class you won’t know us.” Anya comes into the bedroom and tugs open the curtains. The sudden light makes Carrie feel as if her pupils are made of chips...