Louise thought, home is where the…
“One minute,” Dayana said.
Louise flicked on the overhead lights as she went to unlock the door. “Hello, World!” she announced in her best Broadway voice. On the street, Stella Mondragon’s champagne colored sedan came into view. Stella was a fast, loose driver. She liked to go top speed even on poky Main Street, and she hit the brakes abruptly at stop signs as if she had no idea they were coming. The car jerked to a halt at the intersection in front of the bank. Stella’s hair was dark and shoulder length, her skin powdered. She wore plum lipstick, and a sparkly, too-youthful barrette held the hair over her left temple. Her face looked distracted, even harried; she scratched her scalp with one finger, gave a cursory check for oncoming traffic, and sailed on.
Louise’s fingers unclenched from the door handle—she’d been readying herself to face Stella—and she flipped the sign to Open. “Not a soul,” she said, reading Dayana’s questioning eyebrow. Dayana had seen her notice someone, and was probably expecting a catty comment. Though Louise was a perfectly competent bank teller, she was an artist when it came to knowing, understanding, and disseminating other people’s secrets. Some people looked down on it, called it gossip. She called it public service. What knits a random group of people together? What makes a town a community? Knowledge—shared knowledge—of what makes people tick, and what they’ve overcome and struggled with and succumbed to. Especially what they’ve succumbed to.
Soon a few customers came in and she and Dayana took turns providing the kind of customer service the Corporate Office couldn’t teach, no matter how many badly acted training videos and PowerPoint presentations Bill foisted on them. Louise was finishing up a deposit transaction when Nina Brown stepped to her window: tall and thin, with a long face to match the rest of her. She wore a gold cross around her neck, and a light pink sweatshirt with a calico heart on the chest. Nina’s hairstyle hadn’t changed since she was a girl—brown braid, tendrils held back at the temples with two serviceable black barrettes. Her hands were red and the skin along her nose was dry, as if she’d run out of moisturizer two weeks before and hadn’t made time to restock. Louise filled her lungs and smiled. They went to the same church, First Methodist. Even in a house of worship Nina seemed rushed, on her way to the next appointment—though so far as Louise could tell she spent most of her days on the Brown farm, shuttling between the house and the garden, usually only coming into town for Sunday and Wednesday services. She lived with her quiet teenage daughter and equally taciturn husband, Perry. And Perry’s father—Louise straightened her shoulders in sympathy at the thought of that flinty bastard.
“Nina, good to see you. How’s life?” Louise shut the cash drawer and gripped the counter.
Nina smiled, crinkling the eczema along her nose, and handed Louise a withdrawal slip. “Good, good. Fine. Yourself?” Nina was pleasant as pie, but she’d stretch on a rack before volunteering personal information.
“Same as ever.” Their conversation could have trudged along the expected track, but then, as if she were standing to the side and watching the words float up and dissolve into the air, Louise heard herself ask, “Have you seen Rose lately?”
Nina paused. “Rose?” She pulled a pack of gum out of her pocket.
“Yes.” Louise punched a code and opened the cash drawer. “How is she holding up?”
“Funny you should ask. We visited after the funeral and she wouldn’t…she’s not ready to talk.”
“God bless her,” Louise said automatically, picking up a stack of bills. “I saw Stella this morning, maybe that’s why I… How’s your girl, by the way? Good grades?”
“Decent. Could be better. And Ben? How’s he liking college?” Nina stuck the pack of gum back into her purse without offering a piece to Louise. Then she thought better of it, retrieved the gum, and held it out.
“No, thanks, I’m trying to be sugar free… Benji’s great! Having the time of his life, but he took the news about Lance hard, of course. They were so close.” This was largely speculation. Benji was only four hours away, and his reluctance to come home for weekends had stung. He wanted nothing to do with his parents, it seemed. Louise sighed and shut the cash drawer. “It’s a shame, that’s what it is. It weighs on a person. I still don’t understand it. Lance was…”
“Yes,” Nina said.
Louise handed her a receipt and eighty dollars in cash. They were both uncomfortable now; it was time to end it.
“Where does it all go?” Nina shoved the money into her jeans pocket.
Louise pressed on. “Will you give Rose my sympathies when you see her?”
“I will,” Nina said. “You know how prickly she is…” She paused, her fingers on the edge of the laminate counter, mirroring Louise’s, and her lips pulled into a frown, emphasizing the flaky skin around her mouth. Louise wanted to reach for the bottle of lotion she kept in her drawer and pat it all over Nina’s face. “She’s acting…she might not want…” Nina shook her head.
Bill walked from the corridor that led from his office onto the larger floor, headed in their direction. Louise leaned over and grasped Nina’s sleeve. “Maybe you should go see her?” she whispered. “Just to check up?”
Nina blinked. “That’s just what I was thinking.” She looked down at Louise’s fingers on her cuff and pushed her gum from one cheek to the other.
“All righty.” Louise let go of the sleeve and brightened her voice, pitching it toward the manager. “Thanks again, you have a great day!”
Weird, she thought, watching Nina through the glass as she walked to her station wagon. Bill, asking if she’d seen yesterday’s receipts, interrupted her thoughts. “I gave them to you,” Louise said.
“I know.” Bill held out the crumpled bundle. “But the report says you missed one.” Dayana pulled a sympathetic face behind his back.
They found the lost slip caught in a tiny hollow at the back of her drawer. “It could happen to anyone,” Louise said. She had to say it, because no one else would.
If Louise were to come face to face with Rose, what would she say? It would most certainly be a question: How are you? Is there a thing in this world that’s understandable? She shook her head. Really, what she would most likely ask is: How can I help you today? Withdrawal or deposit? Would you like to find out more about our CD interest rates, Rose?
All of this was speculation because if Rose came into the bank she’d pick Dayana’s window. This in spite of the fact that Lance and Ben had been best friends, playing junior varsity football together, not to mention countless Scouting trips. Rose never banked with Louise—not for years, ever since Louise had let slip that she knew the reason for Rose’s rift with Stella, that tawdry triangle. In spite of their sons’ friendship, their paths scarcely crossed—a mutually agreed upon avoidance. The weekend after news about Lance’s death had broken, she’d made a pot of stew and picked a bouquet of Lazy Susans and delivered them out to church; Pastor Bowen was going to pay Rose a visit. She didn’t deliver them herself. A visit from her would be unwelcome.
Louise looked over at Dayana, who felt her eyes and glanced up.
“I’m not myself,” Louise said.
“Colitis acting up again?”
Louise flushed and looked toward Bill’s office door. “No. I’m okay.” She took a breath. “I can run over to Mondragon’s during my break and pick up a birthday card.”
“You sure?”
“The walk would do me good.” It was a ten minute walk down a stretch of old Main Street to the one store, aside from The Bluebird Café and Rikker’s Liquors, that still seemed moderately successful. She could stop in at The Bluebird and get herself a sweet coffee drink, and then go see what Ward Mondragon was up to.
Before heading to Mondragon’s, Louise went around back to