Let the Devil Out by Bill Loehfelm Page A

shape?”
    â€œHey, Ma, my doctor says I have the resting heart rate—you know what, forget it. I wanted to let you know things worked out. I know you were waiting to hear. Tell Nat I said hello.”
    â€œMaureen, wait,” Amber said, “while I have you, there’s something we should talk about.”
    â€œIs it Nat?” Maureen asked. Please, she thought, don’t let there be a breakup. Or worse, another heart attack. The first one had been bad, a real close call, and he struggled with his weight. “Is he okay?”
    â€œHe’s fine.” A long pause. “Well, do you remember Lori DiNunzio from across the street?”
    Maureen sighed. She didn’t know where this was going, but she was sure Lori DiNunzio wasn’t what her mother wanted to talk about. “Yeah, of course, Ma, we walked to P.S. 42 together almost every day for years.”
    â€œI always thought it was a shame you two drifted apart. You two played at her place every day and then you never saw each other.”
    â€œWe went to different schools after 42,” Maureen said. “You know how little girls are, everything or nothing.” Which was true, though it didn’t help the friendship that Lori’s skeevy older brother kept trying to put Maureen’s hand down his pants when Lori was in the bathroom or went to get snacks. And that Lori pushed Maureen down on the sidewalk when Maureen told her what her brother had been doing. “It was no big deal. We stayed friendly when we grew up. I’d see her around the island. She’d come in now and then where I worked sometimes. Have a drink.”
    â€œYou know, you never had another friend like that,” Amber said. “A close one.”
    â€œI had no friends after the fifth grade,” Maureen said, “that’s right, Ma. That’s so true. Thanks for reminding me. I guess it’s why I’m so easily disappointed. And I did so have friends. Like the whole track team in high school. Just ’cause you didn’t meet them.” Maureen caught herself. She knew she sounded like she did when she was fifteen. Lying then, lying now. She took a deep breath. “Is Lori okay? Did she die?”
    â€œGood Lord, no,” Amber said. “The morbid way you think. She got married. Finally. I was worried. She got so heavy when she moved back in with her mother. And I don’t think she works.”
    Aha. There was the point, Maureen thought. Thirty-year-old, living-with-her-mother fatty Lori DiNunzio had landed a man. And I have this backwater career. “Listen, Ma, if you want me to move home and get fat so I can land a man, just say so.”
    â€œIt’s lovely,” Amber said. “To be reminded that there’s someone for everyone.”
    Who was this person she was talking to, Maureen wondered. “Ma. Are you drinking in the afternoon again?”
    â€œIt gives you hope.”
    â€œMa.”
    â€œWho’s gonna love you when I’m gone?”
    â€œ Ma .” Amber was hitting the box wine again, had to be. Though she didn’t sound like it.
    â€œMaureen, Nat and I have been talking. We’ve been discussing the future.”
    â€œI’m staying in New Orleans,” Maureen said, exasperation creeping into her tone. “I’m staying a cop in New Orleans. I’m sorry if that doesn’t make me as marriageable as old pride-of-Eltingville Lori DiNunzio.”
    â€œYoung lady,” Amber said, “we weren’t talking about your future. You’re a grown woman. You can do what you want. We’re talking about our future, his and mine.”
    â€œOh, wait, what are you trying to tell me? Did y’all decide about Florida?”
    â€œKind of.”
    Maureen stood up. The blanket she was wrapped in fell to the porch. Amber and Nat had been discussing the move south for a while. Maureen knew this; they’d kept her in the loop. Amber had