IVAN DANESCU WAS SOMEONE who looked sinister and behaved accordingly. He was as enigmatic as his boss and his status in the household remained ill defined. Evelyn suspected her employer was almost as afraid of Danescu as the rest of them. She had seen Ivan raise his voice defiantly and Frank Leroy accept it without a word. She thought they sounded like accomplices. Since no one took any notice of the insignificant, stammering Guatemalan girl, she was able to flit about like a phantom, passing through walls and learning all the best-kept secrets. The others thought she barely spoke English and did not understand what she heard or saw.
Evelyn had seldom been alone with Danescu. After she had worked there a year, once Cheryl was sure she was going to stay and saw that Frankie loved her so much she herself was jealous, she suggested Evelyn learn to drive so that she could use the van. In a surprisingly friendly gesture, Ivan offered to teach her. On her own with him in the privacy of the vehicle, she discovered that the ogre, as the other employees called him, was a patient instructor and could even smile when he adjusted the seat for her to reach the pedals, although the smile was more like a grimace, as if he had teeth missing. She turned out to be a good student, learning the traffic laws by heart, and within a week could drive the van. Ivan took a photo of her against the white kitchen wall, and a few days later handed her a driver’s license in the name of someone called Hazel Chigliak. “It’s a tribal license, now you belong to a Native American tribe,” he announced briefly.
At first Evelyn only used the van to take Frankie for a haircut, or to go to a heated pool or the rehabilitation center, but soon they started to go out for ice cream, on picnics, and to the movies. On TV, Frankie watched action films full of murders, torture, explosions, and shooting, but in the movie theater, sitting behind the back row in his wheelchair, he enjoyed the same sentimental stories of romance and heartbreak as his caregiver. They sometimes ended up holding each other’s hand as they cried their eyes out. Classical music calmed him, and Latin rhythms made him deliriously happy. She would give him a tambourine or maracas to hold, and while he shook them she would dance around like a disjointed puppet, sending him into gales of laughter.
Over time they became inseparable. Evelyn regularly gave up her days off and it never occurred to her to ask for vacations, because she knew Frankie would miss her. For the first time since her child was born, Cheryl could relax. In the strange language of caresses, gestures, and sounds that they shared, as well as by means of the computer, Frankie asked Evelyn to marry him. “First you have to grow, little man, and then we’ll see,” she replied, deeply touched.
If the cook and her daughter were aware of what went on between Mr. Leroy and his wife, they never said a word. Evelyn did not mention it either, but she could not pretend she did not know about it, because she had become part of the family and very close to Cheryl. The beatings always took place behind closed doors, but the walls of that house were thin. Frankie’s name always came up in these rows. Leroy’s wish for him to die once and for all was so obvious that he used to fling it in his wife’s face. He wished they would both die, she and her monster, that bastard clearly without a single Leroy gene, because in his family there were no retards. Neither of them deserved to live, they were a waste of space. And Evelyn would hear the dreadful crack of his belt.
After these beatings, Cheryl would spend several days without going out, hiding away in the house and silently allowing Evelyn to look after her. The Guatemalan girl comforted her with a daughter’s loyal care. She treated the welts on her body with arnica, helped her to wash, brushed her hair, sat with her to watch soap operas on TV, and listened without commenting as Cheryl poured her heart out. Cheryl took advantage of these periods of seclusion to spend time with Frankie. She read to him, told him stories, held a brush between his fingers so that he could paint. His mother’s intense affection could become stifling for Frankie: he would grow nervous and write to Evelyn on the computer for Cheryl to leave him alone. So as not to hurt his mother, he always sent the message in Spanish. The week would end with the boy out of control and his mother doped on anxiety and antidepressant pills. This meant more work for Evelyn, who never complained, because her existence seemed easy compared to her employer’s.
She felt great compassion for Cheryl and wanted to protect her, but no one could intervene. Fate had given her a brutal husband and she would have to accept her punishment until the day she could take it no more; then Evelyn would be at her side to escape with Frankie far from Mr. Leroy. Evelyn had seen similar cases back in her own village. The man would get drunk, or fight with someone, or be humiliated at work, or lose a bet—anything could lead to him beating his wife or children. It was not his fault, it was the way men were and that was the law of existence, thought Evelyn. No doubt the reasons for Mr. Leroy’s behaving so badly toward his wife were different, but the consequences were the same.
As the other employees had warned Evelyn, discretion was essential if she was to continue to live there. In spite of the fear Mr. Leroy aroused in her, she wanted to keep her job. In the house of statues she felt as safe as she had in her childhood home with her grandmother and enjoyed things she had never dreamed of, all the ice cream she could wish for, television, and a soft bed in Frankie’s room. She was paid minimum wage but she had no expenses and could send money to her grandmother, who bit by bit was replacing the mud and reed walls of her hut with bricks and cement.