The Fainting Room by Sarah Pemberton Strong

said Ingrid, glad of an excuse to leave the table. She picked up platter of ham and followed Evelyn into the kitchen. “Should I wrap this up? There’s a lot left.”
    “No need. I’ll do it.”
    “I don’t mind helping,” said Ingrid. “I mean, you’re letting me stay here and everything, the least I can do is help out.”
    Evelyn fought back exasperation and opened the dishwasher. This was her kitchen, her space. When she first moved in, she had made Ray fire his cleaning lady—Mrs. Shaughnessy had exerted such a claim on the house that there was no room for Evelyn. She looked at Ingrid, who had taken a dishtowel and was wiping the counter with it. “Tell you what,” she said. “It’s trash night. If you want to do something, why don’t you help Ray take out the trash? He’ll show you where.”
    Ingrid looked up from the counter. Was it her imagination, or was Mrs. Shepard annoyed with her about something? She wasn’t frowning, not exactly, but there was something about her face that didn’t look like she was enjoying herself much. She also had red eyebrows, Ingrid noted, though they were not as red as her hair. And the color of her hair, well, red didn’t begin to cover it. It wasn’t red or orange or copper or rust either; it was all of these; it was a color to see from way off in the distance, a color to up-close stare at twice. And she was staring, she realized—she was just standing there staring at Mrs. Shepard like a total dork. Ingrid put down the dishrag and went quickly back into the dining room.
    Ray was still sitting at the table, his chin in his hand.
    “Mr. Shepard?”
    “Yes?” He looked up at distractedly, as if he’d momentarily forgotten who she was. And then, focusing: “Yes, Ingrid?”
    “Mrs. Shepard said I could help you take out the trash.”
    “Did she.” He lifted his wineglass and drank off the rest of his wine. “And you’re eager for this assignment?”
    “Uh, sure.”
    “Very well, then.” Ray stood up. “Follow me to the dark recesses of the rubbish bins.”
    They went outside and around the garage.
    “I was wondering about the typing,” Ingrid said. “If you still wanted to maybe hire me to type your book for you.”
    Ray, opening the door to the shed, was suddenly acutely aware of his life: thirty-nine years old and standing in front of a house with a large mortgage, unhappy at work, something going on with his wife that he couldn’t fathom, and this child of less than half his age stood there with her hands on her hips and asked him about the book he was supposed to be writing. At that moment the distance from the garbage cans to the typewriter on the second floor seemed almost insurmountable.
    “Saturday,” he said to Ingrid in what he hoped was a hearty, optimistic tone. “I’ll spend the morning making sense of my notes and so forth and then—after lunch, say?—we can begin.”
    “Cool,” she said, and grinned at him in the dusk, swinging the metal lid back onto the trash can with a clang. For her, he supposed, it was simply a matter of money.

7.
     
    Ray spent Saturday morning avoiding the notes for his manuscript, although he kept an eye on them while he coaxed the remaining pieces of glass from the muntins of the broken picture window. Alex Yeager was probably right, it was going to be impossible to find someone to reglaze a window with a curved pane, never mind the problem of removing the window and transporting it; it was much too big to put in the trunk of his car, and the master glazier, if he existed, would no doubt reside on an organic farm in Upstate New York or a houseboat in Bar Harbor.
    As he passed the fainting room on his way to empty the wastebasket of glass bits, he could hear the sound of someone typing on his old manual Underwood. The muffled snap of the keys made a comforting sound, like the first kernels of popcorn popping on a stove. Ray tapped on the door and heard in response the hasty unrolling of paper from the