The Good House

by Tananarive Due

  “Man, you can’t do that,” Corey whispered to himself, sitting up. “Forget that girl.”

  No matter how horny he felt, he wasn’t desperate enough to have sex with a homeless stranger in the woods who didn’t smell right. He would get up, go to Sean’s bathroom, and take care of his blue balls himself. Hell, he was used to that by now. He could write a damn book on it, just like Gramma Marie.

  Corey climbed stiffly out of the sleeping bag and walked down the hall to the bathroom in his underwear, covering his crotch with his hands in case anyone saw him. It would be just his luck to run into Sean’s dad, or his little sister, giving them an unintentional salute.Ten-HUT!!!

  The bathroom was a mess, mildewy and crowded with bath toys. Corey closed the door and locked it, checking it to be sure no one could walk in.Damn, that dream had been real. Corey could still feel the way Becka had enveloped him, grasping. He turned on the hot water in the sink. With damp hands and a little soap, he would close his eyes and recreate the dream as well as he could. He cupped warm water in his hands beneath the faucet.

  Corey noticed a yellow glimmer in the sink, something shining through the tiny space between his fingers. A bath toy was about to get sucked down the drain, he thought. But it wasn’t a toy, he saw when he looked more closely.

  A gold ring with a thick band was nestled against the drain stopper, in danger of falling into the pipe. The girl in the woods vanished from Corey’s mind. The water he’d cupped in his hands spilled over his bare thighs as he drew back, shocked. “What—”

  He grabbed the wet ring, careful not to let it slip past the stopper. He brought it to his face, staring at it with a shaky hand. There were symbols on the ring’s sides. Drawings.

  Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

  This was his mother’s ring. This was Gramma Marie’s ring.

  “Holyshit,” Corey said.

  He said it a dozen more times before he could remember his own name.

  Twenty-Five

  THURSDAY NIGHT

  THEFISHER HOUSEwas on the southwest side of Sacajawea, closer to the marina, a three-bedroom bungalow with its own dock on the river. The house was nearly cloaked behind bigleaf maples with bright yellow leaves, their trunks wrapped in twisting ferns and vines. The leaves were falling, so the yard was buried much the way Gramma Marie’s house had been, until Angela had spent hours sweeping up the mess, bagging as many of the leaves downstairs as she could. These yellow leaves were more colorful, and still looked more alive than dead, so she didn’t mind them. As Angela walked up the curving walkway, she passed Myles’s Saturn instead of Pa Fisher’s old red Chevy pickup, and the missing truck jarred her. So much was the same, yet nothing was.

  When Myles opened the door, he looked surprised. He was still wearing a dress shirt, although he’d taken off his tie and unbuttoned the shirt midway. He hadn’t been expecting company.

  “We said I’d come over for dinner tonight,” she said. “Remember?”

  “I thought that was just tentative. Where have you been? You never returned my calls.”

  “I didn’t get a message,” she said. “My phone’s not working today.”

  Angela hadn’t been able to make any calls from Gramma Marie’s house, and her cell phone’s signal, which usually worked in Sacajawea, had died. She suspected her telephone problems were part of it, too, another tiny piece. There were no more coincidences from now on.

  Myles looked like he felt awkward. She would too, in other circumstances.

  “It’s okay if you don’t have enough food,” she said. “I’m not hungry.”

  Finally, he smiled, almost shyly. “I just wanted to do it up special for you, Cuban chicken and black beans and rice, the whole number. All we have is frozen stir-fry.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not here to eat.”

  “You’re relentless,” Myles said, squeezing her waist with a gentle teasing, and she smiled somehow. It felt that good to be standing near him. A few hours ago, she’d thought she would never have time for smiling again. “Come on in, Angie. I know why you’re here. She’s in the dining room, and it’s a good night.”

  The living room looked unchanged to Angela, old family photographs and uninspired furniture encased in plastic, but the dining room was so bright and full of new life that it startled her. The paint was a tropical peach color, and the walls were decorated with masks, most of them carved from painted coconut shells. Here, the furniture was festively white, nothing like the plain but courtly dining room at the Fisher house years ago. Angela didn’t recognize it.

  But she recognized the woman sitting at the head of the table while her nurse spooned food into her mouth. Ma Fisher looked every single day of her ninety years, her skin riven with wrinkles, her hands as thin and delicate as a bird’s feet. Much of her hair was gone, and what remained looked like tufts of stringy cotton clinging to her head. Some essence of her face was preserved in her eyes, though, and between her deep wrinkles. Angela smiled when she saw Ma Fisher’s birthmark, the quarter-moon beneath her right eye. Even her posture was the same, rigid and proud, as she leaned forward in her seat, waiting to be fed.

  Seeing Ma Fisher again, Angela almost forgot why she had come.

  “Ma Fisher? Do you remember me? I’m Angela Toussaint, Myles’s friend.”

  Ma Fisher’s gray eyes came to hers, and Angela saw them snap to lucidity. She smiled at her, chewing the last of her food. “I remember,” she said. “Hello, Angela.”

  Disappointment jabbed Angela. Ma Fisher was pretending she knew her. She wouldn’t have repeated her name as Angela, only Angie.

  “How are you doing?” Angela asked her, although she already knew.

  “Watching my entertainment,” Ma Fisher said. “Watching you two act like fools.” Her earnest eyes locked with Angela’s, an eerie sensation. Maybe Ma Fisherdid know who she was.

  Myles shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, Angie. Could be something she saw on TV.”

  “Or something she heard somebody say on the phone,” the nurse said, and Angela looked at the woman squarely for the first time. She was a young, ruddy-faced woman, about thirty, and she gazed at Angela with an unabashed intensity that made Angela remember how much gay women loved her short hair. Her gay friends assured her she would have been a queen in the all-girls’ circuit.

  “Anyway, this is Candace. Candace, this is Angie Toussaint,” Myles said.

  Candace smiled knowingly as she shook Angela’s hand.“The Angie Toussaint. Well, well.”

  Myles cleared his throat. “That’s enough from you. Angie, want me to fix you a plate?”

  “Sure,” Angela said, although she didn’t have any appetite. She only craved the warmth of this room, the ease of smiling and forgetting in here. That must be why Myles had painted the room this way, she thought. He’d needed brightness in the house, something to dull the pain of watching his mother slowly disappear. “Is it okay if I eat with you tonight, Ma Fisher?”

  “You couldn’t hit the broad side of an elephant with that rock,” Ma Fisher told her insistently, and Myles and Candace laughed, startled.

  “It’s always a mystery,” Candace said, shaking her head.

  “Wow. She hadn’t been using full sentences tonight,” Myles said. He sounded thrilled.

  Angela stood over Ma Fisher, behind her chair, and rested her hands on the woman’s bony shoulders. Then she leaned over and slowly buried her face in Ma Fisher’s hair, smelling her as deeply as she could. Perspiration, maybe shampoo. She didn’t smell anything she shouldn’t.

  “I love you, Ma Fisher,” Angela whispered, nearly tearful. This woman had spent hours telling her about her youth in Sacajawea, her work with the Red Cross during World War II, and how much she loved her son. She had rarely, if ever, used the wordadopted . In some ways, Angela had been privy to more details of Ma Fisher’s life than Gramma Marie’s. But the one secret Ma Fisher and Gramma Marie had shared, apparently, they had kept to themselves.

  “Why don’t you send yo
ur friend home and stay with me tonight?” Ma Fisher said to her.

  “My friend?” Angela said. “Who’s my friend?”

  Ma Fisher lowered her voice to a whisper. “I know your name,” she said.

  “What is it?” Angela said. She kissed the top of Ma Fisher’s head, a patch of downy hair.

  “Toussaint,” Ma Fisher said, bending her neck backward so she could meet Angela’s eyes.

  “Very good,” Angela said, although something in Ma Fisher’s backward gaze unsettled her.

  Myles and Candace applauded, pleased by their exchange.

  The food was bland, as warned, but Angela didn’t mind. She enjoyed watching Myles and Candace dote over Ma Fisher at the table, the verbal games they played trying to keep her mind occupied so she wouldn’t get restless and bolt from her seat. She was so much like a young child! Every once in a while, Ma Fisher sought Angela’s eyes again, gazing intently.

  From her seat beside Ma Fisher at the table, Angela squeezed the woman’s hand, which felt cold to the touch. “Ma Fisher, do you remember what happened on July 4, 1929?”

  Myles’s lighthearted expression faded across the table, and Candace looked puzzled.

  Ma Fisher nodded eagerly, squeezing Angela’s fingers. “Stay with me tonight, Corey,” she said, enunciating so clearly that there was no mistaking her words. “I’ll teach you real magic.”

  Myles had moved into his parents’ master bedroom, which had a glass door leading to a deck overlooking the river. This room, too, was decorated with a bright color, mustard yellow, and the walls were covered in intricate masks accentuated by track lighting. Unlike those in the dining room, the bedroom masks were carved from rich wood and looked more African than Caribbean, and Angela knew from her clients who collected African art that they probably had been expensive. The room was overcrowded for its size, since Myles had been forced to cram so much of his life into a house that was already furnished.

  There was hardly room to walk around the king-sized bed, and Myles’s massive computer desk and its bookshelves took up nearly an entire wall. Beside it, picture frames and awards hung on the wall. One was a photograph of a young boy who looked Latino, grinning a gap-toothed smile on a beachfront. Another was a master’s degree from the Columbia School of Journalism, beside a column-writing award from the National Association of Black Journalists. The last was an award for Volunteer of the Year from Big Brothers/Big Sisters in Washington, D.C.

  The only item in the room she guessed might have been here all along was Pa Fisher’s traditional wooden bow, which leaned against the wall in a corner by the glass sliding door. Angela smiled when she saw the bow. She’d criticized Myles for hunting when she was younger, but he’d told her plainly that he did it because he’d dreamed about spending time with someone like Pa Fisher when he was in foster care; Pa Fisher reminded him of his uncle Guy, who had lived in the country and died when he was seven. Usually, he’d admitted, he was happy when Pa Fisher’s arrows veered off-course in the wind and his game scurried to safety. Angela doubted Myles was still hunting now.

  Then again, maybe he was. She didn’t know this man, she remembered sadly.

  Angela stared through the glass door at the deck, which was lighted by the orange fire of the dusk sun. The slivers of the river she could see beyond the backyard trees looked like sheets of flames. Myles had strung up a hammock on the deck, and when she noticed a sudden movement from the corner of her eye, her gaze found an odd, tubular-shaped feeder hanging beside the hammock. Two redheaded hummingbirds with impossibly long, thin beaks were flitting around the feeder, sipping from the clear liquid that had nearly been drained inside. Their wings beat so fast they were invisible, making the four-inch, delicate creatures look like they were floating instead of flying.

  “What do you feed the hummingbirds?” Angela asked, intrigued by them.

  Myles didn’t answer at first. He was sitting at his desk in silence, as he had been for several minutes, gazing at the photographs stored in her digital camera. He squinted at the camera’s lighted display, tilting it back and forth for the clearest image.

  “Myles? What do you feed the hummingbirds?”

  “Sugar water,” he said, distracted. “They’re small, but they’re greedy. I’ve already filled that twice today. Have you reported this to Rob?”

  “Reported what to Rob?”

  “This vandalism, Angie. Is thisblood on the floor in your wine cellar?”

  “It smelled like blood. Yes, I’d say so.”

  “We need to call Rob right now. Why did you wait this long?”

  His voice had the let’s-do-something-about-this quality she’d always loved about Myles. He was a fixer, just like Pa Fisher had been. Every time she’d visited this house, Pa Fisher had either been under his car or in his shed, fixing things, and usually he’d shown his son his skills. In high school, Myles had known how to change oil, chop wood, build a radio, and shoot a bow, capacities that made him unlike any other high school boy she had met in L.A.

  Myles stood and walked to her, peering into her eyes. “Angie, are you listening to me? We have to call and report this to the police.”

  “There’s nothing for the police to do,” she said. She wished he could understand that, because then they could move on to the conversations that would mean something.

  “This morning, I got a crank phone call from someone who might have been your ex-husband. I don’t know how he got my cell number, but he said something that sounded like a threat. So, in light of that, someone vandalizing your house and leaving blood in your wine cellar is not something I’m ready to dismiss. Do you get where I’m coming from?”

  “Tariq called you?” This was new, and unexpected. But she should have known Tariq would have something to do with it, she realized. The way his van had vanished like that.

  “I said if he had a problem with me, he should see me in person. He said he was planning on it, but I should try not to die before he gets here. That’s another reason I called you today, so you’d keep an eye out for Tariq. I left you messages both at your hotel and at Gramma Marie’s house this morning. I tried calling you both places again two hours ago. I was planning to swing over to Gramma Marie’s after dinner because I was getting worried.”

  “I didn’t hear anything at Gramma Marie’s. It must not be letting my phone ring.”

  “It?” Myles said. His eyes, concerned before, were downright alarmed now. He sighed, patting her shoulder. “Angie, sit on my bed. We have to talk.”

  Photographs would not be enough for Myles, Angela realized. He would have to see something for himself. But that was all right, because he would. She had no doubt of that.

  “I want you to wear this,” she said, and she pulled out the round clay necklace she’d made for him that day, imitating the shapes and order of the symbols on Gramma Marie’s ring the best she could. She’d strung a leather cord through the clay pendant after allowing several pendants to bake and harden in her oven, and she hung it around Myles’s neck. It was long, hanging midway down his chest. With his shirt open, she saw the gold chain of a large cross he wore. The cross would be good for him too, she thought. She wished she had a cross herself. She and Jesus hadn’t been on speaking terms in too long.

  “What’s this?” Myles said, examining the crude pendant. He sounded impatient.

  “Something to keep you safe. I hope, at least,” she said. “It would be better if you packed up Ma Fisher and went away, but I know you won’t do that. So, I made a charm for you. Promise me you won’t take it off.”

  He didn’t argue. “Yes, I promise. Thank you,” he said politely. “Now, sit. Let’s talk.”

  Once she sat on the neatly made-up bed, Angela realized how tired she was. She’d had a long day at Gramma Marie’s house, with so much to think about. She lay down and curled on her side, enjoying the cool bedspread against her cheek. The bed smelled like Myles. He’d told her he always made his bed as a kid because his group home in Seattle insisted o
n it, and he’d apparently never broken the habit. She felt the mattress sag slightly as Myles sat beside her. He massaged her upper arm, squeezing rhythmically.

  “I’m worried about you, Angie,” he said. His voice cracked.

  “I know.”

  Through the closed door, Angela heard Candace trying to coax Ma Fisher into bed. After dinner, for some reason, Ma Fisher had felt an obsessive need to empty out her bureau drawers, endlessly rearranging her belongings. Another aspect of her illness, Myles had told her.

  “I know it’s none of my business,” Myles said, “but I heard about your hospitalization.”

  Angela chuckled. From his viewpoint,crazy was the easy answer, all right.

  “What’s funny?” he said.