The Den

by Abi Maxwell

  “What’s she up to?” our mother asked when I entered the house. I shrugged. Why didn’t I tattle? There had been no return address, but of course I knew who that letter was from. Who else would write to her? And with a dull pencil, and such a scribble? I ate my snack and told my mother nothing, then went up. There, I stood outside Henrietta’s bedroom, listening for any sound. Over and over again, I lifted my hand up to knock on her door but decided better of it. So far as I knew, this was her first contact with Kaus since before the fire, and it seemed to me that it could contain anything, including the very worst: my guilt.

  * * *

  —

  That Friday we returned to the Hennesseys’ and found that they had lined their porch with eight jack-o’-lanterns, two for every step. They’d also hung three plastic skeletons from the rafters. We rang the bell and waited while behind us those bones clanked dully in the wind. Halloween was in two weeks, and for the first time in our lives we had no plans to dress up. Finally, Les opened the door and drew us into the living room, where they’d draped fake spiderwebbing from the ceiling of the living room all the way to the floor.

  “I love your decorations,” Henrietta said to her, but later, once the twins were in bed, she mounted the stairs to head to the balcony but stopped and looked at me. “How can you sit there?” she asked. “It’s too creepy.” I shrugged and she went up a few more stairs, then stopped again. “God,” she said. “Are you coming or what?”

  I jumped up and followed after her. It did not seem like chance that she should invite me just days after that letter. Outside, I saw that she had made herself a little corner on the balcony—a lighter, a drink, a blanket. Clearly she had been coming out all night while I’d been in the attic with the twins. As we sat there together, I waited for my sister to open up. But to my surprise, Henrietta said nothing of the letter. Instead she said, “What do you think the Hennesseys are doing all night, anyway?”

  “Dinner and a movie?” I ventured. When I spoke, I could see a little puff of my breath in the light cast from Les and the doctor’s bedroom.

  “Anyway,” she said. “They’re definitely not parking, that’s for sure.” She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, drew her feet up into her chair, and continued to go on about them. She said the doctor missed being young, and that’s why he’d moved to the country. She said he was bored with his life, his family.

  As I listened to Henrietta, it dawned on me that I had never heard the doctor offer the information that she now purported to have. Still, I did not get the feeling that she was exactly lying. I did my best to keep my voice natural as I said, “How do you know all this?”

  “We talk,” she said smugly, and suddenly I became disgusted with my sister in a way I had never been before. Somehow, despite my first estimation of Les, I had decided that she was wonderful. I liked her curt manner, the way she seemed so in charge. I liked that she looked plain, that she did not live up to my mother’s stereotype of a city woman. Between her and her gorgeous husband, I had decided that I chose her, and thus, I thought, her family.

  With all my courage I snapped, “What about Kaus?”

  “What about Kaus?” Henrietta snapped back at me. “God, Jane, why don’t you tell me?”

  I froze, did not even let my breath out. I did not know what she meant, what she knew. I had even feigned sickness one day that week to stay home from school and search her room for that letter—is that what she was getting at? The search had been fruitless and now I sat there terrified, listening to the wash of leaves below. Finally she said, “Why don’t you go find something else to do? Go call your ghosts or something?”

  My face burned. I rushed from the balcony before she could see me cry, and after that I was not invited to go up there with her again.

  * * *

  —

  The Hennesseys began to stay out later and later. Most of the time, I would fall asleep on their couch and wake only when Henrietta shook me, saying it was time to go. As always, the doctor would drive us down the hill, but after a few weeks into our job the ride had become more or less silent. Still, Henrietta always had the front seat, and even in my sleepy haze I felt some wall that blocked me off from them.

  But on the night that I had dared ask her about Kaus, our nightly routine suddenly changed. The doctor drove us home, handed my sister our money, and we got out. We went to the porch, and just as I opened the door Henrietta ordered me to not follow her, and then she turned and ran back down to the doctor’s car. She opened the passenger door, climbed in, shut the door after her, and stayed in there for roughly five minutes. It was a cloudy night, but our parents had left the porch light on, and the doctor had turned his car and headlights off. This meant that I could see their shapes in the darkness, just barely. I could see her shape move ever closer to his. I held my breath as I watched their shadows merge into one.

  “What?” she demanded of me when she came back up the porch steps. “Open the damn door already,” she said, then pushed past me to do it herself.

  * * *

  —

  Halloween came and went. The twins became the first trick-or-treaters we’d ever had, and our father delighted in it. They came dressed as fortune-tellers and he asked them each to read his palm, then presented them with entire candy bars. Then November arrived, and that’s when my sister disappeared for the first time. I remember the way it struck me that she should go then. I loved that month, had waited for it. I loved the early darkness, the open woods, the way stone walls were suddenly revealed like streams along the roadsides. But one day I got on the school bus and could not find Henrietta there. On the ride, I convinced myself that she must have gone home sick, but when I walked into the kitchen my mother said, “Where’s your sister?”

  At that point, we had no notion of how real, and permanent, that question would become. Very calmly, my mother called the school, but found out nothing. “Damn her,” she said when she put the phone down, and I wasn’t sure if she meant my sister or the secretary. She told me to get in the car, and we drove down the hill, toward the hospital. I stared out the window, certain I could catch my sister in one of her old, familiar places, like that little store or—if we would only drive by it—the trestle, a cigarette held to her lips and some new boy draped at her side. My mother parked the car and told me to hurry up. My father’s job meant that we could get free meals, and we had done so many times in the past, but at that point I hadn’t been there in perhaps a year. Still, we knew the hospital well, and rushed down the halls, through the cafeteria, and into the kitchen, where we found my father in his chef hat and pants. He smiled to see us there.

  “Henrietta didn’t come home from school,” my mother told him quickly.

  He asked what she meant. As they spoke to each other I turned, walked through the kitchen and back into the cafeteria. I grabbed a plastic cup and headed to the soda fountain, then to a table. Just as I moved to sit down, in walked my haughty sister. I jumped up.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  She smiled and asked me the same question.

  “We thought you died,” I said dramatically.

  “Jesus,” she said. “I just came for a snack.” She shrugged and I looked past her, down the hall. Dr. Hennessey. He was headed away from me and dressed in baby-blue scrubs and a blue cap, like all the other doctors, but I knew those broad shoulders, that slow saunter. I knew without a doubt that it was him.

  “I’m not an idiot,” I hissed at her.

  “What are you even talking about?” she said loudly.

  “The doctor,” I said. “Jack. Henrietta, what are you doing with him?”

  “You mean the boner doctor?” she said. “What do you think I’m doing with him?” she asked suggestively. I stared into her eyes and she stared right back, and to my surprise it was she who broke first. She said, “Not my fault everyone wants me.”


  I could see that our parents had spotted her with me by now and were headed to our table. “He’s like forty,” I snapped quickly at her. “He has a family.” And then, for the very first time in my life, I gave my sister a real, burning insult. “You’re acting like a slut,” I whispered.

  She said nothing. Just stood up from the table as though she was entirely unaffected and walked to our parents, hugged them, then casually told them that she had been bored of the old routine of coming home on the bus to do nothing all afternoon and had decided to change things up. They reprimanded her, saying she had worried them, that she wasn’t allowed to just make decisions like that without permission, and that was it. My mother, Henrietta, and I rode home in silence.

  * * *

  —

  After that, it felt like my duty to return to the self I had become in the summer and follow my sister, figure out what she was up to. It was certainly something. Twice the school called home to say that she had not shown up. Once, I woke up with a start just as the front door slammed. Henrietta, coming in late. I hurried across my room to look out the window, and there I saw it: a small, black car headed slowly up the hill. Dr. Hennessey’s, I knew.

  At their house, after the girls were asleep, I began to creep up the stairs and down the hall to spy on my sister. Usually I just watched her sit out on the balcony and smoke. One time, though, I entered the bedroom to find their closet door opened and my sister on the floor, crawling toward the back.

  “Why are you in there?” I asked, but she didn’t respond. She took her time crawling out, then she looked at me, shrugged, shut their closet door, and went out to smoke. But later that night, she shook me awake. I sat up quickly, thinking it meant it was time to go, but right away I saw that Henrietta had a black leather briefcase on her lap. It must have been oiled recently, because I still remember that camphor smell—just the same as our father would rub into his leather work boots.

  “Jane,” Henrietta said. “How do I open this?”

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “Come on,” she said. “You’re always reading those spy novels. How do you open a briefcase?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be smart? There’s a combination. What are all the possibilities?”

  “Permutations?”

  “Duh,” she said. “Like what exactly are they?”

  “You should put that back,” I said. I don’t totally know why. I was intrigued, certainly, and snooping was in no way beneath me. Also, this was the first time my sister had actually come to me since that day in the hospital. Still, something about that briefcase scared me. The room seemed to pulsate around it. At any moment, I felt, the doctor would walk in and catch us.

  “There’s some secret in there,” Henrietta said. “People don’t hide briefcases unless there’s some secret. I bet it’s why they’re fighting,” she said.

  “Did the doctor tell you that?”

  She gave me a curious look then, one I could not identify. She tilted her head and scrunched her nose, and in one way, she seemed to be saying what she always said to me: You’re an idiot. But in another, it was like she was asking me how I knew that. And in yet another, she was considering this idea, that maybe the doctor would tell her. I never knew what she really meant. I said, “Fine, there are too many possibilities. If you don’t know the code you can’t do it.”

  “Unless you break it,” she said, and walked back up the stairs, the briefcase hanging from her hand, hitting her leg with every step she took.

  * * *

  —

  After that night, my sister began to join us in the attic, and of course her presence commanded all the attention of the girls. She told them she knew how to call spirits, and that it had to do with codes. “When’s your mother’s birthday?” she asked. “Your father’s?” Also, “Any lucky numbers in the family?” She would gather the information and then she would go through a show of holding hands with the girls and chanting the numbers. “Did you feel that?” she would say. “I totally felt a spirit brush my shoulder.”

  Finally one cold Friday she thought to ask the question directly. She said, “Does your family have any combinations for anything?” It was only late afternoon, but the sun had already set. Out the window, the birch trees glowed against the gray world.

  “For our security system,” Amber said. “7768.”

  “Amber!” Ashley said. “That’s secret!”

  But my sister assured them both it was okay, and then her eyes shone as she told them that she had a new idea. She said that in order to communicate with the ghosts, we had to have a Ouija board, and since the twins did not, she would just run home and get ours.

  “You can’t go home,” I said. “We’re babysitting.”

  “How old are you?” she said. “Five? Wait here. Ten minutes. Fifteen, tops.”

  I often think about that. Of how I sat with those twins up in the attic, wondering if I should tell them it was a sham. I think of my foolish decision that it would be a worse trespass to leave those girls alone than to follow my sister, to stop her from her certain crime. We all heard the front door slam shut, but only I got up to look out the window. If it weren’t for that streetlamp they had installed, I never would have seen her. But there my sister ran, up the driveway and across the road, into the woods, the briefcase held tightly to her chest.

  Thirty minutes passed before she was back. The twins wanted to know where the Ouija board was, and she told them she hadn’t been able to find it. She talked them into going downstairs to watch a movie, but while it played she paced the kitchen, chewing on her lips and squeezing her hands into fists. When the girls went to bed, I asked her what she had done. I told her I had seen her. I told her she could be arrested.

  “What is wrong with you?” she asked me, and she returned to her pacing.

  “Les!” she said when the Hennesseys came back. “Jack!” She told them we didn’t need a ride home tonight. She said the moon was almost full, the walk took only one minute, and we needed some fresh air.

  “It’s supposed to rain,” Les said. “Freezing rain, actually.”

  But my sister insisted. She said she had watched the weather; it wouldn’t start until close to midnight. Finally Les said, “You’re sure your mother won’t mind?” and Henrietta assured her that she would not. She pointed out that we could practically see our house from theirs, anyway. Jack was in the kitchen, and I remember that he didn’t even look up when we said goodbye.

  * * *

  —

  I think I knew, when we left that house, that it would be for the final time. There was a part of me that did not want to follow my sister, did not want to be associated with what she had done. But there was that ever-present, deeper stream in me that felt compelled to do all she said.

  “Jesus, hurry up,” she snapped at me as we crossed the driveway. I turned to head toward home but she asked me what the hell I was doing. A raw winter chill had set in. We had coats but no hats or mittens. I knew where she wanted me to go, but I asked her anyway. She didn’t answer. She just crossed the road and entered the woods. As I stepped over the stone wall to follow her I thought of the hours I had spent in that very spot as the Hennessey house had been worked on, staring up at the attic, sure that some secret lay within. It had never occurred to me that Henrietta could actually steal that secret. I hurried through the bare woods behind her. The birches glowed, and to this day their sight in dark November reminds me of that night. I could have stopped her.

  In The Den, Henrietta reached into the chimney and withdrew the small metal box that our father had used on boyhood canoe trips. I hadn’t known she had it. She opened it up, removed pitch wood and matches, and in one try lit a fire that she must have arranged ahead of time.

  “I didn’t know you kept that box in the chimney,” I said.

 
“Well,” she said. “You don’t know everything, now, do you.” She took a flashlight from the box and went to the corner—our childhood kitchen—and brushed away leaves until the briefcase and her huge duffel bag were revealed.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “We need to figure this out,” she said without looking up. She took a deep breath and twisted the numbers into place. Slowly she opened the briefcase and stared down at a stack of uncut hundred-dollar bills as deep as the case itself.

  “Put that away,” I snapped, terrified.

  “I didn’t think the code would work,” she said absently. It was as though she were speaking to the woods, the air, anything. “Did they make it? Are they Boston mobsters? Is this why they moved to our lame town?”

  “Henrietta, don’t touch that,” I said.

  “I thought it would be some paperwork,” she said. “I thought I would just get some dirt on them.” She ran a hand over the top sheet of money.

  “Put that away,” I snapped again, but she wouldn’t move. I said her name but she wouldn’t look up. I said it again and again. Finally she slammed the briefcase shut and whipped around at me.

  “Forget it,” she said, her voice now returned to itself. “You’re so juvenile.”

  She had never called me that before, but it struck me as exactly the right word. I was cold and scared and my entire body was shaking, my teeth literally chattering, but still I tried to win her back. I said, “That’s the way they make money. You can buy it that way at the mint. I read about it.”

  “Just forget it,” she said, as though it was nothing. “I don’t know why I even bothered showing you.” She turned away and covered the case and her bag with leaves again. I heard her take another deep breath. I tried to do the same, but it had no effect. She kept breathing loudly, though, purposefully. Were those few moments the ones in which she devised the plan for her future? She couldn’t have had the plan when we left the Hennessey house; if she had, why would she have brought me to the woods with her? Henrietta took one final loud breath, and then she turned and walked slowly toward me. She brought her face so close to mine that our noses nearly touched. Before she even opened her mouth I knew an attack was coming, and I knew it would work. Her words, when they came out, were only a whisper. She said, “Mind your own damn business, Jane.” Her breath spread across my skin. I took a step back but she stepped with me, this time coming somehow closer. “If you have ever cared one bit about me then you had really better mind your own damn business.”