Halfway House

by Katharine Noel

  In the morning, he practiced for longer than usual but still he finished too early to go to rehearsal. He got into the car nonetheless and swung toward Applefield, instead of going straight to the rehearsal hall. He stopped at the general store, where he bought a carton of apple juice, not really wanting it but wanting something. Laura, who ran the store, had iron-gray hair, short except for a single braid, narrow as a shoelace, which reached down into the collar of her sweater. “Nasty out there,” she said.

  “Yes.” On another morning, it might have been he who commented on the weather and she who concurred. After more than twenty years in New Hampshire, he still wasn’t considered a native, though he was no longer an out-of-towner, either. He didn’t know if there was a word for what he was.

  He stood near the woodstove, drinking his juice and looking out through the glass door. Across the street was the school bus parking lot: buses lined up neatly, a box of yellow pencils. It was a wet, gray morning, cold with fog. He wore a green sweater Angie had knit for him last Christmas. Though the wool’s scratchiness irritated his neck and wrists, he’d begun wearing the sweater every day. It made him feel less solitary.

  A man turned from the counter, paper bag in one hand, the other arm around the baby girl on his hip. Next to him, a small boy walked drunkenly, swinging his whole body with each step, and as they came close Pieter could see a metal bar, some kind of orthopedic device, holding the boy’s feet apart. Sitting down, the man unscrewed the baby’s bottle and carefully poured in orange soda.

  Without Jordana, Pieter found himself imagining what she would notice or say. He couldn’t turn it off, which meant he walked around flayed, open to all stimuli. He could be moved almost to tears by something like this family, the man gently pulling off his son’s knit hat, smoothing down his hair. Pieter aimed his carton into the trash can’s neat hole. Tenderness kept flooding him at odd moments like this one, dark water that could take him down as easily as it had once borne him along.

  He let himself out into the cold drizzle of the parking lot—wet black leaves; a tabby cat crouched under a parked car, blinking unhappily—and drove to the empty rehearsal hall to wait out the rest of the hour there. He longed for the others to arrive; then he longed for rehearsal to begin; then he longed for it to be over.

  Fidel had the other sections wait while the winds went over their part in the Shostakovich. Pieter thought of Jordana and felt his spirits lift a little, the way they might when he looked out the window and saw the mail being delivered. He realized he was imagining that he would see her again tonight, which of course he wouldn’t. The hours ahead hollowed out.

  Later, walking to his car, he was startled to see himself in the window of a store. He almost expected not to have a reflection.

  Thirty-eight

  Wendy loved Sundays. When she woke, Mr. Voorster would be gone to quartet rehearsal and Luke would be sleeping against her in his old single bed. Sometimes she woke him, bracing herself on her arms and dragging the ends of her hair very lightly across his face and neck, laughing when he swatted at her sleepily. This morning, she just turned on her side and watched him sleep. Cut short, his hair looked darker than it had long.

  They hadn’t bothered rearranging Luke’s bedroom, which was full of his old things: record albums in plastic milk crates, faded swim ribbons pinned above the desk. Early-morning sunlight streaked the ceiling. She wrapped her arm around his waist. His shoulder blade smelled of soap and chlorine. Running her hand down his stomach, she slipped it into the opening of his boxer shorts—in Iowa boxers were old-man underwear, and it had taken her awhile to adjust to Luke’s wearing them—cupping her palm over him. It wasn’t meant to be arousing; she just liked the feel of him in her hand.

  When she woke again, Luke was propped up against his pillow, pen in hand, doing the crossword in The White Mountain Times. “Hey,” he said, using the pen cap to lift a strand of her hair and tuck it behind her ear.

  “What time is it?” She groped for his wrist: past ten. “Wow.” She never slept so late. It took her aback and pleased her.

  “When did you get in last night?”

  “Late.” She yawned, saying through the yawn, “I made more than a hundred bucks, though.”

  “Ah mud muthahunnedbuhs,” he imitated, pretending to yawn and then overtaken by a real one.

  She rolled over onto him, pummeling his shoulder. He laughed, catching her wrists in his hands. With one motion, he rolled them over, so she was on her back. He kissed her lips, then her neck, running his hand down her side.

  The phone rang.

  “No. Don’t get it.”

  He was already stretching his long arm across the bed. “It could be Angie.”

  The hostess showed them to a booth, dropping laminated menus in front of them. Angie wasn’t there yet. “Weekends are hard for her,” Luke said to Wendy for the third time.

  She shrugged: What was there to say? She could hardly complain about missing one morning in bed together, when Angie had missed literally years of her life. What Wendy hated was that Luke seemed bewildered, even hurt, if she didn’t feel just as enthusiastic about his sister as he did. He was always repeating some insight of Angie’s, waiting for Wendy to say how amazing she, too, found it.

  This restaurant wasn’t Luke and Angie’s kind of place. They liked diners with shabby remnants of fifties glitz—like Cleveland’s, where Wendy had worked in Madison—or else cafés with community bulletin boards and homemade squash soup and hairy-legged waitresses. They’d chosen JP’s only because it was near Angie’s house; the Galaxie was in the shop. JP’s had striped vinyl wallpaper, shiny floral upholstery in the booths, a wobbly gold-framed stand with ornate script that instructed customers to wait to be seated. The menu listed a scrumpdiddilicious banana split, nachos that would blow off the roof. Under the fried chicken with greens was Mmmm-hmmm!! Dat’s de GOOD stuff!!

  But Wendy liked this kind of restaurant. Families, still in their church clothes, sipped Cokes and cut into thick slices of ham steak topped with canned pineapple. Coffee cups, upside down on brown plastic trays, waited by one of the side-work stations. Senior year of high school, Wendy had worked at a place like this, a big step up from the Dairi Shoppe and McDonald’s. She used to do homework during lulls, standing at the bread station. Steve picked her up every night; if she still had tables he sat at the counter eating pie the other waitresses brought and refused to charge him for. For years, her memories of Steve had been edged with contempt or embarrassment—she didn’t know which—but now that she was far enough away, she could let herself miss him a little. His long legs wrapped around the stool’s base. His big, tanned hands that smelled of soap.

  “We need to move out of your dad’s house,” she said.

  “You said last week—”

  “We’re always with other people.” She felt fragile, jagged, like she might cry.

  Luke said, “It’s just that every time I suggest we look for a place you say no, we’re saving money, we should be patient.”

  “I didn’t mean indefinitely.”

  Angie, out of breath, appeared by their booth, sliding in next to Luke. “Sorry. Always late.” To Wendy, she said, “Is this place okay? I know it’s tacky.”

  Wendy shrugged, trying to keep her face neutral. “It’s fine.”

  “So, the funniest story.” Unwrapping an electric-blue scarf from around her neck, Angie launched into a narrative about her temp job, how she’d begun to answer her home phone Hello, Regier Management. She never seemed to be having a very hard time, though Luke always said she was; she chatted and laughed and called for more decaf.

  Out the window, the trees blazed yellow and dark orange. In Cort, whose numbers swelled with tourists this time of year, everyone called this season Foliage. Apparently New Hampshire had a sixth season as well, Mud Season, between winter and spring.

  “Why so glum, chum?” Angie asked Wendy.

  “I’m not.”

  Angie raised her eyebrows a
t Luke. “Could’ve fooled me.”

  Wendy shook her head and looked around for the waitress. She and Luke ordered hamburgers, Angie grilled cheese.

  “Meat’s like the worst thing for your body,” Angie said. “We’re not supposed to be meat eaters. We don’t have the teeth for it.”

  Luke groaned. “Like I’ve never heard this before.”

  “We can’t even digest meat right. Sharks don’t like to eat people because they taste rotten.”

  “So you’re more likely than I am to get eaten by a shark?” Luke asked.

  The waitress brought their plates. “I’m going to wash my hands,” Wendy announced. She hadn’t spoken for a few minutes and her voice came out over-loud. She slid out of the booth.

  She locked the bathroom door behind her. Her back ached from waitressing the night before. The floor didn’t look too dirty; she sat, then lay down flat. Cloudy brown water stains drifted across the ceiling. She pulled her knees to her chest, unlatching the tightness in the small of her back.

  She missed her sisters. Julie wouldn’t even talk to her—of course she wouldn’t; Wendy wouldn’t have talked to herself either. Cammie took Wendy’s calls, but stiffly—they’d talk for a few minutes and then just as the conversation relaxed the tiniest bit, just as Cammie had asked something about New Hampshire and Wendy had began haltingly to answer, Cammie would blurt I have to get off the phone.

  God, she was alone.

  She didn’t want to get up from the floor, but of course she did. She held her hands, then her wrists, under the cold water. In the mirror, she looked very pale, freckles standing out like chicken pox.

  She started back to the table. The waitress was just putting down their orders. Angie took one of Luke’s French fries, and he slapped her wrist and she laughed, taking another. If Wendy didn’t know them, she would think they were in love.

  Luke looked up at her. He half frowned, half smiled—what are you doing?—and the moment for seeing him passed.

  Thirty-nine

  Angie stepped off the porch of their rambling Victorian, crossed the street, and crouched by the fence. On the other side, the brindle puppy cringed and wriggled. She glanced around to make sure the owner’s car was gone and pushed the cold scrambled eggs she’d brought under the fence. The puppy wolfed them down, and Angie worked three fingers through the fence to scratch its head. The puppy (in her head she called him Gibson) stilled, seemingly spellbound, though if she moved too suddenly he would yip and spring back.

  Even though it meant getting to work too early, she took the eight o’clock bus instead of the eight-thirty; what if the bus was slow one day? The thought of being late to work unsettled her completely.

  The bus drove east on Route 138, passing the bank building with her mother’s clinic, a half mile of car lots with plastic flags, hanging limp and dripping in the rain. A new not-yet-grimy billboard advertised pork as “the other white meat,” and across the street, The Hard Times marquee echoed:

  EXXXPLOSIVE DANCERS

  “SCHOOLGIRL SALLY” THE OTHER OTH3R WHITE M3AT

  This temp job had gone on two months now. As she was sorting the mail, one of the managers stopped by her desk. He was in his early thirties and WASP-handsome, with receding hair and watery blue eyes. “How are you liking the job?”

  “It’s good,” she said.

  “You’re good at it.”

  She was good at it because she still couldn’t concentrate enough to read books, and because she didn’t have people to whom she might make long personal calls, and because if she sat still too long, she thought too much. During the long afternoon lulls, she had reorganized the filing system, thrown out the outdated catalogs and phone books, and started a recycling system. She dusted the front office twice a day and made fresh coffee constantly.

  The manager asked her, “How much are you getting for this job?”

  “Seven dollars an hour.”

  “You know we pay the temp agency fifteen?”

  She nodded.

  “Anita’s decided she’s not coming back. You can quit the agency; we’ll hire you and pay nine. Everyone wins.”

  A real job: The idea was terrifying. When one of her housemates’ friends asked what she did and she said I’m temping, the very uncoolness of the job made it cool. The job at which you temped could not, by its very nature, be an identity—you shed it at the end of the day as surely as you would eventually shed it entirely after a few days or weeks. Her housemates’ friends did things like temp for three weeks, then make silkscreens for two, or use office temp jobs to work secretly on their screenplays. Now Angie wouldn’t be temping, she would be a receptionist.

  Seeing her hesitation, the manager said, “Nine-fifty.”

  “Eleven,” she heard herself say. It was like a game.

  “Ten.”

  “Eleven. It still saves you more than six hundred dollars a month.” She’d always been good at doing simple math in her head, a mostly useless skill.

  “Fine.” He didn’t look as cheerful, and Angie realized as he walked away that she didn’t care—and how rare it was for her not to care—that he liked her a little less than he had.

  So. A receptionist.

  Angie had heard that a house’s actual matter would fit in a teaspoon; the rest was the space between atoms. In the same way, the day’s actual work took maybe an hour: a few phones answered, lunch ordered from the Great Wall, some papers to be copied and sent off. She reorganized the filing system a second time, threw out old magazines in the waiting room. Always, she prodded herself gingerly, like touching a bruise or a cavity. Did her restlessness mean her meds weren’t working? But mania felt invincible and pure, and all she felt now was a need to keep moving. Dread sawed in her like a steel rasp, but if she kept busy enough she didn’t have to pay attention to it.

  She computerized the list of things to be ordered:

  Lightbulbs

  fluorescent tubes

  incandescent, 40 watts

  incandescent, 75 watts

  Toilet paper

  Cups

  She found an insulated paper cup to order instead of environment-fucking Styrofoam. It was wonderful and awful, to succeed on such a small scale. To measure out days restocking the coffee station and unjamming paper from the Xerox machine, fingers blackening. The ink had a strange powdery texture, and when she turned her fingers they glittered a little, as though dusted with mica. She went into the bathroom, where the pink and frills made her want to touch things with her inky fingers and mar them. Instead, a good employee, she washed her hands, washed the black streaks from the basin, went back to her desk. She tried to channel Wendy, to be neat and efficient and give nothing away.

  * * *

  She saw Luke and Wendy Friday night, but then Saturday stretched, hot and terrible, toward Saturday night. Angie’s room, at the back of the house, faced east. She’d hooked a wool blanket over the curtain rod to keep out morning light, shutting out the motel with its sign that seemed to command welcome vacancy. She got up, took her lithium, and went back to bed. Faintly from downstairs she could hear the bird clock strike eleven with eleven white-breasted nuthatch calls. She wished she could work all weekend.

  When finally she dragged down to the kitchen, Maureen said, “Trevor called. He says he really needs to talk to you.”

  Angie made a face and sat down at the kitchen table. Trevor called constantly, three times a day sometimes, always with something crucial.

  Maureen washed brushes in the sink. Angie tried to think how to ask if she could watch Maureen paint. She wanted it to sound like she was interested in painting, not just dreading the afternoon. Unfortunately, she didn’t like Maureen’s work much: too gooped and muddy.

  Isobel wandered in. She wore an Indian sari, pale pink that made her skin look golden brown. “I’m bored,” she said to Maureen.

  “Where’s Bradley?”

  “I hate Saturdays.” She sat at the table. “They make me feel like killing myself.”
>
  “Me too,” Angie said.

  “Not literally.”

  “Oh, me neither.”

  “Bradley’s with his fucking band.” Isobel picked up a catalog from the table, flipped through it aimlessly, then threw it down. “Maybe we should go for a drive.”

  “I’m painting.” Maureen, her back still to them, held up brushes.

  “I’ll go with you,” Angie said.

  “I don’t know. I probably won’t even do it.”

  Above the sink, the bird clock ticked, then whirred into twelve owl hoots. The curtains lifted on a thin breeze. Outside, a car approached, stereo thumping.

  With her thumbnail Isobel scraped some varnish up from the table. “Oh, fuck it. Where should we go?”

  * * *

  They drove to Portsmouth. The whole town reminded Angie of Cort’s historic district; like in Cort, the old brick warehouse buildings had been turned into shops selling candles and pottery and gourmet coffee.

  Isobel picked up some shoes from the sale table outside a store. Turning them over, she frowned at the size. “They’re too small. They might fit you, though.”

  The shoes were high heels, the upper part made of dozens of narrow silver straps. “It’s not really my look.” She didn’t take the shoes: she hated Isobel to see how much her hands trembled. “I haven’t worn heels since—in a long time.” Manic, her skirts got shorter, makeup brighter, heels higher. But she knew that only from photographs and fleeting memories of feeling charming and irresistible, filled with wit and power. She’d felt more in touch, saner, than at any other time in her life.

  “They’d look cool with jeans. No offense, but your clothes don’t do as much for you as they could.”

  Isobel was always saying no offense right before she was rude. Angie could never get away with wearing those shoes. You had to be, like Isobel, so cool you didn’t think about coolness. You had to be someone resolutely sure of your own sanity to risk looking bizarre.

  They bought ice cream and wandered down to the water, dark green and smelling of brine. Trash rocked listlessly against the docks’ pilings. Isobel still wore the pink sari. People turned to look at her; she was six feet tall, only a few inches more than Angie, but her carriage made her seem even taller. Angie felt like Igor, rushing and scraping behind, saying Yes, master.