by Rachel Kane
“You know, it was a personal call.”
“Yeah, like the way you personally broke the news about Jerome three months late? Or was it four?”
I sighed and looked down at the rest of the messages. How many of them could wait? The drive to the lake would take a while.
“Forget Jerome,” I said. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Braddock Moore.”
“Ugh. What about him?”
“You won this case. How’s he feel about that? Do you think he’ll keep us on retainer? Or do you mind having a big bad crook as a client? I know you’ve got your morals.”
That was the hell of it. Part of me didn’t mind. Braddock’s money was just the thing to keep us growing. I liked staying busy. The busier, the better. Much as I didn’t like Moore, his tangled mess had kept my brain busy for weeks.
But…
“Let me ask you this,” I said, “and answer honestly. Do you want us to be the practice that guys like Braddock Moore come to?”
He scratched his chin. “Uh…do you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t want to be the guy who acts all cavalier about ethics and values. But god, if I’ve got to take care of my mom now…I’m going to need money.”
“It’s your call,” he said.
“Yeah, I realize that, but I’m asking. What would you do?”
He got up and walked to the window. “I never wanted criminal law,” he said. “That always seemed like a dead-end to me. Steady stream of clients who can’t pay. But we can’t compete with the big firms right now. All that sweet, sweet corporate money is bypassing us completely. Maybe Braddock Moore is the best we can do.”
I rubbed my temples. It turned out that thinking about the future wasn’t any better than thinking about the past.
Maybe it was better to just stop thinking for a while, and take care of the present.
3
Theo
“She did what?” I said, my eyes trying to resolve the blurred shape in front of me into something other than Impressionist smears. Everything looked wrong. The light was coming in from the wrong side, the colors were all muddy. Worse yet, it felt like someone had been dropping individual grains of sand into my eyes all night, until great dunes had formed on my corneas.
The grumbling shape in front of me was Val, who was inexplicably next to the foot of my bed. “You heard me. You should probably get up.”
I had several questions, the first of which was, why was Val here? How did he get in? Had he been the one dropping sand into my eyes? Was he the one responsible for this headache? Perhaps he was holding a hammer behind his back, and had been using my skull like a bell.
When I tried to move, my body was willing, but my head was not. “Ow,” I explained.
“We don’t have time for this,” said Val. “We have important things to talk about.”
“Can you come back in an hour? Or…tomorrow? I think I have the flu.”
“Perhaps you caught a virus from one of the shots of tequila you insisted on downing last night.”
“It was those sales guys. Ow. Why do salesmen drink so much?”
“Despair, one presumes. I’m not sure why you felt you had to keep up with them.”
I blinked, and blinked again, but still my apartment wouldn’t resolve into its usual shape. “Somebody had to be sociable,” I said. “You were sitting there all stern with your sparkling water. Nobody likes a businessman who doesn’t drink. Ow! Val, remind me to order a new mattress today. I don’t know what happened to my bed, but it’s uncomfortable as hell.”
There came a rare sound, a sound that so few people have heard, some have said it is acoustically impossible, and that rumors of its existence are mere myth and legend:
Val laughed. He laughed loud, he laughed long, and with a wheezing sigh he said, “Good god, Theo.”
Like in the story of St. Paul, the scales fell from my eyes, and I realized I wasn’t in bed at all. I’d fallen asleep on a couch.
Further, this wasn’t my couch. I never would have bought such a bland, functional item, a hard, angular, brown-grey sofa, the kind you might find in Ikea’s annual Severe Depression Catalog. I sat up on the Sädtorp. “This isn’t my apartment!”
“Well, no,” said Val.
“I’ve been kidnapped! Why am I being held in this weird brown purgatory?”
“Ah, I see you’re now awake enough to insult my home. That means you’re awake enough to talk. Coffee?”
My skull was still ringing with pain, but I accepted a mug of coffee from him, along with two ibuprofen he had thoughtfully set on the coffee tray. Val was the most judgmental person in my life, but he wasn’t a sadist.
“Okay, so talk,” I said, swallowing the pills and wishing I could put them in my ears and have them work faster.
He left the side of the couch and sank into one of the chairs. “When I spoke to her, she was very insistent.”
“Mother, selling the house. I don’t believe it. It doesn’t make sense. That house has been in our family since Great-Granddad’s day.”
Val blew on his coffee to cool it. “Even so. It’s hers.”
“Is it? Wouldn’t it be bound up in the trust or something? I mean, people don’t just sell the family estate. Unless…is there something I don’t know about? Is the company in trouble? Are we suddenly poor?”
He looked at me over his cup. “Use your head, Theo. I haven’t spent these past years training you in business, for you not to figure these things out on your own.”
“Ugh, thank you, Socrates.” I lay back on the couch.
Harrison House had always been home. No matter where we lived, no matter where the business might take us, the great house on the lake was, for us, the center of the world. I’d grown up there as a boy. Even had my first kiss there, hiding on a boat in the center of the lake. It had been the scene of some of the greatest pleasures of my life…and some of the greatest pains.
I winced. I didn’t want to think about that. Nostalgia was pointless and absurd. I’d spent my entire adult life pushing memories like that aside, and I wasn’t going to start indulging in them now, just because I was hungover.
Why would she sell? Val thought I could figure it out on my own. He had more respect for my intellect than I did.
I could see the house before me, the great white portico with its massive Doric columns. My right hand twitched, as though it were holding a pencil ready to sketch the lines of the columns, to scribble in the shadows that formed in late afternoon, stretching out over the lawn.
My left hand came over and held the right still. Senseless instinct.
If my imagination were left to run on its own, I think I could have traced every line of the house, the vast fireplaces and vaulted ceilings, the intricate moldings, the grain of the old wood floor, so deeply polished the planks seemed to glow with the light of centuries.
I couldn’t understand why my mother would want to rid herself of this house. She didn’t need money. My father’s work—carried on by me and Val (mostly Val, if I’m honest)—had ensured her comfort for the rest of her life. The house was so full of history, our history, our memories, that it didn’t make sense that she would want to throw it off—
Oh. An uncomfortable thought occurred to me…one even more uncomfortable than the headache and queasiness of the morning. I sipped my coffee while I thought it through.
“There’s a man,” I said.
“I’ve always said you had a good mind,” said Val. “I just wish you’d use it more often.”
“Damn it,” I said. “She met someone. The house feels too heavy with history. She wants to move on. Am I right?”
“Father has been gone a long time. She has a right to move on,” said Val. “It’s understandable that a woman in her position might want a fresh start, rather than forever living in the shadow of her late husband’s family’s greatness.”
“Yeah, but it’s that greatness that’s paying the bills,” I said. “I don’t get it though. Sure,
she could move. She could live anywhere. But why sell the house? Why not let us have it?”
He shrugged. “When I spoke to her, she wasn’t interested in going into details. She was very brief. She told me we should come down and sort through whatever belongings we might have there, anything we wanted to keep.”
“How morbid,” I said. “What do we have down there? Old school uniforms?”
Paints.
I felt an electric charge go through me at the thought.
My paints were there still. My brushes. The jars, the easels…
No. No sense in thinking of that. I’d left all that behind. If they still existed, they could go into the trash. I didn’t mind. I’d moved on.
“Surprisingly, she’s also getting rid of the staff,” Val mentioned.
At that, my eyes widened. “Our mother, without staff? Who’s going to cook her food? She’s practically helpless on her own!”
“This new man in her life…he has apparently made her turn over a new leaf.”
“What is he, a communist? Damn it, Val, what’s going on with this family?”
“I know,” he said. “Believe me, I know. I thought we could pay her a visit.”
“Oh god, no.”
Val looked at me strangely. I ignored him. Pushing myself off the couch, I walked to the bathroom and ran water in the sink. When it was warm enough, I thrust my hands under the stream, scrubbing them off, before cupping them and splashing my face.
There was no going back there for me.
I hadn’t been home since my father died.
Looking at myself in the mirror, I thought, There’s no sense getting emotional about it. You’re a grown man. One with a rich, full life. Things worked out okay for you.
Focus on the positive, that’s the way to get through things, isn’t it? That’s what people say. Some people. I don’t know those people. I’m not a big fan of positivity.
Sometimes in life, you do what you have to do. You buckle down, you grit your teeth, and you shelve your dreams. Dreams don’t get you anywhere. Do you know how many artists are out there right now, starving, because nobody cares about art? What the world needs is practical men, men who wear ties and nice shoes, men who can read a quarterly report. Wealthy, self-assured men who can run the world like they always have.
I groaned at my reflection. The carmine of my eyelids blended with the alizarin crimson of the little veins in my eyes.
You will not indulge in self-hate.
You will NOT indulge in self-hate.
The last thing I needed on a morning when I was this hungover, was the memory of home. Being young, being free, feeling like the future might go my way.
But what was I scared of? It was just a house. It wasn’t haunted. My wretched past wasn’t going to pull me back in.
“Are you okay?” asked Val from the bathroom door.
I looked at him through the mirror. “I’m not sure.”
“Look, if you don’t want to fly down there—”
“No, no, I will.”
He studied my face. Did he understand? It was always so hard to tell what Val was thinking. Old before his time, he reminded me of that portrait of Henry James, by John Singer Sargent. Plump and self-satisfied, secure in his place in life, even more secure in his own self-regard. But what went on in that great domed head of his? Did he have any regrets about the way life turned out?
Probably not. Val had been Dad’s right-hand man since the day he was born. Nothing had ever interested Val as much as the family business. He was chattering about holding groups and tax shelters back when I was in diapers. A life of hard work and stern self-denial was catnip to my brother.
We were so different.
“It might be good for you,” he said. “I think you’ve been in a rut lately.”
“Me? A rut? Never.”
“You don’t go out anymore. You stay at home after work. You drink.”
I scowled and turned from the sink. “Are you keeping tabs on me?”
“Of course I am.”
“That’s ridiculous, Val. Don’t I show up to work every single day? Don’t I do my part for the business? I’m fine.”
He inclined his head. “Very well. I won’t pry. It’s not my life.”
“You’re damn right it’s not. My life is wonderful, and full, and vibrant, and spectacular…”
“It’s just, you used to tell me about your plans. Galleries to visit. New clubs. Dancing. All your friends. And recently…nothing.”
I brushed past him on my way back into his living room. “I think you’d be proud of me, curtailing all that youthful foolishness. You wouldn’t be caught dead in a nightclub.”
He chuckled, a pale shadow of the sound of his laughter earlier. “Perhaps I was living vicariously through you.”
I downed the rest of my coffee. “All right. So what are we going to do about Mother and this…this interloper?”
4
Micah
I didn’t know what I was going to find at the lake, but it made me nervous.
The drive to Lake Harrison was a long one; it was well outside Corinth, with miles of farms and pine forests between us. Unless you were a fan of cows and peanut fields, there wasn’t much to see on the drive…and I wasn’t a fan.
Probably I should have brought some work with me. I could have reviewed files, or dictated memos. Gotten something useful done.
Filled my head with something other than my own thoughts.
I was worried. What was the job market like for someone who had spent her adult life as a housekeeper? Were there any other millionaires in Corinth who needed her? Or was she going to be stuck working for a motel, vacuuming up after messy tourists? What other skills did she have? She’d dropped out of school when she had me.
Honestly, working for the Harrisons was the best thing that could’ve happened to her. I grew up with her telling me horror stories of what happened to girls with no prospects, no education, but a kid in tow. She’d always said she lucked out to get the job.
But now what?
I could just picture her moving into the little studio apartment I currently called home. It was tiny. Like living in a walk-in closet, compared to the big old Victorian Jerome and I had shared. It was great for me. Cleaning was a breeze, the bills were minimal, and most importantly I was on my own. Nobody to clutter my time with conversation and requests.
All that would change, if she ended up with me. I felt guilty even thinking that way. She was my mom! If she needed a place to stay, I wouldn’t turn her away. But…wow. I could picture her lecturing me over having nothing but coffee for breakfast. For staying too late at the office. For never putting my clothes away, living out of laundry baskets and dry cleaning bags.
It was a little like being a tourist in your own home. I hadn’t really settled down in my apartment. I hadn’t unpacked…not that there was really room to unpack.
There is a concept in law called intent to be bound. It’s when both parties to an agreement show their willingness to enter into a legally-binding contract.
In a lot of ways, my life right now was the opposite of that. An intent to be unbounded. To shake off any emotional entanglements. The anonymity and size of my apartment was just one sign of that.
I hadn’t dated since Jerome left. I hadn’t done much other than work. It was like my life was refusing to put down roots.
If anyone asked Jerome, he’d probably say my life had been like that for a long time, even before he left. My inability to settle down, my need to set everything aside in favor of work…
What do you even see in me? He’d asked that in one particularly painful conversation towards the end. I’d stood there, stone silent, not knowing what to say, not wanting to talk, knowing I had to say something, and yet my mind was full of casework, listing off all the tasks that still needed to be done.
He had taken my silence for an answer. I already know, he’d said. You don’t see me at all.
Arriving at the lake
allowed me to put all that out of my head, at least.
It hadn’t really changed over the years, this area. There was still the big house, just barely visible from here, hidden by trees. The caretaker’s cottage was a short walk away from the big house, close enough that my mom didn’t have to go too far to get to work, but distant enough that the small house wouldn’t spoil the view.
Her driveway was empty. She’d never owned a car of her own. When she had to go to town, she would take one of the trucks, or if the Harrison’s driver was free, he would take her sometimes.
What was that like, not to have your own car? This wasn’t the big city, it’s not like she could hop a bus. I just don’t want to spend my money on something that’ll break down, she used to tell me, when I’d pressed her to get a little car, worried about her lack of independence.
I knocked, and waited for her to open the door. It gave me a second to look around. She’d always kept the house so neat. There wasn’t a caretaker anymore, of course; the lawns and gardens of the big house were maintained by professional landscapers, the upkeep of the plumbing and roof farmed out as well. No need for a grizzled old man with a belt of tools to stalk around the house, fixing everything that needed to be fixed, like in the old days. So they had let Mom live here. She had her little flower garden in two tidy rectangles next to the door. Magnolia leaves had been carefully raked away.
This had all been perfect for her, and I didn’t understand why they were forcing her out. It made me angry. I’d grown up here. I used to play in this yard, used to run down to the lake and back, playing chase with the boys who lived in the big house. What right did anyone have to take this away from my mother?
She wasn’t answering the door. I knocked another couple of times. I peeked in the window, cupping my hands to block the glare, but I didn’t see her. Could she be up at the big house? I guess she still had responsibilities there, until they actually kicked her out.
I took the old familiar path up to the house.
When you grow up with something, you often don’t realize how remarkable it is, because it’s just part of your life, part of the background. Harrison House was like that.