The Upstairs House

by Julia Fine

  “Yes,” I said. “I do.”

  ALL THE WAY down the alley I was shaky, the alcohol and sleep deprivation combining for a tenuous high. I’d asked Annie to come with me out of spite, but it turned out that I did, actually, need her.

  “Shit,” I said when we got to my front door. I could hear Clara through the wall, an unintelligible scream. Hungry was whiny, had a glottal burst at the beginning of each wail. Wet was sharper, more hysterical. This was neither.

  “Sounds like the babysitter has her hands full,” said Annie.

  We walked in and saw Clara, buckled into her bouncer. Annie went to her at once.

  “Margaret?” I said, scanning the room. The television remote was where it had been, the door to the downstairs bathroom cracked just as it had been when I left. No used glasses on the kitchen counter, no frozen pizza cardboard in the trash. Other than Clara and a desperate Solly whining in the kitchen, the condo was empty. “Jesus Christ,” I said, my throat a cinch pulled tight, and swooped Clara out of Annie’s arms. She was howling, pulsing and contorted, a blazing purple flame. I wriggled half out of my sweater and sat down on the floor, giving Clara a breast. It had been an hour or so since I’d left her. Where had Margaret gone? Had there been some sort of emergency? Why hadn’t she called?

  I realized that I was crying along with Clara, hiccupping, heaving sobs. Annie sat down next to me, the garbage episode forgotten.

  “Meg—” She nuzzled my cheek with hers, like we were children. “Everything’s okay. Nothing bad happened. It’s going to be all right.”

  We sat, the three of us, while Clara fed, huddled together on the area rug. It felt good to have their bodies against mine—Clara hot at first, but cooling as she sated herself; Annie chilled from walking outside. The living room felt colder than I thought it should, but it was hard to know if that was the actual temperature or the icy enmity I felt for everyone but Clara. The icy enmity that I felt for myself. The world was harsh and cruel and cold, and I’d done nothing to protect my own child. I hadn’t asked if Margaret knew CPR. I hadn’t checked her references. I hadn’t made sure she was real.

  “I’m a terrible mother,” I whispered. I didn’t need to say it out loud to know it was true.

  “It’s going to be okay,” said Annie, squeezing closer.

  I fed Clara, and changed her heavy diaper. We examined her all over, lifting eyelids to check for popped blood vessels, swabbing the folds behind her knees with a warm washcloth, feeling her stomach for hernias, her forehead for fever. She seemed untouched, and now content. Instead of putting her back down, I maneuvered her into the baby wrap, our heartbeats gentling together. All the bottles were still in the fridge. The pajamas I’d laid out across the bassinet still hanging there. Annie put on the electric kettle and brought me a blanket to drape across my shoulders. I swayed until Clara was asleep.

  “We have to talk about this,” Annie said, once it was clear that Clara wouldn’t be disturbed, once I was somewhat calm and settled.

  “I fucked up,” I said. “I picked the wrong babysitter.”

  “Mmm,” said Annie, in agreement.

  “I’m lost,” I said. “It’s so much harder than I thought it would be.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Annie,” I said, suddenly frighteningly lucid. “You can’t tell anyone. I’m just tired. I made a mistake, and I’m tired. If you tell anyone, they will make me go away, and for my whole life Clara will look at me the way we look at Mom.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It isn’t. Annie, please.” I gripped her hand, pressing bone against bone, her knuckles cracking. “Annie, you have to promise.”

  I felt this with an intensity I hadn’t known since before Clara’s birth, before the move, before pregnancy. A desperation that reminded me of childhood—the intense vulnerability of utter dependence. Annie had been there with me, in childhood, adolescence. She knew what it was like to eat canned corn and stale potato chips for dinner, to watch our mother eat nothing. She knew what it was like to know that Mom had gone away, to talk to her over the phone on Sunday nights through sophistry and static, what it was like to sit on the front stoop on the day she came home, the five pounds she’d finally put back on after losing more than twenty hanging foreign on her upper arms, her jawline. And then to walk on tenterhooks, to tiptoe, to help her comb her hair, to see the streaks of gray and realize that she was older. That she was brittle now, and any slammed door or backtalk might shatter her.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” said Annie. “I’m not going to call the cops on you or anything. But Megan, you have to tell Ben. And you have to find somebody to talk to. You guys have good insurance. It’s normal to feel messed up after having a baby. Get a referral for somebody who can help you. It’ll help Clara, too.”

  I nodded. She was right. I knew she was right. But I wasn’t the only one who’d messed up—there’d been Margaret. How could Margaret have done this to me? I’d trusted her with my child, which meant I’d trusted her with my whole life. Was it my fault for feeling like I knew her? For thinking that a few hours of mostly one-sided conversation and a bit of biographical reading was enough to warrant confidence?

  Margaret wrote stories by the fire with an old-fashioned quill pen; she cut windows out of imaginary walls. Of course this was not someone to whom I should give my child. Just because Margaret held Clara, touched the fur coat to her cheek. Just because Margaret had stylish taste in clothes. Just because Margaret said she understood children. What had I been thinking? I hadn’t been thinking. I’d been thinking too much.

  At the beginning of the hunt, the rabbit knows the dogs are coming. It springs up on its haunches; it trembles.

  “I’ll stay the night on the futon,” said Annie. She went to take a shower in the guest bathroom.

  Opening the fridge, I counted the lined-up bottles of breast milk. I wasn’t ready to take Clara out of the carrier, to let go of her. Was this love? This combination of self-hatred and refusal to remove her skin from my skin?

  Even with Clara attached to me, it was still so cold. In the living room, the ceiling fan was on, but the chill continued after I had gone and switched it off. The tag on Clara’s nursing pillow fluttered. When I went over to examine it, I realized the living room window was cracked open, about an inch and a half of naked screen exhaling night. I slammed the window shut, and locked it.

  But the balcony door was also cracked open. So was the window in the kitchen. I peeked into the guest bathroom, muggy with Annie’s shower, and saw that the tiny window there was lifted up an inch as well. I felt lightheaded, as if I might fall forward just from Clara’s negligible weight. I put my head down to nuzzle the velvety top of her head.

  In the master bedroom upstairs, the windows were pushed fully up, the frames like raised eyebrows above massive, whiteless eyes—a flicker of a pupil from someone’s television flashing across the dark alley. I yanked them closed, swept shut the curtains, and then sat down on the bed, trying to steady my breathing.

  A subtle creak came from the other side of the room, a gear winding, a handle turning. The bassinet was next to my side of the bed—just a thin mattress and tight fitted sheet, see-through mesh sides so that Clara wouldn’t suffocate if she showed herself a prodigy and suddenly rolled over. Ben had set up a mobile of plush stars at the head. As I watched, it started spinning, tinkling out the first few notes of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” The motor settled in, and the song strengthened, getting faster.

  I knew that I hadn’t turned it on, that Annie couldn’t have touched it.

  Margaret had let the anger in.

  Margaret had let Michael in.

  Part II

  In her own opinion, she is greatly influenced by the opinions of those she respects.

  —Charles Shaw on Michael Strange, December 1927

  November 1941

  The night is too cold for the terrace, but Margaret, in her dark green dress, has tried. She has escaped the inside of Har
rison Tweed’s celestial penthouse—New York’s velveteen elite clinking martini glasses, plinking out piano ditties, gossiping about bankruptcy and cuckolds and divorce—and now stands shivering on the balcony. Below her the East River sits serene, Welfare Island barely visible through fog. Margaret leans out over the wrought-iron barrier and finishes her drink, leaving the tumbler balanced where the railing meets the building.

  Ostensibly, this party is for nineteen-year-old Diana, who is leaving for Hollywood in the morning, despite her mother’s efforts to keep her in New York. But Diana made her exit early. Most of her cohort is also gone, as are all Margaret’s close acquaintances. Michael, Margaret’s mentor, has become her dearest confidante, yet even after two years of these soirées, the others still are not her friends. Especially not Michael’s husband Harry’s crowd—didactic and judgmental, talking finance and legal justice, puffing their cigars and letting themselves be charmed by Harry’s wife, but never her pupil. Harry himself tolerating Margaret, as he tolerates most of Michael’s whims—the poetry he doesn’t read, the radio program to which he doesn’t listen, Michael’s expensive tastes and dilettantism. Margaret is distinctly aware of herself as being tolerated, which makes her uncomfortable, and timid in the company of Michael’s high society.

  What she sees now in the vast drawing room: a small group of lawyers in a corner by the tall stalks of delphinium, Harry at their helm—his flat, pleasant face nodding along to the man next to him, only the reddening tips of his wide ears betraying any sort of humor—and a conclave of Michael’s devotees strewn about in armchairs by the fire. Michael stands by the painting of herself that hangs over the mantel, which, for better or worse, serves to highlight the difference between the debutante who sat for the portrait thirty years ago and the woman who holds court below it now. Both display the same thick eyebrows, the same narrow nose. An expression of defiant haughtiness that dares one to doubt her. But now Michael is fleshier. Her cheeks are fuller, her jewels more expensive. She wears silk trousers and a long string of pearls, and as she gestures toward the man next to her—a college friend of her son Leonard’s—she keeps getting her cocktail ring tangled in the fringe of her shawl.

  “She’ll have a chaperone, of course,” Michael is saying as Margaret approaches, “and I made her promise never to stay overnight with her father. God only knows what goes on there after dark. Still, my poor Diana”—Michael’s voice sits on the middle vowel, her eyes cast down—“the press are going to eat her alive.”

  “But the film studio offered the contract?” asks the college friend, whose name Margaret cannot remember.

  “Of course the studio offered, they want her, everyone wants her—but only to have a Barrymore up on the marquee. They wouldn’t sign her under any other name.” Michael’s stage whisper carries to the group of lawyers, several of whom now turn toward her. Harry, looking up, offers a bland and thin-lipped smile.

  A member of the household staff appears at Margaret’s side with a tray of old-fashioneds. Margaret considers her waistline, then the palpable tension between her two hosts. She takes the drink.

  “We all know Diana’s pretty enough,” Michael continues, opening her inner circle to include her husband’s colleagues, no longer any pretense of secrecy or tact. “And with time she could develop some talent. But the girl won’t take the time. She’s too impatient. When the public sees her act, they’ll tear her to pieces.”

  “You worry for her,” says Harry, with a dryness that tells Margaret he has heard this all before.

  “I do.” Michael ignores his tone and sighs. “And it’s exhausting. I can barely focus on my own work.”

  “Your work,” says Harry, blank-faced, blinking.

  Margaret wishes she were back out on the terrace. She sends Michael a silent prayer of strength. But the explosion does not come—instead of taking Harry’s bait, Michael laughs heartily and lifts her glass, crosses the room to give her husband a kiss on the cheek. And now Harry is smiling and raising a hand to the smudge of dark lipstick on his jowl. Now the businessmen are chuckling, and the young people who’ve hung on to every word Michael has spoken this evening about European nationalism and contemporary art are letting their shoulders relax ever so slightly and sloshing their drinks. Relief makes them sloppy. One young woman—someone’s date—lets a pump slip off her foot, revealing a small tear in her stocking. Somebody elbows a tumbler of whiskey, and the others around him titter, ignoring the help sidling in to sop up the liquor that has splashed onto the opulent mauve carpet and mahogany floor.

  “One must always prepare for criticism,” Michael says with practiced gaiety. “Such is the burden of the Poet. Readers are dull and reviewers are bastards, and it is up to the Poet to remain true to her art.” The way Michael says poet, with her wet lips rounded—the final t suspended by her exhalation, the brief flash of her tongue—makes Margaret’s breath shallow, her desire a beached dolphin refusing defeat. She blinks and cracks an ice cube with her teeth.

  “And how is the biography selling?” asks a man in Harry’s cadre, dinner jacket abandoned and sweat dark under his arms. Michael’s book is an autobiography, and it is not selling well. She pretends not to have heard him.

  “There is a necessary tenacity that dear Diana lacks,” she continues, “an artistic vision.” The sudden edge to her voice slices the room’s bonhomie, and Margaret sees where Michael’s energies are headed. Having fully lamented Diana, Michael will find another target; Margaret’s career is ever in her sights. She tries to back quickly into the library, but bumps against a gilded floor-length mirror. The disruption catches Michael’s attention. “Take Margaret,” says Michael, and the whole room turns to look at Margaret, and consequently at themselves. Margaret sees Michael make eye contact with her own reflection. “She writes those kiddie books, but if she had more self-discipline, she too might be a poet.”

  “You like her poetry?” The same man who’d asked about book sales is looking at Margaret. He’s lost a cuff link, and one sleeve flaps when he fondles his mustache. Silence, as all try to discern to whom he’s referring, and to whom he’s tried to speak. Michael wears a benevolent expression: nose upturned, brows creased in anticipatory amusement. She says nothing.

  “I do,” Margaret says finally. “I like her poetry very much.”

  Michael nods. She turns slowly to look at her husband. “And you,” Michael says. “You, my darling. What do you think of my work?” The darling is a dagger, the question a dare.

  Harry will not meet Michael on the field of battle, not directly, not in front of their guests. Michael’s second husband, John Barrymore, would have yanked the knife from his chest and thrown it back at her, but Harry, her third, is urbane, careful. Not for Harry, John’s theatrics—the locked bathroom doors and suicide threats, the smashed antiques. Harry takes Michael’s hand and pets it.

  “As I’ve told you before, I don’t have an opinion,” says Harry, “because I have not read it.” In Harry’s eyes Margaret believes that she can read a sudden hatred, followed by remorse toward that hatred. Perhaps the memory of love, then the determined, unchanged mind.

  A silence. An awkward dispersal as all find their coats and bid their adieus. The sense that as Michael discharges her guests, she is simmering, then boiling.

  And now Margaret follows her through hallways of mirrors and flower arrangements the size of small front gardens, past blue and gold brocades and Baroque armoires. Michael kicks off her shoes and leaves them in a corner of her bedroom, begins unbuttoning her wide-legged silk trousers before the door is fully closed. Margaret perches at the edge of the bed.

  “He’s having an affair,” says Michael, removing her earrings. “He’s too smart to leave me proof, but I can tell.” Michael’s last drink is just now hitting her—she stumbles a bit as she slides out of the pants, and braces herself on Margaret’s knee. “Twelve years of marriage,” she continues, fingernails digging into Margaret’s stocking, “and he treats me like a child.” Margaret o
pens her mouth to speak, but Michael isn’t finished. “I loved him once,” she says, “though not like you.

  “I’ve begun to feel very close to you,” says Michael.

  10

  Annie was downstairs on the futon. Clara in her bassinet. Me, in bed, covered by just a sheet—the condo warmer than it should have been, given the recently opened windows. One curtain peeking open, a brume of city midnight cast across Clara. Her pacifier had fallen, though her lips didn’t recognize the loss: still pursed, they quivered like a trembling fish. A ribbon woven through the crown of her mobile fluttered in a nonexistent breeze.

  I was nearing the heaviness of sleep. I felt a stirring at the foot of the bed, and assumed it was Solly. She liked to join me sometimes, when Ben was gone. But the breath was soft and dry under the sheet, and when it moved up the bed to my thigh, I knew it couldn’t be Solly. Ben, then, come home to surprise me? Of course it wasn’t Ben. Ben wasn’t the type to surprise me. Besides, we hadn’t broached the topic of sex since Clara was born, which felt appropriate. I wasn’t one of those women who needed to feel physically desired after giving birth, I didn’t measure my worth by the erectness of his dick.

  But this. This apparition at the foot of my bed, the sheet tented by my curling leg, nobody visible, and yet someone beside me. The sudden intimacy shocked me. It was frightening at first, but so deliberate and gentle I relaxed into the joy of it. The someone took such care of me. It had been so long since I, myself, felt taken care of. A brush of hair, a tapered finger, exploring. A tongue that found the fulcrum of my pleasure, the skid of a silk negligee against my bare skin. A confidence that was not the straight-shouldered bluster of a man who has studied his craft, but something deeper. Someone who knew.

  I gripped the side of the mattress, I lengthened my neck. When I finally cried out, the phantasm receded. It hadn’t expected me. In the night, in this house. Who had it thought would cry out? Who did I taste like?