Two of a Kind

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  Cunningham was still talking; just the sound of his voice made Oliver desperate to be somewhere, anywhere, else. “So what you’re saying is that Oliver has to see a school-recommended therapist once a week over the summer and that this person will be providing a full report of his progress in September?” said Andy. Oliver knew his dad liked to sum things up quickly; he got antsy when you took too long to explain something.

  “As a condition of his remaining here with us for his senior year, yes.” Cunningham pinned Oliver with his gaze; Oliver looked away.

  “And in September, he’ll resume his sessions with you and you’ll be reporting back to me,” Andy said to Ms. Warren, who nodded.

  “I’ll keep you in the loop about grades,” Mr. Pollock said. “Right now they’re erratic.”

  “I’m missing physics now,” Oliver said. “Maybe I should go.”

  “All right,” Cunningham said. “Back to class with you, young man. And I expect to see some improvement—substantial, even radical improvement—very soon. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir.” Oliver decided to toss in the sir; it was an easy enough concession to make. It seemed to work, because Cunningham gave him this big, phony grin and clapped a hand on his shoulder; Oliver had to resist the urge to peel it off.

  After physics, which by this time would be pretty much over, Oliver had a free; he could use it to hunt down Delphine in art class. The hand remained on his shoulder, though, weighty as a slab of raw meat.

  “I’m hoping you’ll have a productive summer,” Ms. Warren said.

  “Dude, we’re all rooting for you.” That gem was delivered by Mr. Pollock. What an a-hole.

  “I’ll see you tonight.” His father stood up and checked his watch. It must have been hard to ignore it for so long, Dad, Oliver wanted to say. Just think of all those minutes going by and you had to miss them. But he just nodded and, as soon as Cunningham removed his paw, made for the door.

  When he had bounded up to the art room on the top floor, Delphine was not there. Her friend Rebecca volunteered that she was home sick. “What’s wrong with her?” Oliver said anxiously.

  “I don’t know,” Rebecca said. She was intent on her acrylic rendering of some turdlike fruit and this hideous vase. He left the art room and clattered down the school’s central staircase and into the boys’ room on the lower level. There he used his cell phone to call that florist his dad always used and ordered a mammoth basket of flowers, some with names he had never even heard of, to be delivered to the Central Park West apartment where Delphine lived.

  After his free, he had lunch, and then English. They were reading King Lear, a play Oliver actually liked, though he kind of thought Lear deserved what he got from his daughters Regan and Goneril; what kind of father asked those questions anyway? Though maybe they did take it a little bit too far in the end; that scene of Lear wandering around the storm was, like, too much. He raised his hand.

  “Yes, Oliver? You have a question?” The English teacher, Ms. Konkel, looked at him expectantly.

  “Where is their mother?” he asked. He knew Ms. Konkel liked him.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The mother of Cordelia, Regan, and Goneril?”

  “Shakespeare doesn’t tell us, does he?”

  “No, which is weird. The play is all about the king and his daughters. But what about his wife? The mother of his children? Is she dead? Or did she, like, run off with one of the courtiers or something?”

  A few kids laughed and Jake lobbed a tiny spitball in his direction; it eluded Ms. Konkel’s notice and landed on the floor near his chair. Oliver leaned over to pick it up, and began to massage it gently between his fingertips.

  “Do you think her absence is meaningful in some way?” asked Ms. Konkel. “Was it intentional on Shakespeare’s part?”

  “I don’t know if it was, like, intentional. But it is meaningful. These are motherless girls, right? Maybe that’s why they behave the way they do. Maybe they miss their mother and are . . . acting out.” Oliver had heard that phrase used many times to describe him. He pressed the spitball hard between his thumb and forefinger; it took some pressure, but he succeeded in flattening it.

  “That’s an excellent observation, Oliver,” Ms. Konkel said. “Does anyone want to elaborate on Oliver’s point? Or have anything else to add?” Molly Hahn raised her hand and so did Adam Schwartz; Oliver used the distraction to check his phone, but there was nothing from Delphine. Dejected, he put the phone away.

  Even the words of praise from Ms. Konkel did not do anything to lift his spirits and he was glad that he had a joint buried in the pocket of his jeans; he intended to smoke it later, a comforting if not exactly joy-inducing thought. He could have sworn he had a pretty full bag tucked away in his room somewhere. But the last time he checked under the pillow—his usual spot—it was gone.

  The afternoon was warm and golden when he got out of school at three o’clock; he decided not to go straight home, but over to Jake’s, on West Ninety-seventh Street. Jake lived in a town house where he had a whole floor to himself. Turned out Jake had a joint too, and they could enjoy their weed in peace up there; the smoke didn’t seem to register with Jake’s mom. He didn’t leave until after five o’clock, though the light seemed hardly different than it had been two hours earlier.

  Oliver headed south along Central Park West, just because it was where Delphine lived. He texted her to see whether she had gotten the flowers, but she didn’t respond. To distract himself, he decided to walk home through the park. Yeah, that was a good idea. The park was, like, beautiful in June. He entered at Eighty-sixth Street; the trees were a hyperlit green and the flowers—he didn’t know their names—were so bright they might have been covered in paint. He stopped to watch a pair of sparrows, and became fixated on the subtle distinctions of their feathers—gray, brown, black. When they flew off, he felt a loss so keen he wanted to cry. Being stoned affected him like that sometimes.

  Around Seventy-second Street, he got a sudden attack of the munchies, so he bought a Häagen-Dazs ice-cream bar from a vendor and finished it in, like, a minute; then he bought another, and ate it more slowly. When he reached his own apartment building on East Sixty-ninth Street, he was still floating. After riding up in the elevator to the fortieth story, he let himself into the apartment quietly. Nothing brought him down faster than having to engage with his dad.

  Oliver said hello to Lucy, who was in the kitchen making dinner. It would be low fat or low carb or both; his dad was on this kick about healthy eating and gave Lucy strict instructions. Not that any of this was new. But when Oliver’s mother had been alive, the food thing hadn’t seemed so . . . relentless. Good thing he’d had the ice-cream bars.

  Then he went down the hall, toward his own room. When he reached his dad’s study, he stopped. The door was closed, but he heard voices coming from inside. One was his dad’s voice. The door opened. “Ollie,” said his father, using the nickname that his mother had given him; Oliver wished he wouldn’t. “I’m glad you’re home. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  “Meet?” Now the weed was making him fuzzy. Damn. He really wished his dad had not been here.

  “Yes. Could you come in, please?”

  Oliver tugged on a coil of hair as he shuffled into the office. It was neater than neat, with nothing on the long desk other than a high-powered lamp and a stainless-steel cup that held several weapon-sharp pencils. The shelf unit opposite the desk held his perfectly lined-up books, and a few framed family photos. His mom was front and center; around her were pictures of Oliver on a tricycle, Oliver in a stroller, Oliver in a wading pool, clutching a rubber shark. It was like his dad wanted to freeze their family in time; nothing on display was even remotely current.

  “Ollie, this is Christina Connelly,” said his father. “You met at the wedding, remember? You were sitting next to her daughter, Jordan.” Olive
r swiveled around. He felt like he was moving in slow motion; it seemed to take him a half hour before he was actually facing her.

  She stood up, this Christina person, and extended her hand. For a second, Oliver’s weed-clouded brain could not make sense of this gesture, but he recovered and took it. Definitely not his dad’s type: drab dress, hair pulled up and away from her face, no makeup.

  “Oh, right.” Jordan was the one who cut her food into teeny, tiny pieces, pushed it around on her plate, and called it eating.

  “I’m interviewing Christina about a job,” his father explained.

  “A job?” What could this woman possibly do that his father would want?

  “I’m planning to redecorate the apartment.”

  “Redecorate?” said Oliver. “Why? Everything looks okay around here. Everything looks fine.” Oliver’s head felt like it had come loose from his body and was floating somewhere up in the vicinity of the ceiling. He needed to sit down, and lowered himself onto his father’s beige and cream tweed sofa, where he perched, tensely, at its edge; if you got, like, even one little spot on that sofa, Andy would pitch a fit. Was this one of the things in need of redecoration? Oliver could totally get down with that but not with anything else.

  “Oliver, you’re being rude,” his father said. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “He doesn’t want the home where his mother lived to be changed,” said Christina.

  “You get that?” Oliver was surprised. He would have guessed she’d say just the opposite.

  “Of course. My husband died a number of years ago. For a long time, I wouldn’t change anything in our house. I kept thinking that if he came back, he’d want things to be just the way he’d left them.”

  “Then you thought that too?” Oliver couldn’t believe she was saying these words; this was exactly the way he felt about his mom.

  “Thought what?” his father asked. Oliver ignored him.

  “That the person who died is not really dead. That she’s coming back, and it’s your job to preserve everything so that she’ll be able to find her way home,” said Christina.

  “That’s it!” Oliver burst out, not caring how stoned he sounded. Christina Connelly was all right.

  “What are you two talking about?” Andy seemed genuinely confused, and at another moment, Oliver might have relished this, but right now he was too busy looking at Christina.

  “The dead,” she replied. “And the way they won’t move on.” She turned to Oliver. “I just want you to know that if your father decides to hire me, it won’t be my goal to eradicate your mother’s presence from the apartment. It will be to honor it.”

  Oliver looked at her, seeing, as if for the first time, the way her hair—light brown and very smooth—was swept off her face, the tiny earrings that pierced her lobes, the kind of retro summer dress she wore, which was not drab at all, but instead way cool, with a pattern of little birds all over it. “Sweet,” he said, his face splitting into a wide, goofy grin. “Sweet.”

  Oliver trailed Christina and his dad to the door and waited while they said good-bye. Then he started to go back down the hall to his own room, but before he could make his escape, he heard his father’s voice. “Could I see you about something?” Yeah, whatever, he was about to reply. But then he turned and went still; no words came out. There, dangling between his father’s two tightly pinched fingers, was his missing bag of weed.

  FIVE

  Christina studied the house—a double-wide brick on Third Street—before mounting the steps. The bricks were pale, almost apricot, and both longer and narrower than the standard issue in the neighborhood. They were beautiful, even historic bricks. But they needed work.

  If she got this job—and it was a big if—she would recommend repointing immediately. She would also address the other signs of neglect, like the big urn by the door, empty save for some weeds, that was peeling in long, curling strips, and the ancient metal trash cans—who even had metal cans anymore?—that were painfully battered.

  It’s a huge job, Mimi Farnsworth had told her. But a huge job was just what Christina needed, and she was grateful that Mimi had recommended her. I feel like I owe you, Christina, she said. Seriously. But Mimi’s recommendation, while helpful, was not a guarantee. Christina still had to meet the owners, a wealthy hedge fund manager and his wife, and convince them to hire her.

  Years ago, it was common to see these once-grand houses sink into ruin. Their owners had fled in the frenzy of white flight, and the architectural carcasses left behind had been carved up into apartments or single-room occupancies. Drug deals went down on corners that Christina knew enough to avoid when she was growing up here. There were bands of tough kids, angry, testosterone-juiced boys looking for an excuse to commit some petty crime. The girls who circled them were equally scary, with their thick eyeliner and thicker accents. Some of them went to the parochial school where Christina had been a favorite of the nuns; she knew they resented her exalted position and she kept her distance.

  But things in Park Slope had changed. New money from Manhattan poured in, houses were bought, renovated, their prices shooting up along with their restored facades and fresh coats of plaster. If their house on Carroll Street had been worth what it was worth today, Christina’s father would have sold it immediately and relocated to “the Island,” as he called it; he had never gotten over his longing for the suburban dream of a freestanding dwelling, golf-course green lawn out front and patio with a grill out back.

  The front windows of the Third Street house were open and Christina could hear voices coming from inside. “Stop!” said a woman. “I said no jumping on the sofa!” There was the sound of giggling and then a yelp. “Okay, that’s it! Time-out for both of you!” Christina waited a minute before she rang the bell. “Coming!” called the same woman’s voice. “Coming, coming, coming!” The door was pulled open and there stood Phoebe Haverstick, the woman who had recently inherited this derelict house. “Sorry for making you wait.”

  “Not a problem,” said Christina. There were no signs of the children she’d just heard.

  “Anyway, please come in. The place is a mess.” Phoebe used a well-muscled forearm to brush the hair from her face. She was a sturdy, athletic-looking sort, with tanned, powerful limbs revealed by her gray shorts and white tank top.

  “Yes, you’d said your great-aunt hadn’t touched it in what—forty years?”

  “Make that fifty,” said Phoebe. “Can I get you something?”

  “Nothing for now,” said Christina. She followed Phoebe past the foyer into the parlor. There, she actually gasped. The entire room—walls, ceiling, furniture, carpeting, even the baby grand piano that stood at the far end—had been painted or upholstered in the same celestial shade of blue. “Please, sit down.” Phoebe gestured to a Louis XVI sofa covered in shredding pale blue silk. Christina hesitated but then saw that all the furniture in the room—the matching Louis XVI chairs, blue velvet settee—was in an equally deteriorated condition, and so she perched carefully on the sofa’s edge.

  “She certainly had a point of view,” Christina began.

  “Did she ever! Wait until you see the rest of the place.” Phoebe had flopped down on the velvet love seat, drawing her strong legs—she’d played field hockey in school, no doubt about it—under her.

  “How long did she live here?” Christina let her eyes travel the room. No paintings, but a large mirror in a sky blue frame hung above the sky blue mantelpiece, and several smaller mirrors were dispersed on other walls.

  “Her parents bought the house in 1915—she was about five years old. She lived here her whole life. Never married, never moved.”

  Christina reached into her bag and pulled out a black Moleskine notebook. “I’ll want to see the whole thing, of course. But I want to hear more about you first—what your goals for the house are. How you envision it changing and growing along with yo
ur family. Then I can tell you about how I might help you.” As if the word family were the prompt, there was a thud and then a shriek, both emanating from somewhere above.

  Phoebe leapt up and sprinted toward the sound. Christina followed more slowly, climbing the center staircase that was covered, of course, in balding sky blue carpeting.

  Upstairs, the monochromatic motif continued, but now in a pale, buttery color. In one of the golden rooms, Phoebe introduced Christina to her two daughters; the seven-year-old, Torry, was the namesake of Great-aunt Victoria. Once the girls were safely parked in front of Phoebe’s laptop, Phoebe showed Christina the upper two floors, one done in lilac and the top one in pink.

  When they were through, they went back down to the blue floor again. Christina had a brief, irrational desire to tell Phoebe to leave all of it, every last stained and shredded scrap, intact. But of course she would not say such a thing, and anyway, how ridiculously impractical would that be? Phoebe needed a more family-friendly kind of space; she had two daughters—and a third on the way, she had said confidingly, patting the front of her shirt. Christina had not realized she was pregnant, but now she saw it, the barely perceptible bulge. The woman was so taut and solid it was easy to miss.

  Back in the parlor, Christina asked more questions, took notes, and began formulating a plan. She wanted to maintain these light colors, but give them a more relaxed, contemporary spin. The moldings, pocket doors, and the like—those hard-to-replicate details that made these old houses so prized—she would recommend keeping, though she envisioned low-slung, informal furniture, bright rugs, and natural wood.

  Phoebe listened intently, and spent a long time looking through the book of photos Christina had brought. Finally, Christina got up to leave.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Phoebe said as they walked to the door. “And I do like your ideas for the nursery. A sweet, safe little space where I can bond with the baby.”