Three Story House: A Novel

by Courtney Miller Santo

  Benny read a few of the cards in his hands and touched the photographs and other mementos taped to the sides. “I guess it is a diary of some sort.”

  Lizzie picked up a cigar box, finally connecting the years on the boxes to the cards. “One day for one card.” She picked up half a dozen cards and quickly looked at the fronts and backs. None of them marked the year. A thousand cards lay scattered around them, and Lizzie realized it would be nearly impossible to put them back in order.

  “What a funny way to keep track of your life.”

  “Grandma Mellie was a librarian,” Lizzie said, realizing at last why the cards seemed familiar to her. “My mom’s funny about a lot of stuff. She alphabetizes the breakfast cereal and color codes our towels. Growing up my color was powder blue—same as my eyes.”

  Elton raised his bushy eyebrows, which were more gold than his mustache. “All our mamas are strange in one way or another.”

  “I suppose so,” Lizzie said, her voice catching in a way that surprised her.

  Benny looked at her out of the corner of his eye. He was still gathering the cards and returning them to the boxes. A few had remained in ordered stacks of twenty or so cards, but most were scattered and out of sequence.

  She sank to the floor and started to help him, hoping that he and Elton would ignore the fact that she was in the middle of a breakdown. Gathering up a stack, she placed it inside a cigar box and then groped around for another one.

  “There, there,” Elton said, patting her back. She opened her mouth and small mewing sounds escaped.

  Benny rubbed at the birthmark on his neck. The tips of his ears were red. When he spoke, his words ran together. “I’m sure it won’t be that hard to get them back in order. And look, you’ve got all them other boxes, which are intact.”

  “I shouldn’t read this,” Lizzie said. “It’s private.”

  “Ah, now, well,” Elton said, scratching his head.

  “If she didn’t want them read, she would have destroyed them,” Benny offered. “I always thought your mother was an honest woman. You know, not all girls were like that in high school They had the tendency to think two or three boyfriends ahead. But when your mother talked to you, that was it. She was the type of gal who fell in love with one man at a time.” He moved back toward the secret compartment and after a moment, started listing off the years that were still there. “Looks like it goes as far back as 1970.”

  “She would have been ten,” Lizzie said, trying to remember what she’d been interested in at that age. The skies opened up, releasing a sudden flood of water. It streamed down the windows of the receiving room and pounded insistently against the house. She wiped at her eyes with the edges of her T-shirt and finished gathering the cards. Benny walked past her, carefully carrying two cigar boxes. She gestured toward the stairs. “Could you put them in my room?”

  “I bet there are other secret spaces in this house,” Elton said, stopping his work on the electrical panel to hand her a box. “I’ve seen this before. People who like to hide things find lots of spaces in houses to conceal their secrets. You’d be surprised how many spots there are that no one thinks to look—closets, under the stairs, false cupboards. I wired a bookcase once that turned out to be a door.”

  Lizzie looked at the date etched on the box. Her heart beat twice out of sequence. She rubbed her thumb across it and then turned it toward Elton. “What does that say?”

  He squinted down at the box, his mustache twitching. “1985.”

  “Huh,” Lizzie said, opening the box quickly. That was the year she was born. If there were any information about who her biological father was, it would be in that box. Inside were a clutch of cards in sequence starting with 158 and going to 170, the day she was born. On the last card, her mother had written, “Elizabeth Grace born at 2:25 P.M. at Baptist Memorial Hospital.” Attached to the card with the same yellowing tape was her hospital birth picture, which she’d never seen before.

  “That you?” Elton asked, peering over her shoulder.

  “I guess so,” Lizzie said. She flipped through the few other cards, which seemed to be about the pregnancy and the heat.

  “Cute baby. My wife says that babies always look like their fathers the first six months. What do you think? Take after your dad there?”

  “I don’t know,” Lizzie said, staring at the cards remaining on the floor.

  Benny paused at the bottom of the stairs. “They’re all up there for you. Maybe your mom can help you sort them all out. Crazy system she had.”

  Lizzie picked up a cluster of cards from the floor and looked at them. The years were mixed up. If there were clues as to who her father was, it would take her quite some time to put them all back in order. She could ask her mother about them, but that would mean taking the first step to thaw the ice between them. Right now they only spoke, or rather e-mailed, about the costs and timeline associated with the renovation. Lizzie wasn’t yet ready to give, even a few degrees. How long had it been since she’d given up finding her biological dad? It seemed like since Jim and her mother had their own children. She didn’t know if she’d stopped wondering or had just accepted that a stepfather was as good as it would get for her. And here were the tools she needed to uncover who her mother had been when she got pregnant with Lizzie and who her father was. She looked up at Benny and Elton, who she realized were waiting to see if she would be all right before going back to work.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.” She hugged them both around the neck before taking the remaining cards to her room to begin her search.

  It was Rosa May who finally called the Triplins out on the absence of men in their lives. They were watching Lizzie’s team scrimmage one of the stronger church leagues. The cousins looked out of place on the sidelines—Isobel in her enormous sunglasses and Elyse, her hair tied in two low ponytails that made her seem much younger. Rosa May had brought her family to the scrimmage. Her husband, who she’d met at college, watched their three small children run around the back lot imitating the play on the field. Rosa May’s voice had the same inflections as T. J.’s and as she chatted with her, Lizzie kept glancing at T. J., who sat in one of those sideline chairs with the brim of his cap pulled low over his eyes. Lizzie paced the sidelines, stopping most often in front of her cousins, who lounged on a blanket.

  “Switch,” Lizzie yelled to her girls, trying to get them to move the ball to the opposite side of the field. “We’re wide open over here. Wide open.”

  Rosa May kept pace with her, chatting about the girls and their progress. As they paused next to the cousins, introductions were made. Elyse barely glanced up from her phone to shake Rosa May’s hand.

  “You’ve got good genes in your family,” Rosa May said.

  “We’re not actually related,” Lizzie said, reflexively.

  “Could have fooled me. You girls look alike. Pretty.”

  “Pretty isn’t alike,” Isobel said, putting down the notebook she’d been writing in.

  “My momma always said it was a mistake for pretty girls not to have their kids when they’re young. That’s the only way to stay pretty.”

  “I know,” Elyse said, at the same time that Lizzie and Isobel protested how much time they had left before they had to worry about their biological clocks and how their looks were tied more to working out than popping kids out before they hit thirty.

  “How old are you girls anyway?” Rosa May asked.

  “The truth?” Isobel asked.

  “We’ll be twenty-eight by the end of next month,” Elyse said.

  Lizzie called her right middy, Coraline, over to throw in an out-of-bounds ball and stood on her toes so the girl wouldn’t lift her feet off the ground. She patted her on the back as she jogged onto the grass. She’d lost at least ten pounds since that first week, but more important, she could run the length of the field without getting winded.

  Isobel dropped her voice and continued speaking with Rosa May while Elyse returned to tapping out
messages on her phone. Lizzie didn’t hear much of what they said, but once in a while, she felt them looking at her.

  “I know you aren’t talking about me,” she said as the first half wound down and the girls on both teams began to drag their feet, mindlessly passing to one another. She heard Sonja’s father let out a stream of Spanish that embodied urgency and direction. Then, out of the backfield, she saw Sonja streak by, stealing the ball from one of her own players, and dribble it toward the opposing goal.

  The parents, who had been mostly uninterested, got to their feet. The opposing coach yelled at the goalie to challenge Sonja, who expertly slid around the girl by moving the ball to her left and then kicking it into the net as the referee blew the whistle signaling the end of the first half.

  Drayden, who had in fact turned out to be a fine goalie, ran out of her net and lifted Sonja off the ground. Lizzie herded them together and tried to offer as much coaching advice as she could before they were called back to play. Mostly she urged them to drink water and maintain focus. “Wait, wait,” she called as the girls jogged back out onto the field. “Before you can be winners, you have to believe that you are worth it. Go out there and instead of being aggressive, be brave.”

  The girls looked at her as if she’d spoken another language, but she heard them, under their breaths, telling themselves to be brave.

  Rosa May slapped her on the back. “That is why I hired you,” she said. “Your cousin tells me that both of you are looking for the sort of man who doesn’t care who you were, just who you are.”

  “I’m not looking right now,” Lizzie said.

  “Every single woman I know is looking,” Rosa May said and then, anticipating Lizzie’s objection, continued, “even if she tells me it’s not the right time.”

  “I’m not lonely enough and I don’t know where I’ll be after this,” Lizzie said, looking back at her cousins. “Tell her we don’t need a man.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Elyse said, finishing sending a text.

  “I’m holding out for the right one,” Isobel said. “You know any right men, Rosa May?”

  “I know plenty of men but right’s a whole other matter. I married the one I did find.”

  They laughed and looked at Rosa May’s husband, who raised his hand in a friendly wave before picking up his son and swinging him around. When Elyse bent her head toward her phone again, Isobel snaked her hand out as quick as a viper and snatched it from her. “Hot romance?” she asked.

  Elyse shrieked and grabbed for the phone.

  Isobel read from the screen, putting air quotes around the words typed in text language.

  “I’m so excited?”

  “;”

  “Talk 2nite?”

  Elyse continued howling in protest.

  “Geez,” Isobel said, “you gotta give the guy a chance to respond. How do you expect him to get a text in edgewise? And what the hell is asterisk, backslash, oh, backslash, asterisk?”

  “Cheerleader,” Lizzie said, thinking of the texts she used to exchange with her teammates while they were on long bus rides to and from games. She watched her cousin scroll through Elyse’s texts.

  “Ah, here we go, one from him ‘Texting one-handed is hard.’”

  “Whoa,” Rosa May said.

  Elyse pushed Isobel’s chair over in a burst of strength and snatched her phone back.

  “That girl is up to something,” Rosa May said, watching Isobel chase Elyse across the field.

  “Coach, coach,” Sonja said.

  Lizzie looked up and realized the referee had called her team for a handball inside the goal box and was trying to explain to the girls how to set up for a penalty shot. They hadn’t practiced this particular turn of events, and the team milled about kicking at the grass with their cleats. Drayden paced in the box like a cougar about to pounce. “What you mean she gets to kick it right at me?” she shouted at her team and then at the referee.

  The referee walked over and tried to explain what would happen, but Drayden continued to escalate her complaints, stepping close to the college-aged girl, as if she’d challenged her authority.

  “Whitney, Whitney,” Lizzie said, trying to catch the sideline player’s attention. “You’re in goal. Get out there now before—”

  A commotion erupted on the field and Lizzie realized too late that Drayden had shoved the referee, who was only a few years older than the players themselves. As the other team’s players pulled the referee to her feet, she took a red card from her pocket and held it up to the crowd. Lizzie saw Drayden clench her fists and take another step toward the referee. Coraline stepped in between the two of them and began yelling at Drayden to “back down, back down.”

  In a flash, Lizzie dashed onto the field and pulled Drayden to the sidelines, apologizing to the referee and yelling at Whitney to get her butt in the goal. The opposing player took the penalty shot, which arced high and left, floating in over the tips of Whitney’s fingers.

  “I could’ve stopped that,” Drayden said, kicking at the ground and at Lizzie’s ankles.

  “You don’t know what you could’ve done because you’re not playing,” Lizzie said, ignoring the menace on Drayden’s face.

  “So?”

  “You let someone else determine your fate. The only way you should come off that field is if you’re injured.” Lizzie pounded on her leg with her fist. “That’s what you can’t control.”

  Drayden started to speak, but Lizzie cut her off. “Shut up.”

  Rosa May started to walk over toward them, but Lizzie waved her off. She wanted to see how the other girls would react. They’d been listening with rapt attention to the exchange and when Lizzie dismissed Drayden, she turned toward her teammates on the sidelines, who opened their arms to her, offering encouraging words. “It’s okay.” “We’ve got this.” “We love ya, Dray.” Lizzie turned away from her girls and smiled. One of a coach’s greatest tricks in forging a team was to create a common enemy.

  Near the end of the second half, Rosa May returned to Lizzie’s elbow. They watched the church team, which was made up of mostly white girls in sponsored uniforms. Their ponytails bounced high on the crowns of their heads. “You know in every other country, soccer is a sport for the poor kids. It doesn’t take much equipment—basically a ball and an empty space.”

  Lizzie shrugged. “Doesn’t much matter. That’s what’s great about soccer—it’s an equalizer. You can be good if you’re big or if you’re small. Some girls bring precision and others bring passion. That’s why I love the game. It plays to everyone’s strengths. Hard to do that in basketball.”

  The whistle sounded. “Tie game,” the ref said, congratulating each team before walking off the field. Out of the corner of her eye, Lizzie saw Dray move toward the ref. Rosa May tensed and the other coach, who’d been walking toward them, turned, ready to intervene if necessary.

  “Wait,” Lizzie said, more to herself than to those around her. “Give her the chance.”

  When she got within striking distance, Dray dropped her head like a dog losing a challenge and mumbled an apology to the referee, who smiled and clapped Dray on the back.

  “How about that,” Rosa May said.

  Lizzie let the girls drift toward their families and rides home. She reminded them about practice and then turned back to her own family. Elyse and Isobel were still squabbling over the phone, with Isobel threatening to write every word Elyse uttered into a screenplay and Elyse claiming that one in ten people in the world had psychopathic tendencies and that she felt quite strongly that Isobel was one of those ten percent. It made Lizzie laugh to see how much like sisters the three of them had become. The last few months had been the longest they’d ever been together.

  Rosa May gathered her family and after helping to strap her children into their car seats, she turned toward Lizzie. “Call my brother.”

  “Nah,” Lizzie said. “I’ve got too much going on.”

  “No, that’s just it. You don’t have en
ough going on. Besides, it’s like you told the girls with that pep talk of yours: you gotta be brave if you want to win at life. Calling him, that’s the brave act.”

  In the car, Isobel decided she wasn’t speaking to Elyse. “She’s up to something,” she told Lizzie as they loaded the balls and other practice gear into the back of Grandma Mellie’s old yellow Datsun, which served as the main transportation for all of them.

  “I can hear you,” Elyse said from inside the car. “It’s not like this thing is soundproof.”

  Isobel pushed her sunglasses up off her face. “You should ask her why she’s texting Landon.”

  They got into the car and Lizzie started the engine and then just as quickly turned it off. The trouble with Elyse had always been that she thought she was smarter than everyone else. One of the reasons she dressed the way she did and kept her hair in that girlish style was so that she had the advantage on other people. She liked to be underestimated.

  “What’s going on?” Elyse crossed her arms. “We should get home.”

  Isobel, who’d taken the backseat, leaned forward and shook out her hair in a single flamboyant motion. “We’ve got nothing but time.”

  “Really?!” Elyse said.

  Lizzie tried not to laugh.

  “We all know that’s your line from the cop show that got cancelled after three episodes,” Elyse said, putting her own sunglasses on and then pulling them off in mimicry of her cousin. “There’s a flipping gif of it floating around the Internet, where you take the glasses off and put them back on again in an endless loop.”

  Isobel adopted a serious pose, her eyebrows knit together in false injury. She held it for a moment before smiling. “You two are impossible.”

  They laughed together for several minutes before Lizzie finally started the car. They’d find out sooner or later what Elyse was up to. Because even if she hadn’t realized it, Isobel had spoken the truth. What they’d done by abandoning their other lives and coming to Memphis was give themselves time.