Three Story House: A Novel

by Courtney Miller Santo

  In the face of such relentless enthusiasm, Isobel’s energy escaped her. She hadn’t slept well in weeks. At night instead of counting sheep to fall asleep, she counted possible outcomes of this production, of Tom, of Lizzie, of Elyse. Her brain hadn’t worked so hard since learning how to solve for X when she studied algebra.

  Craig had let himself inside Spite House, leaving the door ajar. “What a house,” Kitty said, craning her neck to peer at the small balconies that extended from each of the floors. “Is that a room? On top of the house?”

  “Cupola. It’s an Italian feature, dates back a couple hundred years,” Jake said, setting the rest of the equipment on the porch. “I worked on a few projects with Vila. Got to know my way around architecture. It was in the middle of being repaired when we were here last time.”

  “You should see the kitchen,” she said, opening the door for them. “I mean the whole house is under construction, but the kitchen is my mess.”

  Craig appeared on the stairs, his girth making the rise seem even more precarious. Isobel nodded before continuing to explain the layout of the house to Kitty.

  “What did we film when we were here last?” Craig asked, leaning against the banister in a way that made it groan out a complaint.

  “I’m not sure that’s secure,” she said, gesturing for the producer to move back. The special had been filmed in the spring, and all of the women had been shot on the porch or in the backyard with the Mississippi River behind them. “They did lots with the house—really played it up.”

  “I’m picturing a floor plan in the opening of your reality show. This place is impossible. It’s like something out of a set designer’s nightmare. Who built it?”

  “Lizzie’s grandfather.”

  “Lizzie? I thought it was your grandfather.”

  “We’re step-cousins, although close as any family. She doesn’t even know who her father is.”

  Craig narrowed his eyes. “She’s the soccer star, right?”

  Isobel felt as if she’d stumbled. It’d been too long since she’d been around cunning people. Memphis was a town without guile, but sharks like Craig, assholes from Los Angeles, were dangerous. Here he was pretending not to know what he ought to. She realized that she’d given him too much information and tried to move past it. “We’ve got blueprints of the house if that would help with the graphics.”

  He made more notes in his book. “Nah. I’ve got it.” He told Jake and Kitty what he needed and instructed Isobel to relax until they’d been through the house.

  “Have at it,” she said. “There’s nobody here but me.”

  Kitty turned and pressed her cheek to Isobel’s as if bidding her farewell. “I love this place,” she said in a fierce whisper before disappearing up the stairs with such gracefulness that none of the treads groaned out their usual squeaks. Isobel could see why the girl had become a sound technician.

  In the kitchen, Isobel took the jug of sun tea that Elyse had set in the window that morning and poured it over ice. Her cousin appeared to be recovering from the wedding situation, as she and Lizzie had taken to calling what had happened in Boston. In the last two weeks, she’d started cooking classes, which meant that they hardly saw her. When Isobel had her heart broken the first time, her mother had told her the only way to mend it was to get on with life. Waiting around only made grief insufferable.

  Isobel’s heart had been broken so many times she needed only a day or so to get over rejection. Before meeting Tom, there had been no one serious. Nine months of stand-him-till-you’re-bored-with-him, as Isobel liked to think of her one-plus-night stands. The stuff with Tom was Lizzie’s fault. She and T. J. were the type of couple who made you want to get into a relationship—like watching a triathlon made you think you could do one. Lizzie and T. J. were fit and purposeful. Isobel had sworn off relationships after the dating horror show that had been her late teens and early twenties when people had still expected great things from her. She dated older men, established in their careers. More often than not their agents or handlers arranged it. She’d fallen hard for two or three of them, and then there were those awful months when she’d been spectacularly dumped by a man whom most of America was in love with.

  And that had been the beginning of the end of everything in Isobel’s life. His verdict that she wasn’t good enough seemed to pervade casting directors’ assessments of her acting and her potential to move from the small screen to the big screen. She stopped getting calls, stopped being asked to read scripts. All of it, in a matter of months, dried up. There had been precious little in the five years since that ended. Her last movie—a bit part in an indie she’d done in an attempt at being a grown-up—had been panned and then hadn’t even been released in the theaters. One of those straight-to-DVD flicks. Not to mention that she’d stupidly agreed to a frontal nudity scene, which people used stills from for pornography sites. Her agent didn’t speak to her for more than a year after that. He’d told her not to do it, warned her about the consequences. The first she’d heard from him since the indie flop had been when he’d called about the Where Are They Now? show.

  Isobel finished her tea and put the glass in the sink. She listened to the strangers moving around in what she’d come to think of as her place. What would they think of this mess of a house? Looking around the kitchen, she tried to see it through their eyes. The floor, which she’d been admiring moments before, looked crafty instead of craftsman. The metal cupboards would be beautiful when they were actually refinished. She’d arranged with an auto detailer to powder coat the metal a beautiful off-white color with flecks of gold in it to draw out the colors of the floor. Right now, though, they were rusty and hung crooked so several didn’t close. Benny’s repairs appeared to have been made out of necessity and as cheaply as possible. There were holes in the plaster from when Elton had rewired. If it weren’t for T. J.’s constantly watching Benny, they’d never have a hope of meeting the code requirements.

  Looking again at the cupboards, the need to take action filled her with a restless energy. What could it hurt to begin? She found a drill motor charging in the corner and without thinking through the consequences or even making a plan, she began to unscrew the hinges on the cupboard doors. She started at the top, standing on the counter to reach the cupboards attached to the upper portion of the wall.

  The dust on top of them was two inches thick. She supposed no one had been up here in years to see the tops of things. If she stood on her tiptoes, she could peek over the lip of the cupboards, which had been topped with a molding of sorts to make them appear more elegant. A few small boxes nestled behind the decorative frame of the cupboards and were covered with a layer of the greasy dust that coated the top of the molding. A grapevine-patterned border ran along the length of the wall between the ceiling and the cupboards. One of the seams had come unstuck and the corner flared out from the wall. Isobel stretched for it, grasping it between the tips of her fingers and pulling at it. The brittle glue on the back gave way easily. In less time than it had taken her to climb onto the counter, she’d pulled away an entire length of the hideous border.

  Laughing, she spun on one foot and nearly lost her balance. From behind her she heard clapping and turned to see both her cousins standing near the back door. They’d just come from the hairdresser, and Elyse sported a pixie cut that emphasized the sweetness of her face. Before she could compliment her, Isobel flailed about and then grabbed hard onto the upper cabinet.

  “Careful,” Lizzie said, stepping forward.

  She smiled at them, meaning to let them know it would all be fine, but instead, in the half second it took for her to regain her balance, the cabinet tore loose from the plaster wall and crashed down onto the counter. The momentum threw Isobel off balance and she fell from the counter, half landing on Lizzie, who had rushed forward to try to catch her. Elyse screamed and then the sound of shattering glass echoed throughout the kitchen.

  “Are you hurt? Are you hurt?” Isobel asked Lizzie. />
  “I don’t think so,” she said, putting her hands down and struggling to stand up. “My leg.”

  Isobel held her breath, not wanting the worst to have happened. Lizzie stood, but carefully and without putting weight on her right leg.

  “It’ll be fine,” Elyse said, tugging at the ends of her newly shortened hair. Her voice was low and calm. “Take a step. I’m sure it’s fine. You didn’t land on your knee.”

  Lizzie looked at both of them, her eyes wet. She took a step forward and then another. She walked across the room and then did a few jumping jacks. “It’s fine,” she said. “Fine, fine fine.”

  Elyse smiled and then looked up at the beaded curtain, which still rustled with movement. “Who are they?” she asked.

  Jake stood in the entryway, his camera on his shoulder. Craig stood to his left, giving him hand signals about what to film and where to focus the lens. The girl Kitty had crept around to the glass windows and pulled the shades down. She stood almost behind the refrigerator so she’d be nearly invisible in any wide shots of the kitchen.

  “Those are the people we’re going to pretend not to see while they shoot a sizzle reel.”

  “Starting now?” Lizzie asked.

  “Guess so,” Isobel said, getting to her feet and surveying the damage. The cupboard itself had dented like an auto fender when it hit the ground. She cursed. The cupboards were impossible to replace—the manufacturer, St. Charles Steel, didn’t even exist anymore. She kicked at the now warped metal and looked at the wall where they’d been attached. The plaster behind them had torn away in large chunks, revealing the lathe and through that the clapboard of the house. A dozen jelly jars were broken in bits across the tile floor. Isobel’s sense of accomplishment at having started a project faded. Her face reddened as she surveyed the disaster. “Were these your grandmother’s?”

  Lizzie’s blue eyes softened. “Doubt they hold any meaning. Granny liked to save everything—margarine tubs, aluminum foil, bread ties. We cleaned a lot of that stuff out when she died and left the practical stuff. Mom never got sentimental about things.”

  “I’ll pay to fix it. All of it. I mean, I was going to anyway, but I can cover this and more,” Isobel said, walking to the closet for the broom and dustpan. She knew her cousin was concerned about money, which was why Lizzie had agreed to the television show in the first place. Craig had offered to pay her an amount large enough to cover the cost of finally bringing the house fully up to code. There was the possibility of more money on top of that if a network picked up the show or even if Craig could find another investor or two to film a pilot.

  Elyse stepped forward to hold the dustpan for Isobel. Her eyes flitted from the broken glass to the crew. “Surely this part isn’t worth filming—who is ever interested in clean-up?”

  “It’ll take you guys a few days to get used to having us here,” Craig said. “Until then we’ll film most of what we see. You never know when we might need this footage.”

  Over the next week, while the crew filmed, Craig followed the three of them around asking a series of increasingly unrelated questions. They learned to ignore Jake and his camera as well as Kitty and her silent, stealthy way of slipping a wireless microphone on them or skittering around the house with the boom. In many ways, Kitty with her small frame and impossible thinness was the one most at home in Spite House. Isobel wished she had a clearer picture of what Craig wanted for his sizzle reel. There seemed to be as much footage shot of Lizzie as there was of Isobel, and yesterday the entire crew had followed Elyse to her cooking class. They’d wanted to come to the community center to film Lizzie and Elyse and the work they did with the girls there, but Rosa May had been adamant in her opposition. Isobel had wanted to try to explain that it could be a good fundraising opportunity for the school and for Rosa May’s programs, but nobody asked her for advice or even her opinion.

  Unlocking the back door, she stepped inside, not expecting anyone to be there. She wasn’t supposed to be there, but after she’d dropped the cabinets off at the detailer’s shop, she realized she’d left the hardware at the house. She intended to grab it and be back out the door in a matter of minutes, which was why she left the keys in the lock and the back door open. The shoddy patch job Benny had started on the plaster where the cabinets had fallen caught her eye. He seemed to be getting worse. Not that he was a problem that Lizzie would deal with. Her cousin was as sweet as pie, but terrible at conflict. She never should have hired him.

  In many ways, Isobel was older than her cousins. While they’d spent their adolescence in school, she’d spent hers playing at being an adult. She wished other people knew this about her. Because she was the baby of her family, everyone treated her like a child—it had always been that way. Maybe for a brief moment when Lizzie first became part of their family there had been the possibility of Isobel’s not being treated as fragile, but then Lizzie became a big sister and extended the same protective feeling toward Isobel that she had toward her younger siblings. She took up the plastic bag with the hardware and turned to the door, thinking that the way people treated her was as much her own fault as theirs. She smelled smoke. Benny stood in the doorway squinting at her through the hazy late afternoon light.

  “Watcha doing here?” he asked, leaning against the doorway.

  “I live here.”

  He dropped his cigarette on the threshold and twisted his foot to put out the few embers.

  Isobel’s eyes searched Benny’s face for some sign of why he was acting strangely toward her. She’d seen him drunk before, but this appeared to be more than that. “Maybe you should head home for the day,” she said.

  “You shouldn’t tell me what to do.” He took a step toward her. “Besides, home is right there.” He gestured outside the house to his RV, which Isobel took to mean the trailer that had become a near-permanent part of the lot next door to Spite House.

  She couldn’t help herself. The smart move would have been to keep her mouth shut. “That’s illegal, you know. If Lizzie finds out and tells T. J., you’ll have to leave.”

  He looked as if he hadn’t heard her. The skin underneath his eyes was dried and wrinkled like tissue paper. “I can do what I want. You know this place was supposed to be mine? I mean, Mellie offered to sell it to me when Annie got married. Would’ve given it to me for a song, too. Knew all the problems with the place. We all thought a guy like that, a Northerner, wouldn’t ever let her come back to this place.”

  “They’re coming back,” Isobel said, uncertain of what Lizzie’s parents wanted with the house. It didn’t make sense, but then not much about Lizzie’s family had ever made sense to Isobel. She remembered her father talking about how hard his little brother made life. Of course, that had been before, when their own lives seemed easier than they should be.

  “We’ll see about that,” Benny said, giving a sort of chuckle that turned into a raspy cough.

  Isobel forgot her concerns about Benny and moved toward him. “What do you mean?”

  “People got other plans for this place, you know? I don’t want to see Lizzie waste her life waiting around in Memphis with a guy like T. J. You know what he is?”

  Isobel shook her head. She didn’t want to interrupt him, thinking Benny was on the verge of revealing the truth about facts that Isobel hadn’t previously realized were lies.

  “Nothing better than a meter maid. Going around fining people for stuff that nobody but him gives a rat’s ass about. And I’m no racist, but them dating doesn’t sit right with me. You know what I mean? I worry about that girl. She’s more fragile than the rest of you.” He fiddled with the brim of his hat and then seemed to see in her what others had not. “I mean, you’re as fragile as a pit bull. Your daddy did something right.”

  “You shouldn’t talk about people’s fathers,” she said. She had nothing to fear from Benny. He was a worthless drunk. Taking a step toward him, she inquired after his own children. If he wanted to bring up fathers, his own abilities were fair ga
me.

  Pulling the brim low over his eyes, he looked away from her. “My kids is fine. I do all right as their dad. I’m not perfect but I keep an eye on my daughter and kick my sons’ behinds when they need it.”

  “But you don’t see them that often? Do you?” She took another step toward him. “Who threw you out of the house this time? The mother of your daughter or the mother of your sons?”

  Benny took his hat off and looked wildly around the kitchen. His eyes landed on the jagged hole in the plaster. “That’s going to cost you extra and I think you ought to be nice to me or you’ll find more surprises in this house when I’m done.”

  “More surprises?” She looked again at the shitty start he’d gotten on repairing the wall.

  “I’m saying I like to take out my own kind of insurance.” He swayed a bit and then put his hand back on the doorframe for support. “I gotta make sure Papa gets paid cuz I hear you three are about out of money.”

  “What are you talking about?” Isobel’s mind worked to try to put together what Benny meant. He must have been doing more than drinking. Usually he was a comical drunk but at that moment, his words held an edge to them.

  “I’m just saying that plaster might not have been damaged if that leak in the roof had been patched up.”

  She set the bag with the hardware on the table and fished around the piles of tools until she came up with a flashlight. Pulling a ladder over, she walked to the area where the cupboards had fallen. She’d been right about their being ruined. Her plan now was to install shelving on the wall instead of trying to match the lower cabinets. The walls were plaster and lathe, which essentially meant that the heavy plaster had been smeared on top of thin strips of wood. Benny had torn the jagged edges of the hole away and smoothed them in preparation for laying on new plaster. He should have fixed the broken pieces of wood, but instead, he’d nailed several paint stirrers to the exposed studs. She turned the flashlight on and shone it toward the top of the hole where the plaster had failed. Then she reached and felt carefully around the wood and remaining plaster. Bits of the material crumbled in her hand. The wood felt damp and cool. She pulled a chunk of plaster out and stood on her tiptoes to peer into the space until she traced the source of the water to the corner of the room where the windows met the wall.