The Carriage House: A Novel

by Louisa Hall

  Isabelle breathed in, taking her time. “When you win this war, Jack,” she said at last, “you’re still going to be just another middle-aged man, married to a woman you can’t remember loving, wishing you’d become the person you used to hope you’d become.”

  “Sure, Isabelle,” he said.

  “You’re still going to drive to work in the morning, and you’ll stroll around the hospital and tell yourself that you’re somehow important. But when you come home at night, you’ll miss this fight with my dad because it gave you some intensity, at least.”

  “Well said, Isabelle. You have a way with words, don’t you.”

  “And then without a feud to keep you distracted, you’ll look around and get that your wife is boring, your daughter is average, and you’re nothing more than a little boy pretending he’s grown up into a man.”

  He waited until she was finished. “And you’ll be nothing more than a girl who threw her life away to make the point that she could.”

  Her breath caught. “I won’t let you,” she said, although she had no idea what she meant.

  “Go home, Isabelle. Go home and get some sleep.” She didn’t move, so he shrugged, turned his back on her, and went into the house. The light in the kitchen switched off. A new darkness descended around her. She waited for a while longer, until the house started settling into the night, then opened the screen door and sat in the wicker chair he had been sitting in. She toyed with the matches he’d left beside the ashtray. She ran one finger through his discarded ash, then put the finger to her lips; it tasted acrid. On the other side of the porch were a hopper of tennis balls and two rackets leaning against a card table. She examined these and all the easy familial comfortableness that they stood for. She settled into Jack’s chair. Then she got up and tested the kitchen door. It gave with only the slightest creak, so she walked in and tried the cabinet beside the sink for liquor. She was right; people’s liquor cabinets exhale a special allure that makes them easy to find. She took a handle of bourbon out to the porch and settled into the wicker chair. There was something extremely pleasant about drinking directly underneath the room where Abigail Weld was sleeping peacefully. Izzy looked out over the lawn. It was too late for fireflies, but the bullfrogs were croaking. Over in the Adair yard, in the silt of the pond, the frogs’ pale gullets were extending and collapsing. In the carriage house, the rats had been hiding all day, and now they were venturing out of their holes. There were whole nests of rat babies over there, and rat mothers scurrying around, scavenging for food. There were mice, too, with translucent ears and trembling noses. And termites burrowing into the honeycomb rafters. All of them would be lost when the carriage house went down. Isabelle took another swipe of cigar ash and tasted it again, and she thought if they were going to be lost, it might as well be now. You could fight for something only so long; at some point you just have to stop. You have to pack up your bags and get out. She imagined whole trails of exile mice wearing little straw hats and pioneer bonnets, pushing their children ahead while behind them, their city burned to the ground. And this was very sad, so sad it was practically unbearable, and Isabelle felt she couldn’t put it off any longer. If they were going to be banished, she wanted them to just fucking get out. Why wait around in a sinking ship? Why wait for Jack Weld to come in with his wrecking ball ready? Better to do the thing herself. She didn’t want him to watch it go down. She took a final swallow of bourbon and put the matches in her pocket. On her way out, she stole the ball hopper and one of the tennis rackets, then trooped back down the driveway. The soles of her feet didn’t hurt anymore. By the time she’d crossed the Schmidts’ lawn, she had formed a coherent plan, and she stopped in front of the carriage house with a sense of immediate purpose.

  She took a ball out of the hopper and held it in the palm of her left hand. At one point in her life, she’d loved the feel of a tennis ball in the cup of her palm. Now she held the ball and tried to remember the old comfort, but that was gone, so she whispered, “Fuck it,” and lit it on fire. It was hard to light at first, but then the flame caught so quickly she was afraid it would burn her, so she took the racket in her right hand and launched the flaming ball out toward the carriage house. It arced through the dark like a comet. Isabelle’s eyes widened in appreciation of its beauty. It was the most beautiful thing she’d seen in a long time. She lit another ball and lobbed it, a little higher this time. It was like a Viking funeral ceremony. She was shooting flaming arrows, and the carriage house was like a big canoe in the lake of the night. She struck another match. She was giddy with the scent of unnatural smoke. She was seeing them off. She was seeing all of them off, and when they were gone, she would turn back and move away from the shore. In the thickening haze of smoke, it looked as though the carriage house were moving away from her, a big slow canoe receding into a mist. “Here is for the mice,” she said to herself. “And here is for the rats, and the termites, and the old falling rafters. Here is for my sisters, and here is for my mom.” Each time she lobbed another ball. “And here is for myself,” she said, just to keep talking. She kept on lobbing until she burned a hole in the strings, then dropped the smoking racket on the grass and headed back to the driveway. She found the keys that William always left in the ignition of the Jeep, and she thought she would be sick, but then she rolled down the windows. The breeze rushing past her settled her head, and she told herself she needed to go on a drive, away and away and away and away, a drive so endless there would be no need to imagine it ever coming to an end.

  Chapter 16

  When the first ball of fire broke the windowpane and bounced four times across the floor, Diana watched it as if it were an exotic bird. It was intensely bright, the orb of bluish heat at its center dripping with gold. The second one bounced outside the open door, then rolled into the entryway, where it kept to itself, a lonely little blaze. Watching it, she smiled. It was the strangest, most beautiful thing she had seen in a long time. Only when the third ball hit the window frame and bounced back out, landing in a pile of shrubbery and erupting into flame, did Diana become more practical. She thought of running into the Schmidts’ house for water, then stopped. Judging from the speed at which the shrubbery was going up in flames, she wouldn’t have time for that. She remembered that you were supposed to throw blankets over fire. She’d have to climb up the old stairs to the loft, assuming those blankets were still up there. She should probably run for help. It was an ancient building, condemned by the district. But it was also her father’s carriage house, the carriage house she shared with Arthur, and she was running up the stairs before she had time to hesitate. She nearly broke an ankle when one of the old planks gave out beneath her feet, but she had hold of the loft’s floor by then, and she found firm enough footing on the next stair to scramble up. The blankets were heaped there, so inviting that she almost wanted to lie down in them, wrapped in their old scent, allowing the smoke to billow up around her in plumes.

  By the time she had an armful of blankets, at least a dozen more balls of fire had been launched into or around the carriage house, and flame from the first one was licking the wall in a ribbon of bright tongues. There was one at the base of the stairs, too, but the crown of fire around it was small enough that Diana started her backward descent. Only when she reached back with her foot and felt nothing but air—the bottom half of the stairs had collapsed entirely—did she understand that she would have to jump into the fire. She hung there for a minute, barefoot, strangely calm, perversely imagining that perhaps she should wait, but the wood was burning her fingers, and she knew she would let go soon except that suddenly someone reached up and took hold. She released her fingers and fell into him. He helped her outside. For a moment she thought of holding on to him, grasping this unexpected closeness while she could, but the carriage house was burning. Three jags of flame lined the door as if it were a hoop of fire in a circus trick. Inside, the floor shimmered with gold.

  “Did you call 911?
” she asked.

  “No,” he said, “I thought someone might be in there, so I came.”

  “I’ll do it,” she said, and ran inside, and when she came out again, he was still standing there, holding the blankets. She took them, went back through the flaming hoop, and threw them down, as best as she could, over the shimmering floor. Smoke billowed up around her and she retreated, coughing. Arthur took hold of her elbow. “Don’t go back in, Diana, it’s only a house.”

  She pulled free of him and ran back out to the road, as though that would hurry the fire trucks, and when she did, she saw that the Jeep was gone, which was curious enough to give her a chill. When she crossed back through the yard, she passed a tennis racket with a black hole at the center of its strings and a half-full hopper. Only then did she realize that the orbs of fire had been burning tennis balls.

  She joined Arthur again. “We have to go look for her,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Isabelle. She took the Jeep.”

  He looked down at the tennis racket in her hands. “She was drunk?”

  “Yes.”

  “I should have stayed with her.”

  “Just come with me,” she said. He followed her back to the house. Inside, she ran up to William’s room and saw, in the darkness, Adelia lying beside him. She was wearing her white flannel nightgown; he was dressed in striped pajamas that made him look like a child. They looked like children curled together, Adelia’s head against his shoulder and her arm across his chest, his hand holding the elbow as if to lock it in place. Diana knew she should feel betrayed on her mother’s behalf, but there was something so tender about her father’s hand holding that elbow, and outside, the carriage house was burning. Diana knelt at Adelia’s side and put one hand on her shoulder.

  “Adelia,” Diana whispered. Adelia peered at Diana through the darkness. “The carriage house is on fire. The fire department is coming. I’m going out to look for Isabelle.” Adelia blinked, still comprehending. “I’ll call you later. It’s going to be okay.”

  The air outside smelled like smoke and June trees. The bullfrogs had gone quiet; everything was oddly hushed except for the static crackling of the fire. The dark sky behind the house had been pushed aside by an uneasy halo of peach-colored light. Arthur and Diana didn’t speak as they climbed into the car and turned down Little Lane, passing the screaming sirens on their way onto Clubhouse Road.

  “Will they save it?” he asked when the screaming had faded behind them.

  “No. They’ll stop the fire, but they won’t save it.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. She looked at him for the first time. He was wearing the same plaid shirt, over the same gray T-shirt, that he had been wearing at dinner. His hair smelled like smoke. She remembered, now that she was seeing him, the particular line of his profile.

  They drove down Clubhouse Road, under the Osage orange trees, out Buckley Street past St. Matthew’s church, to Breacon Avenue. They passed the tennis courts on their right, lined by chestnut trees. Diana watched them slide away. “Why did you go back into the house that morning you saw me in the garden with Lucy?”

  She could feel him glance at her, then look away. “It’s been hard for me to see you,” he said. He was quiet for a while, and she kept her eyes on the road so that he would continue. “For me, what happened between us was real,” he said at last. “For a long time, it was hard to forget. Even now seeing you is difficult.”

  “I’m sorry, Arthur,” she said. Through the open windows, the wind brushed by her. Everything was passing so quickly. Now, in the eerie light of this evening, that morning in the garden seemed impossibly distant. Even the way she’d missed him all those years seemed like an ancient artifact, something that could be talked about without too much embarrassment. “It’s hard for me, too,” she heard herself saying. “I’ve changed so much since we were together.” It would have pained her to admit this before, but she was long past that point.

  “We all have,” he said. For a while they drove in silence, the car full of wind and the sound of leaves passing outside, until Arthur turned to her again.

  “Where would she have gone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To school, I guess.” By instinct, she was following their old route to high school. Through Breacon, over the bridge, west toward the city. Already she could feel the dangerous curves of Kennedy Drive in her hands. She had steered that road for years, driving with Izzy to school. In the winter, icicles as long as yardsticks dripped down the sheer rock face along the western side of the road, and in the spring, trickles of water poured through the moss that grew in its crevasses. There were three different memorials at treacherous points of its route. It curved in ways that were difficult to manage. Beside her, Arthur looked out the window. The night rushed in, lifting the scent of smoke in his hair.

  “How did you know I was in there?” she asked him.

  “When I was talking with Isabelle, I had a feeling you were inside. I saw the fire and I wanted to be sure.” They passed the Fishers’ horse farm on the left. Diana could see the shadowy outline of three horses close to the fence; when the car passed, the shine of their eyes shifted to follow it. They crossed the bridge that spanned a deep valley of treetops. The wire ropes at the side of the bridge were intact; there was no tangle of metal where a car had taken flight. Arthur turned in from his window. “I should have stayed out there with her. She was telling me something important, but I missed it, I think.”

  “It’s not your fault. I’m her sister, and I barely know her.”

  Trees passed. The cool night was untorn, and Diana began to feel that she had anticipated excessive danger. When they came to the turnoff onto Kennedy Drive, the air outside smelled of dripping water. She steered Adelia’s car around steep curves, her nerves suspended by immediate focus. The road was as it had always been, back when they were children going to school, and it was only at the last sharp jag of the road, under a ledge of stacked rock, that they saw the semicircle of blinking lights, so bright that the wreck they enclosed was invisible from the outside. Diana parked the car.

  “It might be my sister,” she said to the officer who tried to block her way. He stepped aside and Diana pushed through. There, at the center, the Jeep was on its side, wedged into a tree. Behind it, the world had lost its resolution, nothing but a blur of rock and tree and electric pulsing light. The turned car looked like a statue, a piece of public art that had been there as long as the tree that had bitten so deeply into its side. One of the upturned wheels was spinning; the others were still. Diana felt Arthur beside her.

  “Where’s the driver?” she asked in the general direction of the lights.

  “They took her to the hospital,” someone told her. “They just left. Is she a relative?”

  “My sister. Is she okay?” She tried to focus on the officer and noticed that he was clutching his hat.

  “She was alive when they took her. Unconscious, but alive. They drove her to Breckenridge.”

  Diana looked at Arthur. “You don’t have to come with me.”

  “I want to.” His face was crossed with alternating shadows of red and blue.

  He drove this time, away from the throbbing lights, along the rock face of Kennedy Drive. Diana’s head was spinning, so she put the window down, and there again was the smell of water and moss, laced with rubber and gasoline. She closed her eyes and imagined she was young again, and that Isabelle was even younger. They were driving to school with Elizabeth, protected by the surety of their childhood. When they pulled into the hospital parking lot, her head cleared. The urgency of the luminous red letters, emergency, focused her, and the mathematical grid of the parking lot. The useful architecture of a place devoted to injury. She could hear the jangling of keys in Arthur’s pocket as he walked alongside her. The receptionist, at her broad, clean
desk, directed them to Isabelle. They had placed her in the children’s wing; she was in surgery, listed as critical; they could wait in the visitors’ room. They took the elevator together. In the waiting room, they sat in small plastic seats, red and yellow and blue, surrounded by LEGOs, stuffed animals, and battered coloring books. When she turned toward Arthur, the familiarity of his profile opened a hairline crack in her rib cage; her breath caught at the sharp sensation. “I’m going to call the house,” she told him, and left him in his little chair. When she came back, a nurse was standing with him.

  “You’re her sister?” the nurse asked. Di nodded. “She’s unconscious. Her spleen ruptured in the accident. Dr. Bellamy performed a splenectomy; it went fine. He’s closing the incision now. She suffered head trauma as well, and her collarbone is broken. But there was no damage to the spine. She’s lucky for that.”

  “Will she be okay?” Diana asked.

  “She’s in critical condition, but she’ll stabilize after the surgery. We’ll run a CAT scan when her alcohol level is down. But there’s no paralysis. No damage to the spine. No other internal bleeding. She’s lucky.”

  “When can we see her?” Arthur asked.

  “Not until she’s stabilized. You can wait here. Dr. Bellamy will speak to you.”

  They sat together, shoulders close. There was a basket of Highlights magazines in the center of the room and a crate of inflatable basketballs. “I’m exhausted,” she said. Her weariness at the dinner party had been nothing more than practice for this. This, finally, was what she’d been waiting for.

  “Here,” he said. He put a child’s pillow on his shoulder.