by Jess Lourey
This must have been Deck’s parents’ bedroom.
If Ronald follows me into here, I might as well commit hari-kari now and get it over with.
When after several calming breaths he doesn’t appear, my shame gives way to anger. Why didn’t he stop me sooner? Before I opened my mouth and reached for his zipper, for God’s sake.
But that’s not fair. He was probably as shocked as me.
My eyes begin itching, and I notice something in this room smells oversweet, like fruit gone bad. I stand and walk to the window, the deep pine-green carpeting swallowing my footsteps. The window is open only an inch, and despite all my strength, I can’t open it any farther. I kneel to gasp at the air like a fish in a bucket.
While the warm May breeze clears my nose, I focus on the house next door. It’s a near copy of this one—a craftsman, only in reverse colors, blue with white shutters. And the bedroom I’m staring into doesn’t have wallpaper but is laid out identically, sheets draped over the furniture.
Huh. Two empty houses next to each other. Probably haunted. I snort. That’s silly. I saw a single poster for Rosemary’s Baby before we left Minneapolis, and now I’m imagining demons and conspiracies in this sweet little town when I’ve just proven myself the most dangerous thing on wheels.
Having arrived not even an hour ago, I’ve already groped the mayor.
You’re just tired from all the packing. Plus, nerves. Settle down already.
A brush at my ankle makes me jump out of my hair.
“Slow Henry!” I scoop him up, chiding myself for being so excitable. “You’re lucky my knife bites are nearly all better, you old codger, or I’d be crying right now.”
The sudden bustle and clamor of voices downstairs tells me the welcoming committee has arrived. I peek inside the other rooms—a spare bedroom, a bathroom, a large linen closet—then pop into the bathroom, finger-combing my hair and pinching my cheeks for color. No point in delaying the inevitable.
If Ronald’s a gentleman, he won’t mention my mortifying mistake.
In fact, I’m going to decide it never happened.
“Come on, you,” I say to Slow Henry.
I toss a parting glance at the house next door, noticing its window is open the exact height as mine. I shiver and squeeze Slow Henry tighter, making my way to the main floor.
The dining room seems to have shrunk, jammed as it is with strangers, all of them eagerly watching me descend, a hungry nest clamoring as its food drops down. My gut grows slimy.
“There she is!” a large man booms from the bottom of the stairs, his voice so loud that Slow Henry yowls and leaps out of my arms. The man is square-jawed, one of the biggest humans I’ve ever seen, the size and build of a grizzly bear. “Ronald and Barbara’s new daughter-in-law!”
“Mr. Brody,” Deck cautions, appearing beside the man.
Before I can figure out the joke, Mr. Brody wraps me in a hug that steals my breath.
“My name’s Clan,” he says, still too loud. “Clan Brody. We live right next door.”
Engulfed in his arms, I think about the empty house I just peeked inside, the one with sheets draped over the furniture. He must mean the other next door.
“You’ll have to tell my wife, Catherine, if you need anything,” he continues. “She’s in charge of Lilydale’s welcoming committee.”
“Nice to meet you,” I murmur into his shirt.
They sure like their hugs in Lilydale.
“Oh, let her go, Clan,” I hear. I’m released to face a woman with a sharp, broad face. She looks familiar.
“I’m Catherine,” she says, holding out her hand.
When I clasp it, I realize she doesn’t look like anyone I know. Rather, she’s a dead ringer for the mother captured in Dorothea Lange’s iconic Depression-era photo, the one of a woman sitting grimly on the edge of a tent, covered with her dirty, tired-looking children. Migrant Mother. That’s the photo’s name.
Clan the Brody Bear and Catherine the Migrant Mother.
“My turn,” I hear.
Catherine releases my hand. Another man moves in to embrace me, but he makes it short, a quick squeeze before stepping back. He’s wearing browline glasses, striking against his tight, narrow face.
“Mr. Schramel,” Deck says respectfully, gripping the man’s hand before turning to the woman with mouse-colored hair standing next to him. “Mrs. Schramel.”
Another casserole, I think, noting her acorn-shaped covered Pyrex dish with a matching acorn-patterned towel wrapped around its bottom and handles. But then I catch myself being ungenerous. It’s a reflex, something I do as protection when I’m overwhelmed. Here I am judging these lovely people—Deck’s family and friends—when they’re bringing me food and welcome.
“Mildred,” she says, ducking her fuzzy brown head.
Browline Schramel and Mildred the Mouse.
It’s what I do to organize the chaos of the world: create characters out of the people I meet and turn those characters into stories. But there are too many new faces coming at me. Browline Schramel and Mildred the Mouse step aside, and I find myself in the arms of a police officer, still in uniform.
“Amory Bauer,” he says, “chief of police. And this is my wife, Rue.”
If I were to pick two people in the crowded den less likely to be a couple, it would be Amory and Rue. She’s tiny and birdlike. Her neck twitches, and her eyes behind her glasses dart everywhere. Amory, however, is a mountain of a man, even larger than Clan in girth but not height. He was handsome once, I can tell from the pale blue of his eyes and the silver streaking his ink-black hair. He’s carrying forty extra pounds, though, most of it inner tubing his stomach. His smile, while dashing, has an arrogant tilt.
My mother never liked police officers. Said they couldn’t be trusted, not one of them.
Amory Mountain and Birdie Rue.
“Last but not least,” Ronald says, pushing a wheelchair to the front of the receiving line. (That’s what this is. A receiving line.) The man in the wheelchair is hunched and trembling.
“Pleased to meet you,” I say, hands stiff at my side. Should I crouch so I’m at his eye level? I hate myself for not knowing how to speak to someone in his condition. I dearly hope I’m not making him uncomfortable.
“Did you hear that, Stanley?” A woman appears next to him, patting his hand, gazing at him lovingly before winking at me. “This is Deck’s girl. She says she’s pleased to meet you.”
Stanley doesn’t make a noise, but he drags his rocking head upward for a moment. A bulbous nose shades thin lips. I think I spot a flash of something smart in his rheumy brown eyes, but the light promptly fades.
The woman holds out her hand. “I’m Dorothy. Dorothy Lily.”
Despite being petite, she carries herself in a way that suggests authority. She’s wearing a smart red pantsuit, the flower-shaped, enameled white locket at her neck her only jewelry. I self-consciously straighten my posture. “Joan. So nice of you to drop by.”
“So nice of you to move in,” she says, her smile distant but warm. “It’s been too long since we had young blood on Mill Street.”
Startled, I glance around the room. The guests are snacking on Ritz crackers and deviled eggs brought by I don’t know who, the men drinking beers like they’ve visited here before. I suppose they have. “You all live on Mill Street?”
She nods, and something slips in her face. It’s gone so quickly that I almost believe I imagined it, like Stanley’s flash of intelligence. “Most of our lives. I tell you what, I wouldn’t mind moving south, at least for the winter, but with Stanley’s condition, travel is out of the question.”
Sad Stanley and Saint Dorothy, the Lovely Lilies of Lilydale.
“I’m so sorry,” I murmur, unsure whether it’s the proper response. “Will you excuse me?”
I suddenly, desperately, want to return to the grungy little one-bedroom Minneapolis apartment Deck and I shared for the last six months. Just me, him, and Slow Henry, tuckin
g into eggs and toast in our kitchen nook, watching Sunday television on our drooping couch, making love like we invented it in our tiny bedroom.
Deck, catching my eye across the space, seems to read my mind. He smiles, his dimples lighting up the room.
I paste on a matching grin. I will make the best of this.
For Deck.
For the baby.
CHAPTER 4
“They really all live on Mill Street?”
Deck’s perched on the edge of our bed, which one of our neighbors set up and made for us, sheets, pillowcases, bedspread and all. (Who makes someone else’s bed?) After meeting what seemed like the whole town, I spent the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen, accepting hot dishes and feeling stunned, like a cricket dropped into a beehive.
I’m exhausted to my core.
“My parents, plus the eight who were here right away,” Deck says.
“Some of the people who came later seemed nervous,” I say, remembering the way the non–Mill Streeters seemed to be staring at Ronald for approval. Come to think of it, the whole welcome party was like some sort of royal gathering, with the highborn first and the commoners allowed after.
Deck chuckles. “Probably because you were hosting the most important families in town. The latecomers were ass-kissers. I didn’t know half of them. They just showed up to get in good with my dad and Amory, mark my word.” He pats the open spot next to him. “Come to bed?”
I drop my nightgown over my shoulders. “I have to brush my teeth first.”
“Isn’t it nice, having a bathroom right off the bedroom?”
“I won’t remember all their names.”
The lie gives me a fizz of pleasure.
The people I’ve met today are locked in my treasure chest, their names my rubies and sapphires. And I finally have space to spin their stories. Clan the Brody Bear hibernates in his cave while Catherine the Migrant Mother hunts to feed her starving children. Browline Schramel and Mildred the Mouse live in someone’s cupboard, like the Borrowers. Amory Mountain and Birdie Rue solve crimes. She’s the brains, he’s the brawn. Sad Stanley and Saint Dorothy, the Lovely Lilies of Lilydale, embark on a romantic adventure, one where they realize Stanley really can walk. They simultaneously inherit a million dollars, which they use to open a wheelchair factory for orphans.
Deck sighs. He doesn’t like this game, but he’ll play it. “You know you never forget a name, Joanie. You’re just tired. You’ll recall my mom and dad, of course. Clan and Catherine Brody live next door. Clan’s employed at Dad’s insurance company, where I’ll be working, too. Teddy Schramel with the glasses is an engineer at the phone company. His wife is Mildred. Amory Bauer is the police chief. His wife’s name escapes me at the moment because I guess I’m tired, too.”
Birdie Rue.
“Stanley’s in the wheelchair. That’s new. He’s a direct descendant of the original founders of Lilydale, you know, practically royalty here back in the day. His wife is Dorothy, and that’s it for the Mill Streeters. The others who showed up live in town, but not on this street.”
I duck into the bathroom and then step out, gripping a toothbrush with a pearl of toothpaste gleaming on it. “But the person who owns the newspaper never dropped by?”
“Joanie, you know I would have told you if he did.”
“It’s just that I need a job, Deck. I have to write.” This is true. If I don’t get all the stories I carry in my head out on paper, they turn on me, like an infected sliver just beneath the skin. I’ve been that way for as long as I can remember.
I return to the bathroom, run water over the toothpaste, and start brushing. Clan the Brody Bear needs insurance to survive the winter, and Catherine the Migrant Mother won’t sell it to him. Browline Schramel and Mildred the Mouse live inside a telephone, one that Browline Schramel is always tinkering with.
“I know you have to write, baby. Come to bed?”
“What did Stanley do before . . . before he retired?” I ask around a mouthful of toothpaste.
“Attorney.”
Sad Stanley earns a million dollars in the case of a lifetime, and he and Saint Dorothy donate the money to crippled children.
I brush all my teeth for another full minute, rinse, spit, wash my toothbrush, drop it into the holder, and pad into our bedroom. “I wish we could fast-forward to being done, being settled in, everyone knowing about the baby,” I say, pulling my thoughts back. “I want to be on the other side of all this, where everyone’s happy.”
He’s suddenly studying the wallpaper as if it’s a love note.
I don’t know why he’s acting uncomfortable, but he is. I change the subject. “Why do you think the house looks empty next door?”
His head jerks, as if I’ve woken him. “The green house? I told you. That’s the Brodys’. Clan and Catherine.”
“No, the other one.” I drift to the window, which someone has closed. I tap the glass, indicating the white-shuttered craftsman on the other side of our driveway. I can see by the shadowy streetlight that the window mirroring ours has also been closed. Guess nobody in this town likes fresh air.
Deck appears behind me, our images a warped version of American Gothic reflected back at us. “That’s Dorothy and Stan’s. I suppose they don’t need the second floor now that Stan’s in that wheelchair.”
I nod, let him wrap his arms around me. He’s nuzzling my hair, whispering how much he loves me, when a face appears in the opposite window. I scream and yank the curtains shut.
“What is it?” Deck asks, releasing me.
“Dorothy,” I say, my heartbeat clobbering my veins. “She was staring at us from that empty room.”
Deck’s brow creases. “You sure? That doesn’t seem right.” He flicks off our bedroom light and returns to the window, pulling the curtain to peek at the edge and then sliding it all the way open. “See? No one there. Probably only your reflection.”
“Maybe,” I say, peering out. Except I still feel the jolt, electric, like I’ve licked a battery. I close the curtains again, with finality.
Then I remember. “Why did Clan Brody call me Ronald and Barbara’s daughter-in-law?”
I’m hoping Deck will explain it away as a poor joke, an overfamiliarity meant to put me at ease. The pained look on his face tells me otherwise.
“You told them we’re married!”
“Eloped,” Deck says, wrapping me in a hug that mimics his father’s from earlier, only smaller. (Not just his father’s hug. All the men embraced me.)
“It’ll make it easier once our baby starts showing,” he’s saying. “Trust me, my parents and their friends are good people, the best, but they’re still in the dark ages on some things. They’d flip if they thought you were pregnant and unmarried.”
He pulls back and grins his charming grin. “Besides, it wasn’t really a lie because we’ll be married soon enough. In the meanwhile, I did what was best. Those bohunks wouldn’t accept a bastard.”
The word is too sharp. “Deck!”
“You know what I mean. It’s only for a bit. As soon as we’re settled, we’ll be married, and think of all the money we’ll save by actually eloping.” He smiles again, wider, hoping I’ll fall for it.
I just might. I want to ask him why we’re not married already, know I should, but I can’t bring myself to do it.
Yet.
Instead, I close my eyes, trying on his words. The two of us, forever joined. I inhale deeply. I can’t envision us with an actual child, have hardly felt pregnant other than that invasive doctor’s visit.
“Doesn’t it feel great to be here, baby?” he asks, kissing my forehead. “Safe, with family? Away from the draft, and the mugging?”
And just like that, he’s awoken the memory I meant to forget.
CHAPTER 5
I’d stopped by the Red Owl grocery near our apartment, full of self-pity because I hadn’t been promoted (hadn’t even been considered, if I’m being honest), with instructions to pick up Tang for Deck.
I grabbed some milk and bread, too, paid for my groceries, and took a shortcut through the alley. The sun was sinking behind clouds, the alley shadowed, but there was no safer city than Minneapolis—I swear to God that’s what I was thinking. The temperature dropped the moment I stepped between the buildings, driving a shudder up my spine.
Someone’s walking on your grave, my mom used to say about such a shiver.
“Excuse me.”
I turned toward the voice, the hairs at the back of my neck vibrating in alarm. The man had appeared from a cross alley. He was disheveled, breathing like he was winded. A rankness, pungent like sour milk, radiated off him.
“Yes?” My pulse grew thick at my wrists, but I wasn’t scared, not yet. It was a few minutes after 5:00 p.m. and still light out. Our apartment was around the corner and a block to the right. There would be other people on the main street. I was jittery only because I’d been thinking of my grave when he popped out.
The man shambled closer.
I covered my nose, discreetly so as not to offend him.
The echo of two people talking, laughing, careened around the corner on the far end of the alley and bounced toward us.
“Do you have a light?” he asked, holding out a pack of cigarettes.
I breathed a sigh. I’d been more scared than I’d admitted. He only wanted help with his smoke. And now that he’d stepped out of the shadows, I could see that he was actually reasonably dressed, average size, his tan suit and porkpie hat several seasons out of style but presentable. He was still panting like he’d run to get here, his hooked nose dripping with exertion or the cooling temperatures. The rotten smell I’d initially associated with him—powdery sour—was surely coming from the nearby garbage bins.
I smiled and set down my grocery bag before tugging my purse off my shoulder. “You’re in luck. I don’t smoke anymore, but my best friend, Ursula, talked me into a quick puff the other day and gave me her lighter—” were the last words out of my mouth before he shoved me against the brick, slamming my head against the wall with such force that shooting lights exploded behind my eyes.