Set This House in Order

by Matt Ruff

  As for the laws of physics that apply to the geography…well, it’s complicated. Because the geography doesn’t really exist, certain things are possible inside that are not possible outside—but because I am used to these impossibilities and consider them normal, it’s hard for me to list them on demand. One impossibility that I’ve already alluded to, though, has to do with distances inside: they’re optional. Inside, when you want to get from point A to point B, it isn’t strictly necessary to pass through all the points in between, the way it is when traveling from A to B in the real world. For instance, if you’re on the hilltop beside the column of light, and you want to go to the house, you can get there by following the path, but you don’t have to—if you’re in a hurry, or don’t feel like walking, you can just decide to be in the house, and quick as thought, there you are.

  Today I wasn’t in that much of a hurry, even though I knew that the others were all waiting for me. I stood on the hilltop for a while, staring out across the lake. Inevitably, my gaze was drawn towards Coventry, the lake island where Gideon was imprisoned. There wasn’t much to see: a mist had risen from the deep waters in the middle of the lake, reducing the island to a vague outline.

  I said that my father controlled the weather inside the geography. He did not control the mist—he didn’t summon it, and he couldn’t make it go away. In hindsight, it’s clear that this should have been cause for concern, but because it was associated with the lake, rather than, say, the forest or the pumpkin field, my father chose to regard it as a harmless anomaly rather than a potential danger sign.

  Like the column of light, the lake predates the geography. Originally it was a kind of void, a darker area in the dark room in Andy Gage’s head that occasionally vomited out new souls. In the course of constructing the geography, my father tamed the void somewhat—he made it resemble a body of water, which was better than having a gaping black hole in the landscape, and he also learned how to call new souls, like me, out of it at will. But he never fully mastered it. Since the lake was still technically its own entity, it was not completely outrageous that it should act of its own accord, and so my father chose not to worry about it when it did. And since he didn’t worry about it, neither did I—but I was curious.

  “Andrew,” my father said, appearing beside me on the hilltop.

  I nodded hello, but kept on staring out across the water, trying to catch a clear glimpse of Coventry in the whiteness. “Does the mist come more often now than it used to?” I asked. My father didn’t answer, and I could tell he was growing impatient. Still, I went on: “I think it does come more often. Back when I first came out of the lake, it hardly ever—”

  “Andrew.”

  “Right, I know: the meeting.”

  “Yes,” my father said, “the meeting. Let’s go.”

  We went: thought about being at the house, and were there.

  The floor plan of the house in Andy Gage’s head looks like this:

  As you can see, it is a fairly simple structure. The first floor is one big common room. A staircase in the southwest corner goes up to a gallery that overlooks the common room on all four sides and gives access to the bedrooms and the nursery. A short hallway off the gallery’s east end leads out to the pulpit.

  In preparation for the meeting, a long table had been set up in the middle of the common room. The table was wider at one end than at the other, and my father, as head of the household, took his place at the wider end. I sat to my father’s right; Adam to his left. The next two seats on my side of the table were occupied by Aunt Sam and Jake; Seferis sat next to Adam. Farther down the table were Simon, Drew, and Alexander; Angel, Annis, Arthur, and Rhea; Sander, Archie, Seth, and the two Samuels; Silent Joe the Gravedigger; and Captain Marco. Many of these were souls who, like my father, had grown weary of dealing with the outside world, and only rarely occupied the body anymore. Silent Joe and the Captain had never been outside; they were helper souls, called out of the lake by my father to perform specific functions within the geography.

  There were still more souls up in the gallery, scores of them: the Witnesses. The Witnesses were what impolite psychiatrists like to call “fragments”—fragmentary souls created by a single traumatic event or act of abuse. Living embodiments of painful memory, they resembled small children; more than a few of them were dead ringers for Jake. But they lacked Jake’s depth of personality, most having been outside only the one time, in the awful moment that made them. They had sad eyes, and rarely spoke. It was unlikely that they would have anything to add to the proceedings, but because they were members of the household, they were allowed to attend the meeting; they lined the gallery banister, some sitting, some standing. Three adult helper souls circulated behind them, ready to whisk them back into the nursery if they became bored or upset.

  My father called the meeting to order.

  “We’re here,” my father said, “because a series of threats has been made against Andrew by one of his coworkers at the Reality Factory. And since some of these were physical threats against the body, they potentially affect all of us…” He went on to describe what had been happening with Penny. By the time he finished, more than half of the Witnesses had vanished from the gallery, and a couple of souls at the table had become hysterical. When he got to the part about the protector chasing me in the Buick, Annis clapped her hands over her ears and ran upstairs to her room, and a moment after that Arthur bolted out the back door of the house in the direction of the forest, probably intending to work off stress by chopping down a few stands of trees. My father took all of this in stride; such reactions were perfectly normal for a house meeting. “…so that is what has been going on,” he concluded, “and now we need to discuss what should be done about it.”

  Simon raised a hand. “How dangerous is this Penny Driver?” he asked. “Would she really hurt the body?”

  My father turned to Adam. “The soul we saw today is capable of real violence,” Adam said. “Seferis and I are sure about that. We don’t think it actually wants to hurt us, but it might, if it got mad enough.”

  “Well then,” said Simon, looking directly at me, “somebody ought to call the police. There’s no reason why we should have to tolerate even the possibility of violence.” Several other souls around the table murmured agreement.

  “Andrew?” my father prompted me.

  “I don’t think we need to get the police involved,” I said, startled by the suggestion. “I mean yes, what happened today was upsetting, but I think Adam’s right, the intention wasn’t to hurt us. It’s just…they want help. This isn’t about harming us, or making us feel bad. Penny’s souls want help, and for better or worse they’re convinced that we can give it to them, and I guess they’re a little desperate about it.”

  “That doesn’t justify threats!” exclaimed Simon. “Or chasing people in cars!”

  “We needed help,” I reminded him. “Are you going to tell me we were never so demanding that it scared somebody?”

  “What are you suggesting, Andrew?” my father asked. “Are you saying we should overlook Penny’s…desperation…and try to help her?”

  “Well…”

  “Because that isn’t how you’ve been acting. You’ve been acting like you don’t want anything to do with her.”

  “I know,” I said. “But maybe…maybe the fair thing, if we could just get her some help, at least point her in the right direction—”

  “LIAR!” Adam’s shout spooked another dozen Witnesses into flight. “‘Maybe the fair thing,’” he mocked. “This isn’t about what’s fair, or nice—the truth is you don’t give a damn about Penny. This is about Julie.”

  “Oh good grief,” said Simon, “not her again…”

  “It isn’t just about Julie!” I protested. “I honestly think that—”

  “Oh, not just about Julie! So you admit—”

  “Adam! Andrew!” my father shouted. “Both of you stop—”

  “I have a suggestion,” Aunt Sam said. He
r level voice cut through the ruckus, quieting all of us at once. “I think,” said Aunt Sam, “that we should go see Dr. Grey.”

  Jake, who’d been fidgeting uncomfortably in his seat throughout most of the preceding discussion, now perked up and said: “Oh, yes! Let’s go see Dr. Grey!”

  But my father wasn’t so pleased with the idea. “Dr. Grey is retired,” he reminded Aunt Sam. “She’s not well.”

  “She’s not dead,” Aunt Sam retorted. “It’s high time we paid her a visit anyway, just for courtesy’s sake—it’s been over a year since we’ve seen her. And I’m sure she wouldn’t mind giving us some advice. Maybe she’d even be willing to meet with Penny personally.”

  “That’s not appropriate. You don’t show up at someone’s house asking them to—”

  “I think it’s a great idea,” I said. “The part about going to visit her, I mean. Aunt Sam’s right, she could advise us what to do. I mean, who better?”

  “Andrew—”

  “We could go see her tomorrow. We could call her tonight, and see if she’s free.”

  “Tomorrow is Friday,” my father said. “You’re supposed to be at work.”

  “But there’s no point in my going to the Factory if I’m just going to play hide-and-seek with Penny. Julie won’t mind me taking the day off—at least, not after she finds out we’re trying to get Penny some help.”

  “I don’t like this idea,” my father said. “I—”

  Down at the far end of the table, Drew suddenly piped up: “If we do go to see Dr. Grey tomorrow, could we stop at the aquarium on the way back?”

  “Ooh!” Jake exclaimed, bouncing in his chair. “And what about the Magic Mouse toy store? That’s practically on the way!”

  That opened the floodgates. Whatever reservations my father had about visiting Dr. Grey had to be put on hold as half the souls at the table weighed in with suggestions for possible side-excursions. My father rejected all of them, but by the time he was finished, the visit itself had somehow become an established fact.

  “All right,” my father relented. “All right. We’ll go see Dr. Grey.”

  “And maybe the Magic Mouse toy store,” Jake added, unwilling to give up.

  The meeting ended soon after that. When I returned to the body, Mrs. Winslow was knocking on my bedroom door. “Andrew?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Winslow?” I sat up stiffly, checking the clock on the nightstand: it was almost five.

  “You have a telephone call,” Mrs. Winslow said.

  “Is it Julie?”

  “No—Julie called earlier, but I told her you weren’t available. This person won’t give her name, but she’s very insistent about speaking to you.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Andrew? Do you want me to put her off?”

  “No,” I said, swinging my legs out of bed. “No, I’ll take care of it…” I came out into the sitting room. “I’m sorry about this. I hope she didn’t say anything nasty to you…”

  “She has a colorful vocabulary,” Mrs. Winslow allowed, “but nothing I haven’t heard before.”

  The phone was on a stand in the side hallway. Posted prominently on the wall above it was a list of emergency numbers: poison control, hospital, fire department, police department, and FBI.

  I picked up the phone. “Hello?” I said.

  No answer. But the line wasn’t dead.

  “Hello?…”

  I could hear breathing, now. I started to get mad.

  “Who is this? What’s your name?”

  “Cocksucker,” the caller hissed, and hung up.

  I set the phone handset back in its cradle. Mrs. Winslow, who’d been listening from the kitchen doorway, came forward and stood beside me.

  “Andrew?” she said, indicating the list of emergency numbers. “Do we need to call somebody?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But not the police. Dr. Grey.”

  “Oh…well wait a moment, I think I’ve got her number in my address book upstairs.”

  “It’s all right,” I told her, picking up the phone again. “I’m sure my father still remembers it.”

  8

  A fine drizzle was falling the next morning as I walked up Olympic Avenue to Julie’s apartment, but I didn’t mind it. I had my umbrella, and the cold damp air blowing past my cheeks helped keep me awake. It was 5:45 A.M., give or take a couple minutes.

  It wasn’t just the early hour that had me yawning. Penny’s souls had called two more times the night before, once at around nine, and then again after midnight. The nine-o’clock call was from Thread, initially; Mrs. Winslow picked it up, and came back to my bedroom to ask “Do you know someone named ‘T’?” But once I got on the line, Thread only managed a brief utterance—“Mr. Gage?”—before the foul-mouthed protector took over, blistering my ear with a stream of curses and threats and hanging up before I could get a word in edgewise.

  The after-midnight call was Foul Mouth from the first syllable. By sheer luck I answered it instead of Mrs. Winslow. I was having trouble falling asleep, and was walking back to the kitchen to fix myself a glass of warm milk; the call came in just as I was passing the phone in the side hall, and I grabbed it in the middle of the first ring. I lifted the handset to my ear, heard the words “cocksucking cunt,” and immediately hung up again. I counted to fifteen to make sure the connection was broken, then left the phone off the hook for the rest of the night. But after that, the warm milk didn’t help much.

  At least my one outgoing call of the evening had gone well. I’d reached Dr. Grey with no trouble, and she’d said she’d be happy to see me. She sounded good on the phone: her voice was strong, with only a trace of slurring.

  I’d thought about phoning Julie as well, to let her know that I wouldn’t be coming into work, but realized that that would probably involve more explanation than I was really in the mood for. So I decided instead to get up a little early and leave her a note on my way out of town. Of course, this also served as an excuse to go by Julie’s apartment, which, Adam argued, was the real reason I was doing it.

  During the first year I knew her—the first year of my life—I was a frequent visitor at Julie’s, often following her home from work to hang out, sometimes for hours. At one point these visits became daily, so that it was almost like I was living there—I even had my own key—and in fact, Julie and I had talked about becoming roommates for real. Then things changed; for a long while, Julie’s apartment was off-limits to me, though I still saw her every day at work. Even after the no-visits restriction was lifted and I was allowed to come around again, it wasn’t the same as before. Having worn out my welcome once, I was afraid of wearing it out a second time, and could never really relax, even when Julie specifically invited me over.

  And so a funny thing happened. You’d think that the whole purpose of visiting someone’s home was to spend time with them, wouldn’t you? Certainly that’s what I would have thought. But now, as much as I still liked coming by Julie’s apartment, I only got comfortable enough to really enjoy it when she wasn’t there. Like the time three months ago, when Julie had gone out of town for a week and asked me to water her plants while she was away: every day, after seeing to the plants, I would go sit in Julie’s bedroom for a while, feeling happy. Which made no sense, since without her in it, Julie’s bedroom is just a space. But it made me happy anyway, being there, because it reminded me of what it was like back when Julie and I had almost been roommates. Back when my visits were still casual, and I didn’t have to worry about overstaying my welcome.

  So maybe Adam was right: maybe the real reason I decided to leave Julie a note was so that I could go by her apartment while she was still asleep, and “visit” her without feeling I was imposing on her.

  Julie’s apartment was the converted attic of a three-story private house. To get to it you had to take your life in your hands and climb an outside staircase, a sort of enclosed wooden fire escape, that had been attached none too securely to the side of the building. The door at the bottom of
this covered stairway was missing its knob. The knob had been missing for at least six months now, and though Julie kept talking about getting it replaced, so far the closest she’d come was to thread a rope through the hole and knot it at both ends. A tin letterbox was nailed to the inside of the door. I could have just dropped my note in there, but I told myself that Julie might not see it—after all, there was no reason for her to check the letterbox first thing in the morning. Better to slip it under her apartment door.

  I climbed the stairs, which creaked and groaned ominously with every step. Reaching the top was only a partial relief. There was a two-inch gap between the landing and the attic doorway, so that if you looked down as you entered Julie’s apartment, you could see the tops of her landlord’s garbage cans three stories below.

  It was all right; I’m not that afraid of heights. Mainly I was worried that the stairway’s groaning would wake Julie. But standing on the landing, I didn’t hear any sound of movement from inside the apartment. I decided to stand and listen a while longer, and while I did, I flashed back pleasantly on a winter day in that first year we’d known each other, when Julie and I had hauled a Christmas tree up these very steps, and—

  “Oooh,” Adam moaned, from the pulpit. “Oooh, baby…oh, yes…oh, right there!…ooooohh…”

  “Adam!” I whispered sharply. “Adam, cut it out!”

  “Oooh, baby…oh, oh, oh, oh…yes…yes…YES!”