Set This House in Order

by Matt Ruff

Andrew trots up the front walk of the house, calling to Mrs. Winslow; as he mounts the porch steps she says something to him that breaks him up, and they laugh together, at ease.

  Mouse gets out of her car and—moving slowly at first—goes to join them.

  FIFTH BOOK: ANDREW

  13

  Julie was jealous of Penny.

  That was what Adam thought, anyway; I wasn’t sure what was going on. I’d expected Julie to be pleased about my decision to help Penny out, and she seemed pleased, especially at first…but she also started acting weird.

  Like the invitation to have breakfast at her apartment on Saturday morning. That was nice, if unexpected. But when I showed up bright and early on Saturday, Julie was waiting for me outside her building.

  “Let’s go eat at the diner,” she suggested.

  “The diner?” I said. “But I thought…I thought you wanted to have breakfast here.” I held up a grocery bag. “I brought frozen cinnamon rolls. The fun kind.”

  “The apartment’s kind of a mess right now,” Julie told me. “Besides, I’ve got no food in the fridge—I forgot. We can’t just eat cinnamon rolls.”

  “OK,” I said, disappointed.

  “Here,” Julie said, reaching for the bag. “I’ll put those in the freezer so they won’t thaw. Just wait down here for me…” She took the rolls and ran inside. She was gone a long time.

  “Tell the truth,” said Adam, while we were waiting. “The fact that you can’t figure her out is part of the attraction.”

  “Be quiet. I’m not attracted to her anymore.”

  Adam wouldn’t even dignify that with a laugh.

  “So,” Julie said, a little too cheerfully, when she finally reappeared, “let’s go eat!” She hooked her arm in mine and started down the block at a brisk pace, practically dragging me along with her.

  “Julie,” I said, stumbling as I tried to keep up, “Julie, slow down a little!”

  “I’m hungry!” Julie exclaimed, and kissed me on the side of the head, which temporarily scrambled my thoughts. By the time I got my equilibrium back we were on Bridge Street—moving at a more reasonable speed, now—and Julie was quizzing me about Penny.

  “There isn’t a whole lot to tell, so far,” I said, which wasn’t strictly true. But I’d already decided I wasn’t going to mention the e-mails I’d gotten or the part about Maledicta chasing me into Thaw Canal, and if you left that stuff out, there wasn’t a whole lot to tell.

  “You’ve been hanging out with her though, right?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “But yesterday, when I came by and saw you…”

  “That wasn’t hanging out,” I explained. “Penny just showed up, just like you did. Or some of her people did, actually—Penny wasn’t there.”

  Julie looked pleased. “So you’ve met the family.”

  “A few of them,” I said, thinking of how Maledicta had threatened to burn me with the cigarette lighter.

  “What did they want?”

  “They want me to help Penny.”

  “So I was right.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I still don’t know if Penny herself wants help, though. And—”

  “Sure,” Julie interrupted, “but if her people are trying to get her help, that’s a good sign, isn’t it?” Without waiting for an answer, she went on: “So what about Dr. Grey? What happened there?”

  I shrugged. “Not much. She said she’d like to meet with Penny, if Penny’s willing to meet with her. But I don’t know if—”

  “Good,” Julie said. We were stopped on the corner across the street from the Harvest Moon Diner now; the crosswalk light had turned green, but Julie ignored it. “You and Penny will probably need to take another day off work for that, right?”

  “I suppose. I hadn’t actually thought about it. But…yes, I suppose we might. Or she might. It depends on—”

  “Well whatever time off you need, that’s no problem. Just try to give me a little advance warning this time, OK?”

  “OK. But—”

  “Also, if the two of you need a ride out to Poulsbo, I’d be happy to give you a lift. Assuming my car’s running that day, of course…”

  “Well thanks, Julie,” I said politely, actually finding the offer a little strange, “but you know Penny’s got her own car. And anyway, I think you’re getting ahead of—”

  “Just keep it in mind,” Julie said. “Anything you need from me, I’ll be happy to help out.”

  “OK,” I said. “OK, thanks.” I looked up at the light, which was green for the second time now. “So…are you still hungry?”

  The Harvest Moon was crowded that morning. While we waited for a table to open up, I scanned the newspaper racks by the door. Warren Lodge’s picture was on the front page of both the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Autumn Creek Weekly Gazette. MANHUNT CONTINUES, said the P-I’s headline; the caption beneath the Gazette photo read “Cougar” Still at Large.

  Julie noticed my interest. “That’s some story, isn’t it?” she said. “You know what I want to know? Where was the mother?”

  “The mother?”

  “Yeah, you know: Mrs. Lodge.”

  “Mrs. Lodge?…I thought he was a widower.”

  Julie shook her head. “The papers said he was divorced, but I don’t remember anything about the ex-wife being dead.”

  “But if she were still alive,” I said, disturbed by the notion, “don’t you think she would have known, or at least suspected, what her ex-husband was really like? And don’t you think she would have tried to protect the girls?”

  “Well yeah, I’d think so,” said Julie. “Which is why I was wondering where she was.”

  A waitress came and seated us. After calling on my father to silence a few protests, I ordered a single breakfast, a shrimp-and-cheese omelet. While we ate, Julie continued to ask me questions about Penny, most of which I had no answers for. “Really, Julie,” I said, “I haven’t gotten to know her yet. At all. What little contact I’ve had has all been with other souls.”

  “Well what are they like, then? How many have you met?”

  “A few. But—”

  “So what are they like?”

  Because she insisted, I gave her brief descriptions—the best I could do—of Thread and Maledicta.

  “Maledicta.” Julie grinned. “That’s what, Bad Mouth?”

  “Something like that.”

  Julie nodded. “I think I met her too. What is she, Penny’s version of Adam?”

  More like Penny’s version of Gideon, I thought. Adam himself was not flattered by the comparison, but I’ll omit his response. “Maledicta is Maledicta,” I said diplomatically. “She’s a protector, I know that much, but beyond that…I don’t think it’s fair to compare her to anyone in my household.”

  “Of course,” said Julie. “Is she the one who kissed you?”

  I blinked in surprise. I’d wondered whether Julie had seen that…but of course she had. Julie was very observant when she wanted to be. “I don’t know who that was…or, or what that was.”

  “Hmmph.” Julie raised her eyebrows skeptically. “Well, if you can’t say, you can’t say.”

  After breakfast, as we were leaving the diner, a tow truck driving west on Bridge Street honked its horn as it went past us. This wouldn’t have been noteworthy except for the way that Julie reacted: she caught me by the elbow and spun me around so that I was facing away from the street.

  “So Andrew,” Julie said brightly, “would you like to come back to my place and hang out for a while?”

  “What?” I shook my arm loose and looked back over my shoulder at the tow truck, which was already a block away. “Who was that, Julie?”

  “Who was who?” Julie said, all innocence, and I thought: Adam is wrong. I don’t find this attractive at all.

  But when Julie repeated her offer to come back to her apartment, of course I said yes. I didn’t even bother to mention the obvious: that if her place had been too messy for visitors
before breakfast, it ought to still be too messy now. I went back with her, and hung out for the rest of the morning, and actually had a really nice time, just like in the old days.

  Then around noon I noticed that Julie was stretching and yawning for the third time in as many minutes. Figuring that might be a hint, I got up to go. “I should head back to Mrs. Winslow’s,” I said. “I promised Thread and Maledicta I’d call them this weekend, and I should probably do it this afternoon; Maledicta was kind of anxious about it.”

  “You can call from here if you’d like,” Julie said, breaking her stretch.

  “No, that’s OK. It could be a long call.”

  “All right,” Julie said. Then she smiled. “I knew you guys would hit it off.”

  I tried to keep my expression neutral. But what did she mean, hit it off? Hadn’t she been listening before? With the exception of a few words exchanged at work, and at lunch that first day, I hadn’t even spoken to Penny herself yet.

  “Don’t bother trying to explain it again,” Adam counseled. “Just say see you later and get out of here.”

  “Right,” I said, picking up my jacket. “See you later, Julie.” I turned, started to walk out of the apartment…and stopped, my hand on the door. “Julie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think it’s great, you wanting to be so helpful, but…you do understand, right? Even if Penny does decide to, to build her own house, you won’t necessarily be a part of that process. I mean, I probably won’t even be a part of it, beyond introducing her to Dr. Grey. And if Penny does come to me for advice, or whatever, I may not be able to tell you about it. Not because I don’t want to, but because, well…”

  “That stuff is private.” Julie nodded. “Sure, of course, I understand. No problem.”

  “OK,” I said, not totally convinced. “OK, good. Well anyway…”

  “Call me later if you want.”

  I went home and dialed Penny’s number. Thread answered on the first ring. “Hello, Mr. Gage.”

  “Hi.” We spoke very briefly; Thread asked, right up front, if it would be all right if she and Maledicta came out to Autumn Creek to talk with me in person. I’d been halfway expecting this, and had decided that it would be OK so long as Maledicta and her twin behaved themselves. I told Thread they could come by Mrs. Winslow’s anytime that afternoon. “Will Penny be coming too?”

  “Oh no,” said Thread, sounding surprised. “Penny still doesn’t know anything about this.”

  At quarter to two the Buick Centurion pulled up to the curb in front of the Victorian. Mrs. Winslow had taken a seat on the porch a few minutes earlier, after I’d told her who was coming to visit; she watched my back as I went down the front walk to the car.

  Maledicta was behind the wheel, puffing on a cigarette; Thread didn’t know how to drive. “Would you like to come inside for some coffee or tea?” I asked.

  Maledicta looked over at Mrs. Winslow sitting sentry on the porch. “No,” she told me bluntly. Then: “Get in the fucking car. Let’s go someplace else.”

  I frowned at her rudeness, but then turned, nodded reassuringly to Mrs. Winslow, and got in the car. “Where to?” I asked.

  We ended up driving to a number of different places around town. While the car was in motion, Maledicta spoke to me; when we parked somewhere for a while, Thread took over. Between the two of them, I began to learn the answers to some of the questions Julie had been asking. Thread gave me a broad outline of Penny’s history: how she’d been born in Willow Grove, Ohio, in 1971; how her father, a traveling salesman, had died in a plane crash two years later; how over the next decade and a half her mother, a crazy woman named Verna Dorset Driver, had systematically broken Penny’s soul apart; how Penny had finally escaped on a scholarship to the University of Washington; and how her mother’s death the following year had freed her for good. Like a good reporter, Thread tried to keep her account as objective as possible; though she readily described Penny’s emotions, she kept her own feelings to herself, and downplayed her own role in Penny’s life.

  Maledicta made no attempt at objectivity. She went out of her way to share her feelings, which consisted primarily of different flavors of hate, anger, and resentment. She bragged about her own actions, saying that she’d “saved Mouse’s fucking ass” more times than she could remember, and that “without me and Malefica to look out for her, Mouse would be a fucking stain on the wall by now—and it’s not that the little cunt doesn’t deserve it, but it’s our fucking neck, too.”

  In addition to telling me about Penny’s life, Thread and Maledicta asked questions about mine. Thread was fascinated by the idea of the house, and wanted to hear all about the practical aspects of building and running it; Maledicta, more skeptical, wanted to know what problems to expect (“Do Malefica and I get our own fucking room?” she demanded. “What if someone acts up? How do you keep the assholes in line?”). I answered their questions as completely as I could, until finally—it was late afternoon by this time, and I was exhausted again—they were satisfied.

  “All right,” Maledicta said. “We’ll do it. We’ll build a fucking house.”

  “What about Penny?” I asked. “Will she cooperate?”

  “Fucking Mouse,” Maledicta sneered. “Yeah, she’ll go along. She fucking well better.”

  “But does she even know that you—”

  “She knows. Enough. She pretends to herself that she doesn’t, but she knows. Mouse isn’t stupid, she’s just a fucking coward.”

  “OK. But—”

  “What we’ll do,” said Maledicta, “we’ll get Mouse to come out here tomorrow, and you’ll tell her what’s what. And we’ll make sure she fucking pays attention.”

  “Tomorrow,” I mused, not sure I wanted to give up my entire weekend, not without being asked, at least. But whatever objections I was thinking of making were put on hold as Maledicta thumbed the button on the car’s cigarette lighter.

  “Yeah,” Maledicta said, pulling a pack of Winstons from her jacket pocket and shaking one loose. “Yeah, Mouse’ll go along. We’ll fucking see to it. And if she doesn’t…if she doesn’t, we’ll get someone else to run the fucking show.” She looked over at me. “We could do that, right?”

  “I’ll talk to Penny,” I said, preoccupied now, waiting for the lighter button to pop back out. “You get her to meet with me, and I’ll do my best to help her understand what’s going on.”

  “Fucking right you will,” said Maledicta.

  And so the next day at noon I waited for Penny in front of the Harvest Moon Diner, trying not to laugh as Adam did Maledicta impressions: “How about this fucking weather? Pretty fuckingly clear fucking skies for fucking April, don’t you fucking think?”

  Then Penny arrived, and the laughs were over for a while.

  There’s a type of protector soul, called a runner, whose function is to remove the body from threatening situations. Penny had at least two runners, and it wasn’t long before I’d met both of them.

  The first runner came out only moments after Penny’s arrival. I don’t think it was my fault; when I’d asked my father’s advice about how to speak to Penny, he recommended I be direct, but he also warned me that no matter what approach I used, Penny would probably switch several times in order to avoid hearing what I had to say. “It’s a terrifying thing to find out about yourself. I remember.”

  “But Maledicta said Penny already knows…”

  “I’m sure Penny suspects the truth, or part of it,” my father said. “That’s not the same as knowing for sure…or being told flat out.”

  Thread and Maledicta had told me that they would leave Penny a message instructing her to meet with me. I decided that would be a good opener: I’d say something about the message, and segue naturally into the question of who had sent it. It was a reasonable plan, but I never made it to the segue. As soon as I mentioned the message—something that, from Penny’s perspective, I shouldn’t have known about—Penny got scared, and out came the first runn
er.

  This runner didn’t actually run, just walked fast: ducked Penny’s head down so that her chin nearly touched her chest, fixed her arms stiffly at her sides, clenched her fists, and shuffled off with surprising speed. Almost before I realized what was happening, she was out of the parking lot and scooting away up Bridge Street. I chased after her, calling Penny’s name; she didn’t look back, but as I came up behind her she started making a noise, a low caterwauling from deep in her throat, that caused the hairs on my arms to stand up. I wasn’t the only person unnerved by that sound—other pedestrians, hearing that caterwaul come out of Penny’s mouth, hurried to make way for her.

  Then I was alongside her, putting a hand on her shoulder, and the caterwaul jumped octaves, rising up into a high keening—the sound a porcupine might make if it screamed. The keening froze me on the spot; the runner pulled free and kept moving, ducking out of sight around the next street corner.

  “Don’t lose her!” Adam warned.

  So I took off again, following from a distance now, not wanting to hear that keening a second time. The runner was almost a block ahead of me when she went into Maynard Park, and for a moment I worried I had lost her; but when I entered the park myself, Penny’s body was seated on a bench, waiting for me.

  “Penny?” I said uncertainly. The runner was gone, that was obvious, but I wasn’t sure what soul had taken its place.

  Then Penny’s face darkened in a scowl, and I knew.

  “Sit down,” Maledicta fumed. “We’ll have her back out in a fucking minute.”

  I sat. The scowl disappeared, replaced by confusion, and Penny’s shoulders hunched. I gave her a second to get her bearings, then started in again, commenting matter-of-factly that she’d just had a blackout, trying to make it sound like it was no big deal.

  Out came another runner, this one a sprinter; it dashed off into the trees behind the bench.

  “Oh boy,” I sighed, getting up to follow. The direct approach wasn’t working very well.

  To make a long story short, I got my exercise that day. In the end, Penny did listen to everything I had to say, but only after I’d put several new miles on my sneakers, and only after Penny had nearly broken her own neck.