The Household Spirit

by Tod Wodicka

  —

  They brought two bottles of champagne, one of them already half consumed. She wasn’t drunk because she never, ever got drunk, or so she’d claim, loudly, whenever she was particularly drunk. She got rosy. She was wearing heels. Drew wore a Christmas red Ralph Lauren sweater with pleated khaki shorts. Black socks, sandals.

  Howie was happy to see them both. They brought a gift for Howie the size and shape of a window. It was wrapped in silver paper.

  The room, in an attempt to hush itself, momentarily increased its volume with two dozen Shhhhs. Like the top of a forest before a storm. Drew said, “Don’t even ask how we got that thing in the car.” Hand on Howie’s shoulder. “It’s from Harriett,” he said.

  Carefully, carefully, thinking it was an actual window, Howie opened it. It was a painting of Lake Jogues. It was a painting so clear and picture-perfect that it might as well have been a window. It was not painted with sludge or soil; it was not a blustery, aggravated abstraction. Harriet had painted him the actual Lake Jogues, and not only that: Howie’s favorite spot on Lake Jogues. It was a view of the lake facing the gigantic stone cliff known as Rogers Rock. It was so real that you could hear it. When had she started painting like this again?

  Drew pointed something out. There, on the back, Harri had written LAKE JEFFRIES.

  Howie wanted to step into the painting, shut the window behind him. It was too intimate. Everyone please turn down your eyes. Turn them off. Howie was smiling too much.

  “Don’t look so sad!” Dube shouted. “It’s a birthday present!”

  Because no. Howie wasn’t, in fact, smiling. He’d been trying so hard to control his face, to prevent his happiness from cracking it apart, that he’d very likely been glowering.

  “That’s just how Jeffries looks,” someone said, shushing the others.

  OK.

  Well, let’s show them how he looked. Howie looked up and fine: he let his face go. It is likely that he smiled because there was more applause, and Howie, finding his voice, said, “Thank you.”

  He held up Lake Jeffries for everyone to see.

  “It’s from my daughter, Harri.” His daughter, the greatest freaking artist in the world. His daughter was happy now, obviously, finally, and she had painted something gorgeous for him. “It’s Rogers Rock on Lake Jogues.”

  —

  Howie’s ex-wife said, “Obviously, Howard, your daughter—” Nothing good ever started with your daughter or, for that matter, obviously. Plus, she had that face. “Your daughter was supposed to be here.”

  Enough, Drew mouthed.

  “Harriet had to get back to the city is all I was going to say, Drew. That’s literally all I meant.”

  “Something she couldn’t miss,” Drew added.

  Howie’s ex-wife bitched an eyebrow. (This had been one of Harri’s terms for the numerous communication possibilities of her mother’s eyebrows.)

  Drew continued, “Harriet sends her love. I know she really wishes she could’ve been here. She made us promise to come. It’s my understanding, Howie, that she’s been painting that secretly for a long time now. Every time she’s come up to visit this year. It’s a shocker all right. Unlike anything she’s ever done. She really wanted to give it to you in person.”

  “Thank you for bringing it,” Howie said. “Thank you for coming, Drew.” Thinking: Harri’s been up to visit this year? She never told him. She never visited him. But OK.

  Drew said, “Howie, it’s our pleasure. I mean that. It’s really good to see you, buddy. Wouldn’t miss it. Happy belated. Oh, one small request. Harriet asked that we would take some photographs, hope you don’t mind.”

  Howie did not mind. Drew stepped back. Drew held his telephone out before him, turning slowly, a crazy person checking for radiation. Some of the boys came over to appreciate the painting, which one deemed of museum quality. “I’ve been to the museum,” Roger Schulz said. “Jeezum Crow. This could be in the museum.”

  “I read about this painting sold for forty million. It wasn’t even nice like this. You couldn’t even tell what it was.”

  “Could be worth something someday, that’s for sure. It is something.”

  But Howie was listening to his ex-wife, who was standing nearby and speaking into the side of Drew’s nodding face. Howie was still tuned into her voice like no other, especially when she was worked up, rosy. She was a poor whisperer.

  “…but seriously, do me a favor and will you stop defending her, please…doesn’t work, she hasn’t worked in years, it’s not like…his fault anyway, why shouldn’t he know, why isn’t this the right place, he’s bankrolling her and, anyway, you said you’d talk to him. You said, Drew. Why do I have to always be the bad guy I’m sick of it…fine, you’re right, you’re exactly right, this isn’t the place I know this isn’t the place but then where is the place I’m…these people, they blame me for him, oh you know they just do…always have, see how they can’t even look at me…he’s not my fault or responsibility, he’s not, OK, I’ll calm down. I’m calm down. I am calm down, Drew…”

  The water was blue. The mountains green, and Howie knew what this meant if nobody else did. Harri giving her father the world in accurate colors.

  —

  Two hours later, Howie was driving up the Northway, his ex-wife asleep, laying across the backseat, completely hidden under Lake Jeffries. The painting took up the entire backseat. The ex-wife snored lightly. It didn’t sound like waves lapping anything, though Drew, sitting next to Howie up front, had said that it did. “Well, if you listen just right.”

  They laughed.

  Howie had agreed to take them home, both of them way too rosy—she’d said—to drive legally. Predictably, the more his ex-wife bloomed, the nicer things became, and, by the end of the evening, she’d soggily apologized for tending not to like him very much anymore, among other things. “It’s your fault, Howard, but I’m so sorry anyway. OK? How’s that?”

  “That’s fine,” he’d said. “I’m sorry too.”

  “I’m so happy you came,” she said, possibly forgetting for a moment where she was and whose party she was attending. Maybe it was too much to comprehend: a party all for Howie. But she’d continued, “You look so handsome today, actually. You’re not so bad. You are not so bad! We’re not doing so bad, are we? Let’s face it, Howard, look at us. We didn’t turn out bad at all, did we?”

  Howie agreed.

  “Right?” she said, excitedly. “Right? Tell me about it!”

  “You’re right,” Howie had said. He meant it. He said, “I like Drew very much.”

  “That means so much, you don’t even know. But you know that he likes you too. Too much, I’d say. He’s always telling me to lay off, you know?”

  Howie nodded. He said, “You don’t need to lay off. You say what you have to say to me. It’s OK.”

  “Thank you, Howard!”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “It’s hard to believe.”

  “What is?”

  “Me, you; everything. But it’s good. It’s really freaking good.” She laughed. She tottered. “Howard, you goofball. I forget how much I like you sometimes. Please try to remind me more often, would you?”

  Howie thought that this was a reasonable request. “How?” he asked.

  She hugged him. “Just hug me, Howard. For starters? Just freaking hug me.”

  —

  Drew removed a metal flask from who knows where. He said, “The secret to a happy marriage. Care for some?”

  “What is it, Drew?”

  “Works for ex-husbands too. Laphroaig single malt whisky. Quarter Cask. It tastes like smoky rope and”—he paused—“burning tires, Pepsi, charcoal, honey wheat, tennis ball, marmalade…”

  Howie tapped the steering wheel.

  “Right, got it,” Drew said. “Good man.” He took a long pull on the flask.

  They headed north.

  Interstate 87 was before them. They passed billboards and towns lit up like a
uto dealerships. Clifton Park. Round Lake. Burnt Hills. Malta. They also passed an actual auto dealership: cold white and yellow lights and still, deep expanses of asphalt carved into the forest. Gigantic flags, lit up and billowing in the night. Yellow signs for jumping deer, ADOPT-A-HIGHWAY PROGRAM NEXT 1.5 MILES, and soon the hills began lumbering up on either side of them, keeping pace. Then the mountains.

  Howie said, “You’ll pick up your car tomorrow?”

  “Mm,” Drew said. “What? My cat? Cat’s dead. Hey, how about some music, Howard?”

  Howie did not know where exactly on the radio one found music that Drew might enjoy. Drew, he knew, was appreciative of culture; he was a retired high school English teacher with a single gold earring, short grey hair. He always recommended books and articles about books on Facebook; he had political convictions and frequently attended Broadway musicals in New York City. Howie found a station that played music.

  Drew laughed. “Howard, that is not OK.”

  “Sorry?”

  “What is this? Is this what you listen to?”

  Howie found another station. “Nope.” Then another. Drew shoo-shooed Howie’s hand away from the radio. He found what he was looking for. Drew said, “There we go. You into Dire Straits?”

  Music was the opposite of fish. Music made Howie uneasy in the same way that people in Walmarts and parades made Howie uneasy. Dire Straits was an affront to the idea of a lake, of ripples and the occasional small, white splash. Howie respected Drew but couldn’t understand why Dire Straits existed.

  Drew patted Howie’s arm. “Harriet, you know, she still tells the story of that concert when she was sixteen. Oh, what was it again?”

  Howie said, “Maroon 5.”

  “Mary mother of God, Howie, you crack me up sometimes! Exactly. Taking your goth daughter to see Maroon 5!”

  Fourteen, actually. Howie had planned it for months. He could not help noticing how important music had become to Harri. She was always lost in her headphones, earbuds she called them, and so he had asked around at work, wanting to know what exactly they called the kind of music that fourteen-year-old girls listened to with earbuds. Maroon 5, apparently, was what a lot of folks called it. They were age appropriate. They had a song called “This Love” that Dube played for Howie. His own daughter, Tegan, forget about it. Tegan was nuts for those guys. Tegan was a popular and attractive young lady.

  Howie purchased two tenth-row tickets to see Maroon 5 at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. It had been a particular happiness for him, planning their special, cool night out.

  But on being presented the birthday Maroon 5 tickets in the Saratoga Performing Arts Center parking lot, Harriet had all but screamed. She had this way of making her entire body a fist. Howie said, “But I thought that you liked music.” He floundered. “Your earbuddies.”

  “My what? Jesus, Dad! You can’t be serious. What do you think? Who do you think I am?”

  “Have you heard the Maroon 5? Maybe you haven’t heard the Maroon 5. I’ve heard them, Harri. I think that they’re very cool.”

  “Oh my God!”

  Harri wouldn’t budge. She said that Howie didn’t know shit about her if he thought she’d want to be here: here with him, first of all, Jesus F-ing Christ, and second of all, Maroon freaking 5—seriously? Seriously? He couldn’t be serious! It was so embarrassing and messed up and all he’d have had to do was ask her. Talk to her. But no, talking to her would involve talking with her and when did he ever freaking want to do that?

  Howie drove them home in silence, hoping that she’d change her mind. They didn’t have to miss the concert. He suggested that they swing by and get one of her friends, Bea maybe, Bea could have his ticket. Because perhaps Maroon 5 wasn’t the problem. The problem was him. Harri was rightfully embarrassed about going to an awesome Maroon 5 concert with her age inappropriate father, and that was OK. That was how it should be. He told her that he would forfeit his ticket.

  “Stop stop stop saying Maroon 5!” she screeched. “Are you insane?”

  Plus, she’d said, what the hell, she hadn’t been friends with Bea in like two years. Three years! Bea’d probably love Maroon 5, actually, sure, Harri sneered, and so why didn’t he just take Princess Beatrice to see the concert? He and Bea could be lame together. They could boogie.

  She said, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “What? No, Harri. I wouldn’t like that.”

  The drive home was desperate, irretrievable.

  Harri ran to her room, slammed the door. The sound of that echoed. Howie stayed up half the night waiting for it to stop, for the silence of Route 29 to be silent again, for his daughter to open her door, come back downstairs, and see the birthday cake. It made no sense. He was sorry. He called in sick. He’d purchased Harri the birthday cake from Price Chopper, a pink cake that said HAPPY FOURTEENTH BIRTHDAY, HARRI!!! The cake person had asked what his daughter liked and Howie, with pride, had told her that his daughter liked music, so they put candy tubas and trumpets and drums on the cake. Howie needed to be in the kitchen with the cake when his daughter reemerged. He would light the candles as soon as he heard her feet on the stairs. He set it all up on the table and he waited. Everyone likes cake.

  16

  Drew looked back at Harri’s painting. He snapped on the overhead light. “It’s amazing to think, isn’t it?” he asked Howie.

  “The French and Indian War?”

  Drew guffawed. “What?”

  Howie had been thinking about the French and Indian War.

  “I mean, it’s amazing that she’s still sleeping under that,” Drew said. “But sure, that French and Indian War was something!” Drew looked at his metal flask. “Maybe it’s time I had some of what you’re having?”

  “I thought because the painting—” Howie started.

  “Howard, that is not a painting of the French and Indian War,” Drew said. “You sure you’re under the legal limit there, boss?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, besides the wife, I can assure you that there are no people in the painting. French, Indian, otherwise.”

  That was the point, Howie wanted to say. They were hiding. It was likely that Harri herself didn’t know the full story of Rogers Rock. Howie, feeling misunderstood, and in an atypically loquacious turn, decided that Drew might appreciate the history. “Do you know about Rogers Rock?” he asked.

  —

  In 1758, during the French and Indian War, Robert Rogers was an English officer known for the wily, brutal guerrilla warfare that he deployed against the French and their Indian pals. Howie didn’t say pals.

  Robert Rogers was more bear than man. The story, which Howie only partially told Drew, and only in the most basic and likely dull fashion, went that Robert Rogers and about 180 of his men, who were rangers and ex–fur trappers, a ragtag group of woodsy, godly, eccentric wanderers conscripted into the English army, made a deep-winter trek from Queens Falls up to the northern end of Lake Jogues toward the French stronghold of Fort Ticonderoga. Howie was not sure why. Usual French and Indian War reasons, he assumed. Famously, Robert Rogers had gone up there before and freed captured English officers, plus had led the occasional provisions raid and Indian massacre. But so this winter became brutal. The snow was deep. The frozen sky a taunting, uncharitable blue. Rogers’s men, especially the less hearty ones, began dying off after a week: some were taken by coughing diseases, others by the endless trudging. There were wolves. Toes felt like pebbles stuck in their boots, then fell off. Like teeth. One by one. Fingers and ears fell off. There was little to eat. Then there was nothing to eat. No fires, Rogers insisted, not even little ones, because fires would compromise the whole operation, whatever that operation happened to be. Nobody asked. These were, Howie imagined, silent, staring types, every last one. But he did not tell this to Drew. To Drew, he said, “Many of them died of the cold.”

  They gnawed on carcasses left by wolves. Some died of that, too. But not Rogers. By the time that they re
ached what is now known as Rogers Rock, at the northern end of Lake Jogues, he and what remained of his men were finally ambushed, beset by hundreds of murderous Francophile Indians. They’d been hiding. They had obviously been tracking Rogers for miles, waiting until the climate and the lack of provisions had done most of the work for them. This became known as the Battle on Snowshoes because Rogers and his men had been wearing snowshoes.

  Howie said, “It is very hard to run with snowshoes.” Let alone survive an Indian massacre.

  “I like that,” Drew said. “The Battle of Snowshoes. It’s like sponsorship. This afternoon’s battle is brought to you by snowshoes.”

  It was too cold for prisoners. Rogers’s men went down by musket, knife, hatchet, and stones hurled from invisible Indians in trees. None was spared.