The Household Spirit

by Tod Wodicka

  For some reason, he expected Emily to be awake when he returned, as if she knew he’d brushed his teeth and hair and put on a presentable shirt. Like, for propriety’s sake, she’d been waiting for this. She was still asleep. Sleepyhead, he thought.

  This sleeping was weird, considering, but she didn’t seem to have suffered any visible head trauma besides the bits of lawn that were stuck in her hair like plastic Easter basket grass.

  Telling her, in his head, that he’d be right back, don’t worry, Howie went to his car and began moving his cache of stone anniversary gifts inside with an emotion he didn’t have time to acknowledge as happiness. He left the Playboy magazine in the backseat.

  —

  Howie sat on a wooden ladder-back chair in the center of his living room on a beige carpet. He observed his neighbor, waited. He practiced hellos in his head. He had never thought about his carpet being beige before. Howie assumed that this was the correct color, in case Emily asked what color it was, specifically, when she awoke, though Howie knew how remote the possibility of such a question was.

  Until this moment, he had never thought about how abandoned his living room looked. He’d taken the wooden ladder-back chair from the kitchen. He only had one chair in his kitchen. Slouchless, alert: Howie sat with intense formality. He did not move. He’d brought the chair into the living room because imagine him waiting there for Emily to wake up while sitting casually, intimately, in his ex-wife’s tufted Rhapsody chair. That chair was the color of pollen. Even worse, imagine him standing above her. His first impulse had been to wait in the bathroom upstairs in the dark. That would not do at all. Even though it was a muggy summer evening, Howie had covered Emily in a red, white, and blue afghan that had once belonged to his mother. Emily was clothed. To Howie’s mother, Doris, knitting had been a joyless, patriotic act. She only had red, white, and blue yarn. She didn’t follow politics, and she didn’t read the paper or necessarily enjoy the company of her fellow man, but ever since her first husband, Nathanial, had died in the Pacific, Doris had dogmatically cleaved to the accoutrements of being a proud American. Toward the end of his life, Guy, Howie’s father, in a rare moment of communication, said that Doris, who had passed away several years before, had probably been a more invested widow than wife. Temperamentally, she was just better at it. Basically, she’d felt it was her duty to dress her household in a manner respectful to the country that Nathanial had given his life to protect. Your father, she might begin, when speaking of Nathanial to Howie, and then correct herself: “I mean to say, my first husband, Private Nathanial P. Sounes.” Howie knew everything about Private Nathanial P. Sounes, certainly more than he knew about his real father, the gentle, ghostly Guy. Howie’s father had been 4-F. Something about his heart, and something—like everything—that they never got around to speaking about, though Howie was certain that his father knew exactly what his wife was doing with all her flags and afghans and doilies. Like Howie, Guy Jeffries didn’t have a competitive bone in his body. Perhaps that was the real reason for his 4-F. Howie could not imagine his father saying a harsh word to anyone, never mind rousing himself up enough to patriotically kill strangers.

  Crickets chirped and stopped, started, stopped; outside, on Route 29, three trucks gusted past, shaking the silence. They left a deeper, darker silence in their wake. Then more crickets and the revving hum of Howie’s old refrigerator, the clunking of the clock. It was 2:41 a.m., and time moved reasonably along.

  It was 2:42 a.m.

  2:43 a.m.

  Clunk.

  2:44.

  The microwave in the kitchen would say it was 5:44 p.m., but the microwave had been insisting, silently, on a different time zone for years. You learn to be tolerant.

  He had left Emily with her muddy shoes on so as not to take any liberties with her feet or property. Nobody wants to wake up on a stranger’s sofa without her shoes. Mud was only wet dirt. Howie thought about his face and how best to comport it. Sitting in the ladder-back chair, he would try an expression, freeze it for when Emily awoke, which could be any second, then forget which expression it was, erase it, start over, probably make the same exact face again. Who was he kidding? Howie only had one face.

  He had never been more afraid of anything in his life than he was of this freckled girl asleep on his sofa. Howie was wearing his muddy shoes indoors, too. Under the circumstances, this seemed like the rectitudinous thing to do. Don’t want her thinking that she was the only person wearing muddy shoes indoors, that he had extended deferential treatment to her that might, when she awoke, make her feel self-conscious or in any way uncomfortable. That, and Howie did not want Emily to see his socks.

  Harri’s painting was behind Howie, the accurate colors of Rogers Rock and his beloved Lake Jogues leaning against the TV. It pretty much covered his entire so-called entertainment center. The painting supported him, rallied him, propped up and straightened his back: he was Robert Rogers, hiding here in plain sight, waiting for Emily to ring.

  She looked huge up close, though she was, Howie decided, not so very large. In twenty-five years, he had never been this close to her. In fact, she had lost a tremendous amount of weight. Her dark hair was unwashed. Her brown freckles, if you stared long enough, popped about her face like fleas. Under the Private Nathanial P. Sounes memorial afghan, she wore red shorts and pink socks and a filthy maroon and white Boston University hooded athletic shirt.

  Then, and without moving a muscle, she changed. She went from looking like a phone that he was expecting to ring to a phone that was ringing, but internally, ringer on silent.

  This did not exactly make sense. The air around her face had changed. The volume of the air was raised, and kept getting louder, louder.

  Louder.

  Howie stood. He walked across the living room carpet. He paused, steeled his face, and saw the impossible: his hand reaching out and touching his neighbor’s shoulder. He shook a shoulder and he snapped open Emily Phane’s eyes.

  —

  Emily had been awake for what seemed like hours but was probably only minutes or that eternal hell space between seconds. She couldn’t place herself inside any kind of immediate, narrative past. Only that she was herself again, stuck inside herself, and she wanted out. She thought she’d found a way out, but nope, she was on her back.

  Back was not out.

  Emily was back on her back on her fucking living room sofa. She could not open her eyes. She was breathing, and she smelled smoke, but faintly, as if she’d just come back from a Boston party where everyone had been smoking plastic and logs instead of cigarettes, pot. She felt the shoes on her feet.

  She couldn’t move her feet.

  Though she couldn’t hear anything but a strangely loud clock, then a strange refrigerator, she knew that her grandfather was in the room with her. There was a caring presence nearby that she hadn’t felt in years.

  Jiminy crickets, she thought.

  Her grandfather breathing.

  Buzzing refrigeration.

  They were on her.

  The sound first, as always, as if her ears were being filled with molten scream. She felt herself being pushed down to a small, dark point inside her head. Drowning inside herself. She struggled. She couldn’t move. Her eyes, of course, would not open. But something was different this time because when she heard the footsteps approaching her, she didn’t sense the evil. Then, a hand on her shoulder, a good hand, Peppy’s hand. I’m here. Don’t worry.

  The carpet was yellowish, old. The walls, too. The fireplace empty and cold, totally clean. It was exactly her living room but all the plants were gone, gone; everything was gone, actually, except for a giant, strange window that reached to the yellow carpet and revealed a view of a cliff, a lake. The air had the bland, white smell of boiling pasta.

  For the first time, there was an actual human man standing over her.

  His face, which, in her paralysis, she’d anticipated as being made of some kind of pure, grandfatherly goodness, looked
angry. Like a chiseled, angry rock. Like tree.

  Emily gasped, began coughing.

  Mr. Jeffries had finally snapped and abducted her.

  His eyes were blue. Emily had never seen her neighbor’s eyes. But his face, if you started with these eyes and moved outward, his face wasn’t angry at all. It was frightened, resigned, like a courageous little boy preparing himself for a spanking.

  He didn’t speak or move, as if he’d been possessed by the paralysis that had just held her, and Emily felt immediately, oddly protective.

  She stood.

  She’d been wrapped in a large, knitted flag. She was dreaming. Not dreaming, walking. She followed Mr. Jeffries down the hall to the kitchen. It was her hall but denuded: no family photographs, nothing but a terrible fish. This was exactly what her house would look like if it were dead.

  —

  Even after all that planning, Howie had forgotten to say hello. Emily was trembling; she was coughing, maybe sobbing a little. Then she was still. Except for her eyes, which clicked around the room.

  She put up her hood.

  Howie took his neighbor to the kitchen. That is, he began walking to the kitchen and hoped that she would follow. Everyone knows that the kitchen is the safest room in a house.

  Howie opened a cupboard. He turned and heard himself say, “Do you want a glass of water?”

  But he was the only one who heard this, because Emily said, “What?”

  She sounded like a woman.

  Howie handed Emily a glass. He pointed to the sink—with his face. He watched her grip the faucet as if it were there solely to prevent her from slipping to the floor. She pushed it up, the water came down. Perhaps she was too weak to move the faucet from the hot left to the cold right, or maybe, Howie thought, she just likes her tap water warm. Some folks did.

  Howie had moved his computer, toaster, and telephone off the kitchen table. These he had unplugged and planted in a nest of wires on the linoleum in front of the refrigerator. This is why Howie was unable to offer Emily a refreshing glass of milk or ginger ale. On the table, in their place, he’d moved his birthday gifts, including the large pile of stones with faces painted on them.

  They stood in the kitchen together. Emily put down her hood.

  Put it back up again.

  She looked at the stones, and Howie at Emily, and both thought, and not without good reason, that the other was far more gone than they’d previously imagined possible.

  18

  So he was friends with rocks. Probably he had conversations with rocks, had rocks round for lunch. They looked happy at least, Emily thought, and then she noticed an old computer on the floor in front of the refrigerator, plus a toaster, phone, wires. The telephone had been ostentatiously unplugged.

  Emily turned her back to the room.

  The reflection of the kitchen inside the window above the sink. It was the ghost of her kitchen. She poured herself another glass of water, relaxing, momentarily, inside the comfy, blanket-like sound the water made coming from the faucet. There was a continuum in that sound, one that stretched back to Peppy and childhood safety. The same metal sink, too. The same water.

  Mr. Jeffries wore a tucked-in white dress shirt and shapeless L.L.Bean chinos. On his feet, dressy, tasseled JCPenney shoes. Like he was just about to go to work. In 1982. Emily had to use the bathroom. She felt woozy, hypnotized; she coughed. She sipped warm water. Coughed.

  The kitchen smelled nice, actually. Like smoke, soil, and…

  I just burned down my house.

  Emily rushed toward the other window. But it gave her nothing but her own reflection, not just her house but everything out there was gone, voided, only the reflection of Mr. Jeffries behind her.

  He said, “It’s OK.”

  The voice almost belonged to a teenage boy. It was feathery. It did not fit his face. She saw him put his hand to his mouth, as if in acknowledgment of this fact. It was easier for both of them to talk to each other’s reflection in the window.

  “My house,” Emily said.

  “The fire is out. Everything is wet. I’m sorry.”

  “How did I get here?”

  Howie did not want Emily to know that he had touched her. He said, carefully, quietly, “You came to the door.”

  “I did?”

  “You fell asleep on my sofa.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I think your electricity is blown.”

  “What happened?”

  “There was a fire.”

  “I know.”

  “OK.”

  Pause.

  “Did you call the fire department, Mr. Jeffries?”

  He shook his head. He could not explain it. “The fire was already out. You put it out with a garden hose.”

  “You put it out with a garden hose?”

  “I did not.”

  “What are you talking about? I need to go. I need to get out of here.”

  “OK.”

  Next to the stones on the table was a digital clock the shape of the shark from Finding Nemo. There was a goldfish in a jar next to a microwave. The sun would be rising soon; the crickets had become birds.

  Emily was trembling. “I think I need to sit down,” she said.

  “I have a chair,” Mr. Jeffries said, sadly. “But it’s not here.”

  In spite of everything, Emily smiled. There were, of course, no kitchen chairs around the kitchen table.

  He said, “Would you like some scrambled eggs?”

  “What?” Like, instead of a chair?

  Emily turned and faced Mr. Jeffries, finally. She seriously needed to pee.

  Mr. Jeffries winced, looked at his tiny, tasseled feet. He said, “Do you like ginger ale?”

  —

  Emily fell asleep in front of the TV. Howie had given her a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and a glass of ginger ale, but she hadn’t exactly seemed conceptually aware of them, cocooned, as she was, inside the Private Nathanial P. Sounes memorial afghan on Howie’s sofa. She had moved the painting and turned the TV on all by herself.

  Moments after Howie had brought her the food, Emily had begun blinking her eyes, once, twice, three times, and then they remained closed, almost midblink, one arm jutting from the afghan clutching the spoon.

  Emily wore a gold wedding band on her ring finger. It looked, Howie thought, almost exactly like his ex-wife’s ring. It was disconcerting. Her hand, too, could have been his ex-wife’s hand, but when was the last time he had really examined a woman’s hand up close? There were probably more similarities than differences.

  Maybe she did not care for ginger ale.

  Howie went back to the kitchen for a glass of water, warm, the way she liked it. He left the TV on, the History Channel it looked like, a documentary about Nostradamus and ancient aliens, and then Howie went upstairs. For the first time in years he closed the bedroom door behind him. The house felt muzzled and questioning. Howard, what are you doing?

  Good question.

  The next morning she was gone. Motionless at the top of the stairs, Howie listened; he was, as they say, all ears. He listened with his skin, feeling for vibrations through his feet and his hand, which gripped the railing as if his house could, at any moment, lurch violently to the left. The silence of his house became a racket, a wreckage of small sounds that Howie found himself parsing through for signs of Emily Phane, awake, asleep, deceased. He thought that he would know what a dead neighbor sounded like if he heard one.

  The clock clunked.

  The refrigerator brrrrrrrrrr’d, and there, another car passing outside on Route 29. In the sky an airplane or a long, slow pull of thunder. A dead neighbor would sound like a clock not clunking.

  It was 9:34 a.m. The TV was off. Howie hadn’t exactly slept, but Harri’s painting had kept him good company.

  He descended the stairs.

  —

  Howie looked out the living room window. Nothing. He walked to the kitchen and looked out the kitchen window. Emily was
in her backyard.

  Before leaving she’d moved the bowl of cereal, napkin, and water to the kitchen counter. Howie realized how odd his piles of stones must have looked. Standing safely back from the window, he watched her remove the plants from her house to where her garden used to be. She appeared to be replanting the ones with broken pots; the others she lined up like an audience or army. This was inappropriate. You should not be watching this. Howie had to be at work soon. But that would mean leaving his house, going to his car, and Emily would see him and probably say something. She would have to say something, and so would he.

  Howie called in sick.

  His manager, Bill Morrow, laughed. It was understood, acceptable. Howie’d sure had the shit partied out of him, hadn’t he?

  “Oh, yes,” Howie said. “Thank you.”

  “Not a problem, my man. Sleep it off and we’ll see you tomorrow. Once every ninety years, right? You earned it.”

  “OK.”

  He went upstairs to his spot by the bathroom window and watched a little longer. Just to make sure. But make sure what? He did not exactly know. The plants seemed threatening. The roof might collapse. Something might leak, explode.

  Twenty minutes later, Emily was inside her house. She did not reemerge.

  Howie lay down; his room was dusky, cool. Nothing exploded. He’d closed his bedroom door again. The windows in his bedroom were always covered; they’d been blinded for as long as he could remember. He placed Fishing the Adirondacks on his chest. It was his alibi for being back in bed and fully clothed before noon. In case folks wondered. He stared upward, allowing himself a momentary seethe against the spider-like magnificence of his ex-wife’s dead grandmother’s chandelier. He had leaned Harri’s painting against the wall. Sometimes he looked at that too, but only once every twenty minutes. He wanted to savor it. He did not want his staring to erode any of the fresh, happy love he felt every time he saw it. Howie imagined where in the painting he would hide if it were winter and Indians were after him, until he really began to feel as if he were hiding inside the painting. Then he fell asleep.