by Tod Wodicka
This may have been behind Emily’s decision to remove the chandelier from his room and drag it out into her backyard. She’d meant to take it all the way to the creek, toss it in there, drown it, as if that might wake Howie up, but she’d been far too tired. Now you’ll have to find something else to hate, even if it’s only your own self-protective and sickening inertia, Emily thought. Even if it’s me. Emily sort of wanted it to be her. That would clarify things at least.
Now please come home.
She’d ripped the chandelier and a shoe-sized chunk of the ceiling plaster down around midnight. It was good to have a project. She hadn’t slept the night before since it was one of Howie’s night shifts, so time had begun to fuzz, waver. Like the good old days.
She called him. She called him. She called him.
His phone was off, but she called him. She texted from the internet.
Sitting, waiting, hoping for Howie to return had begun to feel worse than when she’d been on her own next door, because at least hope hadn’t been a part of that equation. This was more like when she’d been waiting for Peppy to die. Like then, she supposed she knew that when Howie returned, if he returned, if he really existed at all, nothing would be the same. It would be like willing yourself back to the exact same dream after being awake for hours.
She’d taken his money and hid it so that Harriet wouldn’t get it. Partly, Emily thought that Harriet deserved the money. If that was all the love her father could manage to express, then she should take whatever she could get. But another part of her was jealous. Harriet didn’t deserve it; Howie did, Emily did, and the two of them were going to sail away on a boat named Richard, because where the fuck was Harriet, anyway?
Clearly that was the mystery. Dori and Drew’s e-mails made no sense. Harriet should have been here, right now, in Howie’s house. She’d been spending weeks at Howie’s house, on and off, apparently. It made Emily’s heart race, reading that. It made her dizzy, and she’d had to look over her shoulder. Emily thought often of Howie’s iconic daughter—and it had made things here more palatable, less ridiculous. Like, maybe she could become Harriet now, start over as Harriet. The idea of little Harriet held Emily’s hand. But what the fuck? Had Harriet come and, if so, where and how had Howie disposed of her body? Or was Harriet hiding? Emily listened to the house. She heard Harriet upstairs when she was downstairs, and vice versa. Emily locked the doors. Closed the curtains. She sensed Harriet’s punk eyes out in the dark of the woods. Had Harriet and Emily switched places, or maybe Emily had always been Harriet, and Harriet was insane now, out here with her father, hallucinating herself into the hell of Emily Phane? Emily thought about her past and how unhappened all of it now felt. Boston was a ghost story. Peppy and her childhood wasn’t even that, it was a ghost story in a different language. She held her hand before her face; she went to the mirror, said her name. She laughed. Get a fucking grip.
Emily deleted the mail about the money and then deleted the unread (by Howie) follow-up, the one explaining why Harriet needed it so bad, and then she’d put the money under Harriet’s bed for safekeeping.
Emily called. She kept angrily calling and then, eventually, she plummeted to sleep.
—
“You’re not even going to ask? Jesus, seriously, what is wrong with you that you haven’t even asked?”
Emily was referring to the chandelier. But so what? Why should he ask? Finding out why did not change the fact that the chandelier was in her backyard, that his bedspread was covered with ceiling. Dust, crystal, wire, asbestos. She had used a hammer. What else did he need to know exactly?
“Nothing?” Emily said. “You got nothing for me? If I’d thrown the refrigerator in the creek would you, like, shrug and go buy a new one?”
“Eventually,” Howie said.
“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
“Are you asking me?”
“What?” she said. This tone was new.
“Because if you’re asking me, Emily, I would prefer if you laughed.”
It took her a moment to realize that he’d finally said her name. The sound of it stunned her. It sounded like a spotlight: like suddenly she was really happening. Found at last.
“Howie?”
Howie said nothing. This wouldn’t normally scare her. But it was pouring down now; the living room window like a grey stone.
“It’s raining.” Howie sighed.
They watched.
Emily said, “Please don’t make me go, Mr. Jeffries. I don’t have anywhere left to go.”
She had been awake for an hour after having slept for nearly five hours, most of those with Howie watching over her. He had found her in a hollow, incoherent state, half sitting, half sleeping amidst the debris on his bed. He had told her that she had to sleep, and told her that she had to not sleep there, in his bed, and she had told him to please not say that. Then begged him to sleep, too, next to her. That it was OK.
It was not OK. They were talking in the bedroom. The spell was broken.
Eventually, he had carried her to Harri’s room, where she fell asleep curled up next to the computer. Howie pulled up a chair, sat by the bed. He touched her head as he would have touched the head of his own daughter, when she was young, if she’d ever been the type of girl who needed him to be there, petting her, telling her that everything was OK when it very clearly was not.
Emily would wake every twenty minutes in a state of panic, and she’d ask him why he didn’t help her, where he had been. Howie told her that he’d been right there. “I’m right here,” he said. But then why’d he let them have her? He told her that he didn’t know what she was talking about.
Now they were on the sofa. The TV was off. The plants were, too, somehow, like a movie that had switched from color to black-and-white. It wasn’t only the storm. Howie and Emily regarded each other as hungover strangers might after waking in each other’s arms. The awkward depth of their intimacy matched only by the fact that everything they’d learned about the other had evaporated with the alcohol. But he’d said her name.
“It’s like I’m my own coffin,” Emily said. “That’s what it’s like.”
She was explaining. But words weren’t much up to it. It was like putting shoes on a headache. She told Howie about her sleep paralysis. She told him about the entities.
Howie said, “I don’t understand.”
“I mean, what is this?” Emily meant everything. She made an everything gesture with her hands.
They listened to the rain.
“I don’t know how to help you,” Howie said.
“You did.”
“OK.”
“You helped me before. You knew somehow. I’m not crazy, don’t make me feel crazy, Mr. Jeffries. You know what I mean. You helped me.” She could not call him Howie anymore.
“I’m sorry.”
“These things are everywhere, all around us. They’re laughing at us. Because this doesn’t feel like it’s happening. Being awake. I can’t take anything seriously.”
Howie said, “I know.”
Quietly, “Do you?”
Did he? “I don’t know.”
Emily said. “Never mind. Look at me.”
“OK.”
She scooted away from Howie, opening a space between them. They looked into it. Their look greeted each other, acknowledged something, as if they were accomplices who’d just spoken for the first time about a crime they committed together, years before. “Do you think that you’re real?” Emily asked.
Howie did not want to think about this crap.
“It’s like we’re puppets sitting here,” Emily said. “OK, I know, enough. I’m so fucked up it isn’t funny. Time terrifies me, Mr. Jeffries. Seriously, I’m so scared of time and being stuck inside it forever. Consciousness.” She laughed. “What am I, you know?”
“You’re Emily.”
“Established. But can I be someone else now, please?”
“I doubt it.”
; They looked at the window.
Howie said, “It’s really coming down.”
“You said.”
Howie remembered how Rho spoke. The way Rho splurged herself to Howie with such trusting, wanton generosity, chucking her thoughts out of her head like ballast from a sinking balloon—Rho falling around Howie in pieces. She was so unashamedly alive. Howie would speak as she did, as she might. Thinking and talking, it was a communal thing: it was the only thing that made you real among other real things. He had been unreal too long. He said, “I’m very shy.”
Emily’s eyes widened. “It’s more than that.”
“OK,” he said.
“No, continue. I’m sorry.”
Howie said, “I feel like an actor playing a human.”
Emily laughed. “You’re a terrible actor most of the time!”
“OK.”
“I’m not kidding. You’re the worst. Totally miscast.”
Howie nodded; smiled. Nodded harder.
“Can I say, every time you smile I think you’re preparing to bite me. It’s going to take a while to get used to,” Emily said. She touched Howie’s shoulder. “No, listen, but I’ve never had a best friend. I always used to have a lot of friends, but nobody could get that close, like there was something wrong with me. Turns out, there was something wrong with me. Let’s face it. The other girls knew. People know. I knew they knew, but I could never figure out what or how. That scared me. I don’t think I was being paranoid. Nobody wants to be close with someone who doesn’t take seriously what they take seriously. Did you ever have a best friend?”
Howie said, “My wife.”
“Doris? Really?”
“Dori. In high school, that’s right,” he said. “I don’t think that we ever should have gotten married.”
“Why not?”
“But we used to have so much fun,” Howie said, wonderingly.
Emily said, “What kinds of fun things did you do?”
“Well, roller-skating.”
Emily gawped her mouth. “Roller-skating?”
“For some reason I was better at skating backward than forward; I’d go like this,” and Howie stood up, gracefully chugged his arms. Closed his eyes. He laughed, too. Then sat down with the self-contained triumph of someone who had just given a successful speech.
“Oh my God, that’s too much! Did you, like, win competitions?”
“It wasn’t a competition,” Howie said. “It was for fun.”
“Mr. Jeffries.”
“Well,” Howie said. “People always thought that something was wrong with me. But nothing was ever really wrong with me.”
“No offense,” Emily said, “but I’m pretty sure that something was wrong with you.”
Maybe he was mean, like Rho supposed. Maybe he’d been hiding in plain sight all this time: someone who hates everything safe behind the immovable mask of someone who hates everything. But it couldn’t be that simple, could it? Leaving yourself alone for so long rarely is.
“I wish I’d known you then,” Emily said. “Do you think we would have been friends if I was your age?”
“No,” Howie said.
Emily nodded. “But I hope we would have said hello to each other once in a while.”
“OK.”
“More than we did for the last twenty-five years, anyway. Right? It’s hard to believe that was us.” Emily made a face. “For the record, that was totally your fault.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t try to help you sooner,” Howie said.
“If it’s any consolation, you probably haven’t helped me. I’m still crazy.”
“I don’t know,” Howie said.
“Me neither.” Emily sighed. “I’m sorry. You have helped me, I guess. If keeping me alive is of any value.”
“It is, Emily.”
Something caught in Emily throat. “Well, thank you.”
“What was Ethan like?”
“Wow, really?” Emily wiped a tear from her eye. “Mr. Jeffries with a question!”
She did not want to evoke Ethan Caldwell right now, her half-lived life in Boston, Les French Flowers, Boo. Ethan was a regret, not one of many but the one that could be said, in a way, to contain them all. She told Howie about the last several days that they’d spent together on Route 29.
“I made him go,” she said. “I was a monster.”
She said that Peppy had loved him too. She told him that she had reacted in a bad way to how much her grandfather loved Ethan and how invisible and secondary she became when Ethan was in the room. MY BOY, Peppy had called him, writing, suddenly, in full, perfectly crafted paragraphs, telling Ethan more about his past than he’d ever told her. Had she really not asked? Was that all it was? The ambitious, lost Pete Phane resurgent, proud, full of a masculine bluster that Emily hadn’t even guessed. She felt like a fussy, hysterical little girl and realized that maybe she’d been kidding herself: that she’d always just been that to her grandfather. His trouble girl.
This wasn’t true, of course, in fact it was unhinged, but she hadn’t been getting a lot of sleep. Did she desperately need Peppy to be what he most wanted not to be: a dying, helpless old man? Had she only wanted to be his protector for once? Maybe. She hated how Ethan disrupted their balanced illusionary household.
She was not nice to Ethan. She would not fuck him; she would not put her arm around him or hold his hand. She wanted to, but she was terrified of that particular longing and where it would lead. She said it was because of Peppy, but it wasn’t, and he knew it. It was because she needed him gone. Because, finally, after a few days, Peppy had begun to shut down, as she knew he would. Emily had been passed off to Ethan. Peppy was happy. He could go now.
Peppy had even told Ethan that Emily would be moving with him to New York City soon, and that he’d come and visit. He hadn’t been in almost fifty years, he wrote.
SHE LOVES YOU, he wrote.
DON’T LET HER SAY OTHERWISE, he wrote.
BE PATIENT WITH HER, he wrote.
This had made Ethan cry. Emily hadn’t told him that she loved him.
PLEASE TAKE CARE OF MY LITTLE GIRL, he wrote. It might have been this that set Emily off.
She made Ethan leave.
Hysterical, as they say. Angry, beyond exhausted, she told Ethan that he had to go home, that this was no place for him, up here in the middle of nowhere. He didn’t belong. What did he think he was doing? She told him that she didn’t love him. She threatened to call the police unless he got the fuck out, get the fuck out out out, and so he got in a taxi and headed back to the Queens Falls bus station, where, apparently, he stayed for two days, calling Emily, trying to get things to work. “I’m not giving up on you,” he’d said. “You need help. I can help you. I love you.”
She stopped answering the phone. It was a dream, she told herself. Ethan didn’t know her, not really. He would kill Peppy. He couldn’t help her. It was too late. She never spoke with him again.
Howie said, “Ethan never came back?”
Emily shook her head no. “Peppy and I never mentioned those days again. He was terrified, I know. How I behaved. But there was nothing he could do. He became worse after that, and so did I,” Emily said. “I really don’t know what happened after that. This happened after that.”
“You never told Ethan about your dreams.”
“They’re not dreams.”
“OK.”
“I never told him,” Emily said. “Everything would have been different if I had been able to tell him. But maybe not. Probably not.”
“Your grandfather knew.”
“Yeah.”
They sat in silence. Howie thought about missed opportunities; he thought about Peter Phane holding baby Emily up for him to see.
“You made him a better person,” Howie said, finally.
“What?”
“I saw it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your grandfather. You made him so happy.” Howie realized that he
had never been brave enough to take that kind of happiness.
Emily reached out and held Howie’s hand. “Thank you.” She was crying. “I don’t know what to believe. I’m fucking scared, Mr. Jeffries. I’m scared.”
Howie said, “I’m sorry I didn’t answer the phone last night.”
“I’m sorry I killed your chandelier,” Emily said. She sniffled, laughed. “So,” she said. “The date went well?”
Howie said, “Yes, I think so.”
“Is this something we can talk about? I really want to talk about something else. Do you like her?”
“Yes.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Well.”
Emily laughed. “But you like her.”
“She happens to talk a lot.”
“Perfect. But you’re attracted to her, I hope? Is it serious? She’s not married, is she?”
Howie did not know how to situate the reality of Emily inside the reality of Rho. “I have to see,” he said.
“I’m happy for you.”
“Why?”
“Yeah, that sounds like the sort of thing an ex-girlfriend would say, doesn’t it?”
“Does it?”
“Kind of. Maybe I’m not happy for you. Maybe I want you all to myself and I’m terrified of you leaving.” Emily felt shiftless suddenly. “Mr. Jeffries, what am I going to do now?”
Howie said, “I don’t think you can stay here anymore.”
“I know.”
—
They spent the day in conversation. They were saying good-bye and hello at the same time, though neither knew where the other was actually going or, really, had been. Emily didn’t go anywhere. She did not go back to her house or to sleep, though she knew that sleep was probably the first destination she’d soon have to set out for alone. Howie still planned on buying Richard. Safe on the sofa, they spoke about fishing together, and sailing terminology that made Emily laugh. But Richard was less real now; neither could imagine him without the other. Emily told him that the money was under Harriet’s bed. She didn’t tell him why. He didn’t ask. She couldn’t tell him about Harriet’s e-mails. She wanted to, but that was too much of a violation now. Howie said that maybe Emily should read her e-mails and she agreed. Tomorrow, she said.