by Sonja Condit
She put the picture in Eric’s laptop case. Later, when he found it, he thanked her and promised to put it in a frame in his office. Then she was embarrassed because that was a thing a little kid would do. Look at this picture I drew for you. He was gone all day, twelve, thirteen, fifteen hours, coming home only to sleep. Nobody should have to work this hard. It wasn’t like he was appealing death sentences on the eve of executions. She didn’t put him through law school so she could be married to an empty bed. She had to talk to him.
First, Drew. CarolAnna Grey had lived in the house, CarolAnna who had told them they shouldn’t buy it, CarolAnna who didn’t know what stories the children told. Once upon a time, Drew was her best friend in the world. Lacey found Grey and Associates in the phone book and decided she’d rather have this conversation in person, and without warning. Madison Grey took violin lessons from Harry Rakoczy, so Lacey went for a walk when he was pruning dead branches off his dogwoods and chatted with him about students. She’d tutored privately, last year, and she always had to have her apartment clean and her materials ready. How many students did Harry have? Was it hard to keep track? Madison Grey’s lesson, she found out, was at four on Thursday afternoons.
On Thursday at 3:58, she ran out the front door, gasped, and stepped back in. After three weeks of dry air, with everybody’s lawn turning blond except Harry’s, all September’s hoarded rain was coming down at once. The Greys’ car swam along Forrester Lane, waves washing back along the gutter from the wheels. Lacey grabbed Eric’s umbrella and hurried down the street as the Greys pulled into Harry’s driveway. “Let me take you to the door,” she said.
“No way am I getting under an umbrella that comes from the murder house,” Madison returned sharply. She jumped from the car and ran up to Harry’s door, shielding her head with the violin case.
“Want to come in?” Lacey asked. She held the umbrella over CarolAnna’s door.
“Thanks,” CarolAnna said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“Yes, me too.” Water filled Lacey’s sneakers and ran down her shoulders as she held the umbrella over CarolAnna, and the ten seconds from the car to the door soaked her to the skin. When she got inside, her wet clothes turned cold and stuck to her. She shook her head, feeling the wet hair flapping against her ears, and laughed. “There’s sweet tea. Or I can make coffee.”
“Tea’s fine, thanks.” CarolAnna sat down, put her elbows on the table, and shoved all her fingers into her hair, in the eternal gesture of the overworked mother. It took Lacey right back to the classroom, parent-teacher meetings with women who’d already put in a nine-hour day and had to get home to clean the house and make dinner.
Lacey wanted to tell CarolAnna not to worry, Madison was a good girl with the potential for high achievement, she simply had to apply herself, because that was true of them all. Nine-year-olds: their parents never appreciated them until it was too late. The only parents who knew how great their fourth grader was were those who had teenagers. She handed CarolAnna the glass of tea and said, “You wanted to ask me something?”
“Halloween. Will you decorate?”
“Not this year. No ladders for me, and Eric’s too busy.”
“It can get intense, so just leave your lights off. The Wilsons three doors down from you do a huge display, so there’ll be traffic. Last year they had holographic flying witches. And if you think it’s bad at Halloween, just wait till Christmas!”
They laughed, and Lacey said, “Have you lived in the neighborhood long?”
“We live a few blocks away, on Hills Place. It’s a nice neighborhood. Very active. I didn’t see you at the Labor Day picnic.”
Lacey rubbed her belly. “I didn’t feel up to it. Too hot.” She took a deep breath, wondering how to get the conversation around to the house. Then Drew was there, sitting opposite CarolAnna. Lacey’s body clenched and the hair on her arms stood up—the chair hadn’t moved from its place, it was impossible for anyone to have taken the seat without moving the chair, yet there he was. She was living in her mother’s world, where spiritual influences permeated every daily act. Light the right candle, change your life . . . She became aware that some minutes had passed in silence, herself staring blankly at Drew’s chair, and CarolAnna waiting for her to come out of her daze. She shook her head and laughed. “Sorry,” she said, “just faded out for a second.”
Drew put his elbows on the table, propped his chain in his hands, and grinned at her, eager to help, which surprised her after his furious reaction to Madison. According to Piaget, nine-year-olds were in the phase of concrete operations: Drew could reason abstractly and anticipate consequences. He could use deductive reasoning. She didn’t feel that she was using any reasoning at all, just flailing around by instinct.
“Ask her if she remembers me,” he said.
“Do you remember him?” Lacey said obediently.
“I should go wait in the car. Madison’ll worry if she doesn’t see me.”
“Do you remember him? Drew?”
CarolAnna shook her head. “I don’t know anyone named Drew.” She kept on shaking her head, as if she’d forgotten how to stop. “I don’t remember.”
“Ask her,” Drew said. He leaned across the table, until his face was only inches from CarolAnna’s. How could she not sense him, his voice vibrating the air? “Ask her if she remembers what she saw underwater.”
“What did you see underwater?” Lacey said.
“Nothing.”
“And you left me!” Drew shouted at CarolAnna. CarolAnna mimicked Drew’s previous posture, resting her chin on her hands. If she was mirroring him, wasn’t she somehow aware of him? Lacey’s head whirled. Drew was so close, CarolAnna must have felt his breath on her eyes. She never blinked. “You went away,” he said. “You left me all alone and now you can’t even see me!” He was gone, leaving a hum of anger that made Lacey breathless but didn’t appear to touch CarolAnna at all.
“Why did your family leave?” Lacey asked. Her breath was short, and she was panting like Bibbits on the verge of a coughing fit, yet CarolAnna seemed to sense nothing unusual.
“My dad got a job in Atlanta. My mom had bad dreams.”
“What else do you remember?”
“Nothing. We lived here the spring of 1991. The people who came after us, I remember their name because it was so unusual. Warm and fuzzy. I named a hamster after them. Honeywick. The hamster was orange with white paws. I’d better go.”
Lacey walked CarolAnna to the door. CarolAnna dithered, waiting for a pause in the rain. “Maybe you shouldn’t stay,” she blurted. “Not with the baby coming. Maybe it’s not a good house for a baby. You can’t blame me, I tried to tell you.” And she was gone before Lacey had time to answer.
Chapter Eighteen
SOMETIMES, INSTEAD OF GOING FOR LUNCH with the rest of the office, Eric stayed at his desk to browse baby-related websites. Lacey spent hours on YourBabyNow.net; she was always calling him into her room to share some new and interesting fetal fact. The baby’s retinas were fully formed. He could recognize individual voices. But when Eric wanted to put together a list of names, she shook her head.
He’d been dreading the day when Lacey would announce they needed to buy the baby furniture they couldn’t afford. The day never came, and now it was her silence he dreaded. She hadn’t bought so much as a single baby blanket. Why wasn’t she getting ready? Eric, sisterless, had an impression, distilled from movies and sitcoms, of the rituals of pregnancy. A baby shower. He asked why she didn’t have one. “You can’t give a shower for yourself,” she said. “I don’t know anyone in Greeneburg.”
So he called a couple of her old friends, fellow students and teacher colleagues from Columbia, to let them know that Lacey was taking her pregnancy hard and felt lonely. He had disliked those women when he was dating Lacey, knowing she discussed him with them—what did she say? Did they advise her to hold on to him, or did they shake their heads and tell her she’d be better off alone? And e
ven after they were married, she took it for granted that she’d go out with her friends without him, just the same as before. When they first moved to Greeneburg, he’d been happy to see those connections fade. The Lacey who came home from a night out with her friends was hard and loud with the smell of beer in her hair, not a girl he would ever have dated—not his Lacey. Now he found those friends on her phone and asked for their help.
A few days later, her old roommate, Phyllis, called to tell him that Lacey had vetoed the idea of a shower and wouldn’t even let any of her friends come visit. “She’s feeling superstitious,” Phyllis said. “Don’t push it. Let her do what she has to do.” Eric noted on his calendar in November: Invite Phyllis for Christmas party. Lacey needed her friends; he didn’t have to like them, but he had to welcome them for her sake. She wouldn’t be drinking with them, anyway.
Alone, he wandered the infinite shopping aisles of Amazon and found everything babies needed. He marveled at the five-thousand-dollar strollers and fell in love with a tiny little newborn-sized tuxedo onesie with a red bow tie. That was his first purchase, and he was hooked. He bought clothes, diapers, chewable books, and tiny little socks. He bought crib bedding and stuffed animals, Eric Carle prints, and a mobile of Dr. Seuss characters. He bought a diaper presterilizer and a bassinet but decided to hold off on the crib until Lacey felt better; the baby would use the bassinet for the first three months.
He didn’t buy a breast pump because looking at the pictures made him feel funny, and the YouTube video of a woman hooked up to a double electric pump was something he wouldn’t forget in a hurry. He didn’t buy bottles because they attached to various other pieces of equipment. They weren’t just bottles, they were feeding systems. He eavesdropped on Internet chats among young mothers about the relative merits of Medela and Avent and decided this was one decision he would leave entirely up to Lacey.
He joined a chat on circumcision and found himself arguing, lawyerlike, for both sides. On a chat about postpartum depression, he asked diffidently if there was such a thing as prepartum depression, to which all participants unanimously responded yes and encouraged him to talk with his wife’s OB. Dr. Vlk alarmed him, in much the same way as the breast pumps, but he called her to say he thought Lacey might be depressed.
“Lacey is doing very well,” Dr. Vlk said. “You should come to the next appointment. You need to sign up for a birth class.”
He was startled to realize their due date was that close. Lacey shut down the idea of classes. “Not yet,” she said. “Not till he’s bigger.” Phyllis was right, then—Lacey wouldn’t prepare till she was sure there would be a live baby. He complained on the postpartum depression chat that he felt he was going through pregnancy alone, and the women flamed him so badly for his insensitivity he didn’t dare go back.
He had his purchases delivered to Moranis Miszlak so they wouldn’t upset Lacey. On the Friday after the big rainstorm, with summer’s heat finally broken, Sammie hauled a box in from reception. “More of your loot,” she said. “What’s this?”
“Got to be the bassinet.”
“How come it’s coming here and not to your house?”
He explained Lacey’s odd behavior. Sammie laughed. “My grandma wouldn’t let anybody buy anything for my sister,” she said. “It’s an old-country thing. They think they’re going to jinx the baby. You better quit buying, she’ll want to do it herself.”
“We need the car seat.”
“You’ve got three days after the baby’s born to get the car seat. Listen, your four thirty canceled and I rescheduled your five for Monday. Go home. Try not to buy any diapers on the way.”
Released early, feeling ridiculously free, Eric drove home in daylight for the first time in weeks. He had a boxful of files in the backseat, twenty hours of work for the weekend, but it was only 4:45 and he was home. He sat in the car to admire the house. Lacey had been right about the green door. It welcomed him. Voices came from the backyard, so he walked around the side of the house to see what was going on.
Lacey, looking like a peach in a pale orange dress, was running water into a big plastic tub, while Bibbits chewed the hose and Harry Rakoczy hung around his own back porch, spreading mulch and watching. “Come on, you stinker,” Lacey said. She grabbed the dog and pushed him into the tub, holding him down with one hand while she squirted shampoo on his head.
Ella Dane came out of the house on the wings of her own raised voice. “What are you doing to my dog?”
“He’s filthy. Look at this, his fur’s all matted. Come and hold him while I scrub.”
They hadn’t seen Eric yet, and he hung back, unwilling to get involved with soap and water and matted dog filth in a suit that had to be dry-cleaned. Whatever was going on between Lacey and Ella Dane, he wanted no part of it.
“You haven’t been taking care of him,” Lacey said. This sharp tone surprised him; she’d never spoken to him in that voice.
“Oh, and you know so much about taking care of things. Who’s been washing your dishes and vacuuming your floors and doing your laundry?”
“I was on bed rest. It’s not like I asked you to come here.” Bibbits’s claws slipped on the plastic as he tried to climb out of the tub. Lacey pushed him down and squirted more shampoo over him. She dropped the shampoo bottle and held the dog in the water, working her fingers into the matted fur, scrubbing with both hands.
Lacey must be feeling better. Recovering from sickness always made her angry, and she worked her temper off by cleaning something. He’d learned to stay out of the house on the fifth day after she came down with a cold, so she could have the place to herself, although her furious bleaching usually ruined something, leaving rusty spots on her good black pants, or yellow stains on white Formica. It wasn’t too late to drive back to the office—the women hadn’t seen him yet.
“Let go of my dog!” Ella Dane said. “What’s that stuff you’re putting on him?”
“Shampoo.” Lacey scrubbed the dog into a ball of foam. Bibbits paddled frantically in water three inches too deep for him, and Lacey’s hand plunged through the foam and forced him underwater. “You’ve heard of it. It gets hair clean. Also dog fur. Have you smelled this dog lately? My bed reeks like a kennel.”
The dog’s legs were slowing down. Eric didn’t want to get into the middle of this—it was worse than the breast pumps—but he couldn’t stand there and let the animal drown. Harry laid down his rake. “Ladies,” he called as he walked across the lawn. Lacey turned to look at him, and her hand relaxed on the dog’s back. Bibbits surged out of the tub, and half the water sloshed out as he broke for freedom.
“Catch him!” Lacey and Ella Dane shouted. Ella Dane ran after the dog, and Lacey sank down where she stood, one hand pressed against the base of her throat. Eric stepped in front of Bibbits, who swerved to the right, directly into Harry’s arms.
Harry picked up the still-running hose, held the dog flat in the grass, and worked the water into the fur until there were no more bubbles. Ella Dane picked up the shampoo bottle and read the ingredients out loud in tones of horror. “Sodium laureth sulfate,” she said. “Salvia extract. So they dipped a sage leaf in it, big deal.” She went inside.
Eric helped Lacey up. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you need the doctor?”
“No, I was dizzy, there was this feeling. Something came over me.”
“You were rough on the dog.” Such violence—this was a side of Lacey he’d never seen, and he couldn’t help imagining her, a year from now, alone with a baby who needed a bath, angry and impatient as she was with Bibbits. She wouldn’t. She would never lose her temper with a child, never. Of all the things Lacey would never do—but he kept seeing her hand, holding the animal underwater. “It looked like you almost drowned him,” he said. He’d been several yards away; he couldn’t be sure what he’d seen. But some of the things those women said on the Internet . . .
Lacey shrugged herself out of his arms. “Oh, come on. You think I’m going to ta
ke the dog outside and drown him right there in front of Harry and Ella Dane, really, you think that? How crazy do you think I am?”
“Of course not,” Eric said, but he added something new to his ever-evolving mental shopping list of things he needed to buy for the baby. One of those plastic bath seats, with a seat belt, the tub formed to support the baby upright. He’d spent half an hour yesterday watching online clips of babies being washed in a variety of tubs and seats and even, one of them, in the kitchen sink, which didn’t look safe at all. A plastic bath seat, for safety.
How crazy did he think she was? Not crazy at all, but maybe Ella Dane could stay on for the first couple of months. Several women on the depression chat wrote about how close they’d come to killing their babies, one way or another. Shaking, dropping, and drowning. Mostly drowning. It seemed so easy, one of them had written, it seemed like a thing I had to do, and dozens had agreed.
Chapter Nineteen
OVER THE NEXT WEEK, Ella Dane was sweet and careful with Lacey. She drove her to all the used-car lots that Harry Rakoczy recommended, and when they found a three-year-old Camry, silver, with only forty thousand miles, Ella Dane bundled Lacey back into her car and drove her away, telling the salesman, “We might come back later.”
They came back with Harry. Ella Dane insisted, and she was right. Harry made thoughtful sounds at the engine and doubtful sounds at the brakes, and the car cost three thousand dollars less than Eric had budgeted.
Something had changed between them, on the day Lacey gave Bibbits a bath. Between all of them. Bibbits took to licking her hand, or standing in front of her and wagging so hard his claws rattled on the floor. Gratitude or submission? Either way, it creeped her out, and something was wrong with Eric too. He watched her with a caution she knew well. This was how he evaluated any not-quite-adequate machine—would the car’s transmission last till September? How soon before the air conditioner needed servicing?—but why was he looking at her that way? It was only a little water, nobody got hurt. And Ella Dane stopped singing lullabies for Drew, stopped bringing home crystals and sprinkling rock salt in the fireplace. Instead, she began to talk about moving out. She wouldn’t move far, and she’d come back for a few days when the baby was born, but it was time to get her own place. She paused as if waiting for Lacey to protest Please stay, I can’t manage without you, but Lacey said, “That sounds great,” although she’d miss Bibbits. The little dog had grown on her.