Starter House

by Sonja Condit

  Ella Dane sniffed the baby. “Yams?”

  Bibbits joined them, dancing on his hind legs, trying to get a taste of the baby. Ella Dane set the baby down on the grass, and the baby promptly rolled over on her back, giggling while Bibbits dashed around her, licking any part of her he could reach.

  “She won’t stop crying,” Lex Hall said again.

  “She’s fine,” Ella Dane said. “Happy as a june bug.”

  “She’s hungry.”

  “If she was hungry, the yam would be inside, not outside.”

  Bibbits licked yam off the baby’s nose. She crowed with joy and grabbed his ears. He yelped but, to Lacey’s surprise, did not bite. Lacey knelt and pulled the baby’s hands off the dog’s ears. “Don’t hurt the doggy,” she said. Bibbits barked, whined, and licked the cookie crumbs off Lacey’s hands.

  “Obby, oof oof,” the baby told her.

  “Doggy says woof woof. Good doggy.”

  “We’ll clean her up,” Ella Dane said. Emergency, as always, brought out the best in her. Lacey knew she had not forgotten Drew, and as soon as she’d dealt with this baby, she’d turn her mind to the problem. “I need a towel. Does she have clothes?”

  “They’re at home,” Lex said wretchedly, like a conscientious child who had forgotten his homework for the first time. “Her diapers and everything.”

  “Then you’d better go get them,” Ella Dane said, and Lex hurried back to his car. Harry ran into his house and came back with a brown towel, and Ella Dane swaddled the baby. Seeing the dangerous hands restrained, Bibbits started licking the baby’s face. Harry held out his arms for the baby, but Ella Dane held on to her and said, “Who is he, and why does he come to you?”

  “Crazy nephew. Nobody else to go to when he needs help. And this is Theo.”

  “He’s driving around with a naked baby in his car? Is there a mother?”

  “They’re getting divorced. I’ll take the baby now.”

  “Let me do it. I’m going to be a grandma soon and I’m out of practice.”

  Lacey watched. Harry went inside for a bucket of warm water, soap, and a washcloth, and Ella Dane unrolled the baby from the towel and got to work with Bibbits’s help, right there on the grass. She didn’t seem that badly out of practice. In five minutes, Theo was laughing, trying to grab the washcloth. Ella Dane let her chew on it and laughed when Theo stuck out her tongue at the taste of soap.

  “We live and learn,” Ella Dane said. “What does she eat, cupcakes and bacon?”

  “Fried chicken and white bread,” Harry said.

  Lacey sat quietly while Harry explained the situation. She hoped Eric was doing all he could to help Lex.

  When Lex arrived with the clothes and diapers, she was happy to see Theo give a shout of laughter and crawl over to him, and even happier to see him smile as he swung her into the air. Theo landed in a laughing bundle on his chest, and she grabbed his nose and said, “Da da da,” in a tone of clear delight. A baby that young had no tact. If she had reason to fear her father, she would have cringed from him.

  Ella Dane took Lex and the baby into Harry’s house, and Harry stayed to give Lacey a hand up from the grass. “Thanks,” she said. “So what are you going to do?”

  She followed him into his house, where they stood in the doorway and watched Ella Dane and Lex playing with Theo. The man was as innocent as his own child, but something had to be done.

  “They can stay here tonight. I’m always here for Lex.”

  “Not if you move to Australia.”

  Lacey knew about crazy parents. She was still a certified teacher, and as far as she was concerned, a mandated reporter too. She could not go back to her house and pretend everything was fine. A child in the midst of a custody fight would have a volunteer guardian appointed by the court. She had briefly served as one herself, last year, for a girl whose noncustodial father had tried to take her from Lacey’s classroom several times. She’d made contact and left a card with every member of the girl’s extended family, so she said, “The guardian ad litem must have left you their number. This is when you have to call them. The guardian, or the police.”

  “Why get the law involved?”

  “This is not okay.” If Lacey had seen a parent like Lex with a baby like Theo in the car line at school, waiting to pick up a student—naked baby screaming, dad obviously decompensating—she would have called the police without thinking twice. She had no patience with anyone who put a parent’s feelings above a child’s safety, although she’d give Harry a chance to handle it before she stepped in. “I don’t have the guardian’s contact info,” she said. “I’ll be calling 911. I’m not leaving till it’s done.”

  Harry pulled his cell phone from one pocket and his wallet from another, sorted through it for a business card, and made the call.

  “You did the right thing,” she said when he closed his phone. She still needed to ask him about Drew, but this was not the time. Thank you for betraying your nephew, now tell me about the ghost: like that would work.

  “Lex has had such a hard life.”

  “When you’re gone to Australia, and Lex panics, what’s he going to do?”

  “He’s not dangerous.”

  Lacey wasn’t so sure. She’d seen too many bullied children snap. Last year, she’d been first on the scene when a fourth grader, a quiet boy whose family was so poor that he wore his older sister’s hand-me-down shirts and sneakers, decided his classmates had called him gay often enough. He took off his sister’s blouse, knocked down his cruelest tormentor, and knotted the sleeves around the boy’s neck. It was all so quick, neat and silent, none of the teachers supervising recess noticed. Lacey’s class was in music, so she was in the teachers’ lounge revising her rubric for the big Westward Expansion project, and her eye was drawn to unexpected motion under the slides. She didn’t stop to call for help. She opened the window, kicked out the screen, and arrived at the slides as the bullied child inserted a stick into the knot of his improvised garrote and began to twist.

  The look on that boy’s face was one she would never forget. He didn’t seem angry. He was intent, focused on his work, attentive to issues of torque and leverage—keeping his knees on the bully’s upper arms, turning the stick in the knot—oblivious to thought or reason. She had to lift his fingers off the twisted shirtsleeves one by one, and then he turned that deliberate unconscious look on her and rammed his head into her midriff, knocking the breath out of her. He twisted the knotted shirt around the stick again. Breathless, struggling to fill her collapsed lungs, she had no strength to stop him or call for help. When the playground teachers finally noticed something was wrong, it took all four of them to pull him away.

  Lex Hall’s face had something of the same quality: thought beneath words, a human intelligence without the full faculty of language. He smiled, but she didn’t believe him. He sat on the floor with Theo on his lap, watching as Ella Dane counted the baby’s toes. “This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy had roasted organic celery root, this little piggy had none, and this little piggy went wee wee wee all the way home.” She tickled Theo’s foot. Lex and the baby laughed.

  Lacey felt warmth at her back. Harry stood behind her, uncomfortably near. “He’ll stay if I cook,” Harry said. “How about you?”

  “No thanks,” Lacey said. She’d take her chances with Ella Dane’s roasted celery root rather than be here when Lex’s wife’s lawyer sent the cops for Theo. That intense listening look: she didn’t want to get downwind of that. “What happened to him?” she asked, flicking her hand at Lex. She’d never seen anyone over the age of ten look so damaged. Adults learned to hide it.

  “His parents died when he was little. You’re sure you won’t stay? I’ve got a frozen lasagna. Forty minutes in the oven. Keep us company.”

  “How’d they die?”

  “One of those things,” he said vaguely. “Lex, does Theo like lasagna?”

  “See you later,” Lacey
said. “Mom, we’d better get home.”

  If this was going to turn into some sort of crisis, she didn’t want Ella Dane in the middle of it. And there was Drew waiting for her at home. The Chutes and Ladders game spread on the kitchen table, the plate of sugar cookies half eaten; she had to get that cleaned up before Eric came home and asked what she’d been doing, had she climbed into the attic, risked the baby’s life for a board game? But as Lacey reached down to shake Ella Dane’s shoulder and hurry her up, Lex looked up at her, with the baby now cradled against his left shoulder, stuffing her fist in her mouth.

  “He called someone,” Lex said.

  There was no point lying to him, not with that look full of dark less-than-language thought. She saw that look on some children racing on the playground, and others with crayons in their hand making bright private worlds, and they were as sensitive as dogs to any hint of falseness. “The guardian ad litem,” she said. “He’s worried about the baby.”

  “The guardian doesn’t like me. Your husband is my lawyer. I’m a good daddy.”

  “I believe you.” He knew to ask for help. She’d seen too many children whose parents believed they could go it alone to undervalue that. “You’re going to have to learn some things before you can take care of the baby by yourself.”

  He stood up so carefully, the sleeping baby didn’t even twitch. “I’m learning.”

  “I know. Come on, Mom, your dog’s hungry.”

  They left Harry’s house together, and Lacey watched while Lex buckled the baby into her car seat, something else too many parents didn’t learn. There still might be an armed standoff when the ex-wife’s lawyer caught up with Lex, but with Theo the only available hostage, Lex would surrender rather than threaten her. “Can you lock the door?” she said to Ella Dane.

  “You’re not afraid of that poor man, are you?” Ella Dane said. “He’s too scared of himself to be a danger to anyone. Fear is a sign of imbalance in the spirit.”

  “I know. He’s unbalanced, so I want my door locked.”

  “Not his spirit. Imbalance in your spirit. Your third chakra is obscured. If you would just let me massage you with locust oil—”

  Lacey surprised herself with a laugh. “Oh, come on. You just make this stuff up as you go along. Locust oil! Like I’d let you rub your nasty old squashed grasshoppers all over me.” She had been pretending to misunderstand locust oil for years, along with royal jelly and anything made of hemp.

  “Locust bean,” Ella Dane said, as she always did. “I’m going down to the spa for a bottle of oil of cassia for spiritual cleansing. Also a vial of Anacardium.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A homeopathic remedy. It’s good for body odor, poison ivy, and spirit possession. Also hemorrhoids and warts. You coming?”

  Lacey wanted nothing more than to leave. But at Ella Dane’s words, a wave of heat ran over the back of her head: that was anger—Drew angry at the thought of her leaving. Walking out the door wouldn’t help. She’d seen him in the front yard, on the street, as far away as the hospital. He could reach into Lacey’s hands, make her grab Ella Dane’s steering wheel and crash the car into the maple, if he wanted.

  “I’d rather not,” she said lightly. “I’ll stay here and see if Drew will talk.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “And I’m starving.”

  “Put this in your pocket,” Ella Dane said, handing her an amethyst crystal. “Strong protection.”

  “See you later,” Lacey said in a cheerful tone. She didn’t want Drew to see her afraid. Ella Dane left, and Lacey went into the kitchen to fry up a couple of eggs and call Eric, to let him know that Lex Hall might be in trouble. The chunk of amethyst pulled her sweater down on the left. “You want an egg?” she said to the empty kitchen, and Drew did not answer.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  ERIC’S PHONE WENT STRAIGHT TO VOICE MAIL, so maybe he was already on his way to Lex’s, or home. Lacey didn’t leave a message. When she turned from the refrigerator with two eggs in her left hand, she came face-to-face with Drew. Usually he slid up behind her, or beside her, and she felt him before she saw him. This time, he flicked into existence without warning, dazzling like a camera flash. She flung her hands up, and the eggs splashed on the floor. “Don’t do that,” she snapped. “Look what you made me do.”

  “Let’s finish the game.”

  “Let me . . .” No, not that voice—she sounded like a frantic child. She opened the back of her throat and let the teacher voice rise out, alto and firm. “Let me get these eggs cleaned up.”

  “I was winning. I want to finish.”

  On her first day of practice teaching, her mentor had warned that children, like feral dogs, could sense fear and would eat her alive if they had the chance. She stopped herself from agreeing with Drew, anything he wanted if he promised not to hurt her and the baby, and she held the teacher voice, the voice that ruled the room. “You see those eggs on the floor,” she said.

  “So?”

  “So dried egg is way harder to clean than wet egg. It won’t take a minute.”

  “So?”

  “So I’m going to clean them up, and then we’ll play.” It was important to appear normal, to keep Drew in the mode of ordinary child, not angry ghost, until she worked out what to do next. She tried a smile and hoped it worked; the muscles above her lip didn’t seem to be moving right.

  “You’re just scared of losing,” Drew said. “Scaredy scaredy scaredy.”

  “Sweetie, it’s Chutes and Ladders, not the Super Bowl. I’ll get over it.” Lacey scooped up the eggs in a paper towel, sprayed cleaner on the floor, and scrubbed with another paper towel. Bibbits patted in, busy little feet rapping on the floor. He stood on his hind legs and turned a circle for her, then stood up, with his front paws paddling in the air. Ella Dane had gone out without feeding him. And he was on another brown-rice-and-vinegar purge, poor thing.

  “Let’s see.” Lacey opened the pantry. To appear normal—feeding the dog, that was a thing she’d normally do. “There’s tuna, maybe.” Bibbits dropped to the floor and stood with his head down, panting. That short dance had exhausted him; there’d been days when he skipped from room to room on his back feet, poor old boy. She wished she had something better than tuna to give him.

  “Play with me,” Drew chanted at the kitchen table, “play with me, play with me.”

  “I’m just going to feed the dog.”

  He stuck out his lower lip. “You said you’d just clean up the eggs.”

  “And now I’m just going to feed the dog. It won’t take a minute.”

  “You said you’d play with me. You promised.” Bibbits, seeing the can in Lacey’s hand, was dancing again. “Stupid dog.” Drew kicked out at Bibbits, and the dog’s feet slid away from him. He fell heavily on his side, with a yelp.

  “Drew!” Lacey picked Bibbits up and felt along his sides. He wriggled in her arms, trying to lick her hands. “Drew, sweetie, we don’t hurt animals.”

  “You promised.”

  She popped the can of tuna and dumped it into a plate, stealing a chunk for herself and spreading the rest around with her finger for Bibbits. Her imitation of normalcy began to seem real. She was any woman on Forrester Lane, a woman with house, husband, child, and dog; she was feeding the dog, then she would play with the child. Bibbits had trouble with tuna, unless she broke apart the big pieces for him. He’d swallow it in chunks, only to regurgitate later, in her bed. “Almost done,” she said cheerfully.

  “And then there’ll be something else that won’t take a minute. Like your stupid husband might call, or your stupid baby might kick, or your stupid dog might need to go out, and then something else and something else, and you promised.”

  “Drew!” She put the plate down on the table, ignoring the now frantic dog, and wiped her hand on her thigh. “Look, it only took a—”

  The telephone rang. Lacey made a motion toward it, but stopped herself. She couldn’t turn her back on him. He m
ight do anything. He might rush into her, as he had done before; take her baby by the throat and choke it inside her. “What do you want?”

  “Go on, answer the phone,” Drew said bitterly. “It’s somebody who matters. You don’t care about me, nobody does. And I didn’t even cheat.” He swept his arm across the table, and the game pieces scattered. Lacey flexed her hand. Had he done that through her, as he had played the game? She’d felt nothing. “Answer it!”

  The phone rang again. Lacey let the answering machine take it, although she heard Eric’s voice. “I’m listening to you,” she said. “I’m listening right now.”

  “Nobody ever listens.”

  “I care about you.”

  “Nobody cares.”

  Lacey knelt in front of him, took his shoulders in both her hands, and looked into his face. What did he want, more than anything, what was all the noise about? He was the same as any other child. She knew about noisy boys because she had been a quiet girl; when she was little, she’d longed to do what they did, to demand along with them, Look at me, listen to me, love me. To be a person no one could ignore. She said, slowly and clearly, “I am paying attention to you, Drew.”

  He wrenched himself away. “Nobody listens, nobody cares, nobody loves me!” He grabbed the plate of tuna off the table and whirled out of the kitchen. Lacey and Bibbits followed him.

  Drew ran up the stairs. He did not float or swoop or drift; his feet pounded hard and solid on every step. Bibbits raced after him, yipping with hunger and excitement, an old dog, not used to such games. “I accuse you,” Drew shouted, from the darkness that gathered at the top of the stairs. Lacey held on to the curved edge of the banister and could not speak. “I accuse you,” he said again, his voice now deeper and older. “You are guilty, all of you guilty, all, all, all.” And Bibbits’s desperate bark mingled with Drew’s voice.

  The front door opened and Ella Dane came in. “I meant to ask if you wanted . . .” she began. She stopped short, staring toward the noise. “Is that Bibbits? That noise?” She pulled the brown glass vial from her pocket. “Bibbits, honey, come get your meddies.” She headed for the stairs, and Lacey clutched her arm and pulled her back.