Starter House

by Sonja Condit

  The fear came from Lacey, her irrational thoughts infecting him. This was the power she had over him. She said ghost and he almost killed himself on the highway, because of a random something in the mirror. Ella Dane had brought it into their house, whatever it was, a chimera of her superstition—candle smoke and the echoes of chants—Lacey’s childhood come to life. And it was his own fault. She’d warned him and he’d insisted on bringing Ella Dane into their home.

  He couldn’t live like that. Lacey had to choose. Him or her mother. He controlled his racing mind with conscious plans: debit cards, credit cards. Keep the house—that was the only reasonable plan.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  THE NEXT DAY, Sunday afternoon, Lacey and Ella Dane stood in the Civil War section of the Greeneburg Cemetery. Bibbits had led them here. Ella Dane opened the cooler, where the dog lay cradled in ice bags, paws curling toward his body, black lips locked in an eternal snarl.

  Lacey recalled the dogs of her childhood: Henry who was hit by a car; Noodle who had a high fever and vomited for three days before closing his eyes forever; the smiling Pomeranian called Salsa who lived to the age of nineteen and simply stopped breathing one day. Each of these had a real grave, chosen with care. Bibbits deserved the same.

  “Is this the place?” she said. A week ago, she would have sighed and rolled her eyes. But if Drew could throw a tantrum over a game of Chutes and Ladders, then Bibbits could pick his own grave. Maybe Ella Dane wasn’t as crazy as she seemed.

  On the other hand, maybe she was exactly that crazy. It was five in the afternoon, and this was the fourth place that Bibbits’s finicky and indecisive spirit had led them. They’d been to the antebellum mansion-museum Gage House, then to the playground at Rosemont Park, which Bibbits approved until Lacey mentioned that the playground was soon to be remodeled and repaved, with a climbing wall, a bungee bridge, and a skateboard half-pipe. “Bibbits will get dug up,” she said.

  “He won’t like that,” Ella Dane agreed, and they visited Burgoyne Elementary, which made Lacey nervous—only three miles from home, could Drew sense her, so near?—because Bibbits loved children and wanted to be near them. This came as news to Lacey. Bibbits growled at children and had bitten several. Here, too, the problem was new construction. Sooner or later, the district would scrape up enough money to rebuild Burgoyne’s termite-ridden gymnasium, and the project might involve any part of the school’s grounds.

  “Bibbits wants peace,” Ella Dane said, so here they were at Greeneburg Cemetery, under a statue of a horse with an empty saddle. Lacey had researched this spot while writing up a sample lesson plan and field trip for her education portfolio, in her junior year.

  One of Greeneburg’s local heroes, General John Banister, was memorialized here. He had disappeared at Shiloh, leaving his horse wounded on the battlefield. The horse charged a Union cannon and trampled five of the enemy. The general’s grieving family buried the horse, planting a garden of rosemary and lavender around the life-size bronze. When the lost general was discovered alive, operating a bakery under the name of Shemple in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1883, there was some talk of removing the statue. By then, it had become traditional for young men to propose marriage under the animal’s eyes, and its muzzle was gold with constant stroking, and anyway, Fly-by-Night had been a true hero of the Confederacy, even if General Banister unfortunately wasn’t.

  “This is the perfect place for Bibbits,” Ella Dane said. She knelt beside the cooler and touched the dog’s head. “Isn’t it, baby?”

  Lacey’s cell phone rang. She scrambled in her purse—was it Eric? She held the phone in her hands without looking at the screen and let it ring one more time before looking—make him wait for just a second longer—but it wasn’t him. The number was unfamiliar, the area code 803. “Hello?” she said cautiously.

  “Ms. Miszlak? Ev Craddock. You left this number.”

  Ev Craddock. How dare he call her, cluttering up her phone while she was waiting for Eric to call; he might call any second. Lacey bit the inside of her upper lip to keep from shouting at the man. “Thanks for getting back to me,” she said.

  “You’ll want a room?” he said. “Off-season rates.”

  A room, room for what? Oh yes, his beachside motel. “No, I wanted to talk to you about the house where you used to live, on Forrester Lane in Greeneburg.”

  “You a reporter?”

  “No. I live there.”

  “You calling from the house?”

  “No, I wanted to ask you a question. About your wife. About her trial.”

  Everett Craddock gave a wet and rattling sigh. “You sure you want to know?”

  Lacey instinctively wiped her own phone on her sleeve. “The newspaper said the jury came back in only forty-five minutes, and I was wondering why were they so quick?” Another death rattle from the phone. “Please,” Lacey said. “I’ve been living in the house. I’m pregnant. I really need to know.”

  “I bet you do. Her clothes were wet. Tyler had bruises on his head, matched her hands. Couple of his hairs under her fingernails. She done it, no question. You want to know more, you come down here.”

  Lacey patted Fly-by-Night’s golden nose. “Is there more to tell?”

  “You left the house?” Ev Craddock asked.

  “Yes, I’m done with it.”

  “It ain’t done with you.” He began to cough with a ripping noise, as if some wet and necessary vital organ had torn loose and was now working its way up to his mouth—a kidney, maybe. Lacey waited, flinching at the worst of the gurgles.

  In the meantime, a group of children with cameras had gathered around Fly-by-Night. Lacey scanned the cemetery and noticed all the casual strollers, some snapping the more exciting monuments with their cell phones, others setting up careful geometrical shots with professional-looking outfits with big black lenses.

  They’d never be able to bury Bibbits without being seen. And, worse, photographed. She’d never get a job in the district with something like that on her record. “Hello,” she said into her phone. “Mr. Craddock, are you okay?”

  “A room,” he said.

  “Bibbits doesn’t like it,” Ella Dane said. “Too many children. Too much noise.”

  Lacey blinked at this—they’d been at Burgoyne Elementary, not an hour ago. What happened to Bibbits loving children and wanting to be near them? “What about the beach?” she said.

  “It’s outside,” Ev Craddock said. “That’s where we keep it.”

  “Bibbits loved the beach,” Ella Dane said.

  “Two double beds,” Lacey said into the phone. “Nonsmoking, and we can be there tomorrow afternoon.” She’d have preferred to leave today, immediately, and get as far from Forrester Lane as she could, but she had an appointment with Dr. Vlk tomorrow morning, and Eric might still call. She’d left eight messages for him and she refused to try again. It was his turn. Surely, surely, he wasn’t going to stop talking to her. Their marriage couldn’t end like this. He had to call. Maybe he was calling right now and leaving a message.

  Everett Craddock reserved their room, and Ella Dane worked her way through the crowd of children. “Another thing,” Lacey said abruptly, as if she had been arguing with her mother, “we need clothes.”

  “You don’t want to go back to the house, do you? Bibbits is scared of it.”

  This was the first rational message Bibbits had sent all day, and Lacey wasn’t about to argue. “We’ll pick up a couple things in the hotel,” she said. Something new, something Drew had never seen or touched. There was a gift shop. They wouldn’t have maternity clothes, but she could at least grab a new T-shirt and replace the rest of her clothes tomorrow at the mall on the way out of town.

  They drove back to the Skyview. While Ella Dane replenished Bibbits’s ice, Lacey sailed into the Skyview Shoppe, where her credit card was refused. She laughed. “Wrong card,” she said, “sorry,” and handed over two of her precious twenties. Thirty-two dollars for two T-shirts, and Eric had canceled
the cards. How could he—how dared he, after she’d supported him and taken out loans for his education. He had income and she didn’t, but six months ago it was the opposite, and she’d never thrown it in his face, not even once. Not even when he complained about how they were burning through their savings, when it was all money she’d earned. She kept the stiff, public smile stapled to her mouth all the way out of the shop and across the lobby.

  Her phone rang in the elevator, and it was Eric. Too late. Canceling the cards, after all they’d been through. That was just mean. She turned the phone off without answering.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  THE LAWYERS SPOKE too fast and there were too many of them. And where was the green line on the floor? Lex had followed the green line to this room, which was Family Court, even though the judge was too young and wasn’t wearing a black robe. How could you tell who the judge was when everybody was dressed the same? The judge wore a plain blue tie. Plainer than any of the lawyers’ ties. Lex’s lawyer, the young one, wore a brown tie with tiny gold squares in it, and sometimes the squares were floating and sometimes they were falling. Lex kept his eyes on the plain blue tie, but he was worried about the green line. Without it, he would never be able to find his way out.

  “I have to go,” he said.

  The lawyer pulled at his gold-squared tie. He had a tiepin with a square yellow stone in it. It wasn’t lined up with the gold squares in the tie. Lex had to look away. When he looked up, he couldn’t find the judge. Where was the plain blue tie? Where was the green line that would take him back to the big glass door?

  “I have to go,” he said again.

  Jeanne’s lawyer, that scary woman, was staring at him. He pushed his chair back and lunged for the courtroom door. It was a plain gray door, plain as the judge’s tie.

  Bangs and shouts. The young lawyer grabbed Lex’s elbow and yanked him downward and sideways, back into his chair. “Mr. Hall, you have to stay here.”

  “Where’s Theo?” They had to give Theo to him now. That was what the hearing was for. Lex’s lawyer would explain everything, and then the judge would give Theo to Lex, and Lex would take her home. All these words, the story, the evidence, that was what had to happen, the only thing that mattered. Plain blue tie. There it was. He looked straight at the judge’s tie—always look straight at the judge and keep your face up, the old man said, long ago, when Lex used to get in trouble.

  “She’s at home with her grandmother,” the lawyer said.

  That was wrong, because Theo’s grandmother was dead. “There’s no grandmother,” Lex said loudly. He stood up again. “She died a long time ago! Where’s Theo?” They had her in a room, maybe in a closet or some small place, the kind of place where a little kid would hide when there were too many words and the words were too loud. “She’s dead,” he said to the Family Court. Maybe Theo was nearby and she could hear him. “Theo!”

  “Counselor,” the judge said angrily to the young lawyer, and Lex recognized that voice; all judges had that voice. “Control your client.”

  “She’s with your wife’s mother,” the lawyer said. “It’s almost over; you’ve just got to sit down for a minute.”

  Theo was with Big Jeanne? “No,” Lex said. “That’s not right.” Nobody would listen; they never did. “You can’t do that,” he said, and two of the courtroom cops dragged him outside and made him sit in a cold metal chair in the hallway, and they wouldn’t even let him go to the bathroom.

  But the green line went straight up to the Family Court door. He leaned forward in the chair so that he could look at the intersection of two gray hallways. The green line turned left, so that was the way out. One of the courtroom cops slammed Lex back against the wall and said, “Stay where you’re put.”

  Lex was used to staying where he was put. That was what courts did. They put him places, and he stayed there. Eventually they would let him go, and he could go back to his house that he had bought, and his job that he was good at, and he would take his baby home and take care of her like a good daddy should. If he needed help, the old man would help him. He leaned back against the wall and began to hum.

  “Stop that,” the cop said, so he stopped.

  Everybody came out of the courtroom. Jeanne walked past him with her lawyer, and she didn’t even look at him. Here came his lawyer at last, looking tired and sick and alone. Something bad had happened to him. “When do I get Theo?” Lex asked.

  The lawyer pulled off his brown tie with the gold squares. Lex was relieved. He wouldn’t have to look at the squares changing direction anymore, or the sideways tiepin. “You didn’t help yourself back there, but there wasn’t much doubt how it would go.”

  “When do I get Theo?”

  “Friday, from two to four, in MacAvoy’s office. Supervised.”

  The lawyer didn’t understand. Lex said patiently, “When can I take her home?”

  “You’ve got supervised visitation in MacAvoy’s office, two hours a week.”

  “I’ve got her room all nice for her.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Hall.” The lawyer started walking along the green line, and Lex followed him. “Here’s the thing. After what happened last week—”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “You drove across town with the baby naked in your car, because you couldn’t give her a bath. You’ll have to let the custody issue lie for a while, that’s all.”

  They waited for the elevator. Lex checked: yes, the green line ran toward the elevator doors. How did the judge know about Theo’s bath that went so wrong? The lawyer’s wife knew, but he was Lex’s lawyer. The nice lady, the lawyer’s wife’s mother, she knew about it, because she had helped get Theo clean. Was she the one who told Jeanne’s lawyer? He couldn’t believe it. She didn’t even ask him, What happened, are you okay?, the way the old man did, over and over; she just cleaned Theo and played with her.

  The old man. The old man knew. He called someone. “The old man told Jeanne,” Lex said as the elevator arrived.

  “I really can’t say,” the lawyer said, and Lex knew what that meant. The lawyer pushed his foot against the elevator door to hold it open, but he didn’t get in. “Mr. Hall, you’re going to have at least a month before your next hearing. So you’ve got time. You’re going to have to look into getting new representation.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You need another lawyer, Mr. Hall.”

  “Is it too hard for you? Do you need help?” Lex was disappointed. But the lawyer looked tired. Maybe he was scared of Jeanne’s lawyer. Jeanne’s lawyer was a very scary woman. If he needed help, then asking for help was the right thing to do. “Is it something you can’t handle on your own?” Lex asked.

  “Mr. Hall. This is something I can’t handle at all. Here’s a list of firms. As soon as you’ve got a new lawyer, I’ll send your file. You need to do this right away.”

  “But you’re my lawyer.”

  “I can’t be your lawyer anymore.” He pushed the piece of paper toward Lex. “You call one of these people, and they’ll help you better than I can. Take the paper.”

  Lex took the paper.

  “Call them today. They need to deal with spousal support, that’s coming up next. Now you’ll call them today, won’t you? Say yes.”

  “Yes,” Lex said. He folded the paper in half so he wouldn’t have to look at it.

  “Good.” The lawyer pulled his foot out of the elevator and patted the doors as they closed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you, Mr. Hall, and I’ll have all your files ready for your new lawyer. You take care, now.”

  “Thank you,” Lex said as the door closed. He closed his eyes. The elevator shook, and then it began to climb, slowly, in little jumps. He crumpled the piece of paper and dropped it. He didn’t want a new lawyer. He already had a lawyer. He just had to make him understand. The elevator stopped, and he waited a few seconds with his eyes closed, hoping that when he looked, if he was patient and good, he would see the green line that wo
uld lead him to the big glass doors.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  LACEY KEPT COUNTING THE MONEY, and it came out the same every time. “Two thousand dollars,” she said. “It’s not much, considering.”

  “Something will come up.” Ella Dane was in the bathroom, emptying the melted water from the ice bags. Lacey could smell the dog, not the usual dark smell of Bibbits, but a sharper odor, with a skunky, sulfuric overtone. The sooner they got the poor animal buried, the better.

  Something will come up. For as long as Lacey could remember, that was Ella Dane’s motto, and something usually did come up. They’d live in the car for a few days and then start traveling from one of Ella Dane’s friends to another, sleeping on couches, in sleeping bags, in attic bonus rooms with no air-conditioning, in basements or converted garages. One of these friends would hook Ella Dane up with a friend of a friend who needed a house sitter or had a trailer sitting empty on family land. Once, they lived for three months in a model home in a new subdivision, the builder paying Ella Dane to keep it and the two other models clean and ready to show.

  Mostly, Ella Dane earned a few dollars here and there, babysitting, housecleaning, gardening. And she could always work with dogs. She’d advertise dog training in your home, house training a specialty. They always had money, never much, just enough.

  Lacey sat at her computer, trying to figure out what baby was born at 571 Forrester Lane in 1971—Greeley Honeywick had been so positive, surely there was a way to find this out—and thinking Eric-type thoughts about Ella Dane. Would she drift from one odd job to another for the rest of her life? Did she have any money saved? What kind of Social Security benefits could a person receive, who had practically no official income over her lifetime? Who was going to take care of Ella Dane when she was old?