“See if it works?” he said, in a whisper. She kissed him.
How naughty we were…
We were a couple to be reckoned with, Miss Glenn.
* * *
The room was chilly. The walls, so far back in the house, were likely uninsulated.
On the way out of the room, a terrible thought occurred to her.
She believed that might have been the last time she would ever make love. It surprised her at first, the thought coming like that. It sat in her mind. She didn’t go past it. After a moment, she decided if that was it, that would be fine.
She slowly swung the bed up to its place in the wall. It disappeared easily, as though it had never been.
She shut off the light and closed the little door again.
On her way up the stairs she glanced out of the tall, narrow window between the new front door and the wall for the stairs. Two children, jackets undone, no hats or scarves, walked by the house with a glance. It would be noon, then, children on their way home for lunch. There was an elementary school(close to schools!) about two blocks from the house.
They’d never had children. Howard hadn’t wanted any and Glenn hadn’t had feelings one way or the other, although tipped in his favor was the fact that her family was in England. That would have made it more difficult, more awkward, growing up without a grandma. It had never made an issue of itself. Glenn had had her moments of regret, but nothing life-threatening, and they had passed through those years spending nappy money on a boat, went to dinner on birthday cash and drank margaritas in Mexico at Christmas after her mother had died. Tuition went to a cottage.
It was lately, in her fiftieth year, that she had had her regrets most seriously. And not because she longed for the patter of grandbaby feet, but because she was alone in her grief. No one to mourn with her. There was no one to say,Do you remember when Daddy —no one who knew him the way she did. No one to rage at the gods with. Who felt his absence with the same intimacy of his presence. She was alone in that.
The master bedroom was doubly blessed, with both a medieval arched doorway and matching, fitted door, and a large double window on the south side overlooking the street. The floors on the upper level had not been redone. They were in decent shape, however, with worn spots by the doors. There must have been a carpet runner in the hall, because no path had been beaten between bedrooms and bath. In places the varnish was nearly gone and the floor was lackluster. There were no unforgiving gouges or broken boards or, worse, inept repairs. It was fine.
There were three-plus bedrooms (the room with the Murphy bed was the “plus”) and a bath. The master bedroom door was directly at the top of the stairs, to the left, and got a south-facing window; the Murphy room was under the stairs to the peak of the wall, and beyond that the rest of the wall must have been dead space. She thought to inquire as to whether or not the Previous Owners had had it insulated. Such a large empty space could be a heating nightmare. She made a mental note. The rest of the rooms ran off the hall. A large house, but the rooms themselves were very small, excepting the master bedroom, which was comparable to most homes. The bathroom was equally small. Curious for the first time in the house, she popped in to see.
The tub had been bought at auction and hauled in through the bathroom window, enlarged for that purpose. It was the only item listed in the insurance letter and she felt it had been mentioned more for amusement’s sake than anything else.
It was enormous, larger nearly by half than regular tubs. They’d used a hydraulic lift to bring it up to the second story and she smiled imagining the show put on for the neighbors. It was quite a find. The feet alone likely justified the purchase.
They were beast’s feet. Claws poked out from each rounded toe in sharp detail. The underside had been painted a soft color. A nice rose, not that eighties poofter pink that could still be found on walls in the city, if you weren’t careful of the company you kept. The bathroom had been (at least) decorated with restraint. There was wallpaper, but nothing obvious, just a small white flower or something on a pink that matched the tub. The floor was tiled. It could not have been the original, of course, that would have been impossible, but still it was equally restrained and very old-fashioned-looking in the manner of the tub. It was very nice. Bathrooms and kitchens sold a house. Kitchens particularly, but a lady liked her bath.
The soft coloring of the underside of the tub seemed a direct attempt to downplay the fierceness of the claws. If so, it had not succeeded. It looked like an animal. Of course, it was supposed to.
But still.
It looked like something that could eat you.
* * *
Across from the bathroom was a child’s room. The walls had been painted a sky blue. It was a deep, rich blue, not robin’s egg blue, which always seemed whiny to Glenn. It was nice. You could almost imagine clouds and lying on your back finding trucks, elephants and an old man with a long beard.
The windows had been trimmed in recovered wood from some estate sale, or maybe a gem collected from somewhere special. The edges were crudely cut, and left roughly hewn, the wood stained dark, but not so dark that the character and age of the wood didn’t show through. They had varnished it all to a gleam.
The baseboards and cupboard door, as well, were obviously scavenged wood from some lot or estate sale. The closet couldn’t be rightly called that, the low door not quite reaching the sloped ceiling, indicating a cubbyhole as opposed to something full-sized. The edges were not finished, but rough and uneven in places. It was very low. A child might like the size of it. The wood was scarred and aged, although the door had been freshly varnished and shone even in the limited light in the bedroom. She suspected there had been some sort of theme in mind that had not quite been fully realized, but Glenn got the general impression of something western or farmish: a barn or horse stall. It made sense with the sky-blue walls—the sky.
The little cubby door did not have a knob, but a latch, the sort you might find on a garden gate from a long time ago.
Glenn walked across the floor to the window, to see the view. It was of the front street. The southern exposure would give good light on a sunny day. It was very small. But there were three other bedrooms. This didn’t have to be a child’s room, it could be a home office, or a nice sewing-quilting room, that sort of thing. The dark trim seemed out of place, but it was interesting. Afeature. She silently hoped the other rooms did not match.
Her eyes were drawn again to the little door. There was something inviting and whimsical about the latch that made you want to reach out and—
Put your clothes away,she thought, and smiled with it. Would a child like that? Would it promote good habits, putting your clothes away, toys in a row?There you go. Chores done. Good lad.
Come inside.
She pulled the little door open. Darkness yawned back, terribly dark, without the sun shining in to light it. It seemed to go back very far. A child could get lost in there for days.
Cool, chilled air followed the opening of the door. A puddle of it seemed to settle at her feet. Glenn frowned, thinking of the space under the stairs not being insulated and how chilly it might be in the dead of winter in this little child’s room when the sun was not shining. There was an earthy smell as well and she wondered if the space had been a cold storage at one time. There was an unpleasant undertone to the odor, like something gone bad. Even in the cold. In the dark.
She swung the door shut and lifted the latch and closed it good. The other room was down the hall.
It had been closed up for a long time. Unlike anywhere else in the hall, there was dust, undisturbed in front of the threshold. She would just take a quick peek before leaving. She needed people. She would have liked to be back at the office, joking with Elsie about the pillar and Gavin Edwards’s new toupee.
Instead, she opened the door that had been shut to yellow walls and a smell that was both unpleasant and familiar. It was faint, leftover, like the varnish on the first floor, but nonethe
less present. It stung in her nostrils, dug into her memory—
—he’s the same today no progress not expecting
Can we get you a cup of tea, Mrs. Darnley—
the smell of swimming pools and the custodial room off the parking lot at their building downtown. The smell of
Can we get you a cup of tea?
disinfectant.
She looked up at the white ceiling, the circular molded pattern around the light fixture, like berries or grapes in relief. The walls were garish, bright and artificially cheerful, as though manufactured for a purpose. A sickroom.
Howard’s room at St. Matthew’s.
If she walked across the floor now, instead of the click of her heels over the wood planks echoing, she would hear thesquitch squitch of rubber soles. She could almost hear the clanging of meal trays and whispers of guests. The hum and blip of machines.
Oh, How.
* * *
He’d been in the middle of a story, a not particularly funny story, but the only one he had from the day, about a lady trying to take back a skinny turkey at the butcher’s.
Glenn had been tired that day, too, having unloaded (finally) a huge, expensive house that she’d had listed for nearly a year, to a couple that shouldn’t have bought it. Ethically, she wasn’t comfortable with it, but practically, she was glad to have it done. There had been a lot of paperwork that had sat untended while she walked the couple—nice older pair, the Reynoldses—through the motions of buying what was going to be a large investment for two people who should have been past large investments and beginning short-term projects such as annual trips to Florida in some sort of large van. It was their third trip through the big old house.
They had signed, and while that had been lovely, it had taken up the rest of the afternoon with more paperwork and phone calls, and then she had had to stay later than usual to finish up some other paperwork that had waited long enough. By the time she got home Howard had supper ready and on the table and was bursting with energy and enthusiasm that Glenn had tried to catch, but couldn’t. So she’d half listened to the story and let her mind wander in and out of the conversation, adding appropriatehmmmms in the right places.
He’d made a curry. Curry played havoc with her digestive system and even as she ate it, enjoying the flavor, she made a mental note to take an antacid later. Howard should, too, she remembered thinking. His digestive system was even older than hers and more susceptible to the cruelties of Eastern food.
She had just been thinking,He should have been Italian, when he coughed, suddenly, hard, deep in his chest. She frowned, something about the sound of it not right. She paused politely, smile moving back onto her face, about to ask him to excuse himself when he did it again.
One arm was raised in an arc, illustrating the posture of the old woman waving the skinny bird around, when his face went red and he coughed again.
“—S’cuse me,” he choked. He forced another cough, his face red (always ruddy anyway, but the color seemed to deepen with every cough), from low inside his throat as though trying to clear it.
“Are you choking—” Glenn started to say.
The arm that was held out swung into his chest and banged as though trying to dislodge something.
Glenn stood up then, fast, knocking her chair out from behind her. Howard still held his fork and it stuck out from his chest.
“How!”she called, not a scream, but close.
He shook his head, trying a smile. “’Sokay. Not choking. Pain here—” He shook his head again. “Heartburn—” he choked out, just before his hand suddenly swung away from him again and the fork flew out, hitting the wall beside the table with a metallic clang. Glenn dashed around the table to his side, crouching down beside him.
Howard banged his chest again. He sucked in his breath, and made a low sound in his throat. All of these things happened in the space of time it took Glenn to complete her thought, if not her sentence, about how he looked like he was gonna—all of this happened in the time it took for her to get up from her crouch beside his chair and grab the phone. All of this happened in the second for her to know,to know, that her husband was having a heart attack.
While she dialed the emergency number, never once taking her eyes off Howard, she remembered things like blanket, water, airways; portable phone in hand, she went to the bedroom, yanking the duvet off their bed and running back with it to the dining room shouting (for some reason she felt she needed to shout her address her name her problem or it would not be deemed an emergency); she was flinging the duvet over her husband, still in his chair, his face ashen and blank at the same time that she dropped the phone. She lifted him from his chair, words of comfort and nonsense coming out of her mouth, whispering, for some reason she felt she should whisper or the situation would be deemed grave, and helping him to lie on the floor. She undid the button on his trousers, and for lack of anything else, the buttons down the front of his shirt until the whole of his chest and stomach—hisbeautiful broad chest just beginning to gray —was exposed. His breathing was nothing more than gasps and the color of his lips changed, or rather lost color. When she hovered above him, the words coming strangely, “Don’t you worry a lot of times heartburn isn’t something to worry—I’m going to get you water—you have a sip and that curry—no more curry, it’s good for the Middle East not for us Westerners—” she spewed and dashed into the kitchen grabbing not water from the fridge—it would be too cold, too jarringmaybe jarring would be good make his heart pump if he is having he is nothaving, and took water from the tap where coming right out it would be lukewarm or room temperature and then she ran with it back to the dining room and looked into the face of her rapidly expiring husband.
His eyes were closed. His lips were gray, nearly the color of the rug in the dining room that they both hated. His chest rose and fell with uneven rapidity and labor. She dropped to her knees beside him, hands shaking, spilling most of the water on the duvet and herself.
She held the water out from herself as though offering it up, but could not bring herself to make him drink it. It seemed like it might be dangerous even to have him open his eyes. Her own heart was racing, her breathing fast. There was something primal in the way she felt; she was afraid. Afraid to speak to move him afraid to move herself, as though any ripple in the universe, in time, might tempt the gods to finish the nasty work they’d begun.
He breathed through his mouth. He looked dreadfully and suddenly, small. She touched his cheek. With ferocity, Howard grabbed her wrist. It gave her hope.
“Um ’kay,” he said, gasping the words. He was asnot okay as it was possible to be and Glenn couldn’t help but let a small laugh escape. He smiled, just at the corner of his mouth, one corner, forced up. And, for some terrible, desperate reason, that too gave her hope. She expelled breath and believed entirely for one beautiful moment that it was going to be all right—it will be hard he had some damage the way his mouth moves up on one side, he could be paralyzed on that side that happens but we can work through—and then she heard the sirens and Howard opened his eyes and looked into hers a second before closing them again. He put the slightest pressure on her wrist and then loosened his grip.
“Cav’ry here—” he said.Cavalry here. She nodded and stroked his face, her mumblings and nonsense beginning again.
“All going to be all right, we’re never having curry again, by the way, and we are ripping out this carpet and when you feel better—” Then the cavalry was bursting through the front door dragging ruthless and monstrous equipment and she was shunted aside and she would not,could not cry in front of Howard. Not then.
He lingered three days in a room of indifferent color, fed through tubes, surrounded by whispers and the softsquitch of running shoes—lips blue, face yellowed and slack, her bits of gasped bravery and forced wit unheard or condescended. Then he died.
* * *
Glenn had stared at the wall throughout the remembering, one arm tucked under her breasts, the
other hand touching the hair at the back of her neck. She had followed them to the hospital in her car. By the time she got there Howard was sequestered in a makeshift room, closed off from uncaring eyes by only curtains, with strangers shouting in abbreviations and they wouldn’t let her in. Not even to touch him, comfort him by her presence. She had stood outside the curtains for as long as she was ignored, peeking through, terrified to watch, and absolutely certain that if she moved, if she wasn’t there, then something would happen and he would need her. She was told to move twice and was finally led away, when they were bringing a large machine in. For reasons unknown she thought of her compatriots over the water and their machine that wentbeep. She promised herself she would remember to tell Howard that one. He’d like that. That he had everything, she would say, even the machine that wentbeep.
She never told him. It was never funny again.
He’d been briefly awake (alive) the next afternoon. Glenn hadn’t left the hospital. She hadn’t slept. She had sat all night in the chair in the waiting room. When they put him in a ward with three other beds, she moved in there. There was a man in the bed next to Howard who looked much, much worse than he did and she comforted herself with that as though Howard would be graded on a curve. She never saw the third patient. His curtains had been drawn, maybe the whole time Howard was in the hospital.
He woke the once and smiled at her, fulfilling every dream and prayer she’d had in the last twelve hours.
He said, “Big fuss, huh?”
She said, “Nothing but the best for my Howard.” He’d smiled at her and they held hands. He opened and closed his eyes and she whispered words of comfort and told him how much she loved him and how long did he think he was going to keep his sorry backside in that bed and would heplease hurry up and get well because she had work to do. He’d smiled once or twice more, when he opened his eyes, but he never said anything again.
The Dwelling Page 2