“Ingrid,” her father said at the end of the program, “dropping the bomb was a terrible thing, but it was the only way to end the war. That doesn’t mean everything nuclear is bad.”
In response, Ingrid shaved off all her hair with her father’s razor to demonstrate how she would look with radiation sickness, and three weeks later began ninth grade at the public high school with a murderous fuzz clinging to her scalp and the wig her stepmother Cathy had bought her in a wad at the bottom of her knapsack.
That night Cathy came into her room to talk to her. Ingrid was lying in bed reading The Western Boy Scout’s Guide to Regional Plants and Trees, a book that had been her dad’s when he was a boy.
“Ingrid,” said Cathy, I know this isn’t an easy time for you.”
Ingrid waited, looking at the shiny leaves of the poison oak.
“You’ve just started high school, your body is changing—”
Ingrid froze her face into a turned-to-stone slab, designed to arrest forever any potential body changes.
“—And you may have noticed your father and I aren’t having such an easy time right now.”
Ingrid shifted the stone slab into a scowl.
“Ingrid, the world doesn’t always go exactly the way we want it. We have to learn to accept that the world goes according to God’s plan, not ours. Sometimes that plan doesn’t seem to make much sense to us—”
“Huh,” said Ingrid and put her book over her face.
“—And that’s when God is testing our faith, that’s when we need Him most.”
“Does God plan to have us get into a war with Russia, or is he just going to send an earthquake to make all the reactors between here and San Francisco split in two?”
“Ingrid, Ingrid, honey.” Cathy moved to sit beside Ingrid on the bed, put her hand on Ingrid’s shoulder. Ingrid did not want a hug, and remained stubbornly flat on her back.
“You shouldn’t be thinking about things like that at your age,” her stepmother said.
“At what age should I be thinking about them?”
Her stepmother sighed one of those melancholy adult sighs that gave Ingrid the creeps.
“Ingrid, I know what you’re going through. But sometimes what we’re afraid of just doesn’t happen. So there’s no sense in worrying like this. Sometimes things just work out.”
“And we all live happily ever after?”
To Ingrid’s surprise, Cathy’s eyes filled with tears. She blinked them away again, but Ingrid decided that her stepmother knew something she wasn’t telling. The danger must be even greater than she had suspected.
Her ninth-grade year ended as it had begun, in crisis. The last day of school, Ingrid went to class only because the science teacher had said she could have the garter snake over the summer. She hadn’t bothered to figure out how she was going to transport it from the terrarium in the classroom to the one in her bedroom, so when the dismissal bell rang that afternoon Ingrid had the snake in a brown paper lunch bag clutched firmly in one hand as she pedaled her bicycle home. In celebration of being finished with school, she left the bike on the front lawn, where her stepmother had told her not to leave it, and banged into the house. Her father and stepmother were in the den, her dad on the Barca Lounger and Cathy on the sofa. They both looked up at her when she came in and Ingrid felt a shiver of fear at their blank expressions.
“Why are you home so early?” she asked her father.
“I left early today. Come sit down, sweetie, there’s something we want to talk to you about.”
Ingrid stayed where she was, clutching the neck of her paper bag. She couldn’t move. She knew why her father had come home early. She knew what they were going to tell her. There had been an accident at the lab. Radiation was seeping through the air, through the walls of the house, through the air conditioner and into their bodies, their bloodstreams, their lungs. First they would become nauseated, then their hair would begin to fall out. Their skin would blister and bleed as the radiation lodged in their thyroids; their chromosomes would mutate and break, blood cells would die while tumors sprouted like dandelions on a lawn. And then slowly, agonizingly, everyone would die. She would never grow up. She would never start 10th grade because she wouldn’t live that long.
“Ingrid, Ingrid,” said her stepmother, and pulled a frozen Ingrid down beside her on the sofa.
Ingrid burst into tears.
“She already knows,” her father said, “I told you she could hear us.” He looked at his daughter sobbing on the plaid couch beside his wife and said, “Now, sweetie, I know it seems hard—”
“It is hard,” said Cathy, glaring at Ingrid’s father.
Ingrid wept harder. Everything would be gone, everyone, all the kids at school who hated her, her teachers, her poor garter snake who hadn’t done anything, all of them would sicken and die and she had known it all along and her father hadn’t stopped it.
He moved to sit beside her on the couch. She looked up at him, her father who had gone to work every day like an idiot and done nothing at all to stop this.
“How could you?” she sobbed.
“Ingrid, this decision wasn’t easy. But we have to take into consideration—”
“Decision? What are you talking about? I don’t want to die.”
Her father and Cathy exchanged glances over Ingrid’s head.
“Sweetie, you won’t die for a very long time,” said her father. “I know a shock like this might seem as if it’s the end of the world, but it isn’t, not really.”
This was too much. “It is the end of the world,” Ingrid wailed. “All the people will die and the rivers will be poisoned and the fish and birds and there won’t be any more fruit or vegetables we can eat and the rain will poison everything it falls on.”
“What?” her father said.
“Everyone is going to die and you know it. Any victims within a five-mile radius from ground zero can expect to die from radiation sickness, cancer, or leukemia within the first six months.”
There was a short silence.
“What are you talking about?” said Cathy.
“Ingrid,” said her father, “there’s not going to be any bombing.”
“A meltdown, then. Same difference.”
“Sweetie, there’s no meltdown. We’re not—”
“Oh my God,” said Cathy, and put her hands over her face.
“Then what?” Ingrid demanded. “What happened? Why are we all sitting here? Why is Cathy crying?”
“Sweetie,” said Ingrid’s father, “we wanted to tell you. What we wanted to tell you is.” He looked at the carpet. “We’re getting divorced.”
She was going to live, she was going to live, and she loved the plaid couch, the orange shag carpet, the dusty eucalyptus-scented air outside, the itch of poison oak on her left forearm, the candy dish on the coffee table beside her stepmother’s knee, her father’s polyester pants scratchy against her thigh. The world was not ending just yet after all, and Ingrid began to cry again, this time with relief.
Then her stepmother screamed. Her legs kicked out in front of her, upsetting the coffee table. The candy dish went flying, scattering miniature Clark bars over the rug.
“Jesus Christ, Cathy,” said Ingrid’s father, “what is it now?”
Ingrid’s stepmother jumped into a crouch on the sofa. “A fucking snake,” she gasped. “A snake just crawled over my foot. There.”
Ingrid and her father looked where Cathy pointed. The three of them watched Ingrid’s garter snake as it moved slithering through the shag carpet as if through dry grass. It paused, disoriented, by the leg of the TV stand, then turned suddenly and vanished behind the drapes.
The empty paper bag lay on its side at Ingrid’s feet. Ingrid picked it up and absently began crumpling it into a ball and then stopped. No one said anything more, and no one moved. The silence settled in around them and thickened, holding the three of them on the couch in a kind of suspended animation, eyes fixed on the spot where the s
nake had disappeared.
In the ensuing shuffle of the divorce, Ingrid was allowed to leave Melvin High and go to boarding school, which her father referred to as A Good School Back East. She did not exactly fit in, not even with the other mohawked kids, but no one made fun of her, either. She did her schoolwork, had one real friend, and dreaded the holidays that meant a return to Melvin. The thought of spending the whole summer back there, waking up every morning at Linda’s in one of the twin beds in Melanie’s room, with its yellow daisy curtains and matching bedspread, its walls plastered with posters of Scott Baio and Andy Gibb—well, it was enough to make you want to be dead.
Ingrid had been pedaling her bicycle as fast as she could go through Newell and around the reservoir. Now, coming into Randall, she felt winded. At the crest of the hill she stopped and gazed down at Randall Center.
The Town Green looked just like a postcard, the kind that says GREETINGS FROM NEW ENGLAND across the top. All picture-perfect, Mister. Grass so manicured it looked like each blade had been cut with nail scissors, old wrought iron benches that didn’t know the meaning of the word rust. A white clapboard church with a big bell in the steeple, nice maple trees. Whatever problems the people who lived here had, they could probably just sprinkle them with a little money and make them go away again.
At least, that was how it looked from the outside.
As she stood straddling her bike and trying to light a cigarette, the rain began, sudden and intense and very cold. By the time she had pedaled ten yards to take shelter under the nearest maple tree, she was drenched. Too wet to smoke, even. So she got back on her bike and pushed on, around the green and out Old Adams Road.
When she found the Shepards’ house, Ingrid wiped the water from her face and stared. The house was worth staring at. It was different from all the others she’d passed, neither rambling farmhouse nor boring colonial. Her eyes ranged appreciatively over the steep roof of blue-gray slate, the wide porch detailed with gingerbread scrollwork under the eaves. There were arched stained-glass windows flanking the front door, copper downspouts etched with the turquoise patina of age. It looked to Ingrid like a house in an old movie, the kind that hid a lunatic in the attic or a body in the basement. She propped her bike against an oak tree, ran across the lawn and up onto the porch, pushed her sodden hair back from her eyes and rang the bell.
The woman who answered the door did not go with the house at all. She looked like she’d be more at home in Southern California: mail order pastels, big gold earrings. Ingrid felt a lurch of disappointment in her stomach.
“Mrs. Shepard?” Red hair, pancake makeup. After a pause that went on too long, during which Ingrid felt herself being looked over and found wanting, the woman smiled.
“Yes, hi. You must be Ingrid. I was expecting you a bit later.” Mrs. Shepard looked past Ingrid to the driveway. “Where’s Liz Luce?”
Ingrid hooked her thumbs in the back pockets of her jeans. “Mrs. Luce couldn’t come.”
“Oh—well, come in. You’re drenched.”
“Yeah, it’s raining,” Ingrid said, and then wished she hadn’t.
She followed Mrs. Shepard inside and looked around. There was hand-carved scrollwork on the post thing at the bottom of the stairs, a very old mirror built into more carved paneling beside the front door. The antique brass door hinges with an inlaid pattern of fleurs-de-lys. Old things, well made. Whoever had built this house had cared about what they were doing, had intended it to last a long time. Through an archway Ingrid glimpsed a living room filled with books, a fireplace and a worn brown velvet sofa with wooden legs that looked like lion’s paws. She imagined stretching out on the sofa after everyone else was asleep and reading. The image pleased her.
“This is a cool house,” she offered.
“Let me just see where Ray is,” Mrs. Shepard said. “Why don’t you go on in the living room there. Here, take off that sweater, and I’ll get you a towel.”
Ingrid hesitated, then peeled off her sweater. Beneath it she wore a black Minor Threat tee shirt whose collar and sleeves she’d cut away with some very dull scissors. She felt Mrs. Shepard’s eyes on her and wished for a moment that she’d worn more regular-looking clothes. Then she shook away the feeling and wished instead for a cigarette—if the Shepards weren’t going to like her, it was better to find out now.
In the kitchen, Evelyn threw Ingrid’s dripping sweater across the back of a chair and spread a dishtowel beneath it so the floor wouldn’t get wet. This was the girl who was going to save her from doing something even crazier than throwing a rock at her husband’s head? This girl, with hair sticking out from her head every which way, with clothes so ragged even a church poor box wouldn’t want them, this girl with a safety pin in her ear, this girl who showed up wringing wet a whole hour early? This girl was not going to make her life any easier. She hadn’t even had time to vacuum or figure out what to serve, or—shit, she hadn’t even cleaned up the broken glass in the study upstairs. The big jagged pieces of windowpane and the smashed lampshade were still all over the rug and the rain had probably come in and wrecked the rug entirely. She should have dealt with that first thing this morning; what was wrong with her?
Evelyn leaned against the sink and took a deep breath. She could at least bring out some snacks. But what? Her own mother, when she was being fancy, used to set up a card table outside the Winnebago on which she’d serve ladyfingers she had cut in half and filled with Cool Whip, then sprinkled with powdered instant coffee. Right, Evie Lynne, that’ll look real good. She began opening and closing cabinets: brownie mix, corn muffin mix, Bisquick. She’d bought these things herself, but at this moment the boxes seemed malevolent and alien. Just choose something, anything, she thought, and bring it out on Ray’s grandmother’s old tea set. That, at least, would lend an air of class.
Ray came out of the bathroom to find a bedraggled-looking girl in old clothes sitting on the living room sofa and neither Evelyn nor Liz Luce anywhere in sight. The girl stood up when he came in.
“Ray Shepard,” he said, extending his hand. “Glad you could make it in this weather.”
“I’m Ingrid.” She ducked her head, as if she were a little shy, but then seemed to recover and shook his hand with more force than he expected from someone her age. Her hand was clammy.
“Hello, Ingrid. I’m sorry, my wife and Liz are...?” he looked around, as if they might be hiding behind the sofa.
“Your wife went to get me a towel,” the girl said. “Ms. Luce didn’t come. I rode my bike.”
“In this rain? She told us she was going to bring you over.”
“She was—but I came by myself.”
She did not smile. Ray was reminded of the sober-faced women and children who stared out of 19th century daguerreotypes looking as if they had never cracked a smile in their lives.
“Well, here, please, have a seat.” Ingrid sat down again where she had just been sitting. Ray cleared his throat and called, “Evelyn?”
The door to the kitchen swung part way open and Evelyn poked her head out.
“I’ll join you in a minute,” she said brightly, a brightness like a sharp knife; her smile was tight and a muscle twitched in her jaw. She gave him a little wave before disappearing behind the door again.
“So Ingrid,” Ray began, in the manner of a man who does not know how to fish bravely casting his line, “Do you enjoy school?”
As soon as he said it he remembered being asked this very question when he was her age, and knowing that the adults asking were doing so only to be polite; he had resolved to be different.
“It’s okay,” Ingrid said, in the bored tone the question deserved.
Ray cleared his throat and tried again. “Liz—Ms. Luce—tells us you’re hoping to spend the summer here in Massachusetts.”
“She didn’t tell you I got suspended?” Something that might have been a smile flickered at the corners of Ingrid’s mouth and was suppressed.
“She did, actually. She said yo
u’d been caught drinking beer, but she assured me you aren’t a problem drinker. I should hope not, at your age.”
“It was one lousy Budweiser. If she only knew what goes on in the woods behind the music building, she wouldn’t have bothered with me.”
“So the problem is not that you’ve been suspended, but that you cannot return home for the summer because your parents are away.”
“It’s not a problem for me. I’d rather die, actually, then go back to Melvin.”
“Melvin’s your father?”
“Melvin is a horrible sprawl of houses that passes for a town east of Irvine, California.”
“Ah, yes,” said Ray. “Those awful houses, ‘designed,’ as it were, by builders—houses bearing no relation to the landscape or to one another, save that the walkways from garage to house are all filled with the same shade of artistically-placed beige gravel. I don’t blame you.”
“Yeah.” She looked at him approvingly. “Are you a Southern California transplant too?”
“No, just a poor old-fashioned architect trapped in a world of vinyl siding and poured concrete.”
“That’s right, you’re the guy who designed our new dining hall, Ms. Luce told me. I like it, there’s lots of light. Are you going to do any more buildings there?”
“I wish I were. At the moment I’m working on a very unpleasant bank in Waltham, and writing a book on Victorian architecture to keep my sense of aesthetics intact.”
Ingrid was looking around the living room. “Did you work on this house too?”
“I remodeled it to look more or less like it did when it was built in 1880.”
“I like it—I like old stuff. In Melvin everything is so new it’s all untested. You never know whether the next big earthquake to come along will just flatten all of those stupid kit houses right down.”
“Let me show you around,” Ray said.
As they got to their feet Evelyn came out of the kitchen.
The Fainting Room Page 4