by Jac Jemc
I check the closet. I find it empty. I insist on maintaining Julie’s confidence and so I return to our bedroom and say, “Oh, I’m tired. Just being silly.” I shut the bedroom door. Julie raises her eyebrows at the click of the lock. I pull on my pajamas. My skin feels warm and tight, as if it’s been burned. I know that isn’t something the moon can do.
28
AT WORK, I take Connie to lunch and we sit at a table on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant near the train station. We split a bottle of white and order the daily catch.
“It’s like an exclusionary diagnosis,” I tell her. “It’s maddening. How can I accept that the solution is just all the things it’s not? That means there’s no answer.”
Connie squints. “What are we talking about? The bruises? Or James? The house?”
“All of the above? The symptoms keep adding up. I wonder about selling the house and going back to the city, but what if that’s not the answer and then we’ve gone to all that trouble? I’m not willing to give up on this place yet.”
“I hear you, hon, but we’ve got to improve this situation for you. Leave the house or get James in to see a counselor or both.”
“Yeah,” I say, “but I’m at fault, too. I’ve got the bruises and sometimes I feel so out of it, like I’m miles away. There are times I completely understand how he’s thinking about things, you know? I get it.”
“Right, but empathy can only take you so far. You’ve got to have a little objective distance, too, so you can see what needs to change.”
The food arrives and we dig into our fish platters, dip broccoli in tartar sauce, stay quiet for a few minutes. “I understand what you’re saying. I want to think through everything really carefully.”
“Have you mentioned any of it to your parents? Or to his?”
“No! I mean, my stepmother thinks the house needs to be exorcised, but it’s hard to take her opinion seriously.” I don’t want to tell Connie about the sounds we heard when my parents visited. I wipe my hands in my napkin. “James’s parents would whisk him home if they knew how he’d been behaving. My dad and stepmother would be out here in a minute filing lawsuits and having James committed and admitting me to Mayo. Maybe they’d all be in the right, but I don’t think we’re quite at that point.”
The train goes by and I take the opportunity to chew and evaluate Connie’s reaction. I can feel her forming an allegiance, convinced this is James’s fault. It feels more like something in the space between James and me, though, like an electricity that’s been turned on since we’ve taken up this new life, something that buzzes at its highest frequency when we’re both home, together. I go along with the idea that James might be the biggest part of the problem so that I don’t scare Connie off. I need her right now.
When the quiet is restored, Connie says, “You know the situation better than me, so I won’t pretend I can give you advice. Say the word if you need help, though.”
“This is all the help I need.” I drain my wine and Connie refills my glass.
29
WHEN WE LOOK for the house on a map, we see only a black square.
When we seek out the woods: cross-hatching.
When we hunt for the lake, we find a watermark.
Every map.
At work, Sam asks me what’s wrong.
“Julie’s mad at me. I fucked up. I don’t know what to do other than apologize.” I pull out my chair.
“You cheat on her?” he asks, spinning around. His chair squeaks so loudly I wince.
“No, nothing like that.”
Sam shrugs. “What’s she doing?”
I wonder what it is that allows me to keep placing a frame around the parts I want to hide. “She’s not doing anything really. It’s not the silent treatment because she’s talking to me, but it feels like that.”
“Well, here’s a thought: Why don’t you ask her what’s up?” he says.
“I think she’ll ignore me. She’ll pretend like nothing’s wrong.”
“I’m no Dr. Phil, James, but I’m pretty sure you should give her the benefit of the doubt and wait for her behavior to improve. Am I right? Chances are she’ll get tired of being angry. But maybe she can tell you what she’s still holding on to. Talk to her.” Sam raises his eyebrows.
“So logical. Out of nowhere, you’re logical.” I turn back to my screen.
“I do what I can,” he says.
In the last hour of the day, I start getting texts every few minutes from Julie:
“James.”
“James.”
“James.”
“James.”
“James.”
“James.”
I don’t respond. I think it’s a duplicate, some cellular glitch. Maybe she’s being antsy. I don’t want to get into a texting war. I want a chance to talk to her in person before anything else goes off.
At 4:59, the message changes: “For real. I need help.”
I call her. “What’s wrong, Julie?”
She is silent for a long time. “I’m stuck in some room of the house. I don’t know how to get out.”
“I’ll be right home,” I say.
I gather my coat. Sam asks if I finished up the project I’d been working on. I tell him, “Cover for me.”
30
I HEAR THE door slam, feel the reverberations. When I dial James’s phone, the call goes straight to voice mail. I crouch down to see if there’s a lip between the floor and the wall to grab and shove out, but instead I find a book, leatherbound and wedged thick with loose pages. The room seems to pull in closer, and I panic, wondering if I’ll be crushed, then suddenly the wall behind me slides to one side on its own, and light floods in and I am in our bedroom, and I push through the crack quickly, and I look at where I’ve been and it’s just another space we don’t know, a narrow closet, and I examine how the wall works and slide it back, trying not to close it completely, but it clicks into place and then I can’t seem to budge it open again. I try to crank the wall sconce and step gingerly in different areas of the floor to see if I can trigger the opening again, but to no effect. In the light of the room, the book in my hand seems to be a journal and my instinct is to keep it for myself and I wonder why I am turning it into another secret even as I stuff it into the drawer of the nightstand and collapse onto the bed.
James comes into the room, screaming for me, then quieting down when he sees I am right here. “Where were you? What happened?”
I smile because I always smile when I shouldn’t, a nervous tic. I point to the wall that has resealed itself and then open my hand up and raise my eyebrows.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a room behind that wall, but it’s gone now.”
He looks at me strangely. “There can’t be. It’s the guest room on the other side. There’s not enough space.”
I’m too tired to convince him. “Well, I didn’t make it up.”
I can tell he wonders if this is all a bid for attention, if I was ever even trapped. “Talk to me, Julie. What’s going on? Are you mad at me? Are you trying to get back at me?”
I don’t know.
31
WE GO ABOUT our evening, making dinner and rummaging about the house. I try to keep up a regular conversation, but James clips his responses. He takes a call from his parents. “I know you want to visit, but now isn’t a good time. Julie’s under the weather. We’ll let you know as soon as we get settled … Just a cold, I think … I will … Love you, too. Bye.” I snuggle into him while he watches the news, tuck into his armpit, and wrap an arm around the pudge of his belly, and he allows it, but after about ten minutes he tells me he’s wiped and heads upstairs to bed.
I cry on the couch, feeling the gap that’s formed between us widening when we’d hoped this move would close it. I cycle three times through all the channels before I give up.
The lights in the bedroom are off. In the soft shine of the moon through the window, I startle at what looks like a person o
pposite me, only to realize it’s a figure drawn on the wall. I flip my bedside light on, not sure if I hope to wake James or not. The outline droops with liquid, watery and pink, and I wonder, Paint? Blood? Those are all of the answers I can think of.
I remember the drawings on the wall the lady at the grocery store told me about. I shiver at this form, crude—like a child’s sketch: a rough, wide oval for its head; limbs that stretch too long; features simple and too small for the face.
James and I are living in a Latin mass, memorizing ritual, reciting mysteries we’ve given up on deciphering, foreign syllables unrolling in order.
I want to flip the light on and scream. I want to rock James awake and say, James, you said this was over and also I feel like something’s gone wrong in me, but instead I crawl under the blanket with him and place a hand on his smooth back and rest my lips on his shoulder and I pray.
32
“I GOT A talking-to from Kim,” I tell Sam. He’s eating a leftover pulled-pork sandwich at 9:05 a.m. I can see he’s already kicked his shoes off under his desk.
“Ah, I’m sorry, man. I couldn’t stay late last night. It would have taken me all night to get caught up with where you were in the project, and I had dinner plans.” He holds up the sandwich as if it’s evidence.
“It’s cool. I should have come back after I ran home.”
“Everything okay with Julie?” A piece of pork falls into his lap. He picks it up and delivers it into his mouth. The grease stain it leaves behind on his pants goes untended.
“I don’t know.” I edit my reply carefully. “She, uh, got stuck in a closet yesterday. How does that happen? And then I found this weird drawing on the wall of our bedroom.”
“Some crafty shit? Leaves and birds? My mom did that once and my dad painted over it because it was so bad. She was pissed.”
“No. I’m not sure what she was after with this. It’s like a cartoon person.”
“That’d be cool. Like Wolverine busting through the wall?”
I don’t correct him. I turn my computer on and take a sip of coffee.
Sam shifts. “Boss lady was mad, though, huh?”
“I shouldn’t ask for special treatment. They don’t even know me yet. I get it. It felt like an emergency. How do you explain that your wife somehow got lost in your own house? I know that sounds crazy.”
I’ve already spent Sam’s attention, though. He chuckles a little too late. I can tell he’s been absorbed into his computer screen.
33
I BEAT JAMES home from work, and instead of starting dinner as I normally would, I put on sneakers and walk across the yard. I listen for the children or for the birds, but I’m unspecific about my listening, and I can’t tell which it is I hear far out in the distance.
The day is clear and so the water reflects blue when I emerge on the beach. I feel hunger thrum within me and regret not cooking right away, and so I turn around. I retract back home, on automatic, my attention focused only on the ground in front of me. I emerge on the other side of the woods and cross through the grass and pull open the back door and find myself not in our home, but in Rolf’s kitchen. The door slams behind me, and I freeze, shocked, uncertain how I could be where I am, asking myself if this is the first time this has happened or the second. I force myself to move forward into his living room and pause to look at the portrait above the fireplace and search the young boy’s face for a resemblance to Rolf and find that familiar underbite, jutting out farther even than his wide, broken-looking nose. On the couch, I see a sweater that looks like one of my own. A reflex makes my hand grab it and hold it up and the label is the same brand as mine, a size large, but the knit has a stiff spot, like a liquid has dried near the collar. Cat hair snarls on the side that was facing out. When I hold the cardigan to my face, the smell of ammonia repels me. I vise the sweater between two fingers and tear the front door open, unconcerned about Rolf’s hearing the noise. I beat a shortcut through the fountain grass lining his front walk and yank open our own door and deposit the sweater in the laundry room before I run up the stairs to our bedroom, collapse facedown on the bed, deafen my exasperation in a pillow, and come up for air, certain the scent of that sweater is still straying nearby. Did Rolf steal my cardigan? Why? Had I been in his house before? Had I left it there? For a moment, I let myself consider what it must be like for an old man to hear his own front door slam and not know who or what has caused it. What role were we playing? The ghosts or the haunted?
When I look up, the figure drawn on the bedroom wall seems bigger than the night before, but I don’t yield to the confusion this time. I trace its edges with permanent marker to track growth, trying to define my own standard of safety.
I pull the journal I’d found in the wall out of the bedside table. I flick through, and illegible writing fills the pages—tiny, layered, crisscrossed—each piece of paper a woven tapestry. The penmanship forms itself like a rolling wave, never peaking or breaking. Stuffed into the beginning, some loose pages appear more precise but uncertain, like the handwriting of a child.
Mother avoids me now that Alban is gone. The shades stay drawn and I’m to be quiet. The people at church pity us. We hear them whispering. It’s unfortunate. I can’t imagine. Where was she at the time? I would have been there.
Father tells Mother they’ll have another child when the time is right. Mother wants another child now. Every night she cries.
At dinner now, we don’t speak. I stare straight ahead. Tonight, Mother broke the silence with Alban’s name. Mother struck herself. She slammed her head onto the table, punched her belly, bit her lip, squeezed the flesh of her legs so hard beneath her fingers that bruises formed. Father clutched her. I sit outside the closed loop of them. I am not enough.
Father disappears for days at a time. Mother’s sloppy grief has turned tough. He runs away. Mother is furious. Everything is worse.
At suppertime, I shave valerian root into the pots on the stove, trying to put all of us to sleep. I hide from her nightmares, stuff a blanket under the door, hum, make all the noise I can to block out the sounds. I can see her bad moods coming and swerve to avoid them.
I hear James arrive home. I force the book back into the drawer and lie down. He enters the room and rifles through the dresser for sweatpants. “Just taking a rest before dinner,” I say, as if he’s asked for an answer. He looks at the drawing, then at me. He gets out his camera and snaps several exposures.
“Not a bad idea,” I say, “to start documenting your work.”
He looks at me with a smirk I don’t recognize. I expect James to apologize or explain, but nothing of that sort emerges.
The nights like this start to line up like matchsticks, close together, hard to count.
34
I USUALLY LOVE the dark, but on this night, it is not my friend and it feels like a punishment to be forced to sit in the pitch and stare. The pages inserted into the journal talk about the death of a brother. I think of what James told me about Rolf’s family losing a son and decide I need to tell him what I’ve found. Why is the book in our house, though? James said they weren’t living in this house when Alban died, but had they lived here at some other point? These preoccupations twist themselves out of the darkness. I watch them tick by like seconds on a clock. I tell myself that all this night is, is a bunch of instants, and even when you add them up, it’s not that much, and finally I fall half-asleep, but James and I startle awake at the same moment, both listening for that growl we’d heard, but it’s not a sound. Something else has fussed us. James tells me he had a dream that a girl wouldn’t stop climbing on top of him, shouting in his face. I tell him that an identical dream woke me.
I huddle into James, still comforted by the way I can tuck perfectly into his big frame, and I breathe in the scent of his sleep-soaked neck and smell love and grief, like chicory.
James pounds his fist into the mattress and pulls away and shouts, “What the hell? It’s too much.” I feel comforted that at leas
t he believes me, that he doesn’t think I’ve made up my duplicate version of his dream. I think about telling him about the book, too, but I don’t want to turn the light on. I don’t want to lose hours of sleep to paging through the journal together now; I want him to know what I know as soon as I know it. This dream is already too much and impatience sparks within me like a menace, threatening to catch. I tell myself, Tomorrow.
I can’t stop the tears that dash down my face quietly. I keep them secret until James kisses my cheek and tastes the briny gloss and squeezes tighter so that eventually I calm down, but I don’t hear our breaths fall into the pattern of sleep.
In the morning the birches all hunch at the edge of the yard, groggy, as if they, too, were up all night, and we are on the other side of half-awake, James looking dried out, a salted version of himself.
Every time a door in the house creaks, it says something a little different, and like those picture puzzles where you have to find the errors, we can’t pinpoint it, but we hear the something that is off.
In the cupboard, all the jars of pickled and jellied things are empty, but unclean, as though someone has been eating them and then shoving the hollowed vessels to the back, until the empties have nothing to hide behind. The clock on the wall of the kitchen stopped days ago, and I can’t reach it, but I wouldn’t know where to move the hands anyway.
Every time I look at the neighbor’s house, he’s staring back: Who’s checking up on whom?
35
IN THE MORNING, a fresh drawing of peacocks on the wall next to the last one. A new figure. “What is this?” I ask. Julie looks away. “Does it mean anything?” I can sense her nerves. I take more photos.
“Look at this.” Julie’s hand is stretched around a leatherbound book stuffed with paper. “I found it in the wall when I was stuck. It’s a journal, but look at the writing: it’s those layers people have been mentioning, that that girl wrote in. But then, back here, the handwriting’s different.”