by Jac Jemc
We pinch oily pillows off the couch to sit on it and slide toward each other and realize the center springs have lost their strength. I stand to let James have his space as he flips through a binder to find news stories carefully arranged and yellowing in plastic protective sheets. He reads me the death notice for Alban Kinsler again, hoping something will have become clear since he tracked it down at the library. I pull stacks of velvet jewelry boxes off the bookshelves, but all of them are empty. James shows me a birth notice for Eleanor Kinsler, seven years the junior of Rolf, and I sit again. We page through prayer cards for names that don’t match up with what we’re looking for and newspaper articles marking the sorts of historical events that seem worth recording—centennials and local ribbon-cutting ceremonies—the stuff of small-town life. A death notice for Bette Kinsler, survived by husband Frederick, son Rolf, daughter Eleanor, reunited with son Alban. We find a real estate listing for the empty lot on which our home would be built. We find a prayer card made for Eleanor’s funeral and perform the backward math of calculating her age to have been twenty-five at the time of her death. A newspaper story beside it shows a picture of the lake with the caption that the body of a young woman was found on the shore by a jogger.
Still it is not enough. We navigate the house easily, a mirror image of our own. I go to the kitchen, trying not to breathe in the rancid odor. Even the flimsiest of plastic containers are huddled together for reuse, all marred with a smear or speck of food unaddressed by scrubbing. I have the urge to stack them by size: yogurt cups into margarine tubs into gallon ice cream buckets, but I stop when I see the mouse droppings on the counter and then, when I realize what the tiny flecks are, I see them everywhere. I pull open the oven and then the dishwasher and the refrigerator, all unplugged, all filled with paper, mostly sheets folded into thirds: bills and statements and characterless summaries of the resources Rolf consumed in his life.
We climb the stairs to hunt for more. The master bedroom is perfectly arranged, but buried in dust, as if it hasn’t been touched in decades. We open a wardrobe to find beautiful silk dresses and neckties, but no suggestions. James forages through a secretary desk, but uncovers only receipts. “A new car for only 580 dollars!” he exclaims, but moves on quickly.
I examine water damage on the wall near the ceiling and try to read a face into the spots. Slowly, I’m discovering the way my habits have conformed to the shape of the house.
A dresser drawer feels heavy even after I’ve pulled out the girdles and camisoles jamming it full. I convince myself of a false bottom and pry my nails around the inside edges and lift the thin sheet of veneer to discover cash and envelopes. I carefully lift the flap of the first, and the glue sticks a little. Inside, I find a letter addressed to Alban from “Mother.” I ask James to retrieve the album of clippings from downstairs so we can compare dates, and he does. The letters are all posted after Alban’s death. In them, Bette expresses her overwhelming grief. She praises Alban as her “Cupid child,” perfectly beautiful, skilled, full of love. She writes, “I cannot bear to look at your brother. I know that your footing could not have faltered in that tree. How I wish the Lord had taken him instead of you.” Other letters call out what must have been Eleanor’s nervous locomotion, framing it as a sort of perfect energy around which they all revolved. “Her mind is so full of ideas. Her hands and lips always moving to write or say something that is already beyond my comprehension. She reminds me of you, my love, of what you would have become had Rolf not forced you from this life.” Other letters show Bette’s unraveling, admitting that it would be easiest if she joined Alban, that she can’t force herself from bed most days so stuck is she in her dreams of this reunion, that she takes more and more of the pills prescribed by the doctor to calm her nerves and convince herself out of the house. “I dread the moment your brother’s evil will resurface and take Eleanor from me, too. I have grown fearful of him. Your father disagrees, but he has always been blind to emotion, assuming the best in people and stepping away when something is too hard to deal with.”
In another bedroom—one it is apparent has more recently been used—we hunt through shoeboxes. We find to-do lists broken into the addresses 891 and 895. Rolf’s signature on documents for both. We find a framed photo on his bedside table of a young man and young woman. The young man looks directly at the camera, while the young lady, her hair rumpled, pulls away, staring off toward the woods behind her. If we didn’t know better, we might have assumed it was Rolf and his young bride. We know, though, it must be Eleanor, anxious, even then, to hide.
James takes my hand, puckered and tarnished by the dirt that shakes off everything we touch. He recalls the children in the woods, shouting to each other, balanced in the trees, dropping. I mention the way the water at the beach threatened to pull us into it, that gentle sidestroke whistling us home. “The cave?” James asks. We don’t have a hint about the cave, but we can create stories. We know enough now to see sense in it without understanding specifics.
James shifts and turns, looking for more, and I splinter into silent tears beside him. It is too much to know all of this now, after I accepted that it might have been contained within me. How do I return from that horizon?
“Read this.” I hand him a journal, not unlike the one we found in our home, this one written in an adult hand, the script grown flawless.
I pointed at a bottle of poison and asked my father what it was for. He refused an answer and hid it from me.
Once again I found it and asked the maid. She took it from my hands and made it disappear.
The last time I found it, I brought it to my mother. She accepted it as a suggestion and swallowed it down, losing herself in a slender jungle of pain and rupture. For the first time in ages, she held my eyes defiantly in her own and bade me to bear witness. “It is appropriate that you deliver me unto my death,” she said. She believed this was my curse, one she could no longer bear: to push people to their ends.
I should have called someone. I should have told her that that wasn’t what I’d meant, but I could see, before the act was even complete, that everything would be easier from then on. Her resolve and fury evidenced themselves. I had given her the tool for an intention she’d been thumbing the edge of for a long while.
Atropa belladonna. Atropa, from the name of the third Fate, Atropos, who cuts the thread of life. Bella donna: beautiful woman. Mother previously used the serum to dilate her pupils, to make her eyes appear more seductive. Father used it to treat his weak stomach. One substance, both to heal and poison.
Mother stayed close, twisting on her feather bed as a storm ate away at the north-facing shore. Trees tipped into the lake. Blissful digressions yarned from her mouth. Father joined me in her room and we wound tightly around the moment. He never asked why I didn’t gather him sooner so we might have helped her survive. Her face clouded with an ultimate doubt. He held her hand as she gave way.
“It’s not enough to believe we’re haunted, though, is it?” James asks.
I agree it is not. I refuse.
We give up, ready to return home, when we’re jolted by the pound of marching-band music from downstairs.
James looks at me, panicked. “Could he have come home?” His thumb vibrates against the page of the book.
I’m so sure it’s not that, I squeeze his shoulder. “I bet that old turntable stopped spinning weeks ago and just kicked on again.” I lead the way down to the living room and pause at the bottom of the stairs. I see a thick wool sleeve resting on the armrest of the wing chair facing the fireplace.
“What?” James pushes past to pull the needle off the record and I look away, hoping what I saw will be gone when I turn back. “That’s a good sign we should go, right? You ready?”
I cast my glance up the stairwell, then into the kitchen—pretending to take it all in one last time—finally returning my sight to the arm of the chair, and the fingers resting on the handhold. James stands a few feet in front of it. If Rolf is sitting th
ere, there’s no way James could miss him, but James’s face shows only fatigue.
“I might make one more sweep of the place. Make sure everything is in order.”
“Do you want me to stay?” James asks.
“No, you go ahead.” I try, with all my might, to keep my eyes on James.
He kisses me on his way to the back door. “Don’t stay long.” He gives my hand a squeeze. He shuts the door behind him, and I hear a rasp, not unlike that breath that formed above us the night my parents stayed over. I walk toward the chair and see that the little finger of the hand is missing. I pause and push ahead.
I can’t call seeing Rolf’s face a surprise. We lock eyes, as we have so many times before through the windows, but this time I don’t look away. I don’t try to touch him. Neither answer would satisfy me.
I think hard about what I could possibly say. Are you real? What happened? Do you need help? Have you done this to us? No threats or statements shape themselves in my mind. I form only questions. I speak none of them.
He doesn’t tell me to go. I don’t stay.
90
ON THE BATHROOM mirror: a face drawn in lipstick. I wipe it off and don’t mention it to Julie.
A plumber visits and can’t find a reason for the mold.
A new bruise clenches Julie’s ankle.
We bring in a contractor to give us an estimate on replacing the kitchen cabinets.
We look up tax credits for putting in new windows, ones that don’t stretch the view outside into strange shapes and will keep the energy inside instead of allowing it to slip away.
My parents finally visit, for what will be the first and last time. My mother beams. My father’s normally shadowy features gather up the light. They compliment every detail of the house. They wonder aloud why we would want to sell it.
“It’s not for us,” Julie says. “Something smaller, more manageable.”
“This is a good house for children, though,” my mother says.
Julie and I shrug. We avoid arguments. We invite them to sit down. We pour them water from distilled jugs we bought at the grocery store. The renovation excuses us from allowing them to stay here in the house with us. We say the water is turned off. We hope they don’t test the faucet.
My mother looks out the window. “That old man next door will be sad to see you go. I’m sure he was glad to have someone to call on if he needed to.”
I try to remember if we’d mentioned him to her or if we’d kept him a secret. I walk over to the window. I follow her gaze.
“Oh, there he goes,” she says. She turns back to the living room. I cast a look at Julie. She shuts her eyes gently.
We don’t comment on the noise that hums under our small talk.
We prepare ourselves to leave. We experience our fear privately. When I see an errant shadow, I tell myself it’s nothing. When I notice a row of photos turned facedown on the shelf, I right them.
91
BACK AT WORK, my coworkers behave politely. They ask me how I’m feeling. I know they’ve been told I had an infection, but I note the questions in their eyes, wondering about details, trying to discern some other issue.
By the time I had recovered my senses, the flowers they’d sent to the hospital had died, but James saved every enclosure card. I wrote thank-you notes for these gestures and for the people kind enough to cover my work while I was out of the office. A prototype of the product I was spearheading has been fast-tracked, already moved into compliance review. Usually I’d be angry they’d gone on without me. I’d scour their specifications for miscalculations. This time, though, I commend people on pushing ahead.
I check my bank account online to see if a payment for a medical bill has cleared and see some withdrawals for small amounts from our shared account. James has not yet found a job. I tell myself the ATM visits are for incidentals and nothing more, until he can build up his own account again. I take my chances.
Connie treats me to lunch. “Beer? Wine?”
“I think I’ll stick with water today,” I say. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“Very well, we’ll be good. I’m ordering the cheese curds, though, for us to share.”
I resolve to order the cheeseburger and fries, but when the waiter arrives, I chicken out and ask for a veggie burger and to sub a side salad. Connie squints and one-ups me, ordering a bowl of soup. She pulls up the batch of listings she’s forwarded to me on her phone: town houses and single-family homes on the outskirts in new developments. She’s glad James and I have decided to stay nearby once the house sells. I tell her I can’t even think about buying a new place until this one is off the market, though. If it means we’ll need to rent for a while, so be it. “Maybe renting is the way to go no matter what,” I say. “A nice one-bedroom where we can see the whole place at once if we stand in the middle of it.”
“Apartments mean more neighbors to deal with,” Connie says.
“Ah, but they can’t peek in if they’re in the same building. They could see us come and go, and that’s about it.”
The summer sun is shining brightly through the window, and Connie mocks me when I put my sunglasses on inside. “Have the detectives been by to see you lately?”
I shake my head, tolerant of their absence. I feel that pang that’s grown familiar—guilt at not mentioning what I saw in the house after James left. I consider telling Connie what James’s mother spotted in Rolf’s window, but I don’t trust her eyes more than my own. “You?”
“Nope, but no further trouble. Repainted that wall and that seemed to be the end of it.”
I search Connie’s face for accusation, but she hides it well if it exists at all. Her trust has allowed her to move on.
“That has got to be the fifth double-wide stroller that’s gone by today,” I say, catching sight of another mother maneuvering down the street, willing to distract myself.
“Lots more twins these days what with fertility treatments. Soon everyone will be born with a double.” Connie flares her eyes, risking spookiness.
I laugh, but I think of all the times I was alone, but didn’t feel that I was, and vice versa.
92
A COUPLE COMES to look at our house. We tell them what improvements are in process. We uncover the secret passages one by one and watch their wonder unfold. They ask us why we want to sell it so soon after purchase. “It’s too big for us,” Julie says. “I had some health troubles and we want something more manageable.”
I feel a spike of unease not telling them all of the other truths. They put in an offer right then for more than we asked. There will be weeks of busy work to be sure of the outcome. When we see the number they’ve written down on the slip of paper, though, we allow ourselves to feel relief. We walk them out. We tell them we’ll be in touch. We wave them off.
I stare into the grip of the front door. I am ready to turn my back on this afternoon. Julie takes my hand, though. We sit on the porch swing. The air is still. We don’t rock ourselves. We stay where we are.
We hear fireworks near the lake. It’s not dark yet. We search the sky for the explosions. We can’t find the light against light. The brilliance is lost without contrast. We hear the booms over the buzz of the interior.
We watch as those kids climb down from their trees and peek into the neighbor’s house. Maybe we feel responsible because we broke that first window. It showed them no one was watching. It let them know advantages could be taken. Maybe we watch those kids pull out cans of spray paint and leave words behind. Maybe they hurl rocks. Maybe they turn the hose on. Maybe they light fires and scale the outside of the house like a mountain. We wonder what the kids call this game. Is it a game? We consider phoning the detectives.
“Let’s not,” Julie says.
“And when they ask us if we saw anything?”
“We haven’t seen a thing.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Unlimited rounds of gratitude dedicated:
To Claudia Ballard for her committed smarts
and warmth and encouragement for the past four years.
To Emily Bell for believing in this book and taking it on, and for the amazing space she’s made for bold women’s voices. To the entire FSG team, especially Maya Binyam, for making this process even more rewarding than expected.
To Lindsay Hunter and Aaron Burch for delivering enthusiasm when I was at a moment of crisis and for being bold enough to serve tough advice. To Eileen Myles and Bonnie Jo Campbell for their astute guidance.
To the Vermont Studio Center and the Hald Hovedgaard Danish Author-and-Translator Center for the time and space to work on this project. My thanks and hope also go to the Illinois Arts Council. I am optimistic that Illinois will recognize, again, the importance of fostering the arts.
To Pam Harcourt, Andrew Cha, and Jon Evans, for the only writing group I’ve ever been a part of, short-lived as it was. This was born there.
To Zach Dodson for serving as a role model and for being a cheerleader all the way.
To Amelia Gray for her friendship and generosity and having my back again and again.
To the good people at Dzanc for everything up to this point.
To Lauren Spohrer at Two Serious Ladies and Ryan Bradford at Black Candies for publishing portions of this manuscript.
To Roger Ballen for his images, which pushed this book further.
To the long list of teachers who are with me every time I write.
To my employers for supporting this work.
To my family for understanding and believing in me before anyone else did.
To my friends for their kindness and distraction.
To Jared for everything else.
ALSO BY JAC JEMC