Dark Rooms: Three Novels

by Douglas Clegg

  That night, after the rainstorm which she had raised in an effort to keep them out, after she had recited her curses, she felt she was safest in the down, in the subway.

  The subway was not the best place to spend the night in the summer: it was only slightly cooler than the air outside, in the up. The down, where the Metro was, choked itself sometimes with its stale, dusty air. She would’ve preferred a nice cool alleyway, or even a bench in the park, but when the baron was on the loose, she didn’t feel safe in the up.

  An old wino crouched in the alcove behind the ticket machines. He was dressed in stained trousers and ragged shirt. A coating of filth ran across his face down to his burst shoes.

  He smiled at her, and Mattie was a little worried that he might try to rape her like Willy and Pete in the park. But his eyes seemed kind, the way her lover’s eyes had once looked at her as if she was the most beautiful woman in the world. He offered her a drink from his bottle, so she went over and sat next to him. If there was evil in his eyes, she couldn’t read it, and her need for a drink was overpowering. His name was Ken, he told her, and the people out there had fucked him something royal. Mattie asked him if he’d ever met the baron, and he snorted. “Don’t know no dang baron,” his voice like a rusty nail scraping on a chalkboard.

  “Baron find you no matter where.” She sucked at the bottle like a hungry baby. “He smell you like a hound, he go where he please. And when he get a hold of your collar, he yank on it, and he take-take-take.”

  The man grinned a four-tooth half-moon. His teeth and gums hung over the chasm of his mouth like stalactites in a cavern. “Crazy bitch.”

  “You laugh, but he laugh louder.”

  “Those son-bitches stole my damn money.” He reached over for his bottle. His hand hung like a dangling spider in midair, waiting for her to let loose of it. It was a good bottle of Thunderbird.

  “You see him ‘round the eyes, he hides in the eyes like a speck of hell dust, but he comes out from the teeth.”

  “Shut up, you crazy old bitch!” He grabbed the bottle and tore it loose from her clutching fingers. Raising it to his lips, he thrust it against his mouth and then howled in pain. Ken pulled the bottle away from his face—blood sluiced from his upper lip. He spat out a chip from one of his few remaining teeth, tonguing his uppers to make sure all four of them were still there and in place. Wiping his bloodied mouth with the back of his hand, he raised the bottle of Thunderbird once again to his lips—this time, gently.

  “He got my baby, and he got my baby’s baby. He come out through the teeth and get my babygirl and her child. Baron's been ‘round a long time.” Mattie could not help herself—she began weeping, grasping her Hefty trash bags around her shoulders and poking small holes in them with her fingers. She felt her thick flesh beneath the plastic, and winced as she pinched herself. “I let him do it! I let him do it!”

  “Get your ass away.” Ken was looking at her from the corners of his eyes as he guzzled the wine. He shoved at her with his elbow.

  “Gimme a drink.” She motioned to the bottle.

  “You gonna shut up?”

  She nodded, her fingers still kneading and pinching her soft, flabby skin beneath the bags.

  He passed her the bottle.

  She chugged it long and deep.

  “Save some for me, willya?”

  “He got no place to come into, ya see? He's gonna look for a place, and she's gonna give him a place to come into. But she ain't no mambo— she just skin and spirit—she think she know it, but she don’t—she got no power but what he give her.”

  “You shut up!”

  “You got to believe, ‘cause if you don’t believe, you let him in.”

  The air brushed through the subway tunnel, up to where they lay huddled together; she sniffed and smelled something rotten from down there in the dark tunnel. A three-day, lying in the heat, dead-animal rottenness.

  “Oh, I believe you, whore,” the man’s voice changed, reminding her of another man, someone she’d once been in love with. His fingers clutched hers. “I believe you well enough, my little scum bucket, my love.” The man screamed, cupping his hands over his mouth convulsively, pitching forward and backwards; foam bubbled from his lips across his gnarled fingers. He began pulling his last remaining teeth out of his mouth, digging into his diseased gums with his dirt-rimmed fingernails as if he were extracting splinters from his skin. His screams echoed throughout the subway.

  “Samedi! Samedi!” Mattie screamed, pushing herself away from the man, crawling out into the light, trying to maneuver onto her haunches.

  It was him, it was the baron. He was in that wino lying next to her and he was gone from him, swept like a summer wind down the long tunnel of the subway. Gone, leaving the man dead on the cold, red floor, frothy blood simmering on his chin, four teeth, torn out at the roots, in his right hand.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE NEW OWNER

  1.

  Rachel could only stare at the newly painted walls for so long; but this activity took up some time between the seemingly endless phone calls that had been plaguing her since Sassy had left at three.

  First, the two teenagers that Hugh had hired to help move the bedroom furniture and the dining room table called at quarter to four wondering where Hugh was.

  They wondered if they would get paid even though they obviously weren’t moving anything.

  Then her secretary called; messages were piling up for her at the office, and one of her clients was angry because he’d been arrested after his case had already been dismissed when the man bringing the charge had failed to show up for the preliminary hearing. Rachel then had to call him, then call the municipal court and act angry.

  Then, Sassy called to see if she was all right. She lied and said that Hugh had gotten home about five minutes after Sassy had left.

  With some pathetic semblance of organization, Rachel Adair wandered around the house with the yellow Post-it Notes she’d pilfered from her office. At each door, each corner, along the refrigerator, above the stove, on the French doors, she stuck the paper with phrases like: WINDEX or GARBAGE DSPSL? or ROACH!! or PAINT PEELING. She stuck yellow papers all over the house with ROACH ALERT written across them. Then she saw what looked like mouse droppings in a faded rectangle of linoleum—every kind of vermin in the world seemed to use the kitchen as its dumping ground. The Post-it Note she left on the wall above it read simply, MOUSEDOODY, with an arrow pointing to the floor. The Post-it Note mania was on the advice of her mother who was perhaps the most organized person in the cosmos. “If you write notes to yourself, you don’t have to overload your brain with minor details,” mom had said. “You’ve never been good at getting your facts straight or your details right, Rachel, not when you were a little girl and not now, but if you just keep reminding yourself of these things…”

  And if I don’t remind myself, I know you will, mom. Would Rachel really say that to her mother? If she did say something snippy her mother would pause whether on the phone or sitting across the table from her or next to her in the car, and look away. Or Rachel imagined her mother would look away because it seemed like the Right Thing To Do, which mom was really, really good at.

  Normally, I’d rebel against you on this, mom, but I want it to be right, I want it to be normal in this house. I don’t want to start off on the wrong foot in my own house—our house—I want this to be a place we can start our family. Maybe only one baby, maybe six, maybe this year, maybe in three years. But Dear God! before I turn thirty-five, please, please, please!

  She was again staring at the walls when the phone rang.

  A woman’s voice, “You hooked up your phone?”

  “Mom.” Rachel wanted to add: Funny, I was just thinking about you. Rachel always recognized her mother’s voice by that sedimentary layer of Southernness that remained in the woman’s voice all these years she’d been living outside of North Carolina: every sentence seemed to end in a question mark, so it was not just, You
hooked up your phone, but, You hooked up your phone? If her mother were to mention the weather, Rachel knew she’d say in a slow, deliberate voice, It’s gonna be a sun-shiny day? When Rachel had been younger, her mother constantly scolded her for talking back, while Rachel had always felt she was just answering her mother’s questions.

  “You don’t sound thrilled.” You don’t sound thrilled?

  “I was expecting Hugh.”

  “He’s working?”

  “He had an interview.”

  “You don’t sound too hopeful. You went and had your blood sugar checked like I asked you, because when you sound like this -”

  “When I sound like what? ”

  “You know, drained and edgy? I used to have bad periods, you know, it’s not that unusual. But there’s hypoglycemia and your brothers have it. Kelly has PMS. It’s like having walking time bombs for children.”

  Rachel waited a beat, catching her breath. She was not going to argue with her mother over the phone; that would be playing into her hands. “Hugh was supposed to be home at two.”

  “Good lord, it’s nearly seven. You don’t think something happened?”

  Sometimes I wish something would happen. “No. But I guess if he’d gotten the job he’d be home.”

  “Sometimes it takes a while. Your father had nearly a year when he left the Navy before he got on with the beltway bandits.”

  “Let’s drop it. Is something up?”

  “I was just bored. I was playing grandma to Kelly’s brood last week, and now the place seems empty. Are you all moved in?”

  “There’s a shitload of work to do.”

  “Since when do you use language like that with your mother?”

  “When I get off the phone I’ll wash my mouth out. Goodbye.”

  “Give me a call when you’re feeling better, okay?”

  “Right. Goodbye.”

  When she got off the phone from that call, Rachel felt like breaking something. Not because of her mother, although there was that little aside about “playing grandma” to Kelly’s kids (she had four and she wasn’t even thirty yet)—it was Hugh who was the object of her frustration. The thought Hugh where are you? was soon replaced with, I could scream, I will just scream. But she remembered the downstairs tenant. So I can break something and it will be like screaming. The plates and glasses were still packed away in boxes, so it would be difficult to break them. By the time she’d opened the boxes the anger would’ve dissipated. Rachel saw Hugh’s record collection there by the fireplace. She went over.

  This will really hurt him. She picked up his “Ella Fitzgerald Sings Duke Ellington” record, removing the disc from the sleeve. But instead, she looked at the shiny record kept in mint condition—“Take the A Train.” She spent the next twenty minutes unpacking the stereo and connecting the speakers up. She put the record on. She sat on the sofa and gazed out at the patio and alley. The rain had stopped and in the sunless summer light, steam and mist glowed like morning dew.

  Through the French doors she saw a man standing in the alley on the other side of the gate. For a second she thought it was Hugh finally home, but realized not only would he not be coming in the back way (it would make no sense) but also Hugh had lighter hair. Even from this distance she could tell that the skinny stranger was much better looking than Hugh (and she thought Hugh was pretty damn cute).

  Rather than panic, as she was well aware any normal person would, Rachel thought: This is one of the oddest neighborhoods, bag ladies in front of the house and thieves in back. The tall, gangly man was attempting to climb over the back gate. He was the kind of skinny that reminded her of a skeleton, although his darkly tanned face seemed to have enough meat on it. His eyes looked like small coffee beans sunk above high cheekbones. Beneath the heavy eyebrows and the short-cropped light brown hair he was wearing a navy blazer and a yellow tie, hardly the uniform of the neighborhood thief. Perhaps one of Mrs. Deerfield’s friends.

  It was only when the stranger saw her and waved frantically that she realized who it was.

  Ted Adair.

  Hugh’s brother.

  Rachel rose from the couch, smiling.

  2.

  Rachel hadn’t seen Ted since the wedding last fall, and then only briefly because naturally there was some argument between the two brothers. She was sure that if you put Hugh in a room with any member of his family, he would find something to argue about with them, whether it was the state of the world or a jar of peanut butter. Perhaps that’s why they were a family of lawyers. At the reception, she’d pulled Hugh aside and said, “Can’t you two get along for just five minutes?” But she’d felt it was Hugh’s fault that Ted had not shown up for the reception. “What did you say to him?” she’d asked her husband.

  Hugh had looked her square in the face and said: “I told him he wasn’t welcome, Scout. He’s just a messenger boy for the Old Man. He’s only here to lay the family curse.”

  Because it was her wedding day and she had her own friends and family to contend with (particularly her drunken Uncle Paul who had begun flirting heavily with her bridesmaids), Rachel had decided not to reprimand Hugh for this kind of boorish behavior, although she would’ve liked to tell him, “Hugh Adair, you’re becoming more like your father every day.”

  And now, as she went through the French doors and down the rain-puddled iron stairs in back, she was glad that Hugh wasn’t home to drive Ted off.

  “Rachel! Let me in or I’ll blow your house down!” Ted banged hard on the gate; it creaked and shuddered as if it would fall apart at any moment. “I feel like a wet dog out here!” His voice rose and fell like a swing, and hearing it reminded her of Hugh before life had begun to bog him down.

  She went to the gate and unlatched it from the inside. It swung open with an obnoxious squeal, threatening to slam against its side, but Ted caught the edge of it with his right hand. With his left hand, he reached over and clutched her shoulder as if he were off balance and about to fall forward.

  “You should post a sign: Slippery When Wet.” His dark eyes drank in the whole scene: the patio, the house, Rachel with damp hair—and no Hugh. “I’ve caught you at a bad time.”

  “Of course not. Come inside and see the place.”

  “I hope I don’t muddy my boots on the way from the carriage house. Quite a little manor you got here. Where’s my baby brother?” He picked up his attaché case from the concrete and swung it from side to side. “Got something the two of you might be interested in.”

  “Oh, Ted, he’s on an interview. But he’s supposed to be back fairly soon.”

  “Who needs Hugh?” Ted patted the case. “You can handle this stuff yourself, I mean, it is in your name.”

  “What is?” She led the way up the staircase.

  “Rachel,” and when she turned around to face Ted on the stairs for just an instant she had a sense of something, something there on his face that was like Hugh but not like Hugh, and he grinned a broad uninhibited grin as if he had a terrific joke but if he told her it wouldn’t seem so funny. But he could no longer keep it inside. Ted Adair said: “Didn’t he tell you? The whole goddamn house is in your name.”

  3.

  “My name?”

  “I’m surprised Hugh didn’t mention it, although, hey, maybe dad didn’t even go over the details with Hughie—dad’s not real good with his kids, but I guess you don’t need me telling you that -” Ted spoke in gusts of conversation, still managing to take sips from the can of Diet Coke she’d brought him when they went inside. He slouched on the sofa in the living room, one leg looping through the other, his feet tap-tapping nervously against the hardwood floor. “Dad, in his own inimitable way, has his charming side, and he thinks the wife and kiddies—if any exist I don’t know about, you tell me—should have some property. It’s dad’s soft side coming through. I think the way dad put it was: ‘I don’t want my grandchildren going homeless.’”

  Rachel glanced through the papers. It all looked like just anoth
er batch of legalese to dump in her already overstuffed file cabinet, but there was her name on every page, and places for her signature. “I’m flattered he thought to -”

  Ted interrupted: “Include you in the little grudge match he’s got going with Hughie? It’s an unenviable position. He treated Joanna—it’s okay to say her name now, isn’t it?—that way, too. He made sure everything was put in her name, what there was, anyway.”

  When Ted mentioned Hugh’s first wife, Joanna, Rachel felt a jolt go through her that had nothing to do with all the caffeine she’d been drinking. She wasn’t sure if Ted was joking or not; Hugh called his brother The Joker, and a tense moment arrived when she didn’t know how to take this last comment. With Hugh, this would be a serious conversation because it concerned the Old Man and his late wife—and there was nothing to joke about there. Hugh always had that dead earnestness which she had admired in law school, a true-blue quality. His integrity. The same integrity that kept him from going to the Old Man’s law firm for a job.

  Rachel watched Ted, trying to read his eyes.

  They were dark brown, like hers, and unfathomable.

  But Ted broke out laughing—it was a joke after all. “It gives one pause, as inappropriate as it is to bring such sacred cows as the dead, and the near dead—I mean pop, about being near dead. He believes that he’s not going to be around much longer.” But he was still chuckling as he spoke, and so, Rachel thought, It’s all a joke, he’s not serious.

  His laughter was contagious; she, too, began laughing in spite of herself, in spite of her anger with Hugh for taking so long to get home, in spite of his dead first wife, and in spite of the Old Man and his deeds. “Oh, Ted, this is awful, making jokes about dead people.”