Dark Rooms: Three Novels

by Douglas Clegg

  “Don’t believe a word of it, dear.” Penelope went over to the kitchenette. “I grouse about everything in creation. I don’t have a kind bone in my body. Are you hungry? Annie’s brought a delightful cheesecake, only we’re all complaining from diets.”

  “That’s right,” Annie said archly. “This is even diet sherry we’re guzzling.”

  “No, I’ve got to get back, my husband might call.”

  Bringing a slice of cheesecake out to the living area, Mrs. Deerfield said, “She’s got such a lovely ‘usband, ladies, when these two have children we will have a clan of beauties above us.”

  “We can ask my Len if he knows.” But as soon as Betty Kellogg said this, she acted as if she’d just wet her pants—she squirmed uncomfortably, tugging at the edges of her dress, her face turning red.

  “She’ll think we’ve all gone to the moon,” Annie Ralph said, shooting Betty a nasty look. “And she may be right on that count.” Then to Rachel: “Honey, Len is her husband.”

  “Was my husband.”

  Mrs. Deerfield studied Rachel’s face for a reaction, but there was none. “He died in ‘78, dear. Heart attack—Betty had been dreaming for ten years that he would go that way.”

  “But,” Annie added, “of course, Betty never told Len about her dreams, probably because she was afraid he would take steps to prevent it. I believe she fed him a steady diet of butter, fatty red meat, and grease -”

  “She’s joking,” Betty said, shaking her head from side to side.

  Annie giggled almost charmingly and said, “Of course, Rachel, you don’t know me, but I am joking.”

  “But not about communicating with his spirit through -”

  “She’ll think we’re batty, Betty.” Annie seemed to like this turn of phrase. She repeated it: “Batty-Betty, Batty-Betty, that’s a good one.”

  “We are batty,” Mrs. Deerfield said, and the steadiness of her voice momentarily silenced the other two women. She looked Rachel directly in the eyes, and her gaze was so pure and unclouded that Rachel had to resist flinching. But then the kind, overly made-up face of a retired nanny returned, softening her glance. Mrs. Deerfield said, “Rachel, we talk to dead people.”

  3.

  Rachel helped Mrs. Deerfield with the card table. They unfolded its legs above a trap door. “This is the center of the house, you see.”

  “A cold spot,” Betty Kellogg said as if she were translating a foreign phrase for Rachel. “The clamoring place.”

  Mrs. Deerfield tapped the trap door with the heel of her shoe. “In the old days, they called it a crib—I guess it kept the babies cool. I’m joking, dear, I imagine it was for perishables of various and sundry sorts. It’s quite chilly down there, the house holds in the night. It’s where I keep my jams and pickles, dear.”

  “And honey, you must try her pickles.”

  “Bread and butter.”

  “She’s got jars this big full of jellies.” Annie Ralph held her hands out as wide as her hips.

  “Ladies, pull your chairs up.”

  “You called it the clamoring place?” Rachel felt like Alice in Wonderland; she wondered if they were all making fun of her, or if they really took this seriously. Right at that moment she was wishing that Sassy was there with her to witness this. She sat down with the ladies, setting the china plate with cheesecake in front of her on the table.

  “It’s a Carrefour, dear, a crossroads of sorts. This is where the spirits cross on their journeys. You find it hard to swallow, I see.” Mrs. Deerfield smiled pleasantly. “But Annie’s cheesecake, on the other hand, is a bit easier to swallow. How is it?”

  Rachel nodded as she took a bite, her mouth full.

  “It’s an old ladies’ game, honey.”

  “Yes. When you see death up ahead, in the next ten, twenty years -” Betty let her voice die mid-sentence. “Len was taken when he was only fifty-one. They clamor here, can’t you hear them?”

  “We’re giving her the creeps, really. They are just passing through, honey, like wind through an old house.”

  “Where are they going?” Rachel wished she hadn’t asked; she wished she’d just gotten up from the table and gone back upstairs or gone out for a walk down to DuPont Circle for some ice cream or to see if Hugh was in one of the bars down there. Where are you, Hugh? Don’t you know that I love you even if you don’t have a job right at the moment, don’t you know that? Don’t you know things like this make me mad, but I still love you anyway? She felt slightly dizzy, but was getting a heady sugar rush from the cheesecake, which was not half bad.

  “It’s really only an old ladies’ game, dear.” Mrs. Deerfield seemed to sense her discomfort.

  “We can’t have all the answers. Even they don’t have the answers. How is my cheesecake, honey?”

  “It’s delicious.”

  “I only use Philadelphia brand cream cheese. It’s very simple to make.”

  “Don’t give her the ‘recipe,’” Betty said with a hint of sarcasm. “It’s so hard to follow, and then it never comes out the way she does it because she always leaves something out.”

  “Betty Kellogg, you make it sound intentional. What I do is I forget to put something in.”

  “Recipe?” Mrs. Deerfield huffed. “My dear, she got it off the package of cream cheese.”

  “Bitch. Menopausal bitch.”

  They were all momentarily silent. Rachel felt itchily uncomfortable, just as if she were surrounded by mosquitoes. Or those fleas of Ramona’s. She made a slight move back in her fold-out chair; it scraped the floor and her knee hit the underside of the card table.

  “I should be -”

  “We’re a rough pack of cards,” Penelope Deerfield said, reaching over to squeeze Rachel’s hand. “We’re being rude—my goodness, dear, your hand is so warm. You’re not running a fever are you?”

  Rachel did feel warm suddenly, as if something had just been let into the room, some wild animal with its fur burning. She felt dizzy. She was sitting there with three versions of her own mother, at different ages: when her mother was thirty, when she was forty-five, and then in her sixties. Her mother in her sixties pressed down on her hand and said, “Get her a cup of tea, “and then it was no longer her mother, but a black man holding her hand. His skull seemed to be pressing outward against his coffee-colored skin, his large dark eyes sinking back into holes, becoming cracks, and then his eyes were sealed up completely—his lips dried like a riverbed. And emerging were ridged yellow teeth covered with a dripping scum, growing in size as they came towards her, his nose swimming in the dark flesh that gradually filled up her vision. The teeth parted, flying up, and she was looking down into his throat, his enormous purple tongue slapping just in front of her face, his pulpy uvula flapping like torn skin—and a blast of heat from his gut rising up through his throat—heat and something else, something sweet and sour, vinegary, reminding her of a biology class, of dissecting a frog when she was fifteen, and then she felt freezing cold and it was over.

  “How long does it take you to pour tea, Annie?” Mrs. Deerfield’s face was turned away from Rachel’s, but her hand was still clutching Rachel’s wrist.

  “She’s coming down,” Betty said.

  Rachel coughed, wrenching her hand from Mrs. Deerfield’s. “I’m sorry.”

  “Those who clamor,” Annie Ralph said, balancing the tea cup as she came back from the kitchenette, “they’ve spoken through you, honey.”

  “It was the sugar shock,” Penelope said. “That damn cheesecake of yours. You must be exhausted, dear. You’ll run a fever if we don’t get you upstairs for a rest.”

  4.

  “Did they speak through me?” Rachel lay down on the sofa in her own living room. She felt drained and weak and wasn’t sure if she was dreaming.

  Mrs. Deerfield stood above her, gazing down at her with concern. “What?”

  “Annie said it was those spirits. She said they spoke through me. You told me I was sensitive. Is that what it means?”


  “Annie Ralph would believe anything. I say just because it happens doesn’t make it real. You started saying some jumbled words, it was gibberish.” Mrs. Deerfield felt Rachel’s forehead. “You don’t seem too feverish, but it’s probably the humidity, too. Can I turn up the air conditioner?”

  Rachel nodded dreamily. Mrs. Deerfield went over to the thermostat and switched it on, adjusting the temperature.

  “Did I say something bad? They looked scared.”

  “Those old birds are frightened of their shadows. But Rachel, you see I knew it, you’re open to spiritual influence.”

  “It doesn’t frighten you? Jesus, I was terrified and I don’t even believe in it.”

  “One never knows what to believe in this world. Nothing’s really out there telling us what to believe, is it? But we all muddle through and sometimes the patterns reveal themselves to us. You obviously have a talent that way, dear, perhaps untapped, but still there. But who knows what to make of it all?”

  “But you believe in ghosts.”

  “The child in me believes, dear, the child in me believes. And the grown-up in me believes in letting that child out now and then, sometimes just to run amok in the garden and track mud across my quiet life. But one mustn’t confuse things: a ghost is a remnant of a life, while a spirit is simply a life without flesh. I believe in spirits and their influence. But it is just a pastime for a little old lady like myself, nothing for a pretty young girl to worry about.”

  “You’ve been very sweet, Mrs. Deerfield—I’m sorry for wilting like that with your friends.”

  “It was the sugar, Rachel, the way your face went from peach to white and then red when you came to—it was only a second. What have you eaten today?” Mrs. Deerfield returned to the couch; Rachel scooted over a bit to allow her to sit on the edge.

  “Oh. A Diet Coke and I guess that was it until the cheesecake.”

  “Sugar can do nasty things to you if you’re not careful. I try not to use much in my jams and jellies—as we all get older we must watch what we put in our tummies. When I worked as a nanny I saw what sugar can do to children.”

  “You must’ve been a very good nanny.”

  “Not so good.” She rose from beside the couch. “You sure you’ll be all right? I can sit here awhile longer.”

  “No, thank you, though. I’m just sleepy.”

  “When Mr. Adair gets home have him make you a good dinner.”

  “When Mr. Adair gets home he’ll be lucky if I’m still asleep.”

  Mrs. Deerfield wagged a finger at her. “Naughty girl.”

  5.

  It was dark out when she felt a kiss on her forehead, waking her, and smelled a brewery pressed against her. She remembered the man’s mouth in Mrs. Deerfield’s Clamoring Place, and tried to scream, but the mouth sucked greedily at her lips. When Rachel opened her eyes, pushing the man away from her, screaming, he switched a light on and it was Hugh, his tan suit stained and filthy, his hair brushed in opposing directions, his eyes half lidded, his shirt opened almost to his navel.

  “I didn’t think you’d scream,” he said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PLAYING HOUSE

  1.

  “Washington is hell in summer,” Penelope Deerfield said as she dug into her mulch pile with a small rusty trowel. The patio was hot as a broiler, and Rachel (standing over her, observing) kept switching from one foot to the other. She was barefoot and had only come downstairs to put the trash bags in the alley dumpster when Mrs. Deerfield called her over to the small mulch pile near her thin strip of garden.

  Mrs. Deerfield explained to Rachel, “You see, even the rodentia go off on suicide missions.” She tapped the dead rat that lay next to her. It was the size of her own fist; Mrs. Deerfield had discreetly turned the rat over on its stomach so that Rachel wouldn’t lose her breakfast looking at the deep gash that the cat had made down the rat’s stomach. Mrs. Deerfield wore a wide-brimmed straw sun hat, a stretched-to-the-limit pair of blue jeans, and a grass-stained blue chamois work shirt that made her look a little too “down on the farm” considering what she was doing—burying a dead rat into the mulch pile. “It’s morbid, I suppose, to use the rat’s carcass as part of the mulch, but of such things is fertilizer made, dear. I’ve often thought it a pity that we don’t bury human beings in mulch piles—it would make them ever so much more useful, don’t you agree?”

  “I hope the mice in our house don’t get as big as that thing,” Rachel said. The soles of her feet felt like they were burning, and the cement of the patio was like a bed of hot coals. She’d awakened feeling fat and unattractive, found a pimple in the middle of her forehead, her car would probably not start (or if it did, it would make those funny noises), and now she had to look at a dead rat and be polite about it after having eaten runny fried eggs. And it’s my day off. She clutched the sides of her bathrobe together. “You’re sure it didn’t come from inside somewhere?”

  “Oh, no, dear, this is most certainly an alley rat who had the misfortune of crossing Ramona’s path. Ramona is a warrior at heart, and although a pregnant lady, still a wanderer—I saw her bring it in from near the dumpster. She was quite proud, I assure you, and expected extra cream this morning.”

  “Makes me happy there’s a cat around—even if she does make me sneeze.”

  “It’s the easy season for felines.” Mrs. Deerfield poked a hole in the mulch pile with her trowel, stabbing into the mound to make a wide berth for the dead rat. “When the humidity and heat explode like this—it’s not even eleven and already we’ve got a drippy oven day on our hands—all a cat has to do is put her paws out to trip the rats.” She pushed the rat into the hole with the back of her trowel and then began covering it up. “The rats get fat and stupid in this kind of weather and then start fighting with each other. Usually, they’re at each other’s throats before a mischievous cat like my Ramona even happens upon them.”

  2.

  Rachel wondered if she and Hugh were as bad as the rats.

  They had managed to survive the first few weeks in the house without being at each other’s throats—this was Rachel’s feeling, anyway. Unemployment, Rachel knew from only brief experience, was depressing enough without having someone hanging over you like a vulture reminding you of it. She’d wake up for work in the morning and see him lying there, still dreaming, snoring, for all the world like an innocent, while she bitched and moaned about her malfunctioning car, about the soaring humidity, about the slight weight gain she’d noticed from eating all those on-the-way-to-the-office bagels from the Chesapeake Bagel Factory. She’d take her shower, still wary of the roaches darting beneath the tile where the grouting had come out CALL EXTERMINATOR, her yellow Post-it Notes scattered across the tiles, down the hallway, on the refrigerator), and look in the steamed bathroom mirror wondering who was the fairest of them all, knowing it was not her. She was tired even before the day began. One morning, she wrote across the steamed mirror BREADWINNER.

  She hoped that Hugh would see it. She could never commit these nasty messages to her Post-it Note mania—too permanent, not lighthearted enough. A Post-it Note he could slip in his pocket and confront her with; writing on a steamed mirror was somewhat whimsical, a joke to be rubbed away with a towel or two fingers. Who wrote this? Oh, you and your little jokes!

  Then it became a habit, leaving messages on the mirror in steam: WORK, or CASHFLOW, or the worst one, THE BIG 3-0. All in hopes that he would see it, would laugh, think she was being cute. And still get the message. She imagined him pulling back the shower curtain, all set to shave, looking up in the mirror and seeing the magic mirror message appear. Shaking his head, That Rachel, he would think, what will that little dickens think up next?

  But he never mentioned the messages which meant one of two things: either he was taking them too seriously or he didn’t notice them at all.

  Rachel couldn’t complain about Hugh having nothing to do around the house. He managed to strip off most of the dingy old wa
llpaper in the halls. He’d re-grouted the tiles in both the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms, completely replaced the downstairs bathroom sink. He acted like a kid at Christmas every time he got his tool kit out, his hammers, screwdrivers, planes, crowbar, and sledgehammer (“for when I need to take out my aggressions on the walls…”), and a series of wrenches of all sizes. If he was busy he seemed happy. Everything seemed to be costing an arm and a leg—some days Rachel would look at her paycheck and know that it was going to pay for refinishing the floors or repairing something or other. Paints and wallpapers ate up most of the money, with new drapes running a close third. But no matter how much work Hugh put into the house, it always looked half-finished, and Rachel was a little afraid that it would always be that way. She made enough money to cover all the household expenses, but she was saving practically nothing and it had never been their plan to only live on one income. Her car alone was eating up a lot of spare change—it made strange noises which were to her a mystery, and there were mornings when she had to take a cab to work because the car refused to start.

  But Hugh seemed to be happy, just keeping busy—summer was a horrible time to look for a job, the fall would be better, and Hugh was going on at least three interviews a week as it was. She couldn’t even begrudge him a few beers here and there.

  Sometimes she thought about inviting people over—Sassy or Hugh’s brother Ted, or her mother, but the house smelled of paint and nothing was quite the way she wanted it to be yet. She wanted the house to be perfect, or as close as it could get, before she undertook anything like a house-warming party.

  3.