Rooms

by Lauren Oliver

  There. It was done. The cello hit the D note; the crickets stopped singing. Now that she’d said it, Minna felt suddenly empty. There was a long stretch of silence. She was afraid to look at her mom.

  “Minna,” Caroline said finally, in a voice that sounded very young. But she said nothing else. Minna knew she should be relieved or furious or disappointed—she should be something—but the tears had dried up as suddenly as they’d come, and she couldn’t muster up the energy to feel anything.

  Caroline picked up the pack of cigarettes, offered one to Minna, and took one for herself. The smoke burned her throat—a good, cleansing burn.

  They sat, and they smoked. All around them, the house was silent. Gradually, the crickets began to sing again.

  ALICE

  Morning, this morning, tastes like ashes and rosebuds. Minna and Caroline both fell asleep together on the air mattress, a single blanket bundled around them. Caroline snores into her pillow, and a bit of drool is clotting Minna’s hair. The room smells like whiskey, and wind from the open window stirs the cigarette ashes scattered across the leather ottoman. Outside smells gray today, like rain.

  Today is Richard Walker’s memorial, a Saturday. What did Saturdays used to taste like? Like eggs and fried ham and the bitter smell of hair in heavy rollers. Like long quiet hours and making up after a fight. Like ointment and bruising. Like waiting, especially, for something—anything—to happen.

  Thomas was going to come for me on a Friday night. He had last-minute things to take care of, and the letter still to write to his fiancée, breaking off their engagement. He told me not to expect him before dinnertime, and I avoided eating, even though I was hungry. I was too nervous, too excited, and I imagined we’d have our first dinner together as a real couple on the road. We’d pull off a no-name highway, miles away from anywhere, when the darkness was pulled tight over the whole world and even the stars seemed remote and unconcerned. We’d find a little restaurant where the food was cheap and awful and we would laugh about it later.

  It was nearly ten p.m. by the time I started to worry. I called his house. No answer. Then I was reassured again. He must be on his way to meet me. But another hour passed, and he didn’t come. It was a warm night, a perfect spring night, but I thought maybe the roads had been closed—a sudden flash flood, though it hadn’t rained more than usual, a portion of the steep hillside by Hayes’ farm giving way. Those things happened, back then.

  But I would have heard. He would have called. Surely, someone would have called.

  Hour after hour, I waited in the sitting room with the suitcase at my feet, while the darkness deepened and spread out around me, like an endless well closing in over my head. For a long time every sound—a coyote crying out, a sudden change in the wind—brought hope again. I imagined the crickets were an engine, drawing closer. I imagined the shush of the wind through the grass was his footstep.

  Finally, the darkness began to ebb. The room began to assert itself: the sofa, the suitcase, the lamp, and the telephone all floated out of the deep purple shadows like objects thrown up on a tide, somehow—suddenly—unfamiliar. Deep inside my belly, the baby kicked, restless.

  We had names already picked out: Thomas, for a boy; Penelope, for a girl.

  That Saturday, too, tasted like ashes.

  TRENTON

  “It doesn’t hurt,” she said. By now her voice was even quieter than a whisper; it was like the memory of a voice, like a shadow falling across Trenton’s mind.

  “How do you know? I thought you didn’t remember anything.” In the living room, the guests were already assembling. Trenton could hear the soft pressure of dozens of feet beyond the bathroom door, and the murmur of quiet conversation. How many of them had really known, or liked, his dad? None of them, probably.

  His suit itched.

  “The worst part is being scared . . . before,” the ghost said. “After that, you just let go.”

  Thirteen pills and a bottle of vodka. Would that do it? He’d brought in a carton of orange juice, too. He didn’t think he could take even a few shots of vodka without puking. And what was the point of that?

  He heard Minna say, “Thank you for coming,” her voice higher pitched than usual. He had a brief moment of regret, for her and for Amy. He’d loved Minna once, and she’d loved him. He remembered Christmases when she’d heaved him, kicking, into the air, so he could be the one to put the star on the top of the tree.

  He wondered whether his memorial service would be full of assholes pretending to be sad and secretly filling up on free booze and deli sandwiches. He wondered whether his mom would have him cremated, and what kind of urn style she’d pick out for his remains—hair, nails, toes, pimples, singed to fine dust. A plain style, probably, for a plain, nothing-life.

  He wasn’t sure he wanted to die. But he didn’t think he wanted to live, either.

  He measured half a glass of vodka, then topped it with orange juice. The first sip almost made him gag. He hated vodka, didn’t understand how his mom could drink it plain. He forced himself to take three big swallows, then washed down two Valium. He fought the urge to puke.

  In the living room, Minna was saying, “Thank you so much for your flowers, and we’re sure that’s what he would have chosen.” Her voice sounded very faint, as though he were hearing her from the bottom of an ocean.

  “I’ll be here,” the ghost said. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

  Her voice was close. He was hot. His shirt was itchier than ever. He unbuttoned the collar. When he reached for the glass, for a moment his hand was water and broke apart; he saw the sink beyond it, the hard lines of porcelain, the lingering brown silhouette of a cup that had been packed away or discarded—the things that would outlast him, outlast his body and his life. What was the point of trying at all, if in the end you were no better, no longer, no more real than a bathroom sink and a rust stain?

  “Where’s Trenton?” That was his mother’s voice. “Has anyone seen Trenton?”

  He shook another pill into his palm. It was very blue. It looked like a breath mint, which struck him as funny. A deadly breath mint.

  Was there anything he would miss? Anything at all? Would anyone miss him?

  “I’m happy,” the new ghost said. At least, he thought she said it. He couldn’t tell, anymore. Her voice was an echo, like voices he had heard before but forgotten. “I’m happy you’re coming.”

  He brought the pill to his mouth. He put it on his tongue. There was a faint vibration in his pants, and for a moment he thought he might be having some kind of predeath experience, a just-before-dying erection, a final humiliation; and then he realized that his phone was buzzing, and he had a message. He worked his phone out of his pocket clumsily with one hand, spitting the pill into his other, and placing it carefully on the edge of the kitchen sink.

  He was dizzy. He leaned back against the wall, blinked, made the words come into focus.

  The text was from an unknown number.

  “Don’t read it,” the ghost said, speaking directly into the darkest corners of his mind, speaking like a footfall that isn’t heard, but felt or intuited. He could feel her, still, even though he couldn’t see her anymore. Even though every part of her was fading. “It doesn’t matter.”

  It’s Katie, the words read. They kept blinking and re-forming, disappearing and reappearing, and he had to hold the phone very steady with both hands. Where are you? I’m coming. I need to explain.

  “Please don’t leave me alone, Trenton,” the ghost said; but he was reading the text again and again, feeling the words in his fingers, already imagining the smell of menthol and tobacco and wildflowers, and his head was rising out of the shadows, and he didn’t hear her.

  I’m at home, he typed back, very carefully, with very clumsy fingers. I’ll wait.

  Then he took another long sip of his drink, and as the guests continued flowing into the living room for his father’s memorial, he ran the faucets, bent over the toilet, and let it all co
me up.

  SANDRA

  Richard Walker is a lot more popular dead than he was alive.

  We haven’t hosted this many people in years. It’s like standing in an overcrowded elevator on your way to the forty-second floor. Someone’s always farting. Too much perfume, too much bad breath, too many murmured conversations and fake smiles, too much lipstick-on-teeth, and too many men trying to scratch their balls in their suits so no one will notice.

  Most of the action is in the living room, where Caroline and Minna have set up rows of chairs in front of the fireplace, with an aisle in the middle like they’re preparing for a wedding. There’s no podium, no priest—just a small standing microphone that Minna rented, a half-dozen flower arrangements, and a huge cardboard poster of Richard Walker’s face, a professional shot he must have had taken for his company. He’s tan and smiling, leaning forward like he’s about to whisper the camera a secret.

  “He looked so healthy then,” a woman says, shaking her head, as if it’s his fault he started aging and stopped looking so good.

  “It’s terrible,” says another woman, sipping her gin and tonic.

  “Is he in there?” says a young kid as he points to a small marble urn set up on the fireplace mantel, just behind the photo of Walker smiling.

  “Only his body,” the kid’s mom says, as if that should give him comfort.

  The kid keeps staring, fidgeting with his jacket. “How’d they fit him in there?” he asks finally.

  The woman with the gin and tonic overhears and turns, smiling, with lipstick-coated teeth. “They burned him, sweetie,” she says.

  The kid begins to cry.

  When I was maybe five or six years old, a woman down the street, Mrs. Gernst, got flattened by a train. When I got older, I realized it probably wasn’t an accident—it was a late train, and she was so sick and swollen with age she could barely move, so what the hell was she doing crossing the tracks at midnight on a Tuesday?—but at the time my mom only said that God works in mysterious ways, a.k.a. God will make a pancake of a sick old woman who never did harm to anybody, so what do you think he’ll do to you if you don’t clean your room and brush your teeth and mind your gospel?

  Somehow—don’t ask me how—they managed to stitch and cinch and stuff her, ice her down, stick her in a big wood coffin, and put her up on display, like one of the glazed carp my dad’s friend Billy had hanging on a wooden plaque on the wall of his living room.

  That’s probably my earliest memory: the funeral of Mrs. Essie Gernst. It was the first time I’d ever seen a dead person. I remember playing rummy in the back of her living room with Billy Iverson and Patty Horn during the speeches and the service, and how the whole house smelled like a combination of my dad’s old socks and the kind of powder my mom put down in our drawers and cabinets to keep the ants away.

  Billy told me if I kissed Mrs. Gernst on the mouth, she would wake up. I had to do lip-on-lip, he said, and then she’d sit up and throw her arms around me and give me all her fortune—because everyone knew that Mrs. Gernst had a lot of money that she didn’t spend.

  What the hell did I know? It worked in all the fairy tales.

  (Cissy and I once played Prince Charming and Snow White. We were drunk on apple brandy she’d unearthed from her parents’ liquor cabinet, lying out by the creek on a big patch of deep purple moss on one of those Georgia summer days like we were living inside of a painted egg: greens and blues and bright splashes of color; everything brighter and better than real life should ever be. I was sleepy from the heat and the brandy and the slow rotation of the minutes, like even the seconds were too hot to move at normal speed. Cissy sat up on an elbow and leaned over me.

  “You be Snow White,” she said. “I’ll be Prince Charming.”

  Before I could ask her what she meant, she leaned down and kissed me. Her lips were dry and tasted like sugar and her hair was wet from the creek and I could smell her sun cream and deodorant.

  “What was that for?” I said when she pulled away, and I remember laughing even though I felt scared for some reason I couldn’t name.

  “Now you’ll never die,” she said, and she was smiling, too.)

  After the service was over, when the grown-ups had drifted into the kitchen to talk about nothing and drink coffee and watch the clock sideways, wondering how quickly they could leave without looking impolite, Billy gave me a boost so I could reach the casket. I remember Mrs. Gernst collected porcelain figurines and there were two cats nestled next to her, perched on tissue paper, eyes up, watching me. Her skin smelled like the inside of a garage, like spilled chemicals and someone’s wooden workbench; her lips were thin as paper and just as dry.

  And I remember the sudden scream, and falling backward on top of Billy, who was laughing like a maniac. My mother came charging out of the crowd like the devil was at her heels, yanked my skirt up where I was, and gave me a solid spanking right there in front of Mrs. Gernst’s body, until my father intervened and dragged us both into the street.

  Funny enough, I thought at first my mom was mad because I’d done it wrong. Mrs. Gernst hadn’t woken up. She was still dead as dead.

  That was always my favorite part of the story, anyway. Not the happily-ever-after part—even as a kid I could see that that was a load of honky—but the kiss, the reversal, the waking up, like the past had never happened at all. It was better than confession and getting Jesus to absolve you after a few Hail Marys.

  Maybe that was my problem all along, and Alice’s, too. We were waiting for Prince Charming and that magic kiss.

  We were waiting—are waiting—for forgiveness.

  MINNA

  Minna saw Danny slip into the living room just after her mom started speaking her dad’s eulogy. At first she thought he’d come to show support, to listen to her apologize; but then she saw he was in uniform and was accompanied by another cop in uniform. She tried to gesture to him several times—which was hard, because she was sitting in the front row and was supposed to be paying attention—but he kept his eyes glued to her mother.

  Where the hell was Trenton? She didn’t see him anywhere.

  “You can never really know anyone else,” her mother was saying, and Minna turned around, guilty, feeling as though her mom was speaking a private message to her. And Caroline was looking at her. This wasn’t part of the speech, Minna knew, at least it wasn’t part of the speech her mom had rehearsed with her earlier, while they were stashing the roll-away beds, carefully avoiding discussing what they had said to each other last night, how they had slept side by side, as if Minna was still a little kid.

  “I was married to Richard for almost twenty-two years, and in some ways he was still a stranger to me,” Caroline said. It was very quiet in the room. Someone coughed. Minna was embarrassed by her mom’s eye contact, and the pleading look of her expression. She wanted to look away but couldn’t. “But I know certain things for a fact. Richard enjoyed life, truly enjoyed it, in a way very few people do. Sometimes he enjoyed it a little too much.” Several people laughed. “One time, he decided we should all go camping as a family. He spent weeks researching the best tents, the best fishing poles, the best places to pick berries in the summertime. He wanted to do it. He didn’t want to bring even a can of beans. Well, that lasted about half an hour. We spent the night in a Regency near Lake George, after I got eaten alive by mosquitoes, Minna picked a handful of poison ivy, and everyone got hungry.”

  Now everyone laughed. Minna felt a sudden gripping terror: she had forgotten about the camping trip, but now she remembered her father suited up in a broad hat decorated with feathers and ornaments, wading into a flat river the color of sky, calling for her to come swim. She remembered, too, how he had taken her arm, bloated with poison ivy, onto his lap, squinting with concentration as he applied calamine lotion.

  What else had she forgotten about her dad? How many other moments had she let slip? She knew he had loved life, almost to the point of poor taste. That was the problem, in some way
s. The rest of them had been like passing shadows on the brilliant high-noon photograph of his life; she had felt like a shadow next to him.

  For the first time it occurred to her that maybe, maybe, it wasn’t entirely his fault.

  “Death makes it easy to forgive,” Caroline was saying. She looked down and shuffled the notes in her hand, even though Minna knew she wasn’t reading from them. When Caroline looked up again, she had the same pleading expression in her eyes. “We all do our best,” she said, speaking very deliberately. Then she broke eye contact, finally, and looked out over the rest of the crowd. Minna wondered whether her mom was sober. It was hard to tell. She didn’t usually speak so truthfully, even—or especially—when she was drunk. “I loved Richard very much, even after all this time. We stayed very close.” Her voice broke slightly and Minna gripped the sides of her chair, to keep from feeling like she might be bucked off. “I forgive him for everything. I forgive him for dying, too, although I’ll miss him very much. There were things I still wanted to say. But there always are.”

  It took the audience several moments to work out that Caroline’s speech was over; it was a strange, abrupt ending, and it wasn’t until Caroline had sat down heavily in the seat next to Minna’s that the tension, the silence of waiting, broke. If this had been a play, the audience would have applauded. But it wasn’t a play, and instead there was just the sound of shuffling and chairs creaking and mints being unwrapped, as Minna’s cousin, Greg, came silently up the aisle and took his place behind the microphone.

  “How was I?” Caroline leaned in to whisper to Minna. She reeked of vodka. Not sober, then, not that it mattered. Minna reached out and squeezed her hand. She was worried if she tried to talk, she would cry again.