The Woman in Our House

by Andrew Hart

  “This is amazing!” said Josh. “Oh my God, Anna, it’s almost exactly like the first meal we had together. Remember?”

  Anna did, though the memory was, Nadine thought, more complex for her. Again, Nadine wondered if she’d overplayed her hand, but Anna’s sense of displacement seemed to relax as they ate. She didn’t ask how Nadine—that is, Oaklynn—happened on so perfect a meal, one designed to trigger only the best and most comfortably nostalgic of feelings, and after a couple of mouthfuls, she was offering wine. Nadine, of course, declined, but the Kleins sipped their glasses of pinot noir and, for the first time since Nadine had arrived, seemed to release some of the caution with which they had been watching her.

  “You never said you could cook!” Anna exclaimed. “We might need to add some kitchen duties to your workload.”

  She was kidding, but Nadine took it in stride.

  “I’d love that,” she said. “I mean, I don’t want to get under your feet or take over or anything, but if you wouldn’t mind me cooking once or twice a week . . .”

  “That would be great,” Josh said. “Yes, Anna? Give you a break from slaving over the stove. If this is anything to go by,” he said, considering his empty plate, “I’d say we’d jump at the chance.”

  Anna’s hesitation was only momentary, but Nadine saw it.

  “Well, I’m sure you don’t want to make a lot of decisions now,” she inserted before Anna could say anything. “It must be quite an ordeal having a stranger move in with you, and the last thing I want is to get in the way. I’ll leave it up to you,” she added, addressing Anna directly. “If it would help for me to make the odd meal, just let me know. If not, no worries.”

  It was like releasing the guy rope on a tent. Anna didn’t quite buckle, but a tension you wouldn’t have known was there, slackened off, and she settled a little deeper in her seat, smiling with genuine pleasure and relief.

  Perfect, thought Nadine.

  They talked about the schedule for tomorrow, what Nadine would need to get done on her own, and whether it would be all right for her to use the car. It would. That was great, Nadine said, because in addition to swinging by the grocery store and a PetSmart where she could get supplies for Mr. Quietly, she’d really like to scope out the local parks, especially if there were places the girls particularly liked. Maybe they’d find time to all go for a walk together—Nadine, Anna, and the girls: get to know the immediate neighborhood. Sounded like a plan, said Josh, who was sitting back and watching everything with muted delight. Anna had some work to do in the morning, but maybe after lunch . . .

  After dinner, Nadine loaded the fancy stainless-steel dishwasher and went over Anna’s routine one more time, taking notes in an ostentatiously efficient ring binder and enthusiastically agreeing to everything Anna said. The cat—currently locked up in the basement bathroom—might still be an issue, but that could be finessed. The story of the imaginary friend and her tragic railway accident had done most of the work for her. Nadine had a gift for convincing other people that what she wanted was what they needed, but in this case, she would barely need to do that. Anna would never deprive Veronica of Mr. Quietly. The child had bonded with the cat at first sight.

  Apart from being the one thing with whom she could be almost entirely and honestly herself, Mr. Quietly was also useful, she thought, as she sat in the basement, stroking him absently. He would act as a kind of barometer, a way of testing how well she was doing, how welcome she was, and what the Kleins would sacrifice to keep her around. It was important that she stay alert to all the signs. By the time she settled into her nauseatingly pretty room for the night, Nadine felt that some of the highest hurdles had been crossed. So far, in fact, it had been easy. But Nadine wasn’t born yesterday, and she knew exactly how bad things could get.

  Not born yesterday, she thought, considering the cliché and wishing, just for a moment, that she could have been, that she might walk into this house as a fully grown adult but one with no past, no guilt, nothing to hide. She sat quite still, lost in the thought, then blinked suddenly and glanced about her, anxious, as if someone might have taken this moment when her guard was down to flip open her head and peer inside. Nadine didn’t like that. In truth, she had to admit, neither would they.

  Chapter Seven

  ANNA

  “She’s just so . . . easy!” Josh gasped as soon as he had put his toothbrush down.

  It was true. Dinner had been a surprise and, like the cat, had put me slightly on the defensive, but that had passed quickly, and not just because Oaklynn had been so poised and professional, so good with the girls. She just seemed to fit in effortlessly. The niceness I had found slightly jarring in so many of the Nurture profiles, something that seemed either superficial or slightly holier-than-thou, seemed deep-rooted in her, stemming from something surprisingly genuine and ordinary. She didn’t think she was a Disney princess slumming it in the woodland cottage, bandaging injured rabbits or whatever the hell she did while the dwarves were at work; she was a real person doing a job she was good at, a job she liked. No doubt the dinner was designed to be ingratiating, but I couldn’t fault her for that, especially when the food had been so good.

  “I could have cut that chicken with a fucking spoon,” Josh mused, going back into the bedroom. “Was that fresh basil in there? That hint of pesto?”

  “Yep. Brought a whole plant with her in her hand luggage,” I said wonderingly as I brushed my hair. “Says she’s going to plant it in the garden.”

  “My God, it’s like moving in with Mary Poppins!”

  “Right?” I said.

  “I was a bit weirded out by that two-finger-handshake thing, but . . .”

  “Oh my God, I was going to warn you!”

  “I know! I was like, what the hell?”

  We were both a little giggly after the wine. Alone upstairs and speaking in hushed voices, we felt like kids who’d pulled a fast one on their parents and couldn’t believe they were getting away with it.

  “But tomorrow,” I said, “I get to read submissions. During the day! Do you know how long it’s been since I got to sort through my in-box to see if there was anything decent in the slush pile? On a weekday? Before bedtime?”

  “Let me see,” Josh considered, grinning. “How old is Veronica now?”

  “Exactly!” I said, climbing into bed and pulling the sheet around me. “God, Josh, I feel like I’m getting my old life back. Don’t get me wrong: I love the girls. But it’s like a door that has been locked for years just opened, and there are all these rooms down there full of great stuff—I’m talking really great stuff, and I’m, like, ‘Oh yeah; I remember that . . .’”

  “And did you see Veronica’s face when Oaklynn produced that spaghetti?”

  “I know! How did she know that was the one thing Veronica would always eat?”

  “Must be some nanny sixth-sense thing.”

  “Maybe it’s Mormon magic,” I whispered. We both got the giggles again and started shushing each other, which made it harder to stop laughing.

  “You are so going to hell,” said Josh.

  “I’ll save you a seat.”

  “Oh, I’ve got a first-class ticket to the other place.”

  “You wish. Strictly hellfire for you, my friend. Nonstop disco inferno.”

  “Well, since we’re going, anyway,” said Josh, switching gears and sliding over onto my side of the bed, “a little more sin can’t hurt, can it?”

  “Not unless you want it to,” I replied in kind.

  “Well, now, Mrs. Klein,” he said, snuggling up and burying his face in my neck, “now that you have all this free time on your hands, what do you plan to do with it?”

  “All the time when I could be cooking and cleaning and making sure Veronica doesn’t take a Sharpie to the dining room walls, you mean?”

  “That’s the time I mean,” said Josh, kissing his way up to my chin and cheek.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Needlepoint? Basket weaving? Cr
ochet?”

  “You thinking of becoming a live-in nanny?”

  I shook my head vigorously.

  “You can’t trust the husbands,” I said. “They get a bit handsy.”

  “Like this?” Josh tried.

  “More like this,” I said.

  “Interesting.”

  “Very.”

  Afterward, when we lay on our backs, listening to the silence of the house and feeling the cold draft of the AC on our sweating bodies, Josh said, almost dreamily, “I know it’s early and all, but I think this might be really good for us, Anna. You know, I was skeptical, but I think it was a good decision.”

  “And the cat?” I asked, grinning.

  “The cat’s interview will be rather longer,” Josh said. “I’m going to reserve judgment.”

  “Veronica has wanted a pet for as long as she could say so.”

  “True,” said Josh. He was drifting off now. I could always tell, though it had been, it suddenly seemed, months since I’d gotten to witness it. Maybe close to a year. Could it have been that long since we’d had sex? I started thinking back in stunned disbelief, counting the times since the kids had been born, and realizing that I could, all too easily. The thought brought me up short, but by the time I rolled over to ask him, he was snoring softly. Overcome with a quiet joy that he was right, that this business with Oaklynn may indeed have been the best decision we ever made, I closed my eyes.

  I fell asleep quickly, body and mind relaxed in ways they hadn’t been for a very long time indeed, sure of good things to come. I dreamed of a cornflower-blue sky and a meadow where gummy bears grew, Veronica as she had been when she first began to walk, stumbling through the grass and laughing so hard that at last she tumbled over and lay there, tears of hysterical delight streaming from her eyes. I woke chuckling, lay still for a while, breathing in the night, then slept again.

  When I woke next, it was to a strange, disorienting sound that felt like I was still inside a dream: a nightmare, in fact. An unearthly howling was coming from outside, high and keening, like the wailing of small children, but also somehow booming and laced with an edge of menace. Not dogs. The sound brought me to a boiling panic, and I sat bolt upright, clutching the covers to my chest. My mind was slower than my body to respond, and I pushed the wrong word—wolves?—away before the right one settled in my head and set me to shaking Josh.

  Coyotes.

  It sounded like dozens of them, right outside the house. The unnerving, feral sound rose in pitch and volume as more voices joined the general cry, and then, as suddenly as it had started, it was gone.

  “What?” murmured Josh, vague with sleep.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “That howling. There are coyotes in the yard, Josh.”

  I was hissing at him, breathless with fear and the sheer strangeness of it. I was a city girl. All my life. I’d never heard anything like it.

  “Probably just dogs,” Josh grumbled. He hadn’t opened his eyes.

  I snapped the bedside light on.

  “I need you to look outside,” I said. “See if they are in the garden. They sounded really close.”

  I was up now, pulling a light cotton kimono-style wrap—a yukata—around me and moving into the bathroom. I peered out through the window over the bathtub into the yard, but it was too dark outside to see anything. Josh made it worse by blundering in and turning the bathroom light on.

  “Turn that off!” I said.

  He mumbled something resentful and did so, but the darkness didn’t really help. The ground fell away toward the creek at the back of the garden, so it was a long way down from the top floor. I fumbled in one of the drawers and pulled out a black flashlight with a bluish LED light. I had to cycle it through some weird flashing program before I settled on a good, solid beam, but though I swept it along the undergrowth just visible by the side of the creek, I saw no telltale shapes moving in the dark, no eyes flashing.

  “Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?” said Josh, yawning.

  “Positive,” I said. “Mary Beth said she’d heard coyotes close by a month or so ago.”

  “She was imagining it,” said Josh. “Kurt said he thought it was probably dogs.”

  “Kurt doesn’t have a baby to worry about,” I snapped back. My heart was racing, and I felt tense with anxiety.

  “Neither does Mary Beth. And ours are asleep in the house. They are perfectly safe.”

  “We need to get some kind of protection,” I said, not really thinking.

  “Like what, a shotgun? You wouldn’t have it in the house.”

  That was true. I was, Mary Beth said, gun averse, like it was a slightly comical condition you picked up from living in New York.

  “Go to bed,” I said.

  Josh rallied. “Anna, if you really think you heard something, I believe you. I’m just saying . . .”

  “Go to bed, Josh,” I repeated, more kindly this time. “You have work tomorrow.”

  Chapter Eight

  ANNA

  In the morning, I went to check on the girls, only to find that Oaklynn had their breakfast already in hand. Veronica barely spoke to me, so enamored was she of Oaklynn’s syrupy chocolate-chip pancakes, so I warned her that she was only being allowed to skip her usual fruit and Cheerios because this was Oaklynn’s first day.

  “Did Oaklynn do wrong, Mommy?” asked Veronica, trying to decide whom she should be criticizing.

  “No, honey,” I said, feeling Oaklynn’s watchful nervousness. “Let’s just say this is a special occasion.”

  “Sorry,” mouthed Oaklynn, as soon as Veronica got up to put her plate away. “I should have asked.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “But yes, we should chat about the girls’ dietary restrictions.”

  “Do they have allergies?” asked Oaklynn, baffled. “I don’t recall seeing anything in their . . .”

  “No, just general health,” I said. “We try to restrict their sugar intake, processed foods, things like that.”

  “Right. Of course. Oh cripes! Sorry. There’s coffee made if you want some.”

  “Thanks,” I said, getting a mug and splashing milk in the bottom. I felt churlishly ungrateful, like I was starting the day off on the wrong foot.

  “If it’s not how you like it, tell me. May take me a couple of tries, but I’ll figure it out.”

  “I’m easy,” I said. “However you take it is fine.”

  “Oh, I don’t drink coffee,” she said. “Or tea or Coke.”

  Right, I thought, feeling stupid. It was a Mormon thing. Which meant that the coffee that lent the kitchen a warm, homey aroma had been made exclusively for me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m tired. I had a weird night.”

  “The coyotes woke you?” asked Oaklynn.

  “Yes!” I said, delighted, pancakes forgotten. “You heard them, too?”

  “Of course! Cripes! Who didn’t?”

  “Josh,” I said, loading the delivery so that she rolled her eyes, grinning. I poured my coffee and sampled it. It was good and strong, just this side of bitter. The way I liked it.

  “And he didn’t believe you,” said Oaklynn knowingly. “Jiminy Christmas.”

  “He said he did. Eventually. But that’s what it was, right? Coyotes? Not dogs or . . . anything else.”

  “Definitely coyotes,” said Oaklynn. “You hear them a lot in Utah.”

  “I knew it!” I said. “Man, they sounded so close. Freaked me out.” I took my cup over to the window and gazed outside. “Why are they here now? They never used to be.”

  “The population is expanding all over the country. I heard a thing on NPR about it. It’s like in Europe with foxes moving into cities, changing their diet and whatnot.”

  “Coyotes, though,” I said vaguely with a shudder. “Where do they go during the day, you think?”

  “Bed down somewhere safe,” said Oaklynn. “You’ve got some serious greenery out there for a city.” />
  “It’s the creek,” I said. “Designated greenway. Runs right through the city. No one can build on it. We saw a couple of deer there a few months ago, walking along it like it was a highway.”

  “Keeps them off the roads, I guess.”

  “Yeah. We’ve always loved it,” I confided. “Makes the area quiet and peaceful, and when you look out there and it’s just trees . . . It’s like we’re not really in the city at all, you know? There are turtles and herons. But coyotes? Not crazy about that. In fact,” I added, turning back to her, “I’m going to look in the yard. See if there are paw prints.”

  “You want me to come?”

  “No, you stay with the girls. I won’t be a minute.”

  The fence at the back of the property was really just a guide, a warning to Veronica not to stray beyond it unless she was with me, three wire strands held up on uneven wooden posts. It was easy to climb over or through, and the little gate that gave access to the creek itself was often left open. That was the case now, and I was horrified to see the dirt bank from the trickle of mud-colored water covered in paw prints. A few of them—possums or raccoons, presumably—were like tiny hands with slim finger lines ending in little indentations from claws, but the vast majority were doglike, and they were all over the yard. I stared at them, remembering the unearthly horror of the howling, and felt suddenly unsafe, as if the pack might emerge from the bushes and attack me right now.

  I shoved the gate closed and latched it, though I was doubtful that it would actually keep the coyotes out, then walked quickly back to the house, checking over my shoulder and wondering what kind of fence we could get built quickly that would be more functional. Oaklynn read my face as soon as I got back inside, by which time I was already hunting for my yard guy’s number on my phone.