The Woman in Our House

by Andrew Hart

  In other circumstances, I might have been dissatisfied with this assessment, but in truth, I was so relieved that Grace’s illness had blown over so completely that I was positively elated. I told Oaklynn, who smiled and said she was so glad, then got on with preparing the girls’ lunch. With a weight lifted from my shoulders, I went up to the office to work.

  I checked my email an hour later and saw Ben Lodging’s response. It was and was not what I had expected. It read:

  Dear Ms. Klein.

  I’m so happy to hear this, though that phrase is, perhaps, unfortunately ironic. I am almost completely deaf, so phones and videoconferencing don’t really work for me. Sorry! Please don’t take this as a lack of enthusiasm about your very exciting interest in me and my work. Could we continue to “talk” by email? Or by some kind of instant messenger? I have Facebook and Twitter accounts that we could use to communicate directly. Sorry for the inconvenience. Again, please don’t read anything more than my disability into my request. I am very excited about the possibility of signing with you.

  Best wishes,

  Ben Lodging

  I read it twice. I had never had a disabled client before, and I immediately began to worry if it would make working together more difficult or whether acquisition editors might be less willing to enter into a relationship with someone they couldn’t easily communicate with in person. In my gut, I felt sure all matters related to producing and editing the book could be done in writing, but it seemed I would have to rethink the possibility of TV and radio interviews.

  Perhaps not, though. A sign language interpreter might scare off some interviewers or slow proceedings down, but maybe that, too, could be a kind of asset, a way of differentiating Ben from the hundreds—thousands—of mystery and thriller writers competing for a place in the limelight. Was that a cynical exploitation of the man’s disability? Probably, though deaf authors must surely have faced enough discrimination that making their condition work for them rather than against them for once didn’t seem too bad.

  But I was getting ahead of myself. There would be a lot of talk—well, type—before we were strategizing TV and radio interviews, something most writers never got near.

  He will, though, I thought. I can feel it. He’s special.

  I typed my email response immediately, laying out my boilerplate questions about his work, his sense of what he would like to write next, and where he saw himself in five years as a writer. They wouldn’t catch the spontaneity I got in a phone call—that sense of whether the writer was in it for the long haul or was just angling for a big payout—but I felt like I had a sense of the man already. It might be wishful thinking, but I had a good feeling about him, however quirky he might be. In a crowded marketplace, quirk was good. It made you different, and difference made you visible. Combine that with a facility for language and structure—the nuts and bolts of storytelling—and there was real potential. Ben Lodging might be just the author I had been looking for to break my way back into the business.

  I said as much to Josh.

  “What?” he said, looking up from his computer, his face tight and hollowed out by the bluish light of the screen.

  “I said I think he might be the real deal,” I said.

  “That’s great, Anna,” he said, his eyes returning to his work.

  “Yes,” I said pointedly, “it is.”

  I waited until my tone registered, and he looked up again.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Yes, you’re right. We should do something to celebrate.”

  I backtracked.

  “Well, it’s hardly anything to celebrate yet,” I said.

  “Not signing him,” said Josh. “Feeling like you are back at work for real. Grace is healthy. Oaklynn is helping out, and you are back in the saddle. Sounds worthy of a celebration to me.”

  “OK,” I conceded. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Have some friends over, maybe. Drinks? Dinner?”

  “Friends?”

  “Yeah. Kurt and Mary Beth, the Wards. Whoever you want.”

  I considered this, warming to the idea.

  “It would give me a chance to properly introduce them to Oaklynn,” I said. “I feel like I’ve been keeping her away from our friends a bit.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, I really like her, but she is a little . . . different.”

  “Eccentric,” Josh supplied.

  “That, too,” I conceded.

  “Are you embarrassed to have her meet your friends?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

  “No!” I said. “Maybe. A little.”

  “Are you afraid she won’t measure up to them, or the other way around?” he asked.

  I thought about that for a second: dog-obsessed Tammy Ward and her babysitter-fancying husband, Tommy; bland, acquisitive Kurt Wilson and his acid-tongued wife, Mary Beth.

  “You know,” I said, mildly surprised by the idea, “I’m really not sure.”

  “It will be fine,” said Josh. “Mary Beth can be a bit sharp, but she’s fun.”

  “Fun?”

  He hesitated.

  “Yeah,” he said, shrugging. “Basically sweet, right?”

  Fun and now sweet? That made her sound like the kind of guest determined to have her friends sing karaoke or drink cocktails with salacious names because she knew in her heart how much they’d love it. A night with Mary Beth was more like playing catch with a live grenade. She could be hysterically funny, often when she was being mean, but fun? Sweet? They were nice words, cautious words, words like cute, which you used when you meant hot, words you used to dodge other things.

  But what things?

  I watched Josh as he studied his computer screen again, trying to decide if he was avoiding my gaze.

  Chapter Twenty

  Oaklynn put her laptop down and flexed her wrists. Outside the light of the screen, the basement room felt dark and oddly unlived in, even though Oaklynn was the person who lived in it. Except not really, because Oaklynn wasn’t real, and Nadine had been wiped away, and the person sitting here in her stupid felt hat and her witchy shoes was a kind of no one: a job performed for other people who needed help, who needed eyes on their children, though if they knew . . .

  The hospital had been hard. Glorious in its way, of course, but also hard. Each moment was a memory, sharp and clear and weighted like smells from childhood. Sour smells of blood and decay and death barely masked by disinfectant. It was impossible not to see Maddie there, just in the corner of her eye as she glanced at the curtained beds, wondering vaguely which patients would live and which would not.

  Everyone dies, the doctor had told her long ago, when he had brought the news she had known was coming. She had watched his face for an unspoken accusation as he said Maddie’s name, and she had lain there, tense and watchful, feeling the guilt radiate off her like heat from an oven door. He would see it. He would demand to know what she had done or not done. He would call the police.

  But none of that had happened, though a part of her thought it still might, that they might still be tailing her, pursuing the scent of her culpability across the miles, the years . . .

  Everyone dies, he had said, as if that was a comfort. The question was only when.

  Oaklynn looked at her laptop screen, her eyes sliding over the numbered boxes on the calendar in the corner, the minutes ticking over on the clock at the top, and thought it again.

  The question was only when.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ANNA

  I read more of Hell Is Empty, a deliciously creepy scene in which Carried, the sociopathic accountant, returns some misdelivered mail to the single mother who lives next door, all the while fingering the handle of a bread knife he has strapped to his thigh, easily accessible from a hole in his trouser pocket. It was electrically unnerving, and I read with one hand clamped to my mouth, conscious that my heart was racing as I considered the looming but unwritten ending.

  Will he
or won’t he?

  It was quite a tightrope act. The book world had moved steadily toward action-driven thrillers and the kinds of mysteries where there’s a body within the first chapter if not on page one, but Lodging was managing to do the impossible, keeping my attention while—page after anxious page—nothing happened. Would flying in the face of industry wisdom be a problem when I came to sell it? Perhaps. But only until people read it. This was a book that would sell not as an outline and a sample but as a complete manuscript, where every sentence would work to prove the strength of the premise.

  I was still thinking about this when Ben Lodging’s meticulously detailed answers to my questions arrived by email. They were all I could hope for and more: specific, ambitious, and dedicated. This was not a one-book author but a focused writer with a career I could build. Within a half hour, I had formally offered him representation. Ten minutes after that, I got his delighted acceptance. I called Ramkins and Deale and spoke to Jim Ramkins, letting him know I was sending a letter of agreement over to Ben Lodging and outlining the project. Jim was, as ever, enthusiastic and hands-off, careful not to try and sway my judgment either way, and twenty minutes later, the deal was done. Ben Lodging had representation, and I had my first new client in over three years.

  It was still not really worthy of a celebration, but it felt like an achievement, and I was glad we had agreed to host the dinner party. As the evening got closer, however, I became more and more convinced that it had been a bad idea. I think Josh thought so, too, but he clearly wanted to assert some kind of normalcy, a return to some version of our pre-Oaklynn life, and after my minor meltdown over Grace’s ER visit, he was keen to get me out of what he referred to as “Mommy mode.” That was ironic, really, since the incident had resurrected some of my insecurities about the kind of mother I was when compared to Oaklynn. Beyond her coolheaded efficiency at the hospital, Oaklynn seemed to know just what to do and say to keep Grace and Veronica happy, while being utterly unfazed by our assorted minor dramas.

  Mommy mode, my ass.

  Neurotic-and-inadequate mode might be closer to the truth.

  Either way, the dinner party was supposed to be a break of sorts, though it wasn’t entirely clear from what. With still more irony, I was acutely conscious that I wouldn’t have been able to manage it at all without Oaklynn’s help.

  Help was an understatement. As Josh and I had been talking idly about what to serve a few nights prior, I had remarked that what we really wanted was something like the meal she had served to us the night she’d arrived.

  “I could do that, if you like,” she volunteered. “It’s easy to adjust for more people. I made it several times for my previous families. You could handle dessert and appetizers, Josh can look after drinks, and I’ll do the main course.”

  And that was that. We told her it was too much to ask of her, and I know we both felt the awkwardness of having the meal prepared by someone who wouldn’t then eat with us, like she was a servant, but when we invited her to join us, she said that she’d rather dine with Grace and Veronica.

  “I mean, you guys are great,” she confided, “but I don’t think I’m ready for your high-finance friends. I would feel out of place.”

  Being a servant . . .

  “I’ll say hi,” she added, as if sensing that part of the point of the party was to put her on display, “but I’m happier with the girls, if that’s OK with you.”

  I said that was fine, but I still worried about her shouldering the bulk of the cooking. Josh shrugged it off.

  “She’s happy to do it,” he said. “She likes being useful.”

  “You don’t think it’s humiliating?”

  “She’s getting paid for it! It’s her job!”

  “Not really,” I said. “She’s supposed to be a nanny. We added extra duties, including cooking and other housework that she’s getting a stipend for, but we never said anything about entertaining our friends.”

  “It’s all the same to her, and at this point, you’ll hurt her feelings if you say no. She’ll think you don’t think her cooking is good enough for our fancy East Coast executive friends.”

  “She wouldn’t think that!” I replied. “She knows we love her food.”

  “I just don’t see why you want to blow off something that she clearly wants to do.”

  He had a point, but it still didn’t sit right with me.

  “Maybe we should pay her a bonus,” I said. Josh turned to me, frowning. “It’s only fair. A hundred bucks or so.”

  “For one meal?” Josh said. “We could just have the party catered.”

  “Not for a hundred bucks we couldn’t,” I said. “What’s the big deal? Is it the money? We’re rolling in money, Josh. Hadn’t you noticed? Our bank balance has barely taken a hit since she moved in, and I’ll be pulling in more soon.”

  “We don’t know when that will be,” he said.

  It was true, but I couldn’t help but be annoyed by the remark, as if I wasn’t doing my part for the family.

  “I will soon,” I said carefully. “And you make more than enough. I can’t believe you are haggling over a hundred bucks.”

  His face tightened, and for a second, I remembered how cagey he had been about work lately, but he just shrugged and looked away.

  “OK,” he said. “But make her understand this is a one-off, OK? I’m glad she’s here and all, and I’m happy to make sure she’s properly compensated, but we’re not a bottomless well.”

  “Look at this place, Josh! We have money. I don’t see why we have to . . .”

  “It’s the principle of the thing. I don’t like being taken advantage of.”

  “We’re offering her a bonus. No one is taking advantage . . .”

  “I just don’t want her to think that she just has to show courtesy, and I’ll get my wallet out!” He caught my look and backtracked. “Our wallet,” he corrected.

  Josh could be . . . careful when it came to money. It was probably why he was good at making it and investing it for other people.

  “It’s a hundred bucks, Josh.”

  “I know. I said it was fine.”

  “Grudgingly.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Let it go.”

  I took him at his word, and the following day, I presented Oaklynn with our proposal. She cried with gratitude, which made me feel, paradoxically, like a heel. But the next night, she helped us prepare the best dinner we had offered our friends in the almost four years since we had lived on Settle Road.

  And yet.

  I’d hidden it as best I could, and I wasn’t about to unload any of it on Josh, whom I had had to convince to try the nanny idea in the first place. But I’d be lying if, when it actually came down to it, with Oaklynn working her magic in the kitchen and me reduced to assistant, I said I didn’t feel just a teeny bit overshadowed. I wondered again, as I had that first night Oaklynn arrived, if I had inadvertently made myself irrelevant. I had given up my family to someone better suited to running it. A stranger, no less, but one who would be beloved by all but my most cynical friends. With that thought came the memory of the semicircular shadows of the dogwood leaves, and the sliver of sun peeking out behind the moon . . .

  Eclipsed.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  At seven, Mary Beth dragged Kurt from whatever idiocy he was watching on TV and made him put on a jacket. They called on Tommy and Tammy on their way over, their maddening dog yipping around them as they dithered, eventually getting their shit together, and left. She gossiped excitedly with Tammy about the Mormon nanny whom they had glimpsed in the street for weeks but who was going to be properly unveiled tonight as they headed over to the Kleins’ for what promised to be an eventful evening. They brought chardonnay, suitably chilled, which Mary Beth presented to Anna at the door and said, “Get your Mary Poppins to uncork that.”

  The nanny, vast and nervous but smiling like some fifties housewife in a soap
commercial, was at the foot of the stairs with Anna’s eldest kid, and surely within earshot. Anna blushed guiltily, as if the remark had been hers, but the nanny didn’t respond. Mary Beth mouthed a theatrical apology but followed it up with a mischievous grin. And if the nanny couldn’t take a Mary Poppins joke, to hell with her. At least she hadn’t called her Mammy. Not that the nanny was black or anything. That would have made an already strange situation even weirder.

  People got so sensitive about race these days, always dragging the issue up again just as it was finally over. You never knew when someone would get all offended about something that was only a joke. Anna was usually cool, but Mary Beth—who liked to tell people that she didn’t see race at all—had learned to be careful around her and never mentioned her Asian Americanness, or whatever the hell you were supposed to call it. The important thing was that the wine got uncorked fast, and whether it was the Mormon weight lifter who did it or someone else entirely didn’t much matter. Just bring on the vino.

  In fact, the nanny just nodded her hellos, smiling as wide as Utah itself, and offered each guest just two fingers to shake. It was so deeply odd. Who shakes hands like that? It was like being offered the end of a rope. Mary Beth gaped from her to Tammy, and everyone smirked, and then the nanny went upstairs to hang with the rug rats. She’d be down later, she promised, as if that were a special treat for everyone. There was a momentary hush as everyone watched her go, got their drinks, and moved into the Kleins’ spacious kitchen, where the whispering started.