“You were my teacher and you helped me. And you,” he pointed at Jeff Tyler, the hardware store manager. “You teased me.”
Jeff smiled, uncomfortably.
“I don’t remember a lot of things. Dana gets mad at me about that. But I remember my mom and my dad and my brother and my home. I always remember my home.” He presented the microphone to the mayor and saluted. He gave Ted a hug, then he stepped off the stage and walked down the center aisle, toward the back door, just as Cox had done.
People stood, clapping. Some were even wiping their eyes, Nina Strauss among them.
Ted clapped so hard his hands hurt, tears in his own eyes. “Ladies and gentlemen: my brother.”
“LOOK AT THIS UNDERWEAR!” IT WAS BIG AND SAGGY, THE KIND OF thing an old granny would wear. Lindy waved it overhead like a flag.
Pregnancy underwear? How awful. Jillian snatched it out of Lindy’s hands. What if Grant and Suzanne came home now? Raiding the kitchen was one thing, but snooping through Suzanne’s bureau? “Please stop.”
Lindy pulled out little soaps and shampoos from hotels and tiny plastic bags of replacement buttons, a pocketknife—“Think they’re into weird sex or what?”
“Lindy, stop!”
“Okay. No problem.” Lindy closed Suzanne’s drawers—finally—then, with a wild laugh, she opened one of Grant’s. His boxers and socks were all mixed together, along with some white briefs, the opposite of Suzanne’s orderly collection. “Tighty whities!” She threw them like snowballs. Jillian felt like one of the kids in The Cat in the Hat.
Lindy fished little bits of paper out of the back of his drawer. Receipts for meals. A wad of tissue paper held closed by an old purple rubber band. A big color photo of a woman with big boobs and porny panties sitting on a red couch—not Suzanne.
Jillian and Lindy both screamed. Jillian attempted to stuff the picture back in the drawer, but Lindy was faster. She grabbed the photo and held it tight in both hands.
“Put it back, Lin.”
“No way. I’m keeping it.” Lindy laughed.
Jillian felt sick. She grabbed for the picture, but Lindy just held it out of her reach. Jillian got hold of it, tearing off a corner in her attempt to get it back. “Look what you did, Lin!” she cried.
“Me? You tore it. Now calm yourself. Let’s go raid the fridge.” Lindy folded the picture and stuck it in her pocket, turning off the light as she left the room.
LATER, WHEN ALLISON TRIED TO PIECE IT TOGETHER, SHE COULDN’T remember the order in which it happened, or even what exactly happened. Admittedly, she’d been a little distracted since Nick left the meeting, but she wasn’t the only one who was confused. Some people remembered a child coming to the school, opening the door and yelling. Others said that there was no child, but that sounds between moans and screams—sounds more suitable to Halloween than a December night—alerted them to the problem.
It came in the middle of speaker number forty’s testimony. Everyone agreed on that. Ned Lehrer had just broken down in tears about the state of his retirement fund. That would have been a dramatic enough moment, but people forgot about the crying in the tumult that followed.
Most of the crowd stood simultaneously, their chairs scraping against the linoleum. There was pushing and panic as they squeezed out into the night. Someone opened the emergency exit, which set off an alarm, driving out anyone who considered waiting at the school until the hubbub had died down.
The lights on the houses guided them to the green, daylight at night. The murmuring got louder as they got closer. “What a shame,” people said, and “What kind of jerk would . . . ?”
The tree was lying on its side, all twenty-five feet of it, sawn off at the base and left for dead. Its lights were still on, thousands of tiny white lights twinkling throughout its branches, though some had broken in the fall. Whoever had done it had taken care not to damage the electrical cord. Some ornaments had clung to the branches; others were strewn about the ground.
“Cox,” Ted said, a look of devastation on his face. Allison, feeling guilty, held him close. She thought of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, the Whos in Whoville, joining hands and singing, swaying back and forth, determined not to let the Grinch win the day.
“Let’s start some carols going,” Allison said, inspired.
“Are you nuts?” Ted said.
And together, they walked home.
15
DECEMBER 25
Five days. It had been five long, long days since their kiss, five days of the schizophrenia of the angel on her shoulder saying, Never again. Never again, and the devil countering with When? When? She felt like a machine whose switch had just been turned on after more than forty years of dormancy, a machine whose sole purpose was to suck face with Nick Cox. Possibly more. The machine that she was might be designed for a whole lot more than that. But it would, of course, never be permitted to function as intended. Their kiss would remain an isolated event, a secret she would take to her grave. She flicked the devil off her shoulder, enjoying a few minutes of respite before he climbed back on again.
It was for the best that they didn’t run into each other—obviously it was for the best—but it was still awful. It actually wasn’t that they never saw each other. They did, but just glimpses—through the windows of their respective houses, in line at the liquor store, at the town holiday lantern festival with their kids and spouses; it was arguably worse to have him dangled so close than not to see him at all.
Today, Christmas Day, had been lovely, she reminded herself. Ted had been delighted with his gifts from Allison: new socks, a blue cashmere cardigan, and a book—the perfect book: The Hidden Life of Trees. He’d read aloud from it throughout the day, telling her and Terrance—Jillian had spent most of the day in her room—all about the friendships and the hibernation of the trees, the social networking and the love. Tree love. Ted and Terrance had gone in on a gift card to Trader Joe’s for Allison, which was—well, they knew she liked Trader Joe’s, so it was thoughtful on some level. Allison’s parents opted to spend Christmas at Brighton Manor, the first time they’d spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas there. Allison had offered to drive up on the twenty-third, after school let out, but her parents discouraged her. The traffic. The weather. She, Ted, and Jillian could come up in spring. They could attend the Easter party, when they served spiral ham.
Didn’t her parents want to see her? It felt like a rejection of her as a daughter, yet another rejection after being rejected as a wife and mother. Teens were supposed to reject you; that was their job. But it was still a lot of rejecting all at once. No wonder she was so preoccupied with Nick. He was the only person she knew who actually seemed to want her.
Their paths would cross again. It was inevitable. Maybe when Jillian went back to school next week. She imagined running into him on the porch of Lucy’s one cold afternoon, tapping the rims of their coffee cups together as they toasted what might have been. Or maybe he would have forgotten about it. What kiss? He kissed women all the time. That was a more likely scenario.
After dinner Allison left Ted and Terrance playing their annual Christmas-night checkers tournament, and walked Candy to the green. She meant to honor the carcass of the fallen Christmas tree before it was sawn up and carted off—and lo and behold, a Christmas miracle: there were Nick and Rex, apparently doing the same thing. The tree lay like a fallen dinosaur, construction paper and cranberry garlands its funeral shroud. Was Nick responsible for its demise? Had he come back to the scene of the crime, as criminals were said to do? She didn’t think so. But she didn’t want to ask either. Who was it, if not him? It was just so heartless. It was depressing to think someone so heartless lived among them. She didn’t want to think about that. Not right now. There he was. Him!
Candy and Rex barked and cried out their delight. They leaped and pulled, drawing their owners side by side.
“Well, hello, Mr. Cox,” Allison said, hoping he didn’t hear the quiver in her voice.
&nbs
p; “Mrs. Miller.” He nodded, and his bedroom eyes and white teeth caught the light of the streetlamp. “I was thinking I might die if I didn’t see you again soon.”
And there, alone together on a cold, dark Christmas night, their lips met and their bodies glommed to each other, their kiss more passionate and wild than even their episode in the parking lot might have predicted, a kiss that rapidly became more than a kiss: his hand that wasn’t holding the leash yanking down the zipper of her coat, then diving under her sweater, her free hand leaping for buttons and zippers in turn, his teeth biting her lips, her teeth biting back. They were a head-on collision on the highway, an accident too late for brakes.
Allison was the first to surface. She looked around the green desperately. Anyone might see them! Anyone might report the sighting on Lucy’s bulletin board! “We need to stop,” she whispered, starting up again.
“We need to go,” Nick said. He grabbed her hand, and led her and the dogs off the green and down the street. Allison let herself be led, the pompoms on her hat bouncing as she ran, Candy and Rex running, too, the cold air feeling colder for their speed, her hand warm in his. Where had her gloves gone? Who cared? Where were they going? They were just running. Like children. Running away.
They stopped in front of the Sawyers’ old house. It was dark and the moon was reflected in the windows.
She opened her mouth to ask why they were there, but she started kissing him before the words could come out. It was like the French fairy tale, the one in which frogs or toads came out of the girl’s mouth when she spoke. Except in her case, it was kisses: hungry, libidinous kisses.
He laughed, gently separating his mouth from hers. “Hold on, doll!”
Doll. Again. Sexist and so fucking sexy. Doll.
He pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and opened the front door.
“What are we doing here?”
“You’ll see.” He let the dogs off their leashes and into the house, then leaned over—she thought to kiss her again—but he scooped her up in his arms, like a groom carrying a bride over the threshold. She laughed, her arms around his neck. Were they crazy? Were they so crazy they were breaking into houses?
He carried her up the small flight of stairs and into a bedroom. She’d never been farther than the Sawyers’ powder room. What was he thinking? What was she thinking? She wasn’t thinking. She didn’t want to think. He set her down and lay his long black coat on the floor. Then they suctioned to each other again, shedding clothes, shedding all sense, easing their way down to the ground.
16
JANUARY 1
Suzanne didn’t mean to destroy the house. She didn’t wake up on the first day of the new year thinking, Today I will wreck my house. In fact, she woke up thinking about spinach. She rolled out of bed at first light, turned up the thermostat, and ate cold, cooked spinach at the kitchen counter, straight from its BPA-free plastic container.
Allergies were to blame for Adam’s headaches. That was it, plain and simple, she told herself, her teeth sinking into the squeaky leaves. It was the thought that had kept her up the better part of the night. What else could be causing the headaches?
The neurologist had spent nearly an hour with Adam the day before Christmas, taking a family history, taking a history of his symptoms, making him walk a straight line and touch his finger to his nose, tapping his knee, giving him lists of items to remember in order, and quizzing him on the number of fingers she held up as if Adam were a circus poodle. She wrote up orders for a slew of tests and suggested Suzanne keep a headache diary.
“For me or for him?” she asked the doctor, who laughed, but it had been a serious question.
They’d spent the day after Christmas in doctors’ offices as well. Grammy, who had been in town for the holidays, had wanted to come to the appointments with them, but the idea made Suzanne want to jump out a window. She gave her mother a guidebook and a Metro card and told her not to come back till five o’clock. But her mother didn’t go downtown at all. Instead, she stayed home, wiping down the ceiling fans (You can’t imagine the dirt! I wish I’d taken a picture!) and cleaning out the pantry, throwing out the spices that had lost their pungency. This only added to the fury Suzanne felt at her for giving Adam a video-game console, in complete and utter defiance of her instructions.
Adam’s CT scan, thankfully, had shown nothing abnormal. The MRI, too, though it had been a terrible morning watching a terrified Adam sit strapped like an astronaut to an oversize machine that took pictures of slices of his brain. She wanted to unbuckle him, to spirit him out of the office and keep on running. Instead, she’d waited until the technician gave them the all clear, then took him back to the blood lab for additional testing by the sadistic phlebotomist. The results wouldn’t be back until later this week. Suzanne was convinced that they, like the tests the pediatrician ordered, would show nothing. It was the allergy tests that held the answers.
She’d spent last night on the Internet doing research. She missed the annual dropping of the mirrored disco ball in front of Lucy’s at midnight, an event Grant attended alone. He’d gone over to the Coxes’ afterward for champagne, returning blurry eyed and horny around two in the morning. Suzanne rebuffed him. She had work to do. There were so many allergies to consider: dust mites, dander, cockroaches, chemicals, pollen, peanuts, ragweed, eggs, soy, wheat, nuts, mold—and those were just the most common ones.
Mold seemed the most likely culprit. Toxic black mold, perhaps, an allergen that was well covered online. An old house like this must be full of mold. That would explain why Adam’s symptoms had come on so soon after they moved to Willard Park. That explained the fuggy, weedy smell that she sometimes caught a whiff of: it wasn’t weed, it was mold.
Suzanne, fortified by her spinach this first morning of the new year, walked through the living room, past the Christmas tree, out the kitchen door, and down to the basement, turning on lights and sniffing for mold as she went. The basement smelled a little suspicious, she thought, tucking her nose into the crawl space and around the water heater. She sniffed her way upstairs, past a snoring Grant and into the bathroom. She studied the sink and the grout between the tiles, then pushed back the shower curtain. The caulk that sealed the border between the wall tile and the shower floor was darker than it ought to have been. She scratched at it and came up with a ridge of dark crud under her fingernail. She stood, her hand trembling. “Grant!”
She plopped herself on his side of the bed where he lay, facedown. She tapped his shoulder until he turned his head sideways and opened his eyes, presenting her dirty fingernail to him the way a cat might drop a dead bird at its owner’s feet. “Mold,” she said. “It’s mold.”
“Mm,” Grant said, turning his face to the pillow again.
“Mold. It’s an allergen.”
“From the bathroom?” he said.
“Yes.”
“It’s probably mildew. Mildew in a bathroom is normal.” He pulled the covers over his head.
She pulled them down. “It’s black mold. Toxic black mold.”
“So let’s sue,” he said.
“Is that all you ever think about?”
He thought for several seconds. “Not all . . .”
“What about Adam’s health?”
“Is it real? Toxic black mold? I mean, didn’t someone just invent it a couple of years ago to scare people?”
“It’s real.” Suzanne filled him in on her research: Black mold could be deadly. Black mold caused asthma and pulmonary bleeding. Black mold caused permanent cognitive damage. Black mold destroyed houses. It was so invasive, so pervasive, that bleach solutions didn’t kill it, nor did removing drywall. One family in New Orleans she’d read about moved back home after the waters from Hurricane Katrina had receded, only to come down with unexplained respiratory symptoms that left them barely able to breathe. The cause?
“Let me guess,” Grant said.
“Explain our new roof. Why would someone put a new roof on a house ju
st before they sold it if there were no water issues?”
“Old roof . . . ?”
“Explain the brown stains on the dining room ceiling.”
Toxic black mold arose from hidden leaks. Its spores lurked behind the drywall. There was only one way to find out if their house had fallen prey to the scourge: look behind the walls. But how?
And so Suzanne put in a call to Nick Cox, who came over dressed from head to toe in protective gear, a crowbar in his hand.
TED SAT ON THE CURB ACROSS THE STREET FROM THE DAVENPORT-GARDNERS’, his hands jammed into the pockets of his down jacket, his legs splayed in the blocked-off road. He watched Nick’s yellow bulldozer standing at the ready, engine running, gnashing its teeth, ready to tear the boards off Grant and Suzanne’s house at Nick’s command. The bulldozer wasn’t much bigger than the Coxes’ SUV. A Volvo, oddly enough, just like his and Allison’s wagon.
Jillian sat beside Ted, more engaged than he’d seen her since her Disney princess phase. “Wow,” she said between bites of bagel and smoked salmon from their abandoned New Year’s brunch. Ted had run out of the house empty-handed after seeing the bulldozer roll down the street. His stomach was growling, but he didn’t want to leave for fear things would get worse in his absence. The bulldozer might have at the house, removing chunks, leaving it as airy as a hunk of Swiss cheese. They had been dragging out big hunks of drywall already, as if they were planning to hollow it out first. “Can I have a bite of your bagel?” he asked Jillian.
“A small one,” she said.
Ted took a nibble.
“Oh, Dad! You nearly ate the whole thing!” She wrenched back the bagel and walked away.
A sound like a jackhammer came from within the house. White clouds puffed through the open windows, dust settling onto the grass.
Allison, sitting on Ted’s other side, held her camera up to take a picture, then lowered it without taking a shot, an action she’d repeated several times since they’d arrived. “It was the best example of a Sears house in Willard Park,” she eulogized.
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