White Elephant

by Julie Langsdorf

  “It’s still standing, Al,” Ted said.

  “Not for much longer. Damn him!”

  Ted put his arm around her, but she pulled away, not wanting to be held in her moment of grief. “Yes. Damn him,” he agreed.

  The Thorps, who’d just arrived with beach chairs and Bloody Marys, waved to Ted and Allison. They settled down between the Conways and Mrs. Olden. Ted was reminded of the spectators at the Battle of Gettysburg, who came out for a pleasant afternoon of picnicking.

  Nick Cox was willfully and wantonly defying Willard Park’s newly passed moratorium. You couldn’t hack away at your house on a whim! It required applications and permits, all of which Ted had shouted to the demolition crew, only to be shouldered back behind the yellow tape that rimmed the property.

  He called every county department remotely associated with building construction and destruction, but all he got were voice recordings wishing him a happy new year and advising him to call back during business hours. The emergency number appeared to be disconnected. Finally, he called 911. The operator promised to send someone right over. That had been nearly an hour ago. Meanwhile, Willard Park town council members pecked about like geese, waving official-looking papers.

  Suzanne and Grant sat on their couch on the front lawn alongside a heap of furniture. Suzanne sat bolt upright, like an engaged student, the opposite of Grant, who was wrapped in an afghan, possibly sleeping. Adam, on the frozen grass at their feet, was the happiest Ted had ever seen him. What better fun for a kid than to watch a bulldozer pull up at your house, prepared to, perhaps, eat it? It occurred to Ted that Suzanne and Grant might be doing it for Adam’s amusement, like the king in one of the fairy tales Jillian used to like, who was willing to do anything to make his youngest daughter laugh.

  He didn’t blame Grant and Suzanne—Nick Cox had clearly been the instigator. He was obviously the force behind the felled Christmas tree as well, though no eyewitnesses had come forward. All anyone knew was that the lights on the tree had been off for about a half hour during the public hearing, presumably while the tree cutter sawed at the base in the dark.

  Cox had arrived at the moratorium hearing late and left early, giving him plenty of time to cut down the tree. Or maybe one of his minions had done it while he testified. Nothing seemed to be happening at the White Elephant these days, though houses already under construction before the moratorium were grandfathered. Rumor had it that Cox had run out of money, a thought that made warm feelings rise up in Ted. He pictured Nick being evicted from his grand house, couches and televisions piled on the curb, a scene not unlike the one before him.

  The destruction of the holiday tree was just one of a series of recent outrages in town. Muddy rocks had been left in mailboxes, and recycling bins had been upturned on lawns. So many signs had been ripped up that the town had issued an order to remove them all; and the little trees were still being cut down, ripped out of the ground, pushed over, left for dead. They were up to thirty-one now.

  Meanwhile, Cox pretended to be on the side of justice. He’d joined the Moratorium Implementation Committee, the very committee Ted was on, and he made a big year-end contribution to the playground fund, sticking a red, white, and blue COX DESIGN AND BUILD sign in the ground lest anyone forget who owned it.

  Ted called Terrance two or three times a day to check on him. “You doin’ all right, bro?” he would say, and Terrance would say, bravely, that he was fine.

  What would Terrance do when he found out the Davenport-Gardners’ house had been decimated? It might put him over the edge. He might go to bed and decide not to get up for work in the morning, which would mean a sure and sudden end to the nursing home job. Ted had a terrible image of his brother spending all day, every day, watching television, his self-confidence sinking into the sofa cushions.

  Adela Lambert’s granddaughter stopped at the curb in front of Ted, a plate of sugar cookies in hand. “Two for a dollar,” she yelled above the sound of the destruction.

  Ted felt his pockets. No wallet. He laughed. “Can I get a couple on credit?”

  The girl shook her head at him sadly, then walked on.

  THE CROWDS HAD DISSIPATED BY THE TIME ALLISON FOUND NICK alone that afternoon. He was sitting in the now-silent bulldozer, gazing at Suzanne and Grant’s house. The sun was setting rather gloriously, as if it understood that it was witnessing the end of something.

  Nick saw her approach and smiled, flirtatious. “Hey, beautiful.”

  She leaned into the cab. He closed his eyes, readying for a kiss.

  “Fraud!” she cried. And she pushed his shoulder.

  He opened his eyes and laughed. “Happy new year to you too.”

  “You tricked me.”

  “They had mold.”

  So he said, but who knew if that was even true? Suzanne had pulled her aside during the early, giddy part of the day, to tell her about the bathroom caulk and the black streaks under the kitchen sink. Suzanne, in CEO mode, told Cox to tear down walls “and keep on tearing” until he found the mother lode.

  “You said—and I quote—‘I’m all about preserving what’s best about the town,’” Allison said.

  “I am,” Nick said.

  “It was an original Sears Modern Home.”

  “Modern for what . . . 1920?” He looked disappointed. “I thought you got it.”

  “Got what? What are you talking about?” Allison said.

  “That old houses are obsolete. You agreed with me.”

  “I agreed that the arts and crafts houses in Winterset were nice.”

  He nodded. “And you agreed that some houses in Willard Park weren’t worth keeping.”

  “I didn’t mean everything built before 1980 should be bulldozed!”

  “It’s not a bulldozer, Mrs. Miller. It’s a compact excavator.”

  Allison wasn’t playing. “Let me rephrase that: I didn’t mean we should compact-excavate everything built before 1980.”

  “God you’re sexy when you’re mad.”

  “Be quiet,” she said. Were people watching them? Were they going to report that they’d had a heated conversation and come up with damning theories? “And I’m not,” she protested. She wasn’t sexy. She was cold, and her nose was probably bright red, and she was mad.

  He smiled again. God, that smile. “What is up with your eyes?”

  “Nothing . . . They’re just eyes.”

  “They were green a minute ago.”

  She blushed, gently waving his words away.

  “You are a witch. You’ve bewitched me.”

  She pushed at his shoulder again, but not as hard. “Don’t try to butter me up.”

  “Ooooh,” he said. “That sounds fun.”

  “Don’t.” She tried to refuel her anger, to ready it to lob back at him. He was a monster. He was ruining their town. What was wrong with Allison to be sleeping with him? She was sleeping with him now. They’d slept together twice, both times at the Sawyers’ when she was allegedly walking the dog.

  “There they go again,” he said, gazing into her eyes. “Now they’re blue. How do you do that?”

  It was all she could do not to tear off his clothes and sit on his lap right in the middle of the Davenport-Gardners’ lawn, peering eyes be damned. Had she flipped her lid? “I hate you!” she said, stepping out of hands and face reach. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”

  “Ten o’clock?” he said.

  “No!” she said, then, remembering how good it had felt, how otherworldly after so many months without intimacy, cried, “Yes! God damn you!”

  He laughed and pointed his little compact excavator toward home.

  She was a horrible person. There was no way around it. Cheating on poor Ted! She rarely thought of him without the adjective “poor” these days. It wasn’t a good adjective to associate with your husband. Your poor husband.

  On the other hand, Ted didn’t want to have sex anymore, and that was kind of a marital right. She’d suffered through more than f
ive months of sexual drought before succumbing. Five months was a long time. And Ted had given her no indication about when that might let up. She might agree to an indefinite hiatus if he let her have sex with Nick to fulfill that need.

  But he wasn’t going to agree to that. Of course not. Especially not with Nick. Not that a friend would be better. Who would agree to that kind of marriage? Well, some people would, she’d learned. Some people were polyamorous, which had sounded like a dangerous idea when she first heard about it, but now sounded like a pretty great option. Would Ted agree to be polyamorous? It wouldn’t even be polyamory, actually. It would be monogamy. Just not with him.

  But what about Kaye? Poor Ted was one thing, but what about poor Kaye? She made herself picture Nick’s wife, his pretty, well-meaning wife. It was something she really hadn’t done in a serious way until now. In what way did Kaye deserve to have her marriage destroyed by Allison? Or their children? What right did Allison have to potentially destroy Lindy and Jakey’s family? And for what? It wasn’t as if she and Nick were going to make a life together.

  Allison made a decision. She would not meet up with him again tonight. She would not meet him ever again. She was done with it. Done hurting her husband, done hurting Kaye and the children. How had she let herself become a potential homewrecker—with a man who actually wrecked homes? She sent Nick a text, a cryptic one, in case someone in the family picked up his phone before he did. Cannot make meeting tonight. All collaborations off. Then she blocked his number.

  It was a relief to know it was over, she thought as she walked home, that she would not behave in a morally reprehensible manner anymore, would not get caught in any wayward acts. She nearly had been caught. The other night when she was going to meet Nick, Ted came out to do a little more sleuthing even though he’d been out once that night. He joined her and Candy on the sidewalk walking toward the Sawyers’. Thank goodness she hadn’t caught up to Nick, who was half a block ahead. When Ted saw Nick, he insisted they follow him. So they trailed him past the Sawyers’ and around the green. Then Nick walked across the middle of the green, and they did too. After that he went back and forth in front of the closed market three times—as did they—then made his way home, where he waved to them both from his walkway.

  “We saved a few trees tonight,” Ted said, clearly pleased—but then they saw this wasn’t the case at all. Their little dogwood, which they’d planted in front of the living room window a year or two back, had been attacked in their absence. A few of the branches were broken, and dry leaves lay scattered at its feet.

  “How the heck . . . ?” Ted said.

  “So it’s not him!” Allison said.

  “Of course it’s him.”

  “How can it be? We were just following him.”

  “One of his people then . . . ,” Ted said.

  He wouldn’t let it go.

  Allison headed up the path to their door, prepared to find not only Jillian and Ted, but the Davenport-Gardner family, whom she had invited for dinner since their house was uninhabitable. Goodbye, Nick Cox, she thought. Goodbye, and good luck.

  NINE O’CLOCK AND ALL WAS WELL. WELL, IT WASN’T PERFECT. ALLISON and Ted and the Davenport-Gardners sat in the living room after dinner, listening to Grant try to explain the house situation to Suzanne’s mother over the phone. Suzanne’s mother had, it seemed, bankrolled the house.

  His voice was eerily calm, which lent an aura of surrealism to the situation. Everything about this first day of the new year was surrealistic, when you came down to it. Allison had just ended her affair with Nick—she’d had an affair. She wasn’t the type to have an affair—and their neighbors had destroyed their house and were homeless. It was a lot for one day.

  “I’m not sure where we’re staying,” Grant told his mother-in-law.

  It was a question that had been simmering in Allison’s mind.

  “With you?” Grant said, his eyes on Suzanne.

  Suzanne shook her head. “We can’t go to Richmond. You have a job.”

  He put his palm over the speaker. “She wants Adam to come.”

  “No way.” Suzanne shot Allison a desperate glance, but Allison looked down at her hands, dry from the winter weather. She was staying out of this one.

  It wasn’t clear what Suzanne had against her mother. She was clearly devoted to Adam, reading aloud to him at every opportunity during her short holiday visit, giving him a haircut, and orchestrating Christmas dinner—each gesture of which inspired Suzanne to phone Allison, to vent. “She’s underfoot. Doesn’t she realize?”

  The worst offense seemed to be her Christmas gift to Suzanne: an appointment for a ninety-minute massage at a spa in Georgetown, which she insisted Suzanne have before she went back to Richmond. While Suzanne was at the appointment, her mother not only wiped down every single one of Adam’s toys and cleaned the oven, but got Adam out of the pajamas and cap he’d worn for weeks and into some fresh clothes. Then she walked him to the playground, where she pushed him on the swings. He’d come home rosy cheeked. Suzanne had been apoplectic. “Wasn’t that going too far? He’s sick!” Suzanne asked her, a question to which Allison hadn’t responded. It might be good for him to stay with his grandmother for a while.

  Allison surveyed the room, full of family and friends, the way a home should be. She snapped an imaginary picture, which she dubbed “New Year’s Night.” She took care to Photoshop the expressions: in reality Suzanne’s eyes were fierce, like that of a she wolf protecting her young; Grant’s mouth was frozen in an odd smile; Ted’s lips were pursed like a drawstring bag. By the time Allison was finished, they all looked beatific.

  She turned her expression into something serene as well, because if her outsides reflected her insides at all, her expression was probably that of a madwoman.

  Jillian and Adam barreled down the hallway and into the room, bursting into the imagined photo. Adam jumped into the rocking chair and Jillian sat on top of him, making him scream with laughter.

  “What are we going to do?” Suzanne said.

  There was really only one thing to do. Allison was the root cause of the demolition, after all. She was the one who had suggested to Suzanne that allergies might be causing Adam’s headaches. If she and Ted didn’t put them up, who would? “Why don’t you stay with us?”

  “That’s too much,” Suzanne said. “We can’t.”

  “Why not? You could sleep in my office.” Allison let herself look at Ted, who looked as though he’d just swallowed a hard-boiled egg, whole. “Tonight at least. Of course! Where else would you go?”

  “A hotel,” Ted muttered.

  “We can pull out the futon in the office,” Allison chirped.

  “Maybe just for tonight,” Suzanne said, looking at Grant. His eyes were closed. She nudged him.

  “What?” he said, startled.

  “They’re letting us stay here tonight.”

  He extended an arm toward Ted for a fist bump.

  Ted hesitated, then reluctantly bumped back.

  Allison went upstairs with bed linens, trailed by Jillian, who sat on the floor while Allison unfurled the bed and put on the fitted sheet.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t ask me,” Jillian said.

  “Ask you? Since when do we ask your permission to have houseguests?”

  “Adam is not going to sleep in my room, Mom.”

  Allison pulled the sheet taut and smoothed it with her hand. It was ten fifteen now. Nick might think something was wrong. Maybe he would be worried that something had happened to her. Maybe he would be angry.

  “Is he, Mom?”

  “Is who what?”

  “Mom! Is Adam going to sleep in my room?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “He’s going to mess up my stuff.”

  “Go get ready for bed.”

  “I’m nearly thirteen!” she yelled.

  “Jillian,” she warned in a voice that would have chastened her daughter in the past, but Jillian shot back a ve
nomous “What?”

  Something clattered against the window. It sounded like hail. They both looked toward the sound, but it was quiet again. The window was unbroken, the curtain undisturbed. “A little sleet,” Allison said, knowing exactly what it was. Her heart sped up at the thought. Stop it, she told it.

  Jillian would imagine the sound into robbers or vandals. She’d been a fearful child, forever climbing into their bed, for safety. Allison felt a little sad, knowing Jillian would never cuddle between them in bed again. She let the top sheet billow over the mattress and float down with a sigh.

  The sound came again. Allison went to the window and pushed the curtain aside. There he was in his long coat and boots, grinning up at her. God, he was bold. And sexy. And very, very tempting.

  “What is it?” Jillian said.

  Allison looked at him for a long moment; then she let go of the curtain.

  “Well? Should I be scared?” Jillian said.

  “No, honey. There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Allison said, shaking the pillows into their cases. She pulled up the blanket and gave Jillian a hug, a hug that said It’s over, a hug that said I’m back.

  “Mom,” Jillian said, arching away from her. “Don’t.”

  17

  JANUARY 10

  There was only a little snow, just enough to cover the grass, but Rex was outside leaping around in it. He looked surprised every time he came up with a white nose. Kaye watched him through the window. She and the dog were the only ones in the family who even cared about the snow. The kids had gone upstairs after dinner, Jakey to play video games and Lindy to do homework. Why couldn’t the kids be more fun? Like Adam and Jillian, out making snowballs in the dark. Every now and then Grant would appear in the Millers’ yard and the kids would ambush him.

  She waved to Grant through the window and he waved back. He was nice. He was the only one of them who was. She’d only exchanged a couple of words with him since their night on the porch, saying “Hiiiiii” in a way that he would know she meant “high.” Maybe if she could find a way to buy some weed they could hang out again.