The Good House

by Tananarive Due

  “Is this your babyGlenn?” Angela said. “He’s growing fast, just like Corey. Children are definitely not forever, are they?”

  “No, they’re not, thank goodness,” Liza said. She nudged Angela as she walked into the foyer, her eyes dancing. “Oh, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  “Liza, this town can’t keep a secret. You’re the second person who’s brought it up in twenty minutes. Just tell me what’s going on.”

  “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?”

  Before Angela could press Liza, Glenn began screaming as he gazed at the foyer ceiling. “Lookit, Mom! This house isway big!” Angela could only imagine how he must act at home.

  “Well, keep it down. You don’t have to throw a fit. It’s not like you’ve never seen a nice house,” Liza said, as if her son’s outburst cast doubt on Art’s much-whispered Big Bucks from his law practice in Longview. Angela heard rivalry in her friend’s voice. All through high school, she and Liza had raced to see who could get more, faster. Liza had never left Sacajawea, but she’d still done just fine: Rumor had it that Liza only worked part-time at the grocery store with Marlene because she chose to, since Art quietly owned a million dollars in real estate throughout western Washington. Art and Liza never talked about how much they had. They lived in a three-bedroom house on five acres near State Route Four, like anybody else.

  “No, Glenn’s right. The Good House is special,” Art said, as somberly as if he were speaking of a church. He gazed up at the foyer’s chandelier, which sparkled from its recent cleaning. Illuminated by the stained-glass window built in a half-moon shape in the door, the chandelier cast rainbow-colored teardrops onto the staircase and throughout the foyer. Art rested his hand on his son’s head, and Angela noticed their identical sunburns, probably from a day’s fishing. “Wow, this is a hell of a house. Hasn’t changed a bit, Angie.”

  “Don’t sayhell, Dad,” Glenn said, teasing.

  “Stop that, Glenn,” Liza snapped. “I’ve told you, repeating it’s not funny.”

  Angela recognized the quick look that passed between father and son, because she had seen that look countless times between Tariq and Corey:Lighten up, Mom.

  In the living room, Rob Graybold, another former classmate who was now the county sheriff, was holding court near the French doors, entrancing a huddle of guests with stories about transients running crystal meth laboratories in the woods. Crowding attentively near him were a new physician, Rhonda Something from Portland; the Everlys, an older couple who served as caretakers for Angela’s house and yard during the months she was away; and June McEwan, the Sacajawea County High principal. Laney Keane, president of the county historical society, was admiring the player piano in a corner by herself. And Angela could hear laughter from a bigger knot of guests who had gathered in the kitchen, the room that somehow became the nucleus of any party. The murmur of combined conversations was a roar to Angela, burying the melodic squeal of Coltrane’s saxophone on the stereo. If a bomb dropped here today, she mused, Sacajawea would be history.

  “Dad, how come it’s called the Good House?” Glenn Brunell asked.

  Laney Keane gave the boy a smile that softened her pinched face. “In the first place, Glenn, this house was built in 1907 by the town pharmacist, Elijah Goode. He chose this place because he said the land felt ‘blessed beyond all description,’ or in any case that’s what he wrote to his brother in Boston. Marie Toussaint worked for him for a time, and he left her this house in his will.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Art said, hoisting his son onto his back with a grunt. “I never heard that. I always figured it was something to do with Mrs. T’saint and her teas.”

  “Oh, no, it’s much more than that,” Laney said, as if their ignorance distressed her. “In 1929, three years after Marie Toussaint took ownership of this house, a mudslide destroyed the other homes on this side of town. Mrs. Toussaint and her husband brought their neighbors in, pulling some of them out of the muck with their bare hands. Have you heard that story, Angela?”

  “Only every other Sunday,” Angela said, remembering Gramma Marie’s fondness for elaborate storytelling. In another era, her grandmother might have been agriot . “She told me she even had her neighbors’ goats in this living room. Chickens, pigs, you name it. She had to throw out her foyer rug.” Gramma Marie also told her she’d been treated badly by her neighbors until that mudslide. Angela repressed a sour chuckle, wondering how her guests would react tothat portion of their heritage.And did you hear about the time Sheriff Kerr shot up Gramma Marie’s door and shattered the round attic window with buckshot? Have another Bud and I’ll tell you….

  “Did people die?” Glenn asked Laney eagerly.

  “No, thank goodness,” Laney said. “And as far as I know, this house has been called the Good House ever since.”

  “Well, it’s those teas I remember,” Art Brunell said. “Those weren’t just your normal teas. My papa used to swear up and down that Mrs. T’saint’s teas could cure anything from a head cold to a cold bed. He said it was voodoo for sure.”

  Angela felt her ears burning with embarrassment in the ensuing laughter, and she slowly eased her way out of the living room, toward the now-empty foyer. She knew where this was going: Sooner or later, someone would ask her what Gramma Marie used to put in those teas, treating Angela like the progeny of a legendary medicine woman. Gramma Marie had earned a nursing degree, that was all, and her Chinook husband, whom most people condescendingly called Red John, had likely taught her a thing or two about the medicinal qualities of regional herbs. Gramma Marie, despite her roots in Louisiana and her Creole surname, had not been some kind of witch doctor. Would anyone assume she had been a witch if she and her husband had been white?

  But the townspeople weren’t the only ones to blame, Angela reminded herself. Gramma Marie had played the stereotype for all it was worth, giving her customers mystical-sounding instructions—Now don’t you ever drink this in a bad mood, or it’ll have the opposite effect,and other nonsense Angela overheard from time to time, remnants of old bayou superstitions. That kind of talk had crept up in Angela’s mother, too. During her bad spells, Dominique Toussaint had claimed she was hearing the voices of demons laughing in her ears—before she’d silenced them with a bottle of downers, that is. Maybe Gramma Marie had sown the seeds for her mother’s delusions, Angela thought. She was glad her grandmother had never tried to pass any of it on to her. As a child, she’d been afraid whatever was wrong with her mother might be catching somehow.

  Angela went to the kitchen, where Melanie Graybold and Faith Henriksen, both of whom owned shops in town, were red-faced with laughter over a joke she had missed. Angela snuck behind them and glanced out of the breakfast nook’s bay window toward the patch of grass cleared away for their backyard and deck. Half a dozen men congregated around the grill with Tariq. With the back door propped open, she could smell beef cooking and hear the men debating starters for a fantasy football league.

  Earlier, she’d overheard the men talking about some new law against mole-trapping while Tariq nodded sagely, pretending an escapee from the Chicago projects knew anything about outdoor life. Tariq wouldn’t know a mole from a raccoon. She was glad he had steered the conversation back to comfortable ground. Tariqknew football—that, and a few volumes’ worth of finance, economic theory, and post-Reconstruction history and sociology, if he could find anyone who cared. The more he enjoyed himself at the party, the better his mood later. The better for both of them.

  A glass of Pellegrino on ice might help her nerves, she decided. She’d brought a supply of the sparkling mineral water from L.A., and she drank it constantly, a substitute for the Chardonnay she no longer allowed herself to enjoy because she enjoyed it too much. Pellegrino was safer, since the last thing Corey needed was a mother as incapable of coping with daily life as hers had been.

  After finding a glass, Angela clawed into the half-empty bag of ice sagging in the kitchen sink. That cold-bur
n sensation seized her arm again, exactly as it had at the store, except, if anything, it was more pronounced this time. Like her arm had been injected with ice.

  Angela yelped, drawing her hand away with a spasm that nearly knocked the glass from the counter.“Dammit,” she hissed, shaking her arm out. It tingled, then the strange sensation vanished. Great. Now she was probably having an anxiety attack, just in time for the party.

  “Mom?”

  Corey walked from behind her, gazing at her with those almond-shaped eyes that mirrored her own. Although he was slightly bent over, Corey stood above her, a new development this summer that was hard for Angela to get used to. Corey was less a child each day.

  “Can I talk to you? I have to give you something.” Corey sounded distressed.

  Angela forgot about her arm. “Baby, how’s your stomach?”

  “Whatever, it’s a’ight,” Corey said. He took the crook of her arm, steering her toward the privacy of the foyer that ended behind the stairs, near the closed door leading to the wine cellar. He took a breath. “Mom, I did something, and I have to make it right. It’s been heavy on my mind.”

  Shit, Angela thought. Something in Oakland. Or something with Sean. Suddenly, Angela remembered Marlene’s inquiry about Sean at the market:They’re always running here and there….

  Angela felt inexplicably panicked. Her belly was as tight as it got some nights in L.A., when she lay awake wondering where Corey was at that precise moment, if his father had met any of the parents of the kids their son was spending his time with. Wondering if Corey was already sexually active, in danger of becoming a parent or catching a disease. Or if Corey might be in the wrong car at the wrong time when an Oakland cop might show up with an attitude. The worries came in a flood, deepening and multiplying. That was the thing about summers—during the summers, she didn’t worry as much. But she was worried now.

  Corey slowly raised his closed palm, then unfolded it painstakingly, like a flower-bud. There, nestled among the dark crisscrossing lines that foretold her son’s future, sat a small gold band with tiny figures sculpted all around it. When Angela saw the ring, her mouth fell open with a long, stunned gasp. Her eyes beheld it, unblinking.

  “At first, I was gonna play like I’d seen it at a yard sale or something, and say, ‘Hey, Mom, look what I found, it’s just like Gramma Marie’s.’ But it’s the same one.”

  Angela’s heart bounded, although she was afraid to trust her eyes. The solid gold ring was carved with African symbols that looked both geometric and oddly singular, unknowable. Gramma Marie had been wearing that ring the day she died. She’d motioned for Angela to come closer, then she’d slipped the slick, warm gold across Angela’s finger, making her promise to keep it always. This ring had been Gramma Marie’s good-bye to her, and Angela hadn’t seen it in four years.

  It had been stolen. Whatever bastard had broken in through her bedroom window and stolen this ring had also somehow broken her life, the parts that mattered.

  Now, the ring was back. This was impossible. Angela stared at the ring, not touching it.

  Corey’s voice wavered as he met her confused eyes. His explanation tumbled out.“I threw the brick and broke your window, Mom. It sounds dumb now, but there was this girl I liked, right? Her name was Sherita, and I knew the ring was special to you, and I thought maybe it would be special to her.” Corey swallowed, glancing away. His voice became a monotone, signaling that he had spent time rehearsing this speech. “It was just dumb kid stuff. I said I’d let her wear it for a week. But she said she saw me talking to some girl before the week was over, and she wouldn’t give it back. I was afraid to tell you I took it. So I threw the brick and broke the window and knocked your jewelry all over the floor, and you thought somebody stole it. I said to myself, ‘If she asks me if I did it, I won’t lie.’ But you never did ask, Mom.”

  He looked relieved to be finished, blinking fast.

  Angela took the ring and stared at its beautiful symbols, which looked like shiny golden light-etchings against the sunken surface. A triangle with a cross in the center, a double wave, a pear shape. Slowly, she slid the ring onto the bare finger where she had once worn her wedding ring. It was snug, but not too tight. Perfect fit, like the day it had been given to her. Thinking of her grandmother, Angela could nearly smell the rose-scented talcum powder Gramma Marie had dusted herself with. She felt a shift in time, as if she were standing before this cellar door with her grandmother again as she had when she was Corey’s age. Angela had hauled box after box of preserves down those steps, stacking the jars in the compartments that had been built for wine.Now, Li’l Angel, you be careful on those steps. The jars were dusty now, and the preserves inside were surely dried or rotten, but some of them were still down there exactly where she’d put them.

  Angela felt a single icy fingernail brush the back of her neck, hearkening to the strange cold-burn she’d felt at the store and in the kitchen. Something felt wrong.

  “How did you get this ring back?” she whispered.

  Corey didn’t look her in the eye. “I wrote letters to see if Sherita was still staying down there, and she was. I paid her for it with extra money I made from Sean’s dad, grooming his horses. I was thinking about how stealing your ring was one thing I wish I could take back. So I did.”

  No wonder Corey had been behaving so strangely! He must have lain awake half the night, wondering how he was going to finally tell her the truth. And yet, it wasn’t all truth, either. Not yet. Corey spoke quickly when he was lying, like now.

  “And she still had it?” Without meaning to, Angela had shifted into her courtroom voice.

  Corey shrugged. This time, he looked at her and smiled, trying to imitate his father’s playfulness, the Hill men’s charm. “Well, it’s a damn nice ring. Like they say on TV, I cared enough to give the very best. You know what I’m sayin’?”

  Corey knew better than to cuss in front of her, no matter how grown he thought he was, and she’d told him she would skin him alive the next time he droppedyouknowwhatimsayin into a conversation with her, which sounded as ignorant to her as Jimmie Walker’sDy-no-mite had sounded to Gramma Marie. She wanted to slap her son’s face. How many times had she told the story of her stolen ring as a woeful loss? How many times had she felt genuine hurt over it, sometimes at the mere sight of Gramma Marie’s photograph, as if allowing someone to take her ring had been a shameful act on her part? Howdare Corey let all these years go by without saying anything!

  Then, Angela’s anger melted, swallowed by relief. Bliss. She breathed in deeply, feeling lightheaded. Could this be real? Maybe her secretly spoken wish was coming true after all. She squeezed her own fingers, enjoying the solidness and texture of the ring.

  “I know you’re mad at me, huh? Well, I’ve been thinkin’ about a punishment—”

  “Corey…” Eyes smarting, Angela cut him off. She cupped his chin in her palm. “I don’t know if you remember, but not long after you took this ring, everything fell apart for us. Your daddy and I lived in separate houses, in separate cities, and we forced you to choose between us. I think maybe that’s punishment enough. What do you think?”

  Now, it was Corey’s turn to be silent. His lips were mashed tightly together, thinned out. He was fighting tears, she knew.

  “Come here, baby,” she said, reaching up to him, and he leaned against her in a hug, as he hadn’t in far too long. Angela felt her heart pounding from the simple pleasure of embracing a child who rarely gave her the opportunity anymore. “When you stole this ring, you were being a selfish, thoughtless little boy. But getting it back to me—saving your money, writing a letter to that girl, using your head—that was the work of a youngman . That makes me proud of you, Corey. That lets me know you’re doing all right despite everything we’ve put you through. I’m glad, and I thank you with all my heart.”

  “It ain’t all that, Mom,” Corey said. She heard moisture in his nose.

  “Yes, it is. I love this ring. And I lov
e you.”

  Corey exhaled, and his breath warmed her neck. He gave her a tight squeeze before releasing her. Then, his gaze was dead-on. “Mom, did Gramma Marie tell you stuff about the ring? Like, those symbols. Did she tell you what they mean?”

  “It’s West African, she told me. She got it from her grandmother, and I forget how far it goes back before that. At least another generation. I guess she thought it was a good-luck charm.”

  He lowered his voice. “But what about the symbols? She never told you anything about them? Like…if they’re supposed to have powers or something like that?”