The Good House

by Tananarive Due

  “What happened to his kids? Sean Leahy was Corey’s best friend,” Angela said.

  “I know. Rick talked about that. I think an aunt is here staying with them. They’re still next door, Sean and his brother and sister.”

  “There’s no mama?” Naomi said.

  “Rick was a single father,” Angela told her.

  “And the little girl has been orphanedtwice now. Two of Rick’s kids were adopted,” Myles said, and Angela and Naomi shook their heads, murmuring theirumh-umh-umh s. “Sean turned eighteen this year, and he may try to win custody to raise the kids here, so they won’t have to leave their friends and be uprooted again.”

  Eighteen. Only a few months older than Corey would have been. Angela could hardly believe a child so close to her son’s age was facing such a large responsibility. She remembered Sean’s pale blond hair, his nasal laugh, the way he and Corey had often huddled together like mad scientists, being kids together. Corey would have been nearly a man now, and Sean was one already.

  “His father just didn’t hear the truck coming?” Angela said.

  Myles clasped his fingers together, and he didn’t answer at first. Angela wondered if maybe she’d probed too deeply, if Myles didn’t want to discuss it any more. But Myles finally leaned far back in his chair and met her gaze. “Well…that’s the bizarre thing,” he began. “There were two witnesses who weren’t as far from Rick Leahy as we are from that china cabinet, and one of them was the driver. You know—Terry Marlow. I feel terrible for the guy. They both say Rick saw the truck. They say he looked dead at Terry’s face and then walked into his truck’s path.”

  “Suicide?” Angela said. Suicides always took her back to her mother’s breakfast table.

  Myles shook his head, shrugging, as if he were shedding a hot, uncomfortable cape. “Terry says Rick was grinning from ear to ear when he did it,” he said. “He tells me it’s giving him nightmares, not just what happened, but theway it happened. The way Rick looked at him.”

  Grinning. A distinct shiver started at the top of Angela’s head and wound its way to her neck, shoulders, and both arms, leaving a trail of cold skin. Suddenly, she’d heard more than she wanted to know. She slid her shaky hands beneath her thighs.

  “I shouldn’t have said anything,” Myles said perceptively.

  “No, it’s all right, Myles. I asked.” Angela tried to smile.

  “I think it’s time to play Scrabble,” Naomi said. “I brought my game from home. You know who busted out with a-s-p-h-y-x-y for seventy-five points to beat me the last time I played? Will Smith. It’s true. That man is so smart. I met him back…”

  Naomi told stories like no one else. For the first time since the Fourth of July party, there was raucous laughter at the Toussaint house. This time, it went uninterrupted for hours.

  Seven

  ANGELA WAS WIDE AWAKEby 5:30A.M. , grateful for the fledgling sunlight that meant she’d made it through the night. Gramma Marie’s bedroom seemed too beautiful a place to have offered her so little rest.

  She lay in the center of Gramma Marie’s canopied bed draped with sheer white curtains, a bed her grandmother was rumored to have once shared with Elijah Goode before she shared it with her common-law husband, John. With a shiny mahogany dresser, a tiny sink with a white skirt, and a private window seat, where she could sit and stare out at the woods if she chose, the room should have been a comfort. But if Angela had slept, she didn’t remember it. All she remembered was her racing mind, Corey’s words assaulting her.

  I’m gonna take care of you good, Mom.

  In her half-waking state, Angela recalled the words exactly as they’d been spoken to her—notI’m gonna take GOOD CARE of you, Mom, which was a devoted son’s promise, butI’m gonna take care of you GOOD, which might be something else altogether. A threat. A presaging. He’d said those words minutes before he shot himself in the head, inflicting the most damage the best way he knew how.I’m gonna take care of you good, Mom . And Corey had said it with a smile. No, a grin. Just like Rick Leahy before he walked into the truck.

  Angela felt a burning, hurting brand of angry. She’d never let herself feel mad at Corey for long, but she was mad now. She wanted to have her son back if only so she could slap him senseless.

  What if, just supposing, Corey had shot himself out of spite? To spite her for forcing him to stay with her in Sacajawea? To spite her and Tariq for making a mess of his family? What did those words mean if itwasn’t an accident, if it was another family suicide after all? Angela’s greatest fear was that when she finally went into Corey’s room, she would find a big fat suicide note taped to his mirror even though none had been there before.I’m gonna take care of you good, Mom.

  And he had, hadn’t he? He’d taken care of her good, all right.

  Angela sat up in bed, hoping to shake the poison from her head. Her throat and stomach felt bloated, as if she might vomit. She would take a quick run before Naomi got up. Four or five miles of hard running along the Four would knock out the bad thoughts. Sore muscles were good for that. Traffic would be sparse this early on a Sunday.

  Happy to have a plan, Angela slipped on her black jogging suit, the same one she’d worn yesterday. The crotch was still slightly damp because she’d left the sweatpants balled up on the floor, but she’d make do. She strapped on her running shoes, fixed her headband. One stop at the bathroom, and she’d be gone.

  Stepping into the hallway, Angela noticed that Naomi’s room door was half open. Damn. That probably meant the dog had gotten out again, and he might have figured out a way to reprise whatever escape route he’d found yesterday. Angela peeked into the doorway, hoping she’d find both Naomi and Onyx in the daybed.

  Instead, she found neither. The covers were turned back, the bed empty. Naomi was not at her glass-top tea table either, where her script pages were spread out beside a coffee mug.

  If Angela knew nothing else in life, it was that Naomi Price was not an early riser. On days she wasn’t working, Naomi couldn’t drag herself out of bed until 9:30 or 10A.M. , sometimes later. Naomi would not be up before six. Angela felt the first vibration at the base of her skull when she saw the empty room; a small vibration, but perceptible. She didn’t like it.

  The bathroom door was ajar in the hallway, too, and the light was off. Angela didn’t think Naomi would keep the light off, but she looked in the bathroom anyway. Empty. Angela sat on the toilet and made herself relax, allowing her full bladder to squeeze itself empty. After flushing and drying her washed hands on her clothes, she went downstairs to look for her friend.

  “Naomi?” she called.

  No answer. None of the lights downstairs were on. Angela flipped on the foyer light when she reached the bottom of the stairs, bringing life to the chandelier, which cast a sunny, mottled glow throughout the foyer. Maybe Naomi was outside walking her dog, she thought. Or, maybe she and Myles made some kind of plan behind her back and were screwing each other blind back at his place. That last thought, a nasty jab, annoyed her to a surprising degree even while she told herself it was ridiculous. But the front door was still locked from the inside, even the dead bolt. Naomi might have locked the doorknob lock from outside without a key, but not the dead bolt. Unless she’d gone outside from the back.

  When Angela turned to walk toward the kitchen, she saw that the door to the wine cellar was wide open for the first time since her arrival. Her flesh seemed to leap away from her.

  Why the fuck would Naomi go down there?

  “Naomi?” Angela called, not moving. Her heart was taking deep dives into the pit of her stomach, then slamming back up against her chest. “Naomi, if you’re in the cellar, please come out.”

  She heard a thump against the roof of the porch, a walnut rolling like a midsized stone. But nothing else.

  Open door or no open door, Angela decided she was not going near that wine cellar. The cellar door could have popped open by itself because of an air pocket in the foyer. There was no reason in the worl
d for Naomi and her dog to be down there, and Angela wasn’t going to poke her head in that cellar unless she had a list of good reasons herself. At least twenty, maybe more.

  Instead, Angela unlocked the front door and stood on the porch in the cool morning air, calling Naomi’s name. The early-morning sky was gray and unpromising. Angela went to the stone steps and surveyed Toussaint Lane, seeing Tariq’s van parked on one side and the Explorer parked on the other. No Onyx, and no Naomi. She walked on the smooth bluestone garden path along the right side of the house until she was climbing the cedar steps to the backyard deck. No Naomi at the patio table, sitting beneath the umbrella in one of the chairs. No Naomi in the hot tub, which was covered with its foam seal, unused.

  “Naomi!” she shouted into the woods beyond the drop-off behind her house, toward the herb garden she had not visited in years. She turned again, this time north, facing The Spot, and called her friend’s name again. Her voice tripped into the foggy treetops, unanswered. Naomi was not outside. Her friend wouldn’t venture into the woods, as scared as she was of coyotes. Naomi was either in the house or taking Onyx on a walk toward town. Simple deductive logic.

  But as Angela let herself back in through the front door, embraced again by the warmth of the heated house, she came face-to-face with the open door of the wine cellar at the other end of the foyer. At that instant, Angela knew: Naomi was down there. It seemed as obvious as the fact of her own existence. And for some reason, Naomi was not answering her.

  “Naomi!” she shouted, loud and cross. If this was a prank, it was a cruel one, and she couldn’t imagine Naomi being that cruel. Naomi knew what had happened in there.

  Without any understanding of what or whom she was arming herself against, Angela found one of Gramma Marie’s old black umbrellas in the coat closet, the kind Angela had once fantasized about taking flight with like Mary Poppins. Keeping it closed, she brandished the umbrella and its pointed tip like a sword, clasping the polished wooden handle. She kept it close to her body as she took her first steps toward the cellar.

  Angela’s heartbeat was doing calisthenics she didn’t know it could do. “Naomi, please come out if you’re in there,” Angela said, pleading. “I’m not playing with you. This isn’t funny.”

  She was four feet in front of the door, not yet close enough to see down inside. She waited a long time, unable to go on. Then, she felt herself taking the last few steps to the cellar doorway, and she was standing fixed in the one place where she had never thought she would stand again. She stared down past the stairs. The narrow cellar’s light wasn’t on, and it was dark inside, but the light from the chandelier provided just enough illumination for Angela to see through the darkness.

  Pale clothing against dark skin. A person was lying on the cellar floor.

  “Oh, no,” Angela said, staring hard into the pitch, praying the figure would dissipate into a hallucination. Instead, it just became more clear. Angela flung the umbrella away and tugged the string to turn on the cellar light. “Naomi?”

  Naomi Price was lying in the center of the cellar floor, her head facing away from Angela. One arm was splayed out, the palm upward, and she looked—

  Like Corey.

  The room whirled momentarily, but Angela fought to keep from fainting or fleeing, whatever her body was trying to do. She flew down the stairs so quickly that she nearly tripped over her feet. Just like last time. “Naomi?” She knelt at her friend’s side, shaking her.

  “Mmmmppphhh…” Naomi made a sound. Yes, praise Jesus, she had made a sound. And her back was rising and falling with her breaths, and now she wasmoving, rolling over onto her side.

  “What the hell are you doing down here?” Angela said. Tears were flowing, mingled tears of utter panic and a kind of relief she could never describe.

  Naomi blinked up at her without comprehension, her eyes and face bleary. Naomi’s brow was so furrowed, her eyebrows almost met. “What?” Naomi said, irritable at being awakened.

  “Why are you down here on the floor? You’re in the cellar.”

  Naomi blinked twice more, and then she sat up as if she’d been doused with cold water. She stared around her with saucer eyes, first at the brick walls and the wine shelves, then at the floor. She peered especially hard at the floor, touching her pajamas, gazing at her own palms, and Angela suddenly understood what she was looking for: blood. Yes, she knew what had happened in the wine cellar.

  There was no blood, not even dried blood. Now that Angela was down here, she saw that the floor had been scrubbed clean. The spot where Naomi sat had beenmore scrubbed than the rest of the floor, with smears of cleanness standing out against age-old grime at the borders, where the scrubbing stopped. She was sitting exactly where Corey had died, but there was no blood.

  “What happened?” Naomi said, and tears came to her eyes too.

  “You don’t remember coming down here?”

  Naomi looked at Angela, so lost and horrified that Angela pitied her.“What is going on?”

  Angela spoke slowly and clearly, trying not to alarm her further. “Naomi, I saw you weren’t in your room, so I came down looking for you. The cellar door was hanging open, and here you are, lying asleep on the floor.”

  Naomi waved at her, dismissing her explanation. “No, no, no, no,” she repeated, running the scenario through her groggy mind. “That can’t be right. Thatcannot be right. How did I get here?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you…walked in your sleep?”

  “I don’t do that.” Naomi’s face wrenched with disbelief.

  “Sweetie, you did it. Look at you. You got down here somehow.”

  When Naomi’s face didn’t change, paralyzed in place, Angela pulled her close and hugged her, smoothing back the matted hair at her hot forehead. She gave her methodical, soothing strokes. “It’s all right, Naomi. You were just sleepwalking. You didn’t get hurt.”

  She heard Naomi sob, and her heart sank. In her own fear, she’d scared Naomi needlessly. Now that she had her friend’s fear to contend with, Angela magically forgot her own. She was here in the wine cellar crouched where her boy had died, and she was the one doing the consoling. God definitely has a sense of humor, she thought.

  “This is weird shit, Angela,” Naomi whimpered. “There is some weird shit going on.”

  “Sleepwalking is not that weird. I know it seems freaky if it’s never happened to you before, but it happens more than you think.” Something else occurred to Angela, and her voice brightened. “And you know what I just figured out? I think I know how Onyx got out yesterday. I think you let him out, just like when you came down here this morning. You just don’t remember it.”

  Immediately, Angela realized she’d screwed up. She’d spoken without thinking.

  Naomi pulled away, more shaken than before. “Angela, where’s Onyx?”

  Angela had no idea.

  For more than an hour, Angela and Naomi combed the house and the outdoor areas bordering the house, and there was no sign of Onyx. This had turned into one of those mornings that felt like an entire day had passed before nineA.M. The sun had grown gleefully bright for a while, but now the sky had surrendered to the gray clouds, foretelling oncoming afternoon rain.

  Angela called the Humane Society and Animal Control, leaving messages at both places. Then, she and Naomi drove toward town, moving slowly, watching every alleyway, every garbage can. They went to the boardwalk, to the bait-house, talked to the early-morning fishermen camped up and down the river, and then to the Four, driving a couple of miles up and down in each direction. A dead raccoon by the side of the road—its legs straight up in the air as if in four-paw salute—made Naomi shriek before she realized the dead animal wasn’t Onyx.

  On the way back home, they stopped at the front gate at the Leahy place. A pigtailed girl in eyeglasses was in the front yard playing on a tire swing. After telling her how sorry she was her family was having a sad time, Angela asked if anyone in her family had seen a dog. The girl ran inside the
mobile home to check. The answer, she reported breathlessly on her return, was no.

  “Fuck,” she heard Naomi whisper, just below the child’s hearing.

  The hard truth sank in: It was after nine o’clock, and they hadn’t been able to find a sign of the dog. This search could take all day, and Naomi had to leave by four-thirty to get to the airport on time. At best, they had been robbed of a good part of their day together. At worst, Naomi was going to have to miss her flight. That wasn’treally the worst-case scenario, as Angela knew full well, but her imagination wouldn’t allow her to consider what that might be.

  They would find Onyx. Angela just didn’t know when.

  She had to start searching her acreage, and she would need help. She’d pretty well managed to spook Naomi out of the idea of going near the woods, so she found herself leaning over her kitchen counter at 9:15, spooning yogurt into her mouth as she dialed Myles Fisher’s number.