by Rachel Kane
It was practically a mansion, grander than the plantation houses which had clearly inspired the architect. Seeing it as an adult, I was surprised to find it gaudier than I remembered. The Old South, reinterpreted by the nouveau riche. The Harrisons had come into their money in the 1910s and 20s, before the crash, and the house served as a kind of temple or memorial to their financial acuity, their ability to make their money grow while everyone else suffered the Great Depression.
I hadn’t understood any of that when I was young, of course. I’d tagged along behind my mom as she’d cleaned every room, every nook, corner, cornice, dusting and polishing and shining, until the whole house gleamed. Things don’t seem quite as grand when you have to clean them every day, I think.
Avoiding the front of the house, I went around to the kitchen. In the old days, long before we got here, the kitchen had been in a separate building off the side of the house, but it had been incorporated back in, and its door functioned as the servants’ and tradesmen’s entrance. The door you went to when you weren’t fancy and didn’t have money.
“Mister Micah!” said Consuela, the Harrison’s cook. “Your mama didn’t tell me you were coming!”
I brightened when I saw her. Talk about memories! She came over and put her arms around me, and for just a second I was a little boy again, sitting over there at the table with my math homework, while my mom did the mending and Consuela made dinner for the family. Don’t let him have another cookie, my mom would say, you’ll spoil his supper. But Consuela would shake her head and say, he’s so thin, he’s skin and bones, one more won’t hurt.
“My god, it’s good to see you,” I said to her. “Do you know what’s happening here? Are they getting rid of you too?”
“Oh, it’s awful,” she said. “Your mama will tell you all about it. Mrs. Harrison, she has a new beau. Nobody likes him. He told me I cook all wrong, I make everything too fatty. Says I’m killing Mrs. Harrison with my food. He’s a bad man, Micah.”
“Where’s mom? Surely she’s not still cleaning.”
“Upstairs,” said Consuela. “Still cleaning.”
I felt like I was trespassing. I took the back stairs, to avoid Mrs. Harrison if she was home, but I still felt like I might get caught at any moment, asked what my business here was.
How strange. When that sense of belonging leaves you, all that remains is the feeling that you’re doing something wrong. That you need to get out while you still can. I don’t know how my mom had managed to keep helping out, knowing she was being cast aside.
I found her in one of the guest rooms.
“You came!” she said.
“Of course I did. Why are you cleaning? You got fired.”
She looked down at the pillowcase she was holding. “Mrs. Harrison gave me two weeks. What was I to do, go sit in my house and leave the beds unmade?”
“I don’t understand what’s going on here. Consuela said something about Mrs. Harrison’s new boyfriend?”
She slid the pillow into its case, and fluffed it up before returning it to the bed. “She was a very lonely woman, the missus. I can’t begrudge her a little happiness in her life. You don’t know what it’s like, to lose someone you love.”
There wasn’t anything I could say to that. It was wrong, completely wrong, but this wasn’t the time to think about myself.
“Why does a new boyfriend mean she has to fire everyone?”
“Can you imagine? Come live in my late husband’s house, come sit by the fireplace below his portrait. No man wants to feel like he’s haunted by his predecessor.”
It wasn’t my place to understand it all, I guess. Not my business what these rich people did with their personal lives.
“Tell me what you want me to do,” I said. “Do you want to pack your things and come to Corinth with me? Do you want me to talk to Mrs. Harrison about keeping you on? Do you want me to file a lawsuit?”
At that, she laughed and swatted my arm. “You and your lawsuits. Everyone is so proud of you. Consuela always wants to hear about you. Although what’s this about you and Jerome? He was such a nice boy.”
I shook my head. “We can talk about Jerome later. What do we need to do?”
She sat on the edge of the bed, her hands clasped in her lap, and looked away. “I don’t know, Micah. There’s no sense in talking to her. She wants to give up the house, so there’s nowhere for me to go.”
“Sure, but I seriously doubt that she’s going to clean her own house, wherever she ends up…couldn’t she take you with her?”
“Go with her? Leave the big house and go…somewhere else with her? I didn’t think about that at all. I’m not sure I’d know what to do at another house. Where would they keep the linens? Would she let me keep the vacuum, or would she make me use one of those new ones with all the plastic and no suction—”
The worry in her voice bothered me. I didn’t like to see her emotionally unsettled like this. “Look, let me talk to her, okay? Don’t worry about linens and vacuums right now. We can think about all that when we know what’s going to happen.”
She reached out and took my hand. “I miss you, Micah. I wish you’d come down here more often.”
I squeezed her hand. “I know. I really should’ve. Things just get so busy. But don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything. Do you know where Mrs. Harrison is right now?”
“I’m sure she’s in the study. She said there was so much business to take care of.”
I kissed my mom on the cheek and headed downstairs again.
It was the voices that stopped me. There hadn’t been cars out front; I didn’t know that anyone was here other than Mrs. Harrison and the staff. But I heard voices from the front hall, and they sounded angry.
I don’t think of myself as a nosy person. Certainly it’s not my place to intrude on other people’s business. But you can’t be a successful lawyer without a healthy dose of curiosity, and you can’t win cases without getting all the information you can, whether it’s about the weaknesses of your opposition, or the psychology of the jurors. So I didn’t think of myself as eavesdropping, exactly, when I pressed myself against the wall next to the doorway into the front hall. Intelligence—gathering. Reconnaissance. Due diligence.
“It’s not worth arguing about,” said the first voice. “I just think we have more important things to do, now that we’re here, than heading straight for the liquor cabinet. Didn’t last night teach you anything?”
The voice that spoke next was the one that really shocked me, though. That pulled me out of the fog I’d been in since I got here, and focused my mind entirely down to one single point.
“Look, I came, okay? I’m here. I’m being good, but if we’re going to argue with Mother then I’m going to need a little something to steady the nerves.”
I should have stayed hidden. Or, more sensibly, I should have gone back upstairs and told my mom to pack her bags, and we’d drive back to Corinth tonight.
What I should not have done is walk through that doorway. What I shouldn’t have done is face the two speakers in the hall.
And yet…
I walked through the doorway. I faced the two men in the hall.
My eyes fixed on the younger of the two.
I said, “Theo?”
5
Theo
In another lifetime, I had been an artist. A promising painter, with dreams of making a name for myself. I’d won a few prizes in high school that had built up my confidence, and would spend hours studying other paintings, trying out techniques, trying to capture the world around me, with that accuracy that only painting can offer, a reality beyond the flat realism of a photograph. There was such a difference between portraying something on canvas, its three-dimensionality, the way the eye travels across an object, and the way everything was flattened down in a camera’s picture. It didn’t matter how many megapixels a phone offered, or what quality of lenses a camera came with, nothing captured the intensity of the world like paint.
<
br /> I felt like I’d been living in a photograph, in a flat, color-drained world of business. I’d left everything behind when my father died. I’d taken on a new life, one so different from my old one, it was almost like changing identities. Like when someone goes into witness protection, and has a new name, far away from their old home.
Val was the perfect brother in a lot of ways. He supported me, he taught me everything I know about business. But there was no color in Val’s world. Everything was black and white. Profit and loss, growth and contraction. Every penny paid in tax was a penny that couldn’t go towards acquiring another company. A constricted way to view the world, but the only way to maintain our father’s legacy.
Arriving back home was like stepping out of a faded old Polaroid into the brightest thing Van Gogh had ever painted. The green of the lawn was almost hallucinatory. The sky was such a rich blue, a blue that wouldn’t sit still, that drew the eye deeper and deeper, hinting at the vastness of space just beyond it.
And the house.
When you live among skyscrapers, towers of glass and steel that stretch to the clouds, it’s easy to forget the grandeur possible from simply being big.
The house was only three stories, and yet dominated the view in a way a skyscraper never could. It was like pure history, reaching out and grabbing you, dragging you into reality.
I needed a fucking drink to deal with all this.
I’ll be honest, I needed a drink to deal with lots of things lately. Work was busy, and not without interests of its own, but it didn’t grip me the way it did Val. Meeting with businessmen and bankers, all they wanted to talk about was money, and when they were done talking about money, they wanted to talk about golf. Or the best places to dock a boat. Or whether it made sense to buy your own plane free and clear, versus getting a share of a plane with NetJet. Men who commuted via helicopters instead of trains. They didn’t care about art, unless it was to talk about how much the latest Jeff Koons balloon animal sold for.
It was all so tedious. I drank to kill the tedium. I drank to kill the loneliness.
And I was sure as hell going to drink to fight off the discomfort that coming home had caused me.
The problem was that I had announced this plan to Val, in a casual way.
“Well, no,” he’d said, as we left the car. “We should talk to Mother first, obviously.”
“Maybe we need to take a minute to settle in, to get our bearings. Get the lay of the land, so to speak.”
Val just stared at me. “You can’t get drunk here, Theo. I need your help.”
“Nobody’s suggesting getting drunk,” I said.
We were at the front door, and oddly, no one opened it for us. I glanced back at the car. Surely we’d been seen, right? Where was the butler? Who was the butler, these days?
Or had Mother gotten rid of him, too? Had she gotten rid of everyone? Were we just supposed to let ourselves in?
The strangeness of that shook me harder than anything else. It took this house, whose form and patterns I remembered so well…and changed it. Was it really home, if there was no one there to greet you?
I definitely needed a drink. Opening the door, I said, “Do you think Consuela still has the key to the liquor cabinet? Oh god, what if Consuela isn’t here? Val…?”
“Would you stop?” said my brother. “It’s not worth arguing about. I just think we have more important things to do, now that we’re here, than heading straight for the liquor cabinet. Didn’t last night teach you anything?”
I was about to crawl out of my skin. The house was so quiet, and there was no one to answer the door, and everything was different. I didn’t need a lecture, I needed an exorcist. “Look, I came, okay? I’m here. I’m being good, but if we’re going to argue with Mother then I’m going to need a little something to steady the nerves.”
Then came the final straw, the thing that would wreck my sanity entirely. As I was standing there, holding my own jacket, wondering if I was expected to put it on the coat rack myself, I heard a familiar voice.
A voice from my past, one that I had never expected to hear again.
One I had almost guaranteed myself never to hear again, thanks to my own thoughtlessness and guilt.
“Theo?” said the voice.
I nearly dropped the jacket.
“Holy shit,” I said. “Micah?”
“I…um. I didn’t expect to see you here,” said Micah, standing in the doorway looking as frozen as I felt. My wild eyes flashed back between him and Val. I had the sudden feeling that this was somehow a trap, that Val had brought me here under false pretenses, perhaps for an intervention. A visitation by Ghosts of Boyfriends Past.
If that were the case, then Micah wouldn’t have looked so damn shocked.
He stayed at the doorway, not stepping a foot into the hall. “You’re looking…well.”
I swallowed. “Um, yes. You, too. Are looking well, I mean.”
Understatement of the century.
Micah had grown up. I could remember back when he was a gangly kid, when you could count all his ribs when he was in his swimsuit, readying himself to dive off the dock. Adam’s apple poking out like there was a bone stuck in his throat.
And now?
His broad shoulders stretched the thin fabric of the sweater he wore over his shirt. His Adam’s apple was less prominent, although I saw a tiny dot of red on it; he’d always had trouble shaving the skin there. Some things never change.
Some things did.
His eyes were different now. It wasn’t just that he had a line or two at their borders. I could remember the way he looked at me back then, the softness of his eyes. That softness had gone. I saw a hard intelligence behind his look now, and could feel myself being studied as closely as I was studying him.
While I was busy trying to compare the Micah standing before me with the boy from my past, Val wasted no time.
“Micah, it’s good to see you. I assume you’re here for the same reason we are.”
“Val, hi,” he said. I watched them shake hands with something like jealousy.
Stop being friendly, I’m not done reacting yet.
If I hadn’t needed a drink before…
“Do you know what’s going on?” Micah asked us. “Your mom fired my mom, and I don’t want to interfere, it’s just so weird—”
Val stared at Micah, as though sizing him up, deciding whether he was friend or foe. “We’ll get to the bottom of it. Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry?” I said, my voice sounding more choked than I expected. “She’s gone crazy. We should definitely worry. Micah, did you know she’s selling the house? The lake? Who sells a goddamn lake?”
Micah watched me a moment before speaking. Studying me again.
I could almost hear his thoughts: Who are you these days? Why are you wearing a suit?
His look let me know I had to get it together.
The last thing I wanted was to come across like a neurotic in front of him. The embarrassment would be too much. I had to act strong. I had to act stable.
I’m strong and stable.
“It’s a shock,” he said finally.
“Look, Theo,” said Val, “there’s no sense in barging in on her with accusations of her being insane. And Micah, I’m not sure you’re the best person to speak to her about this. Given…well, given everything.”
Instead of looking at me, Micah just nodded. “I can see what you mean.”
“Exactly. I’ll speak to her privately. So congratulations, Theo, you get to go make yourself a drink. Make one for Micah, too. I’ll come find you after I’ve spoken to her.”
I’d gotten my way…except now I was stuck with an ex whom I’d completely deserted, after my brother had hinted I was too emotional to speak to my own mother. Worse, an ex who had only improved with time. One who had grown into a shockingly handsome man, one who looked powerful and daunting.
Great.
This was just great.
“I’m
sorry, my head is just rattled from all these surprises,” said Micah, accepting the whiskey from me (Consuela was still here, still kept the key to the liquor cabinet on the chain around her neck, and was very happy to see me. I wished I could stay in the kitchen). We were out on the patio, where the back lawn sloped down towards the lake.
Micah had led the way out here. So confident, like he owned the place. As I followed, I made sure not to check him out. It was hard. His sweater was thin enough that I could see the lines of his back.
That’s not to mention his legs, his ass. I most certainly did not look at those, did not study them, did not ask myself whether Micah ran marathons or something to get a muscular set of thighs like that.
Not what I was here for. Not at all.
Ice tinkled in my glass. I held it up, and watched the sunlight filter through the golden liquor, the tiny world of shadows inside the ice. “I know what you mean. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
I didn’t expect you to be so damn filled-out. I didn’t expect you to still have those long fingers, those hands that would have been perfect for playing piano, or finding chords on a guitar, or sliding down the neck of a cello.
I didn’t expect the way the sun touches your face.
His tan was gone. It used to be that every summer, he’d grow darker and darker, and it would drive me nuts. It took me so long to finish painting a picture back then, and he just kept changing color, like a chameleon.
“So…are you…” He had a swallow of whiskey to buy him time to find the words. “Are you an artist now? You’re so well-dressed.”
I nearly choked on my drink.
What could I tell him? That no, I’d given up on the great dream of my life to become Vice President of Engagement? That I was the one who softened up CEOs before Val came swooping in to buy their businesses?
It all sounded so venal.
Draining my glass first, I said, “Yes, painting. Definitely an artist.”
