A Stranger's House

by Bret Lott

  We were quiet, the two of us staring at the house, the engine ticking, a breeze high in the trees behind the house.

  “Well,” I said, and broke the quiet.

  Tom looked down at his feet, then back to the house. He took his arm from around me, put both hands in his pockets. His shoulders sank as he moved toward the porch. He went up the two steps, those boards, it seemed, ready to break under his weight.

  I followed him. Our footsteps on the planks of the porch were hollow, loud.

  Tom had his hand at the door. The door, too, was scarred with bubbled and broken paint, and had nail holes in the wood where, I imagined, someone had once put a knocker or hung bunches of Indian corn. The exposed wood of the door was just as gray as anywhere else, and I was already starting to picture what we would do: how the front door would be scraped of its paint; the exposed wood stained; this porch, if I could talk Tom into it, kept, reinforced and replanked, a railing put on, maybe a roof put up over it so that we could sit out here on days like this and eat lunch or dinner, watch fireflies come out in the summer. There was so much I wanted to do, and I even envisioned a dried grapevine wreath from the General Store on the front door, some final, simple touch that would turn this Handyman’s Dream into our home, regardless of the fact we would have no children to fill it, bring it alive with hope and care.

  I wanted to go inside, too, to see what the place looked like in daylight, to see exactly where things would start, with exactly which room we would begin to rebuild. I wanted to see my room, that room upstairs.

  Tom tried the doorknob. Nothing happened, and I walked to the left down the porch to one of the windows off the large front room.

  Again my footsteps were hollow and heavy on the planks, and as I leaned toward the window, thinking of how loud my steps were, I thought I caught a glimpse of a shadow, movement out of the front room and into the kitchen.

  I swallowed quickly, then looked again. Both the front room and kitchen were filled with light, but nothing was in there, only the floors, the doorway into the kitchen, that same dark, cheap paneling on the walls. It had been only my imagination, I knew, remnants of the dream last night still playing through my head. I took a deep breath, cupped my hands to the window, and peered in.

  And then there was a face, right there, not an inch from mine, its eyes bloodshot, open wide, the mouth open, chin drawn back, and I screamed, staggered back and away from the window, still looking at that face, one I hadn’t imagined. It was there.

  It was a man, I could see now, gray hair thinning at the top and slicked back, his teeth white and horribly perfect, his mouth wide open. He was staring at me, his eyebrows up, his forehead wrinkled, but for all his expression his face was still blank somehow, and in that instant, I knew it was in his eyes, somehow dead, gray-green and dull, and this emptiness, I knew, was what frightened me most, what would stay with me.

  Tom turned to me as soon as I screamed, but seemed frozen where he stood. I could not see his face—my eyes were still fixed upon the face in the window—but then the front door swung open, Tom, too, startled and flinching as if the open door were a fist coming at him.

  Another man stepped out of the open door. My adrenalin was flying, the pulse banging in my bandaged hand, feeling as if the blood would spurt up through the threads, fill the dressing.

  I looked to the man, saw that he was only a teenager, could have, in fact, been one of the undergrads I saw everyday: his hair was black and flat, and he had thick, black eyebrows, his skin pale and acne-scarred. He had on a white T-shirt and jeans, and stood dusting off his hands. He was grinning at us.

  I looked at the window, but the older man was gone.

  The teenager finished dusting off his hands, then put them on his hips. He was still grinning. He said, “What can I do you for?” He shook his head to get the hair out of his eyes, the sharpness and quickness of the move showing me he’d done it a million times. He reached up and tucked a lock of that black hair behind one ear.

  Tom looked at me. I was still breathing hard. “Uhmm,” he said as he looked to the teenager, then to me. He reached up and put his hand to the back of his neck. He said, “We, uh,” and paused. He took a breath. “We’re looking at the place, actually. Rita Longford sent us up here. The realtor?”

  Tom looked at the boy, waited for some show of recognition, but nothing changed about him. He only grinned. I brought my hand down, took in two shallow breaths. I looked back in the window. There in the glass I could see only my reflection, and the trees behind me, so that it looked as if I were inside that empty house looking out at me, here on the porch, looking in.

  I closed my eyes, took in one more breath, then opened them.

  The boy had crossed his arms, and had stopped smiling. Finally he said, “Oh. In town.” He looked at his feet. His hair fell from behind his ear and down into his face again. “You going to buy the place?”

  By this time Tom had gotten himself together. He had his hands in his pockets, his feet spread. “Who are you?” he said.

  The boy looked up. “Why? I should be asking you. You’re the one who was jimmying the door.” His arms were still crossed.

  “Look,” I said, and took a step toward Tom. I heard my footsteps again across the wood. “We’re up here looking at the place. That’s all. We might buy it. You scared us. Who are you?”

  He looked at me as if he hadn’t seen me before that moment, as if I hadn’t existed before I spoke. His jaw was set, hands in fists beneath his crossed arms, his eyes taking me in. Then he smiled. He dusted off his hands once more, put out a hand to Tom.

  “I’m Grady,” he said. “My grandfather owns the place. He’s the one who’s selling it.”

  Tom, hesitant, paused a moment before he brought a hand from his pocket and shook with him. Grady put out his hand to me, and I took it in mine. He placed his other hand over the two of ours, said, “So pleased to meet you,” and I could see his affected air, the forced adulthood. He was acting.

  Tom said, “We got all the way out here from town to find out we’d forgotten to get the key from the realtor, from Rita.” He put his hands on his hips. He’d never used that name before, never called her Rita. It had always been That Realtor. Tom, I saw then, was acting, too.

  I wondered about the older man, that face. I said, “Is there someone else in there? I saw someone in the window.” I tried to smile. “That was why I screamed in the first place, actually.”

  Grady took one small step backward. “Oh,” he said, and put his hands in his back pockets. He was a child suddenly, having lost his adulthood in just that moment. He kicked at nothing with the toe of his tennis shoe. “That,” he said. “That was Martin. He’s a friend of mine, Martin.” He turned around, called into the house, “Martin, come on out.”

  There was silence then. Even insects in the trees seemed to shut down. The door stood open a foot or so, behind it darkness, and a head appeared, that same head, that same hair and eyes and chin. Martin moved from inside onto the porch.

  He was tall, over six feet, and wore an old, long-sleeved khaki shirt, brown slacks with blue suspenders, the pants hitched up above his waist. He must have been in his fifties, the skin beneath his chin beginning to crease and wrinkle. He stood just past the threshold, and held in his hands a rag, what looked like a piece of old bedsheet. He twisted the rag, let it go, twisted it again. It was a practiced motion, something, I could see, that had evolved into a nervous habit over years. His feet were close together, the toes pointed out too far, and his shoulders were rounded, his neck and head that much more prominent. He didn’t look at us, but at some invisible point a few feet before him on the wooden deck.

  Grady cleared his throat, and smiled. He said, “This here’s Martin. An old family friend.” He went the few feet to Martin, put his hand to Martin’s shoulder, clapped him a couple of times. Martin smiled, and I could see his white, white teeth, his smile wandering into a grin, and still there was no emotion behind his eyes, nothing that m
ight invest in his face some life.

  “He comes up here with me,” Grady went on, and now he was the adult again, “the three times a year we’re here to clean. This is that weekend, too. Quite a coincidence, you two heading down here today of all days.” He was still holding Martin’s shoulder. He looked at Tom, then me, then Tom again. “The perfect weekend, too. Tonight we’ll get a fire going in the fireplace here, make us some dinner.” He turned to Martin. “Ol’ Martin here makes a mean roast beef hash and eggs, don’t you, Martin?”

  Martin hadn’t stopped twisting the rag, hadn’t lost the smile. He said, “Hash out of the can, yep,” and gave a little laugh and a quick nod, still looking at the ground. He shrugged.

  It was no surprise when Grady said, “Martin here’s been out of the hospital now for six years. He’s been up here with me to help clean up the place three times a year for as long as he’s been out. Except, of course, when I was out in sunny California. He’s a damn fine worker, too. Does the windows so’s you’ll think he’s gone and taken the panes out, they’ll be so clean.”

  Martin shrugged twice, nodded.

  “So,” Tom said. He looked at me. He, too, was smiling. “Can we take a look around?”

  Upstairs the rooms were filled with light, more light than I could have imagined in a house with only two windows on the whole second floor, one window at either end of the house. But still there was light, and the view was tremendous: from our bedroom I could see far back into the trees, the land rising up into the hill behind the house; to the right was the road leading up to the place. From the other upstairs room, the room that would be mine, I could see the barn a hundred yards away, black wood shrouded by trees and bushes.

  Grady had led us through the house in a sort of tour, stopping to show us precisely how sturdy the floors were by stomping them with his shoe, and by stooping and reaching far back into a cupboard in the kitchen to knock hard on the wood at the very back to show us how solid that was, too. He also pointed out things that needed extra work: the loose bricks of the hearth, six or seven of them just set in place with no mortar; the hinges on the door from the kitchen into the pantry and how they were pulled out of the door frame; the soggy wood beneath the pipes under the bathroom sink. Things only he would know about, only he would point out. Not what a realtor would do.

  All the while Martin was behind us, following us from room to room. I’d positioned myself between Grady and Tom, though I knew there wasn’t anything to be afraid of. At least that was what I let myself think, but still there I was between the two men, still afraid.

  He kept back a few feet, too, every time we stopped, sometimes not even coming into the room, instead standing back in the windowless pantry as we examined the linoleum in the kitchen, or staying on the last step up before my room upstairs.

  It was in my room that I’d begun to feel most at home here, and I knew then some of the joy Tom must have felt the other night when he had smiled at his own room downstairs. This was my room, only half as big as the bedroom, the slanted ceiling cutting into the space, but still mine. There was work to be done, certainly, and I knew precisely where I would start: the walls, like the front room downstairs, had been covered over in cheap plastic paneling, here a dull gray instead of the brown downstairs. The paneling would go down first, and I would be able to see what I had to work with, see what was beneath, if it were more of that faded wallpaper downstairs, or just walls ready to be painted. White, I decided then, was the color I wanted.

  Tom and Grady were talking, but I heard nothing, only looked out the window, at the trees, the barn. I could have taken a picture, the view seemed so perfect, and I decided I would do that next time we were up here: take pictures to show to Sandra and Paige and Wendy and Will.

  I turned from the window, and my eyes fixed on Martin. He stood just outside the door. He was looking at me, not at my eyes, but at my bandaged hand. He held his own hand, gently rubbed the same spot on his left hand where the dressing was on mine. His mouth was drawn up, his eyes squinted as if he, too, felt the pain.

  Then he saw me, quickly brought his hands down, put them behind him. He turned and moved down the stairs.

  I touched my hand, felt the dressing. I turned to Tom and Grady.

  “I don’t know why,” Grady was saying. “I didn’t even know the place was up for sale myself until two weeks ago. That was when I heard. He’s in town, you know, my grandfather. Over at the Maplewood Home.”

  “Whatever the reason it’s for sale,” Tom said, “we like it. But I want to know why he wants to get rid of it.”

  Grady frowned, gave a shrug. “But my offer still stands,” he said. “Martin and me’ll be glad to help you out with whatever you need. You just let us know.” He turned and looked around the room, and for a moment he looked startled. He swallowed, called out, “Martin?”

  “He’s downstairs,” I said, and moved to Tom. I looped my arm through his, and leaned on him.

  Grady looked out the doorway, again called, “Martin?”

  “Yes,” came his voice, deep and stilted and hollow through the house, his throat, it seemed, constricted with the strain of just one word.

  “You okay?”

  “Okay,” he called back.

  Grady smiled at us. “Just have to let him know he’s not alone. That’s what he hates. Sometimes we’ll be in here at opposite ends of the house, and, well, I’ll—” He stopped and sniffed, rubbed his nose. Just a boy. “I’ll think I’m hearing things or something, and I’ll listen, and it’ll be him in the room he’s working in. I’ll go in there, and he’ll be sitting in the middle of the room and facing the wall, and he’ll be crying.” He gave a tentative smile, a quick shrug. “So, I got to check on him.”

  The room was silent a few moments, and I said, “So the place is your grandfather’s. Are your parents in town?”

  “Oh,” he said, and he was turning, heading for the door. “They’re out in California. They moved out there three years ago. I stayed with them a year and a half, then came back here. Too much sand and surf. Too many good-looking girls.” He was at the threshold, and looked back at us, smiling. He gave a wink, another practiced adult move, and he was moving down the stairs.

  I went next, down the stairs that met with the ones from the bedroom, then, with no banisters, down into the entryway. Tom was right: until they were fixed, the stairs would take practice.

  Grady was already standing behind Martin when we got to the bottom. Martin had the rag and a bottle of vinegar, and was rubbing hard on the glass of the window. Grady had been right: the window, unlike the last time I had stood there looking out at the woods, was spotless, as if there really wasn’t any glass.

  “Look at that,” Grady said, turning to us. “Work of art.”

  Tom said, “It looks great in here, Martin.” He’d said it too loud, as if Martin were hard of hearing or spoke a foreign language.

  “Beautiful,” I said, and I too had spoken too loud, the sound of my voice ringing through the room.

  Without stopping with the rag, he looked at us, his face all smiles, his eyebrows up, his eyes open wide. “Thank you,” he said, his voice this time higher-pitched, the throat even tighter, perhaps, with the job at hand, and how much he enjoyed it, and how well he did it. He turned back to the window, dipped the bottle onto the rag, went at the glass.

  Tom nudged me, and said, “Let’s check out the barn.”

  For an instant I was sorry he’d said that out loud, had hoped he would have whispered it to me, because now I knew Grady would accompany us out there. I wanted to be with Tom, to walk with him, consider alone for a few moments this place and the prospect of our buying it.

  But as soon as Tom had spoken, Grady looked down at his feet, sniffed, and went to the bottle of vinegar next to Martin. He pulled from his back pocket a rag just like Martin’s, an old piece of white sheet, and then picked up the bottle, tipped it into the rag. He was all movement, all action, all business as he took three big steps to
the window nearest him. He started rubbing a pane.

  Martin had stopped his rubbing. He sat still, the rag at the glass in midswirl, frozen. He was looking at the window, his back to us, and Grady said, “Martin, let’s pick it up.” Grady paused. “They’re just going out to the barn,” he said.

  Martin was still for a few moments more, and then slowly he started rubbing, the circle he made growing in size as his hand moved faster until, finally, he was at full speed, just as he had been before Tom had made mention of the barn.

  We left them there. I was puzzled at first, wondered why so abruptly Grady had decided to get back to work, but I was relieved, glad he wouldn’t be back in that dark barn pointing out to us broken beams and rusted hinges.

  The trail back to the barn was only wide enough for Tom and me to walk it side by side, my arm in his. The grass along the path was still green, the leaves of trees bordering it dull and crisp, about to change over. The barn itself was just large enough to fit two cars and perhaps some sort of workbench for Tom, and was built of black boards, a few shingles broken out, the sun filtering down and in, leaving traces, small slips of light filled with the shadows of leaves here and there on the ground.

  It was cold in the middle of the barn, my arm still in Tom’s, and I was looking up into the rafters, just looking, imagining in that cold someone here with a hammer and saw building this thing maybe a hundred years ago. I imagined it being put together, the sweet smell of new wood in the air, the ringing through these woods of hammer against nail, the roof not yet up so that the inside was filled with September light.

  Tom said, “Maybe next summer we’ll get to this. After the house is done and spring comes around.”

  I looked from the rafters, from that empty space up there, to him. His eyes were looking up to where mine had been.

  I said nothing, only pulled his arm a little closer to me, and as if that were a prearranged signal between us, we both turned and headed out of the dark into shadows thrown by the sun through trees.