The Wrong Family

by Tarryn Fisher

  She groaned as she lifted herself from the chair and limped off to put her laundry in the dryer, but not before tucking the list of names into her pocket.

  That night, Juno lay in bed listening to them fight again as she held the piece of paper in her fist. Their fight was the same old, same old. Nigel and Winnie making the rounds, revisiting the wrongs. She was bored of it; she didn’t know how they weren’t.

  “I can’t even believe you’re guilting me about something I do for myself after you spent all of that money on the addition!”

  “The addition that would be making us money if you let me rent it out!”

  “And I made it very clear that I don’t want a stranger in my home—then or now.”

  “Well, you got your way, Winnie, per usual. The three of us, secluded in this little world you’ve made for us. I suppose you want thanks, too. Sam is so very grateful that you’ve forced him to be a vegetarian. I am so very grateful that you choose my underwear brand, and schedule my weekends, and tell me how to use my time off.”

  “Rent your stupid apartment out,” Winnie said. “But I’m not living here if you do.”

  Part Two

  THEN

  11

  JUNO

  At first, she had only followed them around the lake, staying a few yards behind as they bickered—or on the very rare occasion, chatted amicably. More often, they walked with their faces turned away from each other, and when they did, Juno would remember the way Nigel had wrapped his fingers around her biceps that first day and squeezed gently. She’d believed in them in that moment, cared about their outcome. She was content to have something to do, to have something to study. The depression that choked her on most days ebbed back in the wake of new purpose. At a quarter to six, Juno would find a bench near the theater and wait for them to begin their loop around the lake. It became a game to spot their faces among the walkers, and then she would get to her feet, which suddenly seemed lighter, and stroll behind them for the rest of the way.

  On the days when they couldn’t bear to look at each other but could tolerate a walk together, Juno saw their real connection. She caught words, sentences—but mostly it was their body language that interested her. They were never more than three feet apart—even when angry. It was like they were connected by a rubber band with only so much stretch. She’d known couples like this, had sat them on her office couch for counseling. But none had ever interested her like these two. She told herself it was harmless, her fascination with them—like watching reality television. Wasn’t that what everyone was into nowadays? But somewhere deep inside, Juno knew it was more. They walked late in the evenings when the foot traffic at Greenlake Park had thinned out for the day and they wouldn’t have to share the path with a fleet of strollers. She’d never followed them after they left the park, because they were just that—her park family, something to be interested in other than her own tired problems. They had a child—a boy with wavy hair that hung in his eyes. During the week he’d join them, scootering ahead so fast they’d frantically call out for him to wait, but he wouldn’t hear. It was Juno’s opinion that he chose not to hear. That always made her laugh. Prepubescent boys had a way of wringing their parents’ nerves dry. They called him Samuel—never Sam—but Juno thought he looked like a Sam with all that hair and those big eyes that stared so intently.

  How many weeks had she trailed them around the 2.8-mile loop, sometimes trotting to keep up with them, cursing their youth? It went from interest to obsession for Juno in a matter of days. She couldn’t sleep; she could no longer eat for fear of missing out on something. All Juno could think about was this family. For weeks she’d stopped near the utility shed and watched as they’d crossed the street and gone into a monstrous brick house on the east side of the park. Then, one day, just out of curiosity, she’d taken a peek into their mailbox, just to see their names. And there it was, right on a postcard from their car dealership reminding them to get an oil change: Winnie and Nigel Crouch. The names fit them well, Juno decided. Out of boredom, she’d Googled them on the library’s computer, a fat gray machine that hummed louder than she did, and found that Winnie currently worked for a nonprofit called None the Richer as coordinator for their fundraising events, while Nigel worked as a web designer for an athletics company called Wella.

  Juno liked how the information made her feel. Like she wasn’t without all the things that made up a person: a family, a home, history. Just to hold theirs for a few moments left her heart racing. She wasn’t doing it again. No, that’s not what this was. She shook her head, narrowing her eyes at her own inner voice, that old liar. The last time, she knew she’d been wrong: she’d allowed herself to get too involved and it had cost her everything. But this time, she didn’t have anything to lose; this time, Juno could throw herself into the project. And the project was the Crouches, who needed her help.

  She hadn’t decided to move in with them; an opportunity had presented itself and Juno had merely taken it like any person would. She’d needed a place to stay, and the Crouches had plenty of space—so much space in that monstrosity of a house. And yet they were adding rooms! She couldn’t believe the greed of it. For weeks she watched from the park as the crews arrived early in the morning and worked through the day. The workers would carry their lunch across the street to the park and sit under the trees, sometimes napping in the shade until it was time to go back to work. Once, they’d come to the same tree where Juno herself was napping.

  “Oh, shit,” one of them had said. “She’s homeless. Let’s go sit over there,” and they’d ambled away to a different tree. Juno, who had pretended to be asleep the whole time, had rolled over to watch them. There were three of them: two looked to be in their early thirties, and the third—who was on the outskirts of the friendship but had clearly latched on—was just a baby. He can’t be twenty-one, Juno thought. He laughed at everything they said but a little too loud and a little too hard. She’d heard them call him Villy, as in “Villy, you dumbass” when he didn’t know who Chris Farley was, and “Villy, you punk-ass bitch” when he admitted to listening to Justin Bieber. Juno felt bad for Villy. She’d rolled up her sleeping bag and left it in the crook of the tree, and then she followed them back to the Crouches’ house.

  She’d wanted to get a better look at what they were doing; it was just regular old nosiness, she told herself. To the workers she looked like nothing more than an old lady taking a walk down one of the more prominent streets facing the park. Old ladies wore sweatshirts and sweatpants in the winter, they waved at babies in restaurants and stopped to tell the parents, “Soak up every moment. It goes too fast.” So when she started sitting on the wall watching them work, they’d thought nothing of it. She waved at them some days, and they waved back. She’d asked one of the workers once about the addition, and he’d said they were adding a multiroom structure to the side of the house.

  “Wow,” Juno had said dumbly. “Isn’t that nice. Must be expensive.” And he had looked right through her, as most young people did. For weeks she watched as they filled in the framing, then plastered the walls. They’d installed the wide window that would look out at the flowered backyard a few days ago. But then it was almost finished; any day now, the workers would pack up their things for the final time. Juno wanted to have a closer look before that happened, so around lunchtime she went to sit on the little wall across the street, the low brick one. She had a ham and cheese sandwich and an orange soda, and she swung her legs as she ate, kicking the backs of her heels against the wall and watching the last of the men leave for lunch. She noticed with satisfaction that none had stayed behind today as they sometimes did, probably on account of the good weather. She left her trash on the wall and gingerly crossed the street that ran parallel to the house. The addition was being put on the south side of the house, a compact limb jutting from the body. Juno gazed around. There was an old-fashioned lunch pail sitting in the corner, and someone had le
ft a waterlogged John Grisham novel on the windowsill. She looked for more human touches but found none. Then her eyes found the double doors at the back of the room.

  The doors were white, they opened inward toward the interior of the house, and where the doorknobs were supposed to be were two holes. Lying on the ground next to the door was the hardware for the doors waiting to be installed—probably after lunch. Juno reached out one sun-spotted, gnarled hand toward the doors and pushed.

  The door swung inward, and Juno stepped inside. She was in a den area. To the left of the doors and slightly behind them was a recess with a brick fireplace. It looked to be old, probably part of the original house; a few empty cans of Coke sat on the mantle next to a staple gun. Juno turned away from the fireplace and walked through the den. A large television box sat in the corner unopened; she glanced at it briefly, musing at how careless the workers were to leave the door open. Anyone could just walk in and rob the Crouches blind. The den led to the family room, and then a sunroom facing the back garden.

  The house was bright. Juno blinked around the room, taking in the color with wide eyes. How long had it been since she was inside of a home? She looked behind her then, past the den and through the addition. The birds chirped incessantly. No one was coming—not yet. The workers were all safely napping in the park. They wouldn’t be back for another thirty minutes.

  She could turn back now. Juno very clearly knew that what she was doing was wrong, and yet she took six more steps until she was standing in the middle of their family room. From where she was, she could see a hallway that led to the kitchen, and past that the front door. No one notices when you’re around anyway, she thought—so she walked through it.

  She wandered the Crouches’ home, almost floating through rooms.

  Juno hadn’t meant to linger. She’d gone through the downstairs quickly, stopping briefly to look in the pantry when curiosity got the best of her. A house of fiber, a family of champion shitters. No plastic water bottles, no refined sugar, no fun whatsoever. Juno helped herself to an apple from a bowl on the counter. She ended up at the stairs. The staircase was a double wide—her mama had called them that if they were fancy, and this one was as fancy as they came. It was the same rich mahogany as the floors, polished to an elegant sheen. Juno laid a hand on the nearest bannister and began to climb the Crouches’ double wide, and hot damn if she didn’t feel like Scarlett O’Hara.

  The stairs bent once like an elbow; there was a massive, gilded mirror hanging on the landing as tall as she was and as gold as it was gaudy. As soon as her reflection appeared, Juno averted her eyes. She knew what she’d see if she looked closely and—no, thank you very much. The stairs came to an end and opened into a wide hallway. On one end of the hallway was a bay window that looked out at the park. Two rocking chairs sat side by side with a small gold table between them, the quaint little setup laid over a Turkish rug. She wondered if they drank their coffee together on those chairs, or maybe had a nightcap. Her eyes went back to the four widely spaced doors, two on either side of the hallway. Between them ran a lush runner—leopard print, Juno noted. Winnie had a pair of leopard-print sneakers she sometimes wore on her walks, and some evenings she carried a leopard umbrella on a wristlet, though Juno had never once seen her open it. Turkish rugs, and neon busts, and leopard-print carpets—my God—Juno’s own house had been a plate of beiges: brown, taupe, linen, cream, froth, camel.

  She moved toward the first door. It was on the right and turned out to be a bedroom, probably the spare. She closed the door without going in and moved on to the next; this one belonged to Nigel and Winnie. The master faced the street, and it boasted a huge window overlooking the park. The bedroom, Juno noted, was less of a color bath than the rest of the house, mostly done up in grays. The bed was made, but the coverlet folded down to reveal deep purple satin sheets with a cream duvet over the top that looked like whipped frosting. In the corner of the room stood a four-foot fountain that bubbled and gurgled like a happy baby. Juno could finish out her days in a room like this; it was magnificent. Their bathroom was attached, and it was so white it made her feel like a lesser person. A bathroom had never made her feel inferior before. What would she have said to one of her patients if a bathroom so spotless and white had made them feel like the most worthless piece of shoe dirt? You’re allowing it. You’re giving the bathroom permission to make you feel that way...

  Juno laughed. She didn’t even mind that it was loud because everything seemed ludicrous: the bathroom so white a single pubic hair would mar it. Who wanted to live in a world so easily toppled? Even the fact that she was here in this damn house was funny. She laughed as she left their bedroom, closing the door behind her. Next were the two other—but then, voices. In the house.

  Eyes wide, she fell to her hands and knees, crawling on the floor to remain out of sight. She heard the stomping of work boots on the floor downstairs. Someone called out, “Grab the rest of the shit, too...” and then more stomping. Do or die, Juno thought. She was going to have to make a run for it. And even if they did see her running out the front door, what were they going to say to the homeowners—that they were irresponsible and had left the door open, allowing a homeless woman to wander inside? No, she was fairly certain they’d keep their traps shut on the matter. As she charged down the stairs, she still had the apple clutched in her hand. She stuck it in a pocket as she reached the landing, rounding the corner and trotting down the remaining stairs. But whichever worker had been in the house, he’d obviously hightailed it back outside with the “shit” because the downstairs was blessedly empty.

  Juno dashed for the front door. Aches and pains forgotten, she moved like twenty years had just fallen off her limbs. She’d moved like this once before, when she’d stolen a block of cheese from the corner store; the cashier had spotted her sliding it into the pocket of her hoodie. The front door faced the park, so if she walked out casually enough, maybe no one would notice her.

  She was five steps away; she could see the stained-glass windows that flanked the door when the handle started rattling. Juno skidded to a stop, balancing on her heels, quite certain she was having a heart attack. There was movement on the other side of the stained glass. Was it normal for a heart to beat side to side, up and down, side to side, up and down? Juno had always been fast on her feet—she’d spent her sixties being homeless, which had certainly improved her survival skills—and in that moment, her instincts told her to move. As a key fitted into the lock, she reached for a different door handle—was it the coat closet or the junk closet? She couldn’t remember; without pause she backed herself into what she thought was the junk closet—the one with the golf clubs and the snowboards leaning against the back wall. What else...what else had there been in here when she’d looked? She remembered a crate of tennis balls, old textbooks...nothing they would need, she hoped. She let a jagged breath out through her nose; she was trying very hard to hold still, but her body was shaking.

  The front door opened; Juno held her breath. She held still, everything so still. There was suddenly a whoosh of noise as traffic and other outside sounds filtered into the Crouch house, into the closet where Juno was hiding. She thought she could feel a breeze on her ankles from under the door, but then it was gone as the door slammed closed. The sound of footsteps moving away from the closet and Juno. Light footsteps, she noted—Winnie. Had she come home to check the progress the men were making? Clearly she’d surprised them, too, as they’d been scrambling to collect whatever they’d left in the house.

  She strained to hear. If Winnie was in the kitchen looking out at the work, then Juno could slip out of the closet and make the three steps to the front door. And what if someone does see you, one of the workers, or a cop—can you outrun them? Juno flexed one of her feet and felt pain roll up to her hip. Movement equaled pain, and while some days were better than others, it seemed that the exertion of reaching the closet would now prevent her from being able to
run from it. She reached one hand behind her to the wall and leaned her weight there as she tried to catch her breath. Goddamn if this wasn’t the most foolish, ass-hearted plan. She hadn’t been thinking straight, a lapse in judgment. Juno felt like she couldn’t breathe. But you can, she told herself. She said it in the same authoritative voice she used on her patients. She placed a hand over her heart and counted the beats, counted her breathing. Her vision swayed in and out of focus. Juno focused on the hand that wasn’t on her heart, the one that was still braced against the back of the closet wall. Feel it, she told herself, it’s rough and warm. Count your breathing.

  When it was over and the worst had passed, she hugged her arms around herself, shaking now from exhaustion and cold. She was clear of mind and furious at herself, but, though she was thirsty and light-headed, she could do nothing but wait. Winnie had the front door open, and for a moment Juno thought she would leave, but then the sound of more voices joined her, children’s voices.

  “Sorry about all the construction.” This was Winnie’s voice, calling this to someone outside the door. Juno flinched as feet pounded into the house and up the stairs. Another voice—female—said something to Winnie from a distance, and Winnie laughed. Juno couldn’t see it, but she could picture it: a parent idling on the curb in their car. Parking was impossible on the slanted streets of the city.

  “Yeah, if you text me, I can send him out tomorrow, so you don’t have to try to park.” There was a response Juno couldn’t hear, and then the door slammed shut. Winnie’s heels began to clack away, and Juno tensed her body, ready to sprint if she got the chance. Two minutes later the doorbell rang again, and this time the voice was right outside the door.

  “Roman, take off your filthy sneakers! Don’t! No, leave that with me...” And then, after a swift goodbye, more clattering of feet on the stairs above Juno’s head. The voice came back, this time without the parental lilt; this was the voice of a woman who’d seen too little time for herself. “God, you’re a saint for having them over. What time tomorrow...?”