by John Enright
Lunch was a disaster. The deviled eggs were way too salty, as if she had salted them twice. She burned the wild rice. A large black bug crawled out of Nemo’s salad. Sissy wouldn’t eat the salmon. Nemo seemed to withdraw to spectator status. Morgan had morphed into an entirely different social creature, one whom Amanda had never seen before and one who had no use for her. It was Morgan and Sissy’s show, as they each called forth and deployed their finest displays of elaborate politesse and insincere deference. Morgan, for instance, whom Amanda knew disdained everything religious, was suddenly solicitous to Sissy’s brand of born-again Christianity. Sissy for her part praised Morgan’s shady real estate dealings as if they were the height of black female civic entrepreneurship. And, oh, how they loved each other’s dirt-poor-roots anecdotes. It was all so blatantly fake it was frightening.
Distracted by disaster, it took a while for Amanda to see where Morgan was heading. In passing, Sissy had asked about the Wiccan thing—the symbol on the side of the house, the rumors about what went on out here—and Morgan had let it pass. Now she circled back there, with a Christian bent.
“Say, you’re a local girl, Sissy,” Morgan said. “Tell me, are there many pagans hereabouts? You asked before about the witches’ coven and all. Those are all local white women. I know that down in Maryland we didn’t have witches forming congregations. What’s up with that?”
“I was curious about that, too,” Sissy said. “You guys aren’t … ah … you know, members?”
“No, no,” Morgan said. “We just rented to them, that’s all. I’m a firm believer in the First Amendment, freedom of religion, civil rights, etcetera. So, they’re not Christians. I figured, so what? They’re still Americans, still human. I figured we were doing them a favor, letting them all stay here together, even holding their little meetings here. Those white girls can go through some weird phases, you know? I figured they were harmless.”
Amanda noted that when Morgan said “white girls” it was as if Amanda weren’t sitting there beside her.
Morgan went on: “But after a while I began to realize that they weren’t just not Christian, that they were like the opposite of Christian, anti-Christians. Maybe there was a reason they had been persecuted for so long, why they had to hide out. I guess I am wondering how common that is up here. You know, a lot of strange religious cults came out of this part of New York State. Is it the water or something? More tea?”
“No, actually, we are all pretty much basic Christians up here,” Sissy said. “That’s what makes the Wicca thing interesting. Who knew there were people like that around here?”
“Oh, so you might be interested in writing about the witches, too, not just the house?” If this was an accusation—and in Amanda’s estimation it should have been—Morgan managed to make it sound an awful lot like an invitation. Denise and her troop had nothing to do with the house or its history or their efforts to restore and sell it. If anything, the Wiccan connection would seem to be bad publicity. What was Morgan thinking?
“Now, Sissy, as a Christian woman you must have some feelings about this,” Morgan continued. “I mean, they have the right to worship the devil if they so choose, but I could see if it didn’t sit well by local norms.”
Amanda was beginning to feel all alone. It was like nothing was making any sense, like she was surrounded by strangers jabbering. Nemo was staring off into the distance. As far as Morgan and Sissy were concerned she wasn’t even there. Morgan seemed bent on some pointless vendetta. Amanda had told Sissy not to return, and here she was sitting there, poking at her food. They were eating at the kitchen table. Amanda got up and walked out the back door to the porch. No one acknowledged her leaving. Sissy was asking Morgan about Wiccan meetings. How many participants? Amanda’s pack of Pall Malls was on the table beside Nemo’s chair. She lit one. It tasted terrible.
Nemo followed Amanda out onto the porch, but he didn’t stop to talk. He walked right past her toward the path to the front of the house. “Sorry,” he said. “We’ll be leaving soon.” Amanda felt like punching him as he walked by.
Chapter 17
“Morgan, the first time you and I talked about this, down in New York, you said something about my having a permanent place here if I joined in your development scheme. How would that work?” Dominick and Morgan were down toward the foot of the driveway, looking up at the old house. Dominick had walked there to take a long-distance shot of the place for Sissy’s article. He was using the newsroom’s digital camera that he had gotten from the car. He had never used one of these gizmos before, so he wasn’t sure if he had taken a photo or not or how many. He had stopped to light a cigar and enjoy this respite from the verbal jujitsu that lunch had devolved into. To his surprise Morgan had joined him, confessing that she wanted to make one more pitch for his throwing some of Marjorie’s money into their Diligence Retreat & Spa project.
Sissy’s earlier question about his not having a permanent address had struck a chord in Dominick. What kind of person was it who didn’t have an address? A homeless person, someone who lived in his car or under a bridge. For legal reasons he had to have a home address, an official state of residence. It was funny that Morgan had called it Marjorie’s money, because he still thought of it that way, as Marjorie’s money, not his, and it was her fault that he was now officially homeless, so maybe her money could appropriately solve that.
“We just write it into the agreement,” Morgan said. “Basically, your investment would purchase for you a condo unit of your design in the final product, yours to live in, lease, or resell.”
“Could I use this address before then? I mean before the place is completed?”
“I don’t see why not. You’d be like a partner in the firm. Should I have something like that drawn up for you to look at?”
“Yes, why don’t you do that? Do you still have the address of that lawyer Barnett in Alexandria?”
“Oh, yes, Counselor Barnett has stayed in touch.”
“Send it to him to look at, the financials and all. I’ll consider it.”
“Well, hallelujah. I have to admit I didn’t expect that. Why the change of heart? Surely not that young thing,” Morgan said with a gesture of her head up toward the house.“I wouldn’t think evangelical was quite your type.”
“No. No, it has nothing to do with Sissy. I need an address, that’s all. Why not here? Remote is nice, and I’m assuming I can trust you and Amanda not to rob or defraud me.” Dominick was looking at the house now in a different light. It seemed closer, for one thing, more personal; and for the first time he felt an urge to fix things—those sagging gutters, for instance, the uneven sills. He was embarrassed by a rusty air conditioner stuck in an upstairs bedroom window. He hadn’t even seen it before. Where would his rooms be? Which exposure? “You will keep as much of the original building as you can?”
“That is the plan,” Morgan said. “If you’re a partner in the retreat, you’ll have a say. I’m excited at the idea of having you aboard. I think you’ll provide more than just needed capital.”
“The place does kind of grow on you,” Dominick said. “Here. I am sure you know how this thing works. Take a picture of the place for me, would you? For Sissy’s article.”
Morgan took the camera and pushed several buttons. “You already have a couple of fine shots of it here. But, I’ll tell you what. Walk up the driveway a bit, and I’ll take a picture of you in front of your new future home.”
As they walked back up the driveway together, Dominick asked, “What was with the attack on the Wiccans? I never took you to be much of a Christian either.”
“Oh, I was just playing with your girlfriend. No harm intended. I just wanted to see how Christian she was. These young people are so sure they know all the answers. It irks me sometimes.”
“So how Christian is she?”
“Pretty much your standard max, I’d guess. Gospel Evangelical, the feel good type.”
“Trying to turn her against Denise?”
“Sissy is a bit of a local historian. I borrowed some books from her.”
“Anything about this place?”
“No, but I wasn’t really looking. I will now.”
They had reached the front of the house. “Morgan, can you find me a broom?” Dominick asked. Morgan went one way around a corner of the house toward the back porch, and Dominick went the other to where Susan’s garden hose was coiled beside its spigot. By the time Morgan returned with a kitchen broom Dominick had already soaked part of the dried blood around the front door. “We can get rid of this, I think,” he said. “This Denise’s work?”
“You got that right, and I do believe there is some sort of curse attached to what you are doing,” Morgan said.
“Just leave the broom. I’ll do it. We’ll see if it’s a unisex curse.”
Dominick was making some progress with the dried blood when the front door swung open and Sissy came out. She was half turned, speaking over her shoulder. “I don’t know what your problem is, Amanda, or why you want to be that way and go there, but, sure, I’ll leave.” Sissy wasn’t looking where she stepped as she came out the door, and she slipped in the smear of freshly soaked blood. Dominick dropped the broom and caught her before she went down. They stumbled backwards together in a comic tango until Dominick’s back scrunched up against a veranda post. Then they both went down, Sissy in Dominick’s lap, his hands on her generous breasts.
***
After Sissy and Nemo left, Amanda finished cleansing the blood from the porch. She used soap and a scrub brush and all the bleach in the house. Her mood was not especially improved by Morgan’s news that Nemo was considering a partnership. “I don’t see why we need him or his money or his interference,” Amanda said. She was on her knees with the scrub brush.
“That’s not very sisterly of you,” Morgan said. She was leaning against the front door jam, watching Amanda work. “The poor man has been saddled with this cash from his dead mother that he wants nothing to do with, and you would deny him the chance to transfer it guilt-free to his only sibling? Besides we always need more cash. It means less to borrow, less interest to pay, more freedom to do what we want without loan officers second-guessing everything. Come on, Amanda, this is business, remember? Free money is free money. You know he is incapable of hanging around to interfere. He has no head or heart for this sort of stuff.”
“Why did he start doing this? And weren’t Denise and her crew supposed to clean up this mess?”
“So, that young woman was the reporter who was here before looking for Susan?”
“You could give me a hand, you know.”
“I warned Nemo there was a curse attached to messing with the blood. For all I know it’s still attached. I’m saving myself for the next emergency.”
Amanda’s inner voice had been busy all afternoon. It had had a lot to comment on that Amanda couldn’t say out loud, until she did, to Sissy. Now she felt like saying: Screw you, Morgan. Look at me, down here on my hands and knees like a scrub woman while she stands there like some queen of the estate. Who is in charge here? How does she get off closing a deal with Nemo when he is my brother and it is my mother’s money? Always on the outside, aren’t you, Amanda my dear? O clueless one. My brother in cahoots with that Sissy woman. Do you think they have sex? And Morgan feeding her that Christian paranoia crap.
“That woman only wants to write about the sensationalist witches stuff out here, not the house or its history or what we want to do with it,” Amanda blurted out. “How could you encourage her like that?”
“You missed a spot,” Morgan said. “So, she writes some negative tabloid stuff about Denise and her coven mates? So what? It still puts the place on the map, and it might turn local public opinion against the anti-Christ Wiccans. How can that hurt? Enemy of my enemy and all that.”
Amanda got to her feet. She wasn’t done scrubbing, but she was finished with it. “You know I don’t like having enemies. I never could see the point, the utility of having them.”
“You don’t choose them. They choose you.”
“So, Denise’s legal threat about not leaving is serious enough that we have to help incite an actual witch hunt?”
“All’s fair in love and war.”
“Do you actually believe that?”
“Well, I’m not sure about the love part—it’s been too long—but the war part is just good policy. Take what advantage is handed to you. We want them out of our hair; maybe some bad publicity will help the cause. Look, I don’t like that Sissy woman anymore than you do—can’t stand the type—but your brother brought her in, and now he’s going to be part of our team. Let’s just see what she does. If I read her right, she is one of those personal relationship with Jesus types. Who knows? Maybe we’ll even get Him and His on our side. That would be weird.”
“I think you would be allied with the devil if it suited your purposes better.”
“What difference would it make? It’s all make believe anyway, Narnia stuff. Here, give me that hose. I’ll rinse it off. It’s still slick as shit. Listen, I’ll have to go up to Albany again to get this agreement with Nemo drawn up ASAP, while he’s still on the hook, and, yeah, it looks as if Denise has enough of a bogus case about religious discrimination to hold things up if we don’t chop her down quick. Can you give me a ride over to Hudson to catch the 4:45? You’ll get to drive your new wheels around. I’ll get you some CDs for your new deck when I’m up there. Write down whatever you want. We’ll have to stop at the bank to move some money around. Look, your knees and shins are all blood colored. Go shower and change. I’ll pack.”
The Amtrak station in Hudson was down by the river. Amanda got Morgan there in time to catch her train to Albany. Then she sat there in her new car for a while, feeling disconcertedly abandoned for some reason. The thought of going back to the house all alone repulsed her. She hadn’t had a chance to talk with Nemo after he and Sissy had gotten themselves up from the floor of the porch and promptly left. She and Nemo hadn’t had a chance to talk at all during the toxic lunch. His hotel was up in the back of town. She drove there, having nowhere else to go. Nemo’s black Lexus was not in the parking lot. She dialed his room on her cell phone. No answer. She drove around a bit, through the town then out of town to the east into the country, onto back roads, trying to get lost. A slow and gorgeous summer sundown flashed like strobe lights through the roadside trees. She started to cry because there was no one else there to see it. No one anywhere to share. She ended up at dusk back at the St. George Hotel. Nemo’s car was still not there. She parked and checked in, a room two floors above his. She found a bar around the corner and up a block, filled with locals. She knew she was going to get drunk, invite oblivion in, and she wanted to be close enough to a room and a bed to stagger back to. The bartender was cute enough. She could watch him as she slipped away, her glance avoiding then lingering on her own face reflected in the back-bar mirror. Reflections are always reversed, she thought, just like thoughts of the past, going backwards. There was chili on the bar menu, and at some point she ordered a bowl. If she had something to eat she could drink longer. The voice in her head had no more to say.
***
The two lowest floating ribs were cracked. Dominick knew it was more than a bruise by the time Sissy and he had made it to the highway into Catskill. When the pain went from throbbing to stabbing he pulled over to let Sissy drive and got in the back seat to see if he could find some prone or supine position that hurt less. Sissy said the only place to go was the emergency room at Columbia Memorial over in Hudson, and she headed there, back through Catskill and back across the bridge. Every jolt in the road bed registered in his lower back like a spike on the Richter scale. The ER and X-rays only took a few hours. There was nothing they could do for him besides give him a prescription for pain pills.
Dominick’s hotel was only a few blocks away from the hospital, b
ut Sissy refused to drop him there. Instead, she left him in the car, took his key, and went up to his room to toss some of his things into a bag. He would stay at her place tonight. He was in too much pain to object. The pain pills they had finally given him in the ER hadn’t made much of a dent in how his nerve endings were feeling about all this. He wanted a bed and a pillow to hug.
“Costae fluitantes, I think,” Dominick said when Sissy came back to the car.
“Cost you what?” she asked.
“No, that term that I just said, I think it’s the Latin for those lower ribs. Isn’t it strange that I should remember that from anatomy class so many years ago?”
“Yeah, weird. We’ll stop at the drugstore, and I’ll get you your oxycodone pills. That might help.”
“You know, some people have more ribs than others, thirteen pairs instead of twelve. I wonder how many I have.”
“According to Genesis you gave me at least one.”
“Could I give you these broken ones?”
“And God shaped woman from his broken ribs? I don’t think so, not in my Bible.”
At Sissy’s house Susan was evicted from the spare bedroom and the bed linens were quickly changed. Sissy helped Dominick out of his shoes and socks and shirt and pants. She brought him two white pills and a glass of water, and he eased into bed, trying to find the position that hurt the least. When the pills kicked in he dove into a dream-filled sleep.
When Dominick awoke, Susan was sitting beside his bed, her hand resting on his shoulder. There was still light out the bedroom window, but it was fading toward dusk. Or was it dawn?
