House of Skin

by Jonathan Janz

  “You’re impossible,” she said and reached for the passenger door handle.

  “Wait,” he said and reached for her.

  She swatted at his arm. “Don’t touch me.”

  He sat back in his seat, unbelieving. “Jesus, Barbara, I’m not trying to hurt you.”

  She opened the car door, put one foot on the ground. “No, you just want to own me.”

  “Own you?” he asked, getting out of the car. He faced her over the roof. “Where’s all this coming from?”

  Her green eyes flared. “From you, Sam. That’s where it’s coming from.”

  “Will you just get back in the car so we can talk?”

  She was heading toward the porch. “I’m done taking orders.”

  “I’ve never told you what to do.” Seeing her climb the steps, he felt something in his chest constricting.

  “Whatever you say,” she said. She reached for the door.

  “Wait,” he called. He moved around the old black car, the one that had replaced his state cruiser. His stomach was a frozen knot. “I’m sorry if I’ve been a pain. I’m not very good with words sometimes.”

  She turned, looked down at him, and the woman he loved was gone. In her place was someone distant, a woman who was moving on.

  “You know what, Sam? Sometimes I think you were a trooper too long. You’ve let it go to your head. You take people and put them in one category or the other—good or evil—but people aren’t like that. We’re all of us good and bad at the same time. I know Myles has his faults, but there’s also nobility in him.”

  “Nobility?” he said. For a moment he forgot his fear of losing her. “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “Sure, Sam. You believe that.” She opened the door, saying, “You go on believing you and Myles are from different species, that you’re the saint and he’s the sinner.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, but the slam of the screen door and the bang of the heavy wooden door behind it stole his words.

  Seeing Emily again was strange, particularly because of the way she was looking at him.

  Her brown hair, usually shoulder length, was shorter now, and as usual, she wore no make-up. She didn’t need to. He’d always secretly considered her his opposite. Naturally healthy, untinged by chemicals and substances, she looked like an actress in a commercial for facial wash. She wasn’t a bombshell like Julia, but she was pretty in her own way. The white skirt she wore showed her figure to good advantage. As she came down the steps, her eyes wide with incomprehension, he noticed she was barefoot as she usually was and hoped she hadn’t hurt her feet walking across the sharp gravel.

  He was surprised at how short she looked. He couldn’t tell how much of their height disparity could be attributed to his improved posture, but standing there in the fading afternoon light she seemed tiny, like a child.

  He liked the way her eyes kept traveling from his face to his torso and back again, and he could almost hear her wondering how it had happened. He tried putting himself in her place, remembered times when he’d seen people after long periods of separation, been amazed at the weight they’d gained or the hair they’d lost.

  But this was the reverse, and he could tell she’d expected the opposite, for him to fall apart here all alone. He couldn’t blame her. He had expected that too.

  She reached up, ran a hand over his cheek.

  “You’re so thin,” she said. “What’s happened to you out here?”

  “Too much to tell.” He looked down at her, at her happy face, her brown eyes and her straight white teeth, and remembered how it’d been when they first met.

  She moved in and gave him a hug. He returned it, though something deep within him held back.

  When she released him he asked, “How did you find this place?”

  “You left your landlord the address in case any mail needed forwarding.”

  “You’re quite a detective.”

  “You’ve been lifting,” she said, her eyes scanning his chest, his shoulders.

  “Running, too. Can you believe it?”

  She grinned, shaking her head.

  “It’s okay,” he told her. “You can say it.”

  “No, it’s just,” she paused, met his eyes. “It’s just a pleasant surprise.” Her face clouded. “Maybe getting away from Memphis really was what you needed.”

  He shrugged. “This is a better life for me.”

  She took in the woods around them, glanced back at the house.

  “That’s not to say I haven’t thought of you, though,” he said.

  She stayed quiet, watched him.

  He turned his head, stared at the garage a little sadly. “I’ve thought a lot about how things ended. The way I acted. Choices I made.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded toward the house. “Let’s talk about it inside.”

  February, 1983

  “Can I come in?” Barbara asked him.

  Sam had been asleep. Had actually dozed off after too many beers and too much solitude. He saw on the clock over the couch it was only five-thirty in the afternoon. Christ, he thought. Not even six yet and already in the bag.

  He followed her through the kitchen out to the screened-in porch. It was where they always sat, enjoying the quiet of the cornfield that bordered his back yard. In the summer it was nice, but now it was freezing. Sam watched her, worried about her thin jacket, the way her breath turned to smoke when it hit the air. She looked bad. Her nose was red, her eyes wet, and if he didn’t know her better he’d guess she had a bad cold. As it was, he suspected what was on her mind had more to do with her appearance than any flu.

  “We could sit indoors,” he said. “I had a fire going the other day.” It was a lie, but he didn’t like her thinking of him sleeping and drinking away his time in a cold house.

  She shook her head, distracted. “It’s good for me. I’ve been inside all winter.”

  “Does Myles drive you back-and-forth from the farmhouse?” he asked, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

  She nodded, wiped her nose.

  He waited. She was looking out at the patches of snow, the dead stalks of corn laid out like starved refugees.

  He thought of asking her why she hadn’t returned his calls, had ignored him when he saw her at the grocery store. He’d even tried writing a letter, and if that didn’t show he cared about her, he didn’t know what did. He hadn’t written a personal letter since the sixth grade, and that was to impress a girl who’d gotten her titties before everyone else.

  He watched Barbara and thought of telling her how she’d hurt him.

  Instead, he said, “It’s nice having you here again.”

  It made her cry. Alarmed, he sat forward on the cold chair and wondered what he’d said wrong. He put out a hand to touch her shoulder, pulled it back. The last thing he wanted was to scare her away.

  “Can I help?” he asked.

  She shook her head, face frozen in a sob. She had bags under her eyes. He wanted to wipe her nose for her, do something to help the crying.

  “Is it Myles?” he couldn’t help asking.

  That doubled her over, her sobs coming in convulsive waves. After a time, she got it under control, took the tissue box he’d brought from the living room.

  She blew her nose, looked at Sam gratefully.

  “You’re so good to me,” she said, her voice breaking.

  “You’re my girl.”

  It set her off again, and seeing the way her tears were frosting her cheeks he took her arm and forced her to move back inside. He left her on the couch to get a few wedges of firewood. She didn’t look up when he returned.

  “Now tell me,” he said as he knelt to open the grate, “what’s got you so shaken up.”

  She looked up, saw him feeding wood into the hearth, and said, “Really, Sam. I can’t stay.”

  She stood.

  He couldn’t keep the impatience out of his voice. “Will you tell me what’s going on?
I’m not going to yell at you, for chrissakes.”

  “Something’s happened,” she said.

  “I figured that.” He stood, watched her from across the room. She was facing the door, but hadn’t yet moved to leave.

  Barbara said, “I should have known this would be the hardest part.”

  “Did he hurt you?” Sam asked. He imagined getting Myles down, bashing his face until there were no features left.

  “I did it to myself.”

  Sam felt ill, though he couldn’t say why. “Barbara, what are we talking about here?”

  “I did it to you, too, Sam.”

  He waited, dread gripping him by the throat.

  “The first time was New Year’s Eve. He brought me home and invited himself in. He’d been so good to me, and I’d been drinking…”

  Sam turned to steady himself on the mantle. He felt the beer in him sitting like lead in his belly. He wished she were making it up, but he knew it was true.

  “It happened more often then,” she continued, sniffling. “The other morning, I felt sick.”

  “Is it…” he stopped, having no idea what to say. He hadn’t the strength to catch his breath.

  “I’m going to have it, Sam.”

  He turned then, looked at her. She didn’t look up.

  “I’m going to have his baby.”

  The tears surprised him because he felt nothing at all now. He buried his eyes in his shirt sleeve, leaned on the mantle and willed her to leave, which she did. He let himself down on his knees, sat back on his heels and went over on his back. After he lay there awhile he went into the bedroom, took the lockbox from under the bed. His fingers closed on the little gray box inside. As he walked through the house and out the back door the velvet on the box felt stiff, frozen. He crunched over snow and brittle grass. With a final effort, he planted and hurled the box and the engagement ring into the field, dropped to his knees in the snow, cursed God and Barbara and Myles Carver.

  Myles Carver most of all.

  The real Emily surfaced.

  “The bar looks nice,” she said, and from the look on her face it was obvious she was asking if he’d been drinking. He opened his mouth to tell her she need not worry about that, he’d gotten it under control, but stopped, wondering why he felt the need to explain himself.

  “It’s one of my favorite parts of the house,” he said.

  She was watching him, he realized, with a look that was part curiosity and part anger. She was waiting for him to tell her how much he’d missed her.

  “Do you want a drink?” he asked.

  She gave him a thin look. “What do you think?”

  “Should we go outside?” he asked.

  She strolled up to him then, a languorous expression altering her face. “Maybe later.”

  She drew him down and kissed him. Julia filled his mind and he pulled away, but then he remembered her angry voice, her eyes full of loathing.

  “Come on,” Emily said, crowding him. She kissed his chest, snaked her arms under his. “Let’s be friends again.”

  Though he kissed Emily back this time, his thoughts tended first toward Julia, then Annabel. He closed his eyes and imagined making love to Julia on the blanket under the fireworks, grew furious with himself that he hadn’t. The vision of Julia’s glorious body brought him alive, intensified his kissing of Emily. She responded, kneading his rigid back muscles and moaning against his lips.

  He thought of Annabel gazing up at him from the forest floor, the earth soft and cool beneath them, golden glints of sunlight slanting through the canopy of branches.

  Emily pulled away and spoke his name. Staring into her unbelieving face, thoughts of Annabel vanished.

  “What is it?”

  “Over there,” Emily said and pointed with a trembling finger. “There was someone in the window.”

  He followed her gaze. “What are—”

  “A woman,” Emily said, a hand massaging her throat. “She was staring at me like she wanted to kill me.”

  August, 1983

  Barbara’s screams went on into the night.

  She hated Myles for taking her to the basement. The midwife argued for the hospital, but he’d shouted her down. The midwife told him Barbara would be more comfortable in her bed and Myles told her he’d be damned if he’d have her bleeding all over his sheets. He’d fathered the child, so she’d damn well do what he said. He reminded the midwife he’d also paid for her, and poked the old woman in the chest to drive home his point.

  Barbara asked for painkillers; Myles refused. Barbara asked for Sam, and Myles smacked her in the mouth. Half the night she wept. By dawn the head was visible, Barbara fully dilated. Forty-five minutes of pushing and the old woman wrapped the bloody baby girl in a wool blanket, scooped a finger through the baby’s mouth to get rid of the slime.

  Myles’s attitude changed then, and what Barbara had feared—his being disappointed if the child were a girl—never materialized. Instead, he stared at the baby, fascinated. He and Annabel had never conceived, though he never doubted his ability to father a child. Barbara wondered how he could be so sure, but wrote it off to his supreme arrogance. She’d been shattered when the doctor told her she was pregnant, but now, as she accepted the baby from the harried old woman, she forgot all about Myles and Sam and illegitimacy and lost herself in the little girl’s stunning green eyes.

  “Julia Grace,” Barbara said, and holding the baby to her chest, wept.

  They walked through the forest, Emily making sarcastic comments about Indiana.

  They’d eaten lunch at one of Shadeland’s two Chinese restaurants. She’d said the soup tasted like dishwater, that it was nothing like the place in Memphis she frequented. He said the selection wasn’t as varied in a small town as it was in a city of two million, and she said you’re not kidding.

  Then they sat in silence.

  It was the way all their conversations seemed to go. It dawned on him that she’d come to Watermere not to check on him, not to assure herself of his well-being, but to retrieve him, to rescue him from the sticks and deliver him to the city, to his old job and his old life, and she was disappointed he didn’t need rescuing. She did not like the way his face had emerged from its cocoon of fat. His hair, short and styled rather than longer and askew, bothered her. She said it made him look like he thought he was still in his twenties.

  That pissed him off.

  She loved reminding him of the passage of time, as though he weren’t aware of it without her pointing it out. In times past she’d used his age as a means of scaring him into a marriage proposal. She’d joked about the two of them standing at the altar on walkers, having a nursing home ceremony. Now, she was using the same tactic for an end more cruel. His youth was gone, she was reminding him, his workout regime and new image were a desperate attempt at recapturing it.

  It was terribly ironic.

  For years she had harped on his lack of cardiovascular fitness, his lack of ambition, and now that he was doing something about it, making the most of the time and resources he had, she was criticizing him.

  He was thinking of how unfair she was being when she gasped with delight and left him on the forest path. She was already through the break in the trees before he realized where she was going.

  Feeling a trifle light-headed, he followed her into the graveyard.

  And damned if she didn’t head right to Annabel’s tombstone. He lingered near the mouth of the trail and hoped she’d lose interest. But the marker had grabbed her the way it had him, and soon she was calling him over, insisting he take a look at it with her.

  He made his way past the smaller markers—several of them guarded by surly crows—and suppressed an irrational fear of her finding out about the novel. She was saying something about how disrespectful it was for people to desecrate so elegant a gravestone, but what got his attention was the way the designs on the marker had gotten clearer since earlier that day. Now not only were the name and dates unscathed, the r
est of the carvings had largely recovered as well.

  Near the bottom, inches above the sharp rectangular base were two designs. On the right side of the marker was a full moon peeking out of a bank of clouds. On the left was a woman’s face, and when he bent to touch it Emily said something that he missed. His breathing slowed and as his feet edged backward through thickening grass, Emily put out a hand, and though he knew she was speaking he no longer heard her voice.

  He walked out of the cemetery and down the forest trail. Though she spoke sharply, her words were a muddled haze. He saw a woman in a white gown, her blue eyes bloodshot above her gaunt cheeks. He saw a younger, dark-haired woman who reminded him of Julia. He heard them shouting at one another, and when he returned to the den and the typewriter, he recorded what they said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Emily stood outside the house, irresolute. After finally finding Paul locked away inside the office, she rapped on the door and asked him why he’d left her in the forest. He refused to answer her questions or even acknowledge her presence. She’d stood outside the office door listening to the typewriter keys clack away far too rapidly—Paul had always been a hunt-and-peck typist who’d be lucky to crank out thirty words a minute. Finally, she gave up and came outside.

  Now, without anything else to do, she decided to take a shower. Her pores were a horror of oil and travel grime, and if she didn’t wash up soon, she’d go crazy in her own skin. In fact, she was already feeling a little unstable, the sedatives she’d taken reacting with her regular heart medicine. She knew she shouldn’t mix the two, but darn it she needed to calm down.

  Emily turned and regarded the old house, the solid red brick that had lasted over a hundred years and would likely last several hundred more. The water, when she’d gotten a drink from the tap, had tasted surprisingly pure. The shower water would be no different.

  She thought of the face in the window, the woman’s hateful eyes.

  Though a shiver plaited down her spine at the memory, her reason nevertheless won out. Even if, she thought as she climbed the porch steps, there was some backwoods voyeur wandering around, the woman was unlikely to bother Emily while she showered.