The Carriage House: A Novel

by Louisa Hall

  “That Lucy’s a real firebrand,” he repeated. “She looks just like your sister out there when she was a kid.”

  “Diana had the bowl cut, though,” Izzy muttered, compelled against her will to a modicum of sociability.

  “You Adairs were always talented.”

  Izzy turned back to her nieces on court. Caroline was playing obediently, as though counting every step, measuring the arc of her swing. She took the ball too late. It was heartbreaking, how careful she was with each of her movements, how reluctant she felt about forward motion. Lucy played differently. She was careless, unhindered, springing on the ball like a young bird of prey.

  Behind her, Izzy felt more people gathering. A lady’s clinic ended, and its members assembled by the fence, clucking among themselves over Lucy’s general panache. Jack said something and they laughed harder, at which point Lucy, startled, looked up as if she’d noticed their presence for the very first time. Her brow furrowed. The cloud of this morning returned with a vengeance. For an extended moment, she glared at the offending gaggle of ladies, then turned and missed the next serve that Caroline launched over the net. Her brow furrowed even more deeply. She muttered something to herself while she walked to the other side, then lost the next three points.

  “She’s got a little temper, doesn’t she?” Jack said. Lucy fumed at him before serving so hard and long, the ball clattered against the back fence. Jack chuckled and Isabelle felt sick.

  By the time they switched sides, Lucy had lost two straight games. She moved forward with murderous intention. At the net post, she gave Izzy a single hateful glance and muttered under her breath, “Shitbagger can of a pile of sluts.”

  Izzy’s mouth dropped. Lucy proceeded to her side of the court.

  “Did she just say ‘shitbagger’?” Abby Weld laughed.

  Izzy stood and walked out to Lucy. She could feel Jack’s eyes on her. Across the net, Caroline watched, shifting from one foot to the other. “Lucy,” Isabelle whispered. “Lucy, what did you just say?”

  Lucy glared at her strings.

  “Lucy, what did you just say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I mean it, what did you say? I’m not mad, I just want to know what you said.”

  Lucy approached until she was close enough that Jack Weld wouldn’t be able to hear her, then whispered with reverberating force: “I said, SHITBAGGER CAN OF A PILE OF SLUTS.”

  “Wow,” Izzy said. Lucy looked up at her, jaw jutting. “Wow, Lucy, that’s pretty expressive.”

  Lucy adjusted her strings, attempting to restrain herself and failing. “THEY’RE WATCHING US,” she whispered violently, “LIKE WE’RE ANIMALS IN A SLUTTY ZOO. LIKE WE’RE SHIT PANDAS IN A SHIT-FUCKING ZOO.”

  It was loud enough to cause Caroline to come running over. “Lucy, shhh,” she hissed. She was clutching her water bottle, splotchy-cheeked with distress. “Don’t say that stuff, it’s not nice. I could hear you all the way over there.”

  “No, Caroline, it’s okay,” Izzy said. “She’s angry. It’s okay.”

  “They’re bad words,” Caroline said, her splotches deepening.

  “It’s okay, Caro,” Izzy said. “She’s right. She shouldn’t have to be watched if she doesn’t want to be.” She turned to Lucy. “Those shitbaggers don’t get to watch you if you don’t want them to.”

  Lucy’s mouth opened a little. She stared at Izzy. She quieted so miraculously that Caroline breathed a sigh of relief. Her splotches cooled. “Shit pandas!” Caroline whispered.

  “You know,” Izzy said, “we don’t have to stay here. We could just stop.”

  Lucy and Caroline appeared shocked by this news, as if giving up a tennis reservation were tantamount to running naked through the country club, cursing at the top of your lungs.

  “These shit pandas will watch us for the rest of our lives unless we stop. You can’t satisfy a shit panda: give him an hour and he’ll ask for a lifetime.”

  “Shit panda!” Caroline giggled.

  Izzy felt good. She felt like she was giving them a thing that was important. “Let’s get out of this shit-fucking zoo and go somewhere else. Let’s get away from this slut pile once and for all.”

  They left Lucy’s racket behind. Elizabeth could pick it up in the lost and found. They were leaving the shit pandas behind. Jack Weld could fuck himself. The ladies’ clinic could look down their noses. What did she care? They were escaping out Clubhouse Road, Lucy was skipping at her side, Caroline was babbling something, and Izzy was thinking that maybe they could go downtown on the train. She could take them to lunch at that restaurant by William’s office. They moved in a green shade, under the arms of the Osage orange trees that lined the street, dropping their fruits like small green brains. The world was still new; the flatness of summer hadn’t settled. Lucy, skipping ahead, picking up oranges and flinging them off to the side, giddily turned and called back, “WORM BONER!”

  “That’s good!” Izzy called.

  Lucy skipped forward, then spun and called back again, jumping up in the air for greater effect: “WORM BONER AND A PILE OF RUSTY SLUTS!”

  Izzy laughed again, and Caroline joined her. Lucy, proud of herself, spun around once more, and as she spun she vaulted forward suddenly, flung down on the ground by her own propulsion. When she got up—reluctantly this time, some of her energy siphoned—there was a red caterpillar on her eyebrow. As Izzy watched, the caterpillar expanded, clinging close, and then there was a curtain of blood falling over Lucy’s eye. For a moment, Lucy looked as though she would either smile or kill someone, but instead she started to cry. She lifted one hand to her face and brought it down, soaked in blood.

  They would have to go back. Izzy had wounded a child who wasn’t her own, and they would have to go back. She ran toward Lucy, picked her up and held her close, then headed back to the club with her niece’s hands around her neck like little panda paws.

  She found Jack Weld in the clubhouse bar. “She needs stitches,” he said, taking Lucy out of Isabelle’s arms. By the time someone got him a medical kit, Lucy’s eyes had fluttered shut. He laid her down on a leather couch in the men’s locker room, which was cleared for the occasion, and Abby took Caroline home. Sitting by Lucy’s feet, Isabelle watched while Jack pulled his needle in and out of Lucy’s eyebrow.

  “She’ll be fine,” he said without looking up from his work.

  “Sure.”

  “There might be a little scar, but that’s it.” He snipped his thread with a pair of miniature scissors, then stood to throw the needle away. Alone with Isabelle, he was less boyish and light. On his way back from the trash can, he glanced at her. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  He set to work cleaning up the medical kit. She watched his hands crawling over his various tools.

  “My dad says he can’t smell anything.”

  He looked up quickly, then returned to his work. “Oh?”

  “Yeah. He’s been saying it all morning.”

  “That happens sometimes after a stroke. Damage to the olfactory bulb.”

  “Is it permanent?”

  He zipped up the medical bag. “Yes, it is. I’m sorry, Izzy.”

  “He seems different.”

  “That’s a big loss. Scent. It’s connected to memory.”

  “Yes.”

  “Look, Isabelle,” he said, reaching the limit of his sympathy, “here’s a prescription for a painkiller Lucy can take. She’ll need it for a couple of days. After that, it might itch a bit. That’s fine. Try not to let her touch the stitches. You can make an appointment with her doctor to get them out in a week or so.”

  “Okay.” She watched him preparing to leave. He would go home to Abby and his wife. They would make lunch, and they would sit together as a family. It was all so unfair that it broke Isabelle’s unfeeling heart. “Jack?” she said
. He turned around. She fumbled for her switch, trying to brighten, to soften her rock-hard face. “Jack, this carriage house thing is killing him. Do you think you could help? We just need one person to agree to a delay.”

  He glanced over his shoulder toward where his fortunate life was waiting for him to return. “I’m not sure. There’s a rodent problem. It’s unhealthy.”

  “A few more days won’t hurt,” she said, loathing the tone in her voice. “There’ve been mice in there for years. A few more days won’t hurt.” Having waded in, she let the water rise up around her head. “I can’t leave him like this. After all these years and the kind of daughter I’ve been.” She focused on her sneakers; it was impossible to look at him, having said this to his face.

  He was quiet for a long time. “I’ll see,” he said, and that was all.

  When he was gone, she lay down next to Lucy and pressed her face against Lucy’s warm cheek. It smelled like medicine and grass. “I’m sorry, Lucy-bug,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t more careful.”

  Chapter 8

  They didn’t get out to canvass the neighborhood until late afternoon. First there were the bulldozers, then the police, then Lucy’s accident, and afterward Elizabeth had to be called at the studio. It took several hours for the accusations to build, and by the time Adelia called them for canvassing, it was clear that neither Isabelle nor Elizabeth was in a diplomatic frame of mind. Adelia was intensely agitated; she had counted on more Adairs than only Diana to help win over the neighbors.

  “Don’t worry, Adelia,” Diana said. They were waiting in the foyer, and Adelia’s face was pinched with anxiety. Diana attempted to sound soothing. “We don’t need them to come. We can cover the street on our own.”

  Adelia didn’t answer right away. She looked past Diana, up the empty stairs, hoping against hope that Elizabeth might appear. Diana could understand the hesitation; over the past few years, she had lost her confidence in social situations. Around new acquaintances, the shift in her personality was fine. But for people who had known her when she was young, the difference was disappointing. She felt it and instinctively became apologetic for having lost touch with the personality they’d liked, embarrassed about presenting them with the new, less impressive incarnation of Diana Adair. This was why Adelia had hoped to accompany Diana on the neighborhood rounds, and because of it, she was nervous about the idea of Di meeting neighbors on her own.

  “I didn’t have the chance to make my cookies,” Adelia murmured, still searching the stairs for the apparition of a more sociable sister.

  “It’s fine, Adelia. The cookies don’t matter.”

  Adelia snapped into focus on Diana. Elizabeth was not going to appear, the cookies would never get baked, and Diana would have to suffice. Her mouth set in a grim line, Adelia accepted these setbacks bravely, and the two of them—doomed little cadre—headed down the driveway to launch the neighborhood initiative. Green spinners were parachuting down from the June trees, and Adelia assumed a military posture as she surveyed the cul-de-sac.

  “You’ll go right,” she said. “The Welds, Suzanne Legg, and Anita Schmidt. Or Arthur. Obviously, they’re the most important.”

  Diana felt her face freeze. “Could I go left?” she asked.

  “I’d rather you went right. I’m afraid I’ve alienated Anita.”

  Diana’s stomach tightened. This was all wrong. She couldn’t see Arthur this way. Adelia had asked her to dress up for the occasion, but in the hubbub of Lucy’s accident, she’d forgotten. Now, the idea of seeing him, wearing these jeans, pleading for the carriage house, was nearly unbearable.

  Adelia watched her, lips tightening. “Oh, Diana, if it’s going to cause you to freeze, I suppose it’s best if you go left.”

  “Okay,” Diana said. “I’ll go left.” She watched while Adelia marched toward Anita’s house, then she turned and embarked on her route. Yusuf Uzmani hadn’t gotten home from work. Diana left him a note on stationery she’d unearthed from a drawer in her middle-school desk. It was bordered with pink flowers and bluebirds, and using it made her feel like a child, but it was the best she’d been able to come up with. “Dear Mr. Uzmani,” she wrote with a felt-tipped pen she’d used when drawing up plans to run for student council. “I stopped by to talk to you about my family’s carriage house. I look forward to meeting you, and welcoming you to the neighborhood, very soon. Yours, Diana Adair.”

  Her next stop was Sheldon Ball’s house, white-pillared and imposing on the corner. Sheldon, with whom she played tennis when she was a teenager, grinned when he opened the door. He looked as though he might hug her, then restrained himself and invited her into the living room. His movements were so jumpy that Diana worried he might upset one of the strange dripping vases that his mother had kept on the sideboards. He was wearing the same tiny tennis shorts that he’d always worn when they played league together, revealing legs that were as muscled as an acrobat’s. He still walked on the balls of his feet. The only difference between Sheldon Ball now and Sheldon Ball then was that his bald spot was wider in diameter.

  “Take a seat!” he told her. He remained standing, shifting from one foot to the other, beaming intensely.

  Diana settled onto the plastic-lined couch. It crinkled as she moved. There was still that flock of pink plastic flamingos in the back of the room. Those birds, the product of Sheldon’s mother’s eccentric sense of humor, had grown eerie under his stewardship.

  “Sorry about the couch,” he said. “Mom used to keep it covered in plastic, and I haven’t changed it since she passed.” His face dropped, and he stopped shifting. Motion coiled in his muscles. After a minute he brightened again, and it was a relief to watch the coiled motion spring outward. “It’s great to see you, Di. I remember playing with you like it was yesterday!”

  For Diana it was a lifetime ago. She only vaguely remembered his style of play and could not for the life of her recollect how she felt when they walked home from the courts. She could remember Sheldon’s mother saying at one point that she’d never seen Sheldon so happy as when Diana called for a match. Sheldon had been in his midthirties at the time. He’d been living at home since returning from college. Every day he walked to the club to play his acrobatic, heavy-handed tennis. He didn’t seem to relate well to other adults; his laugh was the kind of laugh that caused everyone to fall silent around him.

  “Do you remember men’s league?” he asked. “With Bobby Flaherty and Ted Cheshire?”

  Diana smiled automatically. She remembered, but the memories were so distant that they barely registered in the emotional centers of her brain. She was distracted by her diplomatic task, by the pink flamingos and the slick plastic crinkling beneath her.

  “Hey, Sheldon?” she said. “I wanted to ask you about the carriage house.”

  He stiffened.

  “I’m sure you know my dad just had a stroke. He’ll be fine, I think, but he’s struggling. He can’t smell things. We think the carriage house might make a difference. If we could save it.”

  Sheldon wandered over to the flamingos. He stood in their midst, bald spot gleaming, a Floridian Saint Francis.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He put his hands on his hips and leaned to the left. “I just don’t know. I have to talk to Jack Weld. He’s my partner in summer league. I know he’s spent a lot of time on this.”

  “We’re just asking for a little more time. We’ll get it off her property and fix it up so there’s no more rodent problem.”

  “Yes, but I need to talk to Jack.”

  “Couldn’t you just do me this favor?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t heard from you in years. You never once called me to play when you were back on vacation.”

  I was thirteen, Diana wanted to say. You were thirty-five. “I’m sorry, Sheldon,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t have expected that, you know? I trusted you.”
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  He was standing there with his hands on his hips, surrounded by his mother’s undiscarded things, burdened and resentful. “I’m sorry, Sheldon,” Diana said, and she meant it. “The truth is that it’s been hard to come back. I compare myself to the way I used to be.”

  “I would have understood,” he said, looking down at one of the flamingos so that the circle of his bald spot pointed directly toward Diana. “I would have understood that.”

  His racket bag was propped in the corner by the front door. There was a coatrack with his sweaters and his coats; at its top, like a disoriented tropical bird, was a red knit hat with an enormous pom-pom. Diana felt tired. There was nothing else she could say, so she stood to go. “Maybe this time we could play,” she said. “I’m home for a while. I’m not as good as I was, but I’d love to play sometime if you’d like.”

  He crossed his hands over his chest, unwilling to give in so soon.

  “I have to go, Sheldon. I’m sorry.”

  Once Diana was outside, she tried not to turn around until she reached the Cheshire house. Mrs. Cheshire came to the door in a housedress. Her hair was molded into a stiff salon updo, as it always had been in Diana’s youth, the same unnatural chestnut brown.

  “Di, sweetie!” she said. “Come on in.”

  Diana shook her head. “No, I don’t want to bother you. I just have a quick question.” Mrs. Cheshire’s heavily lipsticked smile froze at half-mast. A defensive smile, metallic and well fortified. Diana knew that Mrs. Cheshire took a moral stance against Adelia. She understood that, from the perspective of the neighbors, the friendship with William seemed inappropriate. Still, she couldn’t help but think that these women’s principles were self-serving, kept for the pleasure of keeping principles rather than out of concern for Margaux’s well-being. And Diana felt for Adelia. Once, Adelia caught Diana in the kitchen and told her, “You know I’d never try to take the place of your mother.” It was irritating but also sad. Of course Adelia would never take the place of a mother. That was terribly obvious. But Adelia was there. When she walked in the front door, you could feel the warmth of her arrival from wherever you happened to be in the house.