The Carriage House: A Novel

by Louisa Hall

  But it was she who had invited him first. That was the thing that now caused her shame, standing beside her father in her childish sundress. When she quit, Izzy thought she’d escaped just in time. Everything remained as it was, only she had a little more knowledge. It gave her an edge on the rest of the neighborhood. On neighbors like Abby, suburban and sheltered, sealed off from the actual world. Only now, with Abby standing in front of her, emerging out of childhood at the right time, glowing with the hope of it all, Isabelle wanted to go upstairs and cry. So Abby was the last one standing after all. Isabelle was a wasted attempt, dressed in a girlish costume, and her father was getting old. It was Jack and Abby who had risen above them in the end.

  “The garden looks lovely, William,” Mrs. Weld said, holding her salad bowl to one side.

  “Just beautiful,” Jack agreed. He pointed toward the larger linden. “That’s quite a tree! I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten blight. Lindens don’t seem to survive around here.”

  Isabelle thought she might gag on his cheer, but she noticed that Arthur was walking up from his grandmother’s house. She felt a rush of gratitude for his solitary form, moving up the slope of the street. Leaving the Welds behind, she ran out to meet him, her feet bare on the warm grass.

  He watched her coming toward him, surprised at her hurry. “Hi, Izzy,” he said. He laughed gently. She almost could have taken his hand.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. All around him the pollen was falling. “Do you smell the honeysuckle?” she asked. “Mom planted it.”

  “I know,” he said. “I remember. Every time I smell it, I think of her. How is she?”

  “Sort of the same. I don’t really notice a difference.”

  Arthur didn’t rush to console her, but there was comfort in his presence. Isabelle walked close enough to feel the barest outline of his arm against her arm. When they reached the stoop, she stopped him. “Do you want to go upstairs and see her?”

  He looked startled by the question. “Who?”

  “Mom.”

  “Oh, of course,” he said. “I’d love to.”

  Quietly, so that no one could catch them, they slipped up the stairs. Isabelle knocked lightly on her mother’s closed door. “Mom?” she called.

  The door opened a crack. “She’s sleeping,” Louise whispered.

  “I brought an old friend of Diana’s to see her. We thought she might remember him.”

  “Should I wake her?” Louise seemed disinclined to move from her post. She seemed disinclined, in fact, to move anywhere at all.

  “No,” Arthur said from behind Isabelle. “No, it’s fine. We’ll come back later.”

  Isabelle stared at Louise. Louise stared back. Why are you in there, then? Isabelle wanted to say. Shouldn’t you leave her alone if she’s sleeping? “Is she coming down to the party?” Isabelle asked, as though there were any question of Margaux coming down to entertain.

  “She’s not up to it today.”

  “When will she eat?” The question was pointless: Margaux had always eaten privately.

  “I’ll bring her a plate,” Louise said. She considered Isabelle through the crack in the door. “I can wake her up right now if you’d like.”

  “Really, it’s fine,” Arthur said. Louise remained motionless.

  Izzy shrugged. “Another time, then,” she said.

  At the top of the second flight of stairs, she stopped. “Stay here with me for a minute?” she asked Arthur.

  He sat. Izzy joined him, sitting close. So close he could have put his arm around her and drawn her toward him. They remained in silence for a while. Finally, he spoke. “Should we go down?”

  “Just a minute more. I’ll have to smile so much once we’re there.”

  He waited, leaning back on his elbows. He seemed like the kind of person who could sit and wait with you forever.

  “Do you think it’ll work?” Izzy asked him. “Moving the carriage house?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “It’s pretty damaged.”

  “Diana says she could draw up a plan. In case it falls apart in the move.”

  “She said that?” He looked at her sharply.

  “Yeah,” Izzy said, noticing the change that crossed his face when she brought up Diana. She felt a pang of jealousy that her sister could command the interest of someone like Arthur after all these years, because of something that had happened between them when they were Isabelle’s age. “I’m not sure why,” she continued, feeling the way he watched her with heightened interest while she talked about Diana, “but she suddenly cares about the carriage house. You should see her whenever the conversation comes up. She hasn’t cared so much about anything in years.” Izzy edged toward a question she’d never asked. “What happened with you and Diana? I was only nine. I asked my father once, and he said you two were just close friends. But it was more than that, wasn’t it?”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “I can’t imagine her dating anyone now,” Izzy said. Arthur didn’t respond. She wanted to keep him there, solidly alone with her. He was twisting a carpet fiber between his forefinger and his thumb. “She’s lost something,” Izzy said. “I blame Adelia. There’s something about Adelia that makes you want to give up. When I used to play tennis, she coached me between games. She’d get down in front of me with those beady eyes and say, ‘You’ve got to be aggressive.’” Isabelle noticed that Arthur was smiling slightly. It was a gratifying thing; he seemed like a person who wasn’t overly polite about smiling. “‘You’ve got to be aggressive,’” she said again, bulging out her eyes, hoping she’d make him laugh. “That was her only coaching advice. She wanted it so badly, you were afraid for her. It made me crazy for a while. Then I got it. You just have to stop. You can’t keep trying for people like Adelia or they’ll tear you apart.”

  “You’re probably right,” he said, but he was a little distant, working at loose threads in the carpet.

  She kept talking, hoping to reel him in. “Di never learned that. She’s loyal to a fault. She would have done anything to make them proud. She probably would have kept playing tennis forever if she hadn’t gotten hurt. She might still be playing satellites, struggling in the rankings, beating herself up.”

  He turned toward her finally. “And you think she should have stopped?” he asked. “Before she had to? When she had the choice to do it for herself?”

  His face was long and pale. He had collected himself behind that face, and now he sat beside her, complete in his way. She thought about turning on her charm switch, but something about sitting alone with him, while the light from outside shifted down to darkness, made that impossible to do. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

  “Me, too, Izzy-belle,” he said. “After all these years, it’s good to see you again.”

  Chapter 12

  Despite Adelia’s lack of talent for entertaining, despite her unfounded confidence about the pounded-chicken dish, Elizabeth had managed to make the patio look elegant. It was as beautiful as it used to be when Margaux spent all day preparing for a party, coming home with armloads of flowers and polishing silver for hours. She used to hum to herself while she set the table, and then she’d fall into anxious silence as soon as the guests arrived. As a child, it was painful for Elizabeth to watch her sitting off to the side, hoping she’d be forgotten. Adelia had none of Margaux’s artistry, but at least she could be counted on to try, and what Adelia lacked in taste, Elizabeth could furnish. She had cut a bunch of Margaux’s peonies and placed them at the center of the table, heavy-headed and white, like a bunch of brides. She’d set votive candles everywhere, even on the outstretched palms of Margaux’s gnomes, peeking out of shady coverts. In the candles’ flickering light you could see moss on the rocks around the pond. The bullfrogs were croaking, and out on the lawn, fireflies lit and then extinguished their lamps.

 
; Elizabeth felt young again, sitting out there on the patio. Arthur had brought a bottle of good white wine, and when she poured glasses, the candlelight filtered through the pale liquid in faint webs. She was sitting beside Arthur, and he was actually interested in her acting career. Not since coming back from L.A. had Elizabeth talked to an engaging young person like Arthur, who cared about things like her audition with Woody Allen, when he told her that her face was too striking to play the part of a prostitute. Arthur laughed when she told it, that old familiar story. She was just out of college. Diana was winning matches, Izzy was cute, and Margaux was functioning. And Woody Allen gave Elizabeth his number and said he would write a part for her that was less compromised. He actually said, “The part of a woman who has never heard of a thing called compromise, for a face like your face.” She hadn’t told that story in years. It was refreshing to remember, to lean forward the way Woody Allen did when he talked, dipping into her Woody Allen voice.

  Telling the story again, she felt her face coming alive as it once had. When she was younger—and it was only a few years ago, really—she was so sure of herself. When she walked down the street in L.A., people turned to look at her. Of course Woody Allen came up to her after a jazz show and invited her to audition. Of course famous directors who saw her at the restaurant returned and asked to be seated in her section. She never questioned herself. But people in the suburbs didn’t understand her style. They didn’t understand the subtleties of her talent. She nearly died when she moved back with the girls, especially after finding out that Mark was seeing his ex. After everything they went through! They built a family together. Elizabeth despaired in the little rental house William found for her, driving the girls to school in the morning and coming home to take long naps on the floral sofa, knowing that Mark was probably having breakfast with a producer and afterward coming home to their house, usurped by that woman. Mark was probably screwing her on the bed that was once their marriage bed, for which Elizabeth had found an adorable farmhouse quilt without ever suspecting that it would be put to that particular use. To think of them on that quilt! Even worse, maybe they were planning a dinner party for the friends who once were Mark and Elizabeth’s but now belonged solely to Mark and his ex, as though Elizabeth had never existed, and perhaps they were going to eat in the dining room with the farmhouse table that she’d found in Sonoma on a wine-tasting trip. It felt like death, lying facedown on the rented floral sofa, remembering the wood grain of the table that used to be hers. Facing an eternity of floral upholstery, knowing that her life once kept to a bolder print.

  But she was stirring again on the patio, surrounded by her flowers, gesturing to Arthur with a glass of wine in her hand. It didn’t matter that it was Adelia opposite Daddy. At least Adelia was functional. At least she cared about bringing the family together around a dinner table. The house felt more vibrant than it ever did when Margaux presided at its center. With all the candles lit, the patio reminded Elizabeth of the first house she rented in L.A. with three of her best friends from college. They organized dinner parties in the backyard under strings of Christmas lights that they slung from the lowest branches of the jacaranda trees. While they laughed and drank cheap wine, she could feel herself lifting out of her chair to float over the guests. It was as though only she could hear a chiming above them all and was swimming up through the air to put her ear to its source.

  She got that talent from Daddy. He had always presided over a party. Now he was different, but there was still something exciting about his posture at the head of the table. To help him remember how he had risen for dinner parties once, Elizabeth became especially animated. She demonstrated the poise that he and she had always shared. This was why she was the daughter of whom he was proud, because she still glimmered with promise. The others could feel it around her. Dumb, simpering Elaine Weld was nothing compared to Elizabeth. Jack was impressed with her, and she gave him a large proportion of her attention in the hopes that he would change his mind about the carriage house. When she looked at her own hands around her wineglass—her fingernails painted red to match her new jacket—they were vivid against the darkness of the night. She had not lost the power to light herself so that people would see. Abby asked about the girls, so Elizabeth called them down to sing a song, and they were adorable in their nightgowns, sleep-stricken and luminous. Lucy’s pink gown, with its vertical pleats, was out of a dream. It was the one that Mark had brought her back from New York when he shot the Verizon commercial that would pay her college tuition; they’d saved together for the lives of their children. At the back of Lucy’s head, her hair had tangled into a nest where she’d gone to sleep on her ponytail, but she was blissfully unaware of that; it might have been a chignon for all the grace with which she carried it. A perfect child, hovering at a perfect age. She sang Cosette’s song from Les Misérables while Caroline accompanied her on violin, and Lucy was brilliant singing that song, her little face melting as though she knew what it was to be orphaned in Paris. Even Daddy smiled while she performed, and after the final notes—she sang them kneeling on the flagstone, gesturing up toward the stars—Jack sprang to his feet and shouted, “Bravo,” and Adelia clapped so hard it must have hurt her palms. Even though Isabelle was watching Jack with the thinly veiled hostility that made people nervous when she entered a room, she looked lovely in that white dress, her dark braid melting into the garden behind her.

  Elizabeth didn’t feel jealous of Isabelle’s looks. She and her sister were equally attractive. They came from a striking family. That was what Elizabeth used to feel sure of. She had taken that confidence with her when she moved to L.A. after college, when she had the carriage of a beautiful person. The carriage of someone who would certainly succeed. She’d lost it at some point, but she could feel the old sureness again. Jack Weld understood its importance. She could see him glancing over at Isabelle when he reached for the bottle of wine. They were so beautiful, the Adair girls, that you wanted to watch them, to touch them as they passed by your life. Arthur was here because of that, too. He and Isabelle had been laughing together all night, leaning in to each other, because the world gravitated toward a person who had made herself bright.

  Only there was Diana, sitting so quietly it hurt to look at her. She seemed uncomfortable in her dress, and all night she had been lifting her hand to her temple, as if checking to be sure it was there. She had said nothing other than “I’m fine, a little tired, but fine.” She radiated the desire to be somewhere else, off on her own, where she would not have to talk or laugh or engage. It made Elizabeth furious; one had obligations to one’s family! Everyone at the table politely avoided looking at Diana. Only Arthur occasionally watched her, turning his eyes away from Isabelle, lingering on Diana’s face when she was looking in another direction. Elizabeth wanted to shake her. Straighten your shoulders! she wanted to tell her. Give him a smile, at least! Because Arthur was obviously trying to see if anything remained of the Diana he once knew, and if Diana didn’t attempt to carry herself with some remnant of poise, he would conclude that she had irrevocably altered. But Diana could be beautiful. She, too, was related to Isabelle with her violet eyes. She only had to struggle a little more fiercely with whatever was bothering her, and she could be herself again. They had all struggled, but in the end they were an impressive family. They would be all right. They could still light up the evening if they wanted to.

  When the audience had ceased to applaud, Elizabeth kissed the girls on their warm, fragrant heads and sent them up to bed. She explained to Jack that Lucy had taken acting classes when they were in L.A., and that he should hear her sing Grizabella’s song from Cats, and Elaine asked whether Elizabeth herself was auditioning again. Attuned to their interest, Elizabeth lifted up, expanding vastly under the sky, capturing all of their eyes, and this was closer to the life that she was meant to live than on any evening she had spent since coming back to Breacon after the divorce.

  She felt so confident that w
hen she went in to get the dessert, she shut herself in the laundry room and called Mark. She leaned against the cold rim of the dryer while the phone rang, sipping her wine, thrilling with her newfound strength, and even though he didn’t pick up the phone, she left a message saying, “M, it’s me, I just wanted to say the girls have been so sweet tonight, and I was thinking of you, and I want to just forget about our fight last week.” She hung up the phone and was alone again with her wineglass and her red-painted fingernails, and then she animated herself to pick up the dessert plates and walk out to the patio with the fruit tart as though playing the role of a charming hostess, as though she were Elizabeth Taylor or Grace Kelly, and her tart was beautiful, each strawberry and nectarine lacquered with sugar glaze. It was a tart to be proud of, even in the company of someone used to the Eldridge, even after that terrible chicken. She smiled while she served the tart, holding herself tall, aware of the guests’ attention and plating perfectly proportioned slices.

  When she went in to pick up the dessert forks—she had always loved their silver filigree, their complicated tines—Adelia came with her, and she, too, was triumphant. She said, “Isabelle’s lovely tonight, isn’t she,” and “You look just gorgeous in that color red,” and Elizabeth loved Adelia, even if she was a challenging person to love, no matter what the neighbors might think about her moving in while Margaux was upstairs. She wasn’t sleeping with William, after all. She was just closer so that she could try harder, and the efforts she made swelled Elizabeth’s heart. Adelia murmured, “Do you think Arthur might be interested in Isabelle?” and “I think I might ask Izzy to talk to Jack Weld, to see if there’s anything more he can do.” Elizabeth grasped that Adelia was never going to give up on the carriage house, and this reassured her. It made her hopeful about the state of the universe, about the arc of their family plot, and while she listened, Elizabeth allowed her head to incline to one side, aware that the light was striking the graceful line of her jaw. “We’ll get it back, Adelia,” she told her, stoic yet tender. Adelia nodded. “I’ll just have Isabelle talk to him; she used to be so persuasive.” Elizabeth remembered when they had been the kind of family whom people ask to take pictures of at the beach. When they were older, the local paper ran articles about them. Golden Girls, one headline read when both she and Diana won the regional championships in their age groups. There was a picture of her and Diana sitting on the living room sofa, with Isabelle standing beside them in braids. The Adair girls look like Uma Thurman’s younger sisters, but don’t let that fool you out on the court. They were famous in Breacon. They played on varsity when Diana was in middle school. Boys had to ask Elizabeth to go to prom at least a month in advance or they knew she’d be taken. One fall she starred in the high school play, and her tennis team won states the following morning. Back then she’d been so sure of herself that getting a divorce would have seemed like an utterly impossible thing. Having lived through impossibility, she held the dessert forks close, feeling their cool points against her chest.