The Carriage House: A Novel

by Louisa Hall

  Afterward, they walked home together along the cracked sidewalk, past Pam’s Pancake House and the playground and the rows of houses that had been painted ridiculous sherbety colors. When they got home, Isabelle would make him a sandwich and they would eat together on the screened-in porch. He would not allow himself to imagine anything else, anything greater, than this right now. If it could be like this back on Little Lane, that might be different. If they could keep this closeness there, regardless of Jack Weld, despite the burned-down carriage house. But still. William reminded himself not to wish for too much, lest some of his wishes come true.

  “Do you want chicken salad or tuna fish?” Izzy asked him from the kitchen.

  “Surprise me,” he told her, which made her smile. He watched her opening a can of tuna, mixing it with mayonnaise and red pepper flakes so that he would feel it in his nose even if he couldn’t smell it. When the bread popped out of the toaster, she laid it on one of the sailboat plates and sliced a tomato from Margaux’s garden, deep red and shot through with purple streaks. She salted the tomato slices, glancing up at him to catch him watching her, smiling in response.

  “Izzy?” he asked while her hands moved deftly over the toast. “Do you want to go back to Little Lane? Or would you rather stay here?”

  Her hands paused on the counter, but she didn’t answer immediately.

  “Because, you know,” he said, excitement building in him, “if we went back there, we’d be closer to Lizzie and the kids. Mom could get another helper, and you could play tennis with better people at the country club. It would be great for your game.”

  She didn’t look at him, but she lifted her left hand, holding the butter knife, up to her collarbone. She rubbed her scar with her thumb. Looking down at the half-done sandwich, she shook her head. No. Watching her, William felt as thirsty as he had ever felt in his life. His hands, by his sides, twitched to hold a glass of something to drink.

  “We don’t have to. We could just stay.”

  She was nodding already, first at the sandwich, then at him. He wanted her to say something. “Say something,” he was tempted to demand. “Say something stable and strong, like a young woman who is prepared for the world.” But he held himself back, because this time with her was a gift he had not expected. Because he’d lost her once, years before he’d been prepared to let her go.

  “Sure,” he said. “Sure, Izzy, that’s fine. Mom and I are happy here. You can drive to the hospital. And you can study from here, and we’ll find you more people to play with.” He took a glass tumbler from the cabinet and poured himself water from the tap. Over its brim, he watched her moving between the refrigerator and the plate. She finished their sandwiches, and they sat together on the porch, facing the garden that Margaux had planted.

  Margaux’s garden, rebuilt. Since they fired Louise, she hadn’t once wandered away. She stayed close. It couldn’t last, of course, but William had the feeling that here, in this rented house, the three of them could stay close. For a while William and Isabelle were quiet together, eating their sandwiches, and then she stopped with a potato chip in one hand and looked at him. “Do you mind, Daddy? If we stay?”

  “Of course not, Izzy-belle.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Don’t be. We’re all happier here.” And they were. He missed things only in theory. The walk to the club, the yard, the kitchen island, the Osage orange trees that he passed on his way to the train. These things he missed in theory, but in actuality, they seemed like aspects of a life he’d seen in a film. The kind of film that makes you nostalgic for places you’ve never been. Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night and was engulfed by the strangeness of his new bedroom at the shore. The sound of gulls and the rustling ocean drifted in through his window, unsettling him in its foreignness. Those mornings he woke so thirsty that he stumbled to the bathroom to drink water from the tap only to find he had mistaken something else for thirst. A strangeness that sat in his mind like a boulder, too massive to be divided and composed, understandable only as a tightening in his throat that most closely resembled thirst. Then he sat on the cool porcelain edge of the tub to compose himself, the pre-dawn gloom lit by an overhead light, listening to the strange sounds of gulls.

  These were the moments when he wanted to go home. After these nights it was a joy to spend time with Margaux in the garden, even if she barely spoke to him, because it was her hands that had planted the yellowwoods, when they were still wrapped in their burlap bags, in the yard on Little Lane. When William could not recall the smell of the Osage orange trees on Clubhouse Road, he felt so distant from himself that Margaux seemed close, and he sometimes reached out and touched the brim of her large straw hat and felt reassured that she was more present than most of the world.

  In the end there was no need to go back to Little Lane. Its old urgencies and demands were strange to him. How could he have cared so much about a carriage house? How could he have imagined that his family’s history was more real than pictures in a textbook? It had been too much for his family to bear. Things were better here at the beach. The days passed more happily. Here, there was tennis with Isabelle in the mornings. There was the perfection of her looping backswing. There were Elizabeth’s performances, and time with Margaux in the garden. All of this was complicated, of course, by Adelia’s unexpected return. She prowled the rental house, wishing for more, casting doubt on their new routines in a way that made William want to banish her to Breacon. So that he could occupy his beach life in peace. So that she would not waste more time wishing for him to go back. Soon she would pack up the Acura, and he would miss her and be glad she was gone. Then there would be less question of leaving, less hopeless desire for long-lost pinnacles. There would be Margaux’s tough little roses and the smell of salt in the air, the surprise sometimes of the ocean through a gap between two houses. It was not too terribly little to live these days pleasantly, knowing that his girls would be fine, playing tennis in the mornings and eating lunch on the porch, remembering a world he saw once in a nearly forgotten film.

  Chapter 27

  On Monday morning, Diana went back to Little Lane to oversee the painting. Picking colors was difficult, since the paint on the original carriage house had been discolored by the time she was old enough to remember it, and the only pictures of the house that she could find in the attic were washed with the lemony tint that creeps over aging photographs. She knew that the sides were originally white, but within the spectrum of sixty whites to which the representative at Benjamin Moore introduced her, she was adrift. In the end, she asked Adelia to come down and help.

  “It was almost glossy,” Adelia reported, splaying out color sticks. “Like a house in a magazine picture.”

  Diana moved toward the glossier shades. She pointed at Glacier White, Ice Mist, Paper White, and Snow.

  “Yes,” Adelia said, tapping the wall with her fingernail. “It was Snow. I think it was Snow.”

  They went home with a carload of Snow, and in the afternoon the painters arrived. One hour into the job, however, Diana could see that the color wasn’t right. It blazed in its whiteness, as though someone had transplanted a glacier to the mellowing light of Margaux’s October garden. It was too bright. Even Adelia understood; she’d been biting her lip all morning, watching the glint of it spread across the wooden lines of the house.

  “It looks too new,” Diana said, standing by Adelia’s shoulder.

  “Yes,” Adelia agreed. “It’s not right. It’s not right at all.”

  Back at Benjamin Moore, they faced the expanse of the color wall again. They considered Paper White. They considered Wedding Veil and Chantilly Lace, Gardenia and Baby’s Breath, then turned to Rice Paper and Parchment. Adelia could remember the color’s freshness, the crisp cool of it against the sweep of summer trees. She remembered an American flag snapping from the pole, patriotic and new. Diana remembered the way the buil
ding had been sinking into the ground on one side. She remembered the bare flagpole, reaching its iron arm out of the loft window, dripping with icicles in the winter. She remembered cocoons that nestled in the eaves, far whiter in their spun solitude than the peeling paint outside. In the end, they settled on Rice Paper and drove back to Little Lane in silence, consulting memories of a carriage house that existed as a different entity in each of their minds.

  By the time they got back to Little Lane, Diana was eager to test their color choice, so she couldn’t help feeling irritated when Elaine Weld called out to them in the driveway. She was hurrying over to catch them, clutching an armload of catalogs and an apple. Diana and Adelia waited for her to approach.

  “The house looks lovely,” she said. “You’ve done such a good job.”

  Diana smiled politely. Adelia was staring past Elaine Weld’s left ear. A frosty silence opened between them, and Elaine angled herself more sharply toward Diana.

  “We’ve missed your dad this summer. Has he had a good time at the beach?”

  Adelia’s face tensed.

  “It’s been fine,” Diana said. “Izzy’s enjoying herself.”

  “And how is sweet Isabelle?” Elaine asked. “We’ve been so worried about her. Abby called from Amherst the other day to ask if we’d heard about her health.”

  “She’s better,” Diana said. “She’s out of her cast, and there haven’t been complications since the surgery. She’s doing well.”

  “Oh, thank God. We were all so concerned. My husband acted as if it were his own daughter in the hospital.”

  “Your husband is an asshole,” said Adelia.

  Elaine stared for a moment, taken aback. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “I said your husband is an asshole.”

  “I don’t appreciate that,” Elaine said, coloring.

  “No, I’m sure you don’t,” Adelia said. She crossed her arms over her chest and finally looked Elaine in the eye. “Listen, Elaine, I’d love to chat until the sun goes down, but we’re very busy right now.”

  “You threw rocks at those builders, didn’t you,” Elaine said. Her hands were clenched into fists. “You were the one who threw those rocks. My husband said so, but I told him he should be more generous. I told him that you were a good person at heart.” Adelia had turned her back on Elaine’s outrage and was busying herself unloading cans of Rice Paper paint, but Elaine hadn’t finished with her. “I told him that we should have pity on all of you,” Elaine continued, her voice rising to a new pitch. “I told him that even though William was on an ego trip, we should feel sorry for him because his wife was sick. And I said that women our age grew up in a frustrating time and that your meanness was disguised unhappiness. And even though Isabelle was always a bad seed, I reminded myself that she was only Abby’s age, and I pitied her because she had you instead of a mother.”

  Adelia was already moving up the walk, carrying two plastic bags of Rice Paper, but at this point she turned around and her eyes were electric. “And your husband, did he pity her? Just how much did he pity her?”

  Diana could feel Elaine trembling under the strength of Adelia’s gaze.

  “Grow up, Elaine,” Adelia said. “You’ve lived your entire life as a child.” She took her burden of paint and headed into the house.

  Elaine’s face was drained of its color. Diana was tempted to apologize for Adelia, but she did not. “We’ve got to get back to work,” she said instead. There was some comfort in standing up for Adelia. Though Elaine refused to look at her, Diana lingered a moment longer, unapologetic, then followed Adelia into the house.

  That night Diana and Adelia set up the card table inside the carriage house. They made plates of ravioli and carried them out to eat in the newly hewn, cedary space. Through the open window frames, they could hear the last bullfrogs croaking. Since the incident in the driveway, Adelia’s eyes had softened as she watched the new shade of paint spread across the front of the house. Now she held a glass of white wine in one hand and closed her eyes, inhaling the cedar. “It’s perfect, Diana,” she said.

  Diana looked out the side windows to the Schmidts’ house. Two bedroom lights were on, the shades half drawn. It was like an island just off the shore on which occasional glittering lights signaled the presence of living inhabitants. “I love it in here,” she said.

  “You remembered it so well.”

  “As soon as I started, it came back to me. Complete. I couldn’t remember it at all, and then as soon as I put my pencil to paper, the whole thing was there.”

  They ate their ravioli in silence until Adelia looked out the window. Diana followed her eyes to the half-drawn windows down the street, still glowing against the darkness. “Do you miss him?” Adelia asked. “The way he was before?” Diana nodded. Parts of Arthur that she’d forgotten over the years had also come back to her while she drew the carriage house. The downward slope of his voice, the way his eyelids were heavy over his eyes. For years, the fact that she had once been loved by him had been nothing more than a hollow idea, and only when she started to draw could she remember how it felt. The memory altered her, even though she knew that time was over. She had told his grandmother that she was finishing their carriage house, and he hadn’t come back. He had stayed in Breacon long enough to know that Isabelle was fine, and then he’d left. He had a life of his own. Diana would have liked to explain to Adelia that she was strong enough to survive that. She didn’t need Arthur as she once had, now that she could remember how to draw as she used to.

  “I miss him, too,” Adelia said, breaking the silence. Surprised, Diana turned back to Adelia. “You should have seen him playing tennis,” she said. “Or at a dinner party, wearing a green sweater, telling a story that made everyone laugh.” Diana began to understand. Adelia wasn’t looking at the Schmidts’ house anymore; instead, she had angled herself back to the Adair house, three-storied and haughty against the darkening sky. She was talking about William, not Arthur, as he was before the stroke. “I remember when he would tell me about your tournaments. I’ve never seen a father so proud. You could hear it even in the way he said your name. He could do that. I still remember the way he used to call my name when he walked into my house, so that the whole empty place was suddenly full.”

  “But that’s him,” Diana said. “He’s still that person.”

  “He is, isn’t he?” Adelia asked, then amended her tone to sound more certain. “Of course he is.”

  “He’s the same as he always was,” Diana said, although he wasn’t, none of them was, and here they were in the carriage house wishing they could just go home, except that they were already there.

  Chapter 28

  Because it was a Saturday and she had no practice with the performance art group, and because there was a chill in the air that made the girls huddle closer to her, flushed with an excitement they couldn’t explain, Elizabeth decided to make an Autumnal Feast. She felt alive, as she always did when she brought the girls to Rock Harbor for the weekend. Somehow, away from Breacon, her mood lifted and she remembered all the possibility in her life. She was sitting on the front stoop of the shore house, scraping the seeds out of a pumpkin so she could roast it for soup, when Arthur drove up. As she scooped seeds and shook them into a metal bowl, each wet spoonful landed with a whap. Her toes, warm in gray wool tights, flexed and unflexed around the edge of the stoop. She was wearing a poplin dress under a gray cardigan, and she was thinking to herself that she must have cut a picture of real domestic bliss, sitting there, scooping her pumpkin. Like the kind of woman who doesn’t experience such a thing as divorce. Just an attractive woman in a poplin dress, scooping seeds out of a gourd. She was happy. As Arthur parked and got out of his car, she saw herself through his eyes and thought that only now had she become herself. Later this evening she would drive to the junkyard with Jeanine from the Performance Art Group, and they would sift through
discarded domestic appliances. She and Jeanine would talk about what it meant to be a woman, so that when she came home to kiss her children on their damp fragrant foreheads, she would feel as though she were returning to a secret corner of her life, kept safe by her trips to the junkyard with Jeanine. Sheltered, even if she had no husband to kiss her own forehead after she had gone to sleep. It occurred to Elizabeth, as she gripped the pumpkin between her knees to scrape out the last remaining seeds, that now that she had gotten to this point, it was likely that there would be a man in her life, and probably soon. How could someone stroll by and see her in her poplin dress, the late-October sunlight soft across her face, and not want to make her his own?

  So Elizabeth was feeling composed and sure of herself when Arthur walked up the step, his slouch slight now, his eyes still a little hooded. Despite her confidence, as Arthur approached, she found herself becoming slightly disoriented by his presence, which dredged up memories of those awful final days on Little Lane. She thought of that soured dinner party with Adelia’s briny chicken, and she vaguely remembered Adelia saying, “I think Arthur’s charmed by Isabelle.” She remembered that Isabelle had been drinking with him before she stupidly went out in the Jeep, and so as he approached, she straightened her shoulders and gave him a look that said, We have moved on beyond Little Lane, and we are happy here without you.

  “Hi, Elizabeth,” he said.

  She offered him her most regal smile. He stood in front of her, confident in the way of successful men. She realized that he was looking past her into the house, probably for a glimpse of Isabelle, and Elizabeth felt invisible. “She’s not here,” Elizabeth told him, recovering herself.

  “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  “I’m not sure. She’s playing tennis with our father.”