He hears the two of them clomping upstairs and walks back through the kitchen, which still smells like a bin of potatoes going soft in the pantry, so he peers in there—but no potatoes. He remembers how the eyes grew as long as tentacles. Looking around, he can’t tell whether Phil has been here for a week or a year. The fridge is mostly empty—leftovers, mustard, horseradish—and the light has burned out. Dirty dishes are jumbled in the sink. Half a loaf of bread on the counter. In the keeping room, other than the piano, there’s a rolled-up carpet, a broken chair, tangled telephone wire spilling out of a box, a keyboard, and floppy disks. He picks a fork up off a beanbag chair—dried food in its tines—and drops it in a paper bag of trash. The place, as his mother would say, looks like who did it and ran.
Uncle Raymond always had trouble with tenants because the house was always sort of unlivable and naturally still is. Rooms were left with bare studs after they ripped out the plaster for insulation. Windowpanes rattle in the wind, most of the upstairs still without heat. Plumbing runs to a room that’s the upstairs bath in name only—no tub or sink or toilet. Drains are stuffed with rags. Wires hang from ceilings and walls where there were, or will be, but are not presently, fixtures. Somehow, though, Raymond coaxed enough people into the house over the years that he got the taxes paid. The house apparently still belongs to Phil. And Cole catches himself before feeling too critical: in his own house in Portland, wires have been curling out of a hole in the sheetrock beside the French doors where he’s been intending to put a sconce for years.
Despite its condition, this is a beautiful house. And not merely what realtors would call good bones. Exquisite colonial paneling and mantels, floorboards twelve inches wide, high ceilings, five fireplaces, massive stone hearths and steps, gorgeous doors with their original iron hardware. The perfect house for someone with loads of money to spend.
He sits down on the porch steps and calls Nikki. It rings once, then she answers with “How’d you know?”
“What?”
“Expelled. Our son no longer has a school.”
“Permanently?”
“Forever.”
“Christ.”
“Halfway through honors algebra he quietly got up, left his notes and textbook on the desk, and walked out. The school called the police and they picked him up at the skate park.”
“Where’s he now?”
“In his room.”
“Doing what?”
“I have no idea.”
“Shouldn’t you be talking to him?”
“How would you handle it, Cole? Have a man-talk about the importance of high school? We’ve been working that angle for a year.”
“How are his spirits?”
“Never been better. As soon as I got him home, he put on his pajamas and robe and comes into the kitchen and opens the cupboard. I’m like, ‘So what’s your next move?’ and he says, ‘Making some toast,’ and I say, ‘Your next move in life,’ and he says, ‘Toast might be my favorite food.’ ”
“Jesus.”
“He loves that robe.”
It had been Cole’s robe, which Nikki bought him a few years ago for Christmas. The following winter, when Daniel had a bad flu, he took the robe off the bathroom hook and lay wrapped up in it on the couch in a cold sweat for a week. When he recovered, there was no discussion whatsoever—Daniel kept the robe through the spring when Cole and Nikki began couples counseling, kept it through the summer when Nikki went on yoga retreats in Baja and Vancouver Island, and kept it for good when she moved into her own apartment over a chocolate shop with a second bedroom for him, every other week. Nikki’s own shop is only a few blocks from the apartment, a tiny, trendy boutique where she designs and sews and sells dresses, skirts, and tops.
From the backyard Cole looks down the driveway and across the road to where two nursery workers maneuver the blades of a tree cutter around what looks to be a two- or three-year-old dogwood, then lift the tree and root ball into the air.
“We’ll have to work out a plan,” he says. “I’ll call Daniel later.” Through the upstairs window, in what had been his parents’ bedroom, he sees Phil’s hand sweep to his side, and Alex nodding, as he explains something about the raised hearth or the hiding place under the closet floorboards, big enough for three people to curl up inside.
“Are you there?” Nikki’s saying.
Sunlight spots the old glass, texturing both their faces. Does Phil notice that Alex resembles her? “I’ll call him in a while.”
In the toolshed Cole finds a shovel—certain it’s the same one they had when he was a kid—and out front he scrapes the dead raccoon onto the rusty blade and, propping it out to his side, walks past rows of red maple and black-walnut saplings to the thick weeds at the edge of the swamp, the air even heavier there, seething with humidity and the click of insects. He was right, the digging isn’t difficult, but after the animal’s buried and he’s refilling the hole, a splinter from the brittle old shovel handle stabs into his palm. It’s broken off under the skin and he can’t pull it out with his fingernails, so he gnaws at it, biting into his palm as he looks back over the young trees at the house.
* * *
—
That night, the first cops to arrive smelled like smoke from the burning shed. His mother, still uncovered, lay propped up against the piano. His father was on the floor, moaning, his face turned to the wall. The cops kept the children at the far end of the room, jotted notes, their gazes roaming but always coming back to the dead woman on the floor: attractive, even beautiful, though it was difficult to tell with the welt on the side of her face and the bruises around her mouth and throat; she had brown hair and was overweight, her summer nightgown stretched tight. Cole’s arm was slung over his brother’s back as he silently sobbed; Kelly kneeled behind them, steadily petting Ian’s hair.
The cops had called for paramedics, though it was obviously too late, and for state cops, who’d carry out the investigation; he’d also heard one say into his radio “someone for the kids.” They glanced at Cole, noting his black eye, how it strangely matched his mother’s. His pulse was pounding in his ears, throbbing from his heart down to his hands. The cops looked at his mother again, whispering between themselves, and he considered their gaze an outright violation.
Although the three of them were comforting one another, Cole felt like it was already starting to happen—in the stiffness of Kelly’s hand, the purse of his own lips, Ian’s elbows and arms cradling his guts as if trying to keep them from spilling out onto the floor. They all had known he might kill her, yet they allowed it, and because each was blaming the others, they were—even tangled together in a twisted mess at the end of the room—already ripping apart.
* * *
—
Coming up the driveway he hears the piano again—his father playing the same dark and moody piece. There’s an unnerving absence or emptiness underneath the melody, as if half the notes are missing. He stows the shovel, and walking toward the kitchen door he sees Alex slip the plastic grocery bag off the handlebars. They meet in the kitchen, where she’s wiping condensation from the milk carton. He rinses his hands—there’s no soap—and she reaches toward him with the towel. Spreading his palm open in the light from the window, he examines the splinter, nearly an inch long, in a sheath of blood. Alex puts the milk in the fridge and removes the eggs from the carton one by one, placing them in the twelve empty cups in the door. He’d never seen her until a few hours ago, yet here they are in his boyhood kitchen, putting away groceries, tidying up.
“What a great house,” she says.
“How did it look up there?”
“The paneling over the fireplace in his bedroom’s chestnut.”
“Ha. Now I know why I always liked that paneling.” He hangs the mildewed towel in a hoop of pitted chrome.
“Why’d it take you thirty years
to come back?”
“That,” he says, smiling, “is a longer story than we have time for right now.”
She looks at her watch—“Oh, rats”—and taps it with the empty egg carton. “I’m meeting a client in twenty minutes.”
“I’ll drive you home,” he says, feeling suddenly like she’s his little sister; he felt it earlier too, at the shed: when Antoine got angry, though rightly so and at Kirk, a protective impulse gripped Cole. Until he knows and trusts them, he tends to eye warily the husbands and boyfriends of women he cares about.
“It’s really great to meet you for real.” She wipes crumbs off the counter and, after wringing out the sponge, holds her fingers below her nose, inhaling cautiously, then rubs her hands together under the faucet. He looks down at his shirt, which he’s sweat through digging the grave. She sniffs her hands again, eyes the towel, then wipes them on her pants. His heritage: mildewed and musty, hard to discern what’s half-demolished and what’s half-restored. And all of it gouged with resentment. For the last few weeks he’d imagined arriving fresh and crisp and striking—flying in from a hip West Coast city, a man Alex has developed such an easy friendship with on the phone. He and his company, Greenworks, have been featured in Fine Homebuilding and Architectural Review, and received awards from Sustainable Living for his commitment to low-impact building and design. He wanted to present himself as who he’s become, not who he used to be.
His father pounds on the piano keys. Cole will come back tomorrow and clean the sinks and toilet. He’ll look for a vacuum or at least sweep the place out. He’ll see if there’s a working mower. He pulls some ancient food wrapped in tin foil from the fridge and packs it into the garbage pail, then carries it out to the can in the backyard. He started this short trip with a light heart and sense of adventure. He didn’t need to come at all—he supposes Nikki’s right about that. But he thought it would be inspiring to see the wood standing as it has been for eighty-five years, not as another stack of lumber delivered to his Portland shop, and to see how well his old house and the town itself match his memories. He wanted to prove to himself that he could come back, that Nikki’s wrong about the danger of this trip stirring up the long-settled muck inside him. He’s forty-five years old, for God’s sake; it’s about time. But then he laughs out loud: he wasn’t here for half a day before he was killing a raccoon right out front. That can’t be a good sign! he wants to tell Nikki. He shoves the garbage in the can, comes back inside, swings the kitchen door shut, and locks it.
Alex takes a few dishes from the drainer and stows them in the cupboard overhead. Cole pushes in the chairs, then puts a couple spoons and forks away automatically, knowing which drawer to reach for. They sidestep and slip past each other easily—that intuitive domestic dance—and with a feeling he can only compare to the dry, brittle chafe of the shovel handle on his skin, he suddenly misses his wife.
3
June 10th, his mother’s birthday, her thirty-ninth. Dinner at the Magic Pan in West Hartford. From the table Cole watches his father drape his arm over Ian’s shoulders, the two of them leaning on a brass rail as the chef, wearing a tall paper hat, dips the bottom of the pans in batter and sets them bottom-side-up on the carousel for their slow turn around the ring of blue flames.
They come back to the table grinning. “Twelve pans,” Ian says. “Fifty-two seconds for one revolution. Dad timed it.”
“That’s an actual gargoyle hanging above the kitchen door,” Kelly says, smoothing her hands over the white tablecloth. On the wall behind her there’s a photo of a kissing couple on a wet Paris street, and beside that a painting of water lilies.
“Beef Crepe Bourguignon,” their mother murmurs. “Crepe Chicken Divan. Je ne peux pas me décider.”
“Ian, look at the desserts,” Kelly says. “Chantilly Crepe.”
Everything about the restaurant amazes Cole. He’d like to bring Liz here on a real date, romantic and classy. Their fancy family nights out are most often to the Jack August in the airport Ramada Inn, where the dining room has plush carpet and low lighting; they go on Wednesdays for popcorn shrimp and the salad bar. It’s delicious and all you can eat, and while their parents are having coffee the kids play pinball in the hotel game room by the pool.
They also go to the Chart House and Four Chimneys once in a while with his grandmother Tilly—Easter dinner or her birthday—but those places feel mired in a crusty 1950s. Oil paintings of clipper ships and fox hunters in heavy gold frames, a dish of green peas or steamed cauliflower going cold beside his plate.
The waiter sets down a carafe of white wine and pours a glass each for his parents, then asks about the young lady. “Oh, no,” Kelly says, blushing.
Cole wonders if the waiter is putting on the accent, but then his mother asks, “Vous êtes français?”
“Non, non,” he says. “Je suis de Montréal.”
“J’adore cette ville. Ça fait longtemps que je n’y suis pas allée. Avant les enfants. Avant le mariage.”
Their conversation continues, and Kelly’s cheeks never pale as she gazes at the waiter, who isn’t much older than she is; Cole’s father sips his wine; Ian looks back and forth between the crepe carousel and his mother; and they all watch her intensely. She sits back in her chair, her wineglass loose in her fingers, her French speeding up. She makes a comment about Montreal, the waiter nods, and they both laugh, the rest of the family just looking and listening—not understanding, but watching her lips move into shapes they’ve never seen, hearing the music of the words lift and carry her far away. Not only her mouth moves differently but also her wrists and elbows, her chin juts when she makes certain sounds, her laughter turns gravelly—transforming before their eyes into another woman entirely, the woman she might have been.
4
Kirk isn’t manning the crane the next morning. It’s a kid about Daniel’s age. The day is already heating up, the sun high above the cottonwoods along the river. They got all the rafters to the ground yesterday afternoon, and the kid is hoisting them onto the first of two flatbeds that will carry them cross-country to Cole’s shop.
He catches sight of Antoine inside the shed and he goes in, sipping a coffee he brought from the hotel buffet. Antoine has two other guys up in the timbers, drilling out pegs. “Work across the top,” he calls up to them, “then we’ll bring in the crane.”
“How’s it going?” Cole says.
“Real good. Lots of wood in this one.”
“I owe that to you and Alex.”
“It’s all her. She finds them. I just tear them down.”
“And sometimes you put them back together.” He knows Antoine’s just being humble. This time it’s salvage, but often he’s marking every stick and reassembling the sheds better than ever on another site, building stone foundations, and converting them into studios and homes. Like Alex, he’s a master.
“This one would make a great house,” Antoine says. “I’d build a second story at that end”—he points into the sun—“and a loft over here above the living room.” He describes windows and exposed beams, flooring and a dry-stack fireplace in such loving detail that a scene emerges complete with children’s laughter and a sleeping dog on the Persian carpet.
“I can practically smell the bacon,” Cole says, then taps his chest with a fist. Heartburn. “Or maybe that’s thanks to the hotel breakfast buffet.”
“Knock that purlin off first!” Antoine shouts up to his guys.
“Too bad you can’t put this one back together.”
“No matter. The spirit of the chestnut will keep on living in your family room. That wood’s as alive as you and me.”
Cole’s surprised by Antoine’s moonbeamy sentiments, even though he pretty much agrees. “Well, thank you,” he says finally, and reaches out his hand.
Antoine hollers instructions to his guys again. The confidence of youth, Cole thinks. And he was probab
ly wrong to be suspicious of him. He seems gentle and good-hearted, a wonderful husband to Alex. Kirk could stir up anger in anyone.
Back outside, the kid has shut off the diesel and is cinching down straps over the timbers on the flatbed. “Where’s Kirk?” Cole asks.
The kid pumps the arm on a ratchet strap. “Running late.”
“So you work for him?” Cole notices he’s wearing Kirk’s gloves, smooth and shiny at the palms.
“I help him out.”
“Good summer job?”
“I just help out. Summer I’m working tobacco.”
“Kids are still doing that?”
“Not really.”
“I worked tobacco back in the day.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Cole stares at the boy.
“My father told me.”
He’s got deep brown eyes, pouty girlish lips, a sharp chin. Cole’s legs go watery: he looks like Liz.
“Little Kirk Schaler,” he says, extending a gloved hand.
* * *
—
Rolling past foreclosed houses in their suspended half-built state, he flips the vents so the AC blows straight on him. He presses his palm into the steering wheel—the swollen red spot sore from the splinter—and then presses even harder so the pain flows to his molars and the base of his spine. It turns out that Little Kirk is exactly Daniel’s age. He seems decent enough. Is it remotely possible that Kirk could raise a good kid?
He checks his phone, but there’s no message from Nikki. She’s putting on coffee now, or maybe stepping out of the shower. Almost from the moment her eyes open in the morning she sings—Rickie Lee Jones, Nina Simone, Bonnie Raitt. Her memory for lyrics is astounding. For twenty years Cole woke most mornings to Nikki brushing her hair at her bureau and quietly singing marmalade rhymes—“flying too high with some guy in the sky”—never a trace of performance or self-consciousness. She drifts into melodies as easily as Cole drifts into daydreams, in his case often dark recollections. Sometimes, for no reason he can identify, his blood starts racing, like the pain from his palm now, shooting up his arm and pooling in the back of his mouth. Sometimes it’s fear that Daniel might be in trouble. Or disgust at himself for losing Nikki, or a nagging suspicion of looming secrets.
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