Home Improvement: Undead Edition

by Harris, Charlaine

  She craved fresh air. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and sunglasses to protect her still-sensitive eyes, Eve walked out the front door. A thirtysomething woman with curly red hair was in front of Eve’s walkway, pushing a stroller back and forth while she kept her eyes on a redheaded boy furiously pedaling a tricycle up the street.

  The woman smiled at Eve. “You’re the new neighbor. I’m Sandy Komin.”

  “Eve Stollman.”

  “Nice to meet you, Eve. I planned to introduce myself before, but with three kids under eight, my intentions rarely pan out. If I can take a shower, I consider it a good day.” Sandy smiled again.

  Eve smiled back. “How old is your baby?”

  “Lily is eight months.” Sandy beamed at the infant asleep in the stroller. She pointed to the toddler on the bike. “Michael’s two and a half. Our oldest, Geneva, is seven. She’s in school, thank God. Do you have kids?”

  Eve shook her head. “We want to start a family. That’s one of the reasons we bought the house.”

  “Well, if you want to practice, you can borrow mine whenever you want.” Sandy laughed. “Seriously, let me know if I can help with anything. Dry cleaners, markets, carpet cleaners, plumbers, gardener—I have tons of numbers.”

  Eve thought, What about ghost busters? “Thanks, I’ll take you up on that. I hope the noise from the remodeling isn’t bothering you too much.”

  “Not at all. We’re up early. And I’d rather hear hammering and drilling than Barney. Barney the purple dinosaur?” she said when Eve looked puzzled.

  “I’ve never watched it.”

  “Lucky you.” Sandy adjusted Lily’s blanket. “The couple who owned the house before you, Nancy and Brian Goodrich? They did some minor remodeling. They were planning to put in a new kitchen, but then . . .” Sandy’s voice trailed off, and her expression had turned somber. “You know what happened, right?”

  Eve nodded. “The broker told us.”

  “God, what a tragedy.” Sandy sighed. “We were all shocked. Nancy and Brian seemed happy, and I never heard them arguing.” Her eyes narrowed. “Michael, turn around and come back!” she called. “You’re too far!”

  Eve waited until the boy obeyed. “What happened, exactly?”

  “The police think Nancy woke up when she heard someone entering the bedroom and thought Brian was an intruder. She must have been disoriented, maybe because she was on antianxiety medication.” The baby whimpered. Sandy resumed the back-and-forth motion of the stroller. “Nancy shot him. When she realized she’d killed Brian, she killed herself.” Tears welled in Sandy’s eyes. She wiped them with her hand. “It’s heartbreaking. It’s . . .” She shook her head.

  “Why was Nancy on medication?”

  “I heard she had a nervous breakdown. She seemed stressed the month or so before she died. I didn’t see her in the final weeks.” For a moment Sandy was quiet, lost in thought. Then she looked at Eve and her face brightened. “Hey, I hope you don’t let the house’s history bother you. What happened to Nancy and Brian has nothing to do with you and your husband. What’s his name?”

  “Joe.”

  “I saw him. He’s a hottie, Eve, a keeper.” Sandy winked. “How’d you meet?”

  Eve told her.

  “That is so romantic. Tom and I dated in high school. We always knew we’d get married. Boring, huh?” She smiled. “I’m glad we finally met, Eve. Welcome to the neighborhood. I’m sure you’re going to be very happy here. Michael, what did I tell you? Not so far!”

  JOE AND EVE ate Shabbat dinner in the dining room, uncluttered now that he had moved the boxes into the living room, and she hadn’t even asked. The light switch for the chandelier had stopped working. Eve didn’t mind. The fixture was ugly, and some of the globes were cracked. She much preferred the honeyed glow from the candles in the two silver candelabras, an engagement gift from Joe’s parents. The lighting, lovely and soft, hid the spiderweb of cracks on the walls and ceiling.

  Over Ruth’s potato leek soup, Eve told Joe about Nancy and Brian Goodrich.

  “Two lives gone because of a tragic mistake, just like that.” Joe snapped his fingers. “I don’t know about you, Eve, but this makes what happened less creepy. You and I—we’re nothing like the Goodriches. I feel better about the house.”

  “Me, too.” She really did. “Speaking of the house, I saw cracks on the bedroom wall, above the headboards.”

  Joe nodded. “The house is settling. It happens.”

  “But we painted less than a week ago, Joe.”

  “I guess the house has its own schedule.” He smiled. “We have touch-up paint, babe, so there’s no problem.”

  Joe insisted on clearing the table and doing the dishes. Eve, still suffering from the hangover-like aftereffects of the migraine, took two Advil tablets and had read a chapter of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo when Joe joined her.

  Joe fell asleep first. Eve took an Ambien and twisted the outer shell of the Shabbat lamp on her nightstand until the room was dark. Drifting off to sleep, she realized she’d forgotten about the Advil she’d taken earlier and wondered if mixing the two pills was dangerous. She could check the package warnings, but unless she was prepared to make herself gag and cough up the Ambien, which she wasn’t, what was the point? She wasn’t really worried.

  This time she dreamed she was at her parents’ house. Her mother and father were seated on low folding chairs in their living room. Sitting shiva for Eve. The third low chair, Joe’s, was unoccupied. Eve found Joe leaning against a wall. She saw the slim, brown-haired woman sidle next to him, saw them link their hands, just for a second, when no one was watching.

  No one except Eve.

  Saturday morning Eve stayed in bed while Joe attended Shabbat services at the synagogue on Chandler, a five-minute walk from their house—another selling point.

  “Sure you don’t want to come with me, babe?” Joe said before he left. “You might feel better if you get out, and you’ll meet people in the community.”

  Eve was sure.

  She wasn’t sure, for the first time since they had started chatting on J-Date, about Joe. She accepted that the nightmare was a product of her unsettled imagination, compounded by the tragedy that had befallen the house’s previous owners. But dreams had a purpose, didn’t they? Wasn’t she supposed to learn something from them?

  And what did she really know about the man she’d met on an Internet site less than two years ago? She had never caught Joe in a lie, but then, she’d never questioned anything he’d told her. She’d checked him out before they met—that was only prudent, and she would have done so even without her parents’ urging. She had spoken to his rabbi (“A great guy, Joe!”), had heard positive comments from friends of friends. The Stollmans, her mother had learned, were solid people, well liked by the San Francisco Jewish community.

  Eve knew that Joe had spent a year in an Israeli yeshiva after high school and had worked as a day trader in Brooklyn before returning to San Francisco, where he obtained his administrator’s license in a nursing home. Eve knew little about his six-month marriage. Joe didn’t like to talk about his ex-wife. All Eve knew was her name. Karen.

  None of which was damning, Eve had to admit.

  Eve knew what Joe would say if she told him about the woman in the dream. A figment of your imagination, babe. You’re insecure. You’ve always been insecure about your looks.

  That was true. But . . .

  Eve got out of bed and searched through Joe’s things, first in the armoire, then in the dresser. She found nothing suspicious, no references to another woman, no photos. In Joe’s nightstand she did find every note she’d written to him since they’d met, every card she’d given him.

  Joe loved her. How could she have doubted him?

  The door to the bathroom was open. She stepped inside. The room would be beautiful when it was finished, airy and spacious, so elegant with the white marble.

  She frowned. Nails were protruding from the cement backer boards.
Stepping closer, she noticed gouges in the boards. She examined the bottom of the shower. The marks and cracks on the mortar were back.

  “KEN IS GOING to quit,” Eve told Joe when he returned from shul. “I wouldn’t blame him. This is crazy, Joe.”

  Joe examined the nails, studied the mortar.

  “Let’s eat,” he said.

  He was quiet over lunch. When they finished dessert, he said, “I have to tell you something, Eve. You’re going to be upset, but I’m hoping you can keep an open mind. Okay?”

  Eve gripped the edge of the table. He wanted a divorce. He wanted to be with the brown-haired woman in Eve’s dreams. “Okay,” she said. As if she had a choice.

  “I’ve been thinking about the bathroom,” he said. “The marks, the nails.”

  The bathroom. In her relief Eve almost laughed.

  “Is it possible—don’t answer before you hear me out, okay?—is it possible that you’ve been walking in your sleep and doing stuff you don’t remember?”

  “You bastard.” Her lips were white.

  “You’re taking Ambien every night, right? Ambien makes some people hallucinate, Eve. It can make people walk in their sleep and binge without knowing what they’re doing. It was in the news, remember? We talked about it. There are cases of people who didn’t know they were driving, for God’s sake.”

  Eve shook her head.

  “Think about it, babe,” Joe said. “That’s all I ask.”

  Eve went back to her bed. When Joe came into the room she turned on her side. A moment later he was lying next to her.

  “Eve, you know I love you. The Ambien is the only thing that makes sense.”

  “The floors are ruined.”

  “What?”

  “The hardwood floors we just paid two thousand dollars to refinish? There are tons of scratches. You probably made them when you were moving the boxes.”

  Joe rolled onto his back. “You didn’t say anything.”

  “Well, now I am.”

  He sighed. “What is this, tit for tat?”

  “There are scratches on our bedroom floor, too.”

  “You helped me move the beds, Eve. We were both careful about the floors. Maybe Ken’s guys did it.”

  “Why don’t you tell him that, Joe? He’ll charge us double for redoing the shower pan, again.”

  Eve gazed out the window.

  THAT NIGHT SHE didn’t take an Ambien. She dreamed she was at her parents’ house. Joe and the brown-haired woman—Eve hated her!—were alone in a hall. She heard Joe whispering, “You can’t imagine the hell I’ve been through, Eve was so crazy.” She heard the woman saying, “No one blames you, Joey, everyone knows she was suicidal.”

  And then the voices: Leave, leave, leave, leave, leave.

  Sunday morning she told Joe she hadn’t taken an Ambien.

  “And?” he said.

  “You were right. No nightmare, no voices.”

  He grinned. “Well, now we know. I’m sorry about the floors, Eve. I should have been more careful. We’ll get them redone after everything’s finished. And don’t worry about Ken. I’ll smooth things out, guy to guy. It’ll cost us, but the main thing is you’re okay. This is great, babe, isn’t it?”

  “It really is,” Eve said, trembling with hate so strong, it frightened her.

  Joe would tell Ken. They would laugh about it, guy to guy, Hahahahah, women, when it was Joe who had damaged the shower and walls, deliberately.

  The noises she’d heard the first night had been animal sounds. Cats or squirrels, maybe birds. But her anxiety had given Joe the idea to frighten her. He was very clever, her Joe. He’d probably made a tape that he played when Eve was sleeping. Leave, leave, leave, leave, leave. The weight on her body, the breath on her face? That was Joe. He’d moved quickly and pretended to be asleep when she’d opened her eyes.

  It had taken Eve a while to puzzle out why Joe would do something so cruel and hateful. When she did, she was angry at herself for being so stupid.

  Joe wanted the house. He didn’t want her. He would make her so terrified that she would beg him to sell the house. He would refuse. They would divorce. He would remain in the house and everyone would say, “No one can blame him. Eve was crazy.”

  Eve tried to define the moment Joe had stopped loving her. Then she wondered if he had loved her at all. Maybe it had always been about the inheritance, which she had foolishly mentioned when they were dating.

  Well, Eve had news for Joe. She wanted a divorce, too. And guess what, babe? You’ll get far less than half of what the house is worth, almost nothing. Eve had inherited the money before she met Joe, so it wasn’t community property.

  Eve decided to bide her time before confronting Joe. She needed proof. She considered moving out, but she had to stay in the house, to protect her claim.

  Squatters’ rights, babe.

  Of course, Joe wouldn’t leave. Oh, no. Joe would continue his campaign of fear to drive her out.

  She was stronger than he knew.

  A MIGRAINE KEPT Eve in bed the entire day, and the next and the next. The nightmares and voices disturbed her nights. The headaches, along with increasing fatigue and listlessness, made getting up in the morning impossible.

  On Thursday the school principal called again. Eve told him she wasn’t coming back.

  Joe looked genuinely worried. “Maybe a therapist can help you get a handle on this, honey. Do you want me to make some calls?”

  You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Joe?

  A day earlier Eve, listening in on the phone extension on her nightstand, had overheard Joe telling Ken they had to put the project on hold. “My wife isn’t well. I’m sure you understand.”

  Her mother came every day. “Tell me what’s wrong, Evie,” Ruth implored, stroking Eve’s cheek.

  Eve couldn’t tell her about Joe. Her mother wouldn’t believe her. No one would. She had found no proof, not in any of his papers or on his BlackBerry, which she’d accessed on Sunday while he was out buying groceries.

  One morning, the nightmare fresh in her mind, Eve realized she’d underestimated Joe.

  “You can’t imagine the hell I’ve been through, Eve was so crazy.”

  “No one blames you, Joey, everyone knows she was suicidal.”

  Joe wanted her dead.

  He would inherit the house they’d fallen in love with and bought with Eve’s money. Oh, he would pretend to be heartbroken, and after a decent period of mourning he would remarry—“He was so lonely, poor Joe, he deserves happiness after what he’s gone through.”

  Joe’s wife—the brown-haired woman or someone else, who knew how many women he had in his life?—would live in Eve’s house and sleep in Eve’s bed. She would luxuriate under water streaming from the rainforest showerhead in Eve’s marble-tiled shower and relax in the tub, letting the Jacuzzi jets massage her body. She would see the backyard bloom with flowers Eve would never have picked. She would lie in a hammock and rock a baby that wasn’t Eve’s.

  Eve cried.

  JOE AND HER mother drove Eve to her internist in the Third Street Towers in the city.

  “Her vitals are fine, except for her blood pressure, which is a little high,” Dr. Geller said, addressing only her mother and Joe, as if Eve weren’t in the room or couldn’t hear. “She’s lost over ten pounds and she’s withdrawn, almost nonverbal. I suggest you consult with a psychiatrist.”

  Eve had lost weight because she couldn’t be sure if Joe had tampered with the food he coaxed down her throat. Eve thought, wasn’t it ironic that she was thinner than she’d ever been in her life, her hips slimmer than slim?

  Her mother said, “Evie, why don’t you stay with us for a few days? I can take care of you until you feel better.”

  Eve wanted to say, Yes, please, yes, God, yes. She longed to lie in the safety of her bed in her old room, where she could sleep without fear of the nightmare or noises, or Joe.

  But Eve couldn’t leave the house, and she couldn’t see a psychia
trist. A psychiatrist would listen while Eve talked about the voices she heard and the thing she felt pressing against her. A psychiatrist would nod while Eve told him that Joe was behind the voices, behind everything: strange marks on the mortar, popping nails, scratches on the floors, light switches that were no longer working, cracks that were spreading like vines on the Kennebunkport Green walls.

  Eve would be committed.

  Joe would have the house.

  EVE KNEW HER parents were desperate when they brought a rabbi to the house late one Sunday morning. His name, Ruth told Eve, was Rabbi Ben-Amichai. The rabbi was a mekubal—a holy man, a master of Jewish mysticism—who lived in Jerusalem and was visiting Los Angeles. Eve’s father, Frank, had met the rabbi that morning at shul and had asked for his help.

  “First the rabbi wants to check the mezuzahs,” Ruth said.

  “But they’re all new.”

  A week before they’d moved into the house, Eve and Joe, following Orthodox tradition, had bought eight rolled parchments, inscribed by hand with verses from the Torah in Hebrew. One mezuzah for every doorway in the house.

  “Rabbi Ben-Amichai says even if they’re new, a letter may be missing, or part of a letter, or there may be some other imperfection. If something’s wrong with a mezuzah, Eve, it won’t protect you.”

  Eve stayed in bed. She pictured the rabbi hunched over the small table in the breakfast nook where the lighting was best, inspecting the mezuzahs Joe and her father were removing, one by one, from the doorposts.

  An hour later her mother returned. The rabbi had pronounced the mezuzahs fine.

  Eve had known they were fine. The problem wasn’t mezuzahs. The problem was Joe.

  “The rabbi wants to talk to you,” Ruth said.

  “Why?”

  “He’s a wise man, Evie. Maybe he can help.”

  “Can he stop my dreams, Mom? Can he stop the voices?” Can he stop Joe?