by Megan Abbott
“No. He was just going to work.”
“Can you guess why one or both of the men might have been on the third floor?”
Dara paused. “Charlie suspected the contractor was using the third floor, maybe to entertain a date. You know. We were concerned. The students . . .”
It all came naturally, like smoke ribbons from her mouth. It was true, after a fashion. Nothing was ever simple.
“We found cigarette butts up there,” one of the deputies said, as if on cue.
“If they’d caught fire . . .” Dara said, shaking her head.
* * *
* * *
Yeah, I like it. It tracks, she heard Mendoza saying to Walters. Fella’s pissed. Work’s not getting done. Can’t even find the contractor. Thinks the guy’s up to no good.
So maybe he gets here, tries to catch him in the act? Walters said. Or hears him and charges up the stairs—
—just as the contractor’s coming down. They struggle on the stairs, a do-si-do and BAM . . .
* * *
* * *
There would be more questions, she knew. They asked for samples of handwriting, they took more prints, put things in bags, took fibers from her shirt and Randi Jacek’s, scrapings under nails. They still wanted to talk to her sister. But at the end of it, they let her go home, Detective Walters offering to drive her himself.
She declined.
It never crossed her mind to tell them the truth. Telling them about the contractor’s wife would mean telling them about Charlie and about Marie, all the private things.
It wasn’t their business, any of it. It was hers and Marie’s, all of it.
* * *
* * *
She called Marie at the Ballenger and told her to go home immediately. To lock up the house and wait for her.
Then she told her about Charlie.
The call was brief and awful.
Marie kept crying. She couldn’t stop crying and Dara had to hang up or she’d never make it.
* * *
* * *
I’m so sorry,” Randi Jacek said, touching Dara’s arm as she moved to leave. “If I hadn’t made you come here, you wouldn’t have had to see—”
Dara felt something stir in her chest, against her heart. She moved quickly past and heard a sound in her throat that felt like a scream.
In the stairwell, in the parking lot, in the car, she tried to let it out, the scream, the cry, the breath. It never came.
THRESHOLD
She was pulling into their driveway when she saw the car out front, a weathered minivan, rust-dimpled and sputtering exhaust.
Dara could make out two girls’ heads in the backseat, both swathed in winter hats, one plain purple pom-pom and the other shaped like a unicorn, a silvery horn bopping to and fro.
It was only then that she saw the figure on the front porch bouncing on her feet to keep warm. Sunglasses, a hood, but the same faded parka from the night before. Was it only the night before?
Exiting the car, Dara approached the woman without knowing what she was going to do, with no idea what was inside her.
The woman, her face weather-beaten, looked tired, frightened, her head darting from her minivan to Dara and back again.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked.
“I guess so,” Dara said. A curtain twitched in the bay window. Marie, Dara thought, watching. Hiding.
The woman shook her head, pressing her mittens over her ears.
“The detectives called,” she said. “They told me about Char—your husband.”
“Why did they tell you?” Dara snapped.
“They were asking questions. About my husband mentioning any trouble at work,” she said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Dara said nothing, staring into the woman’s sunglasses—oversize, bottomless—and seeing only the dark flutter of her own eyes reflected there.
“I don’t know what Charlie told you. Or if he told you anything.”
“I know more than he did,” Dara said coolly. “I know you used him.”
“No,” the woman said, shaking her head again, the vast abyss of her sunglasses. “No.”
“Charlie could never do anything like that. Not on his own. He had trouble doing anything at all,” Dara said, her eyes pinching suddenly, upsettingly. “So it had to be you. You wanted out. You wanted the money—”
“Is your sister inside?” the woman said suddenly.
“You’re not talking to my sister,” Dara said, stepping forward, a feeling in her chest, a ferocity, something she hadn’t felt in years, since they were small and their father sometimes sent them both to the deli to buy beer for him, three ragged blocks, and sometimes the cashier who leaned down far too close to her sister and once asked her if she had polka dots on her panties.
“Okay,” the woman said. “But maybe she wants to talk to me. Maybe I can help her. About Derek.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Dara said.
They both looked at each other a long time. It reminded her of playing board games with her sister, the few soggy ones her father kept in the basement. How it was impossible to play with Marie because she never cared about losing—paper money, game pieces, pride. It only worked if you both cared. If you both had the power to wipe out the board.
“So are you going to tell them?” the woman asked finally. “The police. Are you going to tell them about Charlie and me?”
Dara peered into her sunglasses, one lens smeared. This woman, this woman. With a hunch to her posture and a spray of gray at both temples. This woman. Who was she.
“No,” Dara said. “I’m not. But not for you.”
The woman nodded, breathing softly now, her shoulders sinking. “Would you believe me,” she said, “if I said I didn’t know Charlie was going to do it? That night. Would you believe me?”
“I wouldn’t,” Dara said, “believe anything you said at all.” Looking past her toward her minivan, sludge-colored. The two girls in the backseat, the sway of their winter hats listening to some song on the radio as the car fogged up.
“Those are your girls,” Dara said, her voice small and strange.
“Yes,” the woman said, a stitch of caution on her face. “The boys are away at school.”
They were both looking now, at their winter hats bopping through the window, purple and plush, the unicorn horn slightly bent, pressed against the roof of the car as the girls played.
The woman’s body twitched suddenly, as if remembering something, and she covered her mouth with a stiff mitten. Dara knew what it was. She’d felt it a dozen times that day already. The body remembering, contorting. He’s gone, he’s gone.
For a moment, only a moment, Dara felt sorry for her.
As if sensing it, the woman looked at her and reached for her sunglasses, removing them at last. Her eyes heavy, swollen.
“I wish I could explain,” she said. “You build this family. And it’s perfect. It’s everything you wanted. And then something goes wrong. Slowly or all at once. It was good and now it’s so bad, and it’s his fault. Or he started it. All the ripples from his bad behavior.”
Dara didn’t say anything. The woman kept going.
“So, in some private part of your head, you start thinking up fantasies of escape. You tell yourself: If only he were gone, if only a heart attack, a lightning bolt, a car crash . . .”
“I have to go,” Dara said, turning.
“Sometimes,” the woman said suddenly, her voice choked. “Sometimes, you think you’d do anything to get out, to be free.”
They held glances a long moment. Dara could feel Marie behind the glass. She could feel her as if they were one. She could feel Marie’s little rabbit heart beating fast. Oh, Marie . . .
“You’re never free,” Dara said, realizing it as she said
it.
When something goes wrong in a family, it takes generations to wipe it out. Those words came to Dara, something from a history book, a book about kings and queens she once found in the den long ago.
Marie, Charlie, they thought they could escape it, through leaving, or trying to. Through other people, lovers. But they both ended right back where they started. In their mother’s house, her third-floor hideaway.
“I guess you’re right,” the woman said. “You blame everything on that one person. You think if that one person is gone, everything will be perfect and good.” She slid her sunglasses back on. “But in the end, that person is you.”
WE TWO
It was late, very late when Dara woke with a start.
She’d barely fallen into a tingly pitch-black sleep, her face pressed on the pillow beside her, which still smelled like Charlie and like Marie, when she heard something,
A slither of slippers along wood.
Charlie, she thought with a start.
* * *
* * *
Squinting down the long hallway, she spotted her sister at the far end.
Ghostly in their mother’s nightgown, Marie hovered at the threshold of their old bedroom, the very spot the contractor had stood less than a week ago.
She looked tentative, unsure, her face bright under the moon.
Dara moved toward her, gliding down the hall, her own feet seeming to make no sound.
It was almost as if she were sleepwalking, still dreaming, or they both were, and together, clasping hands, they stepped inside.
* * *
* * *
This room,” Marie said, the whiskey on her breath, coming off her skin now. “I hate this room.”
Dara didn’t say anything, her gaze snagging on things, the nicks in the paint where they’d whacked their pointe shoes into submission, the worn spot on the carpet from the time they spilled varnish for their pointe shoes, the smear on the bedpost where the contractor’s hand had been.
“It’s just a room,” Dara said, even as she remembered everything, remembered sneaking Charlie in here that first time, curled around her in the bottom bunk, the smell of sex and saliva everywhere, the damp bedspread.
“It wasn’t healthy here,” Marie whispered, shuddering in her nightgown, all her bruises illuminated by the streetlamp shining through the window. She looked, Dara thought, like the illustrated lady at the carnival. The ladies of the carnival.
“It wasn’t healthy for me,” she said again. “It wasn’t healthy for any of us.”
* * *
* * *
Reminding Dara of the day nearly ten months ago when Marie moved out, milk crates tattooing her arms, her eyes covered by sunglasses though it was the middle of the night. How she passed Dara on the way to her waiting cab and whispered, her chin dipped to her shoulder, You can’t even breathe in here. How can you breathe.
The house that was their childhood. The house they never left.
“We’ve always lived here,” Dara said. “We’ve lived here our whole lives.”
* * *
* * *
Are you remembering?” Marie was saying. “All those nights.”
“Which nights?” Dara asked, but she knew. She knew before Marie began.
“How we’d hide under the covers to make it stop,” Marie said. “Our hands pressed against our ears when the screaming started. Remember how she screamed at him? You are nothing to me. You mean nothing to me. You touch me and I feel nothing.”
“Why are you talking about this?” Dara said, moving for the door. The carpet smelled of old glue, felt like sandpaper under her feet.
“She got worse and worse,” Marie said, turning around and around in the cramped space. “She wouldn’t stop. Drinking almost as much as he was, that glass always curled in her hand. How she raged at him—”
“You mean how he raged at her,” Dara said, bristling. “How he pushed her, choked her?”
“She pushed him,” Marie said, eyes fixed on Dara with a look she’d never seen before. Determined, resolute, grave. “She slapped him. She tore out a hank of his hair. That time. Other times. She did things behind his back. You know.”
You know. It seemed cruel to say it now. It felt cruel with Charlie’s slippers still on the floor of their bedroom. Charlie who, three days before, had scrubbed this carpet for her, for them . . .
Dara’s head throbbed, Marie too close and smelling like the rancid whiskey, like old sweat. Dried spit.
There was something Marie was going to say. Dara could feel it. A thing that could never be unsaid. Maybe it was time.
“She never should have been driving that night,” Marie said.
“He always drove,” Dara said. “He always drove. I think he was driving.”
But he wasn’t. Everyone had told her that. Her mother flung up against the steering wheel so hard its shape tattooed her chest.
The day of the accident was a blur to Dara. Was lost to some furrow of her brain. She only remembered the night before. How her mother had sat her down on the bunkbed and tried to explain that what Dara had thought she had seen on the third floor—what she thought she’d seen her doing with Charlie—well, it wasn’t like that.
Dara didn’t say anything, a feeling in her chest like a sharp stone. It had been four days since she had walked in on them, four days in which she and Charlie plotted and schemed an exit, an escape. The impossible confidence of youth.
I need you to promise you won’t tell anyone, their mother said. Because other people might not understand.
Dara promised. Who, after all, would she tell.
And I need you to promise you understand. And forgive me.
Her mother’s voice breaking over the word forgive. A word Dara couldn’t remember her mother ever using before. Along with sorry.
Now is the time, Dara had thought. To tell her she was leaving, with Charlie. But she couldn’t make the words come, the stone in her chest now in her throat.
Dara, her mother said, more firmly now, I’m your mother.
But Dara couldn’t speak.
Dara, tell me you understand. Tell me you forgive me.
But Dara couldn’t and she started to feel sick, her body keening over.
You have to leave.
The voice wasn’t her mother’s but Marie’s. Marie standing in the doorway.
Mother, you have to leave.
The look on her mother’s face, so surprised. So full of wonder.
Marie Durant, their mother said, her voice trembling, this is a private conversation.
Mother, you have to leave. Marie so stoic. So certain. The certainty of the Sword Swallower, lifting her blade.
The look on her mother’s face—like a queen dethroned.
And then that next night, their anniversary. The only time their parents ever went anywhere together and alone. They’d both been drinking and her mother had locked herself in the bedroom, refusing to put on her dress until he nearly tore the door from its hinges, threatening to drag her out in her nightie to pretend this one night a year that you’re my wife. My wife. And that tomorrow she could go back into her playroom with the children, with all the pretty little boys.
Dara and Marie were hiding in their bedroom, in this room. Dara and Marie wanted it to be over and they were glad Charlie was still at the studio and couldn’t hear.
You can’t drive, their mother was saying. Give me those keys. Give them to me. I know where we’re going.
Eventually, they heard the car engine shudder and spurt.
I know where we’re going.
Peeking out the bedroom window, they’d watched the car lurch out of the driveway and into the blue night.
* * *
* * *
Now, more than fifteen years later, Dara stood at that same window, look
ing at Marie.
“Dad mostly drove,” she said finally. “But that night she wanted to.”
Marie looked at her, her eyes blue and limpid.
“Yes, that night she wanted to,” she whispered. “So she did.”
* * *
* * *
Without either of them deciding, Marie followed Dara into the master bedroom, sidestepping Charlie’s slippers and climbing into bed after her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Dara.
Marie smelling like toothpaste, pushing gently against Dara’s back, little scratches, hands tangling, like when they were kids.
“It’s okay,” Dara said. Somehow, she was glad to feel her there. To smell her smells—the Band-Aids and baby powder and the sweetness of her sweat.
She was finally starting to slip to sleep when—
“Where’s Mama’s blanket?” Marie whispered. Mama. She hadn’t called their mother that since they were very little. “Mama’s fur blanket. The rabbit blanket.”
Dara’s eyes shuttered open.
The rabbit blanket. It wouldn’t go away, would it, like seeing it in the basement only days before, kicking it across the floor toward the furnace. She’d made it come to life and then Marie had dreamt about it and now it was back again.
“You hated it,” Dara said. “And it gave you hives.”
Marie had wanted to throw it out when their parents died. She thought it looked like an animal hide left behind by a hunter. Which it was, really. Later, she’d claim it gave her hives and then, suddenly, it did. Pink wheals across her belly, on her thighs.
“What did you do with the rabbit blanket, Dara?” Marie asked, clutching at Dara’s back. “Do you and Charlie still take it out? Remember that blanket, how electricity would run through it. How it would hold it and spark?”
Dara could feel what was coming, could feel it vibrating in the air, and it was more than she could bear.
