Trail of the Spellmans

by Lisa Lutz

  At the first meeting, Perkins struck my mother as nervous and edgy, and his attempt to present the job as commonplace gave him a ticlike laugh, underscoring the lie. My mother told Mr. Perkins that she would check our schedule to see whether we could take the case. This wasn’t our typical investigative fare and something about the simplicity of the job didn’t sit right with Mom.

  She then proceeded to engage in a rather lengthy investigation of our potential client—a habit we discourage, for cost-cutting purposes. Walter Perkins is a math professor, without any criminal records or civil suits in his wake. He was recently divorced, but the settlement appeared amicable. Still, my mother’s suspicion spread like a bad rash.

  Over the course of three days she made inquiries to be certain we weren’t getting saddled into cat-sitting, dog-sitting, botanical gardening, or checking in on a home that was not, in fact, Walter’s. When she had exhausted all of the most inconvenient possibilities, we took the case. Or, more specifically, I persuaded her to take the case. Times are rough; we can’t turn down easy work just because it isn’t in our usual repertoire. Walter made an unlikely request, but there wasn’t anything unethical about it. After Mom agreed to my demands, her only stipulation was that I handle all direct communications with Walter, who she said had the distinct whiff of a Scharfenberger.1 I couldn’t smell it, so I phoned my new client; we negotiated an hourly rate and he handed me the keys to his apartment.

  In the two months we’d worked for Walter, I’d grown quite fond of him as a client, though I’d only met him once in person. Our interactions usually followed a similar chain of events:

  Walter phones. He thinks he left the stove on. Or perhaps his apartment door is unlocked. Sometimes a window is ajar (he is on the fourth floor, so I’m not exactly sure what he’s worried about—flies?); sometimes the bathtub might be overflowing.2 Or an appliance is left plugged in. Or an errant sock accidentally fell from the laundry basket. Sometimes his fears are more catastrophic.

  The apartment is burning, flooding, collapsing for no good reason. These fears abate when I visit Walter’s home and assure him nothing is amiss. In fact, the only time anything was ever amiss in Walter’s apartment was after I checked it for a gas leak and Walter noticed my footprints on the unblemished beige carpet when he returned home from work. This disturbance was quickly remedied by my removing my shoes and combing the carpet upon departure, each visit.

  As it turned out, Walter didn’t travel, but he was close to losing his job because of his abrupt departures from the campus, which sometimes took place midlecture, even midsentence. They apparently gave him the appearance of a convict making a run for it. Now all Walter had to do was make a quick call from his office or send a text message from behind the lectern.

  It was 3:42 when I reached Walter’s apartment. After entering and checking the burners, I phoned him with the usual good news.

  “All clear,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Walter replied, sighing deeply, as if he had been holding his breath.

  “Anything else?” I asked because there’s usually something else.

  “Can you check and make sure that the bathroom sink is shut off?”

  It’s possible to fake check when I’m speaking into a phone line and know, based on ample history, that the answer will be no, but I never humor Walter. I’m paid for the work and I do what is asked of me.

  “All clear,” I said, securing the faucets, even though they were already secure.

  Walter sighed again, thanked me, and ended the call. As I combed the carpet, backing into the front door, I noticed that the electric cord on his toaster was still plugged in. Among Walter’s plethora of fears, electrical fires rank third after sewage backups and water-line breaks. I unplugged the cord and gazed at the outlet with a surprising sense of unease. It was as if someone else were in the apartment with me. Surrounded by erratic behavior, I think I’ve found some comfort in Walter’s religious consistency. I resolved to keep this inconsistency to myself. If Walter thought he was slipping, his condition would only worsen. Once again I combed the carpet and departed, wiping the doorknob with a handkerchief on my way out.

  You might be thinking that a problem like Walter’s would be better served by professional help. Believe me, I conveyed that very same sentiment after my third visit to his home. Walter assured me he had been through the gauntlet of physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, psychics, spiritual healers, and even a life coach—whom he claimed was the biggest scam artist of the bunch.

  Until Walter’s wife moved out, his situation was somewhat under control. Spellman Investigations brought him back to his previous state of equilibrium. “Equilibrium” is not a word usually associated with my people.

  DOMESTIC DISTURBANCES

  With the Spellmans there is always a steady simmer of conflicts, oddities, and subterfuge. And I cannot deny that I’ve come to find all of this quite ordinary. But as with any family, these things accumulate like the imaginary slow drip of Walter’s bathtub faucet. Only on occasion do I notice a sudden deluge.

  It was just another Wednesday in October when a series of unusual events took a mundane morning into an evening of chaos. It began like any other day. I was in the office filing because I chose rock over scissors. I suppose that’s the kind of comment that requires explanation.

  Every employee of Spellman Investigations despises filing. I’d argue that I loathe it the most, but then we’d get into a who-hates-filing-more debate, which is almost as tedious as the job in question. Throughout the years, we’ve flipped coins, drawn straws, used a lottery system to dispense with this odious chore. When D came to work for us, he kindly took over the chore, always filing when no one else was in the room to stop him or offer to take over. But then the oft-absent Rae suggested that between D’s cooking (which he enjoys) and grocery shopping (my mother never picks out the right item), we were treating D more like a personal assistant than an associate investigator. Since D is everyone’s favorite, we suddenly saw the error of our ways and decided to split the job between the four fulltime employees.

  However, unlike sane people in a similar situation, we didn’t attempt to evenly split the chore. Instead, Rae suggested we play rock-paper-scissors for it once a week to determine who does the filing. For reasons I still cannot explain,1 we all agreed.

  One would think, the game being only marginally skill based and almost entirely odds based, that approximately a fourth of the time, I would be saddled with this chore. My average was 72 percent2 at the time.

  So, there I was filing for the third week in a row and the phone was ringing and the office was empty and I noticed that my mother and D’s “coffee break” had extended well past two hours. In fact, in recent weeks Mom’s hobbies had made her work absences rather pronounced. I certainly enjoyed having the office to myself, but not at the expense of our work. At first I thought of Mom’s extracurricular activities as a kind of dress rehearsal for retirement. But lately I’d begun to find holes in that theory; something else was at play. I noticed a stack of paperwork growing on my mother’s desk and caught a series of errors in surveillance reports that were typed in the early hours of the morning. I decided to put an end to her coffee break and searched the house for Mom and D.

  I found them both seated on lawn chairs in the back garden, lazing about like it was an aimless Sunday afternoon. If I haven’t mentioned a garden before, that’s because there wasn’t one. Another one of Mom’s very recent hobbies had been gardening. She’d planted some perennials and something that I swear looked like a marijuana plant. My mom, apparently reading my mind, said, “Isabel, don’t try to smoke that. It’s a Japanese maple leaf.”3 I took a moment to note the status of the greenery; everything was still alive, but that’s not saying much—they were alive when she got them and it’d only been about a month. Forget about the garden. The absent employees reclined in their chairs with the exact same book in hand and, oddly enough, almost identical baffled expressions on their faces.
Between them sat a plate of D’s secretly famous cranberry scones. Even though I wasn’t hungry, I snagged one and dug in.

  Typically, my mother crammed alone for her punitive book club meeting. I’d yet to get a proper answer for why she joined the club in the first place. The entire affair had the air of espionage about it. For most women, a book club is at worst a nuisance and at best a great way to get free food and wine (and literature, if you’re into that sort of thing). But I couldn’t figure what my mom was getting out of it. She rarely had anything interesting to say about the book or the other group members and was always cramming at the last minute in a comprehension-challenged state of stressed-out speed-reading. This month Mom had fallen particularly far behind, and since work was relatively slow, she solicited D’s assistance as a human CliffsNotes. However, the time crunch was so severe that Mom could only tackle the first half, while D read the second half blind, offering up the mere bullet points. He was also battling a series of questions that arose out of the narrative incongruity.

  “Who is Mark?” D asked.

  “Her spiritual adviser.”

  “Got it.”

  “What’s happening now?” my mother asked D.

  “Lynette has enrolled in five courses from the Learning Depot: pottery making, molecular gastronomy, tai chi, assertiveness training, and speed-reading.”

  “I should take that one,” my mom said.

  Demetrius continued: “She decides she wants to quit the assertiveness class but comes up with a lie about a family emergency as an excuse, not recognizing the inherent irony of that behavior. Who is this Loretta lady? She keeps talking about her and not in a friendly way.”

  “That was her best friend whom she found in bed with her golf instructor.”

  “Why aren’t they speaking anymore?” D asked.

  “Because she was also sleeping with the golf instructor.”

  “Okay, that explains a few things,” D replied.

  “Just be grateful you missed the ten-page invective on golf.”

  “I never played,” Demetrius said.

  “Miniature golf is better,” my mom said authoritatively.4

  “I love miniature golf,” D replied. “At least I used to.”

  “We should have a company miniature golf day,” my mom said.

  An interruption was required at this point.

  “What’s the name of this book?” I said, taking another bite of D’s spectacular baked good.

  “This Road I Call My Heart,” D replied, shaking his head in disbelief.

  I almost choked on the scone.

  “I think I might be ill,” I said.

  “Give it a minute, the nausea will pass,” said D.

  “Can I take the scones to the book club?” Mom asked D. “That might buy me another month.”

  D nodded his head once while continuing to skim the pages with a tinge of bafflement on his face. My best guess was that a middle-aged woman’s coming-of-age memoir was not his usual literary fare.

  “Remind me again why you’re doing this?” I said.

  “It’s good to have hobbies,” Mom replied with an undertone I couldn’t put my finger on.

  All I knew was that the book club was a cover for something more complicated. If I wanted answers, questions were not how I would get them.

  SIBLING CONFLICT #157

  It used to be my habit to keep lists of various aspects of my life. Some prefer a diary, but I like the cold, clinical nature of a spreadsheet. Most of my lists have been neglected for years. (I quit documenting my misdemeanors at least twelve years ago; that’s not to say I haven’t committed any. But keeping a list started to seem like keeping evidence against myself.) Anyway, some lists remain. And, as of the writing of this document, we’ve now reached #157 in the sibling conflict department.1

  After work, I drove straight to my brother’s house for a reconnaissance mission requested by Maggie. The fact that checking in on David kept me checked out of my own life was simply an unforeseen benefit. I couldn’t remember the last time I had an evening at home. I knew Henry was growing suspicious and annoyed and probably a few other adjectives and I’d have to do something about that. But until I sorted out a few things, I would stick to the Avoidance Method™, my primary go-to plan when something is amiss in my personal life. You might start wondering what was amiss, but I don’t feel like discussing it right now. We’re on the subject of David, which is far more interesting. Why are other people’s troubles so fun when our own are so tedious?

  Ever since David became the proud father of Sydney, his ability and desire to socialize with people over the age of five has diminished considerably. Maggie has solicited help from all of the family members, but I take particular pleasure in the task.

  My parents also follow the cult of Sydney, basking in the angelic glow of their eighteen-month-old granddaughter. So far, no one has noted that, based on history, not a single Spellman woman has ever grown up to be anything remotely resembling angelic. Still, my brother’s acute metamorphosis has not gone unnoticed by the unit. That said, with New David comes new Sydney and the cost-benefit ratio is definitely in their favor. Even if New David is an eyesore.

  Always garbed in fuzzy slippers, sweatpants, and any of a wide variety of holiday-themed pajama tops, David’s primary accessory is a cotton cloth he dangles over his shoulder, which is commonly covered in Sydney’s mucous or some half-masticated food item left over from her last meal. This means a sour odor trails him around the house. Sometimes the mere sight of him makes me want to run in the opposite direction.

  Maggie was pulling into the driveway when I arrived. As we converged at the front door, my sister-in-law put a hundred-dollar bill in my palm.

  “What’s this for?” I asked.

  “Drinking money,” Maggie replied.

  “I’ll need another fifty for David.”

  Maggie, oddly enough, dug back into her purse.

  “I was joking,” I said.

  “Just make sure he comes home drunk,” Maggie said as she unlocked the front door.

  “That won’t be very difficult,” I replied.2

  Sydney was sitting on a blanket on the living room floor with my brother, composing a tune on a primitive xylophone. David, sadly, was attempting to write lyrics to accompany the random notes. Maggie gawked for a moment, then hunched down, smacked her knees, and called to her daughter. “Sydney, come to Mommy,” Maggie said.

  “She’s not a dog,” David said, for what I guessed was not the first time.

  “She needs to practice walking,” Maggie replied. “You carry her around all day.”

  Sydney stumbled to her feet and approached her mother with the gait of most tavern patrons at closing time. The resemblance vanished with the adorably alien voice that replied.

  “Mama!”

  Maggie swept her daughter up in her arms and pointed at me.

  “Look who I brought home,” Maggie said.

  Sydney performed her usual vacant stare, which on a grown-up I would translate to You look familiar; have we met?

  “How’s it going?” I said to Sydney, nodding a polite hello.

  “How’s it going?” David repeated in a harsh tone of mockery.

  “I don’t speak toddler, okay?” I replied. “One day she’ll respect me for it.”

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I invited her,” Maggie replied.

  “I should warn you, if you’re staying for dinner, we’re only having fish sticks,” David said. “Can I get you a juice box?”

  “Yeah. If you put some vodka in it,” I replied.3

  “No, you and Izzy are going out,” said Maggie. “Now. To a sports bar. I’m sure there’s a basketball or baseball or even hockey game on tonight. You will drink beer and eat chicken wings or something like that.”

  “I couldn’t possibly go out tonight. I’m exhausted. Plus, I promised Sydney we’d finish Lord of the Rings before bedtime.”

  “You know she doe
sn’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  “She understands more than you think,” David replied.

  “I’ll be reading to her tonight,” Maggie replied, “and I think we’ll stick with Green Eggs and Ham.”

  “She doesn’t like it when you patronize her.”

  “Are we going to a bar or not?” I said. “Because I have to start drinking right now, no matter what.”

  “Help yourself to the liquor cabinet,” David said.

  It was easy to ascertain that any persuading wasn’t going to happen in the near future, so I poured a healthy glass of the good bourbon. Lately, just about anything could slip by my brother.

  There was a knock at the front door. David answered it. Our sister, Rae, stood on the threshold accompanied by a motley assortment of overstuffed luggage.

  “I’m packed,” she said, stating the obvious. Overstating it, to be precise. Her car was parked in the driveway; the entrance to her in-law unit was just a few short steps away. Instead of loading the car en route, she’d dragged her luggage around the house, past her car, and up David and Maggie’s front steps to make a point in the most dramatic way possible.

  “I wish you all the best,” David said formally.

  My family isn’t all that formal, so that was weird.

  “Are you going somewhere?” I asked Rae, taking a sip of bourbon.

  It’s hard for me to explain the perfection of that moment, witnessing a conflict that was not my doing with a free drink in hand.

  Rae ignored me and spoke only to David. “Once again, I’m sorry,” she said.

  “What are you sorry about?” I inquired.

  “Nothing,” David quickly replied. “We will not speak of it again. I take it you’ve found a place to stay.”