Heaven Adjacent

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  She joined Roseanna in the sunlight in the open doorway. Her daughter did not. Willa continued to skitter up and down the junk aisles, laughing at nothing.

  “I know it doesn’t look like much,” Patty continued. “The barn. But Macy had somebody come out now and then and make sure the structure was sound. The siding . . . you know, the boards . . . they’re pretty rotten from the weather. But it has a good concrete base to protect the bottom of the support beams from water damage. And they’re in good shape. It’s such a pretty car. Expensive. I know you don’t want to leave it out in the snow.”

  “Oh,” Roseanna said. “Right.”

  “The winters are really fierce here. You’d barely be able to dig it out.”

  It struck Roseanna that there was a great deal she did not know about this property and its geographical location. Maybe it didn’t hurt to have someone around—briefly, of course—to educate her about the history of the place. Its inherent dangers.

  “I doubt I’ll keep that car,” she said. And it was odd, because it was both logical and true, yet utterly surprising. She’d had no idea she was thinking it until she heard herself make the declaration. “I mean, who drives a Maserati out here? It’s a city car. Meant to drive on paved roads only. It’s so low slung you could damage the body on a curb or a parking stop. I’ll probably sell it and get . . . oh, I don’t know. A pickup truck, most likely.” But, as she said it, her resistance to selling the car rose up like a wall and secured itself into place. Maybe she’d buy a truck and keep the car. She could afford to, after all.

  “You still don’t want to have to dig your pickup truck out of the snow.”

  “What did Macy do?”

  “She had a sort of . . . canopy. Like a carport, but made of tent fabric. But it’s dead now. The weather killed it. I think the listing agent had somebody haul it away. It looked terrible. But the barn would make a great garage. You could just rent a truck, and I’d spend a couple of weeks getting all this stuff cleared out of here.”

  Roseanna stood a moment, feeling the sun warm her back. Listening to the little girl shriek with laughter as she ran up and down the aisles. Wondering why life was always a process of choosing the lesser of two evils. Why couldn’t a person have all of what they’d been wanting? Especially after working so hard for it, for so long.

  “It’s going to be a noisy couple of weeks,” she said, followed by an audible sigh.

  “I’ll teach her not to shriek like that. I promise. We’ll make it a game. The Whispering Game.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” Roseanna said. “But I guess I can put up with anything for a couple of weeks.”

  Chapter Eight

  Metal Cats and Horizontal Horses

  Roseanna woke the following morning to a high-pitched squeal. It was outside the house, but that didn’t seem to help muffle it much. The windows were ancient single panes with no weather stripping around their frames. The thin walls did not seem to have room for any sort of insulation. Maybe insulation had not yet been invented back when this house had been built.

  No wonder it’s so cold in here, she thought, and pulled the blanket more tightly down around her neck. The little electric heater was blowing on its highest setting. Had been all night. But there was only just so much it could do.

  I’ll have to get a bigger, more powerful one, she thought.

  And with that she began to drift back to sleep.

  Just as the pictures in her mind morphed into nonsensical dream images, Roseanna was jolted by another shriek.

  “Damn it!” she shouted out loud, and pulled one end of the pillow over her upward-facing ear.

  About two minutes later there came another happy, irritating little shriek. But this time it didn’t startle Roseanna awake. Because this time she hadn’t been sleeping. She had been lying there waiting, braced to hear it again.

  She sighed, and threw back the covers.

  As she slipped into her robe she felt a strong draft on both sides of her body at once—a warm one from the heater side and a cold one from the window side. She stepped into her fuzzy slippers and trudged outside, squinting into the early morning sun.

  Seeing and hearing nothing, she walked around to the barn. As she approached the barn door, the little girl came barreling out, slamming into Roseanna, knocking the wind out of her with a poorly placed forehead, and stepping on her foot.

  “Ow,” Roseanna said.

  “Willa! Tell the lady you’re sorry.”

  “Sorry,” Willa said.

  It sounded distressingly sincere. Her little-girl face twisted into deeply felt, heartbreaking remorse, and she looked up into Roseanna’s eyes as though her life would end right there and then without the older woman’s forgiveness.

  Roseanna’s heart melted. And she hated that. Hated it. Always had.

  “And tell her you’re sorry you woke her up,” Patty said from an unidentified location. “I mean, did we wake you up? If we did, I’m sorry.”

  Roseanna opened her mouth to speak, but found she simply was not awake enough yet. She could not respond to all of this.

  “So, I got a good start,” Patty said, stepping out into the early slant of light. “I can’t haul anything away yet, but I’ve hauled a lot of it out of the barn. I’ve been putting it around the back, so you won’t have to look at it until we rent a truck and a trailer and I can haul it away—”

  “I’m not so sure about renting,” Roseanna said, waking up fast. “I have to buy a truck anyway.”

  But as she said this she glanced over her shoulder at the Maserati, parked in the dirt in front of the gate, and realized she was in no way willing to let it go. Maybe she would have to buy a truck, but nobody was forcing her to sell her car. Sure, she had said herself that nobody out in the country drove one of these. But what the hell, she thought. I can be the first.

  “We need more than just a truck,” Patty said, breaking Roseanna free from Maserati thoughts. “If all I have is the bed of a pickup, it would take me a year to move all this stuff. I need one of those open trailers you can use to haul.”

  “Oh. Right. Okay, I guess. But you still need a truck to pull it. Right?”

  “Right. I’m sorting the stuff out as I go. If it’s too heavy to move, I leave it in. If I can move it out but it’s worth selling, it goes in one pile. Or if it’s just landfill material, in another.”

  Roseanna felt a sharp tug on the sleeve of her bathrobe.

  “Hey, Mrs. Lady!” Willa piped up. “Hey! I found a cat.”

  “A cat? Oh no.”

  “What’s wrong with a cat?”

  “I don’t want a cat.”

  “It’s not a real cat,” Patty said.

  “I’m confused.” Roseanna felt herself overwhelmed by a desire for coffee. Also solitude while she drank it.

  “Willa’s been looking at the junk and finding shapes in it.”

  “Oh,” Roseanna said. There were certainly more apt things to say, but that’s where she landed.

  “Come here!” Willa shrieked. “I’ll show you the cat!”

  She dragged Roseanna around to the back of the barn by her sleeve.

  They stood a moment, staring at a constellation of metal laid out in the dirt. Two car fenders, something that looked like a chain guard for a bicycle. A variety of small wheels, maybe from a lawnmower or a wheelbarrow. Several pipes cut to inconsistent lengths.

  “See it?” Willa asked.

  “Not really.”

  “You don’t see a cat?”

  “I’m trying, but . . .”

  “Its head is right there!” Willa insisted, clearly irritated. She pointed vehemently.

  “Oh, there. Right. Of course.”

  “See the cat now?”

  “Yes.”

  Roseanna did not see the cat.

  “’Bout time.”

  “Well, I would say you are a kid with a very good imagination,” Roseanna said, because most of the time children didn’t know enough to judge that such statements
were not genuine compliments.

  “Do you have a kid?” Willa asked.

  “I do,” Roseanna said.

  “Where?”

  But Roseanna never answered the question. Because she suddenly remembered what she had been forgetting.

  “Oh no! I said I’d call him. I said I’d call Lance. And that was . . . what? Three days ago?”

  “Who’s Lance?” Willa asked, clearly not relishing the distraction.

  “Damn,” Roseanna spat in lieu of an answer.

  “You cursed.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “You shouldn’t curse.”

  “That’s probably true.”

  “Oh, it’s true.”

  “Will you excuse me, please, Willa? I have to go make a phone call.”

  “Oh my God, Mom!” Lance fairly shouted.

  It was the first thing he said. He did not say hello. He seemed to have skipped hello and replaced it with this complaint, springing directly from what she could only assume was his having read her name on the caller ID.

  “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  She sat quietly for a second or two. Right in the dirt at the top of the hill. A small stone was poking into her thigh, but she didn’t bother to move. She was looking out over the farmlands, stunned by the clouds. They looked billowy and white and enormous, like puffy mountains, their bottoms dark and flat. They scudded along fairly close to the earth, leaving imposing shadows sliding across the forests and crop rows.

  The wind was up, and it cut through her clothing and made her teeth chatter.

  Roseanna realized, just in that moment, that living in her new home was all about feeling exposed—feeling the sun and the wind and the cold. And living in the city was about being insulated. And she had lived in the city all her life.

  There was discomfort involved in this new way of being. It made her feel alive. But not necessarily in a good way. Maybe these things just took some getting used to.

  “You must’ve called to say something,” Lance said.

  “Right. Sorry.”

  “Why do you sound out of breath?”

  “Long story. Not what I called to say. Look, I’m sorry. It’s been a very strange time. In a lot of ways. You know how sometimes you get up and walk into the kitchen, and then once you get there you don’t know what you went in there for? Turns out there’s an actual reason for that. It’s some kind of evolutionary thing. It kept us safe, I guess, when we were running from dinosaurs. Once you’re in a new environment your mind goes blank. Like a clean slate. That helps us be ready for any challenges in the new place. Or, anyway, that’s what I read somewhere.”

  “With all due respect, Mom, I have no idea what you’re going on and on about.”

  “Sorry,” she said, and just watched clouds scud for another few seconds.

  “Are you saying you literally haven’t had a second to call me?”

  “Well, it takes more than a second, actually. I have to climb this little mountain to get reception. It’s no small task. But no. That’s not what I’m trying to say. I’m admitting that I forgot. I feel incredibly guilty that I forgot. But that’s the truth of the matter. I told Nita I’d call you, and then I forgot.”

  “Then why not just say you forgot? Skip all the evolutionary lessons about evading dinosaurs?”

  “I guess I thought I had extenuating circumstances,” she said.

  Lance didn’t answer.

  Roseanna looked away from the clouds and down onto her own property. She could see the little girl and her mother dragging metal trash around, but they looked like ants from this vantage point. Every time Patty added a piece of trash to a pile, Willa dragged it away again and added it to her arrangement. Another indecipherable cat, perhaps.

  “And I wanted you to know that it really wasn’t a matter of not prioritizing you. Because I know you think I don’t prioritize you.”

  “Right, be that as it may, Mom . . . there’s something I need to say to you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  A brief silence fell as he put the thing together.

  “Come. To. Your. Senses. Seriously. Please.”

  Roseanna sighed, still watching the mother and daughter haul trash, working utterly at cross-purposes.

  “Lance, I have. That’s the thing. I came to my senses and that’s why I left.”

  She waited a moment for his reply.

  When no reply came, she pulled the phone away from her ear and glanced at its screen. The call had ended. A dropped call, she thought at first. But she was getting a full four bars of reception.

  No, the more logical assumption was that Lance had hung up on her.

  She rang him back but he never answered.

  “I made a horse!” Willa shrieked as Roseanna stepped back onto her own property.

  The little girl grabbed Roseanna’s hand and dragged her behind the barn. Roseanna stood a moment, considering the spot where Willa eagerly pointed.

  “Oh,” Roseanna said. “A horse.”

  “I told you.”

  “But, I mean, it really looks like a horse.”

  “Well, it’s a horse,” Willa said. “So what else would it look like?”

  “Good point, good point.”

  Roseanna dropped to one knee and examined Willa’s work more closely. It was rudimentary but clear. Its legs were made of pipes. Straight pipes. This particular horse was capable only of gaits that did not require bendable legs. He had no hooves. His neck and ears were pipe as well, so he had shaped up to be something of a stick-figure horse. But the metal piece she had found for his head—Roseanna thought it looked like an elongated motorcycle gas tank—looked surprisingly like the head of a fairly cartoonish equine.

  “We could make him look even more like a horse,” Roseanna said.

  “How?”

  “We could give him legs that bend.”

  “How could we do that?”

  “We could find some of those pipe fittings that let you put two pieces of pipe together so they can turn a corner.”

  “I have no idea what that means,” Willa said.

  “And we could give him a mane and tail.”

  “Out of what?”

  “Maybe some of that chain that’s stacked up in the barn. We’d have to have some way to cut it.”

  “How do you cut chain?”

  “I have no idea,” Roseanna said. “I’m as new to all this as you are.”

  “You use a bolt cutter,” Patty said.

  Roseanna whipped around to see the young mother standing behind her.

  “Is there a bolt cutter around here?”

  “There might be. I could look. And I just put some pistons in the landfill pile.”

  “I’m not sure what pistons are in this context,” Roseanna said, struggling to her feet and dusting off her hands on the thighs of her pants. “Or what they do.”

  “From an old engine. I was just thinking they would look like hooves.”

  “If he had hoofs,” Willa shrieked, “he could stand up! And then I could ride him!”

  “Honey,” Patty said, “if you tried to stand all this up, it would just fall apart. The ground is the only thing holding it together.”

  “Oh,” Willa said. She sounded heartbroken. She wiggled into position and lay down on her side in the spot that represented the horse’s back. As if attempting to ride him horizontally. Lying down. “Giddyup!” she shrieked, then frowned and pulled to her feet. “That’s no good. We have to glue him together.”

  “Glue won’t hold all this,” Roseanna said. Then she looked to Patty in case she was wrong. “Will it?”

  “No, I wouldn’t think so. You’d have to weld it.”

  “Well, that’s that, then. Unless you know how to weld.”

  “Not really. But I used to work for a guy around here who welds. Maybe he could teach us.”

  “Hmm,” Roseanna said. “Sounds like a project.”

  “Yeah!” Willa shrieked. “I think it soun
ds great, too!”

  While Patty hiked to the top of the hill to call the welder, Roseanna sat in the shade of an old maple tree with Willa. They both leaned against its trunk, Willa’s shoulder pressed into Roseanna’s arm.

  “Why are you sad now?” Willa asked. She did not shriek it. She seemed to have slipped into a more nappish mode.

  “Why do you say I’m sad?”

  “Because you are. You seemed good when I was showing you the cat. Then you walked up the hill. Then you came down and you were sad.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Right. Well. It’s like this, Willa. I was talking to my son. And we didn’t exactly get along.”

  “I’m sorry,” Willa said.

  Then she scooted her butt a foot or so away and lay down on her side in the dirt, resting her head on Roseanna’s lap.

  Roseanna stroked Willa’s thin, silky hair and thought, Okay, I’m dead now. It’s all over. They’re going to stay forever, and there’s not a damn thing I can do.

  ABOUT A MONTH BEFORE THE MOVE

  Chapter Nine

  Scratches and Scuffs of the Heart

  Roseanna arrived at her Manhattan law firm offices nearly half an hour late.

  When she walked into Alice’s office, Alice immediately spun in her chair until she sat faced away from the door. And from Roseanna. She was on the phone, speaking in hushed tones. She did not meet Roseanna’s eyes.

  This was not a business call. Nor a happy occasion.

  When Alice glanced guiltily over her shoulder, Roseanna tried to signal that she would come back later. It involved a vague pointing toward the door she would use for her exit. Alice shook her head and held up one finger.

  Roseanna exited anyway.

  Three or four minutes later Alice stuck her head out into the hall where Roseanna stood with her back leaned up against the wall, staring at nothing.

  “Apologies, darling,” Alice said.

  “Bad timing. It’s my curse in life. It follows me wherever I go.”

  “Oh, bull. Nobody has better timing than you. You could have been a stand-up comic. Get your ass in here.”

  Roseanna walked in.

  She sat in one of the buttery-soft leather wing chairs, facing the window.