Dark Rooms: Three Novels

by Douglas Clegg

  “No—believe me, if I could resist last Sunday I can easily turn down a cigarette— not that Hugh’s been turning down his cherished booze.”

  “Enough!” Sassy covered her ears with her hands. “I am so tired of married women telling me their problems. Single people have more troubles, but we don’t whine to everybody. Go see a therapist.”

  “I don’t have time to see a therapist.”

  “Mmm—this cig sure is good.”

  “Blow a little smoke my way.”

  “That would be cheating. How many miles you think we ran?”

  “Ten—twelve… maybe two.”

  “I’m sweating like I ran twelve. This river really stinks in the summer.”

  Rachel nodded, but fell silent for a while as they walked along the running path.

  “All right, so tell me—what’s going on with Hugh?”

  “No, you’re right, I shouldn’t dump it on you. I should figure this out on my own. Or dump it right back on Hugh. And it’s nothing really bad. In a way—a very sick way—it’s kind of good. Hugh and I were bickering about something, I forget, and then he went racing out of the house, and then I didn’t see him until midnight when he was throwing up on the stairs and crying.”

  “Whoa, now, slow down. He was crying?”

  “It was about his first wife, something about her, but he kept pushing me away, and there was that vomit on the third step up. Not a pretty sight. Between that and the mice and roaches… His first wife, Joanna, is not one of my favorite topics, either.”

  “Chalk it up to life’s ups and downs.”

  “I wish. Hugh is kind of—I know this sounds wimpy—sensitive and he’s not a coward or anything, but he has that kind of poetic slouch to him. I always feel like I should protect him. But he’s been sort of out of it lately, at least since we moved in. Maybe taking on a house this soon was a mistake—maybe we should’ve waited until he had some steady work, or at least passed the bar. I actually thought the house would help things. But I think he’s…”

  “Losing it?”

  Rachel nodded. “One of us is, anyway.”

  “Maybe you two should start living a normal life—he doesn’t get out much, does he?”

  “Supposedly on job interviews, but I think mainly to grab a few drinks.” Rachel almost laughed: her life with Hugh was beginning to sound funny to her, as if they were two sad sacks who had found each other.

  Sassy’s face was screwed up in the kind of intensity of thought that Rachel’s mother was so good at when advice was forthcoming. “While I’m admittedly no expert on relationships, Retch, I think maybe you should cut back on your workload a little and try to do a few things together—maybe go off for a sexy weekend or start entertaining more.”

  “That sounds vaguely 1950s housewifey to me."

  “I guess it is. But you're kind of talking vaguely 1950s housewifey-ish, too.” She blew a smoke ring into Rachel’s face. “You said you might give a housewarming party?”

  Rachel inhaled the smoke, smiling. “With all the vermin we’ve got running through there, we should call it a mousewarming party. I had to set one of those awful traps—you know, where the cute little mouse gets his feet caught in glue—really gross. But it’s better than the racket these mousetraps make.” She paused, breathing in, sighing. She glanced across the river to Virginia and thoughts of home and daddy seemed to be there, just over the water. The thought of dealing with Hugh at all made her want to crawl into bed and stay there for a week or more. I want to scream, but not too loud.

  “Get out of yourself a little: give a party, go sky diving, join the Junior League.” Sassy smirked.

  “You realize you’re the only friend I have in this town?”

  Sassy puffed on the cigarette. “No good—you’re going to have to have at least twelve friends to have a housewarming party.”

  Getting back up to M Street on their way home, the two women passed a storefront on the edge of Georgetown. Rachel was not aware that she had begun crying until she felt the squeeze of Sassy’s hand on her elbow.

  “Oh, Retch,” Sassy said.

  “I guess my body just hasn’t caught up with reality—it still thinks it’s pregnant.”

  The store window display was of baby clothes. They were frilly and light and draped across a long blue rocking horse with painted eyelashes and a lipsticked smile.

  I want to scream, she thought.

  2.

  On Saturday, Rachel could not get her car started. She sat in the damn car in the alley after a frustrating few minutes of turning the key in the ignition, pumping the gas, jiggling the wheel, and praying to whatever gods were listening. The seat of the car was hot, the wheel burned her fingers, she had gotten dressed up to go to the store, and already she was fried and sweating. “You goddamn car!” she shouted, pounding the dashboard with her fist. She sat there feeling as if she were nothing but frazzled nerves covered with skin. She felt like yelling her head off, spewing out every obscenity she’d ever heard or seen written on bathroom walls in college.

  She waited a few minutes longer; a slight breeze wafting through the open window. Her hands were shaking. She wanted to cry but was so mad at the car she didn’t give it that little victory of seeing her fall apart.

  Rachel looked up at her house, over the back gate, to the second floor. Hugh had come out onto the outside stairs, standing there in his paint-spattered khakis and filthy white T-shirt. When he waved to her, paint flew out from the brush he was holding. Hugh was apparently in a good mood this afternoon—when he was consumed with working on the house, planing the floor, scraping old paint off wails and spreading on a new coat, he was content. He had a way of standing there that reminded her of her other father, just a certain inner calmness regardless of the turmoil going on about him.

  Hugh’s smile sank into a straight line, and a look of concern came across his features; his brow wrinkled. He looked like a lifeguard who had just spotted a shark fin circling a swimmer. He pointed to the left of the car. His mouth opened and he shouted something like, “Look out!”

  Just as Rachel turned to her left to see what he was pointing at, something moved so swiftly it was a blur as it pushed itself into her open car window.

  "Get out!" the thing shouted (and Rachel in the half second of absolute terror knew it was the bag woman from Winthrop Park and at the same time thought it was a monster). Her spit sprayed across Rachel’s face as she howled at the top of her lungs, “Get outta the screamin’ house, lady!”

  Rachel tried to scream but found she had no voice. It felt like her vocal cords had turned to solid ice. As if in a dream, she was moving in slow motion and everything around her went on in real time. She wanted to reach over and roll the window up, but her whole body seemed to have gone to sleep, and her skin crawled with a pins-and-needles sensation. All she could do was stare at the crazy woman in horror.

  But normal life flooded back in an instant as if it had never been gone: the crazy woman moved away from the car. The back gate was opening to the alley; Hugh was running down the iron stairs to the patio.

  Mrs. Deerfield came through the gate holding the garden hose, spraying it at the bag lady who ran limping down the alley. “You get out of here, you old witch, or I’ll have them put you away for good this time!”

  The bag woman began cussing as she turned the corner, her trash bags flying behind her like a cape in the wind.

  3.

  “It seems heartless, I know, but perhaps if I called the authorities she might have a better home at one of the mental hospitals.” Mrs. Deerfield sat on Hugh’s college chair.

  Rachel leaned back on the couch, and Hugh was in the kitchen brewing tea. Hugh’s framed photographs hung along the wall above the fireplace; Mrs. Deerfield studied them with some interest while she spoke. The pictures were of interesting and unusual houses, bridges, landscapes, whatever had caught his eye. One of them was of a twenty-six-year-old girl named Rachel Brennan wearing a heavy sweater on a beach i
n Cape Cod one autumn, trying to smile and keep her hair out of her eyes while he took the picture. Her dark hair was longer then, down over her shoulders, and what Rachel remembered about the picture the most was the way that Hugh kept laughing every time he was about to take the picture and how much love she felt for him then. In just two years, how things had changed.

  “You’re ever so much prettier now, with your hair cut the way you’ve got it, dear,” Mrs. Deerfield commented. “Change is always for the better.”

  “Oh.” Rachel felt as if Mrs. Deerfield had just read her thoughts.

  It startled her a bit, but then Mrs. Deerfield returned to the subject of the crazy bag lady. “She calls herself Marty or Mattie or something, and she used to be in one the state asylums, I think, until someone let her out. I know her well—at least I feel as if I do—she used to fling large chunks of dog feces at my window, and once she broke into this house when the two young men had just moved in. I imagine they scared her as much as she did them—they said she came into their bedroom at two in the morning waving a knife around, but evidently she didn’t expect to see two naked men sharing the same bed. I suppose I would’ve been as shocked as she was, and she dropped the knife and ran out screaming.” Mrs. Deerfield paused when Hugh brought her a cup of tea. “Mightn’t you have a drop of whiskey for flavor?”

  Rachel glanced at Hugh and smiled.

  “I could run get some down in my flat,” Mrs. Deerfield volunteered. “Oh, perhaps not, then.” She sounded defeated; she glanced about the room again, at the photographs, at the stereo, up at the hanging plants.

  “If she has a knife she must be dangerous,” Hugh said. He went and sat down next to his wife.

  “Oh, hardly, she’s all show, that one, mad as a hatter but fairly harmless, I think. She seems to imagine that her baby or something is being held hostage in this house. Perhaps she has a half dozen or more houses she does this to—I suppose it seemed cruel to hose her down like that, but you see, words and logic don’t seem to get through to her. She’s like a poor, dumb child, really. Oh, dear, but you shouldn’t have done it.” Mrs. Deerfield sipped her tea, glancing about the living room.

  “What’s that?” Rachel asked.

  “You went and blocked that lovely fireplace. You put your telly there, and it’s really a wonderfully beautiful fireplace, and I can tell you that no one could build them like that anymore, dear.”

  “I thought you meant I’d done something to that woman.”

  Ignoring her, Mrs. Deerfield went on while Hugh winked at Rachel, “I do like the paint job—ever so much more light in the room, don’t you think? And the photographs are lovely, who took them?”

  “Hugh did—he was big on photography in law school.”

  “Ever do any nude studies? When I was younger I always wished someone would’ve done a nude study of me before the world revolved a hundred times, and here I am today old and useless and drinking weak tea. You ought to put a drop of whiskey in your tea, dears, it adds a little sunshine to the afternoon, especially after our run-in with that creature.” Mrs. Deerfield barely caught her breath when she spoke, and Hugh, sitting close to Rachel, began nudging her knee playfully with his, shooting a smile her way which she tried to ignore because she was afraid she’d laugh and hurt Mrs. Deerfield’s feelings. Mrs. Deerfield seemed oblivious to this, however. She didn’t look at the couple on the couch while she spoke, but scanned the room, taking in the little changes they’d made. “I’ve called the police on her, once or twice, but it doesn’t matter, does it? The authorities around here seem to expect this sort of behavior. I suppose it would be easy to go crazy in this neighborhood—and this Mattie woman has been around a long time, I think. Most of this block burned out in the late '60s, you know. I looked out from the window and saw several men running down the alley spraying gasoline on the cars, and then an explosion as one car after another went up, and then it spread to the building behind us, and it almost came over here, too, I suppose, before the night was over, but the wind kept the fire back—thankfully. It was as if for a brief moment Hell had spilled across the park. Hippies and agitators and of course the downtrodden. Mustn't forget the downtrodden." She paused and looked away. “My Ramona is due any time now and I’m afraid she’s been quite the naughty puss and run away from Nanny Deerfield—if you should find kittens in your bathtub, you have my permission to scold her on my behalf. Sometimes,” now Mrs. Deerfield was wistful, and Rachel got halfway to a smile, “sometimes, when I think of it all, kittens, this house, that insane creature,” Mrs. Deerfield shook her head slowly, “it almost makes me want to scream.”

  It almost makes me want to scream.

  Rachel looked from Mrs. Deerfield to Hugh and back again. Had she said that, had she really said that? It almost makes me want to scream?

  “In our little sanctuary by the park,” Mrs. Deerfield continued, “to be, well, assaulted by that pathetic woman, and where are the police to keep people like her out of our alley? Why is there no one to keep this area free of such people? But screaming would do no good, no good at all. For who would one scream to?”

  4.

  “What a sad little woman, in her small apartment, nothing to keep her going,” Rachel said after Mrs. Deerfield had left.

  “Nothing but booze.” But as soon as Hugh said this, the two of them fell silent. Rachel rested her head in the crook of Hugh’s elbow; she tried to match her breaths with his. The air conditioner seemed to be working better than usual, and the house with its new paint jobs and greased hinges and hanging plants seemed to be theirs at last.

  After a few moments, Rachel said, “You know, your photos are good. I think that picture is my favorite one of me: I look so insecure and inexperienced and confused, and so happy. You really caught the true Rachel.”

  “Nose shark,” he said, pinching her nose lightly between his fingers. “I love you. Scout.”

  “She’s a good influence.”

  “Penny Dreadful?”

  “She came up and saw our living room and she made me look at it differently. She saw it as ours. We’ve screwed up the fireplace, but hey, we did it our way.”

  Then Rachel and Hugh said, simultaneously: “Our home sweet home.” They laughed, and Hugh cradled Rachel against him. Her body felt heavy, and his was like a soft cushion and she wished she could just sink into him and not ever rise up again.

  “I must be getting old,” he said. “I feel the need for a midafternoon nap.”

  “You are a wizened man of thirty.”

  “Let’s just fall asleep here the way we used to in school and we’d just laze around all afternoon.” He kissed her forehead, and she closed her eyes. “Let’s Pretend we’re in our own home, Scout, and Let’s Pretend everything will be all right.”

  “I love you, You-Are-There-Hugh-Adair.”

  5.

  Later they went for a walk—the evening was cool and breezy, which was unusual for the final days of July. The trees that lined the sidewalks were a pale luminescent green, offering dappled shade from the western sun. They hiked up through Kalorama Triangle, looking at the embassies and large houses. Other couples passed by, one family of four obviously sightseeing, young people walking their dogs, which Hugh would stop and pet. The gingko trees stank to high heaven (Hugh called them “vomit trees”), the blocks seemed to go on for miles—Rachel’s calves ached—but she felt so happy inside she wanted to walk forever. It was as if the scare she’d had from that bag woman, following close on the heels of her car breaking down, had awakened something in her that had been sleeping. And Mrs. Deerfield, too, had unlocked something for her, some cabinet in the house, just by saying that one phrase: it almost makes me want to scream. So, Rachel wasn’t the only human being who felt like screaming sometimes, others did, too, others like Mrs. Deerfield could admit it. Things could get to be too much for her just like they could for Rachel. Normal life.

  Hugh grabbed her hand and swung it playfully; he twisted around her in a pretzel dance mov
e. “Sugar pie honey-bunch.”

  “Oh, Hugh, you’re so weird,” Rachel said. She grinned goofily. “Wanna play, Hugh?”

  “A dangerous question.”

  “No, I mean like, ‘come out and play.’ Remember when you could call up a friend and just say, ‘Do you want to come out and play?’”

  “‘Play’ takes on a whole new meaning later on. Why don’t we go to the movies?”

  “Oh, barf, let’s not go to some movie theater when we finally have bearable weather. Let’s go to the zoo—it’s not even seven, I think we can still get in.”

  “And watch the chimps masturbate? Well, it’s your day off.”

  “And we do what I want.” They took a path beside the parkway, walking through a wooded area just beneath the northern edge of Winthrop Park. Joggers were out in droves with blank, almost fatalistic looks on their faces as they pounded the asphalt, avoiding the couple.

  “Walk on the grass!” one of them shouted as he ran by.

  “Nice attitude.” Hugh smirked.

  “I was thinking maybe we could get away for a few days—maybe a week.”

  “It’s a great time. We’ve just spent half our savings fixing up a house, I haven’t worked since May…”

  “Oh, you are getting to be an old man, you stick-in-the mud. I don’t mean anywhere exotic, I mean to the beach or something.”

  “Like I said, it’s a great time.”

  “Well, maybe while you’re unemployed we should do something, go somewhere. I mean, once you get a job you won’t have a vacation coming for at least six months, probably longer. This might be the best time. I think my paycheck’ll cover a cheap motel at Rehoboth or Dewey. And while we’re gone, we can have the place de-moused and de-roached.”

  “Only if we take Penny Dreadful and Baby Dreadful with us.”