The Woman in Our House

by Andrew Hart

  “Were there people around at the time, Ms. Klein?”

  “No. We had the place pretty much to ourselves.”

  “And you didn’t see anyone hanging around or watching the playground while you were there?”

  “Like I said, the place was quiet. A few people walked through, but no one was playing there.”

  “Could the screw have been set while you were there?”

  The mother started to shake her head, then frowned.

  “I’m not sure. There was a woman who worked for the park, I think, in a uniform riding on one of those little electric carts, but I don’t think she went near the slide. She was emptying trash cans. There was a guy with his dog, but I don’t think he got near either.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “One guy in a big coat who cut across the park. I guess he could have gone to the slides, but I was facing the swings at the time, so he would have been behind me. I’m sorry. I really don’t know.”

  “You remember what this man looked like?”

  Again, the head shake.

  “He was all wrapped up. It was pretty cold when we first arrived. Big guy, I think.”

  “White? Black?”

  “White, I think. I didn’t see his face. I couldn’t be sure.”

  “What about after the incident? Do you remember seeing bystanders, people attracted by the approach of the ambulance, maybe?”

  “A couple, perhaps, but no one close. No one I could identify.”

  “Any of the people you saw earlier? The big guy or the dog walker, maybe?”

  She shrugged wearily and shook her head.

  “I guess I wasn’t paying attention,” she replied.

  “I see. Well, we’ll head over and make sure the slide is safe, see if anyone in the area saw anybody messing with the equipment. I don’t think there’s CCTV in that area, but we’ll check.”

  “OK. Will you let me know?”

  “Know what?”

  “I don’t know . . . If you make an arrest or something, I guess.”

  “Sure,” he said, knowing it would never come to that. It would probably turn out to be a fault in the slide itself, and if a screw had been placed deliberately, it was probably just the kind of random malice you could never trace to a specific vandal. Probably some disgruntled teen lashing out at the world. Welcome to twenty-first-century America. They should probably be glad he hadn’t staked the place out with a sniper rifle. “Absolutely,” he said. “I have your contact info, and here’s my card. If anything comes up, we’ll let you know.”

  Chapter Thirty

  ANNA

  “It’s OK,” said Oaklynn, putting her hand on mine, which was wrapped tight around the steering wheel. Our clothes were spotted with Veronica’s blood. We were sitting on the edge of the hospital parking lot with the heat running, about to pull out into traffic. Except that I was suddenly frozen in my misery and shame and didn’t trust myself to drive. “Anna,” she said, forcing me to look at her, “it’s really OK. There won’t be any nerve damage. Just some blood loss. She’ll be discharged in a few hours, and she’ll be fine.”

  “We don’t know that for sure yet,” I said.

  “She could move her fingers just fine. Even her ability to feel pain is actually a good sign. The nurse said so.”

  “There might be scarring.”

  I hated the whiny, fragile note in my voice, the way I seemed to be obsessed with something as superficial as a faint, pale line on my daughter’s previously flawless hand and arm. But Oaklynn knew I was focusing on something minor because I couldn’t bear the thought that my tiny child might have tendon damage in her hand that could affect the rest of her life.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “If anything, it was mine.”

  “No!” I exclaimed, almost offended by the thought.

  “It’s true,” said Oaklynn. “Veronica got to the slide ahead of me, and I didn’t look it over before she went down and . . . I guess I was too slow, not thinking ahead properly. I should have called, told her to wait till . . .”

  Her composure—rock solid till now—wavered slightly, a fractional quaver interrupting her like a car hitting a speed bump.

  “No!” I said again, staring at her now, rocked by the glassy sheen in her eyes. “Oaklynn, this isn’t on you. You couldn’t have known someone would put a screw through the slide.”

  “It is,” she said. She spoke with sad surety, and as she did so, she seemed to deflate, as if she had been steeling herself against the idea but had now given in. As she slumped forward, hanging her head, the tears brimming in her eyes ran down her face. She blinked as if annoyed by them and smeared them away with her sleeve.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “We’ll go home and get Grace set up, and then we’ll take turns at going to sit with Veronica until they’re done and we can bring her home. Take her some toys and books. She’ll like that. Yes?”

  Oaklynn nodded, mute, and I couldn’t help feeling a little rush of pride that I was the one consoling her for once, taking charge and making plans. She wiped her eyes again and grunted with scorn and disgust.

  “Look at me!” she muttered. “You’d think I was the one who got hurt. Poor Vron. OK.” She drew herself up and sucked in a decisive breath. “I’m OK now. Let’s go home.”

  So we did, and when we got back, I gathered some things for Veronica—Lamby, some Magic Tree House books, her Leapfrog electronic game pad, and her soft unicorn pillow—and put them in a pink rolling suitcase, then called Josh. This was my third attempt, and like the previous two attempts, it went to voice mail. I felt a prickle of irritation but left a message relaying what had happened and assuring him—more surely than I really felt—that everything was fine, that they were just keeping her in to have the surgeon give her the all clear and to make sure there was no infection.

  I didn’t say that their caution terrified me. I didn’t say that I hadn’t liked the way the doctor had looked at me as he muttered to one of the cops who had come to take down the accident report, or that I was afraid that I would be visited by some hard-faced woman from Social Services who would ask pointed questions about whether I thought I was giving the children the attention they required. I’m not sure why I didn’t. I wanted to believe I was sparing him from probably needless worry, but I wondered if I was also punishing him a little for not picking up, for not being here, for . . . other possibilities I hadn’t yet put into words for fear of making them real.

  “I’m going to go to Mary Beth’s,” I called to Oaklynn. “Won’t be long.”

  I was going to confide in my friend Mary Beth. I was going to share the anxieties and inadequacies I felt with someone who didn’t work for me. I was going to say what I had barely allowed myself to think about my daughter’s hand, use the poisonous phrases—ligament damage, severed nerves, tendons—words that tasted like battery acid in my mouth. I needed to speak to someone who would respond as an equal, not an employee, someone who would be just compassionate enough to say everything would be OK but would then shrug everything off and make a joke, probably a caustic one at someone else’s expense. That was what I wanted. That was why I stepped back outside to the emptiness of Settle Road, the towering, oppressive trees yellowing and dropping their leaves in great straggling rifts where the asphalt dissolved alternately into lawns in front of the three completed houses and the high, tangled weeds of the vacant lots.

  But though I rang and rang the doorbell, standing on what Mary Beth snarkily referred to as the “unwelcome mat” on the porch, no one came. I felt suddenly and unaccountably worse—bereft—so that I walked back slowly, inexplicably unsure what I would say to Oaklynn, as if possibilities I had hidden had suddenly coalesced into hard fact.

  Josh is gone, and Mary Beth is gone. At the same time.

  I told myself it was a coincidence, that it was meaningless, and that I had been imagining my husband’s recent secretive manner. That Mary Beth was probably just out at the grocery store. I was
just upset because of Veronica. Of course I was. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else meant anything.

  Oaklynn was busying herself in the living room when I came back into the house, adding snacks in Tupperware to the bag I had been putting together for Veronica.

  I should have thought to do that, I thought. It was a good thing, a helpful thing, but it made me feel guilty again.

  “How’s Mrs. Wilson?” said Oaklynn, smiling at me.

  “She’s good,” I said reflexively, compounding the idiotic and unnecessary lie with something even more preposterous. “She wanted to know if we needed her to cook for us.”

  “Cook?” said Oaklynn blankly.

  “A casserole or something,” I said, feeling the blood rush to my face, wondering why I was doing this. “It’s a southern thing. When people are sick or whatever, neighbors bring casseroles. I think she was joking.”

  Oaklynn watched me, as if picking up some weird tell in my manner, something that gave away the fact that I was talking nonsense, but seized on that last detail and rolled her eyes.

  “She likes her jokes, that Mrs. Wilson,” said Oaklynn, smiling again.

  I agreed that she did. We shared an awkward laugh because we knew those jokes were often mean-spirited, and while I thought they were funny, Oaklynn—who was often the butt of them—surely didn’t.

  “She can be a little . . . acerbic,” I confessed. It was supposed to be a kind of apology, but as soon as I said it, I realized I had made things worse with that last word that, judging by Oaklynn’s clouded face, she didn’t understand. “I mean, her sense of humor can be a bit, you know, mean. She doesn’t intend it that way,” I added quickly. “She’s a good person. Just a bit . . .”

  I wasn’t sure how to end the sentence. Unconventional? Bored? Narcissistic?

  “She seems real smart,” said Oaklynn. “But . . .”

  “What?” I said, trying to sound encouraging. Her hesitation had pricked my curiosity, and any conversation was better than the words swirling around my head like numbered balls in some hellish version of a TV lottery drawing: tendons, ligaments, nerve damage . . .

  “Well, it’s not for me to say.”

  “Go on. It’s OK.”

  “Well, I think she isn’t very happy, is all,” said Oaklynn, as if confiding something embarrassing. “Like there’s something missing from her life. A hole, you know? An absence she’s looking to fill with all her . . . smart talk and what have you. But what do I know?”

  I nodded, unsure of what to say, feeling defensive of my friend, instinctively guessing that what Oaklynn thought Mary Beth needed was God, or at least a different notion of family, of life. But then I had thought similar things about Mary Beth myself. For reasons I couldn’t place, the thought worried me.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” said Oaklynn. “I’m sorry. She does seem like a good person.”

  A good person. Everyone is always a good person, no matter what they think. No matter what they do or don’t do. Evil is for other people and for former ages.

  The phrases came to me complete and clear, but for a second, I couldn’t recall where they were from. Then it struck me. They were part of the protagonist’s internal monologue in Hell Is Empty, Ben Lodging’s troubling study in disaffection and potentially deadly alienation. Not for the first time, I felt like a tightrope walker who had just been nudged into wild imbalance.

  “No,” I said, dismissing her apology with a wave and a forced smile. “I think you may well be right. OK,” I said, changing the subject. “So, you sure you’ll be all right with Grace for a while if I sit with Veronica for a couple of hours?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll feed her and put her down for a nap, maybe read my book while she sleeps. You take your time. Vronny needs you.”

  Vronny. It was a name only I used. A secret name between my daughter and me.

  I nodded.

  “Great,” I said.

  Grace’s voice came over the baby monitor, a soft but unhappy noise.

  “She needs changing,” said Oaklynn, grinning at me with something that was almost irony. “Fun, fun. See you later.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I really appreciate all your help. You keep me on the rails.”

  She waved the thought away with a noise like “pshaw,” which also may or may not have been ironic, and leaned in for a slightly off-center hug. She squeezed me hard, and I felt both comforted and frail in her meaty embrace, and then she was leaning back so she could see my face.

  “Give Vronny a hug from me,” she said.

  “Will do.”

  Another squall came from the baby monitor, and Oaklynn snatched up the blue diaper bag with the cartoon elephant head and waggled it like a clown.

  “No rest for the wicked,” she said, plucking a diaper, wipes, and powder from it, then zipping it shut and turning to go upstairs.

  As she did so, I snatched up my car keys and considered the pink bag. Veronica was too old for diapers, but a change of underwear wasn’t a bad idea. I knew for a fact that Oaklynn—ready for anything at all times—carried a spare set with her whenever she took the girls out. I unzipped the diaper bag and rummaged through it. I found the underwear easily, but as I did so, my fingertips hit something slim and hard. At first, I thought it was a pen, but it was too thin and cold, and one end was fat and shaped like a handle. I lifted it out, the cartoon elephant grinning happily at me from the side of the bag, and considered it.

  It was a Phillips-head screwdriver.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “You’re overreacting,” said Josh into the phone. “It doesn’t mean anything. Oaklynn’s just one of those Girl Scout types. Be prepared, and all that.”

  He was still in shock. He almost wished he could see the wound on Veronica’s hand. Surely, being able to see it would be better than imagining it like this? His stomach knotted. But Anna’s need to blame Oaklynn of all people was just crazy.

  “It was the exact same kind of screwdriver, Josh!” said Anna. She was speaking in a frantic, desperate whisper. “You think that’s a coincidence?”

  “Yes! It’s the most common type of screwdriver there is. Even you know the name of it,” Josh shot back, rubbing a hand across his face. His daughter could lose part of the use of her hand, and Anna was talking about their fucking nanny’s screwdriver . . . It was insane. He bit the thought back and spoke through gritted teeth. “What else did she have in the bag, Anna?”

  “Spare clothes, diapers . . .”

  “What else?”

  “One of those utility-tool things, like a Swiss Army knife, a ball of string, some wire, a roll of tape . . .”

  “See?” said Josh. “This is just her being anal Oaklynn. You can’t believe she would want to hurt the kids. That’s . . .”

  “What? Crazy?” said Anna, her tone suddenly accusatory.

  “I’m just saying it doesn’t make sense,” said Josh. “Could she even have done it? You said you arrived together, and you were with her the whole time at the playground. Did she have time to set the screw before Vron used the slide?”

  There was a staticky silence. Then Anna’s voice came back low and grudging.

  “No,” she said. “But she went to the store first thing. She could have gone to the park then and . . .”

  “Anna.”

  “I’m just saying that . . .”

  “What are you talking about?” said Josh, his composure finally cracking. “You think Oaklynn put a screw through the slide on purpose? To do serious injury to the child she looks after? Oaklynn? Listen to yourself, Anna! You know Oaklynn! Has she ever done anything that would make you think she’d hurt the girls?”

  “Not exactly, but . . .”

  “What does not exactly mean? Name one thing she has done.”

  “Sometimes I think . . .”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I just feel like she’s taking over and . . .”

  “That’s about you, Anna. Not her. It has nothing to do with th
is. You’re projecting your own guilt and worry onto her.”

  “Guilt?”

  “Yes, Anna,” Josh snapped back. “You know it’s true. You have been worrying that you aren’t being a good mother because you wanted to go back to work and have the nanny look after—”

  “I know that. This is different.”

  “I don’t think it is.” He took a calming breath, and there was a moment of silence. “Look, if you really aren’t happy with Oaklynn, we’ll deal with it. Let’s just get through this, and we’ll talk when I get home, OK?” She didn’t reply, but he pressed on as if she had. “You need to get back to the hospital and be with our daughter. This other stuff is just . . . It doesn’t matter.”

  “How can I leave Oaklynn with the girls again if . . . ?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Anna! If she had put the screw there before you went to the park, why would she keep the fucking screwdriver in the bag?”

  “Maybe she forgot.”

  “No. Listen to me, Anna,” he said, steeling himself, his eyes tight shut, his free hand clamped to his forehead. “You need to let this go and focus on Vron, OK? Talk to the doctor, and find out if there is any lasting damage. If there is, I’ll come home early.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “Can you? Because right now, you aren’t. Oaklynn is there to help. Use her and focus on Vron. OK? You can’t make it unhappen by turning the accident into something out of one of your clients’ mystery novels.”

  Another silence, and he thought he’d gone too far. Then . . .

  “It wasn’t an accident.”

  “What?”

  “Someone did it on purpose.”

  “Yes, but not to hurt Vron,” said Josh, conciliatory now. “Some sick sack of shit put it there to hurt whoever used the slide. It happened to be Veronica. It sucks, and I hate it for her and because you have to deal with this without me, but it wasn’t aimed at her, Anna. You have to see that. You’ll go nuts if you start not trusting Oaklynn. You have to focus on getting Vron well. Call me the moment you speak to the surgeon, OK?”

  “You’re busy,” said Anna.