HOW STRANGE THAT the only friend she’s made here is a woman whose name she doesn’t know, who lived in this house more than sixty years ago.
How do people make friends? Some of her city friends are from art school, some from work. People ask how couples first met, but they hardly ever ask how you became friends.
Emma goes to a tag sale at the local firehouse. There are a few shoppers, mostly moms with preschool kids. A couple of the kids seem slightly feral, ready to tear the place up if their moms weren’t holding them back. The women have no energy or attention left for Emma. They’re not looking to make new friends. The merchandise—lamps with frayed cords, coffee mugs featuring cartoon characters she doesn’t recognize, a box of bloated cookbooks—is set out on long tables, and the older women sitting behind the tables are talking. They don’t even glance at her. She finds some baby clothes that look practically new, and though they smell a little funny, they can be washed. A friendly woman takes Emma’s money, looks at the pile of neatly folded unisex yellow onesies, and says, “You can’t have too many of these.”
“No,” says Emma. “You can’t.”
The supermarket is ten miles away. Maybe because it serves such a large area, she never sees the same person twice. She could shop here for the rest of her life and never feel like a regular. Maybe no one does. In the city, she knew everybody: the dry cleaner, the newspaper guy, the butchers, the two Jordanian brothers who run the tiny corner grocery.
Fifteen miles past the market is the local public library, but it keeps erratic hours. Every time Emma goes there, it’s closed. How can the library not have a website? If it does, she can’t find it.
She still has friends in the city she can talk to on the phone, but now either they have kids and no time to talk, or jobs and no time to talk. How did they find time before? They used to meet every couple of weeks for drinks, but Emma couldn’t do that now, even if she lived there. Nothing’s worse than sipping ginger ale while your friends get hammered.
At the end of the week, JD shows her a list of what he’s done, an accounting of materials, a sum of hours the boys put in. She zones out while he goes through it, item by item, but she’s aware of how near he’s standing as he reads the list of expenses and costs. She fights the desire to run her hand along his arm. Another unruly hormonal impulse. It’s too bad Ben doesn’t seem to share the same urges. Last weekend, when she and Ben had sex, she had to ask him to turn off the TV.
She needs to focus on the total: what they owe JD. She agrees to whatever he says. She has things she wants to ask—he grew up near here, after all, he knows the area—but she can never figure out how to begin, how to move their conversation away from the cost of nails and two-by-fours. She’s never asked him one personal question. Not one.
She finds him more attractive than she wants to admit. So what? She likes him. If there’s only one other person around, it’s lucky that one person is nice—and nice to look at.
The work is going quickly. Record-breakingly fast. She has no complaints other than being—occasionally—lonely.
And apparently hallucinating a girl and a baby.
One afternoon she decides to take a walk. On instinct she heads in the direction where, from the attic window, she saw the girl and the child.
The wild grasses have grown past her knees. She’s slathered herself with insect repellent, not the poisonous stuff, but something that works reasonably well. After she gets back she’ll take a long bath and check her skin for ticks.
A few hundred yards from the house, she crosses an area that’s overgrown but still partly paved. Maybe it was a patio once. Some of the stones are a few inches above the ground, while others lie flat.
A graveyard. It’s a graveyard.
None of the stones are marked.
Part of her wants to poke around. Explore. It’s her land. The cemetery is a chapter in the house’s history. And part of her wants to be anywhere but here. That’s the part that wins. The dry grasses scratch at her legs as she hurries back to the house. She’s out of breath by the time she gets to the door.
JD comes over.
“Are you okay? You look like you saw a ghost. Two ghosts.”
Emma stares at him. Does he know about the girl and the baby?
Then she says, “A snake. I saw a snake.” Why is she lying? Something keeps her from asking him about the graveyard. It would be such a simple question. He grew up around here. Doesn’t she trust him?
“Striped or black?”
“Huh?”
“The snake.” He knows she’s lying.
“Uh… black,” she says.
“Black snakes are nothing to worry about. Unless you happen to be a field mouse.”
GIVEN EMMA’S FAILURE to make friends, she’s more agreeable than she would have been when Ben tells her, on the phone, that they’re invited to Lindsay’s house for dinner on Saturday night.
“Lindsay?”
“Earth to Emma,” says Ben. “Our Realtor. You do remember our real estate broker?”
Of course Emma remembers. She’d just gone fuzzy for a moment.
“I think it’s a friendly follow-up thing. She wants to see how we’re doing. And she’s inviting people from around here, people she thinks we’ll get along with.”
Emma likes the sound of that.
Ben says, “What I really think is she wants to find out if we have rich city friends looking to relocate.”
“I wish we did have friends moving up here,” says Emma. “Sometimes I can’t help wishing we weren’t such pioneers.”
“Don’t worry. Once our friends see our house, we’ll have crowds of new neighbors.”
THAT SATURDAY MORNING they drive across the river and north to an art fair near Hudson. Ben’s heard about it from an actor friend. He thinks it might be fun. The show is in a barn attached to a café with a hip young chef and a stylish brunch menu.
Attractive young couples lean back in their chairs and chat over blueberry pancakes while their children roam the fields (treated to keep away ticks) and climb on the sculptures. Why didn’t Emma and Ben move here? Why aren’t these people their friends? Then Emma remembers that she and Ben wanted to get away from all that. All this. Why move this far to become another city-stroller mom, with acreage and a massive renovation project? And what has she become? A pregnant woman with no friends, acreage, and a massive renovation project.
Her bad mood shadows the not-so-great art event. She’s forgotten the art she’s seen by the time they’re back on the road.
Lately she’s been loving that moment when they drive around the giant scary oak tree and see the house. The truth still takes a few seconds to sink in: The house is theirs. This is their home. And she’s been feeling all the warm, cozy emotions that go with that idea. That word. Home.
But this afternoon she feels overwhelmed. The house still needs so much work.
Emma goes upstairs and takes a long nap. She wakes up thick-headed and grumpy. Then it’s time to get up and dress and leave for Lindsay’s.
Who’s going to be there? People they’ll get along with. It’s these mystery guests for whom Emma dresses up, not too much but just enough so that when she looks in the mirror, she doesn’t groan. If she weren’t pregnant, she’d feel self-conscious about having no waist, but now it seems like a sign of progress.
Little Person is moving more often now, but whenever she tells Ben, “Put your hand here, you can feel it!,” the baby stops moving.
Ben says, “Mama’s boy’s not performing for Daddy. Say hi to Daddy, buddy.”
Emma hates it when he calls the baby “buddy.”
“Maybe it’s a girl,” she says. “Are you going to call her ‘buddy’?” They still haven’t decided if they want to know. The last time she visited Dr. Snyder, he’d almost slipped and told her, but she reminded him: They want it to be a surprise.
The appointment went well. Everything’s fine: blood work fine, blood pressure and weight fine, check check check. The baby’s growing nicely, not too fast, not too slow. Whatever she’s doing is right.
She and her doctor have decided she’ll have a natural, drug-free birth, unless the pain becomes unbearable, and then she and Ben can change their minds. At her last visit he suggested that she might want to search out a pregnancy group in the country. A Lamaze class or something. It sounded like a good idea, but she couldn’t find one. Fine, said Dr. Snyder. When she goes into labor, she just has to remember to keep breathing and not panic.
Ben says, “Maybe it’s a little early. Maybe you’re imagining that the baby’s moving.”
“I’m not,” says Emma.
She decides not to tell him about seeing the girl and the baby on the lawn—or about the cemetery behind the house.
LINDSAY’S HOUSE—A tiny, vinyl-sided cabin painted barn red and surrounded by a ragged lawn—has the same unlived-in, uncared-for feeling as her office. After an awkward stall at the door—handshakes? Kisses? They opt for friendly hellos—Lindsay shows them into a room that could have been furnished yesterday from Craigslist. A hard plaid couch from the eighties is separated from the huge TV by a scratched, glass-topped coffee table. A wedged-shaped knickknack shelf occupies one corner without even one knickknack on display.
Lindsay says, “We’ve only been here two months, and we’ve both been working… Before that—full confession—I was living with my parents, and Beth… well, that’s her story to tell. We were together—but not together. I mean, not living together? This was the first place we could afford? You’d think a Realtor would get a special break, but not when the Realtor is working for her dad.”
That leaves a silence that Emma feels obliged to fill by saying, “Too bad!”
“What’s too bad?” says Lindsay.
“Not getting a break,” says Emma.
“Yeah, well, I’ve had a lot of showings, so we’ve mostly left the home decorating to Beth.”
As if on cue, a young woman—Beth—emerges from the kitchen, wearing a black chef’s apron that says, in red and black letters, This is what a freakin’ awesome Grill Master looks like.
Beth is the one with the sense of humor. The apron is like armor, and you have to deal with it before you deal with Beth.
Ben cocks his finger like a gun, points it at the apron, and says, “That’s funny.”
Emma has never seen him do that. It’s an LA thing. Early in the spring he spent four days on the West Coast. Maybe he picked it up there. Obviously, Ben feels as awkward as she does, but it’s his fault. He made her accept Lindsay’s invitation. If they’d said no, it would have looked like Emma’s decision. And Emma would have been annoyed if he’d decided without asking her. Poor Ben was in a lose-lose situation.
Under the apron Beth wears tight black jeans, black work boots, and a stretched-out white T-shirt. Her hair is dyed shoe-polish black. Everything about her says toughness and fight, and yet she seems furtive, hunted, like a kid who expects to be caught doing something wrong.
Emma is getting a sinking feeling about the evening ahead.
In an alcove, the table is set for four. Oh, no!
Lindsay says, “We were expecting a crowd. I’ve lived here most of my life, and I know everyone in town. I invited the coolest people. But everyone canceled at the last minute. Or else they were out of town.” She speaks in a funny mimicking voice. “Or their kid got sick, or they got a better invitation.”
She rolls her clear blue doll’s eyes to show that no one could possibly get a better invitation.
“So it’s just us four? Well, fine, it’s a beginning. You guys are here now. There will be a whole summer of parties. If the weather was better we’d be grilling? By we I mean Beth…?”
When Lindsay gets nervous, more sentences come out as questions.
She gestures at Beth’s apron. “Beth’s the cook.”
“So I gather,” says Ben.
Lindsay says, “I was a vegan until I got together with Beth.”
Beth grins. “She only eats meat to please me. I’ll make a carnivore out of her yet.”
I’ll bet she’s a carnivore already, thinks Emma. Where did that thought come from? She should feel grateful for the hospitality, not disappointed by the lack of other guests. No one else has invited them over since they moved here.
“That’s what true love will do,” says Ben.
“Neither of us drink,” says Lindsay.
“We met in AA,” says Beth.
“Well… we knew each other in high school. And we met up again in AA.”
“That’s what I meant,” says Beth.
“That’s great.” Ben casts a panicky look at the bottle of red wine they brought. He’ll drink it himself if he has to.
Emma says, “I’m not drinking.”
“Of course not, Mom,” says Lindsay.
Emma remembers Lindsay’s dad calling his wife “Mother.” She remembers thinking that if Ben ever did that, the marriage would be over. She’d meant to tell Ben that. It would have amused him. But she forgot.
Ben looks like he’s ready to open a vein if he doesn’t get some wine.
“Do you want a glass?” Beth asks Ben, not a moment too soon.
“I’m sure we have a corkscrew somewhere,” says Lindsay. “For guests. I’m not sure we have any wineglasses. Will a water glass do?”
Emma can practically see Ben praying for a corkscrew. At last a corkscrew and a water glass appear. Emma can’t help staring every time Ben takes a sip. She has never wanted a drink so much. Without alcohol, there’s nothing to oil the social wheels. Their attempts to talk start and stop like an engine stalling out on a cold winter morning. Cough, cough. Nothing.
Lindsay notices that everyone is still standing.
“Have a seat,” she says. Emma and Ben fall into the plaid couch that’s harder than it looks.
“It’s a foldout,” says Lindsay. “In case we ever have guests. Which we don’t.”
“TMI,” warns Beth.
Lindsay says, “I don’t know why it bothers Beth, but it does. Why she thinks that wanting privacy is something to be ashamed of. I think it’s romantic living like two hermits. Don’t you agree?”
“I wouldn’t know,” says Emma. “I mostly live like one hermit.”
“Ha ha. Emma’s alone for three days a week tops,” says Ben. “I’m up here the rest of the week.”
“More like five days apart,” says Emma.
“What’s a number?” says Lindsay. “As they say about age.” Is Lindsay referring to how much younger than Emma she is? Where is Emma getting that? Lindsay doesn’t seem competitive or mean. She has nothing to gain from making Emma feel old.
“So… how’s the house coming along?” Lindsay says.
Does Lindsay talk to JD? He’s never mentioned her after that first conversation when he said she was a piece of work.
Here’s something strange: Emma didn’t tell Ben about the night the bat got into her room and JD saved her. It seems like something she’d want him to know. But she doesn’t. She can think of all the teasing remarks he might make, and she doesn’t want to hear any of them.
“The house is a big subject,” says Beth. “Let’s continue this at the table, Baby Girl.” She’s quoting Ted, obviously. Is she affectionate or mocking? Emma can’t tell.
“I wish my dad wouldn’t call me that,” says Lindsay. “It makes him sound like a pervert.”
Ben reaches out to help Emma up from the couch, a thoughtful gesture that Emma would normally appreciate. But she makes a point of getting up on her own. She’s not that pregnant yet, and she certainly isn’t weak. As Lindsay waits for them to come to the table, she’s bouncing on her toes, as if to demonstrate how youthful, thin, and energetic she is.
“Sit wherever you want,” Lindsay says. “We’re very informal here.”
There isn’t much choice among the four seats. Ben and Emma sit across from each other. Lindsay goes to help Beth in the kitchen.
Emma unfolds the rough, dark red napkin in her lap. It still has a store label attached.
She says, “This is weird. It’s like a stage set. For a play called Dinner.”
“Dinner Party,” corrects Ben. “That’s the title of half the off-off-Broadway plays ever written.”
Beth comes in with a platter that Lindsay takes from her and places on the table. Lindsay is wearing a very short skirt that rides up as she bends over, exposing childish white cotton underwear decorated with floral sprigs. Why is she flashing Emma and Ben? Because she can. Emma no longer can, if she’d ever wanted to. Lindsay’s showing off is not about sex so much as about power—the power of the young over the old, the power of the pretty over the less pretty.
“A composed salad,” Beth announces.
Is Emma being snobbish to think that a composed salad means that you arrange the ingredients with some care and attention to presentation? Beth seems to think that composed means one thing on top of another. Sliced beets have stained the crumbled egg yolks pink, among the roughly torn lettuce leaves and chunks of tomato.
“Shoot! I almost forgot the asparagus.” Beth hurries back into the kitchen and reappears with a giant platter of thick asparagus.
“She outdoes herself,” boasts Lindsay. “She’s a magician.”
Beth says, “Some people like skinny asparagus. But we like them… meaty.”
How could anyone cook asparagus so badly? It’s woody on the outside, mushy in the middle.
“This is…” Emma can’t bring herself to say delicious. “Amazing.”
Ben says, “This is delicious.” Ben has gulped down three glasses of wine and is speaking at the slightly slowed-down rhythm he falls into when he’s on his way to being drunk. He’s sailed off and left Emma alone on shore.
Beth smiles proudly.
That settles it, thinks Emma. Ben is a better person than she is.
“When’s the blessed event?” says Beth.
“January,” says Emma, before she has time to speculate about Beth’s tone: the blessed event.
“A New Year’s baby,” Lindsay says. “New baby, new year. So how is the house?”
“Coming along,” says Ben.
Beth says, “Now that they’ve bought the place, Lindsay, you can tell them all the weird stuff you didn’t mention before.”
“Shut up, sweetheart,” says Lindsay. “Withholding information from a client would have been technically illegal. But that doesn’t mean the creepy backstories, just structural stuff and—”
“Oh, please,” says Ben. “We’re fine with it all. We’ve gone this far, and… anyway, I don’t think there’s much Lindsay could tell us that would turn things around at this point. Is there? Emma?”
Emma nods. Well, is there? What if someone was murdered in the house? What if something awful happened to a child? She pictures the marbled composition book. Maybe she shouldn’t have read it, invaded Rapunzel’s privacy. What if someone did that to her? There’s no chance of that. She doesn’t keep a journal.
“Glad to hear it,” says Lindsay. “Because the story gets hairier. Dr. Fogel didn’t exactly die and leave the place to his estranged crazy niece and nephews. He went to jail, and they got it.”
“What did he go to jail for?” Emma isn’t sure she wants to know.
“Manslaughter, I think. There were some suspicious deaths at the clinic…”
“How many?” says Emma.
“I don’t know,” says Lindsay irritably. “More than three. Less than fifty.”
“Jesus Christ,” says Ben.
“Hate to tell you,” Lindsay says. “But they might be buried in your backyard. Hideaway Home had its own graveyard that saw more business than you might think. There was an ex-actor named Bobo who earned his keep working as their part-time gravedigger. Bobo? Can you believe it? Hello, Central Casting? Can you get us a gravedigger named Bobo? Broadway stars check in and they don’t check out.”
“Roach Motel,” Beth says.
“You got it!” Lindsay says.
Was that the graveyard Emma found? But why were the tombstones so small, and why were none of them marked with a name? Emma shivers, then catches Ben watching her. How is she supposed to react to the fact that their home might be a crime scene?
“I wouldn’t go digging them up,” Lindsay says. “But hey, it’s your land and—”
“Was there ever an investigation?” asks Emma.
“The clinic did what it wanted,” says Lindsay. “That’s what I heard. This isn’t the city, you know. It’s the Wild West up here. And those three old crazies, the heirs… After they took over, no one went anywhere near the place.”
For just a moment Emma feels slightly woozy.
“Emma?” says Ben. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” she lies.
“People have dug around in there,” Beth says. “Just a heads-up in case—”
“Who would excavate someone else’s yard?” says Ben.
“Freaks,” says Beth. “Ghouls. History buffs. Metal detectorists thinking Grandma must have been buried with her diamond ring. There’s a lot more metal-detectoring than people imagine. I work part-time for the county historical society. We have a ton of crap about local history. I’ve been digitizing it, but it’s slow. You wouldn’t believe the junk we’ve got in shoeboxes and storage bins.”
Emma thinks of her attic. Those journals and papers, shoes and coats…
Just then the door slams open and JD walks into the room. Maybe it’s just the noise of the door, but Emma notices that her heart is beating faster.
“Hi,” Beth says coldly.
Lindsay watches him without speaking as he pulls a chair up to the table without being invited.
“How’ve you been, sis?” JD asks her.
“Okay,” says Lindsay.
It’s not that Emma doesn’t recognize JD. Of course she does. What’s confusing is more like that feeling, in a dream, when a person appears in a wholly new context. What is he doing here? Why can he just breeze in as if he has every right? And why did he call Lindsay “sis”? JD and Lindsay had said they’d known each other, but…
Emma looks at Ben, who’s as mystified as she is.
“Wait a second,” Ben says. “Are you two… related?”
“Brother and sister,” says JD.
“Half brother and sister,” says Lindsay.
Emma’s trying to remember what they said about each other. Piece of work. And didn’t Lindsay tell them that the contractor she had in mind was a friend from high school?
Does Ben remember? He does. “How come we didn’t know this? Lindsay, didn’t you say that our contractor was a high school friend?”
“That’s my business partner,” says JD. “Luke. He’s been in Toronto taking care of his sick mom. It’s a long story. I lived in Florida when I was a kid. My dad left my mom to marry Lindsay’s mom and move up here. Then my mom died, and Lindsay’s mom died, and I came up here to live with my dad and Lindsay.”
It’s way more than Emma has ever heard JD say about himself. But now, only now, she realizes where she saw him before. It wasn’t at the gas station or on the road. He was the scowling blond kid, his face mostly turned away, in some of the family photos in Lindsay’s office.
“Then who’s Sally?”
JD hesitates for a moment, a long moment. Do JD and Sally have some unpleasant history he doesn’t want to discuss? Lindsay is staring at JD. What does—or doesn’t—she want him to say?
“Sally was Lindsay’s mom’s best friend.” There’s more to this, but no one’s saying.
Why did Emma assume Sally was Lindsay’s biological mother? Why did she assume anything at all? It feels strange, not knowing these basic facts about JD. But all they ever talked about was the cost of building materials… and getting rid of a bat.
“So now you know the whole sordid family history,” says Lindsay.
“It’s not that sordid,” says Beth. “It’s pretty ordinary.”
Silence.
“Anyway, awkward,” says JD.
“Seriously,” says Ben.
It’s almost as if the two men are ganging up on the women.
Lindsay shoots Beth a freighted look that Emma can’t read.
“Right. So now everybody knows everything.” JD smiles at Emma, who can’t help smiling back. Everyone sees. Do they think it means more than it does? No one else is smiling. Someone has to be nice to JD, someone has to welcome him, and it’s Emma’s impulse, even if it’s not her house. Lindsay has made it obvious he’s not welcome. What’s the truth about their half-sibling relationship? Emma wishes she knew. She certainly likes him better than Lindsay. And she’s grateful for how much work he’s done—so rapidly—on the house. She’s glad he’s not sitting next to her. Everyone would notice her uneasiness and make too much of it.
“What’s for dinner?” asks JD.
Lindsay glares at him.
“Fee-fi-fo-fum,” chants JD, in a giant’s deep voice. “I smell… asparagus.”
“Sorry,” says Beth. “There’s none left.”
“I could have some of Emma’s,” JD says, calling attention to how much she hasn’t eaten and suggesting they’re more intimate than they are. There’s a funny slur, or lag, to JD’s speech. He’s tipsy or high or both. Emma feels Ben watching her. Are she and JD so close that he can eat off her plate? She shakes her head at Ben, just slightly, so (she hopes) only he can see.
“You could have mine,” Emma says. “My appetite’s gotten all weird.” She’s thinking quickly now. “I can’t eat like I used to—”
“That’s all right,” says JD. “I wouldn’t dream of stealing a pregnant lady’s asparagus.”
He goes to the kitchen. They watch him return with a plate of something buried under red sauce and a tangle of wilted salad.
“You cut into the eggplant parm,” says Beth. “I mean… you could have waited.”
“I love eggplant parm!” says Emma. Why does she feel that she has to disarm every conflict, smooth out every rough spot? Beth turns to her, clearly grateful.
“It’s a company dish,” she says. “You can never be sure if your guests eat meat, so I always cook something vegetarian, just in case.”
What company is Beth talking about? Lindsay has already said they live like hermits.
“I’ve changed,” says Lindsay. “I eat meat now. For her.”
It’s the second time she’s told them this, but Emma tries to look as if she’s just hearing it now.
“Awesome,” JD says.
The tension is too thick to ignore. Some sibling problem, obviously. Why should Emma care? The truth is, everything’s gotten more interesting since JD got here. If only he was less handsome. Something about his looks makes Emma feel as if saying anything would put her at the end of a long line of women who’ve tried to impress him. So she’s glad for whatever problem he has with Lindsay. No one’s paying attention to Emma.
“Your wife’s amazing,” JD tells Ben. “The other day I was nailing up some Sheetrock, and she looked at it and said one edge was crooked by a half inch. I thought she was bullshitting me, excuse my language. But I got out my level, and guess what? She was right.”
Emma feels herself blushing. At the time her whole body had gone warm when JD complimented her: another hormone rush.
“I’m not surprised. Emma’s an artist.” Ben has said that before, but never with less enthusiasm.
“She’s got an eye,” says JD.
Emma pretends to cough so she can hide how pleased she is.
The conversation stops.
The only sound is JD, slurping eggplant.
“Dude, leave some for someone else,” says Lindsay.
“Brothers and sisters,” Emma says. “It’s always complicated. Even when they’re close.” Could she possibly say anything more banal?
“Brothers and sisters! That sounds like the start of a sermon,” says Ben.
Nervous laughter. Emma shoots Ben a look, but she isn’t sure what she means it to express.
More silence.
Finally, Beth says, “Can I ask what you guys are doing with the theater?”
For an instant Emma feels weirdly territorial. How does she know about their theater? But of course Beth’s seen it. Lindsay would have shown her the house before it sold.
Ben says, “Emma and I haven’t really discussed it. For now, we’ve decided to clean it up and leave it be for a while, maybe with some minimal improvements, just enough so it’s safe.”
“The reason I ask is… our town puts on a Nativity play,” Beth says. “We’ve been doing it for ages. The historical society has a giant file of pictures taken over the years. Since the Baptist church burned down, we’ve been doing it in the grade-school auditorium, over in West Covington. But it’s sort of grody. Wouldn’t it be cool to do it in the Hideaway Home theater once it gets renoed?”
Lindsay and JD both look like they’ve been thrown a curveball. Clearly, Beth hasn’t mentioned this to Lindsay. And JD is obviously out of the loop. Emma wonders if the town is going to flock to a Christmas play in a former dry-out clinic and haunted house. Maybe Halloween would be a more suitable occasion for their first community gathering.
Lindsay says, “Sure… I guess. And with Ben being in the theater, he could give us pointers.”
“Emma and I would need to talk it over.” Bless Ben’s sweet heart.
JD says, “There’s a ton of work to be done between now and then. A ton.”
Emma does the math in her head. “I’d be nine months pregnant by then.” She sounds like some annoying mom-to-be who can’t think of anything beyond her pregnancy. But it’s true. By the holiday season, she might be back in the city. Having a baby.
“You wouldn’t need to be up here,” says Beth. “We’d take care of the house. We’d be careful when we rehearsed. And you could come up to see the play.”
“I don’t know,” says JD. “Do we really want the preschool angels toddling after the angel Gabriel in a place where Broadway drunks got sober?”
Emma wishes he hadn’t said that. Rapunzel’s story wasn’t that simple. It wasn’t a joke. Emma feels protective of the diary writer whose name she doesn’t even know.
JD says, “If I say something here, will you promise to forget it by tomorrow morning when everyone’s sober?”
Could there be a better way of putting everyone more on edge?
“Everyone’s already sober,” Lindsay says icily. “Except you.”
“And me. I’m a little not sober,” says Ben. “I mean, I’m trying not to be sober.”
Emma is the only one who smiles.
“Emma’s driving,” Ben says.
JD says, “I’ve been having this weird dream since I started working on the house.”
Lindsay looks anxious. On guard.
Is there something else—something worse—that Lindsay hasn’t told them?
Lindsay’s watching, trying to figure out how to intervene, if she needs to.
Lindsay says, “Don’t you love listening to other people’s dreams?”
JD shoots her a dark look. But she’s not going to shut him up.
“Emma makes me listen to her dreams,” Ben says. “I have no choice.” Emma can’t remember one dream she’s told Ben. She makes a point of not boring him with her dreams. So why is Ben throwing her under the bus? Social discomfort makes people say strange things.
JD says, “I keep dreaming that I’m looking out the window of the house… and I see this girl with blond hair. She’s carrying a baby on her hip. They look like they come from another century. She doesn’t look happy. Then I look again, and she’s gone. It gives me the creeps. I wake up in a cold sweat.”
Emma tries to speak and can’t. She doesn’t know what she’d say. How can JD be dreaming about the girl she saw out the window? She hasn’t told anyone about it, not even Ben. Not since that first time they came down the driveway.
Wait. She did tell Lindsay. That day they came to look at the house. She told her she’d seen the girl and the baby and asked if Lindsay knew who they were.
Emma doesn’t believe in ghosts. She doesn’t believe in ghosts. She doesn’t believe in ghosts.
Words take shape in her head. She knows what she wants to say: How weird is this? I’ve seen a girl like that. A girl with a baby. I’ve seen her twice. JD’s dreamed about her, and I’ve seen her and…
Emma says nothing. How would she begin?
“Emma, are you sure you’re okay?” Ben gets points for noticing. The mere fact of his attention calms Emma, pulls her back from the edge of… what?
“I’m fine,” she says. “It’s just… the baby kicked.”
“Ooh,” say the two women, in the voices they’d use for a super-cute puppy. “Amazing!”
JD returns to his eggplant parm.
“Why can’t I feel the baby move?” says Ben. “It’s the strangest thing.”
“Maybe it doesn’t like you,” says JD.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Does Ben realize that JD is joking? If JD is joking.
“It means JD’s drunk,” says Lindsay.
“Right,” says Beth. “Sober, he’s the nicest guy in the world.”
“The nicest brother in the world,” says JD.
“The nicest half brother in the world,” says Lindsay.
“Also the nicest brother-in-law in the world,” JD says, leaning toward Beth. “Don’t forget.”
Beth sings, “How can I forget you if you don’t go away?” It’s hard to tell if she’s imitating someone with a good country voice, or if she just has a good country voice.
“I guess that’s my cue to be pushing off.” JD rises to leave.
“Are you okay to drive?” Ben’s right to ask. So why does Emma wish he hadn’t? It’s made him sound sort of stodgy, like somebody’s dad. Well, soon he is going to be somebody’s dad.
She likes the sweet JD who works on her house better than the slightly aggressive, slightly pushy person he is around his sister. Family often brings out the worst in people. Not her family, she promises herself.
JD leans down and kisses her cheek, right in front of everyone. He’s never done anything even remotely like that before. But there’s no way to say that. Emma touches her cheek where his lips have been. She wishes she didn’t feel that jittery buzz.
“Bye, boss lady. Bye, boss. See you Monday morning, bright and early.”
Then he’s gone, and Ben is still looking at her. Why does she feel guilty? She didn’t do anything wrong!
“Beth, can I help?” Emma gestures weakly at the dishes on the table.
“Stay where you are,” says Lindsay. “You’re pregnant.”
“I can carry a dish to the sink.” Emma’s trying to make a joke of it. It falls flat. Why did she and Ben move here? She misses her friends. She misses her old life.
Lindsay slumps in her chair, like a moody teenager. Beth rises to clear the table. Beth doesn’t protest when Emma picks up a stack of dishes and brings them into the cramped, messy kitchen. Hadn’t Lindsay said that Beth is a cook? In Emma’s experience, cooks are neat. She and Ben are.
Beth dries her hands on her grill master apron and turns to look at Emma, the first time she’s looked directly at her all night.
She says, “I’ll bet there’s some stuff about your house in the historical society archives. Records and ledgers from when it was a rest home. Patient charts, deeds of sale, stuff like that. Probably newspaper clippings. You’d be amazed how much crap there is. I think the local paper reported every time somebody took a dump.”
Emma says, “Text me the hours you’re open.”
“It’s pretty fluid. Text me when you want to come. It’s not like there’s a line out the door.”
“When JD’s using some toxic substance, it would be great to get away from the house.”
Oh, why had she made it sound like the only reason she was accepting was to escape a toxic event? She’s curious about the house, the doctor, his wife, and the woman who wrote the diary.
ON WEDNESDAY SHE drives into the city for a sonogram. Ben was supposed to come with her, but a last-minute meeting was called, and she has to go alone. Today is just a routine test, nothing important—she hopes. There will be more doctor’s appointments. It’s okay if Ben skips this one.
But she wishes Ben were here when Dr. Snyder glides the mouse across the slippery blue gel on her belly. If only doctors would learn to say Excellent, Great, Looking good, to keep up a constant stream of encouraging patter. She stares at the screen, at the marbleized patches of black and white, stretching and contracting. She turns away. She’s too anxious to look.
Finally, the doctor says what Emma has been praying to hear: Everything’s fine.
“Look,” he says. “You can see it.”
The blue cartoon arrow on the screen points at a shivering peanut.
“Wow,” says Emma.
“Country life must be agreeing with you. Keep it up. See you in a month.”
She’d planned to have dinner with Ben, but when she calls to tell him the good news, he says he doesn’t know how long his meeting will last. It’s about financing. Ben plans to float the names of actors who might be able to get them money if they are attached to the project.
Emma thinks of calling her friends, and going out for… a ginger ale? Her finger hovers over the phone. She doesn’t want to call them. She thinks of various crowded places she could have dinner by herself, restaurants she could order from. She used to like take-out Chinese food, even if it wasn’t all that great, but that taste has worn off with pregnancy. She could drive upstate and be home in time to make herself something delicious on her beautiful stove.
She leaves a message for Ben so he won’t worry if he tries to reach her while she’s driving through a dead zone.
How can he not take her call? Right. He’s in a meeting.
Emma likes the feeling of leaving the city without telling anyone. It feels like running away from home. It’s five o’clock when she gets to the house upstate, and the golden afternoon light shines down through the trees. She slows down, passes the giant oak, and she’s there.
Home.
There are no vehicles in the driveway. The front door is open.
JD always makes sure the house is closed tight when he leaves. She knows he was working today. Maybe one of the high school kids came back for something and forgot.
It makes her nervous, which isn’t what she’d expected. The door’s blown open. That’s all. She needs to tell JD to make sure it’s shut. The last thing she needs is raccoons in the kitchen.
Once more she feels that Little Person is protecting her. There’s nothing to worry about. She walks up the front steps.
On the porch, in front of the door, is a heap of orange peels. Someone sat here and ate orange after orange.
The journal. The woman who wrote it said she ate seven oranges in a day. A coincidence, obviously. Emma’s being silly. One of the kids must have brought oranges, and they had a little after-work party on her porch. That’s all. Better oranges than boxed wine, weed, and oxy.
Still, she feels ill at ease. She checks out every room. She even looks behind the moldy drapes that JD hasn’t gotten around to disposing of yet. Just as well, since she and Ben haven’t gotten around to replacing them. Nothing jumps out and says Boo!
Years ago she was house-sitting for a friend in Brooklyn. One morning she woke up and found the screen had fallen out of the door. Convinced that someone had cut it, she called the police. The cop who came was polite, but he obviously thought she was neurotic. How young she’d been, how alone, how anxious. She was a different person then, bouncing from job to job, wanting to feel secure. Pretending to be tough. The brave girl her parents didn’t believe in.
Ben likes her nerve, her independence. He doesn’t want someone weak and clingy.
She’s older. About to become a mother. But still, an open door and a pile of orange peels is… unnerving.
That night she hears noises, footsteps in the attic that make her tense until she convinces herself she’s imagining things. Maybe it’s squirrels: almost but not quite as bad as a person. She gets the knife and puts it under her pillow. Anyone would. It doesn’t mean she’s a coward.
She lies in bed for a long time until she stops feeling anxious. An owl moans in the distance. She can relax, let her mind drift toward something that happened not that long ago, something pleasant, what was it, something she means to do…
SHE’S STARTLED AWAKE by the sound of JD’s truck pulling up.
It’s morning.
She dresses quickly and meets JD on the porch.
They’ve never mentioned that evening at Lindsay’s. The more time passes, the more awkward it would be. How come you didn’t mention that you and Lindsay are related? Emma and JD don’t have that kind of relationship. She still knows nothing—besides what she learned that night—about his life. It doesn’t seem like he’s hiding anything. Lindsay’s hooking them up with her half-brother contractor, and not telling Ben and Emma they were connected, was maybe a shady thing for a Realtor to do. But so what? It’s worked out really well. She just wishes she could forget that JD kissed her at Lindsay’s. It meant nothing. He was drunk.
Emma says, “The door was open when I got here last night. I found all these orange peels on the porch.”
JD looks horrified. “But you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” says Emma. “I mean—”
“Orange peels?”
Emma nods.
“I think I know who it was. Some of my guys have pretty chaotic home lives. They’re in no rush to go home. I’ll have a talk with them. I’m sorry. I’ll tell them again. Usually I lock up myself, but I had an appointment for a friend to look at my truck, which has been running a little funny.”
“Funny?”
“Funny terrifying.”
They laugh. JD says, “I promise it won’t happen again. I’m really sorry.”
“That’s okay,” says Emma. “I survived.” She sounds more pitiful than she’d intended.
JD rests a comforting hand on her shoulder.
“Are you cold?” He must have felt her shiver.
“I’m fine, thank you.” How sad to feel thankful because a guy notices she shivered. Ben used to give her his jacket. He hasn’t, not for a while. She misses that kindness, that thoughtfulness. The worst thing she can do is feel sorry for herself.
SOMETIMES, LATELY, EMMA imagines she is involved in a love triangle: herself, Ben, the house. When Ben’s up from the city, he spends less time with her than he does roaming from room to room, pausing to gaze out each window. He can’t seem to stop running his hand over the surfaces that JD and his guys have brought down to burnished wood.
Ben often seems to be in a kind of trance, a sort of dream as he floats along the halls, looking in the bedrooms JD has repaired, averting his eyes from the ones that are still in rough shape. She thinks of Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, of Beauty wandering through the Beast’s palace.
Even on the most gorgeous summer afternoons, Emma has to beg Ben to join her out on the porch. He sits beside her for a few minutes, but his mind is elsewhere. She has to repeat everything, and it makes her realize how little she has to say. No wonder he isn’t listening. After a while Ben says he needs to go inside and get something, he’ll just be a minute. But when he doesn’t return, she knows where to find him.
He’ll be sitting in the theater staring at the stage. Transfixed. It’s as if he’s watching a play only he can see.
Maybe it’s the musical he’s working on, Peter Pan and the Lost Girls.
Or maybe it’s a play that doesn’t exist, a play that’s still being written.
A play about the house.