Ava’s cab parked in front of a wooden house, painted green. She paid and carried her bags to the front porch. The windows were leaded glass, wavy and old, distorting the reflection of the trees and telephone wires. Ava knocked.
After a minute a man opened the door. He was young, late twenties. “Yes?” he said abruptly, irritation in his voice. He held a drink in his hand. Beyond him in the fading light were high ceilings, crown molding, Oriental rugs.
“Hi,” Ava said. “Is this where Lane lives?”
“Who are you?” he said.
“I’m Ava. I’m her granddaughter.”
“Bullshit,” he said. “What’s this about?”
“Is she here?” Ava said.
“You got ID or something?”
She shook her head. “I’m only fourteen.” Kaitlyn’s warnings about strange men echoed through her head. “Who are you?” she added.
“Wait here,” the man said.
He closed the door, leaving Ava on the porch. After a minute he came back and opened it again. “You better come in, I guess,” he said.
She lugged her case over the threshold. A woman stood in the middle of the room—graying hair pulled back in a ponytail, a paint-stained dress. She looked old enough to be a grandmother, but unlike any grandmother Ava knew. The woman stared openly at Ava.
“Louise,” the woman said.
“No,” Ava said. “I’m Ava. Are you Lane?”
“Lane, what the hell is going on?” the man said.
“God, you look like your mother,” the woman said.
“Really?” Louise had been beautiful, and Ava thought herself plain, awkward.
“Okay, god,” the man said. “Let’s go sit down. I’m Oliver, by the way. I could use another drink.”
Ava followed them through a living room, dining room, and a dark hall to a kitchen at the back. Lane sat down at a wooden table. On it lay a spiral sketchbook, an empty glass, an ashtray and small wooden pipe.
“What’ll it be?” he said to Ava. “Diet Coke, water?”
“Water, please.”
Lane spoke. “I haven’t seen you in ten, eleven years.”
“I don’t remember it,” Ava said. “I was too little, I guess.”
“Yes,” Lane said. “You’ve grown.”
It was nearly dark out, the kitchen in shadows. Oliver switched on the light. He poured Ava a glass from the tap and fixed drinks for Lane and himself, brought everything to the table.
“Louise is dead,” the woman said. She was speaking as though she had forgotten and suddenly remembered a piece of trivia.
“Yes,” Ava said.
“That your mom?” Oliver asked.
Ava nodded.
“Shit,” he said.
He studied Lane’s face, saw a quietness overtake her, like a scrim behind her eyes. He recognized that expression—she shut down sometimes, shut people out. She wasn’t going to say much else.
“You eat?” he said to Ava.
“No,” she said.
“Alright, I’ll go pick something up. Give y’all some time.”
Oliver left them, drove to the Rouses, and ordered red beans and rice, macaroni and cheese, and fried chicken at the deli counter. He picked up a tray of pecan bars and stood in line. Lane hadn’t told him about this visit. Hell, he didn’t even know she had a granddaughter.
Things slipped Lane’s mind more and more frequently, but mostly they were of little consequence. Something this big—the daughter died and she hadn’t told him? When had this visit been arranged? He paid for the food and drove back slowly through the neighborhood, taking the long route to avoid the worst potholes. He had a bad feeling about all of this, but he would do what he always did—clean up the mess. He would take care of Lane, whatever she needed.
Lane had finally quit staring at Ava. Instead she folded a paper napkin into smaller and smaller rectangles, creasing each fold sharply with a fingernail. Ava came around the table and bent down to hug the woman, but Lane stiffened before patting Ava uneasily on the shoulder.
“Sorry,” Ava said. “Thank you for having me.”
Lane nodded, studying the napkin, the table’s surface.
“So this is where my mom grew up?” Ava said.
The question appeared to rouse Lane from her trance.
“Yeah,” Lane said. “Not just her. I grew up here, too, and so did my father. His parents built this house.”
“Wow, I didn’t know that,” Ava said.
She waited for Lane to respond, but her grandmother looked down at the table, said nothing.
After a minute, Ava said, “Is it okay if I look around?”
“Don’t touch anything.”
“I won’t.”
Ava left the kitchen, glad to get away from this strange woman. At the back of the house were two adjoining rooms. In the first, a wooden four-poster bed stood below a bank of windows. Lane’s bedroom. Antique furniture, framed prints, paintings on canvas and postcards tacked around the walls. Everything in it seemed to belong there, even though nothing matched. The next room was utilitarian and messy, a work space. Shelves were loaded down with buckets of paint. Papers and books were stacked on every surface, and the air smelled of harsh chemicals.
Ava explored the rest of the house, the formal living and dining rooms, a large parlor with a fireplace, several bedrooms stacked with paint cans and art supplies, crates of drop cloths wedged between two old wardrobes. The place was cluttered, but most of the things in it looked old and expensive. She hadn’t known her grandmother was rich. She tried to visualize her mother here and couldn’t.
She crept down the dark hallway to a den with an old bulky TV on a cart in one corner, a sofa, a rug. French doors opened onto another room with shuttered windows on three sides, a kind of enclosed porch. Freestanding racks of clothes lined the space, and in the center was a twin bed, a bedside table, a lamp. She switched it on.
Clothing cocooned the bed, transformed it into a magical space lined with boas, long vintage gowns, assorted garments looped over hangers, yards of fabric. She examined the racks and found they were costumes—a Scooby-Doo outfit, a large foam rectangle that read SOAP with arm and leg holes. Wigs of varying colors and styles lay in a pile. A bright blue pageboy, a red Pippi Longstocking with braids wired to stick straight out.
She heard the front door open and close, then Oliver called out, “Dinner!” He and Lane were in the kitchen, spooning food from Styrofoam containers onto plates.
“Hey, come get some grub,” Oliver said.
“Thank you,” Ava said.
The red beans were good, almost like her mom’s recipe, topped with hunks of grilled sausage. The three of them sat at the table. After a few bites a heavy lethargy overcame Ava and she pushed her plate away. She hadn’t been able to eat much since her mother died.
“May I please be excused?” she said. “I think I need to lie down.”
Oliver said, “Where are you gonna sleep? Lanie, do you have a plan?”
“No,” Lane said. “Wherever, I guess.”
“Can I sleep in the costume room?” Ava asked. “I saw a bed in there.”
“Fine with me,” Lane said.
“I’ll check and see if it needs sheets,” Oliver said. “Come on, let’s get you squared away.”
He pulled linens from a hall closet and Ava helped him make the bed.
“Alright, see ya,” he said.
He closed the French doors behind him. Ava sat on the bed, imagining her mother as a girl in this same spot. The streetlight filtered in through the fabric, imprinting the room with an aura of protection. The heavy food, the heat and anxiety, her poor sleep on the train the night before, all these hit her at once and she lay back and slept among the costumes.