House of Wonder Read online

  “No!!!” she protested. “I want to see Gabby!”

  Laying my hand on her shoulder, I lowered my head so that we were face-to-face. “Baby,” I said, “Mommy needs to go over there by herself, okay?”

  “But I don’t want to stay here!”

  Suddenly Warren was down from his seat. “Come on,” he said, already moving toward the doorway, his hand extending behind him—an invitation for Rose to take it. “You can help Uncle Warren with his plane.”

  Rose looked reluctantly at Warren’s hand before she gripped it limply, as if it were a consolation prize.

  I stepped out onto the back deck, then down the steps, squinting at the air, which was clear and bright and cold. The grass was hard beneath my feet, yielding little as I walked across it. Cresting the hill, I saw the maple that lay toppled on its side across the pond, regal and elegant even in repose, ice beginning to form in a thin layer around its submerged branches.

  As step by step I drew closer to the Vannis’ house, I felt a shaky uncertainty and dreaded delivering my canned speech to Bobby. The timing. The job. Our responsibilities.

  Sunlight reflected off the kitchen windows, making them shine like mirrors against the sky. And as I stepped onto the back deck, I saw Mrs. Vanni through the window, sitting at her kitchen table. I waved and smiled as I approached. She looked out at me, but her face tightened a bit, as if she wasn’t sure she recognized me, this girl clomping up onto her deck. As if she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to.

  My steps became less assured as I approached. I knocked on the glass of the back door. Ba-bum. Only then did Mrs. Vanni rise from her seat at the table. She walked over, the chair in which she had been sitting displaced behind her, her coffee mug resting where she had left it on the table.

  “Hi, Mrs. Vanni,” I said, smiling as she opened the door.

  She returned my smile, but it was sad, full of regret. “Hi, Jenna,” she said. “Come on in.”

  I stepped inside and shook off the chill. “I can’t believe this storm!” I said, gesturing behind me toward the maple. But as Mrs. Vanni’s face remained impassive, I felt a strange sinking, as if I were headed down a river in a raft, unaware of the falls that lay ahead. “Did you guys have any damage here?” I asked.

  She seemed reluctant to meet my eyes. “No,” she said with a slow shake of her head. “We were fine.”

  “Well, I actually just came over to speak with Bobby,” I said, keeping my face and tone polite. “Is he home?”

  “I’m afraid he’s not,” she said.

  “Oh.” Confused, I gestured toward the street. “I thought I saw his car out front.”

  “He went for a jog.”

  “Mrs. Vanni . . . ,” I said, beginning slowly. “Is everything all right?”

  She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, honey,” she said, shaking her head. “I know that everything that’s been going on in the neighborhood has been hard on your family.” Her eyes opened suddenly and she looked at me. “And I’ve been defending Warren,” she said, needing me to believe her. “Whenever anyone has said anything, I’ve always said that Warren Parsons has lived in this neighborhood for over thirty years and never caused any trouble.” Her gaze dropped away, as if she couldn’t say what came next while looking me in the eyes. “But it’s gotten hard to ignore what people are saying.”

  My instinct was to remain as still as possible. “What have people been saying?”

  Her eyes met mine, and her face softened. “The police found a frame. At your mother’s house.”

  My face must have begged for further explanation. So? So what?

  “It was the frame the Doogans kept their coin collection in.”

  My eyes slipped shut as I tried to block out the information.

  “And Lydia,” Mrs. Vanni went on, referring to my stepmother, “told Shelley Ditchkiss that she thinks all of this is related to the problems that run in your mother’s family.” She looked at me, not wanting to continue but doing so anyway. “The mental problems.”

  “Mental problems?” There are no mental problems, I was about to say. Until I remembered my grandmother, the woman in the picture, with the eyes that could see through time. Warren’s more like a Briggs, Mom had said.

  “I’m just so sorry all of this happened,” Mrs. Vanni said. Then her head began to nod, as if urging me toward a determination. “I think both your mother and your brother need help, sweetie.”

  I imagined Warren, moving softly and silently, his eyes searching and scanning the homes on Royal Court, seeing those things that were valued by the families that surrounded us, seeing those things that would ultimately go missing. It was as if he was collecting the relics of normal family life, perhaps to re-create it. You could see how Warren, growing up where we had, might think that things were the solution.

  “I think I need to get back home,” I said, my voice sounding faraway, even to my own ears.

  “Let me know if I can help,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said, making for the door. “Bye, Mrs. Vanni.”

  “Good-bye,” I heard her reply as I slipped outside.

  My breath came jagged and quick as I took small, efficient steps and hurried down the stairs, desperate to put my feet on the hard, cold earth beyond them. And I knew in that indefinable but undeniable way that the mental problems to which Mrs. Vanni had referred were real and secret and bigger than I knew. I imagined how Lydia had offered them up as a way to exonerate my father and by extension herself, to make Warren even more concretely my mother’s problem.

  Keeping my head down, I looked only at the grass beneath my feet as I walked, the sun beginning to melt the frost that had coated the blades. And I wished it were night. I wished that I didn’t hear the buzz of chain saws in the distance, the murmur of voices calling to one another from porch to porch, deck to deck, saying again and again, Can you believe this storm? I wished the air around me were quiet and still and lit only by a round white moon. Because I didn’t want any witness to my thoughts. It wasn’t the first time that I had wondered if Warren had anything to do with the thefts, but it was the first time I meant it.

  Passing the fallen maple, I tried to find that place, that spot deep in my core, that knew what Warren knew, that connected me to him, that tethered us always together. But it was as if the line had been cut. Warren, I whispered, as I remembered looking up to him as he sat in the tree’s high branches, bringing my hand above my eyes to shield them from the sunlight that filtered down through its leaves.

  I passed the wild-looking forsythia bush and its sprays of barren branches. The deck sounded hollow as I stepped onto it, and as I slid open the door to the kitchen, I saw that no one was there.

  From upstairs, I could hear the unintelligible peaks of Rose’s voice. She’d be telling Uncle Warren about how Gordo stole her pizza crust last night. Or that her plane shouldn’t be pink or red but pink and red striped. And in the bright light of my childhood kitchen, I brought my hands to my face and I cried. It was a brief indulgence, a necessary one, before I followed the path to the office my mother had taken with the phone pressed against her chest.

  When I opened the door, she was sitting in the corner, her head resting against the back of the old leather wingback chair. The office had been my father’s. It was still painted forest green and the chair was embellished with nailhead trim. It was the sort of room in which a man was supposed to think big thoughts. The sort of room in which he was supposed to move the chess pieces of his life. It was intended to look collegiate and official, I supposed, but instead it looked like a stage set. As if you could push the walls gently and watch them fall to the ground with a thud and a cloud of dust. I imagined most of the homes in the neighborhood once had an office like this. I imagined that most had been turned into fitness areas or extra bedrooms.

  Mom’s stare didn’t change as I entered. She looked out the window, in
front of which the bayberry bush had grown tall. Hovering on the single step that led to the sunken room, I waited for her to acknowledge me.

  “Mom,” I finally said, “I just talked to Mrs. Vanni.”

  Mom’s face was smooth and placid, though her head still relied on the support of the chairback. I took a breath and realized that my heart was racing; then I crossed my arms over my chest. When I spoke, the words came quickly. “Mom, the Doogans kept their coins in a picture frame.”

  Her stare dropped to an inconsequential spot in front of her, but she didn’t say a word. I wanted her to come back to life, to acknowledge me. I wanted her to refute what I had heard from Linda Vanni. I talked to Liz Doogan and she said they kept those coins in a leather box! But my mother remained silent. I tried to keep the quaver from my voice when I spoke again. “I don’t think this looks good for Warren, Mom.” I studied the elegant line of her nose, the beautiful bones that you could still see beneath the soft pads of her cheeks. “And Lydia has been telling people things. About your side of the family.”

  Mom brought her hand to her forehead and stroked back her hair, closing her eyes and leaning against her own touch. “Hattie died,” she said, looking back out the window. “The nursing home just called.”

  “Oh, Mom!” I gasped. I took careful steps, then sat on the edge of the ottoman in front of her chair, resting my elbows on my knees. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. “Don’t be sorry. She wasn’t my mother.”

  Finally, Mom looked at me. The sadness in her eyes seemed ancient. “Jenna, honey,” she said, “I need to tell you something.” She waited, watching my face. And then it came out plainly. “Your grandmother didn’t die when I was five. She was in an institution for seventeen years.”

  “What?” The word felt like an echo of a shout from somewhere in my chest.

  “They had given her a lobotomy.” I felt the muscles in my legs soften, as if a vial of chloroform had been passed underneath my nose. “And it didn’t . . .” Again, she looked at the bayberry. “It ruined her.” Her fingers almost drummed on the end of the chair’s arms, but her voice remained steady. “And for all that time, I thought she was dead.”

  “My God, Mom,” I said.

  Again, my mother’s head swiveled toward me, her face squared with mine. “They did things like that back then, Jenna,” she said, reading my shock. “It was the fifties. You didn’t talk about things like”—she shifted, as if channeling the era’s discomfort—“mental problems.”

  “Was she mentally ill?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. I was so little when she went away.” With her chin tipped back, she squinted at her memories. “I know everyone thought she was hard to handle. First her parents and then my daddy. I don’t think she was the daughter or wife everyone wanted her to be.” My mother inhaled. “I remember her being wonderful, though. Strange, but wonderful.”

  I pictured Warren walking through the neighborhood with his odd gait, his eyes on the sky, and on the plane gliding through it. I wondered what would have happened to him if he had been born a woman in Texas in the 1930s.

  “Why did they do it?” I asked.

  Mom shook her head. “It was supposedly voluntary.” She glanced down at her legs, smoothing the black fabric that covered her thighs. “But the hospital where it was done closed down and she was moved. All the records are gone, so . . . there’s a lot I don’t know about it.”

  “When did you find out?”

  My mother’s shoulders dropped. And she looked at me as if it were my heart that was breaking. “The day she died.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Hattie’s Take

  1973

  H umming mosquitoes and fat moths thumped and bumped into the window screen in front of Silla, drawn to the light inside. Stewart and her father were in the Harrises’ living room. They were leaning back in their chairs and discussing the types of things that fathers and sons-in-law discussed, while she and Hattie were supposed to be fixing appetizers in the kitchen.

  “What do you want the franks to go in?” asked Silla, not looking up from the pot in which the contents of a package of cocktail wieners and a can of crushed pineapple were swimming around in a bottle’s worth of chili sauce.

  Hattie was leaning against the counter, her hand resting on the Formica with a cigarette between two fingers. She bent over to pull a silver bowl from one of the cabinets. “In here,” she said, tapping it against Silla’s back.

  Silla took it from her, keeping her body angled toward the stove, her eyes on her hands. Hattie leaned back against the counter. Even without turning, Silla knew that Hattie was watching her. It was the first time they had been alone together since she had married Stewart. That was six months ago now.

  Silla heard Hattie take a drag of her cigarette. Through her exhalation, Hattie said, “I know you think your father did some horrible thing.” Her words wafted lazily up, like a twirling stream of smoke. “That’s why you ran off with that boy.” Silla heard her slide the amber glass ashtray across the counter. “But someday you’ll realize that your daddy was actually doing you a big favor.”

  Silla was silent. She picked up the metal spoon and sank it into the pot, stirring. And even though she felt every muscle in her face tighten, even though she felt her jaw clench and her teeth press together, she remained silent. From the living room she heard her father slap his knee, heard him laugh. He was probably telling Stewart about the time they sent Silla to the store for a head of iceberg lettuce and she came home with a cabbage.

  “Does Stewart know?” asked Hattie, her voice laced with false innocence. “About your mama?” At that, Silla’s head whipped over her shoulder to look at Hattie. She couldn’t help it. Hattie’s eyes were heavy, her open mouth lifted at the corners. “He doesn’t know, does he?”

  Silla glanced at the long gray tip of her stepmother’s cigarette, then quickly turned back to the stove.

  “You think he would have married you if he knew?” asked Hattie. And Silla prayed that she would stop talking, that she would just shut her damn mouth. But Hattie went on, her voice disinterestedly musing. “But you had to go diggin’, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t go diggin’,” shot Silla over her shoulder.

  “Now you have to spend the rest of your life lying to your husband, when you could have just not known.”

  She heard her father’s voice from the living room. “Hey, girls,” he called, “where’s that crab dip!”

  Silla dropped the spoon on the counter with a deliberate clatter and jerked open the door to the fridge, pulling out the platter of crab dip and crackers. Without looking at Hattie, she walked out of the kitchen, forcing herself not to scurry, making herself move with defiant ease.

  Her father and Stewart both turned toward her as she entered the living room. And so she smiled. “Mrs. Lloyd’s famous crab dip,” she said.

  “Silla, honey,” said her father, as she set the platter on the coffee table, “I was just telling Stewart about how it was Cal Harper who got you involved in the pageants.”

  “That’s right,” she said, humoring her father. “Mr. Harper had me sign up for Miss Harris County.”

  “You know, Cal said he really thought she had a chance,” said her father, speaking to Stewart now, “at Miss America.”

  Stewart just smiled into his lap. He knew that the subject of Silla’s abandoned career as a beauty queen was still a difficult subject for Lee. After all, he had been her manager. And married women were prohibited from competing in any of the high-stakes “Miss” pageants. They were allowed entry only into the dowdy old “Mrs.” contests, where you might win a year’s free dry cleaning and get your picture in the PennySaver.

  Hattie slipped in, carrying the franks in a bowl and set them next to the crab dip. “Now, now,” she said, sitting on Lee’s lap and draping her arm across his n
eck. “You can’t stop a girl from falling in love.” Then with her hard jaw jutting out, she looked at Stewart. “So, Stewart, tell me,” she said. “What’s this about a job in New Jersey?”

  The previous week Stewart had flown up to Morristown for an interview at Millhouse’s headquarters. They run cheese out of Jersey, he had told Silla before he left. And she couldn’t stop laughing. It just sounded so silly, these big giant companies having whole offices devoted to selling cheese.

  “It would be a big promotion,” she said, looking right at Hattie before Stewart could answer. “If he gets it.”

  “Imagine that,” said Hattie. “Our little Priscilla, living up there in New Jersey. Wouldn’t that be something?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Tree Bridge

  M y mother and I sat in silence for a long time, my hand over hers as I watched her eyes. I saw relief there, a relief that rushed in after dread suddenly and with finality released its hold. My mother had never wanted anyone to know about what happened to my grandmother. To her, in a very real way, my grandmother had died when my mother was five.

  “So Dad knew?” I finally asked, realizing that he was the likely source of Lydia’s knowledge.

  With the back of her head still resting against the leather chair, Mom looked at me. “Not for a long time,” she said, before turning back to the bayberry. “He was the only person I ever told.”

  I imagined him driving back from Alexandra’s college yesterday with Lydia, his eyes fixed on the road. What is it, Stewart? Lydia would say. And he’d pause. There’s something I’ve never told you. About Priscilla’s mother.

  “I’m so sorry, Mom,” I said.

  She turned her palm to meet mine and gave my hand a small squeeze. “It’s all right,” she said. “But if you don’t mind, I’m just going to sit here for a little while.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”