House of Wonder Page 6

  Silla tried to talk to Jesus that night, but she couldn’t think of what to say. She didn’t know what was scaring her. She couldn’t identify that it was some unnamed stirring in the world of adults that had upset her, only that things didn’t seem right. The feeling was instinctual, like the way birds always seemed to know a storm was coming, the way they seemed to disappear from the sky half an hour or so before it grew dark with clouds. In the amorphous thing that was time to a four-year-old, Silla couldn’t attach spans to the events of the past few weeks. She knew that her parents had gone away and come back, and gone away and come back again. She knew that her father had been spending more time at the house, pouring tall glasses of whiskey and sitting out on the front porch. She knew that her mother had seemed nervous, burning food and spilling things and staying in the bathroom for hours at a time. And that day, she had been walking around the house in circles. Just around and around the outside of the house.

  Priscilla heard her door open. “Silla?” her mother whispered.

  Priscilla opened her eyes to see her mother’s face in the crack of the door, the hallway behind her as dark as the bedroom.

  “Can Mama come in?”

  Silla nodded and her mother, who was in her nightgown, came and curled up next to her on the bed, resting her head on her daughter’s small stomach.

  “Silla, they’re going to try and fix me tomorrow.”

  Silla thought about this for a moment. “Are you broken?”

  She heard her mother’s soft breath. “I think so.”

  “Where?” asked Silla, looking down at her mother’s hair, at her soft body. When things were broken, there were cracks and chips and fissures. Her mother looked perfect.

  “I’m scared,” said her mother.

  Silla thought for a moment, twisting her fingers in one of her mother’s curls. “Mrs. Lloyd says to talk to Jesus when you’re scared.”

  Priscilla’s mother pushed up with one hand, then the next, and looked at her daughter. “I don’t want to go,” she said, looking at Silla as if Silla might save her.

  That unnamed fear surged up in Silla’s stomach. “Are you coming back?”

  Her mother nodded. And Silla felt the fear ebb. “Well,” she said, reaching around for the doll that sat next to her on her nightstand. Her father had given it to her for her fourth birthday. She had round eyes with thick lashes, rosebud lips, and bright red hair. She looks just like you, he had said.

  “Take Suzy,” she said now, looking at the doll for a moment before holding it out for her mother. “She’ll make you feel better.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Blue Pills

  I sat on the cold edge of the tub and turned the water on, waiting for it to run hot before sticking the rubber stopper in the drain hole. It was an old claw-foot, with a green-tinged ring along the high-water line, and the beginnings of rust on the underside that no amount of cleaning would remove. The Nashes wouldn’t be bringing Rosie back until midday, but after a few hours of heavy sleep, I had awoken at the usual time—six thirty a.m. That’s when Rose always came bounding into my room, grasping a fistful of my white sheets and hauling herself onto the bed, her body vibrating with energy.

  When there were a few inches of water at the bottom of the tub, I let my clothes drop to the floor and climbed in. Bracing myself for the shock, I leaned back, feeling the chill of the frigid enameled iron against my skin. It took a moment, but we were soon acclimated to each other, the tub and I. And I let my head nod back and my eyes close. I pictured Warren’s face from the night before, the way he looked sitting on that hospital bed. And I thought of how Bobby had tended to him, gently assessing his wounds.

  Looking at the dry, pink bar of soap in the dish, I reached for it, submerging it in the water, letting it become slick and quick, ready to slide from my grasp. I lifted my legs out of the water and looked at my long-neglected stubble. Reaching for the razor high up on the windowsill, I set to work. I was through with one leg when the phone rang. With a soapy hand, I grabbed the portable phone that I had placed on the closed toilet seat, in case the Nashes called. It was Maggie.

  “How was your mom’s?” she asked through a yawn. I heard her boys in the background.

  Leaning back against the tub, I let my pink razor drop into the water and float there. Then I told her about Warren.

  “Jesus,” she said. “Is he going to be all right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I mean, physically, he’s going to be fine.”

  Maggie heard the uncertainty in my voice. “But . . . ,” she said, gently leading me to elaborate.

  “But I guess it doesn’t change that someone beat the shit out of him. If that’s what even happened.” With my free hand, I swished some of the suds out of the way to reveal the clear water beneath. “And we have no idea why.”

  After my bath, I sat myself down in front of my computer with the intention of getting some work done. But my mind veered continually off course until I heard the crunch of tires on our gravel driveway and rose to peer surreptitiously out the window. Miriam Nash stepped out of the passenger side of her husband’s very British SUV and began unstrapping Rose from her booster seat.

  “When you come to Connecticut,” I heard her say, “you’ll get to see your cousins Madison and Lincoln.” Duncan’s sister had subscribed to the convention of naming her progeny after dead presidents. “Would you like that?”

  I waited, tucked out of sight, feeling disoriented by events of the previous night, and watched Miriam, whose silver bob was pushed back neatly by a headband, and Rose, whose chaotic red curls looked like tangled yarn.

  Miriam took Rose’s hand and led her up the stone path to the front steps of our tiny green gambrel cottage, which was once the residence of the caretaker to the large estate situated several hundred yards back. Neat as a pin! the ad had said. And despite its dated touches—the wood-paneled kitchen, the avocado-colored carpet—it was. The property was still crisscrossed with horse paddocks, though the Pritchards, from whom we rented, no longer rode or bred. Mrs. Pritchard’s husband had suffered a punctured lung from a kick from a stallion, and after that, the stable had been sold off, animal by animal.

  When the bell rang, I hung back for a moment, then strapped on a big, gracious smile. “Hi, you two,” I said warmly as I opened the front door. Squatting down, I held out my arms and let Rose fly into them. “My girl,” I said, holding the back of her head in my hand. “I missed you.” With one of Rose’s hands in mine, I stood. “Did you guys have a fun night?” I asked, looking from Rose to Miriam and back to Rose again.

  “Yeah,” answered Rose casually, as she walked past me into our home, letting her backpack slide off her back, “I got to have waffles for dinner.”

  Miriam’s gaze followed Rose inside the house, where she was riffling through a bag full of grandparent-acquired booty. Rose loved to gather trinkets, to collect coins and wrappers and ribbons. She was always bereft when I insisted on throwing any of it away. It made me worry that she had some of my mother’s nature, that one day she would find herself a captive of it. “It’ll be good for Rose,” said Miriam, her head tilted affectionately, “to have her daddy back in the States.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “she was just asking about when she would see him again.”

  Miriam let out a noise that signified her profound relief. “I’m so glad they’re bringing him back to New York.”

  From the inside out, I felt myself stiffen. “You mean for the holidays?” I asked.

  Miriam met my eye, her expression echoing the confusion in my own. “Well, he’ll be back in time for Christmas,” she explained, with a gentle smile. “But he’s moving back to the States. He’s done in Tokyo.”

  “Oh,” I said, as if I were pleased, “that’s great!”

  Miriam’s face twisted just a touch, as if she found my ignorance troubling. “I’m sure he’ll be cal
ling you about it soon.”

  “Oh,” I said lightly, brushing away the slight, “I’m sure he will.”

  Miriam nodded. “When we spoke to him,” she started cautiously, “we mentioned how nice it would be to have Rose come and spend Christmas with us up in Connecticut.” My hand darted up to my chest and I began worrying my necklace, a single hammered gold disk with the letter R carved into it. It had been a gift from my mother. And Warren, the card had said. “It would give her a chance to get to know her cousins,” Miriam explained. “And of course she hasn’t seen Duncan very often over the past four years either.”

  I tried to smile. “I’m sure we can figure something out.”

  Despite his flaws, or perhaps in some cases because of them, everyone loved Duncan. When Duncan walked into a room, glasses were raised. “You’re Duncan Nash’s girlfriend?” people used to ask, and I’d proudly say that I was. When we first met, I was bartending to keep financially afloat after a round of layoffs at an ad agency I had worked for in New York. Duncan had an apprenticeship with a renowned English chef with a French name who was known equally for his skill and his vitriol. Duncan and some of the kitchen staff used to come into the bar to lick their wounds after their nights at the restaurant. They drained their drinks and admired their scars and mocked the chef whom they both revered and feared. Duncan did the best impersonation. “Motherfucking-cocksucking-stupid-American-cunt!” Duncan would quote in his best approximation of a British accent, his words sounding like a drumroll. I would listen and laugh with the rest of them, and Duncan would smile at me.

  Then one night, I walked out of the bar to find Duncan waiting for me. He was leaning against a telephone booth with his arms crossed over his chest and smiling, like ours was going to be a romance from a movie. And for a while, it was.

  Duncan was the first man besides my father to tell me that I was beautiful. He had snuck us into the pool at a posh hotel and as I came up for air after diving in after him, our whispers and giggles echoed around the dark room. I dipped my head back to let the water slide off my hair and I looked at him, only my head visible as my limbs circled under the surface that twinkled with the city’s lights.

  “You know you’re beautiful,” he said casually, the words hanging between us until his hand skimmed the water, playfully sending a small spray into my face.

  When my father used to say those words, my mother would scold him. “Don’t tell her that,” I’d hear her whisper. “She’s so much more than that.” To my mother, beauty was a junk currency, one that lost its value almost as soon as you had finished counting it.

  When she was younger, I understood that my mother’s beauty was something to behold. “I was the first redhead to win Miss Texas,” she used to say proudly. “They were all blondes and brunettes before me.” One of the pictures still displayed on the wall by the stairs at 62 Royal Court was of my mother wearing her crown and holding an armful of flowers, her sash proudly announcing her new title. Her hair hung past her shoulders in thick, smooth curves and she had full, ripe cheeks that bespoke youth and health, and the ephemeral nature of both.

  When Duncan told me that I was beautiful, it didn’t come as a warning or a caution, but the most charming type of appreciation. Duncan was unconditionally charming. But the problem with a charming man is that everyone finds him so. And after several years, I started to notice something else, another ingredient that diluted the admiration with which people would ask if I was Duncan Nash’s girlfriend. It would take me years and a few very unpleasant discoveries to realize that it was pity.

  Then came the series of humiliating, tear-streaked arguments and the sort of theatrical relationship that plays well on television and in the movies, but not in real life. Like most women, I eventually realized that love is supposed to be quiet, not loud. It’s supposed to make you feel whole, not broken. And like most women, I had to find this out the hard way.

  When I became pregnant with Rose, my relationship with Duncan was in its death throes. We said that we were “taking a break,” which is what men say when they’d like the option of possibly having sex a few more times, and what women say when they’re having trouble accepting reality. And that’s just what happened. I had stopped taking my birth control pills and hadn’t seen Duncan in five weeks when the doorbell to my apartment sounded. Then the man who knew exactly the sorts of words I wanted to hear came in and said them.

  The day I missed my period—before I even took the test—I understood that I was pregnant. And the knowledge felt like a cold, deep spring inside me. Once and only once did I have sex without protection. But sometimes fortune favors the reckless. Because in the end, I got Rose.

  Three days later, finally ready to confirm what I already knew, I sat in the bathroom staring at two pink lines for a very long time—until my roommate pounded on the door. Jenna, are you okay? I told her that I was and I picked myself up and I opened the door and squeezed past her on my way to the kitchen, where I drank one glass of milk, and then another. The next day I went to my mother’s house for our birthday and Warren looked at me as I was picking up bunches of discarded wrapping paper, his head tilted, his eyes searching. My mother was bringing the leftover cake to the spare refrigerator in the garage.

  “What?” I asked impatiently.

  Warren seemed to read my face and then his eyes widened almost infinitesimally. Something unspoken was exchanged between us, and I looked away, ashamed. What sort of woman would let this happen? I felt like a stupid teenager, accidently getting pregnant. Squatting down, I reached under the table for a shiny blue gift-wrap bow and I felt Warren crouch next to me. “Don’t worry, Jenna,” he said, his face as serious and grave as it ever got. “Warren will help you.” He reached for a scrap of wrapping paper and put it in the garbage bag that hung from the back of one of the kitchen chairs. I felt him hesitate before lightly resting his hand on my back.

  I folded forward as tears sprang from my eyes. Then, hearing our mother’s voice call for someone to bring out the lasagna, I began wiping my face furiously, blotting it with the sleeve of my shirt. “Don’t tell Mom, okay?” I asked, standing quickly as I grabbed the tray of lasagna and brought it to the garage.

  In no small way, Warren was why I had Rose. For nine months, Warren and I had formed next to each other, cells dividing to become hearts and eyes and fingers. We had breathed each other in and out, more alike than different.

  And then we were born.

  As I grew, I developed a knowledge of the customs and norms and taboos that govern us, that tell us what to say and how to act and who to be. Knowledge that was added in layers, in strata, until I became a fully formed adult. And the further away from childhood I moved, the more I realized how poorly equipped Warren was, how naked. So when I became pregnant, I felt as if some cosmic die had been cast, and it was time to find out if what made Warren Warren was inside of me as well. It was time to find out if some penalty was to be exacted for my getting to be the normal one. I didn’t think most people would understand that. In retrospect, I’m not sure I did.

  Duncan, for his part, took the news stoically. We made one last attempt to become the couple we never could quite figure out how to be. For me, the effort was as compulsive and impossible as forcing together two magnets with like charges. I moved into his apartment; we talked about baby names; he went with me to doctors’ appointments. When he wasn’t in the restaurant and I wasn’t at the agency, we’d take walks around the city. Through it all, he seemed like a barely domesticated animal whose true nature hadn’t been entirely bred out of him. He’d sit silently, his mind miles and miles away.

  Then one Saturday morning as I sat on the floor folding laundry, my belly spilling out over my lap, he came out of the tiny bedroom and settled on the coffee table next to me.

  “Shep says they’re opening a location in Tokyo.” The sentence took too long to come out; I should have noticed that.

 
“That’s cool,” I said as I snapped a white T-shirt in front of me. “Maybe you’ll get to go check it out.”

  The thick silence that followed made my hands, still holding the half-folded shirt, sink slowly down. “What?” I asked.

  “They actually want me to run it.”

  The impossibility of such a monumental move overwhelmed me. “Duncan,” I said, gesturing to my swollen stomach, “I can’t move to Japan right now.”

  And from the expression on his face, I realized that wasn’t what he was asking.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Maglons

  P ressing the button on the lower left side of the screen, I shut off my monitor and lifted my laptop from its docking station.

  “You taking off?” asked Maggie, casting her eyes at me from over one of her thin shoulders. Despite her birdlike frame and Catholic-school upbringing, Maggie used to be the type of girl who would get into fights, pulling hair and pressing nails into skin like a ferocious little mink. She referred to it as her “Bitch-Stole-My-Man” era, a fact I was occasionally reminded of by the suddenness of her motions.

  I startled slightly. “Yeah,” I said, zipping my laptop into its case. “I need to make a couple of stops before I grab Rose.” Standing, I slung the bag over my shoulder. “We’re going to head over to my mom’s. See how Warren’s doing.”

  “Tell him I hope he feels better.” Maggie had met Warren only once, at Rose’s third birthday party. I had warned her in advance that Warren was different, and I saw her discreetly watching him over the course of the afternoon, her dark eyes finding him as he hung back, away from the frenzy of cake and presents and balloons.

  After my mother and Warren had left, when Maggie and I were in the kitchen shoving frosting-covered paper plates into the garbage, she said with her trademark frankness, “You know your brother’s not just weird, right?”