Conundrum (24 page)

In the morning haze, when I uncurled my body amid the tangled covers, I
touched
Jeremy’s side of the bed. The sheet was cool and the house ominously quiet. I found the bedside clock and was surprised it read nine fifteen.
How had I slept so deeply? I hardly felt rested.
I made my way to the window and looked down at the driveway.

Jeremy’s truck was gone. I had no idea if he’d be back. Being Thursday, I assumed
he
had headed to the feed store to work.
My back muscles ached from my frenetic activity around the barn yesterday, so I took a scalding hot shower, then forced myself to eat a piece of toast and two fr
i
ed eggs. Eating did little to calm my fluttery stomach.
I kept my distance from the counter
,
where the postal notice lay beside the phone
, but I dared glance over to test my nerve, knowing I’d have to make the trip to the
p
ost
o
ffice
at some point
and sign for
the letter
. To my chagrin, the small slip of brown paper was gone.

Before I could run through the meaning of the paper’s disappearance—I had misplaced it, Jeremy had thrown it out, Buster had knocked it to the floor with his
curious nose
—Jeremy’s truck came barreling up the driveway, sliding to a stop with such abruptness that gravel flew in all directions under a cloud of dust.

Jeremy moved with
so much
fury that I flung the front door open, afraid he would splinter it with the force of his anger. I instinctively cowered
, curling into myself, not knowing what to expect. I was thoroughly acquainted with the magnitude of his
sheer
energy; just his size alone gave his emotions weight and
clout
. One look told me he wasn’t angry at me at all, but that did little to relieve my terror.

I
n
a brisk gesture, he
slap
ped
a
priority mail
envelope on the kitchen island counter.
He shook his head, at a loss for words. I could tell he’d been railing in his truck, something he told me he did from time to time—scream
ed
at his windshield as he drove, where no one could hear him.
His hair was damp, his face beaded with perspiration, even though the morning was cool and foggy.
He looked as if he had used up all his words and now nothing would come out of his mouth. I knew he was waiting for me to open the envelope and read what my mother’s business manager had sent us.

I moved cautiously to the counter. Jeremy’s breath came
out
in spurts through his nostrils, but he stood there, stiff and unmoving.
It was apparent
we had received
more than just a rent notice. I didn’t dare look in his eyes.

I pulled the letter from its sheath. A single sheet of paper. The kitchen silence enwrapped me. Outside, the dogs were roughhousing; the goats clamor
ed
for breakfast.
The sounds of a normal morning went on
beyond the walls of my house
, muted, distant, as if the rest of my existence was
blocked
by some invisible
force field
.
I was underwater again, in that pool, drifting down the concrete slope, staring up at the world through the rippling surface, knowing I was
sliding
to my doom without anyone noticing.
If you scream underwater, can anyone
up above
hear you?

My hand shook as I held the paper to read it. Just the imposing letterhead with its official businesslike appearance set my gut wrenching.
I had to read the scant three paragraphs four times before the words strung together in some sort of coherence. Nouns linked to verbs, triggering the synapses in my brain, but I grasped for some sense of it as if I
were
translating Latin. Yet, the words were simple and void of legalese. They stated quite plainly that Ruth Sitteroff, out of financial necessity, had sold the property located at 328 Rural Route C to Blake Enterprises. The occupants were to consider this document their thirty-day notice to vacate the premises.

Bl
a
ke Enterprises. Harv Blake—my mother’s business manager. The occupants were listed by name: Jeremy and Lisa Bolton.
They sounded like strangers to me.
Thirty days—how long was that?

Vacate. Leave. Move.

My head reeled in denial. This was a joke, right
?
My mother’s attempt to rattle us into submission, to one-up me for trumping her two days ago. My eyes asked these questions, but when I directed them unspoken to Jeremy, his expression gave me the answer I dreaded. I shook my head almost spastically.

“No. This is wrong. She would never—she can’t do this, can she?” My voice cracked, coming out in broken pieces from a broken heart.
I never expected anything like this—never in a million years. There had to a mistake. The letter was sent to the wrong people. The property listed was in error.

Thirty days? To leave?

My mind flashed over the years of labor we had put into our home—the hours compiled beyond my ability to guess. I thought about my dozen residents in the barn. Where would we go? Would I have to find homes for my animals? Visions of packing up boxes and hauling furniture into a big U-Haul truck barraged my mind. I batted each image away as it attacked.
They flew at me from all directions, these horrible
fractals
of my home, my haven and retreat, being dismantled. And then I pictured some people
—
faceless, shapeless
—
being handed the key to my front door, a handshake, a smile. A voice saying, “Oh, look
,
honey, what beautiful roses, and a pond!
A
nd I hear frogs—isn’t that quaint
?
”

I wanted to scream and shatter the pictures, but my voice was gone. Some sudden illness had ripped it from my throat—the same malady that had struck Jeremy. We were in a nightmare, that
moment when
you have to cry out but can’t. Where you need to flee, but your feet are frozen to the ground. Where you are naked and exposed and everyone can see you and they laugh
and you can’t do a damned thing about it
.

I heard my mother’s laughter and I covered my ears. I squeezed my eyes shut and found myself falling, falling off a cliff, my feet
pedaling
for
purchase
but finding none. I collapsed to the kitchen floor, needing Jeremy to hold me, to gather me up, to tell me he had a plan, had worked it all out. Would make it go away, this madness.

Jeremy’s voice made its way through my gloom. His tone was even. I expected to hear much more
—
defeat, anger, panic. The sound of his voice chilled my heart, its lack of emotion, something beyond resignation.

“I spoke with that lawyer. Dropped by his office after getting the letter a
t the
p
ost
o
ffice.” Jeremy paused and looked out the window toward the rose garden. His eyes were vacant, as if he had already
put
this place
, our home,
behind him. What I saw frightened me to my core. “He said, at this point, there’s absolutely nothing we can do. We could try
.
 
.
 
.
in time, to
.
 
.
 
.
” He gulped in a breath of air and cleared his throat. “Push for some legal action, some remuneration. That
,
maybe in months or years, we could be reimbursed—”

“But what about this notice, that we have to move
?
Can’t we refuse? Can’t we—”

“No. We could stall. Wait until we’re evicted. That would buy us a little time.” He turned and faced me, but it seemed he looked past me, to something distant. I almost wanted to follow his gaze, try to see what he was
staring
at
, but I was afraid I’d see what he saw
.

“Lisa, it doesn’t matter. Your mother won. I give up.”

“What do you mean, you give up? You’re going to just, what, walk away? Hand her our house on a—”

“Dammit, Lisa! It’s not our house any longer. It never was!
This was her plan all along. Why she never let us buy the place, put our names on the title.
You just don’t get it, do you?”

I tried to get up from the floor but had no strength. I looked up at
my husband
, who seemed to tower over me. “
Jer, please. We’ve got to try. There has to
be
something
.
 
.
 
.
” My throat clamped shut, preventing anything else
from
com
ing
out. A rock the size of a grapefruit lodged in my throat. I rubbed it to try to ease the pain.

I watched Jeremy take a long look around him. His gaze traveled
across
the kitchen, out the window, over to the front door. The calm that draped over him alarmed me. I shook uncontrollably, but not a muscle twitched on Jeremy’s body. He was like the living dead from some horror movie.

“That’s it, then. I’m done. I’m outta here.”

Before I had a chance to respond, get my voice working again and force words past the lump in my throat, he was out the front door and in his truck. I yelled at my legs to move, but they didn’t hear me. No one heard me, no one listened. I was screaming at the bottom of the pool, desperate for air, for rescue, and every
one in the world above was going on their merry way, oblivious to the danger I was in,
to
the few seconds I had left before I drowned.

After some time
I got to my feet and stumbled out the front door
.
Buster and Angel trot
ted
back through the settling dust on the driveway, their faces animated and
exuberant
after chasing Jeremy’s truck to the street
. How could they know that they were soon to be ripped away from their home
?

Thirty days? Where would I go? That wasn’t enough time. Jeremy was wrong. My mother would change her mind, back down. Give in. We would refuse to leave. Harv Blake could try to evict us, but we
wouldn’t
budge. We’d get a lawyer to put
together
some sort of stop order—something to prevent the eviction until the legal matters were settled.
Maybe Jeremy’s lawyer was wrong, unfamiliar with this type of situation. Maybe he special
iz
ed in water rights or something irrelevant.

I pictured Harv Blake’s smug face. His beady eyes and bulbous nose. I thought back to the day my mother had been “working” at his
place
, the night I set the house on fire and my mother didn’t come
home
for hours.
“
Harv wouldn’t let me leave
,
”
she said
.
As if any man could restrain my mother from doing what she wanted.

The word
collusion
came to mind.
What’s done can’t be undone
. Macbeth and his wife, whispering plans, murdering one innocent after another.
I would be added to the list of vanquished—
alongside
my father, my brother, my husband. I pictured my mother
carving
another notch
on
her belt
with a blunt knife
and smiling.

I went inside and left a message on Anne’s home answer
ing
machine. I needed to talk to someone, but not over the phone. Anne would be at work until five. I asked her to please come right over, as soon as she was able.
Anne would be my voice of logic, my clear head. She would have advice, know what I could and couldn’t do. How to proceed.
“
And should I then presume? And how should I begin?
”

I moped the entire day. I could do nothing but wander through my house, letting my hand light on the walls and furniture
, but nothing felt solid or familiar
. I took the dogs for a walk over the hills, unaware of the temperature, unable to tell if I was cold or hot, uncertain how many miles I walked before I wended my way home
with my feet blistered and aching
.
I fed all the animals and took the little doe, Sassy’s baby, into my lap. She balanced on my legs and butted my hand as I scratched her head. I couldn’t even cry as I thought about finding homes for my charges. Maybe I could
get
a place to rent with a fenced yard and some shelter. I snorted. How likely was that?
It would be hard enough to find a place that would allow dogs, let alone sheep, goats, and a lame horse.