House of Wonder

House of Wonder

“With keen insight and rare emotional truth, Sarah Healy hits every mark with
House of Wonder
. It's funny, sad, hopeful, and heartbreaking and filled with characters that stick with you and make you care. If you've ever known an outsider or an oddball—or been one—this is a novel for you.”

—Augusten Burroughs,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Running with Scissors
and
Sellevision

“Sarah Healy's
House of Wonder
is an emotionally gripping tale of love, loss, and the universal convolutions of family. She paints her characters into life until you feel as if you've known them forever. I savored every delicious subtlety.”

—Emily Liebert, author of
You Knew Me When
and
When We Fall

“
House of Wonder
shows how family ties tend to worm their way from matters of obligation to matters of the heart, quickly and completely. The delicious dips into family history and the complex relationships in this book are as lovely as they are deep.”

—Jennifer Scott, author of
The Sister Season
and
The Accidental Book Club

Can I Get an Amen?

“A sparkling debut novel about dealing with family and finding love. An absolute treat!”

—
New York Times
bestselling author Janet Evanovich

“An emotional and satisfying novel that is as tender as it is funny—a fabulous debut that's fresh, honest, and addictive. Don't miss it!”

—
New York Times
bestselling author Emily Giffin

“Touching, funny, and full of heart. A highly entertaining novel about love and family, secrets and forgiveness.”

—
New York Times
bestselling author Lisa Scottoline

“Funny, smart, wise, and refreshing . . . the work of a great new talent and an obviously gifted writer.”

—Valerie Frankel, author of
Thin Is the New Happy
and
Four of a Kind

“A soaring debut! . . . A beautiful story that will leave readers waiting breathlessly for her next book.”

—
New York Times
bestselling author Beth Harbison

“Healy's supporting characters are charming.”

—Publishers Weekly

“More about starting over and learning to forgive rather than religion. . . . Healy delivers as many laugh-out-loud moments as touching ones, and with praise from authors like Emily Giffin, seems sure to join the ranks of women's fiction favorites.”

—Examiner.com

“Explores faith in an uncompromising, courageous manner . . . funny, thoughtful, provocative. . . . It's difficult to believe this is Healy's first book. One can only hope there will be many more.”

—Fresh Fiction

“Ms. Healy's funny debut novel is like Kim Gatlin's
Good Christian Bitches
swabbed with makeup remover.”

—
The
New York Times

 

Can I Get an
Amen?

New American Library

Published by the Penguin Group

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A Penguin Random House Company

First published by New American Library,

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Copyright © Sarah Healy, 2014

Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA
REGISTRADA

LIBRARY O
F CONGRESS CATALOGIN
G-IN-PUBLICATION DAT
A:

Healy, Sarah, 1977–

House of wonder/Sarah Healy.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-101-61410-5

1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Twins—Fiction. 3. Single mothers—Fiction. 4. Families—Fiction. 5. Life-change events—Fiction. 6. Domestic fiction. 7. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

PS3608.E2495H68 2014

813'.6—dc23 2014001662

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For my husband,
Dennis

Dogs never bite me. Just humans.

—MARILYN
MONROE

The House on Royal Court

O
urs were dinners of boneless chicken breasts, smeared and then baked in the congealed contents of a red and white can. My mother would have clipped the recipe from a magazine, using sharp orange-handled scissors, the type that can slice down a length of wrapping paper like a fin through placid water. Warren and I would sit waiting, eating our green bell pepper quarters filled with twisting orange strings of squirt cheese. They filled the role of vegetable, the bell pepper and cheese boats, but I'd lick out just the cheese. And then a timer would beep assertively and a steaming casserole dish would be pulled from the oven and set down in front of us. Portions would be scooped and piled on top of our plates, and then Warren would notice a desiccated piece of rice that was stuck to
his fork from three dinners ago. His brows would draw together as he stared at it, and my mother would take the fork from his hands with a gentle tug. “For goodness' sake, Warren,” she'd say, scraping the fleck off with one of her long, shiny magenta fingernails. “It's just rice.”

My mother's fingernails were things of wonder. Each week she would go and have them wrapped in some sort of space-age material that made them as hard as drill bits. Then Sheryl, the manicurist to whom all the mothers went, would adorn them with snowmen or beach balls or abstract geometric shapes that my mother called “contemporary.” “I love the contemporary design that Sheryl did this week,” she'd say as she admired her fanned-out fingers. When we couldn't sleep, those fingernails would trace figure eights on our backs. We would close our eyes, feeling our mother's fingers skating across the planes of our skin, listening to her voice as she sang. Her speaking voice was soft and feminine; it was lapping waves of vowels. But when she sang, her voice was the type that would penetrate. It was the type that would make men stare as they ran their fingertips up and down the sides of their sweating highball glasses. But we didn't know that yet. We just knew that when she sang, we wanted to let the music seep inside us. When she won Miss Texas in 1972, she sang Anne Murray's “Snowbird,” but with us, she tended toward old jazz standards. Her pageant songs were for brightly lit stages; they were for judges with clipboards. In our bedrooms at night, we heard songs for small, dark rooms.

We lived on a cul-de-sac in a town called Harwick, in the state of New Jersey. It was, in many ways, a brightly lit stage. So everyone knew about Warren. “How's your son?” they would
ask my mother. And she'd crease her brow and soften her smile and reply that he was,
Good. Thanks for asking
, in a manner that made them feel benevolent and kind. “You know I asked after the Parsons kid,” they'd say later that night over their own dinners of soup-can chicken. “Priscilla says he's doing well.” And then they'd sink down in their seats, enjoying their armchair compassion. In that way, Warren performed a great community service. My mother had managed to make him, if not beloved, then at least accepted.

Priscilla Parsons had learned many things from the pageant circuit, but most important, she learned to play to her audience. And in those days, she still had the will to do it. In those days she would slick on some lipstick and arrange her bangs into a spiky waterfall and show up at my soccer games with a box of donut holes. She sat with the other mothers on the bleachers and they talked about who was going to be on
Donahue
and congratulated one another on enjoying that new show with the black woman, Oprah something. They talked about whose daughter was promiscuous and whose son was doing drugs. They talked about which male teachers were a little too effeminate and which female teachers were a little too butch. And then the mothers would clap when the game was over. And we would go to the mall. Well, my mother and I would go to the mall. Warren would walk circles around our neighborhood, flying his homemade radio-controlled airplane and listening to whale songs on his Walkman as our neighbors glanced out their windows.

The first time Warren ran away, everyone was sympathetic. The principal called, lasagnas arrived with nice notes, and friends' mothers implored me to tell my mom that
if she needed
anything, anything at all . . .
And then their voices would trail off. I was never sure exactly what I was supposed to communicate. But when I would arrive home and see my mother pacing through the house, holding Warren's pillow, I knew it didn't really matter. And everyone was happy when he returned. Or they appeared to be, at least. But as Warren's childhood eccentricities lingered past adolescence, as he continued to disappear, as he reached the age when he was supposed to be “growing out of it,” their collective goodwill became sapped.

“Goddammit, Warren,” my father would mutter under his breath, as he nudged back the curtain from the front window. Warren would be standing at the end of our driveway, deaf to my mother's announcements that dinner was ready, immobilized as he stared at the pavement. “Jenna, honey, go out there and tell your brother to get in the house,” Dad would say. So I'd grab a jacket and throw it over my soccer uniform, and push open the door, feeling the chill of the early fall air.

“Warren,” I'd say softly as I approached, seeing that he was staring down at something, seeing some movement on the pavement.

“It can't get away,” Warren would say, his eyes frozen. There wasn't terror in his voice, only a sad, tired resignation. “It's still alive, but it can't get away.”

It would be a garter snake, a small one. And its tail would have been run over by a car, mooring it to the pavement. There would be no way it could have moved from that spot, but its body would continue to undulate in graceful, rhythmic Ss, its lidless eyes staring forward. In its futile attempt to keep moving, it would be doing the only thing it knew to do.

“It's okay, Warren,” I'd say, putting my hand on his shoulder. “I'll tell Dad. He'll take care of it.”

Warren wouldn't be fooled, but he'd come with me. The hair on his arms would be raised from the cold air and I'd see his breath cloud in small, vanishing white puffs in front of his mouth. And he'd turn and together we'd walk inside. But not before it could be noted that the Parsons kid had stood at the end of the driveway staring at a mutilated snake for at least thirty minutes. “Forty-five,” Mrs. Daglatella would correct, her eyebrows raised and the lines across her forehead like ripples. “I heard it was forty-five.”

•   •   •

“You have a way with your brother,” my mother would say. “It's you and me that he'll listen to.”

I didn't have to point out that she'd left out my father.

My father had very little patience for Warren. “I wish he'd just snap out of it,” I'd hear him say to my mother on nights when I was supposed to be asleep. “I didn't think twins could
be
as different as Jenna and Warren.”

“He's a late bloomer,” my mother would say.

“Late bloomer?” There would be a humorless laugh, and when he spoke again, his voice would be somber. “I don't know, Silla. I think he should talk to someone.”

“Why?” she would ask, a tinge of hysteria in her voice. “Because he's not just like everybody else?”

“He's not like
anybody
else.”

“He is a smart, kind, wonderful boy. He just needs
time
,” she'd say, her back to my father as she folded laundry, putting our things into nice, neat piles. Smoothing the creases and
tucking in the arms and legs to form squares. “And maybe we should look into getting him a computer. I think he'd like that.” My mother was always offering up such solutions. She wanted so badly for them to work. But when the computer arrived, Warren never did take to it. He seemed suspicious of its binary soullessness.

•   •   •

“Silla!” my father would shout as he walked in from the garage, and I'd see Warren tense. “When did you get a Bloomingdale's card?”

My father would set his briefcase down by the kitchen island and hang his suit jacket over one of the chairs. In his hands would be an envelope and a few sheets of paper with purchases itemized and listed in small black type—all that pleasure condensed into dry words and sums. My mother would remain facing the stove, her head tipped forward. “They were offering fifteen percent off with your first purchase and Warren needed a new comforter,” she said, stirring, stirring, stirring a pot.

“But there are twelve hundred dollars' worth of purchases on here in the last month!” he'd declare.

“Fine,” she'd say softly, still not looking up. “I'll take it all back.” And the next day the frenzy would begin. She'd unearth her purchases from their hiding spots—the tucked-away closets and corners where my father never looked—and try to marry the contents of various bags with receipts. She'd try to determine what she could live without, what she didn't need. “It's not like we can't afford it,” she'd say to herself as she held up sweaters and lamps and platters.

•   •   •

After my father left, things happened very fast. Without anyone to tell my mother to take things back, things didn't get taken back. And our house quickly filled with a great number of solutions.
I'm glad she's spending her alimony so responsibly,
I heard Dad snipe. And Warren, perhaps feeling a freedom he never felt around our father, perhaps feeling a rejection he never imagined, would fill the kiddie pool in the backyard and sit in it for hours.

“What are you
doing
, Warren?” I'd ask, as he sat with his thin, pale body submerged, his face turned toward the sky. He'd look at me with a glint in his eyes that were so much like my mother's, as blue as hers were green. “I'm reverting to a protozoan state,” he'd say. And I couldn't help but laugh. He'd smile back at me, pleased. But an hour later, when I found myself once again outside, once again urging him to come in, it wouldn't be funny anymore.

“Get up,” my mother would demand, as he lay in bed the next morning.

“Mooommmm,” he'd reply. It would be a groan, a plea that was comforting in its good old-fashioned teenagerness.

“Don't you ‘Mom' me. You need to get your butt to school.”

And he would go.

Despite any bets against it, Warren graduated from high school. No one ever doubted that he was smart, but Warren's brand of intelligence tended to be a bit problematic. In eleventh-grade English, when we were studying the transcendentalists, we were instructed to write our own poems. Most—including
my own—utilized nauseatingly common clichés and followed simple rhyming schemes, with lines like:

My heart floats on the silver sea

Will you ever see the real me?

But Warren's poems were different. Warren's were loopy, gasping compositions with a flamboyant structure that countered their restrained language. Anyone could see that they were special. Anyone could see that they were different.

“Did you write this?” asked Mr. Beeman, the principal, when Warren was called into his office. He sat at his desk, his fleshy red hand holding Warren's poem.

Warren replied that he had.

“I hope so,” said Mr. Beeman, letting his words make their way slowly to Warren's ears. “Because plagiarism is cause for suspension at Harwick High.”

•   •   •

Warren and I graduated together, accepting our diplomas one right after the other. My mother sat in the audience, a few rows away from my father and his new wife, whom I was now expected to call Lydia. And all the adults agreed that Warren should be allowed to take some time off. “To get his bearings,” said my mother. “To grow up a little,” countered my father.

I went to college that fall. And I was glad to be rid of Warren. When I made new friends at school, and they asked me if I had any siblings, I could reply, “Yeah, I have a twin brother,” and leave it at that. They didn't need to know anything more.

If I had been back in Harwick, I might have been able to identify the exact moment when my mother's purchasing habits crossed the line from pattern to pathology. I might have been able to tell when the neighborhood's perception of Warren became something other than “oddball kid.” As it was, I was young and unfettered. And I didn't want to think about Harwick or the house on Royal Court or anyone in
it.