Little Girls (3 page)

“Why
were
the locks changed?” she asked.

“You’ll have to speak with Dora about that.”

Laurie frowned. “If it was necessary to have someone maintain the property, I wish the service would have told me. I don’t like the idea of you having to take care of my father’s things for free.”

“It wasn’t like that at all, ma’am. My sister had simply requested I come with her so she wouldn’t have to be here alone.”

“What about the other girl?” Laurie asked. “The night nurse?”

“They were never here at the same time. They worked in shifts. Toward the end, your father required around-the-clock care, as I’ve been told. I presume you were kept up to date on all of this?”

“Yes. I was aware of my father’s condition.” Then she frowned. “Why wouldn’t Dora want to be here alone?”

“You’ll have to ask her, ma’am,” said Lorton. It was becoming his automatic response. “If you don’t mind my asking, where do you folks currently reside?”

“Hartford, Connecticut,” Laurie said. She feigned interest in the crumbling mortar of the fireplace mantel. As a child, there had been framed photographs and various other items on the mantelpiece. Now, it was barren. “It took us longer to get here than we thought,” she added, as if the distance excused her absence from this place and her father’s life.

What do I have to feel guilty about?
she wondered.
He was never there for me; why should I have been there for him? Anyway, what business is it of Felix Lorton’s?

“Understandable. Please have a seat and I’ll go fetch my sister,” Lorton said, extending a hand toward the sofa and loveseat. “Would any of you like something to drink?”

“Ice water would be great,” Ted said. He was examining the spines of the few books on the bookshelf.

“Do you have any grape juice, please?” Susan asked.

The question caused Felix Lorton to suck on his lower lip while his eyes narrowed to slits. A sound like a frog’s croak rumbled at the back of the man’s throat.

“Water will be fine for her, too,” Laurie assured him.

“Very well,” Lorton said, then disappeared down the hall that led to the kitchen.

“All these books have pages torn out of them,” Ted said, replacing one of the leather-bound editions back on the shelf. “How strange.”

Laurie went to one of the windows and looked out onto the side yard. The lawn was spangled with sunlight and the wooden fence was green and furry with mildew. Tree branches drooped over the fence from the neighboring yard, the trees themselves all but blotting out the house next door. She could make out shuttered windows and dark, peeling siding. A green car of indeterminable make and model was parked in the neighbor’s driveway and there was another vehicle with some sort of emblem on the door parked on the street. The Russ family had lived there when she was a girl. Laurie wondered who lived there now.

“This house smells funny,” Susan said. She was crouching down to peer into the black, sooty maw of the hearth. “It reminds me of Miss Tannis’s house back home.” Bertha Tannis was the elderly widow who lived two houses down from the Genarros in Hartford. When she was younger, Susan would sometimes go there after school if both Laurie and Ted weren’t home to greet her.

Ted went over and sat on the loveseat. He sighed dramatically as he draped an arm over the high back. “I should have asked the old
galantuomo
for a scotch and soda.”

“Is this where bats live?” Susan asked, still peering into the fireplace. She was trying to look up into the chimney, but there was a tri-panel screen in the way blocking her view.

“It’s a fireplace, Snoozin,” Ted said, using their daughter’s much hated nickname. “You know what that is.”

“I know what it
is,”
she retorted, “but there’s
animals
out here. Not like we have at home. Didn’t you hear what the man said about the snakes in the well?”

“There are no snakes in the well,” Ted assured her. He sounded bored, tired. It had been a long drive down from Connecticut for him, too. “He was just pulling your leg.”

“What does ‘pulling your leg’ mean?”

“It means he was joking.”

“I know it means
that,
Daddy, but
why
does it mean that?”

“I don’t know. That’s a good question.”

Felix Lorton returned with two tall glasses of ice water. He set them on the coffee table between the sofa and the loveseat. Laurie caught Lorton eyeing Ted ruefully, as if he did not approve of the man lounging on the loveseat in such a casual fashion.

“Thank you,” Ted said, picking up his glass and taking a healthy drink from it.

“Why does someone say ‘pulling your leg’ when they’re telling you a joke?” Susan asked Felix Lorton.

The man straightened his back and lifted his head just enough so that the bands of loose flesh beneath his neck hung like a dewlap. He cleared his throat. “To pull one’s leg is to make a fool of them, as in to trip them up and make them fall down.” Felix Lorton spoke with an authority Laurie found comical, particularly when addressing a ten-year-old girl. Laurie bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

“Neat,” Susan said.

“Yeah, neat,” Ted added. “I didn’t know that, either.”

“My sister will be with you folks shortly. If you’ll excuse me, there are some things I need to attend to before we leave.”

Laurie thanked him and Lorton effected a slight bow. His black coat flared out around his ankles as he shuffled quickly down the hallway.
Blood thinners,
it occurred to Laurie.
That’s why he’s wearing the coat and that’s why his hand was so cold. He must be on blood thinners for medical reasons.
A moment later, Laurie heard a door far off in the house squeal open and then close again. With little carpeting to dull the noise, the sound echoed throughout the house.

Susan skipped over to the coffee table and scooped up her glass of water. She hummed a soft melody under her breath.

“Don’t spill it,” warned her father.

Susan scowled and, for a moment, she looked to Laurie like a grown woman. Those dark eyes, that lustrous black hair, the copper-colored skin and long, coltish legs . . . at times, the girl looked so much like her father that Laurie felt like an outsider among them, an interloper in some other family’s life. Laurie was the fair-skinned freckled one with a plain face and eyes that were maybe a hair too far apart. Summertime, while her husband and daughter tanned with the luxuriance of Roman gods, Laurie burned a fiery red, then shed semitransparent sheets of peeled skin for the next several days.

“How come you didn’t tell me it was such a nice house, Laurie?” Ted asked from the loveseat.

“Didn’t I?”

“A house like this could go for top dollar, even in this lousy economy. I’ll bet it’s worth a fortune. It just needs a little TLC, that’s all.”

“I guess we’ll find out when we speak to the lawyer.”

“What’s ‘TLC’?” Susan asked.

“You’re dripping water on the rug,” Ted told the girl.

Susan set her drink down on the coffee table, then went over to the piano.

“B flat,” Ted said.

Susan pecked out the correct key. It rang in the stillness of the otherwise silent room.

“D sharp,” Ted said.

Susan said, “Oh,” and her index finger moved up and down the keyboard like a dowsing rod, counting the keys silently, but with her mouth moving. She tapped another key, lower on the fingerboard.

“Yuck,” Ted said from the loveseat. “Are you sure? D sharp? Try again.”

Under her breath, Susan mumbled, “Sharp is . . .
up
. . . .” Her lithe fingers walked up a series of notes until she rested on one. She hammered the note a few times, smiling to herself.

Ted stuck his tongue out between his lips and produced a sound that approximated flatulence. This set Susan to giggling. She turned around, her face red, her eyes squinting in her laughter. Laurie watched her daughter, smiling a little herself now. She was glad to have Susan back to her old cheerful self again, after the sullenness of the long car ride down from Connecticut. Then Susan’s laughter died and the girl’s smile quickly faded from her face. Laurie followed her daughter’s gaze to the alcove that led out into the main hall. A woman stood in the doorway. Her face was sharp and white, her iron-colored hair cropped short like a boy’s. She wore a paisley-patterned frock and was in the process of wiping her hands on a dishtowel when Laurie spotted her and offered the woman a somewhat conciliatory smile.

“You must be Dora,” Laurie said, moving swiftly across the room with her hand extended.

“That’s right,” said the woman. She had a clipped, parochial voice. She stuffed the dishtowel partway into a pocket of her frock and shook Laurie’s hand with just the tips of her fingers. She looked to be in her early fifties. There were faint lines bracketing her mouth and crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes. The eyes themselves were an icy gray.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you. I’m Laurie Genarro. That’s my husband, Ted, and my daughter, Susan.”

“I’m sorry we must meet under these circumstances,” Dora Lorton said as she nodded her head at each of them curtly. “My condolences, Mrs. Genarro.”

“Thank you.”

“If you’ve got bags with you, Felix can help bring them in from the car.”

“That isn’t necessary,” Laurie told her. “We haven’t decided whether we’re staying here or not.”

“Why wouldn’t you stay? It’s your house now.”

The thought chilled her.

Ted stood from the sofa, straightening the creases in his linen pants. “There’s supposed to be an historic inn downtown. It sounded interesting.”

“George Washington stayed there!” Susan chimed in.

Dora’s brow furrowed. “Downtown?”

“Annapolis,” clarified Ted.

“Well, it’s your house now,” Dora Lorton repeated, and not without a hint of exasperation. “I suppose you folks can do as you like.”

Ted shot Laurie a look, one that she interpreted as,
Cheerful old coot, isn’t she?
Once again, Laurie had to fight off spontaneous laughter.

“The house is clean and everything in it is functional,” Dora went on in her parochial tone. “Your father was not a man of excesses, Mrs. Genarro, as I’m sure you can see, so you’ll find very little items of a frivolous nature in the house. There are no televisions, no radios, nothing like that. What items there are—Mr. Brashear’s personal items, as opposed to
house
items, I mean—have been relocated to his study. When was the last time you were here at the house, Mrs. Genarro?”

“Not since I was a teenager, and that was just for a brief visit. I can hardly remember. And, please, call me Laurie.”

“Do you recall where the study is?”

Laurie considered and then pointed down one of the corridors that branched off the main hall. It had been a small library when she had been a child, and she could easily imagine it as a study now. “Is it the room just at the end of that hall?”

“Yes. Do you require a rundown of the rest of the house?”

“A rundown?”

“A tour of it, in other words. Seeing how it’s been such a long time.”

“Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary. I remember it well enough. And what I don’t remember, I can figure out.”

“Nonetheless, there are a few things I feel I should show you.” Dora’s chilly gray eyes volleyed between Laurie and Ted. “Which one of you does the cooking?”

“Mostly, it’s me,” Laurie said.

“Laurie’s a splendid cook,” Ted added. His smile was charming, but Laurie could see that it held no influence over Dora. “I can hardly microwave a salad.”

“I figured I would ask nonetheless, just so my assumptions wouldn’t offend anyone,” Dora said, marching right past Ted’s attempt at humor.

“Oh,” Laurie said, “not at all.”

“Very well,” said Dora, those cold eyes settling back on Laurie. “You’ll come with me then?”

“Of course.”

“Can I go play outside?” Susan chirped to her mother.

“Not just yet, Susan.”

“But I’m bored!”

“I’ll go with her,” Ted said, taking up Susan’s hand.

“All right,” Laurie said. She shared a look with her husband then . . . and wondered if he could decipher the clutter of emotions behind her eyes. Not that she could decipher them herself. She was weak, tired, troubled, overwhelmed. There was a darkness here in this house, she knew—something cold and widespread, like black water gradually filling up behind the walls—and she thought it might have been the residual ghost of her parents’ divorce and Laurie’s subsequent extraction from this place.
Extraction,
she thought, summoning the image of a diseased tooth being liberated from purpling gums.
That’s good.

Laurie followed Dora into the kitchen. It was a spacious room with brick walls and stainless-steel appliances. A small circular table stood before a bay window that looked out on the backyard and the moldy green fence that separated the property from the house next door. There were plenty of windows and the room was generously bright.

“You lived here as a child?” Dora said. She led Laurie over to the stovetop.

“I did, yes.”

“It’s a gas range. The appliances are in fair working order, though I can’t be certain how old they are. You’ve cooked on a gas range before?”

“We have a gas range back home.”

“Let me show you, anyway,” said Dora. She turned the knob and let the burner tick until a blue flame ignited. The smell of gas rose up to greet them. Dora turned the stove off and moved to the refrigerator. She opened the refrigerator door. It was stocked, but not obnoxiously so. Laurie could see many of the items within hadn’t yet been opened, and it occurred to her that either Dora or Felix Lorton had recently gone to the supermarket in anticipation of their arrival. “You’ll find it is stocked with milk, cheese, bread, juices, and plenty of condiments. There are frozen meats and poultry in the freezer as well, Mrs. Genarro, and the pantry is sufficiently stocked with cereals, pastas, and canned goods. I didn’t bother getting any fruits or vegetables or other perishables from the market, as they tend to go bad quickly in the summer if not eaten right away. I wasn’t sure how long you folks planned to stay.”