The Dwelling: A Novel (18 page)

From outside, his wife called his name. All very far away.

Maggie lowered her arms. She backed away. Dan followed—the lure of her already ruling his body. He followed her into the little room under the stairs. Enticed. Beguiled. Bewitched.

The door swung closed behind them.

Stay with me.

On the bed then. He pressed himself to her. Pressed his penis, hard with wanting, against her soft belly. She opened her mouth to receive his kiss. Her tongue found his. His arms wrapped themselves around her back, he felt the knobs of her spine through the thin, torn fabric of her dress. It was wet. He buried his head in her neck. Tasted her. Tasted copper.

He pulled away from her.

Everywhere, she was torn and rent. Her throat was a gaping wound. He was soaked through with her blood. He pulled his hands away from her body, his mouth still hanging open, wider now, from her kiss. He looked down. He was covered in her.

When his eyes reached up to hers, she enveloped him. His throat gagged with the taste of her until he couldn’t breathe. His heart thudded mercilessly for a while, then became erratic. She was in him. She was of him.

Stay with me.

Becca stood on the steps for a long time. She leaned against the front door, which would not open. Her screams had brought neighbors. Someone said the police were coming. She heard these things outside herself. Her ear was pressed to the door.

Inside, the same song played over and over. Something old. Jazzy.

A roll of laughter overtook conversation for a moment as Gavin held up a full-sized garden spade on which someone had painted the words B
ETTER
G
ET
S
TARTED
! Under that was
HAPPY RETIREMENT
!

Elsie leaned into Glenn and said, “Is that supposed to be for gardening, or digging his own grave?”

“Oh, I think Helen started digging his grave the minute she heard he was retiring.” Glenn smiled.

“Or her own.” The two of them laughed. Glenn had a bit of cake left on her plate and decided against eating any more of it. It wasn’t sitting well. She tucked the plate and the napkin into her hand behind a photo of Gavin and his dog, Trigger. She smiled wryly at the photo. Trigger wasn’t going to know what hit him.

Gavin Edwards was retiring at sixty (the office joke was that his toupee was also retiring—sometime next year,
ba-boom).
He was hanging up his pager, as he put it, to spend a few years enjoying his garden, dog and wife (in that order, he said,
ba-boom
) before he forgot what to call them. There had been a mumbling of reassurance when he said that, but he raised his hand for quiet. “I’ve put in a lot of years, a lot of miles, and it’s time to spend some time in my
own
house.”

She tried to listen to the speeches. Boss Paul was making some crack about how 50 percent of all listings came from divorces, and the leading cause of divorce after fifty was retirement.

“I guess I just want to say that, as an old friend, I hope Helen will list the house with Shelter Realty,” he finished somberly, to great amusement.

Elsie leaned into Glenn and clucked. “Not very funny, if you think of the truth of it,” she whispered. Glenn nodded in acknowledgment, if not agreement. Elsie was the very voice of the disapproving (and shrinking) middle class. Who was Glenn to disagree?

There were more speeches, few as amusing, and then the last act of a realtor, the distribution of Gavin’s current listings. It was turned into a game. Gavin gave each listing a sales pitch and then a realtor’s name was drawn from a hat. There were fourteen agents and only six listings.

“A beautiful bungalow on lovely picturesque Waymar Avenue in the faltering but-never-giving-up west end. Only six miles from the river! Four bedrooms! Close to bus, school and train yard. A self-seller! Stand around and watch her go! And the listing goes to—” John Peterson did an impromptu drumroll on the desk and everyone laughed.

Merle got the listing on the draw. “How long have you had this?” she asked with a frown.

Gavin shrugged. “Long enough to know the lonely divorcée vendor will not be pleased with her new girl realtor. Good luck, darling!” More laughter.

Carl Wall got the next listing. A two-bedroom condo that really would sell itself. Merle groaned and offered to trade.

“Now as you know,” Gavin moved on, “I shouldn’t have been on the rotation this week, but our next rotation, Benji, has broken his leg and is using that as an excuse to get in a little more golfing.” Everyone laughed. “Mark my words, he’ll be back in here next week, tanned and looking fit and relaxed with a plastic cast on his foot, with ‘Made in China’ stamped on the bottom.” He raised his hand against more laughter and wondered what people were going to do for laughs once he was gone.

Tom called out. “I’m next on the rotation for ‘class clown,’” he said.

“Enough, you people. As I was saying. I decided to take the rotation that came in this morning—should have been Benji’s, too bad for him, and raffle it off in this afternoon’s festivities. So here it is: an old, familiar favorite.” Everyone groaned. “A peace of a house, a plum of a listing, a piece of cake—I’m getting hungry—a three-bedroom plus, two-story, landscaped, hardwood throughout, many unique features, on—don’t take it too hard, Glenn darling—Belisle, in the near heart of the city, and the listing goes to—”

Glenn frowned at him, drawing a blank for just a moment and then
(Belisle)
smiling at the reference. Gavin pulled a little piece of paper out of the hat and grinned when he read the name. “Well, what a surprise. Ms. Glenn Darnley!” He laughed and held out the stats sheet for her. She held her frown as she came forward to get it.

“You remember how to get there, dear?” he said.

She smiled sportingly and glanced quickly down at the address: 362 Belisle. “You’re kidding,” she said. “It’s the same house.”

Gavin nodded. He leaned in and gave her a wink. “I’ll tell you all about it when I’m done here.”

Glenn walked back to lean against Gavin’s desk. She quickly looked over the details on the sheet, thinking it had to be a mistake.
I just sold it. When was that?
She couldn’t seem to pull it out of memory exactly. Not long. Late spring.

I just sold it.

A notation at the bottom, photocopied but legible, said, “Selling due to death in the family.”

Oh, my.

It went on like that, the listings getting better and more exciting, saving the best for last. Glenn was anxious for it all to be over.

Then it
was
over and Gavin was shaking hands and someone was passing out champagne to toast him. Glenn took a glass and a polite, single sip, no more than required for form’s sake. She didn’t think her head could handle the sweet, thick, cheap champagne.

When people started making their way into little groups and chatting, Glenn walked over to Gavin to congratulate him. He shook her hand, his grin nearly bursting.

“Can’t wait to get the hell out of here,” he said. “I got a golf date tomorrow morning at eight. With any kind of luck I can squeeze in a nap before dinner. Hey, Helen’s got a little ‘do’ planned for the twenty-second. Can you make it?”

Glenn smiled warmly. “I’d love to. Shall I bring something?”

“Just bring yourself,” he said affectionately. “And your
bathing costume,
of course.”

Glenn snorted. “You won’t get me in a bathing costume, or
suit,
either, but I’ll bring a lovely bunch of roses for the table.” The roses weren’t doing so well in the garden. She would have to pick some up and lie.

“I’m awfully curious, Gavin,” she said. “What’s going on with the house on Belisle?”

Gavin’s eyes widened. “The fellow. The husband. Mason? He died.” Glenn shook her head.

“Just dreadful,” she said. “I can’t believe it. They’re so
young.”
Gavin seemed near bursting with some kind of news, but Glenn didn’t notice. “Was it a heart attack?” she asked suddenly, thinking of Howard.

“Uh-uh,” he said cryptically.

“What, then?” Car wreck. Cancer. There were so many terrible ways to die young.

Gavin leaned in and whispered with careful enunciation, as though he didn’t want to get it wrong, “Autoerotic asphyxiation.”

“What?”

“No kidding,” he said. “The guy choked to death while—how do you say?
Pleasuring
himself? Is that the love that dare not speak its name? Or is that something else?” he asked, frowning.

“Something else. And we don’t call it that anymore.” She gazed past him.

“Uh, yeah. That’s right. Anyway, autoerotic asphyxiation is when you choke to death doing that. Self-damage, as my dear mother used to say. Not to my face, of course.”

“I know
what
it is,” she said. “I’m just…shocked, I suppose. My goodness.” She grimaced. The image of such things rose and was quickly quelled in her head. “Terrible thing for his wife.”

Gavin said, “Oh, yeah. She found him. In that little room under the stairs.” He shook his head in disapproval. “Why couldn’t he just take it to the bathroom like the rest of us.”

“Gavin!”

He patted her arm. “Don’t forget about the twenty-second,” he said, and wandered off toward Merle and Paul.

Glenn found the package in her briefcase, under a heavy stack of current and pending listings. How could she have forgotten? A large brown manila envelope. It was addressed by hand, the address,
362 Belisle,
written smaller and in a different ink than the larger,
Dan and Rebecca Mason.
Their names
(that poor woman)
had been centered across the middle of the envelope, throwing off the balance of the rest of the address. Inside, as she recalled, was the various paperwork that had come with the house, forgotten in the process of the transaction. Receipts from the renovation, the letter from the bank, descriptions of the work done on the house and the names of various contractors, etc.

The details were vague but, for whatever reason, she hadn’t delivered the letter. She did remember coming across the envelope in her briefcase later and addressing it. The postage was already on the package. She’d never mailed it.

It was strange of her to be so forgetful. She was usually so efficient. And now this. The package felt electrically charged and cumbersome in her hand, as though there was a connection to it all, a series of ripples in the universe. Absurd, but there, lurking; small.

Terrible to think of it, but the whole thing had likely just slipped her mind because, at the time, the house was sold, it was a completed deal by
months,
and in all truth, it simply wasn’t her house any longer.

It isn’t mine now.
She opened her bottom drawer and stuck the envelope into an empty slot in the hanging files for the new (next) owner.

The car turned quite naturally down Gibbons and Lane Drive. She stopped at the stop sign on Gibbons and smiled at a little girl riding her tricycle on the sidewalk. The little girl’s eyes followed the car unsmilingly as it went through the intersection.
Probably thinks I’m a stranger.
She pulled onto Belisle and slowed the car, leaning forward so that her head was nearly touching the steering wheel, taking her eyes off the road at intervals to search for the house.

She checked numbers, although it was unnecessary: 372, 370, 368.

Scaffolding veiled a house of similar construction on the south side. It was being painted; the upper half was complete, the white so clean and bright she could smell the paint through the closed windows, by suggestion only. They’d trimmed it in a deep, rich green. Very nice. Big windows. Excellent curb appeal. People didn’t realize what a difference the little things made.

Through the large tree in the neighbors’ yard, she caught a glimpse of 362.

Peek-a-boo.

The street was full of parked cars, on both sides. Everyone home from work by then. She took note of the SUVs, Volvos and Japanese cars, most of them clean and shiny as though they, too, had been recently painted. There were few signs of children in the yards. It was a starter neighborhood. The people behind the SUVs and foreign cars would climb their ladders and in two or three years buy a place with a severely groomed yard, backing onto a golf course or the river with a house with no asbestos or history, on McGillvray or Somerset or something in the east end of the city, tripling their taxes, and then their yards would bloom with play equipment of the sort that blended in with nature.

She slowed the car to a crawl.

I won’t go in.
There really wasn’t time. Not really.

Then, there it was. She tilted her head slightly to the left to get a better view from under the windshield. The windows were curtained and shut, giving the impression that it couldn’t see her. She considered it.

It looked the same.

She rubbernecked all the way past and then picked up speed.

Not the same, exactly. In her brief, concentrated glance, it had looked cleaner, taller, brighter, and she wondered if someone had washed the front of the house in anticipation of its listing. That seemed too much to hope for. She glanced up at the last moment before she was in front of the neighbor’s house and caught a glimpse of the upstairs window.
The little blue room. The children’s room. Pretty.

Pretty stone walk. Lovely back garden.
(English-style garden! Three bedrooms +! Close to schools! Newly renovated!)
She wondered hopefully if the Masons had at least tended to the garden before he died, and then promptly chastised herself for it.

At the stop she checked her watch and her beeper went off. Juggling traffic, she checked the beeper number. At the next red light she called on her cell, a realtor she had been trying to reach all afternoon about a showing of their listing. They made a tentative arrangement for between eight that evening and not after ten the next morning. After that she would have to rebook.

“I’m showing a bungalow in fifteen minutes,” Glenn said precisely, into the tiny phone. “I will attempt to reach my client at the next stop. Shall I call you back to confirm?” The light changed and Glenn expertly swung the car into a left turn. The realtor said it wasn’t necessary and gave her the location of the lockbox at the house. She hung up politely and curtly and dialed a client’s number by heart, with her thumb, driving the car carefully with her left hand, watching the road and mentally organizing her time.

Twelve and a half minutes later, she was parked outside the bungalow waiting for a Mr. and Mrs. Winkler—driving a blue-green Honda Civic—to appear; she had booked her other client into a nine-thirty showing, which would give her (depending upon the promptness of the Winklers) half an hour to grab something to eat. It would be fine.

The Winklers were two minutes past their appointment time. In the waiting period, Glenn had updated her book, made her list for the morning, adding to the already lengthy list a note to write the pitch for Belisle and to have the sign placed out front, and a reminder to send a condolence card
(so young)
to Rebecca Mason. Discreetly, of course, signing just her name, not mentioning who she was. With any luck it would be received in the spirit intended.

The Honda Civic pulled up behind her and Glenn shut her briefcase and was out of the car door. She pasted a smile on her face and stuck out her hand in greeting.

“Hello, thank you for arriving on time. The house is lovely. I’ve just been in it. Shall we take a look?” she said, and before the Winklers had an opportunity to do much more than nod their greetings, Glenn was maneuvering Mrs. Winkler by the elbow in the direction of the house, with the same deft touch she used in the car.