The Dwelling: A Novel (3 page)

While she dialed the emergency number, never once taking her eyes off Howard, she remembered things like blanket, water, airways; portable phone in hand, she went to the bedroom, yanking the duvet off their bed and running back with it to the dining room shouting (for some reason she felt she needed to shout her address her name her problem or it would not be deemed an emergency); she was flinging the duvet over her husband, still in his chair, his face ashen and blank at the same time that she dropped the phone. She lifted him from his chair, words of comfort and nonsense coming out of her mouth, whispering, for some reason she felt she should whisper or the situation would be deemed grave, and helping him to lie on the floor. She undid the button on his trousers, and for lack of anything else, the buttons down the front of his shirt until the whole of his chest and stomach—his
beautiful broad chest just beginning to gray
—was exposed. His breathing was nothing more than gasps and the color of his lips changed, or rather lost color. When she hovered above him, the words coming strangely, “Don’t you worry a lot of times heartburn isn’t something to worry—I’m going to get you water—you have a sip and that curry—no more curry, it’s good for the Middle East not for us Westerners—” she spewed and dashed into the kitchen grabbing not water from the fridge—it would be too cold, too jarring
maybe jarring would be good make his heart pump if he is having he is
not
having,
and took water from the tap where coming right out it would be lukewarm or room temperature and then she ran with it back to the dining room and looked into the face of her rapidly expiring husband.

His eyes were closed. His lips were gray, nearly the color of the rug in the dining room that they both hated. His chest rose and fell with uneven rapidity and labor. She dropped to her knees beside him, hands shaking, spilling most of the water on the duvet and herself.

She held the water out from herself as though offering it up, but could not bring herself to make him drink it. It seemed like it might be dangerous even to have him open his eyes. Her own heart was racing, her breathing fast. There was something primal in the way she felt; she was afraid. Afraid to speak to move him afraid to move herself, as though any ripple in the universe, in time, might tempt the gods to finish the nasty work they’d begun.

He breathed through his mouth. He looked dreadfully and suddenly, small. She touched his cheek. With ferocity, Howard grabbed her wrist. It gave her hope.

“Um ’kay,” he said, gasping the words. He was as
not
okay as it was possible to be and Glenn couldn’t help but let a small laugh escape. He smiled, just at the corner of his mouth, one corner, forced up. And, for some terrible, desperate reason, that too gave her hope. She expelled breath and believed entirely for one beautiful moment that it was going to be all right—
it will be hard he had some damage the way his mouth moves up on one side, he could be paralyzed on that side that happens but we can work through
—and then she heard the sirens and Howard opened his eyes and looked into hers a second before closing them again. He put the slightest pressure on her wrist and then loosened his grip.

“Cav’ry here—” he said.
Cavalry here.
She nodded and stroked his face, her mumblings and nonsense beginning again.

“All going to be all right, we’re never having curry again, by the way, and we are ripping out this carpet and when you feel better—” Then the cavalry was bursting through the front door dragging ruthless and monstrous equipment and she was shunted aside and she would not,
could
not cry in front of Howard. Not then.

He lingered three days in a room of indifferent color, fed through tubes, surrounded by whispers and the soft
squitch
of running shoes—lips blue, face yellowed and slack, her bits of gasped bravery and forced wit unheard or condescended. Then he died.

*  *  *

Glenn had stared at the wall throughout the remembering, one arm tucked under her breasts, the other hand touching the hair at the back of her neck. She had followed them to the hospital in her car. By the time she got there Howard was sequestered in a makeshift room, closed off from uncaring eyes by only curtains, with strangers shouting in abbreviations and they wouldn’t let her in. Not even to touch him, comfort him by her presence. She had stood outside the curtains for as long as she was ignored, peeking through, terrified to watch, and absolutely certain that if she moved, if she wasn’t there, then something would happen and he would need her. She was told to move twice and was finally led away, when they were bringing a large machine in. For reasons unknown she thought of her compatriots over the water and their machine that went
beep.
She promised herself she would remember to tell Howard that one. He’d like that. That he had everything, she would say, even the machine that went
beep.

She never told him. It was never funny again.

He’d been briefly awake (alive) the next afternoon. Glenn hadn’t left the hospital. She hadn’t slept. She had sat all night in the chair in the waiting room. When they put him in a ward with three other beds, she moved in there. There was a man in the bed next to Howard who looked much, much worse than he did and she comforted herself with that as though Howard would be graded on a curve. She never saw the third patient. His curtains had been drawn, maybe the whole time Howard was in the hospital.

He woke the once and smiled at her, fulfilling every dream and prayer she’d had in the last twelve hours.

He said, “Big fuss, huh?”

She said, “Nothing but the best for my Howard.” He’d smiled at her and they held hands. He opened and closed his eyes and she whispered words of comfort and told him how much she loved him and how long did he think he was going to keep his sorry backside in that bed and would he
please
hurry up and get well because she had work to do. He’d smiled once or twice more, when he opened his eyes, but he never said anything again.

Big fuss, huh
was all she got.

She stopped tugging at the new hair and put cold hands on her cheeks. She had lost weight over the duration of her mourning and could feel it especially then, with her elbows loose at her sides, closer to the inside of her than they had been in ten years. She was regaining her girlish figure just as she was feeling twice as old as her fifty years.

It was the yellow walls, she decided. The room looked somehow garish, as though the Waverleys had gone one shade too bright near the end, perhaps in an effort to stave off the cheerlessness of their encroaching
situation.
A feeble attempt at cheer. Trying too hard. The
squitch squitch
echoed too plainly.

“I’ll have none of this,” she said to herself and to the room at large. The room listened politely, as though apologizing for its jarring color by being extra nice and quiet.

On the way out she closed the door quietly, respectfully, maybe with a little too much relief.

At the end of the sidewalk she looked back at the house. The sun had not deigned to peek out from the endless clouds in the sky. It would go on like this, she suspected, with few breaks, for a while yet. Like the home of her youth.

She felt very tired. It had been a big day. Her first house after four months. It was a good house, an
easy
house, and would be sold within a week to a nice young family. It was that sort of house, mid-priced, well renovated, good-looking, nice neighborhood—not the best, but not dangerous, it was at least fifteen years from dangerous—and by then she would have another couple of listings and a few nice young families who hadn’t acted fast enough to buy them and life would go on.

She didn’t need a pamphlet to tell her what would happen. She would go first hours and then a whole day without thinking of Howard. Then a week would pass. Then she would box up his things and send them off somewhere. In a few months she would run across his slippers or a completed crossword puzzle and she would cry and cry and cry. And then she wouldn’t think of him again for another week.

That was the way these things happened.

When she got into the car and started it, she wondered if she would miss the loneliness of these days. Regret losing the grieving, if only because it was now her closest connection to Howard.

The twentieth day of the Belisle house listing was the day that Glenn went hours without thinking about Howard. She had actually gone hours without thinking about him previously, but hadn’t noticed in the active days. The house, of course, had dozens of calls, as she predicted.

No buyers.

It was practically a phenomenon around the office. They were beginning to refer to it as “that house,” without anyone needing an explanation as to which one exactly they meant. Since the ad had run, Glenn had shown the house at least once a day, but more often twice. On the weekends she showed three times sometimes, taking calls on her cell while she worked the cold, hard earth in the front of the yard, or sat in sweater and overalls on the little bench with a cup of tea. She went every time, and though she bitched along with the others at the office about weekend interruptions, she didn’t mind at all, really. They took her away from her own empty home.

Elsie said, on the twentieth day, “What’s on for that house today, Glenny?”

“Two showings, one’s a repeat. Could be the end,” she quipped.

“So strange,” Elsie said. She said the same thing every time they spoke of the Belisle place. She had had a run-by a week before with the husband and wife of friends of hers. She had built it up in their eyes, in Glenn’s opinion. The young couple had two school-aged children, and the wife worked at home in some sort of computer business. It was perfect for them. There’d been a lot of that.

They didn’t buy it, didn’t even offer on it, even though it was perfect, in their price range and had room for an office. The reason given, by the wife who had the computer business, was, “It has the wrong vibe.”

“The wrong
what?”

“That’s what she said, ‘the wrong vibe.’” Gavin Edwards and his toupee shook their heads, albeit at different speeds. “You’ll need a vibologist for that, I think, Glenny.” He laughed at the photocopier. “You know, get a vibe expert in there, clean out the vibe and then offer it back to them, vibe free.” He laughed at his own joke.

Elsie said, “Oh, no, they’ve bought on Lansdowne.”

“Elsie, your secret Santa is going to bring you a joke book.”

“Oh, oh, I see,” she said, and chuckled redly.

“Well, I’m showing again in an hour. Family. Just the wife and husband coming, I think. Yesterday I showed it to a woman and her mother. They seemed interested. The husband is out of town until the fifteenth. They said they wouldn’t look at it again until he was back.”

“Oh, it’ll be gone by then,” Gavin Edwards said, nodding, Fido bouncing in agreement.

“Oh, yes, absolutely,” Elsie agreed.

Glenn raised an eyebrow, but silently agreed. It was the buying season.

The Trents brought along their teenaged daughter.

“This is Amber,” the mother said, after introductions had been made. Glenn smiled brightly at the girl, who half smiled back and then dipped her eyes to the floor, where they stayed, Glenn thought. She didn’t know how the girl saw to walk.

They were motivated buyers. Mr. Trent—
call me Don
—was about to leave town on business for an extended period of time and wanted the house question settled, and them settled in the house, before he left.

“We’ve got just over a month to find, buy and move,” he said firmly. His wife smiled and nodded at everything he said. He worked in plastics for an international company and was away a lot. Mrs. Trent stayed home, but inquired about business in the area.

“I’m going to need something to do,” she said to Glenn, as they walked through the house. “Don is gone all the time and Amber has grown up. Don doesn’t want me to work, but there is a limit to how dirty a house can get.” She laughed, but Glenn sensed a backbone somewhere in there about to be tested. Don squired his daughter about, his arm around her shoulders.

They were about to go out to the backyard and take a look at its size (Don would like a deck and a garage, one day). Amber asked if she could just look around on her own.

“Sure thing, little girl, you go right ahead,” Don said, and left the house to prowl the yard.

“Don’t touch the walls, honey. They’ve been painted,” her mother said. The daughter rolled her eyes, something only Glenn caught, and then the two women went outside.

Don
liked
the yard. Don tended to say what he thought.

“That’s a
nice
yard,” he said. “You don’t find a backyard that size anymore.”

“It’s a nice yard,” Mrs. Trent echoed.

“Good size. Room for a deck. Can see a problem with a garage, though. All those trees back there.” The two women nodded. Glenn added that the trees were young and some could be moved.

“Tough
job,” he said.
“Tough
job.”

The three of them went back into the house in time to hear the girl scream.

It was a terrible scream and paralyzed them all for a split second, and then there was a crash of something heavy to the floor upstairs and Don was running for the stairs.

The women exchanged quick looks, and then the mother, with Glenn behind her, ran too.

They found Don with Amber, at the end of the hall, in front of the pull-down stairs that led to the attic. She was curled up in his arms, still screaming incoherently and sobbing.

“There’s a man! A man up there—he—”

Don looked up at Glenn accusatorily. “What the hell is going on?” he said.

All three of them looked up at the ceiling. The hatch to the attic was wide open. A light shone, illuminating a plain, gray ceiling. It was all they could see.

“There couldn’t be anyone up there,” Glenn said.

“There was! There was! It was a man!”
Amber cried. She was genuinely upset. She dragged her hands down her face, rubbing her cheeks. Tears poured out of her eyes and she looked much younger than her fourteen years. Like a baby.
“He—he—he showed me his—”
and she began to sob harder still. Don’s face went red with rage.

Mrs. Trent went white. She dropped to the floor and began to croon,
“Oh my poor baby poor baby—”

Glenn stood by helplessly, alternating between the open hatch and the trio on the floor. “I don’t know what to say, there’s been no one—”

Don, red-faced and apoplectic with rage, called up the hatch, “I’m coming up there, you bastard! Touch my little girl—” and he took the hatch ladder in two steps, disappearing into the attic.

Glenn urged the two on the floor to move away from the ladder. Mrs. Trent helped her daughter up. The girl looked up toward the hatch and began her shrieking again.

“He showed me his thing!”

Mrs. Trent covered the girl’s head with her arms, forcing her almost to walk in a crouch. The three of them stood outside the blue room, looking up into the hole. The girl’s sobs slowed and she sniffled. Glenn offered her tissues from her purse.

They listened to Don’s footsteps, at first stomping, then not. Then just walking. They could follow him around the attic by the sound of his feet.

“Why did you go up there?” Glenn asked.

“It was open!” she said defensively.

“It wasn’t. I’ve never seen it open.”

The girl turned to her mother, her face indignant. “It
was
open! It was, honest!”

Mrs. Trent gave Glenn a look that could not be interpreted. But she suspected it was embarrassment. “It’s okay, honey. It’s okay.”

Glenn went to the ladder. “I’m going to go up,” she said. The girl was calming down. There was no one up there. She climbed the ladder carefully. It was steep. At the top she stuck her head through the hatch and saw a man. It was, of course, Mr. Trent. He stood in the middle of the huge, empty room, clutching what at first looked like a spear. It was a hook for the ladder and hatch. There was not so much as a piece of drywall to hide behind. A bare bulb that hung from the dropped ceiling, swayed. He must have banged it as he went past. It cast shadows.

“I think maybe the light played a trick,” Glenn said. She stood on the ladder, not going up. It was chilly up there. Don looked at it absently. Slowly he nodded. He stuck his hands into his pockets. “She got quite a scare. Someone could have run out between the time she screamed and we got upstairs,” he said feebly.

“We would have heard him, seen him. She would have said. I don’t mean to question her, but I really believe it was the light playing tricks.”

He nodded and dropped the pole. It clattered loud in the empty room, and Glenn jumped a little at the sound of it. He came to the hatch. Glenn backed down. Mrs. Trent and Amber looked expectantly at the two of them as Mr. Trent descended.

He shrugged. “No one up there, honey,” he said kindly. “I think you saw the lightbulb swinging—”

“I did
NOT!
There was a man, Daddy! Honest to god there was.” She looked at everyone in turn, wanting support. When she found only sympathetic glances, she buried her face in her mother’s sweater and resumed her sobs.

“What the hell was that hatch doing open, anyway?” Don said, unwilling to leave his daughter undefended.

“I swear it was closed the last time I was here. I suppose another agent could have—” It was too late, of course, for the Trents. The four of them walked down the stairs. Don took over comforting Amber. At the door, Glenn apologized profusely and asked them if they would like to see something else.

Mrs. Trent wrinkled her nose. “I think, give us a couple of days before you call. I suppose Amber wouldn’t let us buy this place over her dead body, now,” she said.

“I’m terribly, terribly sorry. Nothing like this has ever happened.”

“She’s a little high-strung,” Mrs. Trent said.

“I think they all are at that age, aren’t they?” Glenn said, not really knowing one way or the other.

Father and daughter got into the backseat of the car together.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Darnley, thank you for your time,” the woman said. She took two steps down and said oddly, “She’s Daddy’s girl, you know,” as though by way of explanation.

Glenn repeated her own apologies and watched them drive away. Don looked back at the house through the back window. Glenn raised a hand; he didn’t return the gesture.

After they’d left, Glenn went back up. The hatch had been closed, she was sure of it. She tried to think of the last time she had been upstairs, and it had been the evening before. She’d shown it to the Gillespies. If it had been open, she would have seen it.

She climbed the ladder and got up inside the attic to turn out the light.

The girl had been seeing things. The bulb was still now. To prove her point, she gave it a little push. Light flashed and blurred on the wood walls, throwing shadows around the room. Daylight tried to peer through the little window. A cold spot of air swirled around her. She shuddered.

She reached out to still the bulb, and to her right, something moved.

She swung around to where she’d seen the movement. “Who’s there?” she called. The room was bare. Empty.

“Who’s there!” she said again, firmly.

She reached down, not looking, and picked up the pole. She realized she was shaking.

Glenn scrambled down the ladder, feeling foolish as she did it, and at the bottom pushed it up and pulled the hatch closed with the hook on the end of the pole.

She’d left the light on.

She stared up at the hatch, listening. Imagining.

Mwa—ha ha ha…

Horror movie laughs from Hammer horror films of her youth.

Screw it.
The light could stay on.

There were two cards left by other multiple-listing agents on the counter in the kitchen. She knew them both vaguely and that they had been there that morning. One of them would have left the attic hatch open, the light on.

She scooped up the cards and called them from the little kitchen on her cell phone.

Maggie Richards answered at first ring. She’d shown the house around nine, to two people (they’re not married, she almost whispered) before they went off to work. She had never been in the attic.

“Is it nice?” was what she said.

Mike Persher had dropped by with a woman that morning, just after ten.

“You left the attic light on, and the hatch open. I had an
incident
because of it,” she said sternly.

He was defensive immediately. “I never went near the attic,” he said. He asked if it was worth showing.

Glenn heaved a sigh. He was lying. Had to be.

“Well, what happened?”

Glenn explained in brief, saying only that the girl had
thought
she’d seen a man up there. “It was the light, I suspect. You’ll have to be sure that you turn them out if you’re going to show the property,” she said, poshly as possible.

“That’s so weird,” he said.

“Well, her mother said she was high-strung.” Glenn heard his confused
hmmm
on the other end. It might have been amusement. She was losing patience.

He said, “My client saw a woman.”

Glenn looked over her shoulder. She couldn’t help it.