Read The Dwelling: A Novel Online

Authors: Susie Moloney

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Horror, #Thrillers

The Dwelling: A Novel (4 page)

BOOK: The Dwelling: A Novel
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Three

MOVE RIGHT IN! LOVELY TWO-STORY HOME IN QUIET, CONVENIENT RESIDENTIAL LOCATION. RENOVATIONS THROUGHOUT MAKE THIS HOME MOVE-IN READY! THREE+ BEDROOMS, UNIQUE BATH, HARDWOOD FLOORS, WORKING FIREPLACE, UNIQUE ATTIC SPACE FOR HOME OFFICE OR GAME ROOM! REDUCED, $92,500.

“Of course, he’s lying,” Elsie said later. “And he said the thing about the woman to rock your boat. Don’t you remember the story about him and Patty Bunkle?” Glenn did. Mike Persher had stolen a client right out from under her
nose
and then sold it for more money than the original asking.

Glenn hadn’t had time to dwell on either incident. The constant showing and non-sale of the Belisle house had brought her a number of listings as well as a number of clients looking for “the same but different.” It was a buyer’s market right now and she had two more couples looking at houses almost across town from each other. She didn’t have time to do more than grab an apple from the company fridge for lunch before heading out again.

“Your hair is so
modern,”
Elsie told her, and she couldn’t tell whether she meant that in the right way or not. She tugged at it all the time. When she had switched from glasses to contacts in her thirties, she had spent half her time pushing glasses that weren’t there higher up on her nose; now she spent half her time brushing hair that wasn’t there off her cheeks. Secretly, she was starting to like it. It was easy to keep and flattered her now-thinner face.

She was a half-inch from a sale with the second couple by five o’clock that evening. They were going to sleep on it.

*  *  *

It was after eight when she finally walked in through her own front door. Weighing most prominently on her mind at that point was her overburdened schedule for the next day. She had another Belisle showing (although she was near sick over that place and so familiar with the spiel that she could have cell phoned it in:
Look at the lovely high ceilings in this hall! The floors have been refinished throughout the main level and look! A working fireplace)
and she had a good strong feeling about the Vespers and the house on Laughlin.

A new woman, looking for a place for herself and her young daughter, was interested in a place on Sherber and there was the offer for the Durbin place in; they would hear about that either tonight—
oh god not tonight I’m dead on my feet
—and she was showing an older couple a condo in Westwood Park. A gated place.

She put the kettle on to boil for tea and, while waiting for the water, she took cucumber and mayonnaise out of the refrigerator to make a little sandwich for her tea. She added some bean sprouts that looked a day from going bad.

High heels were dropped beside the big chair in the sitting room and slippers went on. The kettle sang and she poured the water into the teapot, then carried a tray of goodies into the sitting room. She had her tea and a sandwich in the chair and the day suddenly then stopped around her with a nudge, a feeling of something forgotten, a task undone. It plagued her like the slight burning in her tummy. It took only a moment before she understood.
Oh no.

I’m sorry, How. I lost track of you today.

Time marches on, Miss Glenn.

It was that house and all the time it was taking up. It was being back with people again. No one mentioned him anymore. For reasons of delicacy or because he was gone; she wasn’t sure why, but there was a loss in there somewhere, as though he was being forgotten by default, forgotten in favor of her.

Her tummy nudged her. There had been a little ache there all day, which she had attributed to having not eaten. She had assumed that the sandwich and tea would take care of it. It didn’t. In fact, she felt a little nauseous with it. It was a little burn that sat just under her diaphragm, not unlike heartburn, except that it hadn’t really gone away. She rubbed it. There were Tums in the cupboard. She found them and chewed two, the cherry flavor oversweet, making her cheeks pinch in.

The rest of her sandwich went uneaten and sleep was long in coming.

 

The Belisle house added a mechanical problem to its list of irritations. Several weeks into the listing, the faucet of the tub—the tub itself had not been as big an attraction as Glenn had supposed it would be; in fact a number of people had commented on the feet of the thing as being “a little scary”—began to drip. Being in and out of the house all the time, it wasn’t very obvious. Glenn would only notice when they went into the bathroom, and on some occasions the shower curtain was drawn. Or not. It looked much better drawn, and whenever she showed the house, she made a point of drawing the plain white curtain around its maw.

The dripping tap left a little puddle in the bottom of the tub, giving the appearance that the water did not properly drain. Which was true: it didn’t. Although most houses have a lurch or two in their floors, this one had proven difficult enough to unload without the added issue of mechanical breakdown.

She spoke to Mr. Cassevetes at the insurance company about having a couple of little things taken care of. It was an assortment of small items that needed attention that in the rush of the buyer’s season, somehow, Glenn had simply not gotten around to asking for.

“In a week or so it may become necessary to discuss another reduction,” Glenn added, in the last seconds of the conversation.

“A reduction? What?” She had never met Mr. Cassevetes, but he always sounded like he had something in his mouth—a cigar or a sandwich. She pictured him large.

“In the asking price, Mr. Cassevetes. It doesn’t seem to be moving. We’d not had so much as an offer.”

He grunted and it sounded as though he might have swallowed. The pause on the other end became so long that Glenn was tempted to ask if he was still there. She waited patiently.

“I’ll think about that. We’re not in the charity business, Mrs. Darnley,” was his patient answer. He agreed to a handyman for one day.

 

Glenn met the handyman at the house in the morning, using a fellow she had used at her own home, Mr. Gretner. She pointed out the pillar-cum-cairn at the foot of the sidewalk and asked that it be removed and the hole covered as well as possible. She explained about the tap in the upper bath and added that she believed a washer was all it would need. She asked him to measure the Murphy bed frame in the small room off the kitchen downstairs.

“I’d like to be able to tell people what they need,” she explained. “I’m not going to buy a mattress.” There was the problem of the back screen door opening and swinging in the wind. “I can imagine the damage to the spring,” she said, by way of explanation. She also asked that he install a lock and latch on the attic hatch, lock it and give her the key.

“How long do you suppose, Mr. Gretner?”

Tom Gretner walked around the pillar in the front and Glenn followed him around to the back of the house where he took a look at the screen door, well latched and firmly closed at the moment. He glanced at her questioningly. “Well, it’s latched now, but it seems to be at its own whim. I arrived here yesterday and found it banging against the side of the house.”

Tom opened and closed it cleanly a couple of times, peered meaningfully into its workings and closed it again. “Can’t see what the problem would be,” he said.

Glenn popped two Tums into her mouth from her pocket. “Look over there, Mr. Gretner,” she said, pointing to the wall on the outside of the house where the screen door had already left a mark. “It’s banging against the paint,” she said defensively. “Just tighten something on it. The wind may be catching it.” Tom opened and closed the door again, and the two of them ran their eyes around the edges of the door. It fitted smoothly, no place for wind to catch.

“Okay, Mrs. Darnley, will do,” he said.

“And you suppose it will take how long?”

“Lock and that’s going to take an hour—I’ll have to run to the hardware for that. Pick up a washer while I’m there…wouldn’t mind a look at the tap before I go. Washer won’t take long if that’s the need of it, and then the pillar out front—” He licked his lips, staring off into space. He checked his watch. It was after nine.

“Could be packed up and out of here by two or three. Does that suit you?”

Glenn smiled. “That will be lovely,” she said. And left him to it.

 

After leaving the Belisle Headache, as she had come to think of it, Glenn showed a little two-bedroom on a pricey street to a young nurse straight from the country. The nurse loved it and put in a respectable offer on the $75,000 place right away.

Now why couldn’t that happen with the Belisle place?

Around one-thirty Glenn dropped by the Belisle house. Mr. Gretner’s patchwork truck was still parked outside. The pillar was gone. She walked up the stone path, hardly glancing to see the earth filled in, and went inside. She could hear the terrible whine of a power tool. She waited for it to stop or subside. When it did she called up. “Mr. Gretner! How goes the lonely battle?”

Tom came to the top of the stairs and walked down two or three steps to see her better. He looked odd without his cap. He was quite bald-headed and looked chubby and babylike with the sun streaming down on the top of his pink skull from the window on the stairwell. “Just putting your lock on for you, now,” he said. “That post outside took a little longer than I thought it would. She was dug in deep. I put it out back in the yard by the trees till someone comes to claim her. Put a new washer in the bath tap. Should be all right for you now,” he said. “Be another half hour or so. Two’s what I said, right?”

“Oh, yes. Don’t mind me. I was in the area, is all. I’ll leave you to it. I’d like to show it today at three if I can. I have a couple interested,” she said casually. Mr. Gretner would have no idea (or interest) in the epic Selling of the Belisle House.

She turned to go and he called back to her: “I—um—tightened your screen door for you,” he said.

She could hear the smile on his face without turning around to see it. “I’m very pleased,” she said, hoping he could hear hers.

 

The Armstrongs met Glenn outside 362 Belisle at three on the nose. Mr. Gretner’s truck was gone. She had hoped they would be late so that she could just walk through the house and see that everything was tidy.

They pulled up in a green, late-model Volvo station wagon, thankfully without their apparent children. The Armstrongs were Cal and Effie, a dentist and his hygienist wife. Effie explained right away that they had to practically “run through” the house, as they had to pick up the children in a half hour.

“Traffic will be terrible,” she said, tilting her head and looking over the place. They waited for Glenn’s lead.

“Shall we, then?” And she led them up the walk, with Cal pulling up the back.

They passed by the place where the pillar had been removed without remark. Glenn glanced down at it, the black earth turned up like a grave, recently filled.

Breezily she said, “The hedge goes all the way around the house. Caragana, you know. It will bloom, come summer.” They went inside.

They did, indeed, run through the house. They did the upstairs first. “We’re practically there anyway!” Effie said. The tap did not drip. They liked the little blue bedroom. They had two children, Effie said. “Earl’s nine and Katie’s thirteen. She wouldn’t mind the yellow room. You’re sure that smell will come out?”

Glenn assured them it would. They nodded agreeably to everything Glenn told them.

The back door stayed shut when the three of them went through to look at the backyard.

“It’s a lovely, large backyard. Perfect for youngsters,” Glenn said.

“It looks a little like a cemetery,” Cal snickered. Glenn turned with a smile, about to explain the style of the English garden, when she saw what they were referring to.

Perched against the back fence, almost but not quite buried behind the trees and tangles, was the pillar, boldly white against the black and gray of the hibernating perennials. Spectral.

“Is that where they’re buried?” Cal laughed. “Waverley, is it?” he read, tilting his head sideways. Glenn glanced over at Effie, who had a hand to her throat.

A breeze came up and blew dead, year-old leaves around the yard.

“They’re picking it up tonight,” she said.

 

The Armstrongs admitted they hadn’t given the time necessary to really look at the house. They admitted it was most of the things they were looking for. They asked Glenn if she would mind if they slept on it and gave her call in a couple of days. That was most often the code for “no, thank you.”

Glenn thanked them and gave them another issue of her card and told them that there were a number of houses on the market in their price range. “None are as lovely as this,” she added.

“Not as convenient either,” Cal said. “This one’ll take you from cradle to grave.” He laughed and winked at Glenn. She smiled gamely and let him have a little chuckle, but the joke was wearing thin.

They didn’t make an offer.

 

After they drove away, she walked through the house, checking to see if all was at rights. She thought briefly of propping the window in the sickroom open again; she couldn’t help but think of it as that, and decided it was a bad idea. She also didn’t want to go in there. She left the door open. The attic hatch was locked. The keys were on the counter in the kitchen, along with the carefully printed measurements for the Murphy bed frame. She found herself walking slowly and thoughtfully through the rooms once more, the light starting to fade outside, the house looking sleepier in the dull light.

She went down the stairs in the same way, eyes roaming up and down walls, as though trying to discern something that she couldn’t openly see.

Her footsteps spoke on the bare wood floors through the living room and dining room. She checked the back screen door. It was latched and behaving like a child warned enough times.

On the way back through she stopped in the living room. She stared into the clean, untried fireplace. Up the walls. Through the window.

Eyes upward.

“You’re going to have to do better than this,” she told the house. “I’m going to wash my hands of you.

“I mean it.” She stuck her hands into the pockets of her raincoat and flapped it open and shut a few times as though in supplication.

She looked sternly around the room once more. She locked up before leaving.

BOOK: The Dwelling: A Novel
11.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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