A Density of Souls (11 page)

Elise nodded her head emphatically.

There was a lengthy pause before Elise tilted her head toward the front door. Nanine noticed it and both of her hands tightened around her glass in response.

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“Would you like to go inside?” Monica asked her.

“Would you mind? Just to look around?” Elise posed this question more to Nanine than Monica.

“Not at all. Have a look,” Monica said. “Don’t mind the Mahler.”

“The what?”

“Nothing. Go on,” Monica said sweetly, lifting a hand as if to nudge Elise through the front door.

But Elise had already shambled through, her hands clasped to her chest like a child entering a haunted house. Nanine sipped her iced tea. Monica smiled blandly at her as she swallowed, took a breath, and set her glass down.

“We all know your husband’s crazy, Monica. You don’t have to lie for us,” Nanine said.

The younger woman twirled her cigarette in one hand, elbow propped on the arm of the chair as if at any point she might hurl the cigarette directly into Nanine’s eyes.

“We are not responsible for our husbands,” Nanine whispered.

“But our gardens are another matter entirely,” Monica said.

Nanine offered a crooked half-smile. Touché, her smile said. Points earned. “Would you like me to tell you why you were really denied membership? Will you still be able to serve iced tea and try to dazzle us after I tell you the real reason?

“You’re a guest here,” Nanine continued, her voice almost a whisper again. “This city is dying all around us. My father helped to build this city. He laid this sidewalk, in fact. But now I am of the belief that all of it will someday be devoured by the river. You know the river, don’t you? You grew up next to it?”

Monica didn’t answer.

“My point,” Nanine continued, “is that guests tend not to appreciate what we have here. These blocks, this neighborhood. They must be preserved. And that is a job best done by those who gained an appreciation for this neighborhood from the day of their birth.”

Monica sucked another drag off her cigarette. Upstairs, Mahler’s Second Symphony was resetting itself on the record player. “However,” Nanine said, lifting her glass to her mouth and taking a sip, “I must admit, that no matter how extremely, you have demonstrated a

. . . how should I put it? A sense of appreciation.” She gestured to the garden around them.

“As for Jeremy, don’t try to fool us. We all know that if he had his 76

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way this house would be a crumbling wreck. But he has you. And I guess whether we asked for it or not, we have you, too.” Nanine set the glass back down on the table with just enough force to convey that she would not be lifting it to her mouth again.

Neither of them spoke. The Mahler played on. Elise was lost somewhere inside the house. In the trees overhead, the birds and cicadas were beginning their tribute to the slanting sun.

Forgive me, Monica thought. Forgive me, Jeremy, for letting this woman do this to me. Forgive me for wanting our children to have a neighborhood and a history. If you ever do forgive me, try to understand that I did this for my mother, who died in the company of rats, with many ghosts to lead her toward death and only one daughter to remember her.

“I accept,” Monica finally said.

“Our next meeting is on Sunday,” Nanine announced before rising from the chair and moving out the front gate, leaving her daughter-in-law behind. Monica sat and watched as Nanine disappeared around the corner of Chestnut Street.

Her new yard had been a small triumph. Yet a heavy defeat kept her sitting in the middle of it, glued to her chair for long minutes she didn’t bother to count.

Shattering glass startled her from her stupor. Elise appeared in the doorway, holding half of a picture frame.

“I’m sorry,” Elise mumbled, “I just bumped into it.”

Monica rose from her chair slowly and took the shards from Elise’s hand. Elise’s palm was slightly scored by the frame’s jagged edge and her whole body seemed flushed and sweaty with embarrassment.

“Where’s the picture?” Monica asked without offense.

“It’s on the floor in there. I’ll sweep it up. I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .”

She was trembling. Monica set the glass down and gripped Elise by both shoulders. “It’s all right,” Monica whispered, looking into the other woman’s dark, doe eyes.

Elise nodded.

“I’ll see you on Sunday evening,” Monica said as she released Elise’s shoulder, and promptly turned away from her.

“She . . .” Elise faltered, surprised, her jaw dropping. Monica turned and nodded.

“I’ll see you then,” Elise managed, then turned and descended the front steps.

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Monica did not watch her go.

That night, she found Jeremy at his desk, bent over a notebook, his pen clutched in one hand and a half-empty bottle of Merlot on the desk next to him. He did not glance up at her as she lingered in the doorway for a moment. The frame Elise Charbonnet had broken contained a snapshot of Monica and Jeremy minutes after they had been married in a chapel just outside of Reno. Monica held the tattered picture in her hand. Jeremy finally noticed the picture. “Have you been accepted?”

Monica nodded.

Jeremy looked back to his notebook.

Monica shuffled into her bedroom, making it to the bed where she curled into a fetal position without bothering to untuck the covers.

She cried for an hour. Jeremy was right.

She had lost her husband. The thought crippled her before another displaced it. I need a child, Monica thought.

Behind Stephen, the windowpane was fogged with ice but the snow on the ledge had melted. Monica could not look at her son for a while. He finally broke the silence.

“Why did you tell me this?”

She leaned her head to one side of the pillow to meet her son’s eyes.

“Never give in to them,” she whispered. “No matter what they do or how important you feel it is to get their acceptance. Never kill part of yourself for them. Because other people will notice that part is missing before you do.”

Stephen pressed the knuckles of his right hand into his left palm, as if testing their heft.

“I never went to one meeting,” Monica said.

They both burst out laughing. Stephen crouched by the bed and rested his head on his mother’s stomach. They continued to laugh.

Monica’s abdomen rose and fell, lifting Stephen’s head in short gasps as his hand reached out to clasp hers.

Jeff Haugh awoke from a half-dream of Stephen’s naked skin bathed in the green glow of the Honda’s dashboard lights, and he tasted blood in his mouth. His hand grabbed for the pillow, slipping in puddle of 78

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blood next to his jaw. He tried to cough, but the contraction only brought another spasm of blood up from his throat. When he sat up, he felt as if he were going to split down the middle.

When Jeff finally stood in his parents’ bedroom door, his mother screamed when she saw him. Jeff tried to speak as his father pushed him into the bathroom. His mother stared dumbly at the trail of blood Jeff left across the carpet as she called 911. Jeff could not form words through the blood caking the insides of his mouth. If he had been able to speak, to tell them why he was vomiting blood across their bedroom late at night, they would have been baffled by his explanation—Stephen Conlin had ripped his stomach open.

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T
he rain had frozen in the gutters overnight, and Meredith awoke to the glare of morning sun reflecting off ice. She sat up, slowly bringing her knees to her stomach. Her notebook lay open on her desk, but the sunlight blotted out her handwriting. An empty bottle of Stoli sat on her desk. She heard her mother’s footsteps in the hallway and leapt from her bed, grabbing the bottle. She barely had time to slide it under her bed.

Meredith vomited into her closet. She had no choice; her mother was in the hall and would have blocked her way to the bathroom.

When she finished, she lifted her head and found herself staring at her cheerleading uniform. With a sudden dread that cloaked her nausea, Meredith remembered today’s date. December 8.

Several blocks away, Stephen opened his eyes to the sight of the oak branches outside his bedroom window frosted in ice crystals. He slipped out of bed and moved to the window.

Maybe Jeff Haugh wouldn’t speak to him in school that day. But it wouldn’t matter.

Stephen stared out over his ice-shrouded neighborhood and realized that what had happened the previous night was inviolable; it could not be taken from him the way his childhood had been. Jeff Haugh’s arms and lips had held him, and no words or actions could undo that.

Jeff Haugh. Stephen rolled the name back and forth in his head.

He found himself unable to think of him as just Jeff. His full name seemed more appropriate. With Jeff Haugh in his history, Stephen would always be part of something beyond his window.

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He remembered the date: December 8. Jeff Haugh would in fact not be speaking to him that day—he had obligations in their little world that would draw him elsewhere, Stephen reasoned. That evening the Cannon Knights would face off against the Thibodaux Boilers in the game that could decide the state playoff teams. As first-string quarterback, Jeff bore the weight of Cannon’s honor. Stephen’s added weight would be too much to bear.

But when Stephen saw the ice, he imagined a football field covered in it. He smiled.

“Your future football prospects will be complicated . . . to say the least,” said the heavy-voiced doctor as Jeff gazed emptily at him and his parents hovering over his bedside. The doctor addressed his parents next, as if the news had deafened their son. “He has a preponder-ance of stomach ulceration atypical in someone his age. Stress and strenuous exertion will aggravate it.”

With these words, Jeff knew the doctor had virtually killed his football scholarship to the University of Michigan, insuring that he would go to Louisiana State University as his mother and father had. Jeff said nothing as the doctor delivered a death notice to his life plan.

“Did you do anything high stress last night?”

Jeff looked at him evenly.

“I had a few beers with a friend but that’s about it.”

Nodding, the doctor turned his attention back to Jeff’s parents as he broached the topic of laser surgery.

As Meredith entered the locker room, Kate Duchamp grabbed her by the shoulder so hard that her book bag slid down her left arm. They were both dressed in their cheerleading uniforms, ready for the pep rally at three o’clock that afternoon. The locker room was packed with students talking and arguing louder than usual.

“Okay, like, where have you been?” Kate began as she led Meredith by one arm. “You want the good news or the bad news first?”

“The game’s canceled,” Meredith answered immediately.

Kate let out an audible gasp of disgust. “Okay, no! We’re still waiting. Supposedly, like, they didn’t get any snow in Thibodaux but they have to check to make sure the field doesn’t have any ice because they The Falling Impossible

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had a freeze or something. Okay. Whatever! That was the bad news.

You want the good news now?”

Meredith spotted Brandon and Greg amid a small cluster of letter jackets. Greg seemed to be the focus of attention, which was odd because he was surrounded by mostly junior and senior players. Kate took Meredith by both shoulders and pulled her in close.

“Jeff Haugh was rushed to the hospital last night. I don’t know the details except that it’s, like, some stomach thing.”

She paused for effect. Meredith burped slightly, the acidic flavor of vomit blossoming in her throat.

“Do you know what that means, Mer?” Kate asked, louder. “Greg’s going to play! He’s going in as QB in the most important game of the year. Aren’t you psyched?”

Meredith felt the threat of vomit now in her sternum. She knew if she didn’t get Kate out of her face, Kate would feel it, too. She tried a smile and bowed her head

“Get your shit together! This is only, like, the most important day of the whole year!” Kate hissed before disappearing into the crowd.

“Did you hear?” Greg called out. Meredith turned to see that he was staring at her from his throng of letter-jacket cronies. She moved toward him, trying to force the nausea down into the base of her stomach. She clasped his face in both of her hands and kissed him on the lips. He went rigid. A few players snickered into clenched fists.

“Congratulations, baby,” she whispered, before releasing Greg’s face with too much force. Other players whistled under their breath. As she strolled off toward her locker, Meredith heard Brandon mumble

“She’s fucked up, dude.”

Greg didn’t respond. During the brief kiss, Meredith had pressed his upper lip against her front tooth, the one he had chipped the night before when he slammed her head against the car window.

“It can’t be fucking canceled, man!” a player said, breaking the un-easy silence.

Meredith was at her locker, unpacking her books with all the focus she could manage. Then she heard it. A soft singing coming from a few banks of lockers away. She went rigid.

“That fucking sucks, dude! Snow? I mean give me a fucking break . . .” Brandon stopped. Meredith turned her head back toward the group. She realized Brandon was hearing it, too. He cocked his head at the sound of the low-pitched male voice singing softly. Greg 82

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heard it, looked at Brandon, and followed his gaze to where Stephen Conlin was emptying books from his locker. Meredith watched, gripping the door to her locker, as Brandon and Greg charged toward Stephen.

Stephen didn’t see them approaching. Greg hung back several paces. Brandon leaned against the closed locker door next to Stephen’s open one.

When Stephen glanced up, Meredith speculated that it must have been the first time he had met Brandon’s gaze in years.

“You gonna sing us a little song, Stevie?” Brandon growled. Meredith was probably the only one in the locker room to recognize Stephen’s song—his major solo from The Mikado, a production she had been the only Cannon student to attend. When Stephen had sung it before the audience of twenty on his closing night performance, Meredith had fought tears and briefly pondered what a life might be like without Kate and Greg and Brandon.