Amber House (7 page)

“Come see my room, Daddy,” Sammy said, taking his hand and leading him up the stairs.

“Let me guess, squirt. Are you in the nautical room?”

How’d he know that?
I wondered, following them up. Then I remembered. My father had gone to medical school in Maryland. He and Mom had met and fallen in love in Baltimore. He’d probably been down here to visit a few times — maybe even a lot. Sammy and I were the only ones who had never known Amber House.

Sammy was giving him the tour. “This is my bed,” he said, patting it.

“I like it, Sammy. Did you know it’s a real ship’s bed from a real ship?”

“Uh-huh. And this is my bell.” Sammy gave it an enthusiastic ring.

“Whoa, squirt.” Dad put on his best Mr. Darling voice from
Peter Pan
. “‘A little less noise there, a little less noise.’”

Sammy laughed. He climbed up on the bed and patted the wide carving that hung over the top of it. “And see my eagle?” he said.

“That’s a stern board, Sam. From the rear of a ship.”

“Uh-huh.” He leapt down and ran to the opposite corner. “And this is my mermaid.”

“She’s a beauty too, Sam. She’s a figurehead, from the front end of a ship.” Dad sat on the bed and picked up Sam’s bear. “Who’s this?”

“He’s mine. He’s Heavy Bear.”

Dad looked startled. “Did your mom call him that?”

Sam took the bear. “That’s his name. Heavy Bear.” He turned to run out of the room. “Come on. Come see Sarah’s room. I gived it to her.”

Dad and I followed him out. Sammy stood in the doorway of my room, waiting for us. “Look,” he said proudly.

“Oh, Sam, you found this room for Sarah? It’s be-a-u-tiful,” Dad said.

“Uh-huh. And see this dollhouse?” He patted its shake roof. “All the lights really light up when it has batteries. Maybe little people live in there.”

“What a wonderful dollhouse. What a wonderful room. This is the room Sarah always should have had, don’t you think, squirt?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What I can’t figure out, guys, is why your mother decided to stay here.”

“I did it,” Sam said proudly, spilling the beans. “Sarah told me and I did it, but you can’t tell, ’cause it’s a secret.”

Mom called up the stairs: “Can we eat?”

“Come on,” Sammy said, running out the door.

My dad gave me the look. I squirmed. “What did he
do
, exactly?”

“Just — screamed a little.”

“Sarah. Come on. You know you can’t encourage autistic behaviors.”

“I do know, Dad. And I’m sorry. But it was so important to us. And you should have seen him. I couldn’t believe the job he did. It was frightening, he was so realistic. The kid should be in movies.”

“Your mother must have been hysterical.” He laughed, then he mussed the hair on the top of my head. “You don’t play fair, Sarah. Lord help anyone who gets between you and what you want. That’s a good thing and a bad thing. Like all superpowers, it must be used wisely.”

“I think you’ve got me mixed up with my mother.”

“You know whose room this is, don’t you?”

“It’s hers.”

“She tell you?”

“No. I just figured it out.”

“You figure out a lot of things, kiddo. You always have been perceptive. Another superpower.” He smiled.

I had to blink back sudden tears, surprised at how much I had missed him.

He looked uncomfortable. “Let’s get down there before your mom tries to reheat the food.”

“Not much danger of that,” I said. “I don’t think she knows how to turn on the oven.”

We sat down to a dinner of sweet-and-sour pork, moo shu, Szechuan beef, and fortune cookies.

“Jackson finded me today, Daddy. I was hiding and Jackson finded me.”

“Yeah?” Dad said.

“Uh-huh. He is more gooder at hide-and-seek than Sarah, even.”

“Better,” my mother corrected.

“He is more
better
,” Sammy said.

“Not
more
, just
better
. He is better.”

“That’s right,” Sam said, delighted. “He is!”

Dad laughed. Mom didn’t. “He must be a pretty good seeker, Sam, if he’s
better
than Sarah,” Dad said.

Sam nodded. “Better.”

Silence settled over the table. I didn’t like it. “Did you hear about my party, Dad?”

Evidently not, since his face was all surprise. “You’re having a party? Here?”

My mother was instantly defensive — I guess she was a little sensitive about how
insane
it was to be doing this. “She’s turning
sixteen. That’s an important birthday. And I had a coming-out when I turned sixteen. Lord, wouldn’t it be
nice
if we celebrated?”

Dad turned to me. “What does Sarah think?”

“Sarah thinks,” I said deliberately, “that spending an evening with a hundred strangers is her idea of hell.”

“A
hundred
?” my father repeated.

“You have no idea what you’re even saying,” Mom snapped at me. “In the first place, they won’t all be strangers. Richard is going to be there, and you’ll probably know some of his friends by then —”

“Richard?” Dad asked.

“The senator’s son,” I answered.

“The senator —” Lights went on in my father’s eyes. “Would this be Senator Robert Hathaway?”

“Robert dropped by today to express his condolences,” Mom said impatiently. “He said he would help me round up guests.”

“How is Robert?” my father asked, exaggerated interest in his voice.

“He’s fine. He said to say hello.”

“Nice of him to remember me. Did you tell him how I was? How
we
were?”

“Of course not. I just told him you were working up at Johns Hopkins again.”

“And how is
Mrs.
Hathaway?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“She’s dead,” I said. “A few years ago.”

I shouldn’t have said it. I should have bit my tongue and kept it in my mouth.

“The bereaved widower, huh?” my father said. “How cozy for you.”

My mother’s eyes narrowed. “How
dare
you criticize me? How dare you insinuate
I’ve
done anything wrong? Don’t put this on me.”

He didn’t have any response to that. Without looking my way, he grated out between clenched teeth, “You don’t have to have this party if you don’t want to, Sarah.”

Mom didn’t flinch. “You’re wrong about that, Tom. Sarah doesn’t have any vote in the matter at all. Some of the wealthiest people on this side of the country will come to her party, and since I am selling this house and everything in it, I am
thrilled
for them to see Amber House all lit up and glowing. You can’t
pay
for that kind of advertising. So we are having this party, and Sarah will be there with a smile on her face. You are certainly welcome to come if you want.”

Then she dropped her napkin onto her plate and walked out. I stared at my food, completely miserable.

“Come on, Sarah, squirt,” Dad said. “We don’t want to waste this feast. Let’s eat.”

“Nope,” Sammy said. He started to rap his fist against his head.

“Hey, enough of that.” My dad caught Sammy’s fist in his hand. “How ’bout some ice cream instead?”

“Nope! Nope, nope, nope!” Sammy shouted. He wrenched his hand free, jumped down from his chair, and ran out of the room. I could hear his feet on the stairs.

“This is my fault,” I said. “I shouldn’t have brought up the party.”

“No, don’t you do that to yourself.
None
of it is your fault.” Dad sighed. “She doesn’t want me around. Maybe I should stop intruding.”

“But you’ll come to the party, right?”

“If you want me there, I will.” He stood. Awkwardly, he bent and kissed the top of my head. “I need to check on Sammy, okay?”

“Yeah. Better go.”

Dad rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. I pretended I didn’t notice. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “To help with the dishes.”

Nobody had opened their fortune cookies. Sighing, I cracked mine: “The mirror’s reflection should show someone you wish to see.”

I rolled my eyes. I always got the crappy fortunes.

I had most of the food put away by the time Dad came back down. “He’s asleep,” he said. “Just fell on the bed with his arm around his bear and went out. He’ll be okay.”

“Yeah, he will,” I told him. “He’s really a pretty upbeat kid.”

“You know where he got that name for his bear?”

“Heavy Bear? No. Why?”

“Your grandmother gave me a tour once.
She
called that thing Heavy Bear. I think that’s pretty odd. Don’t you?”

“Maybe she told Sammy about him on one of her visits.”

“Maybe.” Dad picked up the scrub pad and started in on a plate. I stopped him.

“Don’t worry about that. It’s getting late; you need your sleep. Get going. I don’t want to be the cause of a malpractice lawsuit.”

“You sure you got this?”

I shrugged. “It’s practically all done already.”

He gave me a hug before he left.
A product of separation
, I thought. He never used to give me hugs back home in Seattle. I finished up. I wished, as I went from room to room, hitting the lights, that I had a TV. But the only set was in Gramma’s room, with my mom.

Nine o’clock. Two and a half hours to go. If I’d had Jackson’s phone number, I would have called and cancelled.

I went upstairs and fished my cell out of my luggage, thinking I would call Jecie, but it was dead. And, of course, I’d forgotten my charger.

I snuck into Sam’s room and took his flashlight out of his backpack, then went back down to the library. I thought I remembered seeing a phone in that room.

It was there, on the table between two chairs. It had a dial, like one of those things from a Bogart movie. It took me a second to figure out how to make it work.

“Jecie. It’s Sarah. Remember me?” I cringed. I always sounded stupid on the phone.

We talked for a little bit. She told me she’d gotten a tattoo — Hebrew letters from the Talmud: “If I’m not for myself, then who will be for me? But if I’m only for myself, then what am I?”

“Way to rep the Hebrew people,” I told her. “I’m pretty sure tats aren’t kosher. Does the rabbi know? Never mind that, does your mom know?”

She just laughed. I told her about the party, but she couldn’t come. Even if she could have afforded the plane ticket, she had dress rehearsals for
The Secret Garden
. I told her about the senator’s delicious son.

“Model status?” she asked.

“Model status,” I confirmed. I promised I would e-mail some photos as soon as I could get to a place with Internet. I missed my computer.

Still an hour and a half to go. I explored the library. It was enormous — floor-to-ceiling shelves built around the doors and windows on all four walls. As far as I could see, the books were all hardbound, most of them leather covered. Small brass plates identified different subject matters. There was a section of French authors and a section of German. A heavy Oxford unabridged dictionary lay open on a stand near an ancient globe.

I sat in one of the tufted leather chairs and examined the stack of books my grandmother had left on the table, unshelved. Conan Doyle and Christie, Lovecraft and Poe. Her taste, evidently, had run to the macabre. On the far side of the table, a large book lay
open to a picture of a house on a bluff glimpsed between the trees. I stood and examined it right-side up — it was Amber House. I checked the cover.
A Place in Time
by Fiona Campbell Warren.

This was the book Richard had told me about. Of course my grandmother had a copy. I closed it and tucked it under my arm. Maybe it would help me kill some time.

I sat at the kitchen table. The window in the outside door stared at me like a great black eye. I thought about switching chairs so I didn’t have to see it, but I didn’t quite want it at my back either. I opened the heavy book flat on the table.

The page after the title was filled with a photo of the author, my great-grandmother. She was pretty striking. Finely carved features, great figure, and a mass of thick hair piled on top of her head. She looked a little like my mother. The next page was the editor’s explanatory preface: