House of Wonder (22 page)

Kept

1973

S
illa brought the cigarette to her lips and pulled in the smoke, hearing the dim crackle of the tobacco as it burned. Holding her breath for a moment, she released the gray cloud into the wind, which took it instantly. The wind was wild that day, disappearing entirely only to return in a furious gust. She leaned against the hood of the car, the cigarette held erect between her pointer and center fingers. She had parked as far away from the building as she could. And now she just stood there staring at its unadorned facade. At the bars on the windows. At the peaks of its roof. It looked much as she had thought it would, which was perhaps why she couldn't bring herself to go inside. Instead she took another drag of her cigarette.

Stewart hated when she smoked. He told her it would ruin her voice and he was probably right.
How are you going to make it as a singer if you lose your voice?
he'd ask her. But she'd just smile and tell him she didn't know. That she didn't know and that she wouldn't smoke anymore. Then when he'd fall asleep, she'd crawl out of their bed and step out onto the balcony of their apartment, seeing the vast flat city of Houston that always looked like the bottom of the ocean to her. She'd slide her hands underneath the planter that held the green and purple-leaved coleus, pull out a hidden pack of cigarettes, and think about all the things she didn't let herself think about when she was with her husband.

He was away on one of his trips now, probably imagining her at home, drinking a Tab and practicing her scales. He was always on a trip—meeting the head of this region or that, talking to a supplier or a vendor.

She brought the cigarette to her lips again, then dropped it on the pavement in front of her, stomping it out with the ball of a high-heeled shoe. She lowered her head, crossed her arms around her body, and marched toward the concrete walk that led to the entrance, past the flags of Texas and the United States, past a cold-looking marble bench with an inscription that she could not bring herself to read. She pushed open the heavy metal door and walked up to the front desk, where three women in white uniforms sat in a fortified glass box.

Silla leaned down and spoke through a pocked plastic circle. “Good afternoon,” she said. “I'm here to pick up Martha Harris's things.” Her words sounded unrehearsed and fresh, though she had run through them over and over on the way
down. “I'm her daughter.” She nodded in introduction. “I called yesterday and spoke with Penny Ward.”

The three women exchanged glances in a silent negotiation over who would tend to the redheaded girl in high heels and a tight sweater. Finally the middle one stood. Her body was shaped like a chicken's, with a full mound of breast and a short torso balanced atop long thin legs. Her hair had been set into tight, pert gray-brown curls and she had a sharp nose and jowls that hung past her jawbone. “This is one of the boxes from the basement,” she said to her colleagues. “Penny told me about this.” With a key ring in her hand, she shuffled to a side door. “I'll be back in a minute,” she said as she opened it. Then she disappeared slowly down the hallway that was a tunnel of yellow. Yellow floors. Yellow walls. Yellow lights.

Silla tried not to look at the other two women as she waited, though she felt their gazes pass over her as they carried on their hushed, leisurely conversation. “I don't know why we keep 'em,” she heard one of them say. “We're not a storage facility.” Silla strained to hear more, to make out any sound but the women's murmurs, but silence filled the air like water. And she wondered if her father had ever been here.

Finally the woman came shuffling back up the hallway, a small brown box in her hands. It looked like a container in which you would store files, only smaller. On either side was a hole through which she hooked her fingers.

Silla took a few steps to meet her and relieve her of her load. “Thank you,” she said. She was braced for the box to have some weight, some heft, but it was as light as a whim. The woman turned to walk back toward her coop. “Pardon me,” Silla said.
The woman swiveled her head around. “Did you know my mother? Martha Harris?”

The chicken's face went from hard to soft. “I stay at the front desk, dear,” she said, before turning back around.

“Thank you,” Silla called after her.

She pressed the door open with her hip, taking care not to brush the box on the doorframe. It felt sacred. Holy. And she thought of Mrs. Lloyd, who used to quote Psalms to her.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.
Silla never really knew what it meant; she still didn't. But the words ran through her head now as the bright midday sun drew the shape of the building on the balding earth below her feet.

All the way across the parking lot, she judged the contents, their slide, their volume. She tried to imagine what was inside, what her mother had kept with her. What still remained. Opening the driver's-side door, she scooted into her seat and slid it back, making room to hold the box on her lap. Through the windshield, she felt the sun warming her hands and the brown cardboard of the box. Then, quickly and efficiently, she lifted the lid. Inside were three things. Set in a slim wood frame was a black-and-white photograph of Silla as a toddler, colored so that her cheeks were rosy pink, her eyes hill green. Next was a yellow hat with a faux bird, its wings outstretched in frozen flight and pinned against a tiny veil of netting. But what Silla couldn't take her eyes off was the doll that she had given her mother all those years ago, the last time she saw her. Silla lifted it up, the memory of her mother suddenly thick and deep enough that she could have drowned in it. Stripped now of its green pinafore, the doll's cotton muslin torso was the color of
dishwater, the smooth plastic of its limbs worn dull. She tilted the doll back, watching the thick fringe of its lashes draw down like a shade, then lift again as she brought it upright. They stared eye to eye for a moment, she and the doll, as tears ran from Silla's eyes without sob or sound.

Roots

W
e pulled into Royal Court, passing neighbors wearing fleece hats and carrying rakes as they righted overturned lawn furniture and cleared away broken branches, calling to one another from their respective yards and comparing the damage. It felt strange to be here now, as if the entire Parsons family had been implicated in everything that was wrong with Royal Court.

Under the guise of surveying the scene, I drove toward my mother's house, then turned, continuing to the Vannis'. Keeping my gaze ahead, I noted Bobby's Jeep in the driveway; then I looped around the cul-de-sac and headed back to number sixty-two. As I pulled into the driveway, I saw that the tarp that had protected the porch during the painting project had
blown into the Fitzpatricks' bushes, so after unstrapping Rose and releasing Gordo, I hurried over to retrieve it, crossing over a distinct line where my mother's weed-addled yard met the Fitzpatricks' ChemLawn-bolstered turf.

As I folded the tarp haphazardly against my chest, Rose and Gordo bounced up the front steps, reaching the door just as my mother opened it. They bounded in, Rose giving my mother a quick
“Hi, Nana!”
as she scampered up the stairs to the second floor, Gordo trailing behind her. My mother watched her, looking as though she was smiling through the pain.

“Is Warren up there?” I asked, nodding toward his room.

Mom took a deep breath. “He is,” she said.

“What's he doing?” I asked, setting the tarp on the floor just inside the door.

She shook her head. “He's just been staying up in his room,” she said. “Working on his
planes
.” It was the first time I'd ever heard her speak of Warren's hobby with anything even approaching derision. “He won't go outside.”

She headed toward the kitchen and I followed, my voice dropping to a murmur as I asked, “And have you found out anything more about that frame the police took?”

We stepped onto the yellowing linoleum floor. “No, but . . .” She shook her head, her eyes finding the picture of her mother among the trinkets and treasures on her baker's rack. “All the neighbors are talking about it.”

“But it was just a frame!”

“Linda Vanni called me this morning to tell me that Beth Castro's saying they found the Doogans' laptop here.”

There was a calm defeat in Mom's voice, a sense that we were all hurtling toward some inevitability. I stood frozen in
the face of her surrender. She had protected Warren all his life. Now it was possible that she no longer could. Finally she asked, “Has Rose eaten breakfast yet?”

“She had a little cereal,” I said. “But I'm sure she'd love something warm.”

Without a word, my mother shuffled toward the stove. “I've got some sausages in the freezer,” she said. “Warren hasn't eaten yet either.”

We began moving next to each other in the kitchen, communicating without words. She handed me the butter before I asked for it and I added a pat to the pan, watching it slide over the smooth black surface. “Does Warren still like his eggs—”

“Fried but not burnt,” said my mother, finishing my sentence.

She put the bread in the toaster while I cracked the eggs into a skillet.

“This storm really was something,” she said, looking out into the park through the window over the sink. Glancing back over my shoulder, I did the same. My gaze flickered to the Vannis' house before I made myself look away. Panning back over the sweep of dull green grass, still touched with frost from the cold night, my eyes snagged on a particular spot, at first registering only that something was different, then realizing what that something was.

“The maple!” I gasped. The old maple that had stood next to the pond was lying on its side, its roots reaching out of the ground and its trunk disappearing behind the curve of the hill.

“I know,” she said, her voice a lament. “It fell in the storm.” Her hand drew a line across the horizon. “It's lying right across the pond.”

With my hands on my hips, I stared out from behind her at the void in the sky where just a few weeks ago the tree's leaves had blazed red. The maple was a monument on the map of my childhood, the one thing that had always seemed to grow more glorious and majestic with each passing year. I remembered how Warren used to scale its branches, fearless and light, as if his body were made to do so. Climbing trees was the one physical feat at which he had excelled, the one for which he was admired. He'd perch on the highest limbs and look out onto the world like some strange, wonderful bird as the rest of us groaned and grunted, trying to haul our clumsy bodies up after him. “I can't believe it,” I said.

Smelling the eggs threatening to burn, I returned my attention to the stove. “Shit,” I whispered, managing to grab a spatula and flip them before they browned. I gave them a moment or two more on the other side before plating them with toast and sausage. Then I set the plates on the island, each in front of a barstool.

“I'll go get Rose and Warren,” I said.

Padding up the soft, thick carpet on the stairs, I passed the framed family photos in their jumbled and jammed arrangement. There were class pictures and snapshots, photos of Warren and me with our grandfather. There was a faded image of a redheaded siren in an evening gown holding a bouquet of yellow roses. And one of a middle-aged divorcée, her arms draped over her reluctant teenage children in front of the gray Sears portrait studio backdrop. If you didn't already know, you might never guess that the two photos were of the same woman.

As my eyes lingered, passing each picture, I heard Rose's and Warren's voices, growing clearer as I approached the landing.
With my foot already on the next step, I held the railing and listened.

“Can my plane be pink instead of red?” asked Rose.

“What plane?” asked Warren. His voice was distracted but unrushed and languid, the way it sounded when his hands were working under the bright light of his desk lamp.

“The one you're making me for Christmas,” she said.

Warren chuckled. “Okay,” he said. He had been teasing her. “Uncle Warren will make you a pink plane.”

“And can it have my name on it?”

“Rosie the Riveter?”

“No, just
Rose
,” she said.

I heard the sound of a wire being clipped. “Just Rose,” he agreed.

A few beats of silence passed. “Uncle Warren?” asked Rose. From her tone, I imagined her little elbows resting on his desk, her fist tucked against her chin and her eyes deep and worried. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

I could almost see Warren's smile as his eyes remained fixed on some minuscule plane part. “Your mom is Uncle Warren's sister,” he said.

“I don't,” said Rose quickly. “I don't have any brothers or sisters. But Tucker at school has a brother
and
a sister.”

“Well,” said Uncle Warren, his tone leisurely and long, as if it had been trolling through deep water. “You have an uncle Warren. I'll bet Tucker doesn't have an uncle Warren.”

Rose seemed to think about this. “Yeah,” she said, more than satisfied with the logic. “He doesn't have an
uncle Warren
. That's
better
than a little brother.”

“Uncle Warrens don't wear diapers.”

Rose's giggles spilled over. “Yeah,” she repeated. “Uncle Warrens don't wear
diapers
.”

I heard the squeak of Warren's desk lamp being adjusted. “Not everyone likes Uncle Warrens, though,” he said. It was the way you might caution a child that Santa was watching—a good-natured warning—but beneath it I sensed something more raw.

“Why not?” she asked, seeming to understand that they weren't being silly anymore.

Warren seemed to ponder the question. “I don't know,” he finally said. “Nobody ever told me.”

I shut my eyes as if to shield myself from the truth of it. In all his weirdness, with his odd little habits and strange manners of speech, Warren was just being Warren. He didn't know how to be anything else.

Then, perhaps alerted to the scent of sausages, Gordo's wagging body made its way out of Warren's room, his nose searching the air. My cover blown, I stomped loudly up the few remaining stairs. “Hey, you guys,” I said, smiling as I crossed the threshold. “There's breakfast downstairs.”

Rose sprang up from her seat and began bouncing toward the door. Still at his desk, Warren's thin body was turned to watch her, his shoulder blades visible through his long-sleeved T-shirt. She stopped and looked back at him. “Come on, Uncle Warren!” she said, scooping the air in front of her.

Taking a deep breath, Warren hauled his body up. “Okay,” he said.

Satisfied that Warren was coming, Rose trotted ahead. I waited for my brother. “You know,” I said as we followed Rose
down the stairs, “you really should try to eat more.” I squeezed his upper arm. “You're so thin, War.”

Warren's brows drew together as his feet dragged over the carpet as if they were shackled. “I'm not hungry that much,” he said.

Rose was already in her stool and eating a sausage with Gordo circling beneath her when Warren and I walked into the kitchen.

My mother looked at us and tried to smile. “My babies,” she said through a breath. Warren slunk into the seat next to Rose and picked up a piece of toast.

I walked back over to the window above the sink. “I still can't believe the maple fell,” I said. “The park looks so weird without it.”

“It looks like the pond has started to freeze around it,” said Mom.

“What's a maple?” asked Rose.

“A tree, honey,” I said, without looking back. “It fell right across the pond. Like a bridge.” I followed its line across to the Vannis' house. When I turned around, Warren was watching me. Our eyes met for a moment before he looked down and took another small bite of toast.

“They cut the surface roots,” Warren said into his plate, referring to the great knotty roots that had extended a few inches above the grass, reaching out to grip the earth.

“Who did?” asked my mother.

“The landscapers,” answered Warren. “The roots used to wreck the blades of their mowers. And they didn't like mowing around them.”

“And that made the tree weaker. That's why it fell,” I said,
Warren having drawn me toward a conclusion that felt profound in its own quiet way.

With his chin tucked to his chest, he looked at me from beneath his brows and nodded, his blue eyes appearing as they had for all of our thirty-six years.

“Rose, honey,” said my mother, seeming eager to move away from this talk of fallen trees and butchered roots, “do you want Nana to put on a show for you?”

Rose leaned over the counter to better see the park. “No, I want to go see the tree,” she said.

Before my mother could respond, the phone rang. Mom picked it up off its cradle. As she looked at the display, her face grew grave and she pressed the handset against her chest. “Excuse me,” she said, as she hurried from the room. I heard the door to the office open, then shut behind her.

Warren and I looked at each other.
It's Dad,
I thought.
That's why she rushed out.
Whatever she and my father were going to be discussing, she wouldn't want to do it in front of Warren. Then, before I could change my mind, I reached for my coat. “Hey, War,” I said. “Can you keep an eye on Rose for me?” Warren's eyes moved briefly across the park to the Vannis' house, and then back to me.

“Where are you going?” asked Rose.

One by one, I closed my toggle buttons. “I'm going to go see if Gabby's daddy is home,” I said, avoiding Warren's gaze.

Rose tensed with excitement. “I want to come!” she said, making a move to hop down from her seat.

“How about you and Uncle Warren play Candy Land?” I suggested.

“No!!!” she protested. “I want to see Gabby!”

Laying my hand on her shoulder, I lowered my head so that we were face-to-face. “Baby,” I said, “Mommy needs to go over there by herself, okay?”

“But I don't want to stay here!”

Suddenly Warren was down from his seat. “Come on,” he said, already moving toward the doorway, his hand extending behind him—an invitation for Rose to take it. “You can help Uncle Warren with his plane.”

Rose looked reluctantly at Warren's hand before she gripped it limply, as if it were a consolation prize.

I stepped out onto the back deck, then down the steps, squinting at the air, which was clear and bright and cold. The grass was hard beneath my feet, yielding little as I walked across it. Cresting the hill, I saw the maple that lay toppled on its side across the pond, regal and elegant even in repose, ice beginning to form in a thin layer around its submerged branches.

As step by step I drew closer to the Vannis' house, I felt a shaky uncertainty and dreaded delivering my canned speech to Bobby.
The timing. The job. Our responsibilities.

Sunlight reflected off the kitchen windows, making them shine like mirrors against the sky. And as I stepped onto the back deck, I saw Mrs. Vanni through the window, sitting at her kitchen table. I waved and smiled as I approached. She looked out at me, but her face tightened a bit, as if she wasn't sure she recognized me, this girl clomping up onto her deck. As if she wasn't quite sure she wanted to.

My steps became less assured as I approached. I knocked on the glass of the back door.
Ba-bum.
Only then did Mrs. Vanni rise from her seat at the table. She walked over, the chair
in which she had been sitting displaced behind her, her coffee mug resting where she had left it on the table.

“Hi, Mrs. Vanni,” I said, smiling as she opened the door.

She returned my smile, but it was sad, full of regret. “Hi, Jenna,” she said. “Come on in.”