House of Wonder (4 page)

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She inhaled through her teeth, almost wincing. “There've been some thefts,” she said, enunciating every consonant. “Lots of things going missing.”

“Really?” I asked. “In King's Knoll?” Even though the neighborhood had become dated and somewhat down-market, I had thought it was regarded as safe and family-friendly.

Mrs. Vanni nodded, her chin moving slowly up, then down.

“My God,” I said. “That's such a shame.”

“Well, no one really knew they were thefts at first. Gina Loost thought she lost her watch and Perry Burt thought he misplaced his iPhone. Then enough people start missing things, and . . .” She opened her hand, as if to offer up the logical conclusion. “Just the other day, someone got into Beth Castro's garage and stole her son's mountain bike.” It seemed to pain her even to think about it—theft being a problem in King's Knoll. “That's Zack right over there,” she said, nodding toward the boys by the Crock-Pot. They were laughing and jostling each other like overgrown puppies. “He'd only just got the thing. I guess Beth said he paid for half of it with his lawn-mowing money.”

“Poor guy,” I said.

“The scary thing is that whoever is doing it seems to know exactly what to go for. There hasn't been any forced entry or anything,” she said. “Lock your doors, that's what I've been telling everyone.
Lock your doors.
” Then her eyes seemed to narrow, tracking some logic I couldn't follow. “Your mother didn't mention any of this?”

“No,” I said, thinking the omission inconsequential. “She didn't.”

Linda paused for a moment, then swatted the air in front of her, as if it were an unwelcome thought. “Anyhow, I didn't mean to go on and on,” she said.

I was searching for a more pleasant subject of conversation when Rose sprang up. Looking from Mrs. Vanni's face to mine, she began to bounce her knees as she held herself. “I need to pee,” she said.

“Okay, Rosie,” I said, grabbing her hand. “We're just gonna . . . ,” I said, looking at Mrs. Vanni while gesturing up the street.

Mrs. Vanni nodded in understanding. “It was so good to see you,” I said, as Rose and I turned away.

Navigating out of the crowd, with
excuse-us
's and
pardon- me
's,
I glanced around for my mother. When I saw her, my feet became leaden. Though surrounded by groupings of neighbors—holding paper plates and plastic cups and talking about taxes and football and reality television—she stood alone, her hands clasped in front of her, her expression pleasant and hopeful. Like a girl who hadn't been asked to dance. As neighbors passed, they made sure they were looking anywhere but in her direction, suddenly finding the cloud formations overhead or the face of their watch endlessly fascinating. With an urgency I
couldn't quite explain, I cast my eyes about for Warren and found him walking back up Royal Court. His pace was quick and purposeful. His head was bowed as if against the wind. He was going back to the house, of course. A house from which much that was of value had long ago been taken.

Lemonade Stand

1954

T
he sun hung fat and heavy in the sky, as if ready to be harvested, glowing the gold-to-orange ombré of late summer. Two months ago, the sun would have still been high overhead, proud and young. But it had settled into itself, no longer having quite so much to prove.

Priscilla looked at her mother's arms, which were draped over the table that they had set up next to the big oak in the front yard.

“Do you think we're going to get any customers?” asked Priscilla, her voice as tiny and lyrical as a bird's. She glanced at the pitcher of lemonade that they had made, the sugar still a thick layer at the bottom. It had been her mother's idea, the lemonade stand.

Her mother turned her head toward her, letting the warm, leaf-dappled light hit her face. “If folks are thirsty,” she answered. Then she smiled, the small gap between her front teeth visible as she closed one eye, resting her cheek on the tablecloth, which was white with big fat red cherries on it.

Priscilla saw a car approach and straightened as it drew closer, waiting to see if it would stop, if the man driving would step out and with a smile drop a shiny nickel in the cup. Instead it only slowed and floated by—a blue-gray cloud passing on the horizon. “Maybe Daddy will buy some,” she offered. But her mother's focus had gone elsewhere.

“Look, Silla,” she said, rising from her chair, her gaze angled up toward the sky. Scooting round the table, her mother took a few steps closer to the street, her feet shuffling blindly over the dry, brittle grass. She raised her hand, pointing to a bird on a wire. “That's a scissor-tailed flycatcher.” Her mother looked back at her. “See his tail? See how long it is?”

Silla nodded. The slender feathers that extended past his back were twice as long as the bird himself. “Why is it like that?”

“That's just how he was made,” answered her mother simply, smiling as she watched her daughter study the bird. “Mama's gonna make him fly for you,” she said. Then she turned, and squinting into the sun and bringing her hands above her head, she clapped loudly. The bird lifted off instantly, his wings flapping, his glorious tail spreading into a long, elegant fork. “Go on home, Mr. Flycatcher!” she said, her words long and unhurried. Beaming, Silla watched the bird until she couldn't see it any longer. Then she looked back at her mother, who was staring into the sky, her front teeth gently biting her lower lip.

Her mother was still standing like that when her father's bright red car approached. He peeled into the driveway and Silla watched him get out, slamming the door shut and marching over to her mother.

“Martha,” he said, quiet and stern as he firmly took her upper arm. “What in God's name are you doing out on the front lawn dressed like that?”

Priscilla watched her mother look at him, as if she didn't quite understand the question.

“Goddammit, Martha,” she heard her father whisper, as he took a step toward the house, pulling her mother along with him. She saw her lean toward his leading hand, as if to relieve the pressure from his grip.

“Daddy,” Silla begged in a voice that wasn't loud enough to be heard, “we were just selling lemonade.” The screen door whined as he pulled it open, and he forced Silla's mother in ahead of him. Inching closer, she heard her father's raised voice. “I have to get a phone call at work about you sitting in the front yard with our daughter in nothing but your
slip
!?”

“Lee,” she heard her mother say. Her voice was always so innocent.

“This sort of thing has got to stop, Martha.” Even at four, Silla understood the gravity in her father's voice. “One way or another it's got to stop.”

Painkillers

G
ordo led the way down the empty sidewalk, trotting from Maggie's house to our car. Though Maggie and I spent our days sitting no more than eight feet away from each other in the Wonderlux office, Rose and I along with Gordo were frequent guests at the Dyer home, where Maggie lived with her husband and sons.

“Why do we have to go?” whined Rose, continuing the slump-shouldered, slack-jawed protest that she had begun in the house.

“You've got a big day tomorrow, Rosie.” Duncan's parents, who had made an admirable effort to stay involved in Rose's life, were coming for a visit. And this time his mother, Miriam, had suggested that they take Rose to the Waldorf Hotel for the
night. Though I was anxious about letting her go, it was the sort of indulgence that I couldn't easily afford, and therefore was grateful that Miriam and John were willing to provide for her. “You're going to live it up with your gram and gramp in New York.”

Rose looked up at me, and in the dark, her pale skin seemed lit from within. “Is my dad going to be at the hotel?” she asked. It was a question of curiosity, rather than desire. As if she was trying to understand with what and whom she should associate her father's visits.

“No, monkey,” I said. “He won't be back for a visit until Christmas.”

Rose's brows drew together as she tried to process the information. “How many days is that?”

“About sixty,” I said. Rose had recently become fascinated with numbers, always wanting to know how many days until her birthday or since she last went swimming.

“And how many days ago was the last time he came?”

“About three hundred,” I answered, making my voice light.

“That's 'cause Tokyo is really far away,” she explained, repeating the logic I'd offered her so many times before.
You don't get to see your daddy as much because Tokyo is really, really far away.

Over dinner, Maggie had asked me what I was going to do while Rose was in the city, suggesting drinks and maybe dinner. Maggie loved drinks-and-maybe-dinner. And when I'd opted out, she'd given me the sort of look that seemed to insist there were better ways to spend a child-free Saturday evening than watching a movie in your fat pants. She had, however, let the subject drop.

The next morning, after Miriam and John picked up Rose, after I did the laundry and paid the bills and scrubbed the bathroom floor, I sat on the couch and looked around.

With my sock-clad toes, I gently poked Gordo in the side. “What now, huh?” I asked. He groaned and rolled onto his back, straightening his legs and arching his back. Objectively, Gordo was an exceptionally unattractive dog—something close to a chocolate Lab mixed with a sea lion. But he was a noble beast, loyal and true, who licked my feet and warmed the cold side of my bed, and whose small, slightly crossed yellow eyes looked at me with pure affection. I thought Gordo was magnificent. “Should we stick around here?”

The entirety of our little cottage could be seen from the family room. And compared with my mother's house, mine looked like the dormitory of a monk. Or would, if not for the small pops of color and life, all of which were related to Rose. Her toys, her artwork, her clothes. I never did like being there when she wasn't home. I never did like the way I could feel her absence as I passed through each room, seeing her shoes by the door or her chair in the kitchen. It was like walking through a cold spot in the ocean. So on impulse, I picked up the phone. On impulse, I called the one woman who would understand completely.

“Hey, Jenna,” said my mother, sounding surprised to hear from me.

I hesitated for a moment. “Hi, Mom,” I said.

“What's going on, sweetheart?” There was a twinge of worry in her voice, as if she was expecting trouble. And I realized how rare it was for me to call for a chat.

“I was wondering what you're doing tonight.”

•   •   •

A few hours later, I was in my mother's house, sitting on her couch, and watching a movie in my fat pants. Spread over my lap was a blanket and my slippered feet were resting on the edge of the coffee table. But despite those comforts, I had trouble relaxing. The house on Royal Court—with its memories, its things—felt like quicksand.

Objects had accumulated over the years, settled into their places like layers of sedimentary rock, but underneath it all, the bones remained the same. The same bulky television sat in the same oak entertainment center, the shelves of which were filled with the same boxes of jumbled VHS tapes. The right side of the same plaid couch had the same squeaky spring. And the same mauve lampshade gave the room the same dim light. I wondered if I was the same girl I had been when I watched my father walk out the front door with a suitcase in each hand, as if he were taking the last lifeboat off a sinking ship.

“Oh, Lord,” said my mother, bringing a hand to her forehead with a pained chuckle. We were watching the beauty contest scene in the movie
Shag
, in which Bridget Fonda's character performs a scene from
Gone with the Wind
for a less than enthusiastic crowd. “That poor thing.”

I shoved one of the sofa's many teddy bears behind my back as a pillow. “Did you ever do a dramatic interpretation for your talent?” I was clearly joking, but my mother answered honestly.

“No,” she said, her head tilted as she watched the screen. “I always just sang.” She took a breath, watching the girls parade around the stage. “I never did like the swimsuit portion, though.”

Though I could think of dozens of reasons why that might be, I wanted to hear hers. “Why?” I asked.

She shifted, settled deeper into the corner of the couch. “In the bigger pageants, they used to announce your height and weight.” She gestured toward the television. “When you first came out onstage.”

I felt my expression turn incredulous. “They did?”

Her eyes didn't leave the screen. “Sure,” she said, finding this bit of trivia wholly unremarkable. “The audience liked to know that sort of thing.”

I looked at my mother, at the soft sag of her skin beneath her chin, and the rounding of her body. It seemed as though we often bumped into subjects from which she gently steered us away. Over the years, her beauty queen days had become one of them. “Did you get nervous?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I hated pageants.”

I rearranged myself on the couch, angling my body toward her. “Then why did you do them?”

She looked at me for a moment, as though she wasn't sure why I needed to ask. “What else was I going to do?” she asked. When I didn't answer, she gave me a small, sad smile. “I wasn't smart, honey.” She said it as if it were an innocuous fact. “And even if I was, your grandfather didn't think girls needed to go to college.” Though she turned back to the television, her gaze remained soft and unfocused. “I got lucky,” she said. “At least I was pretty. If I wasn't . . .” She shook her head. “I'd probably still be in Texas changing old Hattie's bedpans.”

Hattie was my mother's stepmother. Whenever her name came up, it felt as though the air in the room became colder and thinner. She had married my grandfather when my mother was
about seven years old, just a few years after my grandmother died. My mother didn't talk much about Hattie, though they were each all that the other had left by way of family. I had met her once, when my grandfather was still alive and they came to Harwick for their one and only visit. Though I thought Hattie was glamorous and beautiful, my mother's voice had turned shrill and angry when she was here. She burned dinner. She slammed doors. Warren wouldn't come out of his room, and spent their entire visit working on his planes.
Come on,
I had urged, as he put paintbrush to wing.
She's nice. She gave me ten bucks.

“Oh, I love this part,” Mom said, bringing my attention back to the TV. “Isn't Phoebe Cates just
gorgeous
in this movie?” she asked, her words slow and long as she pointed toward the screen. But I couldn't take my eyes off my mother.

We finished
Shag
and Mom dug through the racks of tapes near the entertainment center for another option, while I checked my cell phone for any calls from Rose. Without looking at me, Mom said, “It's a good sign if you don't hear from her. Means she's having fun.” Then she held up another box.
“
Steel Magnolias
?”

•   •   •

I opened my eyes, blinking against the dim light in the room. I had fallen asleep. On the television, the credits were rolling down a black screen. I looked at my mother, who'd also dozed off, her chin sunk back into her neck, dark smears of mascara having found their way into the lines around her eyes.

We both seemed to wake simultaneously. In those transient seconds between slumber and consciousness, I heard the sound of the front door being gently shut. Gordo let out a single,
belated bark, then stared at me, as if covering up for his lack of vigilance. My gaze went to the digital clock display on the cable box. On Saturday nights, Warren usually got home from work within an hour-long window, depending on how many deliveries he had. I waited for some sign that it was him: his whistle, his footsteps.

My mother's face was alert, her body stone-still, and I knew that she was thinking about the thefts, about the things that had gone missing from Royal Court. There was a quiet creak of the floor and my mother raised one finger, a silent acknowledgment that she had heard it as well. Maybe whoever this was had seen us sleeping and assumed they could slip right in. I looked around at the room.
But what would they want in here?

Then it came, faint but clear. A single bursting sob, like a crashing wave hitting the shore, then being just as quickly pulled back into the sea.

And my mother was up.

She walked quickly toward the foyer, her elbows pumped at her sides, as Gordo and I trailed closely behind. She saw him before I did, gasping and stopping in her tracks. Then I saw him, too. Warren was standing in front of the door. Blood caked his nostrils and was running in red rivers down over his lips, his chin. His nose was swollen, the bridge purple and tender. Another spring of blood came from a gash above his eyebrow and one of his planes was dangling from the hand of the arm that hung limp at his side. Startled, he gave us one brief, reflexive glance, the wide-eyed, frightened look of a solitary nocturnal creature. Then he dropped his head. “I'm okay,” he muttered, walking quickly toward the stairs, as if he could make us believe we hadn't seen him.

“Warren!” cried my mother as she went after him.
“What happened?”

Stunned at the sight of my brother, I remained still, feeling as though my muscles had begun to stiffen into rock, inch by inch, from the ground up. I heard their feet making their way quickly to the second floor. Then I heard Warren's door shut and my mother's fists on it. “Warren, honey, you need to tell me what happened to you!” she begged. “Please let me in!”

Still I couldn't move.
Mom,
I wanted to yell.
Leave him alone!
But I didn't. She couldn't see how embarrassed he was. How shocked and ashamed. All she could see was that her little boy had been hurt.

“Jenna!” my mother called from upstairs. I forced my feet to move. I walked more slowly than my mother, taking the stairs step by step, staring at the carpet that was as blue as the sky. When I reached the top, I looked at her agonized face. “Mom,” I said firmly, my eyes widening instructively. I let my head bob in a slow, small nod. Then she covered her eyes with her hand, turned, and leaned her back against the wall.

Taking her place in front of the door, I spoke into its white wood. “Warren,” I said, my hand on the knob. “It's me.”

I waited for a moment for him to come. When he didn't, I swept my hand across the top of the door's trim. The straightened paper clip that I had always kept there was right where I'd left it. I stuck its end into the hole in the knob, released the lock, and opened the door. Warren was sitting on his bed, his feet flat on the floor and his elbows resting on his knees. He dabbed his bloody nose with his sleeve. He looked up at me, but said nothing.

I was always allowed in, even when no one else was.

•   •   •

I drove while my mother sat in the backseat with Warren, her hand on his thigh. He was holding a washrag against his nose, his head leaning against the cool glass of the window. I thought of Rose. I thought of her standing at one of those big wide windows at the Waldorf, looking out onto New York, its lights looking like Christmas.

“Are you in pain?” Mom asked Warren quietly.

“I'm okay,” he said, as he stared out the window, his mouth open slightly, from the swollen nose and heavy thoughts.

“Hey, Warren,” I said. “Let me know if you get too hot.”

I had the heat on high, and Warren was still wearing his thick Pizzeria Brava sweatshirt.

We rode in silence for a few more minutes before my mother asked almost hopefully, “Did this happen at work?” She tried to catch his eye, tried to evoke an answer, but Warren didn't move. “I remember when that one cook opened the pizza oven too fast,” she said. “And knocked himself in the nose.”

I turned up the radio just slightly, knowing that whatever had happened to Warren was not the work of a pizza oven. And as I stared out through the smooth, clear windshield, I remembered when Warren and I were eleven. He was shuttling an inchworm away from the peril of the Mt. Lewis School playground monkey bars over to the safety of the bushes. Scurrying with his shoulders hunched forward and hands cupped protectively around the worm, he passed a group of boys. I saw Seth Werlock's eyes become small before he casually, almost elegantly extended his leg. It met Warren's foot and Warren—who had been watching only the tiny green body in his
care—flew forward, landing on his stomach, the inchworm disappearing into the grass. Warren turned his head to look at Seth, who looked away.