The Household Spirit (5 page)

Howie imagined his daughter walking straight up into Emily
and disappearing, as if that's where she belonged anyway, who she actually was, or who she could have been if Howie hadn't failed so spectacularly. Emily and Harriet living next door as one.

—

“God, Dad,” Harri said, returning to him. She lifted her eyebrows. One of them pierced with a metal beetle.

Emily was gone.

“That,” she continued, “was your next-door neighbor. By the way. Maybe you've seen her around once or twice in the past seventeen years?”

“I'm sorry,” Howie said. He tried to fix his face.

“Don't be,” she said. “I love how you don't even pretend to give a shit. You're an inspiration. But did you see how wasted Emily looked?”

Howie had seen nothing of the sort. “She has a lot of freckles,” he said.

“Observant,” Harri said. “No, I mean, it looks like she hasn't slept in years. I feel bad for her. There are all these bitchy rumors now, you know? These slut rumors. I fucking hate high school.”

Harri liked testing her father with new words and concepts. He said, “She was probably up late studying.”

“Probably not, Dad.”

Harri took out her phone, began tapping.

Howie said, “The freckles make her look strange.”

Silence. Had he gone too far, defending Emily? He felt guilty—as if he'd just been caught cheating on his daughter with another daughter. He said, “You're much prettier.”

“Jesus.” Harri made a face. “What are you even talking about?”

“I'm sure she gets enough sleep,” Howie continued.

“What the hell, Dad.”

“OK.”

“You are so weird. I don't think she's ever really liked me. I don't know,” and Harri turned around, back to where Emily had been standing. She watched that spot.

Moments later, Harri's phone beeped. “Uh-oh,” she said. “It's Mom. She says you promised to buy me a new jacket.”

“OK.”

“Not OK. I don't need a new jacket. I could use some new boots though, actually. Maybe before Bellaggio's?”

“That sounds nice.”

“Nice?”
Harri laughed. “You're a maniac.”

Howie liked Harri best when they were shopping. She became younger, more possible, and so they went back, deeper back into the Aviation Road mall, Harri pulling him toward a not inexpensive pair of Frankensteins she promised he'd be in a holy shitload of trouble for getting her. “Mom'll manslaughter you!” How could he resist?

They put the shopping bags and cans of paint into the backseat of Howie's car. They got in the front. Howie put his seat belt on. Harri, of course, did not. She'd grown unwieldy again.

“Bellaggio's?” he said.

“I don't know, maybe just take me home.”

Howie said, “OK.”

He started the car.

“Yeah, take me home.”

“OK.”

“I
know
it is, Dad.”

They drove in silence. Howie, at a loss, asked a question about Emily, wondered what they'd talked about at the mall, if Emily was applying to any of the same colleges as Harri.

“Seriously?” Harri said.

She didn't wear seat belts because of the way they fell across her neck: she was just way too small. They left marks. Her skin irritated easily. “The worst thing is, I'm small but I'm not
cute
,” she once told him. “I'm small the way bugs are small.”

Other children had been cruel to her. Likely they still were. But even she wouldn't let that take the blame for the inscrutable, constant costume changes of her moods. “Hey,” she said, finally, as
they approached her mother's house. “Hey.” She squeezed Howie's arm. “I'm sorry, Dad. I love you.”

Pulling his car out of his ex-wife's driveway, Howie honked three times, something he only ever did with her and only because when his daughter was little she'd absolutely insisted on it. Three honks.

Dad!

Dad!

Dad!

His daughter was still little. She waved good-bye, playful now, happy, a brand-new boot comically gloving each of her hands. She raised them above her head and waggled them, then bent them slowly, back and forth, like the antennae of an insect someone had just stepped on.

“M
essage. One,” said the telephone robot. “Friday. Eleven. Four. Tee. One. P. M.”

BEEEEP!

“Hi, this is Emily Phane from next door. Peter's granddaughter. Mr. Jeffries, I'm really sorry to bother you, but I'm calling because
—no I'm calling him now, I'm actually on the phone right now, I'm
[mostly unintelligible]—”

BEEEEP!

“Message. Two. Friday. Eleven. Four. Tee. Four. P.M.”

BEEEEP!

“Sorry. Emily Phane again, from next door. From Boston. I know this is unusual but could you please call me back as soon as you get this? It's an emergency. I mean, I hope it's not an emergency, but—here, my number is six one seven, eight three eight, five five six one. Please call. Even the middle of the night, whenever you get this message. That's area code six one seven, five five five, five five six one. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks. Bye!”

BEEEEP!

“Message. Three. Friday. Eleven. Four. Tee. Nine. P. M.”

“…”

BEEEEP.

“End. Of. Messages.”

—

Nearly three years ago, on a Friday at 11:58 p.m., Howie stood waiting for his telephone to ring again. He had been sitting down but that began to feel inappropriate. The phone was more likely to cooperate if he was standing.

It would ring on Saturday, he thought. In two minutes. He was in his kitchen and had been all evening, through all nine unanswered phone calls and two messages. In the same way one might obsessively peel back a bandage and poke a wound, Howie wanted badly for the phone to ring again. He knew what he was when the phone was ringing. He was a coward. When it wasn't, he actually entertained the idea of answering it were it to ring again. Why not? Then it would ring again and he would remember. He was paralyzed. He could not answer, just as he knew that he would never be able to call Emily Phane back, knew it even as he was writing down her number in his address book, circling it in red marker, twice, as if to differentiate it from all the other less important numbers he also was not ever going to call.

EMILY EMERGENCY 617-555-5561.

Or, as she said, perhaps there wasn't an emergency. What then? Why had she been calling? How did she even have his number? He was confounded.

Message one was the first time that he had ever heard Emily's voice up close, certainly the first time she had ever been in his house. His kitchen.
His kitchen table
. Emily, for the most part, sounded like she was supposed to.

Telephones that you expect to ring look markedly different from telephones you do not ever expect to ring. Howie played the messages again. BEEEEP! Then once again.

The unintelligible part on the first message concerned him. There was someone there with Emily, a male someone. Was he the emergency? That did not make sense. If not an emergency, the male was certainly an asshole, possibly even a
fucking
asshole, this much
Howie gathered because he thought that he could hear Emily, her hand momentarily over the receiver, calling him exactly that. Back in Howie's day, that kind of language certainly would have constituted a low-level emergency, but a call to your next-door neighbor hundreds of miles away? Doubtful.

Howie sat down and looked into the internet computer.

On Facebook, Emily Phane was currently in a relationship with a young man named Ethan Caldwell. Ethan Caldwell's profile was private, but his photograph revealed an Oriental man in a robe. Twenty-six years old and standing on a hilltop with a sword. The male someone Howie heard during the muffled portion of the recorded message did not sound characteristically Oriental, but huh. Really, what did Howie know? The sword was, potentially, a problem.

It was morning now. Past midnight, anyway. Howie watched the phone and the bossy old clock above the stove. It clicked 12:17. Then, in what seemed like significantly more than sixty seconds, another click. A clunk.

12:18.

Howie yawned.

He had put that clock up there after his wife left. The louder the time, the better. Once, this kitchen had been a place for mornings. That was before his family fled, and long before Marty's internet computer had installed itself on the round oak table. There between the toaster, microwave, radio, telephone, and the answering machine. Ex-husbandhood meant he could do this, crowd his antique kitchen table with machines. Because why not make toast or reheat Bellaggio's pizza where you're going to actually eat Bellaggio's pizza? The resulting spaghetti of wires extending through the air from the kitchen table to the kitchen counter didn't bug Howie in the least and, in fact, the limits they imposed upon kitchen mobility were satisfying. There were already too many ways one could do things. Howie rarely thought of his wife preparing breakfast anymore.

The computer crackled with exertion. He watched a pop-up ad for heartburn relief. Indigestion as poignant blobs of red light. Howie had pulled a night shift yesterday and then, before dawn, on a whim, drove straight from the GE Waste Water Treatment Plant to East Caroga Lake, where he'd spent the majority of the day fishing.

The phone rang.

His first reaction was that it was an alarm, and that it was time to wake up, go to work. He reached for it, instinctually, as if to hit snooze.

The red blobs on the screen yo-yoed from stomach to neck and back again. Caressingly, almost. They looked like something you might enjoy having inside you. Why fight it?

Howie was exhausted.

The phone kept ringing, so Howie kept his right hand on the receiver, feeling a ticklish electric purr, holding the receiver down, shhhhhhhhhh, as if there were a genuine possibility of it leaping up and answering itself or Howie's left hand going rogue and finding out why Emily Phane had been calling all night.

It stopped ringing.

Harri, age sixteen, spoke from the table: “My technophobic dad's not home right now. Or, who knows, actually. He probably totally is. Either way, leave a message after the—”

BEEEEP!

Then, Emily: “I'm sorry, Mr. Jeffries, I'm sure you're at work or out night fishing but…” Howie yanked his hand off the phone as if it had actually become the top of his neighbor's head. Emily paused then, as if in confused reaction to the removal of Howie's hand. Like they were both listening for the other now through the static snow of distance. Boston and Route 29. Breathing. Both of them waiting for the other to make a move. Then, “Well, so, I've been calling my grandfather since yesterday and he hasn't picked up. If you're listening to this, could you look and see if his car's there? If
it is, please go and see if he's OK, Mr. Jeffries. It's probably nothing. I'm sure it's nothing. It's usually nothing. His phone is probably unplugged or the TV's too loud or something. But please. I'm worried. I'll try calling again in the morning.”

BEEEEP!

From the kitchen window, Howie could see the Phane house. The lights were on downstairs, all of them, and Peter's car, a sable black Cadillac DeVille, was in the driveway.

—

The disappointment lasted only a moment. It was replaced by incredulity. What else did he possibly think she could have been calling for? She was not his daughter. She had not been calling him for
money
—nor was she calling because she was inebriated, alone, momentarily sloppy hearted…

He looked out at the Cadillac again. Now that Emily was at college, Peter Phane was lights out by nine. It was well past midnight now. The windows had the cold, empty light of a refrigerator opened at 2:00 a.m.

Emily knew that Howie liked to fish.

He went upstairs. He tucked in his shirt, combed his grey hair back; he brushed his teeth, shaved, and put on his good shoes. He brushed his teeth again. Then he took off his good shoes and put on his sneakers. This could be an emergency.

And, well, sure she knew that he fished. They had lived next door to each other for twenty years.

Downstairs, back in the kitchen, the so-called screen saver had snapped on. It bubbled. Cartoon fish. Shortly after Harriet's birth, Howie had stopped killing them. Fish. If he could help it, and he mostly could, he'd chuck them back into the lake, only once in a while making a trophy of one, like the twenty-four-pound muskellunge pike he caught seven years ago ice fishing on Lake Champlain. He rarely thought of fish as something that could also be food.

Howie walked down his driveway. Reaching Route 29, he turned left. Then another left up the Phanes' driveway. Do this proper. No sudden movements. His hands were in his pockets. This, he realized, probably made him look shifty. He removed his hands from his pockets. He wished he had brought his book because nobody would be afraid of someone walking up a driveway with a book. Howie wanted the house to know that he was approaching it with only helpful, neighborly intentions. He'd briefly considered driving over.

Howie had never stood on the Phanes' front porch before. It was his house, but wrong—and yellow.

Howie knocked on the door.

He could hear the TV.

Knock, knock.

He could hear a ringing telephone. Fine. Howie found the doorbell. Fool thing, he thought. It ding-donged joyfully.

He did not expect an answer. If he had, would he have even come over? Probably he would not have.

He stepped off the porch and approached the living room window, standing among waist-high shrubs. The mulch felt queasy underfoot. Howie saw Peter Phane on a rug, TV light flickering over him. He was not wearing trousers. His eyes were open.

Howie found himself trying to open the front door.

Locked.

He hurried around the back, on the grass now. The back door was unlocked.

The kitchen was a crime-scene reenactment of his own kitchen. Dishes everywhere; a broken glass on the table. Flies and candy wrappings and slices of bread hardened into mossy stone; unopened mail, opened mail, and sticky dried beige stains on the linoleum. Lots of newspapers from New York City. The refrigerator was open.

Then down a hallway decorated with framed photographs.
Howie had the same hallway, of course, but his was barren but for the twenty-four-pound muskellunge pike on the wall across from the bathroom door, so whenever you exited the downstairs bathroom:
remarkably big fish
. (“Dad, whoa, that is the single weirdest place to put a fish. Is that even a fish? You're so awesome. You're art. What is
wrong
with you?”)

What was wrong here?

The living room was humid and bad. Howie smelled something chalky, rotten, medicinal. His feet crunched through a spill of unexpectedly cheerful breakfast cereal—Peter Phane ate Lucky Charms?
Froot Loops?
Pills, too. There were bloody tissues, a splayed
Sports Illustrated
magazine, orange peels. The TV applauded. Two black women began to sing. The phone began ringing. It was there next to the TV. The black women on the TV seemed annoyed by this. Peter was too, each ring registering on his face like a slap.

“Em,” he said. “Em, em, em.”

Howie waited for the phone to stop ringing. This was just as natural as a waterfall, a Taco Bell, a tree. Once it stopped ringing, he picked it up. He dialed 911 and requested an ambulance.

“Route Twenty-Nine. Yes. Route Two Nine. That's correct.”

Howie would not look directly at Peter Phane. Even when he had to look, he tried, for propriety's sake, not to see. Peter Phane was like something without a shell. Howie found a quilt and covered the lower half of his body. He maneuvered a segment of sofa under Peter's oddly weightless head and, like that, the TV stopped singing.

The phone again.

Howie got down, told Peter that everything was fine. Peter tried to disagree, tried to get Howie to answer the phone. Tried to say the name of his granddaughter. But Howie only stood, stared out the window at his own house, and when he finally heard the ambulance he turned off the TV, unlocked the front door, and left out the back.

—

Emily was home the next day. A week later, Howie received a tray of Rice Krispies Treats with a note.

You saved his life. Thank you, Mr. Jeffries. — E
.

It could not have been a coincidence. Howie wanted to call his ex-wife, tell her the thoughtful pastries had come full circle, but he lacked the wherewithal and the implications troubled him. Emily was, after all, about the age his wife had been when she'd begun her futile cookie-based courtship of Gillian and Peter Phane.

“I've lived a lot of life since then, Howard,” his ex-wife had said the last time he had tried to share an old Route 29 memory with her. “That was so long ago. I guess I remember.”

No, no. The implications were clear.

—

Emily would not return to Boston, and one year later, Peter Phane was gone. He had been ninety-four years old.

Her nocturnal ambles began soon afterward. Well, what else could you call them? Sleepwalkings? Excursions? They weren't quite walks. Howie did not understand them. When he first saw her out back after midnight he assumed that she was looking for a dog, though he knew that she didn't have a dog. Someone else's dog? That made less sense. She would hurry out, her movement tripping the motion sensor spotlights, a fluorescent blight that turned the grass into a ghostly
lawn
and the dark that surrounded her property into pure absence. Which is where Howie would be, watching. In a window, normally the upstairs bathroom window, but sometimes the kitchen window, sunken back in that deeper night she had created. She would poke around the corners of her property. Something was missing. But what? True, she spent a lot of this time just sitting out there in a lawn chair, sipping something. Milk? Tea? Looking normal, more or less, except it was 3:00 a.m. and it was about the creepiest thing that Howie had ever seen. Sometimes she would busy herself with night gardening, vegetable picking.

They were a community though. You saw things. You see things and you worry. There were wild dogs in the area, packs of them, apparently, and every few years a bear would waddle down from the mountains. Foxes didn't bite but they might, Howie supposed. They sure might.