The Rest of Us: A Novel (34 page)

“Okay, good, just leave her. Stop shaking her. She’s going to be okay. They’re coming.” I kept repeating this. An overturned bottle
of Perrier had made a small waterfall down the stairs, and I picked it up and clutched it to my chest. I didn’t want to go near Constance. Hallie had arranged her mother over her lap like a giant doll and was stroking her hair, saying, “Don’t worry, it’s just Terry here. She doesn’t care if your mouth’s open.” I nodded foolishly in agreement.

It seemed like we were there forever, just the three of us. It was so quiet, we could hear each other breathing. Then there was confusion and noise and blaring lights and the paramedics came in with a stretcher and machines, and moved us away to the periphery, and Hallie called her father. Or maybe he was already there. They all went off in the ambulance together. I stayed behind, and instinctively, maybe inappropriately, went up to Constance’s room to wait. I ran my hand over the bedspread and dresser, over the perfume in antique bottles with pump sprays. The scent of her. Constance believed that perfume should be worn in the hot spots, on the wrists, behind the ears and knees. Every time I visited, she squirted a fine, elegant mist on me, and all the way home I would discreetly sniff at myself, pretending to rub an itch above my lips. For Christmas that past year, she’d bought me my own bottle, and I was rationing it to last me through college. I was thinking these things. I was thinking of how Constance had pulled me aside a few weeks ago and told me how much she was going to miss me when I was away at school.

The phone rang. Constance’s ivory phone, with a dial, where she took all her calls. The receiver smelled like her. I hesitated before saying hello.

It was Hallie. Constance had died twenty minutes after they got to the hospital.

Hallie and her father returned dazed and tearless and strangely intact, as if they’d been out somewhere else, to a movie. I was standing in the foyer waiting for them, a tissue balled up in my hand, bawling, and it was as if everything had been turned inside out, and I was the bearer of this horrifying news. I didn’t want to go home and was afraid they would ask me to leave. But instead Hallie’s father excused himself very politely to me, as if I were his guest, and went up
to bed. Hallie was in the mud room, rummaging around for the flashlight. The cat was missing and she was going to look for it. I thought it had been scared off by the paramedics, and would come home eventually, but I was in no state to argue, or to do anything. I went into the living room and curled up in a fetal position on the couch. For hours, I listened to her outside, calling for Pooky. At times, I also heard Hallie’s father crying upstairs, a terrible, frighteningly intimate sound, like hearing him have sex. I covered my ears. Hallie called for that cat. I dozed in and out of sleep, as the beam of her searchlight scrolled past the windows.

We found the cat in the refrigerator the next day. By some miracle, he was still alive, a cold, balled-up body of fur. He’d eaten everything on his shelf, even the tofu, and had furiously clawed the doors. It was months before it occurred to me that Constance, high on pills, was probably carrying him when she went to the fridge for the chicken, and had set him down in the most convenient place.

•  •  •

Sitting on the floor outside Hallie’s bedroom, I decided it was time to talk about it. Everything I could remember. I could hear Hallie crying on the other side of the door. “Maybe it was an accident. Or she was just so focused on her own pain, but it was the worst thing that’s ever happened to us, and if she had known that, she never would have done it. You need to think about the people who love you. Because we both wanted her not to have been so selfish. We loved her. I loved her, too. She was really good to me. There were times when I used to pretend she was my mother.” Even as I said that I felt a tremor of the old fear of being laughed at. “I know that sounds stupid, but I’d imagine what it would be like.”

From the other side of the door came Hallie’s choked voice, “She used to say the same thing. Really pissed me off.” I heard the click of the lighter, her inhaling. “You’re lucky you weren’t though, Terry. You were shielded from so much of the bullshit. Sometimes she’d throw fits in the middle of the night, wake everyone up. She’d overdosed
before, you know. She even spent time in a psychiatric hospital—that summer we went to camp.”

Hallie had told me her mother was suffering from exhaustion and was going to a place where celebrities went to de-stress. I had believed her, and when Constance had come back, she was in such a high mood, she’d danced around the kitchen, cooked us pancakes with rose petals scattered on top. We were in fourth grade. “How could you have kept this from me? I was at your house all the time.”

“I was ashamed probably. You thought she was so great.”

But I had always had a realistic view of Constance. I knew her behavior was strange. I said as much to Hallie. “I just accepted her, I guess. Maybe you’re right. It was easier for me.”

“Oh God, I’m exhausted. I’m so exhausted,” Hallie said.

“Unlock the door,” I said.

She did and then returned to the mattress and curled up. Automatically, I walked towards the chair in the corner, and she said, “Go on and get something to eat, Nancy Drew. You don’t have to worry about the pills—I dumped them all two days ago.”

•  •  •

Later that night, lying next to each other in that big marital bed, whispering as if afraid someone would overhear, Hallie added to my version of that day. She remembered looking for the cat, but could have sworn I was with her searching for most of the night. Both of us remembered the stillness of the house while we waited for the ambulance to arrive. “She was still alive then,” Hallie said. “Those were her last moments.” She paused. “I always wonder if she took a little too much that day because she was getting scared to lose us. Because we were going away to college.”

This was too terrible for me to contemplate. I got up and opened the window. The muggy night pushed through the screen.

We were both quiet, remembering. Into the silence, Hallie said, “I wasn’t honest with you. I did contemplate taking the pills.”

“When? I’ve been with you every moment.”

“Four nights ago. While you were sleeping.” I was stunned, and she said, “I’m sorry I lied to you—you weren’t my first priority. I dumped them out on the living room floor, who knows if it would have even been enough for a lethal dose, and just stood there, staring at them.” Her eyes were shining with excitement in the retelling. “You know what was going through my head? That tree out in my backyard that we used to play on. Do you remember it?”

“Of course.”

“I was sitting up there, in the branches, proclaiming that I was going to save all the animals in the world. We were nine, maybe, and I was calling down to you. You were on the swing. I just remember the excitement of describing how I’d have a big house with tons of dogs and cats and birds that no one else wanted, and they could all live there, and I’d take care of them. I never even came close to that.”

“Because it’s unrealistic—who do you know that’s turned their house into a shelter? And Adán was allergic.”

“It’s just that I used to have this sense that my life was going to be special. And here I am, almost thirty years later, lying on the floor, weeping over a man. I haven’t done anything with my life really, not anything significant—I’ve just been existing. Like Constance was. She really had talent, you know. I didn’t invent that. I saw her on stage once—she was so incredible. The entire audience was electrified by her.” She laughed, weakly. “Why was she so fucked up?”

I felt a tremendous surge of compassion for Constance, thinking of how she was always so carefully made up, as if waiting for that life to come back. “I don’t know. But it wasn’t your fault or your dad’s fault. He suffered, too, you know. You give him too hard a time.”

She was looking at me plaintively, like a child. “Tell me the truth. Am I that fucked up?”

“No, of course not. You’re also not addicted to anything. Except maybe cigarettes again.”

“I’m just feeling so lost. I’ve never been this lost before. And I’m so alone now that Adán’s gone.”

I began to protest, and she said, “He’s not coming back. It’s okay.
It’s time for me to get my shit together. Build up my confidence again. Get a job.”

“You have enough money for a while. You don’t have to rush into that yet.”

“But I
want
to. Even when I said it just now, I got excited. I still have some of my old PR contacts. I can make some phone calls.” She rolled over. “I always liked working.”

I hugged her from behind. It reminded me of the times I’d slept over as a little girl. Once the lights were out I’d leave my cot and join her in her bed with the Strawberry Shortcake sheets. In the morning, she would wake me up by sticking a feather or a piece of string up my nose to make me sneeze. There were always rainbows on her walls from the teardrop crystals Constance had hung in her windows. We were obsessed with rainbows, rainbow hairclips, stickers that we traded and stuck in our albums, metallic rainbow-colored ribbons that fluttered off the handlebars of our bikes as we circled around her backyard, shouting names to each other, “Titface,” “Asshead,” and laughing. She was my sister. What it would have been like to find her lying facedown on the living room rug? It chilled me to think how close we’d come. A shark skimming behind us in the dark ocean that had, just by chance, turned and slipped away.

•  •  •

Hallie had begun chanting again. I could hear her through the walls of her study, where she had a little cabinet, and a pillow on the floor, and a bell. I came up behind her, and she turned around and smiled. “Come chant with me. God won’t be mad.” She got out a pillow and threw it down next to her. “We’ll chant for Constance. For her happiness. Already I’m feeling as if something big has happened. Something’s changed.” Later, while I was eating breakfast, she made a phone call to her old therapist, and I knew then it was finally okay for me to go home.

R
hinehart would spend occasional evenings discussing writing and politics with his poet friends, but during the day, if he wasn’t in his study, he was hanging out down the street with the owner of the dollhouse store, whom he referred to as “a fellow of the highest order.” Buddy, the “true artisan,” was also very accessible—he spent at least twelve hours a day in his shop, and he lived in a studio apartment above it, into which I conjured a sagging twin mattress with striped ticking and a hotplate. Although Rhinehart and I had agreed not to find out the baby’s sex, he and Buddy had both decided I was having a girl, Buddy favoring the Spanish names, like María José. Rhinehart was pushing for the ridiculous name of timothy lowercased, signifying wild grass.

That’s where I went to find Rhinehart, eager to see him, to touch him, after all that housebound trauma with Hallie. He wasn’t in the front, although if he had been, he still wouldn’t have been easy to spot. The place was jammed with forty years of Buddy’s solitary business, finished and unfinished frame structures, staircases that led nowhere, miscellaneous carpentry tools, doll heads, stiff little wingback chairs, and blue china plates, sale items.

Being in here often called up a fear I had when younger that the dolls left their house and walked around my bedroom while I slept. I was afraid of getting up in the middle of the night, stepping on one, and killing it. I was often subject to visual hallucinations at Buddy’s, convinced I’d seen something small moving about. Maybe because of this, I had a strong desire to shoot there, although I hadn’t yet asked
Rhinehart to finesse it with Buddy, who I sensed wouldn’t be that willing. I’d have to clear enough space for the lights and tripod. But I liked the idea of alternating photographs of these interiors with the highly stylized images I’d taken of the roses, as they both seemed to speak to a common theme of artifice. It was an incredible place, this shop, and all it suggested, hours of effort put into scaling down a home to a manageable, easily manipulated size. I wondered what Buddy’s own family life had been like to choose this as his career.

I found Rhinehart in the sawdusty workroom, perched on a stool. “Finally! I was starting to feel abandoned!” He kissed me all over my face, and then my belly, which embarrassed me in front of Buddy. “You look like a seedpod about to burst. How is Hallie?”

“Much better. It was an intense few days.” Just then, I realized how completely exhausted I was. Rhinehart fussily lowered me onto his seat.

“Will you look over the prints with me that I’m making for the show?” It was only two weeks away. I really wished I had Laura’s help, but Rhinehart had an emotional response to the photographs that could be useful.

“Of course, of course. We can go right now. Buddy’s doing a custom-made house for the baby, and I can show you some of the features on the way out.”

I whispered, “But we don’t even know it’s a girl, yet.”

“If it’s a boy he can admire the house’s craftsmanship and historical architecture like we do.”

Buddy put his tar brush back in the bucket, and said in an abrupt voice. “The Tudor in front.”

Again, I saw something flash out of the corner of my eye, quicker this time. Buddy stopped in front of a blue house, spinning it around on its lazy Susan contraption to show the interior—oriental carpets, glass-fronted china cabinet, even red silk wallpaper in the drawing room. These rich dolls sat stone-faced in the bedroom. Buddy pointed out the staircase with its carved newel posts and antique trim. The house had a garret with a tiny stained glass window. Inside, he poked with his beefy, stained fingers at the beds and chairs.

It took me another half an hour to get out of there, while he and Rhinehart discussed different types of crown molding and the half-timbering on the exterior. I finally squeezed Rhinehart’s arm, hard, and we left.

Once outside, I said, “I now have enough material to fill up several doll-themed nightmares. I think we’re having a boy, anyway, and I doubt he’ll like those houses as much as you.”