A Stranger's House (13 page)

I said, “Where do you live?” and my voice sounded small and fragile in the air. “What do your parents, your daddy, think of this? Selling the house. Have you heard anything from them?”

“Hah,” Grady said, a loud, violent burst of air, a cloud shooting from inside him. He looked at the ground again, then at us. He took another drag. “My daddy. My daddy. He's dead, so he doesn't think much of this arrangement at all. He doesn't think anything of it, I imagine. He's dead. He died seven or eight years ago.” He paused
a moment, leaned his head a little to one side. He was still shifting his weight, gently rocking from side to side. “Nine years. That's it. Nine years ago. One tends to forget these things, you know. I was ten years old.”

“Oh,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

Tom pulled his hand from his coat pocket, put it around me, and I leaned into him.

“Yeah, me too,” Grady said. He was quiet a few moments, and said, “And my mother. There's a case. She's living out in California someplace. Some place named something Spanish. Mission del Mar or something. Jesus, she left about two months after my daddy died.” He stopped, slowly shook his head. He let the cigarette drop in front of him. It hit the ground, and a few sparks floated up, disappeared. He stepped on the butt, moved his foot away, and the three of us stood looking at where the amber piece of light had been only a moment ago.

He took a deep breath, and put his free hand into his pocket. He shrugged. “That left me reared by my grandparents. My grandmother, well. My grandmother, she's dead, too. She was beautiful. She was a beautiful lady, and she loved me. She took care of me. But my grandfather. What an old fart.” He paused. “We lived in town here, in this big old thing a few doors down from the coffin factory. You've seen that, right?”

He looked up at us a moment, and I nodded, though I'd only heard of the place, never actually seen it. Kids used to talk about it when I was in school, and would dare one another to ride bikes out here to Florence and past the place at midnight, but I'd never been one to take the dare.

“I was with them until about four years ago. That was when my grandma died. And that was when I figured to go it on my own.” He was looking straight at us, waiting, I knew, for us to say something about that, about his moving out when he was only fifteen.

I went along with him. I said, “But you were only fifteen. You were too young.” I took my hands from my coat pockets, crossed my arms, holding myself in this cold.

“Yeah,” he said, and nodded his head, and I could just make out in the dark the faintest smile on his face. “But I got a job. This job right here. Been here for four years. Believe it? Four years at a
rinky-dink Friendly's.” He laughed. “I think it's some kind of record. For somebody my age, at least. To be here for that long, I mean.”

I was starting to get cold now, my feet beginning to feel like stones, my cheeks beginning to tingle. He still hadn't answered our question. I said, “But the house. Is there something wrong with it?”

He stood still a moment, quit shifting his feet. He was looking at me, and seemed to have stopped breathing.

Just then the door at the rear of the restaurant shoved open, and light spilled out onto the cement and pavement.

Someone leaned out to look at us, and though he was about twenty yards away I could see it was Martin. His head hung there out the door, looking at us.

Grady quickly turned to the scrape of the door across the ground, to kitchen sounds escaping the building, and I felt warmer. Just that sound, the comfortable sound of glasses and silverware and people talking, warmed me up.

“Hey hey,” Grady said, almost shouting. “The man of the hour. Come on out and say hi to the—” He turned to us. His eyes were half in light, and were shiny, some moistness caught by the lights of the building. He was smiling. “What was your last name?” he said.

“Templeton,” Tom said, and took his arm from around me.

“Templeton,” Martin said from the door, and his voice, taut and high-pitched, seemed to echo with some sort of strength across the lot and through the cold air. He came out wearing only the blue-checked shirt and pants and workboots, and started toward the three of us, his steps heavy, his arms swinging forward and back in an exaggerated gait. He said, “Templeton. That's a good name,” the word
good
accented, his voice tightened even more on that word, the pitch a notch higher; and I imagined for a moment someone's hands around his throat, squeezing out puffs of air, words, ideas from this man's head and heart, as if forcing them were the only way to get them out.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Grady said, and quickly took a few steps toward Martin. Martin stopped, halfway across the lot He let his hands fall to his sides. Grady stopped, too, said, “Now wait a minute. You're forgetting something, right? What are you forgetting?”

Martin stood there, crossed his arms, put his hand up to his chin, a pose you could tell was instinct for him, the move so quick and smooth. He said, “I'm thinking.”

“Good,” Grady said. “But I hope you don't freeze to death while you're at it.”

Martin looked up and snapped his fingers, a loud, hard pop in the air. “Ah,” he said, and wheeled around, taking the same heavy steps back toward the restaurant, where the door still stood open. He disappeared inside.

Grady hadn't moved, still stood a few feet out in the lane, half-turned to the door.

A moment later here was Martin again, now wearing a thick, heavy CPO jacket, green buffalo plaid. He already had it buttoned up to his neck, the collar turned up. He was putting on a knit cap, too, and was walking right toward us. “My coat,” he said, his hands at his head, adjusting the cap, making certain his ears were covered, the cap far enough down on his neck. “And cap.”

“Precisely,” Grady said, in his voice not condescension, not fun, but congratulations. The sound of encouragement. Martin made it to Grady, who put his hand on Martin's shoulder, shook it. “Exactly. Great, Martin, great.” They turned and started back toward us.

Finally Martin stopped adjusting the cap. He said, “Templeton is a good name. It's a good name.” He put out his hand to Tom. “Tom Templeton,” he said, “my name is Martin Hosmer.”

Slowly Tom took his hand from his pocket and shook. This, too, was an exaggerated movement, Martin working his hand up and down five or six times, then stopping suddenly.

He turned to me. He said, “Claire Templeton is a good name, too.”

He held out his hand, and I took it. We shook just as he and Tom had: up and down, up and down, up and down, the sudden stop. His hand had been warm in mine, and I thought of him washing dishes back in the Friendly's, the hot water and clouds of steam.

He said, “Is your hand okay?”

“I'm fine,” I said, “just fine. No problems anymore.” I heard my voice. It was still too loud.

“Good.” He nodded several times and sort of bowed at the same time, his eyes on my hand, then me, then my hand again.

“Well,” Grady said, and took his hand off Martin's shoulder. He put his hands together in front of him, and started the rocking movement again. “I don't know what it is your experts told you, but there's not anything wrong with the place. I showed you around. I showed you some of the basic troubles of the place, but none of that's of any matter, really. And that's all the problems I know of, actually. But I'll tell you what.” He paused a moment and glanced at Martin, who now stood with his hands clasped in front of himself, too. “I'll tell you what. Martin, here, well. Martin here is good with wood. He's good with fixing things, with telling what's good wood or what's bad, weak places in the wood and stuff.” He put his hand to Martin's shoulder again.

Martin gave a quick shrug, almost too fast to catch. He was looking at the ground, grinning.

“We'll meet you on Saturday morning,” Grady went on, looking now at Tom. “And we'll look the place up and down to see what really needs to be done. What do you think?”

Tom said nothing for a few moments. We stood there, the four of us, our breaths turning the circle of air before us into thin veils of white in the dark.

Tom said, “Okay.” He seemed to straighten his shoulders, set his jaw, and I knew that to be a look of resolve. He pushed himself from off the trunk. His feet were spread. He said, “This Saturday. Around 11:00.”

“Great,” Grady said, and he turned, an instant later Martin turning, too, and they headed back toward the rear of the restaurant.

I said, “Where are you guys going? Aren't you off work now?”

Grady turned and, walking backward, called out, “Oh yeah. We're heading home. Got to get the bikes.”

Martin disappeared behind the large, black dumpster pushed up against the back wall of the restaurant, then Grady went behind it, too. Tom and I looked at each other again.

From behind the dumpster came first Grady, then Martin, both pushing bicycles, three-speeds, I could see, Martin's with wire side baskets, Grady's with a wire basket fixed to the handlebars. They came toward us and into the lane; Grady put one foot on a pedal, took two quick steps with the other foot, and climbed onto the bike.

Martin, only a few feet behind him, did the same, and the two were riding through the lot.

“Grady,” Tom called out. “What about a phone number?”

Grady was almost at the entrance to the lot, but wheeled sharply back toward us, Martin, again, doing the same, and as they came toward us I could see their generator headlights, the dull yellow light given off because they were moving so slowly through the lot. They reached us, and Grady said, “No phone. That's a luxury. I'm a runaway, remember?” Slowly he passed by us, and then came Martin, his hands gripping the handlebars, his eyes on the rear tire of Grady's bike. He had a huge grin on his face, sheer joy, I imagined, at follow-the-leader through the Friendly's parking lot.

“I've got to get Martin over to his place,” Grady said, and turned back toward the entrance. “Then I'm on my way.” He was quiet a moment, and said, “You two ought to get bikes, too. Keeps a human being healthy.” He took his hands from the handlebars, and clapped them to his chest a couple of times. “Just breathe that night air,” he shouted.

I laughed; Tom only smiled. I watched to see if Martin would try riding with no hands, but he was still looking at Grady's tire, still leaning forward. He closed his mouth, though, and took in a deep breath. He was only doing what Grady had told him: taking in this night air. He was still smiling.

They moved past us to the entrance, Grady now with his hands on the handlebars. He slowed, looked both ways, and then, so quiet I wouldn't have heard it had there been another sound in the air, he said, “Okay, Martin, let's head on home. It's a good night,” and they turned left onto the street, Route 9, leaving behind them only the soft tick of gears in the cold air.

 

“I'm going to find out about this guy,” Tom said as we drove home. I looked at him. Headlights from oncoming cars played across his face, turned his features into strange, contorted shadows, changed his skin, clothes, hair from the gray of night into white, ignoring any real colors there. His eyes were on the road.

I said, “What? What about him?”

He turned to me, his face gray again. “What do you mean? Weren't you listening to him back there?”

'To what?” I looked back at the road, then at Cooley-Dickinson to my right, that hospital where Paige had had her baby. As I did every time we passed here, I thought for a moment of when I'd visited her there, of the row of babies in the nursery, all of them crying except for Phillip, little Phillip lying there in his crib, his body wrapped tightly in pure white, the lights bright, keeping the room warm.

I turned my head as we passed the hospital, trying to see back behind the addition to the old wing and the window on Paige's room, just an old window with a frame and twelve panes; an ordinary window, but one from which I wanted to gaze and see cars passing on Route 9, and I wondered who was in that room now, and what the child's birth had been like, whether vaginal or C-section, if there'd been any fetal distress, if the father had been there to coach the mother on, to hold her hand, to feed her ice chips and to yell
Push.

“Claire?” Tom said.

I turned back to the windshield. “What?” I took a deep breath, smoothed out my skirt.

“Didn't you hear what he said back there?”

“Yes,” I said, and I touched my hair, put my hand to my forehead. “But what?”

“He said his dad died nine years ago. But that day when we were out at the house the first time he said both his parents were in California”

We'd already passed the Smith dorms, those rooms still full of light, as if nothing in this world had changed since I was a girl standing before them, except that now the windows were closed against the October air. We slowed to a stop at the light just before the drop into downtown.