Authors: Sarah Kernochan
“I know you got a bunch. You could spare one.” She spots his revolver, still on the coffee table after the intruder incident. “That one.”
“No. Go buy your own.”
“My credit card’s maxed. Hoyt, please. Somebody broke into my house a couple nights ago.”
That gets his interest. “Really? How did he get in?”
“Pearl left the door open. And it was a woman.”
“What makes you think that?”
“She ate my
yogurt.
What guy would do that?”
Hoyt frowns, scratching the stubble on his chin. “That’s odd. A few days ago, I left the door unlocked while I was out. Someone came in, had a bite in the kitchen, and left.”
“Then I didn’t imagine it.” She runs shaky fingers through her hair. “‘Cause I’ve been hallucinating stuff lately. Scary stuff. I think it’s from the accident we had. Something must’ve happened in my head. I can’t sleep anymore, I get these nightmares—” She eyes his cervical collar. “Guess you’re not having no picnic neither.”
Hoyt thinks of the lock of hair slithering out of the garbage can, coiling in his hand. Maybe Marly’s right, maybe their collision caused some sort of neurological damage to both of them—scrambled the visual cortex.
The agony in his neck is gathering again, ready to pierce the scrim of pills and booze. He is impatient to get rid of her. “You don’t need a gun. Just lock your door.”
“I need protection! She murdered my dog!”
“It’s probably the pissed-off wife of some guy you’re pleasuring. If she comes around again, invite her in and eat her pussy.”
Marly glares at him, then makes a sudden dive for the gun. Hoyt pushes her away.
“Motherfucker!”
“Not quite. I will concede that I’m a dickhead.”
She clenches her fists as if she’s going to haul off and punch him. “I used to think you were a good person underneath. I accept that you don’t give a rat’s ass about me. But how you can ignore Pearl, your own child—”
“If you were so sure she’s mine, you would’ve told her by now,” he interrupts. “She’s not, and you know it. And, as you rightly surmised, I don’t give a shit.” He heads to the bedroom. “See yourself out. I have to get dressed.”
But she pursues him, hissing, “I can file a paternity suit. I should’ve done it long ago. I could force you to give a DNA sample.”
Turning in the bedroom doorway, he reaches into his shorts and extracts a pubic hair. “Here. Knock yourself out.” He hands the hair to her and shuts the door in her face.
As he throws on a T-shirt and jeans, he hears her car drive away.
Her transformation disturbs him. Marly was one of the few remaining people he hasn’t completely alienated. Whenever he showed up at the trailer, in the days when his sap ran too fast for the liquor to quash, she allowed him in her bed, docilely enduring his insults. He never enjoyed exploiting her; he’d done so out of an inexplicable sense of assignment, as if they had a contract: he to hurt, her to receive hurt.
There’s no woman left who can stand him now. It’s not just that he’s drunk and nasty; he is also a loser, blowing every job he has ever undertaken, from attorney to real estate agent to house painter to exterminator, racing downhill with a deliberation for all to see.
Returning to the living room, he knows the gun won’t be on the table, and it isn’t. He wanted Marly to have it: he just didn’t want to appear to care. Give a woman an inch, and it morphs to a mile; and pretty soon you’re Mama’s little soldier, handing over your gun.
BRETT PAGES THROUGH
the musty record books in the Graynier courthouse’s registry of deeds. Jane pulls her chair alongside his, tilting her head close so she can read with him. She smells of lavender and, faintly, of onions: lavender from the French soap he bought her at the mall, onions from the Western omelet he made her for breakfast.
The pretty ribboned straw hat he gave her, to protect her fair skin from the sun, rests by her elbow on the reading table. He aches to give her more. Maybe a book of romantic poetry. She could tilt her head against his, as she’s doing now—even lay her head in his lap while he reads Byron or somebody.
She likes his presents, but they don’t bind her to Brett as he would like. Instead she spends more and more time away from the house. Out on her walks, she searches every day for an imaginary wall, as he waits, his frustration and anger building as the hours pass. Last night she returned well after dark, wet from the rain. Seeing her weary and dejected, he abruptly filled with tenderness, wanting to smoothe her tangled hair and kiss the tiny veins at her temples. He keeps holding back, both the anger and the caresses. There is a gentility about Jane; he feels there’s some kind of etiquette he must obey.
The clerk sets down more volumes, indexes of land transactions tracing ownership of 53 Sycamore Street backwards from the present.
1977: grantee Petrelli bought the house and .4 acre lot from grantor O’Connell. 1961: Grantee O’Connell bought from grantor Nielson, who owned the house for more than half a century after purchasing it from Pease in 1903.
Brett photocopies each record of transfer.
“We have nothing earlier than 1826, when the town was incorporated.” The clerk arrives with the final pile of heavy tomes, each dustier and dingier than the last. Brett’s sinuses fill in protest.
Pease purchased from Sperry, 1877. Sperry from Upham, 1866. Here Brett succumbs to a volley of sneezes, ejecting a flood of mucous into a tissue proffered by the clerk. Upham bought from Jarley, who bought the house and lot in 1854 from the Estate of Benjamin Pettigrew. Pettigrew bought the empty lot in 1829 from the P. Graynier Holding Corporation.
“Pettigrew bought the lot without a house,” Brett explains to Jane. “That means he built the house sometime after 1829. His estate sold the lot with the house in 1854, which meant he still owned it when he died.”
“Benjamin Pettigrew,” Jane writes careful notes in her elegant, looping script. “Then it was he who bought the seraphine!”
“Not necessarily. Anyone could’ve bought it at any time, like, at an antiques store.” He’s anxious to leave; his throat is constricting and his chest hurts.
Disagreeing, she shakes her head stubbornly. “You said harmoniums were more in fashion by mid-century.” Then she mused, “I wonder if Benjamin Pettigrew lived alone, or if he had family.”
The clerk advises them to check the census records at the Historical Society. “The census lists the occupants of every house by name. But you’ll have to deal with Elsa Graynier. She’s shy a few screws.”
THE LAST LIVING
member of the Graynier family, Elsa Lucille Grayner is something of a local legend. Most people in town consider her an eccentric nut, though generous and com munity-minded. She lives in a white-shingled 1873 Queen Anne house on Graynier Avenue, in a set of rooms above the Graynier Historical Society, which she established and has curated since the death of her beloved father, J. P. Graynier, twelve years before. The archive contains every last Graynier document and artifact—most of them untouched by anyone but Elsa, though sometimes a teacher drags in a gang of recalcitrant schoolchildren.
Because the history of Graynier is indistinguishable from the history of Elsa’s ancestors, she guards the museum with primal intensity, as if fending off extinction. Every day she wanders the museum talking to her father, whom she sometimes glimpses winding the Ormulu clock in the corner. Evenings she listens to
Tristan and Isolde
. Never married, childless, she will live out her family’s doom to its end: the twilight of the Grayniers.
Entering the foyer, Brett and Jane step on a mat that sets off a
ding-dong
inside the museum. Frosted glass sconces, and a ceiling fixture with a hobnail glass bowl, flood the hallway with light.
Jane points out the museum door’s etched daisy panel. “Look. It’s the same glass as our front door.” Since she got up this morning, she has been jumping out of her skin, rushing Brett out of the house. He glances at her determined profile, her shoulders tensed as if her soul’s salvation hangs on this errand.
A shadow moves behind the glass, and then a tiny, plump woman in her seventies throws the door open. Perspiration tinted with beige makeup stains the neck of her blouse.
“Hello! Come in! Welcome!” She motions them inside eagerly.
Glass fixtures blaze from every wall of the torrid, airless room. Five immense glass chandeliers hang from the ceiling; reading lamps with frosted glass shades line the tables.
Glass-front cabinets are filled with goblets, plates, decanters, and bottles, clear or rendered in jewel tones of ruby, turquoise, canary, magenta, emerald. Artificial light bounces off every surface, lending an infernal glare to the massive oil portraits that hang between the lanterns and sconces.
“All made at the Graynier Glass factory,” the woman chirps, sweating like a stevedore. “I’m Elsa Graynier. Would you like a tour?” She gestures toward a sign over a doorway: “THE HISTORY OF GRAYNIER GLASS.”
“Thanks, maybe next time,” says Brett.
“I’ll take that as a promise!” Elsa wags a finger at him.
“Could you point us to the census records?”
“Certainly. May I ask for what purpose?”
“We’re interested in the history of a specific house. We’d like to find out all the people who lived there from the time it was built.”
Elsa lowers her voice confidentially. “Have you got a ghost?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I’m relieved! I thought you might be researching one of those awful haunted house guides.” Elsa leads Brett to a shelf of oversize volumes bound in red cloth. “Now, then! Where is the house and when was it built?”
He shows her the photocopied page from the Grantor’s Index. As she studies it, he looks around for Jane.
She’s standing beneath a 19th century oil painting, seemingly riveted by the portrait of a middle-aged couple in formal dress.
“It says Benjamin Pettigrew purchased the lot from Graynier Holding.” Elsa looks up from the page. “One would expect that. The company owned all the property when the factory was constructed. Then it rented or sold lots to the employees. Pettigrew was probably one of them. I’ll check the factory payroll records. You see if you can find Pettigrew in the 1850 county census.” She passes Brett one of the red volumes. Its pages are suffused in dust; his nose starts flowing again.
“Who are the people in this painting?” Jane asks.
Elsa joins her beneath the portrait, gazing up at the seated man. He is gaunt, with fierce deep-set eyes and a flat head, dressed in black cutaway, tall standing collar and flowing cravat. “My great-great grandfather Philip Graynier, who founded the glass factory. Indeed, he created the whole town.”
“And the lady?” A handsome woman stands, dressed in a lace cap, capacious skirts and leg-of-mutton sleeves, her hand resting on her husband’s shoulder.
“That is Evelyn Graynier, my great-great grandmother.” Elsa bustles to a glass cabinet to remove some antique ledgers, leaving Jane to stare up at Evelyn Graynier.
Jane’s eyes are fixed on the woman’s lace collar. A brooch is pinned at her throat.
A gold wreath, fashioned of two roses.
Dust flurries up as Brett pages through the slim volume of the census: only about 5,000 county residents in 1850. Running his finger down the list of names, he marvels at some of them: “Alpha Daniels,” “Submit Fowler,” “Worship Hale.” The columns beside each name list age, sex, color, profession, date of birth, property numbers, as well as the answers to such questions as: “Married within the Year?” “Over Age 20 & Unable to Read & Write?” “Deaf & Dumb, Blind, Insane, Idiotic, Pauper or Convict?”
At the P’s, his finger pounces on an entry. “Got it.
Pettigrew, Benjamin L
.”
“I just found him, too!” Elsa calls from the corner, an open ledger on her lap. “He was the superintendent of Graynier Glass. Quite an important position after all.”
Jane tears her gaze from the painting and listens attentively. Brett slides his index finger across the columns. “Age: 51…Place of birth: Canaan, Connecticut…Number living in house: 4. Him, two daughters, and a ‘female servant.’”
Jane approaches, peering over Brett’s shoulder as he drops his finger down to the next name.
“The first daughter was ‘
Pettigrew, Rebecca, age 21.
’ She was born in Canaan, too. Wonder what happened to the mother. The second daughter’s name—”
Suddenly Brett wheezes desperately for breath. His chest is tight, as if the weight of a great stone is pressing on his lungs.
“Dear!” Elsa looks up in alarm. “Is something the matter?”
Frantic for air, Brett rushes out the door.
Jane follows him outside, where she finds him leaning against a tree, thumping his lungs and gasping.
After a few moments, the pressure on his windpipe eases. “Allergy—dust—gotta run home—my inhaler—be right back.”