The Dwelling: A Novel (23 page)

“Three plus, as we say in the business,” Glenn said, with professional joviality. She felt alone in the room. “That means simply that there are three bedrooms upstairs, and a small room under the stairs that could serve as a guest room, although it is very small. There’s also an attic that is currently undeveloped. There is lots of room up there for whatever your needs are. Do you have children?” Glenn walked her into the kitchen and stood in the center of it, to make it seem larger.

“I have one. A son. Petey. Only he doesn’t like to be called Petey anymore. I’m trying to remember to call him Peter.” She smiled ruefully.

“Well, then, there’s ample room,” she said dismissively. She opened her arms and pointed to the dishwasher and refrigerator, taking in the stove as well. “There are four appliances. The fourth is a garbage disposal. And with a small table, you could eat in here, as well,” she said, and led Barbara to the back door. She opened it and moved aside so that the woman could look out. She did, dutifully.

“A nice, big backyard for your son to play in,” she said.

Barbara nodded and stared. And stared.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Parkins?” Glenn asked.

Barbara turned her head jerkily to look at her, eyes wide, almost fearful. “I’m fine,” she said quietly, turning her head back to the yard and staring out again. “I have to find a place right away. My husband’s left us. For another woman. I can’t stay in that house another minute. I’ll see the upstairs, please.”

Glenn had no idea what to say. “That’s terrible. I’m very sorry. I’m very sorry,” she repeated. She fumbled quickly for something better than that, toying with the idea of mentioning Howard, but it seemed somehow a betrayal of him, or of dignity. Instead she held out her hand for Barbara to go ahead.

On their way up the stairs, the woman’s tone changed. She sounded cheerful when she said, “It’s very good to say it like that. Out loud. I’ve only said it once out loud. To my friend on the phone. It’s good to say it,” she said, nodding brightly.

“Yes, it likely is,” Glenn said. “The master bedroom is very large and roomy. It’s L-shaped. Look at the lovely arched doorway. It reminds me of my childhood home in England,” she said, and thought, oddly, of the ball downstairs. “There’s a nice corner in here for reading, I’ve always thought.” She led Barbara around the edge of the wall, to where sunlight poured in from the small window.

“It’s nice,” Barbara said, bobbing her head.

Glenn began the story of the tub being brought in through the wall with a crane. The woman was scarcely listening. They looked only briefly in the bathroom, and she never commented on the tub, to the point where Glenn almost wanted to point it out directly.
Look at the damn feet. It wants to eat you.

The little blue room across the hall from the bath caught her attention. She clapped her hands together in delight, and Glenn smiled truly. It was a delightful little room.

“This is
perfect!”
she said. “This is just perfect for my little boy! He’ll love this room!” She walked in and across to the window, which overlooked the spacious backyard. Glenn repeated her statement about the yard. She was glad when the woman did not ask her about other children in the neighborhood. “There’s a school less than two blocks from here,” she mentioned.

Barbara nodded, looking out the window. Then she suddenly spun around like a ballerina. “I could paint clouds on the walls and ceilings! I just
love
the color of these walls, like the sky!” she said.

“Do you paint?”

“I’m going to, I think. I’m not sure what I’m going to do, after all this is settled.” She looked at Glenn confessionally. “I’ve never done anything. Wife and mother. That’s what I am. Was.” She nodded, as though accepting that for the first time.

Glenn softened considerably. Her heart went out to the woman. Her eyes were puffy from crying. A small child, youngish woman. It would be so hard.

“There are lots and lots of things that you can do now. I think you should look at it as the start of a whole new life,” she said, cringing at the way she sounded like a women’s magazine, or an ad for feminine protection. Barbara Parkins did not see it that way. She looked deeply, nakedly at Glenn, her brow furrowed in just the way it would be in a few months’ time, permanently, if she did not take care.

“I know that. That’s absolutely true.” She shrugged her shoulders, her arms hanging limply, impotently at her sides. “I just have to get past this hump. Just get past this difficult part. Then everything will be all right,” she said. For a moment, Glenn was afraid she was going to cry.

So needy.
Glenn leaned against the hallway wall. It was firm and cool, but not cold, in spite of the minimal heat. She leaned her head against the doorframe in what she hoped was a casual posture, but was really to steady her. The woman’s pain was making her tired. It was awful; draining.

She straightened up. There was an imperceptible nod of her head that needn’t have been as subtle; the woman had faded out to somewhere.

She needs this house.

“I think they would accept eighty-nine thousand,” she found herself saying, and it was a false brightness that came out of her mouth this time.

Barbara Parkins stared past Glenn into the hallway. Glenn stepped out of the room and raised her arm to lead her to the last room in the house. Barbara stayed in the blue room. “Shall we take a look at the other bedroom? I’ll show you the attic after that. There’s a sort of ladder that comes down on a pulley. It’s really quite clever,” she babbled. There was no reaction from the woman.

“I guess I’ll buy it,” Barbara said, sounding utterly exhausted, looking like she might just lie down in the middle of the room the color of the sky and sleep. She stared down at the floor and raised her eyes when she was done speaking. She looked blankly as though she’d forgotten what they were talking about.

“I have a settlement,” she said quietly, and straightened her shoulders.

From downstairs there came a loud, hollow sound that echoed up the stairs, and both women started. They listened as another echo followed the first, and then another, each softer. In a moment, Glenn chuckled with recognition.

“The ball,” she said. Barbara looked blankly at her. Glenn smiled kindly. “The rubber ball fell off the mantel. I guess it’s pleased.”

The two smiled, met eyes. It was so.

Barbara Parkins (or Staizer) leaned over the side of the tub in despair. The bulk of her bosom pressed painfully against the lip, her flesh cold from a damp line where splashing water had wet through her thin cotton blouse. From her right hand dangled a shiny new wrench. Beside her on the floor, open to page six, “What to Do With a Drippy Tap!,” was a pamphlet from the hardware store where she’d bought the shiny new wrench and the less shiny but equally new washer. A little package of them, as though she would be needing a half-dozen more sometime in the future. The pamphlet was called
Everyone’s Guide to Simple Plumbing,
but was clearly marketed at women: a sturdy-looking blonde in overalls and a tool belt lay under a sink on the cover, and most of the title heads were
fun!
And everything ended in an exclamation mark! As though home repair for the desperate was just another Hollywood party!

She wanted to scream. She had been a half hour getting the tap off (righty-tighty,
lefty
-loosy), only to find that the part in question was as pretty, shiny and new-looking as the washer she’d just bought to replace it. Did that matter?

The tap was in two pieces on the floor of the tub, near the drain. She had carefully placed the old washer—easily distinguishable from the new washer because it was
wet
—on the tank of the toilet, where it could be even more easily distinguished. The new one was in place. Her wrist was sore from trying to get the tap off and she was taking a breather.

Staizer. She was Barbara Staizer now, she supposed. Parkins was over. She hadn’t actually decided yet to go back to her maiden name, it was nearly as tainted with bad baggage as her married name, and wished she could just pick some clean, fresh name to start over with. Something simple like Smith or Jones, or White or Brown.

It had been suspiciously easy to switch from her birth name to her married name. She remembered her astonishment at how easy it had been. All she had to do was present her marriage certificate and voilà! New person. Barbara Staizer became Barbara Parkins. What was that song?

Water from nowhere rolled out of the top of the tap and slid down the nozzle, dripping into the drain. The water line had been shut off (page two, “Ready, set, repair!”). The water ran anyway, as though not subject to the law of physics.

“—how that marriage license works, on chamber MAIDS and hotel CLERKS!”
And on clerks in the Vital Statistics offices, also. Like a flash card, a badge.

Annie Get Your Gun?
No.
Funny Girl.
Barbra Streisand.

The wrench was heavy. Barbara Staizer-Parkins-Something-else-like-Brown picked up the tap from the tub and gingerly placed it over the nut and started wrenching. It was easier the second time. Righty-tighty.

She was pretty sure it wasn’t as easy to go back to your maiden name, but that was one of the many things she would have to find out. Anyway, she wasn’t even sure she would. She was just trying it on, mostly out of anger. Petey (Pe
ter)
was still Parkins and that was something to consider.

There was a minimum of mess to Simple Plumbing, and the tiny bit of water that had gotten around stayed mostly in the tub, or had been absorbed by her blouse. The house was a little cool and she suspected that it was poorly insulated, even though it had been renovated by the people who’d owned it last. She’d wondered more than once about those people in the last three days. It was a noisy house. Had they left it because of that?

For instance, the (damn) tub ran. Never when she was in the room, or even upstairs, although she had heard it the other night in the tentative place before sleep: it had woken her. It took just a moment to place the sound. Sitting up in bed, feet on floor, up and at ’em, she could hear it, muffled as though the bathroom door was closed, even though she could see it was open. It was water running from tap into tub, a medium flow, complete with splashing and the hollow sound of pipes in the wall clanging their work. It was a familiar sound like winter wind rattling windows and the newspaper banging against the front door, the fridge coming on. There was no figuring it out: it was the tub, filling up with water. Then draining. And that was the worst part. She’d finally gotten up out of bed, barefoot onto spring-cold floor, and padded to the bathroom.

By the time she reached the doorway of the dark little room, a trek of no more than four steps, she heard the distinct, unmistakable—no arguing,
I’m not a moron it is as familiar as rattling windows fridge coming on
—sound of the plug popping out of the drain, and the water running out. Clear as day.

She’d thought Petey was playing, of course. She’d said his name—in a whisper because it seemed the right thing to do with the dark and all—but he hadn’t answered, and when she flicked the light switch beside the door, she looked first to his room. The light caught his smooth white face in sleep.

That’s when her heart caught in her throat because obviously
there’s someone in the house
but that lasted only a second because it was too late anyway, she’d turned the light on. No escape lady, ha ha! Someone in the house and he’s taking a bath?

The bathroom, tiny as it was, was empty. So was the tub. Empty and dry. She thought it only looked dry, so she’d bent over it and ran her hand along the bottom. Dry as a bone.

She spun around tensed and looked over her shoulder, only to see nothing. The house was quiet again: there was no hollow, muffled clang of pipes in the wall, no water draining out. She’d imagined it. It had been part of a dream.

Something had made the noise. It had to have been the tap. Although it was not the way it had been described in the pamphlet and the man at the hardware store had gone blank-faced as she’d explained it and hastily told her it was likely a leaky washer. He’d insisted, really, as she’d tried to explain. There had been no
dripping
sound, she’d explained, just the sound of water running and draining. (She hadn’t gone so far as to explain the other noise, the one that precipitated the draining of the tub, because it sounded too preposterous, even to her, and she’d heard it.)

“It’s most likely a washer, ma’am,” he’d said patiently, about one more question from a yawn or a sigh. “It usually is.” She’d gone along with it because she didn’t know, and while Elizabeth Staizer didn’t raise no fools, she wasn’t exactly Mrs. Fixit, although she had once put together a yard composter from a kit. And there was no Mr. Fixit anymore.

And, insult to injury and poor repair skills, it turned out Elizabeth Staizer had raised at least one fool.

Barbara dried the wrench on a towel and left it on the back of the toilet. She tossed the old washer into the little wicker garbage basket beside the sink and put the pamphlet beside the wrench. She might need it again. Maybe some pipe would explode somewhere and really test her mettle. She went into the bedroom and changed her shirt, knowing full well the whole exercise had been a waste of time. There was nothing wrong with the washer she had replaced.

Before going downstairs for a cup of tea, she checked her face in the mirror of the little dresser she’d pinched from her mom’s house for signs of crying. Her eyes were slightly red and puffy, but no worse than usual. She would rinse her face with cold water. That would take some of the swelling down and lessen the redness around her mouth, too. Petey would be home from school soon. She didn’t want him to know that she’d been sad today.

The tub was reflected in the mirror over the sink. Barbara did not keep her eyes closed long when she rinsed her face. She kept her feet tucked close under the pedestal sink, far away from the claws that held up the tub, her eyes fixed on the tub, its reflection white and cool in the mirror.

She had her tea in the living room. There were fewer boxes in there and less work to be done. The pictures that had to go up were stacked against the walls and she wasn’t much of a knickknack person. The bookshelves were up and two boxes of books were beside it, but that wasn’t bad and she could have those put away before Petey got home. The TV and VCR were hooked up—correctly too, the illustrations in the owner’s manual much easier to follow than the written directions—and the stereo had been up since their first day. The room looked terribly bare. She and Dennis had divided up much of the furniture, and she hadn’t been very strident in those days. He had gotten most of the good things, when she thought about it. She did get the sofa—a lovely, creamy-colored overstuffed soft thing, long enough to sleep on. He’d got the chair that matched, and the coffee table and one of the side tables. The side table that she’d taken had the stereo on it. Her cup of tea was on the floor at her feet. The decor was minimalist, to put a spin on it. The pictures would help. Time Marches On.

The pictures were currently objects of panic. She had tried to put one up in the hall on the way up the stairs that morning and had succeeded only in hammering a hole in the wall. The nail had loosened the drywall and fallen through. She hadn’t attempted another. She would have to ask someone what to do. The pictures in their old house had just been hanging. She had no idea how they’d gotten there, but she supposed that Dennis had put them up. She wondered if there was a guide called
Everyone’s Guide to Hanging Pictures, Everyone’s Guide to Hauling a Spare Bed Upstairs, Everyone’s Guide to Unclogging the Gutter.
She bet there was. It was a world that needed a lot of home repair.

The floor creaked above her and she cast her eyes that way from under a cool washcloth, soothing away the puffiness around her eyes before the boy got home. It was a noisy house, full of creaks and bumps and draining tubs. The first night she had lain awake in bed, terrified, every bump someone breaking in, every creak someone’s footfall. Petey had come to her bed around midnight (after she’d spent the best part of the day putting his room together so that it was ready for him to sleep in). She crawled in with him about one, having put some of the kitchen together, towels in the bathroom so she could have a shower the next morning, and generally wandering around the strange house, poking her head into pitifully small closets and cubbies, running her hand over the smooth refinished surfaces, the new paint. The house smelled fresh and new, just built. The upstairs smelled like something else. Something chemical like fertilizer or that stuff you drag around your yard so that weeds won’t grow.
Weed-Go.
She adjusted the cold cloth on her eyes and rested her head on the back of the sofa.

Petey would be home any minute. New school.

God, let it be okay.
She really felt like crying again when she thought of her boy, alone in a new school. She didn’t cry, but felt the sting of it behind the cloth. She’d cried herself out, maybe for that day. At least for that afternoon. Nights were harder. But for all the terrors of her day, they did not involve the staring eyes of three hundred new people. And he was
sensitive.

As if in answer, there was a sudden, muffled
thump!
at the front door. Barbara pulled the cloth off her eyes and guiltily dropped it in a ball on the hidden side of the couch. She waited for a moment, thinking it was Petey. The door was unlocked.

When nothing happened, she got up. Her heart jumped a little at the thought that maybe a neighbor was dropping by to say hello and welcome them, maybe a Welcome Wagon lady with all kinds of goodies and coupons and baby-sitting advice. Someone nice, and her age. Divorce would be an asset, but she would be willing to overlook an intact marriage. She put a smile on.

Her socked feet padded comfortably on the cool tiled floor in the hall. She pushed her fringe back, damp from the cloth, and knew how she would look. She had put on a good twenty pounds over the last year and it was not kind on her. It was sloppy-fat and her frame was not large enough to hide anything, not even five pounds. Her lips pressed together and she frowned. There was momentary debate over opening the door at all.

Loneliness won out. Barbara fixed the smile, pushed her hair behind her ears and tugged her T-shirt—at least it was clean—down over her front, and pulled the door open, hoping she looked suburban, relaxed and only as unkempt as any new homeowner
(Oh, hello! Come in! Excuse me, but I’ve just been fixing a tap!).

A gust of fresh air shuttled in through the open door, but the stoop was empty. She panicked, sticking her head out of the door—had she taken too long? There was no one on the path or on the street beyond the hedge at the end of the yard. Crossing her arms over her chest against the cool spring breeze, she stepped onto the stoop to get a better look and trod on something soft that gave. She lifted a foot and looked down simultaneously.

Her smile broadened into something real and she let out a little squeal of pleasure.

On the stoop (decidedly crushed by her foot) was a little yellow bouquet of buttercups. She bent over and scooped them up, letting go of a little groan at the sight of their stems, broken and flattened, bleeding green from having been stepped on. Two of the blossoms had been crushed as well. She bent her head and brought the flowers up to her nose, knowing already how they would smell, the wet way they would brush under her nose.

Do you like butter?

They were limp and battered as though having been carried a long way and Barbara, smiling, looked around again, scanning the street this time for a smaller neighbor, a child, maybe with her mother, coaxed into leaving the new family a hand-picked bouquet. Even when she walked down the sidewalk to the end of her yard, she still couldn’t see anyone, big or small, who might have left such a delightful welcome on the step.

“Thank you!” she called out into the open street. She gave another round glance, but saw no one.

Maybe it will be all right,
she thought. It was chilly out. The buttercups were cold in her hands, the green juice bleeding onto her fingers. She knew from experience that it wouldn’t come off easily, but would stay for an hour or so, until it wore off. Still smiling, she went inside, closing the door softly.