Help me find her.
A creak. A hinge, someplace. David might have gone back downstairs. I tip to one side.
Help me find her.
But when I open my eyes a moment later, he’s returned, flopping onto the sofa. I straighten up, smile. He smiles back, looks past me. “Cute kid.”
I swivel. It’s Olivia, beaming within a silver frame. “You’ve got her picture downstairs,” I remember. “On the wall.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “Don’t know. Didn’t have anything to replace it with.” He drains his glass. “Where is she, anyway?”
“With her dad.” Swallowing wine.
A pause. “You miss her?”
“Yes.”
“You miss him?”
“I do, in fact.”
“Talk to them a lot?”
“All the time. Just yesterday, actually.”
“When do you see them next?”
“Probably not for a while. But soon, I hope.”
I don’t want to talk about this, about them. I want to talk about the woman across the park. “Should we check out that ceiling?”
The steps coil up into blackness. I lead; David follows.
As we pass the study, something ripples beside my leg. Punch, stealing downstairs. “Was that the cat?” David asks.
“That was the cat,” I answer.
We ascend past the bedrooms, both dark, and onto the uppermost landing. I slap my hand to the wall, find the switch. In the sudden light, I see David’s eyes on mine.
“It doesn’t look any worse,” I say, pointing to the stain overhead, spread across the trapdoor like a bruise.
“No,” he agrees. “But it’ll get there. I’ll take care of it this week.”
Silence.
“Are you very busy? Finding a lot of work?”
Nothing.
I wonder if I might tell him about Jane. I wonder what he’d say.
But before I can decide, he’s kissed me.
55
We’re on the floor of the landing, the carpet rough against my skin; then he hoists me up, carries me to the nearest bed.
His mouth is on my mouth; stubble sandpapers my cheeks and chin. One hand rakes my hair hard, while the other tugs at my sash. I suck in my gut as the robe spreads wide, but he only kisses me harder, my throat, my shoulders.
Out flew the web, and floated wide; The mirror crack’d from side to side; “I am half-sick of shadows,” cried The Lady of Shalott.
Why Tennyson? Why now?
I haven’t felt this in so long. I haven’t felt in so long.
I want to feel this. I want to feel. I am so sick of shadows.
Later, in the dark, my fingers brush his chest, his stomach, the line of hair trailing down from his navel like a fuse.
He breathes quietly. And then I drift away. And I half dream of sunsets, and of Jane; and at some point I hear a soft tread on the landing, and to my surprise, I hope he comes back to bed.
Sunday, November 7
56
When I awake, my head swollen, David is gone. His pillow feels cool. I press my face to it; it smells of sweat.
I roll to my side, away from the window, from the light.
What the hell happened?
We were drinking—of course we were drinking; I pinch my eyes shut—and then we made our way to the top story. Stood beneath the trapdoor. And so to bed. Or, no: First we hit the landing floor. Then bed.
Olivia’s bed.
My eyes bolt open.
I’m in my daughter’s bed, her blankets wrapped around my naked body, her pillow dry with the sweat of a man I barely know. God, Livvy, I’m sorry.
I squint at the doorway, into the dim of the hall; then I sit up, the sheets clasped to my breasts—Olivia’s sheets, printed with little ponies. Her favorite. She refused to sleep on anything else.
I turn toward the window. Gray outside, November drizzle, rain leaking from the leaves, from the eaves.
I cast a glance across the park. From here I can gaze directly into Ethan’s bedroom. He isn’t there.
I shiver.
My robe is smeared across the floor like a skid mark. I step from the bed, gather it in my hands—why are they shaking?—and swaddle myself. One slipper lies abandoned beneath the bed; I find the other on the landing.
At the top of the stairs, I take a breath. The air is stale. David’s right: I should ventilate. I won’t, but I should.
I walk down the stairs. At the next landing, I look one way, then the other, as though I’m about to cross a street; the bedrooms are quiet, my sheets still disarranged from my night with Bina. My Night with Bina. Sounds filthy.
I’m hungover.
One flight down and I peer into the library, into the study. The Russell place peers back at me. I feel as though it’s tracking me as I move through my house.
I hear him before I see him.
And when I see him, he’s in the kitchen, sucking water from a tumbler. The room is shadows and glass, as dim as the world beyond the window.
I study his Adam’s apple as it bobs in his throat. His hair is scruffy at the nape; a slim hip peeks from beneath the fold of his shirt. For an instant I close my eyes and recall that hip in my hand, that throat against my mouth.
When I open them again, he’s looking at me, eyes dark and full in the gray light. “Quite an apology, huh?” he says.
I feel myself blush.
“Hope I didn’t wake you up.” He raises his glass. “Just needed a refill. Got to head out in a minute.” He gulps the rest of it, sets the glass in the sink. Drags a hand across his lips.
I don’t know what to say.
He seems to sense this. “I’m gonna get out of your hair,” he says, and comes toward me. I tense, but he’s making for the basement door; I move aside to let him pass. When we’re shoulder to shoulder, he turns his head, speaks low.
“Not sure if I should be saying thanks or sorry.”
I look him in the eye, summon the words. “It was nothing.” My voice is throaty in my ears. “Don’t worry about it.”
He considers, nods. “Sounds like I should be saying sorry.”
I drop my gaze. He steps past me and opens the door. “I’m heading out tonight. Job in Connecticut. Should be back tomorrow.”
I say nothing.
When I hear the door shut behind me, I exhale. At the sink I fill his glass with water and bring it to my lips. I think I can taste him all over again.
57
So: That happened.
I never liked that expression. Too flip. But here I am and there it is:
That happened.
Glass in hand, I drift to the sofa, where I find Punch curled on the cushion, his tail switching back and forth. I sit beside him, stow the glass between my thighs, and tilt my head back.
Ethics aside—though it isn’t really an ethical issue, is it? Sex with a tenant, I mean?—I can’t believe we did what we did in my daughter’s bed. What would Ed say? I cringe. He’s not going to find out, of course, but still. But still. I want to torch the sheets. Ponies and all.
The house breathes around me, the steady tick of the grandfather clock a faint pulse. The whole room is in shadow, a blur of shades. I see myself, my phantom self, reflected in the television screen.
What would I do if I were on that screen, a character in one of my films? I would leave the house to investigate, like Teresa Wright in Shadow of a Doubt. I would summon a friend, like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. I wouldn’t sit here, in a puddle of robe, wondering where next to turn.
Locked-in syndrome. Causes include stroke, brain stem injury, MS, even poison. It’s a neurological condition, in other words, not a psychological one. Yet here I am, utterly, literally locked in—doors closed, windows shut, while I shy and shrink from the light, and a woman is stabbed across the park, and no one notices, no one knows. Except me—me, swollen with booze, parted from her family, fucking her tenant. A freak to the neighbors. A joke to the cops. A special case to her doctor. A pity case to her physical therapist. A shut-in. No hero. No sleuth.
I am locked in. I am locked out.
At some point I rise, move to the stairs, put one foot in front of the other. I’m on the landing, about to step into my study, when I notice it. The closet door is ajar. Just slightly, but ajar.
My heart stops for an instant.