I’ll call her Jessie.
I’m not a bad person, I remind myself, though in that moment as I sit—watching a roach as it scurries across the worn carpeting, reaching a wall, shimmying along the baseboards to where the rest of its family no doubt lies waiting—reflecting on the last twenty-four hours of my life, the last twenty-four days and weeks, I’m not entirely certain that’s true. All sorts of emotions get churned up inside me, everything from sadness to regret and shame, and I think of him standing unsuspectingly at the cottage, knocking on the door in vain.
“You’re not a bad person,” I incant, believing that if I think on it long enough, if I say it enough times, a thousand times over, it might somehow turn true.
I didn’t set out to do the things I did. There was never any willful intent, any malice, only a pining for something I didn’t have, something I so desperately needed. You wouldn’t condemn a famished child for stealing a loaf of bread, now would you? A homeowner for shooting an armed intruder to protect his family?
I’m not a bad person, I decide, far more resolute this time.
I only did what I had to do.
jessie
When I finally make my way back to Cornelia Avenue, it’s evening. The colors of the sky have begun to change. Shadows fall across the street. The sun is thinking about going down.
I walk along Cornelia beside Old Faithful, staring at the million-dollar homes that fringe the street. They’re mostly newly gutted homes with small tracts of grass. For each home lies a single tree on the road verge, fully grown. Its leaves form a canopy over the street where it joins with the tree on the other side. Conjoined twins.
The temperatures have fallen. It’s no more than fifty-some degrees outside, a cold that creeps under my clothing, chilling me to the bone. The heat in the carriage home is stingy at best, when it runs. Though I toyed with the thermostat this morning, setting the temperature to seventy-two degrees, the furnace never kicked on before I left. When I arrive, it will be cold inside.
As I make my way along the street, the dread of nighttime creeps in. The fear of eight long hours of darkness with nothing to do and only morbid thoughts to keep me company.
The front door of the greystone is open as I approach, though Ms. Geissler is nowhere to be seen. I stop on the sidewalk, wondering if I should let her know or if I should keep going. What I want to do is keep going, but my conscience says otherwise.
There’s a garden on the front lawn of the greystone, one I didn’t notice before, but now I do. It’s not huge because city living doesn’t allow for things to be huge. But it’s magical. A blanket of yellows and oranges and reds that warms the earth. Tiny white butterflies hover above the blooms, levitating midair.
I blink once and they’re gone because most likely they were never really there.
I make my way down the walkway, climbing the steps toward the front door. The home is large; three stories tall with a garden apartment to boot, one that peeks at me from beneath street level, hidden behind a black metal fence.
As I knock on the door, it pushes open more than it was before. My eyes take in the foyer, a carpeted runner, an unlit chandelier that dangles from the ceiling. “Hello?” I call out into the empty space, but if my landlord is here, she doesn’t hear me.
My fingers press the doorbell and I hear the chime of it from inside, but still, there’s no reply. “Hello?” I call again, laying a hand flat against the door and pressing it the rest of the way open. My feet cross the threshold as I step into the home.
I reach for a light switch and toggle it up and down, but nothing happens. The chandelier above me remains dark. It’s not black in the home because the sun has yet to go all the way down. There’s still some light outside, but it’s fading fast. Soon it will be gone.
“Ms. Geissler?” I call out, explaining who I am and why I’m here. “It’s Jessie,” I say. “Jessie Sloane. Your new tenant. I just moved in to the carriage home,” I call out, and at first I think the worst, that she’s here somewhere, but that she’s hurt. That she’s had a nasty fall. That she can’t answer me because she’s lying on the ground just waiting to be found. That she’s dead.
I don’t think the obvious. That Ms. Geissler’s in the shower and can’t hear me. That she forgot to close the door on the way out rather than the way in. That she’s not here.
“Ms. Geissler?” I call again, with an urgency to my voice this time. “Hello? Are you here?”
And it’s only then that I hear the sound of a piano playing from upstairs. Classical music, I think. The kind you’ve heard before because it’s famous. Mozart. Beethoven. I don’t know which. The piano is quieted down from the distance, diluted, but still I hear it, the music staccato-like, sharp and disconnected.
And I breathe a sigh of relief because she’s here. Because she’s fine.
I could go home now.
I should go home now.
I should pull the door fully closed behind me and leave.
But instead I find myself hesitating at the base of the stairs. My hand grips the baluster as I stare up the flight of stairs, into the dark, cavernous second floor of the home. Because now the classical music has turned into some sort of ballad, and I find that it’s haunting and beautiful.
That it’s calling me, summoning me up the stairs.
Begging me to come and listen, to come and see.
And instead of leaving, my feet carry me up the stairs before I can think this through. I hold my breath as I go, listening only to the sound of the piano. Climbing upward, one step at a time.
The house is large, each room sprawling and grand, though they’re hard to see for the scarcity of light, which becomes even more dim with each minute that passes by. Upstairs, my legs carry me to the bedroom from which the music comes. The only room that, as far as I can see, boasts light. The door is pulled to and so there’s only a sliver of it. Only a sliver of light peeking from beneath the door slab.
I go to it.
Standing before the closed door, I listen to the sound of the piano play. My hand drops to the door’s handle and it’s unintentional when I turn the knob. I can’t help myself; it just happens. I press a hand flat against the door and push it open, so slowly so that it doesn’t squeak. I see her there on the piano’s bench, her back to me. Her fingers move nimbly over the piano keys, foot pressing against the pedal with obvious expertise. I find myself entranced by her song, by the rhythmic motion of her hands and feet.
And then she stops playing.
And it strikes me suddenly, an awareness.
She knows that I am here.
I shouldn’t be here.
All at once I feel like a trespasser. Like I’ve gone too far. This is not my home and I have no business being here.
She doesn’t turn. “Something I can help you with?” she asks and I gasp first before I laugh. A nervous laugh. An exhausted laugh. One I can’t make stop though I try. And only then does she turn and look at me as I press my hands to my mouth to smother the laugh.
Ms. Geissler looks to me to be about sixty years old. Her hair is short, a dyed blond that’s feathered around the edges. She wears glasses, dark, plastic frames that sit on the bridge of her nose. There’s a frailty about her, her body gaunt, cloaked in a cotton dress. She rises to her feet and only then do I see that she’s petite. There are lines on her face, laugh lines, frown lines, crow’s-feet. And yet they look more regal than old. She’s a beautiful woman.