WE NEVER THINK through why a room ends in one place but the next room doesn’t begin there, until one night we awake to our spatial stupidity while I’m washing my face. I find a cupboard behind the medicine cabinet. We find a loose brick in the fireplace and pull it out and stick our arms into the space and can’t find a wall within reach of our blind touch. For weeks we assume that a corner that juts into our bedroom is the closet of the room next door, but the next time I’m in the guest room, I notice the closet there is on the opposite side. What inhabits this empty column? I knock, as if that might provide an answer, but hear no echo. I show James, and he shakes his head.
We plant new bushes—boxwood, James’s choice—around the perimeter of the property and talk about how there is an earth beneath the earth into which we wedge our spades. At the beach suddenly we are looking for seas beyond the sea.
James says, “Stop. It’s extra closets in an old house, fallout shelters and pantries, and we’re not used to being prepared.”
I say, “I can feel the history in them, though.”
At dinner, James lifts his plate to put it in the sink. When he returns to the table, an empty plate remains where he’d been sitting. “It’s been there all along,” I insist. “I wondered what you were up to.”
On walks around the neighborhood I peer into windows, trying to see how our lifestyle compares, and find our same lamp, a bookshelf identical to ours, a TV playing what I know James is watching at home. I walk through our front door and straight out the back and realize it is not our home I’ve passed through, but Rolf’s. I pause at the newly planted hedges and look at one house and then the other and ask myself if what I think just happened really did, but I talk myself out of it. I try to picture my body passing through his house from back to front, like a ghost, but I can’t remember any details and so it mustn’t have been real, but a daydream on foot. When I secret myself inside my own back door, I find I have to uncurl my fists. Everything I see in our house looks as if it had been replaced with a replica.
17
“DID YOU ACTUALLY go to Rolf’s to pick this stuff up?” I set my bag down in the entryway and seek out Julie, who’s at the sink washing vegetables.
“Why, hello! I didn’t hear you.”
“The tray and pitcher on the table. Did you pick those up or did he leave them on the front porch?”
“Neither. I thought maybe you’d gone to ask for them back before you left for work this morning.” She shuts off the water and wipes her hands.
I shake my head. She slows, surprise inching onto her face. “Are you kidding?” Her grin wastes. “What does that mean then? That he came into our home? Jesus Christ.”
I try to think of another way.
“What do we do? Call the police?”
“I’ll go over there,” I say. “I’ll talk to him.”
“I’d rather call the police at this point, James. I told you we should have changed the locks. What if the last owners gave him a key?”
“Let’s try to keep things civil,” I say.
“I’m calling the locksmith. If you’re not back in five minutes, 911 is next.”
I skip the front pathways and trace a crow’s flight across our lawns. I knock loudly, a triple rap, and then a dectet. No one comes to the door. I try the handle. In movies, everyone is always surprised the door is unlocked. I think I’m out of luck. Then, I remember the heavy creak of the hinges when we stopped by. I push harder. The door resists, then opens at once, as if something were slumped against it, but when I step inside, nothing is there.
“Rolf?” I call. Letting myself into his house feels like retribution for his intruding on us. I realize no answer will be provided in this visit, though. The massive portrait above the mantel hitches my vision. A chill runs through me. Maybe it’s the sense of being watched. The eyes in the painting track my trespass. A family of four: a father and mother, a young boy and baby daughter. I edge away and my heel strikes something solid. I tumble backward and see it’s a pile of old newspapers, toppled now, copies of the same issue. My eyes fumble to focus on the headline. “Kinsler Family Tragedy” repeats itself across a dozen fanned editions. I hear what I believe to be the creak of floorboards upstairs. I struggle to my feet. I shut the door behind me as quietly as possible. The coughs tumble out of me. Once out in the fresh air, I realize how rancid the must had been inside.
18
JAMES HURRIES BACK across the lawn and I catch Rolf in his kitchen window. I flash back to the vision I had of walking through Rolf’s house and ask myself if I could have grabbed the pitcher and tray, if I could have carried those things into the house with me and forgotten. I can’t talk myself into believing what my mind suggests. I turn away and open the front door. “What did he have to say for himself?”
James looks startled, flustered. “He wasn’t home or he was sleeping and didn’t answer.”
“What do you mean? I saw you go inside and I just saw him in the window. How did you get in?”
“Shit. Then he heard me.” James’s eyes bug out, the sharp white standing out against the purplish-olive sickles of fatigue beneath. He blinks and the contrast pops again. “The door wasn’t locked. I let myself in.”
“An eye for an eye, eh?” I try to remember if it was me or James who would have locked our door as we left this morning.
“He’ll know I was there. I knocked over some newspapers, too. But get this: ‘Kinsler Family Tragedy’ was the headline. Multiple copies. Rolf Kinsler. I should have taken one.”
“That would have been stealing. We should look that up to see what it’s talking about, though.”
“They were ancient. Too old to Google,” he says.
“Microfiche, then. We’ll go to the library.”
James is pressing his fist to his brow, hunched over the dining room table.
“James, he came into our house first. He had no right.” I say this and trust it. “The locksmith is on his way. You didn’t do anything more wrong than what he did. If he’s angry, it’s what he deserves.”
James forces himself to at least appear to agree, and then his eyes focus sharply on me, like something’s clicked. “The way he watches us, the fact that he came in without our knowing—something’s going on. I’m calling the Realtor to see what he knows. Maybe he can help figure out which of all these stories we’re hearing is true. He might know what Rolf’s deal is. Do you have the number?”
I’m surprised James wants to act on this right away. Usually he’d put it off and then lose momentum. I pull up the number on my phone and hand it to him and watch him dial. He starts to pace and stops short. “I dialed wrong. It says the number’s been disconnected.” He dials again and pulls the phone to his ear and then hangs up. “Disconnected.”
“How can that be?” I hit DIAL and listen to the same message. “Maybe he got a new number.” I pull up the browser to look up his name, but nothing comes up. “What the hell? I must be spelling it wrong or something.”
“I am not into this. I’m going to the library this weekend to investigate.” For once, I believe James when he says he’s going to do something.
I rifle through the papers from the move and search for the Realtor’s ad again, but it remains lost.