“This one’s a canteen!” Carol broadcasts.
I thank her and hand the pot to James. “See if you can fit your flowers into our lovely new vase, please!” James disappears into the kitchen while I show my parents to the guest room.
I make dinner: fried chicken and mashed sweet potatoes and bean casserole—food I know my parents will eat—and James mixes everyone manhattans and my dad drinks too many. He holds forth on whatever he’s read about recently and ruffles his wily eyebrows about the injustice of a recently passed law. We perform our incredulity at some new way we’re poisoning our bodies and gasp politely at all the random facts he shares.
My dad drains his glass and jingles the shards of ice at James for a refill. We wait for my dad to look away to share a glance. I shrug, resigned that at least he’ll probably pass out after the next drink. My dad gets to flipping through the pictures in some history books stacked in the living room. My stepmom retreats into the guest room so she can shower and set her hair in the foam rollers hourglassed with plastic memory.
Alone in our bedroom, I want to decompress and tell James all the things I couldn’t say in the company of my parents, but the walls are too thin. Instead, I lie down and close myself around him and hear his breath regularize quickly, but my mind spins. I have trouble getting comfortable and think about how we’ll fill the day tomorrow, then, suddenly, right in front of my face, I hear a thick exhale, almost a growl. Hot air through a ragged windpipe; I can feel its moist remainder lingering on my skin.
The electricity of fear almost bolts me upright, but I hold myself down, sure someone is standing right over me. I inhale sharply and try to focus on the darkness. Has some vent above me decided just now to start making this noise? I settle back and attempt to calm myself, beginning to drift off, sure I’ve dreamed the thing, when I hear it again.
The sound shapes itself, rough and wet before me. I smell the breath, sour and ripe at once. “James?” I whisper.
“Yes.” His response is not that of someone half drawn away by sleep.
“Did you hear that?”
“Julie, it was right in front of my face.”
“It was in front of my face.” I find his warm hand under the blanket. We wait for it to happen again, barred from sleep by anticipation, the time fast and slow at once, but neither of us hears it if it does.
I am aching with exhaustion when dawn starts to show through the window and we can finally see that nothing is before us. We drift off and wake late.
At the brunch table, we don’t want to alarm my parents, so we keep our secret quiet. My stepmom, her hair already sculpted into a pouf that frames her face like a halo, helps herself to some pancakes and says, “Now, you kids know I don’t like to start trouble, but I had such a fright last night.” James and I glance at each other, chew slowly. “I was falling asleep, and, I swear, right above me, I heard something breathing, deep and heavy. I thought maybe your father had finally come to bed and was having some kind of attack, but I felt around and said, ‘Frank? Is that you?’ No response.” She pauses. “I lay back down and I heard it again: a loooong snarl. I was spooked. Is that your heating system or something? Do you think an animal could have gotten into those spaces in the walls? Maybe you have an infestation?” She whispers the final word, as if the pests might be offended to hear it.
I wait for a moment, trying to decide whether to admit we also heard the noise, but I decide honesty is best. “We heard it, too.”
“It was that loud?” My stepmother looks at my dad in shock. He continues shoveling pancakes into his mouth, as if nothing were amiss.
I recognize her misunderstanding as a way out of this exchange, but I clarify, “No, we heard it, too, but it was right above us, right in front of our faces. We could smell it.” I wonder what keeps me going, what it is that’s encouraging me, if I like seeing Carol horrified.
“Yes!” my stepmother gasps. “That smell was awful. I could have thrown up.”
Finally, I feel the regret at having been honest release through me like a faucet opening. I stand to reach the coffee carafe, trying to move on.
“This is too much. I’m sorry, Julie. I wasn’t going to say anything, but I do not like this house.” My stepmother sets down her silverware. She throws her napkin on her plate. “Frank, we’re not staying here another minute. Julie, this place is bad news. There’s something creepy about it. I couldn’t pinpoint it, but, with what happened last night, I know you can do better.”
I should have seen this coming. I should have known having my parents here wouldn’t help, that my stepmother would be overly critical even if everything went right. I should have protected this space until we were settled and assured and ready to defend it.
My dad says, “I didn’t hear anything, Carol.”
“That’s because you were passed out, drunk as a skunk. You wouldn’t have heard a lion roar inside of you. We’re going home. I’ve seen all I need to see. Julie, I’m begging you: get out of here. We’ll help you. I’ll lend you some money—some money you can keep, but leave.”
“I think you could be more supportive, Carol,” I say. She recoils. Calling her by her name instead of Mom has been the greatest insult to her since my father married her. “This is our first home. Of course, some things need fixing, but I’m pretty proud of it. I agree it’s probably best if you leave.”
I can see I’ve riled her by telling her to go. My father doesn’t try to right the situation, only turns his eyes away so it can’t seem as if he is taking any particular side.
James and I clean up the table while my parents disappear upstairs. When I hear the front door open, I force myself to follow them out and watch as they load their car, but I can’t find any words that strike the right balance of civility and admonishment. I wave as they pull away.
Alone, we examine our bedroom and the guest room for vents and cracks in the window frames. James and I re-create the conditions by lying on the bed side by side. In our bones, we know nothing will happen, and so we use this time to talk, as if we’re both trying to convince the other we should stay.
“My stepmother was obviously overreacting.”
James takes only a moment to commit. “Absolutely.”
“I think the house might lend itself to suspicion what with the secret rooms and whatnot, but really I think we started off on the wrong foot. And I’m certainly not accepting money from her. Even if I paid her back, I’d never hear the end of it.”
James agrees, but then he pauses, and I am nervous about what he will say next. “That sound last night, though, that was … something alive, right? It sounded like a beast—which, I know, seems crazy—but whatever that was, it wasn’t a clog in a vent or the house settling.”
I think this is where I might lose him if I agree. “I’m not that certain, I guess,” I say, but in my mind it seems clear.