It takes a little while for me to even think of what the truth is, let alone a lie that would make everything seem normal.
I wait in the lobby for her to make it to me. She and Connie pull up. Connie will drive Julie’s car home so Julie can drive mine. As Julie climbs the big flight of stairs out front, I see her wave Connie off. Already Julie’s eyes search through the glass doors for me. She tugs them open and struts toward me. She pulls me up to standing. She hugs me. I hug her back. I can feel everyone watching: the guards and every set of eyes in every painting. I want to tell her, I’m fine. And It was nothing. And I should have eaten something more. I can’t lie. I say, “Let’s go.”
On the way home, Julie talks nonstop. I try to listen. I still feel a bit woozy. My head aches.
“Why would you do that?”
In the question, I hear what she’s not asking: Did you actually go up to the city to gamble, to join the old crew at the bar, to lay what little money you’ve earned in the last month down? I feel the anger growing in me that her concern for my well-being is being overridden by her suspicion.
“It was a bad idea. Okay? I don’t feel well right now. Can you save the lecture?”
Julie keeps quiet then. She doesn’t apologize. She allows me to drift off.
26
AFTER WE RETURN from the museum, James sleeps for twenty-four hours until he wakes, distant and paranoid. He says he wants to change things, wants to get to the root of whatever it is that’s filling the spaces of this house. I think he means this abstractly, but then he begins unscrewing switch plates, he pulls out the stove, runs his hand under the cabinets, climbs onto a stepladder to remove the ceiling vents. Beneath the surface of it all, we discover more ligament than we imagined, but the rudiments of the house aren’t what James is looking for. It’s something else that I can’t figure out. “James, what is it you think you’ll find?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be looking.”
James makes a precise cut along the edge of the box spring and inspects each coil. He removes the stuffing from the sofa cushions and rips open the seams on the pillows. He tries to settle the feathers in a neat pile, but they take flight in a panic when I enter the room. “I’ll put them back,” he says.
James pulls up the edge of the carpet to show me the grime hiding between it and the floorboards, and I force the corner back down. I can’t let myself think about the dirt hiding where we can’t get to it. I heave at the thought of the filth caked into this old house. “You can’t make a shell of our home, James.” I try to trace this destruction to the way he picked horses and hoped they’d win. I tell myself people can have two problems with no common cause. He drills a hole in the wall between the two bedrooms, trying to get to that oddly shaped void we’d originally thought was a closet.
When an opening big enough for a flashlight is formed, he shines the light in and tells me, “It’s just an empty column of space. It goes pretty far up and down.”
I peek in. “Maybe it was a laundry chute or a dumbwaiter? Maybe they sealed it off when they stopped using it.”
James says, “I don’t know where else to look. Where is the sound coming from? The moisture? Your bruises? I can’t find it.”
I try to stay calm and stroke his back and tell him maybe there’s nothing to be found.
That night, we lie on our mattress, tufts of stuffing pulled out and resting beside us on the ground, exhausted and uncomfortable, but unwilling to do the work of filling it back up, the springs digging into our backs more accurate, more true.
27
I WAKE UP early and feel nothing. I go back to sleep. I wake up again. I feel the pressure. Remorse stings through me, like a hangover without having had a drink. I remember slowly. I look at the seams sliced into all of our belongings. Screws balance on every surface. I see an exaggeration of some impulse that is familiar to me. I see what I’ve done with surprise, but unearth no doubt.
I emptied everything I could find in the house. I worry Julie will identify this as a ripple of what I did with my bank account. I gambled enough away that the money still remaining only reminded me of what I’d lost and so I gambled that away, too.
Now it is my job to refill what I’ve emptied. I sew it all shut. I drill every screw back into place. I make dinner: grilled fillets and asparagus, my only culinary talent.
Julie returns home relieved to see order restored. We sit down at the table. Julie eats without a word. She doesn’t look at me until her plate is clean. “Well, that was a real fast one-two punch. First the museum and then cutting everything apart, but that’s it, right? We’re not headed down some irreversible path? Can I help? Do you want to talk to someone?”
“I don’t know what came over me,” I say. “The incident at the museum unmoored me, but I feel better today.”
Julie’s eyes are filling up. She shuts them lightly. She tries not to let the tears spill. “James, if it happens again, I need to tell someone. I need to get us help.”
I feel incapable of facing the worry I’ve caused her. My mind insists that her recent transgressions have been more severe than my own. “We need to watch out for each other is all. I’ll do the dishes. You go relax.” I stand to gather our plates. Julie wanders to the couch. She stares at the television as if she can see something in its blank screen. I finish the dishes and hear the stairs creak.
I try to make it up to her. I wipe down the counter. I take the trash out. The moon is low. I have to search for it. The woods seem closer than they had earlier that day. I count my paces to their edge. Fifty in all, though I swear it used to be a hundred.
Back in the house, I shake my shoes off inside the door. I head upstairs. When I pass the guest room, I see Julie sitting in the dark wearing an old Mardi Gras mask we’d brought home from vacation once upon a time. “What are you doing in there?”
She whispers, “Nothing.” I barely hear it. I exhale a short laugh. I keep moving to our bedroom.
“What am I doing in where?” Julie says from our bed. She is tucked in tight, book in hand. I startle when I see her. I return to the guest room. The mask is back on the wall.
I check the closet. I find it empty. I insist on maintaining Julie’s confidence and so I return to our bedroom and say, “Oh, I’m tired. Just being silly.” I shut the bedroom door. Julie raises her eyebrows at the click of the lock. I pull on my pajamas. My skin feels warm and tight, as if it’s been burned. I know that isn’t something the moon can do.
28
AT WORK, I take Connie to lunch and we sit at a table on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant near the train station. We split a bottle of white and order the daily catch.
“It’s like an exclusionary diagnosis,” I tell her. “It’s maddening. How can I accept that the solution is just all the things it’s not? That means there’s no answer.”