Connie squints. “What are we talking about? The bruises? Or James? The house?”
“All of the above? The symptoms keep adding up. I wonder about selling the house and going back to the city, but what if that’s not the answer and then we’ve gone to all that trouble? I’m not willing to give up on this place yet.”
“I hear you, hon, but we’ve got to improve this situation for you. Leave the house or get James in to see a counselor or both.”
“Yeah,” I say, “but I’m at fault, too. I’ve got the bruises and sometimes I feel so out of it, like I’m miles away. There are times I completely understand how he’s thinking about things, you know? I get it.”
“Right, but empathy can only take you so far. You’ve got to have a little objective distance, too, so you can see what needs to change.”
The food arrives and we dig into our fish platters, dip broccoli in tartar sauce, stay quiet for a few minutes. “I understand what you’re saying. I want to think through everything really carefully.”
“Have you mentioned any of it to your parents? Or to his?”
“No! I mean, my stepmother thinks the house needs to be exorcised, but it’s hard to take her opinion seriously.” I don’t want to tell Connie about the sounds we heard when my parents visited. I wipe my hands in my napkin. “James’s parents would whisk him home if they knew how he’d been behaving. My dad and stepmother would be out here in a minute filing lawsuits and having James committed and admitting me to Mayo. Maybe they’d all be in the right, but I don’t think we’re quite at that point.”
The train goes by and I take the opportunity to chew and evaluate Connie’s reaction. I can feel her forming an allegiance, convinced this is James’s fault. It feels more like something in the space between James and me, though, like an electricity that’s been turned on since we’ve taken up this new life, something that buzzes at its highest frequency when we’re both home, together. I go along with the idea that James might be the biggest part of the problem so that I don’t scare Connie off. I need her right now.
When the quiet is restored, Connie says, “You know the situation better than me, so I won’t pretend I can give you advice. Say the word if you need help, though.”
“This is all the help I need.” I drain my wine and Connie refills my glass.
29
WHEN WE LOOK for the house on a map, we see only a black square.
When we seek out the woods: cross-hatching.
When we hunt for the lake, we find a watermark.
Every map.
At work, Sam asks me what’s wrong.
“Julie’s mad at me. I fucked up. I don’t know what to do other than apologize.” I pull out my chair.
“You cheat on her?” he asks, spinning around. His chair squeaks so loudly I wince.
“No, nothing like that.”
Sam shrugs. “What’s she doing?”
I wonder what it is that allows me to keep placing a frame around the parts I want to hide. “She’s not doing anything really. It’s not the silent treatment because she’s talking to me, but it feels like that.”
“Well, here’s a thought: Why don’t you ask her what’s up?” he says.
“I think she’ll ignore me. She’ll pretend like nothing’s wrong.”
“I’m no Dr. Phil, James, but I’m pretty sure you should give her the benefit of the doubt and wait for her behavior to improve. Am I right? Chances are she’ll get tired of being angry. But maybe she can tell you what she’s still holding on to. Talk to her.” Sam raises his eyebrows.
“So logical. Out of nowhere, you’re logical.” I turn back to my screen.
“I do what I can,” he says.
In the last hour of the day, I start getting texts every few minutes from Julie:
“James.”
“James.”
“James.”
“James.”
“James.”
“James.”
I don’t respond. I think it’s a duplicate, some cellular glitch. Maybe she’s being antsy. I don’t want to get into a texting war. I want a chance to talk to her in person before anything else goes off.
At 4:59, the message changes: “For real. I need help.”
I call her. “What’s wrong, Julie?”
She is silent for a long time. “I’m stuck in some room of the house. I don’t know how to get out.”
“I’ll be right home,” I say.
I gather my coat. Sam asks if I finished up the project I’d been working on. I tell him, “Cover for me.”
30
I HEAR THE door slam, feel the reverberations. When I dial James’s phone, the call goes straight to voice mail. I crouch down to see if there’s a lip between the floor and the wall to grab and shove out, but instead I find a book, leatherbound and wedged thick with loose pages. The room seems to pull in closer, and I panic, wondering if I’ll be crushed, then suddenly the wall behind me slides to one side on its own, and light floods in and I am in our bedroom, and I push through the crack quickly, and I look at where I’ve been and it’s just another space we don’t know, a narrow closet, and I examine how the wall works and slide it back, trying not to close it completely, but it clicks into place and then I can’t seem to budge it open again. I try to crank the wall sconce and step gingerly in different areas of the floor to see if I can trigger the opening again, but to no effect. In the light of the room, the book in my hand seems to be a journal and my instinct is to keep it for myself and I wonder why I am turning it into another secret even as I stuff it into the drawer of the nightstand and collapse onto the bed.
James comes into the room, screaming for me, then quieting down when he sees I am right here. “Where were you? What happened?”
I smile because I always smile when I shouldn’t, a nervous tic. I point to the wall that has resealed itself and then open my hand up and raise my eyebrows.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a room behind that wall, but it’s gone now.”
He looks at me strangely. “There can’t be. It’s the guest room on the other side. There’s not enough space.”
I’m too tired to convince him. “Well, I didn’t make it up.”
I can tell he wonders if this is all a bid for attention, if I was ever even trapped. “Talk to me, Julie. What’s going on? Are you mad at me? Are you trying to get back at me?”
I don’t know.
31
WE GO ABOUT our evening, making dinner and rummaging about the house. I try to keep up a regular conversation, but James clips his responses. He takes a call from his parents. “I know you want to visit, but now isn’t a good time. Julie’s under the weather. We’ll let you know as soon as we get settled … Just a cold, I think … I will … Love you, too. Bye.” I snuggle into him while he watches the news, tuck into his armpit, and wrap an arm around the pudge of his belly, and he allows it, but after about ten minutes he tells me he’s wiped and heads upstairs to bed.