Audrey’s Door (4 page)

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get his shoes to line up nicely, or his furniture to shine quite right. She never wanted to admit it, but she knew why. It wasn’t
her
furniture. It wasn’t
her
apartment. The thing about other people is, they’re not you.

“You make me a better man,” Saraub said.

She took a breath. And another. And another. Imagined the house full of voices. A barking dog. Meddling in-laws with really good table manners, who corrected her when she used soup spoons to stir her tea. A kid or two. Indian kids! On holidays, she’d have to dress them in saris. The rest of the time, they’d want to know how to tie their shoes. They’d need burping, and bathing. They’d need mothering, and who was fooling whom, she could hardly take care of herself.

“What do you say?” Saraub asked.

She put out her left hand and told him the truth. “I really love you,” she said.

He slipped on the ring, which fit as neatly as Cinderella’s glass slipper.

When they got home that night, they made love. It was good, and slow, and for a little while, she thought maybe it would all work out, and they really would live happily ever after. But after he fell asleep, she was restless. She got up and rearranged all the dishes. Saucers in front, bowls in back. Then she took everything out, and relined the cabinets. Then she put the dishes back, and stopped eating.

Two days later they went out to Daniel Restaurant for a fancy French dinner to celebrate their engagement. They split a bottle of wine. On an empty stomach, the booze hit her fast. She turned into a blabbermouth. Everything she’d held in since they’d started dating gushed out. “I need a break,” she said, “Not from you. From my life. I’m so tired, all I want to do is sleep. Don’t you ever get sick of this city? It’s so noisy. It never stops. I thought I’d move out for a while. Find a sublet or go to a hotel. Just to catch up on my sleep, you know?” The worst part was the shock that resolved into puckered hurt on his face, like she’d punched him, and he was trying to show he could take it like a man.

“Okay. I understand,” he told her while smashing his wild okra into mush. Still drunk, unaware he was close
to crying, she’d continued. “It’s not that I don’t love you, but you drive me crazy, you know?”

That was when he covered his face with his hands so she didn’t see his tears. She felt so bad that she stopped talking. The rest of the dinner, she didn’t look up from her plate because she was afraid that if she saw him crying, she’d start crying, too.

He slept on the couch that night. In the sober light of morning, she was ashamed. What a terrible way to break such news. Most of the time, she liked him just fine. More than anybody else, at least. She’d considered crawling onto the couch with him. When he woke up, she’d eat as many runny Velveeta omelets as he cooked, if that was what made him happy. “I’m neurotic and have limited interpersonal skills,” she’d explain. “You know that. Next time, don’t take me so seriously.”

Then again, sleeping alone for the first time since they’d moved in together, she’d noticed a change. The bed was deliciously spacious, and the walls stayed where they belonged. Without Saraub, she could breathe.

So she moved to the Golden Nugget and told him it was temporary, when in fact, she was pretty sure it was permanent. She stopped wearing the ring on her finger, and now carried it in her pocket wherever she went, because she didn’t trust the hotel staff not to break in and steal it. Probably, she should give it back to him. But she wasn’t ready to, just yet.

And here she stood with a packed bag, checking out of a fleabag flophouse. Not so different from the Midwest no-tell motels her mother had dragged her through like a rag doll when she was a kid. Maybe this was how Betty had started her descent, too. A relationship that got too close. A move too many. And then the inevitable red ants of madness that had followed them from town to town, like they’d developed a taste for her scent.

Audrey took one last look at the room. She’d straightened, of course: folded white sheets, a Bible, and a spar
kling ashtray. The blinking red message light on the phone and the letter “S” traced into the glass-topped nightstand with her finger were the only evidence that she’d lived here at all.

She imagined going back in time. Picking up her suitcase, and walking rearward out the door. Reversing the order of this thing she’d done, so that she’d never signed the lease for The Breviary, never done anything that couldn’t be undone. She’d return home to Saraub and fall asleep alone in their futon, and when she woke, she’d be on a date at a fancy French restaurant, only this time, she’d take it all back. He’d talk about moving to Yonkers, and she’d tell him, “I hope we have enough kids for a football team!”

Yes, she decided. She would go back to him. It wasn’t too late. If she stayed on this desolate road she was carving for herself, she knew what would happen. Her life would become an empty thing. Erased daily because she had no one to share it with. She’d become a phantom again, and this time her mother wasn’t around to blame.

She picked up her bag.

Saraub, or The Breviary?

Saraub.

The idea of him caught in her chest and pressed out her breath like a weight. She imagined getting fat with a kid in her belly. She’d try to sit at her desk, and she wouldn’t fit. They’d fire her, and she’d get stuck cleaning the Victorian and playing host to the bitch quartet while with every year, Saraub’s center of gravity got lower, and his smile more fake, and the smudges on the walls became holes. Her breath got slow, and then was gone altogether. Before she found him, when the space in her stomach had been an empty thing called longing, she’d known the truth. Squandering love is the ugliest of sins. She wished she was a stronger person. She
wished she could reach inside herself and fix this thing that was broken. But she couldn’t.

In her mind, the asphalt outside opened again into a hungry black hole. It widened like a wave and crashed against all the families walking home from church. It crashed through the hotel window, too. The current pulled her back out and into its depths as it receded. It carried her to a small, dark place deep underground, where she became still as a shadow and she didn’t need to breathe.

The Breviary, indeed.

I
live here now. I’m moving in today,” Audrey told the doorman at The Breviary. He was a skinny Haitian man wearing a faded gray uniform with silver buttons. It reminded her of a bellhop costume from the 1950s. She bit her lip and gave him a pleading look: she’d forgotten to call ahead and reserve the freight elevator, and it had only occurred to her now, looking at the sign that read,
NO MOVING ON SUNDAYS!
that she wasn’t supposed to move in on a Sunday.

He nodded. “I know, Mizus Lucas. Fourteen B. They tell me. It’s in the schedule.”

She cocked her head. The owner? The co-op board who’d approved her application? “Did Edgardo tell you I was moving in?” she asked.

“Edgardo no work here no more,” he said, then smiled at her and went back to reading Borges’
Labyrinths
in French.

“Where’d he go?” She was holding her cactus so its dirt didn’t spill.

He shook his head, then returned to his book. Either they were divided by a language barrier, or else he was done talking and had decided to erect an imaginary language barrier. She moved on.

As she rode up the elevator, she noticed that the floors had all been cleaned, and the powdery hotel scent of Love My Carpet wafted through the iron bars. The only remaining evidence of a party on the seventh floor was the cigarette burns—perfectly round circles of black branded into a beige carpet. The ninth floor was still empty, but someone had hammered drywall over the plaster holes where the copper had been torn. The job looked hastily done, or else in keeping with the architecture: none of the boards were level.

She keyed herself into 14B and put down her suitcase. The ceilings were even higher than she’d remembered, and the fifty-foot hall was more cavernous. She pictured herself waking up at night and getting lost, so she took a deep breath and reminded herself that big was good.

Carrying her cactus, she walked down the hall and opened doors, one after the next. First, the small bedroom. A child’s room, she guessed. Where the drowned ones had slept.

After signing the lease, she’d been foolish and had researched Clara DeLea. A divorced has-been opera diva. Worse than a has-been; an almost been. Big, beautiful, and full of temper, her drinking got the better of her and City Opera fired her. The low point in her life transformed her. She checked into rehab and became a new, more generous woman. A few months after her release, she met and married her lawyer husband at Betty Ford. They had four dewy-eyed kids aged ten, eight, five, and two. Their life was suburban perfection—a picket fence, good schools, nice neighbors, a short commute to the city. They grew apart.
The divorce got ugly. She accused him of cheating. He accused her of beating the children and giving the infant brain damage. At two years of age, Deirdre Caputo had still not spoken a single word. Her eyes, which had once focused on objects dangling in front of her (mobiles, human faces, her own fingers), became glazed. When the change in her behavior was proven in court, and her concussions linked to the dull handle of a metal spatula, Richard wound up with custody.

Clara and her kids had only lived in 14B for fifteen days before the tragedy, but in that short time, she’d managed to start drinking after more than a decade of sobriety. The
Daily News
posted one of the last family photos of the Caputo/DeLea family in its online archive. The father was absent, possibly because he’d snapped the picture. The kids, dressed in red-and-green finery, had stood next to the fake, white Christmas tree. Eldest Keith had cradled glassy-eyed baby Deirdre in his arms. The child’s gaze had been eerily vacant, her pupils so dilated they’d appeared black. Beside them had been the second oldest, Olivia, with her hands fixed on toddler Kurt’s shoulders. They’d formed their own family while, several feet behind them, Clara DeLea had lurked. She’d grown sloppy and obese, wearing black, horn-rimmed glasses and blue sweats.

Normally, Audrey might have wondered about Clara—whether the woman had suffered, was sick in the head, had some kind of reason for what she’d done. But looking at this miserable, lurking thing that had glowered behind those four innocents, all she’d seen was a monster.

Now, Audrey’s eyes adjusted to the bright October light as it shone across the freshly glazed pine planks in the children’s room. She didn’t like to court these morbid thoughts, but unanswered questions tended to nag her into insomnia. So she imagined the room’s many pos
sible configurations. Then she nodded and pictured the one that fit best. The baby hadn’t lived here, but in a crib with Clara in the master bedroom. In this room, there had been a bunk bed against the wall for the boys and a single bed by the window for the girl. Trunks for clothes, a shared closet, and an aisle of walking space between beds. She even thought she could guess the color. Jarring red, because the children would have argued between pink and blue, and Clara, by then, had gone mad.

She walked to the center of the room, then lowered her head in prayer because a tragedy this size demanded acknowledgment. “You poor kids. I’m so sorry,” she said. The apartment did not answer her, and nothing creaked in the stagnant bedroom air, so she continued. “I’ll change this place and make it warm, but I’ll remember you.” Her words didn’t echo, even though the room was empty. Instead, they seemed to gather inside the walls, as if something there had received them. She bowed her head and left.

Across the hall was the renovated bath. The copper fixtures remained, but the antique yellow wall tiles had been ripped in places to make room for the new Jacuzzi, Home Depot vanity, and pressed-wood cabinets. She closed her eyes, and imagined a claw-foot tub. Deep enough to stack all five of them. After a few hours, the tops of their bodies would have turned pale, and their bottoms would have purpled with jellied blood.

Audrey blinked. When that didn’t work, she held the cactus steady and tapped her ballet flats four times each (left-right-left-right: a slow-motion Fred Astaire). The sound was soft, and soothing. The hole in her mind from which the image had sprouted closed. She moved on.

The next room was the kitchen. Old built-in cupboards and oak floors. To her relief, the walls smelled like grain and decades of home cooking. The happy opposite of hunger. Finally, the master bedroom. She took a deep
breath and opened the door. The chandelier threw rainbow shards of light along the walls. Small details like Guilloche molding and the handblown Mercury glass doorknob made her heart pitter-patter. She imagined green, Scarlett O’Hara velvet curtains, and knew exactly where she’d get the four-poster bed. That antique shop on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn that delivered. She laughed out loud, just thinking about it: she’d sleep until noon on Sunday mornings, and speak in the royal “We!”

She let out a deep breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She’d chosen right after all. This place was a dream come true. And, well, if it needed paint and a few wall sconces to brighten the mood and erase the bad history, she was up to the task.

At last, she marched to the end of the hall and pushed open the final door. The den. A rush of ancient dust, some remnants of the former tenants, sprayed her face. She swallowed fast, and it got inside of her. She felt it land in the pit of her stomach.

Murder!
A man’s voice whispered.

The hairs on the back of her neck pointed skyward. Instinct took over. She raced like something was chasing her and inspected every corner of the den. The turret, the rotted support beam, the double-doored closet. She looked high and low, felt the plaster with her fingers, ran her hands along wood and glass. Sniffed the stagnant, dusty air. Nothing spoke or leaped out from a hiding space. She was, quite clearly, alone.

Murder!
—Had someone really said such a thing, or was she just nervous about this move? Perhaps this was one of her bad thoughts, like the black hole, that wasn’t real? She hoped so. Good God, she didn’t want to move
again!

Just then, someone called to her from the front door: “Hey!”

She jumped. Down the fifty-foot hall leaned a skinny, potbellied young man wearing Janus Moving Company
coveralls.
WE GET YOU WHERE YOU WANT TO GO!
The add in the phone book had read.

“Hey!” she said back, then walked fast in his direction, like the room behind her was on fire.

He pointed a clipboard at her. “Sign on the X,” he told her, so she did. He walked away before she could tell him that actually, there’d been a mistake. She was moving to Queens instead. Wherever they could find a FOR RENT sign hanging out the window—that would be her new home.

She followed the mover out. There were four other apartments along the common hall: A, C, D, and E. As she glanced out from 14B, each of the other apartment doors slammed shut. It happened in a single, synchronistic motion. Blood rushed to Audrey’s face, and she wondered:
Were my neighbors watching me?

A few minutes later, all three movers returned. From their thick nasal accents, she guessed they hailed from the Bronx. In her mind she named the first one “Boss Guy,” and the other two “Hot Guy” and “Improbably Gangly Plastic-Man Guy.”

“Where do we put this?” Boss Guy asked, as the other two hauled the Steinway baby grand through the door. Rolled on its side over a dolly, it just fit.

“That’s not mine,” she said.

Boss Guy shook his head. “Naw. The guy at the other apartment told us it was a present.”

Sweet Saraub. She smiled. His grandmother had given him the Steinway, but he’d never learned to play it. Back at his apartment, Audrey used to sit at its bench and bang out “Chopsticks” or half of “Heart and Soul” while he gave vocal accompaniment in a Monty Python old lady’s voice, off-key and absurd:

Heart and soul, I fell in love with you
Heart and soul, the way a fool would do, madly
Because you held me tight!

“It’s too much,” she said under her breath, but the three movers heard her and glowered. They were skinny guys, and she was surprised any of them had the muscle to prop the jeans over their bony hips, let alone lift a baby grand.

“I don’t wanna move this again, lady,” Gangly Plastic Man said. He was sweating so much that the floor around him was damp. It was a warm October day, and this was, after all, the fourteenth floor.

Saraub. The man was a saint. She reached into her pocket and felt something sharp. The ring. Good. She’d never forgive herself if she lost it.

“Please! Where do we put this?” Boss Guy asked.

She startled. “Oh. Right. The den.”

They followed her down the long hall, wheeling the piano on its side. When they got about halfway, the lone bulb dangling from the ceiling hissed, popped, and went out. All the doors were closed, and no light crept through their cracks. Everything got dark.

“Hold on!” she called, feeling her way toward the den with one hand, cradling her cactus with the other. Somebody, maybe Gangly Guy, yelped, like the piano had pinned him to a wall. She thought about those four kids, and Clara. What if their spirits had never left The Breviary?

In her mind, a hole opened up in the floor, and Clara’s wet hands reached out.
Stop!
She scolded herself.
Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!
Then, to the movers, “You okay?”

“Fine! We’re fine!” someone answered. But it was so dark in here. Was that one of the movers talking, or was there someone else in this apartment?

Breathing fast, she ran her hands along either wall as she walked. The hall ended. She slammed her forehead—
bonk!
—and reeled back. The den door creaked open. A rectangle of midday light shone through the turret and illuminated the hall just enough for her to
see the movers’ shapes. They blended together with the piano like a single, lumbering beast.

She found the light and flicked it. Everything got bright. The men blinked like moles. Their faces sagged in this less-forgiving light, and she realized they weren’t as young as she’d thought.

“Where?” Boss Guy growled. They were sweating. They were pissed.

“Oh, right!” she said, after she caught her breath. She pointed to the buckle in the middle of the den. “Sorry about the light. You can wheel it right to this hole in the floor. I think somebody had a piano here before. Or
some
thing heavy, at least.”

All three of them chose this moment to roll their eyes at her, like it was her fault that pianos are heavy. Then they wheeled it into the room.

After they made two more trips, Hot Guy finally spoke. “This place isn’t right,” he said. He wore a cigarette behind his ear and a pack of Pall Malls rolled into the short sleeve of his sweat-stained undershirt. “Do you know what I mean?”

“What’s not right, the piano?” she asked. “Where else should I put it?”

He was a good-looking guy, and from the way he posed, cross-legged against the wall, she got the feeling that he was accustomed to the attentions of the fairer sex. “My cousin lived in a place like this,” he said. “His dog used to bark all night long at the fireplace, like it saw something there. Then my cousin saw it, too. An old guy’s face, watching him. All red-eyed and crazy-like. Turned out, some guy’d been murdered in the house, then buried under the fireplace with some extra bricks. His wife did it. Happened a hundred years before, and nobody who’d lived there after that had ever noticed anything wrong. Something about my cousin brought it out. Or, hey, maybe it was the dog that brought it out.”

She decided he’d smoked a bowl before reporting to work. Who else but a stoner would say something so stupid to a woman about to spend her first night in a new apartment, all by herself?

“Did something bad happen here?” he asked.

A shelf dropped in her stomach. She thought about four children. Acknowledged the thing she’d been denying. She’d read that Clara DeLea hadn’t emptied the tub from one child to the next. At those tender ages, they could not have understood what death meant. Had only learned what it looked like as their mother had plunged them underwater, and they’d witnessed its wild-eyed mask on their siblings’ rigid faces.