The Carriage House (12 page)

But then Diana came downstairs wearing a pink dress from high school that no longer fit her properly. She kept tugging at its side, slouching to conceal the fact that it was too tight in the chest. Adelia tried to remain focused on the chicken. She opened a bottle of wine and poured a cup of it over the casserole dish. Diana fidgeted at the end of the counter, unsure how to occupy herself. Adelia poured more wine. Frustration scratched at the back of her throat.

“I have a terrible headache,” Diana finally said, as though to excuse her unhelpfulness.

“I’m sure it will go away,” Adelia said, grinding pepper. It was an ancient grinder, crusted over with residue; to grind properly took great force and determination. “Right?” she asked. Diana looked back helplessly. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and it immediately fell. “You might,” Adelia attempted, measuring a quarter cup of capers, “doll yourself up a bit, for fun, don’t you think?” Isabelle ceased chopping; Adelia felt a downward slant in her expression. The moment of union with Izzy was already lost. It had come so quickly, and now it was gone.

“I don’t look good in makeup,” Diana said. “Really, this is the best I can do.”

“I could lend you a skirt,” Elizabeth suggested. “And some lipstick.”

“I don’t look good in lipstick. I’m telling you.”

“You’re fine,” said Isabelle, chopping again. Her expression was flat.

“Yes, you’re fine,” Adelia repeated, slicing the garlic thin. “It was only a suggestion.” She shoved the chicken into the oven. “All of us are absolutely fine,” she said, and slammed the oven door shut.

Chapter 10

O
n Friday, when Adelia asked Louise to stay overtime for the dinner party on Monday, she was happy to agree. This had to do in part with a desire to research her novel, in part with the fact that overtime was sacrifice, and Louise had been searching for penance since Sunday. On the previous Friday, the first day of Brad’s Philadelphia business trip, her resolve to withhold herself had remained flinty. Friday was a positive day for Louise. While Margaux was upstairs painting, Louise wrote an entire chapter about Adelia throwing rocks at Anita Schmidt’s construction team, taking care to note the ghastly nightgown Adelia was wearing. She was proud of herself. She imagined giving interviews during which she called her novel a “psychological thriller of miniature proportions.” She was not sure what this meant, but it had the rhythm of a comment that would go over well in interviews. Buoyed by accomplishment, she attended a spinning class after work, showered, and applied a pore-cleansing face mask before settling in for an evening at home. It was ten-thirty by the time Bradley called, and even though she was two thirds of the way into a bottle of wine and halfway through a terrible movie about teenage ballerinas, she refused to meet him on the premise that she was busy writing a novel. “You’re writing a novel?” he asked, and laughed. After hanging up on him, Louise poured herself another glass of wine and made a mental note to include a character named Bradley Barlow, whose main attribute would be a constant gravitation toward failure despite his obsession with achieving success.

On Saturday morning, an atmospheric shift occurred in Louise. She reread her chapter about Adelia throwing rocks and realized that it was completely unbelievable. No one who had not lived with the Adairs would believe that a non-mentally-ill woman in her fifties, with a successful legal career, would actually find herself in the situation of throwing rocks out an upstairs window in order to prevent the demise of a carriage house. Furthermore, Louise began to see that from her first chapter on, she had described the Adairs as though they were the busty heroes of a romance novel and not the characters of any respectable story. The novel was not a psychological thriller of miniature proportions. There were no miniatures, only great fat mistakes.

This epiphany depressed Louise so severely that she called her only friend in Breacon and invited her over for a glass of afternoon wine. This friend was a slightly unhinged Welsh nanny named Arlene. After two bottles of wine, Louise and Arlene rewatched the ballerina movie. This time they perceived, with galvanizing unanimity, that ballerinos were far more attractive than either of them had previously imagined. This inspired them to open another bottle of wine, which in turn inspired them to go out to the local bar in search of good-looking dancers. Dressed in short skirts and Louise’s most precarious high heels, they teetered down the hill outside of Louise’s apartment to McGillicuddy’s.

As it turned out, McGillicuddy’s was not a ballerino hot spot. Still, after three lemon-drop shots and a drink that tasted like caramel, Arlene had straddled a man too old to be trolling McGillicuddy’s for nannies. Abandoned, Louise ordered another caramel drink and contemplated either a) seducing the bartender or b) calling Brad. In the morning she awoke with the awareness of Bradley’s arm on her back. She groaned. With great bursts of hangover erupting in her temples, she managed to extricate herself from his weight in order to root around for her clothes.

“Are you leaving to work on your novel?” he asked while she searched for her tank top, and by the tone of his question, he might as well have asked if she were leaving to fly to the moon.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am,” she said.

“Will you put me in the acknowledgments?” he asked, watching her from the royal ease of his naked recline.

All Sunday afternoon, no matter how she tried to distract herself, she couldn’t stop wincing at the thought of his arm on her back. It was all her fault. She had made herself available to him. She felt like a receptacle. Twice in the course of the afternoon, she had to sit down and put her head between her knees in order to avoid getting sick. By the time it was dark, she had eaten an entire frozen pizza and watched the ballerina movie again. This time she cried when the bulimic ballerina told her pushy mother that she was sick. “I’m
sick
,
Mom,” Louise said in unison with the ballerina. “This is your
dream
,”
the mom said. “No, Mom, this is
your
dream,” said Louise and the bulimic ballerina. Together they ate a pint of ice cream and fell asleep while the Latina dancer performed
Swan Lake
.

On Monday morning, Louise woke before it was light. She went on a run in her neighborhood, and halfway through, it started to rain. Louise stopped running, closed her eyes, and said out loud for all of the stormy heavens to hear, “You have one more chance, Louise.
Please don’t screw this up.
” On her way to the train, she dropped the ballerina movie off at the video store, bought herself a Starbucks, and threw out the notebook with the chapter on Adelia pitching rocks. Whatever she wrote would be more careful this time. These were not bulimic ballerinas she was writing about; they were real people, with real personalities to contend with.

When she arrived at the Adairs’, Adelia was sitting at the kitchen table, so small in her nightgown that Louise was tempted to go sit beside her and hold her hand. But it was her task to notice carefully, not to intervene, so she went off to the TV room with her magazines to wait. After Isabelle left, Louise spent the morning watching Margaux paint. For an hour or so she snooped around in Izzy’s bedroom, and at noon she went down to the kitchen to make a turkey sandwich for Margaux, which was when Adelia cornered her and asked if she’d mind staying through
dinner.

“We’re planning a party,” Adelia said, using the same tone with which a politician might say, “We’re planning to occupy a developing nation in order to get our hands on its oil.” “Do you think Margaux would like to come?”

“Parties confuse her,” Louise said. “I’ll ask, but I think it’s best if we respectfully decline.”

“That’s fine. Whatever you think is best.” Adelia blinked. Louise waited. “And also,” Adelia continued, “do you think you might stay late tonight? I could pay you overtime. We could use some extra help. This party means a great deal.”

And so Louise was granted a reprieve from going home and checking her machine for a message from Brad, and at the same time she received a penance for her sins. Upstairs, on the floor of the house reserved for forgetting, she asked Margaux about attending the party.

“Why do they want me to come?” Margaux asked. “They’ll be just fine without me.”

“Yes, but they’d like you to be there,” Louise assured her.

“I don’t see why,” Margaux said, shaking her head. Louise felt a flush of pity for her own mother back in Melbourne, whom she had often made to feel as if she were encroaching in undesirable ways.

“Because you’re a lovely person,” Louise said. “And they love you.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Margaux said, standing up and brushing the wrinkles out of her linen pants. “I don’t know why you’d say that.” She took a wet paintbrush and placed it in the graveyard for unwashed brushes, then muttered something about going out to the garden. In her wake, Louise remained in the treasure trove, trembling in her nosy excitement. She counted to twenty, giving Margaux time to retrace her steps, before pulling out the latest journal.

November 1988

It’s been months since I’ve written. I haven’t been up to recording my thoughts. I sometimes feel our brains protect us by forgetting. My meeting with Dr. Worthington was terrible. I keep hoping the memory will fade, but the worst things stay vivid as the best grow dim. “Who is the president?” he asked me. And “What year is it?” I remember those things. It’s not the basic facts I forget. Then his tone shifts. “This is the age when your mother got sick. It must be difficult to think about, isn’t it?” I didn’t answer him. The thought of my mother made me want to lay my head on Dr. Worthington’s desk and never open my eyes, just to dream of her forever. “Do you
sometimes feel depressed, Mrs. Adair? Do you have feelings of despair?” I could barely bring myself to answer him. I sat there shivering. It has always been the saddest thing to me, how fully people fail to understand each other’s minds.

But here is something I’d like to remember, from the time just after our marriage. We took the train from the city to have dinner with William’s parents. His father took me out to the carriage house. I tried to focus, but he was carrying a glass of bourbon, and its ice cubes were clinking. “It’s the finest example of shingle architecture in North America,” he said. “William’s always loved it, ever since he was a boy.” I tried to act as though I loved it, too, but to me it seemed lonely. A carriage house. A house never lived in. Full of the ghosts of old cars, elaborate machines, and horses that waited through long nights, their dark shapes fading into the darkness. Nothing more than a passing through on the way to somewhere else.

William’s father could see that I was pretending. “William used to play here with Adelia,” he said, eyeing me. “Did you ever meet Adelia? She was William’s first love. We were all quite close with her.” Her name rang in my ears. Adelia. When he said it, I finally knew who William was hoping I’d become.

In the first year of our marriage, I’d walk into a room where William was sitting and I’d have to try to remember: who is the person I’m supposed to be? It always confused me. I felt myself getting it wrong, although William was too determined to give up. But that afternoon, with William’s father leering over the rim of his glass, I knew that Adelia was the woman I was meant to be. It made me terribly sad, but I hoped I’d meet her one day. Adelia, the woman I was not. The woman I am not still.

On the train ride home I asked William about her, and he looked as though I’d slapped him across the face. “Who told you about Adelia?” “Your father,” I told him. “Adelia Lively was a girl I played tennis with when I was a kid,” he said, but he didn’t talk to me for the rest of the ride. When we went to sleep that night, I lay so far to the side of the bed that it was
a struggle not to fall. It felt good, working all night to keep myself from slipping off the edge. I never fell. In the morning I was exhausted but proud of myself. William never knew. He ate his breakfast quietly, then left to go to work.

That year I was pregnant with Elizabeth. She is the child of William and a woman who was not.

Chapter 11

A
fter they got the chicken in the oven, Isabelle went out to the front stoop. The vision of Adelia pounding chicken breasts, jaw clenched, telling Diana how to doll herself up, had annoyed her. She needed a breather before dinner started. She sat with her toes pressed against the cool flagstone of the front walk until she felt the door open and close behind her.

“Hi, Izzy-belle,” William said, sitting beside her.

He hadn’t called her that in years. Izzy leaned toward him slightly and let the sound of that forgotten nickname hover. A breeze lifted around them. The linden trees were blooming, dropping swathes of pollen so that the air was hazy with gold, and the smell of honeysuckle wafted up to the front stoop from the fence along the Schmidt property, where Margaux had planted vines before her diagnosis.

“What are you thinking, Izzy-belle?”

Izzy shrugged. She could feel her father’s desire to unravel the things he’d said in his hospital room. She, too, had things for which she would like to apologize. They waited at this cusp.

“You haven’t disappointed me,” he said finally. “I was wrong. You haven’t disappointed me.”

“It’s okay, Dad,” she said. “I wish I’d turned out differently, too.”

“I don’t,” he said. His voice trailed off into the hazy air. They sat together quietly while the evening dropped its mantle over their expectant shoulders.

“That honeysuckle smells nice, doesn’t it?” Izzy asked.

“I can’t smell it.”

“Oh, Dad. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t say anything, only squinted out into the distance. “I wish to hell we could skip this dinner party,” he said.

“Are you not feeling well?”

“Oh, I’m feeling fine. I’m fine.”

“It seems like things are working out with the carriage house. That’s good, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. The whole thing is a mess. I’ll die soon, and then what will it matter whether that carriage house is standing?”

“Don’t say that, Dad.”

“I think maybe I’ve been holding on too long.”

Isabelle was quiet. In the evening breeze, the lindens’ branches creaked. Behind the house, the yellowwood would be sighing in response. Since she was a little girl, she had fallen asleep to that sound. She was about to close her eyes to listen when she noticed that the Welds—all three of them, a little phalanx—were walking across their lawn. Elaine was holding a salad bowl. Jack was gesturing in a way that made it seem as though he was telling them a familiar joke.

“What are they doing?” Isabelle asked her father.

“Adelia invited them. I don’t know why.”

Isabelle watched them advance. Abby was laughing at her father, favoring him the way daughters always do. Her hair was pulled back in a tortoiseshell barrette.

“He’d burn down my house to humble me,” William said, rising to greet them. “But what does it matter anymore?” Isabelle stood beside him. Her shoulders felt bare in the sundress she’d chosen to wear. The familiar shame began to creep up from her stomach. To combat this, she straightened her posture and imagined she was participating in a military ceremony conducted by an absurd little army, rather than standing with her ailing father while their victorious neighbors approached. With a little effort, she could substitute a degree of detachment for the confusion of feeling that was even now taking hold. What smug ambassadors the Welds made, marching over the lawn. And what a motley delegacy she and her father must have seemed, standing on the stoop to welcome the conquering heroes of the Little Lane Wars. White flags should have been waving, pins on lapels glinting, and everyone ought to have worn their white gloves. Set apart from all this, she tried to smile coolly, but she could feel Jack watching and the smile got stuck.

What a stupid child she had been, to have allowed this to happen. Preposterously daring, encouraged by warlike Adelia toward kamikaze types of behavior, full of dumb belief in her own intrepid potential. The first time she asked Jack into the empty house, it was on a clever little dare with herself, like swimming down to the pool drain from which you suspect a shark might emerge. After tennis, she invited him in for lemonade. Sitting with him in the living room, rather than playing tennis at the club, was invigoratingly scary. Izzy thrilled with fear that she felt must be profound because she so little understood its actual source. Her mother was upstairs, but she’d never come down. Izzy and Jack were alone. This seemed to present a challenge to them both, but Izzy was learning to throw herself before all sorts of interesting challenges. Given the circumstances, she felt she was performing beautifully. Jack told jokes. Izzy laughed carelessly, as though nothing were unusual. The second time he came over, when she brought him his lemonade, she stood very close to him and held out his glass. She felt this was an elegant and daring addition to the scene as it stood.
Thank you,
he said, looking up at her. She realized she was much too close, but she was determined to hold her ground. She stayed where she was, acting as well as she could. He didn’t reach for his lemonade, only watched her where she stood. His face had gotten nervous. Something buzzed silently, and Izzy stood frozen before him.

After a long time, he laughed. An unpleasant laugh that made her feel like a silly little girl, as if she had lost a silent bet they had made. Later, when Adelia came home, Izzy told her that she hated Dr. Weld. Adelia put down her groceries and considered Isabelle, and Izzy thought she could see a shift in Adelia’s face. Adelia understood. Only she looked triumphant, as if Izzy had beaten him. She stood with her hands on the countertop, considered the situation for a moment, and then a little competitive light flared up in her eyes. Something played on the corners of her mouth. “He’s just fond of you,” she said, and arranged another court. They played again the next week, and Jack asked to come back to the house. The week after that, Izzy quit.

But it was she who had invited him first. That was the thing that now caused her shame, standing beside her father in her childish sundress. When she quit, Izzy thought she’d escaped just in time. Everything remained as it was, only she had a little more knowledge. It gave her an edge on the rest of the neighborhood. On neighbors like Abby, suburban and sheltered, sealed off from the actual world. Only now, with Abby standing in front of her, emerging out of childhood at the right time, glowing with the hope of it all, Isabelle wanted to go upstairs and cry. So Abby was the last one standing after all. Isabelle was a wasted attempt, dressed in a girlish costume, and her father was getting old. It was Jack and Abby who had risen above them in the end.

“The garden looks lovely, William,” Mrs. Weld said, holding her salad bowl to one side.

“Just beautiful,” Jack agreed. He pointed toward the larger linden. “That’s quite a tree! I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten blight. Lindens don’t seem to survive around here.”

Isabelle thought she might gag on his cheer, but she noticed that Arthur was walking up from his grandmother’s house. She felt a rush of gratitude for his solitary form, moving up the slope of the street. Leaving the Welds behind, she ran out to meet him, her feet bare on the warm grass.

He watched her coming toward him, surprised at her hurry. “Hi, Izzy,” he said. He laughed gently. She almost could have taken his hand.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. All around him the pollen was falling. “Do you smell the honeysuckle?” she asked. “Mom planted it.”

“I know,” he said. “I remember. Every time I smell it, I think of her. How is she?”

“Sort of the same. I don’t really notice a difference.”

Arthur didn’t rush to console her, but there was comfort in his presence. Isabelle walked close enough to feel the barest outline of his arm against her arm. When they reached the stoop, she stopped him. “Do you want to go upstairs and see her?”

He looked startled by the question. “Who?”

“Mom.”

“Oh, of course,” he said. “I’d love to.”

Quietly, so that no one could catch them, they slipped up the stairs. Isabelle knocked lightly on her mother’s closed door. “Mom?” she called.

The door opened a crack. “She’s sleeping,” Louise whispered.

“I brought an old friend of Diana’s to see her. We thought she might remember him.”

“Should I wake her?” Louise seemed disinclined to move from her post. She seemed disinclined, in fact, to move anywhere at all.

“No,” Arthur said from behind Isabelle. “No, it’s fine. We’ll come back later.”

Isabelle stared at Louise. Louise stared back.
Why are you in there, then?
Isabelle wanted to say.
Shouldn’t you leave her alone if she’s sleeping?
“Is she coming down to the party?” Isabelle asked, as though there were any question of Margaux coming down to entertain.

“She’s not up to it today.”

“When will she eat?” The question was pointless: Margaux had always eaten privately.

“I’ll bring her a plate,” Louise said. She considered Isabelle through the crack in the door. “I can wake her up right now if you’d like.”

“Really, it’s fine,” Arthur said. Louise remained motionless.

Izzy shrugged. “Another time, then,” she said.

At the top of the second flight of stairs, she stopped. “Stay here with me for a minute?” she asked Arthur.

He sat. Izzy joined him, sitting close. So close he could have put his arm around her and drawn her toward him. They remained in silence for a while. Finally, he spoke. “Should we go down?”

“Just a minute more. I’ll have to smile so much once we’re there.”

He waited, leaning back on his elbows. He seemed like the kind of person who could sit and wait with you forever.

“Do you think it’ll work?” Izzy asked him. “Moving the carriage house?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “It’s pretty damaged.”

“Diana says she could draw up a plan. In case it falls apart in the move.”

“She said that?” He looked at her sharply.

“Yeah,” Izzy said, noticing the change that crossed his face when she brought up Diana. She felt a pang of jealousy that her sister could command the interest of someone like Arthur after all these years, because of something that had happened between them when they were Isabelle’s age. “I’m not sure why,” she continued, feeling the way he watched her with heightened interest while she talked about Diana, “but she suddenly cares about the carriage house. You should see her whenever the conversation comes up. She hasn’t cared so much about anything in years.” Izzy edged toward a question she’d never asked. “What happened with you and Diana? I was only nine. I asked my father once, and he said you two were just close friends. But it was more than that, wasn’t it?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“I can’t imagine her dating anyone now,” Izzy said. Arthur didn’t respond. She wanted to keep him there, solidly alone with her. He was twisting a carpet fiber between his forefinger and his thumb. “She’s lost something,” Izzy said. “I blame Adelia. There’s something about Adelia that makes you want to give up. When I used to play tennis, she coached me between games. She’d get down in front of me with those beady eyes and say, ‘You’ve got to be
aggressive
.’” Isabelle noticed that Arthur was smiling slightly. It was a gratifying thing; he seemed like a person who wasn’t overly polite about smiling. “‘You’ve got to be
aggressive,
’” she said again, bulging out her eyes, hoping she’d make him laugh. “That was her only coaching advice. She wanted it so badly, you were afraid for her. It made me crazy for a while. Then I got it. You just have to stop. You can’t keep trying for people like Adelia or they’ll tear you apart.”

“You’re probably right,” he said, but he was a little distant, working at loose threads in the carpet.

She kept talking, hoping to reel him in. “Di never learned that. She’s loyal to a fault. She would have done anything to make them proud. She probably would have kept playing tennis forever if she hadn’t gotten hurt. She might still be playing satellites, struggling in the rankings, beating herself up.”

He turned toward her finally. “And you think she should have stopped?” he asked. “Before she had to? When she had the choice to do it for herself?”

His face was long and pale. He had collected himself behind that face, and now he sat beside her, complete in his way. She thought about turning on her charm switch, but something about sitting alone with him, while the light from outside shifted down to darkness, made that impossible to do. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

“Me, too, Izzy-belle,” he said. “After all these years, it’s good to see you again.”