The Fainting Room (6 page)
Authors: Sarah Pemberton Strong
The woman who answered the door did not go with the house at all. She looked like she’d be more at home in Southern California: mail order pastels, big gold earrings. Ingrid felt a lurch of disappointment in her stomach.
“Mrs. Shepard?” Red hair, pancake makeup. After a pause that went on too long, during which Ingrid felt herself being looked over and found wanting, the woman smiled.
“Yes, hi. You must be Ingrid. I was expecting you a bit later.” Mrs. Shepard looked past Ingrid to the driveway. “Where’s Liz Luce?”
Ingrid hooked her thumbs in the back pockets of her jeans. “Mrs. Luce couldn’t come.”
“Oh—well, come in. You’re drenched.”
“Yeah, it’s raining,” Ingrid said, and then wished she hadn’t.
She followed Mrs. Shepard inside and looked around. There was hand-carved scrollwork on the post thing at the bottom of the stairs, a very old mirror built into more carved paneling beside the front door. The antique brass door hinges with an inlaid pattern of fleurs-de-lys. Old things, well made. Whoever had built this house had cared about what they were doing, had intended it to last a long time. Through an archway Ingrid glimpsed a living room filled with books, a fireplace and a worn brown velvet sofa with wooden legs that looked like lion’s paws. She imagined stretching out on the sofa after everyone else was asleep and reading. The image pleased her.
“This is a cool house,” she offered.
“Let me just see where Ray is,” Mrs. Shepard said. “Why don’t you go on in the living room there. Here, take off that sweater, and I’ll get you a towel.”
Ingrid hesitated, then peeled off her sweater. Beneath it she wore a black Minor Threat tee shirt whose collar and sleeves she’d cut away with some very dull scissors. She felt Mrs. Shepard’s eyes on her and wished for a moment that she’d worn more regular-looking clothes. Then she shook away the feeling and wished instead for a cigarette—if the Shepards weren’t going to like her, it was better to find out now.
In the kitchen, Evelyn threw Ingrid’s dripping sweater across the back of a chair and spread a dishtowel beneath it so the floor wouldn’t get wet. This was the girl who was going to save her from doing something even crazier than throwing a rock at her husband’s head? This girl, with hair sticking out from her head every which way, with clothes so ragged even a church poor box wouldn’t want them, this girl with a safety pin in her ear, this girl who showed up wringing wet a whole hour early? This girl was not going to make her life any easier. She hadn’t even had time to vacuum or figure out what to serve, or—shit, she hadn’t even cleaned up the broken glass in the study upstairs. The big jagged pieces of windowpane and the smashed lampshade were still all over the rug and the rain had probably come in and wrecked the rug entirely. She should have dealt with that first thing this morning; what was wrong with her?
Evelyn leaned against the sink and took a deep breath. She could at least bring out some snacks. But what? Her own mother, when she was being fancy, used to set up a card table outside the Winnebago on which she’d serve ladyfingers she had cut in half and filled with Cool Whip, then sprinkled with powdered instant coffee. Right, Evie Lynne, that’ll look real good. She began opening and closing cabinets: brownie mix, corn muffin mix, Bisquick. She’d bought these things herself, but at this moment the boxes seemed malevolent and alien. Just choose something, anything, she thought, and bring it out on Ray’s grandmother’s old tea set. That, at least, would lend an air of class.
Ray came out of the bathroom to find a bedraggled-looking girl in old clothes sitting on the living room sofa and neither Evelyn nor Liz Luce anywhere in sight. The girl stood up when he came in.
“Ray Shepard,” he said, extending his hand. “Glad you could make it in this weather.”
“I’m Ingrid.” She ducked her head, as if she were a little shy, but then seemed to recover and shook his hand with more force than he expected from someone her age. Her hand was clammy.
“Hello, Ingrid. I’m sorry, my wife and Liz are...?” he looked around, as if they might be hiding behind the sofa.
“Your wife went to get me a towel,” the girl said. “Ms. Luce didn’t come. I rode my bike.”
“In this rain? She told us she was going to bring you over.”
“She was—but I came by myself.”
She did not smile. Ray was reminded of the sober-faced women and children who stared out of 19th century daguerreotypes looking as if they had never cracked a smile in their lives.
“Well, here, please, have a seat.” Ingrid sat down again where she had just been sitting. Ray cleared his throat and called, “Evelyn?”
The door to the kitchen swung part way open and Evelyn poked her head out.
“I’ll join you in a minute,” she said brightly, a brightness like a sharp knife; her smile was tight and a muscle twitched in her jaw. She gave him a little wave before disappearing behind the door again.
“So Ingrid,” Ray began, in the manner of a man who does not know how to fish bravely casting his line, “Do you enjoy school?”
As soon as he said it he remembered being asked this very question when he was her age, and knowing that the adults asking were doing so only to be polite; he had resolved to be different.
“It’s okay,” Ingrid said, in the bored tone the question deserved.
Ray cleared his throat and tried again. “Liz—Ms. Luce—tells us you’re hoping to spend the summer here in Massachusetts.”
“She didn’t tell you I got suspended?” Something that might have been a smile flickered at the corners of Ingrid’s mouth and was suppressed.
“She did, actually. She said you’d been caught drinking beer, but she assured me you aren’t a problem drinker. I should hope not, at your age.”
“It was one lousy Budweiser. If she only knew what goes on in the woods behind the music building, she wouldn’t have bothered with me.”
“So the problem is not that you’ve been suspended, but that you cannot return home for the summer because your parents are away.”
“It’s not a problem for me. I’d rather die, actually, then go back to Melvin.”
“Melvin’s your father?”
“Melvin is a horrible sprawl of houses that passes for a town east of Irvine, California.”
“Ah, yes,” said Ray. “Those awful houses, ‘designed,’ as it were, by builders—houses bearing no relation to the landscape or to one another, save that the walkways from garage to house are all filled with the same shade of artistically-placed beige gravel. I don’t blame you.”
“Yeah.” She looked at him approvingly. “Are you a Southern California transplant too?”
“No, just a poor old-fashioned architect trapped in a world of vinyl siding and poured concrete.”
“That’s right, you’re the guy who designed our new dining hall, Ms. Luce told me. I like it, there’s lots of light. Are you going to do any more buildings there?”
“I wish I were. At the moment I’m working on a very unpleasant bank in Waltham, and writing a book on Victorian architecture to keep my sense of aesthetics intact.”
Ingrid was looking around the living room. “Did you work on this house too?”
“I remodeled it to look more or less like it did when it was built in 1880.”
“I like it—I like old stuff. In Melvin everything is so new it’s all untested. You never know whether the next big earthquake to come along will just flatten all of those stupid kit houses right down.”
“Let me show you around,” Ray said.
As they got to their feet Evelyn came out of the kitchen.
“There you are,” said Ray. “What were you doing all this time?”
“Just whipping up a snack for our guest here.” Evelyn smiled brightly, a smile that Ray knew was not a good sign. His wife was trying too hard, which inevitably led to things going wrong, to tears. “I hope you’re both hungry,” Evelyn said. “I just came out to tell you that tea will be ready in a few minutes.”
“I’ll show Ingrid the house, then.”
“Yes, do that. I’ll be out in a bit.” She disappeared back into the kitchen. Ingrid followed Ray through the foyer and up the stairs, the soles of her wet sneakers squeaking on the floor.
They had gone halfway up when Evelyn appeared again. “Ray!”
He paused on the landing and looked down at his wife standing at the foot of the stairs. Evelyn darted her eyes meaningfully in the direction of the study, then toward Ingrid.
“What?” he said, having forgotten about all the broken glass.
Evelyn sent her gaze around the circuit a second time: upstairs, then to Ingrid, then back to Ray.
“What,”
said Ray again, exasperated now.
said Ray again, exasperated now.
“It’s just, you know, Ray, some of the rooms are—a mess.” She glanced at Ingrid, who looked like she might be about to laugh. “I haven’t had time to clean today,” Evelyn went on. “Maybe you two would like to have some tea now while I tidy up, and then later—”
“Nothing’s that messy,” said Ray, puzzled. “I’m sure Ingrid won’t take offense at the sight of an unmade bed.”
“God, no,” said Ingrid. “You should see my dorm.”
“But, Ray—”
“Come on, Ingrid,” Ray said a little too heartily, and ignoring his wife, he led the way up the rest of the stairs and turned down the hall to the guest bedroom. “Evelyn can be a trifle overzealous in her standards of cleanliness,” he said, hoping to make a joke of it, “but really, we aren’t swine.”
As they went down the hall he showed her the old brass gaslights that had been converted to electric wall sconces, and the spare bedroom she would sleep in if she came to stay. Then, as he was turning toward the door of the study to show off its curved bay window, he realized all at once what Evelyn had been trying to communicate. Behind the closed door was the smashed window, the glass all over the rug; there was blood on his desk. Of course he couldn’t take Ingrid in there, it was too bizarre: bizarre that it had happened, and that they hadn’t cleaned it up yet. Ingrid was standing at his elbow, waiting. He turned and led her instead to the little room at the head of the stairs.
“This is the fainting room,” he said, and opened the door all the way so she could step inside. This room really was a mess: Evelyn never went in here, and Ray had begun using it as a de facto storage space. Boxes of books, an old typewriter and a shoebox leaking tax records were piled on a big executive’s desk too large for the tiny room; a couple of broken chairs and a suitcase took up the available floor space.
“Why’s it called a fainting room?” Ingrid asked.
“That’s what the Victorians called it. Some of the houses from this period have a room like this on the second floor. After climbing the stairs in tight corsets,” Ray smiled, “breathless ladies would go into the fainting room to sit down and sniff
sal volatile
to recover themselves.”
sal volatile
to recover themselves.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding. Tummy-firming pantyhose, I gather, are not nearly so constricting, so nowadays the room has a different purpose.”
“You do your writing in here?” Ingrid asked dubiously, eyeing the desk. The old manual typewriter Ray had used in college was parked there beside a box of battered paperback crime novels. The open door of the tiny closet revealed further disarray: more boxes of books, old coats on wooden hangers, manila folders spilling across the floor.
“My writing?”
“Yeah, your architecture book. Is this where you write it?”
“Oh.” He turned in the direction of the study and then stopped. “Actually, I’m sort of between desks,” he stammered. “We’re having some—some work done on the actual study, so in the meantime, I’m rather adrift.”
“That’s a cool typewriter,” Ingrid said, running one finger lightly over the space bar. She wasn’t really listening, he noted, relieved.
“Oh, I don’t actually type on that. I’ve got a new electric that takes a lighter touch.”
She nodded, laid her fingers on the keys without striking them.
“I learned on an old one like this in typing class,” she said. “I like the sound it makes when you’re typing much better than the sound of the electric ones.”
Ray looked at her in surprise. He also held this opinion but had never voiced it; at work his receptionist had the latest model IBM Selectric, a machine whose dull, industrial hum he found annoying. His own electric typewriter, the Smith Corona in the study, was quieter, but made a curiously flat and unsatisfying slap when the keys struck the paper. He had written all his college papers and a few detective stories on this manual Underwood, and he was still fond of it.
“Yes,” he said to Ingrid, “I know what you mean.”
Downstairs Evelyn arranged cups and saucers on a tray in the kitchen. Anger made her hands clumsy. What would Ingrid think when she saw the blood and glass all over the study? How could Ray be so dense? And why was she, Evelyn, such an idiot that she had not cleaned it up? She had wanted a tea party as perfect as the delicate teacups themselves, but Ingrid had come too early, the cake she had hastily thrown in the oven was nowhere near done, and the state of the study was inexcusable. She measured the loose tea Ray liked into the teapot, poured the water, and shook sugar cubes into the sugar bowl—the tea set, at least, looked elegant. When she first moved in she had found it in a box in the attic, the carefully wrapped china as thin as bird bones—Ray’s grandmother’s wedding pattern.
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