The Stager: A Novel (31 page)

“Nooooo! Please, Mom, you just got home, and I want to spend some time with you!” I haven’t planned to start crying; I don’t think I even realized until that moment how much I’ve really missed my mom. I throw my arms around her waist and hold her tight.

“So sorry, Elsa. This has been a really rough patch, I know, and I promise I’m going to make it up to you. There’s a lot going on, and I’ve been distracted. We need to get your dad some help, and watching all of this is not something a ten-year-old kid should have to do. On top of which, this move is unbelievably hard, and I’m sorry to have been away this week—horribly bad timing, but unavoidable. I should have brought you along, but I really thought you’d be happier here. I travel all the time, and you and Nabila usually do just fine, and you’re so busy with your friends and school and field hockey that I figured a week would just fly by like
that
!”

She snaps her fingers, and I notice that the red nails could use some fresh polish.

“I can see now that Dominique running away just triggered a whole bad series of events.”

Hearing her say all this, plus mentioning Dominique, makes me cry even harder. My mom continues to hold me, and she keeps rubbing my back and kissing me on the head, and after a while I feel better. Still, I need to do something to keep her from going upstairs, but I can’t think what, and I’m lucky I don’t have to figure out a solution, because just then Nabila walks through the door.

“Oh, hey,” she says, acting nonchalant but looking at me, alarmed. I try to tell her with my eyes that I haven’t said anything that will get her in trouble, like that she left me with the Stager or that the bag of opium belonged to her. But she can’t tell what I’m trying to say, so we just stand there making weird faces at each other. Then she says to my mom, “Um, wow, I didn’t realize for some reason that you’d already be home. I thought you were … in London. I’m really confused!”

It’s helpful to not be the only confused person.

“Anyway, I looked every place you suggested, and tried three additional Starbucks as well. I showed his picture to the baristas and to some of the people sitting in the cafés, and no one has seen him. I was going to call you, but…”

“You forgot your phone!”

“Exactly. And I wasn’t sure what you wanted me to do next. I’m glad you’re here. And I’m really sorry.”

“There’s no reason to be sorry, Nabila. I’m sorry we’ve put you in the middle of this mess.”

There is a noise outside the window, a rustling of the bushes, and then voices. My mom goes to the door to look. “What the hell…”

She opens the screen door and goes outside. “I told Amanda to tell you not to film this house. I’m going to call the police and get a restraining order. I’ll give you one minute to get off my property.” She starts to count: “One … two … three…”

While she’s counting, Nabila’s phone starts to vibrate again. She picks it up and listens and keeps nodding her head. Then she puts her finger up in the air, which I think means that she has something interesting to say, which she does: when she finally hangs up, she explains that her friend Eton has found my dad, that he’s apparently been drinking the tea, and that he is bleeding and we should come over quick.

*   *   *

THERE ARE TWO
ways to get to Unfurlings if you are walking. One way is to stay on our street, then turn left at the first intersection and go downhill, then turn right at the bottom of the street and head back up on a different street. You have to be careful at the fork; it’s easy to get confused, since all of the houses there look exactly the same, and sometimes you might go the wrong way and wind up going in a great big loop. If you make the wrong choice, you end up back where you began. If you make the right choice, you will get to the little thatched gatehouse where a man sits in the booth to tell you whether or not you are allowed to come into The Flanders. If you are on your way
out,
you don’t need to stop, because anyone can leave The Flanders. You only need permission if you want to come in.

Next is the trickier part: Unfurlings is right across the street, but there are six lanes of traffic, and the cars go very fast. The nearest traffic light is a quarter of a mile up the road, which is a long way to go to cross the street, especially since, once you get to the other side, you have to walk a quarter-mile back to get into Unfurlings. My mom once told me they were trying to get a traffic light installed, but it had been two years already and they were still having meetings about whether or not this was a good idea.

There’s another, better way to get to Unfurlings, which is what I learned the first day I went chasing after Dominique. You have to sneak into the Mehtas’ backyard, which is a little tricky; then you have to make sure that at the
BEWARE: GUARD DOG ON DUTY
house the dog is not in the yard, and then you have to go to the very back of the property, behind all the flowers and bamboo, and then find the hole in the chain-link fence and squeeze through. The next thing you know, you’re at Unfurlings; the houses look completely different from The Flanders, and there’s lots of land, and the last time I was there a llama even came up and licked my hand.

My mom hasn’t changed out of her work clothes, since I absolutely refused to let her go upstairs, and I feel kind of bad that she’s still wearing those red high heels. As she squeezes through the fence, the sleeve of her shirt gets caught on a piece of sticking-up wire and makes a tear in the sleeve. “It’s a brand-new shirt,” she says. “Theory!” I don’t know what she means by “theory,” but my mom is really into fashion, so I guess she’s talking about the shirt.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” I say, pointing to a lake with ducks floating on the surface.

“It’s a little strange, I admit, to have this completely different universe right behind us. It’s even a little disorienting. What’s that delicious smell?”

“That’s the fairy-cake house! There are three colors of icing, but they all taste the same.”

I take my mom’s hand, and then I take Nabila’s hand, and I pull them toward the house. “You have to meet Marta!”

“Wait, Elsa. You don’t just knock on someone’s door unannounced. Plus, we’re not here to eat cupcakes. We’re here to find your dad.”

“Actually, it’s possible this is the house Eton called from,” Nabila says, pulling out her phone. “Let me check the address … 54 Naomi Wolf Lane.”

“No way.”

“Yes, we seem to be in the Contemporary Nonfiction division of the Literature compound.”

“I hope we’re not in
Vagina
.”

“Mom!”

“It’s okay, honey. It’s a book.”

Nabila is already knocking. Marta opens the door. She looks a little like an angel, with flowing blond hair and a lot of bangles on her wrists. She throws her arms around me. “Elsa! Thank God you’re here. I really don’t know what to do. I think I’ve got your dad here, of all the coincidences in the world. He’s only semi-conscious, but he keeps saying your name. I don’t even know how he got in here, but I came home from running errands just a few minutes ago and there he was, lying right there on the floor, talking to himself. I was totally panicked, because I didn’t want to call an ambulance since I’m not supposed to be here…” She stops talking and stares at my mom. Maybe my mom looks like the sort of person who might call the police.

“It’s okay, Mom,” I explain. “It’s the model house. That means it’s supposed to look perfect so that people will want to live here and they’ll want to buy one just like it. Look, it has fake everything, even dishes and a coffeemaker. I mean, it’s pretend, but it’s real. But since no one is going to buy a house here anymore, Marta is staying here so it doesn’t go to waste. Right, Marta?”

My dad makes a noise. I squat down beside him, but I can’t tell what he’s saying. His hair is a total mess, matted with sweat and sticky with something that looks like blood. His shirt is full of stains, and the zipper on his trousers is down; I’m embarrassed to see him like this. My mom sits down on the floor on his other side and runs her fingers through his hair. “Wake up, Lars,” she says softly.

He mumbles some more, and it sounds like he says, “Once upon a time there was a man named Lars…” And then he stops. And then he starts again and he says, “Once upon a time there was a man named Lars.” And then he stops.

I go over to him and say, “Dad, finish the story!” And then he starts again with the “once upon a time” part, and then his eyes open and he tries to sit up, but he can’t. He looks around, then puts his hand on his stomach and says, “Oh my God, where’s Dominique? What did he do with my spleen?”

“Jesus, Lars!” my mom says. “You’re hallucinating.”

“Do you want some water?” Marta asks.

“Just more tea,” my dad says.

“Enough with the tea!” my mother shrieks. “How much did he drink already?”

Nabila shoots me a nervous look.

“I have no idea,” Marta says. “As I was saying, I just got home and there he was. I don’t even know how he got in here.”

“What’s the rest of the story you were going to tell, Dad? ‘Once upon a time there was a man named Lars.’ I think that’s what you said. Is there more? Is Dominique in the story?”

“My God, where am I? I was in the middle of a dream about … You know what, I think you’re right … I think I was actually dreaming about Dominique, and he wanted me to tell him a story.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I don’t really remember, but he really wanted to hear about my life, and I think all I could talk about was
you.
”

“Is that good, or is that bad?”

My dad doesn’t answer. He’s staring out the window, mesmerized.

“Of course that’s good,” my mom says. “Right, Lars? Tell Elsa that any story about her is a good story, no matter what. It’s important that you tell her that.”

I don’t know why my mom says that. I already know that any story about me is good, unless it’s one about me not running laps or spilling paint or eating too much or doing something else that’s bad, which makes me remember the Stager in my bed and the red paint on the floor and my broken bed and the half-finished six-foot rabbit on my wall.

“You are the light of my life, Elsa,” my dad says. But the words come out slurred, and then he asks me if I have any idea where his spleen is.

“We should really get him home,” says Nabila.

“Actually, what I think we should probably do is get an ambulance,” says my mom. “Let’s first wipe up all that blood … Do you have a cloth or something?”

“Please,” says Marta, returning with a bowl of water and a cloth. “Please, I’ll do anything I can to help, just don’t have anyone come here. Anyway, these look like superficial wounds, just scratches on his head and all over his arms. Maybe from the barbed wire on the fence?” She wipes his forehead with the cloth and puts some iodine on the cuts. “I’ve also got to get busy baking. I have a big commission for tomorrow. I was just hired to bake cupcakes for some realty firm, to serve at open houses, and I can’t afford to blow it. So, as much as I want to help, I really need you guys to get out of here. No offense.”

“They give cupcakes out at open houses?” I ask. “We should totally do that!”

“I think maybe we are,” my mom says. “It was either that, or Amanda was going to do some sort of cash giveaway to whoever guesses the sale price, which seems to me a little tacky, so I voted for the marginally less tacky cupcakes.”

“Did you say cupcakes?” my dad asks.

Nabila puts a hand under his arm, and my mother does the same thing from the other side, and Marta puts her hands around his waist, and they pull him up onto his feet. He peers down at his side.

“Hey, weird. Somehow the wound has closed up, but it’s still pretty tender, and it’s not quite healed. Do you think my spleen is back inside? Or do you have it? Did someone say something about cupcakes?”

“Lars, for the love of God, what’s wrong with you?”

He pulls up his shirt and points to his side, but we can’t see what he’s talking about. Then he looks out the window and then back at me, and he smiles hugely and says, “My God, Elsa, look at that gorgeous sun poking through the clouds!”

*   *   *

THE HOSPITAL SEEMS
to take forever. We’re there all afternoon, and then all night. The good news is that I get to watch television in the waiting room, and no one tells me to do my homework or practice the violin, but the bad news is that the only thing to watch is CNN, and they run the same stories over and over and over. Most of the stories are terrifying.

First, the ground has opened up and swallowed a grocery store in Louisiana. A lady who had been pushing her shopping cart down the cereal aisle disappeared, and then most of the food in the cereal aisle disappeared, too. They’re bringing in drilling equipment and men with flashlights and goggles to try to find her, but she’s been gone for half the day and they seem to think she’s unlikely to be alive. They interview the chief of the fire department, and then they talk to her husband, who cries and says she’d just gone in to get some Diet Coke and sliced salami. They also interview the manager of the grocery store, who says nothing like this has ever happened before. Then they interview a lady who had just been standing outside the store with her dog while her daughter ran inside to buy paper towels, and then they interview the daughter, who had just been getting her change from the paper towels, and she’s really relieved that she hadn’t dawdled, because she’d actually been thinking about maybe getting some cereal, too.

The next story is about a crazy man who has a lot of guns and has kidnapped a boy and put him in a box. That story is on a lot, too, and the CNN newswoman says, “Wow, it’s a busy news day, and a grim one at that!” For the boy-in-the-box story they talk to the police, the FBI, the boy’s mom, who says he’s a very good boy, and then they talk to another person, who’s just standing there with his dog and doesn’t know what’s going on, so he doesn’t have very much to say.

Then there’s a story about the government not having any more money and how that’s going to mean people are going to lose their jobs and some schools are going to have to close because they can’t afford teachers. For that they interview a senator who’s the head of the budget committee, a lady who’s the head of the teachers’ union, a teacher, and a mom holding the hands of two children. There’s no dog in that story.