The Stager: A Novel (7 page)

“Tell Mr. Lars that I decided three skylights, not two.”

Now Bella sits up in bed and turns on the nightstand light. She begins to use what I think of as her “office voice,” which will be familiar to you if you’ve ever seen her on TV, which you likely have. It’s a blend of morning news anchor—fake friendly, fake warm—with the not-so-subliminal suggestion that she will slash your throat with the thin tip of her Pilot pen should you make her cross.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Bella says. “Let’s put this entire project on hold, Jorek. It’s better to do this once we have properly moved in.”

“But I already bought another on my way home last night.”

“I only gave you money for two.”

“So now you pay me more.”

“That’s not how this works, Jorek.”

This is one of those classic chicken-and-egg situations one reads about, by which I do not mean the money (and, frankly, I am a little embarrassed that Bella is giving Jorek a hard time about money, given how well off we are). What I am talking about here is the light. Bella doesn’t seem to understand that we can’t possibly move in until we create more light; she thinks we should create more light
after
moving in. I’m not entirely sure what Jorek says in response, since by now Bella is out of bed and moving toward the bathroom. After a few more exchanges, she clicks off and returns the phone to my bedside, then undresses and gets in the shower. Once I hear the water running, I call Jorek back and arrange to meet him at the house in a couple of hours.

Now I feign sleep again. Bella emerges from the shower, does her morning ritual of hair and makeup with a practiced efficiency, and then dresses. As she is getting ready to leave, she sits down beside me and says, even though I am fake asleep, “If you are really so light-obsessed, Lars, perhaps you ought to consider opening the curtains.” Then, without further ado, she grabs her bag and leaves.

Here she has a point. Not only are the curtains drawn decidedly shut, but I have also employed the special room-darkening blinds. Even at midday, it is deliciously cavelike in this room. This is emotionally tricky territory. I need light in my life, yet prefer darkness in my room. Please don’t ask me why. I don’t have all the answers.

After I hear the door click, I lie in bed contemplating this riddle, the riddle of me, Lars Jorgenson, until I can motivate myself to emerge from beneath the tangle of bedclothes. Finally, with trepidation, I approach the window. I stand with my fingers clutching the pull rod on the curtain, but find myself frozen—I try to shift it in a rightward direction, but I actually, physically cannot. It’s as if I’m having some adverse reaction to the possibility of light, or at least light in this room, and the complete illogic of the situation is paralyzing. I sit on the edge of the bed for a while, staring at the curtains, and then I go into the bathroom and swallow a Praxisis. These can be slow to kick in, so I crawl into the bathtub to wait. And let me tell you, if you have never taken a Praxisis, it’s always worth the wait. Although lately it seems the wait does not always deliver, and after an interminably long time, when nothing happens, I swallow a couple more.

After about thirty minutes, I climb out of the tub, walk over to the window, pull the cord on the blinds, and then draw back the heavy flax drapery. It’s almost biblical what happens next: the sun streams in so blindingly that I have to shut my eyes and fumble about the room until I locate my sunglasses.

And then—outside! A rich emulsion of pedestrians streaming by, every one of them looking so purposeful, carrying coffee and newspapers, computer bags slung over shoulders; a young woman, her hair still wet from the shower, or maybe from the pool, clutching a bouquet of wildflowers, which makes me wonder if she’s having a dinner party, or if it’s someone’s birthday. Some refrain from a book Bella often refers to pops into my head. Something to do with flowers and dinners and glorious days in June. I feel myself begin to soar. Maybe this is why she likes books so much; the poetry is its own high. I wish I liked books. But for now, I find Praxisis to be a good facsimile of the intellectual stimulation I am lacking in my life.

Across the street is a patch of greenery, and I wonder if perhaps we’re situated across from one of those famous London parks. Bella had said something about our hotel being in a posh section of town, within walking distance to many popular attractions (a bit of travelogue, dropped frequently, and not very subtly, into random conversations, surely meant to plant the seed of my going out), but this failed to entice me before now. I’d chosen to see the entire city as cold and aloof, although maybe it was just all that steely wrought iron, the beeping horns, the ever-present chill in the air. Still, I have the sense I could live here for the next ten years and never really belong, or even comprehend what’s going on. But then I see a bunch of schoolkids in uniforms emerging from the park, and that’s an easy thing to understand, no matter where you are. From the D.C. suburbs to an upscale London neighborhood to, perhaps, Jorek’s Poland, your compass points in a certain direction when you see a group of kids. This seems possibly profound, or at least it does for a second or two, while I search for a pen and a pad of paper on which to write it down, but all I manage is “kids” and “compass,” by which point I can’t really remember what it is I wanted to say, and whatever it is was probably trivial and clichéd, or at least no longer an observation that might hold the key to my repair. I sit there for the longest time, staring out the window, pen still in hand, but can’t think of anything else to write down.

ELSA

At school, I’m so busy I almost forget about Dominique and the Stager and the Rule of Three. I take my math quiz, and I know even before the teacher grades it that I got everything right. Also, I know all the answers in French class and raise my hand seven times, although Mademoiselle Shapiro only calls on me once. But Diana is being weird. We always sit together at lunch, and we almost always eat pizza and French fries (although sometimes we eat macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets), but today she’s brought a turkey sandwich from home, and when I ask her why, she says she’s decided to stop eating unhealthy food. I explain that pizza and French fries aren’t
necessarily
unhealthy, that it depends on how they’re cooked, but she says I’m wrong; they’re always fatty and greasy. French fries are potatoes, I say, refusing to give up. And since potatoes are organic and locally grown and from Whole Foods, they’re good for you. Ditto for the pizza, which has both calcium and vitamin C.

I don’t know if any of this is true, but sometimes facts are the enemy of truth. Or maybe it’s the other way around. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I once heard my mom say this on television when she was talking about problems at the bank where she works.

“To each his own,” Diana says. Then she picks up her tray and goes to sit with Zahara and leaves me alone with an entire sausage pizza, which at first seems like a good thing, but after I take a bite I feel the grease ooze down my throat and realize that Diana has ruined it for me. Then, even worse, after school, Diana acts like she actually
enjoys
running laps at field-hockey practice. Usually we run together, although we don’t really run, we walk until the coach notices we aren’t running and he yells at us. Then we run a little bit until he looks away again. But there she goes, up ahead with Zahara, who is the fastest runner in our class, and that makes me move even more slowly. After a while, I just stop. The coach yells at me and says if I don’t try harder I won’t be eligible for the team when we get to middle school next year, and I say big deal, I’m moving to London anyway.

I sit down in the middle of the track.

The coach comes over and asks if I’m okay, and even though I am, I know I’m about to get in trouble, so I say I’m having difficulty breathing and that I need to go back to the main school building to get my inhaler. When I get there, I open my locker, find my inhaler, and take a fake puff. By then it’s almost time for Nabila to pick me up, so, rather than go back to the field, I stand in front of the school to wait.

*   *   *

NABILA THINKS IT’S
important that we talk each day. On the way home she asks me the usual annoying questions about school: what did I learn, what did I have for lunch, did I have a lot of homework. Fortunately, she doesn’t ask me about field-hockey practice, because I know she won’t be sympathetic. She always talks about how exercise is good, and sometimes after school she even proposes we go for a bicycle ride or a walk. I don’t want to have that conversation.

When we arrive at the driveway, I see the Stager painting the front door. I roll down the window and shout to her: “Hey, what are you doing?”

“She’s painting the door,” Nabila says, as we pull into the garage.

“Yes, I know that, but why is she painting it white? It looked good black.”

Nabila shuts the garage door behind us, using the automatic opener. “You need to let the lady do her job,” she says. “The lady has a lot of work to do to get the house ready to sell.”

“I know that, but…”

“I spoke to your mum again, and then I spoke to the lady, and everyone agrees it’s a good idea for you to just let her do her job.”

“Yes, I get it. But I
am
letting her do her job! I just want to know why she’s painting the door white!”

“The first open house is in four days. The lady does not have time to be your babysitter.”

“God, Nabila, you are being so mean! The lady has a name. It’s the Stager. Well actually, it’s also Eve Brenner. And I know she isn’t my babysitter. Anyway, she’s the one who wanted to play yesterday, not me.”

“Okay. Let’s change the subject and go have a snack, and you can think about what you’d like for dinner. Oh, also, your mum said to tell you she’s going to be on the television tonight. And she’s wearing your favorite dress. She said she already taped the show and she blew you a secret kiss, so you should watch very closely and you’ll catch it.”

“Big deal. She’s on television all the time, and if she means the green dress with the stripes, it’s not my favorite anymore. I get embarrassed when she leans forward and I can see her bra and so can everyone else who’s watching TV. What about my dad?”

“What about your dad?”

“Did you talk to him?”

“No, sweetie.”

Nabila is digging around in her gigantic bag, trying to find her house key. Her purse is always a mess, like the Stager’s. I once counted and it took her nearly a whole minute to find the key, which is not a good safety practice, especially since the garage light automatically goes off after a minute. I once told Nabila she should wear her key around her neck, so she could find it quickly in case a criminal was hiding in the bushes or, in this case, inside the garage, but she didn’t listen, and now I’m thinking maybe I can do Nabila a favor and organize her purse for her, too. I wonder if the Stager has even noticed what I’ve done for
her
purse, but she might not have had any reason to look inside or use her wallet if she’s been at the house doing her staging all day.

“I won’t bother her, but I just want to know why she’s painting the door white, and also what rooms she staged today.”

“I’m not sure. Until I left to pick you up, she was mostly in the front hallway and the living room and the kitchen.”

“Is the smell gone yet?”

“Funny you should ask. It
was
gone. I thought the Stager fixed that horrible garbage smell, but now either it’s back or there’s another smell. I hadn’t noticed it until today.”

“Is it the same smell?”

“It’s the same but different.”

“Better or worse?”

“I don’t know if you can quantify how bad a very bad smell is. Sometimes I smell it and sometimes I don’t, so maybe I’m imagining the smell. Who knows, maybe I’m losing my mind.”

I hope Nabila isn’t going crazy, too.

“Well, maybe it’s good that our house smells bad, because I don’t want anyone to buy it. I don’t want people knocking my wall down and painting my room some other color, and I don’t want to move to London. Will you come to London?”

“We already talked about this, remember? I’m going to university here, so I can’t go with you. But you’ll find a new friend in London. And maybe I can visit you sometime.”

“I want you to come.”

“I know, honey.”

“I don’t want to move.”

“I know. I understand. Moving is very hard, even for grown-ups. I had to leave my country to come here, and I miss my own mum and dad every day. But look, at least you aren’t going to leave your family.”

“Maybe I could just stay here with you and we could keep the house.”

“I like that idea, but unfortunately life doesn’t work like that.”

“I have to leave my room, and my friends, and you, and Dominique is probably dead and I’ll never see him again.”

“Don’t be morose. He’s probably fine. I’m sure he’s found a lot of rabbit friends by now. Maybe he’s hopped back to his own family!”

“No, he came from a farm in Frederick, don’t you remember? Or maybe you weren’t here yet. Maybe that was Adriana. Or Fatima. Or wait, maybe it was before her … the girl from Romania. Anyway, Frederick is, like, an hour away, so I don’t know how he could have gotten that far.”

“You never know. Rabbits are good hoppers.”

“Not Dominique. He’s not that good a hopper, plus I’ll bet he just bites all the other rabbits anyway.”

Nabila laughs, but I’m not trying to be funny.

She finally finds her key and is about to stick it in the door when the light switches off, and we just stand there for a moment in the dark.

*   *   *

ALREADY THE HOUSE
looks different. The painting that we bought in Barcelona, the one that hangs above the table where my parents always put their keys when they walk in the door, is gone. My dad is going to have a meltdown. Not only does he love that painting, but it cost a lot of money.

I keep staring at the space, trying to figure out what else is wrong, and then I see the green table is gone, too. There’s a different table there that looks familiar, but I can’t say why. Then I realize it’s the table from the living room. Now there’s a mirror over the table instead of the painting. And the mirror is from … I don’t know. I’ve seen that mirror before, though. Maybe it was in my parents’ room once, and then it got put in the attic?