The Understory (2 page)

Story rolled her eyes. “Not
to
my cat,
with
my cat. Isn’t that wicked sick?”

“You’re funny!” the clerk said with a wink.

Story slumped out of the store, realizing she failed even at humiliating herself. She wasn’t, of course, going to do inappropriate things with her cat. She didn’t have a cat. Pets were another of her failures.

But that had been her morning; she was hoping her evening would be better. With her belly full, and her games of solitaire complete, she picked up a small, worn slip of paper she’d found in a fortune cookie eleven months ago, a piece of paper that she’d saved and had been using as a bookmark in her copy of Kafka’s
The Metamorphosis
. As with all of her books, she could recite from memory this story’s first line—
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into a gigantic insect
—but she could not recite its last.

Story had always thought that reading a great first line was a lot like falling in love—surprising, but at the same time, comfortable. And she preferred beginnings to endings, probably because she harbored a subconscious aversion to accomplishment, but as of late, she’d become so disgusted with her own lack of ambition that she’d given up on expectations. In fact, she was so bored with herself that she’d resorted to reciting her favorite novels’ first lines to replace her own worn-out words and ideas.

Thinking of it as a beginning she hadn’t yet attempted, she opened up the small, folded-up fortune and read the familiar words—
Everyone gets one chance to do something great. Yours is coming soon—
but when the bitterness of the word “soon” settled in with an unpalatable aftertaste, she tucked it back into the book and, once again, reminded herself that things boasting of magic were usually caked in horse crap. And once again, she managed to find the shit-brown, shadowy side of things. From kindergarten through high school, Story’s failings hadn’t disappointed her. Sometimes she missed her apathy like she missed things in her less complicated past: Madonna with twenty extra pounds,
Fantasy Island
reruns, cherry Pop-Tarts with sprinkles.

One month ago, to recapture the feeling of being alive, of
feeling
alive, Story painted every room in her house a different shade of green, the color of life. The kitchen: pea pod green. The bedroom: hunter green. The bathroom: sage green. The living room: grassy green. But it hadn’t helped her feel any more alive, or any more at home, so now, today, after she put her book away, she left her own disappointing house in search of another.

It was clearly nighttime—the time when Story Easton quenched her parched spirit by breaking the law—and so it was on that Sunday night that Story invited herself into a stranger’s house for the fourth time that week.

Technically, she wasn’t on the guest list.

Technically, she was a criminal.

If she’d given her nighttime actions much thought, she’d have pointed out that what she did hurt no one, but she didn’t think about it—she
felt
it. It was a compulsion. One she’d had for three months now.

It had all started on a sultry evening back in July when the motionless Phoenix air too closely resembled her sad and stagnant life, and she’d started seeing the words
restless
,
irritable
, and
discontent
everywhere she looked. They swirled in her triple-shot latte, they sat perched on perky tree branches, and worst of all, they engaged in combat with more palatable adjectives as they passed by on the street with their very
satisfied
,
blissful
, and
whole
owners.

So there she was, three months later, starting the Sunday evening festivities without fanfare, going through rote motions with the fervor of someone about to brush her teeth. She drove around in her hand-me-down Volvo, keeping in mind practical things like parking, lighting, and the fact that she’d never visited this street before. And as she passed house after house, she tried not to let one of Zora Neale Hurston’s first lines ruin her fun.
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.

And then, like the unexpected beauty of a shooting star, she saw a house that intrigued her, a
life
that intrigued her. Boredom and discontent were replaced by exhilaration and possibility.

“Hmmm,” she said to herself as she drove by the split-level she wanted to know more about. On the front stoop, a porch light revealed what the distracted homeowner must have forgotten and left behind in a rush—a brown paper bag full of groceries, with a bunch of bananas sticking out the top. Several other lights were on—twice as many as the other houses—exposing the goings-on inside, and Story was once again amazed at how much you can see into someone’s life when it’s illuminated. When she slowed the car, she saw a man sitting alone on his couch, pouring from what looked like a whiskey bottle. He displayed a Me-Against-the-World gaze as he stared out his front picture window at nothing at all. Or perhaps he was staring at everything—the overwhelming, all-encompassing
everything
of things he didn’t have but wanted. Story could relate. And as selfish as it was, the idea of surrounding herself with people more screwed-up than her always made her feel better, or at least less screwed-up.

She drove two blocks and parked—this was standard procedure because it cut down on suspicion—and then, for stealth, she put on her light jacket over her dark navy flannel pajamas. Back in July, when she first starting doing this, she’d worn her street clothes, and it made for quite an uncomfortable night. And then there were a few nights when she’d brought her pajamas with her in a small overnight bag, but she found that traveling light enhanced the experience. Besides, changing clothes can get noisy.

As she walked closer to her destination, she realized the house could be a stand-in for Carol and Mike Brady’s, complete with ’70s exterior flair and a slightly more sophisticated station wagon in the driveway. Story considered possible entry points and decided, as usual, the back entrance was best, but first she grabbed the forgotten groceries on the front porch.

“Shit,” she mumbled when she rolled her ankle on a rock in the backyard and dropped the bananas. When the motion light sputtered, she hugged the house to stay in the shadows, and instead of feeling cold, it felt warm and welcoming. When blackness returned, she made her way to a small patio and quietly checked the sliding glass doors she knew would be open.

“God, I could be a serial killer,” she whispered while she slowly opened the heavy door and wondered why people didn’t lock their doors anymore. Of the scores of homes she’d
visited
, she’d only had to pry open three locked doors. She’d become quite handy with her makeshift tools—the Leatherman worked well, but the best was an old, metal fingernail file she’d retrofitted for breaking and entering. Way more fun than a manicure.

After taking her slippers off so as not to track in dirt, she put down the groceries and scouted out the lower level of the house. There was one bathroom, a small living space, a kitchenette and, bingo—when she walked to the other side of the stairway, she discovered a bedroom. Its inhabitant was not home, and had been gone awhile, as evident from the layer of dust and overall sense of emptiness.

As Story entered the vacant bedroom, a colorful room with bright pink sheets, a yellow and orange bedspread, and a floor-to-ceiling rainforest mural painted in whimsical, swirling colors, she heard the television upstairs come on for a minute, bellowing a preachy commercial in which an airy, godlike voice asked a series of questions over a soundtrack of inspirational music. “Do you feel lost? Is your life empty and meaningless? Do you ever wonder about those unexplainable coincidences in life? It is all connected.
We
are all connected.” She heard the man from the couch mumble something and then let out an audible, angry sigh. The commercial ended with a sped-up, “Paid for by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” When the television went silent, Story heard the man pour another drink, and shortly after that, creaking bedsprings indicated he’d gone to bed.

Story examined her temporary bed. Above it hung a cartoon picture of a smiling sun—bright, golden, and peaceful. Propped up on two pillows was a pigtailed doll wearing khaki pants, a safari vest, and a little button that said, “Girl Explorers Rock!” And that rainforest mural had each of the forest’s four layers labeled with black, hand-drawn words.
The Forest Floor
, it said at the bottom of the wall, near the carpet, amongst tree roots, leaves, and tiny saplings. The second layer, an area in the trees labeled
The Understory
, teemed with excitement, appearing as one interconnected world of action and secrets: brightly-colored birds flying about, tree kangaroos clinging incognito, howler monkeys leaping from branch to branch so fast there was an actual blurred brush stroke to illustrate it. The third layer,
The Canopy
, a roof of treetops, looked like a giant, carpet-like blanket draped over the whole forest. And the highest layer,
The Emergent Layer
, featured the few stray trees tall and hardy enough to break out of the canopy and stretch toward the sun.

And somewhere between the forest floor and the understory, a big white flower bud jutted out from a gray tree trunk. Having never seen a flower quite like it, Story walked closer. The vines held clusters of waxy, crimson leaves, and the flower itself was closed tightly, each petal hugging the next in layer after layer of silky white.

Story walked to the bedside table and saw a book,
Once Upon A Moonflower
, featuring a young blonde girl on the cover, alongside the same beautiful white flower from the wall. On the back cover was a picture of a man with salt-and-pepper hair—the same man she’d seen through the window—and underneath the picture was a short biography.

Martin Baxter, scholar and author, earned a Ph.D. in Botanical Sciences from Cornell University after enduring a lifelong obsession with plants. After discovering that plants were much more interesting than people (and much quieter), he focused his doctoral research on a phytochemical and pharmalogical investigation of Amazonian ethnomedical plants.
Once Upon A Moonflower
is Martin’s first non-academic book, and he hopes children everywhere discover the same magic and interconnectedness he’s seen firsthand in the Amazon rainforest (or at least put off bedtime for a half hour). Martin teaches and lives in Portland, Oregon with his lovely and vibrant wife Katherine, who happens to hate plants, and his precocious but silly daughter Hope, who happens to be the greatest kid on the planet.

It was written in third-person, but somehow, Story heard Martin Baxter, the stranger upstairs, in the words, as if he was hiding between the distant tone and the quirky sense of humor. The smile he wore in the book jacket picture was infectious, and with the smart-but-rugged thing he had going, he evinced a surprising sex appeal. But the interesting and vivacious man from the book jacket looked very different from the man she’d seen in the window. Something had changed since he’d written the book.

Something horrible had happened to Martin Baxter.

Story then walked over to an open closet and saw a poster of a city skyline, titled
Portland at Dusk
, propped up against the closet wall, its tone grayed-out and bleak. On the floor sat a large cardboard box holding neat little rows of carefully packed items, each wrapped in a dishtowel for protection. She unwrapped one on top. A stained coffee cup with a picture of a family on the front, it showed a woman with bright blue eyes standing close to Martin Baxter, and on his shoulders, a young blonde-haired girl, smiling and waving. Story wrapped the cup back up the way she found it and looked in the next dishtowel to find a woman’s worn yellow slippers.

She then found another picture of the young blonde girl, sitting on a bed beneath the same golden, cartoonish sun picture, and in the background was the rainforest mural, but it was slightly different. On the back of the frame it said
Portland
, and it was dated two years ago.
Two almost-identical rooms
, Story thought. Somebody liked the décor enough to reproduce it. Somebody was hanging on.

After laying the picture aside, Story uncovered one more item. It was a framed piece of paper with a picture of the woman and young girl from the coffee cup, and these words underneath:
In Loving Memory of Katherine Anne Baxter and Hope Amelia Baxter.

Story swallowed the lump in her throat, but she remained silent, avoiding the urge to look through the rest of the box and risk waking up the man who mourned upstairs, and who, as evident from the many discarded high-ball glasses on the bureau, occasionally mourned in the very room Story temporarily called her own. It seemed that Martin Baxter had fled from Portland to Phoenix, looking for sun, only to find himself still lost in shadows.

No wonder he’d forgotten the groceries. Remembering the milk, Story tiptoed her way into the kitchenette, put the canned goods and bananas on the counter and, like a good intruder, placed the milk in the mini-fridge. She watched the refrigerator light flicker, which meant a rolling blackout. Though blackouts were most common for Phoenix during summer’s peak heat, during the last week, sporadic fall thunderstorms had prompted electrical interferences, and it looked like another one was probably on its way. She returned to her room before complete blackness came.

But then, just as Story was settling in for a good night’s sleep in a total stranger’s house, Martin Baxter stirred upstairs. Soon, he stumbled down to lock the very door that Story had entered through. Story caught a glimpse of him through the cracked bedroom door as he walked past, and thanks to the moonlight flooding through the hallway window, she noticed Martin’s face as he glanced in her direction. He stopped and stared at the spare bedroom as if it were an old friend—one he knew he should let go of, but could not.