Three Story House: A Novel (10 page)

Benny mocked them for a few minutes, then, growing visibly impatient, he told them to get some rope and hoist it up from outside. Not sure of what she should be doing, Lizzie joined Benny at the end of the roof. They stared at the Mississippi in silence. It was a light brown color—reminding Lizzie of rinsing off after playing on a muddy field. The river was wider than it had been when she’d first arrived. She mentioned this, and Benny told her that the Big Muddy expanded and contracted into the flooding fields along the Arkansas side.

“I didn’t play in the Olympics,” she said.

“Neither did I,” Benny said, offering a half-smile.

“Guess we’re the same then,” Lizzie said.

“More than you know,” Benny said. His workers shouted at him and tossed up a length of rope, which he caught with the ease of a former athlete. Lizzie wondered what his sport had been—baseball or lacrosse, she thought, looking at his broad shoulders. In a moment, the roof was busy with the men’s activities. Lizzie continued to stand at the edge of the house. Benny shouted to her from his position at the edge of the roof. “You know I’ve got kids that play soccer.”

“It’s a good sport,” Lizzie said. “You don’t have to be one particular build to play. You gotta know how to run and how to listen.”

“They’re not any good.” He held the rope with one hand and tucked his hair behind his ears. It was longer than that of most men she knew. Some of the South American players Lizzie had known had kept their hair that long. She thought it odd for a Southern man. Granted, she hadn’t been back in nearly a decade, but it looked out of place. “Don’t get me wrong, I mean they do okay, but they’re not phenomenal, like you were. Your grandma used to talk about you like you was Atalanta.”

Lizzie shrugged. It embarrassed her to hear that other people had talked about her, even if it was praise. She certainly wasn’t worth the comparison to mythology’s fastest runner. With the brace on her leg as a constant reminder of what she couldn’t do, discussing soccer was like drinking water in front of a desert hiker.

“They’re always looking for coaches in the church leagues,” Benny said.

“Maybe,” Lizzie said. She hadn’t ever wanted to coach—not that she’d ever even tried. Unlike most of the girls she’d played with growing up, she hadn’t given a serious thought to much. Soccer kept her from getting serious about her life. Just the other day, she’d steered T. J. clear of the coaching subject when he brought up the need for one at his sister’s school. Her only goal was to prove her coach wrong and be ready before the Olympic team roster was announced.

“No, no, no, no, no,” Benny said, as the ladder slid from his grasp. Swear words in both Spanish and English echoed around them. After a heated exchange, Lizzie understood that one of the men below had stepped on a snake and inadvertently tugged on the wrong part of the rope, pulling the ladder out of Benny’s hand.

“You afraid of snakes?” Benny asked, directing his men to send the ladder back up. “I don’t like snakes.”

“Snakes aren’t any trouble at all,” Lizzie said, still thinking about her injury. “Tendons, those will undo even the strongest.”

W
hen Lizzie’s physical therapist had told her he’d opened his own office, she’d pictured a light-filled space with wood floors and private spa-like rooms for individual consultations. Aesthetics were how those who treated elite athletes differentiated themselves. The last time she’d visited his office, he’d been part of a vast complex attached to the hospital and she’d told herself that this new practice, one located near the trendiest part of Memphis, was sure to be a step up. She continued to tell herself this as she parked in the basement garage of the office building and took the musty-smelling elevator to the fifth floor.

She almost turned around when she stepped off the elevator and saw the vinyl lettering that differentiated Tremain’s Target Therapy and Rehabilitation in Suite 508 from Lara’s Paralegal Service in 506. Instead, she thought of the way her temporary therapist—the one suggested by her coach—compressed her lips into a straight line when she talked about wanting to be able to start playing by April at the latest.

The intake girl sighed heavily when Lizzie entered the gray and pink waiting room. She was several months pregnant, and the top of her scrubs rose up and exposed her belly when she reached for Lizzie’s insurance card. After glancing at it, she told Lizzie to go on through to the patient area. “He’ll find you. All he’s done today is yip and yap about you coming in.”

The space, about the size of a high school gymnasium, was carpeted. The white Nautilus machines were scuffed and grimy from heavy use, and rips to the leather tops of the treatment tables had been repaired with duct tape. None of this was as off-putting to Lizzie as the people she saw working on their rehabilitation. Not one person was under the age of sixty. When he’d worked at the larger office, they’d had a wide variety of patients and Phil had always worked with the athletes. That had been his specialty.

She cast her eyes to the right and watched a small woman with thinning white hair strain to push the hip abductor machine even a quarter of an inch. Her therapist, a heavyset black man wearing blue scrubs coached her in his unusually high voice. “Come on Ms. Lorraine, come on. I know you wanna beat Ms. Priscilla. I think she’ll be giving up her walker any day now.”

“Competition works whether you’re young or old,” Phil said, sliding up behind Lizzie and clasping her shoulder. “My heavens you’ve grown up.”

“I’m not any taller, just older.” She leaned down to hug Phil, who was one of the few short men she knew who wasn’t self-conscious about his height.

He put his hand on the small of her back and walked her to a training table in the farthest corner of the room. “I know it isn’t fancy, but I wanted to do it right, you know. Without loans and cosigners and—”

“It’s fine.” Lizzie dropped her eyes to the rubber-banded folders he held tucked under his left arm. She wanted to know what the doctors and the other therapists had said about her recovery. “What do you think?”

“Go ahead and lay back,” Phil said, as he rolled the sleeves of his coat up. He ran his fingers along the side of her knee, pressing gently and then feeling it as if he were blind and reading Braille. Under his touch, she relaxed. This had been why she’d wanted to see him—his hands had a way of radiating healing just in the way they touched. He set her knee down and then took out his tape measure and goniometer and took her through the paces every other specialist had put her through to figure her range of motion.

Phil told her to sit up. “I gather you haven’t been hearing what you want to.”

“They have other agendas,” Lizzie said, thinking of the dozens of other players who fell under the umbrella of the national team. “Everyone’s risk averse these days. Besides, you know me. You know my knee.”

“Have they talked to you about scar tissue?” Phil rubbed the knuckles of his ring finger and then spun his wedding band around. “There’s a slight resistance and you’re at 120 degrees when I’d thought you’d be closer to 125—”

“It’s not. I mean I’ve never had that issue before.”

“And you’re ready to work?”

“Yes.” Lizzie sat up. “Is that a yes to all of it?”

“It’s more of a wait and see,” Phil said, taking out a sheet of paper and walking her through the second eight weeks of her rehabilitation. A morning session followed by weights and interval training on the bike and then after lunch another therapy session.

“At least I get Sundays off,” she said, folding the paper into thirds and tucking it into her pocket. “What do you get out of it?”

“You’ll be good for business,” he said, handing her a length of PVC pipe and explaining how to roll it against the back of her knee to break up any scar tissue. “I’ll have you jogging in a month and then it’s just a hop and a skip, literally, away from the pitch.”

He took her through all of the exercises she needed to do in between appointments and then walked her through the conditioning portion of her rehabilitation. By the time they were finished, the rest of the patients had cleared out. The other physical therapists had settled into their offices in the back of the space, and the assistant put on headphones and wiped down the machines, cleaning in a rhythm that only she heard.

Sitting on the bike, Lizzie looked around the room and decided it was better to be in a place that looked like people had to work hard. She pushed herself faster even though she was supposed to be cooling off. If she had any chance of getting back on the team, she had to become so good that they couldn’t ignore her.

Sunday mornings were quiet at Spite House. Lizzie allowed herself to stay in bed after sunrise and on those days, lying in the bed that had been her grandmother’s, she let herself imagine the life she’d have after soccer. She imagined a satisfied life—one lived in a sunlit house with a husband who looked younger than he was and studious children who ran cross-country and played instruments. It was a lot to ask of the world, but the thought got her through the monotony of her present life. When she heard her cousins stir, she collected the newspaper and brewed coffee. After nearly a month and a half of living together, Lizzie knew to set aside the comics for Elyse and the real estate section for Isobel.

When they were awake enough to talk, they discussed the past. Elyse became a natural storyteller, recounting the demise of her ill-themed bed and breakfast, The Boston Cream, or her disastrous engagement at nineteen to a German pastry chef. “You wouldn’t believe the sex jokes,” she said and Lizzie didn’t know if she were talking about the chef or the inn. There was little doubt that Elyse embellished her failures, but at least (and Lizzie envied her for this) she enjoyed them. Isobel tried to tell stories in which she failed, but in the end, there was always triumph. She bought a house in which chickens were kept indoors that turned out to have marble flooring under the soiled carpet. There was the time she and her father had to pay to have asbestos siding removed and discovered that the ugly cement tiles had been hiding striking stained glass windows. Lizzie talked about the incremental successes and failures that marked her time in rehab.

A knock on the front door interrupted their reminiscing. After a long pause, the bell rang twice. The cousins looked at each other and, although they’d done nothing wrong, they felt as if they’d been found out. At times, living in Spite House offered the same insulation from the outside world as a fortress. Lizzie offered to get rid of the salesman or Jehovah’s Witness or whoever the uninvited party might be. With her rehab, she counted every step she took as one that got her closer to being whole. She opened the door, letting light into the confined space of the entryway. T. J., whom they had not seen since he threatened to evict them from their own house, stood with his hand raised as if to knock again. After speaking with him so often on the phone, the intimacy of seeing him in person was almost too much for Lizzie. “I took you for the sort of man who spends his Sundays in church,” she said.

“My sister is the one who’s big on church,” he said, giving her a look that made her wish she were wearing something other than sweatpants. “But I have been known to sing in the choir.”

“I thought so.” Seeing him made her wish she’d done more to follow up on their case. “Are we in trouble?”

He held out a manila envelope. “Is that coffee I smell?”

“Subtlety isn’t your strong suit.” Lizzie stepped aside and invited him into the house. As they walked toward the kitchen, she opened the envelope and slid out the paperwork from the code enforcement office. They had stopped the auction process and issued a temporary occupancy permit for the house, which gave them the legal right to stay.

T. J. reintroduced himself to Isobel and Elyse and then helped himself to a cup of coffee. He stood slightly behind Lizzie and watched her look over the papers. “It’s not bad,” he said. “It looks worse than it is and you’ll have until June.”

Isobel reached over and took the paperwork from Lizzie. “We’ll need far longer than June.”

“There’s a renewal option,” T. J. said, blowing on his coffee and then taking a sip.

“It’s like you started speaking French,” Elyse said.

“How’s this?” Isobel said. “We can get Benny to do real work now. Stuff that will make a difference, like the wiring.”

“That’s worthy of a celebration,” Elyse said.

Isobel folded the paperwork into a square and put it in her pocket. She looked at T. J. and narrowed her eyes. “Why do this in person? Seems like the sort of news that goes through the postal service.”

“I thought if we talked in person, I might convince you to go on that date I keep asking about,” T. J. said, setting his cup on the table, and looking at Lizzie. “You know it took me all weekend to get up the nerve to knock on that door? I drove by on Friday and couldn’t even get out of the car. On Saturday I made it up to the top of the stairs before I turned around.”

“Date,” Lizzie echoed.

In a rush, as if he’d prepared a speech, T. J. began to apologize for his behavior when they first met and told Lizzie that afterward he felt bad, like he’d kicked a puppy. He kept seeing her in the hallway dressed up in her grandmother’s clothing and how, instead of looking vulnerable, she looked determined. “The difference between the possible and the impossible is a person’s determination,” he said as if it were a closing statement.

Elyse laughed. “Are you asking her out?”

“Of course he is,” Isobel said. “And I’m sure she’d love to, wouldn’t you?”

Lizzie had lost track of the conversation, but without knowing why, the no that had started to form on her lips changed to a yes when she looked into T. J.’s eyes. They agreed to brunch the following Sunday, and then he left with their coffee mug, one of Elyse’s cranberry-orange muffins, and Lizzie’s interest.

As February closed in on March, Lizzie watched Benny from the safety of the house. She brought boxes of Grandma Mellie’s possessions into the kitchen and sorted through the crap. From what Lizzie observed, Benny didn’t work. He supervised. In the empty lot next to the house, which he referred to as the staging area, he’d parked a half-size recreational vehicle and plastered a vinyl sign to its side that read LaRusso Construction. Each morning he arrived with four or five day laborers in the back of his orange truck, gave them directions in Spanish so rudimentary that Lizzie wondered if he’d learned it from watching
Sesame Street
, and then shut himself inside the RV. He’d come out at lunch to check on the progress and then again before quitting time.