Authors: Julia Heaberlin
I can rattle off this menu ordered by a
racist freak, but can’t remember the day my world blew apart. I can’t
remember a single thing that will save Terrell.
I glance out to my studio window, glinting
at the top of the two-story garage in the corner of the back yard. I should go up there.
Shut the blinds. Pull out my pencils and paints, and draw the curtain. Begin my
homework.
The garage was renovated from crumbling
disaster two years ago. Effie gave the plan her historical stamp of approval. Blue
window boxes and straggly red geraniums for her, Internet and a security system
connected to the house for me.
Cheerful. Safe.
The bottom level, which once housed the
previous owner’s blue 1954 Dodge, is jammed with my table saw and biscuit joiner,
router and drills, nail gun and orbital sander, vacuum press and welder. The tools that
curve cabinet doors like sand dunes and solder master staircases into a dizzy spiral.
Machines that make my muscles ache and reassure me that I can take on a man, or a
monster.
The top level was designed just for me. My
space. For the quieter arts. It seemed so important—a real home for my drawing
table, easels, paints, paintbrushes, and sewing machines. I splurged on a Pottery Barn
couch and a Breville tea maker and a Pella picture window so that I could spy into the
upper floors of our live oak.
The week after the nail pounding stopped, as
I sat and sipped tea bathed in the studio’s white, clean, new-smell glory, I
realized that I didn’t want
my
space. I didn’t want isolation, or
to miss Charlie’s burst through the door after school. So I stuck with the living
room. The studio turned into the place my little brother, Bobby, hangs out to write when
he visits from his home in Los Angeles twice a year and where Charlie goes on the
occasion when every word out of my mouth sets her nerves on fire.
I don’t know
why, Mom. It’s not what you’re saying. It’s just that you’re
talking.
This is the reason that the living room is
piled with brocade fabric and designer dress patterns and bead carousels that mingle
with Charlie’s flip-flops and textbooks and misplaced earrings and itsy-bitsy
“seahorse” rubber bands for braces. Why my daughter and I have an unspoken
agreement not to speak about the state of the living room, unless it involves ants and
crumbs. We clean it together every other Sunday night. It’s a happy place, where
we create and argue and refine our love.
The studio is crowded. My ghosts moved in
right away, when I did, after the last stroke of linen white on the walls. The Susans
feel free to talk as loudly as they want, sometimes arguing like silly girls at a
sleepover.
I should climb the steps. Greet them with
civility.
Draw the curtain. Find out
whether it swings from a window in the mansion in my head where the Susans sleep.
Let them help.
But I can’t. Not yet. I have to
dig.
I’m staring into a gaping hole again.
This time, a swimming pool, empty except for a chocolate slurry of leaves and
rainwater.
Feeling ridiculous. Disappointed. And cold.
I pull up the hood of Charlie’s Army sweatshirt. It’s 5:27. I haven’t
stood in this place since Charlie and I lived here when she was two. Charlie has already
texted the word
hungry
while I was driving the wrong direction on I-30 with a
red pickup on my tail, and twenty minutes after that,
home,
and five minutes
after that,
cool tutu,
and one minute after that
um?????
I tried calling back, but no answer. Now the
phone in my pocket is buzzing. The sun is dropping lower every second, a big orange ball
going somewhere else to play. The apartment windows wink fire with the fading light, so
I can’t see in. I hope no one is staring down at the hooded figure in the shadows
armed with a shovel.
“Why aren’t you at
Anna’s?” I blurt into the phone, instead of
hello.
“You are
supposed to be at Anna’s.” As if that would make it so.
“Her mom got sick,” Charlie
says. “Her dad picked us up. I told him it was OK to bring me home. Where are you?
Why didn’t you answer my texts?”
“I just tried to call you. I was
driving. I got lost. Now I’m on … a job. In Dallas. Did you lock the
doors?”
“Mom. Food.”
“Order a pizza from Sweet
Mama’s. There’s money in the envelope under the phone. Ask if Paul can
deliver it. And look through the peephole before you answer to make sure it’s him.
And lock the door when he leaves and punch in the code.”
“What’s the number?”
“Charlie. You know the security
code.”
“Not
that
number. The number for Sweet Mama’s.”
This from the girl who last night Googled
that Simon Cowell was the young assistant who polished Jack Nicholson’s axe in
The Shining.
“Charlie, really? I’ll be on my
way home soon. I’m late because … I thought I’d remember the
way.”
“Why are you whispering?”
“Pizza, Charlie. Peephole. Don’t
forget.” But Charlie has already hung up.
She’ll be fine.
Was that me,
or a Susan? Which of us would know better?
“Hey.” A man with a weed eater
is quickly approaching from the other side of the house.
Busted.
I lean the
shovel against a tree, too late. Even at this distance, something about the way he
carries himself stirs a memory.
“This is private property!” he
shouts. “What do you think you’re doing here with that shovel at
dinnertime?” A drawl mixed with a threat and a reprimand about proper mealtime
etiquette. A perfect Texas cocktail.
Because I’m scared of the dark. Because I think there are plenty of people
with itchy fingers in this neighborhood who have a gun tucked in a drawer. I know I
did.
“I used to live here,” I
say.
“The shovel? What’s that
for?”
I’ve suddenly figured out who he is,
and I’m a little astonished. The handyman. The very same one who worked here more
than a decade ago, who swore every day he was quitting. As I recall, he was a distant
cousin of the grouchy woman who owned the place, a converted Victorian in East Dallas
advertised as
a four-plex
with character.
Translated: ornate crown molding that dropped white crumbs in
my hair like dandruff, windows requiring Hercules to open them, and hot showers lasting
two and a half minutes if I was lucky enough to beat the exercise freak on the first
floor who woke up at 5
A.M.
The windows were why I
took the place. No one crawling up and in. That, and the listing’s promise of
Girls Only.
“When did the owner take out the
parking spaces and dig this swimming pool?” I ask. “Marvin? Is it
Marvin?”
“You remember old Marvin, do ya? Most
of the girls do. Pool went in about three years ago. It used to be a gravel lot with
numbered signs where everybody had a spot. But then, you’d know that. Now
everybody complains they have to fight it out in the street. And Gertie has stopped
filling the pool. Says it’s not worth the money and that Marvin don’t keep
the leaves out. Old Marvin’s doing the best he can. When did you say you lived
here?”
“Ten years ago. Or so.” Vague.
I’d forgotten his habit of addressing himself in the third person. It partly
explains why he never found another job.
“Ah, the good old days, when these
whiney college brats didn’t call Marvin at 2
A.M
. about how their
Apples ain’t connectin’ to the Universe.”
I shove the laugh back down in my throat and
don’t correct him. I pull the hood off so I can see better, and instantly realize
the mistake. I toss my hair, trying to cover the side of my face with the scar. The toss
is enough for Marvin to take renewed interest in me even though I’m in roomy black
sweats and running shoes and not wearing a stitch of makeup. It must have been a slow
day for him at the Girls Only House, which is the real reason I’m guessing he
stays.
“I’m curious,” I say
hesitantly. “Did they find anything when they dug up the pool?”
“Ya mean like a dead body? Whoa, you
should see your face. No bodies, sweetheart. Are you missing one?”
“No. No. Of course not.”
Marvin is shaking his head.
“You’re just like those damn kids. Or maybe you’re a scout for one of
those ghost shows?”
“What kids?”
“The sorority that rents the apartment
right up there on the
left-hand corner every fall, thinking it is
haunted. Use it to scare the shit out of their pledges. Drape skeletons dressed in
see-through nighties out the window. Invite their rich frat boys and serve
black-eyed-pea dip and trashcan punch, the stuff they vomit up on the front porch for me
to clean up. Gertie started charging a premium to rent that apartment. But do you think
she pays Marvin more? Nope. Marvin just has to suck it up and clean it up.”
“Why do they think … there are
ghosts?” As soon as the question rolls off my tongue, I regret it.
You know
the answer.
“Because of the girl who lived there a
long time ago. The one who got away from the Black-Eyed Susan killer. We didn’t
even know it was her until a year and a half after she moved in. She was nice enough.
Worked at a little design firm downtown. She complained a few times that we
wouldn’t let her gate up the staircase for her little girl. Gertie said it would
take away the old house charm.”
Suddenly, his face freezes.
“Jesus, you’re that girl,
ain’t ya? You’re the Susan that lived up there.”
“My name isn’t Susan.”
“Shoulda known soon as I saw your red
hair. Crap, no one is gonna believe this. Can Marvin take a picture? You’re for
real, right? Not a ghost?” For a second, he seems to be truly considering
this.
Before I can think, the phone is out of his
pocket, the button pressed. I am recorded, with flash, for all time, into infinity,
about to be passed from phone to Facebook to Twitter to Instagram—Marvin’s
Universe and beyond.
“Great,” he says to himself,
peering at his phone. “Got the shovel in the background.”
If my monster didn’t know already, he
will soon.
I am on the hunt.
A light blares from every window as I swing
into our driveway around 7. Not a sign that Charlie is scared, I remind myself, just her
habit of flipping lights on as she goes and never bothering to
turn them off.
I spoke with Charlie about half an hour ago.
A pizza with Canadian bacon and black olives had, indeed, been delivered, eaten, and
deemed “solid.” Everything seemed so normal on the other end of the line.
Far, far removed from my disturbing encounter with Marvin. So much so that I had stopped
at Tom Thumb to fill Charlie’s texted list of special requests for her lunch: yelo
cheez, BF (nt honey) ham, Mrs. B’s white brd, grapes, hummus, pretz, mini Os.
“I’m home,” I yell,
kicking the door closed behind me. The security system is switched on. Check. Charlie
had even cleaned up the pizza box from the coffee table in front of the TV, where I
assumed she’d been sneaking in a Netflix rerun of something on my waffle-y
I
don’t really like you to watch shows like that
list.
But no Charlie. No backpack. The TV, warm. I
pass through the living room and set the bag of groceries on the counter with my
keys.
“Charlie?” Probably in her room,
living inside Bose headphones while reluctantly tramping around nineteenth-century
England with Jane Austen.
I knock, because Aunt Hilda never did. No
answer. I crack her door. Shove it wide open. Bed unmade.
Pride and Prejudice
operating as a coaster for a water bottle. Clothes strewn everywhere. Her underwear
drawer dumped on the bed. A streak of mud across the floor.
Pretty much as she left it this morning. But
no Charlie.
The rest of the house sweep takes about a
minute, plenty of time for sickening waves of panic to roll in. I thrust open the
sliding glass doors to the back yard, yelling her name. She’s not in the hammock
along the back fence line, jerry-rigged from the thick trunk of the live oak to an
ancient horse post that Effie had saved from a carpenter’s axe. The studio windows
gleam black above me; the garage doors are shut tight.
My phone. I need my phone.
I rush back inside and
fumble for it in my purse. Clumsily punch in the new security code that I had to choose
after the software update yesterday. Locked out.
Shit, shit, shit.
Try the four
numbers one more time, slowly. Promise myself that I will never, ever update my phone
again. Hit the icon.
And there it is, my one-word, God-sent
reprieve.
In seconds, I am banging wildly on
Effie’s door. It seems to take forever for her to answer it. She’s cloaked
in a long white nightgown with lace that strangles her neck. Gray hair, sprung from its
usual braided bun, rains down to her waist. I’d peg her as a runaway from
Pemberley if she were clutching a candle instead of the largest laminated periodic table
I’ve ever seen.
“What in heaven’s name is
wrong?” Effie asks.
Be patient, be patient, be patient.
“Is Charlie here?”
Breathless.
“Of course she is.” Effie steps
aside, and there’s my girl, the most beautiful sight in the world, cross-legged on
the floor by the coffee table, scribbling in a notebook. I pick up every detail: hair
fanned out around her face like red turkey feathers, swept up by a chip clip; the
volleyball shorts she’s still wearing even though it’s 50 degrees outside;
the fuzzy pink pig slippers; the chipped gold glitter fingernail polish. Her lips are
moving, exaggerated, like a silent film star.
Save me.
“I was sitting a bit on the front
porch swing and I saw a man roaming around our yards,” Effie begins.
Pizza guy,
Charlie is mouthing now.
Her eyes are rolling and Effie’s still chattering while all my brain can do is
pound out,
He doesn’t have her.