The Carriage House (8 page)

Chapter 7

W
hen Isabelle opened the door for the police, she found herself explaining that her mother—who had been suffering from advanced dementia for many years—had thrown the rocks, and that it wouldn’t happen again, and that she was very sorry for the disturbance.

This came as a surprise. When she called to report the Little Lane Offensive, she had happily imagined the Horrifying Woman getting carted off in her nightgown, blinking in her lidless way while the cops pushed her head down to avoid the frame of the car. But as Isabelle was making her triumphant way to the door, she passed William, muttering at the open refrigerator. He seemed so small, washed by the false light of the fridge, that Isabelle stopped in her tracks. She wanted to stand beside him and snake her arm around his waist. When he felt her presence, he shut the refrigerator door. “I can’t smell anything,” he said. It had been a long time since she had felt for him so strongly. The cops were at the front door, Adelia was upstairs with her pile of rocks, and William was looking at Isabelle as if only she could restore his sense of the world.

When she opened the front door, she found that she had turned on her charm. This charm was separate from her; she, Isabelle Adair, was not a charming person. But she did have access to a switch that she had been able to turn on or off ever since she started competing on court. When her charm was on, she entered rooms and people adjusted themselves to orient around the pole of her presence. It was a quality her sisters lacked. Elizabeth had no ability to differentiate between her outer and inner selves, a significant failing for an actress. She was one entity, frantic and agitated, incapable of controlling multiple layers of selfhood despite years of study. Diana was athletic, and that was sometimes attractive to people, but she wasn’t charming. Her looks were frank; they seemed to conceal little mystery. No, Isabelle was the most charming Adair. It made her into a powerful secret agent, capable of dangerous missions and covert activities.

As soon as she opened the door, the officer started to stutter. Isabelle acted awed by his presence; she widened her eyes beneath his gaze and awaited his judgment. The officer consoled her; he took full responsibility; he offered to write a letter of apology to the family as a whole. Isabelle accepted this gracefully—no, charmingly—and sent him on his way, waving him off in the driveway.

When the cop cars had receded, she turned the switch off and felt the familiar crumpling that always occurred post-charm, as her veneer faded and she was left alone with whatever existed beneath. By the time she was back in the kitchen, surrounded by her family, she could summon nothing but a dirty bathwater feeling. William had returned to his seat at the table. Adelia was behind him, dressed in a lilac sweater set and capri pants, her hair clipped back like a little girl’s. Beside her, William peered at his coffee as though a dead mouse were floating in it. By the refrigerator, Diana gripped a carton of orange juice, and in front of the potted fern in the corner, Elizabeth clutched Lucy and Caroline, two large chickens that she was getting ready to carry down to the market.

“What happened?” Adelia asked, her voice taut as a coiled spring.

“It’s fine,” Isabelle said. “They think it was Mom. They apologized.”

“Oh, Izzy,” Adelia said. “Thank you. You’re wonderful.”

It should be illegal, Isabelle thought, for a grown woman like Adelia to wear two little clips on the sides of her head. It should also be illegal for her to feign innocence or any kind of fragility. Because when all the Adairs had crumbled to dust—when Margaux evaporated into the hazy atmosphere, when Elizabeth combusted and Diana slipped sadly away, when William finally aged in the way he had committed himself not to do, and when Isabelle had found it in herself to cut the remaining threads—Adelia Lively would rise out of the ashes, craggy-browed, the sole survivor of the whole pathetic group. The chance had been there for Isabelle to vanquish her, but she’d chosen not to. Adelia wouldn’t have chosen the same.

From the crook of Elizabeth’s elbow, Lucy spoke. “We were supposed to play tennis this morning,” she said.

Elizabeth freed her chickens in order to raise a dramatic hand to her brow. “Oh my God, they had a tennis court! At ten o’clock. And I have to get to work. And Adelia, Daddy says he can’t smell his coffee.”

None of the assembled characters responded to this list of grievances. They examined one another in silence, as though everyone had forgotten their lines.

“Izzy, I could use some help,” Elizabeth said when no one else offered. “Could you take the girls to tennis? Please.”

“It’s my first day of summer break,” Izzy said. “Doesn’t Dad want to take them?”

“I don’t want to take them to tennis,” William said.

No one spoke. Elizabeth leaned heavily against the wall, and for the first time Isabelle noticed that she was wearing two different scarves, one lavender and one green with a paisley pattern that looked like an infestation of orange bugs. Something was very wrong with every single person in the kitchen.

“Fine,” Izzy said. “I’ll take them.”

And so she found herself in possession of her two nieces, walking across the golf course to the club. Both of the girls were quiet at first. The scene at the house had obviously shaken them. But as they walked, Lucy’s quietness became noisy. She was summoning resentment; Isabelle could hear it in the angry swinging of her arms. She started clapping her hands in the direction of invisible insects. Caroline was more tentative. She had her father’s nearsightedness and had been wearing thick glasses since she was a toddler. Isabelle felt for her, stuck in a family of people priming themselves for a fight. The rocks, the police, and all of Isabelle’s charming lies must have been difficult for her to understand.

When they arrived at the courts, Lucy tore her racket out of its case and ran to her side of the court. Caroline was slower. She didn’t have a racket; she had to borrow one from the pro shop. She kept dragging her feet. She tied her shoelaces with excruciating attention to detail. By the time she was out on court, a little crowd had assembled to witness the commercial adorableness of Lucy Adair, approximately the same size as her tennis racket, her blond hair in two stiff braids, bouncing a ball on her strings and humming to herself. Izzy sat down on a bench to watch. Lucy was launching forehands that a person her size had no right to launch. In another life, Izzy might have smiled at the sheer guts of that tiny girl to hit such shots, but in this life, at this country club, she felt nothing but the greedy eyes of the gathered crowd fastened to her niece.

“Check out that little firebrand out there,” she heard Jack say from behind her. She didn’t turn around to acknowledge him.

“Hi, Izzy,” Abby Weld said to Izzy’s back. She turned and attempted to smile. Abby was wearing a tennis dress. Her ponytail was tied with a white ribbon, all wrapped up and ready to be given away. Jack stood beside her, proud dad. The kind of dad who puts an Amherst bumper sticker on his Volvo the very second his daughter gets in.

“It’s a treat to see you here, Isabelle,” he was saying. “We haven’t seen you at the courts in years!”

There was nothing to say in response. Seeing him and Abby together had always struck Isabelle as a sad joke. Sometimes the joke was on them, sometimes on Isabelle. She wished she could get away from Breacon and never see them again.

“That Lucy’s a real firebrand,” he repeated. “She looks just like your sister out there when she was a kid.”

“Diana had the bowl cut, though,” Izzy muttered, compelled against her will to a modicum of sociability.

“You Adairs were always talented.”

Izzy turned back to her nieces on court. Caroline was playing obediently, as though counting every step, measuring the arc of her swing. She took the ball too late. It was heartbreaking, how careful she was with each of her movements, how reluctant she felt about forward motion. Lucy played differently. She was careless, unhindered, springing on the ball like a young bird of prey.

Behind her, Izzy felt more people gathering. A lady’s clinic ended, and its members assembled by the fence, clucking among themselves over Lucy’s general panache. Jack said something and they laughed harder, at which point Lucy, startled, looked up as if she’d noticed their presence for the very first time. Her brow furrowed. The cloud of this morning returned with a vengeance. For an extended moment, she glared at the offending gaggle of ladies, then turned and missed the next serve that Caroline launched over the net. Her brow furrowed even more deeply. She muttered something to herself while she walked to the other side, then lost the next three points.

“She’s got a little temper, doesn’t she?” Jack said. Lucy fumed at him before serving so hard and long, the ball clattered against the back fence. Jack chuckled and Isabelle felt sick.

By the time they switched sides, Lucy had lost two straight games. She moved forward with murderous intention. At the net post, she gave Izzy a single hateful glance and muttered under her breath, “Shitbagger can of a pile of sluts.”

Izzy’s mouth dropped. Lucy proceeded to her side of the court.

“Did she just say ‘shitbagger’?” Abby Weld laughed.

Izzy stood and walked out to Lucy. She could feel Jack’s eyes on her. Across the net, Caroline watched, shifting from one foot to the other. “Lucy,” Isabelle whispered. “Lucy, what did you just say?”

Lucy glared at her strings.

“Lucy, what did you just say?”

“Nothing.”

“I mean it, what did you say? I’m not mad, I just want to know what you said.”

Lucy approached until she was close enough that Jack Weld wouldn’t be able to hear her, then whispered with reverberating force: “I said, SHITBAGGER CAN OF A PILE OF SLUTS.”

“Wow,” Izzy said. Lucy looked up at her, jaw jutting. “Wow, Lucy, that’s pretty expressive.”

Lucy adjusted her strings, attempting to restrain herself and failing. “THEY’RE WATCHING US,” she whispered violently, “LIKE WE’RE ANIMALS IN A SLUTTY ZOO. LIKE WE’RE SHIT PANDAS IN A SHIT-FUCKING ZOO.”

It was loud enough to cause Caroline to come running over. “Lucy, shhh,” she hissed. She was clutching her water bottle, splotchy-cheeked with distress. “Don’t say that stuff, it’s not nice. I could hear you all the way over there.”

“No, Caroline, it’s okay,” Izzy said. “She’s angry. It’s okay.”

“They’re bad words,” Caroline said, her splotches deepening.

“It’s okay, Caro,” Izzy said. “She’s right. She shouldn’t have to be watched if she doesn’t want to be.” She turned to Lucy. “Those shitbaggers don’t get to watch you if you don’t want them to.”

Lucy’s mouth opened a little. She stared at Izzy. She quieted so miraculously that Caroline breathed a sigh of relief. Her splotches cooled. “Shit pandas!” Caroline whispered.

“You know,” Izzy said, “we don’t have to stay here. We could just stop.”

Lucy and Caroline appeared shocked by this news, as if giving up a tennis reservation were tantamount to running naked through the country club, cursing at the top of your lungs.

“These shit pandas will watch us for the rest of our lives unless we stop. You can’t satisfy a shit panda: give him an hour and he’ll ask for a lifetime.”

“Shit panda!” Caroline giggled.

Izzy felt good. She felt like she was giving them a thing that was important. “Let’s get out of this shit-fucking zoo and go somewhere else. Let’s get away from this slut pile once and for all.”

They left Lucy’s racket behind. Elizabeth could pick it up in the lost and found. They were leaving the shit pandas behind. Jack Weld could fuck himself. The ladies’ clinic could look down their noses. What did she care? They were escaping out Clubhouse Road, Lucy was skipping at her side, Caroline was babbling something, and Izzy was thinking that maybe they could go downtown on the train. She could take them to lunch at that restaurant by William’s office. They moved in a green shade, under the arms of the Osage orange trees that lined the street, dropping their fruits like small green brains. The world was still new; the flatness of summer hadn’t settled. Lucy, skipping ahead, picking up oranges and flinging them off to the side, giddily turned and called back, “WORM BONER!”

“That’s good!” Izzy called.

Lucy skipped forward, then spun and called back again, jumping up in the air for greater effect: “WORM BONER AND A PILE OF RUSTY SLUTS!”

Izzy laughed again, and Caroline joined her. Lucy, proud of herself, spun around once more, and as she spun she vaulted forward suddenly, flung down on the ground by her own propulsion. When she got up—reluctantly this time, some of her energy siphoned—there was a red caterpillar on her eyebrow. As Izzy watched, the caterpillar expanded, clinging close, and then there was a curtain of blood falling over Lucy’s eye. For a moment, Lucy looked as though she would either smile or kill someone, but instead she started to cry. She lifted one hand to her face and brought it down, soaked in blood.

They would have to go back. Izzy had wounded a child who wasn’t her own, and they would have to go back. She ran toward Lucy, picked her up and held her close, then headed back to the club with her niece’s hands around her neck like little panda paws.

She found Jack Weld in the clubhouse bar. “She needs stitches,” he said, taking Lucy out of Isabelle’s arms. By the time someone got him a medical kit, Lucy’s eyes had fluttered shut. He laid her down on a leather couch in the men’s locker room, which was cleared for the occasion, and Abby took Caroline home. Sitting by Lucy’s feet, Isabelle watched while Jack pulled his needle in and out of Lucy’s eyebrow.

“She’ll be fine,” he said without looking up from his work.

“Sure.”

“There might be a little scar, but that’s it.” He snipped his thread with a pair of miniature scissors, then stood to throw the needle away. Alone with Isabelle, he was less boyish and light. On his way back from the trash can, he glanced at her. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Fine.”

He set to work cleaning up the medical kit. She watched his hands crawling over his various tools.

“My dad says he can’t smell anything.”