THE NEW OWNER
Rachel could only stare at the newly painted walls for so long; but this activity took up some time between the seemingly endless phone calls that had been plaguing her since Sassy had left at three. First, the two teenagers that Hugh had hired to help move the bedroom furniture and the dining room table called at quarter to four wondering where Hugh was. They wondered if they would get paid even though they obviously weren't moving anything. Then her secretary called; messages were piling up for her at the office, and one of her clients was angry because he'd been arrested after his case had already been dismissed when the man bringing the charge had failed to show up for the preliminary hearing. Rachel then had to call him, then call the municipal court and act angry. Then Sassy called to see if she was all right. She lied and said that Hugh had gotten home about five minutes after Sassy had left.
Rachel did not even realize that she was watching apas de deux between two large roaches. They skittered down the kitchen wall, disappearing behind the range. She had seen enough roaches to last her a lifetime that afternoon.
With some pathetic semblance of organization, Rachel Adair wandered around the house with the yellow Post-it Notes she'd pilfered from her office. At each door, each corner, along the refrigerator, above the stove, on the French doors, she stuck the paper with phrases like: WINDEX or GRBGE DSPSL? or ROACH!! or PAINT PEELING. She stuck yellow papers all over the house with ROACH ALERT written across them. Then she saw what looked like mouse droppings in a faded rectangle of linoleum -every kind of vermin in the world seemed to use the kitchen as its dumping ground. The Post-it Note she left on the wall above it read simply, MOUSEDOODY, with an arrow pointing to the floor. The Post-it Note mania was on the advice of her mother who was perhaps the most organized person in the cosmos. "If you write notes to yourself, you don't have to overload your brain with minor details," mother had said. “You've never been good at getting your facts straight or your details right, Rachel, not when you were a little girl and not now, but if you just keep reminding yourself of these things…" And if I don't remind myself, I know you will, mom. Would Rachel really say that to her mother? If she did say something snippy her mother would pause whether on the phone or sitting across the table from her or next to her in the car, and look away. Or Rachel imagined her mother would look away because it seemed like the Right Thing To Do, which mother was really, really good at.
Normally, I'd rebel against you on this, mom, but I want it to be right, I want it to be normal in this house. I don't want to start off on the wrong foot in my own house -our house -I want this to be a place we can start our family. Maybe only one baby, maybe six, maybe this year, maybe in three years.
(But Dear God before I turn thirty-five, please, please, please. She was again staring at the walls when the phone rang. A woman's voice, “You hooked up your phone?"
"Mom." Rachel wanted to add: Funny, I was just thinking about you. Rachel always recognized her mother's voice by that sedimentary layer of Southernness that remained in the woman's voice all these years she'd been living outside of North Carolina: every sentence seemed to end in a question mark, so it was not just, you hooked up your phone, but, you hooked up your phone? If her mother were to mention the weather, Rachel knew she'd say in a slow, deliberate voice, It gonna be a sun-shiny day?
When Rachel had been younger, her mother constantly scolded her for talking back, while Rachel had always felt she was just answering her mother's questions.
“You don't sound thrilled." You don't sound thrilled?
"I was expecting Hugh."
"He's working?"
"He had an interview."
“You don't sound too hopeful. You went and had your blood sugar checked like I asked you, because when you sound like this -"
"When I sound like what?"
“You know, drained and edgy? I used to have bad periods, you know, it's not that unusual. But there's hypoglycemia and your brothers have it. Kelly has PMS. It's like having walking time bombs for children." Rachel waited a beat, catching her breath. She was not going to argue with her mother over the phone; that would be playing into her hands.
"Hugh was supposed to be home at two."
"Good lord, it's nearly seven. You don't think something happened?" Sometimes I wish something would happen. "No. But I guess if he'd gotten the job he'd be home."
"Sometimes it takes a while. Your father had nearly a year when he left the navy before he got on with the beltway bandits."
"Let's drop it. Is something up?"
"I was just bored. I was playing grandma to Keily's brood last week, and now the place seems empty. Are you all moved in?"
"There's a shitload of work to do."
"Since when do you use language like that with your mother?"
"When I get off the phone I'll wash my mouth out. Goodbye."
"Give me a call when you're feeling better, okay?"
"Right. Goodbye."
When she got off the phone from that call, Rachel felt like breaking something. Not because of her mother, although there was that little aside about "playing grandma" to Kelly's kids (she had four and she wasn't even thirty yet) -it was Hugh who was the object of her frustration.
The thought Hugh where are you? was soon replaced with, I could scream, I will just scream. But she remembered the downstairs tenant. So I can break something and it will be like screaming. The plates and glasses were still packed away in boxes, so it would be difficult to break them. By the time she'd opened the boxes the anger would've dissipated. Rachel saw Hugh's record collection there by the fireplace. She went over.
This will really hurt him. She picked up his "Ella Fitzgerald Sings Duke Ellington" record, removing the disc from the sleeve. But instead, she looked at the shiny record kept in mint condition -"Take the A Train." She spent the next twenty minutes unpacking the stereo and connecting the speakers up. She put the record on. She sat on the sofa and gazed out at the patio and alley. The rain had stopped and in the sunless summer light, steam and mist glowed like morning dew. Through the French doors she saw a man standing in the alley on the other side of the gate. For a second she thought it was Hugh finally home, but realized not only would he not be coming in the back way (it would make no sense) but also Hugh had lighter hair. Even from this distance she could tell that the skinny stranger was much better looking than Hugh (and she thought Hugh was pretty damn cute). Rather than panic, as she was well aware any normal person would, Rachel thought: This is one of the oddest neighborhoods, bag ladies in front of the house and thieves in back. The tall, gangly man was attempting to climb over the back gate. He was the kind of skinny that reminded her of a skeleton, although his darkly tanned face seemed to have enough meat on it. His eyes looked like small coffee beans sunk above high cheekbones. Beneath the heavy eyebrows and the short-cropped light brown hair he was wearing a navy blazer and a yellow tie, hardly the uniform of the neighborhood thief. Perhaps one of Mrs. Deerfield's friends.
It was only when the stranger saw her and waved frantically that she realized who it was.
Ted Adair.
Hugh's brother.
Rachel rose from the couch, smiling.
Rachel hadn't seen Ted since the wedding last fall, and then only briefly because naturally there was some argument between the two brothers. She was sure that if you put Hugh in a room with any member of his family, he would find something to argue about with them, whether it was the state of the world or a jar of peanut butter. Perhaps that's why they were a family of lawyers. At the reception, she'd pulled Hugh aside and said, "Can't you two get along for just five minutes?" But she'd felt it was Hugh's fault that Ted had not shown up for the reception. "What did you say to him?" she'd asked her husband. Hugh had looked her square in the face and said: "I told him he wasn't welcome, Scout. He's just a messenger boy for the Old Man. He's only here to lay the family curse."
Because it was her wedding day and she had her own friends and family to contend with (particularly her drunken Uncle Paul who had begun flirting heavily with her bridesmaids), Rachel had decided not to reprimand Hugh for this kind of boorish behavior, although she would've liked to tell him, "Hugh Adair, you're becoming more like your father every day." And now, as she went through the French doors and down the rain-puddled iron stairs in back, she was glad that Hugh wasn't home to drive Ted off.
"Rachel! Let me in or I'll blow your house down!" Ted banged hard on the gate; it creaked and shuddered as if it would fall apart at any moment. "I feel like a wet dog out here!" His voice rose and fell like a swing, and hearing it reminded her of Hugh before life had begun to bog him down.
She went to the gate and unlatched it from the inside. It swung open with an obnoxious squeal, threatening to slam against its side, but Ted caught the edge of it with his right hand. With his left hand, he reached over and clutched her shoulder as if he were off balance and about to fall forward.
“You should post a sign: Slippery When Wet." His dark eyes drank in the whole scene: the patio, the house, Rachel with damp hair -and no Hugh.
"I've caught you at a bad time."
"Of course not. Come inside and see the place."
"I hope I don't muddy my boots on the way from the carriage house. Quite a little manor you got here. Where's my baby brother?" He picked up his attaché case from the concrete and swung it from side to side. "Got something the two of you might be interested in."
"Oh, Ted, he's on an interview. But he's supposed to be back fairly soon."
"Who needs Hugh?" Ted parted the case. “You can handle this stuff yourself, I mean, it is in your name."
"What is?" She led the way up the staircase.
"Rachel," and when she turned around to face Ted on the stairs for just an instant she had a sense of something, something there on his face that was like Hugh but not like Hugh, and he grinned a broad uninhibited grin as if he had a terrific joke but if he told her it wouldn't seem so funny. But he could no longer keep it inside. Ted Adair said: "Didn't he tell you? The whole goddamn house is in your name."
"My name?"
"I'm surprised Hugh didn't mention it, although, hey, maybe dad didn't even go over the details with Hughie -dad's not real good with his kids, but I guess you don't need me telling you that -" Ted spoke in gusts of conversation, still managing to take sips from the can of Diet Coke she'd brought him when they went inside. He slouched on the sofa in the living room, one leg looping through the other, his feet tap-tapping nervously against the hardwood floor.
"Dad, in his own inimitable way, has his charming side, and he thinks the wife and kiddies -if any exist I don't know about, you tell me -should have some property. It's dad's soft side coming through. I think the way dad put it was, 'I don't want my grandchildren going homeless.'"
Rachel glanced through the papers. It all looked like just another batch of legalese to dump in her already overstuffed file cabinet, but there was her name on every page, and places for her signature. "I'm flattered he thought to -"
Ted interrupted: "Include you in the little grudge match he's got going with Hughie? It's an unenviable position. He treated Joanna -it's okay to say her name now, isn't it? – that way, too. He made sure everything was put in her name, what there was, anyway." When Ted mentioned Hugh's first wife, Joanna, Rachel felt a jolt go through her that had nothing to do with all the caffeine she'd been drinking. She wasn't sure if Ted was joking or not; Hugh called his brother The Joker, and a tense moment arrived when she didn't know how to take this last comment. With Hugh, this would be a serious conversation because it concerned the Old Man and his late wife -and there was nothing to joke about there. Hugh always had that dead earnestness which she had admired in law school, a true-blue quality. His fucking integrity. The same integrity that kept him from going to the old Man's lawfirm for a job.
Rachel watched Ted, trying to read his eyes. They were dark brown, like hers, and unfathomable. But Ted broke out laughing -it was a joke after all. "It gives one pause, as inappropriate as it is to bring such sacred cows as the dead, and the near dead -I mean pop, about being near dead. He believes that he's not going to be around much longer." But he was still chuckling as he spoke, and so, Rachel thought, It's all a joke, he's not serious. His laughter was contagious; she, too, began laughing in spite of herself, in spite of her anger with Hugh for taking so long to get home, in spite of his dead first wife, and in spite of the Old Man and his deeds. "Oh, Ted, this is awful, making jokes about dead people."
"Don't forget the near dead, too," Ted giggled almost like a little boy.
"I'm sorry, Rachel, I just couldn't resist. None of us in the family ever really liked Joanna -not that she ever let us near enough to know if she was likable. She was the most talented block of ice I've ever met." His words were punctuated with sniffling giggles. Rachel crinkled the legal papers in her lap. Maybe it was Hugh who never let you get near enough to her, the way he keeps his family away from his second wife, too. She wondered how Hugh would react if he knew that his older brother had dropped by the house unannounced. But she felt giggly, silly, slightly dizzy -probably just hungry -her stomach was gurgling and she'd completely forgotten to buy any food. Ted continued talking, joking, saying hilarious things, and she felt like she'd been given a quick breath of pure oxygen. She was drunk from Diet Coke. "Ted, you're so funny."
"What do you think Hughie would say if I was to tell him he's got the most beautiful and intelligent wife on the planet?"
"He'd say you were after something." Rachel heard her voice as if down a long hallway. Watch what you say, Scout, this is a Greek bearing gifts, not your best old friend in college.
But she'd said it: He'd say you were after something. She covered her mouth to keep other foolish things from pouring out. Ted stared at her. His jaw seemed to drop to the floor, his eyes widening incredulously.
Then he was laughing even harder than before, gales of laughter. He slapped the sofa and his knees and his attach case he was laughing so hard, clutching his stomach, kicking the floor with the heels of his loafers. Tears leapt from his eyes.
"No, no," she was laughing again, pointing to his shoes, “You'll scruff the floors," which caused both of them to laugh again because the wood floors were already mercilessly scratched like an ice rink after a hockey game.
But the laughing died inside both of them, Ted wiping his eyes and Rachel catching her breath, feeling like she'd just sprinted a mile.
"Families," Ted said, shaking his head wearily. It was as if he were coming down from a drug-induced high. The laughing moment was over and normal, steady life had caught up with them again. Ted stood up, stretching his long frame.
Rachel felt embarrassed as if they'd just shared something intimate. The camaraderie she'd just felt with Ted also felt like some kind of betrayal of Hugh. She sat there on the box that held Hugh's collection of novels, smiling up at Ted, wondering if she was betraying Hugh, and if Hugh knew she was betraying him. A small betrayal, not a big one, just a normal betrayal. But what do you want me to do, Hugh? Tell him he's not allowed in the house? My house as it turns out. Well, Hugh, you may have been raised to be rude to people, but I wasn't. No grudge is worth nursing forever. Rachel got up off the box. "I should show you around the place." Ted reached over, touching her left shoulder, bearing down slightly.
"No, you sit down and wait for Hughie. The grand tour can wait for a housewarming party -you're giving one, right?" Rachel shrugged, sitting back down. "We've got so much to do to get this place up to a livable standard."
"Don't be stupid -that's what a housewarming party's for -everyone can bring a gift to keep your decorating overhead low."
"Look, Ted, Hugh should be back soon. Why don't you wait and join us for dinner?"
"Now, do you think Hughie would really want to have me sitting across the table from him?" Ted grinned. He went to the open door, about to leave, and then turned to face her again. “You're a mender, Rachel, that's nice. But no, I better skedaddle. And with those papers, no rush, just sign where you're supposed to, call if there's anything too weird in them, and then those at the end, well, it's all that household crap about how the furnace is set up and insurance bullshit about your tenant-also a blueprint -well, more of a sketch of the floor plan. It's a read-it-and-weep job, because I think a heck of a lot of work has been done in alterations on this place. I heard it was just a skeleton and a bunch of crumbling walls until about 1977. And Rachel, Rachel, Rachel, think housewarming party-I love a good blow-out and I always bring the best gifts, anyway."
He gave her a quick wink before descending the stairs to the patio. Rachel went to shut the French doors behind him; the muggy, steamy day was almost over, Hugh wasn't home, damn him, and she watched Ted shut the back gate gently.
He strode down the alley, looking back every few feet just to see if she was still standing there.
And what would Hugh think of this visit? Oh, Hugh -your brother dropped by today with some papers.
If the interview went well it might slide right off him. He might grin and say, "Oh?" and then tell her about this new job he might get. But if the interview went badly, or if he hadn't made it to the interview (and that had happened twice in the past two months), what would he say? Would he give her his mad smile? The one that meant he was trying to maintain a pleasant exterior, but inside he was seething?
He never mentioned his brother except to recall a particularly vicious moment from what Hugh termed "childhood's greatest hits." Let's Pretend. Scout. Let's Pretend that you're me and you're standing at the top of the stairs and your big brother Ted pushes you down them and you're black and blue. But you don't want to upset your mom because she has problems of her own, big ones like the old Man. And so you say that you fell down the stairs all by yourself And Let's Pretend that this goes on, say, ten or twelve times one summer and you're black and blue to the point where mom, out of concern, takes you to several doctors, one being a kiddo psychiatrist, because she doesn't think an eight year old would normally be so clumsy. And Let's Pretend that your brother puts a rubber band around your pet cat's neck and he tells you, because you're younger and you want to believe your big brother, that it's a special, secret collar and not to tell mom or the housekeeper about it. And then you wake up one morning and the cat is dead on the balcony because this thing, this rubber band, has eaten into its neck and cut off its circulation.
Let's Pretend that you take the blame for it because your older brother lies and calls you a killer.
It wouldn't matter that Rachel would argue that they were both kiddos themselves and that maybe it wasn't as black and white between the two brothers as Hugh made it out to be. “You make it sound like the evil twins on those stupid TV shows," she would say if she had the nerve. But as Rachel watched her brother-in-law, Ted, walk out of sight beyond the apartments next to theirs in the alley, she thought: Okay, for marital harmony, Let's Pretend you never came by, Ted, and these papers arrived through the mail slot.
She went over to the stereo to turn the Ella Fitzgerald record over. Then she lay down on the couch, wondering when Hugh -the bastard -would make it home, wondering when the sun would go down, wondering if it was a headache she was feeling coming on or if this was just normal life taking its toll. She closed her eyes for a few moments, then opened them again, then closed them. Just for a few moments. Rachel Adair dreamed of babies, beautiful healthy babies coming out of her, all on schedule at nine months to the day, all little Adairs. And she was the mommy and Hugh was the daddy, and somewhere in the dream her healthy, beautiful father was saying, "I am so proud of you, sweetheart."