Floating Staircase(26)

“There was a little boy who lived in the house before us,” I said at the foot of the stairs as Jodie plodded tiredly down the risers. “Elijah came here with his mother and uncle when the grandfather got sick.” I deliberately left out the fact that the kid had drowned in the lake behind our house. When she reached the bottom step, I took her wrist and rushed her over to the opening in the basement wall. “You’re not going to believe this, but I think I just found the kid’s bedroom.”

Together we stood shoulder to shoulder, like a couple waiting to get on the subway, in the doorway to Elijah Dentman’s bedroom. I laughed, still amazed by my archeological find, and stepped into the room while negotiating around the boxes I’d placed randomly on the floor after going through them.

Jodie remained in the doorway. There was a look of perfect incomprehension on her face. No, not just incomprehension—apprehension. Fleetingly, I conceded that maybe I wrote those scenes in my books right after all.

“Look at this place,” I said. “They kept the poor kid down here like a prisoner.”

Slowly, Jodie brought a hand to her mouth. Her face had gone the color of soured milk.

“It was like unearthing a bomb shelter or a time capsule or something after a nuclear holocaust.”

“How . . . how did you find this?”

“It was right here behind the wall. I pushed on the wall, and it opened like some pharaoh’s secret f*cking passageway.” I waved her in. “Come here and look at this stuff.”

“No.” She didn’t move.

“What?”

“Get out of there. I don’t like it.”

“What are you talking about? Isn’t this totally f*cking bizarre?”

“Yes. It is.”

I tapped my sneaker against the plastic container of wooden blocks. “I even had these same blocks when I was a kid.”

“How nice for you. Please come out.”

I watched her on the other side of the doorway—really, on the other side of the wall—and for all the distance I suddenly felt between us she could have been in an alternate universe. It was just a temporary feeling, though, and once it passed I went to her and rubbed her arms.

Jodie looked at me, but at the same time her eyes were distant and unfocused, as if I were made of smoke and she could see straight through me.

“Hey,” I said, “what’s the matter with you?” Then the answer dawned on me, and my goofy grin faded. “You know about Elijah. You’re creeped out because you know he died here. That’s it, isn’t it?”

My words surprised her—she’d known, but she hadn’t expected me to know. Before I could fully read her face, she turned away. It wasn’t forceful enough to betray any sense of emotion, but it caused my hands to drop from her arms just the same.

“Tell me,” I said. “You knew, didn’t you?”

“A woman at Adam and Beth’s Christmas party told me.” Jodie wandered over to the washer and dryer where she feigned casual interest in the big orange box of detergent on one of the slatted shelves beneath the basement stairs. I wondered if the woman in question had been Nancy Stein. “I asked Beth about it later, and she said it was true.”

“Why did you keep it a secret from me?”

“Didn’t you keep it a secret from me?”

“I was trying to protect you. There was no need to tell you about it.”

“And I was trying to protect you, too.” When she faced me I could tell she was fighting tears. “I won’t have you chastise me for this. I won’t allow it. I remember that night at your brother’s house after your mom’s funeral. And I’ve been there for your low points when Kyle’s memory haunts you. I hear you talk in your sleep about him. But mostly I know how you are and how you dwell on things, how you torture yourself.” She clenched her beer bottle so tight I feared she would shatter it. “So, yes, I didn’t think you knew, and I had no plans to ever tell you. If I had to keep that secret for your own mental health, then I would have taken it to my grave.”

“Christ. I’m hurt you think I’m so weak.”

“Grow the hell up. Don’t try and make me feel guilty. I won’t.”

Jodie was right. Notwithstanding the sting of betrayal I felt, I understood why she’d kept it from me. Too clearly I could summon the memory of that night after my mother’s funeral, the words that were said in anger and the punches that were thrown.

“Okay,” I said at last, closing the distance between us. I hugged her and felt the beer bottle press into my abdomen. “Okay.”

Jodie sighed against my shoulder, and I let her go. I expected her eyes to be moist but they weren’t. She just looked incredibly tired.

“I want you to call someone, have them come out and get rid of all that stuff,” she said, nodding in the direction of Elijah’s bedroom. “And I don’t want to talk about what happened to that boy anymore. It’s unsettling but it has nothing to do with us.”

“Right,” I said, massaging her shoulder with one hand. “It has nothing at all to do with us.”





CHAPTER ELEVEN

The following morning I telephoned a company called Allegheny Pickup and Removal and spoke to a fellow with the unfortunate name of Harry Peters about getting rid of Elijah Dentman’s things. It would take ten days for them to fit me into their rotation: a duration Jodie wasn’t too thrilled about. Yet if Jodie gave the hidden bedroom and its cache of childlike artifacts more than a passing thought each day, she did a spectacular job not letting it show.