Little Girls(4)

The question caused Felix Lorton to suck on his lower lip while his eyes narrowed to slits. A sound like a frog’s croak rumbled at the back of the man’s throat.

“Water will be fine for her, too,” Laurie assured him.

“Very well,” Lorton said, then disappeared down the hall that led to the kitchen.

“All these books have pages torn out of them,” Ted said, replacing one of the leather-bound editions back on the shelf. “How strange.”

Laurie went to one of the windows and looked out onto the side yard. The lawn was spangled with sunlight and the wooden fence was green and furry with mildew. Tree branches drooped over the fence from the neighboring yard, the trees themselves all but blotting out the house next door. She could make out shuttered windows and dark, peeling siding. A green car of indeterminable make and model was parked in the neighbor’s driveway and there was another vehicle with some sort of emblem on the door parked on the street. The Russ family had lived there when she was a girl. Laurie wondered who lived there now.

“This house smells funny,” Susan said. She was crouching down to peer into the black, sooty maw of the hearth. “It reminds me of Miss Tannis’s house back home.” Bertha Tannis was the elderly widow who lived two houses down from the Genarros in Hartford. When she was younger, Susan would sometimes go there after school if both Laurie and Ted weren’t home to greet her.

Ted went over and sat on the loveseat. He sighed dramatically as he draped an arm over the high back. “I should have asked the old galantuomo for a scotch and soda.”

“Is this where bats live?” Susan asked, still peering into the fireplace. She was trying to look up into the chimney, but there was a tri-panel screen in the way blocking her view.

“It’s a fireplace, Snoozin,” Ted said, using their daughter’s much hated nickname. “You know what that is.”

“I know what it is,” she retorted, “but there’s animals out here. Not like we have at home. Didn’t you hear what the man said about the snakes in the well?”

“There are no snakes in the well,” Ted assured her. He sounded bored, tired. It had been a long drive down from Connecticut for him, too. “He was just pulling your leg.”

“What does ‘pulling your leg’ mean?”

“It means he was joking.”

“I know it means that, Daddy, but why does it mean that?”

“I don’t know. That’s a good question.”

Felix Lorton returned with two tall glasses of ice water. He set them on the coffee table between the sofa and the loveseat. Laurie caught Lorton eyeing Ted ruefully, as if he did not approve of the man lounging on the loveseat in such a casual fashion.

“Thank you,” Ted said, picking up his glass and taking a healthy drink from it.

“Why does someone say ‘pulling your leg’ when they’re telling you a joke?” Susan asked Felix Lorton.

The man straightened his back and lifted his head just enough so that the bands of loose flesh beneath his neck hung like a dewlap. He cleared his throat. “To pull one’s leg is to make a fool of them, as in to trip them up and make them fall down.” Felix Lorton spoke with an authority Laurie found comical, particularly when addressing a ten-year-old girl. Laurie bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

“Neat,” Susan said.

“Yeah, neat,” Ted added. “I didn’t know that, either.”

“My sister will be with you folks shortly. If you’ll excuse me, there are some things I need to attend to before we leave.”

Laurie thanked him and Lorton effected a slight bow. His black coat flared out around his ankles as he shuffled quickly down the hallway. Blood thinners, it occurred to Laurie. That’s why he’s wearing the coat and that’s why his hand was so cold. He must be on blood thinners for medical reasons. A moment later, Laurie heard a door far off in the house squeal open and then close again. With little carpeting to dull the noise, the sound echoed throughout the house.

Susan skipped over to the coffee table and scooped up her glass of water. She hummed a soft melody under her breath.

“Don’t spill it,” warned her father.

Susan scowled and, for a moment, she looked to Laurie like a grown woman. Those dark eyes, that lustrous black hair, the copper-colored skin and long, coltish legs . . . at times, the girl looked so much like her father that Laurie felt like an outsider among them, an interloper in some other family’s life. Laurie was the fair-skinned freckled one with a plain face and eyes that were maybe a hair too far apart. Summertime, while her husband and daughter tanned with the luxuriance of Roman gods, Laurie burned a fiery red, then shed semitransparent sheets of peeled skin for the next several days.

“How come you didn’t tell me it was such a nice house, Laurie?” Ted asked from the loveseat.

“Didn’t I?”

“A house like this could go for top dollar, even in this lousy economy. I’ll bet it’s worth a fortune. It just needs a little TLC, that’s all.”

“I guess we’ll find out when we speak to the lawyer.”

“What’s ‘TLC’?” Susan asked.

“You’re dripping water on the rug,” Ted told the girl.

Susan set her drink down on the coffee table, then went over to the piano.