Help for the Haunted(16)

[page]Chapter 5

The Car with One Headlight



Those first few weeks after our parents died, I heard noises in the basement. A kind of rattling, things breaking and smashing. This was back before that bare bulb went dark. Back when its yellowy glow still oozed from the filmy casement window by the dirt, illuminating the lowest branches of the rhododendrons. I felt certain of what the noises were: down below, the things my parents had left behind were lamenting their untimely deaths—no different from what Rose and I were doing up above.

Those were the nights and days we spent shipwrecked in the living room. Together, though not really. I lay on the worn Oriental carpet, staring at the ceiling like there was something up there, a world of constellations that might spell out an explanation instead of just a vast white space with dust in the corners. Rose took up residence on one of the wingback chairs, dragging a second so close it formed a cradle. Her legs hung over the sides, covered by a blanket our mother had knitted years before.

“I don’t understand,” I said again and again. “Why would you make a deal like that with Albert Lynch?”

When Rose answered, her voice held none of its usual bark. Instead, she sounded as dazed and faraway as me. “I made it . . .” she began then stopped, before starting again, “ . . . I made it because I had no idea what it would lead to, Sylvie. He told me he just wanted to talk to them. He told me he wanted to set things straight about what happened with Abigail that summer she came to live here. He told me—”

I waited for her to finish. When she didn’t, we both fell silent. Time had a funny way of moving in those early days and weeks after they were gone. An hour might have passed, or maybe just a few minutes. It all felt the same. Finally, some part of my consciousness rose up to prod her. “He told you what?”

“I don’t know. He just made it sound simple. Like if I got them to meet him, he’d be happy and would leave them alone. Even though I was in a fight with them, I thought it might be a good thing. You know, for them to be finally rid of the guy. So I went to the pay phone outside that bar, dropped a dime in, and made the call.”

“And Albert gave you the money before he left?”

She did not respond, but I remembered the way my mother once tried to teach me how to understand a person’s silence. And though I had never been good at it before, for the first time, I thought I understood Rose.

“How much?” I asked.

My sister stayed quiet for a long time. At last she said, “I’m tired, Sylvie. So tired you have no idea. And I’ve been forced to answer questions over and over for that detective and all those lawyers. It’s gotten so I can’t think straight. What does any of it matter? Nothing I say will bring them back or undo my part in it all. But you know who you saw inside that church. And the police found his fingerprints and footprints all over the place. So let crazy old Lynch keep telling Rummel and the rest of them that I made the call. It’s our word against his. And all along we’ve both said the same thing: that I was here at home, nowhere near that pay phone. Now, please can we take a break from talking about it?”

I gave her the break she wanted.

If our parents were alive, our slothlike behavior never would have been allowed, and they would not have tolerated the endlessly blaring television. The Price Is Right. Tic-Tac-Dough. General Hospital. Phil Donahue. Cheers. Family Ties. So many shows came and went with applause and tears and dramatic music and canned laughter, while Rose and I remained immobile and numb, barely sleeping before waking and repeating the cycle. Neither of us said much else until I started asking if she heard the sounds coming from the basement.

“Huh?” she responded each time, lifting her head in the fog of that room.

Inevitably, there it would be again: something shifting beneath us, something shattering. “I said, ‘Did you hear that?’ ”

“Hear what?”

“That noise, Rose. Those noises. Down in the basement.”

My sister dug out the remote, lowered the volume. I wanted her to mute it altogether so we could listen properly, but she never did. After lifting and tilting her head, she said, “Nope. I don’t hear anything. You should have that ear checked, squirt.”

She was right. I should have had my ear checked. Foolishly, I still believed it was her responsibility to make that happen—at least that was the understanding when the hospital released me into her care. The gaggle of nurses and administrators at the discharge counter made a fuss over me: the girl with bandages on the left side of her head, a tube snaking into her ear, all because she walked inside a church on a snowy night to see what was keeping her parents. They plied Rose with forms to be signed. They plied her with papers listing doctors I needed to visit. They told her about appointments already made in my name. After we left the hospital, however, the dates came and went.

Clatter. Clang. Crash. Another night brought no movement or sound from us, but a cacophony from below. I began pressing my ear—the good one—to the floor, picturing Penny, that toddler-sized doll with the moon face and vacant black eyes, rattling the walls of her cage. If I pressed my ear to the floor long enough, I could swear some moments I heard what sounded like something breathing. Sucking in air, blowing it back out. Lifting my head, I spoke to Rose in a quivering voice, near tears, “You’re crazy if you don’t hear those things. They’re pissed off. They’re sad. They want them back. I can tell.”