The Ghostwriter(14)
Downstairs had been a vacant showroom, the living room outfitted with just a couch and TV, the kitchen with only a table and two chairs. Every other room—the dining room, formal living room, foyer, and bedroom—all empty. Upstairs, the master bedroom had been the only room so far with any furniture. The king bed had been carefully made, and she’d resisted an urge to fluff the pillows or pull back the covers, her pause at the window long, the curtains left untouched. Maybe she could pick up some flowers at a local florist, something to put on her bedside table and give the room some color.
Or not. Helena’s patience with Kate has to be wearing thin. Given different circumstances, she’d have already been asked to leave. Helena, most likely out of pure convenience, hasn’t taken that path yet.
The door at the end of the hall is closed, and she stops before it, a piece of paper taped to its surface, one of Helena Ross’s famous lists.
Only this list is different. Handwritten in colored pencil, the letters are big and loopy. This list closes a fist around her heart and squeezes.
The Rules of Bethany’s Room
1. No boys.
2. Take off shoes.
3. If Music plays, you dance.
4. No touching my art.
5. No spankings.
6. Bring cookies.
7. Don’t turn out the lights.
Sometimes, it only takes an instant to understand a person.
The feel of loss in the air… it isn’t imagined. The life her mind had painted… at some point, it had been real. At some point, it had created this list-making child, one who hated spankings and loved cookies. Kate looks at the list and knows, without reaching for the handle, there is no one in the room. She gives herself a long moment to prepare, then twists the knob and pushes open the door.
Pale green walls, the shade of Eva’s in Forced Love. A bed hangs from the ceiling by gold and pink ropes, the coverlet an organized mountain of pillows and stuffed animals. By a window sits a desk, the surface covered with drawings, pencils carefully lined up and organized by color. The right side of the room is a half-completed mural, supplies nearby, a forgotten doll on the floor.
The most heartbreaking piece is in the middle of the floor, a sleeping bag unrolled on the rug, the fabric rumpled and open, the pillow indented. So different from the stiff, unused bed in the master bedroom. This one reeks of frequent use, of sleepless nights and tears. Kate’s throat becomes thick and she blinks, turning to leave the room before she loses all composure.
She doesn’t look through any more of the home.
After that, she can’t.
My house smells of bleach, the downstairs gone over by Kate, clad in surgical gloves and armed with a spray bottle and paper towels. She probably would have been a good roommate, one who understood my need for refrigerator conformity and organizational rules. Simon had always scoffed at my concerns, just as he did over my immunization research and the alarming air quality index in Brooklyn. My research, the fat envelope wrapped with three rubber bands, bulging with terrifying statistics, was why we moved to New London, three hours up the coast, a small town with an acceptable crime rate and clean air. I had grown up here, and embraced the idea of returning, my memories of the sleepy town filled with library visits and quiet afternoons reading in the backyard hammock. My mother had also jumped on board, buying a home a couple of miles away, her offers to babysit met with delight by Simon, and trepidation by me.
I watch Kate as she cleans the front of my laptop, paying careful attention to the keyboard, a bleach wipe coating the surface of the letters. When she finishes, she carefully turns it toward me, almost reverently, moving it to the exact middle of the kitchen table. A timer on her watch chimes and she smoothly turns, reaching for the cabinet and pulling out a bottle of pills, twisting off the lid and shaking out one. She holds it out to me.
“Ever thought of being a nurse?” I say wryly, reaching gingerly forward and taking the medicine, half-irritated, half-grateful. Maybe taking my meds as prescribed, on time and with food, would help my symptoms. I already feel better, revived after my nap, my headache down to a barely-noticeable ache.
“Don’t laugh,” Kate says, “but I did.”
“Really?” I reach forward and press the laptop’s power button, turning it on.
“Yep.” Her snappy response makes me smile. Earlier, while she left Marka’s agent another voicemail, I flipped through television channels and asked what she liked to watch, a question that was met with a recitation of Rule 4, in which—one grouchy day years ago—I stated that she must never share personal details of her life with me. It had seemed a reasonable request at the time, one designed to enhance my productivity. Now, it just seems bitchy. Recently, all my rules seem bitchy. And super controlling, which sucks, since that was Simon’s most popular complaint, one I’d always dismissed without consideration.
My computer finishes its startup , and I open my email. There is one from Charlotte Blanton, and it takes my mind a moment to place the name. Charlotte. My doorbell-ringing, husband-inquiring, intruder. I click on her email with the heavy finger of the doomed. Any fantasies of long-lost sisterhood fly out the window as soon as it opens. It is short and cuts to the point, which I appreciate. Everything else about it, I hate.
Helena,
I am a journalist for the New York Post, and am writing an article on your husband. I have some questions to ask you, and some information to share. Please call me.