The Turnout(61)

But by the time they moved through the last set of cues, the elaborate sleigh flight that takes Clara away to unknown lands, she couldn’t find her.

Hurrying to the lobby, she looked through the large glass walls only to see Marie disappearing into the evening mist like a phantom. Her orange car receding in the distance, like a faint flame.





HE’S IN THE HOUSE


Moments later, Dara turned down Sycamore, the street fogged and furtive, inching along until she saw their big old house, its bleary windows, roof tiles loose like whiskers.

It made her chest ache suddenly. Most of the time, you never truly saw your own house from the outside. It was impossible. But she was seeing it now. Seeing her home, her childhood, her family. Drafty, pocked, hungry.

This is ours. It is ours. No one can take it. Never.

She needed, urgently, to be inside. To sit with Charlie at the kitchen table, with their tumblers of wine, now fully replacing the fenugreek, the chamomile, their new nightly routine, Charlie’s shiny orange medicine bottles, his pills and vitamins plotted on the table like a tic-tac-toe game. Together, they were a family. Together, they would protect their home, everything.



* * *



*

But when she arrived at the front door, she saw the note taped to the graying green paint. Charlie had gotten the last available PT appointment. He wouldn’t be home for another hour or more.



* * *



*

    She poured some wine for herself then, balancing the tumbler in the crook of her arm, headed upstairs to wait in the bedroom. They had to band together now. They had to. And she’d felt so close to him on the phone earlier, remembering about the snow.

Maybe Charlie’s back would feel better. Maybe he would come back into the bed that night. Maybe he’d let her hands rest on him, find him again in the blue-dark of the late night, his pills working their gentle ministrations.

The thought made her instantly feverish, and the warmth dipped to her hips, between her legs as she climbed the stairs. Charlie.

Halfway up, in the band of light from a second-floor window, she saw the first one.

A footprint, faint but muddy, on one of the carpeted steps.

Looking up, she saw another. Tracks, like tracking a mountain lion, a great black bear.

But these tracks were familiar, the gray-brown slurry she knew so well, trailed daily across the floors of their studio. She even recognized the shoe print, the natty toes of the contractor’s natty boots.

He’s in the house, a cry racing up her throat.

Reaching the top step, she saw the open door at the end of the dark hall. Their childhood bedroom.

She never left that door open. She seldom went in there at all, except maybe once a year to dust it, to polish the old wood of the furniture set—the dresser and, of course, the bunkbed. The bunkbed, Marie on top, Dara on the bottom, like a pair of twins pressed tight in the womb. The bunkbed, with Marie’s teeth clicking in her sleep, and Dara, restless, her foot kicking against the footboard slats, her arches wrapping around them, her thoughts drifting to that year’s Drosselmeier, the feel of his hipbone against hers as she brushed past, her foot pressing, pressing on the slat, as she pushed into the feeling . . .

Standing there, Dara saw the open door. She saw the shadow thrown on the floor.

He’s in the house. He’s in the bedroom.

Dara set the tumbler of wine on the banister and took a few steps.

The streetlamp outside made the door unnaturally bright, beckoning to her.



* * *



*

Who’s there,” she called out, her voice like a bark.

He appeared suddenly, his body taking up the entire doorframe. Like a monster in a dollhouse, like he could reach his arm up and take the whole thing apart in one glancing blow.

“Hey,” he said, swiveling. “Sorry. Did I scare you?”

He looked surprised, he was surprised. But not that surprised.

“I gotta tell you, it’s a trip, being here,” he said. “Marie talks about this house all the time.”



* * *



*

He was enormous, looming, his shadow making him twice his size, and the only light from the streetlamp outside.

“Easy, easy,” he kept saying.

“What are you doing in our house?” Her voice low, tremulous. “How dare you come into our house.”

“I’m sorry I scared you. I thought Charlie would be home,” he said. “I wanted to talk to him about my idea. This house, its potential. But he wasn’t here, and it’s just so damn good-looking—well, great bones at least—I had to take a peek.”

“Trespassing. Breaking and entering,” Dara said, steadying herself. “I want you out now, or I’m calling the police.”

“It’s only trespassing,” he said, lifting his arms above his head, resting his fingertips on the top of the doorframe, “if you aren’t given a key.”

Fucking Marie, Dara thought. Goddammit, Marie. It was so much worse, every time, than she thought it could be.

“Your sister wanted me to see it,” Derek said. “She wanted an outsider’s take. Someone with some expertise, some perspective. Given everything. Given how it all went down.”

“How what went down?”