We Are Not Ourselves(82)

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She didn’t admit to herself where she was really heading until she had passed the on-ramp to the Bronx River Parkway. She kept driving until she came to the street with the two stone pillars at either side that Gloria had turned onto when she’d taken her there. She felt her way up a couple of turns until she saw the house. She didn’t have a plan. She just knew she had to be near it, to confirm her feeling about it.

She parked in front, figuring the driveway was too conspicuous. She sat in the car for a while, looking at the stone wall that girdled the front yard, working up the courage to walk the grounds. She knew what she intended to do was technically trespassing, even though whoever was selling the house wouldn’t have minded if it helped to firm up her resolve to buy it. She walked up the driveway to the back stairs. No table and chairs sat on the patio, but she saw them in her mind. Someone was being paid to care for the plants and shrubbery. She saw where she could add a few flowers. In a house like this she would be inspired to learn to keep them alive. A path of stone stairs led up the hill in the back. She followed it to a flat area halfway up that had been left untended. She could put another table there. It could be the aerie from which she looked down on her domain.

The property ran all the way up to a wall that abutted the yard of an Italian-style villa at the top of the hill. It dwarfed this house in grandeur and size, but there was no shame in being outstripped by a house that majestic.

After a little while she saw a worker turning over soil in the backyard of the house next door. He hadn’t seen her, but all he had to do was look up. She hid behind a tree and watched till he disappeared inside. Then she scampered down the steps. The bush cover on the patio gave her courage to try the screen door to the den. It slid open, as did the glass door behind it, and in an instant she was in the house.

She didn’t turn any lights on. Sounds echoed in the big empty spaces. She hesitated going deeper into the house, but a rustling of the leaves outside sent her scurrying into the living room.

She headed upstairs. The place smelled different than it had; she picked up a faint hint of mildew, perhaps wafting up from the basement. It might only have been the close air trapped in the house. She went to the bedroom where Connell had lain on the floor. The room felt imposingly empty with no one else there, and she couldn’t stay in it long. She went to the guest bathroom and ran both taps. She looked at herself in the mirror, then looked away, afraid that something would appear behind her. In the quiet of the house every sound was magnified.

She went to the master bedroom and sat leaning against the wall, by the windows. The longer she sat, the more nervous she grew, but she couldn’t bring herself to get up. She was waiting for external circumstances to dictate her next move. She felt like a mountain climber who had reached a longed-for summit and couldn’t bear to return to normal life.

She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting when she heard the voices. She shot to her feet and looked for a place to hide. She gave no thought to walking downstairs and forthrightly greeting them. She didn’t know who they might be: the owner, other prospective buyers, a neighbor, the police. She thought to hide behind the shower curtain in the master bath, but there was no curtain, and even if there were one, how would it look if they pulled it back and found her there? They’d call the cops for certain. She thought of the attic stairs hidden in a ceiling panel in one of the closets, but she didn’t know if she could pull them down quietly enough, and where was she going to hide up there?

She stood by the doorway to the bedroom. Lights were being flicked on downstairs. She heard enough to tell it was a couple looking at the house and a real estate agent who wasn’t Gloria. She decided to stay in the bathroom until she had heard them start up the stairs. If she heard them go left at the top, she would slip out and head down. If they stopped her, she would burble something and keep moving. They weren’t likely to follow her or keep interrogating her. And if they turned right and headed into the master bedroom suite, she would say she had stayed behind after looking at the house.

She listened to this foreign agent enumerating the house’s virtues. Hearing them presented to another couple curdled the joy she took in their particulars. They were taking forever down there. Anxiety and impatience combined to produce an unexpected boldness in her. She flushed the toilet for a bit of theater, then thrust herself out on the landing and headed down the stairs.

“Oh!” the agent said. “I didn’t know anyone was here.”

“Pardon me. I stayed behind to use the bathroom.”

“Not at all.”

“Don’t let me interrupt you,” she said as the couple appeared from the kitchen. “It’s a great house.”

“It is,” the husband said.

“Well, we know the toilet works!” she said, and felt instantly foolish. The agent looked as uncomfortable hearing it as Eileen felt saying it.

“Yes—ha!” the agent said, a little belatedly.

“Do you mind if I leave through the front door? Could you lock it after me? I’d like to get a look at the front porch.”

“Not at all!” The agent looked relieved. “Please!”

Outside, Eileen’s frenzy subsided. She caught her breath leaning against the railing, feeling its smooth but bumpy paint. She smelled the mown grass and the lavender scent of the lilacs in the tree, and she listened to the birds, the shuffling leaves in the branches. The manicured bushes shook mildly in the wind. No police or ambulance sirens battered her ears, nor any thunder from souped-up cars. A little girl rode by on a bicycle and offered her raised hand in a wave. Eileen waved back, completing the illusion of ownership. And then it hit her, the peace she had sought in going up there, the ineffable something she’d been chasing. Then she heard the agent and the couple enter the foyer and felt the peace slip away. Their voices were muffled through the door, but she knew they were speculating about the house, weighing it, considering it. In her mind it already belonged to her. She would do whatever she had to do.