Just Like Home(5)

The burning in Vera’s throat hardened, expanded, reached a fist down into her belly and clenched it until the knuckles cracked. It forced the air out of her lungs. She made a sound like “oh,” and her field of vision shrank to her mother’s hollow eyes and dry lips and thin, thin, thin neck.

She wanted to say that was fine, because it was. She wanted to say that she understood, because she did. She knew better than to try saying that accidental sentence again, even using her mother’s name in place of ‘Mom.’ She knew not to do that, at least.

She let go of the chain around her neck and immediately missed the feel of it between her fingers.

“I’ll check on you before dinner. Daphne,” she said. Her voice came out hoarse, as though she’d let out all the screams she was swallowing.

Daphne didn’t answer. She was already asleep, or maybe pretending to be, bolt-upright, her eyes shut and her jaw slack.

“Okay,” Vera whispered to herself. She turned and briefly rested her forehead against the smooth plaster of the arch between the dining room and the entryway, letting the house soak in a little of the heat from her blazing face. “That’s okay, then.”

Vera went back the way she’d come, from the dining room to the entryway, and all around her, the Crowder House exhaled a long-held breath.





CHAPTER THREE


The stairs that led from the entryway to the second level of the house always seemed to have too many shadows. Before, when child-Vera had lived in the house her father built, she’d tiptoed across the entryway at night to use the powder room, swallowed whole by the dark of the house, counting her steps so as not to bump into the wall.

Francis Crowder had built the lower level of the house without hallways because Daphne hadn’t seen a need for them, and she was the person he was building the house for. Because of this choice the rooms simply led one to another, separated by thick walls and connected by high, wide, open archways. The stairs were off to the right side of the entryway, while the powder room was on the left, with its connecting door back to the living room. The little room under the stairs—Francis’s office, which became Vera’s bedroom—stood directly opposite the powder room, the two doorways mirroring each other.

Just past her old bedroom was the door to the basement, squat and wide with a slanted top to follow the contour of the stairs. The two doors stood beside each other like a half-formed wink—one Vera refused now to see as she walked past, dropping her bags at the foot of the stairs and pulling out her last fresh change of clothes. She’d take the bags into her old bedroom after showering, she thought. Laundry could wait for the morning.

She paused at the foot of the stairs, staring up into the darkness of the second floor.

Her hand lifted to the lightswitch and found it right away, without her having to grope for it. When Vera flipped the switch, the upstairs lights flickered twice, just the way they always had. It was a fault in the wiring her father had put in back when he built the house.

Vera smiled as she climbed the stairs.

That little flicker, and then the soft creak of the fourth step, and now the feel of the wallpaper under her trailing fingertips.

It was as familiar as her own skin.

Vera had lived in a lot of places after leaving the Crowder House. She’d been in shitty apartments and nice apartments and even a townhouse for a year, before that situation went bad the way things always did. But she hadn’t lived in any of those places long enough to stop bumping into things. She hadn’t lived in any of them long enough to feel tenderly toward them.

This house, though. The outside of Vera was shaped like the inside of this house. This was the house her father had built with his two strong hands. This was the goldfish tank where she’d grown to the size she would always be, even after her mother gave her away to the world. There was a space for her here, an indentation she’d left years ago that still held a little of the warmth of her body. No matter what Daphne thought of her daughter, no matter how hard the next few days or weeks or months were going to be, Vera had once belonged here.

Now that she wasn’t looking at the woman that was in her mother’s bed, now that she wasn’t listening to that voice coming from that face and looking at those eyes and feeling the ghost of a slap on the rise of her cheekbone—now that she could feel the weight of the house settling over her shoulders like a friendly arm—she felt almost happy to be where she was.

It was the first time Vera had felt that way in a very long time.

The carpet in the middle of the stairs was darker than the carpet at the edges. It was exactly the same as it had been when she left home, already covered in the same layer of thick clear plexiglass as the sideboard in the dining room. The tread on the plexiglass here was scuffed in places, but the carpet—the carpet Francis Crowder had walked on—was perfectly preserved beneath it.

At the top of the stairs there was a hallway, with three rooms set primly away from each other. Upstairs got a hallway even though downstairs didn’t, since Daphne had always understood the importance of keeping personal things apart.

All the way at the end of the hall was the bedroom where her parents used to sleep, the bedroom where Vera had been born. Along one wall was her mother’s long-disused sewing room and her father’s office, separated by the linen closet. The master bathroom was along the other wall. Vera was glad she didn’t need to go through her parents’ bedroom to get to it. A connecting door met the hallway, just like the powder room downstairs.