The Wrong Family(24)
The doors were white, they opened inward toward the interior of the house, and where the doorknobs were supposed to be were two holes. Lying on the ground next to the door was the hardware for the doors waiting to be installed—probably after lunch. Juno reached out one sun-spotted, gnarled hand toward the doors and pushed.
The door swung inward, and Juno stepped inside. She was in a den area. To the left of the doors and slightly behind them was a recess with a brick fireplace. It looked to be old, probably part of the original house; a few empty cans of Coke sat on the mantle next to a staple gun. Juno turned away from the fireplace and walked through the den. A large television box sat in the corner unopened; she glanced at it briefly, musing at how careless the workers were to leave the door open. Anyone could just walk in and rob the Crouches blind. The den led to the family room, and then a sunroom facing the back garden.
The house was bright. Juno blinked around the room, taking in the color with wide eyes. How long had it been since she was inside of a home? She looked behind her then, past the den and through the addition. The birds chirped incessantly. No one was coming—not yet. The workers were all safely napping in the park. They wouldn’t be back for another thirty minutes.
She could turn back now. Juno very clearly knew that what she was doing was wrong, and yet she took six more steps until she was standing in the middle of their family room. From where she was, she could see a hallway that led to the kitchen, and past that the front door. No one notices when you’re around anyway, she thought—so she walked through it.
She wandered the Crouches’ home, almost floating through rooms.
Juno hadn’t meant to linger. She’d gone through the downstairs quickly, stopping briefly to look in the pantry when curiosity got the best of her. A house of fiber, a family of champion shitters. No plastic water bottles, no refined sugar, no fun whatsoever. Juno helped herself to an apple from a bowl on the counter. She ended up at the stairs. The staircase was a double wide—her mama had called them that if they were fancy, and this one was as fancy as they came. It was the same rich mahogany as the floors, polished to an elegant sheen. Juno laid a hand on the nearest bannister and began to climb the Crouches’ double wide, and hot damn if she didn’t feel like Scarlett O’Hara.
The stairs bent once like an elbow; there was a massive, gilded mirror hanging on the landing as tall as she was and as gold as it was gaudy. As soon as her reflection appeared, Juno averted her eyes. She knew what she’d see if she looked closely and—no, thank you very much. The stairs came to an end and opened into a wide hallway. On one end of the hallway was a bay window that looked out at the park. Two rocking chairs sat side by side with a small gold table between them, the quaint little setup laid over a Turkish rug. She wondered if they drank their coffee together on those chairs, or maybe had a nightcap. Her eyes went back to the four widely spaced doors, two on either side of the hallway. Between them ran a lush runner—leopard print, Juno noted. Winnie had a pair of leopard-print sneakers she sometimes wore on her walks, and some evenings she carried a leopard umbrella on a wristlet, though Juno had never once seen her open it. Turkish rugs, and neon busts, and leopard-print carpets—my God—Juno’s own house had been a plate of beiges: brown, taupe, linen, cream, froth, camel.
She moved toward the first door. It was on the right and turned out to be a bedroom, probably the spare. She closed the door without going in and moved on to the next; this one belonged to Nigel and Winnie. The master faced the street, and it boasted a huge window overlooking the park. The bedroom, Juno noted, was less of a color bath than the rest of the house, mostly done up in grays. The bed was made, but the coverlet folded down to reveal deep purple satin sheets with a cream duvet over the top that looked like whipped frosting. In the corner of the room stood a four-foot fountain that bubbled and gurgled like a happy baby. Juno could finish out her days in a room like this; it was magnificent. Their bathroom was attached, and it was so white it made her feel like a lesser person. A bathroom had never made her feel inferior before. What would she have said to one of her patients if a bathroom so spotless and white had made them feel like the most worthless piece of shoe dirt? You’re allowing it. You’re giving the bathroom permission to make you feel that way...
Juno laughed. She didn’t even mind that it was loud because everything seemed ludicrous: the bathroom so white a single pubic hair would mar it. Who wanted to live in a world so easily toppled? Even the fact that she was here in this damn house was funny. She laughed as she left their bedroom, closing the door behind her. Next were the two other—but then, voices. In the house.
Eyes wide, she fell to her hands and knees, crawling on the floor to remain out of sight. She heard the stomping of work boots on the floor downstairs. Someone called out, “Grab the rest of the shit, too...” and then more stomping. Do or die, Juno thought. She was going to have to make a run for it. And even if they did see her running out the front door, what were they going to say to the homeowners—that they were irresponsible and had left the door open, allowing a homeless woman to wander inside? No, she was fairly certain they’d keep their traps shut on the matter. As she charged down the stairs, she still had the apple clutched in her hand. She stuck it in a pocket as she reached the landing, rounding the corner and trotting down the remaining stairs. But whichever worker had been in the house, he’d obviously hightailed it back outside with the “shit” because the downstairs was blessedly empty.