The Good House Read online

  “You have great skills, Marie…but luck is a creek that often runs dry. Don’t expect to draw your water there day after day,” John said, his face so pained that he seemed to blurt the words against his will. “Don’t take this on, Marie. I’m begging, woman. Do you hear? You know I beg for nothing.” To make his point, he repeated his plea in his Chinook language, holding her face between his large palms.“Yaka humm. Wake okoke skookum deaub. Wake alta.” She could feel his meaning more keenly when she didn’t recognize his words, watching his emotions light his face while the foreign speech washed over her. She had to look away.

  “I have to do it, John. I am responsible.”

  John sighed, leaning closer to her until their foreheads touched. She enjoyed the current of his warm breath, just as she relished the wisps of his feather-light hair brushing her brow. Tears smarted in her eyes. She shook her head gently, nudging him away. “I must, John. This is the cost that has been decided for me. Can you understand? Marie Toussaint cannot turn away a child to die on her front stoop. Not at my own house. Anything but that, you see?”

  “My wife, I know you well. Your enemy, I see, also knows you well. This is a well-laid trap for you,” John said, and she heard in his voice a grudging admiration for thevisiteur, thebaka with no name. He kissed her forehead lightly. John’s next words, although they broke Marie’s heart, came from a place more gentle than the place of whispers.

  “I will do as you ask,” her husband said. “But we both know it has already won.”

  The Party

  …A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam’s,

  Born on the Fourth of July…

  —“YANKEE DOODLE BOY,”GEORGE M. COHAN, 1904

  One

  JULY4, 2001

  Seventy-two years later

  ANGELATOUSSAINT’SFourth of July party began well enough, but no one would remember that because of the way it would end. That’s what everyone would talk about later. The way it ended.

  Angela didn’t want to have a party that day. Maybe it was the lawyer in her, but she was too much of a stickler to enjoy hosting parties, brooding over details.Is there enough food? What if there’s an accident with the fireworks? Will somebody have too much beer and break his neck on those steep steps outside? Angela didn’t have the hostess gene, and she couldn’t remember why she ever wanted to throw a Fourth of July party at Gramma Marie’s house. Like most of the well-intentioned plans in her life, the party had grown into something to dread.

  “Shiton me.”

  Angela’s digital clock said it was just after six. The first guests would be here in less than a half hour, and she wasn’t fully dressed. Still damp from the shower, Angela tore through her jumbled pile of shirts in the top drawer of her grandmother’s old mahogany dresser, searching for a T-shirt that wasn’t political enough to raise eyebrows and draw her into an argument from the start.TREATMENT, NOT PRISON. IT ’S A WOMAN’S CHOICE. STRAIGHT BUT NOT NARROW. She opted for a peach-colored Juneteenth T-shirt a promoter in L.A. had given her last year, and she wiggled into it. Frankly, she’d rather be hosting a Juneteenth party anyway, commemorating the end of slavery. What had the War for Independence done for her ancestors?

  Two clamplike hands encircled Angela’s bare waist from behind. She froze, alarmed, unable to see because she was trapped inside the cotton shirt, her arms snared above her head. “Tariq?”

  “It’s Crispus Attucks, back from the dead to give you a brother’s perspective on the Boston Massacre,” a low-pitched voice rasped.

  Angela’s heart bucked. Jesus. She poked her head through the shirt’s collar and found Tariq’s smiling face behind her. She gazed at the deeply graven lines that carved her husband’s features, at the unruliness of his bushy moustache splaying toward his cheeks as if it intended to become a beard, and it occurred to her that Tariq wasn’t handsome so much as sturdy. At U.C.L.A., watching him dart through and around bigger, stronger men with a football cradled under his arm like a bundled infant, she had felt her juices flowing on a much deeper level than her juices had flowed for any of the men she’d met at law school. Much to her surprise, Tariq Hill had scorned hoochies and loved his books, planning to get an M.B.A. one day—and her juices swept her away. Then, as her punishment for letting her juices do her thinking, time had taught her the downside: Tariq’s demeanor often mimicked his rugged look; unyielding, impatient, even unkind. He made her nervous. Not always, by any stretch, but far, far too often.

  So, Angela couldn’t help it. She let out a tiny gasp, even after she saw Tariq’s face.

  She hoped he hadn’t heard her gasp. He had.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you? It’s just me,” Tariq said, no longer sounding playful. That wasthe tone, understated, nearly robotic. She hadn’t heard this tone from Tariq since he’d been here, but there was no mistaking it. The tone was Tariq’s mask, flung clumsily over his anger. Hiding everything he didn’t want her to see.

  Damn. She’d pissed him off, and right before the party.

  Angela forced a bright smile. “Sorry. You scared me,” she said.

  Tariq’s lips curled ruefully, and Angela saw his annoyance shift from her back to himself. His eyes were suddenly soft. Angela was only five-foot-three, and this was one of the rare times the twelve inches separating her face from her husband’s did not feel like an impossible distance. She had to dial her head back more than fifteen years to remember seeing Tariq’s eyes this soft.

  “My fault, babe. I should’ve knocked. That’s on me.” He kissed the top of her head, massaging her damp, short-cropped hair with one hand.

  Apology accepted, she thought. But were they going to spend all of their time apologizing to each other from now on, tiptoeing around each other’s weaknesses?

  Angela wasn’t used to having Tariq here. Summers belonged to Corey. She’d come to Sacajawea expecting nothing more than summer visitation with her son, when she took a two-and-a-half-month leave from her law firm to become a full-time parent, rediscovering the person her son was turning into since he’d moved to Oakland with his dad. This trip was their third year running, a tradition. More like a reunion.

  But two weeks ago, Tariq had shown up in his faded old VW van, the one he had driven when they eloped to Vegas when she was pregnant, and his presence created a reunion of an entirely different kind. The three of them were spending the warm months here at Gramma Marie’s house, in the folds of this quiet logging and fishing town on the banks of the Columbia River in southwestern Washington state, with ninety minutes isolating them from Portland, the nearest major city. Peace and seclusion, no distractions, no excuses. And if they could live together, just for a summer, Angela believed there was still hope they could dig up something warm and living from the ice that had settled over their marriage long ago. Their last chance.

  The shredded, soulful moan in Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long to Stop Now” playing on Angela’s bedroom CD player was barely audible beneath the Will Smith bassline shaking the walls from Corey’s room across the hall, but Redding’s vocal caresses filled the room in their silence. Tariq’s eyes turned glazed and wolfish. “I love this song,” he said.

  Angela’s thighs squirmed. Last night, once again, Tariq had tapped on her bedroom door and asked for an invitation into her room wearing nothing but his boxers. She and Tariq had made love five times since his arrival, and she felt their sexual play creeping back toward the much-anticipated ritual it had been in the old days, dueling appetites. Last night, she’d dismounted him after her sweet, sudden orgasm and enveloped him within the hot moisture of her mouth and tongue.

  “What areyou thinking about, Mr. Hill?” Angela said, knowing full well. She hadn’t given him oral sex since a year before he moved to Oakland. Today, she guessed, Tariq was one happy man.

  “I’m thinking about what’s in those Levi’s,” Tariq said, his eyes boldly assessing the modest spread of her hips. “And a certain debt I can’t wait to repay.”

  She wante
d to say,I can’t wait either, but she only smiled. There was still an artifice to this, occasional puppet strings flitting into her vision that kept her from sinking into the fantasy. For one thing, they had separate rooms and were still hiding from Corey like two boarding-school students ducking from their dormitory monitor. And neither of them had dared utter the terrifying words “I love you,” for fear of the silence that might follow.

  But God, this felt good. Not quite right, but maybe it was getting there.

  “Baby, please hold that thought, okay? It’s after six. I need to go downstairs….”

  “Yeah, I think I need to go on down, too.” He teased her with his fingertip, drawing his index finger across her breast until her nipple sprang to attention. His voice was a breath in her ear. “I’d like to go down right now.”

  Somehow, despite her fluttering chest and a persistent smoldering where her thighs met, Angela pulled herself away, leading Tariq out of the room by the hand, toward the stairs. Tariq walked behind her, rubbing just close enough that she could feel the solidness of his erection beneath his grilling apron. It was a tempting invitation. More than tempting. Until a week and a half ago, Angela hadn’t had sex in exactly five hundred days. With Tariq behind her on the stairs, Angela’s body went to war with her reason, and almost won. She squirmed against him, then found her resolve. “You better quit following me around with that thing and go put the ribs on.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tariq said. And he stepped back.

  No argument. No sarcasm. That was good. There hadn’t been much sarcasm from him all summer. Mostly smiles, and easy cooperation. Tariq had cut down to one or two cigarettes a day, smoking on the deck outside without being asked, a ritual more than an addiction. This was not the same Tariq who left four years ago. She’d hardly met this Tariq. She had a lot to learn about him.

  He kissed the top of her head again. “I’m gonna check on those ribs.”

  Maybe Gramma Marie’s house would cast some sort of cleansing spell on their family, Angela thought. Gramma Marie would have loved the idea of her coming back to the house she’d called “that ugly old house” when she’d been too young to see it for what it was, before she knew about the magic it could work. She tried to work the same magic every summer with Corey, and up until exactly two weeks ago, she’d begun to think the magic wouldn’t happen. She’d begun to think that maybe Gramma Marie wasn’t preserved in this house after all, that maybe she should take Corey away to New York instead, or somewhere mind-blowing like Egypt. She’d been mourning the loss of the magic until the moment Tariq’s van had driven up and Corey had looked out of the living room’s picture window and said,Dad’s here, his tone dazed, his face emblazoned with an expression of pure joy Angela would never forget.

  At last, it was happening, after all this time. Gramma Marie’s magic was back.

  In the living room, Angela surveyed her grandmother’s 1920s-era quartered white oak furniture, relics from another time. She rested a warm gaze on the old Starr upright player piano against the wall, remembering how she’d hated that scarred piano once, not merely because of Gramma Marie’s mandatory one-hour daily practice sessions—Angela could play decent blues and gospel piano to this day for no other reason than her grandmother’s stubbornness—but because of the way the keys moved by themselves when Gramma Marie put on her music rolls, as if an invisible man, a ghost of some kind, were sitting at the bench. Now, she treasured the piano. It held Gramma Marie’s spirit intact. So did the tall, oak grandfather clock that had kept Angela awake all through high school until age finally silenced it. And the matching rocker where Gramma Marie had spent her days rocking against the cushioned leather seat, gnawing peanuts. And, of course, Gramma Marie’s collection of porcelain figurines were all preserving pieces of Gramma Marie’s spirit, too; strawberries, dogs, ballerinas, flower vases, miniature teapots, juicy watermelon slices, and little dark-skinned children sporting short pants or unruly plaits. Even the ugly-assin, featureless, little dark clay dolls scattered among the figurines, which Angela had never much cared for because they seemed unfinished and vaguely misshapen, were helping bring Gramma Marie back to her. Gramma Marie’s house, she decided, would bring them all good luck.

  Tariq’s head emerged from the French doors leading to the dining room, his face framed between the whitewashed wood panels. “Hey, Snook?” he said softly, using his long-ago pet name. “All playing aside, I’m glad I’m here this summer, babe. I should have said that before now. This is long overdue.”

  “Not as glad as I am,” she said.“Glad isn’t even the word.”

  “We have some talking to do. Tonight, after this party. All right? Real talking.”

  Unexpectedly, Angela’s entire body felt rigid. “I swear, Tariq, I don’t know if I have it in me to sit through another one of our bad talks. I really don’t.”

  “I know,” Tariq said, blinking. “Let’s do better this time then, Snook. I’ve…”

  But his voice trailed off. Angela heard quick-paced footsteps descending the wooden staircase, and Corey appeared from the foyer. At fifteen, Corey was bony and only five-foot-six, although he’d hoped to inherit his father’s genes for height and musculature. So far, Angela’s tiny stature had offset any memorable growth spurts, something else she figured her son blamed her for.

  “What’s going on?” Corey said, suspicious. If she and Tariq were talking too long, their son assumed they were fighting. She couldn’t blame him. Fighting was the one thing she and Tariq had always been good at together—over money, over parenting styles, and their worst, over that raggedy damned handgun a friend of Tariq’s had given him years ago. She’d finally convinced him to sell it, but had they ever recovered from that one night? That fight with Tariq was the closest Angela had felt to having a nervous breakdown, and even as she had listened to herself screaming in rage, she’d wondered why Tariq wasn’t trying to comfort her. Instead, she’d seen something change in Tariq’s eyes, tightening. His forearm had knotted, and his closed hand had risen suddenly, ready to strike her.

  That was when Corey had come out of his room. Nine years old, crying because Mommy and Daddy were yelling. The sound of their son’s cries had snapped both of them back to themselves. Ever since, it seemed, Corey had been their wary referee. His face still wore the same expression, prepared for chaos.

  “Nothing’s going on,” Angela said, swatting Corey’s backside in his too-baggy denim shorts. “Go upstairs and turn that music off. I don’t want that blasting when people get here. I’m about to put on some jazz.”

  “Oh, you afraid we’re gonna sound too ghetto? It’s just Will. It ain’t like I’ve got on nothin’ hard-core.” Corey was purposely butchering his grammar, an affectation he’d adopted since he’d moved to Oakland, trying to pretend away all his years of private school so he wouldn’t stand out. The sound of it grated on Angela’s ear.

  “Go on back up and do what your mama says,” Tariq said. “Don’t get smart.”

  Corey leveled a gaze at his father, as if he had turned traitor. Then he seemed to lose focus, as if he were exhausted. He cut his eyes away before turning to amble back toward the stairs. “I thought maybe Sean was here,” Corey mumbled. “I gotta go to Sean’s later.”

  “What about the fireworks?” Tariq said.

  “I dunno, Dad.” Corey’s voice was muted as his feet shuffled up the stairs. “I don’t feel like it. My stomach’s not right today, man.”

  “What’d he say? Hisstomach?” Tariq said, angry. He sprang into the living room with one of those sudden motions that had always made Angela wonder if a man that big could hurt someone just by moving so fast. His size had always scared her, even if the presence of the gun had scared her more. “Does that boy know we spent two hundred dollars on fireworks? Lemme go talk to him.”

  Watching Tariq follow Corey, Angela knew that the frail opportunity that had just bloomed between her and her husband, whatever it was, had been lost for now. His mood had changed, an aspect of the
old Tariq she remembered very well.

  Let’s do better this time then, Snook. I’ve—

  He’swhat? Angela wondered, frustrated. She felt a certainty, every bit as irrational as it was gloomy, that their conversation couldn’t wait, not this time. A part of her was convinced that if she didn’t find outright now what feelings she had stirred in Tariq, she would never know. All of Angela’s worst nightmares tended to come to merry realization one after the other, as if they were on a hellish train schedule, so it was no wonder she struggled against her grim imagination. There was always something worse waiting. One more bad thing.

  Tariq called out to her from upstairs. “Snook, did you remember the ice?”

  Shit. She’d forgotten. Their freezer’s ice machine was too slow for a party.

  “You want me to go?” Tariq called again, guessing at her silence, and Angela felt herself relax. His mood must not have changed that much after all.

  “No, you put the ribs on,” she said. “It’ll just take me a few minutes to run into town, baby.”

  Angela found her pocketbook on the red upholstered seat of Gramma Marie’s glossy mahogany chair sitting near the foot of the stairs, the empty throne. It was an eye-catching chair, almost more artwork than furniture, standing on lovely legs carved to look as if they were braided, mirroring the seat-back’s twisting, lacelike designs. Beside the chair, an old-fashioned telephone table displayed a yellowed photograph of Gramma Marie and Red John taken during the 1920s, when they had both been young. Angela gazed at the picture, amazed to realize that her grandmother must have been in her early thirties when this photograph was taken, younger than Angela was now. Gramma Marie’s midnight skin was model-smooth, her broad, prominent nose was as intriguing as an African maiden’s, and she wore her thick hair in well-kept French braids that wound around her head, the same style she had favored until the end of her life. Angela had never met her grandmother’s husband because he had died in a logging accident long before Angela was born, but to Angela, her strong-featured grandmother and Native American mate, with his long hair and dark, meditative face, were still the Lord and Lady of this manor.