The Good House Read online

  Corey felt blood charging through his veins. Gramma Marie had written a book, and Mom didn’t know anything about it. Mom cooked Gramma Marie’s recipes, sang her songs, and read the books in her library like the whole house was a tribute to Gramma Marie, but Corey was sure his mother had no idea this book existed. Mom was going to go crazy when she saw this.

  Crouching to the floor, Corey flipped to the next page. It was full of type, single-spaced, written with hardly any paragraphs. And Corey didn’t need a translation for the word typed at the top center of the page, under the Roman numeral I:Magie .

  Magic.

  “This whole thing better not be in French,” Corey said, scanning the first page, and he was relieved when he recognized the words as English.

  I am fearful to commit the words to paper, but I fear their loss more. I leave these words here so they will be documented, and I pray I can steer the appropriate spirit to these pages when I am gone, at the dawning of the new millennium. Perhaps I will steer you, Dominique, when you are well again, or your son or daughter who is yet to be born. Or, perhaps I will find a great-grandchild who is the very image ofgrandmèreand steer her sleep to this piece of her destiny. And when she wakes, I will show her the story of her line.

  As he read, Corey hardly remembered to breathe. Gramma Marie had said she would steer her great-granchild here in sleep. What else could she mean, except throughdreams? He was the great-grandchild! And this year, 2001, was the new millennium, even though most people had made the mistake of getting excited last year, stocking up on food, water, and flashlights like it was the end of the world.

  Gramma Marie had called him here, like she said she would.

  How could someone who was dead steer his dreams?

  “Ho-ly shit,” Corey said, and his profanity shocked his ear, as if Gramma Marie were in the room with him. His skin went clammy, from the back of his neck to the backs of his thighs. Could it be something like the ghosts inThe Sixth Sense?

  Maybe he couldn’t see dead people—but could dead people see him?

  Corey’s memories of Gramma Marie were almost dreamlike because he had been so young when she died, but he remembered how she used to give him a quarter every time he sat on her lap, pulling it from his ear, or at least that was what it looked like to him with her quick flick of her wrist. Gramma Marie had been dead since 1990, the year he was five and her death ruined Christmas day. She’d been dead for eleven years. Yet, Corey felt an aliveness in the room, something other than himself. He looked around, searching for signs of anything unusual; a flickering lightbulb, movement beneath the curtains draped over the furniture, rustling inside the boxes, unusual insects. He didn’t see or hear anything to explain what he felt, but the stillness seemed deceptive. Deliberate.

  “Is someone here?” he said, not sure he was really hoping for an answer. If something talked back to him, he thought, he would scream like a third-grade schoolgirl.

  But nothing answered. His breathing was the sole sound, heavier now. There was no motion around him. The unnerving feeling that had swept over Corey when he first saw the blue door came again. He nearly shuddered as he knelt over the pages, feeling waves of unease that were almost physical. Corey didn’t know what it was, but something was in this room with him.

  “Gramma Marie?” he said. He’d never felt like more of a fool, but he couldn’t stop talking. “I hope that’s you, because I don’t know who else it would be. And if you’re here, and if you’re talking to me in my dreams…does that mean God is up there with you, too?”

  Corey had never thought of himself as religious—Dad took him to church maybe once a year, and Mom wasn’t much better. They were both supposed to be Christians, but they didn’t act like it, just Christmas-and-Easter Christians who didn’t say grace over their meals. Corey always said grace to himself when he ate, even if it was a split second, a habit he’d learned on his own because, hell, it seemed like a good thing to do. He didn’t take his food for granted, so why not thank God for it?

  Corey figured something was out there, but he didn’t worry about what it was, since he planned to live a good life so he and God would always be tight. To him, Hell was the conscience trying to be heard, things eating you so you think you have to be punished when you die. He knew a couple of kids who’d already trashed their consciences—one, T.’s brother, had nearly killed a pregnant woman when he ran a red light once. A lawyer had kept him out of jail, but she hadn’t helped him sleep at night. Corey didn’t like what he saw in people’s eyes when their consciences were burning. He saw that look in Dad’s eyes sometimes, and he’d probably see it in Mom’s eyes too if he looked hard enough. Corey had always planned to treat people right, and if there was a God, he’d figured God would take care of him when the time came.

  But now, this was something else. Something concrete. Something to really believe in.

  “Is all that white light stuff for real, Gramma Marie?” Corey said. His knees felt like liquid as he crouched, so he sat cross-legged on the floor to keep steady. He realized he was having trouble catching his breath. His body had lost interest in normal procedure, but his mind was afire.

  He should run downstairs with the satchel and take it to Mom, he thought. He should share this with her. Mom had known Gramma Marie better than he had, and half the time she was still living in the past, in Gramma Marie’s world. This satchel belonged to Mom. If Gramma Marie wanted to reach out for anyone, she was probably reaching to her.

  “Yeah, I can see it now,” Corey said, imagining the conversation: “‘Hey, Mom, Gramma Marie sent me to find this in my dream. By the way, she says hi. Your mom says hi, too.’ ”

  No, Gramma Marie had calledhim in his dreams, not her. Just like she’d written.

  Mom wouldn’t appreciate anything about magic. Mom got embarrassed when anybody asked about Gramma Marie’s voodoo, like it was something shameful. Mom might appreciate the pages because she loved Gramma Marie, but she wouldn’t treat them like something that might be real.

  Corey handled the papers carefully, straightening them before he slid them back into the satchel where he’d found them. He’d read this after dinner, he decided. He’d keep it somewhere safe and get to it later, when he would have privacy, after Mom was in bed. If it was selfishness, so be it, Corey thought. Mom was trying to own every piece of him this summer—his time, his thoughts, his moods—but now he had something he owned all to himself.

  She didn’t know it was there, so how could she miss it?

  Corey took the satchel into his bedroom and hid it under his pillow. Then, he stopped by the bathroom to wash up for dinner. He let the water run a long time in the bathroom sink, staring at himself in the mirror with the fancy brass frame that looked like something out of a Chinese palace. His own eyes in the mirror startled him, one of the strangest sensations he’d ever had. His heart was pounding hard enough to make him feel like a hard-core punk.

  “That’s just guilt you’re feeling,hombre,” Corey told his reflection, like Sean would say.

  Gramma Marie’s book would be a treasure to Mom, and he was keeping it from her. It wasn’t the same as a hurting kind of lie, but it was still a lie. Just like old times, when he’d stolen Gramma Marie’s ring from Mom like some kind of crackhead, trying to impress a girl. He’d thought he would feel better about it after all this time, but sometimes he only felt worse.

  He planned to show Mom the book when he was finished, but hadn’t he said the same thing about the ring? He’d dug it out of her jewelry box, and he’d been surprised when he found it. He’d wanted that ring because he couldn’t stop staring at it when she wore it. He’d tried it on for size when he found it, sliding it onto his thumb.Just for a week, he told himself.I’ll bring it right back.

  Just like now. But this wasn’t the same as stealing. Was it?

  As he climbed down the stairs, Corey heard his mother’s voice on the kitchen telephone. She was arguing with someone, using her lawyer’s voice, not that there was
much of a difference most of the time. He lost any idea he’d had about talking to her when he heard her stern tone. Maybe Sean was right. Maybe he was scared of her, in a way.

  Corey was hungry, but instead of walking toward the kitchen, he went to the living room instead. He climbed onto the sofa, leaning his elbows against the high, curving back as he stared out of the picture window at the front yard. A couple of fawns usually came around dinnertime, and Corey liked watching them eat the apples Mom left for them in the grass beneath the walnut tree. It was about time for them to show up.

  But the yard was empty today except for the rainbow of blooming summer flowers. That was one good thing about Gramma Marie’s house; it was damn pretty, like a picture in a magazine.

  “Mom, did you leave food outside?” he called, after he heard her hang up the telephone.

  “I forgot! Are they there yet?” Her feet scurried on the kitchen tiles.

  “Not yet.”

  When Corey peered out of the window again to see if the fawns were hidden behind the shrubbery, he saw something that convinced him beyond any doubt that Gramma Marie’s magic might be as real as its promise: Corey made out the olive-green coloring of a vehicle parked on the road, across the street. His eyes seized on the color, knowing what it was before his thoughts caught up.

  Just like that, his father reached the top of the roadside steps with a Raiders knapsack slung across his shoulders, grinning like a fool. Seeing Corey in the window, Dad waved. It was the most remarkable sight of Corey’s life. He was afraid to blink, or the mirage would be gone.

  “Dad’s here,” Corey said, before he believed it yet.

  Corey felt his mother’s hands on his shoulders behind him. He smelled raw onions and chicken fat on her skin, so he knew he could trust his eyes. This was real. She saw him, too.

  “Is that Tariq?” Mom said. For once, she didn’t sound mad. It was the first time in years Corey had heard his mother say his father’s name like it meant something to her.

  Fourteen

  OAKLAND

  Present-day

  TUESDAY AFTERNOON

  ALL NEGATIVE,”the doctor said, fanning Tariq’s records in front of him. “No unusual bacteria or cells, nothing showing in your X-rays, no ulcer. And you said you’re not having the pain today?”

  Tariq sighed, buttoning his shirt after the doctor’s quick inspection of his abdomen in the small examination area of his office. Dr. Yamuna was a gastrointestinal specialist, the third Tariq had seen since August. Six different doctors in two years, and all of them with the same bullshit. Tariq had worked hard not to get his hopes up, but he felt something deeper than disappointment, nearly unbearable. “Not right now. It’s bad at night and when I first wake up,” he said.

  “Have you traveled in any tropical regions in the past five years? Somewhere you might have picked up a bug we’re not so familiar with here?” The doctor’s fingers played with his beard.

  “No.”

  “Did you suffer a fall or some sort of injury? I understand you’re with the football team….”

  Tariq was so tired of repeating himself after two years of doctoring, he could barely modulate his voice. “I work in the business office, not on the field,” he said. “No, man, there’s no injury. Just this same damn bellyache, and nobody can tell me shit.”

  Dr. Yamuna sighed, gazing at him from beneath fuzzy black eyebrows, twin caterpillars. Tariq waited for him to say something more, but Dr. Yamuna remained silent. Tariq could tell he was preparing to move on, ready to go home for the day. It was after five.

  “Don’t let me turn around in six months and have somebody tell me it’s cancer,” Tariq said when the doctor had nothing else to say.Or I will sue your monkey ass, he finished to himself. Trouble would rain down on this little brown fool like the skies opening during Noah’s flood. Tariq felt his fingers flexing as he imagined what he’d do to this guy if he was fucking around and missed something big like cancer. Something it might be too late to stop soon.

  “There is no sign of cancer, Mr. Hill, I’m happy to say.”

  “Well, it sure the hell is something.”

  “Have you had any emotional traumas in recent years? Coinciding with the pains?”

  This tired old game. Shrinks were nothing but quacks dispensing pills to keep people in a fog. Crack for the bourgeoisie. Maybe Angie had given herself the luxury of losing her damned mind, but he hadn’t. As easy as it was to believe otherwise, natural as the temptation might be, he couldn’t blame every ache and pain he would feel forever on the death of his son.

  This was something else.

  The pain in his stomach, at its worst, yanked him out of sleep and made him cry out in the middle of the night. A grown-ass man, yelling into the darkness like a child calling after his mama. He’d broken his arm in two places during a practice his freshman year at U.C.L.A., and then his Achilles tendon had taken him out for good during his senior bowl game. Both times, he’d been in the worst pain of his life. This was another milestone in pain. He’d already racked up more than a month in sick time this year, on the days he couldn’t get himself out of bed. A week ago, he’d cried himself to sleep, believing the pain was trying to steal something from him—and was winning at last.

  Now here was somebody else trying to tell him it was in his imagination.

  “Let me tell you something, Doc,” Tariq said, hopping off the examining table. He took two strides toward the doctor, until he stood inches from him. Tariq was a half-foot taller, and he suddenly wanted Dr. Yamuna to remember that. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, man. I know the difference between imaginary pain and real pain.”

  “Psychosomatic pains are not preciselyimaginary,” the doctor said. Whether he realized it or not, he’d shielded his chest with his metal clipboard. “The pain is very real, but sometimes the stimulus is psychological. Especially in the case of a severe trauma.”

  “I could teach you a couple things about severe trauma, Doc,” Tariq said. His face was hot, his whole body was hot, and he knew he would have to get out of here. It didn’t take much to set him off lately, like at the club last night, and right now he could feel just fine about knocking everything from that counter to the floor, including Dr. Ranjan Yamuna, M.D., Ph.D. Right now, it was very difficult not to do just that. He wanted to crack this guy’s head against the floor with his heel, the Oakland stomp.

  Dr. Yamuna shrank away, pushing against the counter full of boxes of cotton swabs, plastic gloves, and disinfectants. Another half-inch and he would knock an empty specimen cup to the floor. “I think we are finished today, Mr. Hill. I’m sorry I could not be of any help to you.”

  A stone pussy, Tariq thought. All brains and no balls. Tariq eyeballed the doctor, enjoying the way the man’s face hardened, bracing. He was scared, and Tariq would love to give him something to be scared about. Maybe that was why his stomach hurt so much—the strain of not being able to act out on the things he really wanted to do. Maybe restraint was bad for his health.

  “Yeah, this is a waste of my time,” Tariq said, and backed away.

  Tariq saw people in the office looking at him funny when he stopped at the billing window to ask if they needed anything else from him. His voice was nice as pie. Nice as a Sunday morning gospel choir. The sister sitting there was what women liked to call “big-boned” but he called just plain fat, looking at him with a stupid expression. He heard a whisper from somewhere behind the partition, Dr. Yamuna’s voice, in a hushed tone people used when they wanted to call the police. Over what? Men like that made him sick.

  Just to prove Dr. Yamuna a liar for telling stories on him, Tariq tipped an imaginary hat at the big woman behind the window and smiled his best smile. A smile for the kind of woman he thought was fine, the kind of smile that would make her feel good about herself. She smiled back. No mess, no fuss. Just a brother trying to get some decent medical care for a change, against the odds. He turned to go on his way.

  He had to shake off his anger.
He had to go take his real medicine.

  Tariq climbed into his black Toyota Land Cruiser and headed toward Alameda’s Bay Farm Island Bridge. If traffic wasn’t bad, Martin Luther King, Jr. Way in Oakland was only a thirty-minute trip. Although he loved the size of his newer wheels, he missed the VW. The funny thing was, he dreamed about the van more and more often—he saw himself sitting in the driver’s seat, never going anywhere because in his dreams the van always had two flat tires. The flat tires, to him, were a reminder of how the van was falling apart. He’d had it since 1980, and it had been twelve years old when he bought it, so his engine had cut out five times during the drive from Oakland to Sacajawea that summer. But he’d lived in that van for his first semester at U.C.L.A., while he waited for his scholarship money; at night, he’d read from the light above the dashboard, then fallen asleep across the far backseat. He’d first kissed Angie in that van. He’d driven that van to Las Vegas when he and Angie eloped, playing Luther Vandross and Teddy Pendergrass cassettes the entire way, talking about what to name their baby. Marie if it was a girl. Corey or Harry if it was a boy. Both of them scared to death, but happy.