The Good House Read online

  “ ’Bye, Gramma Marie,” Angela said softly to the photograph, as habit compelled her. And the photograph spoke back to her, or at least it always seemed to because Angela could best remember her grandmother’s husky voice when she gazed at her preserved face:Adieu, cher.

  Outside, Angela could smell her past buried among the ferns and salal in the earthy scent of the cool forest floor. She stood atop the high ridge where the house was perched, accessible from the private clay road below only by climbing the twenty-one stone steps—a climb Gramma Marie had been perfectly capable of achieving, thank you very much, until her sudden death from pneumonia at the age of ninety-two. Above the steps, the house appeared like a doll’s house set against the wilderness, prominently displaying the large picture window Angela and Tariq had built after they claimed the house as their own. Gramma Marie’s house had been built in 1907, and except for the picture window, internal refurbishing, roof work, painting, and electrical and plumbing updates, the roomy house remained as it had always been: a cheery blue post-Victorian with five bedrooms, twin pairs of narrow white columns on either side of the porch to greet visitors, and a round window positioned like a watchful eye from the attic. The boxy second story sat atop the smaller first level like a fat, nesting bird. The house bordered nearly virgin woods and a creek that had been in Angela’s family for three generations now. Gramma Marie had left plenty of money, too, but the property meant more to Angela.I never got my mule, Gramma Marie used to say,but I damn sure got my forty acres. The true number was closer to sixty acres, Angela had since learned. Those acres were hers now, and Corey’s.

  The clay road below, which locals called Toussaint Lane, petered out about thirty yards beyond Gramma Marie’s house, vanishing as a thin dirt trail into the woods. Local kids, herself included, used to hike a half-mile into those woods on Gramma Marie’s property to The Spot, a large clearing with a fire-pit and ring of logs where they drank beer, smoked, and necked. And that wasn’t all they could do there, she had discovered in high school. Myles Fisher, her high school sweetheart and first true friend, had become her first true lover one day at The Spot. Two blankets, a layer of fir needles, and mutual eagerness had cushioned their bodies from the hard ground.

  No lovemaking experience had felt quite like it, although Myles’s tentative touches, unlearned but earnest, didn’t rival Tariq’s hungry assuredness. Tariq was the best lover Angela had ever known. But there had been something about that time at The Spot, something it had taken years to work out of her memory that revisited her each time she thought about the ground where their naked bodies had lain.

  Myles, like her, had left Sacajawea as soon as he had his high school diploma, and she hadn’t seen him since. They had both been in such a hurry to get away, and sometimes she wondered why. This was a place of healing. Gramma Marie had always said so, and the people of Sacajawea still seemed to believe it, as if they considered this house their town’s temple, a place to whisper their wishes. A place to make things right after they’d gone wrong.

  “I want a family again,” Angela whispered to the house and the forest that embraced it.

  In the woods, a hidden bird shrieked. Exactly as if it were laughing at her.

  Marlene Odell’s age-spotted fingers tapped in the price code for bagged ice at her cash register at Downtown Foods, a dimly lighted grocery store with shelves crammed tight. Year by year, Angela noticed rarer items springing up around the store: Brie, couscous, Thai seasonings, black-eyed peas, instant grits. There was even a small section of sushi on ice in the back. More like civilization. This store was small, but Marlene and her husband cared about what people wanted.

  “I hear you’ve got a surprise coming later,” Marlene said.

  “What kind of surprise?”

  Marlene shrugged, gazing at Angela through loose puffs of silver hair. “The kind you have to wait to see for yourself. Someone I expect you’ll be happy to see.”

  “I’m not sure I like surprises,” Angela said, but she left it alone. She and Tariq had planned for thirty guests exactly, but the world wouldn’t come to an end if one more showed up. Angela dug for loose dollar bills crumpled in her back pocket. “Thanks for working on the holiday while the rest of us are having a good time, Marlene. This street is like a ghost town today. I was afraid I’d have to go over to the bait shop on the river for ice.”

  “Don’t thank me, thank the cheap SOB who thinks he’s my boss. Rolf sent me out here bright and early. I was happy as a clam drinking my coffee and watching the colored man, Bryant Gumbel, on the morning news.”

  Angela took a deep, calming breath. Marlene Odell must be seventy-five by now, and a lifetime ago she’d caught Angela stealing a handful of Tootsie Rolls from this store. She’d also driven over to personally report the theft to Gramma Marie, thereby becoming responsible for the worst whipping of Angela’s life. So, Angela couldn’t think of a tactful way to tell a woman who’d known her since she was a thieving child that the termcolored was woefully outmoded. Young or old, Sacajawea residents freely referred to Gramma Marie as theircolored pioneer, oblivious to how insulting it sounded.Colored outdatedNegro, even! But, hell, after Angela and Myles moved away for college and then Gramma Marie passed on, no other black person had lived in Sacajawea. Maybe a lily-white town couldn’t know any better.

  It was the crowning irony: Angela loved her grandmother’s house, but she hated living in such a speck of a town. She always had, starting with the summers she spent at Gramma Marie’s house when she was very young. As a child, downtown Sacajawea had reminded her of the set ofLittle House on the Prairie, and she’d wandered through the streets feeling jarred by the foreignness of everything around her. Where was the convenience store where she could buy pickled pigs’ feet and a hot sausage? Where was the record store? The game room? As a transplantedLos Angelina, the concept of camping meant nothing to her, and she had decided after one outing that fishing was a whole lot of hype about nothing. All these years later, she was still searching for something interesting in Sacajawea to catch her eye.

  If not for Gramma Marie’s pioneering days, Angela would never have heard of this out-of-the-way logging town, which was accessible from Portland only by a two-lane riverfront road from Sacajawea’s larger neighbor, Longview, or a ferry from Westport, Oregon, beyond Puget Island. Sacajawea’s main street was home to the grocery store, the courthouse, the fire hall, a pharmacy, a saloon, the old hotel, three antique stores, Ming’s Chinese, a used-book store, the U Save gas station, a drive-thru espresso stand called Joltz, the diner, and Subway Heaven, which sold sandwiches and hand-churned ice cream. There was no movie theater, no health club, no McDonald’s. Main Street reallywas the main street. Aside from the River Rat Lounge off the pier, some warehouses, and a few offices converted from homes on the surrounding streets, Main Street was nearly all there was.

  But if Angela wanted to spend summers in her grandmother’s house, Sacajawea came with it as a package deal. And each year Angela returned, she could practically hear Gramma Marie whispering in her ear:When do you plan to invite folks over proper, Li’l Angel? Because despite Sacajawea’s clear summer skies, a placid river perfect for sailing, and the genteel backdrop of Mount Hood amid the Cascade range, this was not a resort town where people camped for the summer and kept to themselves. Tourists drove farther west for that, to the sands of Long Beach on the Pacific coast. Aside from the handful of vacationers who frequented the town’s two popular B&Bs, most people in Sacajawea had lived here for generations, earning hourly wages in the mills in Longview or taking down trees in the woods. And even if Sacajawea had been a more sometimey place, the rules would have been different for Angela, or anyone else who was kin to Marie Toussaint.

  Marlene and the other townspeople would be deeply offended if they knew how she, Corey, and Tariq cackled about Sacajaweans’ quaint habits. Like how the proprietors of the small cluster of businesses that called itself “downtown” always had their radios tuned to the same oldies sta
tion that played The Four Seasons, Bobby Darin, and Elvis Presley, creating an overall effect Corey called “Time Warp, U.S.A.” And how even the beefiest-looking bill-capped rednecks with gun racks mounted in their pickups’ rear windows drove past them in town and greeted them with wide grins and neighborly waves like characters straight out of a Frank Capra movie. Angela tried to imagine her neighbors in L.A. waving at her with big smiles as they drove through Hollywood Hills on their way to work, and it was a good laugh. Oh yes, and thatcolored thing. That could be funny, too, in the right mood. Sure enough, Angela noticed “Teen Angel” playing on the store’s tinny speakers. Time Warp, U.S.A., all right.

  “How’s Corey doing?” Marlene asked, her gaze suddenly probing. “I keep seeing him with that new boy, Sean. They’re always running here and there, those two.”

  Marlene’s tone put Angela on alert. Teenagers became secretive as part of their code of behavior, and Corey gave vague answers when she asked how he and his friend Sean spent their time. He’d come home with an ugly scrape on his arm the other day, claiming he’d been thrown by Sean’s horse, but the skittishness in his eyes had made her wonder what more there was to the story. “They’re not getting into trouble, are they?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that,” Marlene said, but Angela was sure Marlene’s inquiry had left something unsaid, a judgment. Sean Leahy’s family lived in a trailer on the land adjacent to Gramma Marie’s property, and as newcomers, the Leahys were subject to disapproving scrutiny from the residents. Either new people were considered city-folk trying to spoil their town, or they were vagabonds who couldn’t be trusted. Sean seemed to be a good kid, though. His father was a single parent, and although Mr. Leahy was eccentric in his dress—he strung beads and feathers through his shaggy blond hair—Angela hadn’t noticed anything worrisome about him. The guy had three foster kids, which made him a good citizen in her book.

  “I’m just glad Corey’s finally found a real friend here,” Angela said. “I need all the help I can get dragging him here every summer. But I’m afraidnot to, with all the nonsense waiting for him in the city. Gangs, drugs, guns, all that. It’s unbelievable.”

  “Oh, I believe it,” Marlene said with a knowing look. “Your poor grandmother had such a time with you. But you were a breeze compared to Dominique. Now,she was a handful at Corey’s age, believe me.”

  Angela had not expected to hear her mother’s name today. This was one of those rare days she had not thought once about her mother. Now, she remembered why she kept her interactions with Sacajawea residents to a minimum: They knew too much. They knew the things she rarely mentioned to even her closest friends in L.A. Here, casual conversation was painful.

  Everybody here knew what had happened to Dominique Toussaint, that she had swallowed a bottle of Sominex with her morning glass of orange juice. At the start of Angela’s freshman year in high school in L.A., she had found her mother slumped dead across the kitchen table. Angela had come home from school, walked through the back door, and seen her mother with one long arm reaching across the Formica, holding on to the table like a raft in the middle of the sea. But they didn’t know everything. They didn’t know the first words in Angela’s mind as she stared at the top of her mother’s braided scalp in its death-pose on that tabletop:Thank you, God.

  “Gramma Marie was the best thing that ever happened to me, Marlene,” Angela said quietly, nudging those memories away. “I’m just hoping this town has been good for Corey, too. Even if Gramma Marie isn’t here.”

  “Oh, sure. Harder to go wrong here. We all know where you live.”

  Angela suddenly noticed the display case beneath the cash register, where she saw a collection of gleaming pellet guns for sale, beneath a handwritten sign promisingTWENTY PERCENT OFF . Guns always caught her eye. The guns looked real to her, like the kind that used bullets. People in Sacajawea gave their children pellet guns and BB guns the way her friends gave their children Game Boys. God, she hated guns! Two years as a public defender right out of law school had taught her that—along with a harrowing incident at twelve, when she’d walked into her mother’s bedroom to find Dominique Toussaint standing in front of her bureau mirror with a handgun in her mouth.It’s not loaded, sugar, she’d offered Angela quickly, as if that made it all right.

  Angela’s party mood, as much as she’d mustered one at all, was suddenly gone.

  If she could have been honest, she would have told Marlene she wished she’d never planned a party, because she wasn’t the kind of person who could enjoy several hours with people she had known a long time but had never known well. And she wanted to be alone with her family, because she had no way of knowing if this was the last time they would live together. And, to put it plainly, if shewas going to throw a party, she’d rather do it in L.A., where she could also invite her more rhythmically inclined black, Latino, and gay friends and spend the night dancing to salsa and old-school funk. But none of those reasons were quite right, Angela realized. She just didn’t want this party to happen—she never had, not from the start—and she wasn’t sure why.

  Suddenly, the bag of ice she’d been cradling on the counter above the gun display felt so cold at her fingertips that it seemed to nip her. As she drew her hands away, a too-cold sensation seized her hands, racing up her arms. She shuddered, and it was gone. Angela stared down at her reddened fingertips, surprised. How could she have gotten a cold-burn that quickly?

  “Have a good time, Angie,” Marlene said as Angela jangled through the automatic door with her ice. “That party at the Good House will be the talk of the town. Folks’ll be glad to see you.”

  “If I hadn’t done it, Gramma Marie’s ghost would have whipped my hide,” Angela said.

  By the time Angela loaded the ice onto the scrap-covered passenger-side floor of Tariq’s van, she was bothered by Main Street’s quiet. The street was festooned with red, white, and blue streamers and bows that had been up for weeks now, but it was too still. Angela didn’t like the absence of cars and pickups beside the curb, the empty parking lot at the courthouse, the dead neon signs hanging in the windows of Main Video and Joltz, drained of light. And there wasn’t a single person on the street. She saw a few sailboats listing lazily on the river, in need of stronger breezes, but everyone else in town seemed to be hidden away. Angela locked her door as soon as she climbed into the van, an L.A. habit she usually forgot after her first few days back in Sacajawea. She sat a moment before turning the key in the ignition, watching Marlene through the wall-size window as she shelved cans in the deserted store. The image struck Angela as lonely. No, more than lonely. Like something to grieve, something inevitable.

  Angela wished she could stay here and put off the rest of the day. Just for a while.

  But the ice was melting, and it was time for the party to start.

  The first guests arrived at 6:30 sharp, on Angela’s heels. They would have less than an hour to sample Angela’s 7-Up punch, and they would never taste Tariq’s marinated beef ribs. That wasn’t the way it was planned, but that’s the way it turned out.

  Everyone she’d invited came, and most of them brought stories.

  “I haven’t set foot inside the Good House since I-don’t-know-when,” Art Brunell said, clasping Angela’s hand warmly as his squat figure filled the doorway. His brow was dotted with sweat from his climb up the steps. “It’s going on twenty-five years now. My mother used to send me out here for your grandma’s root teas. Boy, did I love coming over to Mrs. T’saint’s house. I memorized the order of all the presidents once just so she’d let me have a piece of pie, and believe me, it was worth the trouble. How you doin’, Angie? Hope life’s as good for you as it is for me.”

  His green eyes shone through his wire-rimmed eyeglasses with the same zeal and ardent kindness Angela remembered from high school. It was hard not to like Art, even though, like most locals, he pronounced Angela’s surname phonetically instead of sayingToo-SAUNT, the French pronunciation she preferred.

  �
�That’s a tall order for mere mortals, Art, but I’m doing all right. Where’s Liza?”

  “Huffing and puffing right behind him,” Liza Brunell called, breathless. “And I have those jars of elderberry preserves I’ve been promising you. My friends get samples whether they want them or not.” Liza’s care-worn face had been much more luminous in her senior picture as Liza Kerr, the school’s star actress with an eye toward Broadway. She’d been damn good, too. In those days, Liza had considered Art a cornball like they all did, and she’d never imagined birthing Art’s freckled six-year-old son, who was at her side. The boy’s hair was an orange nest, reminiscent of Liza’s, and he fidgeted as if his skin made him itch. All three Brunells wore campaign T-shirts proclaimingYOUR TOWN ’S FUTURE—ART BRUNELL FOR MAYOR. Angela had never asked Liza if she’d made her peace living in a place she’d sworn to escape, but she envied the way Liza and Art fit each other. Maybe Broadway had never been real to Liza, but this was.