The Good House Page 8

  Home.

  Dr. Houston’s pleasant face and manner had disarmed Angela from the start, even if the woman’s good humor had seemed naive.A ball of smiles, Angela had thought when she’d first sat in her office at The Harbor. No white coat, no clipboard. She’d offered Angela hot tea and chocolate-chip cookies fresh from the kitchen’s oven. She had a sunny dress and gentle questions.

  Why have you decided you should be here, Angela?

  Angela had notdecided that she should be there, she thought. It all had been decided for her.

  I’m afraid I’m going to hurt myself or someone else, Angela told her.

  Who are you afraid of hurting besides yourself?

  My husband. My ex-husband.She liked the sound ofex, an erasure. An undoing.

  She told Dr. Houston how she had browsed through aSoldier of Fortune magazine one day at a newsstand in the months after Corey’s death, sobbing, wondering not-so-idly if it was true you could find a hit man in the classifieds section. That was what the rumors said. She thought of a movie she’d seen, one of those Japanese animés Corey had liked so much—she couldn’t remember the name—where someone ordered a hit on himself and then changed his mind. Would she change her mind, too? Probably. She’d be much better off if she followed her mother’s example and swallowed a bottle of pills, she thought. Then, standing there, she’d imagined what it would feel like to hire someone to kill Tariq instead, and she knew she wouldn’t change her mind about that. She’d instruct the hit man on exactly what to say: “Tell the truth and I’ll let you live.” And Tariq would sputter and beg, and he’d finally tell the whole truth:Yes, I lied about getting rid of the gun, and I brought it with me to Sacajawea. It was in my suitcase. Corey must have found it. I lied the whole time. Half the words that come out of my mouth are lies, and they always have been. And the hit man would say to Tariq, “I lied, too. This is for Corey, from Angela. A life for a life,” and after Tariq’s eyes went wide with terror, his killer would pull the trigger. He’d shoot him in the head. Just like Corey.

  That fantasy, she told Dr. Houston, was the only thing of late that brought her any happiness.

  You have a very active imagination,Dr. Houston said.When did you first start believing you would like to kill your husband?

  When I saw that my child had been shot with that gun.

  Well, not right away, she recalled, amending her response. At first, since Tariq had promised her he’d gotten rid of the gun years ago, she had tried her best to argue God and the universe out of the impossible thing they had conspired to try to make her believe. Corey could not have Tariq’s gun, and therefore Corey could not be dead. She could not be seeing what her eyes thought they were seeing. It could not be. He got rid of it. He said so.

  How did your husband explain the gun’s presence in the house?

  Lies, Angela said. If he had told her the truth when it happened—if he had fallen to his knees with the sobs of a sinner and admitted that he’d brought the gun with him to Sacajawea—she might have been able to forgive him. She’d wanted so badly not to feel so horribly alone after Corey died. Because, you see, in the end, you are alone. In the beginning, it was everyone’s concern—the people at the party, the sheriff’s office, the forensics experts who did their tests to determine that the wound, indeed, had been self-inflicted to the head. From day to day, Angela had been able to busy herself with the details of trying to understand what had happened, how it had happened, the exact time it had happened, searching for a suicide note (there had been none, thank God, so the final ruling wasaccidental death although everyone conceded they would never really know), and planning the funeral. The details at the opulent funeral home had been endless and traumatic in their specificity—what to write on the head-stone, what kind of pillow to have in the coffin—yet it had all been perversely comforting to her, a last project for Corey’s sake. Her last chance to be his mother.

  Every step of the way, she’d been surrounded by people for whom Corey’s death was their most important priority. Sympathetic tones and earnest eyes.We’ll look into this. We’ll take care of this. But as time had passed, the number of people in that circle of concern had shrunk, and they all went on with their lives. The police took longer and longer to respond to her calls, and even when she talked to Sheriff Rob Graybold and asked him to repeat facts for her, she could hear the beginning of impatience after a time.There’s really nothing more to it, Angie, he’d told her one day with nearly impolite finality, and she’d felt a flash of aching embarrassment. One by one, they were all gone, until she’d been the only one left.

  If only Tariq had told her the truth, if he’d said he was sorry about the gun, she would not have been alone. The aloneness had been almost as bad as seeing Corey’s bleeding head in the cellar.

  But, no. Tariq had not told the truth. He’d stuck to his original lie, the one he’d first birthed the day he came home and said,I hope you’re happy now, bitch. He got rid of the gun, he swore to the police. He didn’t care if the gun Corey had shot himself with was identical to the one he’d had, with the same silver packing tape wrapped around the butt. He’d been like a hustler trying to con his way out of a petty charge, never telling the truth, not even to save his soul in the wake of his own son’s death. He blubbered and sobbed and moaned, lying the entire time. And Sheriff Rob Graybold and the county police decided Corey must have found the mysterious gun on his own, that it did not belong to Tariq. A big coincidence, they said.

  It wasn’t enough that Angela had lost her son. She’d lost her son to a lie.

  And people wondered why she’d made such a scene at the funeral, throwing a metal folding chair at Tariq that glanced off of his jaw and shoulder before clattering to the floor, destroying the mournful tranquility of the church like a bomb. Why it had taken three people to pull her off of him.

  And now you’re afraid you might hurt yourself?Dr. Houston said.

  Yes, because life has fucked me by leaving me no one to love, Angela had told her. If you want the truth, doctor, every day feels like a ritual punishment I have to endure before I’m allowed to die. I can stay in bed for days, pretending I’m dead, and I like it. I finally understand my mother—she was such a regular visitor to the psych unit, she should have had her own wing. Now I know why she always ended up there every summer like clockwork. My mother heard the demons laughing, and she saw the truth. You want to know what the truth is? Happy people are just people who haven’t learned better yet. Once you know that, it’s hard to go back to the bullshit. But I want to unlearn what I know. I want to reclaim the fantasy. I want to go back to sleep like the happy people.

  Going back to sleep, Angela learned each night, was easier said than done. Eighteen months after she’d left The Harbor, two years and two months since Corey’s death, getting to sleep at night was still the most treacherous part of her day.

  In the dark, Angela opened her nightstand drawer, which was empty except for what appeared to be a hardcover copy of Alex Haley’sRoots . But it was not. Angela had fitted the book cover atop a small safe built in the shape of a book, a marvel she’d ordered from a spy shop when a client raved about how she was fooling her housekeeper by keeping her jewelry in what looked like a can of WD-40 oil spray. Corey’s confession the day he died had done little to make Angela feel more at ease about the possibility of theft. She didn’t own much she considered of value anymore, but Corey’s death had made her more resolute that she would not take any chances.

  The book safe was filled with padding. Beneath that, a small felt ring case. And inside the ring case, Gramma Marie’s gold ring.

  Even with only the moonlight, Angela could see the ring’s tawny glow, dulled by darkness. She slipped the ring onto her left ring finger and squeezed her hand, exactly the way she had when Corey had brought it back to her. She closed her eyes as the precious metal bit gently into her skin.

  Mom, I did something, and I have to make it right

  This was progress, she thought. For the
first year, she’d shunned the ring. She’d kept it safe, knowing that it had been Corey’s last gift to her, but she’d found it too hard to look at the ring in the beginning. But she had worked her way back into wearing it again. On the days she didn’t run, she wore it to work. When her assistant, Imani, complimented the ring a few weeks ago, Angela had said,It was my grandmother’s, and it had felt good to mention Gramma Marie again, honoring her. When Angela wore the ring at night, she believed it helped her sleep. Not always, but sometimes. The spirits of both her grandmother and her son lived in this ring, and perhaps she felt so lost because she was not communing with them often enough, she thought.

  Gramma Marie’s good-luck talisman. Corey’s good-bye token.

  Hot tears washed Angela’s face, but she was so accustomed to tears that she almost didn’t notice them. At least she wasn’t doubled over in sobs, her throat peeled raw. Those exhausting nights, thankfully, seemed long behind her. Tonight’s tears, like those she had shed in front of Naomi, were not the bitter poison that had driven her to The Harbor. These tears were different.

  Go home,Dr. Houston had said.

  Barefoot, Angela padded across her bedroom’s lush carpeting to her hallway and the living room’s hardwood floors, making her way to the little-used kitchen telephone hanging on the wall above the counter. She dialed the number and waited while the phone rang only once.

  “Hey, Naomi,” Angela said after the voice mail’s chipper message. “I’m calling on your cell because it’s after midnight, too late to bother you at home. I’ve been thinking about what you said, and you know what? You’re right. I need to visit the house. I think I’m ready, and I need to make this sojourn whether I’m ready or not. If you’d still like to come with me”—her voice faltered. Why wasthis the hard part?—“well, I’d really appreciate it. Maybe you could come up just for a weekend or something and I’ll stay a few days after you go. We can work it out. But I wanted to tell you now, before I change my mind. Let’s toss around some dates tomorrow, okay?”

  By the time Angela went back to bed, she slid into the bosom of sleep as effortlessly as a toddler who had never known loss and had yet to learn fear. No muddy, dreamy voices plagued her.

  With Gramma Marie’s ring hugging her finger, Angela slept straight through until dawn.

  Four

  SACAJAWEA

  WHERE YOU GOING?”

  The question caught Rick Leahy by surprise. His son’s voice had nearly been washed out because it had come from the left side, Rick’s bad ear. He’d just touched the doorknob of the double-wide trailer he shared with his three kids, expecting to slip out unnoticed, but Sean was slumped down on the sofa in the living room, nearly invisible between two piles of unsorted clean laundry. Rick hadn’t seen him at first, but now Sean’s white-blond hair was unmistakable, the cloned image of what Rick’s hair had looked like until it had darkened to a honey shade in adulthood. Sean was staring at the television screen, a bowl of cereal balanced on his knees.

  What was Sean doing up by ten on a Saturday? The other kids were still in bed.

  “Quick ride,” Rick said. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t truthful, either.

  “Want to come?”

  Sean shook his head. His cheeks and chin were overgrown with what looked like phosphorescent stubble, in need of shaving. He knew Rick was full of crap, but both seemed content to play it this way, not pushing too hard. Sean might not like where he was going, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it, either.

  “Be back in an hour,” Rick said.

  “Do the wordsbad karma mean anything to you?” Sean said.

  Rick didn’t have an answer for that right away, and he didn’t want to argue.

  “I wish I could bring your friend back, kid, but I can’t,” Rick said after a pause, in his most patient voice. “I really am trying to understand how you feel about this. We just disagree.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Sean said. In other words,Yeah, screw you, Pops. “It’s your life.”

  Rick felt like he was antagonizing his son, a feeling he did not enjoy, especially after the nightmare Sean had been through these past couple years. But he wasn’t going to conduct his life according to Sean’s superstitions either. If Sean had his way, the property next door would have been walled off since his friend Corey’s death.

  “Be back in an hour,” he said again, and he eased his way outside.

  Chestnut was Rick’s favorite riding horse, the six-year-old mare he’d bought soon before he found the cheap parcel of land in Sacajawea he now called home, five acres of mostly flat meadowland abutting the woods. He had five other horses now—three were his, and two were retired racehorses biding their time while their owner in Portland waited for buyers or takers for stud services. Named for her coloring, Chestnut was a sweet girl, an animal who understood Rick’s whims without much prodding. Rick shouldered a woven basket and took a short running leap to climb the horse’s back, with only a thick, patterned Navajo blanket serving as a saddle beneath his well-worn jeans. By now, after riding for years without a saddle, he figured he hadcojones of iron. Rick clucked, spurring Chestnut with his heels. “Come on, girl,” he said, and she began a spirited trot away from the barn.

  His sister said he collected children and horses, and maybe Bonnie was right. He loved both. Sean was his biological son with a one-night stand who’d given the boy up shortly after his birth, but Tonya and Andres were adoptive children who had lived with them for nearly four years now. Miguelito, the four-year-old he’d had as a foster child, had been adopted out last year when an uncle came forward and the caseworker decided he’d be better off with family. That hole in their home still hurt like hell. The agency had warned Rick something like that could happen, but imagining it and experiencing it were very different, like trying toimagine what it would feel like to get his leg sheared off. Kids needed homes, sometimes only for a short time, and he’d willingly offered his—but he’d gotten too at-tached to Miguelito. After Miguelito left, he’d brought in the two racers instead of applying for another foster kid. He would soon, maybe, but not yet. The horses were not his to keep either, but he knew the sting wouldn’t be nearly so bad when it was time for them to go.

  Above him, the sky staged a skirmish between the blurry morning sun and soupy clouds. As usual in the fall, the clouds seemed destined to win in the end, but not yet. So far, it was so bright and warm that Rick took off his denim jacket and tied it around his waist. Indian summer, he thought. Good. With sunshine burning off the morning dew, conditions were perfect for his morning enterprise. The ground would be good and dry.

  Rick’s acreage was long and narrow, on a slight incline. The cross-fencing he had built prevented a direct path to the Toussaint woodland directly beside him, so Rick rode Chestnut all the way down to his front gate, which was open, and doubled back to find the trail to the woods he had beaten into the soil over the past two years. There were only a couple of spots that weren’t too steep to give his horse access, if he wanted to avoid having to ride all the way down to the dead end of the road and then take the same trail the kids used on their way to The Spot. Rick wasn’t interested in The Spot. He had his own path, closer to his property line. The woman who owned the house, Angela Toussaint, had given him permission to ride on her property anytime he chose, but he wasn’t really after a morning ride today. That was what he’d lied about.

  He wanted to stock up on herbs.

  Sean called it stealing, but Rick saw it differently. Angela Toussaint had seemed like a cold character when she’d first come to his house and announced her policy of meeting the parents of any of her son’s friends, but she’d invited him to help himself to any of the gifts her land had to offer; walnuts, blackberries, blueberries, apples, or a half-dozen other fruit varieties he could find if he searched long enough.Otherwise, it all just goes to waste, she said. She hadn’t mentioned the unattended herb garden behind the house by name, but why should it be excluded?

  Chestnut st
umbled slightly and slid a half-foot where the soil was loose and damp at the most dramatic drop in the makeshift path. Then she got her footing, and they traveled safely beneath the canopy of evergreens that shaded the Toussaint land, the biggest remaining parcel of forest in town. The path was narrow, barely a path at all. Rick’s face wasthwapped by brittle, dead limbs he didn’t duck in time to miss. Rick kept his elbow up, guarding against upcoming limbs that might be meaner. At Chestnut’s pace, a good pop would knock him on his ass.

  There were still enough clear views between the trunks and limbs for Rick to see the rear of the regal house on the ridge above him, every window darkened. Occasionally, Rick saw Joseph Everly tooling around in the backyard, tending the rosebushes or mowing back the brush always trying to reclaim the small back clearing. And sometimes Rick saw a light on in the house, or open windows, signaling that Laurel Everly was doing her work inside. But aside from the presence of the Everlys, the house was dead. A beautiful post-Victorian, lifeless.