The Fainting Room (7 page)

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Authors: Sarah Pemberton Strong

BOOK: The Fainting Room
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They were coming back downstairs. Evelyn pulled the oven door open a crack, as if after ten minutes the cake could possibly be done. Of course it wasn’t; a shiny skin had formed over the top, the wet batter beneath it having tentatively risen. Evelyn ripped open a box of Walker’s shortbread and arranged the buttery rectangles on the serving plate. That would have to do. She elbowed open the swinging door, trying not to slosh tea all over the tray.
They sat in the living room, Evelyn and Ray on the sofa, Ingrid in an armchair. Ray watched as Evelyn carefully picked up two sugar cubes with a pair of sugar tongs and dropped them into Ingrid’s tea. He wondered where his wife had unearthed sugar cubes and tongs. Evelyn must want Ingrid here very badly, he thought; she was doing her utmost to make a good impression, and as so often happened when she did this, because she was trying too hard the result was unintentionally comical. It was like electroplating, it was campy, almost. He glanced at Ingrid and caught a fleeting expression he couldn’t read—possibly amusement, possibly derision. It’s not Evelyn’s fault, he thought protectively. And to appease his own sense of guilt for thinking ‘electroplating,’ he moved closer to his wife and put his arm around her shoulders.
Evelyn stiffened a little. The room was damp, and Ray’s body seemed to be radiating heat—she felt perspiration dampen the back of her shoulder where his arm rested. She tried to shift so that he would move his arm away again, but he seemed to interpret the movement as snuggling closer, and gave her an affectionate squeeze.
“So how long have you guys lived in this place?” Ingrid asked.
And Ray was off and running, eager as always to talk about the house, what a find it was, the challenges of remodeling—Evelyn had heard it all before. She recalled a time when she had found this discussion interesting—she had been fascinated by Ray’s ability to change a physical structure from one shape to another. It was almost, she’d felt, as if he could do magic. But now, sitting in the middle of the finished magic trick, in this particular moment she felt claustrophobic. Ray’s arm on her shoulder seemed to be cutting off her circulation; the side of her neck was numb.
“The previous owners had done nothing since 1960,” Ray was saying, “when the extent of their remodeling was to put in a dropped ceiling in the kitchen—they covered the pressed tin with acoustical tiles—can you imagine?—and then digging a fallout shelter in the basement.”
“A fallout shelter?” Ingrid sat up very straight on the couch.
Ray laughed. “There aren’t any tins of chipped beef or propaganda manuals lying around. They never finished it, so I turned it into a wine cellar.”
Evelyn felt as if she were watching foreign film without her contact lenses in—she couldn’t read the subtitles, had lost the thread of what was being discussed. She had no idea why Ray was saying “Eleven gauge—not galvanized, mind you, but stainless steel” or why Ingrid, sitting there in her ratty black clothes, responded with, “Awesome, that is so awesome.” There was something odd about her sneakers: like her hair, they seemed to have been dyed black with dye that had not quite taken. The roots of Ingrid’s hair had a slightly greenish cast—not enough ammonia, Evelyn thought—and the black canvas of her shoes was a streaky gray in places.
And then there was the safety pin in her ear—was that supposed to be daring? Ingrid should see the Human Pincushion in the Jones and Wallace sideshow. And yet it was daring, because how dare she, this Ingrid? She was in Randall, she was a student at Newell Academy, the least she could do was dress correctly, but she didn’t seem to care at all, she seemed perfectly happy to sit there in their nice living room wearing whatever she wanted. Evelyn looked from Ingrid to Ray. They seemed to have forgotten she was there.
So say something intelligent. Something perceptive and cool.
“Did you color your sneakers black with magic marker?”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
Faux pas number two
, as Ray would say. Ingrid looked down at her shoes.
“Um, yeah, I did, actually. In English class. I was bored one day.”
“It must be a relief not to have a dress code,” said Ray, smoothing over the awkward pause that followed. “Walking around your campus last fall, I remember thinking how pleasant it was to see kids wearing what they wanted. When I was at Andover, we all had to wear ties.”
Ingrid nodded. “I interviewed at two other schools that wouldn’t take me because of my hair—I had a Mohawk then. Like the point of going to school is a hairstyle or something. It was ridiculous. I mean we’re supposed to be learning how to think, right?”
Evelyn took a sip of tea and burned her mouth.
“So Ingrid,” she tried again, “you need a place to live for the summer.”
For the first time since sitting down, Ingrid looked right at her. “Yeah,” she said. “I really really do.”
Evelyn saw the hope in her eyes and felt a surge of triumph at having finally gotten the upper hand in the conversation. Ingrid wanted something that she had. She glanced at Ray, and he made an almost imperceptible
Sure, why not
expression.
“Well, we do have plenty of room here,” Evelyn said. “This is a very large house.”
“It’s a great house. I really like it.”
“You don’t think you’d be bored,” Ray asked, “spending your summer out here in the provinces?”
Ingrid shook her head vigorously. “Compared to Melvin, this is paradise. I guess the only problem is, I was hoping to get a summer job, and this is pretty far away from everything. Maybe some of your neighbors have kids I could baby-sit, or some gardening I could do or something?”
“I can always use a hand in the garden,” Ray said.
“Or whatever you need done around the house. Hey, I could help you with typing your architecture book. I’m a really fast typist.”
“That’s not a bad idea. I’m an absolutely wretched one.”
“So then you wouldn’t mind having me here?” Ingrid asked, and ducked her head, suddenly shy.
Evelyn felt a stab of fear. She had meant to gain some leverage in the conversation, not actually invite Ingrid to live here, not yet.
“We’ll have to talk it over,” she said, and the other two looked at her. “I mean, with the school, before anything gets decided, I’m sure there are considerations we’ll have to…consider,” she finished lamely. I’m a jerk, she thought. But this was supposed to be an interview, not a promise.
“Oh.” Ingrid suddenly looked smaller, as if she had shrunk into herself. “Um, okay.” She turned to Ray. “You heard about me from Ms. Luce—I don’t know what she said, but maybe you could talk to one of the other teachers at my school. Mr. Carberg, the physics teacher, likes me.”
“Oh, Liz Luce didn’t speak ill of you at all,” Ray said quickly. “I think Evelyn meant logistical considerations. In any case, I imagine your parents will want to speak to us.”
“My dad’s pretty hard to get hold of. Better just talk to the school.” Ingrid put down her teacup. “Well, I should go. If I could just get my sweater—”
“Of course.” Evelyn jumped up.
Ray looked toward the windows. It was still raining. “We’ll drive you back to Newell,” he said.
“Don’t bother, I can bike it fine.”
“It’s no bother,” Evelyn said, coming back with the sweater, “Ray will take you.”
“I
like
biking in the rain,” said Ingrid. “I’m fine, really.” She crossed her arms over her chest to emphasize her position of fine-ness; under the high ceiling, a dark, small-boned girl in damp old clothes, she looked absolutely lost. “Well, see you around.” She went to the door, opened it herself.
Ray followed her, feeling furious at Evelyn for raising the girl’s hopes like that if she didn’t mean it. What was she trying to do?
“I’ll call Liz,” he said. “By the way, what’s your last name?”
The word she mumbled sounded to him like ‘slay’.
“Sleigh? As in jingle bells?”
“Slade.” She spelled it for him.
“Well, we’re pleased to meet you, Ingrid Slade.” He gave her a smile he hoped was reassuring and she smiled back, finally. Ray thought he saw the reason she hadn’t smiled earlier: she had the most lopsided grin he’d ever seen; only one side of her mouth curved up while the other side remained neutral. The effect was not unpleasant, but it was strange—the kind of thing he imagined a self-conscious teenager might take pains to suppress.
He watched her run down the porch steps and across the lawn, hike her leg over a black ten-speed and ride bumpily across the brick path and down the driveway, head bent against the rain.
Evelyn was collecting the saucers and teacups.
“Well?” he asked.
“Well what?”
“What’s going on? What was with the tea party business? My grandmother’s Spode china and the sugar tongs, and why did you tell her she could live here, in so many words, and then in the next breath take it back?”
“I can’t explain.”
“Try, why don’t you.”
Evelyn stared at him a moment, then went out of the kitchen. He had no idea what was going on. You thought he was so smart until he did something and you saw that he was missing half the action, like he’d fallen asleep in the middle of the movie and missed the big scene. Well, she would show him. She would go and get the rock from the study, she would tell him she was the one who threw it. Then he would see.
She went up the stairs but the rock wasn’t there—the glass, yes, all over the place, and the blood on the desk and the carpet. But the rock was gone. Had the police taken it? To fingerprint? She stared at the glass on the floor, at the rain coming in through the broken window, then looked out the window at Ray’s herb garden. There was the garden’s perfect border, nothing missing. He must have put the rock back himself. Just put it back as if nothing had happened.
She went downstairs again, through the kitchen with its smooth, gleaming appliances, past Ray and out the back door onto the porch. She would get the rock, she would show him how bad and crazy she was. Then he would see.
But as she stepped out from under the eaves and the rain hit her face hard and cold, she came to her senses.
Are you kidding, Evie Lynne
? Ray would throw her out and then what would she do? Go back to Jones and Wallace and sell popcorn? Live in her sister’s trailer?
Rain foamed from the square-mouthed gutters, the driveway was lined with flattened daffodils. Evelyn stepped back under the eaves and wiped the rain from her eyes. What had Ingrid said when she was leaving?
I like biking in the rain
. Obviously Ingrid had not grown up in a falling-apart trailer with a leak over her bed. What was to like about rain? For years she had driven pickup trucks and trailers through it, she knew all about patching leaks in aluminum roofs to protect herself from it, about sleeping with towels thrown over the blankets in case the flashing did not hold. It was raining the night Joe died, an autumn thunderstorm.
Evelyn began to shiver. Why did Ray think everything was all right? It was dangerous to think that, to be so off-guard. If he would just realize how far from all right everything was, maybe he could figure out how to fix it. Because she had no idea.
She went back up the porch steps and into the kitchen. Ray had taken the overdone cake out of the oven and was standing at the sink rinsing teacups. He turned around and looked at her rain-soaked face, brown rivulets of mascara streaking her cheeks, her soaking clothes, the mud on her shoes.
“What the hell are you doing?” he said.
Evelyn inhaled the fragrance of chocolate, a tiny shelter.
“I’m sorry.”
Ray was silent a moment, looking at her. Then he said, “You don’t have to be sorry, but sweetheart, I’m worried about you. This isn’t good, that you’re—” she could see him search for the tactful phrase—“that you’re feeling so bad so often. Why don’t I ask Marseille for the names of some people, and you can go talk to someone—”
“No,” Evelyn said quickly. “I’m all right. I know I’ve been acting like a freak, I just—” she stopped.
It was me who threw the rock
, she wanted to say, the words were right there on her tongue, she could taste them: glass and blood.
I’m dangerous, you have no idea.
“I just, it was—” she tried. And then fell silent.
Ray came and put his arms around her. The rain in her clothes soaked into his, sticking them together so that she felt the warmth of his body seeping into her cold skin. She breathed in the scent of him, skin and clean clothes and soap, a scent that had always produced in her a feeling of comfort, safety. She did not feel safe now. She rubbed her cheek against Ray’s shirt, breathed him into her lungs again. Twelve weeks after they met, he’d asked her to marry him. At the time she was too high on endorphins and the delirium of winning the love lottery to consider it from any point of view except her own. Now she drew back and looked at her husband. He had made her part of the architecture of his happiness, had drawn her into his plans and now there she was: a solid structure before him.
Shaking, ready to fall down.

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