The Stager: A Novel (11 page)

“Everything in moderation” was one of my mother’s favorite things to say.

So we tried that, me and Dominique, a little bit of everything in moderation in our little after-school snack club. Apples were allowed but were boring, so we spiced them up with peanut butter and honey. He liked the peanut butter so much that he licked it off my hand and didn’t even bite me, so I went the next logical step and began to bring him Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. He liked those, too.

“I want to look more closely and see if that’s really Dominique,” I say.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” the Stager says. “It’s not a pretty sight. Better to just remember Dominique as he was.”

I remember Dominique as he was, my best friend, the only pet I’d ever had, and I worry I’m going to start crying or laughing or screaming again, so I get up from the table and leave my current half-eaten brownie sitting there, then I run out into the backyard quickly, before anyone can stop me, and I pull the towel off the rabbit. It’s horrible to see something dead up close, especially something matted, bloated, wide-eyed, and reeking of chlorine.

This may be difficult to believe, but I swear, at that very moment
another
rabbit that looks just like Dominique hops by, looks me in the eye, and squeezes under the very same hole in the very same fence that the rabbit had squeezed under yesterday.

I can’t help it. Now I’m
certain
this new rabbit is Dominique, and I go running after it.

*   *   *

“YOU KNOW, ELSA,
you’re becoming something of an unreliable narrator,” my mother says later that night, after Nabila and the Stager find me at Unfurlings and send me, like the tragic child who has been kidnapped in some fairy tale, to my room without supper.

I sit on my bed, holding the phone, staring at the easel. I’m trying to paint a chair. I think maybe if I get it started, the Stager will see it and she won’t be able to resist coming into my room to help me make it better.

“What’s an unreliable narrator?”

“It means your version of events might not be believable. Your story keeps changing. You’re making poor Nabila miserable, and you’re not letting the Stager do her job. I don’t know what to believe anymore. You run off, you don’t tell anyone where you’re going, and you frighten everyone half to death. I’m also starting to get the feeling that maybe
you’re
the one who dug up all the flowers yesterday—did you know that I had to leave a pretty important dinner to take that call? I nearly had a heart attack—I thought something really awful had happened to you. Do you think you might illuminate me?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“What don’t you understand? It’s pretty straightforward, I’d say. Did you dig up all the flowers?”

“No.”

“Okay, who did it, then?”

“A rabbit.”

“You know this how?”

“I just do.”

“You didn’t touch any of the flowers? Like maybe what I was thinking was that you were trying to make a bouquet for me. I thought that was sweet. A welcome-home gift?”

“You’re coming home?”

“Well, in a couple of days.”

“Yes. That’s it. A welcome-home bouquet.”

“Great, thanks. So you did pull up the flowers, then?”

I now see this is a trick question. I had not pulled up the flowers, but I want her to think I made a bouquet. Also, this is starting to make me sad about moving again. “Remember how we’d plant bulbs every fall? How we’d go to the garden center to pick out a pumpkin and we’d always buy daffodil bulbs and also some tulip ones with crazy names? Remember the Hillary Clinton tulips?”

“Of course I remember, Elsa. We did that every year since you were old enough to hold a spade.”

“Yeah, and you always said, ‘Someday, Elsa, we’ll have the most beautiful garden in the whole world!’”

“And we do!” I walk over to the easel and use a black marker to draw a rabbit in the half-finished chair. I put my mom on speakerphone while I draw the outline. Or try to draw the outline. I’m not a very good artist. It looks sort of like a rabbit, but one ear is longer than the other. The rabbit looks less like Dominique than like a villain rabbit in a Batman movie.

“We do. It’s a beautiful garden, and now we have to leave it for someone else.”

“Of course. Okay, that makes sense. I get it, Elsa; this is really hard stuff, and I’m so sorry about Dominique, and…”

“Don’t worry, Mom. That wasn’t Dominique. There was no brown splotch on the stomach. I know he’s okay, because I saw him today. He squeezed under the fence, just like yesterday. That’s why I ran after him again. I’m just trying to bring him home, where he belongs.”

“Okay, well, we’re going to talk about this more when I get back. I’ve got some books we can read about moving. And maybe about pets passing, too. You’ve got a whole lot going on, and I feel awful that I’m away right now, but I’ll be back very soon. In fact, your dad is on his way back right now. His flight gets in late tonight. I could tell you needed one of us home. In the meantime, please remember that when we get to the new house we can plant a
new
garden, and it will be just as beautiful. We can even talk about getting a new rabbit.”

“I don’t want a rabbit. I’d like a dog, remember?”

“Okay, I get it, Elsa. I understand. But just tell me one more thing. Why did you run away? Did anything bad happen with the people with the cameras?”

I’m not sure how to answer this. Maybe something bad did happen. Maybe they caught me stealing Nabila’s bag of leaves that are maybe tea and maybe marijuana. I am definitely not going to be the one to bring this up, however.

“No, Mom, I told you, I saw Dominique, and I followed him. But he squeezed under the fence, so I went around into the Shays’ garden and he was there, but he was just getting ready to squeeze under
their
fence into the Mehtas’ house, so I walked around into
their
yard, and then, when I got there, he went under the
back
fence, which was really a problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, because I had to walk all the way around the block.”

“Elsa, I don’t understand why you didn’t try to get Nabila. You know you aren’t supposed to go wandering around the neighborhood by yourself.”

I have reached the point where my own lies are so confusing I don’t know how to keep them going.

“I did try. Remember? I got locked out. I was in the basement, looking for the vacuum, and I saw the bag with leaves in Nabila’s room, and then these strangers showed up with cameras, and then I saw Dominique, and…”

“What bag with leaves?”

Have I mentioned the bag with leaves? I truly didn’t mean to. I am terrified that I’ll get Nabila in trouble. I remember the cleaning lady who disappeared after the stirrup broke on the American Girl horse. I don’t want Nabila to have to leave, too, and I especially don’t want her to have to go back to the country with the warlords and scrawny rabbits. So I just say, “What?”

“What bag with leaves are you talking about?”

“I don’t know. What bag with leaves? What are
you
talking about?”

“Okay, never mind. This whole conversation is getting a little loopy, Elsa, but just go on, tell me what happened next.”

“Well, I walked all the way around the block, but by then I couldn’t really figure out where Dominique had gone, and then I saw a whole bunch of rabbits in the other direction. Why are there so many rabbits, Mom?”

“It’s spring. Breeding season, I guess. You know, think about the whole Easter thing, with the chocolate rabbits and stuff.”

I think about Easter bunnies, and I look at the Dominique I’ve just drawn and think he couldn’t look any less like an Easter bunny unless I put a cigarette in his mouth or drew him a mustache.

“Anyway, there was a fence, and there was a hole in the fence, and all of a sudden I was someplace else.”

“You wound up in Unfurlings. And you know very well you aren’t supposed to cross the road.”

“I didn’t! I’m telling you, I just squeezed under the fence and I was there. Maybe the back of the Unfurlings place backs up to The Flanders.”

“Maybe,” says my mom. “Although I don’t quite see how that would work, given that it’s across the street.”

“Well, maybe there’s a secret passageway.”

“Sure, Elsa. Why not toss in a little magical realism? I mean, really, with everything else going on, why not?!”

“What do you mean, Mom?”

“Nothing, Elsa. Go on.”

“Well, actually, now that you mention it, it
was
like some magical place. There was all this land, and so much green, and it wasn’t even a golf course! And there were patches with giant vegetables, and I saw a llama!”

“Well, that sure sounds like Unfurlings. Maybe you were back in the service area or something.”

“What does that mean?”

“I just mean maybe there’s a parcel of the land that extends farther than I thought.”

“Unfurlings is a dumb name.”

“Not as dumb as The Flanders!”

“I know, right?” I start laughing. “The Flanders” really is such a stupid name. It always makes me think of Ned Flanders on
The Simpsons
, even though my mom has explained that where we live is about a different Flanders, in Belgium, where the houses look sort of like our house, but actually not really, since our houses are all twice as big.

My mom starts laughing, too, and we stay on the phone laughing for a while, and I think maybe we’re done with this conversation and I’m not going to have to talk about it anymore, but I’m wrong.

“So then, Elsa, what happened next? Tell me about this so-called fairy-cake house.”

“It’s not a fairy-cake house, Mom. It’s a house where they were baking fairy cakes. Can we do that sometime? Marta—that’s the mom of the kids who live there, who are twins—said she’ll give me the recipe.”

“Sure, but really, Elsa, this is so astonishing. Don’t you remember all the conversations we’ve had about not going into strangers’ houses? And then you just go waltzing right in there, and you eat their food, and Nabila doesn’t even know where you are?”

“I know, Mom, but you also said sometimes you have to follow your gut. Like how you bought the new house because of the stone rabbit.”

“I know what you’re saying, sweetheart, but, still, don’t you see why this is different?”

“Not really. You would have gone inside, too, Mom. They’re really nice! The twins are only seven. A boy and a girl. They go to that school on River Road and they can walk there. Why don’t I go to that school? Why do I go to a school where I have to drive half an hour?”

“That’s an excellent question. One more way for your mom and dad to watch their money bleed away so you can learn to play field hockey and eat with a salad fork.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. That was a dumb thing to say. In London, you can walk to your new school.”

“I don’t want to walk to my school. I want to take a bus. I’ve never taken a bus before.” I keep staring at the painting, and then I have the idea that maybe I can fix the crooked ears with red paint, the same color that door is going to be. I go over to the easel and pick up the pot of paint, but the lid isn’t screwed on properly and it winds up spilling on the floor. Now there’s red paint on the white carpet, and I wonder how much more trouble I can possibly get in. I walk to the bathroom to get a towel.

“Elsa, promise me you are going to stay away from this place!”

“They drank milk out of wineglasses, Mom. Can we do that? There aren’t any real dishes, just the pretend ones on the table that is always set, and makes it look like whoever lives there is about to eat dinner. And they have a television but no cable, so it’s just for show, so that other people, when they visit the house, will see that that’s the place where the TV would be if they lived there. Except that now no one is even trying to live there, so Marta said, Why let a perfectly good house go to waste?”

The towels are gone in the bathroom that is attached to my room, and all I can find is a bag from Target with new towels in it. I wonder if it’s worse to use new towels to wipe up the paint, or to just leave it there. Probably best to just leave it there.

“So this lady, this Marta person, is squatting with her kids in the model home at Unfurlings?”

“It’s a real house with beds and everything, it’s just that it doesn’t have a lot of regular stuff in it.”

I turn from the bathroom back toward my room and realize that I have accidentally stepped in the paint, and now it’s all over the carpet, and you can see where I walked from the easel to the bathroom and back. Little red footsteps, like Hansel and Gretel but with paint instead of breadcrumbs.

“I’ve got to go, Mom. We can talk more when you come home.”

“Elsa, wait. I want to tell you something else.”

“Gotta go do my homework, and Nabila is calling me for dinner. Bye!”

“Wait, Elsa! A couple more things. I’m going to be on television at seven p.m., that’s seven p.m.
your
time—and you’d better watch, because I blew you a secret kiss.”

“Okay. Great.”

She starts to say something else, but I push the button to end the call.

LARS

If you’ve ever been on an airplane, then I don’t need to sell you on the light. It’s of a different quality up here: purer, brighter, practically symphonic in its brilliance. Also, you can see the clouds from inside out. Although I can’t actually feel the light to assess its texture, I bask in the warmth through the Plexiglas window.

A somewhat dour steward offers me something from his clanking cart, and even though I no longer drink (not because I’ve ever had a problem with alcohol, but because several of my prescriptions come with surely overblown warnings about not consuming alcohol, as well as not driving or operating heavy machinery), I ask for one of those tiny bottles of gin. Why not? The light is making me giddy, and I feel like celebrating. A toast to our new life in London! It’s time to be positive, and now that we have three spanking-new skylights, I am turning the corner, leaning into optimism. A toast to Jorek, my savior, my new best friend! A toast to Dominique, and a mournful moment of silence, may he rest in peace!