The Tell (2 page)

“I hope you can help me. I've just bought the house next door. Here's the question: Do either of you know how to get the hot water going?” His eyes roamed the kitchen's shabby elegance and distant, shadowed ceiling. What was there but a round milk-glass fixture and years of unreachable cobwebs? “I'm not the most competent when it comes to domestic matters. Switches and buttons, that kind of thing. But we all have our failings, and mine's not the worst, I'm guessing.” A contrite, suggestive smile snaked across his face. “Dials I can probably handle, though who knows?” His laugh was an expensive bauble.

Too many words, Owen decided. Too much padding around it all, too theatrical, too chattering. What was the guy really trying to say? And who talked like that? Mira was about to say something but pulled back. The dip just below her throat pulsed with questions. She was likely trying to figure out how she'd managed to miss the entire real estate transaction happening right next door when, in the past, nothing had ever escaped her.

“But look at this. My timing's perfect, as usual.” The man nodded to the steaming pot on the stove, the sparkling lettuce in the colander, the doomed garlic on the cutting board. When he shook his head, his hair followed stylishly like a little poodle. “You were about to have dinner. I'm sorry for just appearing like this. Should I come back later—or would you prefer never to see me again?”

The question was pure flirtation. You could stop the future cold and unadventurously, it suggested, or take a chance on what might happen next. Which kind of person were you? The man, in his midsixties, Owen decided, spoke with a kind of put-on accent of breeding and affluence, half high-up East Coast, half something fake British, and as though he meant everything and nothing at the same time. A vaguely ridiculous person, Owen thought, a man too much about himself. The standard blue eyes were watery, the blade of nose off-balance, not the result of a fistfight—he was too wispy for something like that—but from aging imperfectly and maybe dissolutely, and there was the first slackness of skin on his neck. His wiry body had an almost dissipated look to it, the former muscles gone stringy as if his personal trainer had recently defected. He looked like he'd once been strong. But it was the pose, the boneless posture and thin wrists, that were most familiar to Owen, though he still couldn't say how or why, and the way the man's shirt hung open to reveal a smooth expanse of tan clavicle and a few gray chest hairs.

“No, it's absolutely fine. Really, this is okay.” Mira had been holding her breath so long that the words came out in an enthusiastic and uncharacteristic rush.

“That's good, then. Because I can do without a lot,” the man said, and leaned forward as if this were a coy game they had played before. “But not a hot shower. A man's necessity, don't you think?”

“A woman's, too,” she said.

He didn't take his eyes off her. “You're absolutely right.”

Heat flamed the tops of Mira's ears and she bounced on her feet. “Look, I just can't believe this. I have to say something, okay? Why should I pretend to be cool about it?” She threw Owen a look that suggested he should join in with her, that this holding-back act of theirs was over, but he had no idea what she was talking about. “How amazing is this? I watch you every night.” She ran her hands down the front of her corduroy pants. Her toes curled to hide under the flared bottoms. “On television, I mean.”

Their visitor gave a shrug of humility. “You're probably the only one.”

“I doubt that.” Mira's laugh was airy and eager.

Owen was still lost, and he didn't understand what Mira's jittery excitement was all about until the man ran a deliberate finger around his jaw and chin. That was the gesture that gave him away. Owen stepped back for a wider view, one that might also take in the years and compress them into a single second.

“Jesus Christ, you're from that show, years ago, that sitcom,” he said. He sounded too fervent, but he couldn't help himself. He didn't
feel
like himself. “
Ancient Times
—am I right?”

“Right, and yes, years ago.” A lift in the man's smile suggested he was pleased to be remembered. “That damned television.”

“You're Bruno Macon,” Owen said, the name landing on his tongue. How strange it was to know him then—in a way.

“Isn't that a terrible name? I never liked it. Sounds like some kind of burned-pork product. Actually, I'm Wilton Deere—Bruno was the character I played.”

The correction prickled Owen; he liked to think he was no member of television's addled class, though he had been an avid member at one time. But Wilton Deere—was that any more of an authentic name? He marveled at how the presence of celebrity, even a one-time, one-show kind, could fluster him like this when usually he was checked and hard to read behind his reserve. He kept his enthusiasms close, his restraint closer. But here was that thrill of seeing someone who'd been on television in real, fleshy life. It was the enthrallment of proximity, the assumed glow, and it was intimacy, even if false, a put-on, like the man himself.

“But it's an interesting idea,” Wilton said. “Which of us is actually the real person? But that doesn't happen so much anymore.” He gave Owen an unhurried gaze that seemed to take in his thready chinos, faded blue T-shirt—a gift from the Spruance Middle School PTA—his averted dark eyes, his thick-veined arms, his loose hands, a flop of hair just starting to gray at forty. The sweat of scrutiny appeared above Owen's lip. “Most of the people who are old enough to remember my show are the same people who are old enough to forget. That's the irony of history. Those who've lived it have forgotten how it went.” Wilton wagged his head, levered himself off the doorway and opened his hands, as if to say you couldn't do anything about the way some people were.

The notion wasn't untrue, but it had a rehearsed feeling to it, Owen decided. The man was actorish in a way he found embarrassing, with the too-expressive face, the stagey intonation. And all that feeling, that hammy honesty. The blowsy clothes, the feminine ankles. He wondered if the man was gay.

“History doesn't matter—not when there're always reruns,” Mira said. Sleepless in the middle of the night since the break-in and watching the TV newly installed in the bedroom, she spoke like a recent convert. Her face flashed with authority. “One, two, three o'clock in the morning. Seven days a week, if you want.”

“Insomnia?” Wilton asked. “Insomniacs and the Japanese. My fan base these days.”

“I couldn't figure it out at first,” Mira said, taking a step back and weaving her fingers through her curls. “You were completely familiar, so familiar that I couldn't really see you, I couldn't make sense of your face. Were you someone I knew? I wasn't exactly expecting you to show up at the back door.” She recounted their meeting as if it were already their delightful history. “And then.”

“And then,” Wilton said. “Here I am.”

Owen caught Wilton glance at himself in the mirror by the basement door and disapproving lines etched around the man's mouth. He was a less robust version of the star he once was years before, but he puffed up his chest and Mira rounded her shoulders to catch his attention. And who wouldn't look at her the way Wilton did just then, returned from his own troubling reflection, at how her pants sat so swingy on her hips that you couldn't help but calculate the rousing rise of her bones, the braless statement of her full breasts, the way she moved like she was on a boat commanding the waves and whales? No, the man wasn't gay; he looked carnivorous, a drop of moisture at the corner of his mouth. Mira's eyes were a remarkable, colorlessly pure element and expertly focused. She never wasted her attention and she could be fierce with her loyalties, fierce with her stubbornness. Wilton blinked and blinked as if she were a very bright signal.

“So, you bought the house next door,” Owen said, taking a step closer to Wilton, to get him away from his wife.

With exaggerated concern, Wilton back-stepped out of the doorway to look at his hulking purchase. They followed him out onto the cool bricks of the patio. “You say that so ominously. Why? Is there something wrong with the place?”

“Nothing wrong with it at all,” Mira assured him. “It's an amazing house, one of the few old beauties still left and not chopped up into condos. You're very lucky.”

“An old beauty,” Wilton repeated.

“Did they tell you that the previous owner died in it? Let's just say no one checked in on her for a few days.” Owen offered the details as a challenge, a way to bend the air and see which way Wilton might sway, or if he would sway at all. “It wasn't pretty. Five days in the heat.”

“Wow, O. He needs to know that?” Mira laughed, but she seemed to understand the test and turned to Wilton expectantly.

The man examined the ink-stained clouds as the city minutes ticked off. “I suppose she had to die somewhere, and isn't it best to die in your own bed? After all, it wasn't her problem that they didn't find her for a while. That's how I want to go, in my own bed. But I just hope they got the body out and let some fresh air in. Maybe a few squirts of air freshener.” He wiggled his fingers under his nose. “Anyway, it gives the place a certain pedigree, its own drama. Every house should have a story. This is my first time here,” he continued, “which should explain why I can't get anything to work. That's what happens when you buy a house over the phone after visiting a few rooms online. They call that a virtual tour, but it's virtually useless. Anyway, a wad of cash, a leap of faith, and here I am. I'd never even been to Rhode Island before today, and now I own a piece of it. All very efficient and perfectly American.”

There was no
we
in the details, Owen noted, and Wilton had tempered his voice to make the story sound empty of attachments, roots, responsibility, lovers, and in the process, arouse a kind of sympathetic curiosity. Who was so untethered and free to buy instant residence anywhere he wanted? No one just landed in Rhode Island, after all, not the first settlers looking for refuge in a forgiving patch of earth and shoreline, and not Owen. It was a place to go when you needed to escape something. And not this guy either—who'd already told them how he'd like to die. What else did they need to know?

“By the way,” Wilton said, cradling his elbows and smirking, “you haven't told me your names yet. That doesn't seem quite fair.”

Mira put her hands on her head in happy surrender. Her glasses slid to the end of her nose. “You're right. That's just terrible. I'm Mira Thrasher and he's Owen Brewer.”

Wilton turned and his gaze climbed up the shingles of their house to the many eaves and the slate roof's highest, homicidal point, where the copper sail of the wind gauge was frozen in its north-south axis. He took in the carriage house and the weighty, surrounding houses. He took in the evening's uncertain hour and both of them, Owen's arm around Mira a little too tight.

“Thrasher and Brewer,” he said. “Like exhibits in the Museum of Industry.”

Mira laughed, unhooked Owen's hand from her waist, and offered to take a stab at Wilton's hot-water heater. “I'm sure it's nothing, just a switch. Or maybe a dial,” she teased, elbowing Wilton without actually touching him. Owen marveled at her ease—and was uneasy with it. Mira was not usually won over so soon.

“Good, because I'm completely hopeless,” Wilton said and followed Mira across the lawn, content to be led by her. Mira called to Owen that she'd be right back, then she kicked open the gate with an athletic flourish and they disappeared into the vast house.

Back inside the kitchen. Owen kept an eye on Wilton's house while he dried the lettuce, boiled the spaghetti, and waited for Mira to return. He chopped parsley but the distracted blade nicked his thumb. Blood dotted his paper towel bandage. How long did it take to turn on the fucking water heater? He watched lights next door go on and off in one room and then another. Finally, there was a diffuse glow on the third floor within the recesses of the eaves. What was Wilton showing her? Or was Mira pointing out city sights to him? Restless, Owen took his students' papers from his bag to the room Mira called his study, as though he were a studier, a scholar, when he was nothing close. But this was the same room, the same chair even, that Mira's father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had used. Two tall windows faced Whittier Street, their dusty velvet curtains pulled apart like revealing skirts. Every Thrasher male must have watched his own timely parade pass by and felt like its master and leader. Mira's family was like that—proprietary and boastful. Owen, though, felt more like a parade follower, still an intruder in this house, in this city and state—and on rare and troubling days, even in Mira's life. It appeared that no woman, in generations of high-minded Thrashers, had ever claimed a single room as her own study. Even Mira used the bed or the kitchen table when she was working even though there was plenty of other space. Was it because every woman already thought of the house as entirely hers?

He turned in the desk chair, still not sure after five years of marriage how he was to think of this house and its contents. Whose cracked rubber bands were these, whose blackened and ancient pennies in an ashtray from the Hope Club, whose keys without locks? Whose marble busts, Chinese porcelain bowls, inlaid boxes, and masterly paintings? Were they his, too? Most of the books on the shelves were not his, and neither were the many pieces of art that interrupted the room's green-banded wallpaper, not the oak desk with its cavernous drawers, not the swiveling leather chair grown shiny from years of commanding, virile body heat. He didn't know much about the endless booty in the rest of the house either. He slept in a bed that had belonged to people long dead. He was surrounded by their bureaus and pillows, wrapped in their linen sheets. He bathed and shaved and shit where they had. He made love to their very last daughter. Mira's father's family—a long line of aggressive lawyers and businessmen with too much city influence—had been single-mindedly acquisitive. They'd hoarded and stuffed every room in the house, even the far back ones never used, as if collecting were a family disease passed down. His own father, Edward, covered the splintered sills of his aging pond-side cottage with an ever-changing collection of the natural: sticks, shells, bleached fish skulls, shriveling apples. When he was bored with it, he just opened the door and tossed the junk out. Nothing was ever tossed out here; it only grew in value and inapproachability. Owen didn't know anything about the one object he coveted in a dark, felonious way: he'd named it the squid pen. Tentacles were etched onto the silver sheath, and two red enamel dots on the tapering cap were collusive eyes. The fountain pen's long black bladder was cracked and limp, vaguely sexual and bereft. He was fairly certain Mira didn't know the pen existed, resting in a velvet-lined coffin at the very back of the desk drawer where it had probably been forever, and where she had no reason to venture.