The Uncanny Reader (50 page)

Catherine took her head out of the fireplace. “Guys,” she said. “Carleton, Tilly. Slow down a minute and tell me what you think. Think King Spanky will be okay out here?”

“King Spanky is a cat, Mom,” Tilly said. “Maybe we should get a dog, you know, to help protect us.” She could tell by looking at her mother that they were going to move. She didn't know how she felt about this, except she had plans for the yard. A yard like that needed a dog.

“I don't like big dogs,” said Carleton, six years old and small for his age. “I don't like this staircase. It's too big.”

“Carleton,” Henry said. “Come here. I need a hug.”

Carleton came down the stairs. He lay down on his stomach on the floor and rolled, noisily, floppily, slowly, over to where Henry stood with the real estate agent. He curled like a dead snake around Henry's ankles. “I don't like those dogs outside,” he said.

“I know it looks like we're out in the middle of nothing, but if you go down through the backyard, cut through that stand of trees, there's this little path. It takes you straight down to the train station. Ten-minute bike ride,” the agent said. Nobody ever remembered her name, which was why she had to wear too-tight skirts. She was, as it happened, writing a romance novel, and she spent a lot of time making up pseudonyms, just in case she ever finished it. Ophelia Pink. Matilde Hightower. LaLa Treeble. Or maybe she'd write gothics. Ghost stories. But not about people like these. “Another ten minutes on that path and you're in town.”

“What dogs, Carleton?” Henry said.

“I think they're lions, Carleton,” said Catherine. “You mean the stone ones beside the door? Just like the lions at the library. You love those lions, Carleton. Patience and Fortitude?”

“I've always thought they were rabbits,” the real estate agent said. “You know, because of the ears. They have big ears.” She flopped her hands and then tugged at her skirt, which would not stay down. “I think they're pretty valuable. The guy who built the house had a gallery in New York. He knew a lot of sculptors.”

Henry was struck by that. He didn't think he knew a single sculptor.

“I don't like the rabbits,” Carleton said. “I don't like the staircase. I don't like this room. It's too big. I don't like
her
.”

“Carleton,” Henry said. He smiled at the real estate agent.

“I don't like the house,” Carleton said, clinging to Henry's ankles. “I don't like houses. I don't want to live in a house.”

“Then we'll build you a tepee out on the lawn,” Catherine said. She sat on the stairs beside Tilly, who shifted her weight, almost imperceptibly, toward Catherine. Catherine sat as still as possible. Tilly was in fourth grade and difficult in a way that girls weren't supposed to be. Mostly she refused to be cuddled or babied. But she sat there, leaning on Catherine's arm, emanating saintly fragrances: peacefulness, placidness, goodness.
I want this house,
Catherine said, moving her lips like a silent-movie heroine, to Henry, so that neither Carleton nor the agent, who had bent over to inspect a piece of dust on the floor, could see. “You can live in your tepee, and we'll invite you to come over for lunch. You like lunch, don't you? Peanut butter sandwiches?”

“I don't,” Carleton said, and sobbed once.

But they bought the house anyway. The real estate agent got her commission. Tilly rubbed the waxy stone ears of the rabbits on the way out, pretending that they already belonged to her. They were as tall as she was, but that wouldn't always be true. Carleton had a peanut butter sandwich.

*   *   *

The rabbits sat on either side of the front door. Two stone animals sitting on cracked, mossy haunches. They were shapeless, lumpish, patient in a way that seemed not worn down, but perhaps never really finished in the first place. There was something about them that reminded Henry of Stonehenge. Catherine thought of topiary shapes,
The Velveteen Rabbit,
soldiers who stand guard in front of palaces and never even twitch their noses. Maybe they could be donated to a museum. Or broken up with jackhammers. They didn't suit the house at all.

*   *   *

“So what's the house like?” said Henry's boss. She was carefully stretching rubber bands around her rubber-band ball. By now the rubber-band ball was so big, she had to get special extra-large rubber bands from the art department. She claimed it helped her think. She had tried knitting for a while, but it turned out that knitting was too utilitarian, too feminine. Making an enormous ball out of rubber bands struck the right note. It was something a man might do.

It took up half of her desk. Under the fluorescent office lights it had a peeled red liveliness. You almost expected it to shoot forward and out the door. The larger it got, the more it looked like some kind of eyeless, hairless, legless animal. Maybe a dog. A Carleton-sized dog, Henry thought, although not a Carleton-sized rubberband ball.

Catherine joked sometimes about using the carleton as a measure of unit.

“Big,” Henry said. “Haunted.”

“Really?” his boss said. “So's this rubber band.” She aimed a rubber band at Henry and shot him in the elbow. This was meant to suggest that she and Henry were good friends and just goofing around, the way good friends did. But what it really meant was that she was angry at him. “Don't leave me,” she said.

“I'm only two hours away.” Henry put up his hand to ward off rubber bands. “Quit it. We talk on the phone, we use e-mail. I come back to town when you need me in the office.”

‘You're sure this is a good idea?” his boss said. She fixed her reptilian, watery gaze on him. She had problematical tear ducts. Though she could have had a minor surgical procedure to fix this, she'd chosen not to. It was a tactical advantage, the way it spooked people.

It didn't really matter that Henry remained immune to rubber bands and crocodile tears. She had backup strategies. She thought about which would be most effective while Henry pitched his stupid idea all over again.

Henry had the movers' phone number in his pocket, like a talisman. He wanted to take it out, wave it at the Crocodile, say, Look at this! Instead he said, “For nine years, we've lived in an apartment next door to a building that smells like urine. Like someone built an entire building out of bricks made of compressed red pee. Someone spit on Catherine in the street last week. This old Russian lady in a fur coat. A kid rang our doorbell the other day and tried to sell us gas masks. Door-to-door gas-mask salesman. Catherine bought one. When she told me about it she burst into tears. She said she couldn't figure out if she was feeling guilty because she'd bought a gas mask, or if it was because she hadn't bought enough for everyone.”

“Good Chinese food,” his boss said. “Good movies. Good bookstores. Good dry cleaners. Good conversation.”

“Tree houses,” Henry said. “I had a tree house when I was a kid.”

“You were never a kid,” his boss said.

“Three bathrooms. Crown moldings. We can't even see our nearest neighbor's house. I get up in the morning, have coffee, put Carleton and Tilly on the bus, and go to work in my pajamas.”

“What about Catherine?” The Crocodile put her head down on her rubber-band ball. Possibly this was a gesture of defeat.

“There was that thing. Catherine's whole department is leaving. Like rats deserting a sinking ship. Anyway, Catherine needs a change. And so do I,” Henry said. “We've got another kid on the way. We're going to garden. Catherine'll teach ESL, find a book group, write her book. Teach the kids how to play bridge. You've got to start them early.”

He picked a rubber band off the floor and offered it to his boss. “You should come out and visit some weekend.”

“I never go upstate,” the Crocodile said. She held on to her rubber-band ball. “Too many ghosts.”

*   *   *

“Are you going to miss this? Living here?” Catherine said. She couldn't stand the way her stomach poked out. She couldn't see past it. She held up her left foot to make sure it was still there and pulled the sheet off Henry.

“I love the house,” Henry said.

“Me too,” Catherine said. She was biting her fingernails. Henry could hear her teeth going click, click. Now she had both feet up in the air. She wiggled them around. Hello, feet.

“What are you doing?”

She put them down again. On the street outside, cars came and went, pushing smears of light along the ceiling, slow and fast at the same time. The baby was wriggling around inside her, kicking out with both feet like it was swimming across the English Channel, the Pacific. Kicking all the way to China. “Did you buy that story about the former owners moving to France?”

“I don't believe in France,” Henry said.
“Je ne crois pas en France.”

“Neither do I,” Catherine said. “Henry?”

“What?”

“Do you love the house?”

“I love the house.”

“I love it more than you do,” Catherine said, although Henry hated it when she said things like that. “What do you love best?”

“That room in the front,” Henry said. “With the windows. Our bedroom. Those weird rabbit statues.”

“Me too,” Catherine said, although she didn't. “I love those rabbits.”

Then she said, “Do you ever worry about Carleton and Tilly?”

“What do you mean?” Henry said. He looked at the alarm clock: it was 4:00
A.M.
“Why are we awake right now?”

“Sometimes I worry that I love one of them better,” Catherine said. “Like I might love Tilly better. Because she used to wet the bed. Because she's always so angry. Or Carleton, because he was so sick when he was little.”

“I love them both the same,” Henry said.

He didn't even know he was lying. Catherine knew, though. She knew he was lying, and she knew he didn't even know it. Most of the time she thought that it was okay. As long as he thought he loved them both the same and acted as if he did, that was good enough.

“Well, do you ever worry that you love them more than me?” she said. “Or that I love them more than I love you?”

“Do you?” Henry said.

“Of course,” Catherine said. “I have to. It's my job.”

*   *   *

She found the gas mask in a box of wineglasses, and also six recent issues of
The New Yorker
, which she still might get a chance to read someday. She put the gas mask under the sink and the
New Yorker
s in the sink. Why not? It was her sink. She could put anything she wanted into it. She took the magazines out again and put them into the refrigerator, just for fun.

Henry came into the kitchen, holding silver candlesticks and a stuffed armadillo, which someone had made into a purse. It had a shoulder strap made out of its own skin. You opened its mouth and put things inside it, lipstick and subway tokens. It had pink gimlet eyes and smelled strongly of vinegar. It belonged to Tilly, although how it had come into her possession was unclear. Tilly claimed she'd won it at school in a contest involving doughnuts. Catherine thought it more likely Tilly had either stolen it or (slightly preferable) found it in someone's trash. Now Tilly kept her most valuable belongings inside the purse to keep them safe from Carleton, who was covetous of the previous things—because they were small and because they belonged to Tilly—but afraid of the armadillo.

“I've already told her she can't take it to school for at least the first two weeks. Then we'll see.” She took the purse from Henry and put it under the sink with the gas mask.

“What are they doing?” Henry said. Framed in the kitchen window, Carleton and Tilly hunched over the lawn. They had a pair of scissors and a notebook and a stapler.

“They're collecting grass.” Catherine took dishes out of a box, put the bubble wrap aside for Tilly to stomp, and stowed the dishes in a cabinet. The baby kicked like it knew all about bubble wrap. “Whoa, Fireplace,” she said. “We don't have a dancing license in there.”

Henry put out his hand, rapped on Catherine's stomach.
Knock, knock
. It was Tilly's joke. Catherine would say, “Who's there?” and Tilly would say, “Candlestick's here.” “Fat Man's here.” Box. Hammer. Milkshake. Clarinet. Mousetrap. Fiddlestick. Tilly had a whole list of names for the baby. The real estate agent would have approved.

“Where's King Spanky?” Henry said.

“Under our bed,” Catherine said. “He's up in the box frame.”

“Have we unpacked the alarm clock?” Henry said.

“Poor King Spanky,” Catherine said. “Nobody to love except an alarm clock. Come upstairs and let's see if we can shake him out of the bed. I've got a present for you.”

The present was in a U-Haul box exactly like all the other boxes in the bedroom, except that Catherine had written HENRY'S PRESENT on it instead of LARGE FRONT BEDROOM. Inside the box were Styrofoam peanuts and then a smaller box from Takashimaya. The Takashimaya box was fastened with a silver ribbon. The tissue paper inside was dull gold, and inside the tissue paper was a green silk robe with orange sleeves and heraldic animals in orange and gold thread.

“Lions,” Henry said.

“Rabbits,” Catherine said.

“I didn't get you anything,” Henry said.

Catherine smiled nobly. She liked giving presents better than getting presents. She'd never told Henry because it seemed to her that it must be selfish in some way she'd never bothered to figure out. Catherine was grateful to be married to Henry, who accepted all presents as his due; who looked good in the clothes she bought him; who was vain, in an easygoing way, about his good looks. Buying clothes for Henry was especially satisfying now, while she was pregnant and couldn't buy them for herself.