The Uninvited (14 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

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Chapter 15

T
he Liberty Brothers shop bell jangled with a nervous clatter above me.

Daniel slid two nails out of his mouth and lowered the disembodied arm of an oak chair to the ground. “What happened to you?”

I ran my hands through my hair and found a bird’s nest of tangles and sweat and dislodged pins. The room rolled beneath my feet and tipped me off balance. I fell back against the door with a rattle of the splintered glass.

“Ivy?” Daniel rushed over and took hold of my waist and left elbow. “Come sit down. You don’t look well.”

“I’ve barely slept.”

He guided me toward the long front counter at the back. “Why didn’t you come here sooner?”

“APL men huddled outside your door when I came by yesterday morning.”

“What?”

“You’re right—there’s nothing but chaos out there. I’m not sure how much longer I can tolerate it.”

He guided me behind the counter and lowered me down to a pale wooden chair with a rose carved into the back. I thought of Sigrid lying somewhere inside that cold and cavernous hospital. And her children. Little gold spots buzzed before my eyes. I sank my face into my lap and interlocked my fingers behind my skull to squeeze the wooziness out of my brain.

“Ivy?” Daniel cupped the back of my neck with a warm hand, and I heard him kneel down on one knee beside me. “Are you all right? Is it more than just exhaustion?”

“I’m terrified that you or someone else I know is going to die.”

“Why? Why did you come in here in such a panic yesterday morning?”

“I see—certain things—before someone close to me loses his life.” I breathed into the folds of my skirt, heating my cheeks with the air. “I saw two of them in the past twenty-four hours.”

Daniel’s second knee dropped to the floor. “What is it that you see?”

“I don’t want to say.”

“Why not?”

“It’ll sound like something’s wrong with my head.”

“I doubt it.”

I managed to lift my face. “Just . . . please be extremely careful of this flu. Stay inside. Keep far away from others.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing. You know that.”

“The world smells and tastes of death and fear right now. I can’t even play Beethoven on a piano for a moment of escape. Someone will march in and take me away to wherever it is they talked about taking you.”

He leaned his face closer. “Don’t worry about those APL
Schweine
so much. No one’s going to take you away.”

“I saw the one who called me a whore again. He stood outside the store with the others, and he looked straight at me. I used to lend Billy and him my marbles when we were younger. I dried his tears when he fell down and scraped his knee at our house. Now he won’t stop following me around like I’m a lethal criminal.”

“Here”—Daniel offered his hand, his fingers trembling—“let’s go upstairs and forget everything else.”

“I’m too tired to go upstairs with you.”

“No, not for that.” He wrapped his hand around my palm and wrist and guided me up to my feet until we faced each other. “I’ll draw you a hot bath, and then you can warm up by the fireplace and sleep in my bed.”

My eyes strayed to the drawers below the brass cash register, no more than two feet away from us. “It’s in there, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“The article about the murder.”

Daniel shifted his position and blocked the drawers with his body. “You don’t want to see that right now. Not if you’re exhausted and unsettled.”

“What better time to read it than when I’m already unsettled?”

“I told you”—he squeezed my hand—“this is supposed to be paradise in here. Just you and me. Don’t remind me of what happened here. Don’t even think about it. Just come upstairs and forget about all these troubles.”

“I don’t . . .” I eyed the front door. “I don’t know if I should. The women I’m working with—the Red Cross volunteers—they also know about you and me.”

He shrugged. “And do they seem to care what you’re doing?”

“I don’t—”

“Have they called you names or threatened you?”

“No.”

“Then what does it matter who knows? Everyone out there besides the APL is too busy saving their own necks to give a damn who’s visiting whose bed. Come.” He laced his fingers through mine and led me toward the workroom. “Let’s take care of you. The rest of the world can just go to hell for all I care.”

His hand relaxed on our way up the stairs, as did the stiffness in his shoulders and his back. His composure eased my own breathing and posture, and by the time we reached the top floor, we had melted into more tranquil versions of ourselves.

The band didn’t play their jazz in that early-morning hour, and the apartment upstairs sat silent and still. The first fingers of daylight nudged through the living-room curtains and turned the place into an entirely different scene from the mystique of our jazz- and sin-infused nights of lamplight and shadows.

“It’s so quiet up here,” I murmured.

“I’ll play you a song on the guitar if you’d like.”

“No, there’s no need. I’m sure you’re tired, too. I do miss the German composers, though. I will say that.”

“I can tell you with absolute certainty that the music of Beethoven and Bach sounds nothing like German warfare. It’s a ban created by idiots.”

He led me over to the living room sofa, a beautiful piece of furniture upholstered in ivory linen, with a black lacquer finish on the wooden frame and legs.

“Sit here.” He let go of my hand. “Get comfortable. I’ll go draw you a bath.”

I lowered myself to the sofa, and as promised, he disappeared into the little bathroom next to the kitchen. The spigot within the room squeaked with a high-pitched cry, and then water rushed through the pipes and splattered into the tub beyond. I sank back against the sofa and stared up at the mantel photograph of the couple whom I guessed to be his parents. The man sported a thick mustache and wore a three-piece suit with soft stripes. He held a pocket watch and a violin. The woman wore a dark dress and a wide hat with a large rosette, and she held onto the man’s left elbow. They posed in front of a brick fireplace—not unlike the one right there in Daniel’s apartment—in a house or a photography studio that must have stood thousands of miles away. Little half-smiles lit up their faces. They appeared content. Peaceful. Musical. Loving.

Daniel wandered back out to check on me while the water roared into the tub in the bathroom behind him.

“Are those your parents in that photograph?” I asked.

Without a glance at the photo, Daniel lowered himself to the rug in front of me and untied the lace of my right shoe. “Yes.”

“Are they still alive?”

He slid the shoe off my foot. “Yes.”

“In Germany?”

He peeked up at me from the tops of his eyes.

I sank my spine against the firm backing of the sofa. “All right.” I sighed. “I won’t ask questions.”

He untied my other shoe and guided it off my left foot. He then slid the hem of my skirt up over my knees and past my thighs and unclasped my right stocking from its garter. I shifted my weight, surprised at the prickles of arousal that managed to awaken inside my limp and weighed-down body. Daniel leaned his face forward and kissed the inside of my right leg. Warmth spread from the pressure point of his lips to the far reaches of my thighs and my shins.

I touched his shoulder. “I’m so tired, Daniel.”

“I know.” His lips brushed my skin with a second kiss before he stood back up and returned to the bathwater.

Later, while he lit a fire for me in the hearth, I undressed amid a cloud of steam in the little whitewashed bathroom. My feet balanced on blue-and-white diamond-shaped tiles, and I struggled to remain awake and upright. I climbed into the bath, sank down into the water with a deep plunking sound, and curled onto my side in the heavenly heat. My head rested against the porcelain rim. The warmth nestled inside my nostrils and swallowed me up until I imagined myself becoming part of the vapor. I envisioned drifting up to the ceiling and landing in a wet circle high above. Little ripples of water lapped against the tub’s walls.

I thought again of Eddie in May’s bed, and of Billy standing behind the ambulance. My mind tried to talk itself into believing I’d imagined them all—there was no such thing as ghosts. Mama and I never actually experienced the Uninvited. We merely believed ourselves to be witnessing spirits because our minds couldn’t bear the cruel and smothering anguish of grief. No one close to me would perish from the earth in a matter of hours, or even minutes. May simply slept with a lover who resembled her deceased husband. Mama remained healthy and alive. Sigrid and her children would survive. Daniel would be safe as long as he stayed away from others and kept his door locked tight against the APL and my father.

Father
—who drank hard when upset—who just watched another son leave for the war—who might learn from Mama that I now spent my time with a German—who didn’t care that I was standing right there in the barn when he slammed that shovel against the side of my brother’s head.

I sat up straight in the tub.

Daniel never locked the door. I always walked straight inside the store, even at nighttime.

“Lock the door!”

I sprang out of the tub. Water rained down on the tiles from my hair and my arms. “Lock the door! Daniel!” I wrapped a towel around my middle. “Lock the front door—now!”

He flew into the bathroom. “What’s wrong?”

“Go downstairs.” I pushed his arm with a palm that soaked his shirt. “Lock the front door. My brother—Peter, Father’s favorite—just enlisted. I told my mother I’ve been with you. My father’s going to think more Germans are taking away his children. He’ll kill you.”

“He won’t kill me.”

“Yes, he will. You know he’s done it before. He once even hit my brother Billy in the head with a shovel.”

“If your father comes in this store”—Daniel stepped forward with feral, darkened eyes—“he’s the one who’s dying, Ivy. I’ll take a knife and carve him up until he squeals like the pig that he is.”

I shrank back and clasped the towel around my chest. Daniel blinked as if he had just realized what he’d said. He cupped his hand over his forehead and breathed with ragged gasps.

“Please, just lock the door,” I said, and a sob burst from my lips.

Daniel turned and left without another word.

I sank down to the bathroom floor in my towel and held my stomach. Vomit rose to my throat. I covered my mouth, worried the foul black tar of flu victims would spill out of me.

Daniel returned with gentle footfalls. His eyes softened when he saw me down on the tiles.

“It’s locked,” he said, holding onto the bathroom door.

“Would you really kill him?”

“I don’t know.”

I clutched the towel. “Your eyes . . . they turned so wild and hateful when you talked about carving him up.”

“I didn’t . . .” He put his hands on his hips and sighed. “That Yank bastard who raised you brought murder into my home and my business. He ruined my brother and me. What do you expect me to think of him?”

I swallowed and stared up at him, remembering what I’d thought of him when I first saw him—how his head had seemed the ideal shape for a helmet of the Kaiser’s army.

“Do you want to kill me too?” I asked.

He sighed again, this time with a growl of frustration, and he offered his hand to me. “Come.” He wiggled his fingers to get me to take them. “You’ll get cold down there on the floor. I have clean, warm pajamas waiting for you to wear. They’re my pajamas, but we can roll up the legs and hope the bottoms fit those lovely, rounded hips of yours.”

I grabbed hold of his hand and let him lift me to my feet.

“The pajamas are in my room,” he said with a nod toward the rest of the apartment, outside the bathroom. “Please, get dressed, and come get warm by the fire. The door is locked. We’re safe. It’s just the two of us, and no one is killing anyone. I swear to God.”

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of morning blinded my eyes on my way back to the sofa, and the pain reminded me of how little I’d slept. I rolled up the too-long sleeves of his striped pajamas and plunked myself down on the same ivory cushion where I had relaxed before the attempt at a bath.

Daniel sat in an armchair next to the Victrola and whittled the flat piece of wood I’d seen him carving when I peeked across the street at him from the Masonic Lodge window.

“If you really want to sleep well,” he said, crossing his right foot over his left knee, “I could pour you a glass of strong German brandy.”

“No.” I smiled and tucked my legs beneath me on the sofa. “Not this early in the morning, thank you. If I ever take a night off from driving the ambulance, however, I’ll gladly take you up on that offer.”

“
Gut
. I hope you do. I have a strong suspicion you’ve never tried honest-to-goodness booze before.”

I smiled. “No, I probably haven’t.”

The fire crackled in the hearth between us, and beyond the windows, the rest of the city stirred to life. The electric streetcar sang against its tracks. Wagons jostled down Willow Street, accompanied by the steady clip-clop of hooves and the jingle of reins.

Without warning, a Model T ambulance dashed through the street down below—I recognized the particular pops and rumbles of the motor and the sound of the size of the vehicle. I lowered my feet back to the floor and sat up straight.

“I hear an ambulance,” I said.

Daniel set his knife on his lap. “You’re off duty, Ivy.”

“I know.” I glanced over the back of the sofa, toward a window covered by a thin brown burlap curtain.

Daniel left his whittling behind and joined me on the sofa. “Don’t pay any attention to the world out there. It can function without you for the next twelve hours. Come”—he patted his lap—“lay your head down and close your eyes. Rest and get warm.”