Three Story House: A Novel (27 page)

Elyse turned away at the mention of the wedding. She couldn’t stand to listen to any small talk about how lovely the bride had been, or how happy the couple had seemed. The wedding had felt like a funeral and instead of facing her grief and starting the mourning process, she pretended it hadn’t happened. During the whole ceremony, she’d focused her attention on the fact that the bridesmaid dress fit her perfectly despite her mother’s concerns. At this point she was still so raw that make-believe was the only salve for the stabbing pain inside of her. It wasn’t fair that such intense pain didn’t leave behind any evidence.

Anna stretched out her hand and patted Elyse’s knee as if trying to draw her back into the conversation. “Just remember how very long life can be and how very unexpected.”

The counter attendants called for passengers who needed assistance to board the plane. Anna shouldered her purse and stood, as steady as anyone. Elyse was embarrassed to think that when she’d first arrived, she’d thought the woman would need a wheelchair. There were whispers around them as Anna bid each of the Triplins goodbye. It appeared that Anna’s notoriety had traveled from the security line to the gate. The flight attendant held out her hand to Anna, telling her that they’d upgraded her to first class, but only if she promised to tell them what it had been like to be born into a world without airplanes. Anna smiled as if such indulgences were commonplace.

T
wo events conspired to keep the Triplins from falling into their old patterns when they returned to Memphis. The first had to do with Spite House and the second with Isobel. Benny met them, hat again in hand, on the front porch. Looking around, Elyse saw that the yard, which had been the only finished part of the house, now looked as if a prehistoric gopher had burrowed through it. As had been the case since the work on the house had moved indoors, it was Isobel who strode to meet Benny. Lizzie and Elyse hung back, each wincing at every word that came out of Benny’s mouth—especially “no plumbing,” which caused Lizzie to sit down on her suitcase and put her head in her hands.

“There’s no money,” Lizzie said to Elyse. “I used all Grandma Mellie had left after the initial bid on the asbestos.”

Hearing the fear and desperation in her cousin’s voice snapped Elyse out of the pity party she’d been throwing since tossing rice at her sister and Landon as they ran to his motorcycle and literally rode off into the sunset. She knelt in front of her cousin, taking her hands as if they were praying together. “It’s going to be fine. You don’t even know how bad the problems are, and I’m sure your parents can come up with a few thousand more to cover this last bit of work.”

Benny walked by them, his chin tucked into his chest, his birthmark purple next to his reddened neck. “See ya tomorrow,” he said.

Isobel stepped off the porch and told them to hurry up out of the heat.

“Is it bad?” Lizzie asked. “Tell me how bad it is.”

“Not in this heat,” Isobel said.

They trudged inside the house, which for the first time all summer offered relief from the heat. As part of the asbestos removal, they’d had new insulation installed and sealed the gaps that had been letting the hot air run through the house as if it were a slatted fence. Lizzie took her hair down; it fell so that it half hid her face.

“She’s worried about money,” Elyse said. Of the three of them, Isobel was the only one without money problems. She hoped that by putting it out in front, her cousin would volunteer to help out, seeing as how they’d all been living there rent-free for the better part of seven months.

“Don’t be,” Isobel said as she bent over her carry-on bag and searched its numerous zippered pockets. “I think I’ve got that about figured out.” She pulled her phone out of the last one she searched and tapped a few buttons before handing it to Lizzie. “I got this a few days ago, but I wanted to sit on it, you know. Think about it.”

“What is it?” Elyse asked, trying to read over her cousin’s shoulder.

“An offer to do a show,” Isobel said.

“About Spite House?” Lizzie asked, moving her fingers to enlarge the type on the e-mail and then passing it to Elyse.

She half listened to them, reading through the e-mail from Isobel’s agent. Although the
Where Are They Now?
special hadn’t yet aired, the reaction to Isobel’s segment had generated enough excitement for the producer to want to film a sizzle reel of Isobel at Spite House. Isobel explained to them that the idea was to capture highlights of a potential reality show to entice networks to pay for a pilot or even green-light an entire show.

“The money they’ll pay us to let them use the house will cover the rest of the repairs,” Isobel said, her voice rising with excitement. “But it could also lead to so much more.”

Elyse, having lost so much more, immediately thought how dangerous it could be to want something too much. “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she said, handing back the phone. “There’s no mention of future projects, and you still haven’t told us what Benny said about the house.”

“Like I said, the fees should cover it,” her voice lowered almost as if she were a child admitting a mistake. “There’s no plumbing. It’ll take most of the month to fix it.”

“No plumbing?” Elyse asked, trying to think how that was possible.

“Pipes were in bad shape and emptying into the front yard instead of the sewer.”

“Where are we going to live?” Lizzie asked. “That’s going to cost something on top of the repairs.”

Isobel coughed and looked away from them. “If we don’t live here, we’ll violate the terms of the TPO. The second one was set up with a default clause. That is, if we move out of the house for any reason, it will be considered to be abandonment. If we leave now, coming on the heels of having been gone for the wedding, then . . .”

Nobody seemed to know what to say. Elyse had never planned on coming back to Spite House and now she had no other place to go. She wondered what her cousins were thinking. Lizzie broke the silence by picking up her suitcase and walking into the house. “You don’t have to stay,” she said. “I’ll make it work—shower at the community center and what not.”

Isobel turned to Elyse. “Are you going to stay? I wasn’t sure you were even before all of this.” She lifted her arm to indicate the house. “Did we do the right thing?”

“I don’t know yet,” Elyse said, not knowing which question she was answering.

“Lizzie isn’t doing well,” Isobel said.

“Are any of us?” Elyse walked past her into the house, leaving her suitcase on the front porch where Benny had carried it.

“I’m grand,” Isobel called after her, laughing.

The sound of her cousin’s amusement had the effect of lightening Elyse’s step, and for the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt like it all might turn out in the end.

When Landon called Elyse, she was at the hospital with Lizzie. The day before the United States played Japan in the final match of the Olympics, Lizzie had arthroscopic surgery to remove a stubborn bit of scar tissue near her hamstring. The cousins had joined her for the procedure and Elyse, against her cousin’s wishes, had promised to keep her family informed of her progress by sending them texts as the surgery progressed.

“She’ll be fine after this?” Isobel asked the surgeon.

“Hard to say,” the woman had said, looking over their heads at a nurse and then motioning that she needed her. “I imagine so, as long as she’s mobile.”

“We’ve been over this,” Isobel said, carrying a large box in both her arms. “She’ll be in therapy twice a day if needed.”

Elyse took the box, which contained more of Lizzie’s mother’s journal entries. “I know we’ve been over it. There are to be no more stunts of self-pity.”

“It wasn’t self-pity,” Lizzie protested as her cousin set the box next to her bed. “Grief. I was grieving.”

“Same difference,” Isobel said, turning on the television and surfing for the soccer match.

“Not even close,” Lizzie said.

“The farther you get from grief, the more you realize it’s always selfish.” Elyse, hearing her phone buzz, silenced it, afraid she’d get reprimanded by the nurse. She looked at the number and then excused herself, finding her way to the smoking area outside the building.

She dialed her voicemail and listened to the message at least a dozen times, not even caring about the cigarette smoke she inhaled. He said their flight had them stopping in Memphis, and they’d changed to a later connection. “I wanted to talk to you about the letters. Expect us around lunchtime,” he’d said.
Us
. Why hadn’t her sister been the one to call? The thought that Daphne might know what Elyse had been planning turned her stomach to ice. It clenched. Why had they changed their stopover? Why had he lied about it? It had to be deliberate—planes, especially those from London, flew direct to Boston or, at worst, had a stopover in Atlanta. No one but FedEx had layovers in Memphis anymore.

She considered lying to her cousins to try to get home to meet him. But, no. They were as much a part of this now as she was. The glass walls of the hospital reflected her worst self. Her wild hair hung in a sad ponytail. Red blotches from the heat covered her face. Without considering the consequences or the long-ago pact made with the cousins, Elyse dug through her purse and pulled out a pair of scissors she’d used to cut coupons. Holding her ponytail out from the side of her head, she cut it off, watching it fall on the concrete patio.

“Holy hell,” said a man smoking a cigar.

She pulled out the elastic and made random cuts until she was crying so hard she couldn’t see her reflection.

Isobel waved to her through the windows and then walked around to the door “Lizzie’s waiting for you.”

“I’m not going.”

“Are you crying?” Isobel squeezed past the cigar smoker and around two sisters sharing a cigarette. “She’s not in any danger.”

Embarrassment flooded Elyse. She kicked at the piles of hair on the cement, trying to move them out of sight. “It isn’t that.”

Her cousin looked first at Elyse’s head and then at the ground. “The heat get to you?” she asked.

“Something like that,” Elyse said, sniffling and then wiping her nose with her T-shirt. She held her phone out to Isobel. “He left a message.”

Isobel’s face remained passive as she listened to Landon’s call. “You should see her before she goes into surgery, and maybe when you’re done, you should bring Daphne and him up to see her. The whole procedure only takes an hour or so.”

Gratitude overwhelmed Elyse. She couldn’t have taken being told not to see him. “Definitely.” She reached out for the keys Isobel held out to her and then linked arms and walked through the hospital to wish Lizzie good luck.

They arrived before lunch. Elyse watched her sister get out of the cab and immediately lift her long hair off her neck as the humidity hit her. Elyse scratched at her bare neck. Before she left the hospital, Isobel had done her best to clean up the mess she’d made of her hair, giving her an asymmetrical bob and side-sweeping her bangs. Somehow, even though it was choppy, it made her face appear thinner. Or maybe she’d finally lost weight. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been on a scale. Before the wedding maybe. Turning away from the window before Landon could exit the taxi, she pressed her ear to the door and listened for their steps on the porch.

She needed to find a way to speak to Landon alone. Who knew what he’d told Daphne? It had to be a good sign that they’d decided to come to Memphis in the first place. She heard them speak softly to each other before one of them rang the doorbell. She counted to thirty before opening the door.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been here before,” Daphne said, leaning in for a shoulders-only hug. “I mean I’ve heard Lizzie talk about it and you too. But seeing it.” Her sister shook her head and then ran her fingers along the doorframe.

They were tan with sunburned cheeks. Landon’s nose had peeled, leaving behind pink skin. “Catch a sunny day in London?” she asked.

“They have beaches not too far from there,” Landon said and then offered an awkward hug. He held her away from him for a moment and then playfully hit her on the chin. “Who ever thought you’d be my sister?”

“Sister-in-law,” Elyse said. She ushered them inside and explained Lizzie and Isobel’s whereabouts. “I’ll take you up there when she’s out of surgery.”

“I can’t imagine going through that,” Daphne said. Landon looked at his arm and then looked away. He had a new prosthetic and stood taller than she remembered. “She’s not going to be able to keep playing, huh?”

“Everyone’s optimistic,” Elyse said. She didn’t volunteer her own observation, which was that Lizzie needed an excuse not to have to play anymore.

They started the tour of the house in the cupola. Her sister marveled at the prisms and the rainbows they cast. “It’s exactly like
Pollyanna
.” She sighed and sat down on the window seat with her feet pulled up under her. “I totally understand why you abandoned Boston for the chance to live here.”

“It has its charms,” Elyse said. How much she’d hated that book. That stupid glad game. Her sister had lived her entire life as an embodiment of looking on the bright side. By the time they reached the kitchen, it was clear to Elyse that Landon hadn’t spoken to Daphne about the notes she’d sent him before the wedding. Instead of relief, she felt disappointment.

“I have to use the ladies’ room,” Daphne said, rising and kissing Landon on the cheek.

“The water’s not on yet,” Elyse said. Typically when the cousins had this problem, they’d use the portable toilet that Benny had put on the corner of the vacant lot, but she saw in this dilemma an opportunity to be alone with Landon. She dug through her purse and held out the keys to the Datsun along with a few bills. “There’s a gas station on the corner. Maybe pick up a few cold drinks?”

Her sister kissed Landon goodbye. Elyse walked out the back door to the edge of the bluff and looked out at the Mississippi. She waited, knowing he’d follow. Landon cleared his throat and when she turned toward him, he extended his left arm as if they would shake hands. She ignored it and walked to the Adirondack chairs that had been left behind by Isobel’s production crew. “Sit,” she said. “I don’t know how long we’ll have. We’ll hear the car when she comes back. It has a squeaky belt you can hear a mile away.”