Chapter 28 - The Woman of the House

“What should we do?” I ask once we’re in the car. I’m panting from fear and my whole body is so tense from adrenaline, I can hear my nerves buzzing in my ears.

Frances’s leg shakes up and down in the passenger seat next to me. Her eyes are narrow and beady as she scans the street in front of us. She looks deep in thought, like she’s trying to solve an equation only she can see.

“Helen saw us.” My voice trembles. “Who knows how long she was watching from that window.” I put my head on the steering wheel and resist the urge to bang my forehead against it.

“Drive,” Frances says. “Just drive.”

I put the car in gear and drive without a destination. I ask Frances where I should go, but she doesn’t answer. I merge onto the two-lane highway that leads to the other side of the lake.

“Helen is sick, right?” Frances asks after a while.

“Yeah. Lung cancer,” I mutter.

Frances intertwines her hands on her lap. Her dark blue eyes look green as they catch the last of the sunlight. I can tell her mind is churning.

“We’ll drive ourselves crazy wondering how long she was sitting by the window,” Frances says. “We have to go see her, find out what she saw.”

“You’re right,” I say as I turn left off the highway onto a quieter street.

Trees line the curb. The houses are smaller, quainter, not like the bigger, more obnoxious ones on the other side of the lake. It’s hard to believe my house, full of unrest and uneasiness, is on the same lake as these normal houses, where people eat and sleep without constant dread.

“Make up an excuse to visit her. Tell Vick you want to keep her company or something,” Frances says.

While I’m paralyzed with fear, Frances is busy taking charge of the situation, making a plan. It’s smart. Something I would never think of. Something clever that Mother would be proud of. Unlike me, Frances is brave. She isn’t helpless or weak, she’s decisive. She gets things done.

“Make a left up here,” Frances says.

I do as I’m told and head back toward the other side of the lake, where we came from.

—

The next day, I stand at the window waiting for Vick’s green pickup truck to pull into the driveway. Brian has already left for work and thinks I have a full day of furniture shopping for the future nursery ahead of me.

After two cups of coffee, I hear the sound of Vick’s rattling engine. Only when I reach for the door do I notice the four fresh nail marks on my wrist. Panic spreads across my chest and rises up my neck. I don’t remember seeing the woman last night, but she dug evidence of her presence into my arm. I can’t think about that right now, though. I pull down my sleeve with a shaking hand and walk outside to talk to Vick. Exhaust fumes linger in the air when I approach his truck. I try not to cough.

“Good morning, Vick,” I say with a forced enthusiasm that makes us both wince.

“Morning,” he says. He reaches into his truck and grabs two Styrofoam coffee cups from the gas station in town. “Here you go. Got one for you too.”

“Oh, thank you,” I say, surprised by the gesture.

“Thought I’d start weeding out the mess in the backyard. Now that some of that stuff has died off with the cold it’ll be easier to clear out.” He must think I’m here for a briefing on his progress.

“That sounds good,” I say, trying to sound interested even though I couldn’t care less.

He smiles. An awkward moment of silence passes between us before Vick slaps his thigh.

“Better get to it,” he says.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I say before he has a chance to turn away from me. “How’s Helen doing lately?”

“Hanging in there. Thanks for asking.” He forces a smile. He looks tired. Not the kind that comes from not sleeping, but the kind of tired that comes from too much living. I imagine once you get to a certain age, you’ve heard enough, seen enough, and lived enough. With Vick’s wife on the brink of death, I wonder if Vick might be too. He walks to the back of his truck and starts pulling out his lawn equipment.

“What does she do all day? I mean, while you’re here?” I ask, trying to sound casual.

“Well, we have a nurse that comes in the mornings. Then I’m back by late afternoon, so she’s only on her own for a couple hours or so.”

“Maybe I could swing by today and keep her company? I’m not sure if I told you, but I knew someone with cancer. Visits used to cheer her up.”

That wasn’t true. Mother hated when I visited her at the facility, unless she needed something from me. One of the last times I saw Mother, she asked me to do something for her, but I refused.

“Oh good, you’re here,” Mother had said when I walked through the thick door. “Come in, come in. Sit down.” She waved me into the room, her eyes bright with a sort of excitement I hadn’t seen in years.

I did as I was told.

“So, how are…things?” Mother asked as she clasped her bony hands together so her fingers looked like a pile of knuckles in her lap.

“Things?” I said almost under my breath. Mother didn’t ask me questions. She never showed any interest in me or my life, so I didn’t know how to respond. “Do you want me to take your tray off the bed?” I asked, motioning to the stale tray of food in front of her.

Mother waved a wiry hand in front of her face, dismissing my question. “Forget about the tray,” she said, her voice low. “Listen, Rose. You gotta get me out of here.”

“What?”

“That’s right. Today. Now.” Mother’s light blue eyes were wide as they scanned the room, and I realized she was only pretending to be nice to me so I would help her escape. “I can’t spend another second in here. I’ll go crazy. I think the people here are poisoning me.”

“I can’t do that. The judge ordered you to serve your time here—”

“Now you listen to me, you good-for-nothing rat-nosed little fuck. You’re going to help me escape this hellhole or you’ll wish you were never born.” Her forehead was shiny with sweat as spit gathered in the corners of her mouth.

“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t—”

With that, she hurled her lunch tray at my head. I covered my head with my hands, but not before a bowl of mashed potatoes hit me right in the middle of my forehead. Her screams bounced off the walls and rattled my brain as I crouched in the fetal position on the floor.

She yelled as she lunged at me. “You get me out of here, you ungrateful little bitch, or so help me God!” Two nurses ran into the room before Mother could reach me. One of them had a needle in hand. “Get off of me! Get the fuck off of me!” Mother screamed as she fought against the nurses. Eventually, the nurse poked the needle into Mother’s paper-thin skin and her screams slowly subsided until she was unconscious.

The nurse turned to me while she caught her breath. “You okay?”

“No. No, I’m not okay.”

Out in the yard, Vick kicks some dirt around with the tip of his boot. “You don’t have to visit Helen, really. I don’t want to put you out,” he says.

“I want to.”

His eyes search the ground. I can tell he doesn’t want my pity. What he doesn’t know is that I’m not offering him any.

“Okay,” he says with a small nod. “The nurse leaves around noon. Helen naps for an hour after, so maybe you could swing by around one?”

“Perfect.”

—

Later that day, Frances and I make our way up the front steps of Vick’s house. When we reach the small landing, Frances cups her hands around her face and peers through the glass window in the door. I look around to make sure no one’s nearby. Helen’s nurse has left for the day and Jonathan’s house is quiet next door.

If Helen saw us breaking into Jonathan’s house, there’s a chance she will tell Vick, and he seems like just the kind of guy’s guy who would run and tell Brian. I don’t know how I would explain breaking into Jonathan Walsh’s house after I promised Brian I would stay away from him. I try to think of a lie that’s good enough to justify my actions, but I can’t. Brian would think I’m insane and I would end up in a facility, just like Mother. After that Brian would divorce me, of course. I’d be abandoned and alone, just like Mother always said I would be.

If I lose Brian, I lose everything. My stable and refreshingly predictable future, my financial well-being, and my security are all wrapped up in this man who, for some reason, thinks that he loves me. And it’s all based on lies. But since we moved here, I can feel Brian slipping away from me. When we lived in Chicago, we used to stay up late talking and lie in bed for as long as we could before we’d both be late for work, but now Brian goes to bed without me and gets up early so he can escape back to the city while I’m holed up alone at the house. I can tell he’s asking himself if he rushed into marriage. No doubt Deborah is in his ear interrogating him about what he really knows about me and if he really wants me to be the mother of his children. Brian can’t find out that I broke into Jonathan Walsh’s house. It will be just the kind of excuse he needs to end things, and I won’t let him have it. Whatever Helen knows, she needs to keep to herself.

I reach for the doorbell, but Frances already has her hand on the handle. Before I can ask her what the plan is, she’s in the small foyer. I follow behind her. Once we’re inside, I close the door quietly behind me. The latch clicks, and for the second time in two days, Frances and I are in a stranger’s home.

Vick’s house has a similar layout to Jonathan’s. The living room is on the right, kitchen is in the back, and the staircase on the left leads up to the bedrooms. “Let’s get this over with,” Frances says, determined. She heads up the stairs and I do the same.

Upstairs, the smell of dried sweat wafts through the air. It reminds me of fluorescent lights and uncomfortable plastic chairs I thought I’d left behind at the facility. Just like Jonathan’s house, two smaller bedrooms and a bathroom are on the left, with what I assume is the main bedroom on the right. The door is closed. Frances nods. I knock softly.

“Helen?” I say as I push the door open. Inside, the air is thick with illness. There’s a wheelchair in the corner with a pillow propped up on it. An oxygen tank is next to an adjustable hospital bed that’s facing the window. A thin plastic tube winds its way up from the tank onto the faded blanket draped over a small, motionless body. A heart rate monitor beeps on the other side of the bed. “Helen,” I say again, but there’s no answer. I turn to Frances, who nods for me to get closer. When I round the corner of the bed, I see a woman who’s too small for it. The skin on her hands is so thin I can almost see the blood running through her tired veins. Long, bony fingers are folded across her stomach on top of the wool blanket. The sound of air being let out of a balloon is coming from the oxygen mask that covers most of her face. Bones protrude from where her eyebrows used to be and her head is wrapped in a colorful scarf.

My head feels light. I realize I’ve been holding my breath since I walked in the room. Air fills my lungs in relief.

“Maybe she didn’t see anything?” I say to Frances.

Just then, a hollow, raspy breath from the bed makes us both jump. When I turn around, a pair of piercing blue eyes is staring back at me. Helen takes another labored breath before she raises one arm out from under the wool blanket and removes the oxygen mask.

“What do you want?” Helen asks.

The cancer has made her voice harsh and strained. It reminds me of Mother’s. I can still hear her raspy voice telling me I’m a worthless, good-for-nothing leech. I glance over at Frances while Helen’s eyes are locked on me. Frances nods. I turn back to Helen, whose expression is unflinching.

“I’m Rose. Rose Crawley. Your husband Vick is doing some gardening around my house, and I heard you might need some company, so—”

“I know who you are,” Helen says.

“So, Vick told you I was coming today?” I smile, but Helen doesn’t smile back. She just stares. Her lips are so chapped they look like they might bleed. “Can I get you some water?” I reach for the jug on the bedside table with an extendable straw. When I hold it up to her mouth, her pale pink tongue reaches for it like a baby being fed. She takes one gulp, then another. Her throat moves in slow motion as it rises and collapses each time she swallows. When she’s done, she waves her fingers and I pull the jug away from her.

“I know who you are,” Helen says again between labored breaths. “I’ve seen you.”

“No, I don’t think we’ve met before,” I say, trying to make my voice light.

“I didn’t say we’ve met, I said I’ve seen you.”

“Seen me? Where?”

“Walking around. Out there.” Helen nods toward the window.

Frances grips the plastic railing of the bed. It’s not long before her knuckles turn white. Helen brings the oxygen mask back up to her face and inhales deeply.

“You must be mistaking me for someone else,” I say.

Helen takes another hit from the oxygen mask before she adjusts herself so she’s sitting up in bed. Her movements aren’t as strained as her breathing. If the wheelchair was next to the bed, she could easily get in and out of it by herself. “I don’t sleep much these days,” Helen says through a cough. “At night, I sit by the window and look at the stars. That’s when I see you walking around. Every night, in your pajamas, walking around. I may not be able to breathe on my own, but I can still see clear as day.”

My head feels light as a realization settles inside my gut. I remember what Vick had said about Helen being worried about me. At the time, I thought it was nonsense, but now I understand what he meant. Helen has seen me sleepwalking. That’s why Jonathan’s neighborhood seemed familiar to me; that’s why I felt like I’d been here before. While I slept, my body did what my mind couldn’t do during the day: escape. And according to Helen, I’ve been doing it more than I thought. If I walked half a mile away to Jonathan’s house in my sleep, where else have I gone in an unconscious state? What else have I done?

The smell of the small room, Helen’s strained voice, and the machines whirring in the background make me feel dizzy. I feel the color drain from my face. Helen takes one look at me and laughs, but soon it turns into a cough. Guttural sounds fill the room. Helen grabs a tissue from underneath the blanket and brings it to her mouth. Her body jerks, as if she’s going to vomit, but she won’t. I know what happens next. I saw it happen with Mother countless times while she was at the facility. Helen brings the tissue to her face, and when she removes it, deep red blood is left behind on the white tissue.

“You live in that house,” Helen says, folding the bloodied tissue and concealing it under the blanket like a dog hiding a chewed-up toy. “Angela’s house.”

“Yes,” I say, my voice just above a whisper.

“I hear you’ve been going around asking questions you got no business asking.”

“Helen, do you know what happened to Angela?” I hold my breath.

“I think you already know the answer to that,” Helen says, raising the spot above her eye where her eyebrow should be.

I shake my head. “Where is she?”

“Gone. Angela’s gone.” Helen picks up the oxygen mask at her side and lifts it to her face. Her chest rises and falls several times.

“Do you know if she ever saw things in the house? Things she couldn’t explain?” My mouth is dry, but my back is damp with cool sweat. There’s a pounding in my ears that drowns out my own thoughts. My heartbeat.

“Oh, that house…” Helen clicks her tongue. “That house is your worst nightmare.”

I take a couple steps back from the bed, my mouth hanging open. Fear takes hold of my body. My stomach falls to my feet as my throat feels like it’s about to close. All the air leaves the room, leaving me feeling lightheaded.

“She knows something,” Frances says from the other side of the bed. Her voice is slow and simmering. I can hear the anger bubbling up behind her words. “She knows something and she still won’t help you.”

Helen doesn’t flinch. Her mouth is in a thin line of defiance. She readjusts herself in bed but doesn’t look any more comfortable than she was a moment ago. Angry tears fill my eyes as Frances’s words snake their way through my ears into my brain.

Frances is right. Instead of trying to help me, Helen stayed in this room, withering away by the window while she watched me walk around unconscious in the middle of the night, knowing the house was tormenting me like it did Angela. It’s like she wanted to see me suffer, just like Mother. There was nothing Mother enjoyed more than watching my face scrunch up in pain every time she called me worthless or told me I would end up alone. My pain triggered a joy in her that made her eyes light up in a way that still haunts me. Standing here in front of Helen, my face wet with tears, I can see the same twinkle in Helen’s eyes that I used to see in Mother’s.

“I don’t know what you were looking for in Jonathan’s house, but it won’t help you. No one can,” she says, and her voice is final.

“We’ll leave.” I look between Helen and Frances for confirmation as I try to talk through my sobs. “That’s what we’ll do. Brian and I will leave here and we’ll never come back.”

Helen shakes her scarfed head. “Don’t you see? There’s no escaping it. It’s got its claws in you now.” Helen raises her hand and points to me.

Instinctively, I bring my hand to my neck and touch the nail marks scratched into my skin.

“There’s nothing you can do.” She brings the oxygen mask to her mouth once again, but even the plastic enclosure can’t hide the smugness all over her face.

The last time I saw Mother, she was just as arrogant as Helen is now. Heat rises up from my body, just like it did that cold day at Mother’s facility. I begin to feel like I’m outside myself, like all of this is happening to somebody else and not to me.

“Rose?” Frances asks without looking at me. Her grip on the plastic railing of Helen’s bed has loosened. The anger radiating off of her just moments ago has dissipated. Her fingers curl around Helen’s cell phone, which is sitting on the bedside table. “Will you go and get Helen some more water? I think once she’s a little more hydrated she won’t be so confused. Then we can talk this out.”

I look down. The empty jug is so light in my hands, I’d forgotten I was holding it. Sweat prickles the back of my neck. Frances nods. A calm passes between us.

“I’ll be right back,” I say. Before I leave the room, I look back and see Frances standing over Helen’s small body.

Downstairs, I let the water run for several seconds before I hold the jug under it. Tiny glass figurines shaped like woodland creatures line the windowsill in front of me. Three squirrels, two deer, and a chipmunk all stare at me through beady, painted-on eyes as the jug gets heavier in my hands. They know just as well as I do that I shouldn’t be here.

Once the jug is full of water, I make my way back upstairs. The rhythmic beeping of the heart rate monitor has been replaced with one long, high-pitched tone. I know what I’ll see before I go back inside. When I walk in the room, Frances is standing with her back to me, looking out the window. Helen’s right hand is hanging off the hospital bed, limp. The oxygen mask she so depended on is just out of reach.

Frances turns away from the window and walks over to the oxygen tank next to Helen’s bed. She turns the key and I hear the flow of oxygen return to the thin plastic tube. With the bottom of her cotton shirt, she wipes away any fingerprints left behind on the tank before she gives my shoulder a light squeeze.

“It’s too bad,” Frances says. “But she was very sick.”

Helen’s blue eyes are glued to the ceiling and her mouth is parted open in shock.

“Frances, what did you—”

“She was in a lot of pain.” Her voice is flat, robotic even.

“You didn’t have to kill her,” I manage to choke out. Part of me wants to shut Helen’s hanging mouth and close her eyes, which are drained of the contempt they were so full of just moments ago, but I don’t. I leave them open, staring up at the blank ceiling.

“You heard what she said, Rose. She saw us break into Jonathan’s house. I did this for you.”

“For me? No, no, I didn’t ask you to do this.” I look down at Helen’s stiff body. Panic sets in as my eyes drift back to Frances. Her lips are pursed and her eyes are unblinking. I watch for some emotion to pass across her face but see none. It’s then that I wonder: What else has Frances done for me?

I swallow hard as the last several months run through my mind. The scratches on my skin, the broken rattle, Mother’s moving portrait—all this time I thought it was the work of a shadowy figure, but could it have been Frances sneaking around my house and adding to my paranoia just to get close to me? Maybe Brian was right; maybe she was putting ideas in my head. The night his parents came over for dinner, he said all this nonsense started after I met Frances. At the time I thought he was lashing out, embarrassed by how I acted in front of his parents, but now I realize he had a point. Frances was the one who told me about Angela’s disappearance and encouraged me to figure out what happened to her. I should have listened to Brian when I had the chance. Now, it’s too late.

“Rose, you’ll thank me later—” Frances reaches out to touch me, but my arm knocks hers away. The impact of her sturdy limb against mine makes me lose my balance, and I catch myself on the oxygen tank before running out of the room, leaving Helen’s heart rate monitor blaring behind me.

—

When I pull into the driveway, Vick is on the side of the house with a rake in his right hand and a pile of leaves on his left. He hears the engine and turns around to give me a wave.

“How was it?” Vick yells from the yard after I open the driver’s-side door.

“Good. It was good,” I say.

I feel the weight of the afternoon on my shoulders. Bile churns in my stomach as the reality of what Frances did sets in. Suddenly, I’m having trouble breathing. I’m about twenty steps away from the front door, but every time I blink I’m walking down the hall of New Hope. I take a step forward, feeling the soft ground beneath my feet, but when I take another step it’s on the white linoleum floor. The warm sun beating down on my face changes to the unforgiving cold light of Mother’s facility. The lawn, sprinkled with dried-up leaves, turns into padded walls that are closing in on me. I’m running toward the house and the elevator at the end of the hall. I grab the door handle. Press the down button. The door swings open. The elevator doors separate. Vick calls my name. The nurses yell after me. I’m in the house. In the elevator. Crying on the floor. Crying on the floor.