Chapter 5 - The Woman of the House

The next morning, my body is jolted awake, like it knows something I don’t. My eyes blink open to the sound of running water. My chest tightens, and for a second I forget where I am. I sit up in bed to catch my breath as my mind races to make sense of my surroundings. The room’s gray walls are slanted, like they’re closing in on me. A wooden dresser is opposite me. There’s a cool breeze coming from the open window on my right that makes me shudder. A stack of boxes is on my left. That’s when I remember the move. I’m not in Chicago anymore, I’m in Lake Moss.

Under the sheets, my skin feels raw. I pull back the covers to see that my arms and legs are lined with dried blood. My hand trembles as I touch the scratches that are striped across my pale skin. Before I wonder what kind of animal did this and why I didn’t wake up, Brian walks out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam.

“Good morning, my little adventurer,” he says, still adjusting the towel around his waist. Tiny droplets of water on his shoulders and chest catch the light while they glide down his body.

“What happened?” I ask.

“You don’t remember?” Brian says. He opens the closet door and pulls out a white button-down.

“Remember what?”

“Sleepwalking? I found you in the boathouse curled up to one of the buoys.”

The night comes back to me in flashes. The wet grass between my toes, the cold night air on my face, the sound of the water pulling in and out from the shore. My mind stuck between being asleep and being awake.

“I haven’t sleepwalked since I was a kid,” I say, more to myself than to Brian. Mother worked the night shift at the gas station, so I put myself to bed for as long as I could remember. When I was about six or seven, I woke up standing at the front door of our studio apartment. My head throbbed. When I put my hand to my forehead, I felt a small bump. I imagined my tiny body walking into the front door over and over again with my arms limp at my sides as my subconscious looked for a way out of the rat-infested apartment. But no matter how hard my brain searched for a way out, my body never found one. Afraid that Mother might come home unexpectedly and catch me trying to leave, I started tying my right hand to my metal bed frame so that I couldn’t sleepwalk if I tried.

“When I saw the back door was open I got nervous, but thankfully you didn’t get too far,” Brian says, buttoning the top button of his shirt. “Your adventure wasn’t without injury, though. You must have walked right through one of the bushes in the backyard. Looks like it’s full of thorns.”

“I guess so.” I finger the marks along my arms. They look like they came from a long-nailed raccoon rather than a thorny bush, but the latter is more likely.

“You can ask Vick to clear the bushes out this afternoon,” Brian says, tightening his navy blue tie in the mirror.

“Who?”

“The gardener?” Brian turns around to face me. His eyebrows are raised. “Rose, I put this in our shared calendar weeks ago. He’s a local guy the woman at the coffee shop told me about who calls himself ‘the mayor’ because he claims to know everyone in town. Remember?”

“Right, right,” I say as I run my fingers through my thick hair. “I remember now.”

“Listen.” Brian is fully dressed now and sitting at the edge of our bed. “I know there’s been lots of changes with the move and everything.”

“Brian,” I start, but he puts a quieting hand on my leg.

“And I know you miss the city, but we’ll adjust. It’s just going to take some time, that’s all. Maybe meeting some new people would help? You know, make a couple of friends in the neighborhood.”

“Maybe the gardener will want to be my friend,” I say, half joking. Brian smiles without his teeth.

“Okay, I’m off. I gotta get to work before the contractors have a chance to mess up my new building.”

“The one over on Oak Street?”

“Yeah, the key is to keep a close eye on them. That way, I know what they’re going to do before they even do it.” He kisses the top of my head.

“That’s why you’re the boss.”

“Exactly,” he says over his shoulder as he throws me a wink.

A few moments later I hear the front door close. Then, silence.

—

After I shower, I stand in front of the mirror with a towel wrapped around my body and study myself. My arms are thin and lifeless at my sides. The pointy parts of my collarbone stick out just above my small chest. Early on, I realized my thin frame was something to be desired. Men, including Brian, seemed to like my childlike features, while women coveted them. Whenever other women asked me how I was able to maintain my physique, I’d watch their eyes bulge and their mouths drop open when they heard it was a combination of a fast metabolism and malnutrition from my childhood.

There’s no brightness to my skin. It’s only when I pinch my cheeks that a little redness rises to the surface. My lips are two distinct lines at the bottom of my slight face, and my blue eyes are apathetic, moving around the mirror with no real motivation. Brian says my eyes remind him of the ocean, but I don’t see it. All I know is that they’re blue, just like Mother’s.

I push my long, unruly hair back behind my shoulders and open my makeup bag. I apply two coats of cocoa-brown mascara to each eye, my hand shaking as I try not to poke myself. When I’m done, I take a half step back and reassess. The goo looks black and flaky against my pale skin. I’m not sure why I even bother with it.

“I choose to let go of the past and embrace the future,” I say to my reflection. I read an article online that said daily affirmations can help you change your life. “I choose to let go of the past and embrace the future.” I repeat the mantra, this time in a more serious tone. The article said it’s important to sound like you mean it. “I choose to let go of the past and embrace the future.” I don’t feel any different after saying the words into the mirror, but maybe I’m just not trying hard enough.

Later that morning when the doorbell rings, I open the door and greet Vick with a smile and an outstretched hand, just how I envisioned it.

“Hi there,” Vick says.

“I’m Rose,” I say. “Rose Crawley.” Saying my married name still makes my stomach do a little flip.

“Pleasure. Vick Mulroney,” he says.

He’s shorter than I expected. Years of bending over to plant flowers and tend to manicured lawns made him shrink to a size smaller than natured intended. A blue baseball cap that looks nearly as old as he is covers his head, but from what I can see there’s little to no hair underneath. His skin is the texture of a worn-in catcher’s glove and the color is the same.

“Please, come inside. I made coffee,” I say as I point toward the kitchen behind me. Vick’s eyes scan the exterior of the house. The siding is a deep shade of blue, one color swatch away from black. Sometimes, when the sun is down, the two-story house and the water are the same inky shade. Beyond the porch that wraps around the exterior is the untamed lawn, which bleeds into the wooded areas that flank either side of the house. But it’s not the dark siding or the impressive porch that makes the house among the woods so stunning: it’s the windows. Floor-to-ceiling windows line the first floor, providing an unobstructed view of the surrounding trees in the front and the lake in the back.

Vick’s gaze lands on the porch banister to his right. A bird is perched on the edge of it.

“Do you want to come in?”

Vick shakes his head. “Out here is just fine,” he says, taking a step back.

This isn’t how I planned it, but I slip on my shoes and follow him down the front steps of the porch. By the time we round the corner of the house and have a full view of the lake, he’s already told me about how he grew up in Lake Moss and never left. As we walk down to the edge of the water so we can inspect the overgrown lawn, I learn the names of his entire family. He married his high school sweetheart, Helen, and they have three children: Bobby, Tess, and Jack, all of whom grew up here and couldn’t leave fast enough.

“So, how’d you find us?” Vick asks.

I wonder if we’re ever going to get around to talking about the landscaping. “My husband, Brian, found out about your business from someone in town.”

“No, how’d you find Lake Moss?”

“Oh,” I say, embarrassed. “Online.”

Vick chews the inside of his cheek, mulling this over.

“Terrible thing, that online business. Ruins everything. Almost everyone who lives here now is seasonal like you. Not me, though. I’ve been here forever.”

“We’re permanent residents,” I correct him. It takes everything in me.

“For now,” he says before spitting on the edge of the lawn, his saliva shooting out of his mouth like a bullet.

I’m not sure what he means. If I knew him better, I’d say he knows something I don’t.

“Lake water’s good for the lungs. Can’t deny that.” He widens his stance and draws a deep breath as he takes in the lake in front of us.

Lake Moss is narrower than it is wide, with several small channels leading into the main body of water. At first I thought the houses lining the edge of the water kept the lake at bay, but now I see how the waves push back in defiance. They’re constantly moving, slowly eroding away the land on which the houses sit. I follow Vick’s lead and take a deep breath. The smell of algae fills my nose. The lake seems to be everywhere, even in the air.

“Helen, my wife, she’s got lung cancer.” He motions to his chest like it’s in him too.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“She slowed down quite a bit this past winter. The kids are all off living their lives, so I take care of her. Can’t stand to see her in some hospital bed. She stopped with the treatment, you know.”

I don’t know, but I nod like I do.

“Terrible disease,” I say, because it sounds right.

Vick clicks his tongue to the roof of his mouth. The whites of his eyes are tinted red, like he was crying recently.

“Well,” he says finally. “What’re you thinking for the landscaping?”

When we’re done deciding what lawn work needs to be done where, I tell Vick I have some inspiration pictures I’d like to show him. I’ve never had a landscaper before, but making a Pinterest board full of neat green lawns and enviable gardens seemed like something someone with a landscaper would do. I head inside, but Vick stays rooted on the welcome mat outside the front door.

“It’s okay, you can take your shoes off,” I say, glancing down at his worn-in boots caked with mud.

“No, that’s all right. You can just email them to me. Might not look like it, but I’m good on the computer,” Vick says.

“It’ll only take a second.” My voice goes up in pitch. His objection to coming inside only makes me want to play the part of the perfect hostess even more. I do a mental checklist of the snacks I have to offer him. We don’t have lemonade, but we have lemons. How hard could it be?

He shakes his head. “Helen is superstitious.”

“Superstitious?” I look over my shoulder at the house. Somewhere nearby, a bird coos.

“Email me the pictures,” he says as he climbs into his truck, leaving me to wonder what there is to be superstitious about.

—

Later that night, while Brian and I are eating dinner, he asks me how it went with Vick.

“Good, I think,” I say as I spin spaghetti around my fork. “He’s an interesting guy.”

“Mm-hmm,” Brian says with a mouthful of pasta. Blueprint layouts from the Oak Street building Brian is working on are scattered next to his plate. He thumbs through them with his left hand while he eats with his right.

“Did you know he grew up here?” I ask.

“No, but I’m not surprised. Most of the blue-collar people around here did.” Brian wipes his face with a white napkin, and his mouth stains it red. “Hey, did you ever call your mom and let her know that we’re settled?”

The water in my mouth almost shoots up my nose. I manage to swallow before I say, “I did, but couldn’t get through. I’ve been telling her to get a new phone for years now. Anyway, I let the church know to give her the message.”

“I’m sure she’ll call you back soon,” Brian says with a smile.

I let the topic of Mother breathe while I think about Vick standing outside the house, looking up at it with something like fear in his eyes.

“He said the strangest thing,” I say, almost to myself.

“Who?”

“Vick.”

“What’s that?” Brian asks without looking up from the blueprints.

“He wouldn’t come inside the house. He said his wife was superstitious.”

“Of what?”

“The house, I guess.”

Brian sits back in his chair and contemplates this.

“What is it?”

“Huh? Oh, nothing,” he says too quickly.

“Is there something to be superstitious about?” I ask with a half laugh.

“No, no of course not.” He picks up his fork and starts eating again.

I twirl more pasta onto mine, but my appetite is gone. Maybe it’s because I can tell my husband is lying to me.