Chapter 7 - The Woman of the House

The next day, after I make lunch for Frances’s visit, I go upstairs and try to do my makeup. When I told Brian last night about how my new friend was coming over, I couldn’t hide my smile.

The smell of lemon wafted through the air as steam rose from the hot tea sitting on Brian’s bedside table. “Look at you. We’ve been here less than a month and you’re already making friends,” he had said, kissing the top of my head before returning to the work scattered across his lap.

It’s important to Brian that we make Lake Moss our home, and if it’s important to him, then it’s important to me. Meeting new people and making friends doesn’t come as naturally to me as it does to him. He makes friends everywhere he goes: the grocery store, the gas station, even the doctor’s office. Once, he got beers with someone he met at the DMV. People gravitate to him, but they usually ignore me. I move through life with a sort of invisibility, letting other people live out loud while I watch from a safe and silent distance. But that’s about to change. Today, I’m going to make Frances my friend.

The eyeliner feels foreign in my hand. I apply it to my right eye, then my left. The lines are uneven, making my eyes two different sizes. Like me, Frances wasn’t wearing any makeup when we met. In fact, she didn’t strike me as someone who ever wore makeup. But still, I want to impress her. I wet a Q-tip and remove the dark lines. When I reapply, it comes out the same. Uneven. I get another Q-tip. My stomach flutters. I adjust my grip on the eyeliner and hold my breath as I bring it to my face.

“I choose to let go of the past and embrace the future,” I say, breathing the words out. My knuckles are white. I lean over the sink so my face is centimeters away from the mirror. The line is thin and subtle over my right eye. “I choose to let go of the past and embrace the future.” The eyeliner looms over my left eye. “I choose to let go of the past and embrace the future.” The tip moves across my eyelid in one smooth motion until my hand twitches and the line becomes jagged.

I grip the eyeliner like a marker and move it across my cheek, along my forehead and down my nose. Wherever my hand goes, a thick black line follows. When I’m done, I look in the mirror and take in the chaotic map of self-hatred drawn across my face.

I throw the eyeliner into the sink. This time, I bypass the Q-tips and grab a washcloth. My skin burns under my frustration and the coarse threads of the towel, but the eyeliner is stubborn.

I check the time on my phone. Frances will be here in forty-five minutes. I reach in the drawer for the plastic packet taped to the back, pop one of the pills in my mouth, and turn on the shower. I let the bathroom fill with steam before I get in and start all over again. This time, without the eyeliner.

Just when I’m about to head downstairs, I hear a thumping noise coming from the other end of the hall. I stop at the top of the stairs to listen. It’s subtle, but consistent.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

I follow the noise down the hall and into the guest bedroom until I’m standing in front of the closet. The door rattles with every thump. My beating heart matches its pace.

I think about the noises I heard outside our bedroom the other night. Brian assured me no one was in the house, but I can’t get the sound of the creaking floorboards out of my head. They sounded a lot like footsteps. Had someone been watching me from the darkened hallway? Were they inside the closet now? Or was Brian right and it was just the sounds of living in an old house?

Thump. Thump. Thump.

I picture a person standing on the other side of the closet door, fist clenched, banging.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Is someone trying to get out? Or lure me in? The metal doorknob is cold in my damp hand.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

I take a deep breath and swing the door open. A flash of black flies in my face and I fall backward onto the bed as my high-pitched scream bounces off the walls. When I regain my composure, I realize a bat is flying around the guest bedroom. I crawl to the window and open it. The bat flies out without hesitation.

“Get ahold of yourself,” I say as I rake my fingers through my long hair, embarrassed that I thought it could have been anything more than an animal who took a wrong turn. Downstairs, the doorbell rings. “Dammit.”

“Do you want some coffee?” I ask Frances once she’s inside.

“Sure,” Frances says.

I pour each of us a cup and hand one to Frances. Her hands envelop the mug as she brings the hot liquid to her lips.

“This place is nice,” Frances says as she pets the edge of the marble island. Sunlight streams in from the windows as Frances stands in the middle of the kitchen, her oversized coat blocking out some of the light behind her. With Frances here, the twelve-foot ceilings don’t seem as high and the view of the lake from the kitchen doesn’t seem so intimidating. Standing at close to six feet, Frances is able to shrink everything around her just by standing still.

“Do you want a tour?” I ask. Without responding, Frances heads toward the staircase as if she’s done it a million times before.

She lingers in the hallway when she reaches our wedding pictures.

“Where did you say you lived again?” I ask.

“In a cabin in the woods. Not too far from here,” she says offhandedly, without taking her eyes off our pictures. “So this your husband?” Frances points to a picture of Brian and me in front of city hall. He’s in a suit and I’m in a white linen sundress.

“That’s Brian.”

“Huh,” Frances says before moving down the hall and up the stairs. I follow behind, her “huh” still ringing in my ears. I bet she thinks Brian is too good-looking for me. I don’t blame her for wondering what a successful guy like him is doing all the way out here with someone as plain as me. I wipe my sweaty palm against my jeans.

“Are you married?” I ask.

“Nope. No kids and no husband. I came close to getting married once, but it didn’t work out. I live alone now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she says, turning to face me. “I’m not.”

I blush with embarrassment. Here I was assuming Frances didn’t like living alone, that she regretted not being married, but with one word and a look that made me feel like she was reading my thoughts as they floated through my brain, Frances dispelled both of those notions. Standing at the top of the steps, I feel intoxicated by her straightforwardness.

When she reaches the guest bedroom, I brace myself for the inevitable questions. Thinking about starting a family soon? Are you trying? Aren’t you just dying to be a mom? I clench the doorframe and wait. Frances stands in the middle of the room, looking around, but says nothing. I’m not sure what’s worse, having to answer the questions or just watching someone think them. The silence is too loud. I start the conversation so she doesn’t have to.

“Brian wants this to be a nursery,” I say with a smile plastered across my face.

“Do you?” Frances asks.

It’s not the question I was expecting. I shift my weight beneath my feet. Suddenly, my throat feels dry. Blood is pumping in my ears. Frances tilts her head. She squints her eyes, ever so slightly, and for some reason I feel like she knows my answer before I say it.

“No,” I say, already feeling lighter. It was one word, but it was heavy, and I’ve been carrying it around with no one to share it with for too long.

“I don’t blame you,” Frances says, turning on her heel and walking out of the room.

—

After lunch, we trade our coffee for vodka on the rocks and sit on the back porch, overlooking the water. The sun has slipped behind the trees and whatever boats were out have returned to their docks. Now the lake is still and the surface looks like glass. I thought the constant ebbing and flowing of the water was unnerving, but the stillness is much worse. I imagine myself picking up one of the rocks along the shore and throwing it into the water, sending endless ripples around the lake and breaking the illusion of peace.

“So, why Wisconsin?” Frances asks, cradling her drink in her hands. Even though we’ve been talking for hours, the conversation is still flowing easily.

“Well, it was time to leave Chicago,” I say.

“Okay. But why?”

I take a long pull from my glass.

“I—I mean we—we wanted a fresh start. Brian’s apartment in the city wasn’t big enough for both of us, and when he found this house, it just felt right.”

“And what about your family?”

“What about them?” I stare into my almost empty glass.

“Are they still in Chicago?”

“My dad died a long time ago and my mother is a retired teacher, but she travels around the world volunteering. Right now she’s in Seoul.”

“Interesting.” Frances’s eyes narrow. “You and your mom must be close if it was just the two of you growing up?”

“Very,” I say, my mouth on autopilot.

“Don’t do that,” Frances says before she takes a sip of her drink.

“What?”

“Lie.”

I swallow hard, remembering how easily Frances saw through my insincere words yesterday. I thought it was just a one-off, a fluke, but now that it’s happened again, I know she isn’t falling for my lies. It takes me by surprise, but Frances looks at me without judgment, without expectation. Lying to Frances isn’t an option, but I realize I don’t want to lie to her. For the first time in my life, I want to tell the truth.

“It’s okay if you weren’t close with your mom. I wasn’t close with mine,” Frances says. “My mom was five foot five, if you can believe it. She was bright and bubbly. If the color pink were a person, it would have been my mom. Anyway, she wanted a girly girl, someone to go shopping with and get her nails done with, but I wasn’t into any of that. I was more of a tomboy. Still am, to be honest. Anyway, she was embarrassed by me. She used to make me hide in my room whenever any of her friends came over.”

“That’s terrible,” I say.

“It’s like sometimes one person can take up so much air, it feels like there’s none left for the rest of us, you know?”

I nod. It’s as if Frances can read my mind.

“To hating our mothers,” Frances says, raising her drink.

“To hating our mothers,” I repeat before our glasses clink.

It gets dark without either of us noticing. The half-empty bottle of vodka sits on the ground between us.

“I should probably get going,” Frances says. “But thanks for lunch.”

We both chuckle. Lunch feels like it was years ago. I trip over my feet as I walk Frances to the rock-strewn lake path along the shore. We drank the same amount, but she doesn’t look as drunk as I feel.

“We should do this again sometime,” I say as I push back strands of hair that have fallen across my flushed face.

“I’d like that,” Frances says before turning to leave.

I make my way back into the kitchen, full of drunken happiness, marinating in the thought of having a friend. A real friend.

My phone lights up on the counter. There’s a text from Brian telling me he has to work late and I shouldn’t wait up. Below it is another voicemail. Feeling the liquid courage pulse through my veins, I swipe right to listen.

“Hi, Rose, this is Shannon from the New Hope Mental Health Facility in Chicago—” Shannon is talking but I don’t hear her. I’m back in the gray halls of New Hope. The air is full of dank breath. I can hear the patients, skeletons of their former selves, cry out in discomfort as they beg for death to take them. I’m running away from Mother’s room at the end of the hall. My legs are moving fast beneath me, but no matter how hard I run I’m still in the hallway. The fluorescent lights and padded walls stretch on for miles ahead of me. I can’t leave.

I slam the phone down on the countertop. “Enough,” I say. I’m not at New Hope. I’m in our new home. I don’t know what the nurse wanted, but whatever it was I didn’t hear it.

The beginning of a hangover prickles at the base of my neck before slowly wrapping itself around my forehead. I leave my phone on the counter and turn off the lights.

Upstairs in the bathroom, I cup warm water in my hands and close my eyes before bringing it to my face. With my face still dripping in the sink, I reach for the washcloth next to me. My hand finds the cool countertop instead. I thought it was right next to me, but now the washcloth isn’t there. The house is quiet. The only sounds are the water dripping from my face into the glass basin and my breath, which gets faster and faster with each passing moment.

My intuition reveals itself somewhere inside the pit of my stomach, telling me I’m not alone. I stiffen. I blink through the water, hoping to see the dark entry of the closet empty behind me, but instead I see my reflection in the mirror. My face isn’t wet with water. It’s wet with blood.

A loud, piercing sound fills the room. My scream. It bounces off the walls and echoes in my ears. The smell of iron fills my nostrils. I bring a shaking hand to my face and my fingers come away thick with blood. I turn on the faucet and bury my face under the running water. The sink turns a bright shade of red as I scrub my face raw. When I’m done, my face is tender, but the blood is gone.

I wonder if it was ever there in the first place.