The Mapmaker's Children, page 20
AUGUST 2014
“Damned D.C. traffic!” Denny swung through the front door cursing.
Turning the corner to the kitchen, he came to a full halt, his eyes nearly dropping out of his head like eggs cracked into a skillet.
Eden had invited Jessica to stay for dinner. What else could she do? The girl was a wreck, and she couldn’t stand outside on the porch all night. Denny off doing God knows what errand, God knows where in D.C. She was a sweet girl, once she stopped crying long enough to complete a sentence. Eden hadn’t dared ask what the tears were about, which might incite them to start again. Instead, she’d handed Jessica a butcher’s knife and had been pleased to see that she was far more skilled in cookery than in conversation. She’d cubed the pile of potatoes in the time it took Eden to skin one, then moved on to the carrots, neatly dicing in a rhythmic chop-chop.
“The man of the hour!” Eden scooped up the potatoes and dropped them in a pot of boiling chicken stock. “Look who I found at our front door.”
Jessica laid the knife down beside the vegetable peels.
Denny stood, catatonic in expression. Earth to Denny? Eden nearly said, but she didn’t want to come off as a reproachful big sister. Whatever was going on with these two, she was really in no position to help or hinder. Look at her marriage: one big Failure. Capital F. But like in hers, the laws of force and nature applied. You couldn’t just stand there gawking. Two pendulums suspended in ineptitude. Somebody had to make a move. Even if that move was from an external push.
“Jessica came all the way from Philadelphia to visit you, Den.” She stirred the simmering broth, banging the spoon more than was necessary. “You aren’t even going to say hello?”
His Adam’s apple bobbled. “Hi.”
It wasn’t exactly an icebreaker. Fine: maybe one more sisterly nudge would break the mute spell. “We’re making Chicken Soup for the Doggy Soul for dinner. Your basic chicken noodle, minus the noodles, so I figured we could have a bite without me making two different pots of the same recipe. Is that okay?”
He nodded. “I’m okay.”
“I asked if the soup was okay, but I’m glad you are, too.”
“Oh, uh, sorry—” He pointed to his gut. “Not feeling right. Unsettled.”
“Is it flu season?” Eden turned the gas burner tick-tick-tick until it lit. “Jessica’s having stomach troubles, too.” Eden pointed to The Holistic Hound, on the counter. “Soup is the best bet for all.”
“She’s having dinner with us?” Denny looked like he sincerely might be sick.
Jessica clasped her elbows in a self-hug.
That was quite enough. Indigestion, stomach virus—whichever, she didn’t care. Denny had been raised better than to be so rude. She’d raised him better.
“Denny!” Eden put a hand to her hip and gave him a look that she hoped communicated, Get your act together, kid. Jessica was a guest in her house. Sure, it was a house she wasn’t planning on keeping, but nobody knew that.
She turned to Jessica. “Jack’s the same way when he’s not feeling well. The Washington Post ran an article a few years back. Research proved men have a lower pain tolerance than women. One twinge of physical or emotional stress and bibbidi-bobbidi, they turn into cranky babies.” She shook her head. “Some way to treat your girlfriend.”
“She’s not—I’m not—it’s not…” he sputtered, and Eden realized she’d officially crossed into annoying-mother territory.
Jessica shrank into herself. “I tried to call, but your cell phone went straight to voice mail every time.”
Denny sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I was at a job interview. I couldn’t talk.”
A job interview! Eden was torn between pride and the daunting feeling that something terribly serious must be going on for her bachelor play-the-guitar-till-I-die brother to secretly interview for a job in conservative Washington, D.C. Only then did she notice that he wore a borrowed set of Jack’s pressed khakis and a button-down shirt.
Denny and Jessica were back to staring across the kitchen.
“Jessica,” Eden said, “do you mind babysitting that pan of chicken while I get the rest of the ingredients?”
“Sure,” she replied, meek as a lamb. Eden passed her the spatula.
“Denny, you help me.” She yanked the cuff of his shirt, and he followed her lead.
Alone with him in the dark of the pantry, she pointed a finger up to within an inch of his nose. “You better tell me the truth. Now.”
He leaned back, his head thudding lightly against the wall, then slumped down until he was sitting on the floor. “I’m in trouble, E.”
“Well, I figured that since the minute I saw you.” She was his sister, for God’s sake. They shared DNA. She knew him backward and forward, even if he didn’t think she did. The sibling sixth sense.
“What’s this job business?”
“I’m trying to get a job—with a solid salary.”
“Not to be an age racist, but you are twenty-seven. It’s about damned time. You’re on the verge of being that old man in some rinky-dink bar smelling like yesterday’s sweaty meatballs and playing tunes for tips.”
He winced. She was sorry to take a reality pin to his fantasy bubble, but somebody had to do it.
“Is that what you and Jack discussed on your walkabout yesterday?” she asked.
The two had been close since their introduction. It had warmed her to be able to give Denny the big brother he’d never had, a quasi–father figure. It’d be hard on him when they split…if that’s what she still wanted. Because at the moment, what she wanted most was for Jack to be beside her in that pantry. He’d agree with her entirely and help her figure this out. They were good at teamwork, in the office and at home. Or at least, they had been, once upon a time.
“The job was one of the things.”
“And the others?”
He looked up to her from below, the same visage she recalled from their childhood.
“I told him I knew about you trying to have a baby and I—”
A bonfire rose to her cheeks and threatened to come flaming out her ears, eyes, and nose. “You talked about me?” she seethed before he was through.
He seemed to eat his tongue, mumbling under his breath, Jack said this and Jack said that, but Eden couldn’t hear past her own mental clamor. Jack hadn’t even spoken to her about their failure to conceive, but he’d talked to her little brother? What did he say—how did he feel—did he blame her or did he see that she’d done everything she could? Every damned thing. That she desperately wished it had worked. That she was sorry. So very sorry to have let them both down. Her mind whirled.
“Jack’s worried about you. He wants you happy. Even if you don’t think you’re ‘meant to be’ in the long run, the dude loves you, E. For real.”
She shook her head. Of course he’d say that. It was the proper Mr. Knightley thing to say. He had to say it, right?
Denny’s hand moved under the notched wooden plank, and the floor lifted an inch. “Is this the pit you found the spook’s head in?”
She took a deep breath. “It’s a root cellar.” She refocused, swapping out Jack’s face in her mind for the doll’s. “I can’t remember if our house in Larchmont had one.” They’d been in the pantry too long. Jessica was waiting. Eden didn’t want to make her more uncomfortable than she already was.
“No cellar,” said Denny. “But we had spooks.”
Eden pulled two cans of green peas off the shelf. “I told you before, Denny, no such things. Just bad memories best buried in the past.”
She left him there and marched back to the kitchen. It smelled gamey. Chicken on the verge of burning. Jessica was gone.
Eden pulled the skillet off the burner, then quickly shuffled from room to room until she spotted Cricket outside the closed maid’s bathroom, directly next to the pantry she and Denny had been in.
As she came closer, she heard the sound of retching. Eden knocked gently. “Jessica?”
Cricket whined and sniffed the oily air.
“I’m sorry,” Jessica mumbled from within. “I was fine, and then the chicken…”
At the mention, she coughed and gagged again.
“Do you want me to help?” She tried the handle. Locked.
Denny came out of the pantry. “What’s wrong?”
“Jessica is sick.”
Then Cricket arched his back and suddenly vomited a pile of twisted green grass at their feet.
“What the hell is going on!” Denny yelped, echoing Eden’s very thought.
She knelt down to the dog and smoothed back his fur. “I haven’t even served the soup, so nobody can blame my cooking yet.”
Jessica cracked the bathroom door, dabbing her mouth with a tissue. Seeing the dog vomit, she covered her nose and turned away.
“Must be a bug going round,” she said, but Eden recognized the sallow color of her cheeks against the rose of her lips.
She’d become an expert on the signs. Unless Jessica was a righteous vegan, only a pregnant person would react that way to the smell of chicken sautéing. Eden had had the same problem with bacon.
She looked at Denny, and like lightning, she knew she was right. Moreover, he knew she knew.
“Help her sit down,” she told him.
Denny obeyed, leading Jessica to the kitchen stool farthest from the offending odor.
“You need to drink something,” he offered, and Eden was relieved to see that he wasn’t behaving like a complete asshole anymore.
“There’s a lemon in the fruit bin. Put a slice in water. It’ll help,” instructed Eden.
On his way to the fridge, he dropped a rusted coin on the island. “I found this in your cellar.”
In light of her new realization about Jessica and after finding a doll’s head with a cryptic key inside, a shard of old copper didn’t get her excited.
“A penny for your thoughts?” she said sarcastically and moved to turn off the burner. She’d left it on.
Jessica held the object up to the light. It wasn’t flat like money but had been tooled with an intricate design. “A button,” she said. “See the sheaves of braided wheat on the front and the back loop for attachment? My mom sewed a lot of our clothes growing up.”
Eden took a good look. She was right. A button. “Another clue for my ace detective dog walker, Cleo.” She put it on the window ledge beside the doll’s head, then turned coolly to Denny. “I insist Jessica spend the night.”
He nearly dropped the glass of water he was carrying but didn’t argue.
“No—no, I couldn’t…” Jessica began, but Eden was resolved.
“It’ll be dark in an hour. You can’t drive back to Philadelphia tonight. I won’t let you, hon. That’s all there is to it. You’re staying in our guest room, and I’ve got deviled eggs if the chicken isn’t appetizing. Sharp mustard, salt, citrus, vinegar—savories always helped my nausea.”
She smiled kindly. “Thank you, Eden.”
With Jessica in the guest room, she presumed Denny would take the couch, leaving Jack…He’d have to come back to her bedroom. There was no alternative, and Eden was unexpectedly glad. A Newton’s cradle of liaisons. She gave Jessica and Denny a click-push, and on the opposite side, they did the same to her and Jack.
“Come on,” Denny said, “I’ll show you up.”
He put a gentle hand to the small of Jessica’s back. A minuscule, intimate gesture weighted with significance: whatever they were now, they’d been close. Very close. It wasn’t a casual spot to touch. Further validation of Eden’s presumption. She hoped the two would be able to talk alone, if not in her company.
While they were upstairs, Eden plucked the “IT’S A BOY!” flags out of the Milton’s Market eggs. That was the last thing any of them needed. She crammed the toy-sized banners beneath the vegetable shavings in the garbage.
“Who’s home?” Jack called through the front door, galvanizing Cricket to welcoming clucks and tail wags. The dog was obviously feeling better.
“Jack, I’m in here,” said Eden, hoping to have a moment alone with him before the others returned, but Denny and Jessica caught him first.
“Oh, ’ello, I didn’t know we had guests,” he said, looking up to the second-floor landing.
“Uh, yeah, a surprise,” said Denny, making his way down the stairs. “This is Jessica.”
“Jessica? Jessica,” Jack repeated. “Nice to meet you, Jessica.”
Eden heard recognition in his voice. Denny must’ve discussed her on their walk. So the boys were in cahoots on that account, too.
“Nice to meet you. I’m sorry to have dropped in on you like this,” Jessica apologized.
“Not at all,” said Jack with a too-happy jingle. His businessman voice, charm applied in the tensest of circumstances.
All three came into the kitchen. Eden stirred the soup pot. The ingredients whirled round and round in a dizzying pinwheel. “Oh good, you’ve met Denny’s friend. She’s staying for dinner and the night.”
“Really? An overnight guest. Wonderful!” Jack didn’t blink the entire time he spoke. It was one of his subtle giveaways only she knew. “And you cooked, too?”
“Yes, one of Cleo’s Holistic Hound recipes.”
“More dog food?”
Eden frowned but saw by his expression that he hadn’t meant it as an insult. He was making light banter. An attempt to ignore the elephants in the room.
“Gourmet,” Denny added.
Cricket sat in the middle of their foursome, sniffing the air again.
“I better give the little guy a bowl of soup for his stomach. Jessica.” Eden nodded toward the plastic container on the kitchen counter. “Those are Milton’s Market deviled eggs. A New Charlestown specialty, I’m told.”
Only she noticed the tiny hole in the center of each where the toothpick birth announcement had been.
—
EDEN HID her displeasure when Denny said he’d sleep in Jessica’s room. They were grown adults, and this wasn’t 1950. Besides, the damage was already done. From what she could tell, they didn’t sleep much anyhow. Their voices murmured long into the night. The old house’s walls were too thin. She wondered if Jack was able to sleep downstairs. Cricket, too. Or if it was just she who heard the murmuring. She’d had a similar problem as a child.
On more nights than she cared to recount, she’d woken to the judder of the front door, the weight of the bolt sliding; heavy footsteps that made no noise but reverberated through her bed and her in it, legs stretched out like a tuning fork. She’d thought it was another in a long list of magical spirits: Santa Claus and his elves, the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, angels, ghosts, shooting stars, and doll houses come to life. Legends of fact and fiction, all of which stirred only in secret, at night. She almost wished she’d kept believing in those fairy tales, never to know.
It had been raining the night she was given the truth. The kind of downpour that pelted the roof in furious waves; the thunder moaned so deep and long that she wholly believed it was the collective cry of dead spirits washed up from the grave. The house trembled with the sound, and the rain smattered the windows like fingers clawing for admittance.
Eden had sat in her bed, knees pulled to her chest, for as long as her stammering heart could withstand. Then the door below opened; the walls of her bedroom fought the draft, her ears popped from the pressure, and the air smelled of wet dirt. She’d been so frightened, she’d run not to her mother or father but to Denny, in his cradle. Too young to protect her, but the sight of him comforted her.
“Don’t be afraid,” she’d whispered to him. “There’s no such thing as ghosts. There’s no such thing. There’s no such thing.”
She’d rubbed his little back until his breath’s rhythmic purring gave her the steady courage she needed. Then she’d crept through the shadows, across the hall and down the stairs, where puddles of rainwater mirrored the floor. A black mass glistened in the hallway corner. The dark figure turned, and she gasped.
“Eden, what are you doing up?” It was her father in his rain slicker.
He hung his wet coat on the rack and attempted to lift Eden, but she pulled away. He smelled not of bay rum but of something cloyingly sour and intensely shameful. It made her nauseated, and she felt the sudden urge to protect her mother and brother upstairs. Not from her father so much as from the mysterious unseen that threatened.
She never told anyone that secret, not even Denny. At first she kept it out of fear. Then it didn’t matter. Her father was dead.
There were no such things as ghosts. The only phantom was the other man her father was when he wasn’t with them. She’d begun wearing earplugs to bed then and didn’t stop until she moved into a one-bedroom apartment in college, in a new building with insulated walls.
Now she contemplated driving to a twenty-four-hour gas station to buy a pair. Just when she thought she might actually do that, the voices quieted for an hour, maybe two. At dawn, they returned when Jessica said her good-byes just outside the master bedroom door.
“I have to teach my three-year-old tap class at noon,” she explained. “If I don’t leave now, I’ll be late.”
“I’ll be back up to Philly as soon as my last interview is done,” Denny assured her. “Call if you need me before then. I’ll keep my phone on, I promise.”
Eden was relieved to hear that he was acting responsibly.
The stairs creaked under their weight, and the screen door gave a clatter at Jessica’s exit. Then it was Jack’s voice rising up through the floorboards. She wasn’t worried about Denny seeing him on the couch. He knew—maybe more than she knew—about their marital woes. Not much she could do about that, but she trusted Jack to give Denny practical advice. He was a gentleman with a true heart. It was one of the qualities that had first attracted her to him. That and the sexy British accent. So very Knight in Shining Armor. She smiled to herself.
The two men below exchanged indecipherable conversation. The front door slammed again.
Eden kicked off the sheets. If everybody else was up…Trying to sleep now was pointless. She went downstairs to find Denny on all fours, mopping the floor with paper towels. Cricket licked the pads of her brother’s upturned feet.
