The Grip of It Read online

  12

  AT NIGHT, on the way to the bathroom, I don’t turn the hall light on. I trace my hand along the wall. I touch something wet and soft. It reminds me of rotten-apple flesh. I think of Julie’s bruise. I run my hand back. I try to find the spot, but I can’t. My senses weren’t awake. Maybe my fingertips imagined it. I massage my hands with each other to wake them up. At the bathroom, I flip on the light. I can feel my heartbeat in my eyes. My vision pulses slightly. I stare at the tiles behind the toilet while I pee. In the mirror, a darker version of myself follows directly behind me. No matter which way I turn, it’s turning immediately before me. I feel a furry smoke spreading its way up my arms. I don’t let myself think. I return to our room. Julie shifts when I get back into bed. Shadows caw outside the window. I know what a shadow is.

  13

  IN TOWN THE checkout lady wants to know my origin. “Where yah comin’ from? And what house d’yah live in now?”

  Her rangy forearms show threads of muscle as she flips through the book that will deliver her the code to punch in for my peppers and I see her key in the number for jalapeño and tell her, “That’s a serrano.”

  “They’re all the same price, ma’am. Don’t make no difference.” Her eyebrows are drawn on a little too high, and the real ones are starting to sprout below, as if the penciled-in lines were training the hairs to grow in a certain place.

  I tell her we moved from the city, and she nods knowingly. “My husband and I bought the house at the end of Stillwater, right before the woods.” She glances up quickly, so I ask her, “What?”

  She stalls for a moment. “Nothin’ at all. That house is fine.”

  I say, “No, please. Tell me what you know about it.”

  She eyes me, determining if I mean it, and scans my box of oatmeal. “Lotsa rumors about that house yah might be happier to live without.”

  “Tell me.” I wonder at how she can turn each item without looking so that the bar code will prompt that satisfying beep and watch the ropes in her biceps slacken and strain.

  “Woman who lived there didn’t leave that house her whole life. Born there and people say died there, too. Nobody ever found a body, though.”

  “A body?” I say, and I’m not scared. I’m excited.

  “That’s right. Neighbor said he hadn’t seen her for a while. Police paid her a visit, and she wasn’t under any rock they turned over. They searched the whole house. They waited. Eventually the house went into foreclosure, then went up for auction. She didn’t have any kin or nothin’. House stood empty for a spell, until, well, I guess till you.”

  “Yeah, the bank told us it had been on the market for a while. We got a great deal.” I look down as she settles lemons onto the scale to be weighed. “Who was she? What did she do?”

  The cashier limps a bit as she backs up to pull out a small plastic bag for some dripping meat, then resumes her rhythm, turning on her waist’s axis the ninety degrees from screen to scanner and back. “Well, her family was real rich, kept to themselves. People talked about writin’ on the walls. Messages and drawin’s. They painted over it all or replaced the plaster or somethin’, I’m sure.”

  “What kind of drawings?”

  “Witchcraft, voodoo, who knows? They say she started young drawin’ on the walls. Her parents would holler at her and crash around the house tryin’ to get her to stop, but as soon as they calmed down, she’d start up again. Then they gave up, let her go wild. But I betcha haven’t seen even a lick of that stuff.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “How have yah found the house? Any spooks around?”

  I squint. “Spooks? Not that we’ve seen.” Answers can be right there in your ears, unheard.

  “People gossip about her still being in there.”

  I scoff. “How could that be?”

  “I agree, bored small-town talk. Flappin’ their gums with any rumor they can think up. I don’t believe it either. Just givin’ yah the full run of the chatter.”

  I thank her and head out to my car. The hum of the engine sounds almost like the moans we hear in the house, and that has started to become a comfort.

  14

  JULIE AND I ring the doorbell. Inside, the neighbor plays what sounds like marching-band music, loud even through the heavy brick. We knock on the door and windows. Julie says she can see him sleeping in an armchair. TA-TA-TAT-TAT. She has a tray of brownies in one hand. I hold a pitcher of lemonade. Julie says, “How can he sleep through that snare?” We sit on the steps and wait for the record to end. When it quiets, we get up and try again, hammering.

  Finally, the door swings open. “Must you?” his voice pounds like a bass drum. We take a step back at the sight of him. Deep creases point like arrows to his bulbous nose. The drawbridge of his broad lower jaw is pulled up tight. His forehead folds in curtains of displeasure. Extending straight out from the sides of his head, tapering at the ends, his hair, full and white, strikes the silhouette of a tricorn hat, clown hair. He is shorter than either of us, but dense. I am not convinced I could knock him down.

  A sprinkler comes on and reaches just far enough to hit Julie. She scurries toward the interior. “May we come in?” I ask. The man takes his time saying yes. We step inside.

  His breath strains. He doesn’t shut the door. He pauses with his hand on it.

  “We’re your new neighbors,” Julie explains.

  “I know that.” The man’s pronunciation is stiff, each word forced out individually like a finger poked into my chest. A low grumble lines each syllable. I stifle a smile at his gruffness. I think about making an excuse for us to leave. I look to Julie. She is letting her eyes take it all in. She scans casually, but I watch her sight snag on the intricate openmouthed face carved into the newel at the end of the stairs and then on an ancient wooden-box easel jammed beside a plastic basket of rags. She is not ready to give up.

  “I’m James and this is Julie. We brought a snack. I hope we’re not imposing.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Oh, uh … to get acquainted,” I manage. “It’s always nice to know the people living around you, right?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name, sir.”

  “That’s because I didn’t tell it to you. Rolf! Kinsler!” He barks his name loudly.

  Julie says, “It’s nice to finally meet you, Mr. Kinsler. Do people around here mostly keep to themselves?” Julie shifts the tray of brownies to her opposite hand and offers one to him.

  “I’d invite you to sit down, but you won’t be staying long.”

  Then I smell it. Something fetid and sharp. I look around the filthy house: newspapers stacked twenty high, mats of fur edging everything. I skim the surface of the room for cats. I know, though, that they can make space for themselves behind and between and below. The air feels coated in a thin layer of grease.

  “Would you like to sit out on the porch maybe? It’s a beautiful day.”

  All the lines of Rolf’s face scowl themselves more profoundly. “I don’t go out much. Eczema, psoriasis, sun poisoning. I’ll see you out.” He unburdens us of the tray and the pitcher. He sets them on a console table near the door.

  Julie looks at me, incredulous. I take the first turn holding out my hand. “A pleasure to meet you, Rolf. We’d love to have you over for dinner sometime. Julie’s a great cook.”

  Rolf grates out a noise that must be as close to a laugh as he is capable of.

  “Okay, then,” Julie says, glaring. “I hope you enjoy the brownies and lemonade.”

  We cross to the other side of the threshold. It’s possible Rolf exhales “Mhmm” before slamming the door. Halfway across the lawn, we hear the marching-band music again. Blaring horns celebrate our retreat.

  “That went well, huh? Anytime we need to borrow a cup of sugar, we know where not to go.” Julie pulls open our front door and drops herself onto the couch. “I’m going to choose not to take that personally
. Is that the right decision?”

  I seat myself beside her. “Yes. We tried. No need to push it. Plenty of other people on the street to befriend.” I consider whether to speak my next thought aloud and then I do. “And he probably won’t be our neighbor for much longer.”

  “James!” Julie pushes my leg with her palm.

  “I’m sure he doesn’t leave the house much. It won’t be hard to avoid him.”

  “We didn’t even ask him to mind his own business and stop looking at us, though.”

  “Well, maybe curtains are the next project,” I say.

  Julie whines, “But I like the light!”

  “It’s a choice,” I say, indifferent to the decision she will make.

  She shuts her eyes. “Why must it always be a choice?”

  “Well, you can always avoid choosing and just let it go.”

  “Let it go? Never heard of it!” Julie’s mouth smiles, but her eyes stay shut.

  15

  JULIE PACKS A bag with towels and bottles of water. I grab my camera. We walk the beach. Julie reads the waves like identifying cloud shapes. She points to a break. I try to see what she sees, but I cannot. We ask each other why Rolf was so resistant to us. We try to reassure ourselves that our visit was normal. Julie says there’s a chance we might never get restless here because everything feels so strange. I agree: “I still feel like a guest in our home.”

  “I just remembered this. Last night in the kitchen, I was having a midnight snack—peanut-butter toast—and I could hear a rustling somewhere nearby, but, you know, the house echoes because there’s so much space, and that sound was everywhere and I couldn’t tell where it was rooted, so I walked around the whole kitchen, wandered into the dining room and the living room, too, and no matter where I went, the sound seemed like it was always above my head, like sand sifting or a plastic bag rustling, but eventually I gave up and returned to bed. I couldn’t find it.”

  “I need to call the electrician. And an exterminator. We’ll get to the bottom of it.” I say this and then wonder if I want it to be something that easy.

  We linger on the topic of the noise. We analyze what would cause this new, more percussive layer on top of the previous drone. We stand at the edge of the waves. We let the sand bury our feet.

  We run out of things to tell each other. We share second- and even third-tier stories we’d never bother other people with. Those minutiae calcify into the bones of our intimacy.

  Julie’s bruise has mostly healed. The purples and browns have faded to a dull yellow that makes me cringe.

  Julie turns and sees my face. “The least you could do is pretend to hide it.”

  I agree with her. Still, it looks as if a part of her were dying.

  She insists it was all the moving and cleaning that caused it. “I’m clumsy. And I wasn’t eating well for a while there, and lack of iron and knocking myself around with those big boxes—I’m sure that’s all it was. I mean, I was so tired I passed out, for goodness’ sake.” Her eyes flick away from mine. I can tell she doesn’t want me to poke holes in these arguments, so I don’t. Julie has taken care of herself up until this point. She will take action when she thinks it’s necessary. I don’t like going to the doctor either. I force myself to detach.

  I take photos of the trees and plants, of the birds and squirrels. I pore over the local field guide I’d purchased side by side with the photos and learn our new surroundings.

  We talk through what to do about the basement. Should we replace the stained plaster? Paint over it? Finish the basement with carpet and beer signs and a sectional couch? Julie lifts handfuls of sand to rub into her fair legs, massaging them. I set my hat over my eyes to keep the sun away. I lie on my back. I vote for letting it be. “I made that one closet into a darkroom. That’s all I cared about really. We have more than our fair share of livable space in that house. Why sink money into fixing up the basement?” Julie doesn’t respond. “Do you disagree?” Again silence. I lift the hat from my eyes.

  Julie stands many yards down the beach. She seems too far away for as recently as we’d spoken. I get up, awkward in the shifting sand. I walk toward her. “What do you see, Jules?” She is staring out toward the distant edge of the forest, near that rocky point.

  “The edge of the inlet there. There’s a cave in the rock, up above the water, I think.” She turns. “And those kids you were talking about. I hear them now. All the time. I want to know where they live. I never see them with parents, do you?”

  I resist the suspicion forming inside her. I know I’ve caused it. “No, but you were right. They’re kids. It’s spring. That’s where children belong, outside, out of their parents’ hair, right? What does it matter?”

  “They’re creepy, like you said. I thought it was a one-off, a fluke, that they’d get tired of it, but they’re always around and it’s weirding me out.” She walks back to where we’d spread our things. “I’m beat. Let’s go make lunch.”

  I agree. We squeeze through the trees to walk back. We swear we can hear the echoes of the children’s voices. Their bodies, though, are nowhere in sight.

  16

  WE NEVER THINK through why a room ends in one place but the next room doesn’t begin there, until one night we awake to our spatial stupidity while I’m washing my face. I find a cupboard behind the medicine cabinet. We find a loose brick in the fireplace and pull it out and stick our arms into the space and can’t find a wall within reach of our blind touch. For weeks we assume that a corner that juts into our bedroom is the closet of the room next door, but the next time I’m in the guest room, I notice the closet there is on the opposite side. What inhabits this empty column? I knock, as if that might provide an answer, but hear no echo. I show James, and he shakes his head.

  We plant new bushes—boxwood, James’s choice—around the perimeter of the property and talk about how there is an earth beneath the earth into which we wedge our spades. At the beach suddenly we are looking for seas beyond the sea.

  James says, “Stop. It’s extra closets in an old house, fallout shelters and pantries, and we’re not used to being prepared.”

  I say, “I can feel the history in them, though.”

  At dinner, James lifts his plate to put it in the sink. When he returns to the table, an empty plate remains where he’d been sitting. “It’s been there all along,” I insist. “I wondered what you were up to.”

  On walks around the neighborhood I peer into windows, trying to see how our lifestyle compares, and find our same lamp, a bookshelf identical to ours, a TV playing what I know James is watching at home. I walk through our front door and straight out the back and realize it is not our home I’ve passed through, but Rolf’s. I pause at the newly planted hedges and look at one house and then the other and ask myself if what I think just happened really did, but I talk myself out of it. I try to picture my body passing through his house from back to front, like a ghost, but I can’t remember any details and so it mustn’t have been real, but a daydream on foot. When I secret myself inside my own back door, I find I have to uncurl my fists. Everything I see in our house looks as if it had been replaced with a replica.

  17

  “DID YOU ACTUALLY go to Rolf’s to pick this stuff up?” I set my bag down in the entryway and seek out Julie, who’s at the sink washing vegetables.

  “Why, hello! I didn’t hear you.”

  “The tray and pitcher on the table. Did you pick those up or did he leave them on the front porch?”

  “Neither. I thought maybe you’d gone to ask for them back before you left for work this morning.” She shuts off the water and wipes her hands.

  I shake my head. She slows, surprise inching onto her face. “Are you kidding?” Her grin wastes. “What does that mean then? That he came into our home? Jesus Christ.”

  I try to think of another way.

  “What do we do? Call the police?”

  “I’ll go over there,” I say. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “
I’d rather call the police at this point, James. I told you we should have changed the locks. What if the last owners gave him a key?”

  “Let’s try to keep things civil,” I say.

  “I’m calling the locksmith. If you’re not back in five minutes, 911 is next.”

  I skip the front pathways and trace a crow’s flight across our lawns. I knock loudly, a triple rap, and then a dectet. No one comes to the door. I try the handle. In movies, everyone is always surprised the door is unlocked. I think I’m out of luck. Then, I remember the heavy creak of the hinges when we stopped by. I push harder. The door resists, then opens at once, as if something were slumped against it, but when I step inside, nothing is there.

  “Rolf?” I call. Letting myself into his house feels like retribution for his intruding on us. I realize no answer will be provided in this visit, though. The massive portrait above the mantel hitches my vision. A chill runs through me. Maybe it’s the sense of being watched. The eyes in the painting track my trespass. A family of four: a father and mother, a young boy and baby daughter. I edge away and my heel strikes something solid. I tumble backward and see it’s a pile of old newspapers, toppled now, copies of the same issue. My eyes fumble to focus on the headline. “Kinsler Family Tragedy” repeats itself across a dozen fanned editions. I hear what I believe to be the creak of floorboards upstairs. I struggle to my feet. I shut the door behind me as quietly as possible. The coughs tumble out of me. Once out in the fresh air, I realize how rancid the must had been inside.