“Where to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Like out of the neighborhood or what?”
“I don’t know. She’s crazy, that’s all. The house spooks her or something. I heard her talking to David and she was saying the same thing on the phone the other day.”
“Do you think you would really move?”
“Who knows?” She rinsed out her glass in the sink, turned to him. “Aren’t you going to finish your milk?”
“I’ve had enough.”
“Then give me your glass. Roberta’s been acting really weird lately.”
“How?”
“Oh, giving me strange looks when she doesn’t think I’m paying any attention. I’ll get a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye and there’s old Roberta studying me like a rare species of insect.”
“Ugh.”
“Sorry,” she said. Erskine had a thing about bugs, and it even bothered him to hear about them. “I’m glad I was adopted. Otherwise I’d worry about going crazy like Roberta. I wish I didn’t have to wait until I was eighteen.”
“I suppose you could try lying about your age.”
“Funny.”
“You were going to work on David, weren’t you? To find out if he knows anything?”
“I haven’t gotten around to it yet.”
“Well, don’t expect too much, anyway. Even if you find out who your mother is, she’ll probably turn out to be just as bad as Roberta. You met my mother, don’t forget.”
Ariel had met Mrs. Wold several days earlier when the woman was returning home from work just as Ariel was getting ready to leave. Mrs. Wold was a tall overbearing woman, her slate gray hair pulled severely back from a bulbous forehead, and she had spoken with the overprecise enunciation of a kindergarten teacher. “I am so happy to meet you, Ariel. I want to tell you how much Mr. Wold and I appreciate your spending time with Erskine. We are both just so pleased that he finally has a friend. You know, Erskine is a very special child. His health is extremely delicate and that has affected his development in many ways. Believe me, Ariel, my husband and I are both very grateful to you.”
Erskine had been in the room throughout this little speech. Afterward he and Ariel could hardly look at each other.
“Parents are horrible,” he said now. “Real or adopted, it doesn’t make any difference. Parents suck.”
“And what happens when you’re a parent?”
He shook his head. “That’ll never happen.”
“Why? If kids are better than parents, wouldn’t you want to have some around?”
“Are you kidding? Actually bring something into your house that’s going to know what a total shit you are? That would be really stupid, Jardell.”
She stared at him. “Erskine Weird,” she said.
“Very funny.”
“Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you the upstairs.”
“We were already there.”
“Have to get the tape recorder anyway. And all you saw was my room. Come on.”
“What are you doing?”
“Blowing out the pilot light.”
“Why?”
“No particular reason. Come on.”
She showed him the master bedroom and he was not surprised by the twin beds. “They had a double bed at the other house,” she told him. “But they got rid of it when we moved.”
“They actually used to sleep together?”
“No, they took turns using the bed.”
“Mine would, if it was a choice between that or sleeping together.”
“Well, they slept together once, didn’t they?”
“Sure, and look what it got them.”
“You.”
“Right. So they won’t make that mistake again. How about if we screw in their bed? That would be better than blowing out a pilot light.” He pointed at a closed door. “What’s that, the bathroom? No, the bathroom’s down the hall. Whats that?”
“Caleb’s room.”
“The room where he—”
“Died,” Ariel said.
“What’s it like?”
“Like a baby’s room. A crib and a bathinet and a playpen and things like that.”
“And the door’s kept shut all the time? Does anybody ever go in there?”
“Roberta, sometimes. She sneaks in and out sometimes.”
“Honestly?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How about you? Do you ever go in there?”
“I used to. I would play the flute for Caleb or tickle him or things like that.”
“What’s wrong, Ariel?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Why?”
“The expression on your face. Like something bad was happening in your mind.”
“No. Maybe it was just the lighting.”
“I suppose.”
“I wasn’t thinking about anything besides what I was saying.”
“Don’t you ever go in there now that the room’s empty?”
“It’s not empty. All his things are there. The only thing missing is Caleb.”
“Well? Don’t you ever go in?”
“I’m not supposed to. Roberta says nobody should go in there.”
“So?”
She hesitated. “Once or twice when I was all alone in the house. I don’t know. It feels funny.”
“When you have an old house, there’s always rooms that somebody died in at one time or another.”
“Any minute now I’m going to start talking about bugs.”
“I didn’t know it bothered you.”
“A little.”
“Can we go in there?”
She thought for a moment, then shook her head.
“Open the door and let me look in? Roberta won’t know and I won’t actually go inside if you don’t want. Please?”
She sighed. “Open it if you want. I don’t want to look. And promise you won’t walk in?”
“Sure. You want me to cross my heart?”
She turned away and regarded the far wall for a few moments. The door to Caleb’s room opened. Erskine said nothing. Then there was the sound of the door closing and Ariel turned toward him again.
“I see what you mean,” he said.
“Do you?”
“Yeah.” His eyes swam out of focus behind his thick lenses. “Hey,” he said, “where’s the attic?”
“On top of the house. We were going to keep it underneath but the basement was already there and the two of them would have crowded each other.”
“Don’t be a cunt, Jardell.”
“Oh, charming,” she said. “You haven’t called me a cunt since the day before yesterday.”
“I didn’t call you a cunt. I told you not to be one. Where’s the stairs to the attic?” She pointed. “What’s it like up there?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t go up there?”
“No. There’s just things that haven’t been unpacked. Suitcases and things.”
“But you’ve never explored up there?”
She shook her head.
He flung open the door and took the stairs at a dead run. She hesitated for only a moment, then trudged up after him.
The attic was unfinished, with no insulation beneath the rafters. Accordingly it was very cold and uncomfortable up there. Ariel would have been perfectly happy to take a quick look around and go back downstairs, but Erskine was in his element. He couldn’t get over the fact that Ariel had lived in the house for the better part of a year without once investigating the attic.
“People leave valuable things in attics,” he said. “It happens all the time. They hide something and then die before they have a chance to tell anybody where it is. Or it’s not valuable when they put it there but it becomes valuable years later.”
“Like True Confession magazines,” Ariel offered.
“Very funny.”
But it turned out to be more interesting than she had thought it would. There were no lights, which made things difficult, and the cold certainly interfered with her enjoyment of the project, but it was definitely interesting. The dozen or more Jardell cartons were off on one side, easily ignored once they had been identified. And the other cartons and bushel baskets and heaps of articles were all the debris of previous occupants of the house.