"I'll be glad to help you look, as long as we don't start from the assumption that I know where it is but I'm just not telling you. Because I don't know. If I knew, I'd tell."
Don turned away from her, exasperated, then turned back. "All right, play it how you want. Help me look for it. Just remember that I really need it. This isn't the only room I have to finish."
"Now that my room's done, what do I care?" she said. And then, because he no doubt looked outraged, she reached out and touched him lightly on the arm. "A joke, Don. That was a joke."
"Please, just... help me look."
"OK," she said. "Let me guess. You want to search in my room first."
"Why not?" he said. "We're already here."
She led the way, opening the closet, making a show of looking in ludicrous places, like the light fixtures and the Venetian blinds. "Not here. Not here. Not here."
"OK, so you're offended," Don finally said. "But the wrecking bar didn't just walk off, somebody had to move it."
"Why is that? What makes you so sure of that?"
"So sure of what?" For a moment he had no idea what she was asking him.
"That somebody had to move that wrecking bar?"
"Because objects made of solid metal don't move unless something moves them."
"Something."
Now it dawned on him. "Oh, some supernatural force did it. The house did it."
The sarcasm stung her. "I don't care what you believe. Why should I help you look? If I'm the one who finds it, you'll assume I put it there."
"Put it where?"
"Where I find it. If I find it. Promise you won't accuse me of that."
"I promise."
"I don't believe you." She wasn't joking. But then, neither was he.
"I just want my wrecking bar!"
"And I want to be trusted."
He thought of a lot of rejoinders that would have made him feel a little better while making the situation quite a bit worse. Instead he answered, quietly, "Please help me look for my wrecking bar."
"If I find it," she said, "it will be because I've lived in this house long enough to know where stuff collects."
"Collects?"
"Where it drifts to. Lost stuff."
"This isn't a lake. Things don't drift."
"Then we won't find the wrecking bar in any of those places." She sounded amused, but her eyes were on fire.
"This is worthless," said Don. "I'll just hunt for it alone."
"Do you want my help or not?"
"I want my wrecking bar. If you can help me find it, please do. Otherwise, stay here with your bizarre fantasy life. It's done you so much good up to now."
He headed out of the room.
She called after him. "Maybe you better make sure you know what reality is before you start talking about my fantasies!"
He kept walking, into the hall, down the stairs.
"How do you know you didn't just put it somewhere yourself and forgot where?"
That was too much. "Because I always put my tools away."
"Always?" She was standing in the hall, leaning over the banister to look down at him on the stairs.
"Always."
"Your mom must have loved raising you. All of Don's little toys put neatly away. A place for everything and everything in its place."
"Exactly," said Don. He headed back into the parlor and began rummaging through all his toolboxes again. He heard her coming down the stairs. If he turned around, he knew he would see her leaning against the doorframe, her arm flung up high, like a dancer, like a drawing from the flapper era. Oh, wait, it's the Weird sisters who were flappers. Sylvie is from the eighties. Got to keep my insane women straight.
He had to look. And yes, there she was, leaning on the doorframe, her arm up over her head, stretched along the white-painted wood. Then she bent her arm at the elbow and it arched over her head like a dancer's or a skater's. The image of grace.
"I thought you said the wrecking bar wasn't in your toolboxes."
"I already looked," said Don. "So I'll look again."
"Unbelievable."
"What?"
"That you actually have enough self-doubt to check. I thought you were above such weakness."
"What exactly have I done to you that I deserve to be mocked? Did you think I was the kind of guy who'd accuse you before I checked up on myself? The back of my head is still tender from the time you moved the workbench, but I'm not supposed to wonder if you touched my wrecking bar?"
Her face darkened. She ducked away from the door. He took a few steps after her. "That's right, hide from me, that's mature of you. Don't face up to anything. Isn't that what your life in this house is all about? Hiding!"
When he got to the entry, he saw her leaning against the other doorjamb, the one leading into the apartment on the other side of the stairs. Only this time it wasn't in that carefree, graceful pose. She was facing the wall, her face turned down, the top of her head in full contact with the wood, her body angling away. Like a goat charging. As if she were trying to push her head into the wall.
"There's maybe something in the cupboard in the kitchen," she said. "Far right, up high in the back corner. The cupboard over the fridge space."
"Which kitchen?"
"Lissy's and my kitchen. The one with the big table."
Don strode down the narrow hall to the kitchen at the back of the house. The top shelf of the cupboard was up high, and because it was over the refrigerator gap, there was no counter under it. Don had to stand on the counter next to the gap and lean over, holding onto the cupboards, and even then he had a hard time reaching in. How did she know what was up here? More to the point, how did she get it here?
He got down and pulled the heavy table over to the counter. It was hard to move and it scraped noisily on the floor. Once he was standing on the table, there was no need for leaning. He could reach right in, could look in.
No wrecking bar. But there were several boxes of nails and screws. The Lowe's price tags were still on them. He got them down, set them on the table, then opened them up. Each one was filled with a confusing assortment of all kinds of hardware, including a lot of old nails and screws that Don had taken out of the walls. What infuriated him, though, was the number of shiny new screws and nails that had obviously been pilfered from his supplies in the parlor.
"Sylvie!" he called.
From the door of the kitchen she answered softly. "It wasn't there?"
"What are these doing here?" he demanded. "What is this?"
She came over, peered in the boxes. "A nail and screw collection?"
He wanted to scream at her, but he kept his voice low. "Is this a joke?"
"I don't know," she said. "Is it funny?"
He held up a bent nail with plaster still clinging to it. "What did you expect to do with this?"
"I thought you threw all of those away," she said.
"You didn't scavenge this and hide it away?" he said sarcastically.
"Why do you bother asking, when you know the answer and you also know you don't intend to believe it?" Her face was sullen now. Defeated.
Well, he was pretty near defeated, too. "Sylvie, where's the damn wrecking bar?"
Her answer was a whisper. "I don't know. There are some places I can't see."
"So tell me the places you can't see and I'll look there."
She turned her face to the wall to hide from his wrath. Touched her forehead to the wall. "The old furnace," she whispered.
"I've got to get inside that?"
"Behind it," she said.
"Why couldn't we just have started with this?"
No answer. She just stood there, looking beaten. Well, she had been beaten, hadn't she? Though truth to tell he had no idea what the game had been.
Don clattered his way down the basement stairs. "I don't like wild goose chases," he said, not loudly, because she looked too defeated for him to want to rub it in; but not softly, either, because he was really annoyed.