And Eva remembered a day she spent with him — sex at his condo and then the drive around town in his Alfa Romeo with the top down, drinking beer, winding through a suburban neighborhood — had it been this very Davis Islands neighborhood?
They’d driven curving roads under oaks and magnolias, seed pods fluttering into her hair, into her lap, and he’d pointed out houses of horrors.
A low-slung ranch, its lawn a swath of dead grass: “This is where my friend was run over and killed by his brother. High on cocaine. Family station wagon.”
A Spanish Mediterranean with green-striped awnings like a candy shop: “Allan Tinker, decapitated in a waterskiing accident.”
A two-story contemporary, its stucco crumbling: “There’s a plexiglass floor upstairs above the pool. One or two ODs at parties. Heard they took the bodies somewhere it would look like suicide. One of them even survived.”
A 1960s mid-century modern, all windows and architecturally sharp landscaping: “Speaking of suicide. Woman was found by the neighbor boy in the kitchen. Former beauty queen. Tampa’s Valley of the Dolls.”
Dr. Harcourt had grinned, pointed his long finger, his hair blown back by the wind. Eva had only half believed him. “Not really,” she said, enjoying the bubble of fear. “You’re making this up.”
He had Barry White’s Can’t Get Enough playing. The car’s leather seats were soft and sun-warmed. He’d given her a Valium earlier and she still felt the effects, the wind cottony in her mouth, her arms and legs leaden.
Like the insects bobbing now, just out of her line of sight.
“Jesus, how long has it been?” he said. He brushed an old man’s hand through his hair.
Eva said it was fifteen years at least. She’d been a freshman then. “I have two children now.”
At the time they’d known each other, Dr. Harcourt had children, a wife. Once, driving in the Alfa Romeo, he’d told her to duck, and she’d slid down in the narrow bucket seat and curled herself up below the glove box. “Look at you,” he’d said, surprised, her tiny body the provider of feats for him.
Eva sensed he’d come now to the door for her. Even though he claimed this was his mother’s house, she still doubted him after all these years.
“Did you want to see the house? I’m still unpacking.”
He put both of his hands up. “I wondered if the place was sold,” he said. “I couldn’t impose.”
But she insisted. “Did you grow up here?”
Dr. Harcourt stepped uneasily over the threshold. Eva led the way into the living room, but when she looked back he was still there in the entry. “I lived here for a little while,” he called to her. Slowly, he came forward and stood across from her. “This is—” He took in the boxes stacked against the wall, the shining floors, the new sofa still wrapped in its plastic.
Eva told him the former owner had taken up all the carpets and polished the terrazzo.
“They reconfigured it some,” he said, cautiously. “There used to be a wall there.”
Eva asked him if he wanted to look around. She remembered how it had ended with him — how cold and unthinking she’d been. She felt sorry for him now, and she reached out a hand to clasp his arm. But Dr. Harcourt’s shoulders tightened in his corduroy coat, and he told her it was nice to see her, welcome back, but he had to go.
That evening her boys had baseball practice. Eva took a photo of them in their too-large caps, the gloves grotesque claws at the ends of their small arms. She was going to unpack some more, she told her husband, set up the house. She watched them drive off, and then she went for a walk. Dr. Harcourt had told her the neighborhood was designed by a man named D.P. Davis in the 1920s as an exclusive resort with hotels and a golf course and luxury Mediterranean Revival — style residences. The islands were man-made, built on top of swamp and mudflats at the mouth of the Hillsborough River. The old stucco houses had been replaced here and there with mid-century ranches, but those were now being threatened by mansions — two- and three-story places, with three-car garages and paved driveways. Eva’s house was one of the remaining 1950s ranches — one that at the time of its construction would have signaled affluence, with its geometric iron gate, a courtyard, and walls of glass. Large birds of paradise filled the front beds, and banyan trees grew along the side of the house. “A tropical paradise,” the agent had said. “Room for a pool.”
The night was balmy, as if they might get a bit of fall weather — although she told her husband not to expect it. She’d only gone to college in Tampa for a year. Of her time here, she claimed dim memories. “My clothes stuck to my skin,” she said. “It always smelled of magnolia and river muck.” She never graduated. Her parents had made her come home, and she had no choice. She had no way to support herself in Tampa and wasn’t in the best shape at the time to find work.
Later, in bed, she told her husband funny stories about the neighbors that visited while she’d been unpacking. She didn’t tell him about Dr. Harcourt.
“Why did they all assume we planned to tear down the house?” she said.
Her husband, turned away from her in bed, was half-asleep, a signal for her to stop talking. He grunted. “It’s just what everyone is doing,” he said. “Tell them we like the house’s style.”
Eva got up from bed and went down the hallway. She stood in the place where Dr. Harcourt had stood that morning. Beyond the sliding glass doors, the sprinklers hissed. The canal seemed oily and dark. Dr. Harcourt had told her about a husband who’d accidentally killed his wife in an argument. He’d stood her in a galvanized bucket and poured in concrete and dumped her in the bay. He’d been caught, somehow. He’d served his time and gotten out of prison and spent his last years working as a salesman in the mall, selling men’s suits.
Maybe this had been a house on Dr. Harcourt’s tour and that was why everyone thought they’d tear it down. She returned to bed, but could not sleep for the bright slice of moonlight that cut the room in half, like a torn photograph.
Eva wanted the story of the house. She’d seen Dr. Harcourt’s haunted expression, his jittery movements when he stepped through the doorway onto the cool terrazzo. The way he fled — that was the only way to describe his leaving. If the house had ghosts she wanted to be prepared for them. If they were angry or distraught, if their lives had been cut short, if they’d been the victims of their own or others’ violence — surely these things would alter the atmosphere of the rooms.
She located his e-mail address at the college and sent him a note.
Two days later, Eva swatted at the small flies she’d let in. She followed through the motions of unpacking that her husband expected — stacking plates on cupboard shelves she’d wiped clean of dust, the bits of spices spilled from their jars, a piece of macaroni, dried and yellow like an old toenail. On one shelf, she’d encountered a small piece of broken glass, and it had imbedded itself in the pad of her middle finger and she could not remove it. Each time she touched anything, the glass announced itself there below the surface. That afternoon, for no reason at all, she felt trapped, held by the house, terror making her heart race. If only she knew what had sent Dr. Harcourt to her door, she might face it down. Maybe it was only a fleeting, sorrowful memory of a lost parent.
She didn’t want her husband to know about her past. That time in her life, the brief year of college — she’d kept that private all this time. She could not confess details that would surely alter his perception of her. The revelation might even cause a breach in their marriage. Too much time had passed, and she could not adequately account for her silence, her secrecy.