William watched her with admiration. He wanted to keep the picture in his mind: his girl, on top of the world, and him right there with her. The cigarette burned down. Guests said their good-byes. Louisa stood to gather plates and cups. “Don’t bother,” William said. “I’ll get it.” When he looked for her again, she was gone, and he was alone in the thickening night.
Part II. A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME
ONE
Most of the neighborhood was green, streets canopied by trees, lawns compassed by hedges, the houses themselves rarely exceeding complementary pastels, but about a mile north of William and Louisa was a stretch of highway that exploded simultaneously into tight-lipped gray and chattering color, a half mile of strip malls where buildings were densely packed in bric-a-brac and reader boards shrieked the latest specials. It was difficult to pass through this part of town without cringing, and for that reason its southern boundary was a site of welcome relief, as well as something of a local landmark. The last building on the strip had been a barbecue restaurant called the Pit, a faux log cabin topped by a stout iron pole, on top of which sat an enormous plastic pig wearing a chef’s hat. The Pit had changed hands two or three times as a restaurant and then become a discount-retail outlet, though the new proprietor had wisely chosen to keep the sign. To get home, William turned right at the pig on the pole, which is what he was doing when the real estate agent waved to him from another car.
“Hi there,” she said. He couldn’t remember her name, but her face was the same as always, fully invested in a synthetic smile.
He returned her wave silently. It was Sunday morning and he was out for coffee only.
“Good news,” she said. “We sold it.”
“Great,” he said. The light changed and he went around the corner.
It took him a few blocks to realize what she meant. The cul-de-sac where William lived was considered one of the most desirable in the area. His neighbors had not changed since shortly after he had moved in: Brooker and Pentz to his left and Eaton and Roth to his right, the other side running from Marker at the closed end of the street through Morgan, Johnson, and Kenner, with Zorrilla at the mouth. The houses were all one-story, Graham Kenner liked to joke, because that is what they told. More than once William had stepped out to collect his newspaper or water the lawn and seen at least one other man doing the exact same thing. There was a laugh of recognition and embarrassment they used in these situations. The structure of the street was as rigid as a crystal. Then one day at a party, Ron Johnson’s wife, Paula, clinked on a glass and pulled her lips in with a secretive smile. “Someone has some news about sunny California,” she said victoriously.
At first the neighbors had cheered the move, in part because it introduced some excitement into an otherwise uneventful April, and in part because most people disliked Ron Johnson and were glad to see him go. But after a month or so, with the FOR SALE sign still planted in the front lawn like a taunting flower, William began to resent the place on two counts. For starters, it bothered him that Ron Johnson could afford to move without selling. People whispered that the money came from Paula’s parents, though Ron had assured William it wasn’t true. The second issue was that the vacant house began to look like a missing tooth in the smile of the street. It was directly opposite William, the first thing he saw when he left his front door in the morning, and he began to internalize its failure.
Now, finally, the place was sold. William went left on Conroy and right on Powell. He gunned the engine enthusiastically as he took the shallow turn off of Brashear, then coasted through the intersection of Jensen and Patrick. When he turned onto his street, he spotted the absence immediately: no sign at all, just the flat broad lawn, which was under the care of the Realtor and as a result far healthier and more manicured than it had ever been when Ron Johnson lived there.
Louisa was on the phone in the other room. Her voice rose and fell in angry waves. He put her cup of coffee on the counter and drank the rest of his.
“Back already?” she said, coming into the kitchen. “Someone’s here, cleaning. Your doing, I assume?”
“I thought it’d make things easier.” Louisa, who could be lenient to the point of indifference about much of the house, was obsessed with keeping the kitchen in order, and so the day before, in a burst of foresight, William had arranged for a cleaning lady. The woman had arrived promptly at eight and stood with him on the deck. Beer bottles lined the edge of the railing; paper plates dotted the long table. Both had a faintly musical arrangement. William apologized for the mess, and she smiled. “Without mess, I don’t work,” she said. “This is three hours at least.” Excitement clotted her voice.
“I’ll go check on her,” William said. But she was on a cigarette break, and he went down into the yard, where he found the whiskey bottle Tom had thrown. Ants rioted around it. In the house to the south, the boy who spoke to his parents as if they were children was already awake. He was crouched behind an overturned bench with a foam dart gun, carefully watching as another boy, a friend, pressed himself flat against the trunk of a tree. William copied the posture against the big tree in the corner of his own yard, but there was no one coming for him. One of the birds whose name he didn’t know chirped loudly in the tree just overhead; its song was an exclamation point with feathers, a sharp whistle that went straight up.
In the kitchen, he paged through the newspaper, not quite reading. Louisa, spoon in hand, appraised a grapefruit that was titanic by any standard. “Hey,” William said. “How about that party?”
“How about it?” Louisa said.
“You should have come out earlier.”
“I had my reasons,” she said.
“I don’t doubt that,” said William, even though he did. “So what were you doing that whole time?”
“What was I doing? I don’t know. I read a little. I went onto my computer to listen to the radio, or whatever they call it now. If I’d known what was going to happen, I wouldn’t have waited so long. I would have loved to see everyone before Tom went into the drink,” she said.
“You mean the tub?” William said.
“I mean the drink,” she said. “That’s the last time we have a party for him.”
“I hope he got home okay.”
“He does his damage before he gets into the car. He’s the world’s oldest living child.”
William lowered the newspaper. “Says the younger sister.” Louisa pinched her mouth into a frown. “Seriously,” he said. “Do you think it’s okay that you hid out for the whole party?”
“Why?” she said. “Did you miss me?” She stood up and poured out her coffee, which was still mostly full. She wore tight aqua sweatpants that had not always been that tight and a cheerful pink T-shirt from the gift shop of the local history museum, where she worked as a curator.
“We’re supposed to be in this together.”
“You seem like you came through it with flying colors,” she said without turning around.
“Says who?”
“You don’t really want to fight about this, do you?”
“Fight, no. Talk, maybe.”
“You don’t really want to do that either.” She fit herself into a safe place by the kitchen wall. “It was one party. I didn’t make it out. No need to enter it into the permanent record.” Her fingernails tattooed the countertop with a series of rapid taps.