Crooked House (10 page)

She ran down the main hall, calling his name, screaming for him.

She found him in his study. Robert had his head down on his desk, and as she entered, wild now with panic, he sat up and stared at her through bleary eyes. At first she thought he was drunk, or badly hung over. But that thought faded – even her fear for Angela faded, for a moment – when she how badly he’d scratched himself up. His shoulders were raw and crusted with dried blood.

“
Oh, Robert.”

“What?” he said
. He stood up, and she could see he was steady on his feet. Not drunk then, or hung over, but very tired.

Then her senses came back to her, and
she focused again on what she needed to do.

“Come on,” she said
. “You have to help me.”

“With what?” he said irritably.

“You can’t hear that? That’s Angela.”

“Hear what
? I don’t hear anything but you yelling.”

“There’s someone in Angela’s room, Robert!  Jesus, please help me!”

That got his attention, and the next moment, they were both running toward Angela’s room. Sarah couldn’t hear the shrieking any longer, and that scared her. That noise, that voice, had sounded so violent, so utterly deranged with anger, that it had caused her to go cold inside. Even now, with it gone, she could still feel it in her guts.

They both slowed as they reached the end of the hallway, and
Sarah was about to tell Robert to break down the door when it clicked open and sighed inward a few inches.

They both stopped.

“Angela?” Sarah said.

Then the smell hit her
. Raw sewage. So intense as to be almost palpable. Sarah coughed, gagged, her face twisted into a grimace.

“Oh God,” she said, turning to Robert.

“Smoke,” he said.

“What?
” The raw sweet stink of it so powerful she could barely keep her eyes open to look at him.

“I smell smoke,” he said.

She started to speak, but a voice from inside Angela’s room cut her off.

You little bastards make so
much noise you shake the house.

It was a woman’s voice, vicious and cruel
. It almost sounded like she was hissing the words out.

Sarah
ran for the door but Robert was already moving, throwing the door wide. He advanced a few steps into the room and then came to an abrupt halt. Sarah stepped around him, her gaze scanning the room. Angela sat at the foot of her bed, wearing one of Robert’s T-shirts as a nightgown, her dark hair looking limp and straw-like in the low light. The rest of the room was empty.

“Angela?” she said.

“Who else was in here?” Robert said.

Angela turned and faced them, and right away
Sarah noticed the girl’s face was wet with tears. Her eyes were red and puffy, her little chest hitching. “Oh baby,” Sarah said. She went to her daughter and took her face in her hands. “Oh, baby,” she again. “What’s wrong?”

“Who else was in here?” Robert said again.

“Huh?” Angela said.

“Who else was in here?” he demanded, and this time there was a harshness in his voice that made even
Sarah flinch.

“Nobody, Daddy
. Just me.”

He huffed dismissively and went around the room, opening doors to her closets, her bathroom
. He even looked under her bed.

“You said somebody was in here with her,” he said to
Sarah.

Angela looked at him, and then at
Sarah, a question hanging in her red and swollen eyes.

“Baby, I thought I heard somebody in here with you
. A woman’s voice.”

Angela shook her head
. “Mommy, nobody’s been in here.” Sarah could tell from the confusion on the girl’s face, her look of complete bewilderment, that she was telling the truth.

“You been smoking in here?” Robert said
. “Out in the hall I smelled smoke.”

“Daddy, gross
. I don’t smoke. Honest, I don’t...I’ve never...”

“
Shhh,” Sarah said. “It’s okay.” She pulled her daughter close and kissed her cheek, tasting the salty tears there. She was still sobbing a little. Sarah could hear it in her breathing. “Oh baby,” she said. “It’s okay. I’m here with you.”

Robert stepped around her with an angry sounding grunt
. He was muttering something, but Sarah only caught the last of it: “...understand what the hell is going on around here.”

*

Robert went back to his study and tried to find the copy of Raymond Carver’s stories he’d seen that first day that Thom showed him the house. It was up here somewhere, he knew it, though now he couldn’t seem to locate it. Whatever that was down at Angela’s end of the hall was already growing dim in his mind, slipping into the background. He needed to focus on his class. He had three syllabi still to write, and though he’d been up here hours on end since moving in, he hadn’t gotten anything done.

It was just so frustrating
. And Sarah, didn’t she get it? He’d finally gotten her to admit that she’d in fact spent not six hundred dollars, but closer to seven and that had really pissed him off. That was money they didn’t have. She knew that, and she was spending it anyway. How in the hell was he supposed to cover all that, much less get ahead? It felt like he was talking to the wall sometimes. Nobody listened.

Or, rather, they did
. They just didn’t care.

No, that wasn’t right
. He knew Sarah cared. They were in this together. But when he looked at the problem, he saw them headed for the edge of a cliff. Sarah, when she considered where they were going, she just saw another bump in the road. What would it take to make her realize how much trouble they were actually in? Did they have to crash before that happened? He hoped not, but at this point, he didn’t see many other outcomes available to them.

Without realizing he was doing it, he began
pacing the narrow lane between his desk and the bookshelf. He stopped where he was, glancing over his desk for where he’d left his checkbook and the latest bank statements, and instead felt keenly aware of the soreness in his feet. He put his hands on the edge of the desk and closed his eyes, collecting himself. He opened his eyes with a sigh, and happened to glance at his phone at the edge of the desk.

Christ, was it really 1:30 in the afternoon
? Had he really missed lunch? Had he really been up that long?

And why hadn’t
Sarah come to get him?

Or sent Angel
a at least?

Well, the answer to that was easy
. Probably still pissed at him, though for the life of him he had no idea what he’d done to earn that. If anything, he was the one who should be pissed at her. Seven hundred dollars!  What kind of crap did you have to buy to rack up a tab like that? Just thinking about it got his face hot.

No, he thought
. Don’t do that. You get started in on that again and you’ll be up here pacing all the way through dinner.

His fingers touched something wet
. He was scratching again, and to his horror he saw that he had made himself bleed. Robert stared at the wound for a second, not really registering how badly he’d chewed himself up, seeing only the blood and the deep red lines down the side of his arm. There was a box of tissues on the corner of the desk and he snatched up a few to dab away the blood. It came away, but the skin underneath was torn up and raw, tender to the touch. There were scaly white circles all over him too. They itched something awful. Pushing the tissue against his skin relieved it momentarily, but only long enough for it to move to his shoulders, his wrists, his back, his belly. He itched all over.

Hard as it was to do, he wiped the blood from his fingertips and threw the tissue away
. At this rate, he’d have to have his own roll of paper towels up here, maybe a bowl of water to dab it into.

Oh God, he itched
.

But he was hungry too
. It would do him good to get out of this office for a bit. He took his windbreaker down from the hook at the end of the bookshelf and slid it on as he walked downstairs.

Rounding the corner into the kitchen he heard
Sarah on the phone, and she sounded angry. His first thought was that it was some creditor calling to harass them, or perhaps even Jay Carroll had tracked them down somehow. But when he stepped into the kitchen she got sight of him and, into the phone, said, “I said, No!  Now stop asking.” Then she held the phone out to him and said, “Here, this is for you.”

He took the phone from her, wanting to ask her what the hell was going on, but she simply walked out without any further explanation.

It took him a moment to realize he was still holding the phone.

He put it to his ear
. “Hello?”

“Robert, it’s Thom!”

“Uh, hi Thom. What’s going on? Sarah looked upset.”

“Yeah, that was my fault
. Sorry about that. I think it was too soon. You said wait till you guys got settled and I’m afraid I jumped the gun. Just eager to see her working again. Listen, the other reason I called was to invite you guys to the faculty Christmas party on Sunday. It’s at Ron Anson’s house this year. Great place. Not as nice as yours, of course, but still pretty cool. I think it’d be a great opportunity for you and Sarah to meet some of your peers. Jean Bernall’s husband, Stephen Bourne, will be there. Have you read him? His latest book hitnumber 43 on the New Yor
k
Time
s
Bestseller list last month.”

“Uh...” was all Robert managed.

“Will I see you guys there? If you need a babysitter, Jean should be able to recommend a few really good ones. Trust me, there’s always a few undergraduates running around here looking for some extra cash.”

“Well, okay
. Yeah, I guess. Sure, we’ll be there.”

“Great! 
Check your e-mail. I send you a map to their place. Okay, I gotta run.”

“Oh, okay
. See you then.”

They hung up, and Robert stood there in the kitchen without knowing what to do with himself
. What the hell was wrong with Sarah? She’d already made it plain she didn’t want to go back to work for Thom Horner, which completely mystified him, but she’d never been out and out rude with him. Certainly never dismissed him so forcefully.

“
Sarah?” he called into the recesses of the house.

He went out to the entryway, called for her again
. He went down the east wing on the first floor, still calling for her, but got no response. Finally, he circled back to the entryway and hollered her name up the stairs.

A moment later, he heard sobbing.

“Sarah?”

He started up the stairs
. About halfway up, he called out to her again.

Still the sound of her sobbing
. It was coming from the sitting room at the top of the stairs, and that caused him to stop.

“
Sarah?”

He swallowed the lump in his throat and stepped toward the door.

She was in there, standing in the middle of the room, her back to him. He could see her shoulders hitching with her sobs.

“What are you doing in here?”

She turned then, and he could see her face was streaked with tears. She looked so much like Angela had that morning, when they’d found her crying in her room. He remembered how Sarah had gone to her and pulled her into her arms. How mother and child had stayed that way until he began to feel like a third wheel and had wandered off, filled with a curious mix of ennui and embarrassment. From the look on her face, one that suggested she was eager, hungry even, for his comfort, he half expected her to dive into his chest and wrap her arms around his neck.

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, at the last minute, she pulled away from him. She turned her face away with a sigh and tried to give him a wide berth on her way to the door.

“Hey,” he said
. “What gives?”

“Nothing gives,” she said.

“Then where are you going?” And just like that, he found all the pity and warmth and desire to comfort her that had brought him in here to check on her had bled out of him, leaving only a tight, ice-cold knot of anger and resentment.

“I’m tired,” she said.

“Yeah? Well, I want to know what the hell is wrong with you. Why’d you act like that on the phone? Thom is just trying to help us out, and you’re treating him like trash.”

She held up a finger at him
. He could see it shaking with her anger. A torrent of words hung on the tip of her tongue. She wasn’t blinking. Her lips were tight, pulled into thin bloodless lines. Her chest was heaving. “Don’t talk to me about this,” she finally managed. “I mean it. Don’t.”

He could hear her teeth grinding as she spoke, and it frightened him a little
. He’d never seen her like this. He said, “But why? Sarah, I don’t know what the problem is, but you can talk to me. Can’t you?”