It was Sylvie’s room. That’s who he had made it for. He knew that Nellie was dead and would never live there. He knew that Sylvie wasn’t his daughter. But she was someone who needed his protection. He hadn’t wanted to take her into that place, but she was there, and the room was for her, had always been for her. For herself, not for some imagined surrogate of his daughter.
When she moved into that room it would no longer be his. He would knock at the door if he wanted to speak to her. If she invited him in then he would go, but as a visitor. That was the way of it, for a builder like Don. You made beautiful spaces, you built with your whole heart, and then you invited someone else into the space you had made and gave them the keys and locked yourself out of it forever. But you were still there, that was the secret. Don was still there in all the houses, watching out for the people, enclosing them, sheltering them. He was still there, soothing their eyes, stilling the sounds of the outside world, framing their lives so that all their dreams could be contained in a place where they had only to reach out and touch them and they would come to life again.
He headed back to the house. Jogged back, the tape measure and wallet and keys bouncing in his pockets. He had left the front door unlocked; he burst through it, calling out to her. “Sylvie!” His voice echoed through the house. It sounded so empty. “Sylvie, are you here?”
He ran up the stairs, tried all the doors on the second floor. Up into the attic. “Don’t hide from me in here, Sylvie,” he said. No answer, she wasn’t there, or if she was he couldn’t find her.
She’d come back. She’d hidden before, stayed out of sight for a while. But she came back. Ten years she’d been trapped in this place, it’s not likely that one quarrel would drive her out, was it? He tried to fill himself with confidence as he went back down the attic stairs, then down the wide staircase to the main floor. Maybe she was in the cellar.
No. She was in the parlor. Lying on his cot. Asleep on his cot. Hadn’t she heard him calling? He’d been so loud. Nellie had been like that. When she slept, she slept.
He thought of waking her, apologizing to her, telling her what he had realized, that the room was for her all along, that she was welcome here as long as the house belonged to him. But he couldn’t bring himself to disturb her.
He went upstairs to the bedroom she had been sleeping in, to the one shabby bed remaining in the house. He took the mattress off the bed, blankets and all, and dragged it into the new room; the sagging box springs came next. Then he knocked apart the bedframe and carried in the four parts and reassembled them, put on the springs and mattress, and neatly made the bed. It looked so small in that large space, like a child’s bed, though it was a regular twin. And so tatty compared to the glowing perfect finish of the room. He thought of buying her a new bed, a queen-size perhaps; a canopy bed, or a brass one, or a four-poster. But no, that would feel too permanent. A waste of money in a house he was going to sell in a year. This shabby old bed would have to do. It was the space around the bed that mattered. What she would see in the morning when she opened her eyes. The bands of light through the windows. The closet where she had already played like a child. She owned nothing with which to fill this space. So instead she would own the space itself.
He heard a sound from the hall outside the room. A footstep. He turned around and there she was.
“My bed,” she said.
Suddenly he was shy about what he had done. “I needed to have your stuff out of the other room before I worked on it.”
She stepped into the room and looked at all of it again, turning around once, twice. “I get to sleep in here?”
He nodded.
“I’ve never had a room like this.” She laughed, a low sound, deep mirth; and then another laugh, cascading, the music of delight. “I know, it’s only for a little while, but—thank you.”
And with that the room was no longer his. He had bestowed it. He smiled at her, tipped his invisible hat, and went away downstairs.
14
Wrecking Bar
Don went to sleep that night feeling better than he had for a long time. Embarrassing as it had been to break down like that in front of Sylvie, he knew that it had been a good thing. A wall inside himself had been broken. He could think of Nellie’s name again, say it to himself. Something had been given back to him. And because Sylvie had been part of it, there was something between them now. A bond of loss, if loss could bind. He could share this house with her, for the months ahead, because they were no longer strangers.
In the morning, though, with the emotions of the day before faded, he began to think of other things. Bleaker things. Had the sight of his weeping diminished him in Sylvie’s eyes? He remembered standing there watching Cindy weep. Touching her as Sylvie had touched him. It had meant the end of his relationship with Cindy. Not that the situations had been analogous. It was the passion that ended between him and Cindy. There had never been any such feeling between him and Sylvie. On the contrary, there had been suspicion and hostility and dread. The transformation could only be for the better.
Yet his suspicion grew as he climbed the stairs, heading for the shower, and glanced at the door to her new room. Closed. Getting her own room—that was a victory he had simply handed to her. Now could he ever get her out of there? Why had he done something so foolish? Yesterday, caught up in emotion, he had felt protective, expansive, even grateful to her for her show of kindness. Today, the emotions spent, he could see that he had only complicated things worse. She was still a stranger. But now she was a stranger who was bound to think she had a hold on him. Loneliness had driven him to do foolish things, and now he would have to face the consequences.
Sooner than he imagined, in fact. For once he was showered, ready for the day, his first task was to look for his wrecking bar. He hadn’t needed it since he tore out the walls in the room that was now Sylvie’s. Which meant it should have been where he always kept it, in the long green toolbox. It wasn’t there.
At first he thought perhaps he had put it away somewhere else. But it didn’t take long to eliminate all the possibilities. Don was meticulous about putting his tools away. There was no reason to think he had done anything unusual with the wrecking bar.
He didn’t want to suspect Sylvie, but what if she had moved it awhile ago, before their reconciliation? It was still annoying that she might have been doing things like that, but at least it wouldn’t be a complete repudiation of the kinder, gentler relationship that was established yesterday. He wouldn’t hold such a prank against her. As long as she gave the wrecking bar back to him.
He went upstairs and knocked on her door.
“Yes?” Her voice came only faintly through the closed door.
“Have you seen my wrecking bar?”
“Just a minute.”
He waited. After a few moments, she opened the door. Wearing her dress, as usual. He wondered if she slept in it. Probably not; it was faded but not terribly wrinkled. So she must sleep in her underwear or in the buff—on bedding that couldn’t have been washed more recently than her dress. “Listen,” he said, “I’m going to do a laundry today, you want me to take those sheets?”
Her face brightened. “Sure. Thanks.”
“Um, I could . . . that dress. If you wore your bathrobe while I’m gone, I could take that dress and wash it.”
She shook her head. “No thanks. Really. It’s all right.”
“It wouldn’t be any trouble. Or I’d get it dry-cleaned.”
“I don’t . . . that’s kind of you, but I just . . . it’s not dirty.”
He didn’t bother to argue. “Whatever,” he said. “But anyway, what I actually came up here for, I wondered if you knew where my wrecking bar is.”
“Wrecking bar?”
“That black metal prybar I used for popping off wallboard. All-purpose breaking and ripping-up tool.”
“I don’t remember it.”
He drew it in the air. “Shaped like this.”
“OK, yes, I t
hink I remember. What about it?”
“Where is it?”
“Where did you put it last?”
“I put it away in my long green toolbox.”
She gazed steadily at him for a long moment before answering. “Don, you told me not to touch your tools and I don’t touch them.”
So much for a more forthright relationship between them. “What was it, killer moths? Fairies? Elves?”
She sighed and leaned her head against the doorpost. “Please,” she said. “I thought we were friends now.”
“So did I. But I need my wrecking bar. I’ve got to start on another room. Tearing out a stud wall and stripping the old lath and plaster.”
“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.
He hadn’t brought a flashlight, and of course the worklight didn’t cast anything but black shadow behind the old furnace. He’d have to go back up. But when he turned, there she was, standing on the bottom step, clinging to the two-by-four banister as if it were the only thing standing between her and disaster. He didn’t want to go near her right now. If the wrecking bar was behind the furnace he could find it by feel. He stepped into the darkness. And sure enough, the moment he disturbed any of the rubble, he heard the clang of metal on stone. Or stone on metal. Unfortunately, some of the rubble fell on top of it, so he had to do some rummaging, but at last he got the wrecking bar out.
Now he was filthy with clammy dust. Whoever stacked the rubble did a lousy job. It hadn’t taken anything at all to dislodge the pile and tumble enough of it down that it was spilling out around the furnace on both sides. The gap at the top must be bigger now, though he couldn’t see it in the darkness. One thing for sure: He couldn’t ignore the tunnel forever. If he wanted it sealed off, he’d have to remove the rubble and build a proper masonry wall.