Kelly stammered a response before coming clean.
“I don’t know, guys.”
It felt like a confession. But her friends didn’t care.
“Whatever,” Tonya said. “Babies and kids. Kids and babies. All the same.”
Andrea changed the subject and that was it. That was the big to-do about Kelly’s first job.
And yet she still felt it meant something bigger.
• • •
At six fifteen Kelly was asking Dad if he was ready to go. He said they’d be fine if they left at twelve to. Kelly didn’t want to be late. Dad understood. So they compromised and pulled out of the driveway at 6:44.
Kelly had been to Dunkirk before but she couldn’t remember why or when. Did she have a childhood friend who lived here? Maybe she and her parents had gone to a party? A wake? Maybe they’d just watched a Lions game back when Kelly was still a little girl. It wasn’t a big deal, and yet, the drive did feel profound.
The enormous evergreens lining the road caught early flakes of a bigger snowstorm on the way.
“Don’t like the sight of that,” Dad said, eyeing the white-tipped trees.
“Think of it this way,” Kelly said. “Everybody has to drive slower when it snows. It’s almost safer that way.”
Dad frowned.
“Sure is a nice neighborhood though. Kills ours.”
As if cued by his words, the trees split wider and seemed to vanish entirely, giving Kelly a view of large homes, brightly lit facades, nice cars in circle drives.
Kelly was a little awed. It added to her blossoming anxiety.
They probably know a good babysitter when they see one. But are you a good one, Kelly?
She tried to lean on Andrea’s and Tonya’s indifference at school. Who cared if the couple didn’t like her on sight? She’d do a good job either way. And who knows? Maybe Kelly was embarking on a lifelong friendship. Maybe she’d sit for Danny more often. Maybe she’d watch him grow, eventually from afar, and run into him one day, on the street in a big city, where she’d hug him and tell him that she used to babysit him and holy cow how the world turns.
“Turn here!” Kelly said.
Dad made a right, probably too quickly, and the car slid, just a little bit.
“Gotta be careful out here tonight, Kelly. I hope the Donaldses know how to drive in bad weather.”
“I’m sure they do, Dad. They’re from Michigan too.”
“Are they?”
The way Dad asked it (how did Kelly know where they were from?) gave her a sinking feeling, and all at once Kelly realized she didn’t know a single thing about these people.
“There it is,” Kelly said, pointing.
Dad slowed the car and rolled to the end of a long, dark drive. He eyed the house and eventually nodded his approval.
“Nice place,” he said.
Kelly opened the passenger door. Before she got out, Dad gently took her arm.
“I’m gonna wait here till they greet you. Get a good look at them. Then I’ll head home. You call us if you need anything. Even if you only need advice. Okay, Kelly?”
Kelly smiled and exited the car.
She walked up the driveway toward the house.
• • •
Kelly knocked and the door opened almost immediately. She was surprised to see a good-looking man, younger than Dad, wearing a pink button-down shirt. His short black hair had spots of gray but even the gray looked healthy.
“Kelly Herman,” he said, and a smile exposed a good set of teeth. Behind him Kelly saw a woman standing with her arms crossed.
Kelly shook his extended hand with a gloved one of her own.
“Come on in,” he said, eyeing the idling car at the end of the long drive. “Is that your father?”
Kelly looked over her shoulder.
“Yeah,” she said, a little embarrassed. “Wanted to make sure I made it up the drive, I guess.”
Mr. Donalds, Charles, nodded. Then he waved to Kelly’s dad.
“Would you mind taking your boots off?” the woman, Allison, said.
Kelly stepped inside, took off her boots and coat. She set her boots neatly on the front rug and felt the cool tile beneath her socks. Charles closed the front door, took her coat, and hung it on a rack beside them.
“We’re going to the cinema tonight,” he said, heading toward what looked like the kitchen. Kelly marveled at how white it was in here. And how big! A wide, white staircase to her right ended in a dark hall above. With no sign of Danny around, she wondered if he wasn’t up there, in his room.
“Dinner and a movie,” Charles said, smiling over his shoulder as Kelly followed him into the kitchen. “Can you get more plain than that?”
“Well,” Kelly said awkwardly, “you probably deserve a night out.”
A moment of silence followed. Allison entered the kitchen quietly. Charles stood at an island with a marble top. Allison leaned against a matching marble counter, near him. They stared at her, and Kelly found herself wishing there was some kind of music playing.
“Deserve,” Charles said, smiling. He looked like a politician when he smiled. And his clothes only added to the image. “Good choice of words. What are you going to school for?”
“She’s fifteen, Charles,” Allison said, not a little icily. “She doesn’t choose yet.”
Charles shook his head. He looked a little embarrassed. Kelly remembered something her dad told her a long, long time ago:
Sometimes, Kelly, you meet someone and it just feels plain . . . weird. And when that happens, when you get that feeling, remember that it’s not you. It’s them.
Them, Kelly thought, looking from one to the other.
“Uh, what movie are you going to see?”
Allison stepped forward.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll figure it out when we get there. I’d like to talk about our son.”
Kelly nodded.
“Okay.”
Another beat. A brief silence.
“We’d like Danny to be in bed by nine o’clock,” she said. “He likes to play games, likes to be around you. If you’re watching television, he may curl up next to you on the couch.”
Kelly nodded again. Beyond Allison’s shoulder she saw a thermostat glowing a soft blue on the wall. She wondered how low it was turned.
“Danny’s a good boy,” Charles said.
Kelly nodded.
“You may not see much of him,” Allison said. “Sometimes I have to call his name four, five times before he shows himself.”
“Likes to peer around the corner of doorways,” Charles said. “Make a face at you.”
The couple laughed, quietly, but Kelly saw some strain there. Was it sadness? She wasn’t sure. They looked into each other’s eyes and Charles nodded. A silent communication. Charles turned to face her again, now more serious.
“Kelly,” he said. “We have a confession to make.”
To Kelly, the house felt very big. Very still.
“Yeah?”
Charles nodded again. He reached out his hand and Allison slowly took it. Kelly looked to their clasped hands, thought of her father, probably home by now, then looked to see Charles was staring deep into her eyes.
“We don’t have a son,” he said.
Allison allowed a muffled moan to escape her.
Kelly looked from one to the other.
“What do you mean?”
Another beat. A pause. Kelly looked over her shoulder to her boots on the rug by the front door.
They both started to speak at the same time, and Charles held out an open palm, suggesting Allison go ahead. She began, then stopped.
“Well, Kelly,” Charles said, his eyes rippling with kindness, “we like to imagine that we do.”
Kelly shifted from one socked foot to the other. She felt chilled.
“He’s practically real,” Allison suddenly said. “The way we love him.”
She brought her eyes to Kelly’s and Kelly saw conviction
there.
“Um . . . okay,” Kelly said. It was hard. Speaking at all.
Charles let go of Allison’s hand and stepped out from behind the island.
“Humor us,” he said, smiling, spreading his arms wide, suggesting everything was all right, there was nothing weird here. “Watch our boy while we go out to dinner and a movie.”
Kelly looked from one then to the other, one then the other.
“What . . . what do you mean?”
“He means we’d like you to play along,” Allison said. There was strange dignity in her voice. Kelly wondered if it was what madness sounded like.
The couple were clearly embarrassed. Kelly thought of her father again. She wished he was still idling at the end of the drive.
“Uh . . . I’m not sure I understand,” she said at last, and the couple nodded along with her.
“Not much to understand,” Charles said, smiling sheepishly. “We don’t have any kids. We’d like one.” He spoke slowly, painfully. “So we pretend that we do. We call him Danny. If you can find it in your heart to watch him tonight, we’d feel very much obliged.”
Kelly felt anxious. A little scared. Should she call Dad? But, on the other hand . . . weren’t they just asking her to stay a few hours in an empty house?
“Um,” Kelly said, “is the pay the same?”
Charles’s eyes opened wide.
“Oh yes! Of course. Still eight dollars an hour. As advertised. We’ll be gone for about four hours. Thirty-two bucks. Well, make it an even forty.”
He reached across the island and gripped Allison’s hand again. The two of them stared at Kelly, and Kelly saw desperation in their eyes.
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll . . . um . . . I’ll watch Danny for you guys tonight.”
Charles sighed. A tear trolled down Allison’s face.
“Thank you,” Charles said. He stepped to Allison and embraced her. He looked at Kelly over his wife’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he whispered again.
• • •
“He likes to eat cereal,” Allison said as Charles helped her into a brown, elegant winter coat.
They were standing near the front door. There seemed to be a lot of space, a lot of house behind Kelly.
“But don’t let him eat too much of it,” Charles said, “or he’ll be up all night.”
Kelly thought she saw him wink. But then she wasn’t sure.
Charles slipped on a pair of leather gloves.
He opened the front door and held it open for Allison. When he was halfway out himself, he turned and stuck his head back in, peering around the white wood.
“Remember! Make sure Danny’s in bed by nine o’clock.” Then, “Thank you, Kelly.”
“Okay.”
The front door closed, making something of a white wall before her.
Kelly turned slowly and looked to the stairs and the dark hallway at the top.
She looked down at her boots on the rug.
Then she went to the living room, planning to watch TV.
• • •
It was difficult, figuring out what to watch and at what volume to watch it. Scary movies were out of the question. So were most thrillers. But reality shows almost carried with them something worse. No ghost hunting shows. No way. At first Kelly had the volume loud, hoping to mask any sound the house might make. Then she turned it way down, worried she might miss a sound the house might make.
The couch faced the television, and directly behind it was the foyer where she’d seen the Donaldses off and the stairs just beyond it. Kelly sat at the very end of the white couch and turned, often, to look at the white, empty stairs.
Two men were boxing on TV. Kelly changed the channel. A man and woman were kissing, and she left it. Low volume.
Through a window to the right of the television she saw the snow was falling pretty hard. She thought of what her dad said. About how he hoped the Donaldses were good drivers.
Kelly looked once again to her boots on the rug by the front door.
She felt weird here. And a little scared.
There was really no reason to stay. Sure, forty dollars was a good thing, but maybe not good enough to keep her in this empty house. All she had to do was put her boots on and start walking home. She could call Dad. He’d come for her in a second. Or however long it took. Ten minutes? Fifteen? Kelly felt a twinge of panic. Fifteen minutes meant that, if she decided she wanted to leave this place, she’d have to stay for another fifteen minutes. That wasn’t counting how long it might take Dad to get in the car and go. But, then again, she could put her boots on and begin walking. But why? And what would she tell Dad?
They don’t have a kid, Dad. They pretend that they do.
That ought to get him moving quickly.
Kelly looked to the bottom of the stairs. Then up them.
She stared at where the white steps led to the darkness until she thought her eyes were going to play tricks on her. Then she turned away and forced herself to watch the TV.
Come on, she thought. You’re getting forty dollars to watch an empty house. Then, You’re housesitting, not babysitting.
This thought comforted her.
You’re housesitting. Not babysitting.
Below the TV, as part of the white entertainment center, books were stacked on a shelf. Kelly looked to their spines, then back to the TV. She looked over her shoulder again, thought of the cold marble-topped island in the kitchen and the look on Allison’s face when Charles told her that they liked to pretend. Kelly looked back to the spines under the TV.
A photo album caught her eye.
She shook her head no. She wasn’t here to snoop. She was here to make forty dollars. Her first job. A real moment. Something Dad and Mom were probably very proud of.
On TV, the same couple that’d been kissing were now swimming in a lake. Kelly could hardly hear them, but she didn’t want to turn up the TV. She set her phone beside her on the couch. Maybe Charles and Allison would call. Maybe they’d check up on Danny.
Danny.
Kelly shrugged off the idea and tried to smile. If ever there was weird, this was weird. She tried to understand where the Donaldses might be coming from. They didn’t have any kids. They wanted one. So they made one up. It really wasn’t a big deal. People made things up all the time. In a way, they were acting like kids themselves, playing pretend. If Kelly thought about it, in a certain way, it was okay. Not weird at all.
She shifted on the couch and heard a creaking come from upstairs. Possibly right above her.
Kelly looked up.
She turned quickly to face the stairs. Her body felt hot. She took the remote control and turned the volume of the TV down even more.
Her first instinct scared her. Her first instinct was to call out his name.
Danny?
But she didn’t. She looked to the window by the TV and saw the snow was really coming down and she knew that a storm could cause a house to creak. She looked to the ceiling again, to where she thought she heard the sound. Then back to the stairs.
She took hold of her phone.
Call Dad.
But she didn’t want to call Dad. She wanted to stay here (housesit) until the Donaldses got home. Then she wanted to put forty dollars into her pocket, get a ride home, and then maybe tell Mom and Dad all about the Donaldses and their . . . son.
No, she didn’t want to call Dad.
She waited. Waited for another creaking.
The snowflakes outside the window were big, heavy-looking things, and Kelly imagined them covering her whole, hiding her.
She waited and she waited some more, trying not to look for too long into the darkness at the top of the stairs. Instead, she focused on the spine of the photo album.
Don’t go looking through their things.
She rose from the couch, leaving her phone on the cushions.
She went to the shelf and knelt and pulled the white, puffy volume out. In cursive letters, the cover read:
&nb
sp; Birthdays.
Kelly held the book a moment. The TV got brighter as characters walked down a sunny country road. Kelly wiped a thin layer of dust off the cover of the photo album and brought it with her back to the couch.
She set it next to the phone and pretended to watch TV.
But it didn’t last long.
She opened the album.
Through the window, the snow fell, but in the window Kelly saw herself reflected, and she didn’t like what she saw. She thought she looked guilty.
And yet she couldn’t stop herself. She flipped to the first photograph.
Both Allison and Charles looked much younger. Allison wore light blue high-waisted jeans, and Charles, with no spot of gray in his hair, had a sweatshirt tied around his waist. They were standing on either side of an empty chair. Both had a hand on the back of the chair. Charles was pointing to the camera, as though guiding the wayward eyes of a child, telling him where to look. Before the empty seat, on the table, was a vanilla birthday cake with a single candle stuck into it.
One.
Kelly looked over her shoulder, to the entrance of the kitchen, where the Donaldses had “confessed” to her. She looked to the ceiling. Then back to the book.
She flipped the page.
They looked pretty much the same, though there were signs that the two were growing more conservative. Charles’s hair was shorter, Allison wore more ladylike makeup, and between them, the chair was a nicer one. A higher back. And upon the back was Allison’s hand, as Charles knelt beside the empty space and pointed, this time, to a white and blue cake on the table.
Two.
Kelly paused, looking up to the TV but not watching the TV. She felt like she shouldn’t go on. She felt a tugging in her chest. A sadness for these two. And yet there was something so . . . authentic about their poses, the looks on their faces. Kelly wondered if this was what love was. Two people sharing such a thing.
She flipped the page.
A closer shot. The two of them framing the same empty chair from the last one.
Three.
She flipped the page.
A new house, it looked like. Maybe this one. Charles was dressed nicer. They both looked cleaner. Allison’s eyes were half-closed. Kelly wondered if it was the only photo they took that day.
Four.