The Birthing House Page 13

  ‘Your house? What are you—’

  ‘I need your help. Maybe together we can figure it out.’

  ‘Figure what out?’

  ‘History. The stuff with the house. If you help me, we could really do something about it.’

  She forced a laugh. ‘You’re out of your mind, dude. I’m going to Seattle.’

  He thought it over. ‘No, that’s not the story.’

  Nadia put her hand on the door handle.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Please. If you really want to leave, I’ll take you to the airport. But think about it.’

  ‘Think about what?’

  ‘Nadia. Tell me the truth. Where were you when you got pregnant?’

  She stared at him.

  ‘Were you in my house?’ He knew he sounded deranged, but he had to know. ‘Like that day I bumped into you before we moved in? What were you doing in there?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’ He was staring at her pregnant belly.

  ‘What makes you think it had anything to do with the house?’

  ‘You saw the snakes. Those eggs. That wasn’t an accident.’

  ‘Oh my God, don’t do this. Don’t. What are you - no, don’t even. I need to leave.’

  ‘You grew up next door.’ Her eyes were starting to well up. ‘You’re not afraid of me. You’re afraid of the house, aren’t you? Afraid of what’s inside.’

  Nadia started shaking. ‘Fuck this.’ She grabbed the door handle.

  Conrad grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back. ‘How many times did you babysit for the Laskis? Did Leon do something to you? Or did you see something in the house?’

  Her lips moved but no words came out.

  He softened his grip. ‘Jesus, I knew it.’

  ‘Was it Eddie, or Leon Laski? I can help—’

  ‘I don’t want your help!’ Her voice hurt his ears.

  ‘You want someone’s help!’ A fleck of spit landed on her neck. ‘What the fuck is in Seattle if not someone who’s gonna help you? You can’t run away, Nadia. It doesn’t work.’

  Nadia’s fist sprang forward and knocked him in the forehead. His head bounced off the driver’s side window in a clock-clock. She looked as surprised as he felt.

  ‘Ouch. That hurt, Nadia.’ He laughed, reaching for her. ‘Calm down.’

  She cocked her fist again.

  His hand went up. ‘Wait, not again, Christ!’ She relented. He wiped his eyes. ‘How much money do you have on you?’

  ‘Three-fifty.’

  ‘That’s not going to get you to Seattle. And if it does, you’ll be broke by the time you leave the airport.’

  ‘I told you, I have friends.’

  ‘Oh, did you meet them on MySpace? Are they going to let you sleep on the futon?’

  ‘Drive the car,’ she said.

  ‘A thousand dollars.’ It just popped out. He hadn’t even thought of it.

  ‘You’re sick, you know that?’

  ‘I’ll finish the chores your mom gave me. Before your folks get home, I’ll pay you a thousand dollars. But you have to tell me your story.’

  ‘What story?’

  ‘Everything you know about what happened in the house. After that, you still want to go to Seattle, I’ll give you a ride to the airport and I won’t tell them anything. Deal?’

  She was thinking about it. The money helped, but he didn’t think it was all about the money.

  ‘If Eddie finds out—’

  ‘Right,’ he said, starting the engine.

  ‘Did you plan this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is this what you did with that girl?’

  ‘What? No. This has nothing to do with sex.’

  ‘So you did have sex with her.’

  ‘No. Nadia, for Christ’s sake. I’m scared, okay? I don’t know anybody here. My wife’s gone. I don’t know if she’s ever coming back. I just need someone to sit there and tell me I’m not losing my mind. Haven’t you ever needed some help like that? Just for a couple days?’

  He could see that he had scored a minor point with that one.

  ‘We’re just going to talk, right?’

  ‘Just talk.’

  ‘I’m not going to fuck you for money.’

  The fact that she could even summon the words in her state sent a nervous quiver running around his stomach. ‘I know that, Nadia.’

  The car made a U-turn over the grassy median and headed toward Black Earth.

  19

  Steve Bartholomew was watering his rose bushes and smoking a cigarette when they pulled up. The cigarette dangled like the hose, two limp extensions of the man: one trickling water, the other smoldering fire. Conrad waved obnoxiously.

  ‘Morning, Steve!’ See how routine this is?

  Steve waved back, his hand slowing as Nadia got out of the car.

  ‘Morning.’ She waved without turning and headed toward her place.

  Steve watched her for a few seconds and went back to his roses. The hose had one of those canisters attached to mix the blue powdered crystals with the water. Steve’s roses were yellow and large.

  ‘Nadia.’ Conrad gestured toward his front door. ‘Don’t you want to meet Luther and Alice?’

  ‘We’re doing this now?’

  ‘The sooner we’re done, the sooner you can leave.’

  She followed Conrad inside. He went to the kitchen while Nadia trailed behind, cooing at the dogs in the living room. The dogs fell in love with her, but they fell in love with everybody. Conrad poured two tall glasses of iced tea.

  Nadia was standing next to the phone when it started ringing. ‘Uhm, want me to get that?’

  ‘Sure.’ He hoped it was Jo. She could use a little wake-up, even if it cost him.

  ‘Hello?’ Nadia said, accepting a glass of iced tea. ‘Yeah, he’s here.’

  He took the phone. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ his wife said. ‘That’s Nadia.’

  ‘Yes, should I introduce you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay. How are you, Jo?’

  ‘You haven’t called.’

  ‘I tried, but you weren’t answering. Figured you didn’t want to speak with me.’

  ‘Is she standing right there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do we have to talk in front of her?’

  ‘I don’t know, are we talking?’

  She ignored the question. ‘I’ve been ordering some stuff. Did you open them?’

  ‘The boxes? No, not yet.’

  ‘Can you put some stuff together, fix the house up?’

  Nadia pointed the front door, mouthing should I go?

  Conrad shook his head. ‘What are you sending again?’

  ‘Furniture, supplies. I want to use the guest room, the one closest to our bedroom. Oh, and rip up that hideous carpet. I want to strip the floors and refinish them.’

  ‘In the guest room?’ His headache had returned. A pair of Chinese table tennis champions in his skull, going for the gold.

  ‘Yes, in the baby’s room.’

  ‘The one next to our bedroom?’

  ‘Why, do you think it should go somewhere else?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘God, are you even listening to me? You sound bad, are you getting sick?’

  ‘No, I’m not, I’m fine.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘I’m fine. That’s fine. We’ll get some walkie-talkies so we can hear her from our bedroom.’

  She paused, then spoke with a kindness he hadn’t heard in weeks. ‘What makes you think it’s going to be a girl?’

  The house. The house gave it to me, Jo. Don’t you see? This is the house’s project, not ours. We’re just the vessels doing the meat work.

  ‘I don’t know. It just feels right.’

  She cooed. ‘Oh, that’s so sweet. I’m kinda missing you.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I discovered something about being pre
gnant.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘In the morning I don’t feel so hot, but at night?’ She giggled, a dare.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I usually fall asleep at like eight, like a short nap, and I have these dreams.’ She made an unmistakable mmmmmhhh sound.

  ‘Are you—’

  ‘And when I wake up, I feel like I just had the most incredible sex.’

  ‘What, like—’

  ‘Last night I had to change my clothes after.’

  ‘Change your clothes.’

  She giggled again. ‘Think about it.’

  He got it. ‘You’re killing me, Jo.’

  ‘Must be the hormones. It’s incredible. I wish you were here.’

  ‘Me too.’

  He could see her in the hotel room, her swollen belly, all sleepy and writhing in the sheets. Her hand slipping beneath the waist of her panties. He was wracked by a lust that made his knees buckle.

  ‘Too bad Nadia’s there. I should let you go.’

  Nadia who? ‘Wait!’

  ‘Call me later,’ his wife said.

  ‘Definitely.’

  By the time he had set the phone down his headache was gone. He stood over the sink and drank the iced tea until his erection went away. Why does she do this? He couldn’t get her on the phone for a week and now she’s got the cord wrapped between her legs? Was it because Nadia was here? Was she staking out turf from four hundred miles away?

  He found Nadia in the living room, on the floor with the dogs.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ she said.

  ‘Me too. What’re you in the mood for?’

  They were seated at opposite ends of the long dining-room table Jo’s father had given them as a wedding present. Conrad had made sandwiches, then Nadia napped through a Monk marathon. When she woke up, she was hungry again and he cooked penne with Knorr parma rosa sauce. Now he was excited and frightened, and he forced himself to conceal both.

  ‘I was only thirteen the first time it happened. I wasn’t even doing it for the money. It was just something to do. Same as the older girls I looked up to. My parents insisted I ask for some money for my time. I think I got a dollar an hour.’

  ‘How old were they?’

  ‘Anna Maybelle was six. Davey was a little younger, maybe four or five.’

  ‘So they’d be in their late teens by now?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘That can’t be right. When I saw them at Wal-Mart, all the kids were young. I think they had the same names, too. Does she have more?’

  ‘She had two then and she was pregnant with another. Then the twins. I don’t know how many she has now.’

  ‘Wait, she had three when I saw her. That’s like five kids. And twins? Did they move away or something? The ones you were watching?’

  ‘Moved away. They went away. I don’t know why.’

  ‘Nobody ever asked? Even with the names? What’s that, like naming your dog Rover Two?’

  ‘Maybe I was confused. Hard to say ’cause by the time my parents started to worry, the Laskis were already sorta on their own. They didn’t talk to anyone or go out much. I told you, this isn’t going to solve anything.’

  ‘Okay. You were thirteen.’

  ‘Right. But I was also, you know, not your average thirteen-year-old. I was . . . like I am now or close enough.’ Here she gestured at her breasts and hips as if to say, what I have now is what I had then. ‘I guess my parents knew what happens to girls who are that developed and go babysitting.’

  ‘What happens?’

  ‘Either boys crawl through the window and stuff happens or the father who drives you home gets ideas and stuff happens. Either way something that isn’t supposed to happen happens. They kept asking me to call every hour or so to check in. They knew Leon and Mrs Laski had a wedding up in Eau Claire. I was gonna be alone for eight hours at the least. I could tell my mom wanted to come and help me. But my dad said no, it would be good for me to handle them alone. And they were going to be right next door. So no big deal. I liked kids. Or I thought I did, until I started babysitting.

  ‘Those kids. I knew they weren’t right. Davey was so quiet, he never seemed to care if he was hungry or thirsty, so I had to ask him a lot if he needed anything. Anna Maybelle was different. All she wanted to do was play with her dolls.’

  Conrad raised his hand. ‘Dolls?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘That’s what I’m telling you. Why, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. Go on.’

  ‘These little home-made dolls. Now those gave me the creeps. They were made of wood. The Laskis didn’t have a TV, either, so maybe that was all she had, but still. The dolls were old and dirty from years of playing. Whoever made them forgot to give them a face. But that wasn’t so bad. What really bothered me was their hair. It was like human hair, but dry, brittle. I tried to play with Anna Maybelle, and it was hard, but what was I supposed to do? Let the girl sit there alone all night? What’s wrong?’

  Her words had turned him white. ‘I’m fine. Don’t stop now.’ She frowned at him. ‘There must have been four or five of them. Anna Maybelle was busy changing their clothes around, which weren’t much more than some beat up house-dress-looking things, also probably handmade. You could see the stitches on them where someone, probably someone’s grandma, had sewn them together. Scuzzy little white trash dolls is what they were. She called one Chessie, like Jessie. And I guess I sort of lost myself for a while then because time passed and I was still making this doll walk and talk and doing little voices, but I wasn’t playing with her. Anna Maybelle. I was just babbling to myself and making strange noises and making up stories. How Chessie was going to the store and how Chessie was getting her hair done, because it needed some work. I think . . . I did that for a while, a long while. Because when I looked up both Anna Maybelle and Davey weren’t playing any more. They were just staring at me, their dumb mouths hanging open.

  ‘Sorry, that’s not very nice. But that’s how they looked. For a minute it was like the dolls had become more real than the kids. Like the kids were made of wood and the dolls were . . . I was so lost in their voices it took me a few minutes to realize I was the only one talking. When I looked up, the kids weren’t moving or saying anything. That just made me mad. Like they were trying to trick me by sitting perfectly still. I had to yell at them to stop staring off into space like that. Those poor kids. They must have thought I was losing it. When I looked up at the clock I thought maybe twenty minutes had gone by. But that was wrong, by a lot.’

  ‘How long were you playing with them?’

  ‘All night.’

  ‘What do you mean, “all night”?’

  ‘The whole night, Conrad. It was eleven thirty when I stopped. We had been in the living room, sitting on the floor since before seven. I know because I remember looking at the grandfather clock when it gonged right before we sat down and I remembered thinking, that thing is loud. But I never heard it again, not once I started playing with the dolls. I didn’t hear anything the whole time. As soon as I realized it, my back hurt and I knew. I’d been sitting there all night. In fact, I would bet anything that they didn’t move or say a word the whole time. When I imagined myself sitting there for hours, babbling like an idiot, like, yeah, okay, like I was one of them . . . like one of those retarded kids . . . it scared me. I started crying and I blurted it out. “What’s wrong with you? What are you doing?” They started crying. I tried to calm them down but they wouldn’t come near me. Davey crawled away fast. Anna Maybelle stood up and actually ran away from me. I had to chase them upstairs.

  ‘Then I smelled it. Going up the stairs. Both the kids had crapped their pants. I mean, sure, they weren’t right, but they were well past potty training. It happened while I was playing with those ugly little wooden dolls. So I don’t know how long, but they were sitting there in their own filth, for hours. I got upstairs and cleaned them up, but they wouldn’t even look
at me. I felt sick to my stomach that I had lost myself like that.’

  ‘That sounds pretty bad. What did you do?’

  ‘I put them to bed and waited for the Laskis to come home. I tried to convince myself it wasn’t possible. But it was. I was hungry, too. Like I hadn’t eaten for a week. And my mouth was dry. I was so thirsty. I was dying of thirst.’

  She paused, watching him.

  He was thinking about iced tea. ‘That could have been panic. Don’t people always need water when they are in shock or something?’

  Nadia drank more water and they sat in silence.

  ‘Is that it?’ he asked. ‘Did you go back?’

  ‘No. I didn’t want to babysit for them again anytime soon. I stayed in my room, went to school, and tried not to think about the dolls. And I did forget about them. But then, very slowly, something changed. I tried to stay away, but eventually I missed them. I had to go back.’

  ‘You felt bad for what happened? You wanted to make it up to the kids?’

  ‘No. I had forgotten all about the kids.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I started hearing voices. The same ones I made up, but saying things I never said. They just came to me. They were all different and they weren’t mine any more. They were their own voices.’

  ‘The kids?’

  ‘Not the kids. I wasn’t missing the kids. After a few weeks, I missed the dolls.’

  ‘What did they say?’ But he didn’t really want to know.

  ‘Lots of things that didn’t make sense. Most of it I forgot as soon as it happened, like waking up from a dream. But one thing I kept hearing in the girl doll’s voice. Chessie, the one I played with, the one with the dead straw hair. I heard her in school, in the middle of the day, reading my algebra book. She called out to me in that high voice. ‘Come back. Mommy, come back. Doctor gonna kill baby you don’t come home soon.’

  20

  The following afternoon, Conrad finished mowing the Grums’ lawn just before the rain started. He waved at her through the front window and pointed at his house. Nadia nodded and waved - yeah yeah, I know.