The Mansion Read online

  Their new car, an SUV, was another act of munificence from Shawn Eagle. Like the pile of phones and tablets and computers, like paying off their credit cards and starting Billy’s salary two months early, like moving them from their lousy apartment to a luxury hotel for the interim. When Billy told Shawn that they were planning to drive east and stop in Chicago along the way to visit her sister, the SUV magically showed up the next day, the concierge phoning them and letting them know they had a delivery. A black Honda Pilot, completely tricked out: fully driverless if they wanted, sunroof, leather seats, alloy wheels. And on the dashboard, another unsealed envelope with another short message inside:

  No way your shitbox is going to make it cross-country. There are more luxurious SUVs out there, but this will serve you in good stead. Solid. Rugged. Well-made. With all-wheel drive, you should be okay driving back and forth from Whiskey Run. The gas station in Whiskey Run has snow tires it will put on for you when you get there.

  —Shawn

  By then, Emily had fallen into their new life. She’d gotten used to the hotel and charging meals to the room—to Shawn Eagle, really, as in “all your expenses are taken care of, Mrs. Stafford”—and to her new phone. She’d gotten used to the idea that they weren’t hopelessly in debt. It had taken her a while—when she’d gone out with Andy for drinks after work and told him what was happening in a sort of baleful tone, he almost bit her head off—but she’d come around to the idea of a new start. It didn’t matter why Shawn was doing this. Whether he felt guilty because of the way he screwed Billy out of his share of the company, he was somehow trying to win her back, or he really just needed Billy’s help to fix this program, none of it mattered. What mattered was that the feeling of desperation that had accompanied her for so many years was finally gone.

  She’d worked up until the night before they left, giving Monica notice right away so that she could get a new teacher in the classroom and situated without leaving Andy in the lurch. Andy was sweet about it, in the skeptical way he had been about her continuing marriage to Billy, and he’d given her a beautiful knit scarf. “You’ll need it in the snow, sweetie,” he’d said. “And if you get up there and you change your mind, you give me a call. I’ll come out and get you myself.” She’d hugged him and they’d both cried a little bit.

  All that was already in their rearview mirror, though. They were due in Whiskey Run on November 1, so they lit out of Seattle with plenty of time: hit the road Monday morning before rush hour; Chicago by Friday night; stay with her sister and Rothko and the twins until Tuesday; a day, maybe two to drive to Cortaca, and, depending on when they arrived, a night or two in a bed-and-breakfast in their old college town; and then up early to meet Shawn’s plane in Whiskey Run on the first day of November.

  The drive itself was nice in a boring sort of way. They could have put the Honda on driverless and slept through most of the country, but they took it as an opportunity to be together, and Emily still liked having her hands on the wheel. They had a cooler with fresh fruit and drinks, and Billy looked ahead on his phone to find good places to stop for lunch and dinner. Their third night on the road, the only hotel they could find was pretty sketchy—so run-down that Emily couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be Carver’s Inn or Graver’s Inn, the carpet thin and the television a box full of static—and she had to admit that driving through Nebraska tested her patience, but otherwise, the trip was both pleasant and uneventful. They were in Chicago for dinner on Friday night, just as planned.

  As soon as they stepped into the condo, Ruth and Rose were climbing all over, squealing and trying to get Emily’s attention over the sound of their dog jumping and barking.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she said, laughing. She pushed the dog away. “Look at you little munchkins! I keep telling my sister to stop feeding you so you won’t get any bigger, but she just doesn’t listen.”

  The girls crowded her, hugging her, burying their heads in her jacket. She knew they were small for their age, and indeed, their bodies would have fit in nicely with those of the children in the pre-kindergarten classroom at Bright Apple Preschool. She could imagine them sleeping neatly on their cots with boys and girls who were so much younger than the twins’ seven years. Still, the two of them had definitely grown since the last time she’d seen them, Memorial Day weekend, when Beth had flown her out to Chicago. Just her. Not her and Billy. Beth hadn’t said anything about it, but she didn’t need to; there was still enough wariness there that even without saying anything, they both knew.

  It was almost as if the girls knew, too. They hadn’t seen Billy since the previous Christmas. Ten months. Might as well have been in a different lifetime for how long ago that was in a child’s life. They turned to Billy, and with an incredible solemnness that seemed even more incongruous because of their diminutive size, they held out their hands for him to shake. Emily watched him crouch down and look them each in the eye, shaking their hands and telling them that it was good to see them again, and she could feel one of those moments of intense love welling up inside her. He never took it personally with children. There were teachers at Bright Apple Preschool who bristled when a four-year-old called them fat, and there were adults Emily knew who would have tried to hug Rose and Ruth, but Billy just took their hands in his and treated them with all the sincerity in the world. It was funny, she thought, how he could be so off sometimes in the way he dealt with adults. But he seemed to get something fundamental and deep about kids, about the way they were constantly decoding the world around them. He was deeply respectful of kids as people in their own right, in a way that parents so often forgot to be. She would be surprised if, later, after dinner, when they were sitting in the living room, Rose and Ruth didn’t crawl beside him on the couch, sit on his lap, and look to him for some sort of comfort. That was how it always went with Billy and kids: he let them come to him.

  Rothko hugged her and kissed her on the cheek, and then Beth swooped in and swallowed her in her arms. “You look great.”

  “I look like I’ve been in the car for five days.”

  “Bullshit.” Beth stepped back and scanned her up and down. She had three inches on Emily, but otherwise, it was clear they were sisters. Same brown hair and same wiry build, though Beth had fewer sharp angles: motherhood and those five extra years had softened her just the slightest bit. “You look healthy. Love the jacket,” Beth said. “Little Miss Sporty. You look like an advertisement for Brooks Running.”

  Emily blushed. She did, actually. The black-and-gray hooded jacket had a subtle houndstooth pattern, and she was wearing a long-sleeved, synthetic white Brooks Running shirt and black pants with a pair of PureCadence sneakers, all of it almost brand-new. Once the second monthly check from Shawn Eagle had hit their bank account—fifty thousand dollars after taxes, Billy proudly pointed out—Billy had persuaded her to go shopping. She’d never been much into fashion, but she was a runner, had been a runner since high school, and it was like being a kid in a candy store. She’d gone a bit crazy. Two new pairs of running shoes plus a pair of waterproof trail runners for when the snow and slush came. The jacket she was wearing now, for weather down to twenty degrees or so, three pairs of running tights and three pairs of pants, new jogging bras, socks, shirts, underwear. Gloves and hats for when the weather turned up in Whiskey Run, and a pair of sunglasses with interchangeable lenses. Nearly fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of gear. Not all of it from Brooks, but it was the first time in years that she’d been able to buy new stuff that wasn’t on clearance at Target. She hated to admit it, but it had felt so, so good to be able to go into the running store and just buy what she needed. No, not what she needed, but what she wanted. Billy had seemed to enjoy it as much as she did, encouraging her to get another pair of tights, some more socks; here, what about this shirt, try this on.

  Her sister laughed and shook her head. “I’ll go for a run with you tomorrow if you promise to take it easy on me. I’m getting over a calf strain.”

  The
same joke that Beth always made, but she could hold her own, and neither of them was out trying to break any records. Not anymore. Emily wondered if she would have gone out for cross-country and track in high school if her sister hadn’t done it first, and they still pushed each other pretty hard when they ran together. For a few years, when Beth still had the double stroller, Emily had taken it easy on her, but they’d have a good run in the morning. She’d let Beth set the pace; they’d run east to the water and then along the lake for a while.

  Over dinner, Rothko told her and Billy about how changes to the tax law this year were playing havoc with the practice, and how April was going to be a nightmare. He’d made partner three—no, four—years ago, and Emily sometimes wondered how her sister had found somebody who was such a good match for her. He was even-tempered, but he wasn’t boring, even though he was an accountant. Before Rothko, her sister had dated another guy in her CPA program, and that guy had been like a sheet of plywood. But less exciting. Rothko was funny, though. Warm. He never seemed to get particularly excited, but likewise he never seemed to get anything more than mildly irritated. Beth liked to brag to Emily that he was attentive in bed, unlike the husbands of some of her friends whose names she wouldn’t mention, but she might, she said, be talking about Scarlet and Mimi and Theresa, who were all dealing with the blahs in the bedroom. Rothko was, in a word, Emily thought, constant.

  “Oh, lord, Rothko,” Beth said. “Do you think there’s any chance that they want to hear about tax law? Can anything make us seem like bigger assholes than to actually play into the stereotype of accountants as complete bores? Pass the salad, please.”

  Rothko swung the yellow glazed bowl down the table, to Rose, who passed it to Billy, and then it came down to Beth. “You say that like there could possibly be something more fascinating than the intricacies of the self-employment tax?” he said dryly.

  “Mommy called you an asshole, Daddy,” Ruth said, giggling. “She thinks you’re boring.” The dog, Rusty, was sitting patiently next to her, and Emily watched Ruth sneak him a morsel of bread.

  “First of all,” Rothko said, “what have Mommy and I told you and your sister about using grown-up words? And second of all, while I refuse to address the first accusation, of being an asshole, I am more than prepared to address your mother’s unfounded belief that accountants are inherently boring.” He stood up, tucking his elbows into his sides and letting his arms dangle, hunching over and screwing his face up so his teeth were showing. “If all accountants were boring, would I, right now, pretend to be a Tyrannosaurus rex, greatest of all the dinosaurs?” He roared and then flailed at Ruth with his T. rex arms until she dissolved in a fit of laughter. Emily laughed along, sneaking a glance at Billy laughing, too. She looked at her sister, and it made her so happy to see the way Beth beamed at Rothko. When her brother-in-law sat down, there was a wreath of bemused silence, the attention on Ruth’s last hiccups of laughter, when Rose spoke.

  “Uncle Billy, does this mean that you’re not an asshole anymore?” Rose said.

  It was like a fat kid doing a cannonball off the diving board. That moment of anticipation, and then the giant splash that left everybody wet. Ruth started laughing again, almost hysterically, hiding her face in her hands, and both Beth and Rothko raised their voices at the same time, but Emily was most surprised by Billy’s reaction. He just had a small, bemused smile on his face, and he tapped his fingers on the table. The attention swung off Rose and onto him.

  “I think so,” he said. “I’ve made some bad decisions. Clearly your parents have told you about some of those. What, exactly, do you know?” He looked at Beth. “How much have you told them?”

  Beth shook her head, trying to figure out what to say.

  Ruth piped up, no longer laughing: “You’re a drunk and you made some shitty decisions, but maybe you aren’t always going to be an asshole and maybe it’s going to be okay because Aunt Emily loves you.”

  “Language!” Beth pushed her chair back, stood up, and clapped her hands. “Okay. Enough. That’s not what I said.”

  “You think it all the time,” Rose said.

  “I said enough. I am aware that Daddy and I have potty mouths, but that is enough. We have been quite clear that certain words are not for children. You two, out, now. Adult time.”

  “You promised dessert.” Both Ruth and Rose spoke together in that odd way they sometimes did. The girls’ voices overlapped in a syncing stutter, the effect disorienting for Emily. Synthetic.

  “Ruth Ann Trimball and Rose Maya Trimball, you are trying my patience, and you need to apologize to Uncle Billy.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s okay.” Emily watched him. That odd little smile of confusion he’d had at first had turned into something genuine, slightly embarrassed. “To answer your question, Ruth—”

  Both girls, again with that odd and singular voice: “Rose.”

  “Rose. Yes. I’m done drinking, so I suppose that means I’m also done being an asshole.”

  The girls looked . . . uncertain. Emily thought there was something they wanted to say, but there was an almost invisible flicker between the two of them, a communication. But it was so quick that Emily wasn’t sure whether she had imagined it. And then Ruth said, “Good.”

  Emily heard her sister exhale, the tension in the room relieved.

  The funny thing was that she’d been right, too, about the twins. Later that night, after they’d brushed their teeth and put on their pajamas and all of them were in the living room watching a reality cooking show the girls liked, they chose to snuggle up to Billy, the three of them burrowed into the end of the couch, one girl under each of Billy’s arms, the dog curled up on the floor sleeping on Billy’s feet. She smiled at the image, thinking of what Billy had promised her back in Seattle, that they’d settle down. She could picture him with their own daughters nested against him. Instead of Ruth and Rose, children of their own. She looked away from Billy and saw her sister staring at her. She offered a crook of her mouth, but Beth didn’t smile back. Beth was still wary.

  The next morning was cool and dry, good weather for the last week of October, but Emily was glad that she had the new running jacket to wear. Everybody else was still sleeping, even the twins, when she and Beth stepped out the front door of the building just past seven. They took it slow at first, settling into the groove of running through the city, pausing at traffic lights when they needed to, but benefiting from the ghostliness of a Saturday morning. The sun was fully up by the time they were running on the lakeshore path, and Emily tipped her sunglasses from her head over her eyes. Six miles and change out and back, neither of them talking much, just enjoying the presence of one sister with another. By the time Emily had eaten and was out of the shower and dressed, the apartment was alive with the sound of the twins talking with and over each other trying to impress Billy, while Rothko held court in the kitchen.

  They spent the morning at the farmer’s market and then wandering through Lincoln Park Zoo. The girls insisted on staying to watch the otters play for what felt like a painfully long time. Lunch out was at a trendy Mexican place that served a queso cheese dip that left Emily feeling pleasantly overstuffed. In the afternoon, they put Rusty on a leash and walked to the Starbucks around the corner from Beth and Rothko’s condo before heading a few more blocks down to the playground. The girls were on the verge of growing out of swings and slides, old enough that Rothko had to remind them more than once to be careful of the younger kids, but it gave the adults a chance to lean against the fence and bullshit while Ruth and Rose ran out whatever energy they still had left.

  “Here,” Billy said, reaching out for Emily’s empty coffee cup. “I’ve got it.” He walked across to the other side of the playground, where trash cans guarded the gate.

  “I’m almost afraid to say it aloud,” her sister said quietly, “but he seems different. Happy. You both seem happy.” Beth and Rothko were a single unit, Rothko’s arms wrapped around her sister’s shoulders,
encasing her.

  Emily glanced at Billy lifting the blue plastic lid and chucking the paper cups into the recycling bin. “He is. I am. It’s been different since he got sober.”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.” Beth tilted her head back so she could eye her husband. “Are you going to back me up here?”

  Rothko shook his head. “You know what she means, Emily. Even after Billy cleaned himself up, well, the last two years haven’t exactly been like a honeymoon. Didn’t you tell Beth last year that you were thinking about leaving him again?”

  “Jesus Christ, Beth, you told him?”

  “What do you expect? We share a penis.” Beth shrugged. “What? You don’t tell Billy everything?”

  Emily looked out over the playground. Billy had wandered over to the swings. The twins were just sitting on the swings, alone together, not moving, talking to Billy. He sunk into a catcher’s crouch in front of the girls, his back to Emily, but she could feel that his full attention was on Rose and Ruth, in that way he had of getting lost in a single moment. It was, she thought, part of what made him so good with computers.

  “No. Not everything. Of course not. And fine. Yes. Since he met with Shawn, things have been terrific. But what do you expect? We’re not broke anymore.”

  “That can’t be all of it,” Beth said.

  Emily swung on her, suddenly angry. “Of course it is. You don’t think about it at all. Sure, maybe you guys wouldn’t mind a bigger place, but since you’ve been married you’ve never worried about it. When you’ve got money, you don’t think about it, but when you don’t have money it’s all you think about. You don’t . . .” She stopped. “Sorry. That wasn’t fair. You guys have always been supportive and generous and . . . Shit. Yeah. Okay. We’re both happier. It’s a fresh start.”

  “He seems peaceful or something,” Rothko said. “It sounds kind of weird given that you guys are about to go work for Shawn Eagle for the next few months, but maybe he’s finally let go of all that history.”