“This is Kayla’s home?” I asked, and received no answer. I was becoming accustomed to Messenger’s taciturnity, to his grudging release of any information, as though truth was a poison that must be taken with the smallest of spoons, over time, allowing immunity to build up.
Kayla’s family had money; that much was clear. The home was large, six bedrooms, with a pool to the side and a view of a stand of woods that might be inviting on the sunniest of spring days but now felt sullen, dense, and silent.
The slope behind the house was quite steep, even more sharply declined than the steps from the road down to the front door. That rear slope led down to Sleepy Hollow Creek. White alders, willows, and buckeyes grew tall, and the deck at the rear of the house was in the midst of those trees, so that sunshine only rarely struck the cedar planks and . . .
I blinked in confusion. I had not been to the back of the house—I was still standing on the road, looking at the house between parked cars. Was I now acquiring information without even the need to pose a question? Was I a fish swimming in a sea of information to which I had now, by virtue of my incredible situation, become entitled?
We stepped into Kayla’s room, as though walking from the one-lane road directly into her room was a matter of course. There was an architecture, a geography to this sphere I now inhabited. I thought that eventually I must come to understand it if I was ever to free myself from an existence as a helpless appendage.
I could only wonder what my own home was like. The brief flashes of memory I’d enjoyed had given me very little to work with. I still had no idea what my room was like, but I felt sure it was not as nice as Kayla’s.
She had a queen-size bed with an antique-white headboard detailed with a blue stripe that picked up the color on one of her walls. The other walls were lighter, avoiding the heaviness that can come from too much blue.
The furniture . . .
Wait a minute. I knew the furniture. That was a Restoration Hardware bed. The dresser and desk were both antiques. How did I know that? Why did I know that? I was too young to be some kind of interior decorator. Was this an interest of mine? That would be an embarrassing bit of knowledge if it turned out I was a student of home furnishing.
I had felt from the start that I cared about words. Cared maybe too much, but that at least felt organic to me, part of me. This unusual knowledge of furniture must come from some personal experience. Maybe my own room had been redecorated?
I tried to force a picture to appear, but it would not, and my attention was drawn to Kayla, who was doing homework on her laptop, tapping, dragging her finger across the touch screen, tapping, glancing at a book, tapping some more.
Above her desk was a cork bulletin board, squeezed in between posters of pop stars and actors and a wistful travel poster from Venice. I moved in to see the bulletin board. A course list. A shopping list—very organized was our Kayla: eyeliner, socks, moisturizer, scrunchies.
My eye was drawn then to a ribbon, a blue satin rectangle with the letters “NaNoWriMo.” I knew what it meant, which was both reassuring and unsettling. National Novel Writing Month. Kayla had participated, even won some sort of recognition.
The door opened
. I fought back the instinct to hide. We were invisible, of course, except when Messenger decided otherwise. Through the door came a woman. She was pretty in a chrome-and-glass kind of way, cold, face unnaturally smooth, hair a glossy black, very different from Kayla. I was sure that black hair should be at least touched with gray, might have been so touched at some point in the past.
She was dressed in a too-short skirt and too-tight blouse over too-ambitious breast-enhancement surgery. She had the aspect of a woman trying very hard to be other than what nature had meant her to be.
“We’re going out,” the woman said.
Kayla didn’t turn around. “You’re supposed to knock.”
“I don’t need to knock in my own home.”
“Your home. Of course,” Kayla sneered. “Yours and his now. Maybe he should be able to walk in on me without knocking, too. I’ll bet he’d like to.”
“Kayla, unless you have something to say, unless you have some kind of sensible thing to say, do not go there.”
Kayla waved a dismissive hand and went back to her work, but she wasn’t really reading; she was waiting, tensed and angry.
“Do you have something to say, Kayla?” her mother pressed.
“No, Jessica,” Kayla said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Not at all. After all, I’m sure a man who is fifteen years younger than you, and only ten years older than me, has no interest at all in walking in on me.”
Jessica crossed the room with long-legged strides, grabbed Kayla’s shoulder, and spun her around. Kayla half fell from her chair and yelled, “Get out and leave me alone!”
“Listen to me, Kayla, if Arnie has done anything . . . questionable . . . you tell me. Otherwise, you stop spreading poison.”
“Questionable? Has he done anything questionable? You mean, aside from moving into my house and sleeping with my mother in my father’s bed?” Kayla’s voice had risen with each word, louder, more insistent, and by the time she had reached the final syllable, there were tears in her eyes and her voice was a scream.
“I have a right to—”
“To sleep with whoever will have you?”
“You spoiled little—” Jessica snapped.