Page 14 of Play Nice

Edgewood Drive, huh,” says Danny, my Uber driver, and suddenly I regret not asking Dad to pick me up from the station and take me to the house.

After reading Mom’s book and her frankly quite compelling footnote allegation, I found it difficult to hold my tongue around my father, to pretend like the seed of doubt hadn’t been planted in my mind.

It made perfect sense why he hadn’t wanted us to read the book. When I looked at him now, his halo was askew.

“What’s with you?” Daphne had asked me when she dropped me off at the train on her way back to Hudson. “You’ve been acting weird since yesterday.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I’d said, going through her glove compartment, where I discovered a bag of mushrooms. “Shrooms? What else am I going to find in here? A flower crown? A tie-dye T-shirt?”

“Stop going through my shit,” she’d said, slamming her glove compartment shut. “Is it the house? Because I told you. Leda and I don’t care if you don’t want to do it anymore.”

“I’m still going to work on the house.”

“Okay. Is it Alexandra? Are you all right to go back to the city? I’m sure you could stay with Dad. Or you can come up and crash on my couch.”

Sometimes, I loved my sister so much I felt like I might explode.

“Thanks, Daffy.” I kissed my fingers and touched her cheek. “Do you think Dad cheated on Mom with Amy?”

Daphne almost ran through a stop sign. “Dude! Why are you asking me this? Did Aunt Helen bring it up at the fucking funeral?”

“Yes,” I’d said, because I wasn’t ready to cop to reading the book. My sisters would see it as a betrayal, and it’d become a whole thing. I didn’t have the energy to puppy-eye my way out of the doghouse.

“Yeah,” she’d said. She didn’t seem surprised. “Figures.”

I sat up in the passenger seat. “I know this tea isn’t, like, piping hot, but it’s still tea.”

“It’s bullshit, is what it is. Dad and Amy only got together after he and Alexandra split. After he started taking us to dance.”

“They never met before then?” I’d asked as we pulled into the station.

“Maybe once or twice.” She paused. Shrugged.

“For, like, a minute when he picked us up. Do you have any memory of Dad chatting up Amy after class? Because I don’t.

Not until well after he’d moved out and we were getting carted back and forth.

It’s just something Alexandra wanted to believe. Nothing was ever her fault.”

“Yeah,” I’d said, unbuckling my seat belt as I heard the train whistle in the distance. We hugged goodbye, and I wanted to leave my suspicion in the car with her, but it followed me to the train, back to the city. Tenacious. Parasitic.

It has me avoiding Dad. Other than having coordinated with him to install the smart lock and deal with the visit from the exterminator at Edgewood last week. And the electrician.

“I’m done after this,” he’d said. “You can take it from here.”

“Promise,” I’d said.

So I hadn’t even told him that I was planning on being here this weekend. Which is how I ended up in this Uber with Danny, who is desperate to talk to me.

“Number six Edgewood, yeah?” he says. We make eye contact in the rearview.

“Sir, yes, sir,” I say, smiling.

“You know it’s haunted, right?”

“I’ve heard. It’s also got mice. And the worst carpets you’ve ever seen. A real house of horrors.”

“Ah,” he says, returning his eyes to the road. “It’s your house?”

Sometimes men are so dumb I envy them. Why would I confirm that information for a stranger? Might as well give him the code to the door and tell him I’ll be alone all weekend while I’m at it.

I don’t respond, and he doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride. When we get to the house, he pulls into the driveway, but barely.

“Hate to disappoint you,” I say. “But the house isn’t haunted. Can you pull up, please? I have a lot of stuff to carry in.”

“Oh, right. Sorry,” he says, his voice dropping an octave. “No, I don’t believe in any of that.”

“Of course you don’t,” I say, flashing him another smile in the rearview as my fingers find the door handle. “Me either.”

The code to the house is a mix of our birthdays. Leda’s, Daphne’s, and mine. The lock whirs and turns on its own. I carry in my bags and the boxes of stuff on the stoop, things I ordered and had sent directly.

It’s obvious from the smell of bleach that Dad cleaned.

I text him Thank you , and a second later he’s calling me.

“You’re at the house?” he asks. “I would have taken you.”

“You said you were done helping,” I say, looking up at the ceiling fan.

“I would have happily picked you up from the train and dropped you off,” he says.

“My hero!”

He goes on to report—in exquisite detail—what the exterminator and the electrician had to say. He’s already told me this once, but I wasn’t paying attention the last time, so I welcome the reiteration.

Essentially, there was no evidence of an infestation in the house, but there were droppings in the garage, where there are now glue traps that I need to check, that I absolutely do not want to check.

The electrician did find some issues, but he fixed them, and it cost, in Dad’s words, “not an insignificant amount of money.” Which could be any amount. He doesn’t specify, and when I ask, he says, “We’ll sit down with a spreadsheet.”

There are few things on this earth that interest me less than Microsoft Excel.

“I’d get someone to look at the deck and those front stairs,” Dad says.

“Who?” I ask. “Who’s someone?”

“I’ll get you some names,” he says. “How long are you staying there?”

“I don’t know. I’m taking some before photos and video today. Then maybe tomorrow I’ll go get some paint samples.”

“Do you need me to take you?”

All this angst for the past two weeks wondering if he cheated, but even if that were true, what would it change, really? Why inconvenience myself over it?

“Yes, please,” I say.

“Did you notice the door?”

“What about it?”

“It’s a different door.”

I turn around and look. It is. It’s white, generic. There’s a window in the center, a flower etched into the glass. It’s not my favorite. I’ll probably end up replacing it again. Partner with a brand to shill some cute but overpriced babydoll dresses to cover the cost. How much are doors, anyway?

“The frame was damaged. Uneven,” he says. “If it wasn’t locked, it’d swing open.”

“Really?”

“It was a lot of work, Clio. Big project. Luckily, Pete was around. He’s handy.”

“Who’s Pete?”

“Pete. My friend Pete. You know Pete.”

“Oh, yeah. Pete .” I’m sure I’ve met him but doubt I could pick him out of a lineup.

“You should thank him next time you see him. He’ll be at the barbecue on Memorial Day.”

“Okey dokey, smokey.”

“All right, all right. Pick you up tomorrow? One o’clock?”

I trace the flower in the glass with my fingers.

A feeling washes over me. It’s brief but unambiguous.

There’s someone behind me, standing over my shoulder.

It happens to me all the time. At bars. On the subway.

Some stranger hovering closer and closer, their looming presence prodding through whatever narrow space is left between us.

Wanting to be near me, to touch me. For me to acknowledge them, which I rarely do.

“Clio?” Dad asks.

“Yeah,” I say, spinning around. There’s no one here. “Thanks, Dad. Sounds like a plan.”

—

I spend the afternoon taking photos and video of the house. The “before” state. I sketch out design ideas with my freshly sharpened colored pencil set. I blast music from my new portable speaker. I cruise Pinterest.

The ceiling fan only spins when I turn it on. It stops when I turn it off. The new front door remains shut and locked. I don’t encounter another mouse, though I’m still on edge.

I find dead flies on the kitchen counter, on the windowsills—icky but not mouse-level icky. I use paper towels to pick them up and drop them into a giant black trash bag. I didn’t realize when I ordered the bags how big they were. Good for contractors, serial killers, and apparently, moi.

I find the fridge empty except for a box of baking soda. I find a bottle of vodka in the freezer.

I don’t find the back half of the book. It’s not in my room.

It didn’t fall behind the nightstand or under the bed like I’d assumed.

It’s not in Mom’s room. It’s not anywhere.

I decide I don’t care. I don’t want to finish it.

The whole thing is derivative, and I resent being cast as the creepy little girl.

Reading it hasn’t invoked a grand swell of memories, but some things have come back to me, and I do think I have a vague memory of Mom asking me about my closet.

I probably realized validating her got me attention, my one true love.

I buy that over me whispering to myself and claiming there was an entity in my closet unprompted, over seven-year-old me originating the idea of the demon.

I don’t trust her version. How could I? And my own might be so faded that it’s basically useless, but I do trust myself. I know myself. I don’t know my mother. I never will.

I order takeout, enjoy watching the delivery kid squirm on the doorstep. I eat eggplant parmesan at the dining table while watching DIY home renovation videos on YouTube.

The sun goes down, and I anticipate the darkness turning the house into somewhere I don’t want to be. But it’s fine.

I get the bottle of vodka out of the freezer and set myself up on the couch under a thick blanket, another new purchase.

I balance a sketchpad on my lap and experiment with color palettes, periodically reaching over to the coffee table for different colored pencils and for the bottle.

I take a few swigs and feel like a rebellious teenager, drinking vodka straight.

It’s disgusting but I love it. The burn of it reminding me how alive I am inside my body, inside this moment.

In the present. The past is over, and the future is overrated. Now is my favorite.

My eyelids go heavy, and I’m comfortable and content enough to doze off, which feels like a win until I’m awoken by a low, slow creaking.

I sit up, groggy, my throat sore. The sketchpad slides off my lap and flaps like an injured bird down to the floor.

The overhead light is on, and it’s not particularly bright, but it still takes my sleepy eyes a moment to adjust. My vision is spotty, so the shadow standing in front of the sliding glass doors isn’t anything at first. Just another smudge. An inkblot.

Until it isn’t.

Until it’s something. Some one . Someone standing there.

Until it screams.

Until I scream.

It flees through the open sliding glass doors out to the deck, fast footsteps. Thud thud thud thud .

I’m up, and I’m wild, and I’m chasing the figure onto the deck.

Thud thud…thud-thud-thud-thud.

There’s an awful crack , followed by a morbid groaning.

I reach inside and flick the back light on, then look over the banister to see there’s an adolescent at the bottom of the deck stairs, splayed out on the yard.

“What the fuck?” I yell.

“I’m sorry,” the boy says, his voice breaking. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone lived here.”

“Are you hurt?” I ask.

A beat. “Yeah.”

“Good,” I say. “Remember this. This is what breaking and entering feels like.”

“Hey! Hey!” I hear. There’s a guy running over.

“Hasn’t anyone ever heard of private property?” I ask.

“Baker. Baker, are you okay?” This guy is older. Around my age.

The kid, Baker, punches the older guy on the arm. “You asshole! You said the house was empty!”

“It was,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t,” I say. “Clearly.”

The guy squints up at me. The light on the back of the house is ruthlessly bright, illuminating the yard out to the perimeter of the woods.

“Shit,” he says. “Hey, I’m sorry about this. I’m Austin. I live down the street. This is my nephew. I, um…”

He pauses to laugh.

“I dared him to break into the house.”

He takes a step to the side, and I get a better view of him. Curly brown hair. Pretty face. Tall.

“That so,” I say, tilting my head so my own curls fall forward. I give him a grin.