Page 17 of Play Nice

I started painting,” I tell Daphne over elderflower gimlets. She’s in the city for a work thing and got us reservations at an insane restaurant on the Upper West Side where we’re eating for free because she knows the chef.

“Like, you picked it up again? Oils?” she says, studying the menu like she’s going to be tested on it. Her brow is furrowed; she gnaws on her lip.

“The house. I started painting the house. Priming. You have to prime first. I’ve done Mom’s office, the upstairs hall, and the downstairs hall.

I’ve done the cutting in in your old room.

Not the kitchen yet, because I think it’s going to be a gut job.

And I’m doing wallpaper in the bathroom.

Look.” I get out my phone to show her the wallpaper I picked, but she shakes her head and both hands, dropping the menu.

“I don’t want to see,” she says.

“You don’t want to see wallpaper?”

“I’m sorry, Cli. I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, but I don’t want to think about it.”

A waiter comes by and saves the day. Daphne chats them up, and the chef sends over oysters and potato chips with caviar and crème fra?che.

Later, when we’re back at my apartment wearing sheet masks and sipping adaptogen soda through straws, Daphne says, “I didn’t mean to snap at you earlier.”

“What?”

“About the wallpaper,” she says, suddenly morose. “I had a dream about the house the other night. A bad one.”

I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing.

“I haven’t had an Edgewood nightmare in forever. I used to have them all the time. I’d wake up Amy and she’d make me hot chocolate. Those fucking gross packets with the freeze-dried mini marshmallows. Woof.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I ask, unreasonably annoyed at her harshing my mellow. “How does this affect your ability to view floral wallpaper.”

“Because all this shit is coming up again. I was in a good place with everything before Alexandra died. Now you’re at that house, and I’m having nightmares about the time she chased you down the stairs with a knife.”

A flash. A vision.

A memory, buried deep, now bursting through the dirt like a zombie.

My back to my locked bedroom door, bracing it against Mom’s pounding. I will bleed you out! I will bleed you out!

My breath hitches. I clear my throat and stand up, peel the sheet mask off my face. I toss it in the kitchen garbage, gently pat the remaining serum into my skin.

“You know I appreciate some dramatic flair, but if you want some woe-is-me hot chocolate, just ask,” I say. “I’d make you some. I’d even go out and get you some real marshmallows. Fresh and gooey.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “That’s not…”

“Not what?”

She seems surprised that I’m being a smidge bitchy while she’s trying to be vulnerable and open with me, and I wonder if she knows that she’s being manipulative. She’s typically pretty self-aware.

“Never mind,” she says, getting up. She goes into the bathroom, shutting the door a little too hard behind her.

I make up the couch for her to sleep on while she gets ready for bed. The toilet flushes, the faucet runs. I hear the swish of her toothbrush, the spritz of toner. Resentment. How can something silent be so damn loud?

When she’s done in the bathroom, she comes over and sits on the edge of my bed. I get under the covers.

“You love to tell me how you and Leda won’t care if I abandon the house. Won’t hold it against me if I change my mind. But I’m not the one who changed my mind. Just admit you don’t want me there,” I say. “Don’t plant seeds and pretend you’re not. I’m smarter than that.”

“Okay. You’re right,” she says. “I don’t want you there. I don’t like it. It bothers me. I didn’t think it would, but it does.”

“You’re having nightmares about the place while I’m there getting finger-banged on the couch by the hot neighbor,” I say, smiling so big it pushes the tension out of the room.

“Dude. Stop,” she says, shuddering. “And how come this shit always happens to you? It’s so unfair. Where’s my meet-cute?”

“It wasn’t a meet-cute,” I say. “No meet-cute involves Yuengling and oral.”

She clicks her tongue. “Mine would.”

“Yours would be in an orchard, on a beautiful fall day, reaching for the same apple.”

“Fuck. Yeah, that’s true,” she says. “All right. Show me the wallpaper.”

“Are you sure?” I ask, pulling up the image on my phone.

She crawls over to where I am, puts her head on the pillow next to mine. I show her the picture.

“That’s stunning. Damn.”

I show her some of the YouTube tutorials I’ve been watching. She falls asleep as we watch time-lapsed kitchen remodels.

She snores and steals the covers, so I end up on the couch.

I came back to the city earlier this week for work and for some appointments—facial, personal training session, trim and blowout—and to have dinner with Daphne.

But ever since I got here, I’ve been anxious to return to the house.

The progress is addicting. And the potential.

Looking around at all that raw space. There’s just something about being there.

What would Daphne say if I told her about waking up on the floor with the bedding all piled up beside me like a soft cairn? If I told her about the sketch that I don’t remember drawing?

Probably blame emotional distress or lack of sleep or alcohol. Probably be right. Definitely tell Dad and Leda. And they would change the locks and put the house on the market.

So I won’t tell her, even though it justifies her having concerns about me being there. I won’t tell her because it justifies her concerns.

I won’t tell her because I’m starting to suspect that part of me wants to believe the house is haunted, wants the place to prove to me that it is.

How could I forget the bedroom door incident? How is it possible I could just block something like that out? Mom locked outside, holding a knife, trying to get in. Screaming.

No.

No, it’s not that I want to believe the house is haunted.

It’s that part of me wants to believe she wasn’t crazy.

The closest church was St. Ann’s. Catholic. I’d been raised Greek Orthodox, but our family had never been particularly committed to the church. My ex-husband wasn’t religious, and so our girls weren’t brought up in faith.

Any belief I’d had in God as a child had waned over the years. If there was a God, he was at best apathetic, at worst cruel. Why would I worship such a being?

But after falling from the attic, I was desperate. I needed help and I would seek it anywhere, from anyone.

I attended mass on a Friday evening while the girls were with their father—he was taking them out to dinner and to the movies because he could afford to do fun things like that with them. They would whine on the weekends they were with me about how bored they were.

Catholic mass was a solemn affair, but I found something soothing about it. A peace I hadn’t ever experienced before. I was grateful for that hour, sitting in the mostly empty pews, the divine words echoing through the space.

The church itself was beautiful. Outside, a statue of the Virgin Mary stood surrounded by flowers.

The exterior of the church was simple—white and square with a tall steeple.

Inside, the walls were painted pale yellow.

There were elaborate stained-glass windows all around.

The ceiling was high and curved, and the floors were cherrywood except for the green runner down the aisle.

There were statues on either side of the altar, the Virgin Mary again—one with her holding Jesus as an infant, the other her holding him after he died.

Beyond the pulpit, Jesus was alone on his cross.

After mass, I lingered, waiting for an opportunity to speak to the priest, Father John. He was an older man with gray hair and a soft face. Kind eyes.

“Hello, Father,” I said.

“Hello,” he said, extending a hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Welcome.”

“I recently moved to the area with my three daughters,” I said.

When I slipped my hand in his, a shadow passed across his face.

His hand was warm; mine was freezing. He held on to it.

He didn’t let me go. He could sense something was wrong, and I think he wanted me to know that I could confide in him.

“It’s been a rough start. I…I was wondering if you could come and bless our house. ”

“Of course,” he said. “I would be glad to.”

I gave him the address, and we settled on the following Wednesday at one o’clock. I told my boss I had a doctor’s appointment, an excuse to leave work early.

I couldn’t have Father John at the house while my girls were there.

They would tell their father, who would ask me why I had a priest at the house.

I wouldn’t have a good answer, a good lie, and the truth wasn’t an option.

If my ex-husband knew that I suspected there was a presence in the house, he would take it as further proof that I was crazy.

It infuriated me how he would revel in my agony.

How he would wield my vulnerabilities as weapons against me.

Any opportunity he had to exploit my very human weaknesses, he would take.

I hung my hopes on Father John’s visit. Whatever evil was in the house, I thought he could cast out. It was something .

I’d read and loved Jane Eyre as a teenager. As a grown woman, my perspective on the novel changed. I was Bertha Mason. Rochester was not a romantic hero; he was a criminal asshole.

I went to sleep on Tuesday cautiously optimistic.

I woke up on Wednesday to a sick daughter in my bed.

“My stomach hurts,” Cici said, and proceeded to vomit all over my sheets.

She was too sick to go to school. I had to call out of work, my boss suspicious since I’d already taken a half day.

I stripped my bed and did a load of laundry, set up Cici on the couch with ginger ale and plain toast. She watched cartoons and colored. I was grateful that whatever she had didn’t seem to affect her sisters, who were their usual surly preteen selves.