Gravedigger's Cottage Read online

  He knew about the fish. And he knew about the bathwater. You couldn’t miss it.

  “Well, thanks, guys,” Dad said, staring all the harder at his list, “but there’s no way around it. We have to look at what we’ve got here.”

  Walter looked all around the kitchen. Then he looked at the pancakes, sausages, fruit, and juice waiting for us in the middle of the table, and he went to work on them.

  “What, Dad?” I asked. “What have we got here?”

  He took a deep breath as if he were about to go underwater for an extended period. Then he went for it.

  “We have…rising damp coming up through the floors. I found a mushroom growing up through floorboards in the hall closet. We have a cracked and rusted skylight in my study—”

  Walter looked up from the food. “You have a study?”

  “The computer room,” I said.

  Dad went on. “We have various minor roof leaks. We have this—” He stood up and pawed at the red-brown tile of the kitchen floor like a bull about to charge. “Look at this. It’s like mud. It’s like an adobe that never set. And the heating system. Have you noticed the heating system?”

  “It’s August, Dad,” I reminded him.

  “Yes, well, I noticed the heating system, because I have checked it. I turned it on, and then followed it around the house. And you know what? The radiators take turns. They don’t all work at the same time. This one comes on and that one goes cold, then that one gets hot and that one turns off, and so on. How does that sound?”

  I wanted to get as worked up as Dad, if only because I could never stand to see him get worked up all alone. But it was hard.

  “It is August, Dad.”

  “It won’t be August for long,” he said with increased seriousness, as if he had uncovered some nefarious plot.

  “Sounds to me,” Walter said, chewing and talking extra calmly, “like we just have clever radiators.” He took another bite. “And lazy. Clever, lazy radiators. We’ll call them claziators.”

  Dad just stared at him, until the dust of his words had settled.

  “And loose window sashes. The wind will whip right through this place. I don’t even think there is any insulation in these walls…and the walls. Didn’t you think it suspicious how many of these rooms are papered, instead of painted? Huh?”

  He was doing that aha, conspiracy-breaker voice of his.

  “Well, no. I didn’t actually think it was suspicious. But then, I never bought a house before. In truth, I didn’t buy this one either. You did.”

  A quick flash crossed his features, like he was upset that I was insulting him or something. Then it went away again, lost in the tide of his home-improvement symptoms.

  But the truth was, he did buy this house and all that went along with it. It was not shocking that Dad could possibly have purchased a place that wasn’t exactly airtight, but so what? We knew he wasn’t that kind of dad. We didn’t want that kind of dad. Or that kind of house, for that matter.

  Actually, this was the first house he ever bought by himself. He would have had somebody with him, when he bought the other one. Somebody would have been watching over his shoulder and seeing the things he just wouldn’t see.

  If there really was anything to see. And telling him to get a grip if there wasn’t.

  “Anyway, I have had a peek at these walls to see what is hiding under that wallpaper. Do you know what is hiding under that wallpaper?”

  “Walls?” Walter said before I could stop him.

  I gulped.

  “Cor-rect,” Dad said. “But only partly. Walls are what normal houses have under the wallpaper. This house has weeping walls…”

  He was very serious about this. I watched him go back and forth over his list, running one hand over and over through his thinning hair while holding his little notepad up in the air with the other one, like in the skull scene in Hamlet.

  But I couldn’t help it. All the things he said only caused me to feel more protective of the house, more involved with it. It was so not a boring house. It was The Diggers. And it wasn’t anywhere near as needy as he was making it out to be.

  “Stop picking on the house, Dad,” I scolded.

  “Picking, huh? Then there’s the electrical system. Wait till I tell you what that does. And that old cat door—or should I call it the rat door…”

  I motioned to Walter to pass me the pancakes. Then the maple syrup. He was already done with them, having munched his way all through the first half of Dad’s rant. Now as I prepared to catch the second half, cabaret style, Walter was well fed and ready to jump in.

  “Hey, Dad?”

  “Yah, Walt?”

  “Why did we move here again?”

  For the first time since we had entered it that morning, the room went still. The air got heavy with the scents that were already there but that thickened now to fill the empty space—pork sausage, Earl Grey—scents Dad would have to breathe in twice as hard to appreciate like we did.

  “Why?” he finally repeated after a surprisingly long wait. Then he waited a bit more, and when he came out of it, his answer fell limply out of his mouth. “My work,” he said. “My job. We know that. We do. I moved for work.”

  As if he were convincing himself, and not doing a very good job of it.

  I didn’t like it. This was news to me, whatever it was, this was a sad surprise. We did move for his job, that was the truth. But every year they tried to get him to come to this office and only now had he decided to do it. There seemed to be so much more banking up inside Dad now…I hadn’t seen this. I hadn’t known about this. And I am good—the best, even—at knowing about him.

  “Dad?” I said. He could never hide from me. He could never fool me, if I didn’t let him. “Why did we move here?”

  He looked away, looked around, looked at food, at Walter, at his list, then at me.

  “This and that,” he drawled, “and that. Time, you know. Time. Really, kids, it was time for us to move. Away from there, from where we had been for so long, you know? Forever. Do you realize that, that you were there forever? For your forever, anyway? That’s too much, I think, in one place. Time, really, it was time to go. Too much was back there, you know. We outgrew the old house, in a lot of ways. There was not enough space left in that old place. We crowded it out, that place, we grew up, and out, past its boundaries. Between us, and everything, there was just nothing left for us there. No room. It was all full up, like you know, like we all know, with old…bygone stuff. No room there. Time, it was, to get away from all the old…bygone. To start anew. Start again, afresh, anew. You know? You know.”

  Afresh. Anew. That would be starting again right there. Afresh, anew? A new language, practically, was what he was speaking. Dad did not speak afresh, anew.

  “Afresh, anew, Dad?” Walter asked.

  Dad nodded. He nodded sadly.

  “Afresh, anew,” he said.

  It was all pretty foreign stuff to us, this new slant, Dad’s full disclosure. But I think Walter and I were both ready to go for it. We probably knew—or I certainly should have—that leaving behind all the bygone stuff was no small part of our new look at life.

  And it suited me just fine. I missed friends back home, missed my school, my old haunts and habits. But I didn’t miss them so much that the idea of leaving didn’t still feel like the overpoweringly right thing to do. Dad was right about it being time. And I for one was glad to hear him say it. That was one step ahead.

  “But we won’t dwell on all that now,” added Dad.

  And one step back again.

  FitzWilliam

  WE PROBABLY NEVER SHOULD have had a fox terrier. Maybe nobody should have one.

  It was hard to tell whether he was a deranged genius of a dog or just deranged, but he clearly needed more than we ever gave him. Fitzy was always busy, always determined, always late for something. He ate raw carrots because they put up a good fight. He made a high-pitched whine-scream-laugh sound when he tried to get a
t something that was out of his reach but that he had to, had to, had to get at for reasons known only to himself.

  On the rare occasions we troubled to take him in the car, he either stood up rigid, peering over the steering wheel like he was the driver, or he wriggled himself up into the raised back window area and peed, right where the driver couldn’t help but see him in the rearview mirror. Neither of these things pleased the driver much.

  FitzWilliam never slept that I was aware of. That may have been partly due to all the coffee and cola he drank as much as to his true nature. Because nobody could put down a Coke or a coffee anywhere within a mile of him. It was like he was bred to hunt caffeine instead of foxes. No place was safe—not the arm of a chair, not the hood of a car, not the highest shelf of a bookcase. He would scale a straight wall like a mountain goat to get a sip, and if Dad came into the kitchen one more morning to find him standing there with all four paws on the table while he straddled and drained a mug of Nescafé, he was going to do the little guy a serious mayhem.

  Of course, that wasn’t necessary. He was quite capable of doing himself all the necessary mayhem.

  Just as he became capable of taking care of many of his own needs. Because we were not.

  He played fetch with himself. He would take his spongy ball, bring it to me or Walter or once in a while Dad, and drop it at our feet. We would throw it. He would bring it back and drop it at our feet.

  He would do this two hundred and fifty times. If you told him no, he would bark at you. If you sat down on the ground and tried to read a book or a magazine, he would place the ball on the exact sentence you were reading. If you tried to lie on your stomach and nap in the sun, he would stand on your back and drop the ball off the side of your face.

  Only if he thought you had died would he go away and start on somebody else.

  Eventually everybody died. We got good at pretending we were dead. Except Dad, who refused to play dead but would lock himself in the garage instead.

  And when there was nobody left to satisfy him, FitzWilliam learned to do it himself. We thought it was funny at first, watching him take the ball with a running start, then let go so it was flying away ahead of him, as if somebody had thrown it for him. But we got tired of this, too, long before Fitzy ever did. He threw that ball. And brought it back and dropped it at his own feet. Then threw it again. And again. And again.

  There was no end. There was no solution, no conclusion, no point. He just went at it until the sun set and he was hauled into the house, screaming, whining, barking.

  He took it out on the house. He chewed the legs of chairs, the corners of carpets, a mahogany salt and pepper shaker set, and, one time, a lightbulb, which resulted in a mouth full of stitches and absolutely no decrease in enthusiasm or increase in sense.

  So he stayed outside more. And more. He was left out unsupervised a lot until he started his collection of people’s fresh laundry, then their gardening tools and whirligigs and hubcaps, and piled all the evidence up in a fairly conspicuous pile on our lawn.

  He was tied up all the time after that, and he didn’t like it. He would throw himself a ball, just far enough so he couldn’t reach it, then strain and scream—with the ball two inches from his snout—for ages, pulling like he was going to drag the house along behind him, until somebody came and gave it to him. Then he went right back and did the same thing again.

  Until it stopped. It was there, and FitzWilliam was there, and the air was full of the sound of him to the point where we could just about ignore him and just about forget why we got him in the first place and just about not think about where and why it had all gone wrong.

  And it stopped, abruptly. Noticeably.

  I was talking on the phone to one of my friends from school and felt this rush of I gotta go, and I told her I had to go, and I went.

  And there he was, little FitzWilliam, when I got there to the yard where he was tied all the time. There he was, at the end of his tether, the ball he played with by himself all the time nowhere to be seen. There he was, with his back feet almost touching the ground, but not quite, hanging by the neck from the hedge he had jumped while chasing whatever it was that came into his yard and changed his day and maybe took his ball away.

  He was detached, Fitz was, you would have to say so. He was fun, and he was lively. He would let you pick him up, let you play with him, wrestle him, cuddle him, whatever.

  But he just let you. That was what I noticed. He just allowed you to do stuff, and then he would allow somebody else to do stuff, and really, he didn’t care. He didn’t warm to you.

  He didn’t love me, I realized. And I didn’t love him. That was what happened, and the order in which it happened.

  But FitzWilliam made me cry. And, for the first and only time, my father arranged a full pet-cemetery funeral for one of our pets. He paid probably enough for Fitzy’s funeral to buy ten new Fitzys, even though we wouldn’t even be buying one more.

  He liked Fitz less than my other pets, Dad did. Truth be told, so did I, so did Walter.

  It was about the saddest thing ever, the three of us standing there, dressed and proper, at the graveside on the day of FitzWilliam’s burial. Nobody said anything. It was a gorgeous sunny day, the air smelled like honey, and nobody spoke a word.

  The Beach at the End of the World

  “HI.”

  “Hi. Who is this?”

  “Come on, stop teasing. This is Carmine.”

  Oh god.

  “I wasn’t teasing, Carmine. Did I give you my phone number, Carmine?”

  Walter walked past the phone, giggling. I put my hand over the receiver.

  “Stop laughing. Did you give him our phone number?”

  “I don’t even know our phone number yet.”

  “Carmine, where did you get this phone number? It’s not even listed.”

  Here’s the thing I realized about somebody like Carmine who flies a different sky from the rest of us: you can never tell whether he is lying or fooling or honestly mistaken or just very, very lost.

  “Um, somebody gave it to me,” he said. “Somebody but I can’t remember who.”

  “You know that’s not at all believable, Carmine, don’t you.”

  “No,” he said in such a sad little way, like he was defending something dear to him, that I felt momentarily sorry. “I don’t know that at all. I wouldn’t lie to you, Sylvia.”

  I hated hearing him use my name. I didn’t know why, didn’t know what else he should call me. But I felt horribly intruded upon when he called me Sylvia.

  “Don’t call me that,” I snapped, even though it was rude and unfair, and I knew it was unwise to yell at crazy people.

  He sighed and snorted. “I have to say, you seem a little bit crazy to me.”

  Well. There was criticism to pay attention to.

  “And another thing. If anybody lies, it’s you. Remember that thing you said to me, about when I wind up as old as you?” He was building up a head of steam. “Won’t happen. Did the math.” Sounded very much like checkmate.

  “Sorry, Carmine,” was all I could think of to say.

  “And don’t call me that,” he said.

  Fine, I suppose I deserved that.

  “What’ll I call you then?”

  “Barry.”

  “Right. Okay, Barry.”

  “I just remembered who gave me your number.”

  “Who?”

  “Walter.”

  “Grrr. Whatever. What did you call me for?”

  “I called to invite you to a party.”

  “Sorry, I can’t go.”

  “I haven’t even told you when it is yet.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Busy.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Why not? Why couldn’t I be busy?”

  “Because. You d
on’t have any friends. You don’t do anything, any of you. The three of you just stay holed up in The Diggers all the time. If you did anything, we’d know about it.”

  A wave of chilly goose bumps rolled over me, like a million cold tiny spiders running up the front of me, over me, and down the back.

  “You little freak. What do you mean by that? And who are we?”

  “Jeez,” he said, and he sounded far away, apparently holding the phone at a distance. He was being dramatic—I wasn’t that bad. “You know, Sylvia, you really are going to make me start thinking you’re kind of crazy.”

  “I’m not crazy,” I said crazily, because he was making me crazy, “you’re crazy.”

  “I just meant,” he said in that extracalm voice that nobody ever uses when they are really calm but everybody uses when they want to make you go berserk, “that people around the village, because you are new and because the place is so small, people tend to know what everyone’s up to, that’s all. Sheesh.”

  “Yah, well I live in this little village, and I don’t know what anybody is up to.”

  “That’s why you need to come to the party. So you can start finding out. It’s a community, you know? You’ll be a part of it.”

  Should that have sounded good? I didn’t know. I suppose to a lot of people, especially people who had just picked up and moved to a whole new place, that would have sounded very good. Warm, even, comforting.

  But I was guessing. It was pure guesswork, what other people might have thought, because all I could feel was what I could feel, and I felt shaken. Community. Community? Did I want that? Was that what we were here for? Small-town life? People looking out for each other? People looking at each other?

  “Walter!” I called.

  He came bounding up the stairs, and when he reached the cozy little landing between our bedrooms, I handed him the phone. “You lied about giving him the phone number.”

  “Um, possibly, yes.”

  “Why did you give him our phone number?”

  “He traded me a bag of Reese’s Pieces.”

  I shoved the phone into his hands before shutting myself off in my room.