Play nice, p.6
Play Nice, page 6
part #1 of 2025 Series
“Why can’t you see that I’m trying to help you? Both of you,” she says, gesturing to Daphne, whose eyes are still shut, who’s probably wishing she’d stayed up in Hudson, where she spends her evenings cooking in the state-of-the-art kitchen of a beautiful restaurant, or eating braised rabbit and truffle risotto and turnips that she plucked from the earth with her own two hands, or eating box, her true favorite dish. “And what do you mean by ‘taking the lead’?”
“I feel like it’s pretty self-explanatory. I’m going to take care of all house-related stuff and whatever. You and Daphne don’t have to worry about it. You’re always telling me that I don’t remember the worst of it, that I was too young. It’s not going to affect me to be there. Not like it would with you.”
Daphne finally opens her eyes, looks at Leda.
“We’re selling the house,” Leda says. “I’ve bought and sold property before. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Let me figure it out. You disparage me for being the baby and then you baby me.”
“She has a point,” Tommy says. I appreciate him standing up for me, especially because I know there will be heck to pay.
“Tom,” Leda says, jaw clenched even more tightly than usual, an angry vein appearing on her forehead. She’s going to break something.
“I’ll go by and check it out. See what work needs to be done. What potential there is. I could spend time there over the summer. Paint, rip up carpet,” I say. “I’ll throw in some sweat equity, and then we can put it on the market in the fall. List it for way more. No one’s going to want to buy it as is, especially with its history.”
There’s a lull, and I notice the volume on the TV has been lowered and realize Dad and Amy are eavesdropping from the other room.
“You’re assuming it’s still in rough shape. Alexandra might have…” Daphne trails off.
“Might have what? You know she didn’t take care of that place,” I say. “She didn’t have the money, and she didn’t live there, and that wasn’t her thing.”
“You’re underestimating the amount of work it takes,” Leda says. “It’s not just about the cosmetic. It probably needs a new furnace. A new roof.”
“I’ll hire people to do that stuff,” I say, walking over to the fridge to get a seltzer.
Leda follows me. “It’s expensive.”
“I have money. I made five K off a single post last month. And besides, I’ll make it all back when the house sells,” I say, offering her the last can of lemon. She accepts it, and I take a cherry. “Daph, you want a fizzy?”
“No, thanks,” she says. “I mean, I agree you’re underestimating what it takes to flip a house.”
“See?” Leda asks, self-satisfied.
“But…” Daphne says, and Leda’s smugness suddenly disappears. “If you really want to do it, if you think you can, that’s your call. I have no objection to you trying.”
“Great,” Leda says, slamming her seltzer down on the table. “Thanks, Daffy.”
“What? She’s going to find one spider or spot of mold and immediately give up,” Daphne says.
“Hey!”
“Prove me wrong, then.”
Leda taps her nails on her can. “It’s so Alexandra to do something like this.”
“What? Die?” I ask, opening my seltzer and taking a sip. They all stare at me.
“No. Leave us with that house,” Leda says.
“That frigging house,” Daphne says.
“It’ll be money in the bank soon enough. Out of our lives for good. Forever.” I wave my hands like a magician after disappearing something into his sleeve.
My sisters exchange a look. Leda relents. “Okay.”
“Cool,” I say. “I’m going to go change into comfy cozies. You want to watch a movie?”
I don’t wait for them to answer because I know it’s a yes. I know they can’t say no to me.
* * *
—
Everyone sleeps in the next morning except for me. I set my alarm early, put on a pair of jeans and a vintage Rolling Stones T-shirt, find some old Adidas in my closet with the soles worn smooth. I also discover a hoodie that once belonged to some guy I hooked up with in high school, a band geek with good hair whose name I can’t remember. Sean? Scott? Sam?
The hoodie is big in just the right way and still smells like Axe. Makes me want to go to second base.
Last night, after a viewing of Thelma & Louise, I opened the little pouch from Roy to find one of my mother’s rings—chunky silver with a white stone. It’s beautiful, and I think it would fit, but I’m hesitant to wear it, considering there’s a nonzero chance she had it on when she died. I pretty much suspect that the contents of the pouch were all things taken out of her pockets or off her body while she still had one, prior to cremation. Also inside was a strange silver coin, some sage, a vial of clear liquid that I sincerely hope is holy water, and the key to a haunted house.
At least, I assume it’s the house key.
I grab the key, and the sage and holy water because why not? I put them in my purse along with my cell, then head downstairs wondering whose car I’ll “borrow.”
“Morning. I made coffee.” Dad sits at the kitchen table behind his open laptop, probably reading the news, an article about something depressing he’ll tell us about later at an inopportune moment.
“Good morning, Daddy,” I say, tying my hair up with a jumbo scrunchie. “May I borrow your car?”
“Don’t go buy coffee,” he says. “That’s why I made some. Your generation wastes so much money on coffee.”
“My generation is never going to be able to retire regardless.”
“You’re saving for retirement,” he says. He knows because he set up my account and logs in sometimes to make sure I’m being a good girl. A responsible girl. “That seven bucks could go into your IRA.”
I almost tell him I’m not going out to buy coffee, that I’m going to Edgewood, but decide it’s better if he thinks I’m venturing to Starbucks. “Please, may I borrow your car to go buy a seven-dollar latte that will make me forget my troubles for all of ten minutes?”
He sighs. “Keys are next to the fridge.”
There’s a stretch of counter space in the kitchen that’s used more as a desk, where the landline used to be. There’s a stack of takeout menus and pens and a cell phone charger and photos of us. Dad’s wallet. His car keys.
“Take my credit card. Get some for your sisters. And Amy. And what the heck? I’ll have a mocha.”
“A mocha?” I say, turning around with my pinky up.
“If I’m going in, might as well go all in,” he says. “The blue one.”
I reach for his wallet and get out the blue Chase card. “I have to run an errand first. I’ll be back in an hour.”
“Okay,” he says. “Drive safe.”
“Venti mocha,” I say, opening the door to the garage. “With whip!”
“No whip!” he calls out as the door shuts behind me.
He won’t be getting that mocha for a while, if at all. It’s about a half hour drive to Edgewood from here, and I want to look around.
I’m excited about it.
It’s a new project. A new opportunity for content creation. The chance to make something pretty, curate an aesthetic. My favorite.
I get to take the setting of the worst time in my family history and transform it into something else. Make it unrecognizable as the place where Mom lost her mind, the place where she died, the place where her demons lived.
It’s the next best thing to burning it to the ground.
9
It’s exactly as I remembered it. The long driveway sneaking off the cul-de-sac. It needs to be paved; it’s needed to be paved for the last twenty years.
The house is set back, surrounded by woods. The front lawn is pale and patchy, covered in dead leaves and twigs. I park and step outside. It’s chilly, and I’m grateful for the hoodie and to whomever it once belonged.
The roof is all angles, which gives the house character, I think. There’s a tall brick chimney that runs along the side. A working fireplace—another feature. The siding is an ugly rusty red, which doesn’t exactly help with the house’s reputation as a demon lair. But paint it white or a dark navy, and suddenly it’s chic and modern instead of evil and dated.
I dig the key out of my bag and watch my step as I head up the stone path toward the house. The pavers have sunk into the earth, thick moss between them. It’s the smell of the rickety wooden stairs that lead to the front door that gets me, that resurrects a sentimentality, a nostalgia, that I didn’t know I had. It’s such a distinct scent, these stairs. I’m surprised they haven’t collapsed by now.
There are parts of these stairs in me and my sisters. Parts of the back deck, too. Splinters we couldn’t dig out, that we gave up on, impatient after sitting for too long on the bathroom floor with tweezers and a flashlight.
This is a reunion.
I get to the top of the steps, slip the key into the lock, and twist.
The landing is brick, but not nice brick. Loose chipped brick. There are carpeted stairs that lead down to a hall, off that hall a bathroom, my old room, Mom’s room, and the garage. There are also carpeted stairs that lead up to the living room, kitchen, Mom’s office, the second bathroom, a linen closet, and then Leda and Daphne’s room. As expected, the carpet hasn’t been replaced—the gross beige shag persists. The wall to the left is wood paneled, all the way up to the cathedral ceiling. To the right are vertical wood posts that leave the space open, allow a peek into the living room from the stairs. My sisters and I used to have fun weaving in and out of these posts, jumping down onto the landing, until Daphne sprained her ankle and ruined it for us.
The wood paneling is, unfortunately, orange-toned, but the wooden posts are a darker stain, along with the wooden beams that cross the high ceiling.
I hold on to the banister, black wrought iron, not totally ugly but not ideal, and make my way to the top of the stairs. There’s barely any furniture. A beat-up leather couch set in front of the clunky brick fireplace, a round glass dining table with three old cane chairs over by the tacky saloon doors to the kitchen. The table is a relic from our time here. The couch is a relic from the sad back room of some discount furniture store, probably.
The ceiling fan hangs low, big blades like the propellers of a jet. I stare up at it. And I watch as it slowly starts to spin.
I swallow. Something hot and dense squeezes down my throat, landing heavily in my gut. Fear? Dread? The feeling has yet to crystallize, to reach its final form.
The blades travel at a lazy cadence. Did I accidentally hit a switch? Is it just the circulation of air in the house stirring the fan? There’s a breeze coming in from somewhere. It’s here, stroking the back of my neck.
I turn around and walk over to the wood posts, peek down into the foyer. I left the front door open.
I’m tempted to shimmy through the posts and jump down onto the landing for old times’ sake, but I don’t have rubber kid knees anymore, I have prematurely achy former dancer knees, so I go around, down the stairs, and close the door. I listen to make sure I hear it latch, then turn to lean back against it, rest my head, take a moment to think.
The carpet needs to go, needs to be replaced with hardwood or quality vinyl. The brick replaced with tile. The ceiling beams can stay, but the paneling can’t. I could keep it mid-century, incorporate some funky retro accent pieces. Go for a neutral color palette. Use mirrors to make it seem bigger, brighter.
I head downstairs to visit my old bedroom and check out the state of the lower level. It’s dark. I feel around the wall for the light switch. The fixture on the ceiling above me flickers on, the bulb humming.
Every door down here is shut, the framed artwork knocked off the walls, and there are muddy footprints on the carpet.
They lead to my room.
I lean down and run my hands over the footprints. The mud is dried, crusty. They appear to have been left by bulky man boots. Could belong to Roy or the paramedics or the coroner or whatever. No one offered up any other details about Mom’s death, and I don’t really care to know. She had a massive heart attack. She called 911. She died before they got here. Any specifics beyond that aren’t for me; they’re for the kind of morbid weirdos who look at photos of dead celebrities on TMZ or spend their lives on true crime forums obsessing over blood spatter. I’m curious, but not curious like that. Dead is dead.
One thing I do know now, whether I want to or not, is that she clearly died in my room. I follow the footprints there and open the door.
Someone left the light on.
There’s my twin bed, in the corner, with my pink floral sheets. Unmade. The bed is unmade.
“Did she die in my bed?” I ask aloud to no one. It would make sense, why Leda and Daphne and Helen would choose to omit that particular detail.
A squeaking interrupts my train of thought. I pivot, chasing the sound. I listen, but it’s gone. Now I face my double dresser. My closet. The dreaded closet.
My hot pink beanbag chair is opposite the closet, under a lamp that looks like a giant tulip, and there are books and magazines piled up beside it. Pictures I cut out of those magazines are tacked to the walls, along with some drawings I made at school and photos from disposable cameras.
She left it the same. It’s a bug in amber. A time capsule.
The lone window is in a weird spot between the bed and the beanbag chair, too high on the wall inside and too low to the ground outside to let in decent light. It’s covered by a white lace curtain that Mom made from her wedding dress. There’s a matching one in Leda and Daphne’s room upstairs.
I approach the bed, study the impression in the covers, the curve of the sheets, the shape made by her, the shape she left in her absence. If I believed in ghosts, I’d wonder if hers was lying there.
Another squeak.
I whip around, not sure where it’s coming from. I hold my breath. Wait. Stay completely still.
There’s nothing but quiet.
When I turn back toward the bed, I notice there’s a book on the nightstand. One I’ve never read, that never belonged to me when I lived in this house. I pick it up and realize it’s torn along the spine; the binding fragile. There’s no back cover, nothing past page 137. Part of it is missing. I open it, and another page comes loose, fluttering to the floor. It’s falling apart in my hands.
I’m about to look around for the rest of the book when I see it. A flash of writing in blue pen. There’s a handwritten note on the title page.
For my Clio—
My troublemaker. My fireball. May you always be brave.
Don’t ever let anyone extinguish your light.
I hope this helps you understand.
Love forever,
Mom
I trace my fingers over her words. I forgot her perfect handwriting, the beautiful loops of it. I continue to flip through the book gently, careful not to damage what’s left. There are notes on almost every page. She annotated this copy. Annotated it for me. When? This thing is beat to perdition.
Did she leave it here for me to find? Did she know she was about to die?
Squeak!
There’s movement. A flash of fur. I’m screaming before my mind catches up, before my brain comprehends there’s a mouse scurrying across the top of my sneakers.
“Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness!”
I kick my feet and run. Down the hall, up the stairs, to the landing, wishing I hadn’t shut the door only a few minutes ago because now I’m fumbling to get it open, to dash through it and escape mouse house.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the ceiling fan in the living room spinning fast, like it’s caught in a hurricane. I turn toward it, and it stops. Suddenly, all on its own. Unless it wasn’t spinning at all, and I imagined it. Unless I didn’t see what I thought I saw.
I stand staring, arrested by confusion.
A blood-freezing cold grabs me by the back of the neck. Icy fingers press hard into my skin with the promise of bruises. I shake, throw my hands up, spin around. There’s no one, nothing, but it doesn’t matter, because I still feel that terrible chill on my neck and in my bones. Feel little mice crawling all over me, their claws scoring my skin.
What I don’t feel is alone. I don’t feel like I’m alone in the house.
I bolt through the door and pull it shut behind me, lock it with trembling hands.
By the time I get to the car, I’ve managed to take a few deep breaths, steady myself enough to drive. As I go to buckle my seat belt, prepared to speed to Starbucks, then go home and take an infinite hot shower, I find my mother’s book in my hand. I don’t remember it being there a second ago. I don’t remember carrying it out of the house. But here it is, and now I can’t seem to put it down. It sticks to me like it’s covered in glue, like it’s an extension of my hand, my body. Like it belongs.
One visit to the house, and I’m entertaining the possibility that maybe a place can make you crazy.
I open the book.
Demon of Edgewood Drive:
The True Story of a Suburban Haunting
-1-
New Beginnings
I bought the house sight unseen. I needed a place to live, for my three daughters to live, that was close enough to their father, my ex-husband, who had recently purchased an ostentatious brick Colonial in a wealthy town in a notoriously wealthy county. Coming off the divorce, I wasn’t in the best financial position. So it goes. Beggars can’t be choosers.
The house had belonged to an elderly couple who had already moved to a retirement community in Florida. Though I’d come to learn that the couple, who had built the house in 1972, had never lived there full-time. Their story is not mine to tell, but I will say this. Shortly after moving in, a series of family tragedies prevented them from spending more than a few months at a time in the house. Why they waited thirty-plus years to sell it is a question for them, though I suspect you’ll be able to intuit the answer by the end of this book.
