Floating Staircase

CHAPTER SEVEN

The party at Adam and Beth’s came as a much-needed reprieve from all the work Jodie and I had been doing on the new house throughout the first week. Most of the fixes had been cosmetic—painting walls, repairing broken tiling, fixing the electrical outlets that dangled like loose teeth from the walls—and we ended our first week at 111 Waterview Court dappled in dried paint and with blisters on our fingers.

Jodie fell back into the swing of her graduate program and picked up a teaching internship at the college during winter semester three days a week. Ideally, her absence should have afforded me the perfect opportunity to get some writing done . . . yet truth be told, the writing had stopped coming to me months ago. Admittedly, my writing notebooks were currently overflowing with drawings of cartoon animals humping each other in a vast assortment of acrobatic positions.

Holly Dreher, my editor at Rooms of Glass Books, had started leaving exasperated messages on my cell phone asking about the rest of the chapters I’d promised her. Though I hadn’t checked my e-mail in several days, I was pretty sure my in-box would be filled with her pushy, overanxious messages as well. I still had two months before the official deadline, but at the rate I was going, I was beginning to consider photocopying pages from the latest Stephen King novel and FedExing them to her.

People started to filter into Adam’s house around a quarter to six. The Goldings were the first to arrive. A furtive little couple, they came bundled in woolen earth tones and proffering a small Crock-Pot covered with a tinfoil tent, then spent an unusual amount of time hovering over the small Vinotemp carriage that, this early in the evening, was equipped only with a stack of leftover Christmas napkins and a small plastic vial of toothpicks.

Ten minutes later, a few more couples filed in. Adam selected an Elvis Presley Christmas CD for the stereo, and with the addition of each newcomer, something akin to a party took shape.

“For the most part, everyone here in the neighborhood is tolerable,” Adam said, preparing drinks for his guests. We were alone for the time being in the kitchen. “Of course, as with any town, there are a few individuals that’ll make your skin crawl.” He cut a lime into half-moon wedges and added, “Gary Sanduski, for example. He gets talking about his car dealership, you’ll want to drive a cocktail fork through your brain.”

“Okay. So I’ll need a cocktail fork handy. Check.”

“And the Sandersons. They’re an odd duo. I’d bet a hundred bucks the husband’s gay. He runs an interior decorating company from the house, and his wife’s a mortgage broker or something. Point is, we’re not really friends with everyone here, but Beth wanted to invite the whole goddamn neighborhood. She said it makes for good karma, and, anyway, you should know all your immediate neighbors.” Adam clucked his tongue. “Ever the strategist, my wife.”

The Escobars; the Sturgills; the Copelands; the Denaults; Poans; Lundgards; de Mortases; Father Gregory, the cherubic Catholic priest from Beth’s congregation; barrel-chested Douglas Cordova, my brother’s partner on the police force; Tooey Jones, the owner of Tequila Mockingbird, the tavern Jodie and I had passed while driving through town—my brother’s house magically unfolded into a veritable cornucopia of chambray work shirts and foresters’ boots, of Allegheny colloquialisms packaged in alpine-scented skin.

Many of my new neighbors insisted on having a drink with me. Not wanting to be rude, I was half in the tank by the time most of the men cornered me in Adam’s kitchen. They were all good-natured, overly friendly in a small-town way, and the excessive alcohol made it so I didn’t mind the bombardment. Jodie was occupied in the den with the women, their voices loud and screechy as they filtered down the hallway and into the kitchen nook.

Tooey poured shots into half-pint glasses from a dark-colored, label-less bottle. At first I thought it was liquor—bourbon, maybe—but as it poured I could see a foamy head forming at the surface. A few of the men laughed in unison at something Tooey said, and one even clapped him on the back. Someone tried to pinch one of the glasses, but Tooey playfully slapped him away.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Tooey said, shoving a half-pint glass in my free hand. “Make sure everyone’s got a glass first.”

“How come you didn’t play bartender at my Christmas party, Jones?” one of the men wanted to know.

“Maybe I should have. It certainly would have livened things up.”

Some bullish laughter.

“Come on. Come on,” said another man.

I turned to Adam, who had also been burdened with a glass of the dark, foamy liquid, and whispered, “What is this stuff?”

“Tooey’s Tonic,” he said.

“But what is it?”

“Beer.”

“For real?” I held it up to the light. It was greenish in color, and I could see pebbly particles swimming around near the bottom of the glass. I thought of witches cackling about toil and trouble while stirring a cauldron.

“He changes the recipe almost weekly,” Adam said close to my ear. “Been trying to get a distributor for the stuff for years. His bar’s the only place you can actually buy it.”

“It looks like it should be outlawed,” I said and perhaps a bit too loud, as a few of the men chuckled.

“Green,” Tooey responded, “is the cure for cancer. Green is what makes the world go round-round-round. Green is gold.”

“It’s not easy being green,” I added.

Tooey’s mouth burst open, and a fireball of laughter burst out. It looked forced but wasn’t. He had a wide mouth, with narrow, sunken cheeks, and I could see the landmarks of his fillings from across the kitchen. His clothes—a flannel shirt, suede vest, faded blue jeans—hung off him like clothes draped over a fence post. The only remotely handsome feature was his eyes—small, faded blue, genuine, somber, humane.

“Good one, Shakespeare,” Tooey said. Anyone else calling me Shakespeare would have irritated the hell out of me, but there was an easiness to Tooey Jones—in his eyes, perhaps—that made it sound comfortable and almost endearing, the way old army buddies had nicknames for one another. “But—but— but taste it. Taste it.”

I brought the glass to my lips and took a small swallow. Fought back a wince. “Uh . . .”

Tooey laughed again. “Well?”

“It’s delicious,” I said.

“Come on. Be honest.”

“I’m new here,” I reminded him. “I don’t know if I can. I’m trying to win friends tonight—”

“Come out with it!”

Still grimacing, I said, “It’s horrible. It tastes like motor oil mixed with cough syrup.”

“Ahhhh! So you’re saying I used too much cough syrup?”

“Or too much motor oil,” I suggested.

Following my lead, a few of the braver men tasted Tooey’s Tonic. Mutual grimaces abounded.

“Drink it all, man,” Adam said at my side. He was looking forlornly at his own beverage. “It’s tradition.”

I imagined crazy little Tooey Jones mad-scientisting away in the supplies cellar beneath Tequila Mockingbird, bubbly test tubes and smoking vials suspended by a network of clamps, pulleys, and hooks over his head, concocting his latest brew.

A handful of men who had previously been in the den with the women appeared in the kitchen doorway, strategically after the last of Tooey’s Tonic had been choked down.

Mitchell Denault nodded at me and took a step in my direction. “I don’t want to embarrass you,” he said, a few hometown minions at his back, “but I wanted to get your John Hancock on this.” Like a Vegas mogul displaying a royal flush, he slapped a paperback copy of my latest novel, Water View, on the kitchen counter.

A fellow behind him—Dick Copeland, an attorney—patted the breast pocket of his Oxford shirt for what I assumed was a pen.

“I see Adam’s still trying to weasel his fifteen percent by promoting my work,” I said, gathering up the copy of Water View and opening it to the title page. The pages were pristine and the spine had no creases; I could tell the book had been recently purchased and not read. Dick’s pen finally materialized, and he handed it over to me with the excited impatience of a ten-year-old displaying an honor roll report card. I signed the book and thrust it in the general vicinity of Mitchell, Dick, and their horde of cronies.

By ten o’clock, most of the guests had left. I shook hands and grinned while committing to dinners at houses hosted by people I did not know. Only a few stragglers remained. The women still occupied the den, now talking quietly and in that secretive, whispering way only women have. The few remaining men lingered in the kitchen, picking at the leftover dip and finishing off the hard liquor.

I had drunk way too much; sometime during the night I’d become overwhelmed by the threat of senselessness that accompanied excessive drinking. But it made the more intrusive of the remaining guests more tolerable, and conversation flowed freely toward the end of the night.

I went over to the buffet table to scrounge around at the last of the food, balancing a plate in one hand and a Fordham beer in the other.

A man hovered over the buffet table beside me. He had small, angular features and dark oil-spot eyes swimming behind the lenses of thick, rimless glasses. His eyebrows were like nests of steel wire, and his face was networked with vibrant red blood vessels that betrayed the man’s affinity for drink. I pegged him to be in his midfifties.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” I said, setting my beer down on the buffet table and extending my hand. Even in my simmering state of inebriation, I felt sobriety rush up to greet me. “I’m Travis Glasgow.”

He shook my hand—a slight, effeminate grasp followed by a quick release. A man who did not like to shake hands. “I’m Ira Stein. You and your wife are the newcomers—is that right?”

“Yes. We’ve been here a full week. We were living over in London before Adam told us about the Dentmans’ house coming on the market.”

“Nancy and I are your next-door neighbors. You can just barely see our house without the leaves on the trees.”

“So you guys are the log cabin overlooking the lake,” I said. I recalled the way the smoke from the chimney climbed into the gray sky that day I’d walked north along the edge of the lake. “It’s an amazing view.”

Ira nodded once almost robotically. “It’s very nice, yes.”

“I’m still shocked we got our place so cheap.”

“Well, we’re glad you and your wife . . . ?”

“Jodie.”

“We’re glad you and Jodie moved in. The Dentmans were a peculiar family, as I’m sure you’ve heard. Not to speak ill of those poor people and what happened to them, of course. Nonetheless, they were peculiar.”

“What do you mean? What happened to them?”

“I’m talking about the tragedy. What happened to the boy.”

I shook my head. Fueled by an overconsumption of alcohol, I felt a wry grin break out across my face. “I’m sorry. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“The Dentman boy?” He raised a peppery eyebrow.

“What about him?”

“Oh.” Ira stared at his plate, which was empty except for a few olive pits and a plastic toothpick in the shape of a fencing sword. Then he looked across the room at a frail, amphetamine-thin woman I assumed was his wife, Nancy. She was leaning against the wall and peering into the sunken den where the other women were talking. Ostracized from the group, she could have been a lamp, a decorative statue on an end table.

Nancy turned her head and returned our stare. I thought she would smile but she didn’t.

“What happened to the Dentmans?” I said again.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, waving one hand. “Really. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No,” I said. “What—”

“Really, really,” Ira said and actually stuck out his hand for me to shake.

Perplexed, I didn’t take it right away.

“It was careless. Never mind. It wasn’t my place and I apologize. Travis, it’s good—it’s good to meet you.”

I watched him join his wife against the wall. They talked with their faces very close together, the uniform arcs of their backs and bends of their necks forming, as is occasionally depicted between lovers in cartoons, a crude heart between them.

Jodie bustled by me, burdened with a tray of desserts. “Some shindig,” she crooned without stopping.

I hardly heard her; I was still staring at Ira Stein from across the room.

After everyone had left, Adam and I smoked cigars on the back porch. Surrounded by darkness and the deep sigh of wind through the pines, I never felt farther away from London, from D.C., from all the places I’d always pictured myself living and growing old.

“What happened to the Dentmans?” I asked.

Adam looked sidelong at me, and for a moment I couldn’t tell if he was going to smile or scowl. In the end, he did neither. Adam had always been tough. Somehow, perhaps through some cosmic interference, he had always known what to do, what to say. Now I felt I was getting a firsthand view of a different side of my older brother—the Adam who was just as lost and vulnerable as every other human being who had ever walked the Earth.

“Hey,” I went on, “what’s the big neighborhood secret?”

“I’m assuming someone said something at the party,” he said, turning away from me.

“Ira Stein mentioned it, but he didn’t go into any detail. He seemed embarrassed about bringing it up. What happened?”

“Ira Stein,” my brother muttered under his breath. His tone suggested he did not completely approve of him.

“Come on, man.”

“An old hermit owned your house for like a billion years, long before Beth and I ever moved here. Bernard Dentman. I can’t say anyone in the neighborhood even really knew the guy, although I guess Ira Stein and his wife may have known him better before he’d gotten ill. The Steins have been here for pretty much their whole lives, so they know what goes on behind every door.” Again, that nonspecific tone of disgust.

“When we first moved here, the neighborhood kids used to scare Jacob by saying the old man was really a ghost over two hundred years old and he haunted that house. I finally convinced him that Bernard Dentman was just an old man and nothing more.

“Last year Dentman got sick, and his two grown children moved in with him. David and Veronica.” Adam shrugged. “They were equally as weird. Veronica had a son about Jacob’s age, but none of the kids around here played with him or even saw him except when he’d play in the yard. Elijah was slow and home-schooled. I don’t think he was, you know, retarded or anything like that. Autistic, maybe. Anyway, Veronica and David stayed on at the house and took care of their father until he died.”

Adam sucked on his cigar, then pulled it from his mouth to watch the ember glow red. “Elijah drowned in the lake behind your house last summer. That’s why Veronica and David moved out in such a hurry and why the place was such a steal. I guess it was too hard on them. They needed to get the hell out of there.”

I felt my palms go clammy. I couldn’t speak.

“You probably noticed the floating staircase, the one coming up through the lake.”

I nodded. “What is it?”

“An old fishing pier. A storm came through a few years ago and uprooted it, tossed it on its side. No one ever knew whose pier it was, so no one ever had it removed. Neighborhood kids congregate around it in the summer, dive off it, whatever. Last summer Elijah was out there playing on it.” Again, Adam shrugged. We could have been talking about the weather or the worsening economy. “We worked the investigation and concluded he fell off the staircase, injured his head, and drowned.” His voice had taken on an eerie monotone, as if he were trying hard to sound disinterested in the whole story. “Someone should have been watching him.”

“Christ. Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“Because I didn’t want to ruin this move for you guys. The last thing I wanted to do was burden you with this morbid fucking thing. It’s a nice house, a nice neighborhood. What happened to that little boy is not your cross to carry. And anyway, I know how your mind works.” He sighed and sounded like he could have been one hundred years old.

Again, I thought of our father. I thought of the way he’d beat me with his belt after Kyle’s funeral service, then disappeared into his study where I could hear his great heaving sobs through the closed door.

“What do you mean you know how my mind works?”

“Fuck me.” Adam pulled the cigar from his mouth and examined it as if he’d never seen a cigar before. “Are you really going to make me say it?”

I didn’t need him to say it. I knew the reason he hadn’t told me about Elijah Dentman was because of what had happened to Kyle. It didn’t take a brain surgeon. Nonetheless, I was a irritated at his overprotection. I wasn’t a little goddamn kid anymore. “Do you think I wouldn’t have bought the house if I’d known?”

He looked at me. His eyes were hard and piercing. Sober. “Would you have?”

I shook my head in disappointment and gazed out at the black woods. “Sometimes I think you don’t know me at all.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t.”

“I’m your older brother. It’s my job.”

“Stop doing it.” A thickening silence simmered between us for the length of many heartbeats. “Smells like Christmas,” I said finally, eager to shatter the silence and change the subject. “The air. It’s smoky here.”

“It’s the pines.”

“We used to have a real tree every year in the house at Christmas when we were kids. Remember?”

“Of course.”

“Jodie and I, we started putting up a fake tree every year in London. It became its own tradition. Or some bastardization of tradition, I guess. A fake tree . . .”

Adam chuckled. “We got one now, too.”

“They don’t smell the same.”

“Not like Christmas,” Adam said.

“Not at all,” I said. “Don’t tell Jodie about it, okay? The drowned boy?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You’re right. It’s not our baggage to carry.”

“I’m glad you think so,” he said and put a hand on my shoulder.

Ahead of us, the blackness of night seemed to make up the entire world. For all we knew, at that moment we could have been the only two people on the cold, dark face of the planet.