Floating Staircase

CHAPTER EIGHT

Christmas came and went. We celebrated the New Year with Adam’s family at Tequila Mockingbird, Tooey Jones’s pub off Main Street. A heavy snowfall blanketed the town of Westlake that first week of January, and old-timers propped up on stools at Tooey’s bar or at the local barbershop proclaimed this to be the coldest winter they’d seen since they’d been young boys which, by the look of the lot of them, must have been approximately three hundred years ago.

With the exception of a less than reliable heating unit in the basement, the new house gave us little worry. The day after New Year’s, someone from the gas company examined our heating system. After toiling around with the heating unit, the technician said there appeared to be nothing wrong with it. He then examined the thermostat upstairs, which registered at an even sixty-eight degrees. “Could be the thermostat’s busted,” he suggested. “You’ll have to make an appointment to have someone else come out.”

Sales for Water View were good, as were the scatter of reviews my publisher managed to secure on websites and in a variety of print magazines. Yet despite this good news, I tried to avoid contact with my editor, Holly Dreher, because I hadn’t written a single damned thing on the new book since leaving North London. For whatever reason, there was a giant brick wall seated in the epicenter of my brain. However, I knew I couldn’t keep up the chase forever.

During one slate-gray afternoon, with the bare tree limbs shaking with the threat of a storm, my cell phone began to chirp in the kitchen. Its persistent call echoed throughout the empty house. (Beth had whisked Jodie away for an afternoon of shopping in town.) At that very moment I had been staring at a blank notebook page, tapping a ballpoint pen against my wrist. And because God enjoys irony as much as anyone, I knew the call would be from Holly.

Sure enough, snagging my cell phone off the kitchen counter, I recognized the 212 area code: New York. “Hey, Holly.”

“I was beginning to think you died out there, Travis.” The tone of her voice suggested she knew I’d been avoiding her like some virulent disease.

“Nope. I’m still alive and well.”

“I was just making an assumption based on the number of phone messages I’ve left for you that have yet to be returned.” She sighed. I could hear her lighting a cigarette. “How’s the new house?”

“Needs some work.”

“Christ. You’re not tearing down walls or putting up walls or anything like that, are you?”

“No, it’s not that bad.”

“You haven’t answered my last couple e-mails, either.”

“Our Internet connection is spotty at best.” Which wasn’t a lie; we’d had some difficulty. We’d complained to our provider, but they assured us the problem wasn’t on their end. Nevertheless, even if I’d been able to access my e-mail for more than a few fleeting seconds at a time before our connection went dead, I wouldn’t have had the fortitude to check Holly’s messages in the wake of the severe writer’s block I’d been suffering.

“Well, you should get your ass down to the local library, buddy, and let a gal know you’re okay at least. Capisce?”

“Haven’t had much time to explore the town. I don’t even know if there is a library. You know how it is out here in the sticks.”

“God. Don’t remind me. I grew up in Incest, Pennsylvania, remember?”

Outside, the wind grew stronger and rattled the kitchen windowpanes. The house creaked and groaned all around me. It was like being in the belly of a giant fish.

“Had you read those e-mails,” Holly motored on, “you would have found high praise from me on those first few chapters.” Dramatic pause. “I’m anxious to read the rest.”

“Sure,” I said . . . then froze. Movement from the hallway caught my attention. I saw—or thought I saw—a shadow receding down the length of the wall. My bowels clenched, and my heart was suddenly a solid chunk of granite. Covering the phone’s mouthpiece with my hand, I called out Jodie’s name and waited for a response. None came. Anyway, I would have heard the front door open had it been Jodie . . .

“We’re doubling the print run on this one, too,” Holly droned. “At least, that’s what I’m shooting for. But I need you to deliver.”

I crept down the hallway in time to see the basement door at the end of the hall slowly close. The latch catching sounded like someone charging a handgun. I swallowed a hard lump of spit.

“You’re frighteningly contemplative. You’re not going to ask for an extension on this, are you? Because the book is already slated—”

Somehow I found my voice. “No. That’s good news.” The words all but stuck to my throat. I heard the basement steps squeaking as someone descended. Heart pounding like a jackhammer, I approached the basement door.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Holly barked. “You sound completely out of it, man.”

“I’m gonna have to call you back,” I said.

“What is it?”

“I think someone just broke into my house.”

“Travis? Broke into your house?”

“I gotta go.”

“Do you want me to call—”

“I’ll call you back,” I said and hung up. The cell phone was a sweaty block in my hand. I slipped it into my pocket, then opened the basement door. There was a light on down there, one I was positive I hadn’t turned on. And Jodie had not been in the basement at all as far as I could tell. “Hey,” I called, trying my damnedest to sound threatening and failing miserably. “I know you’re there. Come on up and we’ll talk. No need to call the police.”

I stood at the top of the stairs, sweating like a hostage, for what seemed like an eternity. Just as my heartbeat began to regain its normal syncopation, a muted thump followed by a peppering of distant, hollow clacks—pencils falling to the concrete floor?—issued from the basement, causing the sweat to immediately freeze to my flesh. I was about to convince myself that some animal had gotten into the house and was down there scrounging around and raising hell until I saw that the carpeted runner on the stairs held the distinct and undeniable impression of wet footprints.

Invisible hands closed around my neck. All of a sudden, the simple act of breathing became a monumental task. I dug my cell phone out of my pocket and prepared to dial 911 . . . although there was a horrible clenching feeling in the core of my soul that suggested whatever was down here could not be shot by bullets or restrained in handcuffs.

No, a voice countered in the back of my head. That’s stupid. Quit trying to frighten yourself.

I descended the steps with excruciating slowness, the risers groaning beneath my weight. At the bottom of the stairwell, I took a deep breath while counting silently to five, then swung around the wall, exposing myself to whatever might be waiting for me.

The basement was empty. The main room was packed with our orphaned belongings—things we had not yet decided where to put—and the single bulb in the ceiling, which was on, cast shadows in every direction. I stood there holding my breath, waiting to hear another sound in order to pinpoint the exact location of the intruder—a raccoon or possum, surely—but other than the slamming of my own heart, the basement was silent.

Then something caught my eye: something that should not have been there because I’d thrown it away after we’d moved to England. In fact, my memory of throwing it into the trash behind our flat was so crystal clear I could almost feel the fading warmth of the sun on my shoulders and smell the trees off the back lot.

Because it’s not here, I thought. Because I threw it away and it no longer exists.

Nonetheless, I crept over to it, my shadow stretching long and distorted on the far wall. I knelt, still gripping my cell phone, and stared at it.

You need to cast an anchor and hold on to something before you can change direction, the therapist used to say. Then: What is it you’re always writing in those notebooks?

What was splayed out before me on the basement floor, like a bullet fired straight out of the past and into the future, was one of those notebooks. It was opened in the middle, and I recognized my childish handwriting on the pages, the ink smeared in places. These were my words about what happened to Kyle, a subconscious coping mechanism from my disheartened youth (something else the therapist had termed).

I placed one hand on the notebook, as if touching it would shatter the reality of it and send it back in a scatter of fluttering confetti and dazzling disco lights to whatever secondary universe from which it had come. The pages were cold, cold.

Holding my breath, I turned one page and knew what I would find before I was actually staring at it: a faded Polaroid picture of Adam, Kyle, and me standing at the river’s edge in Eastport, our arms slung around each other, Kyle’s short blondish hair contradictory to Adam’s and my own dark furry mops, all of us squinting at the cameraman—our father—whose shadow darkened Kyle’s image in some hideous rendition of prophecy. I’d taped the photo into the notebook on the afternoon my father had driven Adam back to college while an unmentionable and foreboding silence ran like ice water through our house.

I closed the notebook but did not immediately stand. Truth was, my legs had surrendered to the strength of my horror; I could no more trust them to hold me up than I could trust the legs of a scarecrow. Instead, I swiped at my eyes with the heel of one hand, the moisture in them temporarily blurring my vision. And when my vision cleared, I happened to be looking across the room at one of the walls of hammered Sheetrock.

During the first week in the new house and at Jodie’s recommendation, we’d bought a few gallons of semigloss paint and painted the foyer and living room a cool sage color. The whole thing took us the better part of two days, and when we finished, we had about half a gallon left over. I’d hammered the lid back into place, then stashed the paint can in the basement underneath the stairs. The paint can was no longer there; it was on the floor between two pairs of winter skis and an old end table. The lid was on the floor next to the can, the paint-splattered underside facing the ceiling. On the wall, smack in the center of that barren landscape of white Sheetrock, was a tiny, sage-green handprint.

Later and for the rest of the week, as my mind returned to this very moment over and over again, I would come to understand that I knelt on the floor staring at that handprint for no more than ten or fifteen seconds . . . but at the time it seemed like a full hour ticked by with the hypnotizing lethargy of planetary evolution. I was aware of the fibers in my clothes, the heat suddenly radiating off my flesh, the goose bumps that prickled along the base of my neck. Capering before my eyes were the ghostly vinegar amoebas of broken blood vessels. I felt every crease in the musculature of my beating heart, every strand of fiber and sinew that networked throughout my body.

I rose and, on unsteady legs, made my way over to the handprint. I brought two fingers up and touched it: the paint was still tacky, not yet completely dry.

Small: a child’s handprint.

“Who’s down here?” Somehow I managed these words, though they came out shaky and unimpressive. Then, frightening myself further, I muttered, “Kyle?”

There came another faint clacking sound from across the room, startling me straight out of my skin, and I whipped around and practically dropped my ass straight into the open paint can. I rolled onto my side as the paint can skidded out from under me. In slow motion I watched it tip on its side and spin in a semicircle across the floor, leaving behind an arc of sage-green paint on the concrete.

“Christ!” I picked myself off the floor.

The clacking sound continued until it finally concluded in a deep-belly whump: the furnace kicking on.

“Jesus Christ.” I forced a nervous laugh, then went to the sink basin against the wall and turned it on. The pipes clanged and rattled before a gush of freezing water the color of copper came spurting out of the faucet. I thrust my hands beneath the icy water, which made me all the more conscious of the sweat that had broke out on my body. Then I grabbed a roll of paper towels and proceeded to clean up the spilled paint on the floor as best I could. I went through pretty much the entire roll of paper towels and only managed to smear the paint in great magnolia blossoms on the concrete.

Holding the last paper towel, I contemplated wiping the tiny handprint off the wall . . . but in the end, I decided against it. I knew why right away, although it would take me until later that evening to finally admit it: I wanted Jodie to see it and to prove to myself I wasn’t going crazy.

The shrill of my cell phone startled me so badly I nearly had a heart attack. When I answered it and before I could even say hello, Holly’s high-pitched voice erupted over the line: “Travis, are you okay? Should I call the police?”