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14

Wrecking Bar

Don went to sleep that night feeling better than he had for a long time. Embarrassing as it had been to break down like that in front of Sylvie, he knew that it had been a good thing. A wall inside himself had been broken. He could think of Nellie's name again, say it to himself. Something had been given back to him. And because Sylvie had been part of it, there was something between them now. A bond of loss, if loss could bind. He could share this house with her, for the months ahead, because they were no longer strangers.

In the morning, though, with the emotions of the day before faded, he began to think of other things. Bleaker things. Had the sight of his weeping diminished him in Sylvie's eyes? He remembered standing there watching Cindy weep. Touching her as Sylvie had touched him. It had meant the end of his relationship with Cindy. Not that the situations had been analogous. It was the passion that ended between him and Cindy. There had never been any such feeling between him and Sylvie. On the contrary there had been suspicion and hostility and dread. The transformation could only be for the better.

Yet his suspicion grew as he climbed the stairs, heading for the shower, and glanced at the door to her new room. Closed. Getting her own room—that was a victory he had simply handed to her. Now could he ever get her out of there? Why had he done something so foolish? Yesterday, caught up in emotion, he had felt protective, expansive, even grateful to her for her show of kindness. Today, the emotions spent, he could see that he had only complicated things worse. She was still a stranger. But now she was a stranger who was bound to think she had a hold on him. Loneliness had driven him to do foolish things, and now he would have to face the consequences.

Sooner than he imagined, in fact. For once he was showered, ready for the day, his first task was to look for his wrecking bar. He hadn't needed it since he tore out the walls in the room that was now Sylvie's. Which meant it should have been where he always kept it, in the long green toolbox. It wasn't there.

At first he thought perhaps he had put it away somewhere else. But it didn't take long to eliminate all the possibilities. Don was meticulous about putting his tools away. There was no reason to think he had done anything unusual with the wrecking bar.

He didn't want to suspect Sylvie, but what if she had moved it awhile ago, before their reconciliation? It was still annoying that she might have been doing things like that, but at least it wouldn't be a complete repudiation of the kinder, gentler relationship that was established yesterday. He wouldn't hold such a prank against her. As long as she gave the wrecking bar back to him.

He went upstairs and knocked on her door.

"Yes?" Her voice came only faintly through the closed door.

"Have you seen my wrecking bar?"

"Just a minute."

He waited. After a few moments, she opened the door. Wearing her dress, as usual. He wondered if she slept in it. Probably not; it was faded but not terribly wrinkled. So she must sleep in her underwear or in the buff—on bedding that couldn't have been washed more recently than her dress. "Listen," he said, "I'm going to do a laundry today, you want me to take those sheets?"

Her face brightened. "Sure. Thanks."

"Um, I could... that dress. If you wore your bathrobe while I'm gone, I could take that dress and wash it."

She shook her head. "No thanks. Really. It's all right."

"It wouldn't be any trouble. Or I'd get it dry-cleaned."

"I don't... that's kind of you, but I just... it's not dirty."

He didn't bother to argue. "Whatever," he said. "But anyway, what I actually came up here for, I wondered if you knew where my wrecking bar is."

"Wrecking bar?"

"That black metal prybar I used for popping off wallboard. All-purpose breaking and ripping-up tool."

"I don't remember it."

He drew it in the air. "Shaped like this."

"OK, yes, I think I remember. What about it?"

"Where is it?"

"Where did you put it last?"

"I put it away in my long green toolbox."

She gazed steadily at him for a long moment before answering. "Don, you told me not to touch your tools and I don't touch them."

So much for a more forthright relationship between them. "What was it, killer moths? Fairies? Elves?"

She sighed and leaned her head against the doorpost. "Please," she said. "I thought we were friends now."

"So did I. But I need my wrecking bar. I've got to start on another room. Tearing out a stud wall and stripping the old lath and plaster."

"I'll be glad to help you look, as long as we don't start from the assumption that I know where it is but I'm just not telling you. Because I don't know. If I knew, I'd tell."

Don turned away from her, exasperated, then turned back. "All right, play it how you want. Help me look for it. Just remember that I really need it. This isn't the only room I have to finish."

"Now that my room's done, what do I care?" she said. And then, because he no doubt looked outraged, she reached out and touched him lightly on the arm. "A joke, Don. That was a joke."

"Please, just... help me look."

"OK," she said. "Let me guess. You want to search in my room first."

"Why not?" he said. "We're already here."

She led the way, opening the closet, making a show of looking in ludicrous places, like the light fixtures and the Venetian blinds. "Not here. Not here. Not here."

"OK, so you're offended," Don finally said. "But the wrecking bar didn't just walk off, somebody had to move it."

"Why is that? What makes you so sure of that?"

"So sure of what?" For a moment he had no idea what she was asking him.

"That somebody had to move that wrecking bar?"

"Because objects made of solid metal don't move unless something moves them."

"Something."

Now it dawned on him. "Oh, some supernatural force did it. The house did it."

The sarcasm stung her. "I don't care what you believe. Why should I help you look? If I'm the one who finds it, you'll assume I put it there."

"Put it where?"

"Where I find it. If I find it. Promise you won't accuse me of that."

"I promise."

"I don't believe you." She wasn't joking. But then, neither was he.

"I just want my wrecking bar!"

"And I want to be trusted."

He thought of a lot of rejoinders that would have made him feel a little better while making the situation quite a bit worse. Instead he answered, quietly, "Please help me look for my wrecking bar."

"If I find it," she said, "it will be because I've lived in this house long enough to know where stuff collects."

"Collects?"

"Where it drifts to. Lost stuff."

"This isn't a lake. Things don't drift."

"Then we won't find the wrecking bar in any of those places." She sounded amused, but her eyes were on fire.

"This is worthless," said Don. "I'll just hunt for it alone."

"Do you want my help or not?"

"I want my wrecking bar. If you can help me find it, please do. Otherwise, stay here with your bizarre fantasy life. It's done you so much good up to now."

He headed out of the room.

She called after him. "Maybe you better make sure you know what reality is before you start talking about my fantasies!"

He kept walking, into the hall, down the stairs.

"How do you know you didn't just put it somewhere yourself and forgot where?"

That was too much. "Because I always put my tools away."

"Always?" She was standing in the hall, leaning over the banister to look down at him on the stairs.

"Always."

"Your mom must have loved raising you. All of Don's little toys put neatly away. A place for everything and everything in its place."

"Exactly," said Don. He headed back into the parlor and began rummaging through all his toolboxes again. He heard her coming down the stairs. If he turned around, he knew he would see her leaning against the doorframe, her arm flung up high, like a dancer, like a drawing from the flapper era. Oh, wait, it's the Weird sisters who were flappers. Sylvie is from the eighties. Got to keep my insane women straight.

He had to look. And yes, there she was, leaning on the doorframe, her arm up over her head, stretched along the white-painted wood. Then she bent her arm at the elbow and it arched over her head like a dancer's or a skater's. The image of grace.

"I thought you said the wrecking bar wasn't in your toolboxes."

"I already looked," said Don. "So I'll look again."

"Unbelievable."

"What?"

"That you actually have enough self-doubt to check. I thought you were above such weakness."

"What exactly have I done to you that I deserve to be mocked? Did you think I was the kind of guy who'd accuse you before I checked up on myself? The back of my head is still tender from the time you moved the workbench, but I'm not supposed to wonder if you touched my wrecking bar?"

Her face darkened. She ducked away from the door. He took a few steps after her. "That's right, hide from me, that's mature of you. Don't face up to anything. Isn't that what your life in this house is all about? Hiding!"

When he got to the entry, he saw her leaning against the other doorjamb, the one leading into the apartment on the other side of the stairs. Only this time it wasn't in that carefree, graceful pose. She was facing the wall, her face turned down, the top of her head in full contact with the wood, her body angling away. Like a goat charging. As if she were trying to push her head into the wall.

"There's maybe something in the cupboard in the kitchen," she said. "Far right, up high in the back corner. The cupboard over the fridge space."

"Which kitchen?"

"Lissy's and my kitchen. The one with the big table."

Don strode down the narrow hall to the kitchen at the back of the house. The top shelf of the cupboard was up high, and because it was over the refrigerator gap, there was no counter under it. Don had to stand on the counter next to the gap and lean over, holding onto the cupboards, and even then he had a hard time reaching in. How did she know what was up here? More to the point, how did she get it here?

He got down and pulled the heavy table over to the counter. It was hard to move and it scraped noisily on the floor. Once he was standing on the table, there was no need for leaning. He could reach right in, could look in.

No wrecking bar. But there were several boxes of nails and screws. The Lowe's price tags were still on them. He got them down, set them on the table, then opened them up. Each one was filled with a confusing assortment of all kinds of hardware, including a lot of old nails and screws that Don had taken out of the walls. What infuriated him, though, was the number of shiny new screws and nails that had obviously been pilfered from his supplies in the parlor.

"Sylvie!" he called.

From the door of the kitchen she answered softly. "It wasn't there?"

"What are these doing here?" he demanded. "What is this?"

She came over, peered in the boxes. "A nail and screw collection?"

He wanted to scream at her, but he kept his voice low. "Is this a joke?"

"I don't know," she said. "Is it funny?"

He held up a bent nail with plaster still clinging to it. "What did you expect to do with this?"

"I thought you threw all of those away," she said.

"You didn't scavenge this and hide it away?" he said sarcastically.

"Why do you bother asking, when you know the answer and you also know you don't intend to believe it?" Her face was sullen now. Defeated.

Well, he was pretty near defeated, too. "Sylvie, where's the damn wrecking bar?"

Her answer was a whisper. "I don't know. There are some places I can't see."

"So tell me the places you can't see and I'll look there."

She turned her face to the wall to hide from his wrath. Touched her forehead to the wall. "The old furnace," she whispered.

"I've got to get inside that?"

"Behind it," she said.

"Why couldn't we just have started with this?"

No answer. She just stood there, looking beaten. Well, she had been beaten, hadn't she? Though truth to tell he had no idea what the game had been.

Don clattered his way down the basement stairs. "I don't like wild goose chases," he said, not loudly, because she looked too defeated for him to want to rub it in; but not softly, either, because he was really annoyed.

He hadn't brought a flashlight, and of course the worklight didn't cast anything but black shadow behind the old furnace. He'd have to go back up. But when he turned, there she was, standing on the bottom step, clinging to the two-by-four banister as if it were the only thing standing between her and disaster. He didn't want to go near her right now. If the wrecking bar was behind the furnace he could find it by feel. He stepped into the darkness. And sure enough, the moment he disturbed any of the rubble, he heard the clang of metal on stone. Or stone on metal. Unfortunately, some of the rubble fell on top of it, so he had to do some rummaging, but at last he got the wrecking bar out.

Now he was filthy with clammy dust. Whoever stacked the rubble did a lousy job. It hadn't taken anything at all to dislodge the pile and tumble enough of it down that it was spilling out around the furnace on both sides. The gap at the top must be bigger now, though he couldn't see it in the darkness. One thing for sure: He couldn't ignore the tunnel forever. If he wanted it sealed off, he'd have to remove the rubble and build a proper masonry wall.

Well, that wasn't the job for today. He had the wrecking bar. He was going to take out a wall. And man, would it feel good to hack into the lath and plaster. He was in the mood for some serious hacking.

When she saw him come out with the wrecking bar, Sylvie visibly relaxed. "Oh, good. You found it."

"Why couldn't you just tell me in the first place?"

She turned away and started up the stairs. "I knew you'd accuse me if I helped."

"Or better yet," he said, "why didn't you just leave it where it was?"

She stopped on the stairs, her head hidden now by the ceiling. "I didn't take it. And if I did, I wouldn't have put it there."

"You have better hiding places?"

She sank down and sat glumly on the landing. Now he could see her face again. She looked really upset. "I don't go there."

"Why? It's nothing. The old ladies next door said it was a rum runner's tunnel. They said this place used to be a bordello." He slapped the wrecking bar against the palm of his other hand. It felt good to have it in his hands.

"How interesting," said Sylvie, not sounding interested. "A tunnel. Who would have guessed it."

"Sylvie, what is it with you? Why can't you just say you're sorry you hid my wrecking bar and you won't do it again?"

She looked up at him with anger in her eyes. "When I do something wrong, I say I'm sorry."

In disgust, Don pushed past her to go up the stairs. "Then I guess you must have done this just right." A few steps above her, he stopped and turned. "Aren't you a little old to be playing the bratty little sister?"

"I'm nobody's sister!"

He continued up the stairs. He heard her calling after him. "I'm not your daughter! I'm not your sister! I'm not your anything!"

Time to get rid of the wall separating the stairs from the south parlor. This one had been built earlier than the other dividers in the house. Probably dated from the twenties, from the bordello days. So it wasn't a stud wall, it was as thick as the wall on the other side, with the same kind of molding. And it wouldn't be drywall, it would be lath and plaster. A messy job, but he was already filthy from the dirt behind the furnace.

He swung the wrecking bar and it went deep into the wall. He pulled it away, and laths gave way and chipped out like broken ribs, with plaster dust flying back into his face. He ought to have his safety glasses on, but he was too mad and it felt too good to be tearing at something. He took another swing at a spot about a foot over, but this time the bar rang against thick hard wood. It surprised him, to find a timber only three feet from the end of the wall. Nobody put vertical posts that close together, not even in bearing walls. He moved farther over, swung again, and this time a huge chunk of plaster gave way and shattered onto the floor. The laths behind it were easy now to pry away from the timbers. Sure enough, it looked as though there were heavy timbers every three feet. Ludicrous. What were they thinking?

"What are you doing!" cried Sylvie. She stood in the doorway, panic on her face.

"What does it look like?"

"You can't tear down that wall! It's the... it's the spine of the house!"

"Look, Sylvie, it's a nothing wall. See how the front door is off-center to the house? That's so the load-bearing wall can run right down the middle of the house and hold the floor joists for the second story. This wall isn't holding anything up, it was just added so they could put a door between the entry and this apartment. Or maybe so they could get customers up the stairs to the prostitutes without everybody in the parlor seeing them."

"You're wrong," said Sylvie. "It's holding everything up! If you break that, you'll—you'll paralyze the house, you'll—"

"You ought to give lessons to those loons next door," said Don. His patience was gone. "This is a house, not a person." He tore out another lath.

Sylvie ran over and gripped one of the thick vertical timbers. "Feel this! Can't you feel the tension in it? It's holding up the whole weight of the house. It's trembling under the weight."

"The engineer said the other one was the—"

"He didn't look, he assumed. Like you did." She touched one timber after another; four of them were exposed now, at his shoulder height, so she had to reach up to touch them. "So many of them. Why would they put in so many timbers? Like the masts of the ship. Why would they put them in if they weren't holding up the house?"

She was right. It made no sense. And Jay Placer hadn't actually inspected the walls. He just pronounced the north wall to be the load-bearing one and that was that.

Well, there was one way to be sure. Don walked past her, grabbed a flashlight out of the north parlor, and soon was back down in the basement. This time, though, his attention was to the east. The basement was under the back half of the house; the front half had only a crawlspace, and it wasn't easy finding a place to get over the masonry foundation and up under the front of the house. When he did, he regretted it. This was spiderweb country, and all the crawling things that had lost their homes under the carpets in the old house had apparently moved down here. It would take a couple of showers before he felt clean again. But this was part of the job. You didn't rebuild a house without getting filthy and disgusted.

Once he got to the place, it was obvious. The heavy timbers from the south wall were the ones that came down to stand on a foundation of huge cut stones, a row of masts, just like Sylvie said. A bed of stone like the shoulders of the earth. Whoever built this thing understood the terrible strains he was putting on that way-off-center wall, and he made sure the foundation was up to the task. Eight posts, but not evenly spaced. The first one was set back far enough from the front of the house to allow for the entryway. Then there were four posts, three feet apart. The other four were spaced at a more normal but still extra-sturdy six feet. Then, just before the crawlspace opened up into the basement, the whole load-bearing foundation shifted over to the exact center of the house. Well behind the stairs, Don realized. But back here apparently there was no need for the extra-long and extra-heavy floor joists.

Don crawled back out. Once he was out in the basement, he tried to brush away all the webs on his skin, but he couldn't wipe away that creepy feeling. His own dripping sweat felt like insects crawling on him. Get a grip, he told himself.

On the way back up the stairs Don realized how close he had come to stripping out the backbone of the house. If he had cut through those timbers, the whole thing would have come crashing down around his ears. He should have realized it the moment he saw how closely the timbers were spaced. If he hadn't been so angry, if he hadn't been so eager to sink that black iron tooth into the house, he would have stopped and thought about it and checked it out.

And he would have realized it anyway, eventually. Using the skillsaw, he would have felt the tension in the timbers. Wouldn't he? He would have sensed that these were load-bearing posts.

Or maybe not. The one certain thing was that she had sensed it.

He set the flashlight aside and walked back into the south parlor to retrieve his wrecking bar. She was still there in the room, but in the far southeast corner, sitting small against the bare walls. He said nothing to her. She said nothing to him. He took the wrecking bar out of the room. That was a clear enough message about what he had found.

He pulled his stuff away from the wall that he had thought was load-bearing, pulled his bed out of the way, too. Didn't want plaster dust where he had to sleep. When he had a good fifteen feet clear, he swung at the wall. He still expected lath and plaster. But no, the bar bit into wallboard. And when he had pulled enough of it away, he could see that this false wall had been built a good eight inches away from the stairway. This was what had fooled him and Jay Placer both—it made the wall look as thick as the bearing wall on the other side of the stairs. No, thicker. But why? Since the wall ran right up the stairs, it meant using twice the materials to build this wall as were needed. Why leave the gap?

Because there was something there, that's why. Don got the flashlight again and shone it through the hole he had made. And gasped. Because now he could see the face of the stairway. It was polished walnut, deeply and delicately carved. Pillars about two feet high, stepping up the stringer, and behind them, in deep recesses, beautifully carved classical figures, sculpted to suggest Italian Renaissance paintings. Venus on the half-shell, or whatever it was called. Adam reaching to pull God's finger. All the jokes from college art appreciation class came back to him. Only this was no joke. This was a million-dollar staircase. This was the treasure of the house. And even though some landlord was stupid enough to cover it, at least he wasn't so callous, so barbarian that he let anybody nail directly to this masterwork. He had boxed it in, kept it from being touched. He must have known that someday this house wouldn't be a cut-up rental. Someday it would be a house again, and this stairway would be the walnut jewel in its crown.

There was no more swinging of the wrecking bar. Don worked very carefully, prying away wall-board, pulling out nails. No skillsaw and sledgehammer this time—he took each stud out of the false wall one at a time, then worked his way up the stairs, removing the wall on the other side, which was seated on the steps rather than touching the carved stringer. He should have seen that too, how the banister could not be the original, how the box around the stairwell had been extended inward by four inches, how the cheap molding could not have been the original. Why hadn't he seen it?

Because it was pretty well done, that's why. And he wasn't looking for it. This was where the bearing wall should be, so a bearing wall is what he saw.

But she had known.

"Sylvie," he called. "Sylvie."

He heard her padding across the floor in the other parlor. Coming through the entry. Then she was in the north parlor. He pointed to the beautifully carved stringer. To the polished wooden bench around the walls of the alcove under the stairs. She touched the pillars, looked in at the figures behind them. "You," she said to each one. "You."

She had seen all she could see at her height. "Want a boost to see the rest?" he asked.

She nodded. He knelt down under her, got her sitting on one shoulder, and stood up. She was so light. So small. Like a child. "You," she was saying. "Hiding here all this time." To help her see the last ones, he gripped her thighs and got her standing on his shoulders like an acrobat. Not dangerous, because she was leaning for balance against the stairway. When she said to, he took another step, another step, sidling along in front of the alcove, until she had seen all the carvings. Fourteen-foot ceilings. An extravagance, Don had thought. Useless, meaningless in rooms this size. But now, as he helped Sylvie glide along the stairs until she was bent over enough that he could hoist her down, he began to wonder about the rest of the room. It made no sense, it had never made sense, for the ceilings to be so high down here. This stairway now ruled the room. It was beautiful, but it was also too much for a room this size, just as the ceiling was too high. Nothing else in the house was so badly out of proportion. What was the builder doing?

Sylvie couldn't take her hands off the wood. She walked around under the stairs now, into the alcove. She sat on the wooden bench, slid along it like a child trying out every possible place to sit. Then she swung her legs up onto the seat and gripped her knees.

Exactly the pose that he had seen Cindy take, there on the untouched couch in her living room.

"I dreamed about this place," said Sylvie softly. "And candles everywhere." She reached up and touched the sloping underside of the staircase. Don stepped into the alcove behind her and saw that set into the wide expanse of walnut was a painting, one that could only be seen by someone sitting in the alcove. A double portrait. A man and a woman. Youngish but not young. The style of the painting made it of the era of Gainsborough. Or at least in imitation of that period. Sentimentalized. But Don knew, looking into the eyes of the woman, that it was for love of her that this house was built. And looking at the man, whose eyes were turned to look at the woman, Don knew that he was the builder. "Dr. Bellamy, isn't it?"

"And they left it here," she said. "Even when it was a whorehouse. That was an awful thing to do, to make them watch what their house had become."

"But it would have been worse to tear them out of it," said Don.

"I guess."

"And the whorehouse was upstairs. Down here it was just a speakeasy."

"I wonder if my father loved my mother like that," she said.

"Nobody ever knows the truth about their mother and father. What they really felt. Easier to see Elvis than to know your parents' hearts."

She chuckled. He liked that low chuckle.

She laughed, a cascade of mirth like water over mossy stone. He liked that, too.

"How do you know this stuff?" asked Don.

"What stuff?"

"How did you know that was the bearing wall?"

"Live here long enough, you get a feel for the house," she said.

But that wasn't it. He knew now. The Weird sisters were right. You could get caught by this house. It could hold you. That's why Sylvie was here. The house had her and she couldn't get away. But in return, the house talked to her. The house revealed itself to her. She knew where everything was. She didn't put it there, she just saw it.

I'm falling into their madness, thought Don. I'm getting caught myself, but not by the house.

Then he laughed at himself. "Why am I so certain of my doubt?"

"What?" she said.

"Why is doubt the one thing we're never skeptical of? We question other people's beliefs, and the more sure they are the more we doubt them. But it never occurs to us to doubt our own doubt. Question our questions. We think our questions are answers."

"We?"

"Me. I. I think that. I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For thinking you were crazy."

"Don't apologize for that." She smiled wryly.

"For what then?"

"For thinking I was lying."

"I'm sorry."

"You're welcome." She giggled. "Or whatever I'm supposed to say."

Sitting there beside her in the alcove, the painting above their heads, he suddenly wanted her to lean back against him.

Instead she swung her legs off the bench and turned to face him. "I think I am crazy, Don. I think I really am."

He shook his head. "Like that makes you different from the rest of us."

She buried her face in her hands. "You like me now, don't you, Don."

"Yes."

"Because I stopped you from wrecking the house."

"No. I liked you a long time before that. Now is just when I could admit it to myself."

"But you shouldn't," she said. "You shouldn't like me."

"Oh, right. OK. Whatever."

She laughed a little. But maybe it wasn't a laugh.

"If you knew what I did. What I've done. You wouldn't like me."

He could feel it coming. Another confession. Like Cindy's.

"Well then don't tell me," he said. "I don't want to know."

"I don't want to tell you."

"So don't, then! Why do people have to confess things? I'm not a priest! I'm just a guy with an incredibly screwed-up life who's trying to maybe fix it up into something, and every time I turn around somebody's laying their own screwups on me, and I don't want to hear it!"

She was starting to cry. Dammit, he didn't want to make her cry.

"Look, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't believe you before. I'm sorry you've been shut up in this place for—ten years? Why did you stay here for ten years? You had everything going for you. A degree. A job. Providence, right? It was a job you wanted, right?"

She nodded.

"But here you are. What is this, then? Penance? What crime did you commit that was so terrible you should be put away for ten years? In solitary confinement, it's a miracle you didn't go crazy. In this house, prowling around, letting it get under your skin, letting it get into you. What did you do that deserves this?"

In reply, she bent over and buried her face in her hands and wept.

"Your turn now," he whispered. "First me, now you." The family that cries together... what? Dies together? Fries together? Lies together? He shook the thought out of his mind. We're not a family. We're the opposite of a family. We're people so lonely that when we're together we make a black hole of loneliness and everything else gets sucked down into it and is never seen again.

Black hole.

He thought of the tunnel under the house. The one thing she didn't know about. The one place she couldn't see.