House Wrecking Read online

  Peter bristled inside his tight suit, which Sarah noted needed further letting out again. “I don’t believe such a gesture is necessary.” He picked up the paper again.

  Silence enveloped the room.

  “I don’t see any harm in it. They used to be friends,” Alice said.

  Sarah gave her a quick nod.

  Peter’s face reddened and he folded the newspaper with deliberate creases.

  The women kept very still.

  “Fine. But you’ll keep quiet. It’s a business meeting,” he announced.

  Sarah smiled and leaped to embrace him. She wrapped her olive arms around his plump flesh and planted a kiss on the loose skin of his cheek.

  He stroked his fingers over her cheek. Sarah caught the disgusted expression on Alice’s face.

  “Thank you Father.” She left the dining room and ran up the grand mahogany staircase two stairs at time. At her writing desk, she took out the case with her fountain pen, unscrewed the hollow barrel and inserted the ink with the kit’s eye dropper, careful not to spill on her yellow dress. She finished her note to Charles, asking him to call on her before returning to New Haven.

  Later she took a walk with Kate and Abby, and passed two young women pushing baby buggies. Her friends ogled over the infants, but Sarah hung back. What would it be like to be a normal young woman who pushed her baby in a buggy? What if the baby were a product of the love of a husband who called her darling, who held her in his arms and gave her his coat? Sarah would call him sweetheart and they would name the baby after his mother or father, who would welcome her into the family as if she were their child. She and her husband would work in the garden together on the weekends and the baby would play in the dirt close by. They’d laugh when the baby ate dirt, washing his hands and face. They’d look at him and agree how grand it was to have each other and this beautiful child. In the evening, his professor parents would join them for dinner. They would drink wine and talk about politics and art and other topics of learned people.

  Kate and Abby distracted her with their banter about what they might name their own babies, saving Sarah from the conclusion of her train of thoughts - that she would never be capable of having an intimate relationship with this imaginary husband or any other. She wouldn’t have the well-loved child, or the loving, scholarly in-laws. What would she have but the incestuous child now growing inside her?

  When she got home, these thoughts got tangled up with the others buzzing in her head until she took out her well-worn copy of the Adventures of Alice in Wonderland. She opened the book and traced her finger along a piece of metal, the rusty nail and three shards of glass. One of the pieces was brown, one clear, but she liked the green one best. She chose this one, encrusted with blood from prior use, to help her mixed-up thoughts to rest.

  At eight o’clock that evening Peter and Sarah Prescott knocked on the door of the farmhouse. Charles showed them into the front parlor crowded with Aunt Rosemary’s furniture. Sarah watched Charles eye her father - a beefy man with a fleshy, dark-toned face and too much black hair spilling from his bushy eyebrows. The seams of his suit and white shirt strained as he sat and looked to at the mahogany tables to his right and left, thick with doilies and china figurines of birds, before he pulled papers from his case.

  “Charles, I’m not sure you’re aware that your Aunt Rosemary was a wealthy woman. The farmland she sold off was fertile and fetched a good price and she’d invested her earnings. She came to me after you first arrived and wrote a will naming you the sole heir to her estate. This house and all its belongings, including the paintings and sculptures, are yours. She also has rare pieces of jewelry, silver, and china, all of which now belong to you. The general store is yours as well.”

  Charles eyes opened wide.

  Mr. Prescott reached into his bag and withdrew more papers for Charles to sign. “Well, if there is nothing further…”

  “I’ll see you to the door.” Charles led him outside.

  Peter shifted his satchel from one hand to the other. “Charles, take this money and make a life for yourself. I can assist you with the sale of this house and the store. There’s not much here in Colebrook for a young lad like you. I’m sure you plan on going back to New Haven. You know where my office is.” Without waiting for a response, he stepped out the door and Sarah followed.

  Sarah could feel Charles eyes on them as she and Peter headed away from the farmhouse toward town. When she heard the door close behind them, she imagined Charles mounting the stairs, switching the candle in its holder to his left hand so he could open the note she’d slipped to him on her way out.

  Baxter

  In her half asleep state, Lauren tried to make sense of the conversation Jeff was having on the phone. They had spent the entire day and most of the night at Yale New Haven Hospital emergency room with Claire before she was discharged with pain medication and a sling supporting her sprained shoulder. It seemed like she had just fallen asleep when the call interrupted an important dream that was now fading away into wakefulness - something about a boy.

  “That was the group home,” Jeff said, handing her the receiver to hang up. “Baxter hung himself in the stairwell.”

  “Oh my God Jeff, I’m so sorry.”

  “I can’t believe he went through with it. He’d threatened so often, no one took him seriously anymore.”

  As a nurse practitioner, Lauren had been educated to take all suicide threats seriously; as a psychiatrist, wouldn’t he, also? But she kept her judgment to herself. “How could you have known?” she said instead. “He’d threatened it many times.”

  “I know, I saw him this afternoon and he said he was going to do it, but I didn’t believe him. I didn’t think he had it in him, but maybe I missed something this time…I have to call his parents.”

  Jeff returned to bed as the sun came up over the early October morning in New Haven. Lauren considered inquiring about the call, or saying something supportive, but she couldn’t quite come up with the words. When she heard Jeff’s breath become steady, she slipped out of bed, grabbing her book and glasses, she closed the door behind her. Downstairs, she lit the logs in the kitchen woodstove, poured herself a cup of coffee and settled onto the easy chair in front. As predicted, the house was a nightmare to heat, but the woodstove warmed the kitchen area and they spent much of their time there.

  She put her feet up on ottoman and opened her book, but amidst the written words, all she could see was that Jeff shouldn’t have let this happen.

  Last night Jeff had told her that when Baxter, his intellectually disabled client, came for his session yesterday afternoon, he appeared more depressed than usual. In their hour together, Baxter had rambled on about the daily slights that irritated him. David had let a girl sit in Baxter’s chair during breakfast instead of holding it for him. They kicked him out of McDonalds after an hour and a half of him not buying anything. Robert made him re-wash all the pans because he said there was food stuck on them. Lauren asked him what he suggested, but Jeff responded that Baxter was incapable of change. At the end of the session, when Baxter said once again, that no one cared if he died. Jeff replied, “Baxter, you know that’s not true.”

  Lauren knew that Jeff didn’t like his job. He was bored listening to other people’s problems, and frustrated with the futility of a practice within which few of his patients followed his repeated advice and all he ended up doing at the end of the day was prescribing medications to make them better husbands or wives, mothers or fathers. He complained so much about his job, she was tired of hearing about it. If he didn’t like his job, he should get another one. But he never would, Jeff would never change either. In some ways, he and Baxter were very much alike.

  Perfect Plan

  Sarah’s pervasive interest in the days following Charles’s return focused on exactly when he might call for her. She’d waited, poised at the window the entire next day for his arrival, only to become incensed at his inconsideration. How could he be so thoughtles
s as to keep her waiting? Anger had an insomniac effect and kept her raging through most of the night. At three o’clock in the morning she allowed for the possibility that Charles could be occupied with his Aunt’s estate. Three days later Charles finally called. Readied each day for him, she wore a pale pink silk gown and matching pink silk boots. Had one more day passed, Sarah would’ve had to find another dress. On this day, Jane had fixed her hair in loose tendrils over the gown’s sweetheart neckline.

  Their butler James ushered Charles to the center of the grand entry hall, its appearance rounded by the odd angling of walls and doors. The mahogany staircase curved out at its base and stretched along the west wall, narrowing and straightening under the round window that let in the afternoon sun. The stairs were covered in a thick wine-colored carpet to soften the steps of anyone who trod on them. In the hall, a strong, dark table stood in the center with a vase of fresh flowers and a tray for receiving calling cards that never came. Charles, whose height made him appear taller in other rooms, appeared lost in the ill-fitting suit he’d donned for the occasion. Sarah stifled a giggle as she noted from behind an upstairs corner how the dark fabric drooped off his shoulders and onto his farm boots. The stale smell of years of storage emanated from Charles all the way up the stairs.

  “I’ll tell Miss Sarah you’re here. Please have a seat.” James gestured toward two Chippendale chairs upholstered in a complementary rose pattern opposite the staircase.

  Sarah dashed back to her room. She forced herself to wait another five minutes before she proceeded down the stairs and across the dark paneled entryway to greet Charles. His smile, though awkward, pleased her.

  “Hello Charles. Please join me in the parlor.” She led him in and closed the door, which she’d pre-locked earlier in the week and checked obsessively. The mid-September sun shined through the windows, leaving a spotlight across the sofa, as if pre-arranged for her performance – they sat.

  “Thank you for coming. I wanted to tell you how sorry I was to hear about your aunt.”

  “Thank you.”

  In her calculations leading to this day, Sarah hadn’t quite considered the need for conversation in her scheme. She faltered a moment before she found more words. “She was quite a treasure around these parts.”

  “Yes, she was.”

  Another uncomfortable pause presented before Sarah could think up what next to say. “How is New Haven?”

  “Oh, very nice. Thank you for asking.”

  Oh for God’s sake, Sarah thought. “Will you return there soon?”

  “I work in the steel mill now and they’re expecting me back in another week or two, but the City needs a new grocery. I have experience in running a store now and a little money, and I thought I would give it a try,” Charles said.

  Sarah expected him to go on, but he said nothing further. The silence in the room made her uncomfortable and she noticed how his feet seemed to tremble.

  “You have a lovely home,” Charles said.

  “Thank you.” In the years she’d known him, she’d never invited him or any of their other friends to her house. “It’s been in my mother’s family for years. There’s a portrait of her father over there. Come see.”

  Charles followed Sarah to the portrait and she stepped in front of him, gesturing. “If you look there, you’ll see I look like him.” She took a stride backwards and stepped right into Charles.

  He grabbed her around the waist and she grabbed his hands in mock alarm.

  “Oh my goodness, forgive me. I’m so clumsy.” She tightened her hands on his and pressed her backside into his groin. She pressed lightly at first, checking his response. It took only a moment before she felt his penis stiffen against her. She pressed closer, enjoying her power.

  Now confident, she moved away, taking his left hand firmly in her right. “Perhaps we should sit down.”

  “Yes,” Charles said.

  Once seated, Sarah saw Charles’s customary blush spread up his neck and across his pale cheeks. Poor boy, she thought with wicked glee.

  With what appeared to be all the courage he could muster to compose himself, Charles said. “Sarah, I don’t mind saying that I often have a strange emotion for you – especially when you’re in my presence, as you are now.”

  “And I for you, Charles.”

  She waited for Charles to show some sign of affection, but he seemed content to sit woodenly by her side. Sarah twisted around to look him full in the face. She leaned in and delivered a kiss on his lips.

  Charles wrapped his arms around her and held her to him, kissing her sloppily.

  Sarah tensed with his unexpected embrace, but she forced herself to relax and finish the task she’d set out to do. Wrapped in his arms with their lips locked together, she moved on top and straddled him. She’d already removed her knickers, so only the thin cloth of his trousers lay between her and his erect penis. With practiced deftness she reached inside his trousers, freed his penis and put it inside her.

  Charles eyes opened wide. He stopped kissing her, mute.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered, leaning into him.

  Charles buried his head in her neck and moved inside her, once, twice, three times.

  As Sarah heard his sigh of release, she noted that the curtains drawn behind the sofa needed dusting. She wondered whether she might have time to read a few more pages of Northanger Abbey before dinner.

  Charles remained paralyzed in the minutes following his climax, then examined his cock before tucking it back into his trousers, like he’d expected some transformation, but to his disappointment it appeared unchanged. He leaned his long torso forward and cupped his face in his hands.

  “Sarah, I am so sorry,” he began.

  Sarah held up a finger to her lips. “It’s alright Charles. We’ll keep this our secret, but my father will be coming home from his office. Perhaps it might be best if you took your leave.”

  “Yes, of course. It’s just…”

  “Shhh,” she said, holding up her finger again to her lip and leading him out the door.

  “Sarah, I think we should…”

  She shook her head and shut the door behind him. A self-satisfied smile spread across her face. The unexpected gift of Charles’s guilty conscience had been a lovely addition to her plan. Now she needed to wait, but for how long? Time was of the essence. She’d already missed one period, perhaps two. She didn’t have the luxury of time. She would give it a week. Everyone knew that one week was an insufficient amount of time to determine a pregnancy, but Charles was such a dimwit, he wouldn’t know this, and she would make sure he didn’t ask anyone.

  Sarah shivered away the feeling of Charles’s thin penis inside her. She’d barely felt it there; nothing compared to the enormousness that usually filled her. No - nothing at all, she decided.

  Beginning the End

  On the day after Baxter’s death, Jeff cancelled his clients. Throughout the morning Lauren called him three times between patients to see how he was doing. When he didn’t answer, she returned to check on him during her lunch hour. In their bedroom, Jeff’s sleeping form lay half-wrapped in a sheet. His hairy foot with the one toe too long hung off the edge of the bed. An empty Bud Light bottle stood on his bedside table. The smell of dirty hair mixed with stale alcohol disgusted her and she crossed the room to give him a shake. “Jeff you need to get up. Let’s go get some coffee. He grudgingly got out of bed and pulled on jeans and a t-shirt. She considered asking him to brush his teeth and comb his hair, but reconsidered. Tossing him the keys she suggested they go to Willoughby’s, then drop her back at work.

  “I don’t know how you do that.” Lauren got back in the car with the coffees.

  “Do what?”

  “Slip this tank into these little parking spots.”

  Jeff laughed. “You can thank Metro Taxi for that. Got me through graduate school without starving and taught me to parallel park.”

  They pulled back their plastic spouts and sipped in silenc
e for a few minutes.

  “How did Baxter’s parents take the news of his death?” Lauren asked.

  Jeff stared into the hot paper cup in his hands. “How do you think they took it? Their son is dead!”

  Lauren ignored his tone and tried to muster empathy. “I’m sure they don’t blame you. They love you and appreciate everything you did for Baxter over the years.”

  “They don’t love me anymore,” Jeff said. “In fact, they said they’re going to sue me and that I should have seen this coming and done something. Stony Brook called me early this afternoon and said that they’ve already heard from an attorney who requested all Baxter’s records going back ten years. They’re obviously upset and I don’t blame them, but they can’t expect to dump their kid in an institution for his whole life with barely a phone call on his birthday and expect him not to be suicidal – right?”

  Jeff lowered his voice. “I mean, I’m sure Baxter said something to the staff yesterday too about his plans to end his life and they ignored him. Why is this all my fault?” He started the car.

  He ranted for a few minutes longer, and she placed a hand on his arm. “Well, I guess that’s what malpractice insurance is for,” she said.

  “Actually, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.” Jeff hesitated. “I don’t have any malpractice insurance right now. When money was tight at the office, I let it lapse.”

  “What? You’re kidding, right? How could you maintain your license?. You would’ve had to keep it up, or Proliability would have notified the state.”

  Jeff kept his eyes on the road. “It was only for a short time. I was just waiting for some insurance checks to come. I planned to reinstate it, but was busy and I just haven’t had the chance. I got a notice from the state a few weeks ago, but they give you a little grace period, so I figured I was ok.”

  “Oh my God, Jeff; we could lose everything. The cars, the house, our savings… How could you be so irresponsible?