This is the first part of a two part short story. Please keep that in mind while reading. Ta!
* * *
The day the Rhodeses moved in was
the same day Emily moved out. Not the exact same day. Emily had already been
gone three years by the time Fiona and Robbie took over the little house at the
end of Orchid Road. It was a day of mourning for me – I never got tired of
self-pity. For everyone else on the
block, however, it was a day of immense curiosity.
They came in a custard-yellow
Cadillac followed by a moving van. I could see them from my kitchen window – my
eggs going cold as I watched. Out of the driver’s seat of the Cadillac emerged
a man, thick and towering. Aside from his sheer enormity, there was something
unsettling about him that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. He made me nervous
– even from the safety of my own kitchen.
After him, out of the passenger’s
side, a small woman climbed out. She wore big, dark sunglasses, and a scarf
over her head. She looked like a toy next to the man – although she didn’t seem
to see it that way. She emanated excitement, almost bouncing as she moved and
flailing her arms in a hysterical way. As they were approaching the door the
man lunged and picked her up off the ground. My stomach lurched – for some
reason I immediately feared I would be privy to some sick, violent act, but the
man raised the woman above his head and swung her around in a playful
circle. Her laughter pierced the panes
of glass through which I was observing them. Then, he replaced her on the
ground and they shared a short, but affectionate kiss. Moving men emerged from
the van carrying boxes and various pieces of furniture, and then the very large
man and his little woman disappeared into the house.
Across my kitchen the telephone rang.
I picked it up, put the receiver to my ear and lit a cigarette. I heard a soft
chuckle on the other end of the line.
“The chicken has flown the coop.” It
was Marjorie, just as I had anticipated. There was no need for hellos.
“Not today,” I said, exhaling a
stream of smoke. I’d always wanted to learn how to form those nifty little
rings. “I don’t feel like it.”
“Emily?” she asked.
I didn’t answer.
“Come on. It’s been three years. And
Sheldon’s only going to be out an hour.”
Puff. Puff. Puff.
“Just pretend I’m her or something.
I know you’re lonely in there—”
I slammed down the receiver, no.
Two minutes later I was across the street in the bedroom Marjorie
shared with her husband.
“Finally,” She said, taking off her
dressing gown. “What took you so damn long?”
“Had to finish my cigarette.”
She came up from behind me as I was
unbuttoning my shirt, spun me around, and kissed me. “And a whole bottle of
whiskey, apparently.”
“It was a single. Had to save the
rest of the bottle for the feelings of regret I’m going to need to drown in
approximately,” I pretended to look at my watch, “twenty minutes.”
“Shut up,” she said. “You can barely
last five.” She pulled down my trousers and pushed me onto the bed. “And
besides, you always come back.”
She was right I did always come
back. But only because she kept calling.
Marjorie was a somewhat plain girl,
but sex with her was out of this world. Fucking interstellar. When she wasn’t
playing stupid games.
“Come on, daddy,” she slapped my
rear. “Show me what you’re made of.”
“Knock it off, Marjorie. You know I
hate that.”
“Good. Maybe you won’t get there
before me this time.”
“I never get there before you.”
“Why are you lying, daddy?”
In hindsight, who got there first
this particular time around is of little relevance. I lay back on the pillows
when we had finished and lit a cigarette while she replaced her stockings.
“Don’t do that in here. Sheldon will
know.”
I rolled over to Marjorie’s side of
the bed and put the cigarette out in a half empty glass of water on the bedside
table. I let it float on the surface.
Marjorie gave me a look. “Nice.”
I changed the subject. “Know
anything about the new people moving into Mrs. Hattie’s old place?”
“That’s the Rhodeses.”
“So you do know.”
“I know they’re from the city. He’s
got some salesman-like job and she’s… a crazy person.”
“How do you mean?”
Marjorie shrugged. “That’s just what I heard. Apparently she did
time in the rubber room.”
I chewed on that. Marjorie sometimes
had a fantastical way of putting things, but her intel was rarely wrong. I
thought about how funny it was – how we could so easily conceal things about
ourselves with some nice clothes and a smile. The woman I saw outside my window
hadn’t looked crazy. But who was I to say what a crazy person looked like? For
all I knew I could have encountered hundreds of them without even noticing.
Marjorie interrupted my thoughts
when she threw my pants at me. “Come on. Sheldon will be home any minute.”
I obliged. Sheldon didn’t scare me.
I could take that guy in a fight, easily. Probably partly why Marjorie
preferred having sex with me than him. But disrupting the sanctity of marriage
wasn’t something I was all that interested in. And anyways, Marjorie and I both
benefited from my silence.
It wouldn’t be until the next
weekend that I would finally encounter either of the Rhodeses. For the first
little while I would only catch glimpses of them as they were coming or going
from their home. I don’t imagine anyone
else on the block interacted much with them either, but regardless there were
plenty of rumors and stories surrounding the mysterious pair. Most of the older
folks didn’t seem to like them that much simply on principle.
“City people,” the widow Whitman
lamented when I ran into her on the street. “No sense of modesty or decency.
They’re all animals out there. All of them.”
More similar to Marjorie’s initial
theory, others simply contributed that the woman, Fiona, was some sort of head
case.
“George Burgess mentioned he heard
shouting and glass shattering coming from their house the other night,” Sheldon
told me when he was returning my sweater to me. Apparently I had left it there
when I went over to help Marjorie fix a leaky faucet. “Either they’re fighting
in there or they’re having some really wild intercourse. What do you think?”
Sheldon chuckled. Of course he thought intercourse
was funny.
Well, I didn’t know about any
screaming, and I certainly didn’t know about any intercourse. And when I finally did meet Fiona I didn’t get the
impression of craziness. She was a wild thing, certainly, but not rubber room
material I didn’t think.
It was a Sunday afternoon. I was in
my living room, lounging on the sofa, escaping the sun, waiting for the day to
end. I heard screeching tires and, not long after, a crash that sounded
suspiciously close to my front door. Weary, I got up from the sofa and out to
the porch. What I saw was the Rhodes’ custard-yellow Cadillac parked right on
my bright blue begonias. It was the young Mrs. Rhodes who climbed out of the driver’s
seat.
“What in God’s name?” I exclaimed. I
wasn’t upset to the point of lividness. More just confused, and curious as to
how she’d managed the feat.
“I am so sorry!” She was apologetic,
but half giggling.
I walked down from my porch to survey
the damage. I could already see my flowerbed was basically destroyed.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“It’s fine.” I came off saltier than
I had intended. I decided to reorder my priorities. “Are you alright?” I asked
– although the woman looked more than alright. Almost giddy.
“Better than your flowerbed I’d
imagine.”
“It’s ok.” I said it begrudgingly. I
hadn’t even planted the flowers. Emily had. I hadn’t the heart to uproot them.
“What the hell happened?” I asked.
Orchid Road was in a quiet neighbourhood. There was hardly any traffic and
certainly no reason to go even a smidgeon above the speed limit.
“Oh, I just drifted out,” was her
response.
I gave her a questioning look.
She elaborated, “I was just thinking
about something else and I lost track of what I was doing.”
I took a brief moment to wonder what
she could possibly have been thinking about that could have prevented her from
successfully parking in her own drive, but she was quick to move on.
“How about I make it up to you?”
“There’s no need for that. It’s
probably better those flowers are gone anyway.”
“No, no. I insist. Robbie and I are
having a housewarming next weekend. Swing by and I’ll make you a drink. I’ll
make you ten!” I could see she wasn’t going to take no for an answer because
she was already mostly in her Cadillac before I could even try to object. “My
name’s Fiona, by the way. And Robbie, that’s my husband. We live at the end of
the road, just over there,” she pointed, though she hadn’t needed to.
“Nice to meet you.”
Fiona started the engine but made no
other move to leave. Instead she sat there, peering at me over the dark lenses
of her sunglasses before she finally said, “Well, you’re not going to make me
leave without telling me your name, are you? Because I’m not going to have a
stranger at my housewarming.”
I told her my name was Jack. And she
said, “Nice to meet you too, Jack.” And then she backed her custard Cadillac
out of my annihilated begonias and drove back to her curious life.
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