Chapter 8 - The Clearing of the Hall
The bedroom at the house in Elm Grove smelled of cedar, lavender fabric softener, and the fresh pine shavings of the new baseboards Ryan had installed over Labor Day weekend.
It was ten-fifteen when the silver crossover pulled into the drive.
I sat in the nursery—in the grey velvet glider that had been delivered from the boutique in Whitefish Bay on Tuesday. The room was dark, save for the amber light that came from the streetlamp through the bare branches of the sugar maple. Around me were the thirty boxes from the shower: the tiny socks, the organic blankets, the stacks of board books, and the white crib with its four turned posts standing like four small sentinels against the floral wallpaper.
I heard his boots on the stairs.
He was not hurrying. His feet dragged against the carpet with that heavy, uneven rhythm of a man who is carrying more weight than he can balance.
He stopped in the doorway of the nursery. His silhouette was wide, blocking the light from the hall.
"Hannah?" he whispered.
I didn't answer. I kept my hand flat against my stomach, feeling the slow, rolling swell of Ella’s shoulder as she shifted against my ribs.
He didn't step into the room. He stayed on the threshold, his fingers resting on the white trim of the door frame.
"I took three suitcases," he said. "The ones from the basement. I left the silver from your grandmother in the bottom of the sideboard. I didn't touch the flatware."
He waited. The furnace clicked in the basement, the blower coming on with a low, rushing sigh that rattled the register beneath the window.
"Kayla’s car is at her mother’s house in Fond du Lac," he added, his voice dropping into that flat, exhausted monotone that has no future in it. "Her brother came down with the trailer at eight. She isn't going to Cedarburg, Hannah. Nobody is going to Cedarburg."
"The rent was paid," I said into the dark.
"I canceled the check," he said. "The realty woman was Peter’s second cousin. She tore the receipt up in front of me at the gas station. She called me a... she told me to leave the county."
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
"Can I see her?" he asked.
"Who?"
"Ella."
"She isn't here yet, Ryan," I said. "She’s inside me. Where you can't reach her with a signature."
He let out a long, shuddering breath that sounded like a tire losing its air through a rusted valve.
"I loved you," he said.
"No," I told him, looking at the dark outline of his shoulder against the hall wallpaper. "You loved having an assistant who didn't ask for a salary. You loved having a girl who made your house look like the houses in the architectural magazines while you played golf with the men from the bank. That isn't love, Ryan. That’s just inventory management."
He stood there for another twenty seconds. Then his hand slid down the white trim, leaving a small, dark smudge on the fresh latex paint where his thumb had been.
"My mother told me I can't come to the house for Thanksgiving," he said.
"Your mother has known you for forty-two years," I replied. "She’s had forty-two years to learn where the rot stops."
May you like
He turned away. His boots went down the stairs—twelve steps, then the pause at the landing, then the two steps onto the parquet of the foyer. The front door opened with its familiar, brassy squeak, the cool autumn air rushing into the lower hall, followed by the heavy, decisive clunk of the deadbolt sliding into the oak frame.
The silver crossover started with a muffled roar. Its headlights swept across the nursery ceiling, illuminating the pink paper lanterns we had hung from the center beam for forty seconds, then swept away down the street toward the bypass, leaving the room darker and quieter than it had been before.
