I stood there, staring down at the gardener. “Too big for a slug, huh?” I sighed. “Well, that really sums it up nicely. This is encouraging.”
The gardener stood up, still staring at the trail, perplexed. “And it smells funny—”
“Can you just get rid of it?” I asked, cutting him off.
“This is really weird . . .” he muttered, but so are you his expression told me. “Maybe it’s that dog you’ve got such a problem with.” He shrugged lamely, aiming for levity.
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” I said. “He’s capable of anything. He’s got quite the attitude.”
We both turned and looked at Victor innocently lying on his side, oblivious. He slowly raised his head and, after a beat, yawned at us. It looked as if he were going to yawn a second time, but instead his head lolled forward and rested itself lazily on the deck, his tongue flopping out of his mouth.
“He’s, um . . . bipolar,” I told the gardener.
“Yeah, he looks like a problem . . . I guess,” the gardener murmured.
I didn’t say anything.
“I’ll hose it down and . . . we’ll just hope it doesn’t come back.”
(But it will, I heard the woods whispering.)
That was the extent of the conversation. It wasn’t going to proceed anywhere else so I left the gardener and as I started walking back across the yard I could hear voices from the side of the house that faced the Allens’. I moved toward them.
When I came around the corner, Jayne was standing with our contractor, Omar (there had been lengthy discussions recently about adding a skylight in the foyer), and they both had the same stance: hands on hips, faces tilted upward toward the second floor. Jayne noticed me and actually smiled, which I took as an invitation to smile back and join them. Walking over I also looked up. Surrounding the large windows of the master bedroom, and above the French doors that framed the media room situated below it, were huge patches where the lily white paint was peeling off the side of the house, revealing a pink stucco underneath. Omar was holding an iced coffee from Starbucks, Persols pushed up on his forehead, totally confused. At first glance it looked as if the house was peeling randomly, as if someone had blindly scraped at the wall in a rushed and curving motion (could that have been what Robby heard in the middle of the night?), but the longer you stared at the swirling patches they began to seem patterned and deliberate, as if there was a message hidden in them, some code being spelled out. The wall was telling us (me) something. I know this wall, I thought to myself. I had seen it before. The wall was a page waiting to be read. At our feet were flakes of paint so finely ground that they resembled piles of flour.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” Omar said.
“Could it be kids? A Halloween prank?” I was asking. “Could it have happened the night of the party?” I paused and then, trying to gain favor with Jayne, added, “I bet Jay did it.”
“No,” Jayne said. “This started happening at the beginning of the summer and it’s just been accelerating.”
Omar touched the side of the house (I shuddered) and then brushed his palms off on his khakis. “Well, it looks like . . . claw marks,” he said.
“Is that some kind of tool?” I asked. “What’s a clawmark?”
“No—like something’s clawing at it.” And then Omar stopped. “But I don’t know how anybody—whatever it was—got up there.”
“Well, who lived here before?” I asked. “Maybe it’s just naturally peeling.” And then I reminded them of the heavy rains from late August and early September.
Jayne and Omar both glanced at me.
“What? I mean, why was this painted over?” I asked, shrugging. “That’s . . . a nice color.”
“The house is new, Bret,” Jayne sighed. “There was no other paint.”
“Plus that wasn’t the base color,” Omar added.
“Well, maybe the paint’s oxidizing, y’know, the enamel, um, underneath?”
Frowning, Omar grew quickly tired of me and pulled out a cell phone.
Jayne took one more look at the wall and then turned my way. She seemed inordinately cheerful this morning, and when she looked at my face she smiled again. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and I reached out to touch it—a gesture that only widened the smile.
“I don’t know why you’re smiling, baby. There’s a dead crow in our Jacuzzi.”
“It must’ve happened after you got out of it last night.”
“I didn’t take a Jacuzzi last night, babe.”
“Well, there was a wet pair of shorts on the railing by the deck.”
“Yeah, I saw them but they aren’t mine,” I said. “Maybe Jay stopped by.”
Jayne’s forehead creased. “Are you sure they’re not yours?”
“Yeah, I’m sure, and hey—did somebody from the decorating company come by this morning?”
“Yeah, they forgot a gravestone.” She paused briefly. “And a skeleton and a few bats.”
“That always happens on Saturdays, doesn’t it?” I grinned and then, trying to keep everything on a light note, I asked the following in a manner as casual as possible: “Did you know that someone wrote my father’s name on that headstone?”
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“When I came back last night—wait, you’re not mad at me because I got tired and had to skip out on trick-or-treating . . . are you?”
She sighed. “Look, it’s the first of the month. Let’s forget everything that’s been happening and let’s try to start over. How’s that? Let’s just start over. New beginnings.”
The hangover vanished. The fear was gone. This could all work out, I thought.
“I love your recovery time,” I said.
“Yeah, fast to get pissed, faster to forgive.”
“That’s what I love and admire about you.”
She flinched. “What—that I’m a total enabler?”
Behind her, Omar was on his cell, pacing and gesturing at the wall, which I couldn’t help looking up at again. How could something get up there? I wondered. What if it could fly? came back in response.
“What about the gravestone?” Jayne was asking. “Bret—hello?”
I made the effort and focused away from the wall and back on Jayne. “Yeah, when I came home last night I noticed it was left over from the party and when I went down to take a look at it I saw that somebody had written my dad’s name on it . . . and they also knew his birth date and, um, the year he died.”
Jayne’s expression darkened. “Well, it wasn’t there this morning.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I took the guys out there when they removed it.” She paused. “And there was nothing on it.”
“Do . . . you think it rained last night?” I cocked my head.
“Do . . . you think you had too much to drink last night?” She also cocked her head, mimicking me.
“I’m not drinking, Jayne—” I stopped myself.
We studied each other for a long time. She won. I settled. I rose up to it.
“Okay,” I said. “New beginnings.”
I placed my hands on her shoulders, which caused her to smile ruefully at me.
“Hey—what’s going on today?” I asked. “Where are the kids?”
“Sarah’s upstairs doing homework and Robby’s at soccer practice and when he returns you shall be taking them to the movies at the mall,” she said in her “theatrical” voice.
“And of course you’ll be accompanying us.”