Trespassing
People aren’t patient the way places are.
“Is it haunted or something?” I ask Allison as I wash out my beer glass in the kitchen sink.
Allison sits at the dinner table, her face frozen in severe concentration and cast in a slickly blue from her laptop screen. I assume she’s struggling with Spelling Bee even though I haven’t heard a click or a type in almost an hour. I am about to repeat my question until she stops me with, “Haunted?”
“Are you getting into paranormal stuff?” I ask earnestly.
Allison raises her face to meet mine while retaining her beady-eyed, clamped-lipped countenance, as if I am another screen.
“Come on, Simon.”
I know people who get overjoyed when their partners address them directly. Hearing their name in endearment is like hearing an old favorite song for the first time in years. It’s more meaningful than most ceremonial forms of commitment. Whether it’s after seeing a movie you both liked, had sex you both enjoyed, or because they remembered your birthday. It’s like getting a cherry on top of an already well-adorned banana split.
I’d like to feel that one day. But Allison’s cherry is closer to a roach. She doesn’t so much as say my name as heave it out, a “Simon”-shaped gasp of exhaustion. It means that an argument is over but not resolved, just to be picked up days, sometimes hours, later. Our arguments have lately revolved around the same thing: that I won’t take her to the Rapeandmurder House.
“I just don’t want to go to a place where something horrible happened,” I say.
“People go to Civil War battlefields all the time. My dad treated Gettysburg like a sacred place.”
“I think that’s different.”
“How so?” she asks with a prosecutorial sharpness.
“I … well … historical imp—“
She rolls her eyes and looks back down at the screen.
“Look,” I say approaching the table and sitting beside her, “what about that magician Mitch took Ashley to see in Montclair?”
Allison’s blue face twitches. “Didn’t you make fun of his eyeliner?”
“I just thought …”
“That I could stand to be more like my sister?”
I take a second dinner at the bar downtown. When I come home, Allison is already asleep.
My resistance to going to the Rapeandmurder House is not just personal, but practical. Because no one who knows about the Rapeandmurder House seems to know where it is. You cannot find it on true crime forums. You can’t stare longingly at interior photos and the price history on real estate websites. Just asking people at our weekend kickball game gets me different neighborhoods and designs. Some say it is a ranch house, some say it is Victorian or Colonial Dutch, some say it is a McMansion in a newer cul-de-sac. They try to link it with crimes they actually remember. “Was that where the kid flipped out, killed his parents, and hanged himself from a water tower?” one asks. “No I think he jumped into a quarry.” “That’s not what I was asking, though.” “I think it was where that guy killed his whole family then ran away to become a mailman.” “That reminds me of a cousin I had who I think weed-whacked one of his hands on purpose.” “It’s nice that people have hobbies.” “I think he went schizo or something.” “I mean just in general.”
“I think it’s revealing,” Allison says in a downy drone as we watch a nature documentary. Or maybe it’s Below Deck.
“Revealing how?”
“Just your attitude. The way you always see the worst in everything.”
My muscles tighten from my side of the couch.
“Well, it’s easy to pre-judge when it’s in the name.”
“Places have ugly names sometimes,” she says to the flatscreen. “You should try being open to other perspectives.”
“I think I have the right perspective about the Rapeandmurder House.”
“I just don’t think it’s the only perspective.”
My back straightens. My upper body jolts up and faces her directly.
“Is that what you meant by ‘girls’ trip’ last night?”
Allison does not shift her gaze. “I’m just saying, Simon, there are other perspectives. You should give them a try.”
Mitch has always held my indifference to baseball against me. Also that I am 11 years younger, and somewhat fitter, than he is, making for an unfortunate comparison as the husband of my girlfriend’s fraternal twin. He regards me like a little brother, and has me meet him at the batting cages for when he sees the need to have a heart-to-heart.
“Ashley hasn’t told me anything,” Mitch says before his next swing-and-miss. “I just sort of heard it from the other room.”
“You heard it?” I say as I lean lazily from behind the chainlink fence.
Mitch strikes again and nervously pats his back pocket.
“The fact of it is, she sounded concerned. I can’t have her being like that. You know she’s due in a few weeks, right?” He hits the ball only to foul upwards. “Fuck! Look, I don’t know what’s going on between you and Allison, but you gotta figure it out for Ashely’s sake. Isn’t Allison excited to be an aunt?”
I drawl out a “Yeah” realizing I’m not sure whether she really is.
“So when can I put you down for some new windows?” Mitch also sells windows.
“Dude, we rent.”
“So?”
“What’s your kid gonna be again?”
Mitch swings another strike.
“Uhm … boy-ish, I think?”
We go our separate ways at the mall. Allison has an appointment at Apple to get her iPad unfrozen while I go and replenish my socks. I’m left with time to peruse the otherwise forbidden storefronts. Like those lined with velvet ropes, those guarded by shirtless men with techno music blasting out between them, and those that seem to exist solely for private school lacrosse captains. I text Allison on her status.
“hey at a booth in california pizza ktchn,” she texts.
I tell the hostess I’m meeting someone while looking over her to spot Allison’s blonde bobbed hair, black cardigan, and red-striped shirt. I see her at a table rather than a booth. But once I get there she becomes a brunette. I see her at another table and she becomes a redhead. And at a booth she is a heavier set, curlier blonde.
“Sir,” the hostess says lightly gripping my shoulder, “if your party hasn’t arrived yet you have to wait by the entrance.”
“where r u?” I text.
“indigo”
“ok,” I frustratedly reply.
I think I see Allison several times in the bookstore, just as she is turning into the next aisle. I never catch her face, as if her head is covered by a 360 degree curtain of blonde hair. The pursuit gives me something like vertigo and I’m told to leave after colliding into an employee with a fresh stack of Jodi Picoult editions.
“Well, they fixed it,” a familiar voice says behind me, now stranded at the coin fountain.
I turn around to see the blonde hair covered by a Mets cap, her sour face obscured by sunglasses, and her cardigan now her Montclair State sweatshirt.
“That’s good.”
“Too bad it’s past the warranty.”
That’s when I knew I found her.
“Also I can’t remember where we parked.”
“You know, I don’t know if this helps at all,” Max from data analytics says while swirling his plastic spoon in his fruit cup, “but I’m pretty sure my dad wanted to fuck his car.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He got really attached to it. He’d always be washing it in this specifically slow way. Like he was caressing it. And sometimes he’d talk to it. Like, ‘You never let me down, Petunia.’ That’s what he named it. ‘I’m more myself whenever I’m inside you, Petunia.’”
“What kind of car was it?” I ask pawing at my leftover store-made pasta salad.
“Oldsmobile wagon. So my mom would see all this. She’d get all watery-eyed. Said she had allergies.”
“Damn.”
“The marriage ended when I was like 13. Mom sold Petunia, then my dad got into some sort of trouble. Never learned the details, but I didn’t see him for three or so years. When he came back he would get allergies every time he saw a Honda Civic. And a stomach bug.”
I push my food away.
“Maybe that doesn’t help.”
“No, it’s okay. Thanks. It’s perspective.”
“So she needed space of something?”
“‘I want to breathe’ were her exact words.”
“And you think she’s at that house?”
“I think so. Or spending a lot of her free time there.”
“You know when you say it really fast it doesn’t sound so bad. It actually sounds like one of those old family names that’s on everything in this state. Rapeandmurder Arboretum. Rapeandmurder State Beach.”
I force a hollow laugh.
“I don’t know,” Max says finishing his fruit cup, “maybe with women it’s different. Maybe she doesn’t mean what you think.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Maybe she said one thing and you heard something else. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be? Don’t listen to me. I don’t have a girlfriend to compare against it.”
“Do you have allergies too?”
“Me? No. It’s just sometimes I think it would’ve been better if I was aborted. Hey check this out.” Max holds his fruit cup in both hands as if it’s a basketball. “Nothing but net.” He throws the fruit cup from our table in the break room to the far off garbage can. It strikes the rim and ricochets onto the pantsuit of Peggy from accounting, who we hadn’t realized was drinking coffee there the whole time.
“You two are such children,” she huffs. “And I’ll see this gets paid for,” she says pointing to the syrupy stain on her blouse. She exits, presumably to human resources, too quickly for Max to apologize.
“It’s good to have new problems to replace the old ones,” Max says.
“hey, i saw ur post,” opens a direct message from dreaded_shroud7823 on JerseyLore dot biz.
i don’t know if i can TOTALLY help. i’m actually from out of state. but i think that every town in the US has a house like ur describing. it’s a secret that everyone knows. the thing is tho that no one can ever FIND that kinda place. those that see it (or claim to) just sort of DISCOVERED it. no rhyme or reason. like Oh THERE it is lol. then it doesn’t leave once u’ve found it. just going by what u said, i think this is what happened with ur friend. sorry about that. no idea how to navigate that. people aren’t patient the way places like that are. they can wait forever. take care, man.
“So that jewelry you’re wearing in your pictures,” I say to Priscilla as she’s seated across from me at the diner, “you made that?”
“Yeah, it’s just as a hobby,” she says.
“They’re nice.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you sell them ever?”
“I sometimes think about putting them on Etsy or something. But right now I don’t mind giving them as gifts. My mom and I have matching thumb rings.” She sips her coffee in a kind of apprehensive state, her eyes scanning from one side of the room to the other has her cup rises and falls from her face. “What about you?”
“I used to do a kickball league on the weekends.”
“Oh fun.”
“That sort of fell away. Now I’ve gotten really into local folklore. Or I guess it’s urban legends.”
“What got you into it?”
“A friend did. Really it was more to understand them better.”
“Did it help?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“I think the worst thing about relationships is all the stuff you can’t get rid of after it ends. Not, like, the actual stuff, but the habits and interests of the other person. Like the things you’d never get into yourself but compel you because they are so important to the person you want to be important to. You let them latch onto you.” She sips her coffee more rapidly and laughs to herself. “I’m sorry …”
“No, no. It makes sense.”
“It sounds like I’m in therapy but actually this just sort of occurred to me recently. I think because now I know it’s time to unhook them.”
“It’s not as easy is it seems.”
“I sometimes wonder if it’s easier the other way around though.” She goes into her purse and takes out a small velvet pouch. “My last boyfriend was actually really into my jewelry. He believed in it. And he wanted to help.” She places the pouch between us and puts her fingers into it. “I keep this thinking it will teach me something,” she muses as she pulls out a bracelet made of human teeth. “He told me it was okay to use them because teeth grow back after you pull them out.”
Max meets me on the back porch with a beer bottle in each hand. Commemoration for getting me mostly moved in. The back of the house is west-facing. The afternoon sunset lights up the expanse of my new surroundings. The house sets at the end of a street where the pavement cracks off into potholes and pebbles and out into a field of overgrown grass and lines of newly budding trees further off.
“Is there even anything out that way?” Max asks.
“I think the highway. But the actual property is much smaller. There’s an indentation in the ground over there where a fence used to be. That’s the property line.”
“Ah, I was worried you’d have to mow all of that.” He sips his beer and scans the house. “Kinda rustic. The sunlight really brings out the chips in the paint, though. Where was this listed again?”
“Nowhere that I know of.”
“How’d you find out about it?”
“I drove by it. I was out, it must have been about a quarter past one.”
“In the morning?”
“Yeah. I took a wrong turn, I guess. Ended up in this random township. Somehow I couldn’t find my way back out. My GPS wouldn’t stop redirecting. So I parked and I saw this place. It was all very still. I can’t explain it without making it weird. Like there was no sound, and it didn’t even seem like there was air. The house was dark. I stared at it for a while from the edge of the yard. It was like I knew about it, or seen it somewhere else. And then this light just came on in the top left corner. It shot out such a beam that you could see the dust specks whirling in it. So I went in. And I .. fell asleep.”
“You fell asleep in this house?”
“In the room with the light, that’s now the real bedroom. Had the best sleep there in I don’t know how long.
“Just on the floor?”
“Yeah. Wild thing is I woke up the next morning feeling fine. No pain or stiffness. And I found my way back fine. When I went outside I saw the ‘FOR RENT’ sign. Called the number, was pleased to find it affordable, and now I’m no longer a trespasser.”
“I wonder if I would see things the same way if I was in your position,” Max seemed to wonder mostly to himself.
“I hope and pray that you do one day.” I clink my bottle onto his as the sunset fades to twilight and we sit at the only source of light on the street.
It’s a warm Sunday afternoon, that point when spring puts on the airs of summer. She clutches her arms together as if to preserve a dwindling body heat. We walk to the farthest edge of the outfield with a five foot gap between us. I didn’t think it was her. The sun gave her a darker complexion; her pixie haircut a new head shape. She became less deniable as a moved toward her on the bleachers. The ideas of starting over and picking up from the last formed opposing walls for my mind to volley between.
She shows me an image on her phone of a well-fed infant.
“That’s my niece,” she says in a placidity of customer service that she does not deviate from.
I lean against the fence to loosen my posture.
“People might think we’re having a profound moment.”
But the people were emptying the coolers early after someone kicked the ball into the woods to a point beyond anyone’s willingness to recover it.
“Do you just watch now?” she asks.
“First time back in a while, so yeah.”
“Same here,” she trails off as she looks back at the revelry in the dugouts. “Was this your idea?”
“Kickball?”
“Yeah. I feel like I don’t really know anyone.”
“I can take the blame for it, I guess.”
“That’s not what I meant, I was thi—“
“I know, sorry.”
“I see why this kind of thing is better thought than done. Everything sounds raw and in bad faith. Isn’t it enough to hope someone else is basically okay?”
“Except when they’re not.”
“Well that’s why it’s a hope.”
“This will sound bitter, but I genuinely want to know: did you find what you were looking for?”
“Yeah, I think I did.”
“What did you discover?”
“Nothing I didn’t think was already there. It was the scope that was different. I had overestimated it. I think I stretched it too thin across my life. I’m learning in therapy that sometimes compartmentalization is actually okay.”
I chuckle in the direction of the woods, and the deserted ball.
“Are you also … sorry, that’s …”
“I think my new place needs a paint job.”
“Oh.”
“But I’m kinda fine the way it is.”
She fidgets and is looking more frequently at the baseball field, where someone is blasting a Killers song from their car stereo.
“This will sound weird also but …”
“Yes?” she says with a reduction in patience.
“Would you have done things differently, knowing what you know now?”
“Do what differently?”
“I don’t know, I guess any of it.”
She narrows the gap between us, her face rests into a twitching, reluctant smile, appearing more rapidly than it did when I last saw it, having been sculpted over the course of several encounters. That shift from the eruptive joy of being good company to the rhythmic serenity in forging an inseparable bond. When we both knew it was right and we were right. “Not for the whole world, Simon.”