The Chelsea co-op, which they’d owned for twenty-two years, had sold quickly and earned them a nice profit, and she’d offered to pay her father back for the down payment, as promised. He’d declined it. “Keep it to help with the kids’ education, in case I’m not around.”
Everything about his words bothered her—that he didn’t foresee being alive when her kids were ready for college, and that he understood the more immediate problem: their savings simply weren’t going to last that long and they needed it for mortgage, food, utilities, car payments, incidentals.
Maybe Shaw expected her to get a job if things got iffy. It was his turn to be creative, her turn to manage the household. He’d supplemented their income with various jobs over the years—waiter, bartender, tax preparer, temp. Maybe such options would have been available to her if they were living in Plattsburgh, about an hour northeast of their homestead. But their place in the woods—a forested piece of land with a view of no one and nothing man-made, up a dirt-and-gravel road on a gently sloping hill—was beyond any clearly defined boundaries. After living in walkable, public-transportation-friendly New York since she was seventeen, Orla was just now learning how to drive, but she wasn’t yet comfortable behind the wheel. Even in good weather, it was too far to walk anywhere. And in bad weather…
She gazed out the window. The extended region had the dubious honor of having the coldest winter temperatures in the continental United States. Not to mention occasional snowfalls by the foot.
Julie had sent them on their way with a big bag full of extra and outgrown winter gear—snow pants, boots, mittens, even a couple pair of snowshoes—and some tomatoes and green beans she’d canned over the summer. Was the summer season actually long enough to grow vegetables? Were those skills Orla would have to learn to help stretch their funds—growing, canning, preserving?
She’d tried to fill her children with a sense of adventure, especially during the weeks when they’d been without a habitable home of their own. Tycho either didn’t notice or didn’t care that his life was in flux. As long as someone he knew was within his field of vision, he was happy. But it bothered Orla that Eleanor Queen still had such basic and essential concerns. She’d been to the house several times, had witnessed the progression of improvements. So why didn’t she think it was ready? Where did she think her parents were taking her?
Eleanor Queen had watched the workers remove the old windows from the farmhouse. When the reflective glass of the big living-room window was gone, leaving a shockingly dark hole, the girl had clutched Orla’s hand. “Are we going to die?”
“Of course not!” Orla had said with a laugh, giving her a squeeze. But for a second there had been only the squish of puffy jacket, and Orla’s blood throbbed with the panic that her daughter had abruptly evaporated. Then she felt Eleanor Queen’s little bones, and the sensation passed.
“Are you excited to have your very own rooms?” Orla said now in a cheery voice, pushing the uncomfortable memory away. Shaw slowed down as visibility diminished.
“Yay!” Tycho said, though he was probably the one who cared the least. Which was fortunate, considering his sliver of a room seemed to have been an afterthought, little more than a closet with a window, created by the addition of a wall that severed the largest of the upstairs bedrooms. But it was still more personal space than he—or any of them—had had. After Eleanor Queen was born, they turned the one bedroom into a nursery and bought themselves a new sleeper-sofa for the living room. A few years later came the bunk beds. The four of them were very accustomed to compact living.
“And Papa has his very first studio, where he can create his masterpieces!” Orla said. She grinned as Tycho’s face lit up, always delighted for everyone. She was still smiling when she turned to Shaw. He looked funny when he was happy, the progression of half-moon lines around his eyes and his teeth on full display, angled this way and that, his upper teeth sitting directly on his lower ones. A crazy grimace. But she was glad for his happiness.
“My own stu-di-o,” he sang, tapping a rhythm on the steering wheel in contra time to the music on the CD. “Where I’ll do my painting-o.” Tycho wasn’t the only one in the family who liked to croon little ditties.
The studio, as it had been in his dream, was the spacious bedroom directly off the living room. For the first time in fifteen years, Shaw would have his own workspace, with a door. Orla was a bit envious, but reminded herself that if he was in the studio, she could go to their bedroom upstairs—and shut the door. It would be new for all of them: the many rooms, the many doors.
Tycho’s eyes fluttered with sleep; the moose in his hand was splayed across his lap, already down for the count. Ever aware of her own body, she too felt a heaviness, a desire to hibernate. Yesterday’s Thanksgiving feast still trudged through her system. And her legs (still two, in spite of the lingering sensation of their having been severed, cleaved) ached and she longed to jump from the car, grab her heel, and extend her leg up to her ear.
They’d always said Plattsburgh wasn’t so far from where they’d be and that they’d go there often for shopping and family visits. But as they drove down Route 3, the world seemed to elongate behind them, stretching beyond recognition, obliterating the landmarks that would guide them back. Orla struggled to accept that they were still in New York—State, not City—but how could it be so different? It had been easier to agree to this when it hadn’t seemed so utterly foreign. North of the city hadn’t sounded so bad, with the word city dangling on, unwilling to let go, and New York still their resident state. But the city was gone. Her life was gone. And the landscape—unrecognizable.
She turned up the music, hoping to blot out the wind screaming beyond her window. You owe him this, it said. You promised. Shaw peeked at her, elated, and she let him assume the best, that she was as happy as he was. But even the dulcet tones of the strummed guitar wouldn’t let her off. Owe. In the vibrating strings. Her husband would never say it, but it existed in the silent space between them. My turn. We agreed. And even softer, beneath that, a voice she’d struggled to suppress. Your part is finished. The curtain had fallen and wouldn’t rise again. And she was afraid of the dark.
3
The snow had laid down a thick carpet by the time they snaked their way up the driveway. The kids were wide awake, faces pressed to the windows. They’d all been in the house before, of course, but none of them had spent a night there or seen it under such wintry conditions. Shaw turned off the music, and the fog they breathed, the recycled mishmash from all of their lungs, hummed with expectation.
“So pretty!” Tycho said when the farmhouse came into view.
Bless his heart. It must have been the snow, like frosting on the tree limbs with smears of white on the roof. Blue-gray paint, so old it looked mostly washed away, and the windows were trimmed in what might once have been a festive red, now rusty scabs. They’d need to have the exterior painted if they were to keep the wood protected, but next year; they’d already spent so much. It looked fragile to Orla, nothing like the massive steel buildings, the stone and brick and solid permanence of her past life. A gust of wind could blow it down. Two stories of decomposable wood, pitched roof, a porch made of matchsticks, and windows of watchful eyes and open mouths.