The Stager: A Novel Page 11

  Even if my transmission is still a little fuzzy, I can see Raymond coming out of his house with a newspaper tucked under his arm. He turns a key in the top bolt of his door, checks his phone, then smiles and waves and goes to Bella. They begin to walk together in a way that suggests familiarity, fluidity, like they are figure-skating partners who know each other’s moves. They walk several blocks toward the Heath, cross the busy road, and find a bench. It is only then that they kiss.

  I refuse to believe this is happening, and am fairly desperate for it to end. I try several approaches, from putting on eyeshades and earplugs to turning on a movie, but nothing stops the transmission; to the terrifying contrary, the harder I try not to see, the clearer the picture becomes.

  Since I cannot make this scene go away, I turn my focus to some children playing near where Bella and Raymond sit. Rosy-cheeked with white-blond hair, they appear to be twins. They’re engaged in some sort of hunting game that seems incongruous with their earthy appearance. Across the way, a toddler kicks a ball; his rusty aim barely misses a pair of girls who sit cross-legged in the grass playing one of those games that involves wiggling fingers and a loop of string. It’s all a bit much, these wholesome children at play, juxtaposed to my adulterous wife, and I am somewhat heartened by the sight of a couple of possibly delinquent teens sitting on a bench, smoking cigarettes and generally looking like they’re up to no good; though I can’t say exactly why this comes as a relief, it’s helpful, I suppose, to be reminded that the world is a generally murky place full of people and their problems.

  I’m in shock, and yet I’m not surprised. I’ve figured out a thing or two in my years-long decline, and I’ve had plenty of time to philosophize. I haven’t quite honed my central thesis, but it’s along the lines of this: Clichés, character types, archetypes—all true. We each have our place in the world, and I, Lars Jorgenson, was apparently put on this earth to play the role of sap.

  Yet there are purpose and dignity in my degradation. I am a vessel. I absorb and contain the fallout of other people’s sins. I wake with my animal nightmares so that others can sleep tight.

  ELSA

  Nabila and her friend Annie, the one who had said I was “a little chunky,” are standing by the stove. Annie is stirring something in a large saucepan, and Nabila has just taken a dish out of the oven. She removes her mitt and curses when she accidentally grazes the side of the rack with her bare hand.

  “We made you your favorite dinner,” says Nabila. “Macaroni and cheese and French fries.”

  “I had that for lunch.”

  “Oh, bummer. Well, for dessert, we also got you every flavor Pop-Tart that Annie could find at Safeway.”

  “I don’t want a Pop-Tart anymore. That was yesterday. What I want today is a fairy cake. Can I have a glass of milk, please?”

  “What’s a fairy cake?” asks Annie.

  “Enough already with the fairy cakes,” says Nabila as she goes to the refrigerator to get the milk.

  “In a wineglass, please,” I add. “The big one that you are supposed to use for Chardonnay, not the smaller one that’s for one of the other kinds, like the red wines.”

  Nabila stares at me for a long time before she goes to the cabinet to get a wineglass. She holds it by the stem and sets it in front of me. “Here you go, mademoiselle.”

  “Listen, Elsa,” she says, “I want to ask you something private. Well, private between you and me and Annie.”

  “Sure.”

  “Something is missing from my room, and I wonder if you know anything about it.”

  “The bag of leaves, you mean?”

  Nabila and Annie exchange worried looks.

  “What were you doing, snooping around in my stuff?”

  “I wasn’t snooping around, I was cleaning up your room for you. You shouldn’t leave wet towels on the floor. And you should hang up your clothes so they don’t get all wrinkled.”

  “Pretty rich for you to tell me to clean up my room!” I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Nabila this mad. “I’d like the bag back. And I’d like for this to remain private. I can do something for you in return.”

  “Like what?”

  “What would you like?”

  This is intriguing, but I can’t think of what I want in return, other than not to move to London, or for Diana to be nice to me, or maybe not to have to run laps at field-hockey practice.

  “Why, what’s in the bag? Is it drugs?”

  “No. I don’t know what’s in the bag. The guy at the farmstand in front of Unfurlings gave it to me and he said it was tea. But, honestly, I don’t really know what it is. Annie and I tried to drink it, but it doesn’t really taste like tea. It could be something else, and we don’t want to get in any trouble.”

  “Did you try to smoke it? Or maybe chop it up and snort it up your nose? But wait, if it’s marijuana, I think you are supposed to roll it up in paper, like a cigarette. You only snort it if it’s cocaine. But also now you can chop up your parents’ prescription drugs and snort those. We learned this in the DARE class at school. The police officer showed us. I can probably help. Do you have any rolling paper?”

  “Elsa! Please don’t even say stuff like that. We don’t want to upset your mum. You know how hard she’s working. She has a lot on her mind, and I want her to think I’m taking good care of you. Lord knows I’m trying.”

  “But we’re moving to London, and you’re staying here to go to college anyway, so why do you care?”

  “Well, for one thing, because, believe it or not, I care about you and your family. But also because I need a reference, darling. And your mum has agreed to sponsor me for a green card.”

  I don’t know what a green card is. But I do know this: this is an opportunity. “I won’t ever tell my mom, but you have to let me play with the Stager.”

  “What is your obsession with this woman? We need to let her do her job. She spent an hour helping me find you the other day, and another hour yesterday helping me deal with that dead rabbit. Plus, your mom wants you to stay away from that woman. She said something about how this doesn’t sit right.”

  “My mom isn’t here, is she? And she’s never even met the Stager. And I’m not obsessed with her! We just had some fun playing with the dolls, and I like her nail polish, and she paints chairs, and we need to finish the painting I started yesterday of Dominique in a chair, and also I never even asked her if she likes her wallet.”

  “Her wallet?”

  “I can’t tell you. It’s private.”

  “Good grief, girl. What’s gotten into you these last few days? Oh, look! It’s seven-oh-three already. I’m so silly, I almost forgot. Let’s turn on the television.”

  She hits the remote, and there’s my mom right away, sitting across a table from another lady. My mom is wearing her green dress, as promised, and when she leans forward, I can see the lacy part of her bra. I want to yell to her, “Mom, sit up straight, we can see your bra!” but I know she won’t hear me, not just because I totally get that the show is prerecorded, plus she’s in London in a television studio and I’m sitting in a kitchen in Maryland with a plate full of macaroni and cheese and French fries, but also because my mom is busy speaking. “No, Maria, I understand what you’re saying, but there are some who might suggest that argument is faulty. Luxum’s problems are completely in the past. From now on, we’re all about the Sunshine Act. Look at our new CEO, he’s…”

  I grab the remote from Nabila’s hand and turn off the television. Then I bring my plate to the trash and scrape all the uneaten macaroni and cheese and French fries into the bin. “I’m going upstairs to find the Stager,” I say.

  Nabila stares at me, incredulous, which is a word that means skeptical, unbelieving. Then the Stager appears at the kitchen entrance. She’s putting her sweater on, getting ready to go home. She gives me a pat on the head like I’m a dog and says, “Good night, Elsa. Sweet dreams.”

  “But we didn’t get to paint!”

  “Maybe tomo
rrow.”

  “I don’t want to paint tomorrow. I want to paint now.”

  “Now, now, Elsa, you know you’re a big girl and you’re not supposed to behave this way. Your mother wouldn’t be very happy about this, would she?” says Nabila.

  “My mother isn’t here, is she?”

  Annie makes a tsk-tsk noise with her tongue.

  “Well, she was a minute ago, until you shut off the television!” says Nabila.

  “Is that supposed to be a joke? She’s in London, and it’s, like, already midnight there. Don’t you know that? The television isn’t real!” I know I should be nicer to Nabila, because where she comes from maybe they don’t have television, so she might not know you can tape things in advance and air them hours, or even days or weeks, later.

  “I’m ready to go home now anyway, I just need to get my stuff from upstairs before I leave, so what if we paint tomorrow, Elsa?” the Stager asks.

  “But yesterday you promised we’d finish painting today!” I’m aware that I’m being obnoxious.

  “I’m going to call your mother and tell her how you’re behaving if you don’t stop this right now, Elsa,” says Nabila.

  “No, you’re not!”

  Nabila looks at me, doubly incredulous, and goes into the kitchen, gets the phone, brings it into the hallway, and starts to punch the buttons. “I’m going to put the Stager on the phone, too, so she can explain how you are not letting this nice lady do her job. Boy oh boy, is your mum going to be angry with you, Elsa!”

  “Hang up the phone or I’ll tell my mom about your bag of leaves.”

  “Elsa!”

  “Let’s all calm down,” says the Stager. “Don’t call Bella. Look, here’s a good compromise. What if we work on the painting for just a few minutes? Ten minutes or so? Whatever we do, we’ll need to let it dry overnight, right? Then, in the morning, we can paint on top of what we do now. And you do whatever it is Nabila tells you, okay? Is that okay with you, Nabila?”

  Nabila looks at Annie and shakes her head in disbelief. But on our way up the stairs, I remember the red paint on the floor. I’m in enough trouble as it is, so I recalibrate and try to divert the Stager into a different room.

  “Wait! I have a better idea,” I say. “I don’t want to paint anymore. Let’s read a story.”

  “Sure. Let’s pick a book from your shelf.”

  “No, let’s go to my mom and dad’s room and you can make up a story.”

  “Why would we do that? I’m not so good at making up stories. Let’s go to your room and read a Max book.”

  “I don’t want to read a Max book.”

  “Um, okay. You have lots of other books to choose from.”

  “We’re going to my parents’ room,” I say, running up the stairs. There’s a small table on the landing outside my room, next to the bathroom, and I see the Stager’s bag. I grab it and run up the next flight.

  “Now you have to come read to me upstairs!” I call, leaning over the banister. “I have your keys, so you can’t go anywhere until you come up here!”

  Nabila is standing at the bottom of the staircase, looking up at me. She says something in her native language that I can’t understand, but it doesn’t sound good.

  * * *

  I HAVEN’T BEEN to the top floor, where my parents’ bedroom is, for about two days. When I get there, things are different, especially in the bathroom in the hallway. Even though this bathroom is up a flight of stairs, it’s the one I like to use, since the one that connects to my room is too pink. My mom said we could repaint to make it more appropriate for a girl my age, but that was before she got the Important New Job and announced that we had to move to London. Obviously the Stager doesn’t know this, because in the green bathroom she’s put everything away like she did in the kitchen, except, instead of hiding the toaster, in here she’s hidden my toothbrush and toothpaste, and also there’s no shampoo in the shower, so I don’t know how I’m going to wash my hair. Another thing that’s different is, the towels are folded like in a hotel and the bath mat is gone. I’d really liked that bath mat, and had even picked it out from a catalogue; it was very shaggy, and it reminded me of a Labradoodle … well, actually more of a goldendoodle, because of its color. Another bag from Target sits on the counter, and I open it. Inside is a new bath mat, but this one has flat hair, like a sheep that’s just been shorn, which I know about because Diana had a birthday party at her weekend farm in Middleburg, where we got to ride horses and look at the animals—but only look. We couldn’t pet them, because we might get E. coli germs.

  Things in the hallway are different, too. I don’t understand why at first, but then I realize the Stager has taken down all of the framed family photographs; on the wall right in between the green bathroom and the extra bedroom, where my grandma used to stay before she died, there was one of those big frames that have room for lots of pictures inside of it, and there were, like, twenty pictures of us from a bunch of summers at the beach, and also some of the drawings I made when I was really young, like one of a cow that says, “When I am a cow I will moo!,” which is a ridiculous and embarrassing thing to have drawn, but my mom had said, “Don’t be silly, Elsa, it’s very cute!” There’s one of me and my dad playing mini-golf, and there is one of me and my cousins eating ice cream, and there’s one of me and my mom that is my favorite, where we’re lying in beach chairs with sunglasses, reading books, and we both look up and smile for the camera at the same time. I like this picture because everyone says me and my mom look exactly the same in it. And we do. Except that was before I started eating more than I should, and now I’m not sure I look like her anymore.

  “What sort of story would you like, Elsa?” the Stager asks as she comes up the stairs behind me. She looks, and sounds, worn down. I feel bad. I’m not sure how to make it better—I’ve done so many things wrong these last few days.

  “Something funny about Moses.”

  “I already told you my funny Moses story. Remember, about Moose?”

  “Yeah. Well, if you really don’t have another story about her, tell me about the boy in your wallet.”

  “The boy in my wallet?” She looks confused, and then alarmed. “When were you in my wallet?”

  “You didn’t see?”

  “See what?”

  “I straightened it all up for you. I organized everything.”

  “Wow, is it possible that I’ve been so busy the last couple of days that I haven’t even opened my wallet? Let me think … Did I get gas, or groceries, or cash…? How crazy is that? It’s like I’m in some liminal space in this house.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just that time seems to have stopped. Like I’m in some other world. Some parallel universe.”

  I look at her, confused.

  “Don’t listen to me. I’m just rambling.”

  “Well, come in here and tell me a story.”

  “Okay, but can I have my wallet? You have me a little concerned.”

  “You’ll have to come get it.” I’m hugging her bag tight to my chest as I step back into my parents’ room.

  “Don’t worry. It’s all fine. I didn’t take anything.”

  “I believe you, but still, I should check. I mean, I have a lot of important things in there. My license, my credit cards.”

  “It’s all there, I promise. Just come in.” I take her hand and try to pull her inside, but even though she’s tiny, she’s still stronger than me, and I can’t get her to budge.

  “Elsa…”

  “What’s the big problem? We’re going to my parents’ room. You’re supposed to stage that room, aren’t you, Mrs. Stager? Oh, sorry! I mean Ms. Stager.”

  “I was already in here and decided it doesn’t need staging.”

  “What about all of the pictures on the dresser? Like the wedding pictures and stuff. I thought you have to depersonalize everything!”

  “Well, I do, it’s true.”

  “So come on!” I give up trying to pu
ll her in, and instead I run inside and flop onto my parents’ bed. I love this bed. The mattress is soft and the duvet is beautiful, blue and yellow with lotus flowers. My mom got it in India, which is where the bed is from, and whenever I see it I want to jump on it, even though I’m not supposed to anymore, on account of being too old (or maybe just too chunky) to jump on a bed. But I do anyway. A few feathers escape from one of the pillows when I land, and they fly up in the air; then one floats onto the sleeve of my shirt.

  “Be careful, Elsa,” the Stager says. She’s still standing in the doorway.

  “What’s the big deal? You look like you’re afraid!”

  “Okay, I have an idea. Instead of reading a story, maybe you can help me. Why don’t you take those pictures off the dresser and very carefully put them away.”

  “Okay. I can be the stager helper!”

  “Exactly. In fact, take everything off the dresser and, very, very carefully, put it all … how about right there?” she says, pointing to the big carved chest.

  “The maharajah cabinet?”

  “Whatever … the one right there.”

  “Yeah, that’s the maharajah cabinet,” I explain. “We call it that because, look, you can see the maharajah painted there. He’s playing polo! My mom had this shipped back when she went to India for work.”

  “Yes, fine, put the pictures in there. But be very careful,” she says. She’s still standing in the doorway.

  “She got the bed in India, too, when she went there to have a meeting. She got it on the same trip when she got the maharajah cabinet. We had to wait, like, three months for it to be shipped.”

  “The bed? No, she got it in Jakarta.”

  “That’s in…”

  “Indonesia.”

  “Why are you saying that?”

  “That Jakarta is in Indonesia?”

  “No, silly! That she got the bed in Indonesia!”

  “Oh … I don’t really know that. I’m just saying it looks Indonesian.”

  “Have you been there?”

  “I have.”

  “Why? Do you get to travel all over the world like my mom and go on television?”