The facts were Penelope skipped classes and was expelled but I didn’t say that. What was there to say? My daughter, though intelligent and bright, can’t manage to make it from one semester to the next, can’t keep an apartment, and can’t keep her head straight for anything? In conversations with friends and neighbors, I might have mixed up the lies I told, about college and traveling and finding herself. They probably thought me to be scatterbrained or dishonest, or both.
When Penelope came home for the summer for what we thought would be two months before returning back to college for her sophomore year, she left a few days after her arrival at Hawthorne Court and we didn’t hear from her. Days turned into weeks. I inquired at a precinct without mentioning my name and that’s how it was explained to me: She is free to come and go, she is an adult. Unless there’s reason to believe a crime has been committed. Or if there is a history of mental problems. I hung up the phone then. Penelope was twenty-two. A foggy time during which we should have come up with a more logical approach to her unpredictable behavior. She told us later she went hiking with friends but forgot to tell us where and with who. She returned like one of those stray cats with a dull coat and bald patches, in need of deworming. She slept for days and that was that. Is that something that needs discussing at book club meetings and cocktail parties?
The house to my left. The Atwals. The husband Indian, the wife Hawaiian, but I can’t be sure. It’s not polite to ask people about those kinds of things. I recall the family owning gas stations but it could have been something else. Hotels maybe. There was the wife and there were other women living in the house, his mother or sister, I believe. Their daughters were of breathtaking beauty, all three of them. Not one ugly duckling among them. I often wondered where this would lead, three girls each a year or so apart. They’d all reach their teenage years around the same time and I thought better you than me. The Atwals did come to the housewarming party and they loved the house, they were oohing and aahing plenty. They never attended any functions after that, though I invited them. I’d like to think their social life was just ascetic. Their lawn needs watering, those yellow patches are unsightly. Was there a reason they avoided us after that night? I don’t—
Look at those silver maples! I planted them, what, five years ago? They have come along nicely. I would have preferred a creek or waterway nearby—one drought and they’ll pay the price—but the roots have taken hold and deepened. They haven’t been pruned in a while, the branches are too long and delicate, flimsy enough so a high wind or even a layer of ice can snap them off, and the rods I had put in to assure a straight growth pattern are tilted. Why would Edward allow such a thing, young trees are so susceptible to growing crooked if not corrected, one storm and in the morning you wake up and there it is—a leaning tree.
The house. There it is.
Ivy twirls undisciplined and shameless around the brick posts by the front door, sticky leaves have climbed upward, have attacked the house like an aggressive invader, and soon it’ll attach itself to the oak, vines will climb up the tree trunk and envelop branches and twigs, blocking sunlight to the first then the second floor. I picture the brickwork overcome by rootlike structures. So much ivy. It’s everywhere. A stem, thick as rope, sends runners over the stones. To my horror the mortar has cracked and blades of grass emerge in between them. The oak by the driveway, its leaves chatter above me, tell me I was supposed to care for the house, protect it. But I had not. I had not. Because Edward—
I wonder, do the neighbors still welcome Edward into their homes, invite him to parties? Will they welcome him with another woman? I bristle at the thought but I follow the easement line toward the house, cut across the lawn, and step onto the old stone path leading to the house.
* * *
• • •
I make my way to the front door. That door knocker. An ornate head of a woman with a bursting sun behind her like a halo I had come across at a salvage company on a trip to the Gulf Coast. The door’s brushed bronze, exquisitely hand-forged hardware, the cut stone set back into a brick wall, make the entrance feel like stepping into a fortress. Having gained distance from my former life, I now understand what I tried to do here: it was my way of clearing the trees and preparing a plat, building dams and levees around it to keep predators at bay.
That day Edward dropped me off at Shadow Garden, I was beside myself and didn’t think . . . What did I think, exactly? Having been cast off like a worn sock, I didn’t have the strength to demand what . . . Should I have insisted on the key? This was my home and not being able to just enter through the front door makes me pity myself. Typical me, disappointment churning in my gut but I also haven’t so much as wasted a thought on how I’d get into Hawthorne Court, having spent all that time wondering how I’d get here.
To my left the marble fountain prattles away. I dip my fingers in the water and quickly jerk my hand back. Algae sticks to my fingers and a scummy layer covers the entire basin, the water babbling and splashing but the gurgle is slow. Soon the pipes will be blocked.
I look up, second floor, second window, that’s where Penelope’s room is. I count the windows, locate my former bedroom. Is another woman sleeping in my bed?
Following the path, I end up at the metal gate leading to the service entrance. It was part of the original floor plan, from a time when employees entered the house and I had thought it quirky and charming and kept it, though we hardly used it.
Edward often forgot to lock the doors at night but the alarm system might be enabled and I don’t dare cause a commotion of epic proportions; shrill alarms and blinking lights, and the security firm showing up. How would I explain myself, that’s the conundrum, but I can’t resist the urge to look through a window and if I’m careful enough, I won’t trigger an alarm.
I part the potted gold dust aucuba by the service entrance which will allow me a view of the butler’s pantry and the kitchen. The ground is nothing but knotted roots and I shuffle my feet to get closer to the window, but before I know it the vines have wrapped themselves around my ankle. Sharp English ivy leaves poke at me. I stumble as I break free, reach for the windowsill to steady myself but the house is so close—or am I closer to it than I thought?—and the palm of my hand hits the windowpane with a loud smack which echoes into the night like a slap on bare skin. I crouch and wait. I slip behind the flowerpot the size of a bathtub. Nothing stirs. No alarm. No footsteps, no lights. I wait a while longer to make sure. I sit in the dark, hidden by the six-foot-tall aucuba, the green, gold-spotted leaves wide and long enough for me to disappear behind. The irony of it all. As I cower in the corner, an ace tumbles out of my sleeve.
* * *
• • •
The first time Penelope hid from me, she was five years old. It was innocent enough. We had just moved to Florida, and the house was so small it took me less than thirty seconds to run from room to room. I checked the door but she was so little and could barely reach the lock. I opened cabinets and closets but there was no sign of her; I ripped shower curtains and checked the backyard for holes in the fence. I found her underneath the dinner table, calm and poised. Had she not just seen and heard me running through the house, screaming her name, banging doors and cabinets? Why was she so composed, as if it was a game we had played, when I was clearly out of my mind with worry?