The House on Vilas Avenue
The contradictory thoughts that Tess held simultaneously as she climbed into the Uber at the bus station were all related to Vivian.
She was excited to see her aunt and to have a safe place to rest and hopefully recover, but as always she feared that Vivian’s mental health would have slid since her last visit a few months ago, that she’d end up being the caretaker and Vivian the patient.
She couldn’t wait to lie back and listen to one of Vivian’s stories—the only thing since Harry’s death that consistently kept the voices in her head quiet—but she feared the stories were nothing more than delusions, the sign that she was losing a little more of Aunt Vivian each day.
Excitement and trepidation—she could almost hear Harry saying, Just like waves and particles.
The car took her within a mile or so of Marie’s house in the Eken Park neighborhood—the house Tess had lived in (except during the summers) until she was twelve.
Unlike the lake house, which had been the site of such happiness and yet slithered in and out of her memory, she could picture every room of Marie’s house in precise detail.
Probably nothing had changed in the past decade, she thought.
Harry’s study preserved like some sort of museum, Harry’s picture in the den next to the television, Harry’s bathrobe still hanging on the hook in the closet, his slippers aligned neatly below.
In the little time Tess had spent in that house after he died, Harry’s spirit permeated the place, at times even more than it had when he was alive—when he was so often absent, working late at the office or off visiting some radio telescope as part of his work for SETI.
As for Tess, even before she finally and completely absented herself from the house, she had been absent from it.
No photographs of toddler Tess adorned the walls, no childish artwork clung to the refrigerator, no bicycle stood gathering dust in the garage.
Tess had been amazed at how quickly Marie had managed to erase a daughter from her life.
After Harry died, Tess had spent some time with Aunt Vivian—she and Marie agreed it would be too traumatic for Tess to attend the funeral, which had infuriated her.
And Marie said she needed time to “get things in order.” Tess soon discovered that getting things in order meant “removing all signs of Tess from the house.” In her memory, which couldn’t possibly be correct, it seemed that when she had returned home a few days (or had it been a few weeks?) after the fire, all trace of Tess, except for a few stuffed animals and the pink-painted furniture in her room, had been removed.
Even her desk drawers had been emptied—her preteen diaries, her carefully saved multiplication tables and notes from science class, her treasured collection of art supplies were all gone.
As the Uber passed by Marie’s neighborhood, Tess looked out the other side of the car.
The leaves had already begun to fall from the oak tree in Vivian’s front yard, and acorns crunched under Tess’s feet as she made her way up the brick walk to the front porch.
The tire swing on which she had spent so many hours rocking lazily while reading stirred ever so slightly in the breeze.
She loved the smell of early October in Vivian’s yard—the musty aroma of the summer dying with a sharp hint of the winter to come.
If she could bottle this, she thought, maybe she wouldn’t need all those drugs.
She knocked gently on the solid oak door, then harder when no response came.
When she knocked for the third time, almost bruising her knuckles, she began to think that coming here without warning Vivian had been a mistake.
Then she heard a loud click and the door creaked slowly open, revealing a white-haired woman in a house dress holding a book in one hand.
“Hello, Aunt Vivian.”
“Tess,” whispered the woman in the doorway. “How lovely to see you. Come in out of the chill.”
Tess stepped through the door into a dim hallway.
An antique hall tree with a cracked mirror stood against the wall between two elaborate sconce lights, only one of which worked.
A threadbare carpet covered the floor, and the dull floral wallpaper peeled in places.
If anyplace was home to Tess, it was this gracefully aging house.
“Your hair’s gone white,” said Tess.
“I just stopped dyeing it. Damn, it’s good to see you, honey.” She pulled Tess into a tight embrace. “Come into the light where I can get a good look at you.”
She led Tess into a sitting room furnished with a hodgepodge of flea market furniture in every style—or at least every style that was wildly incompatible with the Victorian architecture.
On every available surface were framed pictures of Tess—Tess and Vivian in front of a pile of leaves, Tess at her high school graduation, Tess next to a snowman.
“You look like hell,” said Vivian.
“I crashed and burned,” said Tess, dropping onto an overstuffed plaid couch.
“Oh, please tell me you’re seeing someone.” Tess knew that someone meant a therapist.
“I’m always seeing someone, Aunt Vivian. I can’t keep track of all the someones I’ve seen. When I fell apart a few days ago, the latest someone said I should come see you.”
“Don’t you have class, papers, midterms coming up?”
“All part of what led to the latest crisis. That’s what my current someone calls it. A mental health crisis. I kind of wish they still called it a nervous breakdown.”
“And it was definitely this therapist’s idea that you come here? You didn’t feel…I don’t know, pulled here in any way?”
“No offense, Aunt Vivian, but if I feel pulled anywhere, it’s to the island.”
“Of course.”
“What do you mean of course?”
“Nothing. I’m just glad you’re here. I was thinking it would be a good time for you to visit.”
“Why’s that?”
“No reason, the timing just seems…right.”
“I’m glad my mental breakdown happened at a convenient time for you.”
“It’s not that, Tess, not at all. Oh, Tess, there is so much that you don’t understand, and I don’t know how to explain it to you. Or whether to explain it to you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Just an old lady rambling.”
“Harry could always explain things I didn’t understand.”
“He could. I wish your father were here.”
“You’re not an old lady, you know.”
“I’m Harry’s age, and he would have been fifty-two.”
“Fifty-two isn’t old.”
“Tell me that when you’re fifty-one.”
“I told my therapist that the one thing that always stops the voices in my head is listening to you tell one of your stories.”
“I can’t tell you a story on demand, you know. They have to…to happen to me.”
“Have you ever seen anyone, Aunt Vivian?”
“You mean a therapist? Goodness no.” She knocked a fist against the side of her head. “This old noggin is working just fine.”
“And the stories?”
“Don’t you worry about the stories, Tess. Now let’s get you something to eat. You look famished.”