Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood [76]
Which, to Nell, when all of this was reported to her later, was the first sign that something was seriously wrong with Lillie, because this was not the most terrible thing that Lillie had ever seen. Not by a long shot.
The Open House was cancelled, of course. You couldn’t sell a house with so much blood on the floor. But later – weeks later, once the furniture had been cleared out – Lillie tried again. Her heart wasn’t in it, though, Nell realized. She lacked her old enthusiasm, her conviction that better could come out of worse. Not only that, she was afraid of the house itself.
“The house is dark,” she told Nell. “Nobody wants to live in such dark.” She suggested that the bushes could be pruned.
Nell and Tig went over to the house. It wasn’t dark. If anything, it was a bit too bright: bright could mean hot, in summer. Nevertheless they lopped off some branches.
“The cellar – it’s full of water,” said Lillie on the phone. She was upset. Tig drove over immediately. “The cellar’s dry as a bone,” he told Nell.
Nell had Lillie over to tea. The daffodils were in bloom; Lillie gazed out the window at them. “What do you call those?” she said.
“Lillie,” said Nell, “you don’t have to sell the house. Someone else can do it.”
“I want to do it, for you,” said Lillie. “You’ve had troubles.”
“You think the house is dark,” said Nell.
“I have never seen such a terrible thing,” said Lillie. “Terrible. There was such blood.”
“It wasn’t Oona’s blood,” said Nell.
“It was blood,” said Lillie.
“You think Oona’s still in there,” said Nell.
“You understand everything,” said Lillie.
“I can take care of it,” said Nell. “I know people who do these things.”
“You are a good person,” said Lillie, and Nell realized that Lillie was giving up, she was handing over. She was refusing to be the one who would understand, the one who would take care of everything. Nell would have to do that now, for Lillie.
Nell called her feng shui friend, who found her an expert in crystals and purification. There was a fee: cash would be preferable, said the friend. “Fine,” said Nell. “Don’t tell her anything about Oona or dying. I want this to be a clean read.” Was Oona still in the house? Was she hindering the sale out of vengeance? Nell didn’t think so. She couldn’t imagine Oona doing anything so banal. But then, both of them had been guilty of equivalent banalities. The first wife, the second wife – they could have been typecast.
Tig drove Nell over to the house, but stayed outside in the car. He wasn’t going to have anything to do with this. Nell let herself in with her key, and then she let in the crystal person, whose name was Susan. Susan was not a wispy sort of woman; instead she was athletic-looking, businesslike, matter-of-fact. She took the envelope with her cash payment and tucked it into her purse. “We’ll start with the top floor,” she said.
Susan went over the house – into every room, down into the cellar, out onto the deck. In each area she stood still, with her head tilted to one side. Finally, she went into the kitchen.
“There’s nobody in the house now,” she said, “but right here there’s a channel where the entities come and go.” She pointed to the breakfast nook.
“A channel?” said Nell.
“Sort of like a tunnel. A link,” said Susan patiently. “They come into our world and then they go out of it, right here.”
“This is the place where somebody died,” said Nell.
“In that case, they came here on purpose because they wanted to make a quick transition,” said Susan.
Nell thought about that. “Are the entities good or bad?” she said.
“They could be either,” said Susan. “There are all kinds.”
“If you had bad ones in the house, what would you do?”
“Put light around them,” said Susan.
Nell didn’t ask