The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [41]
“Of course. I’ll just have to think a moment. I hear they’re doing very well in school.”
“You hear a lot,” you say, a reflex, and wish instantly that you could take the remark back. It isn’t like you. It’s just that everyone always seemed to be talking about you back in Pennsylvania this past autumn and winter, and now everyone seems to be talking about your whole family here in New Hampshire.
“Oh, you know how people chat in a small town. We haven’t anything better to do—especially this time of the year, when the days are short as a pepper plant.” She looks out the large picture window and continues, her voice a little dreamy. “Soon the geese will be coming back. We’ll see them flying north in just a few weeks. I love geese. Big, powerful birds. They’re another sign of spring.” Then she turns back to you and makes eye contact. “Tell me: Would you and Emily and your beautiful twins like to come to my house for dinner this weekend? Perhaps a casual dinner on Sunday night? Something easy and light?”
This is an enormous amount of information to try to make sense of: There is, as Emily would say, text and subtext. No one can use the words goose and geese around you without knowing that they connote profoundly disturbing images. They do not provoke a PTSD sort of flashback—you do not find yourself sweating when you hear them, they do not induce heart palpitations—but they do conjure for you the destruction of your airplane and the deaths of thirty-nine people. Thirty-six adults, three children. Including one with a doll dressed as a cheerleader. That, too, wound up floating in Lake Champlain, the eyes open, the hair the color of corn silk fanning out like seaweed in the waves. And then there was the girl with the Dora the Explorer backpack. All of the children were, you would learn later, younger than Hallie and Garnet.
At the same time, there is that dinner invitation, proffered out of the blue. An unexpected kindness.
You are not at all sure what to make of the juxtaposition. Was the invitation a spontaneous gesture provoked by guilt? Had she brought up the birds without thinking and then, after realizing what she had done, hoped to make amends with dinner?
“Well, that’s very sweet of you,” you hear yourself murmuring. “Thank you. Let me check with Emily and get back to you.”
“It will be very casual. Maybe some others will come.”
“I’m free!” says Holly from behind her desk, though she doesn’t look up when you glance back at her. “I want to come!”
“Of course,” says Reseda.
You find yourself struck by the names of all of these women around you. Reseda. Holly. Anise. You decide that either you have stumbled upon a secret society of florists or gardeners or all of their parents were hippies. Or, perhaps, they’re part of a coven. You are bemused by that notion in particular and conclude the synaptic link was triggered by the mention, a few minutes ago, of Salem. You always think of witches when you hear the name of that small city. Everyone does. The burning times. The hangings. The women (and men) pressed to death by stones.
“You’re grinning,” says Reseda.
“I just had a funny thought.”
“Can you share it?”
“I like your name. I like all of your names here.”
“The reseda is among the most enticing and fragrant flowers in the world,” she says, and you realize that you’re not in the slightest bit surprised.
When you leave a few minutes later, you have in one hand Gerard’s phone number and in the other a thick espresso-chip cookie from a batch that Anise had baked that very morning and dropped off at the real estate agency. You doubt you will ever call Gerard, at least about that door. But you are glad that you have the cookie. It’s delicious. You hadn’t realized how hungry you were.
Chapter Five
A bird became trapped in the woodstove. It flew in through the top of the chimney just as the late winter sun was starting to thaw the thin skins of ice on the shallow puddles in the driveway. No one was awake in the house. The animal worked its way lower and lower in the