White Elephant Read online

  Dedication

  In memory of my father, Roger W. Langsdorf, whose smile,

  great laugh, and never-ending belief in me continue

  to guide me through the rough spots.

  For my children, Ethan and Sylvie.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  AUGUST 31—MORNING

  Allison Miller lay in bed in the dim light of early morning thinking about sex. It was the hammering on the new house being built next door that was responsible, the rhythmic pound, pound, pounding that ought to have chipped away at any nascent amorous thoughts instead of inspiring them. She slid her hand across the sheet, touching her husband Ted’s thigh, but it was clear from the set of his mouth that sex was not in the offing this morning.

  “Do you know what time it is, Al?”

  The question was rhetorical. Their digital clock was of the large-numeral variety, designed for people like them, in their forties, eyes just beginning to go.

  “We hardly need the alarm clock anymore, Cox is so loud,” Ted said. The revving of a chain saw made him leap out of bed as if stung. He opened the window—with effort. The Millers’ house was old and its parts had settled.

  They’d lost the battle for the trees. Ted couldn’t accept it. Nick Cox, neighbor and builder, had been given the go-ahead to cut down more trees on the property next door. The town only had jurisdiction over trees that were twenty inches in diameter or more. There were a surprising number of these junior, cut-down-able-size trees on Cox’s property, a small forest that had sprung up over the years—trees not strong enough for climbing or genetically programmed to offer fruit or flowers, but still welcome for providing a little buffer of green between the Millers and the adjacent property.

  Allison watched Ted with fond familiarity, the gentle curve of his rear end and the rush of red in his neck from the effort of opening the window. She waited for him to yell, to open his mouth and to really let loose. He’d threatened so many times.

  She imagined Nick Cox in his jeans and hard hat, his blue eyes sparking as he yelled back. She pictured the two of them engaging in a twenty-first-century duel, fought across the yards, a battle of words over the fortress Nick was building to their left, a four-story monolith complete with battlements and a double front door that begged for attending knights in armor. It was even bigger than the faux stone castle he’d built to the right, with its many turrets and spires, where Nick, his wife, Kaye, and their two pretty blond children lived. One half-expected to see fireworks shooting into the sky above the house—if one could see the sky above from inside the Millers’, which one no longer could. Allison and Ted’s little house was wedged between the two, a pebble amid boulders.

  In the meantime Tunlaw Place was in disarray, the air tinged with the stench of diesel. A construction truck and a dumpster were parked along the curb, along with Nick’s little yellow bulldozer, which looked like a brightly painted toy.

  Allison closed her eyes and stretched her arms and legs toward all four corners of the bed imagining that she—not the neighborhood—was the one at stake, she the damsel in distress, she the one for whom Ted would slay Nick Cox. Or vice versa. The winner would bed her. She was ready to make the sacrifice.

  Ted stood at the window, on the verge of shouting. Allison waited, excited at the prospect. Today, it was finally going to happen. Today, blood would be spilled. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs, waiting, waiting—but Ted seemed to think better of it. He slammed the window shut and stomped off to the shower.

  The alarm beeped then, an unrelenting tone that increased in volume until Allison silenced it with the flat of her palm. She set off to face the last day of August. A day that was neither summer nor fall. A day neither here nor there. A day that promised to be nothing more than betwixt and between—just like she was, Allison thought. Just like her.

  JILLIAN MILLER SLOGGED HER WAY THROUGH HER CEREAL, HOPING she’d finish before her dull stomachache went full-blown. She chewed dutifully, her eyes on the leprechaun on the cereal box. She’d slipped the box into the cart on a recent trip to the supermarket. Her mother preferred organic products—brown rice, brown eggs, thin brown paper towels that dissolved in your hands.

  Jillian had hoped there would be a good-luck charm inside the cereal box, but after digging around she came up with nothing more than a powdery hand and arm. No prize to put in the shoe box under her bed amid the other tokens she’d collected over the years: fortunes from fortune cookies, found pennies, rabbits’ feet—until she realized they were the real feet of real rabbits. They hadn’t helped so far, but you never knew when good luck might kick in.

  Jillian was about to give the rest of her cereal to their dog Candy, a shaggy dachshund mix, when her mother came downstairs singing a cowboy love song. Her mother had been cast as the lead in the town production of Annie Get Your Gun. The thought of her skipping around in a little skirt and cowboy boots in front of everyone made Jillian want to die.

  “The hammering wake you, hon?” her mother said. “It’s like living in a war zone.”

  Jillian shrugged. Who knew if she even really slept at night? She always woke up tired, her worries buzzing around her head like the moons of Jupiter: homework, grades, Mark Strauss, bad hair, terrorism, school shooters, racial profiling, global warming, college, police brutality, boobs, sex, death. She hoisted up her backpack, so heavy she had to walk bent over. All the kids did. They were like overworked elves, crushed by the loads they had to carry.

  “Sure I can’t get you one with wheels? They have some awfully cute ones.”

  “Mom. Please.” She shook her head, hot with embarrassment.

  “Don’t forget the soccer game this afternoon. Do you have your uniform and shin guards?”

  “I’m not three!” Jillian dumped her backpack to the floor with a thud, and ran upstairs to get them. She stuffed them into her backpack and took off out the back door.

  Once upon a time—last year, when she was in sixth grade—she and her best friend, Sofia, walked to school together with their matching purple backpacks. Now she was nearly thirteen and purple was a stupid color, but her parents wouldn’t buy her a new one because her old one wasn’t worn out. And worse even than that: Sofia had moved to Paris, leaving Jillian all alone with the idiots at the middle school. Jillian skirted the dumpster and the guy with the yellow hard hat who always greeted her with a creepy, “Good morning, young lady,” and headed down the street.

  She distracted herself by naming the Sears houses she could see: the Glyndon, the Hazelton. If she named all of the house models correctly on her way to school, she would have an okay day. She’d learned the names last spring, when she made a model of the town for her final social studies project. She’d stuck to the houses built before World War II. It was weird to think that in olden times you could order a house as a kit from a catalog. She imagined what would happen if you could order a house online. It would probably arrive by drone two days later, possibly crushing an evil witch or two when it landed.

  It wasn’t even September yet, but her sch
ool supplies had already lost their new-school-year smell. If she ran the world, she’d make it illegal to start classes before Labor Day. It was so hot. Was it hotter this year? Was it global warming? Why didn’t anyone care?

  The Coxes’ SUV idled in the driveway next door, Mr. Cox behind the wheel, eyes on his phone. Lindy sat in the passenger seat, her blond mane glowing through the window. She looked at Jillian with no expression at all, as though Jillian were a fence post.

  Jillian had had hopes at the end of fifth grade, when she learned that a girl her age was moving in next door, but it was obvious right away that she and Lindy would never be friends. Lindy liked popular girls. It was like she waved a magic wand at someone—Katie Brown, who had a pool; or Liz Godwin, who wore mascara—and suddenly they’d be best friends. They’d walk down the hall laughing loudly together and eat lunch side by side. Then, just as suddenly, the magic would wear off. Lindy would roll her eyes when anyone mentioned the girl’s name. “She sleeps with a night-light,” she’d say, or more famously, “She has sex fantasies about the janitor.” Lindy was tall for seventh grade. There were rumors she’d been held back.

  The Starlight, the Katonah. Jillian named houses while she waited for Mr. Cox to back out. The Rodessa.

  Why didn’t they just go? Were they secretly laughing at her? At her yellow pharmacy flip-flops? At her stupid hair? If they ran over her, her parents would probably move away so they wouldn’t have to live with the memories. Then Mr. Cox would buy their house, knock it down, and build another big one on their block.

  She was about to close her eyes and just make a run for it when Mr. Cox backed into the road and sped away, spraying construction dirt on her. Jillian pressed her teeth into her lower lip, the tears pricking at her eyes. The Arcadia. The Hollywood.

  TED MILLER SAT AT HIS DESK AT THE FOGGY BOTTOM UNIVERSITY alumni magazine office editing an article about the championship-winning basketball team of 1962.

  “Once they called him ‘Hoops.’ Now they call him ‘Pops.’ These days, you’re more likely to see him at the food court than on the basketball court.”

  It was impossible to concentrate on a guy called Hoops or Pops when Ted’s head kept filling with images of Nick Cox grinning at him through the leaves of their red maple. Ted had planted the tree for Jillian soon after she was born. He’d chosen it for the color its leaves would turn in fall, imagining the sun shining through the redness—a soft, rosy light under which his little daughter would play, followed, years later, by her own children. Ted would be the grandfather then, the old man puttering around the garden. He had been telling Jillian about that tree from the time she was little. She was bored with the story now, but Ted’s brother, Terrance, still liked to hear it.

  “Once they called him ‘Hoops.’”

  Ted skipped to the “class notes” section, where alums wrote in to brag about their lives: “Carlton and I and our seven children (You heard that right, kids—number seven appeared on the scene in February!) spent the summer in Bellagio . . .” “Win just sold his biotech firm and retired at the ripe old age of thirty-three . . .” “Caroline, whose candidacy for governor . . .” He mangled a paper clip as he read.

  Ted had never sent in a class note, not even to announce that he and fellow Foggy Bott-iam Allison Cole were engaged to be married, which was the kind of thing that gave alums heart palpitations.

  Ted had only had one girlfriend before he met Allison: Margie Kastanienbaum, from Pittsburgh, a pert biology major he’d met in his Philosophy and Religion class freshman year. When he told Margie he loved her after they had sex for the first time, she laughed out loud, thus squelching his plans to give her a pre-engagement ring, to be replaced by a real diamond upon graduation.

  There was no further sex for Ted the rest of freshman year. Nor sophomore or junior. He didn’t really mind. Sex, in Ted’s mind, was equivalent with pressure. Pressure to perform. Pressure to please. He’d grown all but indifferent to it in recent years, which was normal as you got older, he supposed. He made a better older man than a younger one, always had—opting to go home weekends to do laundry instead of attending frat parties, choosing the spot on the bunk bed with his brother instead of the sliver of a twin bed in a girl’s dorm room.

  Then, senior year, he moved to the group house on 39th Street and everything changed. His room was on the first floor, and Allison’s directly above. She was not just the only girl in the house, but his dream girl. She was petite, with curly auburn hair, and eyes that went from green to gray to blue—sometimes during a single conversation. Allison always had time to talk, and sometimes invited Ted along when she roamed the city, taking photographs. She took in strays, from dogs, to cats, to humans, offering them all a home and warm meals, and, for the humans, symptom-tailored herbal teas when they were under the weather. She was like Wendy in Peter Pan. All five of the guys in the house were in love with her.

  Unfortunately so was her boyfriend, Gary Holloway—why, the name alone! It sounded like the name of a used-car salesman, and he acted like one, offering what he seemed to think was a charming smile and smooth remarks, and little else by way of compensation for living in Allison’s room. Gary Holloway was always there. Was he even a student? What did he do except screw Allison? Which he did a lot. The wooden floors were squeaky at the house on 39th Street, which meant Ted heard everything that happened upstairs. This was a torment the first few months—but it gave him the advantage the night Gary Holloway dumped Allison after a loud and ugly fight. Ted suffered through several hours of her unrelenting sobs before he knocked on Allison’s door, opting to console his pretty housemate over getting the sleep he needed for a history test. He’d failed the test, but he’d gotten the girl. He still couldn’t believe it. It was a feat worthy of his fictional brother, Thomas—a third, more confident Miller sibling whom he and his twin, Terrance, had invented as children. Thomas was the charismatic one, the success. Thomas was the brother with balls.

  What would Thomas do? he and Terrance sometimes asked each other, still. He asked himself the question now.

  Thomas wouldn’t put up with Nick Cox’s wanton destruction of Willard Park. He would have seen to it that the White Elephant was never built. At four stories, Nick Cox’s latest abomination rose high above all the other houses in Willard Park, casting a shadow over the Millers’ home. It was painted bright white and had been sitting on the market for months—hence the nickname, which Ted had come up with himself. It had caught on, he’d been pleased to learn, but that was the only thing about it that pleased him. Ted threw the paper clip, his mood having slipped from brown to black. It pinged off the door frame and landed with a tap on the floor. The tower bell gonged the half hour. Eleven thirty. Close enough. He took the stairs two at a time.

  Ted unlocked his bicycle, donned his yellow helmet and vest, and rode through the iron campus gate, bumping down the cobblestone street. He picked up two cans of soda and a package of Oreos from the convenience store, continuing down the block to the nursing home.

  Ted kept his head low as he walked by the nursing home supervisor’s office—Dana had left three messages on his phone this week, none of which Ted had returned. He nodded at the gray heads in wheelchairs or standing, propped up by walkers, in the fluorescent-lit halls and common areas. It was nearly time for lunch and the steamy, overboiled string bean smell rose over the tang of ammonia.

  Terrance was in the Entertainment Lounge, standing between the blue vinyl couch and the television, newsboy cap on head, mop in hand. He smiled at Ted the way Jillian used to when Ted came home from work, the way their dog, Candy, did before she lost her heart to the Coxes’ German shepherd. Terrance removed an earbud from one ear. “Supertramp,” he called out, his voice loud.

  Terrance listened to music on his phone during work, a deal they had worked out with Dana to keep his loquaciousness under control. Terrance had received warning upon warning for hanging out in residents’ rooms to chat, forgetting to mop and dust and water plants. He’d near
ly lost the nursing home job last winter, when he opened an old lady’s window one evening before he left work. The temperature in her room dropped to the midthirties overnight; the woman, feverish, had been rushed to the hospital in the morning.

  “But she told me to,” Terrance told Dana at the meeting the next day. Ted sat beside him the way their father had in similar situations at school and work for years.

  “If I told you to walk into traffic, would you? Just because I told you to?” Dana said.

  Terrance looked to Ted. Ted had shaken his head no. Terrance had shaken his head no, too, but he looked unconvinced.

  “Check it out, Teddy.” Terrance offered an earbud.

  “That’s okay, pal.”

  Terrance let the earbud dangle, keeping the other one in his ear. “It’s a code orange today, Teddy. Moderately bad air. That was on the Weather Channel app, Ted. Catch!” He threw a wadded piece of paper at him. Ted threw it back. “I caught a ball at the Senators game that time, remember?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Frank Howard was number nine. Until 1968, Ted.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He was the only player ever to hit a fair ball out of Yankee Stadium.”

  “I thought it was a foul.”

  “Bobby Murcer said it was fair.”

  “Then it was fair.”

  “Pow! Remember when we played army?”

  Ted smiled, thinking of long-ago summer days playing at the Willard Park creek. He and Terrance used to dig trenches and shoot stick guns, using metal dog bowls for helmets.

  “We’re responsible carpenters, you and me,” Terrance said.

  “Yep.”

  “Dad said.”

  Ted nodded. The summer they were ten, the boys and their father built a fort in their backyard, a months-long project that consumed every long, light-filled evening. It involved lessons in sawing and sanding and the wearing of safety goggles that slipped down their faces as they worked. Their father had entrusted them with the combination to the toolshed lock only when he was convinced they were “responsible carpenters,” an honor that ranked up there with “Eagle Scout” in Terrance’s mind.