Burning Down the House Read online

  She finished the little left in her glass and walked several steps to the sink. She could see better now.

  At least drink the bottled water, the man said.

  Really, this is fine, she said, filling her glass from the tap.

  You’re the boys’ new nanny?

  She kept the glass up to her mouth while she thought about how to respond.

  I’m Steve, he said. Their father.

  I know, she said. I’m Neva.

  —

  She turned around and washed her glass and dried it and put it back in a cupboard. She thought that maybe she should leave now but the thought was swept quickly along on a river of thoughts. The more compelling thought was about how different Steve was from the way she had imagined him, how much larger and yet more approachable. She had known that she wouldn’t be afraid of him, but she hadn’t guessed that she would want to be around him. She had expected to hate him.

  How old are you? he asked.

  Twenty-six.

  Where’re you from?

  Russia.

  How long have you been here?

  I came to the States when I was ten years old.

  Not much older than the twins, he remarked. He took a long swallow from the bottle.

  The boys are very sweet, she said. I’m glad to be taking care of them.

  They’re not sweet. But maybe you haven’t realized that yet.

  Well—she smiled—they’re very bright.

  Felix is. I worry about him. Roman’s an operator. He’ll be fine. He opened the refrigerator and with his hulking back to her he said, Why the hell isn’t there anything to eat around here?

  I don’t know.

  They’re probably having it all flown in from someplace. Jonathan and his goddamn expensive palate.

  Neva began opening cupboards and said, I’ll find something. Do you like eggs? I see some oil, I can cook them with that.

  Scrambled, not overcooked.

  She had already found a pan and lit the stove.

  —

  She has entirely forgotten the thought of leaving and is deeply engaged in the feeling of being around Steve, being present with him, settling in to what seems like a very natural rhythm. If she is a river then he is an ocean, and she feels herself flow naturally in his direction. Already in the car that took her away from home she was gliding, gliding toward this moment.

  —

  She finds, much to her surprise, that she does not hate him. Instead, she feels as if she knows him.

  —

  I’ll find a bowl, she said. She looked around for a bowl and a fork to stir the eggs. She opened drawers, but she found only keys, a screwdriver, duct tape. Far off in the house the plumbing rumbled and drifted off. She opened another cabinet and found a fork sticking out of a teapot.

  You can just crack them in the pan, he said. I like them that way.

  All right.

  Neva stirred the watery eggs and they swirled into one another.

  Couldn’t sleep in this strange house? he asked her.

  She didn’t answer him.

  Steve nodded his head as if answering the question for himself. You’ve had a hard life, he said. It’s a crazy world, isn’t it?

  Not crazier than any other, she said.

  To other worlds, he said, raising the bottle. You seem like you might’ve come from another one.

  She found a stash of plates in a dirty old dishwasher and cleaned one and put the eggs on the plate and handed him the eggs and fork.

  I sometimes feel that way, she said.

  He offered her his fork. Have something to eat, he said.

  I was only thirsty, she said.

  They stood together in silence while he ate. The light outside was bleaching a little bit away from darkness and the objects in the kitchen became slightly more visible, dirtier. It was a fancy house with a filthy kitchen. He handed her the plate and she washed it and the pan and dried everything and put it all away.

  You don’t have any family, do you?

  No, I don’t, said Neva.

  Didn’t think so.

  He finished the champagne and left the empty bottle on the counter.

  I hope you enjoy your time with us, he said.

  I’m sure I will. Thank you for the opportunity.

  He watched her for a moment and nodded some more. Go back to bed, he told her.

  —

  She did. Crawling back under the heavy covers she squeezed her eyes shut and searched longingly for sleep. When it came she dreamed of a dog, its eyes closed, floating on the water. Not dead but dreaming.

  —

  She awoke not long after with the dawn not yet breaking and the thick drapes blocking out any early light. Felix was standing next to the bed, looking down at her.

  What is it? she asked him. Are you okay? But he said nothing and slunk off and went back to his own bed and when it was time to get up he didn’t seem to remember the incident.

  5

  ALL THAT NEXT MORNING she watched Patrizia conferring with Miranda and delivering womanly advice. By lunchtime Miranda had been convinced to get over Jonathan’s involvement with the former nanny and to go through with the wedding. Neva pieced this together from snatches of conversation and gestures and looks, the two women ranging over the subject as if they were surveying and studying the floors of a luxury store. At lunchtime they were talking about rehearsal dinner details, and Neva was giving the boys their lunch. The food had arrived, along with a chef and kitchen staff. Neva served the boys from large platters arranged on a console near an outdoor table. Roman was trying to eat while playing a game. His device fell into his lunch several times and Neva helped him clean off the herbs and oil.

  —

  During the meal Neva tried to get acquainted with Felix, who was not easy to unearth. An inward boy with a delicate, occasionally quizzical expression. They ate side by side in silence, the barely audible clicks of Roman’s thumbs on his machine blending in with clinking silverware, spilling food, the twittering country sounds.

  Felix was usually found reading a book but at the moment he was concentrating entirely on the present, eating with deliberate poise, chewing his fried fish thoughtfully, dipping pieces into the red swirl of ketchup on the white china with a light, graceful movement. He ate his salad using the fork with his left hand.

  He had asked Neva no questions since she’d started working for the family a few days earlier. He seemed to have absorbed everything he needed to know about her from watching her, observing both the way others treated her and the subtleties of mood on her generally inexpressive face. He was like a highly intelligent animal, a dolphin mixed with an exquisite monkey.

  —

  I’ve never had fish-and-chips before, Neva said.

  Felix nodded underneath a filigree of shadows from a large tree.

  I thought it would be greasier, she continued.

  They were both quiet for a while.

  This is fancy fish-and-chips, Felix said. It’s not the real thing. It’s usually pretty disgusting and more delicious.

  I thought so.

  I have a question.

  Go ahead, said Neva.

  Why is it harder not to imagine something if someone says to you, Don’t think of a black dog, than if someone says: Don’t think about the sentence “Are you hungry”?

  Because the mind works in images. So if you hear the phrase “a black dog,” you cannot not picture it. If someone says a string of words, that’s easier to forget.

  Okay. Thanks.

  You’re welcome.

  How do they study memory? Do they go into people’s brains? I guess they can. I guess they’ll figure it all out. It’s like the way there used to be diseases that people don’t get sick from anymore. We can cure them now. That will probably happen with death. I mean I can’t really imagine that I’m ever going to die.

  I haven’t heard about a cure for that yet, she said.

  I know, but it will come in the future.<
br />
  If you say so, Felix. You seem to know a lot.

  Where in Russia are you from?

  The mountains. I’m named after a river near where I was born.

  Felix looked at her for an extra beat, as if he could see the vibrant blue River Neva flowing in the sky behind her head.

  Poppy is coming today, he said.

  Who is Poppy?

  My sister. Actually she’s my cousin who was adopted by my dad when her mother died. She was six. She’s seventeen now. Her mom was my dad’s sister. It’ll be better when she gets here. She’s interesting.

  Like you?

  For the first time since she’d met him he blushed a little and didn’t seem to know whether to laugh or to hide.

  No, he said. Not like me. She’s cool.

  I can’t imagine anyone cooler than you.

  She has totally white hair. Well, the last time I saw her she did. And her eyes are kind of far apart.

  I look forward to meeting her.

  Are there any more potatoes?

  —

  For a long time Neva has had no friends. Not since she was very small. But Felix, this child, seems like a friend. She is twenty-six and yet this nine-year-old boy makes sense to her. He does not seem to need anything, just like her. Except this girl Poppy, he seems to need this girl Poppy. Neva feels a curiosity about the girl and a pull toward the boy. This is new and different. She is not usually taken in by these families. She doesn’t despise them, but she usually feels a great distance, a divide having to do with more than money, more than education, more than privilege. She usually sees them as people with no similarity to her whatsoever, as if they were an entirely different species, even when she likes them, even when they seem to be decent, thoughtful people. But now she feels an unfamiliar kinship, a powerful loneliness that she can comprehend in this family. She could misunderstand it, could think that she and they are very much alike, and that she is one of them. But she is realistic and practical and she understands at least this much: what connects her to this particular family is their loneliness and in the case of Felix his awareness that he is lonely. He accepts it, accepts himself. Jonathan is like many of the other families she has worked for. Jonathan does not even know that he is in pain, inflicting pain, always in the vicinity of pain. Steve is something else. Steve is another matter. Steve is an ocean.

  —

  For dessert they ate ice-cream sandwiches made in innovative combinations such as gingersnap with lavender gelato or mint-chocolate-chip cookie with Earl Grey custard. Neva took the boys back to their room and got them changed into their tennis clothes and then accompanied them to the tennis courts where an instructor was waiting. Roman catapulted the ball at the Australian pro, and Felix hobbled around the court like he had someplace else to be.

  Neva sat on the sidelines watching them, Roman lunging and Felix flitting, two awkward, unnaturally cultivated birds.

  6

  POPPY DID NOT let the men who appeared with headsets and strong arms to take her belongings take her belongings, at least not one suitcase in particular, a beat-up purple T. Anthony, which she lugged by herself up some stone steps into a vast foyer with checkerboard marble flooring and, following that, up a green-carpeted staircase. She came upon her room by herself and looked around at the quiet chandelier, the Persian rug, the intricately patterned wallpaper, and huge bed. She took in that this house belonged to real people from another family who were once very rich, perhaps as rich as her family was today, and who now rented out their stately home for lavish events. A slight feeling of discomfort, something like pity, stirred the foliage around the gate of her inner mansion, that world usually cut off from too much feeling. However, here—in the orbit of her family and especially Ian—feelings could not be entirely held at bay. They were blowing in, first signs of a storm.

  A rumble of the mattress as she hoisted her purple valise onto it, inciting ripples of dark pink velvet bedspread. A rosy reflected light colored her face as she unzipped the bag and rummaged around for a change of clothes. A slight breeze from the drafty house brushed the bangs of her now-brown hair, her new short cut showing off the line of her long clean neck. Her eyes lay wide and searching in her gently mocking, pretty face. Out the window the sun was just slanting sideways through the tall trees, out of which rose little birds like flying thoughts distracting the world from some great mystery behind the greenery. She pulled on a striped and slouchy dress and slipped her toes into low suede boots and strode coolly out of the room.

  —

  Before all of this, shortly before the wedding, Poppy had accepted the persistent attentions of a rich young musician who had been slavishly pursuing her for months. They got together at a party Patrizia and Steve threw for Poppy at that semi-new hotel in Williamsburg. Soon after the party Poppy had announced to Steve that she wouldn’t be applying to college in the fall. Steve was in the middle of a complicated multinational negotiation at the time and decided to humor her until her idiotic idea went away and that boy with the ridiculous beard finally bored her. Steve had no awareness that she would take his evasive “we’ll see” attitude as an affirmation of her plans. And so it continued with the musician whose privileged life was nothing compared with Poppy’s advantageous perch atop the universal elite. He—his name was something offbeat his parents had come up with that was meant to make him extraordinary—looked on in lust and admiration and studied everything about Poppy: her angled face, her knowing naïveté, her sarcastic smile and adorable wit. Her careless, fearless, superbly plain sense of style and ravishing big eyes. In the month of June of the year 20—, the boyfriend looked on as she boarded a plane bound for the wedding of her half brother Jonathan, flying away from him, the boyfriend, and away from the sweltering diseased heat of a soot-smeared summer in New York, into the seductive, self-annihilating beauty of time captured in the endlessly rolling, eternally mythic English countryside.

  —

  Poppy thinks that she is the heroine of her own life but knows, deeply, that she is not. She feels the calm air around her and senses that nature has some wisdom she does not yet understand, some equanimity, while she herself is all impulse and wonder and fury and bottomless hope. Her hopefulness is so deep that it is almost shallow. It is her desire to understand that keeps it from being shallow. She desperately wants to understand who she is, how she got here, what to do with her life. Her life seems all at once too fragile and insubstantial and the only thing she has, and so this leaves her both willing to destroy it and afraid to risk her entire universe, this not-girl-anymore but not-yet-adult life. Some days she would like to risk everything.

  —

  Would she be different if she hadn’t lost her mother at so young an age? Would she be different if she had known her father? Would she be different if she hadn’t had so many resources? (The fancy school, the low suede boots.) These questions swim absentmindedly around in her consciousness, but she never notices them. If she did they would reveal themselves as impossible to answer, but she might learn something from contemplating them, not the answers but the fact that the questions bother her, worry her, distract her like small invisible insects in the air.

  She doesn’t know yet that the questions themselves are her biggest problem, that they are keeping her from deciding what to become. Instead she throws all of her love at the world, swatting at the insects, smacking them with love, without knowing that this is what she is doing. This makes her brave but not strong, intense but not knowing. This makes her heartbreaking to anyone who can see her for who she is.

  —

  She left the house and walked the grounds. There was nobody around. Eventually she followed a path and in the distance she could hear splashing and a man’s voice. At the end of the path there was more grass and, beyond that, gray-stone paving surrounding a swimming pool. Lush plantings bordered the pool and curved and dipped here and there into the water.

  There were a couple of tasteful lounge chairs scattered around the pool,
and in one of them sat Jonathan. He sat on the edge of the chair, not lounging. Alix was sprawled out on another chair, wearing an oversize man’s shirt over her bathing suit, sunglasses, and a hat. Miranda was in the water, doing slow and sinuous laps. Poppy took off her boots before anyone noticed her and walked barefoot on the grass toward her siblings. She crossed the stone paving along the edge of the swaying water and stood at the end of Alix’s lounge chair and still holding her boots in her hand said: Hello, Big Sis.

  Wide eyed, she continued: I am starving and I cannot believe how beautiful it is here. I’ve been looking all over for everyone. Where can I get something to eat?

  Alix peered over her sunglasses at Jonathan who was scrolling through his texts. Welcome, Poppy, Jonathan said.

  Miranda raised her head from the water.

  Poppy. How was your flight?

  Jonathan looked Poppy up and down and went back to his phone.

  Alix pulled her hat brim over her face. She was in a bad mood. Her silence seemed to express the idea that extreme privilege was like extreme deprivation: it could bring people to a savage state. She felt, at the moment, under no obligation to be kind. This was bizarre even to her because she had been looking forward to seeing Poppy, but the presence of a contented Jonathan, the irritating sound of Miranda’s lithe figure cutting through the water, and now the appearance of her much-younger, more beautiful cousin/half sister made her want to retreat into a chalet of self-loathing. Perhaps if Ian had been present she would have chosen to offer Poppy her better self, but Alix had no idea where he was and so she was stuck with these shameful feelings and no one to help her manage them, not that she should need anyone. She was thirty-seven years old. She allowed herself to behave badly and this only made her feel worse.

  —

  Poppy turned to Jonathan. Do you know how to make her say hello? she said.

  Jonathan looked up from his hands. He regarded Poppy without much expression.

  Why isn’t she saying hello to me?

  Jonathan shrugged and made a “who cares” movement with his head.