Chapter Text
The atmosphere in the kitchen was lethal. Kris sat with head bowed and limbs tucked in; they still had that shaky smile, but the rest of their face had fully backed away from it. Berdly stayed poised over their chair, hanging over them, unblinking. The conversation had escalated to a point where no one could see a safe way back down. No sound except a sudden wind through the trees outside, a flat and shivering hiss.
Susie pushed away her plate. “I think it’s time for us to leave.”
She spoke quietly, but her voice still had a certain resonance. Berdly snapped around to face her, glanced back to Kris, and then stiffly stood. He addressed Noelle, who’d gone expressionless as the furniture.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” he said, and strode out the room. Susie rose and pushed her chair in, avoiding everyone’s eyes.
“Good to see you again,” she murmured, and followed him out. Still in their seats, Kris and Noelle heard the front door swing open and shut, followed by the sudden roar of the car engine – Berdly was gunning it down the driveway. Only when that noise faded did Noelle raise her head and look to Kris, who’d finally regained that placid, neutral frown.
“Why did you say that?” she asked. “Any of it.”
Kris unbuttoned their suit jacket. It was the same one they’d worn during the only art exhibit she’d arranged for them, and tonight marked the second occasion they wore it, fidgeting like it was full of ants. But they’d still dressed up, and spent all day preparing the meal, and she’d taken that as an indication they were making an effort for the evening. This had blindsided her. Kris didn’t seem entirely aware of what was going on, either; they stared at the table like they were searching for answers in the woodgrain.
“I was really looking forward to tonight,” she said. Accusation sheened her voice. “Getting to see her after all this time.”
“Me too.” They looked askance at her. “Do you think she liked the food?”
And that tripped her up all over again. Kris’s fists were bunched on their knees; this question seemed to tense them up more than all the venom Berdly had spit in the last few minutes. She looked to Susie’s mostly empty plate.
“I’d say so,” she conceded. “But, you know. It’s Susie. I guess her appetite hasn’t changed.”
“Guess not. Still. I hope she liked it.” They pulled off their jacket, twisting it in their hands.
“I don’t think Berdly wanted to come here.”
“That makes two of them. The way she looked at him. Like he was going to explode from the start. She didn’t look happy.”
“So that’s why you were antagonizing him? That crack about raising a family – what were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t. I know. It got away from me.” They massaged their face, like they were trying to scour the smile away. “Seemed he was waiting for something like it, though.”
She sighed. “He was chugging the wine like tapwater soon as we laid it out, did you notice?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then there’s what he said to you. Why was he going on about you taking revenge?”
“No idea.”
“And the rest of it was just ridiculous. That nonsense about talent…”
“It’s fine. I don’t think he got my joke. Not that it was a very good one.”
“Calling it your job, you mean. He did seem to lock in on it.”
“I shouldn’t have said it.” They draped their jacket over the back of the chair and stood. “I’m just glad we sent Clara upstairs. At least he didn’t mind her.”
Noelle watched as they gathered the dishes and organized them by the sink. They twisted the tap and the water hissed. She would have tried to rebuke them further – there were definitely a few choice words still flitting around in her head – but they’d been together long enough for her to tell it would be wasted effort. They’d receded back into themself.
“If you see Susie again,” they said, “please apologize for me.”
* * *
Susie, too, had been married long enough to become familiar with Berdly’s many quirks, some more aggravating and less explicable than others. Probably the strangest was this: when he was exceptionally agitated, he would start to hum the melody for “Au Clair de la Lune.” It was a habit he’d picked up in college and couldn’t shake off despite how much he loathed it – one of the quickest ways for her to get on his bad side was to point out the humming – so he tried to restrain it, choke it back into a series of staccato grunts, and usually forced himself to stop after just a couple bars. The angrier he was, the longer he’d hum. As they drove home tonight, he was on his third verse and going strong before she finally spoke up.
“You’re doing it again,” she said dully. Confident his mood couldn’t get any worse.
He stopped at once, tightening his grip on the wheel. Susie kept her gaze trained out the side window. They were just passing the church, its stained glass twinkling as the headlights brushed over it.
“They never spoke to you, did you notice?” he spat. “Not once. Wouldn’t so much as look your way. I was their target from the start.”
“Guess that’s one thing you had in common.”
“Excuse me?”
“You were itching to lay into them before we even walked through the door.” She rested her aching head against the window-glass.
“That is completely—”
“Don’t deny it, Berdly. Give me that much, okay?”
“I cannot believe you’re taking their side in this.”
“I’m not taking sides. And you promised you wouldn’t drink.”
“Well, I’m happy to report that our hosts’ hospitality sank in well before the wine did.” He pulled off to the road that led to their house, cutting through the woods. The trees’ silhouettes were jagged and close-set in the glare of the headlights. “That crack about the house, our family… you didn’t tell Noelle about your problem, did you?”
“God, no. Why would I?”
“Kris certainly did seem to have their talking points lined up, is all. You’d almost think the two of them planned this from the beginning.”
And that was the wine talking. Her headache dug in deeper.
“They were a weird little freak back in school, too. Who the hell knows what they were going on about.”
“Now you’re just being obtuse,” he said.
“And why did you get so hung up on the art thing? So they’re a little pretentious, big whoop. Not like you’re much different, the way you go on about buildings.”
“Stop comparing the two of us. I worked hard to get where I am. Bringing you along with me.”
“Yeah. Sure. I’m overflowing with gratitude, here.”
He thumped the dashboard and she flinched. Berdly had been edgier than usual since that villa design project had started – he always treated every new challenge like it was life or death, but this was evidently his true shot at the big leagues now that he’d started working independently, and it had him practically twitching from stress – but this paranoid rage was something else. It should have been comical from a scrawny geek like him, compulsively humming French ditties to himself; instead he gave the impression that he was one note away from swerving the car into a tree. She was already regretting that chance encounter with Noelle.
At last the house’s silhouette loomed at the end of the road. Berdly had proudly called it a modernist interpretation of the Shingles style, but to her it just looked like it had been assembled from the leftover parts of other houses. Lots of windows and too many sharp angles. The motion-sensitive lights they had wired around the property flicked on as they pulled up; she’d thought at first that it was a nice-looking effect, but these days it made the place seem somehow more isolated, moated off from the darkness of the woods.
Berdly was out of the car and up the porch steps before she even opened the passenger door. She hung safely back as he wrestled the doorkey into the lock and twisted it open. He paused there, on the threshold, not looking back at her.
“I can’t afford any more distractions from this project,” he said. “If you want to socialize, do it on your own time. You have enough of it.”
“Whatever you say.”
He went in and the foyer bulb clicked on, bathing the porch in its glow. Susie lingered there a while, beside the half-open door, shivering a little in the early spring air. Part of her was waiting for him to call her inside, irritably or otherwise, but he’d gone upstairs, and when those outer lights finally registered the stillness and switched off, she went in and went to bed.