Read Online Five Roses by Alice Zorn - Free Book Online Page A

sink.
    â€œThe counters need to be replaced,” he said, leaning against the door frame.
    â€œI was just telling your wife,” Yolette began, then waited, as if Fara might want to tell him herself. Fara didn’t. “The owner’s son killed himself here.”
    Frédéric gave Fara a sharp look. Yolette glanced between them.
    Still watching Fara, Frédéric said, “We don’t want a house —”
    â€œCan we see upstairs?” Fara cut him off. Daring herself. Not sure if she could.
    Frédéric gave a small shake of his head.
    â€œI want to see upstairs,” she repeated.
    He looked at her an instant longer, then motioned for Yolette to precede them. He cupped Fara’s elbow and leaned close to whisper, “We can leave.”
    â€œI like the house. And he’s only asking a hundred and fifty thousand.”
    â€œBut won’t it make you think about your sister?”
    Fara didn’t answer. No one thought about suicide until it happened. Then, once it had and your ears were attuned, you discovered that people were killing themselves all the time — among your friends, their families, at work, down the street. There was always someone who couldn’t endure the despair of yet another day.
    Yolette dropped them off at a diner to talk. She would return in an hour. Fara and Frédéric slid into a booth by the window. Orange vinyl seats and a chrome-edged table. “Holy 1950s,” Frédéric said.
    The waitress looked as if she’d worked there since the 1950s. Her posture was stooped, her neck wattled, but her hips were girdled tight and the remains of her bleached hair had been teased and pinned into a wispy beehive. Frédéric asked if she had espresso.
    â€œCoffee.” Her voice grated from the catacomb of a three-pack-a-day habit.
    He ordered Pepsi. Fara asked for tea.
    The paper placemat advertised hot hamburger with fries, club sandwich with fries, fish sticks with fries. “Do you think the spaghetti comes with fries?” Fara asked.
    â€œThe Plateau isn’t far away. If we want to eat out.”
    In the upstairs of the house Frédéric had tested the taps and flushed the toilet. Fara had never before realized how obsessed he was with water pressure. The door frames canted, but the doors closed, and they were solid. All the condos they’d visited had hollow-core doors.
    Fara had walked from room to room, gaze levelled high, trying not to see the bed with its turmoil of grimy sheets, the tangled clothes on the floor — legs and sleeves wrestling to be rid of themselves — the clutter of empty beer cans and the rubber mask of a devil’s face in the kitchen. Those were all things that could be packed up and thrown away. They weren’t the house. A house was a shell that, in itself, didn’t carry memories. She and Frédéric would paint the walls, sand the floors, decorate. Make the house theirs.
    Frédéric stirred his straw through the crushed ice in his glass. “Are you sure you’re all right about the suicide?”
    She heard how he kept it at a distance: the suicide. She should learn that trick. A horror you named but didn’t claim.
    â€œIt’s been years.” The metal teapot dripped when she poured, soaking the white paper doily under her cup. What a time warp — doilies and beehive hairdos.
    â€œWhat if the house reminds you?”
    â€œYou mean ghosts?” She blotted her cup on a napkin and sipped her tea. “If Claire’s ghost never haunted me, why should this boy’s?”
    â€œAs long as you’re sure you’re all right.”
    â€œAre you sure you’re all right about cleaning up his stuff ? I can’t help you.”
    â€œI don’t expect you to.”
    â€œHis father …” she began.
    â€œWhat about his father?”
    She remembered having to pack the clothes in Claire’s closet. The flowered summer