Drowning Karma

Novel number three begins here.

Chapter One

When Deva turned nine, a package from her dead grandmother arrived. Deva’s mother, Maryl, reminded her that nothing came by accident, especially from the dead. Everything was fate. An omen or a symbol was ignored at one’s own risk.

Of course, her father, Jay, said that one cousin or another must have found it hidden away in the old lady’s house and put in the mail as a final gesture of reconciliation. But when he made the effort to call the cousins whose numbers he could dig up, each and every one of them hung up on him.

“You never did understand where I came from,” his wife said.

“You never wanted to explain it to me,” he replied.

So Deva was given the package and the adults didn’t ask her anymore about it for some time.

Inside the package was a box of watercolor paints. Perfect ovals of color slipped out onto the table. Deva knew something about talismans, and she knew that one way to give meaning to the meaningless was to keep hold of it. Time bestowed value on many useless things. Her mother taught her that.

She put the flat, plastic case in her purse and resolved to say nothing else about it. “Well,” Maryl said, “at least you don’t have to send a thank you note.”

Deva carried the watercolors with her everywhere, but didn’t use them. Until one fall day, sitting the backseat of the car, she pulled it from her purse, popped open the lid, and lifted out the paintbrush. Twirling the brush between her fingers, she pointed it out the window at a decrepit house, and she imagined a beautiful and welcoming home filled with warm colors and soft light. A moment later the car reached the next block.

*
Mrs. Montrose woke up late that morning. She did her best to wake up late every morning to put off living the rest of her life. The house, ugly and neglected, was the one thing her late husband left her. She didn’t keep it because she loved him, but because of a land developer who talked about community development and urban decay. As much as she hated the house, she hated anyone who bothered her about words like community. Her house and her pension allowed her to ignore community.

But on this morning, the morning when on her way to school Deva Martin pointed her cheap, plastic paint brush at her front door, Mrs. Montrose didn’t wake up to the same house. Everything was as it was meant to be when a young man first laid out blueprint paper and began drawing plans. No cracks went up walls. No paint peeled away. No floor sagged. No windowpane was gray and chipped from BB pellets.

Furniture stood straight. Frayed edges mended. Cabinet doors covered shelves the way cabinet doors should.

“Where am I?” She grabbed her glasses and pulled the sheets close to here chin. I’ve been kidnapped, she thought. “Well, you’ll get nothing out of me. I got nothing and now you got more of the same!” She shouted through her house that she didn’t recognize. She could tell the silence that met her back was of nothingness, of no one there to listen, not the silence of being rebuffed or unheard by someone really there. This made her brave. It also cleared her head.

A photo of her son sat on her bedside table. Her comb. Her alarm clock. All of it dusted. All of it like new. Now she took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes, and knew she had to be dreaming.

When she got to the front yard, she learned she wasn’t hallucinating.

“Why, Mrs. Montrose,” called her neighbor Betsy Worthington. “What’ve you gone and done to your house?” She looked like a woman who wasn’t only seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time, but who’d never known canyons even existed. Her newspaper hung in its plastic sack from the tips of her fingers. “I mean…”

Mrs. Montrose didn’t like Betsy. The sight of her clenched her guts with guilt, but the woman insisted on forgiveness, and so Mrs. Montrose gave in as much as she could stand, and pretending the past didn’t exist made accepting forgiveness easier. “I don’t know. I was hoping somebody’d explain it to me. This ain’t your idea of a joke, is it?”

“No, ma’am. I mean, sure it might be a good joke, but I don’t got no way to pull off something like this. You know that, Mrs. Montrose, sure as I’m standing here.”

“Have I been sick? I been in a coma and nobody’s done anything about it?”

“Well, I think they’ve done something.”

“To my house, but not to me.”

Betsy shook her head. “We talked yesterday, if you recall. I told you about my Sean making us proud by getting himself put in one of those gifted classes and all. Can you imagine? It’s more than I hoped for from any youngun of mine, but Harold, he don’t hold much to such la-di-da classes, and he said—”

“And I said I didn’t want to hear about that boy of yours, didn’t I?”

“I know you don’t mean nothing by that, Mrs. Montrose. You ain’t gone and forgotten our agreement now, have you?”

Mrs. Montrose had tried to forget. “Course not, Betsy. How’s your daughter?”

“Hard to control as ever. Don’t know how she’s gonna end up—don’t want to know if I’m honest. And your son? Any news?”

Mrs. Montrose turned around to get a better look at her house in the late morning sun. It gleamed and shone and she was possibly more surprised by the tears that came to her eyes than by the house itself. “Ain’t nobody ask me about…well, ain’t no matter.” She said, not really to Betsy, and not in a voice much more than a whisper.

“They’s lots of things none of us want answers to,” Betsy answered. “You and I got that in common, don’t we now?”

Mrs. Montrose shook herself. She didn’t want to talk about Daniel. They didn’t talk about too much or too honestly about Betsy’s daughter or her son. Vague references were as close as either got. “I meant to say I was thinking about this house.” She avoided Betsy’s eyes. “I don’t understand it. I’m almost frightened of it. If I go back into that house, it’ll not be mine and it’ll not be good.”

Betsy rubbed an eye with the palm of her hand. “Don’t be silly Mrs. Montrose. Look at it. It’ll be grand. And where else you gonna go?”

“Why don’t…” Mrs. Montrose focused on Betsy’s collar, the frayed and yellowed lace. She tried not to remember how she felt responsible for Betsy giving up on her looks. Years ago Betsy had been a beautiful woman. “Why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea?”

Betsy was too shocked at this invitation to say no. She had long ago promised herself not to hold onto her anger and to treat Mrs. Montrose better than she deserved. She’d never said she’d be the old woman’s friend, and her husband would like as kill her if she set foot in that house. All the same, Betsy also believed people were judged by how well they treated the people who didn’t deserve to be treated well. So easy to be kind to babies, kittens, and children holding tight to soft animals. Too easy. And too easy never got anybody into heaven.

The entire neighborhood took note of Mrs. Montrose’s house. Everyone on the street walked over to see, to stand on her front walk and gawk. Before they knew it, they found themselves going up Mrs. Montrose’s front walk and knocking on her front door. Soon more people crowded into her house than had ever been in the forty years she’d lived there. There were as many people in the house as that young architect had envisioned when he first imagined the house for him and his new wife. They were going to be that popular and grand and hold soirees, teas, and dances, and everyone would clamor to come. But none of that had happened and Mr. Montrose had bought the house for a criminally low price, and the neighbors all agreed that the decline of the house and the neighborhood began on the day he signed the papers.

Now the rooms were full, and when Mrs. Montrose and Betsy opened the fridge and the cabinets, food was there, always the certain something somebody wanted, just the right thing. The feeling stirring in Mrs. Montrose was so foreign to her that for a moment, she thought she was having a heart attack. Of course, a few people pilfered and stole, thinking anything easily and magically given could be taken, too. Mrs. Montrose didn’t care.

Read Chapter Two.