The Upstairs House Read online

  Dedication

  For my children, my best and most true things

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  November 1950

  Part I

  1: October 2017

  2

  3

  4

  Introduction

  5

  The Visionaries and Their Mentors

  6

  The Major Impact of a Minor Publisher

  7

  8

  Book Sales and the Zeitgeist

  9

  Part II

  November 1941

  10

  February 1942

  11

  June 1942

  12

  13

  September 1942

  14

  October 1947

  15

  January 1950

  16

  Part III

  17

  18

  19

  Falling in Love

  20

  21

  Being in Love

  22

  Mixed Signals

  23

  24

  On Whimsy

  25

  26

  The Makings of a Classic

  27

  Lovers Quarrels

  28

  Part IV

  29

  30

  31

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Sources

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Julia Fine

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  November 1950

  Death flaunts itself on every tree, and Margaret looks out the hospital window, calling it beautiful.

  Typical, thinks Michael. The others have gone to the washroom, to interrogate the nurses, to the hotel to retrieve a fresh shirt. Margaret has stayed. Margaret is here. Margaret helps Michael align the clasp of the necklace to the protrusion of bone at the back of her neck. Margaret looks at her and says, “Oh yes, Rab,” Rab for Rabbit, Michael’s pet name. Margaret is Bun, short for Bunny. “Lovely.”

  Michael knows the appropriate word is not lovely. Once lauded as the most beautiful woman in America, in recent years she’s shed a body’s worth of bulk, finally completing the transformation from her former self—Blanche Oelrichs of the gilded Newport Oelrichs—into the legend she deserves to become: Michael Strange, poetess, actress. At twenty-four, she’d felt the literary urge, needed a nom de plume to publish. The name came to her in a dream, not just a pen name, but a better self, the leading lady role of any lifetime—Michael Strange, iconoclast and luminary. Michael Strange, the benevolent sun.

  Now sixty, Michael Strange is dying.

  For years she’s been told that leukemia will kill her, but the prognosis is so antithetical to Michael’s self-conception, she’s refused to take it as fact. All summer into hospitals, then out of them. No one believed she’d return to the lecture circuit. No one thought she’d make it up to Maine. During the thirteen-hour ride north on the Bar Harbor Express, Michael had begrudgingly written out the details of her funeral: “Dress me in my pleated robe—white with gold trim—and lay me in the living room at Under the Hill.” The prelude to Wagner’s Parsifal will play on loop as the guests are received, “and if the musicians grow tired, replace them.”

  That was July, and here Michael is now, in November. The doctors underestimated her natural resilience, her joie de vivre, her stubbornness. All traits that she’d been known for in her youth. All traits that thrived once she was free of Margaret.

  Margaret. Always Margaret. Margaret bent over the bed, face leaner than Michael remembers, lines webbing out from her eyes. If only someone would marry her, take her off Michael’s hands.

  “Rab, what else can I do for you?” asks Margaret.

  The others trickle in: Michael’s housekeeper, her one surviving son, a few old friends, Charles Shaw and Ted Peckham.

  “Go home and rest,” Ted says to Margaret, but Margaret stays. Margaret is loyal. Margaret is executer of Michael’s estate, and she has sworn she’ll recite Michael’s poetry nightly. No doubt Margaret will sit herself down in their shared rooms at East End Avenue, or in her writing studio—that silly Cobble Court—or in that ridiculous cabin in Maine, and summon Michael. Will that be enough to bring her back? After all, that is the spirit: in ink, in the poetry. That is the soul.

  Michael is afraid to die. Only the foolish aren’t afraid of the unknown. But here are her admirers, hovered above the hospital bed, seated on the windowsills, legions of angels. Michael still conducting her own life. If the musicians grow tired, replace them. And here, around her neck, heavy against her sunken breast, is the thick double strand of pearls her friends so envy. Centering her, weighting her to the earth.

  AFTER A WHILE, Ethel the housekeeper whispers, “We’d better take them off her before somebody else does.”

  Part I

  I MEANT WHAT I SAID IN MY LETTER THE ONLY GIFT MY SOUL WILL ACCEPT FROM YOU AT THIS POINT IS ABSOLUTE SILENCE STOP

  —telegram sent from Michael Strange to Margaret Wise Brown, November 1949

  1

  October 2017

  I’m sure that Clara noticed the balloon, though it was dark and all the books claimed that at three hours old she couldn’t see more than three feet in front of her. Still, there she was, reaching her pruny fingers toward the shadow at the window.

  “The beginning of your life as a woman,” I said. “Being told you couldn’t have seen what you’re sure that you saw.”

  “Oh, stop it,” said my mother. She was sitting on a bench that folded out into a bed. Clara was nursing, or attempting to nurse: burrowing and gumming and ramming her face into my chest.

  “You’ll have to position her,” the nurse had told me. “She can instinctively seek out the breast, but she’ll have trouble seeing it.” So I’d positioned Clara, and she had promptly rejected that position, preferring, it seemed, to rub her forehead vigorously against my collarbone.

  “Remember when you swore there was no man without his pants in our back alley? I was staring right at him. He was peeing on Mr. Novak’s car.”

  “You’re delirious,” said my mother.

  “I was seven. I wasn’t blind.”

  “Feed your child.”

  But it wasn’t as easy as that. Nothing about motherhood was as easy as that. This I knew from the moment they moved Clara from the bloody sheet and up onto my belly. “There is nothing like the bond you will feel upon first meeting,” said Mrs. What-to-Expect. “The rush of love will overwhelm you.” I looked at Clara, a puffy little larva, mouth pulsing, and I waited for the bond. I waited for the rush of love. There were needles still stuck in my arm. Maybe they were interfering.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” said Ben. “Isn’t she perfect?”

  I thought she had been perfect while inside me. Despite the many imperfections of my pregnancy, Clara herself had been perfect as a small, fertilized egg, and she’d been perfect as a fetus when we watched her through the ultrasound monitor, flailing her little legs. Perfect while we’d built her dresser and her crib, and ironed stickers to the wall for her to coo at when she lay on her deluxe organic mattress. She’d even been perfect while she contracted my uterus, through the searing pain of the car hitting potholes and sudden red lights as we rushed to the hospital downtown. She was perfect when the triage nurse reached in to check my dilation, and perfect when I got the epidural, and so perfect while I pushed until the top of her head appeared in the massive mirror the nurse had brought so I could monitor my progress, fully perfect, perfect hair all covered in perfect white g
oo.

  And then she was here.

  I said, “I’m tired.”

  WE’D TAKEN A tour of the hospital several weeks prior, but half an hour after the birth, when they moved me from the labor to recovery room, nothing looked familiar. A baby factory, Ben had called it, and I’d pictured all the little baby parts on a conveyor belt, eyeballs popped into sockets, fingernails glued onto fingers, a pile of dud arms and legs. My nine months in and out of hospital complexes—stepping on and off of scales, peeing in cups, having my blood drawn—had made me macabre. But I found comfort in the thought of each little part of Clara pieced thoughtfully together, of Clara as one of many, which made me one of many, which kept me safe.

  The nurse wheeled me through an empty waiting area toward my recovery room. The lobby’s massive windows looked out onto the fog of the city, a gray day casting a gray light onto teal plastic chair cushions and whitewashed walls. Outside, a balloon drifted past—a face with squinted eyes and a Charlie Brown smile. The attached corkscrewed ribbon, having failed its only task, fluttered pitifully against the glass.

  Ben was still downstairs with Clara. She was forty minutes old. We couldn’t all fit in the elevator together to leave the labor floor, and I was scared to be alone, away from Ben. When the anesthesiologist made everyone else leave so she could give the epidural, I’d panicked to see Ben go, clutching his T-shirt and making him promise to read through all the paperwork after I signed it. It had been a relief to see him peek his head back into the room, and it was a relief now to see the elevator doors open to display him next to Clara in her clear plastic bassinet with the wheeled wooden paneling. Ben was staring down at her, in awe. Frowning in the way I knew meant he was overjoyed, the way he’d been caught frowning in the photos of our wedding. I felt like a voyeur.

  “Ben,” I said. He looked up, and he was mine again.

  “We did good, babe.” Ben let the nurse take Clara, and came out to squeeze my shoulder. “You did so good.” A bit of the joy that I’d wanted sparked quietly in my stomach. I tried to fan the flame.

  “We did, didn’t we?” I reached up for Ben’s hand, but it was gone.

  He grabbed the wheelchair handles and swiveled me away from the IV drip, so that the tape on my forearm lifted and the needle tugged flesh. It was a brighter pain than the pain of the birth, which had been raw and deep and muscly. The nurse smiled at him and wheeled Clara toward us. This was how it would be now—the three of us. This was how it had been, I supposed, for the previous nine and a half months, I just hadn’t really known it.

  My recovery room was just off the elevator. Ben knocked me into the privacy curtain that hung behind the door.

  “Whoops!” He was giddy, eyes rimmed red from lack of sleep. There was a bed with papery sheets, and a bench that folded out for Ben to sleep on. A massive computer sat behind a jumble of tubes and wires, which the nurse connected to the IV pole, still firmly connected to me. I folded over onto the mattress, my legs rubbery with anesthesia.

  “Maybe you should try to walk around?” Ben suggested.

  I shot a panicked look at the nurse pressing buttons, who pretended not to notice. My thighs were massive, doughy and spreading. I stuck a fingernail in one, and felt nothing.

  “The mesh panties are in the bathroom,” said the nurse, adjusting Clara’s swaddle. “And so are cold packs, and a squeeze bottle to rinse. You have to slap the cold packs around a few times before you use them. Don’t be afraid to ask for as many refills as you need.”

  Clara’s eyes were shut. She made a little mewling yawn. I wondered what her breath would smell like.

  “We’ll have to feed her soon,” I said.

  “Let’s get some rest.” Ben rolled Clara closer, so that when I tilted the bed back I could still reach the side of the bassinet. I put a hand on the plastic and turned to the window. There it was again, that lost balloon with its leering Mylar smile.

  I WOKE UP to a different nurse adjusting my bedding.

  “Blood pressure still good.” She had thick hands, capable, squeezing my wrists. Her smile felt routine. “How’s the pain?”

  “Just in general?” I blinked at her. My stomach was still bloated, but instead of a fully pumped ball, it had slightly deflated. Stitches were tightening at the back of my vagina. My biceps burned from holding up my legs while I pushed. “Okay, I guess?” I could almost hear my mother telling me not to uptalk.

  “Okay, good. You get your Motrin now. I’ll write it on the board, but don’t worry, when we switch shifts your night nurse will keep track of it.”

  “Do I need to—” I paused, still hazy, unsure of what I was asking.

  “We’ll try feeding her again in a half hour or so. You two will figure it out. I’ll stop back in to help you soon.”

  I didn’t understand. Would we figure it out, or would we need her assistance? How much of this was instinct, the two of us minnowing up through the water for air? How much was I supposed to be afraid of? I turned to the window to find that the balloon hadn’t moved. Its face was pressed against the glass, flattened features like my sister in a sheet mask, the eyes half-moons, the nose too large. Annie would be here soon—they all would be here soon, and there would never be another of this moment.

  “Wait,” I said, “I think there’s something the matter.”

  The nurse pressed down on my abdomen. “It all feels fine. Totally normal.”

  “No, I mean—” Ben was coming into the room, rolling the bassinet in front of him. He looked so happy, so perfectly content. “Never mind,” I said. “I must just be tired.” The nurse smiled again, parted the curtain, and walked out the door.

  “Do you want to hold her for a minute before the family gets here?” Ben asked, passing Clara over before I could respond. I wanted to want to hold her, so I nodded even while realizing that I didn’t want to hold her. But here she was, in my arms. Little tufted eyebrows, skin so loose she wore it like a coat.

  “She seems smaller,” I said to Ben.

  “It’s normal to lose weight right after birth,” he said, “remember?” I didn’t.

  “Is she supposed to be so . . .” I wasn’t sure what I was asking. Clara wasn’t what I’d expected, but I couldn’t say how. I’d held Ben’s brother’s kids just hours after they were born, so I knew that the baby would feel soft, that she’d be squinty, that her hair would be crusty with afterbirth. I knew she would be me, but also not me, Ben but not Ben. She sighed, and her nose wrinkled. I was on the cusp of something—some emotion, some metamorphosis, some deep realization. Then my mother walked in.

  My mother didn’t knock, just swept in as if entering her own living room, hair freshly dyed and nails just painted. She was wearing a magenta wrap dress with a plunging neckline that displayed her freckled cleavage. Grabby fingers, thick perfume.

  “My grandbaby!”

  “You didn’t have to dress up. You shouldn’t have dressed up.” I frowned.

  Ben mouthed something from across the room: Your father. Of course. It must have been a good six years since she’d seen him. I thought it highly unlikely that he’d make it to the hospital today—or really any day—but who was I to tell her that she’d wasted her best dress on us and Clara?

  “Well, aren’t you just divine? Aren’t you a treat?”

  “Do we have more of those ice chips? I’m thirsty.”

  “I can run out and—” Ben started, but I shook my head furiously, determined not to let him leave me. The balloon was laughing at us—me and Ben, my mother. I didn’t mind, but my mother hated being laughed at.

  “It looks so familiar,” I whispered.

  “What?” My mother had scooped Clara from my arms and was inhaling her.

  “The balloon,” I said.

  “The what?” She glared at me before turning back to coo at Clara.

  “Never mind. I don’t understand why everyone says babies smell so good.”

  “Aren’t you just delicious? Aren’t you just divine?” My mother’s fac
e was so close to Clara’s that I worried she would smear her with concealer.

  “Let her be happy,” said Ben softly. I shrugged.

  I knew where I had seen that balloon before. We’d had one like it in the undergrad office waiting for Steve, the adjunct, when he got back from his four-day paternity leave. I wasn’t yet pregnant. I’d looked at his rumpled button-down and milky red-rimmed eyes and felt superior: because I could, if I wanted, sleep ten hours straight. Because I didn’t smell like spit-up. Because I didn’t have another life tethered, yet, to mine.

  “Can’t someone get rid of that thing?”

  “Get rid of what?” said Ben.

  “The balloon that keeps banging on the window.”

  “I haven’t seen any balloon,” said my mother.

  “Can’t you just open the window and grab it?”

  “Megan, we’re thirty stories high. This is a hospital. The windows don’t open.” My mother’s mascara was clumpy, and prompted in me an unjustified rage.

  “Can we call the nurse back and see if—”

  “Megan, it’s fine. It’ll float away.”

  “It’s been on me since I got upstairs.”

  “Megan, it’s nothing.”

  2

  Before the baby was my body getting ready for the baby, a preparation both physical—swollen ankles, leg cramps, nausea—and mental. I worried about everything. What if the fumes from the carpet cleaner in the condo next door came through the vents in our bathroom and poisoned our daughter? What if she was born with some new genetic disorder that they couldn’t catch with prenatal tests? What if the dog hated the baby and we had to get rid of the dog? What if the dog attacked the baby while we weren’t looking, and we had to have the dog put down, and then the neighbors got mad because they all loved Solly and they tried to kick us out of the condo association for being bad parents and bad dog parents and who would want to live next door to those?

  “They would understand,” said Ben when, at eight months pregnant, I played out this scenario. “In the incredibly unlikely event that our dog turns vicious and attacks our newborn, I’m sure that everyone will understand why we have to get rid of her.” Solly was splayed on the floor next to the couch, and he reached down to scratch between her ears.