The Brooklyn Rail

Emily Hunt Kivel’s debut novel, The Dwelling, comes out this August from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Caught in a “Revitalization” program, which includes the spontaneous mass-removal of all New York’s renters from their apartments, Evie Cavallo heads for a distant relation’s house in Gulluck, Texas. Her second cousin, Terry Lang, guides her as she tours the town’s idiosyncrasies and eventually installs Evie in the cowboy-boot-shaped house of a cobbler. From here, things get delightfully weird and speculative, juxtaposing late-capitalist unaffordability with the sardonic tone of fairy tales. As one character reminds us, “Fairy tales used to be real.” Throughout the novel, the dark potential and eerie winds of fable are never far away.

*

They saw signs for Gulluck long before they crossed into the city. Most of the billboards advertised various attractions. An indoor beach. A petting zoo. A strictly non-swimming lake. The life-sized bronze statue commemorating a dead doo-wop musician who had, apparently, been born there. With each passing sign, the land became more populated. More of the houses—those same looming edifices, with their hodgepodge add-ons and mysterious fifth floors—but also restaurants, trees, mid-level skyscrapers, office parks.

“Where to?” Ben asked, throwing his voice toward the back of the car.

Evie thought. It wasn’t her intention to scare Terry Lang. True, she’d like to move in with her second cousin as quickly as possible, immediately if it were up to her, but she didn’t want to appear presumptuous or aggressive. She wanted to give Terry

Lang the illusion of choice. “What’s a hotel around here?”

“I think they’ve got a Hilton.”

When Evie did not respond, Ben continued. “But I’ll be honest. Hotels are jacked. Overpriced, overcrowded. I’m talking very expensive. Do you have a lot of money?” “Yes,” Evie lied.

Ben turned on the radio. “Just let me know what you wanna do.”

Evie tapped on the glass of the window. She pursed her lips and blew air slowly out, pretending it was smoke. Evie thought of her old apartment, and the beautiful, clean tourists who would soon be inside it. She thought of Elena, and the sound of a muted trumpet. Then she leaned forward, cleared her throat, and slowly recited Terry Lang’s address on Valley Vista Drive.

Evie stood in front of Terry Lang’s screened-in porch, looking right to left and realizing that the house was so incredibly wide, with so many add-ons (though these, she noted, were all done seamlessly enough, in the same materials as the original and painted in the matching canary-yellow color), that she couldn’t see where each wing ended. There was a loud sound coming from the trees that lined the residential street. She searched the sky, the telephone wires hanging low over the sidewalk, for some electrical misfiring. “What’s that?” she asked Ben, who was basking in the shade of an old oak tree. He had removed his shirt and was fanning himself with it. Ben was old, Evie confirmed.

His skin sagged. His chest hair was white and tufty.

“Albino cicadas,” he said.

“What?”

“Just you wait.”

Evie listened to the sound of her feet on the wood porch stairs. She imagined her image, what kind of picture she would want to present to Terry Lang—kind Terry Lang, self-sufficient Terry Lang, sporty and dog-loving and straw-haired second cousin Terry Lang—and which kind of picture Terry Lang would want to see. She shrugged off her backpack—the black synthetic material was burning hot from the afternoon’s car ride—and rested it beside the door. To her right, out of frame. She put her hair back in a low ponytail, mussed it up in front so a few strands would stick out pathetically. The red had been a somewhat arbitrary decision—made five years ago, the night before Elena’s trial, the dye swirling down the basin of her sink. She’d hoped it might help her seem innocent, unassuming. It hadn’t delivered. But she’d kept it all the same.

My name’s Evie Cavallo. My mother was your mother’s cousin. I don’t know if you remember me, but I need your help. I need a place to live. I need a home, or an apartment, or even an add-on will do. I have a job, it’s just okay, but it’s consistent and that’s something. I’m responsible and I’m punctual. My parents are dead. I’m basically willing to do anything. I can smoke, I can not smoke; I can sing or not sing; I can read you to sleep or keep to myself. I can adjust your lighting. I can set up a photo shoot. Let me design your portfolio. But I don’t have to design your portfolio. My sister is gone. My parents are gone. My apartment with the deep windows, the sewer smell, the wood moldings, the sound of the subway afternoon and night. Gone. Here I am, an adult woman with a backpack. Can you help me?

Evie rehearsed as she knocked on the screen door and waited there on the cherrywood porch for her cousin to answer. But when the door opened, after a few seconds of clacking and clicking, the woman who stood before her was so singularly unexpected that all Evie could say, too loudly, was:

“I’m Evie Cavallo.”

The woman paused. She was still behind the screen. She shifted from foot to foot, deciding whether to shut the door.

“Who?”

“Evie Cavallo. We’re cousins.”

“How?”

“My mother was Ernestina.”

“Oh,” the woman said. She brought her hand up to her ear and tucked a lock of straight black hair behind it. The rest fell down just past her shoulders. She was short—she barely came up to Evie’s collarbone—and pale. Rotating shades of gold and brown makeup glittered around her eyes. “Please, come in,” she said.

“Who’s that?” Terry Lang asked as she ushered Evie inside, glimpsing a shirtless Ben leaning against his camel-colored taxicab. His cash payment bulged in a frayed front pocket of his jeans.

“Oh. He’s my driver.” Evie turned to wave goodbye. He gave a sharp nod and went to start the car.

The door shut. They were inside a cool, bright hallway. Photographs lined the walls. “Where’d you drive from?” Terry Lang asked.

“Fort Worth.”

Terry Lang raised her eyebrows. She opened her mouth to speak and then shut it. She led Evie through a narrow room with wood paneling, painted a vibrant powder blue. There was a small side table and a dresser upon which were more framed photographs. Terry Lang did not slow to explain her house. Through another door was a living room, the same canary yellow of the exterior, with an ocher couch and coffee table. “Sit,” Terry Lang said. Evie sat and realized she’d left her backpack on the porch. She imagined it sitting out there like a lonely dog, waiting to be let in.

“I’ll get you some water,” Terry Lang said.

“Thanks,” said Evie.

Terry Lang disappeared. Evie could hear a faucet and a refrigerator.

“Popsicle?” Terry Lang appeared briefly in the threshold. She was wearing patent-leather high-heeled shoes. Stilettos.

“Please.”

Evie looked around the room, which was as vast as any room she’d ever entered but felt, illogically, cramped. The couch was wide. The coffee table even wider. The television screen would have satisfied a small theater. And yellow—this was a welcoming hue. Her eyes scanned the walls for some kind of indication of who Terry Lang was, if she valued blood ties, if she had a special sense of duty toward her late mother and her late mother’s extended family. Outside, through the windows, she spotted a lemon tree in bloom. Birds appeared to be circling in the distance.

No, the birds didn’t move. The sky was brighter and bluer than it had been at any point that dusty, hot day. There weren’t any windows in the room at all, Evie realized. There were only large rectangles painted directly on the wall, shaded expertly and given panes and highlights to look as if they offered a view onto a sprawling landscape, a garden, blooming lemons. Why?

Terry Lang returned with two ice waters and a pitcher of lemonade on a silver tray. She handed Evie a popsicle wrapped in shiny white paper and said: “It’s orange.”

Unwrapping it, Evie leaned over to examine the platter—engraved images of pioneers and frontiersmen. A pictograph story of three cowboys riding into the plains, lassoing various animals and objects, roasting trout over a fire, finding wives, building a life.

“You have a beautiful home,” she said, looking up.

“Thank you,” Terry said brightly, sitting down on the yellow ottoman opposite Evie.

“How long have you lived here?”

Terry examined her hands and rolled her eyes to the side, as if rewinding the last two decades of her life. “About six years.”

Above them, from upstairs, rang the faint sound of thumping feet. Music. Laughter.

“Really? Only that long? And you’ve done so much?”

“Oh, we bought it with the add-ons.”

“Right.”

“Most normal houses have add-ons.”

“What do you mean, normal houses?”

Terry pursed her lightly stained lips. Then she narrowed her eyes. “I remember your mother. She was pretty. Sort of sophisticated.”

“Thank you,” Evie said, a knee-jerk response.

“The last time I saw her was right after my mom died.”

“Were they close?”

“Not really. We aren’t really close with our cousins, are we? Not in America.”

“I don’t know. Is that true? We don’t marry them, if that’s what you mean.”

Terry barked a laugh. “Good point.” She leaned down and ran her finger across the space where the top of her shoe pressed into her heel. Evie could see a Band-Aid, a solid callus. “So what brings you here, Evie?” she said.

Evie took a deep breath. This was how she could begin her pitch. The one she should have practiced, over and over, on the plane and in the cab instead of goofing around with Ben. She was just about to start, wing it, brushing her hair out of her eyes and hoping she looked helpless, when Terry interrupted her before it was traditionally possible to be interrupted. Terry had a habit of doing this, she noticed.

“Oh, you’re from New York, right? Your whole family.”

Evie thought of Elena, perhaps now taking her afternoon snack to the soft, minor keys of “Les oiseaux.” Linen dressing gown. Nightcap. “Basically,” she said.

“You were renting, so you were evicted, and now you’re trying to find a place to live.”

“Basically.”

“Terrible,” Terry said. “It’s bad here too. It’s not as bad. But it’s still bad. People are living in hotels.” Evie listened and nodded.

“Well, I can help.” Terry, who had been leaning her elbows against her knees, now sat up proudly. “You have money?”

Evie straightened her posture too. “I have a job.”

“What is it?”

“Graphic design.”

“Great. Good. I’m actually a Realtor.”

“I heard.” She did not mention that she’d called her once, breathed heavily, and hung up.

“You’re staying with friends?” said Terry Lang hopefully, eyeing the space where Evie’s accessories could have been, and weren’t.

“No. My stuff’s outside. It’s just a backpack because I put everything else in storage.”

Terry cleared her throat. “Well, you can stay in the carriage house tonight. Until we find you a place.”

Irrationally but instinctively, Evie’s eyes darted toward the window, where the same lemon tree and cloudless afternoon sky stood still as before. Terry followed her gaze. “You can’t see it from here,” she said. “This wing doesn’t have visibility. It’s just a little guest house outside,” Terry added. “In the yard.”

There was something about the way she said it that “yard,” an otherwise totally fitting noun for a suburban Realtor and her young family, seemed to indicate something more in the realm of a construction site—a holding space for larger, future development plans. The yard.

Evie did not see the carriage house nor the yard for another several hours. After she’d retrieved her backpack from the porch and finished her popsicle and her lemonade and Terry, still heeled, still buttoned up into a polka-dot collared shirt and maroon pencil skirt, put something on the record player and asked Evie more questions, which she inelegantly answered, and after Evie asked some of her own, which Terry elegantly evaded, Terry walked over to the fake window and grabbed a hold of a brass gong hanging against the wall. “Dinner!” she hollered, banging on the tinny surface and directing her voice upward. A staircase peeped out of the other room. “Dinner!” she screamed again, and Evie could hear the faint music upstairs being shut off, feet moving, running down wooden steps; bodies shifting, objects being put away; all of it moving toward them.

“Dinner,” Terry said, more quietly this time. She smiled at Evie. She hung up the gong.

Terry Lang’s four children sat around a long oval table while Terry Lang scooped a cold rice dish out of a large plastic container and onto six plates. “Plate,” she said quickly, and the eldest child—a boy—got up and dutifully plucked a seventh dish out of the cupboard. He handed it to his mother, solemnly nodding at her before returning to his seat. The children seemed confused about how to navigate the situation—that is, Evie in their house, at their table—and they shifted between stretches of wild, inarticulate banter and fighting punctuated by short bursts of expectant silence, in which they stared at Evie and tacitly waited for her to make herself known.

She was relieved when the husband came in. He was small—only a little taller than Evie, and he probably weighed a little less, a feat given the stark, angular figure her second cousin cut. He looked young. Possibly younger than Terry. He entered his kitchen and noticed a new figure sitting at his kitchen table. A grubby-looking ginger with pretty eyes and bad skin. He smiled at this stranger, a confused expression crossing his rosy face. He looked at Terry.

“This is my second cousin, Evie. She’s going to stay in the carriage house tonight.”

“Really?” This was what he said.

“She was kicked out of New York.”

Terry’s husband turned to Evie again. He walked over to where she sat in her white farmhouse chair and put his skinny hand on her shoulder. “That sucks. I’m Arlo.”

“Evie.”

“Seriously,” he said, sitting down at the head of the table, across from Evie. She wondered if she was in Terry’s seat. “That really sucks.”

“Thanks.”

“Her sister is in an institution,” Terry said. She placed three plates in the microwave.

“What kind of things does she paint?” he asked.

Evie cocked her head. The children were staring at her. “Oh. That’s an institute. She’s in an institution. For the mentally insane.”

One of the children nudged another. The microwave beeped. Terry put more plates in. It beeped again.

Arlo nodded as if he understood everything now. He was processing. He stroked his sharp, clean-shaven chin. “You’re in a rough patch, then,” he said finally.

Dinner was brief. Terry sat on a high stool that she brought over from the island, wedging herself between Evie and one of the middle children, a girl who looked about six and who had a puka necklace fastened tightly around her head, the shells’ serrated edges digging into her temples. Angela, Evie thought her name was, or was this one Selena? The oldest boy, Andrew, sat on her other side and kept nudging his little sister’s arm, urging her to eat, which she didn’t. She shoved the rice casserole around on her plate and became intermittently distracted by the constant bubbly chatter that emitted from her siblings. Every once in a while she looked up suspiciously at Evie.

Terry and Arlo seemed to be having a telepathic conversation across the table. One of their eyebrows would go up, followed by a smile, or a frown. A nod or a grunt. Rice casserole eaten in myriad ways, each bite signifying a different emotional state.

Why’s she here, who is she? she imagined Arlo asking.

She’s the daughter of Mom’s cousin. Ernestina. The snobby one from New York.

No recollection, Arlo said with his eyes.

Well, yeah, you never met her, Terry communicated with a haughty gulp of rice.

Anyway this girl’s an orphan.

She’s not a girl. She’s just a regular woman.

Who cares how old she is? I’ll find her a place tomorrow.

Tomorrow? Fat chance.

The next day, then.

You seem confident.

I’m a good Realtor.

That doesn’t change things.

Well, it should.

So there. A confident gulp of water. Fork down. The family kept eating.

Dinner ended when Seven, the youngest boy, spilled his pint of milk across the table. The liquid spread evenly and whitely over the warm wood. Soaking their napkins, their elbows, the bottoms of their plates.

Arlo checked his watch. “Seventeen minutes.”

Terry got up and went to retrieve a sponge from below their sink. The room was dark. The overhead pendant lamp lit their way. A night-light in the shape of a bald eagle glowed near the trash cans. “That’s almost a record,” she said.

The children resented being hurried upstairs to bed. “But we want to know about her,” said Seven. He pointed at Evie. His forearms were still damp with spilled milk.

“Yeah. She didn’t say anything,” complained the oldest girl. Selena. Straight black hair hanging down to her waist.

“She’s tired,” Terry said. And although she spoke like Evie wasn’t there, she was right. Evie felt grateful. “She’ll say something in the morning.” She turned to Evie. “Won’t you?”

“Yes, I’ll say something in the morning.”

“You don’t have to say anything to them,” Arlo said.

“They’re just kids.”

“Kids matter too!”

“Kids! Kids! Kids! Kids!”

The children disappeared. Arlo said good night and retreated back to wherever he had been in the dark, winding home.

The carriage house was surprisingly normal. On the way through the yard they passed an overflowing cowboy pool whose metal sides twinkled under the moonlight. They passed the foundation for some other kind of edifice. An add-on. An office. There were swing sets and toys and bicycles littering the grass. Terry maneuvered around these things with a mystical, blind accuracy. Evie tried to follow, stumbling over truck wheels and decapitated dolls.

“Here you are,” Terry said.

It was one story, trapezoidal in shape, and lit from within. Evie could see a small kitchenette with a deep copper sink. A guest bed and white dresser sat in front of the door to the bathroom beyond. Her pulse slowed. Finally a cooler wind had picked up. She looked at the carriage house and then up at the stars, letting the breeze dry the sweat on her face and upper lip.

“We’re going to add on to it,” Terry said, almost ashamed. “Eventually.”

Evie was alone. She peeked out the window to get a good look at Terry’s house: one of the most bizarre and magnificent homes she’d ever seen, extending in every direction. A few silhouettes moved vaguely in the amber windows. She watched the lights in the house go off one by one. She tried to calculate how many rooms there might be in Terry Lang’s compound—she counted the columns on the left, tried to multiply it by the rows on the right, but each room varied in size and each wing seemed to have another, secret wing building off of it, and the task was impossible.

She stood, facing the dark house, and pictured Terry crossing through every room with her brisk precision, gently flipping each light switch. Evie cursed herself for not acting more normal. She cursed herself for not knowing Terry’s late mother’s name, and for not even thinking to ask.

Evie could remember the event more clearly now—the funeral of the woman who was her first cousin once removed. Her mother had brought a small tweed suitcase (the same suitcase currently in Edita’s basement, stacked next to an old tray of film). She’d messily packed it full of heavy black funerary clothes and, incongruously, lighter-than-silk summer dresses.

“Hurricane country,” her mother had said by way of explanation, as Evie peered judgmentally into the luggage. Evie had begged her not to leave—she was still young, and not really a fan of her father, not really a fan of men at all when it came down to it; she wasn’t used to them yet, they were always lumbering about, making nonsensical jokes and disappearing before there was time for anything interesting to happen. Elena had been content. She loved their father. He was the stuff of legends, in her mind. He would often come to her rescue in the event that Evie tricked her into an interminable game of hide-and-seek and then forgot about her. He would gently offer his services on the occasion that Elena grew too scared to take a bath alone (monsters of all kinds, Elena contended, lurked beyond the tub’s tall porcelain lip) and Evie grew tired of playing lookout.

Anyway, their mother had been back quickly enough and they’d made a fun weekend of it all. Their father had taken them to the zoo, where they ogled at the caged gorillas and flung peanuts at the zebras. He’d bought them lavender ice cream, which they were disappointed to find tasted a bit like soap.

“Soap?” he’d said, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “Soap?” “Yeah, like shampoo,” Evie had said.

“Try it again,” he’d coaxed. “Close your eyes.”

The girls did so. It was a hot summer day, Evie remembered. She could still feel her body as it was then. Evie held her hand under Elena’s chin to keep the cream from dripping.

“That taste,” he’d said, “is fairy dust.”

Elena had opened her eyes, awed. And for his sake, Evie had pretended. When Evie’s mother returned, she’d informed them that the funeral was a sad, rainy affair. While she was putting away her things, folding the unworn clothes and dumping the others into the hamper, she told them that the highlight was meeting her cousin’s teenage daughter. The rest of the family—Elena, Evie, and their father—sat on the bed and listened.

“She’s very beautiful,” her mother had explained. “Looks just like her mom. She’s not that nice, but her mom wasn’t either. But she’s really smart.”

Smart Terry Lang. Who could have predicted that someday she would be the key?

Evie stripped off her clothes and sat on the bed. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow she’d find something. A house. A receptacle for her small life, her furniture. A place to drink beer. A window to work at, a real one. She scrolled through her emails, weighing in seriously on a question of scarlet versus vermilion from Gregory, whose “away” message showed only a teardrop symbol and the cartoon thumbnail of a dog.

Evie had been stupid, leaving all her things with Obed without getting his number, or even his email. The landline at the Organic Supplements store was always disconnected. You’d call, in search of folate supplements, and receive instead a shrill, violent screeching on the other line. No mild-tempered woman’s voice. No recorded message to try again. Just a bloodcurdling scream, half-human and half-machine.

Evie turned on the small desk lamp by the bed and took out a notebook.

Dear Obed, she wrote with her spine against the pillows. They were fluffy, and yellow, and there were about seven of them for no practical reason. They smelled like tangerine. A sprinkler system went on. Evie could hear the spray hitting the water in the cowboy pool. She crossed the line out.

Obed, she started again.

Things here are weird.