Halfway House Read online

  Praise for Halfway House:

  “In Katharine Noel’s stunning debut novel, family life is revealed—laid open—in all its love and warmth and, yes, its darkness, too. Mother and daughter, husband and wife, sister and brother, father and son: each character lives on the page, and together they teach us the best lessons of fiction: how we live, and how we live through crisis. I was enthralled.”

  —Ann Packer, author of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier

  “Noel’s stunning debut novel moves us through painfully believable human relationships tested, repaired, and transformed by time and experience. … This is suburban angst in the tradition of John Cheever and Rick Moody, told with a rare and honest sympathy that rings true by an author to watch.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “Compassionate and compelling … Noel’s depiction of Angie’s depression is frightening in its accuracy. … She doesn’t shy away from the facts but instead weaves them into a story that is enjoyable and triumphant.”

  —Ellison G. Weist, Portland Tribune

  “A teenager’s psychotic break unhinges her family in this sure-footed first novel.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “[This] arresting debut novel … is an eloquent literary performance. … A richly imagined and deeply felt portrait … Tremendous subtlety … Noel’s finely wrought world of loneliness and fear, the pleasures of connection and the ferocity and unpredictability of mental illness, has its own quiet power. … [A] memorable first novel with a uniquely powerful grace.”

  —Laura Ciolkowski, The Boston Globe

  “Noel brings these characters to life, exposing every blemish and desire, and revealing them in all their messy humanness. … Her keen insights are spot on.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “This is a compassionate exploration of a nightmarish disease and the havoc it wreaks on ordinary lives.”

  —Sheerly Avni, San Francisco Magazine

  “Noel’s handling of mental illness is compassionate and clear-eyed. … [Halfway House] explores the mystery of family and its inexplicable, irresistible, resilience in the face of affliction. … Graceful and quietly assured.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Noel’s prose is lovely; poetic yet realistic and very readable. She portrays her character’s with honesty and intelligence, allowing them flaws and a gritty humanity while keeping them likable. … Stunningly written … A very intense and enjoyable debut from a young novelist with promise and talent.”

  —Sarah Rachel Egelman, Bookreporter.com

  “Can this really be Katharine Noel’s first book? Halfway House is written with such fearless grace, such originality of vision, it reads like the work of a master. Noel has an uncanny ability to render the complicated relationships between brothers and sisters, parents and children, husbands and wives. She slips into the darkest corners of human experience so adroitly that you’re not aware how deep you’ve gone until you find yourself laughing or weeping over the page. The book becomes an obsession, its characters so real you can’t bear to turn away. This is the kind of novel that creates ardent fans; without a doubt, it is the beginning of a brilliant literary career.”

  —Julie Orringer, author of How to Breathe Underwater

  “Compulsively readable … The story will ring true to anyone who’s survived the psychological ups and downs of family life. The opening chapter alone shines with metaphoric brilliance.”

  —Chris Watson, Santa Cruz Sentinel

  “With these characters, Katharine Noel brings us a whole world, carved in sharp relief, as it moves in and out of madness. A brilliant novel. There is nothing like this; it feels just like life.”

  —Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli

  HALFWAY HOUSE

  HALFWAY HOUSE

  Katharine Noel

  Copyright © 2006 by Katharine Noel

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Noel, Katharine.

  Halfway house / Katharine Noel.

  p. cm.

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4704-3

  1. Accident victims—Family relationships—Fiction. 2. Teenage girls—Family relationships—Fiction. 3. New England—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3614.O387H35 2006

  813′.6—dc22

  2005053636

  Grove Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  For Eric

  HALFWAY HOUSE

  Nights, the girl came and stood at the edge of the yard. From inside his unlit kitchen Pieter Voorster could just make out her dark shape, bulky in a parka, beneath the oak. A car passed, a sweep of headlights. Hoarfrost covered the grass, and for a moment the girl flared into relief, dark against the silver lawn like the negative of a photograph. She didn’t lean against the tree but stood, serious and attentive, looking up at Pieter’s son’s bedroom. Posture achingly straight.

  It was nearly midnight. Pieter pulled the carton of milk from the refrigerator. He turned on the overhead light, then turned it off, self-conscious about being so visible to the girl outside. From overhead came the faint noises of his daughter moving around. She was seventeen and had begun to show signs of the night restlessness that afflicted Pieter.

  He lit the stove burner, a blue ruffle of flame. By its light he poured milk into an enameled pan, added cinnamon and nutmeg and a tablespoon of brandy. Small scales of ice puckered the milk’s surface: the refrigerator thermostat hadn’t been working and couldn’t be turned down. His wife, Jordana, sometimes said they lived at fifty-one percent, things working just well enough, or just enough of the time, that they didn’t seem worth replacing. There was the CD player whose left-hand side needed to be propped up on magazines, the shower they turned on and off with pliers, the basement that flooded every year in the spring rains. They’d gotten used to eggs that rattled in their shells and half-frozen tomatoes, slushy and bland.

  He poured milk into his mug and checked the yard once again. The girl was still there. It was December; they lived in New Hampshire; didn’t she get cold?

  She was still there at one, when he came down and made himself another cup of milk. He managed to sleep then until four, by which time she’d vanished.

  At six, he brewed coffee and climbed the stairs to wake the kids for their swim meet. At his knock, Angie yanked the door open. “Dad!” she cried, sounding delighted.

  “Shh. I brought you some coffee.”

  “You’re wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.” She took the mug, which sloshed dangerously, drops spattering her shirt. His daughter had always been passionate, but lately her enthusiasms were fiercer and could collapse unpredictably into irritability. It reminded Pieter—who was a cellist—of some of the musicians he knew. He had the sense, though, that Angie would grow out of this stage, as she’d grown out of sullen listlessness last spring.

  Angie moved a pile of clothes with her foot, clearing a space on the floor so that she could put the cup down. “Let me read this to you.”

  She rushed o
ver to the desk. He bent down carefully to pick up her mug from the floor’s welter of clothing, splayed textbooks, and plates of hard toast. “When did you get up?”

  “I’ve been up. Let me read my paper to you.”

  “Are you nervous about the meet? You need sleep—”

  “I’m going to win my races anyway.” She searched through the drifts of paper covering her desk. A few sheets fell to the floor. “Here it is. Listen: ‘Environmental concerns in Alaska should be the first national priority. In solving the problem of Arctic warming, we also address unemployment and many, if not all, forms of addiction. …’”

  Her face shone. Pieter found a space to perch on the edge of her bed. He was tired and not really following. He listened to the rise and fall of her voice, occasionally saying, “Quieter.”

  Angie had her mother’s dark, straight eyebrows. Otherwise she looked like Pieter’s side of the family: high cheekbones, narrow blue eyes, blond hair. Her shoulders were broad as a man’s. This season she’d won nearly every race she’d been in, and she’d broken the state record for girls’ hundred-meter butterfly. Then she broke her own record. Even this last month’s insomnia didn’t seem to affect her power in the water. Since her freshman year, colleges had been courting her, sending catalogs with pictures of multiracial students studying on the lawn. Now, as application deadlines approached, there were dinnertime phone calls, handwritten notes from administrators and coaches. Her jumpiness and exuberance made sense, given all the attention and pressure.

  “What class is this for?”

  “It’s extra credit. Shh. ‘The problem of homelessness can be solved by the same means as we repair environmental damage: if every family donates one car. Air-conditioning rips up the ozone layer, which leads to global warming and more air-conditioning. When people die—’”

  “Angie. Angie.”

  “What?” she said, irritated, not looking up.

  “You need to get ready. You can work on your paper this afternoon. Or Sunday. Come have some—”

  “I’m right in the middle of this.”

  “When do you think you’ll—”

  “Soon. As soon as I’m done with this.”

  He put the mug down on the desk. “After the meet, I want you to get the food out of here.”

  There was a noise from the side of the room, faint enough he wasn’t sure he’d heard anything until it came again, a soft scrabbling. Mice lived in the house’s walls. He said, “I want you to get the food out tonight”—just as a nose poked out of the closet. Long whiskers, and then the brown and cream face of a Siamese cat.

  “Bean!” Angie cried. She rushed across the room; the cat retreated backward into the closet. Angie fell to her knees and reached inside. Pulling out the cat, she held it under the front legs, its cream-colored body stretching down like taffy. She kissed its nose. “Did you wake up from your nap?” Kiss. “Are you hungry?” Kiss kiss kiss.

  “There’s a cat living in your closet?”

  Kiss, kiss. “They were about to put her to sleep. She has this mark here, like a coffee bean. Don’t you, Bean? Yes, you do.”

  His daughter had a cat in her closet. He knew he should be angry. That his wife would be angry.

  “Bean was in a breeding factory, and when her uterus gave out, they dumped her at the pound.”

  “What were you doing at the pound?”

  “Isn’t she beautiful? Can you believe someone would do that?” Angie rubbed her face on the cat’s flank. Bean had the crossed eyes and look of sour displeasure that all Siamese cats seemed to have, but she was purring loudly. “Oh, God, I just thought of something else.”

  Shifting her arm so it was under the cat, she rushed over to the desk, found a pencil, and, without sitting, bent to write. “The hole in the ozone layer’s connected to pounds,” she said. “If we paid more attention to animalsthenwewouldn’t—”

  “Slow down. I can hardly understand you.”

  “No one understands it’s all interrelated. I need to get this down.”

  “Your mother’s not going to be happy about the cat.”

  Angie whirled around to face him. “Don’t tell her. Tell her it’s okay with you.”

  “Will you get ready?”

  She nodded. “Will you tell Mom it’s okay? Please?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Thank you, darling, thank you.” She blew kisses off the tips of her fingers. Then she turned and began scribbling on her essay.

  It was a relief to let himself back out into the hall, to close the door on his daughter’s fervid activity.

  Squatting, Angie dunked her goggles in the pool. She ran her thumb around the foam eye sockets. Once she had the goggles on, Angie was almost unrecognizable to Pieter, long blond hair hidden under a swim cap, her arms massive as she shook them out. Most of Cort’s teenagers went to Cort High, but the southeast corner of town—where his family lived—belonged to the school district of Applefield, the next town over. Angie’s black racing suit had a red A on the chest and another smaller A on the cap.

  Winter sunlight shone through the high dirty windows of the community college gym. The room was warm. The chlorine smell, so much like bleach, and the way sound echoed against tile, always made Pieter think of high school, when he used to take his cello from Queens into Manhattan and play for money in the subway there. If he let himself, he could get lost in memory for half the meet.

  Instead, he put his arm around Jordana’s shoulders and focused on the swimmers. Clumps of them stood talking; others stretched on the cement floor. The address system crackled, and a man read the names and high schools of girls swimming the Individual Medley. When he said Angela Voorster, there were cheers from the Applefield team. Pieter searched their faces, picking out his son. Luke wore a team sweatshirt, hands in the front pocket, the hood covering his short hair. He was sixteen, a year and a half younger than Angie. On another team, Luke might have been a star, but Angie eclipsed the other Applefield swimmers. Angie stretched her arms behind her back. With her oversized shoulders and yellow goggles, she looked like a praying mantis.

  “What time did you come to bed last night?” Jordana asked. “Was the girl still there?”

  “There’s something kind of heroic about her, isn’t there?”

  “I was that way about you,” Jordana said. “Teenage girls are just like that.”

  “Angie isn’t like that.”

  She did her one-shouldered shrug. He was being too literal. “Angie’s Angie.”

  Jordana’s dark curly hair was frizzy in the humid pool room. She had a thin sharp nose, and her chin—also thin and sharp—pointed up. Today she wore a pilled black sweater she’d had at least since high school, tucked into a pair of boy’s jeans Luke had outgrown. Pieter never tired of looking at her face, its angularity and intelligence. To him she was achingly beautiful, even as he was able to see how someone else might find her ordinary, even ugly. She pushed her sleeves up her forearms, which were smooth and olive, the gesture oddly arousing. He needed to tell her about the cat. Later, after the meet.

  Kneeling, their daughter splashed water up on her arms and legs. Then she climbed onto the starting block and began to position herself. Up and down the line, other girls were doing the same, their toes over their block’s edge, legs slightly bent, hands between their feet. Someone adjusted her cap. Girls pulled backward, testing their positions, then relaxed forward again.

  The starter drew an air horn from the pocket of his red sport coat. The girls quieted, making quick last-minute adjustments, reaching a hand up to snap goggles into better position, curling their hands around the edges of the blocks.

  “On your mark—”

  The swimmers tensed. A little boy near Pieter covered his ears. There was a blare and then immediately a second: someone had false-started.

  Pieter and Jordana both groaned. He hadn’t realized he was holding his breath until he let it go. The starter had to sound his horn twice more, for the girls who hadn’t
heard it during the long underwater pullout. Some of the girls took practice strokes before turning and swimming, heads above water, back to the edge.

  “Was that Angie?” he asked Jordana, though he knew it was.

  “Shit!”

  Among the neatly chinoed-and-sweatshirted parents, Jordana stood out with her height and wild dark hair and old clothes. And none of the other mothers yelled shit—though they might mutter it—when their kids messed up. Pieter turned away so she wouldn’t see him grinning; sometimes his affection made her feel patronized.

  “Will the swimmers please take position?”

  Raggedly, the swimmers were lining up. A girl in the green-on-green suit of Whitman High School said something to Angie, who laughed, throwing her head back. The laugh echoed in the steamy room. The other girl frowned.

  “Will the swimmers please take position.”

  Angie was the only swimmer not in position. Still laughing, she placed her feet, then bent to hold on to the starting block’s edge. When the starter said, “On your marks,” her body tensed with the others, though their faces were set and grim while hers held the ghost of a smirk. The horn went off and five of the girls shot forward, Angie a beat behind.

  The butterfly looked nothing like its name. It was lacerating. Angie tore down the lane, pulling even with the fifth-place swimmer, then ahead, not interrupting the power of her stroke to breathe, passing the fourth-place girl, then the third-place girl just as they hit the first turn. It was as though she and the other swimmers were attached to a pulley; as Angie was pulled up, the others were pulled slowly back. She drew even with the girl in second place. When finally Angie raised her head to breathe—yellow goggles covering her eyes, mouth nearly square—she looked extraordinary, alien, arms rising up together from behind like gigantic wings.

  She slammed both hands into the wall, bringing her knees up and pushing with her legs to launch backward. The IM required that swimmers switch from butterfly to backstroke to breast to freestyle. She moved into second place in the first lap of backstroke, slowly gaining on the girl in the green suit. For two laps they stayed even. When they turned for the second lap of breaststroke, the other girl’s face was long with exhaustion.