Roommates
House peered into the hallway, as if searching for a camera crew.
"Am I being Punk'd?" he asked.
"No, I'm dead serious," Cuddy said.
"You want me to come live you?"
"Not live with me. Just stay with me, for a few weeks. Until you . . . get your equilibrium again."
"But why?"
Cuddy measured whether or not she should tell him the truth.
"Because I'm afraid that if I leave you alone, you're going to kill yourself," she said finally. "Maybe not today, maybe not even quickly—but that eventually, you'll end up dead."
House folded his arms.
"So this is out of pity?"
"I'd describe it more as concern. . ."
"You know, I'm not some delicate flower who needs to be tended to."
"Aren't you?"
"I'm just saying that—"
"Look, House. This is a one time offer. I've asked you. I've eased my conscience. You can take it or leave it."
House sighed, scratched his head.
"What's the weather like in Scarsdale this time of year?" he said.
#####
She had acted on such impulse, it wasn't until they were on the highway, heading to Scarsdale, that Cuddy realized how insane her proposal actually was.
She overcompensated by laying out firm ground rules (that she was literally making up on the fly).
"There's nothing romantic about this arrangement," she said. "You'll stay in the guestroom. You can have meals with us, but that's it—no socializing outside of the house. No interfering with my personal life, no snooping around my bedroom, no inappropriate remarks, absolutely no come-ons whatsoever—"
"You act like this was my idea," House said, defensively.
"I'm just telling you how it's going to be," Cuddy said, gripping the steering wheel more tightly.
"The real question is, how are mom and baby sis going to react to the news that your degenerate ex boyfriend is staying at your home?" he asked.
One of the many loose ends that she hadn't considered.
"They can't know!" she said, rather quickly.
"Oh yeah, because 5-year-olds are so good at keeping secrets," House said.
"We'll. . .figure something out."
House looked out the window.
"How is she?" he asked. He was talking about Rachel.
"She's amazing," Cuddy said, not able to keep herself from smiling. "You won't believe how smart she is. . .it scares me sometimes. The other day, she asked me if it was possible that her dreams were real and if real life was just a dream."
"A philosopher," House said, approvingly.
"Apparently so."
House opened the glove compartment, then closed it, for no apparent reason.
"Does she ever ask about me?" he asked, trying to make his voice sound casual.
"No," Cuddy said.
"Do you think she . . . remembers me?"
"Honestly, House. I don't know. Two years is nearly a lifetime ago for her."
"I know," House said. He hesitated. "Does she know that I'm the one who . . ." But he couldn't quite finish the sentence.
Cuddy glanced at him.
"Are you crazy?" she said. "You think I was going to break my daughter's heart?"
There was a silence.
"Thank you," House said, quietly.
"I didn't do it for you."
#####
Cuddy decided to drop House off at her place first before she picked up Rachel from dayschool. That way she could prep Rachel for his unexpected appearance.
House looked around the sun-filled brick Colonial.
"Nice digs," he said.
"Yeah," Cuddy said. "We like it."
She showed him around—the kitchen, Rachel's room, her office. (She strategically neglected to show him her bedroom.)
"Here's where you can sleep," she said. It was a nice guest room, with a queen-sized bed with an assortment of useless throw pillows on it, a TV, a nightstand and chest.
"It has cable, you'll be thrilled to know," she said. "And the whole house is wired for the internet." She pointed to a closed door down the hall. "That bathroom is for you."
House threw his duffel bag on the bed.
"I may never leave," he joked, shoving his hands in his pockets.
She smiled at him.
"I'm going to get Rachel. Just unpack, make yourself at home—ish. And we'll be back in half an hour."
House nodded. He looked tense—and she wasn't sure if it was the prospect of seeing Rachel, or just the general unreality of the situation that was weighing on him.
"I'll try not to break anything while you're gone," he said.
#####
She wasn't lying when she told House that Rachel never asked about him.
Cuddy and House had already been broken up for three months when the car crash occurred and—although matters had been slightly confused by the late-night hospital vigil after House's self-surgery, the fleeting promise of a renewed friendship—Rachel had already begun adjusting to life without him.
After the crash, Cuddy knew things were a bit of a blur for her daughter—there had been lots of activity, lots of tears, murmured voices, extended stays with Aunt Julia, and suddenly, a new house, a new city to adjust to. House was quickly forgotten. (Or, at least, that's what Cuddy convinced herself. She never dwelled on the real possibility that Rachel simply sensed that her mother didn't want to hear House's name.)
Now, she strapped Rachel into her car seat and cautiously broached the subject.
"Rach, do you remember my friend House?" she said, eyeing her through the rear view mirror.
"Uh huh," Rachel said.
"Would you like to see him again?"
"Uh huh," Rachel said. She had been fiddling with an origami bird that she'd made today in class. She put it down.
"I'm glad," Cuddy said. "Because I have a bit of a surprise for you: He's at the house right now. He's going to stay with us for a . . . little while."
Rachel gave a thoughtful look.
"But I thought Howse made you sad," she said.
"Sometimes friends make us sad, Rach," Cuddy said, trying not to get choked up. "But that doesn't mean we stop loving them."
This seemed to satisfy her.
When they got home, Cuddy tried to take off Rachel's jacket in the vestibule, but she squirmed away and went charging into the house—bolting straight to the guest bedroom where House was standing in the exact same spot where Cuddy had left him.
"Howse!" Rachel said, leaping into his arms.
House held her close, hugged her for longer than Cuddy had ever seen him hug anyone before.
When they parted, his eyes were moist.
"Hey kiddo," he said. "How ya been?"
#####
She made spaghetti for dinner, because it was simple—and because both House and Rachel liked it.
Rachel's presence was a welcome relief, for everyone.
There was nothing like the yammering, cheerful company of a child to relieve the heavy burden of death.
Rachel was so excited to tell House about her new school, her new friends, the two tiny dogs who lived next door who had matching red sweaters, the mailman who gave them biscuits, the boy with the skateboard and the funny hair who zoomed down the block, her favorite teacher who smelled like cinnamon—she could have gone on all night.
But Cuddy had business to take care of.
"Rach, there's a favor I need to ask you. You see, Nana Cuddy and Aunt Julia can't know that House is staying here."
Rachel was dangling a long strand of spaghetti from her mouth.
"Why?" she asked, slurping it up.
Because if they knew he was staying here, they'd have me committed.
"Because it's a secret," Cuddy said.
"Why?"
"Because sometimes not everybody understands my friendship with House the way you do . . ."
"Why?"
Cuddy gave House one of those "a little help here" looks.
"Because if Nana and Julia know I'm here they're going to make me leave," House said.
"Oh," Rachel said, getting it. As always, she and House had a secret understanding. "Normally, I'm not very good at keeping secrets," she said thoughtfully. "But I will do my best to keep this one."
She was being serious, not trying to be adorably precocious, so both Cuddy and House suppressed smiles.
"Thanks, Rach," House said.
######
She thought House was going to be very in-her-face for the next few days, but almost the opposite was true. He kept to himself mostly, locked in his room. She had to coax him out, to eat dinner with them, or watch something on TV.
She began to wonder if she was really helping him at all.
Was wasting away in her house any better than wasting away in his apartment?
No, she was definitely doing the right thing. At least here, she could make sure he ate. At least here, there was sunlight, the occasional smile, some human interaction—and Rachel.
Thank God for Rachel.
He played with her quite a bit. House was a great companion for a kid because he took unironic pleasure in the same things they did—dinosaurs and explosions and things that were gross—and was quick with sound effects and cartoon voices.
One day, House and Rachel were playing a made-up game called "Intergalactic Tea Time"—it involved creating mini explosions in tea cups with Alka Selzers and orange soda— when out of the blue, Rachel said to House: "Is Uncle Wilson really dead?"
"Yeah," House said, swallowing a bit.
"Was he your best friend?"
"Yeah," House said.
"I wish he wasn't dead," Rachel said.
"Me too," House said.
And they want back to playing.
Once, she heard him crying softly in his room and she stood outside his door for a second, badly wanting to console him but understanding that he needed to grieve on his own.
After about a week, he started fixing things around the house.
He built a lazy susan in her cabinet, so she can have access to all her spices on the ground level. (He had seen her climb onto a step ladder to get some sugar.)
He rewired the downstairs entertainment system, so the stereo, TV, and DVD player could all be controlled from one remote control.
She came home one day to find that he had put a dead bolt on the door.
"I didn't think it was secure enough," he said, with a shrug.
One night, she got home late from work—Rachel was having a sleepover party at a friend's—and he was in his room on the bed, looking at a book of photos.
She sat down next to him.
It was an album she had made when Rachel received a working Fisher Price camera for her third birthday. Most of the photos were of Cuddy and House.
"Where did you find that?" Cuddy said.
"At the bottom of a box in your office," House said.
"I told you no snooping!" Cuddy scolded.
"Actually, you said no snooping around your bedroom," he said.
Leave it to House to have an accurate mental transcript of every conversation they'd ever had.
"I'm surprised you kept it, to be honest," House said. "I didn't think you'd ever want to look at a picture of me again."
"What part of, at the bottom of a box, in my office didn't you understand?" she said, only half-joking.
"But you packed it," he said.
"Yeah," she sighed. "I suppose I did."
She peered over his shoulder. The pictures were at strange angles, some blurry, with distorted P.O.V.
"Our own little Diane Arbus," House said.
"Remember when she took 500 pictures of her goldfish?" Cuddy said.
"I noticed you didn't pack that photo album," House said.
There was one picture of House, in extreme close-up, looking brooding and—Cuddy thought—very handsome.
"I love that picture of you," she said. (She didn't mean to say it outloud—it had just slipped out.)
"My head looks enormous," House protested.
"Then she captured your essence," Cuddy cracked.
"Ha," House said.
He flipped the page.
There was a photo, a candid one—Rachel was taking so many pictures at that time, they had begun to ignore her—of House and Cuddy looking at each other.
It was impossible to look at this photo and not see that the two people in it were deeply in love (and lust).
House lingered over the photo for a long time.
"It wasn't all bad, was it?" he said softly.
"No," Cuddy said. "It wasn't all bad at all."
(To be continued. . . )