Her Fearful Symmetry

by Audrey Niffenegger

  Felicity laughed when she saw the cake. Then everyone shushed, remembering the bereaved parents in Nigel's office below. 'That's brilliant,' she said in a whisper. She started placing little pink candles on the cake. Jessica put the phone down and said, 'Behave yourselves,' to no one in particular. She winked at Valentina and went downstairs.

  The only people Valentina had met before besides Robert were Jessica and Felicity. When Robert came in he'd smiled at her and Valentina felt a jolt of confidence. She watched with surprise as Robert bantered with Phil and parried jokes about his advancing mortality with Thomas and Matthew. It's like being a zoologist, watching the rare animal in its natural habitat. Robert didn't seem at all shy here. He summoned Valentina from her chair in the corner and began to introduce her around, one hand touching her back lightly. Valentina was excited to be seen by Robert's friends as part of a couple, even as she was conscious of how much this would have irritated her if it was Julia claiming her instead of Robert.

  James came down from the archives and gingerly settled at Jessica's desk. Jessica walked into the office followed by Nigel. 'Oh,' he said. 'What's the occasion, then?'

  'We're having a twentieth of April party, Nigel,' Felicity said. 'Didn't you bring your costume?'

  'It's Robert's birthday,' James told him.

  'Of course it is,' said Nigel regretfully. 'I'm afraid my mind's somewhere else.'

  'Is it all arranged?' James asked.

  'Yes,' he replied. 'The funeral is on Monday at eleven.' A pall came over the office; no one liked babies' funerals. Robert thought, It always rains when we bury the babies. Then he thought that couldn't be true, really. But I'll bring an umbrella just in case.

  'Oh dear,' Nigel said, noticing the cake. 'What happened there?'

  'Hey, now,' said Phil, 'don't disrespect the cake.' He took a picture of it with his phone - 'for the archives.'

  Felicity lit the candles. Everyone clustered round Robert, who stood looking self-consciously pleased as they sang 'Happy Birthday' to him. Valentina sang and felt as though she'd known all these people for years: Phil with his leather trench coat and tattoos; George with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his baritone voice, a pencil sketch of a gravestone loosely held in his graphite-smudged hands; Edward, who reminded Valentina of a leading man in an old black-and-white movie, dignified in his suit and tie, singing with his hands clasped in front of him, as though he were in church; Thomas and Matthew in their high boots and braces, smiling as they sang; Nigel sad-faced, as though the singing was a very solemn task which might have unpleasant consequences; Felicity kind and clear-voiced; Jessica and James singing breathily like overblown flutes - all singing together, Happy birthday, happy birthday to you. At the end of the song Robert closed his eyes and wished just to be happy again and blew out all the candles but one. There was a murmur of not-quite concern in the group, then he took another breath and finished off the last candle. Applause, laughter. Robert cut the cake and gave Valentina the first piece. She held the paper plate in one hand and the plastic fork in the other, and watched him hand out slices. Felicity poured tea into the cemetery's motley collection of mugs and china cups. Robert ate a bite of cake; the grey icing tasted just like any other colour. He glanced at Valentina and found her staring at him, solemn and silent in the midst of the conviviality. Suddenly Valentina smiled and he felt light-hearted: the past seemed to dissipate and it was all about the future now. Robert walked over to Valentina and they stood side by side, eating cake, happily quiet together amid the humming birthday party. It's going to be all right, he thought.

  Jessica watched them. She looks so much like Elspeth, she thought. It's quite unnerving. She thought of the couple she had just met, the young parents. They had leaned into each other as they went out through the cemetery's gate as though confronting a strong wind imperceptible to anyone else. Robert and Valentina were not touching at all, but Jessica was reminded of that leaning together. He seems happy enough. She sighed and sipped her tea. Perhaps it will be all right.

  GHOSTWRITING

  ELSPETH WAS WORKING with dust. She couldn't think why she had not understood before the communicative powers of dust. It was light and she could move it easily; it was the ideal medium for messages.

  When the twins first arrived in the flat, Julia had idly run her finger across the dust on the piano, leaving a shiny trail. It had been bothering Elspeth, and she had begun to laboriously put the dust back, to erase Julia's thoughtless defacement, when she realised that she had stumbled across what amounted to a tabula rasa. Dust was a megaphone that could amplify her distress call. She was so excited that she immediately went to her drawer to think over the possibilities.

  What to say, now that she finally had the chance? 'Help, I'm dead.' No, they can't do anything about that. It's better not to seem too pathetic. But I don't want to frighten them. I want them to know it's me, not a trick. She thought of Robert. She could write to him; he would know she was here.

  The next morning was Sunday. It was raining and the front room was suffused with an even, feeble light. Elspeth floated above the piano. If she had been visible to anyone, she would have appeared as only a face and a right hand.

  The twins were in the dining room, lingering over coffee and the remains of toast and jam. Elspeth could hear their amiable, desultory conversation, the mid-morning debate over what manner of amusements to pursue today. She shut them out and concentrated on the dull dusty expanse before her.

  Elspeth placed a tentative fingertip on the piano. She recalled reading somewhere that household dust was largely comprised of shed human skin cells. So perhaps I'm writing with bits of my former body. The dust gave way, soft particles yielding as she traced a shiny path. She exulted in the ease of it; she took care with her writing, so that Robert must know it as hers. She spent almost an hour writing a few lines. The twins had gone out by the time she was finished. Elspeth hummed and hovered over her work, admiring the flourish of her signature, the exactness of her punctuation. With great effort she switched on the floor lamp she had once used to illuminate sheet music. They can't miss that, she crowed, and took a celebratory flight around the flat, shooting through doors and skimming ceilings. She managed to drop a lump of sugar on the Kitten's head as it slept on a chair partially tucked under the dining-room table. What a glorious morning!

  Robert spent the day, which happened to be May Day, at the entrance to the Eastern Cemetery pointing a great many people, most of them Chinese, towards Karl Marx's grave. That evening he sat at his desk, exhausted. He stared at his computer and tried to work out what it was exactly that irritated him so about Chapter III. There was something wrong with the tone of the thing: it was a rollicking, almost jolly chapter about cholera and typhoid. It wouldn't do. He couldn't fathom why epidemics had once seemed so delightful.

  He was highlighting all the essential bits in red when he heard someone banging on his door.

  Both twins stood in the front hall looking solemn. 'Come upstairs,' said Valentina.

  'What's wrong?'

  'We have to show you something.'

  Julia followed Valentina and Robert upstairs. She was conscious of feeling hopeful.

  The flat was blazing with light. The twins escorted Robert to the piano and stepped back. He saw Elspeth's handwriting:

  GREETINGS, VALENTINA AND JULIA

  I AM HERE.

  LOVE, ELSPETH

  and:

  ROBERT 22 JUNE 1992 E

  Robert stood there, blank-minded. He put his hand out to touch the writing but Valentina caught his wrist. 'What does it mean? The date?' asked Julia.

  'It's something ... only she and I would know.'

  Valentina said, 'She turned on that lamp.'

  'What happened that day?' said Julia.

  Valentina said, 'The writing looks just like Mom's.'

  'What happened--'

  'It's private, okay? It's between Elspeth and me.' Robert spoke sharply. The twins looked at each other and sat down on the
sofa, hands folded. Robert read and reread the message. He thought about that first day: he stood in the front garden, taking down the estate agent's number off the To Let sign. Elspeth was looking down at him through her front windows. She was waving and he'd waved back; she disappeared and came almost immediately - she must have run down the stairs. She was wearing a white sundress; she had her hair pulled back with a clip. She wore those cheap rubber sandals - What were those called? They flapped at the bottoms of her feet as she went ahead of him up the steps, into the flat. It was completely empty, that day, his flat. She took him through it but they talked about other things. What had they said to each other? He could not recall. He remembered only following her, the way the sundress revealed the wings of her back, the delicate vertebral knobs that vanished into the trough of her spine, the zipper of the dress, the tight waist and the full skirt. She had a slight tan that summer. Later they had gone upstairs, to her flat, and they had drunk shandy in this room and later still they had gone to her bedroom and he had unzipped that dress and it had fallen off her like a shell. She was warm under his hands. Later he rented the flat, but that afternoon he forgot why he was there, forgot everything but her bare feet, the way her hair kept escaping from the clip, her face without make-up, the way her hands moved. I'm going to fall apart, Elspeth. I can't ... I don't know what to feel.

  He stared at the writing. Valentina thought, He doesn't feel that for me. Julia waited. She wondered if Elspeth was in the room with them. The Kitten jumped up on the sofa and perched herself on one of its arms. She folded her paws under her chest and watched them, obviously indifferent to any spirits that might be present.

  Finally Robert said, 'Elspeth?'

  Each of them in turn felt their whole bodies go deep, fleeting cold. Robert said, 'Will you write something for us?' The twins got up and the three of them stood at the piano, watching the surface.

  It was like a slow stop-action cartoon. The dust seemed to displace itself; the letters emerged through invisible agency: YES.

  Elspeth saw that Robert was struggling to reconcile past with present, that he was excited and disturbed. Valentina watched him and Julia watched Valentina. That's how it is, Elspeth thought. Hard on all of us. She began to wander around the room, pushing at things. Doors swayed, drapes fluttered. Robert looked up from his contemplation of the piano as she turned a table lamp off and on a few times.

  'Come here, sweet,' he said, and she flew to his side, suddenly happy. He felt her as a proximity, a cold presence. How did I not understand, before? She was here, and I left her alone. Robert thought of all his visits to her grave, thought of himself sitting for hours on the steps of the Noblin mausoleum chatting away pointlessly, remembered his evening by the river with Valentina and felt foolish and a little nauseated. But I didn't really believe she was there. Did I? He stood shaking his head. He stopped when he realised he was doing it. 'Tell us what it's like ... How is it? ... How are you?' Robert wanted to say things he could not say with the twins present. Elspeth positioned herself over the piano and began to consider the question. How am I? Well, dead. Um, try to be positive about that. Hmm ... She made a little spiral in the dust while she thought about it. Robert remembered her pages and pages of spirals doodled whilst talking on the telephone. You're here, really here.

  Valentina and Julia watched the shiny spiral appear, bystanders. We're, like, the sheep at Jesus' birth, Julia thought. Valentina wondered if Elspeth watched them all the time. What does she know about us? Does she like us? It all seemed very uncomfortable. Valentina tried to remember if either of them had ever said anything unkind about Elspeth. When the twins were tiny they had scared each other with the idea of God watching them every minute of every day. You could never be good enough ... She watched Robert's face. He had forgotten her. He was waiting for Elspeth to write again.

  Letters began to appear: LONELY. TRAPPED IN FLAT. HAPPY TO SEE V & J. MISS YOU.

  Julia said, 'Is there anything you want?'

  READ BOOKS. PLAY GAMES. PAY ATTENTION.

  'Pay attention to you?'

  YES. TALK TO ME, PLAY WITH ME. Elspeth wrote as quickly as she could. Her writing was uncontrolled and large, and she could see that the surface of the piano was not going to allow unlimited conversation. Just then the Kitten leapt on the piano keys with a musical crash and up onto the middle of the piano lid, obliterating Elspeth's writing as efficiently as a duster. 'Ugh,' said Valentina, scooping her up, 'bad girl.' She threw the Kitten onto the sofa. The Kitten, thus rejected, went under the piano to sulk.

  Now half the dust was gone from the piano. Elspeth wrote along the edge of the music stand: R - SEANCES - OUIJA?

  'Right, the Victorians used Ouija boards. And automatic writing, spirits would possess the medium and speak through them. I mean, that's what the mediums pretended they were doing. But they were frauds, Elspeth.'

  MAYBE.

  'Right, okay. Do you want to try?'

  OUIJA?

  'I'll have to make the board.' He turned to the twins. 'Do you have a large sheet of paper? We need a notebook, a biro and a drinking glass to be the planchette.' Julia went to the kitchen and returned with a juice glass and a pen. Valentina brought the notebook and a few sheets of white paper from the computer printer. She taped them together.

  Robert wrote the letters of the alphabet in three rows. He wrote the words YES and NO in the upper corners of the paper. He put the paper on the coffee table and the glass upside down in the centre of the paper.

  Elspeth thought, That glass is too heavy. She managed to rattle it as though it were having its own private earthquake, but she could not make it glide even an inch.

  Robert said, 'We need something that hardly weighs anything. Perhaps a bottle cap?' Julia ran back to the kitchen and returned with the round blue plastic safety strip she had peeled off the milk bottle that morning. 'Yes, brilliant,' Robert said. He placed it where the glass had been and it began to skitter around the paper like it's glad to be out of the garbage can, it's like a happy water bug, Julia thought. It was easy to imagine Elspeth here in the room when she wrote on the piano; when she moved the plastic strip it seemed as though the thing itself had become a creature, moving under its own volition. Julia and Valentina sat down on the floor next to the coffee table. Robert sat on the sofa and leaned over the board. The plastic thing stopped expectantly, as though listening. The Kitten came over and began marching her hind legs and preparing to pounce. Get that animal out of here, Elspeth thought. As though Elspeth had spoken out loud, Valentina got up and put the Kitten in the dining room and shut the door.

  When she had settled again Valentina asked, 'What do you mean you're trapped in the flat? Have you been here all the time?' She didn't say, Are you watching us all the time? even though she wanted to.

  The plastic thing spelled slowly. No one touched it; it moved with intention along short straight paths. YES ALWAYS HERE CANT LEAVE Robert wrote down the letters in the notebook as the plastic circle paused over them. He thought that he should have included punctuation on the board.

  Julia asked, 'What about heaven? Or, you know, all that stuff they tell you in church?'

  NO EVIDENCE PRO OR CON JUST HERE WAITING

  'Ugh,' said Julia. 'Forever? Does anything change?'

  I GET STRONGER

  'Does this happen to everyone who dies?'

  DONT KNOW ONLY ME HERE Elspeth wanted to ask questions, not just answer them. HOWS EDIE she spelled before Julia could ask anything else.

  The twins exchanged glances. 'She's fine,' said Valentina. 'She was sad that you said she couldn't visit us here,' said Julia.

  The plastic circle spun around the paper aimlessly. Finally Elspeth spelled, DONT TELL EDIE

  'Don't tell her what?' asked Robert.

  DONT TELL IM GHOST DONT TELL ANYONE

  'Nobody would believe us,' Valentina told her. 'You know Mom, she would think we were totally lying. And she would think it was, you know, mean.'

  YES MEAN DO YOU SPEA
K FRENCH

  'Yes,' said Julia.

  LATIN

  'Uh, no.'

  VENI HUC CRAS R UT TECUM EX SOLO COLLOQUAR

  Robert smiled. Julia said, 'No fair having secrets.' Valentina thought, They have years of secrets already. She wanted to throw up. Robert reached over and stroked her hair. She looked at him doubtfully. Julia and Elspeth each felt a twinge of jealousy, and each felt strange about that for her own reasons.

  Elspeth spelled out TIRED

  'Okay,' said Robert.

  GOODNIGHT

  'Goodnight, sweet.'

  'Goodnight, Aunt Elspeth.'

  Robert and the twins stood up. There was an awkwardness; they had nothing to say to each other in front of Elspeth. They each would have liked to go somewhere else and burst into exclamations over the strangeness, how peculiar and how exciting and disturbing, and what about it? 'Well, goodnight, then,' Robert said, and went downstairs to his own flat. 'Goodnight,' said the twins, as they watched him leave. He shut his door and stood looking at his ceiling, completely gobsmacked. Then he started laughing and couldn't stop. The twins heard him. They sat at the little coffee table, flicking the planchette back and forth, not speaking. Elspeth lay on the floor in the hall for a while, listening to Robert laughing, worrying about him. When he quietened down she went back to the front room. She touched each twin on the crown of her head. Goodnight, goodnight. Elspeth curled up in her drawer in an ecstasy of satisfaction.

  The next morning was still damp and drab. Robert lay in bed listening to the twins walking around their flat. He was afraid they might stay in, the weather was so unpromising. He could hear their kitten galloping through rooms at random. How can a creature that sounds like the cavalry look like an oversized lab rat? Robert hauled himself out of bed. He made coffee and showered. By the time he had dressed and drunk his coffee the twins were at his door.

  'Do you want to go to the Cabinet War Rooms with us?' Valentina asked.

  'Erm - I do, but I had better do some work. I've got horribly behind on my thesis. Jessica's insinuating that I've given it up.'

  'Oh, come anyway.' Julia spent a few minutes trying to persuade him, perfectly aware that she sounded insincere. Valentina looked beseeching. Robert gently urged them on their way, and they finally left without him. Robert watched through his front window as they angled their immense tartan golfing umbrella through the gate.