by Melanie Tem
Deborah, she thought with a leap of her heart, and started to reach for the doorknob.
Mary called.
For long moments Lydia was paralyzed by indecision. Finally the new fear that the visitor on the front porch would leave and she’d never know who it was triumphed over the lifelong fear of her grandmother’s displeasure, which she couldn’t escape anyway. Having to use both hands and a knee against the heavy wooden panel in order to manage the interplay of pressure and twisting required by the complicated, warped old lock mechanism, against which unsuccessful attempts at jimmying had been made over the years, she got the door open.
Someone, not Deborah, was on the porch: a woman, small, sturdy, fluffy light brown hair. Incredibly, she had come up the steps from Ingram Street and opened the front gate. Lydia thought of the stray weeds that might be sprouting in the cracks of the front steps because since she’d been tending Mary she’d been afraid to leave the house to work in the yard, and her gut tightened in shame. Quickly, she looked to make sure the gate had been closed again, as if there were dogs to be kept in the yard.
Pam Sandahl said, “Hi, Lydia. I just came by to make sure you’re all right.”
Mary called.
It took Lydia a beat or two to identify the woman at the door, although the name had come into her mind right away. She’d never before seen Pam outside work. With her was a short, fat dachshund on a leash; he whined and wagged his tail in greeting.
“I’m—I’m all right,” she stammered. “My grandmother—”
“You haven’t been at work and nobody seems to know what’s wrong. Are you sick? I was worried about you.”
“I’m not sick. My grandmother—” Mary called. Lydia drew her breath in sharply, muttered, “Come—come in—I—” to Pam, quite unthinkably left the door open to her, and hurried upstairs to Mary.
To her dismay, her grandmother had lost patience and was coming down the attic stairs on her own. It would be Lydia’s fault if Pam saw her, Lydia’s fault if Mary hurt Pam. Standing in the open attic doorway as though she could block the path, Lydia for a moment saw the creature as Pam would see her:
A wolf. Nothing at all human about her, because Pam wouldn’t know to look at the cast of her mouth, the opposition of the long inside toes on her front feet. Huge, her shoulder to Lydia’s waist and well above Pam’s. Saliva running from her tongue in sticky rivulets down her chest fur to form gobbets on the splintery attic floor, while at the same time the gray membranes under her eyelids, inside her flared nostrils, at the corners of her grinning lips, were so dry they were visibly cracked.
Much closer now, Mary called.
Lydia started up to the attic. Pam Sandahl was waiting for her downstairs; that fact was so nearly incredible that every split second Lydia came upon it again, remembered it again as if it were something new and newly startling. She didn’t know what to do. Everything she thought to do might be wrong.
“Who?”
Lydia didn’t know what she meant. Frequently she felt that she lived in a world populated by people who used words to mean different things than she did, whose body language held nuances she could never grasp, whose perceptions were wildly askew from her own; she often didn’t know what people meant. But communicating with her grandmother was, truly, like communicating with an alien species. It made Lydia profoundly uneasy and resentful.
Now she remained silent, afraid of answering something that had not been asked, until Mary spoke again. “Who is in my house?”
Of course the matriarch would know that a stranger was in her house. Lydia answered, “A friend.”
“Friend?”
Lydia’s nod was mild, but still a surprising defiance. “Yes. Pam. A friend from work.” Then she wondered whether it had been a mistake to give her grandmother Pam’s name, and why she’d done it.
“Food.”
“But you just ate.” An entire five-pound roll of ground beef.
“Fresh.”
“I don’t know where Ma is—”
“You.”
Despairing, Lydia tried not to understand. She had thought that the days were long past when she was repeatedly tested and repeatedly failed every test. She had thought it accepted that she did not hunt or kill, did not even eat fresh raw meat except during ceremonies under the hallucinogenic influence of belladonna and sage.
Mary had been squatting at the top of the stairs, her head bowed and thrust forward so that she could see Lydia, her dry gray vaginal opening clearly visible as Lydia slowly mounted the steps toward her, the terrible puncture wound red and swollen beside it. Now she started to lie down, to collapse, and Lydia saw with alarm that the huge body would block the way into the attic and she would not be able to move it herself.
“Wait,” she said hastily. “Go back to bed. I’ll—I’ll get you something.”
To her surprise and vague discomfort, Mary responded to what she’d said, pulled herself to her feet, and made her way across the cluttered attic toward the sickroom under the north gable. She was obviously greatly fatigued, drugged, and still in considerable pain. Briefly, astonishingly, Lydia found herself speculating as to how much diminution there’d been of the ancient creature’s physical strength and willpower, how vulnerable she might be now to rebellion or simple abandonment. Alarmed, she pulled her attention away from that seductive, dangerous line of thought and back to the vexatious task immediately at hand.
Lydia pushed aside boxes, discarded furniture and clothing, bones. Although she was sure she had no predatory instincts or skills, she made herself as still as possible and tried to listen. In a house as old as this one, with all its holes and gaps and overhangs and pocks, there was bound to be some live creature she could try to catch. The thought made her nauseous with anxiety.
She couldn’t hear Pam two stories below. Maybe Pam had left, or would leave soon. Lydia didn’t want her to leave.
A tiny beige spider materialized in her peripheral vision. When she turned her head to consider it directly, it wasn’t there anymore.
There was a small commotion at the south end of the attic under the eaves. Sometimes birds flew in. Lydia peered but couldn’t see what was making the noises. She stumbled and crawled closer, but by the time she got there nothing was there.
She heard mice in the walls, squirrels on the roof. She couldn’t think how to get to them.
She listened. Mary was not calling.
Pam was downstairs waiting for her. Pam had come to see if she was all right.
Astounded and terrified by the choice she was making, Lydia crawled backward down the attic steps, keeping an eye out for some stray, careless life form. She stood upright in the second-floor hallway outside the bathroom, shut and locked the attic door. The heavy deadbolt would, of course, prove flimsy if Mary made any effort to get out. But it would slow her down. It would make noise, give Lydia some warning. And Lydia couldn’t think what else to do.
In the bathroom she washed her hands and face, combed her hair, brushed as much of the dirt off the knees and seat of her jeans as she could. As always, she meant to avoid looking in the mirror, but she caught a passing glimpse of herself anyway. Nothing remarkable, a few lines, a few extra pounds. Maybe she wouldn’t go downstairs. Maybe if she stayed up here long enough, Pam would just go away.
She didn’t want Pam to go away.
She went downstairs. Pam was still waiting in the front entryway. She was pacing a little. The dachshund paced with her, adoring eyes on her, nails clicking lightly on the wooden floor. She was looking at things—the light fixture in the shape of cupped hands with furry ruffs around the wrists and intertwined nails; the scaly places on the doorframe to the dining room where years ago Lydia had started to strip the woodwork, had discovered eight stubborn layers of paint that Mary must have put on over the years although it was hard to imagine, and had given up.
It made Lydia nervous for Pam to be looking at things in her house. With one hand on the banister and the other braced against the w
all, she said, “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
Pam looked up, not at all startled, and smiled.
Sun through the matted ivy and then through the streaked leaded windows gently speckled her round face. She was very pretty. Lydia had noticed that before, but here in the house on Ingram Street the prettiness was a miracle, almost not to be believed.
Lydia said with effort, “My grandmother had a serious accident. A—a bad fall. I’m—taking care of her.”
“I’m sorry,” Pam said at once. “But you’re all right?”
Lydia had started down the last flight of stairs, and when she nodded it threw her off balance. She stumbled, gasped. She saw Pam’s hands go up, arms spread as if to catch her. Although she steadied herself easily and didn’t need to be caught, the image of the other woman’s arms open for her amazed and aroused her. “I’m okay,” she said. “I’m—a little tired, I guess.”
“I’m sure you are.”
Lydia risked saying, “A little overwhelmed.”
Pam nodded. “Any word from Deborah?”
She had remembered Deborah’s name and wasn’t afraid to use it. “No,” Lydia managed to reply. “Nothing.” Then she waited, convinced that Pam would retreat scornfully from such utter inadequacy.
Instead, the smaller woman nodded sadly and touched Lydia’s arm. Flinching, Lydia realized without wanting to how long it had been since anyone had deliberately touched her. “When my daughter disappeared I discovered that it’s next to impossible to find somebody who doesn’t want to be found,” Pam told her gently.
“I called all her friends,” Lydia found herself saying. “I called the police, but they said they don’t even look for teenage runaways, they have so many of them. They all treated me like I was the enemy.”
“Well,” Pam said briskly, “you’re not.” Then she did an astonishing thing.
In the house of the werewolf, with the werewolf calling from the top of the house, she reached out, took both of Lydia’s hands in both of hers, and held on tight.
After a dangerously long moment, Lydia freed herself. “My grandmother doesn’t like—strangers in the house,” she managed to say. She wished vaguely that there had been some more polite way to say it, but she had to get this woman out of here. “Or—or dogs.”
Pam glanced down at the dachshund. He had sat; his front quarters were only slightly higher than his hindquarters, and most of his long, plump belly rested on the floor. Looking back at Lydia, Pam said, with no hint of having taken offense, “I understand. I didn’t mean to intrude. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I tried to call.”
“I’m okay.” Lydia was breathless, holding her breath to listen for Mary behind her.
“Is there anything I can do to help you?” “No.” Mary was coming. Lydia heard her, smelled her. She took a step toward Pam and the dog. They didn’t retreat. She reached around Pam, her arm grazing the other woman’s arm, and opened the door. “Please.”
Pam nodded and went out. There was such a clear demarcation between inside the house and outside it that once she’d stepped into the sunshine, Lydia could hardly believe she’d ever been in here. Shorter than she and still quite close, Pam looked up at her and met her gaze before Lydia could look away. “You don’t have to be alone in this, Lydia,” Pam said firmly. “You’re not alone.”
Lydia mumbled, “Thanks,” and shut the door. Then she watched through the front window to be sure Pam left. The old gate creaked open and shut, and Pam paused outside it to check that the latch was in place. Lydia was touched by her care.
Over the fence then, Lydia couldn’t see the woman or the dog, but she stood there for a while anyway, watching, until her grandmother growled from the top of the first flight of steps, “Food!”
Chapter 9
“You must eat something, Deborah. For yourself and for your child.” Julian knelt beside her, his knees cracking, but he didn’t touch her. She’d been with him four or five days, maybe a week, and he’d never once tried to touch her.
She’d have defended herself if he had. She’d have fought him, maybe killed him, maybe eaten him—although she couldn’t stand even the thought of putting her mouth on his grimy, smelly flesh. Maybe he’d be nourishing for the baby.
All day and all night she slept and woke up, slept and woke up. A truck would rumble across the bridge overhead. A siren would go off and she’d think it was right next to them, on the bike path or something, when really it was up on one of the streets. Sometimes she couldn’t even see the flashing lights. Other times they reflected off the concrete and the water in weird ways.
Somebody would stop to talk to Julian and they wouldn’t talk very loud or very long, but their voices would keep echoing from the concrete and steel and from the slow shallow water. College kids. Downtown business people out jogging on their lunch hours. Bicycle messengers. Cops. Dealers. Other street people who lived under bridges along the greenbelt; she supposed you could call them neighbors. Julian knew everybody, talked to everybody. There were conversations about the changes in the Soviet Union, about the stars, about which restaurants discarded which type of usable food on which days, about the music of Beethoven and Pat Benatar, about the proper way to construct a viaduct and why this one was crumbling underneath. Julian knew everything, was interested in everything.
Every time she woke up—startled, head pounding, heart pounding, remembering no dreams, believing she didn’t dream—she was ready to fight him off. So far, he hadn’t even tried to do anything.
So was he gay or what? Or didn’t street people have sex? If street people never had sex, that bum lady was better off dead, Deborah’d done her a favor.
Although it would be kind of nice and relaxing not to have to think about that shit anymore. For just a minute, Deborah allowed herself a fantasy about a life where you never had to think about sex, power and closeness and pleasure coming from somewhere else. But she couldn’t really imagine it, and it made her mad even to try, so she quit.
Maybe this asshole was just too old. He didn’t look that old. She thought he was maybe fifty. Which was pretty old, but not that old.
Maybe she was just too ugly. Because she was pregnant. Or because she was half wolf. More than half, but he wouldn’t know that. He wouldn’t guess it, either—it wouldn’t just occur to somebody, even somebody as weird as old Julian who knew everything, that somebody might be a werewolf.
“Deborah, you must maintain your strength.” “What is that shit?”
“It’s a fish-vegetable stew, sort of a ratatouille, if you will. My own creation.” Julian smiled. He had a nice smile—Deborah thought generous, radiant—but his front teeth were rotten and his breath turned her stomach. God, she hoped her baby didn’t turn out to have bad teeth. It would be so embarrassing. “It has many essential vitamins, including Vitamin B complex, which is difficult to include sufficiently in one’s diet without careful attention. It also has substantial amounts of iron, which you especially need right now, and it’s high in protein. I was able to procure—”
“Gross.”
He sat back on his haunches and supported the bowl of stew on his knee. It did smell good, but she couldn’t imagine eating it. He shook his head, clicked his tongue, and regarded her kindly and worriedly.
Deborah wished fervently that she could throw up. She’d done everything she could think of to make herself sick, and she’d managed to gag a few times. But apparently there was nothing left that her body wanted to get rid of, not even stomach acid or bile. Not even urine or shit, because she hadn’t gone to the bathroom in days either. She couldn’t bring herself to squat here along the river, right in the middle of the city.
She wished she could throw up the baby. It would take her insides with her. It would empty her out. The baby was transforming her. Among other things, it was making her so ugly that even this dirty, lonely old man—who had rotten teeth and smelled disgusting and probably hadn’t done anybody in a hundred years—even Julian didn’t want to touch
her.
She could seduce him. She could rape him. She knew how. She thought of the guy on the bus. She thought of the cute guy she’d picked up at the mall. She thought with particular pride of the night she got pregnant—she’d done anything she wanted to those guys, made them do anything she wanted them to do to her, and all the time had them believing they were violating her.
Deborah was sure the other women in her family didn’t know what she knew about sex. Didn’t know its power. Didn’t know the curse of it. Didn’t know how wild and strong it could make you, how it could transform you into something you wouldn’t be otherwise. Her mother for sure didn’t know; her mother didn’t know anything, least of all who she was, which all her life had pissed Deborah off but which only recently she’d come to realize. Deborah couldn’t imagine her mother having sex, therefore couldn’t imagine her father. Her grandmother didn’t know or had forgotten, it had been so long; the idea of somebody even kissing Ruth, even looking at her like that, was enough to make Deborah laugh.
She wasn’t so sure about Nana. There might have been a time when Nana’d known about sex. She might even know about it now, might know stuff that Deborah didn’t know. The girl shuddered. Nana knew about wilding, but she seemed to think that meant killing men, eating their cocks and hearts, turning into a wolf and racing through the night. Sex could work just as well, if you really got into it.
Deborah pressed her back into the slope under the bridge abutment and brought her knees up as far as she could, which wasn’t enough anymore to ease the pain or nausea that was always in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t believe she was actually living under a bridge. It was embarrassing, but it wasn’t really all that bad. Julian’s home—den, cave—was fairly comfortable. The nights were warm; she wondered what it would be like in the winter. Maybe she’d still be here in the winter. She didn’t know why, but she felt safe with Julian, more or less. So far every time she woke up he’d still been there.