by Truddi Chase
The thought of dinner with Norman that night, the icy waiter, the dregs of a peculiar cadence in her ears, the fright brought on by what she’d known even then, had been a new one, more powerful than all the rest—that someone telling her how time was not meant to be hoarded but wrung dry of all its juices, because when it was gone there was plenty more . . . and it came to her how she had been unable to hear the brogue in the Irish bomb maker’s voice that night she’d joined Thementa for drinks.
The woman began to tremble, even as Sister Mary did, and they were conscious of soft, wailing sobs. Down on the floor with the manuscript pages, Sister Mary went click, click with the beads. Ten-Four poured scotch all around, and her face was grim.
The lisping sobs grew louder and beat on their ears.
“Hush, child,” the voice said. “Our finest hour be upon us; a bit o’ balm to pave the way—for the journey yet t’ come.”
The voice spoke to the thrashing, keening thing that Mean Joe clasped against his shoulder. But no one saw Mean Joe or his burden, and the woman thought the voice spoke to her.
“I’m leaving you now,” she said. “I’ll not pay attention.”
“Y’ cannot leave me this time,” said the voice. “Already m’ cadence has become your own. The times ahead will not be easy.”
The woman felt the gentleness and the power—she could not deny what he pressed upon her.
“I thought the idea of killing the stepfather had been given up,” she said slowly, “only the children aren’t satisfied. They want revenge.”
“They shall have it. ’Tis nothin’ more than their due.”
The woman stood in front of him and for the first time she saw his face. She saw a thousand opposing things in his eyes and all of them were true.
“I ha’ many sides, and man may win by more than one method. It seems t’ me that the wisest choice would leave us all free t’ fight on many fronts and for many days, instead o’ only one. True, ’twould be a grand occasion, that one day, but o’ what value i’ we all go down w’ the enemy?”
The woman wasn’t sure she agreed with him. In that moment she held the stepfather’s bloodied intestines in her hands, watched him die for a longer moment.
“Tell that to the children,” she said.
“’Tis exactly what we’re goin’ t’ do,” he said.
“You’re the one who’s been reading to them lately. Why didn’t I hear your brogue before?”
“Y’ were not ready,” he told her. “But now y’ are. Ready for y’r job. You alone, o’ all the others, feel nothin’. The children will believe your strength, your invincibility even in the face o’ him.”
“You said we weren’t going to kill him.”
“I said we’d do it in a way that would leave us free t’ fight on many fronts and for many days.” He laid the balance of the manuscript pages in her hand. “The ending has n’ changed; it always belonged to the children, it always will.”
The Irishman gave the signal.
The second skin of memory lay in the Weaver’s arms. The skin comprised all that his nimble fingers had ever taken away. The woman knelt as always, knees beneath her, head lowered. The Irishman seized the skin; he held it shoulder-high and let it drop. The memory of more than ninety selves began to fill her. There was no stopping for breath; the second skin for one brief moment in time flowed and encased the woman like her own. She was the others, they were her, of one mind, a million memories.
Mean Joe could not move to hold her; he was inside her and his memory was hers. A soughing began in the cavernous warehouse loft, as if each blade in a thousand fields of tall grass cried against a storm that would never end.
The Irishman lifted the skin. He let the woman go.
She felt the scalding of an awful question. “If I am nothing but an empty shell, a façade, is anything mine in all of this?”
“More than y’ ever hoped for,” he said. “More than y’ ever dreamed.” And he took her to him with his mind and all that he was and forever would be, and he showed her the balance of the Troops, waiting their turn to emerge. He showed her the dead children on Mean Joe’s shoulder. The woman stood in awe before them, her mind seething with outrage at their pain. Her desire for revenge was overwhelming.
The brogue grew softer as he bent her one more time, exposing her to other, much different emotions, in dizzying, kaleidoscopic profusion.
Shaken, the woman took in a breath of the sweetest air she had ever breathed. “I can have that? All on my own, just for me? Exactly as other people do?”
He knew the answer: for as long as she lived, she would experience only through the others, never precisely on her own. As long as she lived, the others would always be there. But since they were learning to absorb more of life’s pleasures and some of the suspicion and hatred were draining away, there would be much for them to give her.
And so he lied.
“Aye,” he said. “All that and more.”
He operated on a grand scale, so for him it was not, relatively speaking, a gigantic lie, only a small white one.
But in the Tunnel that night, because he was a kind soul and had never been able to contain or hide his feelings, the sound of thunderous crying would be heard and the walls themselves would tremble with his rage.
For now, he merely gave the final signal and the children began to gather at his knees. The loft was barren of a Christmas tree and there were no gaily wrapped presents, just a collection of tiny parcels done up in brown paper and tied with cord, clutched in their hands, held tightly in their laps.
Catherine laid her fingers over her lips.
“Sssh,” she said. “Let the children celebrate.”
The voice began to read in a heavy but gentle brogue:
THE CHILDREN’S HOUR
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,
That is known as the Children’s Hour.
I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.
From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.
A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.
The children’s eyes were gleaming. With no further preamble, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was laid on the arm of the rocking chair and the one who was reading in such a fine brogue, resonant and clear, so that no word might be missed, picked up the last pages of the manuscript and he continued: “. . . Who will go with me, into the jaws of hell, into the valley of death?”
* * *
Stanley’s town house was very quiet. A platter of French bread, clove-baked ham, diablo mustard, and scallion-butter sat on the coffee table. With the woodsy scent of pine cones burning in the grate, Stanley took up a bottle of Irish whiskey, and two glasses of Waterford crystal that pinged sharply as the bottle clinked the rim.
“Present to me from the Troops,” Stanley said to Albert. “They asked that I invite you here tonight and share this. Because you’ve been so concerned and because they’ve written you into the manuscript and into this final chapter.”
“Why me?” Captain Albert Johnson looked pleased but skeptical.
“They’ve always feared authority figures,” Stanley said. “I guess someone like you doesn’t frighten them anymore. The other chapters were literal, right down to Lambchop’s childish inability to spell her name. Through it all, the Irishman tried his damnedest to hold back. Now he extends a warm fire, good food, fine drink—and his gift to the children. Have
you ever noticed, Albert, that adults give children the kind of presents they really want for themselves? Things that please them, not the child? In this case, Albert, I suspect that the Irishman still holds back, giving the children not what he wants, but something truly to their liking.”
“So,” Albert said, “You’re going to read me a Christmas story?”
“Yes,” Stanley said. “In honor of the high feast tomorrow, I am.”
He picked up the last chapter and began to read:
The woman felt so calm within the protective placenta the Zombie had placed around her this morning. Just before the end of the session yesterday, Stanley had warned that the scary part wouldn’t go away entirely, ever. It would simply diminish as time went by. The feeling of living in a pressure cooker, he’d said, would abate as the steam was allowed to escape slowly, through the surfacing memories.
The Seventh Horseman waited by the door of the warehouse loft, impatient for them to be off. But the coat must be admired first. The Troops had a new one, unlike anything the woman had ever owned.
Miss Wonderful loved the redness of it; Rabbit said it looked like blood. But it was warm, that was Mean Joe’s opinion, warm enough for the Arctic. Ten-Four took one look and expressed disgust that anyone would buy such a heavy coat when the winters in Cashell, Maryland, didn’t call for it. Lamb Chop and Twelve hung by its hem, brushing the cloth over their faces.
In the pocket of the coat was a round-trip airline ticket. Holding the ticket in her hand comforted the woman as she stood at the loft window, watching for the taxi. Sister Mary Catherine stood with her—neither one wanting to acknowledge the reason for the ticket.
“Listen,” Black Katherine said. “Did you think that for every action there would not be a reaction?”
Sister Mary pretended she was too busy stuffing Tylenol into the woman’s mouth to answer, and pulled the coat tighter around her. She fastened the shiny, blood-red buttons at the woman’s throat, ministering as if to a sick child. But the woman wasn’t sick and, while she trembled, it wasn’t with fear.
Catherine could not resist a last purr of satisfaction over the beauty of the coat she’d chosen, as she wished the woman and Mean Joe and the children luck for the trip. Catherine’s purr was muffled by the deadly heft of the woman’s purse as it bumped against her thigh, a purse filled with the small, paper-wrapped parcels of the little ones.
The Seventh Horseman opened the door.
And the woman was walking out of the warehouse loft, headed to the freight elevator, placing one foot ahead of the other, the way the Zombie had taught her.
She entered the taxi from a snowy, wind-swept street, telling the driver, “Dulles Airport, please.”
* * *
Albert described her to the attendant at the ticket counter as best he could. All signs above the attendant’s American Airlines cap pointed out the flights to New York City, from where, Stanley had said, the woman would have to transfer over to Rochester.
The attendant was way ahead of him, as if she had a fixed picture in her mind, of his precise quarry. She pointed with a gloved finger and Albert saw a white fur hat bobbing above the crowd, over the prettiest coat he’d encountered since giving his mother one last Christmas.
From the back, the style of it accented her broad shoulders, flowed down, elegant and blood red, to suck at a dainty waist and flow further, to the tops of beige suede boots. What caused him to recognise her, even hidden under the hat and facing away from him, was her walk—innocent, unconstrained, and proud. A child in a new outfit, heading off to visit for the holidays.
What was it Stanley had kept babbling, less than an hour ago, while Albert stood in his town house, demanding that Stanley intervene, stop her, stop them, from what would surely happen if they were allowed anywhere near her stepfather?
“I won’t do it, Albert. I can’t.” Stanley had tossed the newly delivered mail, like a man-made snowstorm, down on his dining room table. “Trust is a two-way street between therapist and client. No matter what anyone says, the Troops are sane. I trust them, Albert. I trust them to do what’s right—for them.”
“And what if her stepfather harms her?” Albert was unwilling to leave it alone.
“Albert. That woman and her people were trained in deadlier arts than you or I can imagine—by a man who has never been caught at his game. By the very man whose legal rights men like you are sworn to protect. Except, of course, that he’s out of your jurisdiction. Just offhand, I’d say he should run for his life this time, not the other way around.”
“Goddammit, Stanley.” Albert hurled his last protest. “She’s only a woman!”
“But some of her people aren’t.”
The red-coated figure had gone through the gates and was about to be swallowed up by the yawning mouth of the loading gallery. Albert lit a cigarette and shoved his hands into the pockets of his ski parka. The cigarette sat rigid between his lips as he strode to the airport bar.
* * *
Outside the airplane window, there was nothing but blue sky and shredded grey clouds. A tip of the carefully folded, blood-red coat jutted from the overhead storage rack and the woman fastened her mind on its brightness, willing herself to stop swallowing and dry-washing her hands in her lap.
The stewardess came around, and Mean Joe ordered scotch on the rocks for him and a beer and two glasses of chocolate milk. With straws. There was just enough liquid to go around. He kept his right shoulder carefully hunched.
“He’s a pretty big guy as I remember him,” Mean Joe said. “I hope nobody thinks this is going to be easy.”
“I don’t care how big he is anymore,” the woman said. “I hope he’s big as a mountain. Big enough to warrant all this sweat under our armpits.” The woman leaned back in the seat and the teddy bear peered with one beady eye from beneath her elbow. Having been wide awake all last night, she drifted in and out of sleep now, until Mean Joe stirred and stretched his long legs.
The meal they were served was elaborate, but not enough for him. Mean Joe got empty, often. He was glad for the fast-food bag the woman handed him an hour later, and he shared its contents: hamburgers and potato chips and jelly beans. The stewardess, bewildered with the amount of milk the woman was consuming, made a comment and was ignored.
For the passengers across the aisle, there were occasional, deadly, sideways glances and the husky drawl from Mean Joe, along with a filling-out of the woman’s facial structure, as an occasional little one forgot, and stirred. Since the children startled people more than any of the adults did, they’d promised for the plane ride itself to speak only when spoken to by one of their own. For the most part, it went swimmingly.
The stewardess announced their arrival in Rochester, and warned them that the weather was ugly. Lamb Chop giggled and handed Mean Joe a huge pair of leather gloves. She counted out the small, paper-wrapped parcels and smiled—a scrunch-eyed, round-faced, happy smile.
Mean Joe could not help it. He looked down at Lamb Chop in the silly, too-adult, white fur hat.
“Are you having a good time?”
“Oooooh,” she said, and shivered with delight.
* * *
Back in his town house, Stanley slit open the mail at his dining room table. His client, or rather her crew, had sent him not one Christmas card, but two. The first was a commercial number, a pen-and-ink, single-line drawing of a musician, with a part of the face undrawn, unconnected. That card was signed, “Your unfinished symphony.”
The second card, handmade, bore a title, “A Genuine Old Gaelic Blessing,” and the words went thus:
* * *
When the night wind blows sharp as a rapier from the frozen dark reaches o’ the North; when waters become ice beneath y’r feet and in y’r veins; when the passage is barred to ye and no man comes with the key nor even a soft word t’ mend the mind, then on the darkest o’ nights
when no moon shows, may the moor be lit for y’ always, with the light o’ a finer source. And further, lest we forget the most important thing o’ all, may no bottle y’ ever encounter, be empty o’ the finest brew.
* * *
Stanley was puzzled by the signature because it was looped and scrawled as if written by a scholar at least a thousand years old, but finally he deciphered it: “Ean, for the Troops.”
* * *
The taxi left them off at the corner of a very nice street, with neat little houses and Christmas wreaths dotting the windows. The stewardess had been right. It was bitter cold, as cold as thirty years ago. A dusting of what looked like the same snow brushed their faces as they left the more protected corner and headed down the street. The woman took off her mitten and shoved a small hand in Mean Joe’s larger one.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said.
* * *
Age had done nothing to the man who answered the door, except to pull his features closer together and etch a curious path of tiny roads across his face. His hair was no longer black, but iron grey. The woman greeted him with a twelve-year-old smile that under the white hat was forty and deadly.
“Do you remember me?”
“No.” But a question sprouted in his yellowish eyes under the grey brows, and then there were a hundred questions. He didn’t believe anything his mind was telling him, so he tried to tell her “No” again.
“You’re as rude as you ever were,” the woman said over the beating of her heart. “It’s cold out here.”
He was still a very big man, stepping back into a moderate-sized living room crowded with overstuffed furniture, a television that played softly, and a large German shepherd that ran in nervous circles around his legs.
“Git,” Mean Joe said to the dog.
The dog turned tail and went.
“Still like animals?” The woman’s gaze went around the room, took note of the stacks of detective magazines, the scarlet-and-white packets of Red Man chewing tobacco, the mantel with all the faded pictures of his family. His mother’s picture hung square in the middle of them all, showing her henna sausage curls, and a pouting, lipsticked mouth.