The Final Act

by Joy Fielding

  And then chaos.

  (Chaos: People running in all directions. Passengers locked inside the subway cars, banging on the doors to be let out. The smell of vomit. The ashen-faced conductor, his forehead pressed against the glass of a side window, yelling into his radio transmitter. Sirens wailing somewhere above their heads. Paramedics and police arriving. The police demanding information. Someone pointing at Cindy, sitting on the dirty floor, her back against the dull yellow tiles, her feet stretched out in front of her, like a lifeless rag doll, cradling the now sleeping baby in her arms and staring blankly into space.

  “Can you tell us what happened?” a policeman asks, kneeling down in front of Cindy, forcing his massive shoulders into her line of vision. “You knew this woman?”

  Cindy stares at the young man, whose face refuses to register beyond the deep brown of his eyes. “She’s my neighbor,” an unfamiliar voice responds from what seems like a great distance away.

  “Can you tell us her name?”

  “Faith Sellick. Faith,” Cindy repeats, the irony of the name imploding against her lungs, the strange voice floating to the ceiling, like a moth to light. “Is she dead?”

  Silence.

  Silly question, Cindy thinks, as the officer’s eyes close in confirmation.

  “Is there someone we can notify?”

  “Her husband.” The voice supplies the officer with the necessary information. Cindy watches him jot it down in his notepad. How many times has she seen that lately? Too many times. Way too many. “This is Kyle,” the voice continues. “Faith’s baby.”

  “We’ll need you to tell us exactly what happened here.” The officer signals to a colleague for help. “Can you do that?”

  The two uniformed officers take hold of Cindy’s elbows, help her up, although the ground feels less than steady beneath her feet, as if she is standing on a moving sidewalk. Cindy clings tightly to Kyle, resisting attempts to take him from her.

  “Are you going to be all right?” the policeman with the brown eyes asks, although his words are garbled, as if someone is playing them at the wrong speed.

  Cindy nods, walking slowly between the two officers as they guide her toward the exit.

  “We’ll need your name,” the police officer is saying as Cindy’s attention is diverted by a sudden movement on the subway track.

  “Cindy,” the unfamiliar voice answers, and for an instant Cindy wishes this person would stop talking, let her answer for herself. “Cindy Carver.”

  “Cindy Carver?” the second officer repeats, stopping in almost the exact spot as Faith stopped only moments before. “The mother of that missing girl?”

  And then Cindy sees the paramedics carefully lifting Faith’s hopelessly twisted body onto a stretcher, and notices a torn fragment of Faith’s blue cotton dress lying across the tracks. She turns back, sees bits of human flesh dripping from the blood-soaked front window of the train.

  “Are you Julia Carver’s mother?” the first officer is asking, staring at Cindy with his puppy dog brown eyes.

  A persistent buzz fills Cindy’s ears, almost blocking out his words. Are . . . Julia Carver’s mother? Are you . . . Carver’s mother? Are you Julia . . . ‘s mother?

  And then the unfamiliar voice once again assumes control. “Excuse me,” it says calmly as Cindy hands Kyle to the policeman with the puppy dog eyes, in much the same way Faith earlier handed him over to her. “I think I’m going to faint.” And then Cindy feels her knees bend, her hips sway, her eyes roll back in her head, everything happening in slow motion, as her body begins folding in on itself, like a collapsible chair. I’m getting rather good at this, she thinks as she falls toward the hard tile.

  “She saved that baby, you know,” someone says, as strange arms reach out to block her fall. “She should get a medal. She’s a hero.”

  I’m a hero, Cindy thinks, and might have laughed but for the darkness that envelopes her.)

  “So, according to the eleven o’clock news, I’m a hero,” Cindy said now, watching Neil walk toward her with a freshly brewed cup of tea. He was wearing khaki pants and a beige shirt, and Cindy thought he was the most welcome sight she’d ever seen. On either side of her sat her mother and sister. Leigh stood up as Neil approached, moved to the other sofa, scooted in beside Heather, Meg, and Trish.

  “Not feeling very heroic?” Neil sat down beside her, stroked the back of Cindy’s neck as she gingerly sipped her tea, Elvis keeping close watch on everyone from the floor.

  Cindy smiled at the handsome man who’d rushed to her side when she’d regained consciousness and phoned him from the subway station. “I feel like such a fraud.”

  “How are you a fraud?” Meg asked.

  “Because I didn’t do anything.”

  “You saved a baby’s life,” Trish reminded her.

  “Faith saved him, not me.”

  “It’s only because of you that they’re not both dead,” Cindy’s mother said.

  Cindy shook her head. “This whole thing is my fault.”

  “How can it possibly be your fault?”

  “Because I’m the one who drove her over the edge,” Cindy said, the words she’d been trying to swallow all day spilling from her mouth in a sudden rush. “Literally. I did everything but push her over the side of that platform myself.”

  “Cindy . . .”

  “I’m the one who rubbed her nose in her husband’s affair with Julia. I’m the one who called the police, who had her hauled off to the station for questioning when she was so tired she could barely stand up. I knew how fragile she was, I knew, but that didn’t stop me from flinging all sorts of ridiculous accusations in her face, even after the police warned me to back off, even after they ordered me to stop interfering with their investigation. And now look what’s happened. . .”

  “Cindy . . .” her mother said.

  “Please don’t tell me it’s not my fault.”

  “Do you really think you have that kind of power?” Heather asked, using the same words her mother had used the night before.

  Cindy smiled sadly, holding open her arms as her daughter slid into them.

  “Thanks for being here,” she said, kissing the top of Heather’s head. “All of you.”

  “Where else would we be?” everyone answered, almost in unison.

  Heather had been waiting for her when Neil brought her home from the subway. Her mother and sister, who’d been at the dressmaker’s, rushed over as soon as they heard the news, as had Meg and Trish several hours ago. Only Tom hadn’t bothered to call. Probably halfway to Muskoka when the reports were first broadcast.

  Normally, subway suicides went unreported in the media, lest it encourage others to take similar action. But Cindy’s presence at the scene had changed everything. The fact that Julia Carver’s mother had been instrumental in saving another woman’s child from certain death had been the lead story on every newscast on every radio and television station in the city, and the fact that the victim was Cindy’s next-door neighbor had only added to the intrigue. Reporters had been calling or knocking on her door since early this afternoon, theorizing about a possible connection between Julia’s disappearance and her neighbor’s suicide. The story was sure to make tomorrow’s headlines, Cindy understood, sighing audibly, especially once the press got wind of Ryan’s affair with her daughter, as surely they would.

  “Are you okay?” Neil asked.

  “I should have realized what was happening sooner.”

  “Then she might have jumped sooner, taken Kyle with her.”

  Cindy looked toward the front door. “Is the house still surrounded?”

  “I thought I saw someone from CITY-TV lurking in the bushes about an hour ago, but I think he finally gave up and went home.”

  “What about you?” Cindy asked reluctantly. “Shouldn’t you be heading home? It’s almost midnight. Your son . . .”

  “I can stay a little longer.”

  The phone rang. Everyone lo
oked toward the sound. No one made a move to get up.

  “You want me to answer that?” Meg asked.

  Cindy shook her head. “Let voice-mail take it.”

  After four rings, the phone went silent. Two minutes later, it rang again. And again, two minutes after that.

  “Persistent little devil,” Trish said.

  “Maybe it’s important,” Leigh added.

  “It isn’t.” How many crank calls had she received already today? Between the reporters and the kooks, her phone had been ringing almost constantly, although it had tapered off in the last several hours. At one point, things had gotten so disruptive—the phone ringing, cameramen banging their equipment against the windows, the dog barking each time someone came to the door—Cindy had briefly considered grabbing Neil and taking refuge in a hotel. But she knew her mother and sister would insist on coming along, as would Heather, Meg, and Trish, and the thought of all of them crowded into a small hotel room had been enough to put the kibosh on that idea.

  Cindy pushed herself off the sofa and shuffled into the kitchen, where she checked her voice-mail for messages. “Nothing,” she informed their eager faces upon her return. “Whoever it was didn’t leave a message.”

  “Next time it rings, I’ll answer it,” her mother said.

  “Why don’t you go upstairs to bed?” Neil suggested.

  “I don’t think I could sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see . . .” Even when I don’t close them, she thought, as once again, Faith materialized to hurl herself in front of an oncoming train. Cindy heard the helpless squeal of brakes, the gut-wrenching thud of cold steel against warm flesh, saw the torn sliver of baby-blue cotton clinging to the coal-black of the subway tracks, Faith’s blood splattered across the front window of the car, like mud, burning its way into the glass, like acid rain, branding itself into her soul.

  “I may have a few of those pills left,” Neil whispered underneath his breath.

  “Really? What kind of pills are those?” Leigh asked. “Because I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in months.”

  “Have you heard anything from Detective Bartolli?” Trish asked.

  Cindy grimaced, remembering how angry Detectives Bartolli and Gill had been upon hearing the news of Faith’s suicide and Cindy’s presence at the scene, how Detective Bartolli had gone so far as to threaten to arrest her if there were any further incidents. “Listen, you guys, you don’t have to stay. Really.”

  “Do you want us to leave?” Meg asked.

  “No,” Cindy admitted. “I want you to stay forever.”

  “Okay,” they all said, and Cindy smiled.

  They sat together for another hour, exchanging idle chatter, hugs, and sighs, until Norma Appleton announced she could no longer keep her eyes open, and she and Leigh went upstairs to bed, as did Heather ten minutes after that. Meg and Trish reluctantly said goodbye several minutes later, both promising to call the next day.

  “Your turn,” Cindy told Neil, standing by the open front door.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Only if you promise to come back tomorrow.”

  “How’s breakfast? I’ll bring bagels.”

  “If memory serves, my family loves your bagels.”

  Neil smiled. “Maybe I’ll bring Max. He likes bagels too.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Neil leaned over, kissed Cindy tenderly on the lips. “See you in the morning.”

  Cindy watched him drive off before retreating back inside the house. She was about to close the door when she stopped, stepped back onto the landing, her eyes staring through the darkness toward several cars parked at the far end of the street. How long had they been there? And were they empty or was someone sitting inside them? Cindy squinted, trying to differentiate between flesh and shadow. More reporters? she wondered. The police?

  Probably no one.

  Cindy locked the door and headed upstairs for bed, trying to shake the uncomfortable feeling she was being watched.

  THIRTY-THREE

  She was almost asleep when she heard something outside her bedroom window. Cindy sat up in bed, careful not to disturb Heather, who was curled up beside her, Elvis at their feet. She waited, the silence of the night swirling around her head like a potent perfume. And then she heard it again, a tap on the glass, quick and sharp. And then another.

  Cindy’s first thought was that it was a bird, pecking on the glass to be let in. But birds didn’t fly at night, she knew, climbing out of bed and going to the window, peeking through the shutters. Almost immediately, something slapped against the windowpane, and Cindy gasped, pulled away from the glass, her heart pounding wildly, convinced someone had fired a bullet at her head. But the glass hadn’t shattered. It hadn’t even cracked. Cindy inched back toward the window as once again, something ricocheted off the glass. A pebble, she realized.

  Someone was throwing stones at her window.

  Cindy reached for her robe and raced down the stairs to the kitchen, flipping on the light over the back patio.

  A man, dressed entirely in black, was standing in the middle of her backyard. Cindy stifled a scream as he turned his head toward the light, the scream freezing in her throat when she recognized the familiar look of consternation on his handsome face.

  “Tom?!” Cindy unlocked the sliding glass door, watched her ex-husband toss a fistful of pebbles to the ground, then bound up the stairs. Immediately, the Cookie, also entirely in black, stepped out of the darkness to follow after him. “What on earth are you doing here? What are you doing?”

  “Trying to get your attention, damn it. Why didn’t you answer your goddamn phone?”

  “What?”

  They stepped into the kitchen, the Cookie closing the door as Tom flipped off the patio light, the full moon falling into the space between them, like an errant spotlight. “What was going on here tonight? A party?”

  “You were watching the house?”

  “I need to talk to you. I couldn’t do it when everyone was here.”

  “I don’t understand. Has something happened?” A feeling of dread trickled into Cindy’s veins, like a transfusion of tainted blood. She felt her body grow cold, as if a hand had reached out to her from beyond the grave. “Does this have something to do with Julia?”

  Tom pushed his fingers roughly through his hair. “Okay, listen. I recognize this is going to be a shock, but it’s very important that you stay calm. I understand it’s already been one hell of a day for you, but I need your assurances you aren’t going to freak out.”

  “I think you’d better tell me what’s going on.”

  “I came here to prepare you.”

  “Prepare me for what?”

  Tom said nothing for several long seconds, then he reached back to the sliding glass door and pulled it open. “Okay,” he said to the surrounding darkness. “You can come in now.”

  The night air stirred as a shape began forming inside it, gradually separating from it. Cindy held her breath as the shape assumed human form, began its slow ascent up the patio steps, its face hidden by the hood of a black sweatshirt.

  And then there she was, standing in the doorway, the hood falling from her head to reveal the straight blond hair beneath, looking as impossibly beautiful as she had the last time Cindy saw her over two weeks ago.

  Julia.

  *

  “JULIA!” Cindy threw herself at the apparition, casting an invisible net over its head, and trapping it in her arms before it could fly away, as if she’d stumbled across a rare butterfly. She knew her mind was playing tricks, that the awful events of the day combined with her fatigue had disrupted the normal patterns of her brain, so that not only was she seeing lost young women jumping from her side, she was seeing other lost young women miraculously appearing to take their place. “Julia,” she uttered, staring at the vision in the black velour jumpsuit, touching her face, her shoulders, her hair. “Julia,” she said again, as if the repetition of the name would be enough to give th
e ghost weight, provide it with the substance needed to sustain it. “Julia,” Cindy cried, bracing herself for her daughter’s sudden absence.

  And then the mirage that was Julia was folding herself inside Cindy’s arms. And Cindy was hugging her and kissing her, and her skinny frame felt solid and real, and her soft, smooth skin smelled of Angel perfume. Cindy tasted her daughter on her tongue, like tiny bubbles of champagne. “Are you really here?” Cindy cried, squeezing Julia’s broad shoulders, her toned arms, her slender hips. “Are you really here?”

  “I’m really here,” the apparition said, sounding just like Julia.

  “It is you. You’re here. You’re real.”

  Julia laughed. “I’m real. I’m here.”

  And now Cindy was sobbing, her whole body shaking as she pulled her daughter to her chest, as if trying to solder them both together, all the while smothering the side of Julia’s face with kisses, as if she couldn’t get enough of her, as if she intended to devour her.

  Julia was back. She was in her mother’s arms. She was alive and well. And she looked wonderful. She looked rested and beautiful, more beautiful than ever. No bruises stained her flawless complexion; no nameless terrors clouded her eyes. “You’re here,” Cindy kept repeating. “You’re all right.”

  “I’m here. I’m all right.”

  Despite the assurances, Cindy refused to relinquish her daughter’s hands. If she did, the dream would surely end. She’d wake up. It would be over. Her daughter would be gone. “You’re not hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” Julia said again.

  “You’re fine,” Cindy repeated, unable to staunch the flood of tears streaming down her cheeks. Her daughter was alive and well and back home where she belonged. She wasn’t ghost. She was really here. And no harm had befallen her. How was that possible? “I don’t understand. Where have you been?”

  Julia looked from her mother to her father, who nodded his silent encouragement. “You have to promise you won’t be angry.”