Ariel

by Lawrence Block

  “No.”

  “You even feel you caused it.”

  “I feel she caused it.”

  “Yes, so you have said. But of course that makes no sense. I feel you have erected a whole superstructure to support this delusion in order to keep yourself from fearing for your daughter’s life. You—”

  “Dammit, she’s not my daughter!”

  The vehemence of her outburst surprised her. Around her the silence became heavy, oppressive. The clock ticked some more of her hour away. She lit a cigarette, dropped her lighter back into her purse. Calmly now, she said, “Did you ever happen to read a book called Helter-Skelter? About the Manson family?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Did you read it?”

  “I am familiar with the book. I have neyer read it.”

  “He had children with most of those glassy-eyed little girlfriends of his. Charles Manson did. Of course it was always tricky to know just who fathered which child because all of those people did everything to everyone, they behaved like animals. But there were quite a few children born. And according to the book most of the children wound up being placed for adoption after the arrests were made and the Family broke up. The authorities just swept up the children and offered them for adoption.”

  “And?”

  Her eyes were intense. “Can you imagine? A man and woman decide to adopt a child and without having the slightest idea they take the daughter of two murderers into their home. Can you imagine that? Can you?”

  “Mrs. Jardell …”

  Her hands were shaking. She couldn’t seem to get hold of herself.

  “Mrs. Jardell. You are not seriously suggesting that perhaps your Ariel was one of those children? Because the dates are wrong. And surely those children would have been placed with families in California, or at least in that part of the country. You can’t suspect—”

  “Oh, Christ,” she said. “Don’t order a straitjacket just yet, all right? I know she’s not one of those kids. I was just giving an example of what could happen.”

  “And what is it that you think could happen, Mrs. Jardell?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What could happen now? What is the threat?”

  She tried to concentrate. “You think I’m afraid that Ariel might die.”

  “Your son was born out of adultery and he died. Now you have resumed the affair. And now you expect punishment for it.”

  She thought of telling him that the affair wasn’t going all that well, that she and Jeff seemed to be more bound up in compulsion than carried away with passion.

  “Tell me about Ariel, Mrs. Jardell.”

  “Tell you what? I’ve told you everything about her.”

  “Tell me why you are afraid of her.”

  “Because I think she’s dangerous.”

  “To whom?”

  “To me.”

  “Do you really believe she killed your son?”

  She closed her eyes, sighed heavily, opened them again. “No,” she said. “No, of course not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s impossible. Because she loved Caleb. She used to go into his room and play with him. She played that horrible flute for him. That might have driven him crazy but it couldn’t have harmed him, could it?”

  He said nothing.

  “No, of course not,” she said, answering her own question. “Then why is it so easy for me to see her as a murderess? What is there about her that makes me want to put her in that role?”

  “Is it something in her?”

  “Do you mean it’s something in myself?”

  “Do you think that might be what I mean?”

  “How do I know what you mean?”

  Again he let the silence build around her. She felt very weak now, very tender and vulnerable. Was it all her inner problem, something that came from within her own mind? Was it her fault for worrying that everything was her fault? Was it ultimately that simple, and that ridiculous?

  He said, “You see, Mrs. Jardell, it is not a simple matter of taking an aspirin for a headache. This is part of something that has been manifesting itself in various ways in your mind for as long as I have known you. From time to time you rush to me as if for emotional first aid, and always it is the same underlying problem. You cannot take an aspirin for it, you cannot put a bandaid on it. It is involved in your feeling for your own parents, rooted in some childhood experiences of your own we have barely gotten a hint of.”

  “I barely remember my childhood, doctor.”

  “And do you suppose that what you fail to remember no longer exists? We deal with things by forgetting them, but it does not work as well for us as we might like.” He seized a pipe, twisted it apart. “Of course you can go on this way. You can come to me once or twice a year, when your mind drives you here. I can chat with you for an hour, skimming the surface of your anxiety, and I can give you an occasional prescription for Valium.”

  “Or?”

  “But you know the answer, Mrs. Jardell.”

  “Therapy.”

  He nodded. “A regular program of regular appointments which you will keep and which will become part of your schedule. A program dealing not with the intermittent manifestations of your problem but with the problem itself, the problem that lies deep in you.”

  “How long would it go on?”

  “Two years. Perhaps longer.”

  “And how often?”

  “Twice a week. Once a week is possible, but twice is better.”

  “Twice a week for two years.”

  “Very likely.”

  “But it might run longer.”

  “That is possible, yes.”

  Her eyes challenged him. “And what’ll it do for me? There are no money-back guarantees in this sort of thing, are there? You can’t sue a shrink for malpractice.”

  He did not answer.

  She lit a fresh cigarette, filled her lungs with smoke and thought involuntarily of her own mother. Her mother’s hands, grotesque with signs of age. Her mother’s body, wasted in the last stages of her disease.

  She took another drag on her cigarette.

  “I just don’t know,” she said.

  “I suggest you think about this, Mrs. Jardell.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I will.”

  “It is true there are no guarantees. But I can give you a negative guarantee. This problem will not vanish of its own accord. There has been some deterioration since I last saw you. Your problem is getting worse, not better.”

  “I’ve been under a strain.”

  “Yes.”

  She thought of Jeff. The two of them in his Buick, speeding west on a section of the Interstate. Just leaving everything behind.

  But you couldn’t run away from things. They tagged along after you like old shoes tied to a honeymoon couple’s rear bumper—

  “The time, Mrs. Jardell.”

  His words brought her around. They never lost sight of the time, did they? They always knew when your hour was up.

  She got to her feet.

  “If I could have some Valium,” she said. He looked at her for a moment, then nodded and reached for the prescription pad.

  SEVENTEEN

  Etta Jellin had been in the real estate business for half a century. She’d gone to work fresh out of high school as a secretary to an up-and-coming young realtor. Within three years she’d become his wife, and a couple of years after that she had her broker’s license and worked as his partner. For the dozen years of her widowhood she’d gone on operating the King Street office herself, managing the rental properties Sam had left her and specializing as always in downtown residential property.

  “Why, David Jardell!” she said. “How nice. You’re looking well.”

  He thanked her and returned the compliment, thinking that she was indeed looking well. But then she always did. In all the years he’d known her, Etta Jellin had remained the same, fat and saucy and always possessed of a good humor and
a shrewd glint in her eye.

  “Have a seat,” she said. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you since you lost your son. I was awfully sorry to hear about that.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t go to the funeral. Last one I went to was my husband’s. The day I buried Roy I said, by God, I’m not going to another of these affairs till I go to my own. Which some folk doubtless feel is long overdue. Well, I’m sure we can find a fitter subject for conversation. How’s that house I sold you? Bricks still staying one on top of the other?”

  “Oh, it’s in good shape.”

  “Would I sell you a bad one? Those old homes will outlive us all, my friend. They were built in saner times than our own. I swear I’d hate to hold mortgage paper on some of what’s being built nowadays. The banks’ll write thirty-year paper on some of these cardboard boxes, and you just know the houses won’t last the thirty years. House’ll be long gone before the mortgage is anywhere near paid off.”

  “It’s true.”

  “But don’t shed tears for the bankers,” she went on. “Inflation the way it is, land prices rising the way they are, they’ll be able to foreclose on the empty lots and come out ahead of the game.” She leaned back in her swivel chair. “Lazy old afternoon,” she said. “What brings you here, David?”

  “I wanted to get the benefit of your professional expertise.”

  “Oh?”

  “Let’s suppose I wanted to sell the house,” he said. “What could I figure on netting for it?”

  She looked him over carefully, her dark eyes narrowing. “You didn’t move in but less than a year ago.”

  “I know.”

  “They go and transfer you? Or did you find something else out of town?”

  “Nothing like that, Etta.”

  “Then why in tarnation would you want to sell the house?”

  He forced a smile. “I’m not saying I want to,” he said. “I just wanted to know what it would amount to in dollars.”

  “If you’re looking for cash, I know some awfully good sources of second-mortgage money, David. It’s none of my business to pry and I’m not prying, but if that’s what it is don’t be ashamed to say so, for the Lord’s sake. You shouldn’t ever sell real estate because you need cash, not unless you’re in the business and that’s what you do for a living. Always borrow on it if you can. Every year the dollars get cheaper and the man who’s in debt is that much ahead of the game.”

  “Cash isn’t a problem, Etta.”

  “Then what on earth—?”

  “Let’s say it’s personal.”

  She looked at him thoughtfully, then swung her chair around and rolled it over to a gray filing cabinet. “Just to refresh my memory,” she said, leafing through a drawer of file folders. “Let me see now. Uh-huh. All right. I thought I remembered the house well enough. Peddle enough properties and they tend to merge when you get along in years but I still have a good memory for houses and a tolerable one for figures. You paid sixty-seven thousand five hundred according to what I’ve got written down here.”

  “That’s right.”

  “House was listed at seventy-five, you offered sixty-five, and you and the seller settled at sixty-seven five. I think that’s how it went.”

  “That’s exactly how it went.”

  “And you want to know what you’d get selling it … depends, depends how anxious you are to sell. And how anxious somebody is to buy it. You might list it today at seventy-five and sell it tomorrow, if just the right person happened to come along and he wanted it badly enough. Or if you were willing to put it on the market today and sit tight for up to a year, then you could be fairly certain of getting the seventy-five or close to it sooner or later. But if you want a fast sale and you don’t want to count on getting lucky, then you’re going to take a loss.”

  “How large a loss?”

  “Somewhere between fifteen and twenty thousand dollars. Plus my six-percent commission.”

  He winced. There was no way he could sell the house and sustain that sort of loss. His total equity in the house was only a little over fifteen thousand in the first place. If he sold that cheaply they wouldn’t be able to move into another house.

  “I guess I paid too much,” he said.

  She shook her head. “You paid a fair price, is all. You found just the house you wanted and paid no more than fair market value for it. If you’re willing to wait for a buyer like yourself to come along I’d say you’ll get your money out of it, except for commission and closing costs. But if you want to sell in a hurry, well, it’s going to cost you. And that’s especially true when you’re dealing with older homes in town. They’re unique. Each of them is one of a kind. The charm of the house, the prestige value of the particular block, the special feeling a given prospective buyer gets from the house, all of these intangibles determine how fast the house sells and what price it brings, and you can’t get them down in dollars and cents and put them on the card in black and white.”

  “I see.”

  “You didn’t overpay and you didn’t wind up with a house you’re going to lose money on. Unless you want to unload it in a hurry. Real estate’s not the stock market, you know. You can’t call your broker and be sure of having money in your hand in four days’ time. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “I know.”

  “Why do you want to unload the place, David?”

  “I don’t.”

  She stroked her chin. “Your wife’s notion? You’ll have to forgive me but her name slips my mind. My memory’s better for prices and addresses than it is for people’s names.”

  “Roberta.”

  “Of course. She wants to move?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because of what happened to the boy? Pshaw. I’m a fat old woman, David, and that’s a fine thing to be because you can say whatever comes to mind and not give a damn how it goes over. Now it’s a tragedy when a baby dies and only a fool would say otherwise, but it’s a far cry from being the end of the world. She was not the first woman on earth to have a baby and God knows she was not the first woman on earth to lose one. If she’s going to run around the block every time something in her life takes a nasty turn, she’d be well advised to sleep in a track suit. It’s a hard life and it doesn’t get easier the more you see of it. All you get is used to it.”

  “It’s not that. Or maybe it is, when all is said and done, but that’s not how Roberta sees it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  He hesitated, groping for words. It was hard to explain her feelings, especially in view of the fact that they didn’t make any sense to him.

  “The house disturbs her,” he said finally.

  “It disturbs her?”

  He nodded. “It makes her uncomfortable. She acts as if it were a person instead of a thing. I don’t know how to describe it. She’s going through a difficult time emotionally, it’s obviously a result of losing the baby, and she’s reacted by putting all the blame on the house.” And on Ariel, he thought. But the house could be disposed of.

  “She think maybe it’s haunted?”

  “It’s as if she thought that,” he said. “Of course she’s intelligent, she’s an educated woman. She doesn’t literally believe in haunted houses—”

  “Oh?” The dark eyes sparkled. “I do. Of course I’m not educated and I daresay I’m not terribly intelligent either but—”

  “You believe in ghosts?”

  “I don’t know if I believe in ghosts exactly. I believe houses get to be haunted, and I suppose it’s ghosts that haunt ’em. An old house like yours, a house on that street, it’s more likely to be haunted than not.”

  “You’re not serious?”

  “’Course I am.”

  “You actually believe—?

  “Oh, I don’t believe in anything. I especially don’t believe in astrology. Know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a Sagittarius, and every Sagittarius knows astrolog
y is a lot of hooey.” She lay back her head and cackled at her own joke. “I believe and I don’t believe, both at once,” she explained. “In just about everything, from ouija boards clear through to the Virgin Mary. There’s such a thing as haunted houses. You go into your neighborhood, into any of the good old blocks south of Broad Street, and I’d say three houses out of five are likely to be haunted.”

  “Then you think that Roberta’s right?”

  “You really want to know what I think?” She sat forward, planted an elbow on her desk top, rested her chin in her hand. “I think houses pick up some of the vibrations of people, who’ve lived in them, and especially people who died violently in them. That’s the theory behind ghosts. Somebody dies suddenly or violently and the ghost doesn’t know it’s time to go on to the happy hunting grounds. Anyway, ghosts or vibrations or whatever you want to call it… certain people are just more sensitive to the feeling of a haunted house than others. And certain states of mind make a person more or less sensitive. Your house has been standing over a century. The odds are pretty strong that more than a few people died in it, and it’s a safe bet that one of them somewhere along the way died in some sort of abrupt fashion. As a matter of fact—” She straightened up. “What’s the number of your house again? Forty-two?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if Grace Molineaux lived there.”

  “Who on earth was she?”

  “Before your time,” she said. “Before my time, if you can believe it. It must have been in the eighties or early nineties. I remember people still talked about it when I was a girl.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’m trying to remember. Now I’m not sure I’ll get this entirely accurate. It seems to me she was a widow with small children. Was it three young children? I think so. It’s usually three in stories, whether it’s three little pigs or three bears or three wishes.” She rocked back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling. “I seem to recall she was married to a ship’s captain who was lost at sea and left her a young widow. With however many children, but let’s say there were three of them. And one night they were all murdered in their beds. The children, that is … and it wasn’t three, it was four. I’m remembering it now. They were smothered in their sleep, the four of them.”