by A. J. Finn
Except he’s already there: “You said she helped you in off the street. But maybe that was you. Maybe you . . . I don’t know, dreamed it.”
If I dream things when I’m awake . . . Where have I heard that?
And I can picture it, like it’s a film, in living color: me, hauling my body off the stoop, rock-climbing those front steps. Dragging myself into the hall, into the house. I can almost remember it.
“And you said she was here playing chess with you and drawing pictures. But again . . .”
Yes, again. Oh, God. Again I see it: the bottles; the pill canisters; the pawns, the queens, the advancing two-tone armies—my hands reaching across the chessboard, hovering like helicopters. My fingers, stained with ink, a pen pinched between them. I’d practiced that signature, hadn’t I, scrawling her name on the shower door, amid the steam and the spray, the letters bleeding down the glass, vanishing before my eyes.
“Your doctor said he hadn’t heard about any of this.” He pauses. “I was thinking that maybe you didn’t tell him because you didn’t want him to . . . talk you out of it.”
My head shakes, nods.
“I don’t know what that scream you heard was . . .”
I do. Ethan. He never claimed otherwise. And that afternoon I saw him with her in the parlor—he wasn’t even looking at her. He was looking into his lap, not at the empty seat beside him.
I glance at him now, see him gently deposit Punch on the floor. His eyes never leave mine.
“I’m not sure about this photo business. Dr. Fielding said that sometimes you act out, and maybe this is how you ask for help.”
Did I do that? I did do that, didn’t I? I did it. Of course: guess who—that’s how I greet Ed and Livvy. Greeted. guesswhoanna.
“But as for what you saw that night . . .”
I know what I saw that night.
I saw a movie. I saw an old thriller resurrected, brought to bloody Technicolor life. I saw Rear Window; I saw Body Double; I saw Blow-Up. I saw a showreel, archive footage from a hundred peeping-Tom thrillers.
I saw a killing without a killer, without a victim. I saw an empty sitting room, a vacant sofa. I saw what I wanted to see, what I needed to see. Don’t you get lonely up here? Bogey had asked Bacall, asked me.
I was born lonely, she’d answered.
I wasn’t. I was made lonely.
If I’m deranged enough to talk to Ed and Livvy, I can certainly stage a murder in my mind. Especially with some chemical help. And haven’t I been resisting the truth all along? Didn’t I bend and bash and break the facts?
Jane—the real Jane, flesh-and-blood Jane: Of course she is who she says she is.
And of course the earring in David’s room belongs to Katherine, or whomever.
And of course no one came into my house last night.
It crashes through me like a wave. Slams my shores, cleanses them; leaves behind only streaks of silt, pointing like fingers toward the sea.
I was wrong.
More than that: I was deluded.
More than that: I was responsible. Am responsible.
If I dream things when I’m awake, I’m going out of my mind. That was it. Gaslight.
Silence. I can’t even hear Little breathe.
Then:
“So that’s what’s going on.” Alistair is shaking his head, his lips parted. “I—wow. Christ.” He looks at me hard. “I mean, Christ.”
I swallow.
He stares a moment longer, opens his mouth again, closes it. One more shake of the head.
At last he motions to his son, heads for the door. “We’re leaving.”
As Ethan follows him into the hall, he glances up, eyes shining. “I’m so sorry,” he says, his voice small. I want to cry.
Then he’s gone. The door cracks shut behind them.
Just the four of us now.
David steps forward, speaking to his toes. “So the kid in that picture downstairs—she’s dead?”
I don’t answer.
“And when you wanted me to save those blueprints, those were for a dead guy?”
I don’t answer.
“And . . .” He points to the stepladder braked against the basement door.
I say nothing.
He nods, as though I’ve spoken. Then he hitches his bag farther up his shoulder, turns, and walks out the door.
Norelli watches him leave. “Do we need to talk to him?”
“He bothering you?” Little asks me.
I shake my head.
“Okay,” he says, releasing my hand. “Now. I’m not really . . . qualified to deal with what happens next. My job is to shut all this down and make it safe for everyone to move ahead. Including you. I know that this has been hard for you. Today, I mean. So I want you to give Dr. Fielding a call. I think it’s important.”
I haven’t uttered a word since Norelli’s announcement. Your husband and your daughter are dead. I can’t imagine what my voice might sound like, must sound like, in this new world where that sentence has been spoken, been heard.
Little’s still talking. “I know you’re struggling, and—” He stops for a moment. When he speaks again, he’s hushed. “I know you’re struggling.”
I nod. So does he.
“Seems like I ask this every time we’re here, but are you okay to be left alone?”
I nod again, slowly.
“Anna?” He eyes me. “Dr. Fox?”
We’ve reverted to Dr. Fox. I open my mouth. “Yes.” I hear myself the way you do when you’ve got headphones on—remote, somehow. Muffled.
“In light of—” Norelli begins, but again Little raises a hand, and again she stops. I wonder what she was about to say.
“You’ve got my number,” he reminds me. “Like I said, give Dr. Fielding a call. Please. He’ll want to hear from you. Don’t make us worry. Either one of us.” He gestures to his partner. “That includes Val here. She’s a worrier at heart.”
Norelli watches me.
Little’s walking backward now, as though reluctant to turn away. “And like I said, we’ve got a lot of good people for you to talk to, if you want.” Norelli turns, disappears into the hall. I hear her boots click on the tile. I hear the front door open.
It’s just me and Little now. He’s looking past me, out the window.
“You know,” he says, after a moment, “I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to my girls.” His eyes are on mine now. “Don’t know what I’d do.”
He clears his throat, raises a hand. “Bye.” He steps into the hall, draws the door closed behind him.
A moment later I hear the front door shut.
I stand in my kitchen, watch little galaxies of dust form and dissolve in the sunlight.
My hand creeps to my glass. I pick it up gingerly, rotate it in my hand. Lift it to my face. Inhale.
Then I throw the fucking thing against the wall and scream louder than I’ve ever screamed in my life.
76
I sit at the edge of the bed, staring straight ahead. Shadows play on the wall before me.
I’ve lit a candle, a little potted Diptyque, fresh out of the box, a Christmas present from Livvy two years back. Figuier. She loves figs.
Loved.
A ghost of a draft haunts the room. The flame shifts, clings to the wick.
An hour passes. Then another.
The candle is burning fast, wick half-drowned in a soft pool of wax. I’m slumped over where I sit. My fingers are cradled between my thighs.
The phone lights up, shivers. Julian Fielding. He’s supposed to see me tomorrow. He won’t.
Night falls like a curtain.
That’s when your troubles started, Little said. Your problems going outside.
At the hospital, they told me I was in shock. Then shock became fear. Fear mutated, became panic. And by the time Dr. Fielding arrived on the scene, I was—well, he said it simplest, said it best: “A severe case of agoraphobia.”
I need the familiar confi
nes of my home—because I spent two nights in that alien wilderness, beneath those huge skies.
I need an environment I can control—because I watched my family as they slowly died.
You’ll notice I’m not asking what made you this way, she said to me. Or, rather, I said it to myself.
Life made me this way.
“Guess who?”
I shake my head. I don’t want to talk to Ed right now.
“How you feeling, slugger?”
But I shake my head again. I can’t speak, won’t speak.
“Mom?”
No.
“Mommy?”
I flinch.
No.
At some point I keel to one side, sleep. When I wake, my neck sore, the candle flame has dwindled to a tiny blot of blue, shimmying in the cool air. The room is plunged in darkness.
I sit up, stand up, creaking, a rusty ladder. Drift to the bathroom.
As I return, I see the Russell place lit up like a dollhouse. Upstairs, Ethan sits at his computer; in the kitchen, Alistair seesaws a knife across a cutting board. Carrots, neon-bright beneath the kitchen glare. A glass of wine stands on the counter. My mouth goes dry.
And in the parlor, on the striped love seat, is that woman. I suppose I should call her Jane.
Jane’s got a phone in her hand, and with the other she slashes and stabs at it. Scrolling through family photos, maybe. Playing solitaire, or something—games these days all seem to involve fruit.
Or else she’s updating her friends. Remember that freak neighbor . . . ?
My throat hardens. I walk to the windows and tug the curtains shut.
And I stand there in the dark: cold, utterly alone, full of fear and something that feels like longing.
Tuesday, November 9
77
I spend the morning in bed. Sometime before noon, bleary with sleep, I find my fingers tapping out a message to Dr. Fielding: Not today.
He calls me five minutes later, leaves a voicemail. I don’t listen to it.
Midday ticks past; by three p.m. my stomach is cramping. I ferry myself downstairs and pluck a bruised tomato from the fridge.
As I bite into it, Ed tries to speak to me. Then Olivia. I turn away from them, pulp dribbling down my chin.
I feed the cat. I swallow a temazepam. Then a second. Then a third. Fold myself into sleep. All I want is sleep.
Wednesday, November 10
78
Hunger wakes me. In the kitchen I tilt a box of Grape Nuts into a bowl, chase it with some milk, expiration date today. I don’t even much like Grape Nuts; Ed does. Did. They pebble-dash my throat, scour the insides of my cheeks. I don’t know why I keep buying them.
Except of course I do.
I want to retreat to bed, but instead I aim my feet toward the living room, tread slowly to the television console, drag the drawer open. Vertigo, I think. Mistaken identity—or rather, taken identity. I know the dialogue by heart; strangely, it’ll soothe me.
“What’s the matter with you?” the policeman bellows at Jimmy Stewart, at me. “Give me your hand!” Then he loses his footing, plummets from the rooftop.
Strangely soothing.
Midway through the film, I pour myself a second bowl of cereal. Ed murmurs at me when I close the refrigerator door; Olivia says something indistinct. I return to the sofa, dial up the volume on the TV.
“His wife?” asks the woman in the jade-green Jag. “The poor thing. I didn’t know her. Tell me: Is it true she really believed . . .”
I sink deeper into the cushions. Sleep overtakes me.
Sometime later, during the makeover sequence (“I don’t want to be dressed like someone dead!”), my phone shakes, a little seizure, rattling the glass of the coffee table. Dr. Fielding, I presume. I reach for it.
“Is that what I’m here for?” Kim Novak cries. “To make you feel that you’re with someone that’s dead?”
The phone screen reads Wesley Brill.
I go still for an instant.
Then I mute the film, press my thumb to the phone, and swipe. Lift it to my ear.
I find I can’t speak. But I don’t need to. After a moment’s silence, he greets me: “I hear you breathing there, Fox.”
It’s been almost eleven months, but his voice is as thunderous as ever.
“Phoebe said you called,” he goes on. “I meant to get back to you yesterday, but it’s been busy. Very busy.”
I say nothing. Nor, for a minute, does he.
“You are there, aren’t you, Fox?”
“I’m here.” I haven’t heard my own voice in days. It sounds unfamiliar, frail, as though someone else is ventriloquizing through me.
“Good. I suspected as much.” He’s chewing on his words; I know there’s a cigarette speared between his teeth. “My hypothesis was correct.” A rush of white noise. He’s blowing smoke across the mouthpiece.
“I wanted to speak to you,” I begin.
He goes quiet. I can sense him shifting gears; I can practically hear it—something in his breathing. He’s in psychologist mode.
“I wanted to tell you . . .”
A long pause. He clears his throat. He’s nervous, I realize, and it’s something of a jolt. Wesley Brilliant, on edge.
“I’ve been having a hard time.” There.
“With anything in particular?” he asks.
With the death of my husband and daughter, I want to shout. “With . . .”
“Mm-hm.” Is he stalling, or waiting for more?
“That night . . .” I don’t know how to complete the sentence. I feel like the needle on a compass, spinning, seeking someplace to settle.
“What are you thinking, Fox?” Very Brill, prompting me like this. My own practice is to let the patient proceed at her own pace; Wesley moves faster.
“That night . . .”
* * *
That night, right before our car dove off that cliff, you called me. I’m not blaming you. I’m not involving you. I just want you to know.
That night, it was already over—four months of lies: to Phoebe, who might have discovered us; to Ed, who did discover us, that December afternoon I sent him a text meant for you.
That night, I regretted every moment we spent together: the mornings in the hotel around the corner, shy light peeking through the curtains; the evenings we’d swap messages on our phones for hours. The day it all began, with that glass of wine in your office.
That night, we’d had the house on the market for a week, as the broker slotted tours and I pleaded with Ed and he struggled to look at me. I thought you were the girl next door.
That night—
* * *
But he interrupts me.
“To be very frank, Anna”—and I stiffen, because although he’s seldom anything but frank, it’s rare indeed for him to call me by my first name—“I’ve been trying to put that behind me.” He pauses. “Trying and succeeding, largely.”
Oh.
“You didn’t want to see me afterward. In the hospital. I wanted—I offered to come see you at home, remember, but you wouldn’t—you didn’t get back to me.” He’s slipping on his words, stumbling, like a man striding through snow. Like a woman circling her wrecked car.
“I didn’t—I don’t know if you’re seeing anyone. A professional, I mean. I’m happy to recommend someone.” He pauses. “Or if you’re set, then . . . well.” Another pause, longer this time.
Finally: “I’m not sure what you want from me.”
I was wrong. He isn’t playing psychologist; he’s not hoping to help me. He took two days to call me back. He’s looking for an escape.
And what do I want from him? Fair question. I don’t blame him, truly. I don’t hate him. I don’t miss him.
When I called his office—was it only two days ago?—I must have wanted something. But then Norelli spoke those magic words, and the world changed. And now it doesn’t matter.
I must have said this out loud. “What doesn’t matter?�
� he asks.
You, I think. I don’t say it.
Instead I hang up.
Thursday, November 11
79
At eleven sharp the doorbell rings. I wrest myself from bed, peer out the front windows. It’s Bina at the door, her black hair brilliant in the morning sun. I’d forgotten about her visiting today. I’d forgotten about her altogether.
I step back, survey the houses across the street, scanning them east-west: the Gray Sisters, the Millers, the Takedas, that abandoned double-wide. My southern empire.
The doorbell again.
I slope downstairs, cross to the hall door, see her framed within the intercom screen. Press the speaker. “I’m not feeling well today,” I say.
I watch her speak. “Should I come in?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“May I come in?”
“No. Thanks. I really need to be alone.”
She chews her lip. “Is everything okay?”
“I just need to be alone,” I repeat.
She nods. “Okay.”
I wait for her to leave.
“Dr. Fielding told me about what happened. He heard from the police.”
I say nothing, just close my eyes. A long pause.
“Well—so I’m going to see you next week,” she says. “Wednesday, like usual.”
Maybe not. “Yes.”
“And will you call me if you need anything?”
I won’t. “I will.”
I open my eyes, see her nod again. She turns, walks down the steps.
That’s done. First Dr. Fielding, now Bina. Anyone else? Oui: Yves tomorrow. I’ll write him to cancel. Je ne peux pas . . .
I’ll do it in English.
Before returning to the stairwell, I fill Punch’s food and water bowls. He trots over, dips his tongue into his Fancy Feast, then pricks his ears—the pipes are gurgling.
David, downstairs. I haven’t thought about him in a while.
I pause by the basement door, grasp the stepladder, move it to one side. I knock on the door, call his name.
Nothing. I call it again.