by Clea Simon
Thinking of that sparked an idea: if she couldn’t reach Roland – she checked the clock – she could conceivably call Martin Thorpe, the acting head of the department. The problem was, she’d been ducking Thorpe for days. In addition to running the little fiefdom of bookish scholars, the balding scholar was her thesis adviser. He had already expressed doubt about some of her theories, his own expertise leading him to tut-tut her ‘headstrong ways’, as he so quaintly put it. And instead of being impressed with the chapter she’d drafted the week before, he seemed to expect her to be more productive. She was working as fast as she could – writing as she researched, even if it did make her feel a little like she was getting dressed before she’d put her underwear on. Still, with Thorpe, she sometimes felt like she couldn’t win.
‘Less thought and more writing,’ she grumbled as she scrolled down the phone list. ‘Doesn’t he remember what it was like? How hard it is, to pull everything together?’
It wasn’t just Thorpe, Dulcie knew. Part of it was her thesis topic itself. No matter how good a case she made for The Ravages of Umbria and its nameless author, most of her colleagues would never take the work seriously. To them, all the Gothics were cheap fiction, churned out to amuse a newly literate class of shop girls and merchants’ wives. Never mind that these books were some of the first fiction written by and for women, never mind that The Ravages – what had survived of it – rose above the conventions of the genre – all they saw were the ghosts and abductions, the exotic locales and the overwrought plots, and, in the case of her favorite, an incomplete plot at that. The fact that these books were meant to evoke strong emotions probably played against them, Dulcie had long ago realized. Nothing that much fun would ever be taken seriously by many of her colleagues.
Her thesis adviser, though – he should know better. ‘He could at least pretend to like the work,’ said Dulcie. The kitten yawned, stretching out one white mitten, reminding Dulcie how late it was. Too late to call Thorpe, she realized with relief. But if she wasn’t going to work on her thesis, she should at least clear up this mess.
‘Hi, you’ve reached virtual Roland . . .’ Dulcie listened to the voicemail, only realizing at the last moment that she should have prepared something to say.
‘Um, Roland? This is Dulcie. Dulcie Schwartz.’ She gave her number and hung up without mentioning the meeting, feeling as flustered as a freshman with a crush. What was it about the visiting scholar? Unlike some of the departmental superstars who had blazed through, the Texan wasn’t particularly tall or handsome. Sandy-haired, with more freckles than Dulcie herself would sprout come summer, he had a nice enough face, despite a Chaucerian gap between his two front teeth. Maybe it was that gap – or maybe it was his reputation. Despite Trista’s best efforts to engage her, she could never tell one idealized Dickensian waif from the next, so she couldn’t tell for sure if Roland was as smart as he was rumored to be. No, it must be the gap.
Chris had a perfectly lovely face as well, Dulcie caught herself. And not only was he brilliant – he’d graduate summa, one day – but he was also kind. Dulcie knew her boyfriend worked the overnight shifts largely for the overnight bonus, but even when he was as sleep deprived as the panicked freshmen who flocked to his cubicle, he was as gentle and helpful as . . . well, as Martin Thorpe wasn’t.
Right now, however, Chris was at work. And so, steeling herself, Dulcie reached once more for the phone – only to have it start ringing.
‘Hello?’ Dulcie heard the hesitation in her own voice. If this was Roland calling her back . . .
She needn’t have worried. ‘Dulcinea! I knew you’d be there.’ Her mother’s boisterous voice called out from what sounded like the middle of a percussion ensemble.
‘Hi, Lucy.’ Dulcie relaxed. Her mother had never quite gotten the idea that since she’d gotten a cell phone, she was usually within reach. ‘What’s up?’
‘I think you know.’ Lucy’s voice took on a sing-song quality that made Dulcie sigh. Despite Mr Grey’s continued presence in her life, Dulcie didn’t really buy the idea of the supernatural influencing everyday life. Growing up on the commune – the arts colony, as her mother called it – had been enough to make the most romantic New Ager into a hardened realist. And Dulcie had spent enough years scrambling to make sure the utility bills were paid to not have much faith in the benevolence of the universe.
‘Why don’t you tell me?’ Dulcie lay back on the sofa, tucking her feet under the now sleeping kitten.
‘Don’t you feel the energy, Dulcie? Don’t you feel the heat?’ Behind Lucy, someone started singing. The communal kitchen, Dulcie figured, conjuring up her memories of the loud, crowded space. ‘Can’t you just feel it?’
‘The solstice,’ Dulcie said, as much to herself as to her mother. Of course, even though the beginning of summer was still weeks away, the brethren – Dulcie tried not to think of them as ‘inmates’ – would be starting preparations already. At least, along with the incantations and midnight yoga, the kitchen would get a thorough cleaning. If Matilda were still there, anyway. ‘Is Ma— Sparrowhawk still among you?’ She seemed to recall something about the older woman leaving.
‘Yes, her soul quest brought her back in February.’ Lucy’s voice started to fade against the cacophony, and Dulcie missed some of what came next. ‘—more a voyage of self-discovery.’
So the romance hadn’t lasted. Poor woman. Dulcie felt another pang of gratitude for Chris – and affection for her mom. ‘Thanks. I was just thinking of her for some reason,’ she explained. Lucy would never have asked, Dulcie knew that. To do so would be to deny her sensitivity, as she saw it.
‘Of course you did, dear.’ Lucy’s perkiness had returned. ‘She’s why I’m calling.’
‘Oh?’ For some reason, Dulcie suddenly felt exhausted.
‘Yes, dear.’ Lucy didn’t seem to notice. ‘Since Sparrowhawk returned, she’s been having visions, and last night, we did a circle together.’
Could two people make a circle? Dulcie didn’t want to ask.
‘It was a full moon, as I’m sure you’d noticed.’
Dulcie grunted something that she hoped sounded positive. She had been having strange dreams, though these seemed more in keeping with her work than with the watery light that seeped through Chris’s ancient blinds. Her response seemed enough for Lucy.
‘And after we chanted for a while, Sparrowhawk had her vision. Dulcie – you and Chris are going to come out here for the solstice. For the solar energy.’
‘Mom.’ Enough was enough. Dulcie and Chris both had undergraduates who they had to see through the last throes of finals. Then Dulcie wanted to be here for Suze’s graduation. Suze’s mother was coming up from New Jersey, as well as a score of cousins who Dulcie had never met. After Commencement, the campus would quiet down for a few weeks. And in those precious few weeks, before the summer-school students flooded the city, Dulcie would finally be able to get some work done. It was true, she and Chris had talked about taking a vacation. Maybe even taking the bus out to the West Coast – and Lucy – during the last weeks of August. June, though? No, it wasn’t going to happen. ‘Chris and I are working. We’re going full out, and we don’t have the time—’
‘That’s it, Dulcinea. You don’t have the time.’ The uproar around her mother seemed to have died down. Either everyone was eating, or Lucy had managed to drag the phone into a closet. ‘Neither of you has the time. The spirits are out of alignment at this. Already, someone close to you has been taken, Dulcie. And I’m not going to let my daughter be swallowed up by evil, too.’
SEVEN
The kitten did her best. Still, after fifteen minutes of concerted play, Esmé was sacked out on the sofa with the kind of graceless abandon that only a cat can make look comfortable, and Dulcie was even more aware of the isolation of the apartment. She couldn’t call it quiet, really. Someone’s salsa music could be felt, as much as heard, through the walls, just loud enough to reassure Dulcie that there were other people
alive in the building. But after reading another long paper explaining why women did not need to be educated, she found herself beginning to agree.
Lucy’s call had been distressing for all the usual reasons – maternal loneliness, maternal battiness – but if it had shattered her focus, at least it had also shaken Dulcie from her own paranormal fears. She would work later. Now she needed something. She wasn’t hungry, exactly. But it might be time for . . .
‘Midnight pizza!’ Chris looked up from his workstation, surprise spreading a broad grin across his thin face. ‘My heroine!’
‘Those dumplings were a long time ago.’ Dulcie didn’t mention the peanut butter – or the earlier premonition that had still made her a little nervous about setting out. A sweaty undergrad looked up from a nearby cubicle. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed silently. He ducked back down without comment.
Chris tore off a slice, and after a moment’s hesitation, Dulcie joined him. The two munched in companionable quiet, the few stragglers leaving them in peace for the moment. ‘So,’ Chris said, finally, as he folded his last slice in half. ‘What’s up?’
‘I couldn’t just have missed you?’ She was teasing. It felt good to talk to someone who didn’t claim to know everything before it was laid out. Since his mouth was full of pizza, she explained. First, the situation with Trista and Roland and her own realization about Trista’s flawed interrogation. Then her inability to reach Roland – and the call from Lucy.
Chris rolled his eyes at that. When they’d first started seeing each other, Dulcie had been worried that her unconventional upbringing – and her most unconventional mother – would put off the serious mathematician. But Chris’s logical mind had been charmed by Dulcie’s past. At times, she’d begun to worry he’d romanticized it, making the commune out to be more idyllic than his own straightforward working-class roots. He certainly failed to see why Lucy’s eccentricities bothered Dulcie quite as much as they did.
‘This isn’t Lucy being all charming and fairy dust,’ she said in her own defense, finishing off her own last slice. ‘This was creepy.’
‘You know she misses you.’ Chris picked some cheese off the box. ‘She’d probably say anything to get you to come out this summer.’
‘Well, scaring me isn’t the way to do it.’ Comfortably full and sitting with her boyfriend, Dulcie felt the strange edginess begin to fade. ‘Though I guess I should call her more.’
‘That’s not what’s bothering you, though.’
‘Not really. I mean, Suze didn’t take the whole thing with Trista seriously to begin with, and nobody has actually said anything about Roland being dead. I mean, no text message from the department, nothing. But . . .’ She let it hang, unsure of how to continue.
‘You don’t know if Trista knows something that hasn’t been made public yet, that she can’t talk about, or if there’s something else going on,’ Chris said, finishing the thought. ‘And it’s too late to call Thorpe now, or anyone else in the department, right?’
Dulcie nodded.
‘And I’m stuck here working, and when you go home, you’ll be alone.’
‘I’ve got Esmé.’ She could almost laugh about it now.
‘Who, if I guess right, will be asleep when you’re awake – and rampaging around the house when you’re finally ready to conk out.’
Dulcie nodded in agreement.
‘Do you want to work here for a while?’ His voice had become gentle with concern. ‘I can hook you up with an empty terminal.’
‘Nah, I’m OK now.’ Dulcie stood and picked up the pizza box. ‘In fact, I should get going. Maybe I can get through these stupid essays and bash out an outline for this chapter. Then I could get back to the real stuff tomorrow.’
The grin became wider now. ‘That’s my girl.’
He took the empty box from her and helped her into her sweater. ‘Do me one favor, Dulce?’
She turned, buttoning those oversized buttons. ‘What?’
‘Let’s not push our luck, OK? Take a cab home?’
EIGHT
Writing, she should be in her cabin, locked away, writing. And yet, she stood on the deck, peering into the inky dark, trying in vain to see her way through the impervious blackness. Like a storm unending, the sea itself heaved and tossed. Even in the dark, she could sense its enormity, the mighty and yet mindless strength of it, upon whose mercy she among the other ship-bound souls must rely. She tasted salt, the spray bitter on her lips. Or were those tears? In the cold dark fullness of the night, she could no longer tell. Could barely discern where the ship ceased to be and the ocean began on this wild night, wind toss’d and bitter. She brushed an errant curl aside, realizing the full intent of her words. Her worlds were colliding – the real and the unreal, once again. The ship reared up, a mere scrap upon the back of this heaving beast, and she reached for the rail, spray slick and icy. And as it must rise, so too must it dive, down into the beast’s belly, the trough of the wave. Would it be so difficult then, to simply let go – to release her hold on the rail, on this frail and broken life?
Dulcie woke with a start, disturbing the cat, who had managed to wedge herself under Dulcie’s chin. Illuminated by the light of the moon, Dulcie’s bedroom looked ghostly, cool and blue, but calm. Even the cat, she recognized, had been sound asleep – until her own sudden movement had woken her.
‘Sorry, kitty,’ Dulcie apologized to those blinking eyes. In the light of the waxing moon they almost glowed. ‘I had a dream.’
The little cat stretched, and Dulcie reached over the smooth black back for her glass of water. Water. An ocean crossing. She took a sip, grateful for the cool fresh taste, and lay back on the pillow. The cat, clearly assuming that the night’s disturbance had been completed, started kneading.
It could have been the pizza. She’d only eaten one slice. OK, two. But she’d gotten Chris’s favorite – pepperoni and sausage – and on top of the dumpling and the peanut butter, she’d felt a little uncomfortable. The cab had probably been a mistake: a walk would have shaken the food down. But she’d been touched by her boyfriend’s concern and just a little spooked.
Besides, she’d been having dreams like this for a while now. Even on those rare occasions when she had gone to bed almost hungry. Dulcie would never admit anything about her dreams to Lucy; her mother was too quick to attribute everything to some latent familial psychic powers, whereas Dulcie saw them as her subconscious at work, piecing together connections she had missed in the light of day. But sometimes, she had found, these vivid nightmares had proven to have an extra smidgen of the truth about them. And as much as she tried to dismiss the idea – arguing with herself that everything in her dreams could be traced back to the day’s reading at some level – she’d learned to trust them, no matter where they came from. Or how disturbing they might feel.
‘What do you think it is, Esmé? Can you tell me?’ Dulcie looked down at the little cat, but she kept on with her work, pushing one paw and then another into the blanket. ‘I’m as certain as I can be that my author emigrated. I mean, those later essays, from America, seem to prove it.’
This wasn’t new ground for Dulcie. Even Martin Thorpe had agreed with her on this point. By identifying certain phrases, Dulcie had been able to trace the unknown author of The Ravages across the ocean. She’d found certain images – illustrating strikingly modern ideas about women and their role in society – first in the London papers, then The Ravages, and ultimately in some of the more incendiary newspapers of the new American republic. Dulcie had found one piece that she was sure was by ‘her’ author that dated from 1795. But then the trail had gone cold.
It wasn’t enough. Thorpe, she knew, was waiting for her to dig up more essays – maybe even something that would give the author a name. But Dulcie was beginning to despair.
She looked over at Esmé, but the little cat appeared to be sound asleep. Reaching over to stroke her soft fur, Dulcie tried to rally. After all, she told herself, there were reasons for her author to
stop writing. That last piece – with its plea ‘to bear the Mind as treasur’d as the Virtue of her sex’ – was fiery stuff, coming as it did on the heels of the French revolution. And while the United States had a built-in affinity for France – the sworn enemies of England had helped the fledgling colonies win their own independence – by the middle of the nineties, this friendship was fading. America had made peace with England, and even Lafayette, the hero of the revolution, was in trouble with the new French Republic. Dulcie wasn’t sure if folks in Philadelphia would know about the Terror, or that the Committee of Public Safety had thrown the marquis in jail. But she’d read enough political papers to know that her author had landed just as the political climate was turning conservative.
‘Maybe she just couldn’t get published any more.’ Dulcie addressed the cat, who sniffled and readjusted without waking. ‘It happens.’
Dulcie didn’t want to think about how often it happened. A job at an auction house might be fine for some, for those who could deal with the fickle fashions of wealthy collectors. Dulcie had incorporated too much of her mother’s anti-materialist sentiment to ever feel at home in that setting. If she could just find one or two more examples – just enough to prove her theory – she would have enough evidence to make up a chapter of her thesis. And even if Thorpe had insisted that she posit the author’s movement as speculative, she’d already drafted a paper for the graduate students’ journal on the writing. ‘Cast Upon the Sea: The Transmission of Feminist Ideas to the More Fertile Ground of the New World’ was almost ready for publication, and Dulcie felt sure it would turn some heads. At least, she’d thought she felt confident about it.