Kendra leaned forward and locked him into an embrace. By making the irretrievable connection, she committed herself to the inevitable. There was no going back, only forward to her fate.
She stepped outside herself, and with a naked eye, looked at two of the many pictures of Kendra Swain. The girl she could have been before mental illness entered stage left in the form of her mother. Or the paranoid woman who had chosen a path of folly. But there was a third woman: the one willing to give herself ... and her husband ... a second chance, come what may.
She gazed up and found Doctor Silverstein. Their eyes met over the distance. The doctor’s eyes were pleased. Kendra’s only burned with trepidation.
Chapter 24
THE CITY WAS sick with winter. Mounds of snow shivered under a faraway sun. Watered-down salt coated the streets, leaving the asphalt frosty white. Emaciated trees pricked the sky. Canada geese, squawking in discordant unity, spread wings wide against an arctic blue expanse. Pedestrians walked the windy streets, exhaled cumulous clouds, and swore at the mean season.
Joel drove in silence. Kendra, too, had nothing to say. She felt like a frail porcelain doll. Each detail—threaded curls, silken dress, glass feet, hand-painted face, and beaded eyes—threatened to crumble into pieces too tiny for reassembly.
They turned off Addison onto Marshfield. Kendra didn’t recognize the bungalow. In her dreams, it had become a mansion of many rooms; now it looked small and inconsequential.
Joel hefted the suitcase and waited for her on the stoop. She stepped into the bungalow ahead of him and wiped her feet on the welcome mat. The dimensions measured the same, yet the ceiling descended lower and the walls closed in. The crown molding seemed antiquated and the hardwood floors dull. Once she thought the blue-and-mustard sofa, the wing chair, the antique tables, and assorted curios charming. Now they were gaudy and pretentious. Even though the radiator pipes and floor joists squawked familiar refrains, the house belonged to a different Kendra Swain. The whole one, not this broken version.
“Something I want you to see,” Joel said.
He took her by the hand, but sensing her edginess, let it slip gently from his grasp. A slighted man often demonstrates disappointment with formality, and so it was with Joel, but Kendra could do nothing for him. Not yet.
He showed the way upstairs. Stained in a walnut finish matching the floors below, the staircase gently spiraled in a clockwise direction. Their handholds glided securely along the varnished banister. She feared a replay of earlier events, but sun-drenched pastels appeared through the aperture.
Upon reaching the loft, she marveled at the openness. Sweeping lines of perspective reached to the east and west gables. A chintz comforter of blue and white covered the four-poster. Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls, their arms and legs flouncing in the folds of starched gingham outfits, lay cheerfully among the pillows. A hand-woven rug, designed in a willowy pattern of ivory and sea green, stretched at the foot of the bed. The bed stands, the bookcases, the chiffonier, the armoire, the étagère, the workspace for her laptop and printer, the davenport by the western window, and the window seat beneath the rear window made everything homey.
Peridot crystals strung the shades of two table lamps. Grassy Roman shades lined the street-side windows. Pink marble bordered the fireplace. Logs in the grate only needed a flame. A grandmother clock and crystal bric-à-bracs lined the mantelpiece. A mammoth oil painting depicting yeoman pastures topped the length. Framed watercolors too numerous to take in individually blanketed adjacent walls, their vitreous brushstrokes glowing in the afternoon sunlight like sapphires and emeralds. A stained-glass window set high in the dormer threw prisms across the room. Somewhere a wind chime tinkled.
“But how ...?” She remembered them picking out everything long before the accident. Much of it had arrived but remained packed in crates and boxes in the basement. The transformation was too miraculous to believe.
“I took time off from work,” Joel said simply, as if it explained all.
Lingering near the site where he had taken his dive into the ruins of their marriage, she stood at the threshold between observer and occupant. Every detail spoke of a new beginning. All she had to do was reach out. The invitation to enter tempted her, yet she dreaded moving forward on a path that could never be retraced once begun.
Anxious to make her feel welcome, Joel sauntered over to the hearth, took up the lighter, and started the fire. Attracted like a moth to the light, Kendra drew closer and pushed her hands forward as if to warm them. She was really keeping fear at bay.
Joel removed her coat and folded the garment over her father’s favorite Queen Anne chair. Alan McSweeney sat for hours on that chair, reading his many books. “How did you talk Birdie into letting it go?”
“Didn’t have to. She had it delivered.” Joel replaced the firedog and stood in his usual clumsy way, arms dangling at his sides and eyes peering at her from narrowed eyelids. Years swept away, and he became the lonely young man at her best friend’s party, the sweetheart waking up beside her, and the groom standing at the altar.
“You did everything yourself?”
“Patty came over. She’s bossy. More bossy than you.”
She found herself laughing.
“Like it?”
“It’s ...” She wanted to find the right word. “... a dream.”
He beamed like the gallant of her heart. Impulsively Kendra sprinted toward him. He swept her into his arms, so strong and sure. The laughter between them blossomed into an effervescent bouquet of heady roses.
“Give me a baby, Joel. Give me a beautiful baby.”
Snow drifted past the windowpanes like soap flakes caught in a paperweight. The hearth fire settled in the grate, sending off sparks. Kendra cuddled closer to Joel and oozed contentment. His chest shone with sweat. She reached toward his bruised eye, faded by now but still faintly visible. Using a feathery stroke, she grazed her fingers across the tender underside. He blinked. “I haven’t said ...”
He placed a silencing finger across her mouth.
“But I ...”
He shushed her with a kiss and took her again, loving her with a delicacy she never before experienced. Melting snowflakes, too ephemeral to capture, replaced the fevered stamp of passion. They slept, wrapped in each other’s arms.
Afternoon fluttered on downy wings toward evening. A last spurt of sunlight broke through the cloud cover, dabbing splinters of radiance onto the walls. Kendra got out of bed, reached for her purse, and tiptoed into the master bath. Ferns and orchids swamped a garden tub made for two. Marble tile and granite floors surrounded double sinks and his-and-her shower stalls. Lit candles oozed ocean breezes.
Despite her lavish surroundings, the brittle picture of Kendra in the sink mirror mocked her. She’d lost weight. More than pounds, though, had taken their toll. Overnight she had become a matron of embittered memories.
She grasped the bottle filled with a fresh supply of yellow pills and spilled them into the toilet, afterward stroking the flush handle and watching them swirl down the hole.
With the departure of winter came the advent of hope. Spring blossomed in ribbons of primary colors. Blue crocuses, red tulips, yellow daffodils. But frequent rains dampened the promise.
Two days after Kendra reconciled with Joel, Rob Levin made a string of phone calls. She suspected Joel put him up to it. But Rob seemed elated when, after turning down two generous offers to return to Largesse on a part-time basis, Kendra accepted the third. She went into the office two or three days a week. Work kept her busy but not too busy. In between, she took photography classes at City College.
The marriage stood up to the pressure, if only on a thin layer of melting ice. While Kendra strove to put the past behind her, Joel walked softly, occasionally casting out a butterfly net to corral her back to his side. Over time, he reverted to old habits, coming home later and later from work, sometimes at two or three in the morning. His excuses, though different, rang the same. A client,
a case, a brief. Kendra accepted the careless explanations as she accepted everything else, with patient skepticism.
She wanted to make a go of it. She wanted to believe in him. She wanted the moon.
On a day threatening showers, when Kendra came home late in the afternoon, she had her pick of parking spaces out front. The juggling of packages consumed her focus as she climbed the front steps. Her attentiveness lapsed. One of the grocery bags escaped her fingers and dropped onto the porch. When she bent to retrieve it, she glimpsed a sedan coasting down the street. Behind the wheel, an older woman was searching for an address.
Kendra fished for the house key. Just as the door unlatched, another grocery bag, the one containing the wine bottle, slipped from her grasp. As she watched it fall, she had time to think and to remember Joel’s plunge from the same pair of clumsy hands. Her gut leapt into the dark. Her mind made the same jump. Time stood still. If she could have rewound the clock and taken back this trivial mishap of the crashing bottle, maybe, just maybe, she could reinstate everything else. But like that earlier incident, time kick-started and the bottle smacked like a dead cat, the glass breaking with little more than a muffled thump and a gurgling sigh. Cabernet sauvignon dribbled across the concrete and stained it an unsavory blood color. She backed up a step or two. The door gave way. She lost her balance. And heeding the persistent warnings of the gods, she lowered herself to the doorsill. The last bag fell with her. Groceries scattered across the porch. A cantaloupe broke away, rolled through the swimming wine, and tumbled down the steps. She watched it travel clear out to the curb before coming to a stop.
Time enough for profanities later. Now she scrounged in the bottom of her purse and found a pack of cigarettes.
The tangy perfume of spring rippled past her nostrils. Damp earth and the tumid breath of moist air held the prospect of summer. The wind whipped out of the east, off the lake, and brought with it the harbinger of all Chicago Aprils: chilly air and the tantalizing freshness of lake water. Kendra basked in the sensation of letting everything go. After all, what did a broken wine bottle matter? In the long view, it didn’t, no more than a dive from the top of a staircase. Or so she wanted to believe with all her heart.
The low western sun peeked out from behind wispy silver-lined clouds. The tender warmth bathed her eyes and settled into her bones, still frigid from winter.
The woman Kendra noticed earlier had parked her car down the block and presently strolled up the sidewalk. The nearer she approached the bungalow, the slower her pace became. When she saw Kendra sitting in the doorway, she nearly about-faced. But obstinacy infused the wrinkly expression and determination pushed her forward. She fetched the cantaloupe and carried it back.
Her face was old, but her voice retained the quality of a woman in her thirties. “It looks as though you need a bit of help.” She was a curious woman, stuck in the past tense and clinging to an era three generations gone. Bundled in a black winter coat edged in fur, she might as well have stepped out of a Sears Roebuck catalog. Proper leather gloves gripped a sturdy pocketbook by short double straps. A pillbox hat neatly covered gray curls.
“I can manage.” Kendra smiled politely, received the melon, and laid it aside.
The woman lingered, surveying the house’s interior like a prospective owner or an anxious real estate agent. She tapped the side of her face. “It hasn’t changed a bit. Smaller than I remember, but still the same.”
“I’m sorry. Do I know you?”
“Not until I introduce myself.” She reached down and offered a hand. “Peg Cutler. John Cutler’s wife. You spoke to him ... was it last December? Or November.”
“November.” The memory came like a gift, since with it, came a picture of Mac. “It was so very long ago.”
Energetically she gathered up the salvageable grocery bags, repacked items, and stepped around Kendra. She ventured inside, timid at first, as if to say hello to the ghost, then more boldly. Peg Cutler waited thirty-five years to come home, and the house welcomed her with open arms.
“Excuse me, but ...” Kendra lumbered to her feet. “I don’t recall inviting you inside.”
“But you did, dear,” Mrs. Cutler called from the dining room. “When you barged into our lives.”
Kendra paused in the foyer and tracked the woman with her hearing. “That’s not the way I see it.” She found Bonnie’s mother in the kitchen, putting away the groceries. Familiar with the layout, she didn’t hesitate when it came to knowing what went where. “Mrs. Cutler, it was you, your family, who came into our lives, my husband’s and mine. This is my home. If you think I appreciated finding the ... the remains of a ... of an innocent child ...”
The old lady stubbornly completed her task. Maybe she was deaf. Or maybe she had something in common with Emily.
“Your daughter haunts this house. She cries in the night.”
Trembling traveled the length of the old lady’s arm until weakness forced her to set down the milk carton. “You were saying?” she said in a whisper. She wasn’t deaf. Or crazy.
“She’s here. She never left.”
Rubbing a shaky hand over her heart, Peg Cutler took a steadying breath.
“She’s your daughter. She’s Bonnie. There’s no other explanation. Have you and your husband consented to DNA testing?”
Like a doll with a broken neck, Mrs. Cutler bobbed her head from side to side.
“You should. So you can bury her in a proper grave.”
The old lady wheeled around. Horror lived behind the puffy eyelids. Horror and grief, and something else: an mulishness to keep a secret so vile that it had twisted her heart, once loving; skewed her eyes, once trusting; and pinched her face, once appealing.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Kendra pulled out a chair.
Her hand clawing at her breast by now, Mrs. Cutler broke out of the stupor to smile at Kendra. She was grateful for the invitation. In the previous moments, she belonged to the house and to the very walls. Now she seemed out of place, bereft, and abandoned. “I apologize for not coming sooner, but you see, something changed. No, that’s not the right word. Something happened, and because of it, everything has changed.”
Kendra put on the kettle. “Do you take sugar with your tea, Mrs. Cutler?”
“Please don’t bother. And the name is Peg.” She sat on the proffered chair, holding onto the back and lowering herself with care.
“Why don’t you take off your coat, Peg?”
She did as asked, primly folding it over the back of the chair opposite. Settling once more at the table, she folded blue-veined hands on the top, her fingers pressing and releasing, and leaving imprints on her skin. “You must think me insane.”
“You forgot your hat.”
She reached up and pulled it off. “What am I saying? I am insane. Ever since ... well ... I’m sure I don’t have to tell you.” She gave the stem of her watch an extra twist. The ratcheting sound seemed to restore her poise. Other reassuring sounds—the dishes clattering, the kettle hissing, the cutlery clacking—soothed both women.
“Your husband didn’t come with you.”
Mrs. Cutler stared beyond the back door into the yard. “Are the ... do the lilacs still bloom?”
“He isn’t ...?” Kendra hesitated to say.
“This was my idea, coming to see you. Something happened,” she repeated. Glancing about the kitchen, she harkened back to earlier days. She had lived here once. No doubt cried in this very room. Cooked and cleaned, and laughed at stories her husband told. Scolded Bonnie with a mild slap. And thanked God for the luck in her life ... until everything changed. Eventually her eyes retreated from that idealistic past and refocused on the cruel present. “My son died.”
The teakettle whistled. Kendra shut off the burner.
Mrs. Cutler went on as if there had been no interruption. “Last week. It was a blessing really.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You didn’t know him. But in a way, you did.�
�� Her voice trailed off. “Here, let me help.” The woman sprang out of the chair. Side by side, she and Kendra finished setting up saucers and cups, pouring tea, and arranging napkins. Peg asked, “Why did you never replace the wallpaper?”
“We’ve been meaning to.”
They settled down over hot tea and awkwardness. “When we lived on this block, neighbors looked out for each other. Not like today. Today everybody locks their doors and goes their own way, the devil be damned.” She grew pensive. The tea and conversation seemed to relax her. “I suppose I ought to tell you about Robbie.”
“Not if you don’t want to.”
“I must. But first, can I see the upstairs? What you’ve done to it? And where you found ...?” She found it difficult to say her daughter’s name.
Peg Cutler led the way, spidery fingers gripping the handrail for support and head held high. She was apprehensive but also impatient. When she reached the loft, her face brightened. “It’s a treasure. You have wonderful taste.”
“That was my husband. With the help of a good friend. When I was in ... when I was away.”
“What a lucky woman you are.” She measured out the room with feet that had tromped this path before. When she reached the fireplace, her fingers stroked the glass-smooth marble. “Something went wrong when my son was born. He was never ...” She searched for the best word. “... quite right. Bonnie was an afterthought, an accident, a change-of-life blessing. After Robbie, I didn’t want to bring another child into this world, but Bonnie had a strong spirit. Even then.” Her eyes stared into the past. “Darling Bonnie. She made up for everything Robbie wasn’t. Her brother adored her. He was nine when she was born. Still a boy. Gentle. Sweet. He would stare into her crib and watch her sleep. When Bonnie was three, Robbie was twelve and nearly six feet tall. It was wintertime when she disappeared. A week before Christmas. There’d been a snowstorm the day before. The police, the neighbors, the members of our church, they searched for her night and day. They never found my poor Bonnie, but we never gave up hope. I don’t think he understood his own strength. I don’t think he understood death. He loved her so much. But sometimes he would hug her so tightly that ....” She shook her head to dispel the memories that had been innocent at the time but eventually turned deadly. “Whenever he found a dead creature, he took it up to the attic.”
Trick of the Mind Page 18