“It’s not business at all, Lindsey. But I do have an eleven o’clock client.” She stood and picked up the appointment book from her desk. “I’d like to start seeing you again.”
I nodded mutely.
She flipped through her book. “This really is bad—my first opening isn’t for two weeks. Can you wait?” She turned a few more pages. “Or maybe I could meet you one evening?”
“No, no, two weeks is fine.”
“Tuesdays at ten?”
I nodded again and took the little white card she handed me; I pressed it between my palms.
Naomi watched me, a deep furrow in her brow. “Call me anytime.”
Finding room for my clothes in Richard’s already overstuffed closet wasn’t easy; but once we both accepted the inevitability of a few wrinkles in our suits, we managed quite nicely. There were cockroaches, but I quickly learned to turn on the lights and close my eyes; this allowed them to run to wherever it is that cockroaches run, and allowed me to live in Richard’s apartment. The hot water was lukewarm and there was black goo oozing from under the dish drainer—but the food was good and I didn’t have nightmares.
Despite Naomi and Babs—and possibly Richard, if I dared tell him the truth—I knew Isabel really did exist. Or at least I was pretty damn sure. I also knew I was hiding at Richard’s: Richard’s apartment was my haven, a safe house until I found the strength to finally confirm her existence. But I was terrified that she might not exist at all.
Richard was working late, and I was alone at his apartment, sitting at a Formica table that looked as if it had belonged to someone’s grandmother and eating the moo-shu pork I’d picked up on my way home. The scent of moldy newspapers filled the air; I much preferred lavender. I imagined Isabel sad and lonely, sitting at her little desk, watching the landaus roll down a wide and dusty Beacon Street, thinking about me. About how I thought she killed Montague, about how I was falling for Richard. Thinking how lonely her life would be without me.
Isabel was real. I knew that she was. And I knew she hadn’t made the shower head hit Richard; I’d never gotten the damn thing installed properly. The poor thing was scared and upset; she was afraid she would lose me. For, if I believed she killed Montague, mightn’t I desert her? And if I fell in love with Richard, wouldn’t that leave her alone?
I sighed. How did a mother convince her children that a new sister wouldn’t take their mother away? That her heart was big enough to love many? How did she let them know that no matter what they did wrong, she’d always be there for them?
I took a bite of my moo-shu and smiled, remembering girls’ afternoon. “No boys allowed,” my mother would say when she took me out alone for a treat. “Just me and my girl.” We’d go to the library or to the park or to Friendly’s and eat hot fudge sundaes. She’d listen to how mean Miss Linden made me be a lion in the circus when Beverly and Lori and Linda all got to be tightrope walkers. We’d giggle about how silly Uncle Bunny had been at dinner last weekend and plot what we’d buy Daddy for his birthday. I knew she loved me, that the others were boys and that I was her very special daughter. Nora did the same with Hilary; just last week she’d taken her to tea at the Ritz despite the fact that Hilary had been caught riding on the back of a motorcycle.
Absentmindedly I turned the grease-stained box around and around, watching it twirl awkwardly in the middle of the table. “Chinese Food,” read the black and red letters; they were printed in English but shaped to look like Oriental symbols. I twisted too hard and the box fell on its side; tentacles of black and brown moo-shu reached out along the gray mottled Formica. I sighed. Thinking about ghosts suffering from sibling rivalry made me feel as crazy as Naomi and Babs thought I was. But if I went home—to my bright, sweet-smelling apartment—and Isabel was there, it would prove once and for all that I wasn’t insane.
I went at noon, at an hour when the sun is high and bright, and evil is at its most implausible. Spring was finally loosening winter-rigid Boston, and the Commonwealth Avenue mall was crowded with strollers and readers and kibitzers and sun worshipers. I filled my lungs with that rich, fecund spring aroma—the one that comes from deep in the ground and smells of birth and life and swamps and barnyards. Although in the city it’s tinged with diesel fumes.
The building was strangely still when I entered; I knew from the feel of the silence that all the apartments were empty, that no one else was home. I walked up the stairs and stood outside my door; I pressed my ear to it, but heard nothing. I pressed my cheek to the silky panel and followed the swirls of the stained wood with my finger. What if she wasn’t there? What if Babs and Naomi were right?
I wanted to leave, but was caught by the swirls, by an image of Isabel. Isabel seated in a tall chair, her tiny feet crossed at the ankle, her hands resting demurely on her lap. Like so many birds, colorful ladies flitted and chirped around her; only Isabel remained still, somewhat aloof. She appeared to be fine, although maybe a bit tired, until she turned and looked straight at me. Her eyes were glazed with sadness and despair; she didn’t blink, just continued to stare into the core of my being. Her gaze remained unwavering, filled with loneliness and raw pain, until the image dissolved back into mahogany swirls.
I stumbled backward, the depths of her unhappiness catching me off balance. She was real. And she needed me. I unlocked the door and stepped into the entryway.
The apartment was still as the rest of the house, and beautiful and welcoming and bright. To the left, through my bedroom windows, I could see slivers of light skipping on the river, and to the right, long rays of sun streamed through my living room bay. The whole apartment smelled of lemon oil and The Butler of Boston, my biweekly cleaning service. I was home.
I walked through the living room, touching a throw pillow here, a favorite book there. I went into my sparkling clean kitchen. But there was no breeze. No lavender. No Isabel.
I searched the whole apartment, but the second I entered each room, I knew it was uninhabited. I walked slowly back to the living room and dropped to the couch. So did this mean I was crazy? Or had Isabel left me? I hugged myself, feeling hollow and empty.
I glanced down and jumped slightly; there, lying on the coffee table—there, where I could have sworn it had not been two seconds ago—was the dark journal. I shook my head. Of course it had been there; I was just too preoccupied looking for Isabel to notice.
I reached for the journal, but before my fingers got near it, my hand jerked back as if it had been burnt—the space surrounding the journal was freezing! I lunged forward and grabbed the book, then dropped it to the couch; smoke rose from its cover. Like dry ice, the book was cold and frigid. Smoking.
I sat back and watched the journal. This proved I wasn’t making the whole thing up—Isabel was real, and I was sane. But was she here or wasn’t she? Did she want me or didn’t she?
As I watched, the journal stopped smoking and warmth returned to the air. “Isabel?” I called. I got up and checked behind the armoire, but only dust balls were there; I went slowly into the bay, but I couldn’t sense Isabel; I sniffed behind the blue chair.
I went back to the couch and touched the journal; it felt like any ordinary, unremarkable book. I lifted it. Aside from the slightly damp rectangle it left on the couch, everything appeared normal. Although normal, as Naomi had pointed out, was a relative term.
As I turned the familiar pages, I sensed something amiss, something slightly off. I closed the journal and flipped it over; I opened it again. I started from the back, as one would a book written in Hebrew, and slowly turned the blank pages. When I came to Isabel’s final entry, I glanced down at the words and slammed the book shut.
It couldn’t be true. I stared at the ceiling, at the wall units, at the bay with its mullioned windowpanes; then I slowly opened the journal once again. It was true: The entry followed today’s date.
It surely makes one wonder why a young woman of such substance would make herself so agreeable to a man who lays claim to none. I fancy
she thinks him handsome and charming, when in the end he only seeks to mold her and use her for his own purposes. Although it is my fondest wish that this not occur, I know from my vantage point of age and wisdom that it shall surely come to pass.
Heed my words! He shall take from you all that is yours and all that is you, until you have nothing but what he wishes you to have and wishes you to be.
I shall not allow you to fall victim as women always fall victim. I shall protect you. For you and I are a far better pair.
I jumped up and went to the bay window. I lifted the casement and felt the spring-flavored breeze on my wet face; I took deep gulps of the sweet air and tried to calm down. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. So what? So what if Isabel could write? I knew she could do things far stranger than that. At least now I had absolute proof of her existence—actual proof I could hold in my hand and show to Naomi and Babs. And now I knew what to do: prove to her that Richard wasn’t like Montague, prove to her that, like any good mother, I could love two.
I turned back to the sun-filled living room, straining for the smell of lavender, trying to find a hint of her breeze. “Isabel?” I asked tentatively. “Are you here?” I opened the journal and reread the entry. How silly and foolish she was being. “Isabel,” I called. “You know it isn’t like that. Richard isn’t Montague. Richard’s really great—”
The spot on my head began to pulse; I felt annoyance, impatience, almost anger. “No,” said a velvet-smooth voice inside my ears. “You are in error,” said the familiar voice I had never heard before.
“But, but …” I felt as if I were floating; the air was like an ocean, holding me aloft. It carried me over the couch and the chair and the coffee table. I rose higher and higher until I looked down on the top of the armoire. Then all of my senses deserted me and there was nothingness.
“You are a silly, foolish child,” said the voice, pulling me from the blackness.
I felt the smooth leather of the journal in my hand, the carpet under my feet. I opened my eyes and saw I was sitting on the couch, firmly anchored on the floor. “You, you don’t understand,” I stammered. “It’s different than you think. Richard isn’t, he isn’t like that, he’s different—”
“No.” The voice was louder and edged with anger and strength. “I fear he is far too much the same.”
I started to speak, but was silenced by the sight of a long, narrow object growing down from off the edge of the molding. I watched in frozen terror as a beautifully carved piece of dark ebony, its tip encased in cast gold, was released from the ceiling and slid down the wall; it made a hard thumping noise as it hit the floor. I gasped. It lay quiet and still for a moment.
Then suddenly its stiff body became fluid and serpentine. The thing raised its gold head off the floor and twisted and turned until two tiny eyes locked on to mine; then the thing slowly started to S-curve its way toward me. I screamed and jumped up on the couch. But it came after me, slipping and sliding along the smooth floor. When it reached the carpet, it began to move faster; it lunged at my feet, its gold head snapping in anger, its needle-sharp teeth curved back toward its throat, its huge open jaw homing in on my feet.
I screamed again and kicked it as hard as I could. As soon as I hit it, it resumed its stiff form and ricocheted off the wall. I jumped from the couch and ran to the door.
My last sight of the thing was as it had been once, a long, long time ago: a gentleman’s gold-tipped walking stick lying broken and in pieces all over the floor.
23
“Lindsey, Lindsey!” Richard flung open the door of his apartment. “Thank God you’re here, thank God you’re all right.” He rushed over to where I sat and hugged me. “Pam called when you didn’t show up for your meeting. Where were you? Why didn’t you call? Where have you been?”
I stared at him, trying to comprehend what he was saying, what he wanted of me.
“Lindsey, are you all right? Lindsey, where have you been all afternoon?” He knelt down and took my hands.
“Here.”
“Here? Here? In the middle of the day? Are you sick?” His voice echoed through a long, narrow tunnel.
“Yes,” I said slowly, “yes, I guess I am sick.”
He pressed his lips to my forehead. “What’s wrong, honey?”
I heard him and saw him—I could feel his warm hands, I could feel his cool lips—but it was as if he were only vaguely there, as if he weren’t really present. I was barely present myself. “I, I don’t know,” I said. “I’m, I’m feeling very strange.”
“You go lie down. I’ll call your office and my office. Then I’ll see what I can do to make you feel better.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“No what?” Richard was clearly perplexed.
“No. I don’t want to lie down.” I enunciated each word carefully. “No. I. Want. To. Sit. Here.”
Richard leaned toward me and searched my face. “Lindsey—” He must have seen something that scared him; there must have been something like madness in my eyes, for he not only stopped speaking, he dropped my hands and rocked backwards on his heels, rocked away from me. He shook his head slightly and then came forward again. “You must lie down, Lindsey.” He spoke as if trying to placate an irrational child. “Come on, honey. Come on and lie down.”
“No.”
“Did you go to your apartment?” he suddenly demanded.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
I shrugged. “Who cares if I did?”
“I do—you told me it gives you nightmares. You told me it weirds you out.”
I shrugged again. “So?”
“We agreed you’d stay away for a while.” He grabbed my hands again, more roughly this time. “You chose to ignore me, and now look what’s happened!”
I yanked my hands from his. “I’m not a child!” I yelled, now fully aware of Richard and me and what he was saying.
“I know, I know,” he murmured. “I know you’re not a child. I shouldn’t have said that.” He took my hands and slowly kissed each knuckle. “Of course you’re not a child.”
I burst into tears. Richard sat down next to me; I buried my head in his jacket, and he rocked me in his arms. “I thought I’d be happy to find out she was real,” I mumbled. “But now …”
“There, there,” he said, smoothing my hair. “There, there. Don’t worry, I’m here. I’m here.”
“I just had to prove I wasn’t crazy once and for all. I just had—”
“Hush, hush. There, there. There’s my good girl. There’s my good girl.”
Finally my sobs quieted and I took a deep breath. “I’m, I’m not sure what happened.” I looked up into his worried face. “I’m not sure what really happened.”
“Did anything hurt you?”
I shook my head. “Nothing real.” I buried my face in his jacket again. It was only Isabel creating her visions again. It was only Isabel trying to scare me. But it had seemed so real, those awful beady snake eyes locking on to mine. The swish of the thing’s curling tail. I shuddered and he held me closer.
“It’s all over now. It’s all over now.”
I used his wet tie to blot the last of my tears. “Or, or maybe it wasn’t real. But it seemed so real, so real at the moment.”
He stroked my back and then kissed my hair. “You frighten me, sometimes you frighten me,” he whispered so softly, I almost didn’t catch his words.
I hiccuped.
“Come.” He helped me up and brought me to the bed. “I’ve got to call Pam before she calls the police. You lie down and I’ll be right back.”
I did as he said. I lay there, staring up at the water stains, trying to figure out what had been real and what hadn’t. What had been Isabel and what had been in my mind. I heard Richard’s voice talking to Pam, but the individual words were unclear, something about the flu and too sick to call. He was so sweet and caring. But he was totally innocent, withou
t guilt or shame. Richard could be my friend and my lover, but never a true soul mate. He had never endured what Isabel and I had endured.
The snake had been horrible, but most important, it hadn’t been real. It was all in my mind—where Isabel had put it, where it couldn’t really hurt me. Isabel wouldn’t hurt me, she loved me; she wrote in her journal that she wanted to protect me. Unless she was inadvertently driving me insane.
I closed my eyes as Richard’s footsteps came toward me. He covered me with a blanket and leaned over and kissed my forehead. “Sleep,” he whispered. “Sleep well. I’ll take care of you. I won’t run away this time.”
I kept my eyes closed, and he walked to the kitchen table. I knew he was leaving me a note and thinking of Serena. That he was thinking I was crazy too. And who could blame him? Without knowing about Isabel, craziness was the only possible explanation for my behavior. But telling him the truth about Isabel wasn’t going to change his mind—it might even strengthen his conviction. If there was any truth to tell.
He came back and stood over the bed. I could feel his concern, his worry. He kissed me again, and quietly went out the door. My eyes flew open as soon as he left. Was I destined for the same place as Serena? Was I destined for Peaceful Sea—or worse?
Everything was going downhill. I felt as if I were being slowly suffocated, suffocated by Richard’s over solicitousness, old man Farnham’s demands, Hilary’s ridiculous whining, and my inability to deal with any of them. But mostly I was suffocating in my own fears: fear for my sanity mingled with fear that I was far from insane.
Richard and I were arguing more than we were making love. Sometimes we bickered about who forgot to replace the toilet paper or drank the last of the Coke, but mostly we bickered about us. Every day brought a new variation of the same argument.
“I want you to talk to Babs about putting your condo on the market,” Richard said first thing one morning, a couple of days after the walking-stick incident. We were leaning against his kitchen counter, drinking coffee.
“What?”
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