“Lindsey, please, let’s just get out of here—let’s go to my apartment. We’ll call that Naomi woman and Richard and—”
I held my hands up. “I’ll prove to you I don’t need a shrink. I’ll prove to you Isabel exists.” I lifted the journal from the coffee table. “Look.” I flipped to the last entry. “Look at what she wrote today.” I triumphantly placed the book in Babs’s lap.
Babs read the entry; when she looked up, her eyes were filled with tears. “Oh, Lindsey, oh, sweetie,” she said. “I’m so sorry, so sorry about everything …” She closed the book slowly, and gently placed it on the table. Then she took my hand. “Let’s go,” she said, crying softly. “I’ll take you to my apartment.”
I shook my head. “There’s no need. I’ll be fine here, now that Isabel isn’t mad at me anymore.”
Babs rubbed the skin between my knuckles, a gesture similar to Richard’s. “Lindsey, we both know that Isabel didn’t write anything today.”
“But of course she did.” I touched the journal’s leather cover. “I just showed you—you saw the date.”
“Lindsey, Isabel is dead.”
“Of course Isabel’s dead.” I giggled. “It’s hard to be a ghost if you’re not dead.” This struck me as particularly insightful and funny, and I howled with laughter. I glanced up at Babs; she wasn’t even smiling, she was just staring at me. I stopped short. “You think I wrote it!”
“Didn’t you?” Her voice was soft, and there was very little inflection at the end of her sentence.
“Of course not! Don’t be absurd.” I opened the journal and flipped back and forth between the new entry and the original ones. “Look—this isn’t my handwriting. It looks nothing like mine. It’s Isabel’s handwriting, the same as before. See?”
Babs took the journal and looked closely at the page. “It looks different to me.”
I grabbed the journal from her. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s the exact same tiny letters with the exact same long tails!”
“You could have practiced.”
“I have better things to do with my time,” I snapped.
Babs looked down at her hands, saying nothing.
“Look!” I ordered, shoving the journal under her nose. “If there’s any difference, it’s probably because she wrote it more quickly than in the earlier days. Or maybe, because she’s older, her handwriting has changed a bit.”
Babs looked hard into my eyes and then sighed. “Okay, Lindsey, okay. I believe you. I believe Isabel wrote it. Truly I do. So now let’s go. Let’s go right now.” She tried to take my hands again, but I yanked them away.
I shook my head vigorously. “You don’t want to believe me—don’t believe me. I don’t care. But I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here.”
“I, I, oh, Lindsey …” Tears streaming down her cheeks, Babs stood up and ran out the door. She forgot her scarf on the coffee table.
The next morning I called in sick. I was too relieved and too happy to spend the day at work; I wanted to wallow in the pleasure of Isabel’s companionship and my sanity.
I made a cup of coffee and some toast and watched Isabel make the fireplace tongs perform a happy jig around the living room; I giggled as they danced, Gumbylike, along the windowsills and over the coffee table.
After breakfast, I stood in my bedroom bay, watching in awe as the Cambridge skyline disappeared and the Charles River transformed into the pounding, bubbling surf of Isabel’s summertime Nahant; purple-pink streaks of ocean sunrise filled the windows. The spot on my head throbbed with fondness and gaiety and mischievousness.
Isabel hid my toothbrush and my socks and my newspaper. But each time, just as I was becoming frustrated, the missing items would show up in the bathroom, or on my bed, or on the kitchen counter. Then she helped me switch my winter clothes to the study closet and my summer clothes to the bedroom closet.
As I was stuffing the last of my suits into the mothball-scented bag, I remembered the coats hanging on the rack in the entryway. I went and grabbed my parka and the tweed coat I wore for business and then threw my short green wool jacket on top of the pile. I pressed my chin into the jacket and walked toward the closet. The jacket smelled of smoke, of fires on cold nights, and it smelled a little like salt and the brisk late winter wind. The Cape. It smelled of the Cape. A strong pang sliced through my stomach, and I had to stop to catch my breath; it hurt. What was he doing right now? Was he sad and thinking of me too?
To push Richard from my mind, Isabel and I went for a walk through the Public Gardens. The sun was warm, and the air sweet-smelling; the forsythia were glowing bright yellow, and long-tubed crocuses were popping from the ground. We meandered along the Gardens’ paths, watching the gardeners cleaning out the winter debris and hoeing and planting the beds. Workmen in short sleeves were assembling the swan boats at the lagoon, and the weeping willows were limegreen with new buds.
The dreary, winter-yellowed site of our greatest adventure was being transformed. I pulled off my jacket and wrapped the arms around my waist. I took a deep breath and smiled.
There were lovers everywhere: walking hand in hand, sitting on benches, licking ice cream cones. They all looked deep into each other’s eyes, and they all looked so self-satisfied. The sun dipped behind a cloud, and I shivered; I put my jacket back on and looked around, bored, wondering what we should do next. Nothing interested me, so we went home. I cooked a pot of spaghetti sauce and took a nap. I went back to work the next day.
Things settled back into pre-Richard normalcy—except for the ache that seemed to have permanently affixed itself inside my chest. TWTTR had miraculously survived my lack of attention; although we’d lost the Target Tech job to a well-established New York firm, Farnham had just issued a large task order that would keep us busy until late summer, Data Resources had called with an urgent request for two manuals ASAP, and the headhunter was finally sending me some qualified candidates.
I had lunch with Hilary, went to a few movies, and spent time at home with Isabel. There were no more daymares, no nightmares, no headaches. I canceled my appointment with Naomi and tried not to think about Richard or Babs. I went through the motions. I worked late a lot.
Another night working through dinner. Another pizza. I looked up from my computer and saw it was after 8:00 P.M. Perhaps moo-shu pork? Or I could stop at De Matteo’s for linguine. I sighed and turned back to the computer. Another lonely meal. An hour later I left the office.
It was a hot, muggy night. A fluke for early May. I trudged down the street, my hair sticking to the back of my neck. The sidewalks and stores and doorways were filled with people escaping their stuffy apartments.
Why was everyone in couples? Children paired off, holding hands as they skipped across the mall, old people whispered two by two, and lovers kissed as they sat on sun-warmed granite stoops. Two dogs tussled at my feet. What was this—Noah’s ark? I scowled and trudged on.
As soon as I entered De Matteo’s, I realized I didn’t want linguine—linguine made me think of Richard, and thinking of Richard made me sad. Actually, just being in De Matteo’s made me sad. When Mr. De Matteo finally reached over the high counter and handed me my crabmeat salad sandwich, I didn’t even have the energy to mind that he hadn’t said, “Thank you.”
“I see the old gent still has no manners,” drawled a familiar voice behind me.
I turned and looked up; his dimples flashed and his gaze was direct.
“Hello, Lindsey.”
“Richard.” I could hear the blood rushing in my ears and I could feel it burning my cheeks. I couldn’t look away. “Richard,” I repeated stupidly.
“Lindsey.” He grinned.
“Richard.” I grinned back.
“Want to talk?”
I nodded. “My place or yours?”
“I suggest neutral ground.”
I waited while he got a sandwich and a couple of Cokes. My hands were trembling.
We didn’t say anything as we walked
toward the mall. The silence was jerky and uncomfortable: when I stumbled and he grabbed my waist, I twisted away—but not before I felt the electricity of the contact; when his eyes accidentally met mine, he quickly turned to watch the traffic—but not before I saw the reaction on his face. We found an empty bench and made an elaborate ordeal of removing our sandwiches from their shiny white wrapping, opening our sodas, and taking our first bites.
Finally we looked at each other. We both burst out laughing; a spray of crabmeat flew from my mouth and hit Richard’s shoe. We laughed even harder.
“Chew your food,” he ordered. And when I did, he leaned over and kissed me. Nobody, but nobody, kissed like Richard. “My place?” he asked.
“Your place.”
We undressed each other slowly, as if by mutual unspoken consent we had agreed to prolong the agonizing pleasure. I had never wanted anybody as much in my life, and yet I bent and slowly kissed the spot above every button I opened. He played with my ear with his tongue and his teeth and his breath until I couldn’t stand it anymore. When we finally came together, it was fierce and frenzied and almost animalistic—and it was wonderful.
“Let’s start all over again,” he said softly. “We’ll forget everything bad that’s happened and we’ll just go on from here.”
“Richard—”
He put his finger to my lips. “I know now you’re not Serena—that I was seeing things in you that weren’t there, trying to undo the mistakes I’d made with her. I can’t undo what I did. It’s over and done. I’ll regret it all my life, but now I want to make a fresh start. Just you and me. No one else—no history, no baggage, and no ghosts.”
Electricity of a different kind made me jerk in his arms, made my entire body stiffen.
He loosened his grip. “I’ll lay off, I promise. I’ll give you the space that you need.”
I tried to relax, to consciously slacken each muscle. I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. I unclenched my fists. Isabel would just have to understand. I raised my finger and ran it along the worried furrow in his forehead. I would come up with some way to convince her. “I was wrong too,” I said. “I missed you.”
“I love you, Lindsey.”
“And I love you.”
That night, as I lay protected within the spoon of Richard’s long, lanky body, I dreamt I lived in a mahogany world. Everything, everywhere, was made of deep reddish brown mahogany.
In my office, Pam and Peter were carved-wooden statues; they moved with the stiff, jerky motions of the Tin Woodsman in need of his oil can. On the street, the kiosk man, the commuters, and the joggers in wood running shoes all looked and moved the same way. The tourists, wooden cameras swinging from their arched wooden necks, scanned the tall mahogany skyscrapers.
My apartment was no different. The wooden coffee maker perked coffee that was the right color, but it fell in small mahogany drops into the pot. Clunk, clunk, clunk, streamed the solid balls of liquid. Wooden water flowed from the bathroom faucet, and a moldy wooden sandwich sat, half-eaten, inside my reddish brown refrigerator. My reflection in the mahogany mirror was dim, but I knew that I, too, was made of wood.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a huge, shiny kitchen knife appeared; it was twelve feet tall with a wide-ridged handle, and it twisted and sparkled as it danced a jig in the air. It sliced through my wooden couch as if through butter, Pam and Peter fell like paper dolls, and dark brown balls of wooden coffee rolled away from the mutilated coffee maker.
I was next. The flashing, menacing, dancing knife came slowly toward me. It dipped playfully to my right and then to my left, and then it stopped directly in front of me. I tried to run, but my feet had turned into roots, and I into a tall, stately mahogany tree, my long, clean trunk reaching through the ceiling before I began to branch.
I screamed and opened my eyes. Richard held me and stroked me and tried to soothe me. But when I looked over his shoulder, I saw the flash of a knife’s blade behind the open closet door.
I pushed and the apartment door swung noiselessly inward. I stuck my head in the entryway; all was quiet and there was no mess, no broken sticks and no snakes. A good omen—this must mean Isabel was willing to listen.
Stepping gingerly and keeping my back to the walls, I walked through the empty apartment. There were no signs of her, so I got myself a glass of water and sat down on the couch to wait. I took a sip and then sniffed; perhaps there was the slighest hint of lavender.
We could all learn to live together—this didn’t have to be an either-or situation. There had to be some way to make Isabel understand. I looked around the room. No scent. No breeze. No nothing. But suddenly I knew she was there.
“Isabel?” I took another sip of water and cleared my throat. “I, I want to work this out.” My voice sounded foolish, but I pressed on. “We have great times and you’re great fun. But I love him. I can’t give him up. It just isn’t possible.”
Suddenly the room was filled with her vile odor of horse manure and old tires—but it was stronger and thicker and more horrid than ever before. “Isabel! Listen to me!” I screamed. But she wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t speak and I couldn’t think as the spot began pounding with anger and fury, and it spread until her emotions were all I could feel. I tried to fight back, I tried to think clearly, but she was much stronger than I.
I sat mute and immobile, my back forced into the couch. I watched, barely able to comprehend what I saw, as Grandma Clara’s silver candlesticks—the ones she had kept hidden under her coat when she huddled in steerage on her way to America—leapt from the fireplace mantel and began throwing themselves against the marble hearth. Over and over and over again they dashed themselves into the hard stone until they lay broken and bent and in pieces all over the floor.
The dark journal flew through the air and landed, hard, in my lap. I winced from the impact and then turned to the last entry.
You are a foolish, foolish girl. When shall you learn that all men are the same? When shall you learn the lessons of the past?
Do you not remember what happened with your previous one? Do you not remember the horrors he forced upon you? Do you not remember the loss and the pain?
I tell you it shall be the same again.
This was insane. “This is insane!” I yelled to the horrid smell. “This has nothing to do with what happened to Clay! Richard isn’t anything like Clay!”
The glass of water rose from the coffee table and hung in midair, then it slowly and deliberately came towards me. I ducked, but it made no difference. It hovered above my head for a moment, and then it exploded, raining water and sharp slivers of glass all over me.
“You’re a jealous, evil woman, Isabel! You’re evil and you’re crazy!”
I jumped up, but I was flung back to the couch. The journal crashed to my lap again and flipped open to a new page.
Who is sane and who is insane? A question most interesting, my dear Lindsey. Who is evil and who is good? Another interesting question.
It amuses me to ponder this fact: When you and I find ourselves in similar circumstance, we often respond in similar fashion. Do you not also find this to be true? Is there not an event in your past that might make one think thus?
So, my dear Lindsey, you ought ask yourself who else you think to be insane and who else you think to be evil.
The book fell from my numb hand. The room was suddenly full of Isabel; she had started in one spot but was growing and becoming thicker and wider and taller until she totally surrounded me. She was humid and soupy and opaque like dense fog, and smelled of manure and rubber and lavender, and was full of evil and menace. She got thicker and bigger and stronger, like a marching band coming closer and closer until they are upon you, and you can see nothing but their red hats and shiny buttons and hear nothing but the pounding of their drums.
She wanted me. She wanted to obliterate me. To suck me up inside her until I was no more. She was a vice that was all around me. I screamed and I screamed and I screamed. The r
oom swayed and waved, and I crashed to the floor.
I was facedown on the living room carpet. I was soaking wet and my head was pounding. Everything was still and the odors were gone. I crawled to the kitchen on all fours, barely able to drag my body the few feet I needed to reach the telephone. I stretched up and knocked the receiver from the wall. Somehow I dialed Babs’s number. “Help … help,” I croaked. “Help, help me, help me …”
“You’re home?”
“Home … home … I’m home.”
“Hang on, I’ll be right there.”
As I lay on the kitchen floor, waiting for Babs, the silverware drawer above my head opened. Six spoons rose from the tray and bent themselves double. Moving at ninety-degree angles, the spoons lowered themselves and began striking me on the head and on the back and on the legs. I protected myself as best I could, trying to cover my body with my hands and my arms.
And that’s how Babs and Richard found me—crying and cowering in a fetal position on the floor. Covered with water and surrounded by spoons.
25
“How about this dress?”
I heard Richard’s voice coming from some faraway place, but I was too busy to answer. I was kneeling, furiously emptying my drawers into a tattered suitcase that once belonged to Clay. I flung underwear, socks, old valentines, and combs missing teeth into its large and slightly mildewed interior.
Faster, faster, I had to go faster. The knife was coming. It was going to cut me like butter.
I took the bottom drawer, pulled it from its housing, and dumped the entire contents unceremoniously into the suitcase.
“Lindsey? Do you want to take this dress?”
I pulled open the next drawer and yanked it from the bureau; wool sweaters tumbled to the floor—red, green, royal blue, and lavender. I stared at the bright colors in confusion. Then I saw the knife; it advanced toward the sweaters and, with a few swift slices, turned them into multicolored confetti. “Stop it!” I screamed, gathering the piles of soft, pretty wool to my chest. “Stop it! Stop it! Leave me alone!”
Shattered Echoes Page 29