Black Out

by Lisa Unger

  The good news is that my new doctor does not think I’m truly mentally ill-as in chronically or permanently. She doesn’t feel I have a chemical imbalance, something that will need to be treated with medication for the rest of my life. She believes that I am suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder that started the night I watched Janet Parker kill Frank Geary. The horrors I witnessed during my time with Marlowe deepened my trauma. The adoption of a false identity and my desire to be rid of Ophelia only made things worse. She believes that if I had turned myself over to the police, faced whatever punishment might have been doled out, sought therapy, and tried to move forward in my life as Ophelia March-I would have suffered less in the aftermath.

  Of course I agree. I agree with everything they say. I do what I must to survive in my life as it is. I adapt, as I always have.

  Because I’m so agreeable, I’m allowed to go home to my family. I will not face arson charges for Frank Geary’s farm. Technically, it belonged to me, anyway. This is one of the reasons my new doctor thinks I burned it down-because it was the last link to Frank and Marlowe Geary.

  “Fire is very cleansing,” she says. She’s right. I am glad that the farm’s a pile of ash. I hope someone levels the whole place and builds a mall on it.

  I have agreed to let the county sell the property and keep the proceeds. In exchange, they will not bring any charges against me. It has all been very cordial.

  Likewise, Ophelia March will not be charged for her association to Marlowe Geary’s crimes. Because we crossed so many state lines and Marlowe committed multiple murders, it is a federal matter. So far no one at the FBI or the federal prosecutor’s office is sufficiently motivated to bring charges against me. I am widely regarded as a victim, not as an accomplice. I am generally pitied, not reviled. So far the information about Ophelia’s survival has managed not to make headline news. For this I am grateful, though I wonder if it is only a matter of time.

  And somehow, with Drew and Gray’s connections, the identity theft of the real Annie has gone away as well. It’s all quite seamless.

  I return to the quiet, empty days of my life. Ella comes every morning to be with me after Victory has gone to school. I talk to her about everything. She listens in a way that Gray cannot. He feels a certain anxiety, a need to fix and control, to comfort and soothe, especially regarding events he believes happened only in my mind. This is not what I need. I need an ear, someone to hear and understand that the things that happened have meaning and significance to me-whether they happened in my head or not. Ella seems to understand this. She is a patient and interested listener, not unlike my doctor.

  “Do I call you Annie or Ophelia?” Ella wants to know this morning as we enjoy coffee on the pool deck. We lie on bright beach towels spread over the wide, comfortable lounge chairs. The air is warm with a light breeze. Over whispering waves, gulls screech, fighting in the air over a fish one of them has caught. I have been home for three weeks.

  “I think Annie, you know?” I say. I have given this some thought, of course. “I decided I’m going to change my name to Annie Ophelia Powers. I’m not that girl anymore. But she’s still a part of who I am.”

  She nods her understanding. “You know what, Annie?” she says, giving me a smile. “You seem well. Better than you’ve ever been. More solid, centered.”

  “Whole,” I say.

  “Yes.”

  Marlowe Geary is dead. I shot him and watched as the life drained from him. Finally, I rescued Ophelia. She is safe. She has a home and a family who loves her. I don’t say any of this. There’s no point.

  We sit in silence for a while, sipping coffee. In the kitchen I hear the new maid and nanny, a young woman named Brigit drop a glass; it shatters on the tile. She is someone Gray hired when Esperanza quit. She is cool where Esperanza was warm, thin where Esperanza was curvaceous, quiet where Esperanza was exuberant. She’s not bad, just different. I’ve wanted to call Esperanza, but apparently she has gone back to Mexico to care for her dying mother; there is no phone in her home there. She promised Gray to come back after her mother’s passing. I am afraid that she has left because of me. Victory misses her very much, and so do I. But in a way my daughter and I are closer for her absence.

  I go in to see if Brigit is okay. She is, just flustered and apologetic. I try to put her at ease and think again how much we miss Esperanza.

  When I return, Ella is reading the paper.

  “Did you hear what happened to the police detective who was here that night?” she says.

  “Ray Harrison?”

  “Yeah.”

  I don’t know if she knows about how he blackmailed us, and I can’t decide whether I should get into all that with her. I haven’t thought about him in a while. I remember our last encounter outside the pool where I took my diving lessons, how his conversation led me to Vivian, who told me about Marlowe’s body. She claims that she never said anything about Dr. Brown or made any cryptic statements like, “That’s what they told me to say.” She was fooled by him like everybody else, she claims. Needless to say, our relationship has cooled. She is nervous and uncomfortable around me. We keep up appearances for Victory’s sake. Drew has avoided me altogether.

  “What happened to him?”

  She hands me the paper, and I read the feature about the fallen cop, the hooker, the heroin, the gambling addiction, the mysterious money in his account. Ray Harrison looks beaten, dazed in the mug shot pictured. I notice that the white hair over his ear is gone. Strange. Maybe it’s a trick of the light.

  I glance over at Ella, and she is watching me. She wrinkles her brow when our eyes meet.

  “Crazy, huh?” she says, and there’s an odd brightness to her gaze, as if she takes some pleasure in the sensational nature of the story.

  “Yeah,” I say, folding the paper, closing my eyes, and leaning my head back. I feel the sun on my face. I feel a sudden anxiety, a sense that something is not right about what I’ve read. But I can’t afford to dwell on Ray Harrison right now or worry about his problems. “Crazy.”

  43

  I am never alone, I start to realize after I’ve been home another week or so. Either Gray or Ella or Brigit is always with me. I am not even left alone with Victory except when I take her to school in the mornings. It’s not that anyone’s hovering, but someone is always in the house or out with us as we run errands. With what they think of me, I suppose I can’t blame them. I’ll go along with it for a while, but eventually it’s going to start to wear on me. Right now I’m on my best behavior, doing what I must to be home with my family and not locked up in a rubber room somewhere.

  “Mommy,” Victory says in the car on the way to school this morning.

  “Yeah, Victory?”

  “Are you better?” She is looking at me through the rearview mirror. She’s frowning slightly.

  “Yes, I am,” I answer. “A lot better.”

  I see her smile, then put my eyes back to the road.

  Then, “I don’t want to go away with Grandma and Grandpa anymore.” It’s an odd thing to say, and I look back into the mirror to see that her frown has returned.

  “Why, baby?”

  “I just don’t want to. I want to stay with you and Daddy. You shouldn’t go away, and they shouldn’t take me anywhere.” I can see she has given this some thought. My heart aches a little.

  I give her a smile and decide not to press right now. “I’m not going anywhere. And you don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she says, but her smile doesn’t return.

  The rest of the ride I am watching her face, wondering if I should urge her to talk more. But by the time I get her to school, she’s back to her old self, bubbly and chirping about show-and-tell today. She has brought Claude and Isabel. I am sure they’ll be a smashing success.

  After I drop Victory off, I don’t go straight home. I just can’t face the rest of the day tiptoeing around Brigit, who, by the way, is an even worse cook an
d housekeeper than I am. I’m starting to suspect that she’s an operative from my husband’s company, hired to keep an eye on me.

  I find myself at the Internet café by the beach. I order myself a latte and grab a spot in a booth toward the back, start browsing the Web on one of the laptops. I have thought about trying to find some proof of the things that happened to me. But, it turns out, I don’t really need anyone to believe me. I know what happened. I know I’m not crazy. I know that I faced Marlowe Geary and removed him from the world. I am healed by this knowledge. That should be enough. Whatever Alan Parker and Grief Intervention Services did to cover everything up is not my problem. I have tried to reach my father to talk to him about that night, without luck. I’m starting to worry about him.

  My fingers hover over the keyboard. I think about searching for a way to contact Alan Parker, to look for stories of other people who have been involved with Grief Intervention Services, or to try to reach my father again without Gray around. There’s a pay phone over by the bathrooms. But in the end I don’t do any of these things. I have the sense that I’m being watched. Everyone is so pleased with my “progress.” I don’t want to set off any alarms. I need to be home for my daughter.

  “They don’t want you to be alone, do they?” I turn to see a young woman sitting at the table behind me. She has a baby who is blissfully asleep in a stroller. The woman’s ash-blond hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail, her face pale to the point of looking almost gray. The dark smudges of fatigue rim her eyes. I don’t recognize her.

  “I’m sorry?” I say.

  “I’ve been trying to get you alone for days,” she says.

  “Do I know you?” I ask.

  “No, you don’t know me, Ms. Powers. My name is Sarah Harrison. I’m Ray Harrison’s wife.”

  I look at her face and try to decide what she wants. Is this going to be another attempt at blackmail? A desperate woman looking for money? But no, there’s something about her face. Her eyes are wide and earnest. There’s a strength and a presence to her. She’s not the criminal type. She’s scared, looking over at the door and then down at her baby. The baby looks a lot like Ray Harrison; the only way I know she’s a girl is because she’s wrapped in pink. I remember when Victory was that small and fragile. I can’t help myself-I reach in and touch the downy crown of her head. She releases a sigh but doesn’t wake.

  “I need to talk to you,” Sarah says.

  I turn away from her. If anyone is watching, I want them to think I was just admiring her baby. I look at my computer screen. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Harrison?”

  “You heard what happened to my husband?”

  I nod. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. And I am sorry, for all of them, especially for his little girl.

  “What happened to him happened because he was trying to help you.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say. I’m aware that I sound distant and cold. But I can’t afford to be anything else at the moment. She seems undaunted as she begins to tell me about the recent events of her husband’s life, the version I read about in the paper plus everything he learned in his investigation.

  “They think he had a nervous breakdown relating to his gambling addiction. No one believes him about Grief Intervention Services, about the Taser attack. They think he’s crazy.”

  “There must be marks on his body from the Taser, if it’s true.”

  “There were marks,” she says. “But no one believed that’s where they came from. They questioned your friend, Ella Singer, just to say they had.” She pauses and issues a harsh laugh. “She and her husband were outraged. She helped in every way possible with his investigation, and this is what she gets from him, she said. Apparently, her husband plays golf with the mayor.” Her words are heavy with bitterness.

  I remember the glint in Ella’s eyes when she handed me the paper. She’d made no mention of these allegations Sarah is describing, of course. There was nothing of it in the paper. If I confronted her, I’m sure she’d say she was trying to spare me any upset, that I had my own problems. And maybe that’s the truth. It’s difficult to think of Ella wielding a Taser gun, and yet somehow it isn’t impossible to imagine.

  “Let’s just pretend that I believe what you’re saying,” I tell Sarah Harrison. “What can I do about it?”

  “You don’t understand,” she says. “I’m not asking for your help. I’m trying to help you. They want you to think you’re crazy. You’re not. My husband wronged you, he knows that now. He wants to make it right, and so do I.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Maybe that’s true. But what do you think you can do for me, Sarah?”

  The baby releases a little sigh. I can see the little pink bundle out of the corner of my eye.

  “Maybe nothing. I just thought you needed to know that you’re living in a pit of vipers. Your husband, your best friend, and your in-laws are all lying to you. They’re basically holding you prisoner, in the nicest possible cage.”

  I don’t say anything, just take a sip of my coffee and hope she can’t see that my hand is shaking.

  “This is an interesting thing my husband found out, the thing that brought him to your house in the first place. He learned that Grief Intervention Services is a client of Powers and Powers, Inc.”

  When I still don’t say anything, she goes on.

  “A friend of Ray’s at the FBI forwarded him a client list. The federal government keeps very close tabs on those privatized military companies, for obvious reasons. Let me ask you this: What kind of services might a military company provide to an organization established to help people with their grief?”

  It’s a good question. So good that I’m not sure I want the answer. I drain my coffee cup.

  “If these things are true, you’re putting yourself at great risk by coming here, Sarah,” I tell her. “You should think of your daughter.”

  “I am thinking of my daughter,” she says sharply. “I want her to know that there’s more to life than just playing it safe. That when you make mistakes, part of the way you move on is by correcting what you can. My husband has made a lot of mistakes, some of them concerning you. But he tried to make things right, and he’s paying a very high price-his career, his reputation. There’s not a lot we can do about that. But we both feel we owe you the truth. Here’s my advice: Take your daughter and get as far away from that family as possible. Run. Don’t walk.”

  I stand up then. I don’t want to listen to anything else. I pick up my bag and put it over my shoulder.

  “You have access at home to Gray’s computer, right? Find the client list for Powers and Powers, Inc. See if I’m telling you the truth.”

  I put some money on the table, a tip for service I didn’t get. And move toward the door.

  “If you won’t do it for yourself, Annie, do it for your daughter.”

  I leave her there. I don’t look back.

  In a karst topography, there’s a feature called a disappearing stream. At a certain point in the flow, the water slips through the delicate pores of the limestone bedrock and winds its way beneath the ground through an intricate system of caves and caverns. It travels like any moving body of water and may connect with the flow of yet other streams, traveling swift and steady but in darkness, far beneath the world. Then, as if from nowhere, the stream percolates and resurfaces, sometimes hundreds of miles away from its origin.

  In this subterranean environment, creatures called stygobites, animals perfectly adapted to the wet darkness, proliferate-spiders and flies, millipedes and lizards. Through evolution they have lost their eyes, their skin has become translucent. Even the most minimal exposure to the light would be lethal.

  Ophelia dropped beneath the surface of the earth and then appeared again as Annie. The streams of their lives merged, continuing on together, only to dip into the darkness again. I thought I’d come into the light once and for all. But perhaps it’s true that I don’t even know the difference between light and dark anymore. Perhaps I am per
fectly adapted to my life as it is.

  I drive around for a while, my heart thrumming, my throat dry and painful. My lungs have not recovered from the smoke inhalation, and I’m having trouble getting a full breath of air. I drive up the beach, turn around, and wind through the streets of our quaint little ocean town, watch the tourists with their terrible sunburns; the teenagers with their lithe, perfect bodies strutting about in bathing suits and bare feet; the retirees with their silver hair and walking canes. After a while I am calmer, but Sarah Harrison’s words are still loud in my head. I want to go home, pretend I never saw her. I try to convince myself that she was a product of my demented mind, yet another fantasy on my part. But I can’t do this. It’s what she said about her daughter that echoes: I want her to know that there’s more to life than just playing it safe. That when you make mistakes, part of the way you move on is by correcting what you can. The simple truth of this hurts. I realize that I am betraying myself again, this time for my daughter.

  44

  That night we have plans to go to dinner at Drew and Vivian’s. I’m nervous and edgy because of this. I have not been comfortable around Vivian since my return. And I have not spoken to Drew at all. Having dinner at their place is the last thing I want to do. But Gray has convinced me that it’s a much-needed return to normalcy, the point from which we all move forward as a family. I don’t hate him for it, but almost.

  I have snapped at Gray twice while we get ready, and now he’s avoiding me. Victory is cranky and fussy, maybe because of my mood, which is always contagious where she is concerned. But maybe for reasons of her own. She doesn’t want to go, has said as much, keeps angling for pizza and a movie. I ask her about it as I help her into the new outfit I bought for her after my encounter with Sarah Harrison today. I used it as an excuse for Brigit as to why I didn’t come straight home after dropping Victory off.