Fog Heart

by Thomas Tessier

  She went downstairs again. Now the quiet mellow jazz was no longer enough for her. Kiri singing Legrand? Ute doing Dietrich and Piaf? But she was not in the mood for any music. She put on the AM and scanned until she came across a late ballgame from the west coast. The subdued drone of the crowd in the background was somehow comforting, while the play-by-play didn’t even register. She left it there for a while, until she realized that she might not be able to hear anything else within the apartment. Not that there was anything else to hear. But Carrie turned off the tuner and sat in silence.

  The kitchen. She didn’t think she’d heard a sound. Coming from there. The brush of one pant leg against the other? Rustle of fabric in the air? Sometimes the only thing worse than being alone is not being alone. But the kitchen was empty. She took the bowl of tapioca ambrosia from the fridge and ate it – there wasn’t much left – standing by the breakfast nook.

  She heard Tommy, the resident Irish handyman, bounding down the stairs on the other side of the kitchen wall, his trademark heavy-footed thump trailing away. Probably just solved one more minor mechanical problem for another helpless soul.

  Carrie sat down and slid across to the darkened back corner of the nook. It was funny, in a way. They had often joked about it. Her father had waited decades for a plum posting, London or Paris or Rome, and when it came it only lasted one year and three months. A case of cold politics reaching down below the rank of ambassador. Poor man. Australia next.

  But that year and a bit happened to come along shortly after Carrie had graduated from Bard. She had nothing definite planned and wasn’t even sure what she wanted to do with her modest BA, so she flew off to London with her parents. Took one course at the North London Poly. Met people, both the diplomatic crowd and others. Fell in love with European styles and fashions – a huge new development in her life, since she’d never paid any attention to that kind of thing before. Much too frivolous. Carrie still read books, of course, but the old Eng. Lit. outlook was starting to give way to different and more practical interests.

  She blossomed in London. Or at least she liked to think she did. Girl to woman. Finding a sense of direction. Carrie began to look at rooms, to see how they were put together and arranged, and what people did with them. She learned how to see a room, as it could be not merely as it was. Towards the end of that year Xavier Rocher took her on as an unpaid assistant. It was a great opportunity to learn, and she did. After two months, he gave her a small wage. She was in the business.

  By then it was known that Daddy was on the way out of town. By then Carrie had met Oliver at a do at the Groucho. His band had recently broken up so he was not in the best of form. They clicked, however. He was irresistible, tremendously attractive, witty, polished, considerate, fun – dear God, how she had fallen for him. She was never quite sure why he wanted her, out of all the women who were available to him, but he did. Daddy and her mother both liked Oliver, and when they left Carrie stayed on in London. Worked with Xavier, lived with Oliver. London was their playground, and it was great. Everything.

  She stopped breathing for a moment as she looked through the kitchen and saw a shadow slide along the wall in the hallway. No sound, just a shadow that quickly vanished. Nothing, Carrie told herself. The Dalmas was a good building, there was hardly ever a break-in. On top of which, their apartment was protected by the best locks and security system available. She knew all about it, from work. So. There.

  She got up and went through the dining area into the living room. No one, nothing. No more shadow in the hall. She didn’t want another drink, but she added a large splash to what was left at the bottom of her glass. She wasn’t tired enough to go to bed and fall asleep, so the drink might help. Ought to be a gin, or something equally lethal; the Cointreau was having no discernible effect on her.

  There was a sense of displacement, as if Carrie were waiting to resume feeling like herself again. It was absurd, but there you are. More or less.

  Oliver would be sleeping now. Must be about four or five in the morning in London, she wasn’t sure which. Carrie would admit to a little envy. It had been a year plus since her last visit to London, and she missed it. New York had been Oliver’s idea, not hers. By the time they left, she was just beginning to feel more English than American. It hurt. And it took her a while to get established in Manhattan. She had plenty of useful contacts, and that helped enormously. Now she had all the work she wanted, too much at times. But New York was not London.

  Practically the last thing Carrie and Oliver did before they left London was to stop in at the Kensington Register Office, and make it official. Carrie’s family would have preferred a lavish wedding in the old style (Oliver’s parents were both dead, and he was an only child), but everybody was happy for the young couple. Oliver and Carrie, Carrie and Oliver. Happy together.

  When she put her drink down on the coffee table and looked up, she saw her father sitting on the hassock on the far side of the room. He was naked, and his body was turned to one side so that his genitals could not be seen. Carrie’s breath stopped in her throat. He was there for the longest moment. She tried to speak but the sound barely reached her lips.

  ‘Daddy?’

  His flesh looked soft and flabby, his skin wrinkled, though his cheeks showed a little red. He looked tired and drawn, with circles beneath his eyes. His hands moved in tight gestures, as if he were trying to explain something. He spoke to her, but she heard no sound. She thought she saw sadness or sorrow in his expression. Maybe even pain. Carrie was pinned in place with fear and anguish until the apparition of her father suddenly vanished.

  Five – no, it was six years ago now.

  Carrie sagged back into the leather sofa. Her breath came in short vacant gasps that seemed to originate in her mouth. Her throat was dry, her vision blurred. She had nothing to hold onto because she didn’t believe in God or an afterlife or ghosts. She hadn’t seen her father since the day of his burial in Vermont six years ago. Carrie had never experienced anything like this and she would never expect to because – but this frantic attempt at reason crumbled. She began to shiver, swamped with fear. She had to get out of there. Immediately.

  The telephone rang but she didn’t stop.

  She took the stairs two at a time, unable to stand and wait for the elevator. On to the street, up Broadway, walking quickly, almost running. But where to? Carrie realized that she had left her keys and wallet behind. Never mind.

  She kept walking, sometimes breaking into a trot, because at the same time she felt calmer and yet more frightened and she had to get somewhere. Jeffrey and Mark. It came to her when she was at their door on 85th near Riverside Drive, ringing the bell. Oh, please be home.

  The next thing Carrie knew, she was swallowing vodka, trying to explain what she was doing there and apologize for it to keep from bursting into tears – all at the same time and not doing a very good job at any of it. Jeffrey raised a napkin and dabbed a drop of vodka from her chin. Oliver didn’t like them, but Carrie regarded Jeffrey and Mark as good friends. Wall-covering wizards by day, they worked with everything from antique paper to pressed reed and filmy leather. She had steered some business their way, and they hers.

  ‘Your father?’ Jeffrey echoed.

  ‘Yes.’

  Mark frowned. ‘Didn’t you tell us—’

  ‘Yes. Six years ago. Heart attack.’

  ‘What did he do, when you saw him there?’

  ‘He was just sitting there, speaking to me,’ Carrie replied. ‘But he had no voice. There was no sound at all.’

  ‘How long did it last?’

  ‘It seemed like for ever, but probably a minute or so.’

  ‘How many drinks did you have?’ Mark enquired with a faintly mischievous smile.

  ‘Not enough.’

  Jeffrey patted her hand. ‘Well, it’s over. You’re all right now, just try to relax.’

  ‘Do you think I’m acting crazy?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

&nbs
p; ‘I mean, could I be having a nervous breakdown? Is this how it starts? Seeing things?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘I did see him,’ Carrie insisted.

  ‘Well, yes, of course you did,’ Mark agreed.

  ‘I mean, he was there. My father.’

  ‘Carrie, nobody doubts you.’

  ‘Do you believe in things like that? Ghosts. Apparitions. Whatever it was.’

  ‘Why not?’ Jeffrey said. ‘Too many people have experiences like that – it has to be real, somehow.’

  ‘Any problems on the home front?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes, we’re fine. Really.’

  ‘Where is Oliver, anyway?’

  ‘London. Munich later today, or maybe tomorrow. He’s been away since last weekend. That was probably him calling,’ Carrie added, an afterthought addressed to herself.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The phone rang as I was leaving and I didn’t stop to answer it. But it must have been Oliver.’

  ‘What was your father wearing?’ Jeffrey asked suddenly.

  ‘I was afraid you’d ask me that,’ Carrie replied sheepishly. ‘He didn’t have anything on.’

  ‘Calling Dr Freud,’ Mark said, with a grin.

  ‘No, not really.’ Jeffrey ran his hand over his short hair and adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. ‘It’s a good sign. You didn’t just imagine the whole thing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Remember that party, in Montauk?’

  This was directed to Mark, who nodded. ‘Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?’

  To Carrie, ‘Scott, he’s a friend of ours. Well, sort of a friend. Anyway, at this party I was in a small group of people, sitting around, talking over drinks, and somebody mentioned these old stories of dead sailors who were sometimes seen in that area. Ghosts, right? Supposedly they’d been lost at sea off the coast of Long Island. Now, Scott is very into this kind of thing, and he said real ghosts always appear naked.’

  ‘If you can believe Scott,’ Mark said dismissively.

  ‘Maybe he was right about that.’

  ‘But why?’ Carrie asked, trying not to sound anxious.

  ‘Well, think about it,’ Jeffrey said. ‘When people die they don’t take their clothes with them. If it was a ghost, a genuine visitor from the other side, why would it be dressed? You don’t really think they’re issued with robes and harps, do you?’

  ‘No,’ Carrie had to admit.

  ‘It’s all in the mind,’ Mark said, with a shrug. ‘There are no ghosts, there is no other side. It’s just your mind trying to send you a message.’

  Carrie was inclined to agree. She didn’t have much faith in otherworldly things. People may have some spiritual dimension in their nature, a part of them that wanted to link up with a cosmic force, God, whatever, but that didn’t make it real. ‘I’m just as sceptical,’ she said, then added, faintly, ‘Or was.’

  They talked about it a while longer, inconclusively, and had more to drink. Tiredness finally overtook her. Jeffrey and Mark got her a pillow and blanket, and Carrie dozed off on their sofa. She felt bad about it as she faded away, as if she were being as foolish and self-indulgent as a child. But they were so kind and sympathetic, and she simply couldn’t move.

  * * *

  She awoke a few hours later, shortly after six. Grey light filtered into the room from outside. The apartment was perfectly quiet. Carrie sat up and blinked. She couldn’t remember having any dreams. Her head ached a bit, and her mouth was gummy with the stale residue of all that drink. She noticed the sound of light traffic drifting up from the street below – Manhattan is never perfectly quiet, least of all at the break of day – and found it rather comforting.

  She got up and tiptoed to the seat by the corner window, felt a bit shaky and sat down. Put it in perspective, she told herself. But how? She had no base of experience to draw on, and she knew next to nothing about such matters.

  But one thing did seem clear. If the apparition was real on any level, if it had meaning for her in any way, then the answer must be in the words. The missing words. Because her father had been speaking to her. Speaking anxiously.

  What had he been trying to say?

  3

  As always, Charley was the first one out the classroom door. He might never be invited back to Yale but, by God, he would keep the kids busy to the last day. Quite a few had probably thought a visiting lecturer would be soft and easy, the course a relaxer for three credits, but they had learned otherwise by now, these over-privileged boomer-spawn darlings, and he wasn’t through with them yet.

  He crossed the Old Campus and headed up Chapel Street. Next stop, Gene’s Tap, a plain and unpretentious bar out on the fringe of the college neighbourhood. He was a bit early, though that was technically impossible – the only way you could arrive early at a bar was if you got there before it opened.

  ‘Good evening, Professor,’ George, the barman, said with his usual exaggerated obsequiousness.

  ‘Associate without portfolio,’ Charley corrected.

  ‘Your usual, sir?’

  ‘If by that you mean a pint of piss, the answer is yes.’

  Charley downed the beer at the bar, got a refill and took a seat at a rickety booth on the opposite wall. He lit a panatella. Better. Life was definitely better than it had been half an hour ago. Not that life was ever good; it was problematic at best, he would say (and had, too often). However, it also offered a handy array of worthwhile alleviations, foremost among them alcohol and tobacco, a bit of gash.

  Forty and one, still young. Enough. Perhaps it was time to think of settling in one place. Trouble was, it might have to be some interior backwater, like Nebraska or Louisiana. God forbid. Charley was an academic nomad. Over the last ten years he’d done time at Leeds, Norwich, Cherbourg, Emory, Texas, Bucknell, Berlin and Iowa, not in that order. Not to forget Galway.

  It was a matter of choice, still. Life on the academic road had its advantages. At about the time you got sick of one place you were toddling off to another. You also avoided for the most part the whole savage sub-strata of departmental politics, the career wars and back-stabbing that took place on every campus.

  It was tougher on Jan, no doubt about that. No fixtures, so to speak, no permanent home. But she was used to it. She mucked in, and was often excited about their next destination.

  The journals were littered with Charley’s papers, every one of which investigated some aspect of the plays, poems and stories of Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, a.k.a. Lord Dunsany, literary oddball, neglected master, sublime eccentric. Charley had a part of a corner on Dunsany, his claim staked years ago. If there was ever to be a massive, official biography of the man, Charley knew he would have a fair crack at landing the contract. Trouble was, such a commission would probably never happen. Dunsany remained a minor talent to most, a second-rater in the rankings. And then there was the matter of his personal life, which was dull, to say the least. He rode horses, shot animals and pottered about the family estate somewhat in the manner of a character who had just failed the audition for a role in a novel by Smollett. The geezer hardly even drank. But nobody was perfect, and by now Dunsany was Charley’s academic niche. He had a genuine fondness for the old boy, read and reread his pellucid prose with enormous pleasure, and sometimes thought of him as a kind of dead uncle he had never had the good fortune to know in life.

  ‘You’re almost too late to be early,’ Charley observed, when Malcolm arrived.

  ‘Ready for another?’

  ‘Is that a question?’

  Malcolm smiled and went for a round of drinks. A friend for twenty years or so, this Malcolm Browne. Charley and Malcolm had met as students at University College, Dublin. It was around the time the pound was being decimalized, and Charley had come from a distant corner of Wisconsin in search of – what the hell was it, anyway? Joyce, the Ginger Man, Flann O’Brien, Kavanagh, Dunsany, all the
usual suspects. Found them all, too.

  It was through Malcolm that Charley had landed the Yale gig. Malcolm was a fixture at Yale. Sound critic, excellent teacher, and a bloody genius at the obscure art of departmental diplomacy, with the self-effacing charm and smoothness of Anglo-Irish genes in his blood. Of course, there was a price to pay for this grand success. Malcolm wasn’t half the pub-going drinker he had been a while back. All the same, a dear man.

  Come to think of it, it had been Malcolm who had suggested this particular get-together. Charley wondered what might be in the offing. Perhaps a week with the Brownes at their cottage on the Cape. Sudden space in a journal for a paper on the influence of Dunsany on Sam Beckett – Malcolm was in tight with several fine scholarly publications. Maybe he just felt the irresistible need for an old-fashioned gargle in a moderately bleak saloon, a valid and perfectly honourable motive in itself.

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Your good health.’

  ‘So, have you decided what you’re going to do this summer?’

  ‘Staying on a while, I think. It looks as if that Hamilton job might be put back to the spring semester.’

  ‘How are you getting on in the department?’

  That was interesting. ‘No bother at all,’ Charley replied. ‘You have a dreadful infestation of multiculturalists, but I try to keep a civil tone with them.’

  Malcolm smiled. ‘I might have a summer course available, if you want it.’

  ‘That’d be great.’ Indeed.

  ‘It’s just your basic English comp.’

  ‘A breeze. Consider my ankle chained to the galley.’

  ‘How’s Jan?’

  ‘Oh, fine. She quite likes New Haven.’

  ‘Good. You must come up to Wellfleet this summer. Stay for a weekend. We’ll have piles of fresh seafood, kegs of cold beer, and we’ll play the Pogues all night long.’

  ‘Sounds great. We’d love it,’ Charley said, with enthusiasm. To be fair, a whole week had been a bit much to hope for. ‘How’s Maggie these days?’