I listened to the rain and the sleet hitting the window. I wept. Because I realized how very, very much I wanted Erika back, how much I wanted our routines back, even the occasional boredom, even cleaning up after the cats, and especially sleeping together—curling up naked, my stomach to her back, my thighs against hers, my arm over her. She was the only woman I had ever actually been able to sleep with that way, and I missed it.
I did not believe for a moment that some crazy had gotten hold of her. I believed that she was too smart for that, too wary. And too alive. She was one of those people who looked and acted as if she would always be alive—the kind of person that death could never touch. If it tried to touch her, she'd simply slip away, grinning.
I thought that the people around the house were crazy. But I thought they were probably benevolent crazies. Back-to-the-landers. Maybe they slept in quickly built lean-tos, or on the ground in sleeping bags, or even in the trees. People did much stranger things than that. The Cohocton Tree-Sitting Festival was stranger. The middle-aged men who annually dove into the ocean, in February—they called themselves the Polar Bears, I think—were crazier than that. They just didn't carry it out for quite as long as these people had. They weren't as committed to their craziness.
In my wing-backed chair, I smiled through my weeping as I peeked at these thoughts, and eventually I said to myself, "Oh, hell, Jack, she'll come home. She always has. Just give her some time."
And I believed it.
The dusk that evening was pigeon-gray, flat, and very quick—it brought the night down with a thud, and the night pulled me out of that chair and led me around the house. Lock the doors, it said. Turn the lights on, turn all the lights on! it said. So I did. I was beyond the point of feeling embarrassed for my fears. They were rational, after all. Benevolent or otherwise, there were people around the house, in Cohocton, in Dansville, who did strange things, who had probably vandalized the house and who probably had something to do with Erika's disappearance.
At 7:30, Sarah Talpey came to the house.
She looked tired. She was dressed in tan pants, a denim jacket, a white cotton turtleneck shirt, hiking boots. But she looked very tired, at the point of exhaustion, in fact, and I told her so.
"Thanks," she said, grinning, sat down at the kitchen table, and asked if I could make some coffee. I put some water on to boil, sat down across from her at the table. She took a pack of Camel Lights out of her coat pocket.
I said, "I didn't know you smoked, Sarah."
"I used to," she said. "I gave it up ten years ago. I need it again, I'm afraid." She glanced about. "Do you have an ashtray, Jack?"
I got up. In the cupboard under the sink I found an aluminum foil dish that had once had a Swanson chicken pot pie in it; Erika saved everything. I took the dish back to Sarah and sat down again. I said, "Erika's missing. Did you know that?"
She shook her head. "No. How long?"
"A week. A little more than a week."
"Have you notified anyone?"
"Yes. The police. They said to sit tight."
"Oh. She's done this before, then?"
I nodded. "Once or twice."
She lit a cigarette, took a very long drag of it, coughed once, took another, shorter drag. She coughed again, more severely. "I've forgotten how awful it feels," she said. "I never thought I'd take it up again."
The water started boiling. I stood, hesitated. "I'm glad you're here," I said.
"I had to come here, Jack." She tapped some ashes into the foil dish. "I had to warn you."
I turned off the stove, took the teakettle to the counter. "Oh?" The thoughts I'd once had about her—that she was not unlike Dr. Bernie Swan and his "heavily mutated arachnids"—came back. "Want some cream in your coffee, Sarah?"
"No. Black."
"Sure." Those thoughts stayed, I realized, because I knew it was altogether possible that she was, herself, one of the crazies wandering about.
I brought the coffee back to the table. "Warn me about what, Sarah?"
"About these . . . people, of course." She raised the cup to her lips and blew on the coffee to cool it. Some of it splattered onto the glass table top; a drop hit her cigarette in the foil dish and caused a slight hissing noise. "I came to warn you about these people. I came to tell you that they might hurt you."
"I know they've got toys in their attic—"
"I don't like that phrase, Jack," she cut in.
"Sorry." I took a nervous sip of my coffee, burned my tongue, took another nervous sip, burned my tongue again.
She shook her head quickly, butted out the half-smoked Camel Light, and fished in the pack for another. "It's a personal problem; that's all. I didn't mean to snap at you."
I smiled. "Don't worry about it." I took another, slower sip of coffee and let it slide under my tongue. It tasted awful. "So tell me who these people are, Sarah."
"They're not people. I can tell you that. They're not people." She lit another cigarette, butted it out immediately, got another from the pack, lit it, smiled. "I mean that quite literally, Jack." She took a quick puff of the cigarette, butted it out. "I'm trying to quit," she said, as if as an aside.
"You should," I told her.
"I will. Right now." And she crumpled the pack into a wad the size of a Ping-Pong ball. "Wastebasket?" she said; I nodded backwards. She leaned to her right, and tossed the crumpled cigarette pack expertly so it landed in a grocery bag I'd set up in a corner of the kitchen. "I played basketball once," she said, and grinned.
"Good for you," I said.
"You don't believe me, do you?"
"About playing basketball?"
"Please don't be an idiot, Jack. It doesn't suit you."
"Thanks," I said. "No, I don't believe you."
She took a long swig of the coffee and set the cup down hard on the table. "I know they look like people—"
I interrupted, "Just like people, Sarah. Hands and feet and heads and everything."
She looked me squarely in the eye. "Continue patronizing me, Jack, and I'll leave. Do you want me to leave?"
I said immediately, and meant it, "No. I'm sorry. I want you to stay."
She went over to the grocery bag, retrieved the crumpled cigarette pack, straightened it out, got a smashed cigarette from it, examined it. At last she came back to the table and lit the cigarette. "I don't always act this way, Jack." Smoke came out of several tears in the cigarette, so she drew harder. "I'm a little nervous tonight. I'm very nervous."
"That's obvious, Sarah."
"I'm being a real twitch, aren't I?"
"Yes."
"Would you like to know where these people come from, Jack?"
"I'm sure you're going to tell me," I said.
"They come from the earth." She pointed stiffly at the floor. "From there. From the earth." She smiled thinly, took a long sip of her coffee and set the cup down. "They come from the earth, Jack."
I looked quietly at her for a moment. Then I said, "Sarah—I come from the earth. We all come from the earth!"
"Not quite as directly as they do, Jack."
"Oh? What does that mean?"
"It means that they sprang from it, Jack. Like the trees did. And the mushrooms. And the azaleas." She took another long, slow, very satisfied sip of the coffee. "And I'll make a confession, too." She set the cup down. "I've been wanting to tell that to someone for a very long time. I mean—it's not a theory, it's not my pet theory. It's a fact. Like this table." She hit it with her fist, spilling some of her coffee. "And like that!" She pointed happily at the spill. "A fact. Accept it, don't accept it, they don't care!
"Jack, there are snakes with two heads, and there are fourteen-hundred-pound men, and amino acids in meteorites that have fallen in China, and there are people, here, around this house, who sprang up from the earth. Like mushrooms."
"Or azaleas?"
"Yes!"
"Are you one of them, Sarah?"
She grinned at that, flicked the ash off t
he torn cigarette she'd been smoking, shrugged. "I could be. Hell, you could be, Jack. I don't think that I am. I can recall a past, a childhood. I remember standing up in my crib when I was two or three years old and being frightened by some neighborhood boys peeking in the window. But those could be manufactured memories, and I think it would probably be very difficult to tell the difference between manufactured memories and real ones."
"Yes, I've heard that theory."
"I'm sure you have." A pause. When she went on, her tone was softer. "I would dearly love to be one of them. Of course. What more could a naturalist wish for than to be a creature of the earth,"—she looked earnestly at me—"a creation of the earth. Like the things that she studies—"
I cut in, "Carry it a little bit further, Sarah. Gee, an auto mechanic could be a car, a writer a book, a beekeeper a bee—"
She stood abruptly, stalked to the door, opened it, hesitated, looked around at me. She said, her voice quaking, "And now they're going back to the earth, Jack. That's what I believe. They're going back to the earth." She looked expectantly at me, was obviously waiting for a reply.
"I'm sorry," I told her. "Really, Sarah, I'm very sorry, but I have other things to think about."
She said, her voice steady now, "No, Jack, I'm afraid you don't." And she left the house.
Erika and I went to Durand Eastman Park, near Lake Ontario, several years after we were married. We'd gone into Rochester to visit my mother, and decided we'd have a picnic and take a swim before driving back to Syracuse. We packed hot dogs, some macaroni and potato salad, baked beans, rolls, mustard, relish, and when we got to the park, we went for a swim first.
She is an excellent swimmer, much at home in the water, as if it is her second element, and we swam for a good hour together.
The beach was not terribly crowded. There were some children near where we'd set our towel down. They were playing a clumsy game of volleyball, sans net. Several yards on the other side of us a couple in their teens were busily fondling each other.
After swimming we sat on the beach together. We talked about my mother—Erika has always liked her, although my mother makes it clear that Erika should not get too close—and about the day—very warm and bright—about politics, though briefly. After a while I became aware that Erika was growing agitated, that her gaze was shifting from me to the young couple who'd been fondling each other. I looked. They'd stopped fondling each other. The boy was covering the girl with sand.
I asked Erika if something was wrong. She said no, though the strain and agitation was obvious in her tone.
I nodded at the couple, who were oblivious to us: "Does that bother you, Erika?"
"Why should it bother me, Jack? No. Of course it doesn't bother me." But it was clear, as the sand continued to cover the girl, that Erika was becoming increasingly agitated.
"Let's go eat," I suggested. I thought, at that point, that Erika was on the verge of saying something to the young couple, and of course, I wanted to avoid that.
She looked quickly at me. "I'm not hungry, Jack."
"Well, we've got to get the fire started—"
She looked at the young couple. She said to them, though low enough that they didn't hear her, "Why are you doing that?"
"Erika," I said, "please, it's nothing—"
"Don't do that!" she hollered at them.
The boy looked over, astonished; then the girl. "Huh?" said the boy.
"Why are you doing that?" Erika asked, her voice sharp and high-pitched.
"Somethin' wrong with you, lady?"
"No," I said to him, "we're sorry; nothing's wrong."
"Don't do that to her!" Erika hollered.
"Erika, let's go." I stood, leaned over, tried to pull her to a standing position. She wouldn't budge. "Erika, please—"
She screamed. It was long, shrill, and completely unexpected, of course. The couple near us jumped to their feet. The boy muttered several low and violent curses, and they ran off.
I stared at Erika for a good long time. She did not scream again. She stared quietly at the lake, and at last I sat down next to her and asked her why she'd screamed.
She shook her head. "Just dreams," she said.
"I don't understand," I said.
"I don't either."
And that's where we left it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I should have felt badly about driving Sarah Talpey away, but then, that night, while I sat at the kitchen table and watched her leave, and for the rest of the evening, I could afford to feel badly about nothing. I could afford to feel very little because I was being battered on all sides, because my life had gone topsy-turvy and the best I could do for myself, at that moment, was to put everything aside, as I'd been trying to do before Sarah arrived.
I decided to paint the kitchen. Erika and I had discussed painting it when we first moved to the house. It was an ugly dark yellow, streaked with age, and though the kitchen was twice the size of most kitchens, that color made it feel like a cave.
We'd bought some paint a month earlier, a pretty light blue that C. R. Boring swore would cover anything in just one coat. I got a gallon of it out of a closet in the laundry room—where we stored tools, paint, and the vacuum cleaner—took it into the kitchen, went back to the closet for a roller, a pan, and a stick to stir the paint with. With one hand, it took several trips. And when I was done and all the painting paraphernalia was neatly in place on the kitchen table, I asked myself, "What the hell am I doing?" And I put it all away and went to bed.
That was at about eight o'clock.
It was at one o'clock that Erika's voice broke into a particularly cold and nasty dream. "Jack?" I heard, her tone soft and casual, as if she were going to ask me what time it was. I struggled out of the dream, heard "Jack?" again, followed by "Are you here?" I woke, pushed myself up on my good elbow in the bed.
"Yes, Erika, I am," I said. The overhead light was on, the door open. I remembered closing the door, remembered turning the light off. I swung my feet to the floor, felt a deep, sharp pain in my shoulder, winced, let out a little groan, heard beneath it: "Jack?" The pain stopped.
"Erika?" I stood, went to the door, and looked out into the big, open room at the top of the stairs. The overhead light was on here, too; I had left it on as a sort of night-light. "Erika?" I called, listened a moment, called to her again, and again. Listened. Heard nothing. "Erika, please—"
"Jack?" I heard, very faintly, from the back of the house.
"Erika!" I called, urgently now, and made my way quickly through the open room, into the bathroom behind it, and then into the L-shaped and cluttered spare room. I flicked the light on. "Erika?" I said. "Erika, are you in here?"
"Yes," I heard.
But the room was empty.
"Where are you?" I called. I heard tension, frustration, and anger in my voice. "Christ, Erika, where are you?"
I stood in that room for an hour or more, listening for her, saying her name.
At last I went back to the bedroom, turned the light off, climbed into the bed. "My God, Erika," I whispered into the darkness. "My God, I love you."
Daylight was all over the room when I woke. I muttered an obscenity at it, got reluctantly out of bed, and cursed again, this time at the pain in my shoulder. It was very localized now, like a toothache, and at times it was all but unbearable. I went to the east-facing window and looked out at the driveway, hoping to see Erika's blue Volvo there, hoping that she'd decided, at last, to come back to me, as she had a half-dozen times before.
At the road a young, dark-haired man was walking slowly, hands thrust into his pants pockets, head lowered. He was talking to himself. I could see his mouth move and his head shake now and then, as if he were in disagreement with someone. An old Buick Electra that was caked with mud and loaded with people passed him as I watched. It slowed as it approached him. A rear window was lowered, and a square, middle-aged face appeared that looked as if it were cackling. The Electra veered toward the y
oung man then, and I heard the long, coarse wail of its horn, followed by the squeal of its tires as it accelerated. The young man didn't flinch. I thought, Some people around here are fucking crazy! and straightened from the window, cursed again at a moment of pain in my shoulder, turned, and saw movement in the big, open room that adjoined the bedroom.
"Who's there?" I said. I heard a heavy thumping noise, as if someone had backed into a wall. I went quickly through the bedroom so I was close to the door, hesitated, said again, "Who's there?" and heard someone weeping very softly, as if from within a closed room. "Erika?" I said. The weeping came to a slow stop. I left the bedroom, went into the open room, said her name again and again. I even looked closely at the corners of the room, as if she might have been huddling in shadow.
"Erika," I pleaded at last, "for Christ's sake, what are you doing?"
Jerry Czech came to the house an hour later. He'd picked up my Toyota while I was in the hospital. When I answered the door, he nodded toward the driveway and announced, "She's done, Mr. Harris." I looked where he'd nodded. The Toyota was in the driveway behind his tow truck. The top was still caved in slightly, the left front fender folded back six inches or so.
"Good," I said. "What's the damage?"
"I fixed the damage," he explained confusedly. "Fixed it good's I could, anyway. You turn a car over and you're usually gonna have some damage that's gonna show—"
I interrupted, "No. I'm sorry. What I meant was, how much do I owe you?"
"Seven hundred'll do 'er."
"Seven hundred dollars?" I was incredulous.
"That's the damage. Sure." He grinned.
"My God, what did you do to it?"
"I put a new engine in it. Wasn't a new engine; no, wasn't a new engine. It was an old engine, but it worked. Yers didn't work. Yers had a busted block so it didn't work. "
"You should have called me—"
"Your wife said it was okay. I wouldn'ta done it but your wife said it was okay—"
"My wife?"
"Sure. Mrs. Harris. She said it was okay."
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