by J. D. Robb
Like now. Time alone was suddenly very appealing.
“I don’t know how you plan to spend time apart without leaving me.” She hoisted a box of magazines to the floor so they’d each have one to sit on. “But I’ll at least listen.”
His proposal was simple. They’d take two months—a negotiable time if either of them found it too difficult—and he’d rent a small, furnished apartment just minutes from the house.
“In case you need me to open a jar or kill a spider.” He grinned and she simpered back. He was joking, of course. He’d seen her deliver three babies, watched her napalm gopher holes with gas and matches in the front yard, and he had even cleaned up the mess after she killed a snake to death by hysterically chopping it into two dozen pieces with a garden hoe. She wasn’t a helpless female. “Or if one of us starts to go blind without sex.”
Now that might actually happen.
Everything else in their plan was to remain the same. The same joint bank account, same jobs, and the same car pool schedule for Susan.
She’d still be at home, but he’d be gone. And that’s why it wasn’t working…
Susan returned and handed both frosty, cold bottles of water to Bonnie with the silent, profoundly put-upon service only a teen can deliver.
“Thanks, honey.” Bonnie passed a bottle to her sister. “You’ve been a great help this morning. So if the floors are done and the rugs are back where they belong and all the crystal is washed, you can go ahead and leave if you want.” She was used to speaking to the girl’s back these days and pretended it didn’t bother her. She heard rather than saw her start down the front stairs and lifted her voice. “First check on Pim for me, will you?” Then in a low mutter, she added, “And when you see your dad tell him I’m wide open to the concept of joint custody.”
Bonnie took a long drag off her water bottle. Janice watched her thoughtfully for a few seconds before she broke the seal and drank from her own.
“Don’t give me that look.” Bonnie twisted the cap back in place. “You know, I thought he’d be back in a day or two with all this time apart to ‘find ourselves’ business out of his system. You said every couple could use a few days apart once in while, that it wouldn’t hurt us, that the kids would understand if we explained it to them. Now it’s been four weeks, the kids hate me because they think I drove him off, and you’re suggesting there might be another woman. If I’d known he could hold out this long I’d have been the one to move out. How come I’m still here with the kid and the big house to clean? Obviously, he’s the one who thought the plan through, not me. Plus, now they’re changing the aides around at school so I’m not sure which grade or teacher I’ll get when school starts next month, and Pim’s accident, and now she’s home from rehab and…” She sighed and stood to go back up the steep attic stairs, but she didn’t. “Pim still doesn’t know about Joe. I don’t know how to tell her.”
Pim wasn’t just their grandmother, she was the only mother Bonnie could remember clearly, their parents having died in a train accident when she was five and Janice was almost seven. A young, independent eighty-eight, Pim wouldn’t allow even her great-grandchildren to call her by anything other than the silly nickname she had picked up in her own childhood, back when postcards cost a penny, Marlboro cigarettes were twenty cents a pack, and the country had a total of 131 golf courses and just thirty AM radio stations.
A freak fall in her garden and a broken hip shortly after Joe left kept Pim stiff and housebound these days, and the lack of everything normal in her life was taking its toll on her mind: She was as loopy and unpredictable as a wire spring.
“Don’t try. It’ll just confuse her more. Besides, he may come home before she realizes he’s gone and you might not have to tell her anything.” Janice’s uncharacteristic optimism should have been Bonnie’s first clue that her day was taking a strange new twist, but it was so nice to hear she barely paid attention to it.
“I hope so. And I hope he comes back with enough answers for both of us, because with all that’s been going on here I haven’t had any time to get reacquainted with myself, much less ask myself questions…which sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud, doesn’t it?”
Janice smiled and nodded. “So what are you doing up here?” She peered into the dimly lit space above the stairs and grimaced. “Looking for a good hiding place?”
“That’s not a bad idea, but I’m actually looking for Pim’s magic carpet.” Janice arched a single brow. “I know, but she’s so insistent about having it with her that I think there must be some sort of rug up here that reminds her of a magic carpet. Maybe a mat or a throw or something from her childhood that’ll help her rest easier if we put it on the floor in her room.
“She’s been so restless since we brought her home. You’ve seen how agitated she gets, late at night. The other night, when I covered for the nurse’s night off, I caught Pim trying to get out of bed, saying she had to get to the rug before the dead of night or the magic would be gone. I had to promise her I’d look for it.”
“When exactly is dead of night, I’ve always wondered?”
Bonnie shrugged.
“And pretending to look, then reporting it gone…?”
“Has occurred to me…about a hundred times.” She grinned. “But I figured a quick look wouldn’t kill me and if I find something that helps her rest, so much the better. I hate seeing her so weak and feeble. It breaks my heart.”
Something in that statement caused Janice to look away as if she suddenly remembered some bad news. Bonnie knew the look well.
“I don’t want to hear it, Jan.” She started up the steps. Janice followed.
“But this is good news…potentially.”
“Right.” She glanced back at her sister’s attire—one of her best summer linen pant suits, pale blue, crisp, and tidy with low-heeled sandals that matched—which meant the news was really, really bad if she was chancing the dust and dirt in Pim’s attic. It was a cramped space at the top of an American foursquare, filled with junk and treasures that may not have been cleaned since the roof went on nearly a hundred years earlier. “As long as you’re up here, come over and help me move this rug out of the way. I think there’s something behind it, but it’s wedged in tight between the floor and that rafter there.”
“That’s not the carpet, is it?” Her face was a wince of disgust as she surveyed the sloppy cylinder of dusty gray and dark blue matting.
“No. I know this one, don’t you? She used it outside for her garden parties, remember?” Janice shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Come help me.”
Janice held out her hands to display the professional Realtor look she had going, then waved her hands at her eyes and nose—which had convenient tendencies to plug, puff up, turn red, and run in the presence of dust, dogs, and fresh-cut grass—then shrugged helplessly. “Want me to try to catch Susan?”
“Oh, come on.” Bonnie climbed over several old beer boxes, a tatted footstool, a copper birdcage, and around the steamer trunk she’d been going through when Janice arrived. “You’re not going to get out of here clean anyway and it’ll only take a sec. Hold your breath.”
“All right, but then you have to listen to me.”
“I’ll have to listen to you anyway, won’t I? Take that end.”
All Janice had to do was push a little at the top of the rolled-up floor covering while Bonnie pulled from the bottom…well, shove hard when she jerked vigorously…okay, ram it with her shoulder as she wrenched with all her might before it fell like a tree in a forest. Dust billowed and they both turned their faces away until the cloud settled.
“Oh, for—”
“Wow. Look at this, Jan.”
Janice turned to see Bonnie straddle-walking the rug they’d just brought down, making her way to a smaller carpet, rolled up and leaning against the wall. Clearly the other carpet had shielded this one from the light and years of grimy neglect because even the outer, downside of this smaller carpet was bright with co
lor.
It came out of its hiding space easily, not even as wide as Bonnie was tall.
“I bet this is it,” she told Janice, excited, feeling like something was finally going right in her life. “Look at the colors. And it’s not huge so it won’t be hard to get it down, and it won’t take up too much space in Pim’s room.”
“You don’t think it’s magic, do you?” There was a tone in her voice that assured Bonnie she would be locked up if she gave the wrong answer.
“Of course not, but if Pim thinks it is and if it helps her rest, that’s magic enough for me.” She settled the carpet lengthwise on the old dusty rug and climbed over both. She guessed she could manage to get it down the steps on her own and wouldn’t risk Janice’s health any further. Letting the lid to the steamer trunk fall back in place, she secured the straps and said, “I guess I can handle some potentially good news now.”
“I’m having an end-of-the-summer dinner party tomorrow night and I want you to come.”
“Boy, that is potentially good news.” Watching her sister curiously, she transferred the smaller carpet over to the top of the steamer trunk. Janice’s parties were always…comfortably elegant and catered, big or small. Still watching her sister suspiciously, Bonnie walked across the attic to her and, without looking away for more than a second, bent and picked up the far end of the big dirty rug and began walking toward the wall, lifting the rug higher and higher until she could push it back where it had been. Janice was looking very guilty; the eye contact was getting to her. “But that isn’t all your news, is it?”
“I invited Joe, too.”
Was that all?
“That’s fine. I keep telling you we don’t hate each other. We’re not even fighting. Neither one of us will make a scene in front of all your guests. I promise.”
“There are no other guests.”
“Jan—”
“The two of you need to deal with this, whatever it is. I don’t get it, but I think it’s gone on long enough. We’ll sit down and hash it out together.”
“Just stay out of it, will you?” She sat on the edge of the dusty old trunk, the carpet behind her. It felt warm against the small of her back. Nice. “Joe and I will work things out, alone. I don’t need you to do any hashing with my marriage, thank you very much.”
“Well, you need something. This much time apart isn’t healthy. You need to talk. You need counseling. You need something. Maybe you just need to go over to that place he’s living at and kick his ass around the room a couple times. That’ll get his attention.”
Bonnie ran a hand over the fine, colorful weave of the carpet, vaguely wondering if it might not be more of a mat than a rug, instinctively recognizing the craftsmanship and its antiquity as something special and rare.
“Maybe I need my own magic carpet,” she said absently, enjoying the soft underbelly of the carpet against the palm of her hand, eager to see if the show side was just as silky. She looked back at her sister, folded her arms across her chest, and tried to concentrate on the moment. “Maybe I should have stayed home the night of Chicky Davis’s birthday party. I sometimes wish I’d never gotten married, you know, and I wonder a lot about how my life would have turned out. Not that I’d ever—”
She watched as Janice’s face slowly elongated, her mouth and eyes stretching to form perfect Os of shock, amazement, and fear.
“Jan?” As she spoke, a shadow crossed her face, something passed between them and the bald lightbulb hanging from the rafters. Something in the room was moving…Bats! came to mind.
But before she could move or cover her hair and her face, darkness enveloped her. It came from above and behind her and fell like a curtain in front of her, leaving daylight on the sides. She stood to escape toward the light, felt a gentle nudge from behind, and fell up against it. At that moment it tipped, like it was going to fall on Janice. Bonnie’s body followed and she screamed…She felt herself falling.
Three
Bonnie braced herself to land flat on her face, bringing her arms in to protect herself, trying to turn to one side, hoping to get her knees up to her chest so…What, she could bounce like a ball?
As illogical as that thought was, so was the fact that she hadn’t landed yet. In fact, she wasn’t falling anymore, she was…floating. She relaxed her arms a little and opened one eye to be sure.
Yep. Floating—like on an air mattress in a swimming pool.
“Jan?”
“Bonnie?”
“Jan?” She straightened her legs and stayed chest down for a minute, then slowly propped herself up on her elbows and looked around.
It was Pim’s rug, soft and bright in some Oriental pattern that was truly lovely or could have been, she thought, if she wasn’t floating on it eight feet off the ground.
“Bonnie?”
Carefully, as the carpet was prone to waffle a bit when she moved, she inched her way over to the edge, took a firm grip on the fringe, and eased her head over the side. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so happy to see her sister.
“Jan?”
“Bonnie, my God, what are you doing?”
“Floating?”
“Well, stop it. Get down from there.”
No need to tell her twice. She moved the rest of her body over, preparing to ease herself over the edge and land on the trunk below. She’d worry about corralling the carpet later. But just as she was about to shift her weight over the side, the rug curled in on itself, flipping Bonnie onto her back so she was staring straight into the rafters.
“I think it likes me.”
“Not funny.”
“Not really meant to be, but it won’t let me off.” And yes, she knew how that sounded, but she didn’t know how else to explain it. She sensed a power or energy from it and remembered the warmth she’d felt earlier. “Maybe you’d better go talk to Pim.”
“Pim?”
Bonnie rolled over and crawled over to the edge again. Janice looked up, impatient, her hands on her hips. She was frazzled and covered with dust, her eyes and nose turning red, hair mussed, her only sister hovering above her on a carpet. And somehow, she still looked like the boss of everything.
“Pim’s the only one who knows anything about this thing.”
“She’s also broken and feeble.”
“Not feeble. She knows about this. She’s been trying to get to it. She can tell you how it works.”
“Like a secret word or something?”
“Yeah. Like…bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!” They both held their breath expectantly.
“Sim sala bim!” Janice pointed her arms out in front of her and wiggled her fingers at the rug.
Nothing.
“Go ask Pim.”
“I’ll call Joe.”
“Joe?”
“And Roger, too. They should both see this. Joe can come to your rescue and you can hug and kiss and make up and then I think we should call both the National Enquirer and Star magazines to start a bidding war for picture rights to this. No one is going to believe it. I wonder if Susan’s gone yet. She can go next door and get the neighbors—We should get as many nonfamily witnesses as possible, I think.”
“I think you need to get a grip down there and go talk to Pim. It’s her carpet. She may not want the whole world to know about it. It was hidden, remember.”
For several seconds Janice looked like she wanted to argue, but all she said was “Well, all right, but take this.” She whipped her cell phone from her pocket and tossed it up onto the rug. “At least call Roger. He’ll get such a kick out of this.”
And off she went, her heels clattering on the steep steps as Bonnie sighed and let her forehead rest on the rug. Someone should get a kick out this, she thought, trying to put it all together in her mind.
A magic carpet. Her sister was right, no one was going to believe it. She didn’t believe it and she was stuck on it. Stuck on a flying carpet…no, it hadn’t actually flown yet.
Maybe all it did was float.
She lifted her head and looked around for Janice’s cell phone. It had slipped down the carpet into the valley her body made and was resting against her thigh. Clutching it in her hand, she heaved her body over to the center of the rug and drew her legs up under her to slowly sit up. She hated feeling helpless and started looking around for escape ideas.
If she stood up, she could easily reach the rafters and maybe get off the rug, but that wasn’t the same as getting herself down. She bucked a little to see if she could get the carpet to scoot forward to one of the columns holding the roof up, so she could stand and perhaps push it to the floor, but all it did was readjust itself to keep her from falling off.
She perceived that as well…that the carpet was taking care of her, keeping her safe. It wouldn’t let her off and it wouldn’t let her fall. To test this, she got to her feet. It wobbled like a table with one slightly shorter leg, then it was steady and sure. She walked from one end to the other, measured it in her mind as approximately five feet by nine feet, and was again struck by the color and vibrant pattern. She jumped on one corner, knowing it could give way and she might fall, but also knowing that it wouldn’t. It held like concrete.
“Okay. I admit it. You’re a really cool carpet,” she said out loud and then laughed because she didn’t know what else to do.
She couldn’t resist a hop to the center to stand like a surfer, bending her knees and swaying as she rode the imaginary crest of a…tsunami. After that, it was high-stepping, and the rug gave gently like one of those inflated moonwalk things they have for kids at picnics and fairs. Finally a high jump, then two, and then she raised her legs and landed softly on her bum, but she didn’t bounce like she would have on a trampoline, not like she hoped she would as she invented and discarded one escape plan after another in her head.