Tightrope Walker

by Dorothy Gilman

  “I don’t know.”

  “You happen to be the first,” he said, and we stared at each other across a vast chasm. “I don’t get it, I honestly don’t get it,” he said furiously, “but I hope you enjoy your damn trip very much.” Giving me a glance to match his voice he stalked out of the shop and closed the door so hard the bells hanging over it kept clanging and jangling for a full minute.

  Well, of course I’d known it would have to happen. I’d really been expecting it, hadn’t I? A part of me whispered, ‘Hurry–run after him and say you’ll go’ but I only stood there, feeling numb. This was the thing about people: they either rejected you or they swallowed you up, and you couldn’t be your own self. If you tried to be yourself, if you asserted, they went away, which is what my mother had always done to punish me, so why not Joe? I had long ago learned anyway that everything I became attached to either went away, changed, or died. Suddenly all my inadequacies rose in me like vomit. I felt guilt at daring to do what I wanted, bruised at hurting Joe and, worst of all, a crushing fear that I might be losing my mind over what could only be an insane search for a dead woman.

  Frightened, I reached for a sweater and locked the door of the shop, knowing that this time I was going to Amman Singh as a supplicant, a beggar of alms. I hadn’t seen him for a week; there was so much to tell him and so much I wanted from him. Whatever it was I wanted it badly.

  The smell of curry and spices hung in the air outside his door. He was mercifully alone, except for the ubiquitous relatives whom I could hear poking about in the kitchen, talking in low voices. After five flights of stairs I said breathlessly, “Amman Singh, I have to talk to you. Please?”

  “I have been expecting you,” he said courteously, and gestured me to sit down beside him.

  I sat facing him, my legs crossed under me. “I think I have to tell this like a story.”

  He nodded. “You know I enjoy stories.”

  I told him about the hurdy-gurdy and about the note I’d found inside of it, and I told him about the people I’d visited and met since I last saw him. Only when I’d finished did I look at him, and I saw that he had closed his eyes to listen. I remembered his saying once that it wasn’t just to the words he listened, but to what lay behind them, and I wondered what nuances and inflections he heard in my voice to give away my loneliness, my doubts and my sudden terror. I pleaded, “Amman Singh, why am I doing this? Is it destructive? Am I right to do this?”

  “Right?” he repeated. “Right?”

  “I don’t understand myself, I don’t understand this—this need, this compulsion. Hannah surely has to be dead by now.”

  He was silent for a long time and then he opened his eyes. He reached out for my hand and touched it; his grasp felt dry and cool, scarcely flesh at all. “Please,” he said.

  “Please what?”

  “When the wind frees the seed from the flower,” he said, “and the seed is driven on the breeze across the fields it is not compulsion. The seed is obeying laws we cannot see or know. Trust the wind. One day you will understand.”

  “But will I find her?” I asked.

  He said, “You will find something.”

  “But it’s Hannah I must find!” I cried.

  He looked at me and his smile was tender. “Is it?” he asked softly. “Is it?”

  I felt better after leaving Amman Singh, although I didn’t understand what he meant, not then at least. But he had said I would find something, and since I had just lost Joe that was better than nothing. Still, it was astonishing how impoverished and dull my life suddenly looked without Joe. I had thought I’d found a friend. Until now I’d had only one friend, except that I’d never had any illusions about the bond between Shirley Newcomb and me in junior high school. Shirley had been as fat as I was scrawny, and just as unnoticed. We were united only in our envy of cheerleaders, by our invisibility to everyone in our classes, and our penchant for flunking algebra. I’d never brought her home with me; at best it had been a sickly friendship and when, in our freshman year at high school, she and her family moved away it was almost a relief. After all, we’d never had anything in common but our deficiencies. It seemed kinder to face loneliness alone.

  But a grayness, a lack of sun, hung over everything like smog the next day. I tried to go back in time to my life before I met Joe; I tried reliving my gratitude at finding the Ebbtide Shop, and my excitement over buying it, but Joe stood there like a wall, dividing the two worlds. Finding Hannah’s note in the hurdy-gurdy had brought him into my life and now, with equal dispatch, it had removed him. How treacherous fate was!

  On Wednesday afternoon the truck brought my goods from New York and in a fury of work I rearranged the shop’s window display, and then I stayed up until midnight painting the last wall of the shop, which I’d been too busy to finish a month ago. I draped a few lengths of the Indian fabric across one wall in a great colorful swath, laid out the blue willow ware, and hung price tags on the line of cuckoo clocks.

  On Thursday, after dinner, I dialed Joe’s telephone number just to hear his voice, planning to hang up as soon as he answered. I was denied even that: there was no answer. I called again at midnight, out of some perverse anger, and still there was no answer. Obviously he was finding solace elsewhere: a woman, I thought darkly, and one more amenable than I.

  Not entirely sure what “amenable” really meant I looked it up in the dictionary and found that it meant exactly what I’d thought it meant: capable of submission to test, readily brought to yield or to submit. Unamenable Amelia, I thought with grim humor, and lay in bed staring at the ceiling and hearing my mother saying from her grave, “You see?”

  That did it. The next day, Friday, I arose sane, if grief can be called a form of insanity. Joe had come and Joe had gone: never mind, the sun had still risen, I was twenty-two and I had promises to keep. To Hannah. Mr. Georgerakis stopped in at noon to be shown where everything was, and he displayed his usual deadpan self.

  “Miss Jones, I worry about you,” he said. “This is the Ebbtide Shop, or maybe Macy’s?”

  “Ebbtide,” I said, playing straight man as usual.

  “I would never have known.” He shook his head. “Watch your profits, Miss Jones, in this business it’s in pennies, not dollars. Those clocks—”

  “Twelve of them for fifty bucks at the auction,” I told him proudly. “I’m selling them for nine ninety-five.”

  “Not bad,” he admitted, “but that hearse outside with Ebbtide Shop painted on the side—”

  “Not a hearse, Mr. Georgerakis, a van.”

  “It could bury you from what it must have cost. Watch out or I’ll charge you twelve dollars a day for my services. Where’s the old jukebox?”

  He whistled faintly when I told him the price I’d gotten for it. We shared a cup of coffee and then he patted my hand and said the shop looked just like me, sunny and bright and cheerful. Since I’d just climbed out of the black hole of Calcutta I was inordinately pleased by the compliment.

  “See you tomorrow at eight,” he said. “It will be a pleasure.”

  Tomorrow at eight … I remembered what that meant—Portland, Maine—and nearly panicked. I had to reread Hannah’s note three times before my sense of mission was restored and my anxieties banished; my safety zones were being pounded against rocks by a heavy surf. I packed blue jeans, a heavy turtleneck sweater, my windbreaker, pajamas, and toothbrush, and at eight o’clock in the morning I greeted Mr. Georgerakis wearing my ubiquitous beige corduroy suit, this time enlivened by a pink and orange scarf. Half an hour later when I carried my suitcase out to the alley where the van was parked at night I stopped dead in my tracks in shock. Joe was leaning against the side of the van.

  “Hi,” he said cheerfully. “If you’d only left this monster of yours unlocked I’d have stowed away and shouted ‘boo’ to you along about Massachusetts. But you locked the darn thing, and anyway I’d have only scared you to death and killed us both.”

  I stared at him
, not understanding a single word he said.

  Fortunately he chose to be more explicit. “I’m going with you to Maine,” he said, pointing to a dufflebag at his feet that I hadn’t noticed in my shock. “Unless you mind?”

  “Mind!” I gasped. “But your parents!”

  He said with a shrug, “No problem. I drove down Wednesday to wish them another thirty-five years of connubial bliss and got back last night. Told them I just couldn’t make it over the weekend for the big event.”

  I must have looked as dazed as I felt—after all, I’d lost him, attended the funeral services, mourned him and buried him by now—because he added patiently, “Look, Amelia, if Hannah’s top priority for you right now I’ll make her mine, too, but only for a little while, you understand? For that matter I may have to be back here Wednesday for a court case but I’m yours until then. I think this is what’s called compromise.”

  I could have told him that it was also generosity but I only grinned from ear to ear and said, “I’m so awfully glad to see you, Joe. Would you like to drive first, or shall I?”

  PART II

  “Beware all greedy men, Colin, for who knows where they will stop? If they envy you your fine pendant of jade and feathers, who’s to know if they will bargain for it, snatch it, or kill you?”

  The Magistrate, in The Maze in the Heart of the Castle

  6

  There was no Greenwood Hospital in Portland but there was a private psychiatric hospital five miles out of town called Greenacres. It was a gently aging building of rosy brick surrounded by improbably green lawns, like Astroturf, except that they had to be real because a man was mowing to the south of the building. I swung the van into the parking space labeled VISITORS ONLY and turned off the ignition. “So,” I said brightly, “we’re here.”

  “We’re here, and it’s all yours,” Joe reminded me, pointedly bringing out his paperback copy of Astronomy for the Layman. “Good luck, bon voyage and all that.”

  He said the last very dryly because we’d talked and argued for several hours about how I was going to get inside to see Leonora Harrington if she was here; we’d phoned to learn the Sunday visiting hours but we’d not dared ask if she was a patient. It was Joe’s theory that in any private hospital, considering its astonomical costs, no one was going to allow a presumptuous and impertinent young stranger to bother a patient without a darn good reason. Unfortunately neither of us had been able to think of one.

  And so it was up to me. Naturally.

  I walked up the wide, shallow cement steps to the huge door, half wood, half glass. Looking in before I entered I could see that it looked just like any hospital: there was a brightly lighted reception counter on the left, with clipboards and a switchboard, and a waiting room on the right. The only difference was that the reception counter was Italian marble and mahogany, and the waiting room was done in shades of mauve, purple and pink. Sunday visiting hours began at two o’clock, and since it was now two-ten the waiting room was empty, the only person in sight a nurse in very starched white behind the counter. She looked young, earnest, and new.

  I said politely, “Good afternoon, I’ve come to see Miss Leonora Harrington if she’s receiving visitors today.”

  The girl’s friendly smile turned startled. “Miss Harrington?”

  “Yes. Unless of course she’s—”

  “Oh no, it’s just she never has—” The girl stopped, flushed, and began again. “That is, usually no one except—I’ll have to check it out, would you mind waiting a minute?”

  She was even more inarticulate than I at my worst.

  A very severe-looking middle-aged nurse was produced next, who proved to be more articulate. “I’m Mrs. Dawes,” she announced. “Are you a member of Miss Harrington’s family?”

  Hers was the cold voice of authority, and her gaze was sharp enough to strip a person of pretensions, illusions, and confidence. I am very familiar with the type: they like helpless people and rendering people helpless, and I saw no reason to frustrate her. “Oh I do so hope I can see her for just a minute,” I said, turning arch, naïve, and awkward. “I have no right, of course—not at all—but her cousin Robert Lamandale in New York referred me here. It’s a legal matter,” I added, gesturing helplessly. “It’s so important that she identify this photograph of a hurdy-gurdy.”

  This floored her. “A what?”

  I produced the snapshots and placed them on the counter. “I wouldn’t for the world want to be a bother and of course you’ve every right—”

  I’ve noticed that if someone is about to tell you that you’ve no right to do something it confuses them no end if you say it first. The hurdy-gurdy confused her, too; I mean, it had the unexpectedness of a non sequitur. I do not mean to imply that Mrs. Dawes warmed to me but she blinked, and her gaze changed in quality from flint to steel. “You do know Mr. Lamandale then,” she said.

  “Yes. Robert Lamandale, in New York. The actor.”

  “Dr. Ffolks is in his office,” she said coldly. “I really don’t know—”

  No one seemed to finish their sentences here, but I was content; I often don’t finish them myself. I stood there trying to look poised, since I was here on a legal matter, and at the same time helpless, to placate Nurse Dawes. It was a difficult combination. Presently a man in a white coat accompanied Mrs. Dawes down the hall to inspect me. He looked very tired and all the lines in his face sagged, including his jowls, which gave him an uncanny resemblance to a St. Bernard dog. He nodded to me curtly. “Nurse Jordan will of course have to accompany you for the visit,” he said, “and it will have to be limited to five minutes. Miss Harrington’s under sedation but she’s quite lucid. Miss Jordan?”

  “Yes, Dr. Ffolks,” said the young nurse. “This way, miss.”

  I was glad I’d decided on the truth since I was to have a witness to my interview. Both Dr. Ffolks and Mrs. Dawes stood and watched us walk to the elevator and then lingered to eavesdrop frankly while we waited for its arrival. I commented breathlessly to Nurse Jordan on the signs of spring in Maine, the greenness of the lawn outside, and then we stepped into the elevator and at once I stopped such nonsense and asked how long Miss Harrington had lived at Greenacres.

  “Oh, practically forever,” said Nurse Jordan cheerfully. “She was here when my mum worked nights, and that was eight years ago when we were all kids.”

  “Weird,” I said, and we exchanged the knowing glances of contemporaries.

  “They say she drank all her money away,” Nurse Jordan added in a lowered voice as the elevator slowed. “They say she’s paranoid, too, but I’ve never—”

  The doors slid open soundlessly at the third floor and we stepped out on a corridor with windows at either end. Miss Jordan knocked on the door opposite the elevator, opened it, and I followed her into a room with its curtains half drawn against the sunlight.

  “I didn’t ring,” said a petulant voice from the left-hand corner of the room, “and if you dare to say are we having one of our bad days I’ll throw a glass of water at you.”

  “But I’ve brought you a guest,” Nurse Jordan said in a neutral, colorless voice.

  In the bed along the left wall of the room a woman stirred, sat up, and peered at me. Adjusting to the semidarkness I could see her now. It was hard to guess how old she was, she could have been thirty or forty; her face was an oval from which all emotion and life had been drained. Only her eyes were alive, and they burned like the eyes of someone who looked frequently into hell. She must have been beautiful once, one of those fragile and very exquisite ash blondes; the bone structure was still there. Her hair, striped now with gray, hung to her shoulders but it looked as if she ran her fingers through it often, and with anger. Seeing me she tilted her head questioningly.

  “This is Miss Jones,” said Nurse Jordan. “She’s a friend of your cousin, come to see you. Your cousin in New York.”

  Miss Harrington’s face brightened. She said eagerly, “Robin? You’ve seen Robin?”

 
Robin. I was so startled I almost jumped. Robin—and her name was Leonora. Of course—Robin and Nora! It was like panning for gold and suddenly bringing up a fortune-sized nugget; I found it hard to suppress my excitement but I said calmly, “Yes, and he’s just auditioned for a part in an important play in New York. He sent his best to you, and he said it was all right to ask you about this.”

  I placed the two pictures of the hurdy-gurdy on her bed table. She turned on the bedside light and leaned over to peer at them.

  “Oh my God,” she said softly, tears coming to her eyes. “Oh my God, Aunt Hannah’s hurdy-gurdy. How we loved it as children!”

  “Your aunt Hannah,” I repeated carefully, really excited now but not wanting to frighten her. Matching the softness of her voice I added, “Was her name Harrington, too?”

  But she was staring at the snapshots, bemused, the tears sliding down her haggard cheeks and splotching the pictures.

  “Your cousin Robin said that it was your hurdy-gurdy later, that you owned it for a while,” I pointed out. “Is that true? I’m trying to trace it, you see. It was yours at one time?”

  She nodded. “I kept it … I chose it … as a souvenir, you know—after everything went. Everything. Oh, I hated selling it but I needed the money,” she said with sudden anger.

  I said quickly, aware of my limited time with her, “Where did you and Robin play with the hurdy-gurdy, Miss Harrington? I mean, where did your aunt live?”

  “In Carleton.”

  “Carleton, Maine?”

  She nodded absently; her eyes were looking far beyond the pictures into a past she’d lost.

  “And your aunt Hannah’s last name, was it Harrington, too? Or perhaps Lamandale?”

  She wrenched her gaze from the pictures and stared at me in astonishment. “Of course not—Hannah Meerloo. Why didn’t you know that?” she asked suspiciously. “She ought to have known that,” she told the nurse pettishly. “I don’t like her, I don’t like her asking me questions and making me cry. Take her away or I’ll call Dr. Ffolks.”