by Warren Adler
She could not stay another minute in her room. She dressed and went downstairs. At the desk she found a message. It was from Eve. ‘Please call me ASAP.’
It was early in the morning, but she called anyway, reaching the disgruntled camp director, who was unco-operative until Ann insisted it was a matter of the utmost urgency.
‘I haven’t heard from either Mom or Dad in three weeks. I’m scared, Ann.’ There was an unmistakable note of hysteria in her voice. ‘Josh is a nervous wreck. We’re worried sick.’
‘They’re probably still on vacation.’
‘I don’t believe that. Why was the telephone disconnected? I even sent them a telegram. It came back stamped "undeliverable." But my mail doesn’t come back.’
‘There,’ Ann said bravely. ‘They didn’t leave a forwarding address. That means they’re not planning to be away long.’
‘I called both grandmas. They haven’t heard from them, either. They’re worried also.’
‘I really don’t think there’s anything to worry about. They just needed to get away and took separate vacations.’
‘I don’t believe that, Ann. I’m sorry.’
Ann’s words hadn’t carried much conviction and she knew it.
‘I intend to come home and see for myself,’ Eve continued.
‘Now, that is really absurd.’ Ann’s lips could barely form the response.
‘Well, then, why don’t they call? Why haven’t they written? Whatever the differences between them, we’re still their children.’ She began to cry as her voice teetered on the edge of panic. Ann felt her own sob begin in her chest. They mustn’t, she begged.
‘I’ll make a deal,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’ll find out where they are and tell them that they have got to call because you’re worried. I’ll call at the end of the day. I promise.’ She needed time to think. And she had to keep them away from that monstrous house.
There was a long pause. She heard Eve’s sniffling.
The agony was real, compelling. She wanted to hold the girl in her arms, comfort her.
‘All right,’ Eve replied, the words carrying an implied ultimatum.
‘Just don’t do anything foolish,’ Ann warned, instantly sorry for what she had said, knowing it would put Eve on alert. ‘Please,’ she added.
‘I’ll wait for your call,’ Eve said, colder now. Ann lingered for some time in the phone booth, her hands shaking. She dreaded going back to that house.
She walked, moving counter to the rush-hour foot traffic, careless in the way she crossed the streets, ignoring the honking horns.
She had no plan. Again she debated calling the police. Had she the right to meddle? Her thoughts were confused. One thing was certain. She would not, ever again, enter that house.
It looked as innocent as ever, its white facade and black shutters glittering in the sunlight. Stepping up to the door, she banged the clapper. Her hands shook. Her heart pounded. As before, there was a long silence. This time she vowed not to be deterred. She persisted, banging at a rhythmic pace, shrilly urgent, a persistent staccato. Sooner or later, they would answer.
When no one answered after twenty minutes, she began to bang the door with her fists.
‘Please,’ she cried. ‘It’s about the children. Please.’
She raised her voice to a scream. Nothing stirred in the neighborhood, which was as quiet and serene as ever. No one ever became involved. Everyone was protected by a big house, walled in. Besides, many of the residents had gone away for the summer, and the buzz of the air conditioners of the occupied houses nearby assured auditory privacy. Everybody was living his own life, unaware of the pain or outrage of others. How little relationship rich people really have to each other, she thought. Every house was a private armored ship in which its occupants steered their own course.
She determined to be relentless. Not to falter. The palm of her hand became numb with pain.
‘I know you’re in there,’ she cried.
Something flashed into her peripheral vision and she looked up suddenly. She saw his face in an upper window through an opening in the drapes. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she stepped backward.
‘Oliver,’ she yelled through cupped hands. She saw him lingering in the shadows.
‘Oliver.’
He moved closer to the window. His face startled her. It was gaunt, bearded, disheveled. His eyes were vague and glazed.
‘The children,’ she shouted. ‘You must call the children.’
Oliver continued to look down at her, uncomprehending. He seemed confused. Indifferent. ‘Your children,’ she cried. His face was chalk-white, expressionless.
‘I’m Ann,’ she cried, feeling foolish.
He nodded slowly, his response unclear. What is happening? An image of ghosts in a haunted house popped into her mind. A scream choked in her throat as she saw Barbara’s face at one of the windows of the third floor. She was smiling benignly, contentedly. Her appearance had altered. Her hair was unkempt, her face gaunt and gray.
‘You must call the children,’ Ann cried, hoping that both of them might hear. She was surprised to see Barbara nod as if she had comprehended. Why did she have to plead for this? Eve and Josh were their children. Their indifference revolted her. Oliver continued to look at her without expression. She saw him lift a wine bottle and take a long drink. Who were these people really? she wondered.
‘Do you understand?’ she called.
Barbara continued to nod, like one of these perpetually nodding little toys. Oliver, watching her impassively, took another swig from the bottle. She felt helpless and inert. Remembering the condition of the house’s interior, she shuddered with anxiety.
The exterior seemed to mock her now. The happy house. She wished it would fall to the ground like the walls of Jericho. It was offensive, unclean, masking ugly secrets. She was disgusted by its clean white facade, its arrogant, aristocratic air. Finally, she turned away, depressed, and began to move off. When she turned again for one last look, they were gone. She had, she assured herself, done her duty. She never wanted to see either them or the house again as long as she lived.
She walked for a long time, trying to comprehend what she had seen. The man in the window was not the man she had loved. Remembering his vague expression, she nevertheless dismissed the idea that he was merely in a drunken stupor. What she had seen went beyond that. And Barbara. So ridiculously contented. She seemed drugged, divorced from reality.
She walked down Twenty-second Street, across Washington Circle, down to the Lincoln Memorial, then onto the bridge and along the bicycle path past the Pentagon. Possessions – what good were they? It was better to own nothing. Possessions carried their own seeds of destruction. Compared to human values, they were worthless gewgaws. Having no possessions made her feel pristine, virtuous. She would own nothing, she decided. As for love, perhaps Barbara was right after all. Love lied, she had said. But to whom?
She was so absorbed in her thoughts she did not notice the sun had set. The impending darkness jogged her memory. She had promised to call Eve and now began to search for a phone. Someone told her there was one along the path, but it was farther than she had expected and she did not reach it until it was dark. She didn’t have the proper change and finally she had to cross the highway on foot to reach the Marriott Motel. A clerk changed a dollar.
Finding a phone, she waited impatiently as Eve was summoned. Then a voice came on the phone that Ann did not recognize.
‘Eve’s gone,’ the voice said in a whisper.
‘Gone?’
‘With Josh.’ There was a long moment of hesitation. ‘Is this Ann?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m Kathy, Eve’s friend. They haven’t noticed that she’s gone yet. She said she’d call you when she got home.’
‘What?’ Ann fought to catch her breath. ‘She was worried about her parents. She took Josh home. They took a one-o’clock bus.’
‘When will that get them to Washington?’
‘About eight.’
‘Why didn’t she wait for my call?’
‘She couldn’t stand it anymore. She had to go see for herself. Every night she cried herself to sleep.’
‘The fools,’ Ann cried into the phone. Kathy gasped. ‘Not you,’ Ann assured her, thanking her and hanging up. She looked at her watch. It was nearly eight-thirty.
Running to the front lobby, she hailed a cab.
‘You’ve got to make this the fastest run ever,’ she told the driver. ‘Please.’
31
On his hands and knees, Oliver groped in the forest of empty bottles. His candles had burned out. His matches were gone. Occasionally he would find a bottle with a few dregs of wine still in it, but never enough for a gulpful.
His frustration gave way to rage and sometimes he would pick up a bottle and smash it against a wall. Occasionally a shard of broken glass would open a cut in his flesh. By now even physical pain was irrelevant. Finally he found a full bottle, uncorked it, and drank. It was tasteless. But that hardly mattered anymore.
What mattered was that his mind continued to focus narrowly on the vision of his mission. He must drive her from his house. Everything else was extraneous and unimportant. As if the image were a distant memory, he recalled seeing a young woman on the street below. An image of warmth, of a soft, yielding, loving body, had flickered briefly in his mind, had forced his recognition of a vague longing, some forgotten need. But his mind was already programmed to reject such thoughts. The only thing to be resolved was Barbara’s whereabouts.
In his mind – was it reality or imagination… or both? – he had heard her moving almost soundlessly in his manmade jungle. At first he thought the soft, padding step was that of Mercedes. It was the same catlike tread. The memory of her crushed and lifeless body floated into his consciousness. Mercedes was gone. Benny was gone. The thought of Benny stimulated a sour, chalky taste in his mouth and he gulped.
He listened. Every tiny movement displayed itself on the kaleidoscopic screen in his mind. So far she had cleverly avoided the matrix he had created. Sooner or later, she would falter and start a chain reaction of destruction. It was only a matter of time.
Taking a deep pull on the bottle, he knew he was trying to drown out reason. Reason was his enemy. Like love. Like devotion. Reason weakened the will. He opened the drapes and looked down into the street again. It was dark now, but he vaguely recalled the woman’s cries. Something about the children, he recalled. The children? This was not their affair. What was happening had nothing to do with them. It was not fair to invoke the children. Hadn’t Goldstein told him that? ‘Go away,’ he shouted to the empty street. He screamed again. ‘Go away.’ But that was meant for Barbara.
Out of the vapor of his thoughts, a girl child emerged in memory. A wave of old anxieties washed over him. Her baby cries tormented him with their helplessness. He had not the courage to let her cry. He, the father. He had explained that to Barbara once. They owed this child their protection, their shelter, their warmth. She had protested his spoiling Eve but had moved in their bed to make room for the baby. They held her between them, loving, warm. Now she is safe, he told her.
Then Josh had come. A boy in his image. In their image. Now we have a complete family, he had said, or surely must have said. Barbara had agreed or seemed to agree. They were pictures in his mind, the four of them against the world. Husband. Wife. Son. Daughter. Family.
He had created a fort to protect them. This house.
‘You just don’t matter anymore,’ she had told him, as if she were throwing the first handful of dirt on his coffin. ‘Not to me.’
‘You could have told me that years ago, before you let me build this life.’ Perhaps he had responded that way. He was no longer sure. A jumbled conversation surfaced in his mind.
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Didn’t know?’
‘I was blinded by love.’
‘Blinded? Does love blind?’
‘Yes.’
Well, then, it blinded me as well, he shouted within himself. How dare she take away my life? My whole life. My family. But the house was his. His. She would never get that. Never, never, never, never.
It was a pustule. He could not keep his fingers from it. It itched. He scratched. He wanted to tear it open and let the pus run out and free himself at last.
Sounds intruded – the squeal of tires, the throb of a car’s motor. He looked through the drapes and saw the outlines of the cab in the muted light of the street lamp. Familiar, shadowy figures emerged. A girl and a boy. They stood looking at the house as the taxi pulled away. His mouth opened, but he could not find words. Instead he stepped away from the window. The closed drapes plunged the room into darkness again. He moved backward, losing his balance as his feet hit the bottles. Reaching out, a wall supported his weight. He cowered in a corner, hoping that they would go away. On his knees he prayed, looking upward. To whom was he praying? he wondered.
‘God help me,’ lie whispered, trying to get up. His body wanted to hang back, stay in that safe corner. He heard the beating of the knocker, rhythmical, persistent. The chimes had died. Still he hung back. Perhaps they would go away. Rising now, he listened.
The knocking sound disappeared. Silence. Then a new chorus began, a persistent clarion in a stormy night.
‘Mom. Dad. It’s us.’
Who are they? he thought.
The knocking began again, drowning out their voices.
He heard faint whispers, then a metallic sound and the thing that he had vaguely dreaded became a reality. The door was opening.
He sprang out of the room, but his footing was unsure, made more so by the broken figures in his path. He lost his balance and fell. Through the brass slats in the banister, he saw the door open and heard the children’s screams as they fell on the slick surface, struggled upward, then fell again, groping toward the stairs.
‘Go back.’ The words formed, then burst through the din. They stumbled forward.
‘Go back. Please.’
It was not his voice. Barbara’s. He saw her on the landing above him, looking down, her face frightened, terror-stricken.
‘Mom.’
Their voices rose in tandem. Seeing her, they stumbled forward, their hands tearing at the stair carpet for balance. They untacked carpet gave way and the cast-iron pots began their avalanche with a clanging roar as they rolled forward. The clock chimes, too, began suddenly, booming out in an abrasive rhythm, vibrating in the air. Pictures fell off the walls. Eve and Josh pressed themselves against each other, just managing to escape the falling pots.
‘Go back,’ Barbara screamed, her voice shrill, panicked. She lowered her eyes to his, imploring.
‘Save them, Oliver. Our children.’
Her sobs stirred him and, for the first time since the nightmare began, he saw the old softness, the other Barbara.
‘Our children,’ he repeated, swallowing deeply, desperately trying to clear his mind. Time compressed itself. They looked at each other for what seemed like an endless moment. He sensed what had passed between them at Chatham years before. Perhaps it was still there, after all. Were her eyes begging for what he yearned for -another chance?
Eve and Josh started to move. The clock continued its interminable clanging. More objects fell. Then Barbara’s scream echoed and re-echoed through the house, above all other sounds. She had inadvertently moved too close to the banister, which had fallen into the chandelier well to the floor below. Barbara had lost her balance and now was hanging precariously over the unprotected ledge, dangling two stories above the floor.
‘Hold on,’ Oliver shouted. ‘I’m coming.’
He called to the children, ‘Get out. Please. I’ll save her. Just get out of the house.’ The scrambled forward, slipping amid the litter, and made their way out the open door. They stood outside, peering in, their frightened faces taut with fear.
‘Hang on, Barbara. Just for a moment. Hang on, baby.’
His heart pounded. He moved to the balcony’s edge, calculated die distance to the chandelier, flexed his knees, and jumped. Reaching out, he grasped the heavy chain, and with his feet on the metal rungs of the chandelier, he shimmied up to a point parallel to where Barbara hung. Forcing the chandelier to swing like a pendulum, he made a wide arc. Then, after a number of too-short passes, he finally reached the ledge and gripped it.
‘Steady, baby,’ he cried, reaching out with his free hand to brace her faltering grip. ‘I can’t…’ she mumbled.
‘Yes, you can,’ he said firmly. He heard a creaking sound above him. The chandelier seemed to bounce. ‘Hold out one hand and grab my forearm.’ She shook her head.
‘No, Oliver.’ She was sobbing, hysterical.
‘You must listen to me,’ he pleaded.
Again she shook her head, but it was obvious her strength was giving out, and he had to pry loose her grip. In a reflex action, she reached out with the other hand and held him in a tight embrace as her weight was transferred to the chandelier. The creaking sound above them increased and the chandelier bounced again.
He had barely time to look up. Then he felt the chandelier slip beneath him. He was falling, Barbara with him, and above, in slower motion, he saw the ceiling open up like an earthquake fissure in reverse. There was no time to scream. He gripped Barbara tighter. Everything was coming down at once. As he fell, looking upward, he wondered if he would soon see the sky.
32
Ann heard the crashing sound just as the cab had pulled away from the curb. She stood rooted to the sidewalk, watching a cloud of dust float out from the open entrance door. Her legs would not propel her forward.
She saw the children standing in the dust cloud, looking at the house. Dust had begun to settle on their faces and their hair. They looked like apparitions. She called their names. They turned toward her, their eyes glazed with terror. Tears were running in rivulets down their dusty cheeks. Then they turned away and suddenly started to move toward the open door.