by Anne Rice
“Michael … ” It wasn’t just disapproval in her voice, it was disappointment.
“I know, I know,” he said. “Everything you’re saying is right. Look, you don’t know what you’ve done for me, just getting me out the front door, just listening to me. I want to do what you’re telling me to do … ”
“Tell me more about this house,” she said.
He was thoughtful again, before beginning. “It was the Greek Revival style-do you know what that is? – but it was different. It had porches on the front and on the sides, real New Orleans porches. It’s hard to describe a house like that to someone who’s never been in New Orleans. Have you ever seen pictures-?”
She shook her head. “It was a subject Ellie couldn’t talk about,” she said.
“That sounds unfair, Rowan.”
She shrugged.
“No, but really.”
“Ellie wanted to believe I was her own daughter. If I asked about my biological parents, she thought I was unhappy, that she hadn’t loved me enough. Useless to try to get those ideas out of her head.” She drank a little of the coffee. “Before her last trip to the hospital she burned everything in her desk. I saw her doing it. She burned it all in that fireplace. Photographs, letters, all sorts of things. I didn’t realize it was everything. Or maybe I just didn’t think about it, one way or the other. She knew she wasn’t coming back.” She stopped for a minute, then poured a little more coffee in her cup and in Michael’s cup.
“Then after she died, I couldn’t even find an address for her people down there. Her lawyer didn’t have a scrap of information. She’d told him she didn’t want anyone down there to be contacted. All her money went to me. Yet she used to visit the people in New Orleans. She used to call them on the phone. I could never quite figure it all out.”
“That’s too sad, Rowan.”
“But we’ve talked enough about me. About this house again. What is it that makes you remember it now?”
“Oh, houses there aren’t like the houses here,” he said. “Each house has a personality, a character. And this one, well, it’s somber and massive, and sort of splendidly dark. It’s built right on the corner, part of it touching the sidewalk of the side street. God knows I loved that house. There was a man who lived there, a man right out of a Dickens novel, I swear it, tall and sort of consummately gentlemanly, if you know what I mean. I used to see him in the garden … ” He hesitated; something coming so close to him, something so crucial-
“What’s the matter?”
“Just that feeling again, that it’s all got to do with him and that house.” He shuddered as if he were cold, but he wasn’t. “I can’t figure it out,” he said. “But I know the man has something to do with it. I don’t think they did mean for me to forget, the people I saw in the visions. I think they meant for me to act fast, because something’s going to happen.”
“What could that something be?” she asked gently.
“Something in that house,” he said.
“Why would they want you to go back to that house?” she asked. Again, the question was gentle, not challenging.
“Because I have a power to do something there; I have a power to affect something.” He looked down at his hands, so sinister in the black gloves. “Again, it was like everything fitted together. Imagine the whole world made up of tiny fragments-and suddenly a great many of those tiny fragments are lights and you see a … a … ”
“Pattern?”
“Yeah, exactly, a pattern. Well, my life has been part of a greater pattern.” He drank another swallow of the coffee. “What do you think? Am I insane?”
She shook her head. “It sounds too special for that.”
“Special?”
“I mean specific.”
He gave a little startled laugh. No one in all these weeks had said anything like that to him.
She crushed out the cigarette.
“Have you thought about that house often, in the past few years?”
“Almost never,” he said. “I never forgot it, but I never thought about it much either. Oh, now and then, I suppose whenever I thought about the Garden District, I’d think about it. You could say it was a haunting place.”
“But the obsession didn’t begin until the visions.”
“Definitely,” he said. “There are other memories of home, but the memory of the house is the most intense.”
“Yet when you think of the visions, you don’t remember speaking of the house … ”
“Nothing so clear as that. Although … ” There it was again, the feeling. But he feared the power of suggestion suddenly. It seemed all the misery of the last few months was coming back. Yet it felt good to be believed by her, to be listening to her. And he liked her easy air of command, the first characteristic of her he had noticed the night before.
She was looking at him, looking just as if she was listening still though he had ceased to speak. He thought about these strange vagrant powers, how utterly they confused things, rather than clarifying them.
“So what’s wrong with me?” he asked. “I mean as a doctor, as a brain doctor, what do you think? What should I do? Why do I keep seeing that house and that man? Why do I feel I ought to be there now?”
She sank into thought, silent, motionless, her gray eyes large and fixed on some point beyond the glass, her long, slender arms again folded. Then she said:
“Well, you should go back there, there’s no doubt of that. You aren’t going to rest easy till you do. Go look for the house. Who knows? Maybe it’s not there. Or you won’t have any special feeling when you see it. In any case, you should look. There may be some psychological explanation for this idée fixe, as they call it, but I don’t think so. I suspect you saw something all right, you went somewhere. We know many people do that, at least they claim they did when they come back. But you might be putting the wrong interpretation on it.”
“I don’t have much to go on,” he admitted. “That’s true.”
“Do you think they caused the accident?”
“God, I never really thought of that.”
“You didn’t?”
“I mean I thought, well, the accident happened, and they were there, and suddenly the opportunity was there. That would be awful, to think they caused it to happen. That would change things, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know. What bothers me is this. If they are powerful, whatever they are, if they could tell you something important with regard to a purpose, if they could keep you alive out there when you should have died, if they could work a rescue into it, well, then why couldn’t they have caused the accident, and why couldn’t they be causing your memory loss now?”
He was speechless.
“You really never thought of that?”
“It’s an awful thought,” he whispered. She started to speak again, but he asked her with a little polite gesture to wait. He was trying to find the words for what he wanted to say. “My concept of them is different,” be said. “I’ve trusted that they exist in another realm; and that means spiritually as well as physically. That they are … ”
“Higher beings?”
“Yes. And that they could only come to me, know of me, care about me, when I was close to them, between life and death. It was mystical, that’s what I’m trying to say. But I wish I could find another word for it. It was a communication that happened only because I was physically dead.”
She waited.
“What I mean is, they’re another species of being. They couldn’t make a man fall off a rock and drown in the sea. Because if they could do such things in the material world, well, why on earth would they need me?”
“I see your point,” she said. “Nevertheless … ”
“What?”
“You’re assuming they’re higher beings. You speak of them as if they’re good. You’re assuming that you ought to do what they want of you.”
Again, he was speechless.
“Look, maybe I don’t know what I’
m talking about,” she said.
“No, I think you do,” he answered. “And you’re right. I have assumed all that. But Rowan, you see, it’s a matter of impression. I awoke with the impression that they were good, that I’d come back with the confirmation of their goodness, and that the purpose was something I’d agreed to do. And I haven’t questioned those assumptions. And what you’re saying is, maybe I should.”
“I could be wrong. And maybe I shouldn’t say anything. But you know what I’ve been telling you about surgeons. We go in there swinging, and not with a fist, but with a knife.”
He laughed. “You don’t know how much it means to me just to talk about it, just to think about it out loud.” But then he stopped smiling. Because it was very disturbing to be talking about it like this, and she knew that.
“And there’s another thing,” she said.
“Which is?”
“Every time you talk about the power in your hands, you say it’s not important. You say the visions are what’s important. But why aren’t they connected? Why don’t you believe that the people in the visions gave you the power in your hands?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve thought of that. My friends have even suggested that. But it doesn’t feel right. It feels like the power is a distraction. I mean people around me here want me to use the power, and if I were to start doing that, I wouldn’t go back.”
“I see. And when you see this house, you’ll touch it with your hands?”
He thought for a long moment. He had to admit he had not imagined such a thing. He had imagined a more immediate and wonderful clarification of things. “Yeah, I guess I will. I’ll touch the gate if I can. I’ll go up the steps and I’ll touch the door.”
Why did that frighten him? Seeing the house meant something wonderful, but touching things … He shook his head, and folded his arms as he sat back in the chair. Touch the gate. Touch the door. Of course they might have given him the power, but why did he think that they hadn’t? Especially if it was all of a piece …
She was quiet, obviously puzzled, maybe even worried. He watched her for a long moment, thinking how much he hated to leave.
“Don’t go so soon, Michael,” she said suddenly.
“Rowan, let me ask you something,” he said. “This paper you signed, this pledge never to go to New Orleans. Do you believe in that sort of thing, I mean, the validity of this promise to Ellie, to a person who’s dead?”
“Of course I do,” she answered dully, almost sadly. “You believe in that sort of thing, too.”
“I do?”
“I mean you’re an honorable person. You’re what we call, with great significance, a nice guy.”
“OK. I hope I am. And I put my question wrong. I mean, what about your desire to see the place where you were born? But I’m lying to you now, you know, because what I want to say is, is there any chance you’ll come back there with me? And I guess a nice guy doesn’t tell lies.”
Silence.
“I know that sounds presumptuous,” he said. “I know there’ve been quite a few men in this house, I mean I’m not the light of your life, I … ”
“Stop it. I could fall in love with you and you know it.”
“Well, then listen to what I’m saying, because it is about two living people. And maybe I’ve already … well, I … what I mean is, if you want to go back there, if you need to go back just to see for yourself where you were born and who your parents were … Well, why the hell don’t you come with me?” He sighed and sat back, shoving his hands in his pants pockets. “I suppose that would be an awfully big step, wouldn’t it? And all this is selfish of me. I just want you to come. Some nice guy.”
She was staring off again, frozen, then her mouth stiffened. And he realized she was again about to cry. “I’d like to go,” she said. The tears were rising.
“God, Rowan, I’m sorry,” he said. “I had no right to ask.”
The tears won out. She continued to look out towards the water, as if that were the only way to hold the line for the moment. But she was crying, and he could see the subtle movement of her throat as she swallowed, and the tightening in her shoulders. The thought flashed through him that this was the most alone person he’d ever known. California was full of them, but she was really isolated, and in a purely unselfish way, he was afraid for her, afraid to leave her in this house.
“Look, Rowan, I really am sorry. I can’t do this to you,” he said. “It’s between you and Ellie. When you get ready to go, you’ll go. And for now, I have to do it for totally different reasons. I’ve got to get out of here, and I hate like hell to go.”
The tears had begun to spill down her cheeks again.
“Rowan … ”
“Michael,” she whispered. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m the one who’s fallen in your arms. Now, stop worrying about me.”
“No, don’t say it.” He started to get up, because he wanted to hug her again, but she wouldn’t allow it. She reached for his hand across the table and held it.
Gently he spoke to her: “If you don’t think I loved it, holding you, wiping your tears, well then you’re not using your powers, Rowan. Or you just don’t understand a man like me.”
She shivered, arms tight across her chest, her bangs falling down in her eyes. She looked so forlorn he wanted to gather her to himself and kiss her again.
“What are you afraid of, really?” he asked.
When she answered, she spoke in a whisper, so low that he could scarcely hear. “That I’m bad, Michael, a bad person, a person who could really do harm. A person with a terrible potential for evil. That is what all my powers, such as they are, tell me about me.”
“Rowan, it wasn’t a sin to be a better person than Ellie or Graham. And it isn’t a sin to hate them for your loneliness, for rearing you in a state of isolation from every blood tie you might have.”
“I know all that, Michael.” She smiled, a warm sweet smile full of gratitude and quiet acceptance, but she did not trust the things he’d said. She felt that he had failed to see something crucial about her, and he knew it. She felt that he had failed, just as he failed on the deck of the boat. She looked out at the deep blue water and then back at him.
“Rowan, no matter what happens in New Orleans, you and I are going to see each other again, and soon. I could swear to you now on a stack of Bibles that I’ll be back here, but in truth, I don’t think I ever will. I knew when I left Liberty Street I wasn’t ever going to live there again. But we’re going to meet somewhere, Rowan. If you can’t set foot in New Orleans, then you pick the place, and you say the word, and I’ll come.”
Take that, you bastards out there, he thought looking at the water, and up at the dirty blue California sky, you creatures whoever you are that did this to me, and won’t come back to guide me. I’ll go to New Orleans, I’ll follow where you lead. But there is something here between me and this woman, and that belongs to me.
She wanted to drive him to the airport, but he insisted on taking a cab. It was just too long a drive for her, and she was tired, he knew it. She needed her sleep.
He showered and shaved. He hadn’t had a drink now in almost twelve hours. Truly amazing.
When he came down he found her sitting with her legs folded, on the hearth again, looking very pretty in white wool pants and another one of those great swallowing cable-knit sweaters that made her look all the more long-wristed and long-legged and delicate as a deer. She smelled faintly of some perfume he used to know the name of, and which he still loved.
He kissed her cheek, and then held her for a long moment. Eighteen years, maybe more than that, separated him in age from her and he felt it painfully, felt it when he let his lips again graze her firm, plump cheek.
He gave her a slip of paper on which he’d written down the name of the Pontchartrain Hotel and the number. “How can I reach you at the hospital, or is that not the right thing to do?”
“No, I want you to do that. I pick up my me
ssages all day, at intervals.” She went to the kitchen counter and wrote out the numbers on the telephone pad, tore off the page, and put it in his hand. “Just raise hell if they give you any trouble. Tell them I’m expecting your call. And I’ll tell them.”
“Gotcha.”
She stood back a pace from him, slipping her hands in her pockets, and she lowered her head slightly as she looked at him. “Don’t get drunk again, Michael,” she said.
“Yes, Doctor.” He laughed. “And I could stand right here and tell you I was going to take the pledge, honey, but somehow or other the minute that stewardess … ”
“Michael, don’t drink on the plane and don’t drink when you get there. You’re going to be bombarded with memories. You’re going miles away from anybody you know.”
He shook his head. “You’re right, Doc,” he said. “I’ll be careful. I’ll be all right.”
He went to his suitcase, took out his Sony Walkman from the zipper pocket, and checked that he had remembered to bring a book for the plane.
“Vivaldi,” he said, slipping the Walkman with its tiny earphones into his jacket pocket. “And my Dickens. I go nuts when I fly without them. It’s better than Valium and vodka, I swear.”
She smiled at him, the most exquisite smile, and then she laughed. “Vivaldi and Dickens,” she whispered. “Imagine that.”
He shrugged. “We all have our weaknesses,” he said. “God, why am I leaving like this?” he asked. “Am I crazy?”
“If you don’t call me this evening … ”
“I’ll call you, sooner and more often than you could possibly expect.”
“The taxi’s there,” she said.
He had heard the horn, too.
He took her in his arms, kissing her, crushing her to him. And for one moment, he almost couldn’t pull away. He thought of what she’d said again, about them causing the accident, causing the amnesia, and a dark chill went through him, something like real fear. What if he forgot about them, forever, what if he just stayed here with her? It seemed a possibility, a last chance of sorts, it really did.