She was struggling into a sitting position when Mrs. Bates came in with the glass of water.
“Feeling better?”
“Yes, thank you.” She drank some of the water. “I’ve been having these fainting spells. They only last a minute, then I’m all right.” She handed the glass back and stood up. “I have to go now.”
“You’re sure you should go?” Mrs. Bates said, following her to the door. “Maybe you should lie down a little longer. Can you drive?”
“I’m all right now. It’s happened before. They go away.”
“I do hope you’ve seen a doctor.”
“Oh, yes,” Jennie said. “Thank you for helping me.” Then she turned and fled out toward the car.
9
* * *
SHE DIDN’T TELL MICHAEL. As soon as he got home he hurried her off to a Little League baseball game she had forgotten they were going to—the son of a fellow commuter was the star pitcher and to have begged off would have raised questions she was not prepared to answer. She crouched with the mothers in the small bleachers, watching Michael with the fathers down along the first-base line, talking, laughing, a can of beer in his hand. He was beginning to make friends here, and she should have been glad, but right now entering into the social life of this town was the last thing she wanted. How could she talk to these plain, sensible housewives beside her about visions that seemed to propel her into a mysterious past, about a painting of her done half a century before she was born?
If it was her. It was true that Mrs. Bates had seen nothing out of the ordinary; she had remarked on the similarity but beyond that had noticed nothing strange. But Mrs. Bates didn’t know. “Put you in that dress,” she had said; Mrs. Bates didn’t know that she had worn that dress, that it hung in her closet right now, in her upstairs bedroom.
The next day, trying to occupy her mind, she began work on a terrarium she had been planning for the attic studio. She was glad Michael had been too rushed to notice how nervous she was at breakfast; if he had pressed her she would have had to tell him about the painting, and she knew what he would have said to that: that it was all in her mind, another sign of mental imbalance. And she didn’t need that; she was already too upset to concentrate on her work as it was. Beverly called around ten-thirty to say hello and to invite her to Fire Island for the weekend, but she declined.
“I just don’t feel up to it, Bev. Give me a raincheck?”
“Uh oh, kid. Don’t tell me you’re having problems again. Tell that big lout you’re married to I have my eye on him. If he steps out of line again, I’ll see he’s drawn and quartered.”
“Michael’s been fine, Bev. I’m just kinda down.”
“Weekend at the beach doesn’t tempt you?”
“Not the way I feel, I’m afraid.”
“Well, maybe next time. Take care.”
“Thanks anyway,” Jennie said, and hung up.
She wished Beverly was the kind of person she could talk to about what was happening. She couldn’t talk to Michael, she couldn’t talk to Beverly; there was only Dr. Salzman, and she doubted she could tell even him what had happened. Though he never used the word, he would surely believe, as Michael would, that she was going mad.
She was still trying to concentrate on the terrarium that afternoon when she heard a car pull into the driveway. It was an old Dodge sedan, ’47 or ’48, in immaculate condition. Mrs. Bates got out and came across the yard toward the house, stout and stiff as if even that short walk were too much for her. It was an unwelcome reminder of the shock at the historical society, but she forced herself to put on a calm exterior and went for the door.
“Mrs. Bates,” she said. “What a pleasant surprise.”
Mrs. Bates peered up at her, hands clutching a purse across her stout midsection. “I hope I’m not being a bother to you, Mrs. Logan, but I just had to come see if you were all right. You were so pale and sickly-looking when you left yesterday I said to myself, I said, I never should have let her go like that, so weak and all. And I’ve been just a-beating myself for it ever since. So I had to come see if you were all right.”
“That’s very kind of you, Mrs. Bates. Won’t you come in?”
“Well, just for a minute. I don’t want to be a bother.”
In the kitchen, Mrs. Bates shed her gloves and purse on the buffet near the door. She was wearing a mottled brown suit, though it was hot enough outside for shirt-sleeves, and a black pillbox hat with a tiny veil perched squarely on her head.
“Oh, my,” she said, peering through her glasses, “haven’t you fixed it up nice. Warm and sunny with those yellow curtains and all. I suppose Mr. Logan is away to work?”
“Yes. Michael commutes to New York. Would you like to see the rest of the house?”
“Could I? I haven’t been in this house in I don’t know how long. I knew the Thompsons that lived here, but it’s been, oh, a good twenty years ago now.”
The big picture windows in the living room had evidently been installed in the last twenty years: they hadn’t been there when Mrs. Bates had last seen the house. They did brighten up the living room, though, didn’t they? And the view—you couldn’t beat this house for the view. She didn’t approve of the way the central foyer had been removed, though, to open up the dining room and the stairway. “I do hate to see these old houses changed any more than necessary,” she said. “It’s the old things that give them their charm.” She declined an invitation to look at the upstairs, due to her difficulty in climbing stairs, but she was very happy to see they had kept the corner cupboard. “That’s a really valuable piece, you know. Been in this house for close on to a hundred years, they say.”
Back in the kitchen, she accepted the offer of a cup of tea and sat down at the table where Jennie had been working.
“Oh, you’re making a terrarium,” she said. “Is that partridgeberry? My Aunt Betty had a terrarium with partridgeberry in it. They were very popular in her youth, you know.”
Jennie brought the tea across to the table. “This one’s going to have all kinds of things in it. Partridgeberry, spotted wintergreen, princess pine, club moss. I want it to look like a miniature rain forest.”
“Is that moss damp, dear? I hope I haven’t interrupted you. You just go right on, before that moss dries out.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can dampen it again.”
“No, you go right ahead. I’m just a talker. I’d love to watch you work while we talk.”
“Well, I guess I can get that moss covered before it dries.”
While Jennie laid gravel in the bottom of the terrarium for drainage, and began adding soil, Mrs. Bates reached to the saucer where Jennie had cut a lemon into quarters.
“I do hope you’re feeling better,” she said.
“Oh, yes. It’s nothing really. But it was good of you to look in on me.”
“I did want to make sure you were all right. And then, of course, I didn’t get a chance to finish what I was telling you yesterday. I was going to tell you the story behind the house.”
“Yes?” Jennie wasn’t sure now she wanted to hear the story behind the house.
Mrs. Bates folded the lemon quarter around the tip of her spoon and carefully squeezed the juice into her tea. “Yes, that young painter I told you about, David Reynolds his name was, who did that painting you saw—remarkable how much you look like her. Well, you see, that was his wife in that painting.” She lifted her cup and took a sip. “Oh, my, this is very good tea. Did you buy this in New York?”
“Yes. There was a little shop right near where we lived. They specialized in different kinds of tea from all over the world.”
“That’s something I’ll bet you’ll miss. Not that we don’t have nice little shops here in Chesapequa, but that variety, that’s something you’ll find only in New York. Now, where was I?”
“The woman in the painting. You said it was his wife?”
“Yes, well, he had been in France, you see, studying painting. Knocked about there
for about a year, I guess. And then he came back, oh, in 1899 I think it was, to marry his sweetheart. I never did hear how he’d met her or how long they’d known each other, but in 1899 they got married.” Mrs. Bates set her cup down and looked at Jennie. “Well, then she died.”
She evidently expected some reaction, but Jennie’s mind was elsewhere, glad the woman in the painting had been identified. If it was known to be the artist’s wife, then it couldn’t possibly be her.
“They got married,” Mrs. Bates went on, “had the wedding reception right out there in that yard, and then as they were getting ready to go away, on the honeymoon, you know, one of the horses went wild. Just went wild, rearing and out of control. And it killed her—his bride. A hoof struck her in the head and killed her instantly.” Mrs. Bates shook two pills from a tiny pillbox, popped them into her mouth, and followed them down with a sip of tea. “Well, David Reynolds, the story goes, went a little crazy after that. Very distraught, of course. Rumor was he began to lose his mind. Hallucinating, you know. Claimed he saw his bride come back. He’d be driving a buggy down the road and suddenly there she’d be, in that same dress she’d worn when she died, the one you saw in the painting.”
Jennie felt a shock as though something had sucked the breath right out of her lungs. Suddenly clear in her mind was the image of herself standing on that narrow dirt road, in the long white dress, with the buggy coming toward her, the clop-clop-clop of the horse’s hooves sending sprays of dust into the air; the man in the buggy staring at her, the lash of the whip as he drove the horse directly toward her. She had been scooping soil into the bottom of the terrarium with a tablespoon; now she realized the spoon was trembling violently in her hand. Carefully, she placed it on the table and sat down in her chair.
“She’d appear,” Mrs. Bates was saying, “but as soon as he’d try to get close to her, she’d disappear. Well, he always was a loner, David Reynolds, never had many friends, the story goes, and of course being in Paris all that time he’d lost touch with most of them, but what friends he had, they began to worry about him. They could see he was losing his mind, addled by the death of his bride on their wedding day, and they tried to get him to come out of it, tried to get him to consult a specialist in New York.”
Jennie thought dimly of Dr. Salzman and hugged herself, spellbound.
“Well,” Mrs. Bates said, “David Reynolds always had been something of a firebrand, too, a pretty independent man, and he wouldn’t listen. He broke off contact with what friends he had left and became something of a recluse. Well, shortly after that the story was that he took up with some other woman. They were seen together around town, though I guess they were discreet about it, and it caused quite a little scandal, him taking up with the other woman so soon after his wife’s death.”
Mrs. Bates paused for another sip of tea, and, impatient, Jennie asked, “What happened?”
“Well, that’s the sad thing, the end of the story. Nobody knows what really happened—it’s been an unsolved mystery to this very day. Some suspected it was the woman he took up with, some thought it was his father-in-law, a bitter old man who had opposed the marriage, but one night a short time after his wife died, he was found shot and killed—murdered, they say.”
“Murdered?”
“Yes, and nobody ever found out who did it. There was evidently considerable suspicion directed toward his father-in-law—it was known there was no love lost between them. But then, too, the woman he’d taken up with was seen leaving the scene of the crime, and many believe she did it. But nothing was ever proved, one way or the other.”
Jennie hid her trembling hands in her lap. Something like panic had been growing in her all through the latter half of Mrs. Bates’ story; now, added to it, caught up in it and sweeping with it through all the length and breadth of her body, surprising and unnerving her with its power, was a sudden onslaught of grief. That man was again alive in her mind—the penetrating blue of his eyes as he had lashed the horse toward her along that narrow dirt road, the gentle melancholy way he had fondled the dog that day she had seen him from the upstairs window, the agonized look on his face as he had called to her from the boat on the lake—and dimly she thought, him? he was murdered? Trembling, real pain thickening her throat, she said, “What . . . what was his wife’s name?”
“Well, now let me think.” Mrs. Bates stirred her tea, gazing down into it as if she might find the answer there. She tapped the spoon dry on the edge of the cup and returned it to the saucer. “I believe it was . . . Pamela.” She took a sip of the tea. “Yes, I think that was it. Her name was Pamela.”
10
* * *
“It’s a coincidence, Jennie,” Michael said. “So this woman’s name was Pamela. It’s a coincidence.”
Jennie sat on the couch in the living room, turned away from him, staring out the window. Hazy red clouds streaked the western horizon. The world outside was filled with that immense silence that always seemed to fall after the sun went down. She heard Michael shifting in his chair across the room, but she didn’t turn. All afternoon, since Mrs. Bates had left, she had been in an unreal daze, her mind closed down around some core of control, holding away her fear. Not even telling Michael had brought her out of it.
“What about seeing her from a buggy on the road?” she said. “That actually happened to me. There’s no way that woman could have known.”
“From what you said, what’s-her-name, Mrs. Bates, didn’t say he saw her standing in the road. She said he began to see her. That—to quote, if I remember right—he’d be driving down the road and there she’d be. Now you don’t know what actually happened. If people hear he saw her after she died and it gets passed down by word of mouth for over seventy-five years, it’s bound to get distorted. For all you know he may have seen her floating in the trees like a ghost.”
Twilight was creeping across the lake. Already the trees along the road had lost their distinctive shapes and become a single dark mass. She felt that if she just concentrated on the slow change from day to dusk outside she could cope with what threatened to become panic if she opened her mind to it. It was too much to assimilate; it couldn’t be coincidence; there were too many coincidences.
“Did you hear what I said, Jennie?”
She struggled to make sense of what he had said, but she could hardly think at all. She didn’t want to think. The possibilities were frightening.
“You’d rather I believe I’m losing my mind, I know.”
“Oh, Jennie, what do you want me to believe, that you’re some kind of backward reincarnation? I might just as well believe in those poltergeists or parallel universes Beverly was talking about. Do you really want me to believe you’ve fallen in love with a man who’s been dead a hundred years? I mean, we might as well talk about it. I remember what you said, how these things make you feel, how you’re attracted to . . . to this man. It’s pretty clear to me what’s happening. You’re creating some ideal man in your mind, some man you can throw in my face. Well, let’s talk about it. If you’re still bitter about what I did, let’s bring it out in the open.”
“See,” she said, “you’re really worried I might be in love with another man.” She turned to look at him, anger flushing her face. It was true: she was still bitter.
“Oh, hell,” he said, “not with a man who’s a figment of your imagination. Or some failed painter a hundred years dead.”
“He’s not failed. Mrs. Bates said he could have been very successful.”
“Might have been.”
“Would have been.”
“Listen to us. Arguing about some imaginary man you’ve made up.”
“I didn’t make him up. There was a David Reynolds.”
He stopped for a moment, then rubbed a hand across his face. “Now I’m getting confused.”
She turned back to the window, feeling the anger subside. She hadn’t known she had so much anger in her. And it frightened her, because it was what Dr. Salzman had been saying
all along. Her reaction to Michael’s affair was unnatural, he said. There had to be anger buried deep inside her; that was what had caused all those headaches, all that nervousness and anxiety before they moved from the city. And it was unhealthy, Dr. Salzman said; unrecognized and unreleased anger could do very unhealthy things to the mind. She tried to look at that possibility head-on. But that was the most frightening thing of all. Because if it were true, it meant she really was losing her mind.
“Look, Jennie,” Michael said. “The analyst explained all this. He practically said you were creating this man to punish me. Let’s admit it. I deserve it. I was a bastard. And I’m sorry. I’d do anything in the world if I could undo all that. And I’m trying. But you have to face the fact that that’s what it is. It’s a fleeing from reality. Hell, the move from the city was a kind of fleeing from reality. That’s what started all this.”
“So now my wanting to leave the city was a crazy act, was it?”
Michael sighed. “Jennie, I’m trying to help you. Can’t you see that? It hurts me to see this happening to you. You’ve been so good since you started seeing the analyst. No fainting, no hallucinations. Now this. If you allow this coincidence to influence your mind, you’re going to get worse. Can’t you see I love you, that I just want you to get well?”
She wanted to go to him, to put her arms around him and tell him she loved him, too, but something held her back. She remembered the sweet thrill she felt every time she put on the dress, the peaceful beauty of that other time—and that man, who, every time she saw him, brought that tender yearning alive inside her. She didn’t want to believe that was unreal, all a figment of her imagination. The truth was that she wanted to believe she was being transported into the past.
She heard Michael get up and cross the room, felt the couch shift as he sat down beside her.
Second Sight Page 7