by Alon Preiss
They shot along the highway for miles, Alice transfixed, Eden listening to the radio, trying to gauge Alice’s mood, looking over at her face from time to time, white in the headlights, then black again in the darkness, then white again, back and forth, motionless and silent. Suddenly Alice shouted, “Turn around! Take the next left on the way back.” Eden skidded across two lanes, flipped a U-turn.
There was one other thing about Carroll and Alice that was impossible, but was also absolutely true. They had some kind of connection. Sometimes, Alice would know what Carroll was about to say before she would say it. And vice versa, too. To Alice, and, she thought, to Carroll also, it felt as though God had not intended common egg to be split apart. Sometimes, they even shared dreams in which they were the same person. Because they realized that this was impossible, Alice and Carroll never mentioned it to anyone.
In the eyes of their neighborhood, Alice was the one most likely to go crazy, and Carroll was the one most likely to strike out on her own and make a million bucks — or almost a million bucks — before she hit thirty. Just to show how much anyone knew about them. Carroll and Alice both realized that it was the other way around, just because Alice spent so much time in Carroll’s brain, and Carroll hung out in Alice’s brain, too.
Eden’s car slid downhill into a forest, zipping past big houses with columns shrouded in the darkness of the trees. “Slow down,” Alice whispered. “Slow down.” She was watching very carefully, looking for a break in the trees. After a while she shrugged. “I guess I was wrong,” she said. “Oh well. Keep going.”
When they were seventeen, Carroll flipped out, and that was the end of that. To everyone else, it was a complete surprise, but not to Alice, and not to Carroll. Carroll never really got better. Alice always pretended to forget what it was her sister had. It was nothing she’d ever heard of before. Every once in a while, Carroll would go to a hospital. Sometimes the parents would have someone look after her on her own. Sometimes, Carrie would vanish and wander around disoriented. Sometimes she would come to her senses on her own. Sometimes she would be lost, and the parents would call Alice, who would usually be able to find her. It wasn’t ESP, Alice explained to Eden. She just sometimes knew what her sister was thinking.
“Right here,” Alice said, and then a left, and then two rights in a row, and then they drove along a little quiet residential street for few miles. “If I’m correct....” She didn’t finish her sentence.
After a few more blocks, the street widened; on the left was a dark concrete building with no sign out in front. It looked vacant and lonely.
“Turn here,” Alice said. “Keep driving around.”
Eden turned into the driveway, pulled along the side of the building, and turned left around the back. A small parking lot was surrounded by a chain link fence and shaded by the forest behind the fence. Alice pointed. “There,” she said. In the back corner of the parking lot, Alice saw a pay phone.
“There,” Alice said again. “Pull up.”
Eden turned hard left and drove to the edge of the lot.
Alice left the car, and she put a coin into the phone. She spoke for a while, and then she got back into the car.
“A false alarm,” she told Eden. “I called my parents. My sister showed up. Just now. Carroll was missing. But she wasn’t ‘missing.’ ”
Eden put the car into drive, and they rolled out of the parking lot.
“That’s a relief,” Eden said, and she tried to smile.
“Sometimes she vanishes,” Alice said. Her voice strained. Still tired and sleepy, now filled with a grinding worry, and so beaten down by this terrible love she still harbored for her sister, for this little piece of herself. “I think she just wants to be caught. I think it makes her feel loved and needed. Which she is, of course.” She sighed. “But I worry about her all the time.”
“I know, Alice.”
“She has my brain, you see,” Alice said. “Our brains are exactly the same.”
The car drove on in silence. It started to rain just a little bit, tiny, barely visible droplets pattering on the windshield.
Just when Harriet had given up on ever again in her lifetime becoming the object of a man’s reckless and uncontrollable display of passion, her telephone rang in the middle of the night. And then, a few minutes later, rang again. Then rang again, thirty seconds after that.
“Pointer!” Maurow shouted. “I’m on a pay phone! Can you hear me!”
Harriet blinked and stared at the clock. It was three in the morning.
“I’ve woken you,” Maurow said. He didn’t ask, Did I wake you?
“Where are you?” Harriet asked
“I’m standing in the rain at the edge of the park in the dark night,” he replied. He sounded giddy and dramatic and nervous. “My hair is wet and matted down over my scalp,” he added. “Raindrops are running down my nose, and hanging awkwardly on the tip before blowing off into the wind. I’m sure I look very silly. You would enjoy it. You enjoy me when I’m foolish.”
“I do,” Harriet said. “That’s why I’m not angry now, I guess.”
“Where have you been, Pointer?” he shouted, the wind drowning out his voice.
“I’ve been right here,” Harriet said, “lying in bed, trying to ignore the phone. I only picked up because I wanted to find out who kept hanging up on my call answering service.”
“Well,” Maurow said, “it was me.”
He told her that he wondered if the pay phone could electrocute him. “The idea of dying in such a way embarrasses me. ‘Executive electrocuted by a pay phone in the rain.’ That would make some people laugh.” Again, he said, “Anyway, that was me, calling over and over again.”
“I picked up because I thought that might be the case.”
“Well, I’m glad you did.”
“Well,” she said. “Isn’t that nice. Fine, then.”
“I have good news, by the way. News that will make you happy.”
“Yes. I would hope so. Go ahead.”
“You will have a message on your office voice mail tomorrow morning from headquarters!” he shouted. “Carly Barrows will apologize. She’s accepted your most recent suggested language. We have success! I was at a dinner tonight, and I got this call. We’ve succeeded, Pointer!”
Harriet rubbed her eyes. “And is this why you’re calling me in the middle of the night? Maurow? This couldn’t wait?”
A long pause.
Then Harriet said, “My strong and silent ex-husband.”
He laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “Strong and silent. Right.”
“You got this news at dinner, and you wandered through the rain thinking about it, and finally called me at 3 a.m.”
He laughed again. “Silly,” he said. “I guess that seems pretty silly.”
“Come on. What’s on your mind, buddy?”
“I met a couple tonight,” he said. “I spent the whole evening at a dinner party sitting at a table with this couple who reminded me of us — or, I guess, reminded me of our image of us, our fantasy of the old us. You know. Then I got this good news. We’re not enemies anymore. On opposite ends of this. You know. The old noggin got spinning around and around.”
“After it stopped spinning, where did it land?”
“On our old island,” Maurow said. “Plunked down there, right on the beautiful, white sand beach. Did you ever want to see that house on our island again, Harriet?”
“Sure,” she said. “I loved that place. That island. Who wouldn’t? Love it, I mean. But it’s not our island anymore.”
“We can go down there for a few days. Reminisce. Get all this clear. All this stuff in our heads.”
“Darling,” Harriet cautioned. “Do you think that’s a good idea? Sneaking around?”
“Sneaking around,” he scoffed. “Won’t have to do much sneaking on an uninhabited island way over at the other end of the continent. I mean, I’ve never philandered, Magoo, but this seems low risk.”
“I k
now,” Harriet said. “But just think about this for a few seconds.”
“I’ve thought,” he said. “And then I’ve thought some more. I’ve walked through the night thinking and thinking.”
“Okay. Good, Blake.”
“I’ve thought a lot about what I want.”
“What do you want?”
“I want nothing more,” he said, taking a breath, “than to climb into that big bed with you at the end of a long day.”
Harriet said something that made no sense, then she took it back, and then Maurow cracked a very little joke which was much funnier in the murk of their awkwardness that it otherwise would have been, and he was delighted when Harriet laughed very hard at his little joke, and he laughed back, their laughter mixing together in the air between their two cities, and then Harriet made some sort of unfunny wisecrack that seemed both loving and endearing in the briefness of that moment, and they both practically wailed with laughter. Maurow named a date, and Harriet quickly accepted, everything she said tinged with a red-faced embarrassment. “Do me a favor, Blake,” she said. “Don’t call me again before then. I’ll meet you on the island, okay? If I hear your voice again before that, I’ll feel very guilty, and I’ll cancel.” He quickly agreed, and then after some more discussion, they said goodbye and got off the telephone.
Just a few miles from where Maurow stood in the rain, his telephone plastered to his head, Alice and Eden sat on the cold cement of Alice’s terrace, staring up together at a blurry night that was as blue as a night in a very romantic movie.
“I hate to think of her like that,” Alice said. “A long time ago, we used to have fun together, all the time. Now, I just rescue her every once in a while, and she dutifully allows herself to be rescued. I hate seeing how sad she looks.” She sighed, adding wistfully, “I only wish we could be cured.”
Her friend said nothing.
“Anyway,” Alice added, “thanks for coming along on my traditional family excursion. Blake’s done it twice. Rite of passage.”
Eden slipped her hand into Alice’s hand, just comforting her, and Alice closed her fingers around Eden’s. They sat that way for a while, then Alice whispered, rather dreamily, “I’m so tired — all I want is to be hugged and kissed good night,” and Eden leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, and then reached up and touched the side of Alice’s face, and kissed her on the lips, just briefly.
What followed was a terrible moment, a moment that Alice could have crawled into and lived in for the rest of her life, a slow terrible moment of such painful awkwardness that Alice was certain years later it would strike her at random times, and it would, again, make her legs buckle, make her face flush, her breath stop, as though she might never breathe again.
The night grew a bit colder, and Alice pulled away. Eden sat there, looking into Alice’s eyes, their lips inches apart. Eden’s face was a dark silhouette against the lights of Manhattan, which glowed all around them through the fog and the rain.
Too much time passed. Alice’s hands grew cold and moist; Eden’s hands trembled in hers.
“I meant,” Alice finally whispered, in a voice so low it was barely audible, “that I wish my husband were here. I wish that Blake were here to kiss me.”
Eden backed away. She dropped Alice’s hand. She tried to smile. “Well,” she whispered. “That was a misunderstanding.”
“It’s okay, Eden,” Alice said. “It was nothing.”
Softly, looking away, Eden said, “Alice, I’m sorry.” After a moment, she added, “I guess we’re both just tired.”
“That’s right,” Alice said, standing up. With a smile: “Just a case of bad aim, Eden, resulting from exhaustion. Let’s forget all about it. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Eden nodded, and she slid open the glass door, walked back into Alice’s apartment, through the living room, and disappeared around the corner. A few minutes later, Alice saw her downstairs on the street walking through the rain without opening her umbrella. When Eden reached the intersection, she looked up for a moment at Alice, who waved. Eden turned away.
Alice stood on the terrace, watching until her friend vanished at the avenue, and then she left the terrace and went inside, walked up the stairs to her bedroom. A while later, lying in bed, she heard Blake’s tired footsteps coming up the stairs, and the door to the bedroom opened. Blake stepped out of his suit, he tossed it onto the chair, and then her husband collapsed into bed beside her, absently flopping his left arm around her waist. “Hello, honey,” he whispered in her ear, and she repeated back to him an old pet-name that she hadn’t used in years, and he almost smiled as he dropped off to sleep.
Ewell had a secret that he didn’t tell anyone anymore. When he used to tell the story to girls he wanted to know better and sleep with and eventually marry, his secret frightened them. That was you? they would say. I’ve heard of you. It made them uncomfortable around him. So he stopped telling girls his secret. He never told Alice. He had wanted to tell her. But he had not been able to tell her even the story of how he’d learned to read numerous Asian languages. How could he have told her a secret that would have rendered him first pitiable, and, ultimately, metaphysically creepy?
As a little boy, Ewell was a genius. Or, rather, a “genius of a sort.” Not a terribly smart boy, nor a clever boy. A boy without much charisma, charm or people skills. A boy with a tremendous talent in one very limited area yet with an utter dearth of skills elsewhere.
Because of this talent, a few scattered wire stories were written about him, as though he were a trapeze artist. He soon came to the attention of an American who produced a popular television show that ran every Sunday night at 7 p.m. and focused on amazing things from all over the world. The program was aired live, with various filmed segments, and featured a studio audience. The producer offered to fly Ewell and his parents to America. According to the producer’s plan, Ewell would come into the studio, and he would translate Oriental texts. The audience would clap. Ewell’s parents acquired the services of an American agent, who negotiated a deal for them. They signed a contract. The agent lined up newspaper and magazine interviews. A week before the scheduled trip, the television producer lost his job due to declining ratings. The new producer argued that listening to a little boy translate Asian writing into an obscure European language (which would then be translated again into English by a studio interpreter) might make for less than spellbinding live television. He canceled Ewell’s segment. But the network had signed a binding agreement, the plane tickets had been purchased, the hotel had been, as per contract, paid for. The newspapers and magazines canceled their stories. The agent withdrew his services. But Ewell’s parents decided that they should not let the possibility of a splendid American vacation go to waste.
Little Ewell had never been on a plane before. He had not even traveled far beyond his hometown. Suddenly, he would be flying over the Atlantic, to a magical land that seemed to him not much more real than the fairy kingdoms in the stories his father had told him not too long ago.
What no one predicted was that shortly after takeoff, as it ascended over the ocean, the plane was blown from the sky. A powerful suction yanked Ewell out into the open air where the plane split in two, and at first he felt as though he were flying straight into the sun, then almost gliding, like a sea-bird with its arms outstretched, skimming just inches above the waves. Before too much time had passed, he was rescued, a little boy bobbing along on a gentle sea, his fingers clutching his seat cushion, completely surrounded by flaming airplane wreckage.
Just a moment before the explosion, he looked up at his mother, and he smiled. It was a nervous smile. They had just taken off, and he was still afraid. His fingernails were dug into his seat cushion, which may have saved his life. His mother was sitting next to him, and his father was sitting on the other side of her. Ewell was sitting by the window. So he looked up at his mother and he smiled, but she did not see him smile. She had a neutral expression on her face. The two did not make ey
e contact. When he though back on the moment — as he did, of course, many many times over the years — Ewell assumed that his mother was probably thinking something of no importance, no particular gravity. She never looked back at him. Never smiled back. Ewell did not know what sort of expression was on his father’s face, because he did not have an opportunity to look at him. Then the plane exploded. He was blasted out into the open air. The plane was flying low, and so he did not fall a great distance.
Ewell wished that, rather than merely smiling at his mother, he had put his arms about her, and that she had been sucked out of the plane with her adoring child. Perhaps they would have survived, bobbing on the waves, until help arrived.
His mother was thinking neutral thoughts a split second before her very last moment. Perhaps she did not have the opportunity to sum up her life. Indeed, she did not live long enough even to see her young boy smiling up at her with so much love for the very last time. As a doctor who had seen people die, Ewell came to believe that time might seem to slow at the moment of death, and concluded that perhaps for a very brief moment, his mother might have decided: I have accomplished all that I could have wished. Or perhaps she thought: My poor boy — he will die as well. And I forced him against his will onto this exploding plane. And perhaps that thought tortured her. Ewell’s great-grandfather had died in the hospital after a meal, his family, including Ewell’s mother, at his bedside. I am fulfilled, he said. Ewell’s mother said: The meal, or your life? But he didn’t hear her, because he was already dead.