Upstairs there was a banging of drawers. She was angry, but she was coping with the problem, which was probably a good thing. In a couple more minutes she returned to the head of the stairs again. “It’s so dark,” she told him, “I can’t see a thing. Sit on the other side of the stairs from the handrail. And just stay there till I get to the kitchen and find a candle. I don’t want you crashing into the furniture.”
“Whatever you say.”
Each tread of the stairs had its own distinctive creak as she came down. He could feel her brush by him in the darkness, cloth catching at his shoulder, giving a momentary tug, then slipping away. He traced her progress toward the kitchen in his imagination—through the hallway, across the living room carpet, circling the big table in the dining room, and then a long silence broken by small purposeful noises. At last a candle flame appeared below Alan where he sat on the stairs, Diana’s cupped hand glowing before it brightly like the shade of a lamp. No candle had ever seemed so beautiful before. He understood why Catholics used them for their services and the stricter Protestants didn’t. They were sexy.
He followed the red candle like a moth. The smell was sexy, too. He was getting an erection. His erections were always like that, sudden and connected to something unconnected to sex—the smell of burning grease outside Burger King, the pop of a stubborn pimple, the tingle of snuff. This time, of course, there was a connection to sex, only Alan’s mind veered away from thinking of it. He eased himself down into the chair Diana had pulled back from the table and took a deep breath.
She had lit the stove, perhaps to light the candle, but now there was a kettle over the blue flames. “I’m making a tisane,” she told him.
He nodded acquiescently but then had to ask, “What’s that?”
“An herbal tea. This one will guard against a cold. And warm us up. It is cold in the house. I turned the thermostat all the way down when I left earlier. I thought I’d be away for the night, and Carl has taken Kelly off to visit her mother for the weekend. And now we can’t turn the furnace on till the electricity returns. We may have to snuggle on the couch just to survive.”
She said that in what he thought of as her teasing tone of voice. She had different voices. When she was pissed off was one, and when she wasn’t thinking about him at all was another. The teasing voice was friendlier than those, but there was still an edge to it that could make him feel uncomfortable. It reminded him of his mother when she was coaxing him to do something.
The kettle on the stove began to whistle, and Diana busied herself making the tea. When she was done, she brought the red teapot to the table. Steam rose from the spout, and the light from the red candle made a kind of halo around the pot. The different reds made Alan wish he were a photographer. He also wished he could see Diana naked again, instead of in the pink bathrobe she’d put on. He realized that this was the feeling older men had in mind when they joked about being horny.
And then, again, that teasing voice as she placed two big mugs beside the teapot. “So—do you want to tell me what brought you here at such an opportune moment?” She smiled and sat down in the same chair in which, so little time ago, he’d laid her unconscious body. And now she was asking him about his problems, as though none of that had even happened. It was a little unnerving.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter. Right now I’m worried about you.”
“Nothing bad happened out there. I’ve told you before, I’m a Wiccan. I was performing a kind of ritual. It’s nothing to be alarmed about, but it’s not something I can talk about either. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Actually, it seemed insulting, in a way, to have the matter dismissed so lightly. But also mysterious, like some old black-and-white movie. You probably couldn’t have it both ways. If she were completely open with him about everything, she wouldn’t have seemed mysterious.
“Here,” she said in a mothering way. “Have some of this.”
She poured tea into the mugs and lifted one to her smiling lips. The steam veiled her face. The curling vapors gave off a minty smell and, mixed with that, something he could not put a name to. He picked up his own mug and tried to sip, but the water scalded his upper lip, and he flinched. “It’s hot!”
She drew a deep breath and made a grimace of impatience. “Let’s go in the living room.”
Again he followed the candle flame obediently and sat on the couch. The cushion yielded under his weight, and he spilled some of the hot tea over his gut, catching his breath so he wouldn’t yelp. She put the burning candle down on the end table, and her mug of tea beside it. Since there was no table on his side of the couch, he rested his own mug on the arm so that when she sat he wouldn’t spill any more on himself. Where it had doused his shirt it still hurt.
“Let the tea cool,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”
“The lawyer called.”
“And?”
“My father isn’t who I thought.”
“You’ve told me that before, Alan.”
“But now I know who is. I sent in another blood sample. Not from Jim Cottonwood. And the DNA test says this other guy is my…” He could not say the word. “There’s a match.”
“And?” she insisted.
“Remember when you drove me home the day we met? And my grandfather threw my stuff out of the house? And broke the screen on my monitor doing it? Well, he cut his hand. That’s how I got the sample of blood to send them.”
“You don’t think…?”
“Yeah, it’s him. I couldn’t believe it either at first. I mean, she’s his daughter. It’s incest. And I always hated the bastard. Hated him. So maybe I always knew. Unconsciously.”
Neither of them spoke for a long while. Then she took a sip from her mug of tea.
“But that man has been in prison all this time.”
“Yeah, I know. The more I think about it, the more… I mean, it’s awful.”
“Yes, certainly.”
The candle flame wavered, almost guttered out, then offered a sudden brightness and steadied. Alan remembered his mug of tea and picked it up and took a long sip, hot but tolerable. He closed his eyes—and found that he was crying.
“Have you talked to them?” she asked.
“No! I couldn’t. To my mother? Or him? No! Not even the lawyer. He thinks the blood is from Cottonwood, and I let him go on thinking that. I’m the only one who knows anything. And now you.”
“The beast,” she said in a tone of cool and certain judgment.
“Yeah, it’s terrible. But I remember your telling me that your father…”
“Oh, yes. He touched me. In ways he shouldn’t have. But… there was no actual sex. I think he wanted to. I think many men do.”
“I think maybe they do. I know that my fucking grandfather did.”
As he admitted the likelihood of his worst doubt, Alan felt a terrible cramp in his stomach, just below where the tea had scalded him, and then the cramp became a kind of slithering underneath his T-shirt.
“You poor boy,” she said. “Oh, you poor boy.” And she leaned toward him and took him in her arms, and her embrace and the slithering sensation united, and he felt a terror (and yet only its first glimmering) such as he’d never known before. The flame of the candle shuddered, and her embrace tightened. He couldn’t breathe or speak. Her arms had become the coils of a snake, pressing the breath from his lungs.
And then the lights in the house came on and she screamed, and he could breathe again.
The coils had released him. The terror just as suddenly was gone, but her arms were still around him, and her lips were pressed to his.
He loved her, with a shame and a desire and a pure devotion that were desolating and unbearable.
23
“I love you,” he told her. “I love you now more than I ever have.”
“Well, that’s nice of you to say, but I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true. I’ve had a long time to think about it. And at first I was pissed of
f, I’ll admit. But the fact that you were actually willing to kill me… That’s something you expect more from a guy.”
She laughed. “You wouldn’t think that way if you spent some time here. I actually have a higher credit rating among the other ladies and some of the guards for having gone after you and Dana.”
“There’s the same pecking order in the men’s joint. Homicide’s at the top, but attempted homicide still rates high, as long as it looks like a sincere attempt. And I think yours was pretty sincere.”
“How is Dana these days?”
“You’ll have to ask her. She and I are not speaking. She blames me as much as you. I didn’t testify at the trial, and in her eyes that amounts to aiding and abetting.”
“And how’s your arm?”
“I still get twinges. Listen, we been through all the how-are-you’s already. We better get down to business, honey. If they catch me here, we’ll both be in a lot deeper shit. This place is off limits, for me especially. I could be canned.”
“Well, then, get going. You’re always ready at six a.m.”
“ ‘Cause I wake with a hard-on.”
“Weren’t you the one who just said how much you love me?”
“It’s not the same thing. If you gave me a little encouragement…”
“You mean if I sucked your cock.”
“Yeah, that’s one possibility. Do you need a sex manual, for Christ’s sake? I’m here for your sake, you know. You’re the one who wants to get pregnant and have an exit visa.”
“I know, I know. It’s just difficult. I’m on edge, too. We’ve both got to try and get relaxed.”
“Relaxed is not in the cards, honey. Try stimulated.”
“Do you want to try doing it on the floor? You like that at home sometimes.”
“In summer, or on a thick carpet. But have you tried walking around in this place in your stocking feet? You’d freeze your butt off.”
She laughed. “Or you would, depending.” She leaned sideways and gave him an impulsive kiss on the bristly side of his head. “You can be such a pig.”
He grinned. “That’s the sixty-four-dollar question right now, ain’t it? Can I?”
There was a knock at the door.
“Oh, Jesus,” said Janet with a stricken look.
Carl put his finger to her lips, then whispered in her ear, “Don’t panic. I thought this out. My shoes and pants are both under the bunk, and I’ll scoot down there, too. There’s plenty of room. Just rumple the spread so it hangs down over the side, then deal with whoever it is and get ‘em out of here. Okay?”
She nodded.
And called out, after a second knock, “I’ll be right there. Just let me get decent.”
“It’s Officer Lincoln.”
Carl was under the bunk. He gave her ankle a reassuring squeeze.
Janet said, “Come in. The door isn’t locked.”
Officer Lincoln entered. She was wearing a black nylon uniform jacket, light gray slacks, with boots trimmed at the top with artificial fleece. No weapon (none of the guards at Mankato carried weapons), and no cap, so that her crown of black braids was dusted with snow. “Hi,” she said. “Is this an okay time?”
“Okay as any,” Janet allowed.
“I saw you hadn’t come to the movie but your roommates were there.”
“I’ve seen Doctor Zhivago a few times already. It’s always on TV. Come in, close the door.”
“Thank you.” Officer Lincoln entered and crossed the room to sit beside Janet on her bunk. There were other places she might have sat, but none at a comfortable conversational distance. From Janet’s viewpoint, if not from Carl’s (for Officer Lincoln was a large woman), it was probably the best choice. As long as she was sitting on top of him, she couldn’t look under the bunk.
“It’s a wonderful movie,” Officer Lincoln said, “but I’ve probably seen it enough times myself. But for a lot of the younger women it can be a revelation.”
Janet nodded, hoping this was not the beginning of a conversation about Doctor Zhivago, which she’d never seen except for the first few minutes, and that only at Carl’s insistence. He’d stayed up, she remembered, to see the whole thing. But he couldn’t come to her rescue in the present situation. “How is that?” she asked.
“Well, very few of them have any idea how the whole thing in Russia got started. Even those who’ve got high school diplomas don’t have much sense of history. That’s a luxury these days.” Officer Lincoln heaved a sigh and leaned back against the wall, unzipping her jacket as she did so. “You at least are a reader. There aren’t many here. In Shakopee, yes. There are readers there. When I was there, that’s three years ago now, we actually had a reading group that read War and Peace pretty much all the way through.”
“No kidding. That’s better than me. I think my husband read that one. I know it’s there in the bookcase. It’s a big one, right?”
“One of the biggest. So, how did it go with Carl today?”
“Just fine. He couldn’t have been nicer. Considering. And Kelly, that’s our girl, she was fine, too.” There was a long pause until Janet finally thought to say, “I realized how much I miss her.” And when this produced no response from Officer Lincoln, Janet added, “I was just thinking of writing a letter to my sister, Diana, to thank her for all she’s been doing.”
“You haven’t written many letters while you’ve been here,” Officer Lincoln observed.
Janet bristled at the woman’s careless knowingness, as though everything she did was something Officer Lincoln would automatically be aware of. But she couldn’t show her resentment. Ever. That was the first rule. And the second, and the third.
“I should start to make it a habit,” Janet agreed.
“That’s excellent advice for anyone. But especially for those here. We have to keep those bridges in place.”
“You’re right! I should sit down right now and start that letter.”
Officer Lincoln recognized this as an invitation to leave. She stood up and then, in a casual way, asked if she might go to the bathroom.
“Sure,” said Janet. “You know where it is.”
Officer Lincoln went into the bathroom. After very little time, there was the sound of the toilet being flushed, and she returned.
Her mood had altered. She seemed miffed. “Well, it’s been nice talking to you, Janet. You’ve been making excellent progress here. There are no demerits on your record.”
“Thank you.”
“So keep up the good work.”
“Thank you.”
Officer Lincoln went to the door, opened it, and turned around, scanning the room like a surveillance camera. Then she nodded her head and left.
“Don’t say a thing,” Carl cautioned from under the bunk. “Don’t do a thing. Write the fucking letter.”
Janet nodded her head. She sat at the table in front of the big picture window and went through the motions of writing a letter. She had no idea if she was on videocam, but she felt she might be. Sometimes that feeling could be overwhelming, which was why she had to get out of this place.
Dear Diana, she wrote on the prison stationery, Fuck you! I am having the shiftiest time of my life. I wish you were here instead of me. I wish I were dead. Have you been to bed with Carl yet? If not I expect it won’t be long. Then she took the sheet of paper and tore it into smaller and smaller bits.
“Okay,” said Carl from under the bunk, “now turn off the lights. You know why that bitch asked to use your toilet, don’t you?”
Janet turned off the lights. “She thought you’d be in there.”
“Yeah. Well, I got a hard-on now anyhow. So that’s no problem. You head into the bathroom, and don’t lock the door.”
“I can’t.”
“It’s a pisser, ain’t it?” But then he added, quite sincerely, “You know, I really do love you.”
“I know. I love you, too,” she said, no less sincerely.
24
Witches, so oft
en credited with possessing the power of the evil eye, are also remarkable for their green thumbs. Their gardens are lush, their houseplants thrive, their lawns spontaneously yield pounds of mushrooms and asparagus. The two gifts rise from a single source, a keen and focused attentiveness to patterns and appearances. A natural witch, unaware of her powers and uninstructed in their use, is nevertheless able to pluck, as though they were harp strings, the nerves of any stranger her attention has lighted on. Let her sustain that gaze, and the object of her attention will be petrified into inaction or melt with servile compliance. Wherever sheer intimidation is at a premium, witches flourish. They have always been the best sales personnel and trial lawyers and the most effective nursery school teachers. This is doubly true of those who have become conscious of their gifts and know themselves to be witches—as Diana now did.
Of course, she could not simply walk about through the woods and meadows of Leech Lake township and gather a chaplet of herbs and simples specific to some witchy purpose. But her intuitions were quick and accurate in matters that directly concerned her, such as male lust. Ruben at D & R Auto Service always hastened to the pump when she pulled up for gas, and though the least talkative of men, he lingered by her window to offer his opinions on basketball and the last flurries of winter weather. It was the same with the teenage baggers at the Shop ‘n’ Save, who buzzed around Diana like drones around their queen. If she fixed her attention on any of these males, she could discern not only the auras of their lust but the tribe or totem inherent to their nature, the beast she could make them become if she exerted her powers.
Pigs were commonest. Two of the baggers at Shop ‘n’ Save were of that tribe, as were her brother-in-law and Alan Johnson. Even, probably, President Clinton, though with faces she knew only from photographs or TV she could not be sure if her taxonomies were based on a real witchy intuition or just ordinary hunches. Dogs, horses, and other domestic animals were also common among the denizens of Leech Lake, then the larger rodents and scavenging birds. Predators were rarely discernible in the general population. Perhaps the human personae of those who belonged to the tribes of tiger or fox clung to their human identities more tenaciously. Perhaps her vision was limited to prey and blind to other predators. She did not know her own nature as a beast. In the crude machineries of a mirror auras are not visible. She supposed her essential nature was feline, but she’d never seen herself so.
THE SUB A Study In Witchcraft Page 14