Brass Ring

by Diane Chamberlain

  Claire’s face had turned gray, and Jon felt sweat break out on his chest. There were a few people between them, and he couldn’t easily get to her with his chair. She glanced at him, nothing short of terror in her eyes, then quickly passed behind the guide and out of the room.

  The guide stopped her lecture midsentence. “Ma’am?” she called after Claire, but they could hear Claire’s footsteps hurrying down the hall.

  Jon wheeled out of the room after her. From behind him, he could hear the guide opening a door, telling someone that a member of her group needed to be escorted from the building.

  Claire had made it only as far as the library before getting sick. She was leaning against the wall, tears running freely down her cheeks. Another guide, this one a middle-aged, gray-haired man, was already at her side by the time Jon reached her. Claire gave Jon a look of stark humiliation, then grabbed the guide’s arm. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I can’t believe I…I couldn’t find my way—”

  “That’s all right.” The guide looked down at Jon. “You’re her husband?”

  Jon nodded, his eyes on Claire. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Claire nodded. She was breathing rapidly. She didn’t look okay at all, and he hoped the guide could get her out of the house before she was sick again.

  The man took Claire’s elbow and led her toward the foyer, Jon following behind them. “These things happen,” the guide said kindly. “And it’s just one of those sturdy carpets used for foot traffic. Not an antique. Nothing we can’t clean.”

  They had reached the front door. There were steps leading down into the yard. Jon wouldn’t be able to get out that way.

  “I have to go around to the lift, Claire. Will you be all right out there?”

  Claire nodded, then headed for the stairs, the door swinging closed behind her. The guide looked down at Jon. “Stomach flu?” he asked.

  “No. No, I think it’s something else.”

  The man studied him quizzically. He should have said it was the flu and left it at that.

  It took him a few minutes to find the lift and wheel himself around the outside of the house to the bench where Claire was sitting. She looked at him sheepishly. “I feel like an imbecile.” Her voice was weak. Jon wanted to turn back the clock to those hours in the car when she’d been singing merrily along with Bob Dylan.

  “What happened back there?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I made a fool out of myself, that’s what.”

  He leaned forward to hold her hand. “It was warm in there,” he said. “Stuffy. Was that it? Do you feel better now?”

  She pulled her coat tighter across her chest with her free hand. There were tears in her eyes as she stared out across the grounds.

  Jon sighed, giving in to the inevitable. “It wasn’t just the stuffiness, huh?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “I love you, Claire,” he said. “Talk to me.” He sounded remarkably strong, but his bravado was a facade. As false as her good cheer had been these past couple of weeks.

  “The same stuff,” she mumbled.

  “You mean, you had some sort of…flashback in there?”

  She nodded, gnawing her lower lip, tightening her grip on his hand. “Those oval windows,” she said.

  “What about them?”

  “I don’t know. They just…freaked me out.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is the first time in a while, though, isn’t it? I mean, you haven’t had those flashbacks since…for a couple of weeks, right?”

  She looked directly at him. “I have them all the time,” she said softly.

  “You do?” he asked. “Are they still those bits of memory that don’t make any sense?”

  She nodded, and he knew she was waiting for him to ask her more. What did she see, what did she feel when those memories cut her down? She wanted him to ask. She was begging for it with her eyes, with the coiled stiffness in her hand beneath his. But he was not equipped to ask those questions. Or perhaps he was too well equipped. Maybe that was the problem.

  “Will you see a therapist, Claire? Please?”

  For a moment, she simply stared at him. “All right,” she said finally, and he could see the disappointment in her face as she turned away from him, as she pulled her hand from under his and slipped it into her pocket.

  She stood up, and they moved in silence down the path toward the car. He couldn’t blame her for her disappointment. She had given him the chance not only to recapture their old intimacy but to build on it, lift it higher.

  And he had let her down.

  28

  VIENNA

  “SO, YOU’RE USED TO fixing things,” Debra Parlow said to Claire, “and this woman on the bridge was one of the few things you’ve encountered in your life that you simply couldn’t fix.”

  Claire nodded from her seat on the edge of the sofa in Debra’s office. She’d been talking to the therapist for ten minutes, and her anxiety was mounting rather than abating. She had her eye on the office door. She had asked Pat Wykowski for the name of a therapist without telling her who the referral was for, and Pat had recommended Debra highly. “She’s very skillful and warm,” she’d said. Claire didn’t doubt Pat’s assessment, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t talk easily about this topic to anyone. With one exception.

  “And ever since that night, you haven’t been able to concentrate on your work?”

  “That’s right,” Claire said. If she were not half the team of Harte-Mathias, she would have been fired by now. She was of no greater value at home, either. The laundry was piling up, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d cooked a meal or made more than a quick run through the grocery store.

  “And you mentioned vertigo?” Debra said.

  “Yes. Ever since that night. It’s not constant. Not too bad. Sometimes I feel like I’m falling, but it doesn’t last very long. That’s not the worst part.”

  “What is the worst part?”

  “I’ve been having these little flashbacks—at least that’s what I call them. A friend suggested they might be memories from my past. But maybe they’re a fabrication, I don’t know.”

  “What are they like?” Debra asked.

  Claire shook her head quickly. “I don’t think I can talk about them. Not yet. Not specifically.”

  “All right. How about generally?”

  “Well, they’re odd. Sometimes they pop up out of the blue. Other times they’re triggered by something. The worst happened the other day at Monticello. I saw something there—just an architectural feature that disturbed me for some reason—and I actually threw up in the house.”

  Debra wore a frown. “That must have been very embarrassing.”

  “Well, yes, but it’s over and done with.”

  “Is it?”

  Claire started to nod, then made a face. “Well, though, now I feel nervous it will happen again. It’s unpredictable, and what if I’m in a meeting or the grocery store or—?”

  “Or in this office?”

  She felt her cheeks redden. This was so childish. “Yes,” she said.

  Debra offered a sympathetic smile. “The restroom is right outside my door. The trash can is inches from your right leg.”

  “Okay. Thank you.” Claire tried sitting back more fully in the sofa but succeeded only for a second before returning to her perch on the edge of the cushion. She wished she could relax.

  “So, do these memories seem tied in some way to events from your past?”

  “’Memories’ is really the wrong word for them,” Claire said. “They’re more like little visual fragments, and I can’t seem to connect them to anything that’s ever happened to me.” She looked out the window. There was a large, full weeping willow in her line of vision. “At first I wished they would go away. Just stop. But it’s obvious they’re not going to, and now I really want to understand them. To pursue them, wherever they want to take me. It terrifies me, though. The unknown. I want to know
and I don’t want to know.” She doubted she would ever be able to pursue those images with Debra Parlow. She was digging her fingers into the seat cushion, ready to push herself up and out of the room.

  “It makes sense that you feel that way.” Debra shifted position in her chair. “But memories we’ve blocked for one reason or another don’t usually come to us until we’re ready for them.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I’m ready.” Claire described the dream she’d had the night before. She’d been standing in her kitchen, and all the cupboard doors were open, the space inside black, like the black behind the oval windows in Thomas Jefferson’s bedroom. She’d walked around the kitchen with a determined stride, slamming the cupboard doors shut, one by one, saying, no, no, no.

  Debra looked intrigued. “What are you afraid you’ll learn if you really take a look at those flashbacks?”

  Claire studied her hands in her lap. What was she afraid of learning? That her life was not what it seemed? That her childhood had been bad? Her marriage was bad? “I’m not sure,” she said.

  “Was there any abuse in your past, Claire? Anything you recall from your childhood?”

  She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Sexual, you mean?”

  Debra shrugged.

  “No. Not sexual or physical or verbal. Nothing. And the flashbacks are not at all abusive in nature.”

  Blood on white porcelain.

  Claire jerked on the sofa, raising her hand as if to bat the image away. She quickly composed herself, lowering her hand to her lap. “I just saw…” She shook her head.

  “An image?”

  “Yes. I don’t want to talk about it. Sorry. I don’t mean to be evasive.” If Randy were here, she could talk.

  “That’s all right.” Debra was studying her closely. “What do you remember about growing up?” she asked.

  Claire looked out the window again. “That it was pretty wonderful,” she said. “I spent a lot of time on my grandparents’ farm, and it was great. Although”—she looked at Debra—”there are things that happened to me, and I know from a factual standpoint they must have been unpleasant—like my parents divorcing—but I have no memory of them.”

  “Are your parents still living?”

  “No.”

  “How long ago did they die?”

  “Both of them died around ten years ago, I guess.”

  “And how did they die?”

  “I don’t know how my father died. We were estranged at the time. My mother had lung cancer.”

  “And you were close to your grandparents?”

  “Very. Especially my grandfather. He was a carousel horse carver and fun to be around.”

  “Wow, I can imagine.” Debra’s eyes lit up. She asked some questions about the carousel and her grandfather, and Claire answered them matter-of-factly. She knew that Debra was using the topic to put her at ease, to gain rapport. She wished the ploy were working.

  “How old were you when your grandparents died?” Debra asked.

  “I was…” Claire was suddenly aware of a hole in her memory. She pressed her fingers to her temples, eyes closed, struggling to pull an answer from the void. Finally she looked up at Debra. “I have absolutely no idea,” she admitted.

  Debra wore a puzzled expression. “Can you remember how they died?”

  Again, Claire searched the void, and this time found a small particle of truth. “My grandmother died in her sleep,” she announced.

  “Of?”

  Claire shrugged. “Old age? I don’t know. Wait. We stopped going to the farm when I was…thirteenish? So she must have died around then.”

  “And your grandfather? Do you recall when and how he died?”

  “He…” She made her visit to the void brief this time. She shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “Any siblings?”

  She told her about Vanessa, and Debra’s frown deepened as she listened to Claire talk about their father’s stealing Vanessa away. Debra asked several questions about Len Harte, and Claire answered them as best she could. It was true, though, that there was a great deal she didn’t know.

  “And how about your husband,” Debra asked. “Can you talk to him about the flashbacks?”

  Claire hesitated. Slowly, she shook her head. “I’m not comfortable talking about them to him, and he’s not comfortable hearing about them. But…” Claire gnawed on her lip. “There’s a man. He’s the brother of the woman on the bridge.” She described her connection to Randy. “For some reason, he’s the only person I feel I can talk to about what’s going on. I feel completely safe with him.”

  Debra shifted in her seat again, this time with a complete change in posture that suggested she was thinking: Aha! So that’s what’s really going on!

  “It’s not romantic.” Claire tried to nip the therapist’s specious theory in the bud.

  “I see.” Debra asked a few questions about Randy, questions about Jon. Claire tried to describe her love for her husband and the tender sense of security she felt with Randy, but she soon realized that nothing she said was going to change the therapist’s new course of reasoning.

  This was useless, she thought, sinking low into the couch. If she couldn’t make Debra understand her feelings, if she couldn’t even imagine letting one of her flashback images leak into this room without the need to bat it away, what good was this going to do? She remembered her dream. Slamming shut the cupboard doors. No, no, no.

  “It would probably be best if you had a couple of sessions a week,” Debra said. “I know it’s frightening right now, Claire, but we’ll make this office a safe place for you to let your memories out.”

  Claire could think of nothing Debra could do to make this office feel safe. “How about once a week?” she countered, and it took her more than a few minutes to convince the therapist to accept her proposal.

  She told Jon the truth that night: She had felt extreme discomfort in Debra Parlow’s office. She would go back, she said, but she had serious doubts that she would ever be able to solve her problems there.

  “If it doesn’t work out with her, then we’ll find you another therapist,” Jon said with the simple optimism that she herself had once possessed in grand measure.

  THE MORNING AFTER HER session with Debra, Claire awakened to the sound of sirens and hammering and shouting and the throbbing, persistent strains of an organ.

  Let me call you sweetheart.

  She tried to scream, but the sound was locked in her throat. She grabbed Jon’s arm, shaking him, and when he didn’t wake up, she bolted from the bed in a panic. The room spun as she ran across the floor and into the hallway.

  In the family room, she pulled the afghan from the sofa, wrapping it around herself as she sat down and reached for the phone. She dialed Randy’s number, the sirens still in her head. Her heart pounded against her ribcage, and she leaned back on the couch, hoping she wouldn’t get sick.

  “Hello?” Randy’s voice was muffled by sleep. What time was it? She had no idea.

  “I woke you. I’m sorry, but I had a nightmare, or maybe a memory. I don’t know.” She was crying, and only then realized she’d been crying from the moment she’d opened her eyes that morning. Maybe she’d even been crying in her sleep. “It’s terrible, Randy. I can still—”

  “Slow down,” Randy said. “Take a deep breath.” His voice was low and calm and warm, and she clutched the phone with both hands and tried to settle her breathing. Her heart was going to leap from her chest.

  “There were ambulance sirens,” she said. “First they were in the distance, then coming closer and closer. And ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart’ was playing. It was organ music, like on the carousel. And they were hammering crates closed—big wooden crates, and—”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  Claire closed her eyes to try to recapture the image, but instead she saw a towel hanging on a towel rack, the wall behind it tiled in white. The towel was also white, but stained with blood. Claire leaped from the couch as if she
could run from the picture in her mind.

  “Oh, God, Randy,” she said, “make them go away! The flashbacks just keep coming. Or maybe I’m making them up. They’re too crazy to be real. But if I’m making them up, then I must be crazy.”

  “Whoa, Claire.” Again the calm, deep voice filled her head, and she stood still in the middle of the room. “Did you figure out who was hammering the crates?”

  “No.” She pressed one hand to her forehead. “It was just a sound. The hammering.”

  “How do you know it was a crate?”

  “I just do.”

  “What else?”

  “Someone was screaming.”

  “Male or female?”

  “Female, I think.” The vertigo struck suddenly, and she sat down on the couch again, swallowing hard. “I can’t think about it anymore. I have to stop.”

  “What makes you think the sirens were from an ambulance? Not a fire truck or the police?”

  “Randy, I can’t now! I’m so dizzy, and Jon could wake up any second.” She was shaking. She stretched the afghan to cover her feet. “I wish you were right here next to me,” she said. “I think I could do it then—think about the dream.”

  There was a long silence. Her heart thudded dully in her ears.

  “What do you want me to say, Claire?” Randy asked finally. “I would love to be right there next to you. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. But we can’t see each other without feeling guilty, and I don’t want that.”

  “I know,” she said softly, glad he was willing to provide the voice of reason she seemed to have lost.

  “I’m sorry you’re still going through all of this,” he said. “I was hoping Jon was right and that once I was out of your life, you’d feel better.”

  “I don’t think I’m ever going to feel better until I know why this is happening to me. I started seeing a therapist, but I’m afraid to talk to her about the flashbacks. I feel like something terrible will happen if I start talking about them without you around. Like I may completely lose any grip I still have on my sanity, which isn’t much anymore. Oh Randy, how can I see you? I don’t want to lie, but Jon will never understand.”