“Anita…,” I began.
“No. Buck told me that he told Virginia all of it. All of it. And he told me he’d asked her to tell you. I’m glad. There mustn’t be any more…distance…between Buck and me, and I hope there won’t be any between us and all of you. I’ve learned that I’m tougher than I thought I was; I can take almost anything except aloneness. I have taken almost everything. It was the aloneness that I created for myself that almost killed me. And it almost killed Buck too. It was one of the worst moments of my life, seeing the poor Swanson boy…for a minute I literally thought it was Toby…but somehow it made me really face, for the first time, the fact that he’s dead. I had to do that before I could really start to get well. I haven’t the depth of faith that Buck has, but somehow he gives me some of his; I can live without Toby now. Not without an awful hole in my heart, but I can live. What I couldn’t live with was the awful feeling of somehow waiting for him. I had to know. And I do. Ever since that night, I’ve known, and the…the healing began then. And I have Buck back, one hundred and ten percent. I know I always will. The one thing, the only thing that could get to me now would be to lose Buck, and I’m not going to do that. I’m a lucky woman, and I’m ashamed of myself for hiding in sickness like that for so long.”
I hugged her impulsively, across a waist-high holly bush, and she hugged me back and laughed a little as we both jumped back from the holly’s prickly leaves.
“Well. Welcome to the neighborhood once again, Anita Sheehan,” I said. “Because you’re a whole new lady and one I like immensely, and I hope you’re going to be very, very happy here.”
“I am going to be,” she said. “And you and Walter and the Swansons and the Guthries are part of the reason I am. Virginia is—I just don’t have any words good enough for Virginia. She’s been over every day since that night—just for a little while, no big deal—and I’ve talked her poor head off. All this stuff that comes spilling out—and she just listens. She really listens. I think she’s probably responsible for the way I’ve been getting well. She and Buck and this beautiful house.”
“I’m glad you still feel that way about it,” I said.
“I didn’t know I could love anything inanimate as much as I love my house,” Anita Sheehan said. “I feel like it…needs me, sort of, to be at its best. When I walk in from shopping or somewhere, I feel like it almost preens itself, because it knows it’s prettier with me in it. I give it something. That’s a nice feeling to have about a house. Usually a house gives you something—status, security, identity, or whatever. My house needs me to give it identity. It’s a flattering feeling.”
She stopped and looked at me and laughed, a little embarrassed. “It’s not the crazies cropping out again, I promise. I sound a perfect fool, prattling about my house.”
“Well,” I said, looking up at the house, “it’s a hard house to be impersonal about. You’d never be able to take it or leave it alone.”
“No. Well, I mustn’t keep you. You’ll be getting an invitation, but I want to have a few people on the street in for a buffet in a couple of weeks, and I really hope you and Walter can come. It’s sort of a housewarming for us, only you absolutely must not bring presents.”
I thought of that other housewarming, in that luminous green April twilight, and I almost told her then. She seemed strong enough to handle it; it seemed to me imperative that she know about that other ghastly party. But then I thought, Maybe it’s just what we all need. To go, and have the party be a smashing success, and flush out those old horrors and memories and replace them with good ones. To lay those ghosts once and for all. We can’t go through the rest of our lives averting our eyes from the Harralson house.
So I did not tell her.
I will always wonder if it might have made a difference. But I really don’t think so. Not by then.
The thing that waited for Anita was already spreading its shadows across her shoulders.
The event that triggered the first frail beginning of the terrible, blooming awareness was the housewarming that Anita Sheehan never had.
All through the week following our return from the beach we had caught glimpses of Anita and Buck working in their blossoming yard in the still-hot dusks, coming in and out with armfuls of groceries, leaving early for golf on Saturday morning and church on Sunday.
Once they came over in the late afternoon and sat with us on the patio, Anita turning a glass of white wine around in her hands and Buck drinking iced tea. We talked of the settling in at the Sheehans’ house that was going so satisfactorily, and Buck’s work at Computer Tech, and I told them about my work at the agency, and how I planned, if things went well during the coming fall and winter, to leave the agency and establish my office at home. I had already put out some tentative feelers to three of my favorite clients, and all had seemed receptive. I took Anita upstairs and showed her the unused bedroom that I planned to convert into an office. It was a long, narrow room with dormer windows and a feeling of snugness and charm, even though the space was troublesome and difficult to plan around. She showed a real flair for working with space and form and color and an instant grasp of what I wanted to do with the room. She made some hesitant suggestions for building in desk and bookcase units that had not occurred to me but would be perfect for the room.
“You really ought to consider getting back into the business, Anita,” I said. “I know several decorators who’d be glad to talk to you.”
“I’m better, Col, but I’m not ready for that much involvement yet. I still get a little panicky when I’m out in a crowd of strangers, and I’m a long way from being able to waltz into somebody’s house and tell them to throw out the ancestral fumed oak and get some light and color in there. One step at a time. Right now this party’s got me in a dither. You’d think I’d never had a party before in my life, and we used to entertain constantly.”
“Well, you know I’ll help, and Claire, and Virginia. Just say the word.”
“Thanks, but this is a party for you all, not by you. It’s just opening-night nerves. I want to get everybody over the notion that they’ve got to walk on eggshells around me because I did time in the funny farm. I want to be your equal, not your problem child.”
I laughed, because she did seem so equal then, so sound and matter-of-fact and funny about her illness, and she looked so beautiful. There were depths of sadness in her eyes, sadness that would look out at the world as long as the eyes did. But the same sadness looks out of many eyes, and they are still able to dance and spark with anger and quicken with love and tenderness. Anita’s eyes could do all of those things, and would. Were, already.
“It’s all yours, then,” I said, and we went back downstairs.
“You think she’s up to the party?” Walter said when the Sheehans had gone home and we sat down to tuna fish salad. Razz and Foster sat at our feet like temple cats, imperious and stiff with their ignoring of the tuna fish. I put dollops of salad on two napkins and put them down on the flagstones, and after a minute or two they arched and stretched and seemed to discover the booty. In great surprise they sniffed, and then began to nibble daintily and with vast ennui at the fish.
“Yes,” I said, “I think she can handle it with no trouble at all. And I think it’s going to be just what we all need, and her too. She’s a gallant lady, and I hope it’s the first of a thousand great parties in that house. I hope she gets to be a hostess of legend in this town of legendary hostesses.”
“And I hope you’re right,” he said. “They’re really good people, aren’t they?”
“Among the best, my friend.”
The next week, on Tuesday, Buck Sheehan called and said, “I’ve got to go out of town for a day or two, and I just wanted to tell you so you could sort of keep an eye on Anita, you and Virginia.”
“Of course,” I said.
That was on Tuesday. On Friday morning, before I left for work, Virginia Guthrie knocked softly at the kitchen door. I stared at her in surprise through the glas
s. She was in a severely tailored, belted housecoat, and her hair was a wild cloud framing her face. Virginia never popped in, in the morning or at any other time, and I had literally never seen her in her nightclothes or with her hair and makeup less than perfect. Alarm stabbed at me. I opened the door.
“What is it? Is somebody sick?”
“No. Well, I’m not sure. May I come in? It’s Anita.”
She came into the kitchen and leaned against the counter, as distraught as I have ever seen Virginia. I poured her a cup of coffee and steered her into the den. We sat on the sofa. I could see that her eyes were sunken with fatigue; she looked as though she had not slept for the entire night.
My mouth was stiff with dread. “What’s happened to Anita?” I said.
“It was—just terrible, Colquitt. Just terrible. Charles and I were sitting watching TV last night, pretty late—the Carson show—and we heard this—this—kind of measured, slow hammering at the back door. Perfectly spaced, slow, hard knocking, like something mechanical. Charles ran to the door, and there was Anita, in just her nightgown. She was…staring again. Just looking right through Charles, staring, not blinking, no expression at all on her face. Just like the other night. Even when Charles opened the door and pulled her into the kitchen, she just stood there staring past us, making that knocking motion with her fist, in the air. She was white as death. I thought somebody had tried to break into their house, or she’d had bad news about Buck, or something. It was worse than the first time.”
“For God’s sake, Virginia, what was it?”
“It took us almost two hours to find out. I sat her down on the sofa—she was like a dummy you could move around any way you wanted to—and I brought her some brandy, but she wouldn’t hold it or look at it, and when I held it up to her mouth she spilled most of it. I told Charles to go call Mark Florence. I know he’s a GYN, but I couldn’t think of anybody else, but before he could pick up the phone she made this tremendous effort—you could see her whole body shake with it—and she said, ‘No doctor. No doctor. No doctor.’ Over and over, kind of a chant. I thought she would just go out of her head. I held her, and we asked her over and over, was there somebody in the house? Was Buck all right? Was she in pain? She just sat stiff as a board and shook her head, no. No.”
“Oh, God—” I breathed.
“I left her with Charles, and I went over for her pills—I knew from the other night where she kept them. The door was wide open, and the lights in their den were on, and the TV was going. I brought the pills back and got one down her finally, and after about half an hour she relaxed that awful stiffness a little, and her eyes kind of focused, and she began to try to talk. She kept saying, ‘No doctors, no doctors. Don’t call Buck. I won’t go back to the hospital. I won’t go back.’ So I promised her we wouldn’t call anybody, and then finally she was able to tell me what had happened.”
I was breathless with dread and said nothing. Virginia looked at me oddly and went on.
“Apparently it was something she saw on television,” she said. “She said she fell asleep on the couch about ten, and when she woke up, there was this movie on. She woke up in the middle of it. You know how strange and disoriented you feel when you do that—and she said it was about a boy—”
“A boy?”
“A boy—who was killed. In the war. In Vietnam. She said she woke up just as his helicopter was going down, and she could see him in the cockpit, and there was fire all around him, and he was screaming—”
“Oh, my dear Jesus, Virginia,” I cried softly, in pain. “How terrible! How ghastly, to wake up to something like that—even a helicopter. What a rotten, awful coincidence, and with Buck out of town. Oh, God, what will happen to her now? Should we try to get hold of Buck? I don’t even know where he went.”
“She was able to tell us finally, and Charles called him. He’ll be in this morning. I don’t know what will happen to her, Colquitt. After she told us about the movie she went back into that horrible stillness and quiet, just like somebody snapping off a light, and Charles and I literally pushed and carried her up to our bedroom and laid her down on the bed. She didn’t move again, so about four I turned off the lights and left her alone. I don’t know if she’s asleep, or what. She hasn’t moved this morning. Fanny’s there, or I wouldn’t have left her. I just wanted to tell you so you could call everybody and cancel the party. I thought maybe Claire would help you. I just…can’t.”
“Of course,” I said automatically. “Of course.”
She didn’t move to go, and my heart squeezed tighter with premonitory terror. I knew she was going to say something else, and I knew that it would be something irrevocable and unspeakable. I waited.
“Colquitt, after I left her upstairs, Charles and I got the TV Guide, just to find out, you know, what the movie was. We thought maybe we could talk it out with her after she woke up, or something.”
“What was it?”
“Colquitt, there wasn’t any movie about Vietnam on last night. Not on any of the channels we can possibly get here. Not even any kind of war movie. Charles called all three stations this morning just to make sure. There was nothing even remotely like that. The Carson show, and a movie about moonshine runners or something, and an old Alice Faye movie on the network channels, and—I don’t know, some panel thing or something on the ETV station. But nothing like what she saw.”
“Well, of course she dreamed it, then, Virginia. She thought she was awake, but you know how you do sometimes, you think you’re wide awake but you’re still in the middle of a nightmare. I’ve done that. It was a perfectly awful thing to dream, but you can see why she would have—”
“No.” Virginia dropped her face into her hands. She sat like that, still and stricken, and then she raised her face. It was ravaged and runneled with fright.
“She wasn’t dreaming. Because when I went back over there to turn off the lights and lock her door, I looked in at the TV.”
“Don’t tell me this, Virginia,” I said.
“It was a war movie. It was just ending. There was a shot of a helicopter burning in a jungle at night. And then it switched to this bombed city, and a man’s voice said, ‘Saigon, 1967,’ and ‘The End’ flashed on the screen.”
“How do you explain it, then?” I said to Walter that evening after dinner. “If there’s got to be an explanation, what is it? Virginia saw it, Walter. They checked the TV Guide, they called all the stations.”
“I don’t explain it, Colquitt,” he said very firmly. I could tell he was afraid I was losing control. He wasn’t far from wrong.
“I just said there has to be a logical explanation. The most obvious is that she dreamed it.”
“Walter, Virginia stood right there in that den and saw it.”
“Virginia saw what she was expecting to see. I’ll admit she doesn’t seem the type for hallucinations or whatever, but suggestion is a very powerful thing, and she must have been shocked out of her wits to see Anita like that again, so soon after the other thing, after she’d been doing so well. Virginia was naturally hyperreceptive in a state like that. Or it could be that the movie really was on, and somehow it didn’t get printed in the TV Guide. These stupid-ass local stations are always substituting old movies for something you’d much rather see, at the last minute and without any notice.”
“But they called the stations.”
“Well, there are cretins in TV stations just like anywhere else. Ten to one some idiot didn’t want to be bothered going to look at the log and just flipped through the TV Guide and read out what was there. You almost sound as though you don’t want there to be a logical explanation, Col.”
“I do!” I cried. “I do, more than anything in the world! Do you think I’m a total fool? Do you think I believe the Sheehans have got a haunted television set? It’s just so…bizarre and cruel. Of all things for that particular woman to see on that particular night, with her husband out of town. Even right down to the burning helicopter. It’s almost as t
hough there were some kind of…malign intelligence behind it. Oh, I don’t know what I think. It’s just that she had finally buried the boy, Walter, let him go. She was coming back so well.”
“And will again. You wait and see. Buck said, he told Virginia, you heard her say it, that he expected setbacks. The doctor in New Jersey said there would be setbacks. Okay, so she’s had one. She’ll work out of it. Christ, Col, she was one sick lady. Don’t minimize all those months in that place. You wouldn’t just get up one day and walk out and start laughing and picking flowers. You come out of a thing like that in stages and by sheer, painful will, and it takes a long, long time. I always did think she’d pulled out of that last one too fast.”
“First Duck, and now this,” I said bitterly. “What’s next, I wonder? Do you think Buck will run off with Mary Wells Lawrence or get himself creamed on the freeway? That ought to fix her once and for all.”
“You aren’t making any sense, Colquitt,” he said severely and rose and got me a glass of neat Scotch. “One hysteric and maybe two, if you count Virginia, is about all I can take. I don’t want to hear any more about Anita Sheehan for at least twenty-four hours. I want you to drink this, and then I want you to go to bed. I’m going into the den and read the Wall Street Journal, and I just may take the television set out in the backyard and shoot it.”
I knew he was upset, as much about my state of mind as the frightful thing that had happened the night before. Perhaps because I needed to so badly, I believed what he had said about dreams and the power of suggestion and human error in television stations. Maybe, I thought, settling into bed with Razz and Foster and the latest New York magazine, maybe they were right in the old days. Maybe madness is as close as we’ll ever come to the paranormal. Poltergeists are supposed to be caused by disturbed adolescents, aren’t they? Why shouldn’t a woman whose mental health was shaky see something that wasn’t on a television screen at all but only in her anguished mind? And persuade a perfectly sane, balanced woman that she too had seen it? In the old days they’d have said that Anita Sheehan was possessed, and they’d get some exorcist or something to cast out the spirit. Maybe the abnormal has always been the normal, or vice versa.
House Next Door Page 13
