Echoes

by Ellen Datlow

  days of joy, now it is a dark season

  days of happiness I can hear echoing   at a distance

  he says I am not the beautiful young woman he married

  I am another person, I am not that woman

  to be a mother is to surrender girlhood

  to be a mother is to take up adulthood

  he says I am sick, finished   unless I slash my wrists I am of no interest to anyone

  knowing how I am vulnerable, wanting to die (sometimes)

  welcomed me back, forgave me (he said) even as I forgave him (his cruelty)

  his lies, he’d so adored me

  but then it has been revealed, he has not forgiven me   he will never love the baby he guesses is the child of another

  as in nature, the male will destroy the offspring of other males

  (why does this surprise me?   it does not surprise me)

  a mistake to have confided in him, in a weak mood   my fear of harming the children   and he pretended to sympathize

  then later, laughed at me   in his eyes, hatred like agates

  last night daring to say   do it and get it over with

  Elisabeth is so shocked she nearly drops the diary. For a long time she sits unmoving, staring at the page before her.

  At last, hearing a sound outside the room, a tentative footstep. It is Stefan, is it?—the surviving child.

  Stefan enters the room though Elisabeth has not invited him inside, nor even acknowledged him. Asks her what is that, what is she reading, and Elisabeth says it is nothing, and Stefan says, his voice rising, “Is it something of Mummy’s? Is that what it is?” and Elisabeth starts to reply but cannot. Wraps the diary in the shawl to hide it, leans over the makeshift desk and with her body tries to shield it from the child’s widened eyes.

  11.

  So very easy. Sinking into sleep.

  Position yourself. Behind the wheel of the car, so calm.

  First, you swallow pills with wine. Not too many pills, enough pills for solace. And the child, you must tend to him.

  Dissolved in milk. Warm milk. Who would suspect? No one!

  Start the motor. Lay your head against the back of the seat. Shut your eyes. The child’s eyes. Wrap him in the shawl, in your arms.

  Soon, you are floating. Soon, you are sinking. Soon, you are safe from all harm.

  • • •

  For days, unless it has been weeks, Elisabeth has been feeling feverish. Sick to her stomach. A fullness in her belly as if bloated with blood. Gorged with backed-up blood.

  One day ascending the stairs she loses her balance, slips. It is a freak accident. It is (certainly not) deliberate. A sharp, near-unbearable pain in her right ankle, that has twisted, sprained. In her lower belly a seeping of blood, then a looser rush of blood, hot against her thighs, clotted. At first she thinks that she has wetted herself, in panic. She calls for help. Weakly, faintly, doesn’t want to upset her husband, doesn’t want to upset the child, so very lucky that Ana comes hurrying—“Oh, Mrs. Hendrick!”—and in the woman’s eyes compassion, concern.

  You may warm yourself in the shawl. That is for you.

  • • •

  Just seven weeks old. The tiny creature—“fetus.” Not a pregnancy exactly—you wouldn’t have called it.

  Elisabeth is astonished, disbelieving. She’d been pregnant? How was that possible?

  When he learns of the miscarriage (which is what Elisabeth’s doctor calls it) Alexander is stunned. His face is gray with shock, distaste. “That’s ridiculous. That couldn’t be. You were not pregnant. The subject is closed.”

  12.

  In her Paris Review interview N.K. said in jest, The best suicides are spontaneous and unplanned—like the best sex.

  No more should you plan a suicide than you’d plan a kiss, or laughter.

  True of N.K.’s earlier suicide attempts but not true of the actual suicide in a locked and secured garage in the house on Oceanview Avenue, Wainscott. Life catches up with you, taps you on the shoulder.

  Towels stuffed beneath doors, a plotted and meditated death, motor of a car running, bluish toxic exhaust filling the air. Stink of exhaust, having to breathe it in order to breathe in precious toxic carbon monoxide; the child beside her sedated, too weak to resist; the child in the rear of the Saab less cooperative but too groggy to resist. . . . Beautiful Clea, beautiful Stefan, children the mother hadn’t deserved. In her deep unhappiness calling us back, the kiss of oblivion.

  In the dimly lighted garage Elisabeth finds herself groping her way like a sleepwalker.

  A powerful curiosity draws her. As water draws one dying of thirst.

  Though Elisabeth has never been and is not suicidal.

  This BMW, the older of Alexander’s cars, seems to have been abandoned in the garage. Elisabeth is concerned that the battery might have died.

  She will see! She will experiment.

  The key to the BMW Elisabeth found after searching the drawers in Alexander’s bureau. Loose in her pocket is the key now, and a handful of sleeping pills. Consoling!—though she has no intention of using the pills.

  And in her hand a bottle of Portuguese wine she’d struggled to open.

  And the moth-eaten heather-colored mohair shawl that is yet beautiful, like wisps of cobweb.

  Envy is the homage we pay to those whose hearts we don’t know.

  Envy is ignorance raised to the level of worship.

  Just to enter the (forbidden) garage. To sit in the (forbidden) car. To turn on the ignition—the motor is on!

  (If the ignition hadn’t turned on, that would be the crucial sign. Not now not you not for you. But the ignition has turned on.)

  Just to listen to music on the car radio. (But all Elisabeth can get is static.)

  Just to drink from the bottle. Solace of wine, that might numb the ache between her legs where blood still seeps, nothing dangerous, no hemorrhage but more like weeping. Not a real pregnancy, not for you.

  Like a woman with no manners drinking from the bottle. Hardly the wife of the house on Oceanview Avenue.

  Homeless woman. Reckless, harridan. Alexander would be appalled, but in her distracted state she’d forgotten a—what, what is it—wine glass. . . .

  The BMW motor is quiet. Loud humming, could be a waterfall. Bees at a distance. Oh, but Elisabeth has also forgotten—in her pocket, a handful of green capsules.

  Turns off the staticky radio. Leans her head back against the top of the seat. A mood is music.

  Very sleepy, tired. Even before the drone of the engine, the smell of the exhaust, tired. Weight of the air. Can hardly move.

  One day. You will know when.

  In the mohair shawl she is warm, protected. Warmth like a woman’s arms.

  Airy lightness. Like a kiss, or laughter.

  13.

  Elisabeth?—the first time the child has uttered her name.

  And the sound pierces her heart, so beautiful.

  Small fists on the window of the car door close beside her head. Her heavy-lidded eyes are jarred open. With the strength of panic, Stefan has managed to open the heavy car door, he is shouting at her—No! No! Wake up!

  Pushing away her hand. Fumbling to turn off the ignition. Coughing, choking.

  In that instant the motor ceases. Hard hum of the motor ceases.

  Elisabeth is groggy, nauseated. Hateful stink of exhaust, the garage has filled with bluish fumes. Yet: Elisabeth wishes to insist that she is not serious, this has not been a serious act.

  If she were serious she would not have behaved in such a way in the presence of the child. (In fact, she’d assumed that Stefan was at school. Why is Stefan not at school?)

  Only a single capsule swallowed down with tart white wine. Just to calm her rapidly beating heart. No intention of anything further.

  Wrapped in the beautiful moth-eaten mohair shawl. Shivering in delicious dread, anticipation. But now comes the frightened child crouching beside her. Pulling at her, clawing at he
r. With all the strength in his small being dragging her out of the car. As she stumbles he runs to press the button open the garage door.

  A rattling rumbling noise like thunder . . .

  Pulling at Elisabeth. On drunken legs, coughing and choking. Pleading with her—Get outside! Hurry!

  Together staggering out of the garage into wet cold bright air, smelling of the ocean.

  Don’t die, Elisabeth—the child is begging.

  Don’t die. I love you. The child is begging.

  Never has Elisabeth heard her stepson speak to her in such a way. Never seen her stepson looking at her in such a way. Never such concern for Elisabeth, such love in his eyes.

  And now that they are outside in the fresh clear air Stefan will tell Elisabeth a secret.

  The most astonishing secret.

  Not Mummy who’d pulled Stefan from the car three years ago, carried him out of the poisonous garage and upstairs in the house to (just barely) save his life. For Mummy had been unconscious, her head back at an angle as if her neck was broken, and little Clea unconscious wrapped for warmth in Mummy’s shawl and Mummy’s arms and no longer breathing.

  Not the mother. Not her.

  Stefan will explain: It had been the father who’d come home, who had saved him.

  Alexander had entered the garage, he’d smelled the stink of the exhaust billowing from the rear of the car. Seen the hellish sight knowing at once what the desperate woman had done. And in that instant made his decision to let her die.

  Do it! Do it, and be done.

  There is no love in my heart for you. Die.

  Alexander’s decision not to rescue the mother and not to rescue the little girl wrapped in the shawl in the mother’s arms. Only just the boy in the back seat of the Saab who was his son.

  Blood of my blood, bone of my bone. My son.

  Choking, coughing as he pulled the semi-conscious child out of the car. Seeing that the boy was still breathing, sentient. Not knowing if it was too late and the child’s brain had been injured irrevocably but frantic to save him, the son. His son. Gasping for breath as he carried the seven-year-old out of the garage and kicked shut the door behind him.

  Upstairs and in a panic hiding the boy in a closet. Not knowing what he was doing but knowing that he must do something. And not understanding at just that moment that he would claim to have discovered the boy in the closet, in his search for his son. And not understanding yet that the story would be, it had been the mother who’d carried the son upstairs, laid him on the closet floor, and shut the door.

  The father’s hands badly shaking. Still he’d have had time to return to the garage, to rescue the mother and the younger child if he had wished but he had not wished. Had not even turned off the motor, in his haste to save his son.

  A brute voice urged, in terrible elation—Let them die, they are nothing to you. They are not of your blood.

  Elisabeth will be stunned by this revelation. Elisabeth will grasp at the child’s hands, to secure him.

  You have never told anyone this, Stefan? Only me.

  Only you.

  And so it was murder, yet not murder. The father had only to wait as the garage filled up with poisonous haze, until the death of the woman was certain.

  His excuse could be, he was agitated, confused. He was not himself. Had not planned—ever—to do such a thing. Never would he have murdered N.K. with his own hands. Never would he have wished the little girl Clea dead, though Clea was not his but another man’s daughter.

  One of the wife’s lovers. Forever a secret from Alexander for in her diary he would discover and destroy there were codified names, obvious disguises. Would not know the identity of the little girl’s father though he’d been rabid with jealousy for this unknown person and in his passion would have liked to murder him as well.

  And so, it had happened. The deaths that were (the father would tell himself) accidents.

  Yet, he’d taken time to arrange the towels beneath the door to the garage, as the woman had arranged them. For it was crucial, the poisoning should not cease until it had done its work.

  Gauging the time. Though his thoughts came careening and confused. How many minutes more, before the woman he’d come to hate would be poisoned beyond recovery.

  Twenty, twenty-five minutes . . . By then, he believed that the woman and the child must be dead, and their deaths could not be his fault. For the hand that had turned on the ignition was not Alexander’s but the woman’s.

  In astonishment Elisabeth listens. Yet she is not so surprised for she has known the father’s heart.

  Stefan has saved her. It is wonderful to Elisabeth to learn that he has loved her all along, these many months of the most difficult year of her life.

  Returning from school to save his stepmother. Daring to enter the garage, that was forbidden to him. Daring to yank open the heavy door of the BMW, to shut off the ignition. Daring to scream into her slackened face—No! No! Wake up!

  In confusion and fright she’d flailed at him. Thinking at first that he was the furious husband.

  Then, he’d hurried to open the garage door. Like rumbling thunder above her. Tugging at her, urging her from the death-car. Together staggering outside into the bright cold air of March.

  In this bright cold air Elisabeth will run, run. Strength will flow back into her legs, her lungs will swell. Never has Elisabeth run so freely, alone or with another. She is suffused with joy. Light swells inside her, in the region of her heart. In her throat, into her brain. Behind her eyes that swell with tears. It is not too late, the child has not come too late to save her. Running hand in hand away from the shingle board house on Oceanview Avenue. Hand in hand away from the Hendrick family house and along the coarse pebbly shore wet from crashing froth-bearing surf Elisabeth and Stefan run. Giddy with relief for the cold Atlantic wind has blown the poisoned air away as if it had never existed. Rising on all sides now are gray sand dunes beautifully ribbed and rippled into which they can run, run and no one will follow.

  The Medium’s End

  Ford Madox Ford

  A man called Edward White was talking to a man called Charles Fowler at the Embarkment Club. White was a man of thirty-eight and Fowler was thirty-nine, having just returned to London after seven years in Burma.

  “So you’re still in the bank?” Fowler asked.

  “I am one of the directors,” White answered, “though that is no particular credit to me, as most of my family are directors, and I just stepped in. It isn’t, I mean, like making a career. It was just waiting for me.”

  “Then South . . . ,” the other began.

  “Oh, you remember South?” White asked.

  “You’d nothing else but South on your mind just when I went away,” Fowler said. “I thought you were going clean mad—both you and Milly.”

  The banker looked gravely at the point of his evening slippers.

  “I think we were both going mad,” he said. “But it wasn’t we who did it in the end, it was South.”

  “Oh, South,” Charles Fowler said. “I thought there was more in him than that. I thought he was a tremendous swindler—what’s the word?—charlatan? But I certainly thought he had some sort of powers.”

  “He had,” the banker declared grimly. “I don’t want to talk about it, but I may as well. If I don’t you’ll hear some silly version from some other chap. It was like this:

  “Just about after you left, Milly and I really did go practically off our heads. It wasn’t only that we were prepared to stake all we had on that wretched medium’s wretched tricks. I use the word ‘wretched’ quite carefully, because that was what they were. The whole thing was a wretched business. It wasn’t, as I’ve said, that Milly and I were prepared to stake our whole fortunes, but we were trying—we were succeeding—in roping the whole fortunes of a lot of people—unfortunate old maids and servants and people.

  “You can’t understand that sort of madness. I can’t understand it myself, though I’ve been throug
h it. Why, I mean, should the fact that a tambourine jangles in the air in a dark room or a phosphorescent hand touches you on the face—why in the world should that seem the most important thing in the whole world? There’s no knowing. It’s just a madness. It’s like seeing an enormously bright ray of light and being convinced that it’s a diamond sparkling. And then suddenly, lo and behold it’s just a bit of broken bottle glass.

  “Anyhow, there was this man South—a weird looking creature, with nasty, shifty eyes. You remember him. You used to think he had powers, you say? Well, he had powers.

  “But the point is that the powers he had weren’t, if you understand me, the powers we thought he had. They weren’t even the power he thought he had.

  “Anyhow, we were getting together a large sum of money for him—quite a large sum. There was mine, and Milly’s, and old odd Williamson’s, and twenty or thirty other people’s. Why there might have been forty to fifty thousand pounds in it for him. And after this—his collapse—we discovered that he had forged another old woman’s name for just about forty thousand, and lost the money on the stock exchange. So that our money would just have gone to make up that sum. You understand, he was an arrant swindler. He thought he was an arrant swindler. After his collapse I found in his pocket all the usual paraphernalia of these fellows—the rubber glove with the tube, the fishing lines with the small hooks, the birdlime, the patent reflecting spectacles—but just the very cheapest sort of swindler he was. It was nothing short of amazing that he hadn’t been found out, for every one of his tricks had been exposed thirty or forty times, even at that date.

  “And then came his extraordinary triumph—what you might call his hour of victory and death. What I am going to tell you is absolute truth—perfect and exact truth.

  “It was the day before our cheque was to have been handed over to South. And South was going to give us all a manifestation in the afternoon. He preferred the night himself, as a rule, because it was easier to get darkness. But there was an old general, Sir Neville Beville, who was to catch a 6:20 train to his place near Southampton, and we wanted to get some money out of him, so the séance was to take place at half past four, at Lady Arundale Maxwell’s. You remember her?