I Remember You

by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

  Outside, the breeze had picked up. Heike could hear it in the aspen leaves, a silver sound, shimmery. The house made its regular mild creaks. She went back down the stairs, only somewhat cautious. It seemed to her now that Eric could not be home, would have heard her by now: her movement on the stairs, or pulling out Dani’s bed, tripping over the bedclothes, her urgent whisper, calling Dani’s name. In the front landing the floor was cool under her feet. There was the swish of the wind in the trees again, and a light knocking. She’d left the front door standing open when she came in the second time; the wooden screen beating gently against the frame, unguarded.

  She turned and followed the hallway back to Eric’s office, one hand trailing on the wall. The barest glow, a slim band of lamplight, showed beneath his door. She stopped and shrank back against the wall across from it, watching for a flicker in the light, a movement, a shadow. Her hips pressing into the moulding on the high edge of the wainscot, the woodwork sharp against her tailbone. The light left on, absent-mindedly—or Eric himself in there, waiting in the wingback chair?

  Waiting for her. He’d known she would come back. Or come looking. She imagined him there, in his chair with a Scotch and soda. He curled his lips at her meanly. Or, if not quite mean, imperious. Like a man waiting for a dog that’s tired itself out.

  Heike closed her eyes and opened them. She was still in the hall, and she stepped forward and stopped again. Her hand lay on the doorknob and stayed there, the other hand on the wood frame close to her face. She counted breaths: three, four, five. When she turned the knob, it was slow and silent, and she pushed the door in.

  There he was. In the wingback, as she’d pictured, the reading lamp with its green glass shade shining down. But he did not sit staring. His head lolled back, nestled against the cushion. One hand sullenly hanging over the edge of the chair, and an empty tumbler lying on its side on the floor below.

  Heike drew her arms in close against her sides. Eric’s eyes just thin crescents of white, almost but not entirely closed. A sleeping giant.

  For a brief moment she thought he was dead. The plank floor in the office was polished smooth where it was not covered by a red hooked rug, and Heike stayed slightly on her toes, watching him as she moved closer, then back again. The silence made everything seem false. She felt visible within it, as though there were a camera on her, or a real Eric hiding just behind the door, this unconscious, failed version only a lure. One arm hanging off the chair, one arm across his chest, and on this hand the finger gave a twitch. He was dreaming. She could see his eyes roll back under their lids. She had an urge to look over her shoulder.

  He had shelves with books on them, and bookends, and a file cabinet that she knew from the past was kept locked; a wide oak desk with three drawers. She eased these open now, one after the other, her back dangerously close to the chair, but the topmost drawer held only pencils and some notecards, and the other two were mostly empty. But they had not always been so: thin metal file hangers spanned the depth of the drawers’ sides. The files were missing.

  In the lowest drawer, she found two kinds of glass containers. The drawer chimed as she opened it, the noise of it sending a quick shot of tension up her spine. The little iodine bottles she’d seen Eric using the first night they went to Dolan’s, but also another set of vials, filled with powder, resting in a wooden rack. Each stoppered tube marked with a name: Ledyard, Canoga, Moravia, Locke, Lodi. The names of villages on either side of the lake. She noticed now that there was one vial open on the desk. Aurora, the village down the road.

  She glanced up at him, quickly, then back again. Impossible that he did not see her doing this. There was no figurine here, either, unless he’d locked it up, although she had not realized until this moment that she’d expected to find it here, hidden from her as Daniel was hidden. She did not dare move farther into the room. She leaned a hand on the desk and flicked at the pages of his notebook, lying open, Eric’s smart penmanship tracing its lines around her fingers. A hospital journal, his own set of notes on the patients housed there:

  February 12, 1956. Patient sleeps as normal, without interruption, but engages in limited somnambulance in the early part of the rest period before settling into a heavier phase for the final two to three hours . . .

  Eric’s hand twitched again. Heike closed the book and lifted it off the desk, tucking it against her side like a schoolgirl. She did not want to turn her back to him; at the same time, she was almost afraid to back out of the room. As though he might also be behind her, the other Eric. Out in the hall, the darkness was thick, the office door arcing slowly closed on its hinges and sealing off the lamplight within. She stepped sideways, her fingertips curled under the brass doorknob, coaxing it along with her.

  It was not until she stepped over the threshold that she felt it. Something brushing by her, the hem of her skirt swishing against her calf. Heike froze, waiting to feel the breeze from the doorway against her face. She’d left the front door open, but not the screen. There was no draft now, but as she stood there, she felt the same movement again, this time a nudge at her hip, the little hairs on her arms rising. As though someone else were in the hall, had passed by her a second time, too close; a child or even an animal, whisking at her ankles. She whirled around to look behind her, but the hall stood long and dark and empty, trailing off toward the back of the house.

  — Dani?

  She whispered the name. Could he be here, hiding in the shadows? Hiding, maybe, from Eric? She felt her way along the wall panels and stood at the entrance to the white room, then stepped cautiously in. The garden outside sank back into blackness, the room itself ashy and mute. Moonlight caught on the window glass, the polished lid of the piano, a flicker here and there through the film. Heike’s eye followed the glint. She whispered the name again:

  — Dani?

  Nothing moved.

  The French doors were closed and locked. There was no breeze from this end of the house. She turned to face the front door again, half-expecting to see Eric waiting for her in the hall, but that, too, stood vacant and still. The office door closed tight. She stepped forward and then pulled up, her breath catching in her throat. Something brushed again at her side, harder now. Scratching at her. She glanced quickly down, looking for evidence, some thin gash, a pinprick line of blood. Her skirt swept against her thigh, first on the right and then on the left, then on the right again, as though whatever it was, surely now an animal, something come in from out of doors, were moving around her in a swirl. For a moment she heard the sound of it, silvery. A wind through the leaves. A whisper.

  She drew her fists in tight, unwilling to turn in circles or to look behind her again. Someone standing by, just beside her. A soft breath at her ribcage, her elbow’s crook.

  At the end of the hall, the door to the front garden gaped on its hinges, and she stepped lightly toward it, moving quickly now, her eyes low. At the last moment, some movement in the mirror caught her eye, and she turned her head wildly away, afraid, looking instead toward the wall and the armoire. The drawer still open as Heike had left it, a white glint of moonlight catching there.

  Everything in her to keep her movements steady, to quiet her breath in the dark.

  * * *

  She came out of the house at a pitch and aimed for Eric’s car; steadily, not running. From there she beckoned to Arden to come join her, but stood with her back against the car door, watching the house. The sound of Arden’s quick step down the driveway made her stomach tighten.

  — I thought you were gone, Arden said. I thought you were caught for sure.

  Heike looked over her shoulder and reached for Arden’s hand, her elbow, this contact grounding her.

  — He’s there. Eric. Knocked out cold. He didn’t see me.

  They had to be quick, she told Arden. She glanced at the house again, but there was no movement from the doorway, and she closed her eyes and took a breath and started over, trying to shake off her nerves. It would be better to buy
time to get away by hiding the car, rather than taking it. Something she’d thought of, watching Eric slumber away in the chair. She could imagine him taking a stabbing pleasure in calling the sheriff himself, allowing her to be arrested, then generously dropping the charges. Or not.

  This was on her mind, she told Arden, and she preferred that Eric look foolish when the cops discovered the missing vehicle only a few yards from the house. She did not start the car but popped it into neutral as Arden braced herself against the front bumper.

  They eased it past the garden, walking backwards downhill, their hands firm on the hood to stop the car from slipping away from them. Toward the stream and into the treeline. The ground levelled out, and they switched sides to push from behind. There was a woody scrape as the car nestled in. Heike pulled Arden into the bush.

  From where they stood, you could see the front garden only in pieces. A rough trail led up through the trees to the road. Heike tried to still her fingers, unpicking the pronged tip of a twig where it had caught in the crocheted trim of her skirt.

  — Should we push my car along a bit, too, so that he doesn’t hear the engine start?

  This was delivered in one sharp, exquisite breath. Arden held on to her dress with both hands, as though it were an apron filled with crusts. It was dark, and her face was open, wiped clean. Everything was new. Heike dropped her hem and listened.

  She’d felt something, she told Arden now. Inside the house, just as she was getting out. It had given her a scare, she said.

  — Right here, right beside me. Like I wasn’t alone. They were speaking in whispers. I don’t remember how I got to the front door, Heike said. That’s how fast I was moving.

  She’d still had the notebook under one arm, and turned her head to the side, the way you do in the street when you don’t want to be recognized. But it was the mirror she wanted to avoid.

  — I had this notion that if I looked in the mirror I might see something, you know, behind me. Someone. Whatever was in there with me.

  It was in turning away from the mirror that her eyes had fallen to the armoire drawer, still standing open from when she’d retrieved the key to the car.

  — And there she was, she said.

  It was not a large drawer. The handkerchiefs had been pressed out flat and folded neatly. But this time something else was laid out on top of them. The Dresden doll.

  — But it wasn’t there when you first went in?

  — There was almost nothing in there the first time I looked. I reached right into it. I would have felt her there.

  — Perhaps in the dark you missed it somehow.

  Heike did not think she had missed anything.

  — You’re only giving yourself the willies, Arden said. Come on now. She turned to hike back to where her own car was hidden, up on the road.

  Heike looked back at the house. She’d shut the door behind her, and it was still closed now. There was no longer any wind. The kitchen windows were open, their yellow curtains hanging still and slate grey in the dark.

  Arden was already out of sight; from the road, Heike heard the dull thunk of a car door closing. She tucked the notebook back under one arm, but held the figurine safe in her hand, where she could see it. The porcelain was smooth, and heavier than she remembered. She forced herself to breathe out, relaxing her face and turning the corners of her mouth up.

  There was a little skittering in the underbrush. For a moment she jumped, then shook it off, laughing at herself. All that lurking around, and Eric dead to the world. He had not followed her out. She was safe; he did not know she was there at all. This was only something small: a mouse or, if she was unlucky, a mink. She could feel its movement along the ground near her, through the leaves, no more than a few feet away. She looked down. Where her skirt brushed her knee, there was a stain. She pulled up the fabric, revealing a long scratch down the length of her thigh. The gash she’d felt inside the house, the blood all but dry now.

  Above her, the thin branch of an aspen creaked in the wind. And then something closer. More than a whisper: someone speaking, just beside her. The words plain in her ear:

  I remember you.

  Heike’s body stiffened at the sound, and she whirled around, but there was no one there, no one in the shadows, next to her or behind her. She’d been so afraid of Eric—that he’d come out of the house, that she’d be caught. But the voice, high and clear as a bell, belonged to a little girl.

  12

  The door swung open and Dolan stepped inside, scanning the place, one hand already on his hat. Heike didn’t look up but signalled to him with her empty glass. She was in a booth to the waterside, where the diner car hung over the river, absently thumbing the edges of a notebook in her hand. The only patron in the room.

  Her hair was loose in a way that might have suggested foreignness, or the movies, something contrived; in fact, there was a leaf in it, from the escapade with the car in the woods. Out the window was the river, black-looking, and no moon—it was sunk now behind heavy clouds—but there was a streetlight that shone a kind of arrow streak reflection on the water, and a little lamp at the table, and a table jukebox. A woman’s voice, Ella Fitzgerald.

  She’d put a nickel in the machine.

  — You’re in no rush to see me.

  Heike straightened to look at him, and the crease between her brows smoothed out. Dolan stood tall enough over her that he cast a kind of shadow where the beam from an overhead fluorescent was blocked.

  — I’m glad.

  — Not every day I get a call from a maiden in distress.

  — Or every night?

  — At night, slightly more often.

  — I’m sorry I woke you.

  — Didn’t anybody give you trouble, sitting here all alone?

  It was two in the morning. Arden had parked the car and waited while Heike used the phone, and they’d burnt their tongues and the roofs of their mouths eating hot french fries, the first thing Heike had eaten all day, maybe the first thing for many days. After that, she’d sent Arden home. The diner was empty now, save for the cook and a scrawny waiter sitting at the counter. The waiter’s hair was thin and receding, but he wasn’t old. He was a young man losing his hair. The cook was bent so low over his plate you could only see the fur on the back of his neck, the loop of his apron caught on his shirt collar. They were eating what was left of the dinner special. There was a basket of bread in front of them, plain sliced bread, and the cook shovelled cream gravy and peas onto a piece of it and folded it closed like a sandwich.

  — They gave me a beer. She held up the empty glass, and he could see a trace of foam curling around the bottom of it. And one free phone call, like in prison, she said.

  — End of the night for everybody.

  — Middle of the night. Why don’t you sit down?

  — Don’t you have any things?

  — What things should I have?

  Dolan stuck his lips out and gestured with one hand, a circular motion with just the fingers.

  — Things, things. Like a suitcase or something. Your things.

  Heike let her head sway back and forth. The beer had been Arden’s idea: she’d said Heike was in shock.

  — I just left. I didn’t take anything. No, wait. Just this.

  She patted the black-covered exercise book, and then pulled another item up from the bench next to her. Dolan was still standing over her. He parted the wrinkled newspaper to take a cursory look at the figurine. Heike had rewrapped her.

  — You know, another woman might have brought her nightgown. Some clean underwear.

  — I didn’t have time. Or even a bag to put it in. What would I put it in?

  It seemed to her then that she used to have a suitcase once, a white case with a latch and a pearled handle, and she worked for a moment trying to recall where it had gone.

  — It’s an interesting selection that you did bring.

  — The book is Eric’s. His research journal. Or one of them. I don’t kno
w why I took it. Except that he will miss it, and know that I was there.

  — He may not guess it was you.

  — You don’t think?

  This disappointed her. She took the Dresden shepherdess out of its wrapping, unfolded the paper and smoothed it out flat against the table.

  — Daniel is gone, she said. Missing.

  Dolan slid into the booth.

  — What’d the police say?

  She shook her head.

  — But you called the police?

  — Eric did.

  — And?

  — He won’t help me. Eric only wants to be in charge. He says if I go to the police myself, he’ll have me arrested for infidelity.

  — Infidelity! And here you are now, red-handed. Red-lettered, Dolan said.

  — Or committed. It would be so easy.

  — Who says easy?

  Heike put out her thumb and pointed it inward, at her own sternum.

  — I’m just an unidentified foreigner, remember? Like in your story. The town will circle their wagons.

  — Who says easy?

  — Arden says. She says try finding Dani from the State Mental.

  — Arden who?

  — She thinks Eric has him. Eric has Dani, that he’s not missing at all.

  — That’s an interesting theory.

  — I’m not sure I believe it.

  Dolan looked up and flicked his chin toward the men at the counter, but the cook kept his head down and concentrated on mopping his plate. The waiter held his eyes on Dolan, then called across the room.

  — No beer after midnight.

  This came out forceful; pre-emptive, even. He twisted his body back toward his dinner with steady resolve.

  — You gave one to the lady.

  — No beer after midnight.

  Dolan turned to Heike:

  — You’ve been here all night?

  The waiter stuck a forkful of shredded turkey in his mouth and yelled out around it: