I Remember You

by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

  — Some decorum, my dear! He clicked his heels together and she jounced on his back, the long strands of the willow trailing down and playing with her hair like dumb fingers.

  — Yes, of course. Mrs. Hammond is watching! But the moment she said it she felt it must be true and made him turn in a circle so that she could make sure they were quite alone.

  Where the lawn turned to sand, he let her down off his shoulders and politely asked her for his clothes back.

  — Right now?

  — I’m afraid so.

  — But the pants are no good for you anymore! You cut them, snip snip! She tipped her head to one side and made a scissor motion with two fingers.

  — All the same. They are mine, and I did pay for them. Perhaps I can use them as shorts someday.

  — These are really deplorable manners. She was working away to untie the knotted belt that held the pants to her waist. The knot gave, and she stripped the belt out clean and handed it to him. Don’t think I am ever coming back to one of your parties, Mr. Dolan.

  The pants, unbolstered, slipped down off her hips of their own accord.

  — There are limits, Mrs. Lerner, to a man’s generosity. Even as concerns guests. He folded the belt and tucked it into his own back pocket. Now. My trousers.

  She stepped out of the pants and left them on the sand, and he crouched low to retrieve them, then, stopping there instead, he pointed to their shadows, one hand resting high on the inside of her leg.

  There was a little glow coming down from where they’d been sitting on the porch, but the true light now was the moon. The sky had cleared. In shadow, he was not much more than a mushroom. Her loose man’s shirt hung straight off her shoulders like a box. Standing tall over him, Heike might have been a giant.

  A giant on high, wooden stilts: the line of her bare legs stretching long and straight to meet the ground. A heron-maid. She had the silly thought that the shadow matched up more exactly with her true self than a reflection ever had. She straightened, raising her arms high over her head. Suddenly she was amplified, her diaphragm filling and her body—limbs, torso, her neck upon her shoulders—unfolding, link by link, lengthening out like rope.

  A breeze came up and whipped along the surface of the lake. There was a ripple at the shore. She unbuttoned the shirt and it fell away like wings, leaving only her bird’s skeleton behind.

  * * *

  Sleep was no longer the prison it had been, but neither was there any comfort in it. Heike lay in the dark, neither fully awake nor restful. She was thinking of a glass. She was thinking of the cut-glass tumbler in which Eric might mix a tonic, crushing the powder fine with a pestle, sometimes two or three colours together, the liquid cloudy, the bitterness at the back of her throat. It wasn’t that she liked the feeling, or even the taste. Her head was empty aside from these thoughts. Powder, pestle, glass; powder, pestle, glass. A high ache sang in her skull, piercing, just beneath her hairline. She hadn’t even fully known that she was awake.

  Dolan slept, laid out on his stomach, a thin pillow flat under one cheek. Heike slipped out of bed, reaching down and patting the carpet to find her underwear, then pulling on Dolan’s undershirt as though it were her own. The room was warm. She could hear the steady pace of a second hand somewhere, and set off to learn the time.

  In the hallway, the dark was less complete. She went down the stairs to the kitchen, following the tick of the wall clock, louder now and oddly shifting, erratic. But when she got there, she saw that it wasn’t that sort of clock at all. The time showed on the stove: five past five. The sound seemed now, in fact, to have disappeared altogether. Heike moved toward the pantry door and then back again to where she’d started, listening. Perhaps it hadn’t been a tick after all, but the creak of a door. The click of one latch after another. The sound of someone moving from room to room, searching the house.

  She’d left Dolan sleeping upstairs, the bedroom door closed. Whatever it was, creeping about, it was nothing that belonged there.

  The faucet gave a sudden flurry of drips, and she whirled and caught herself against the counter, her voice caught in her throat. The sound tapering off to a staccato ticking.

  The noise she’d heard from the stairs. The faucet almost shut off, but not quite.

  She turned the tap on full and let it run cold, holding her wrists under the water to calm down, to wash away her nervousness. When she felt better, she filled a glass and drank from it, slowly, sip by sip. She did not think she could get back to sleep—by now, little tendrils of light were sneaking into the sky; she could see them from the kitchen window—but neither did she want to be alone in the kitchen, the weirdness of the last moments lingering in her. She brought the glass of water back upstairs with her and stopped outside the bedroom door, leaning there, listening for Dolan’s breath. A thing she was used to doing for Daniel, when he was sleeping and she worried that the sounds of the house might wake him.

  Daniel in his bed, waking at night now and calling for her. His voice rising sharper and sharper when she did not come.

  Thinking of him like this pulled a tight stitch in her body. Somewhere deep in her ribs. She worked away at it anyhow, picturing him safe and warm, in clean sheets, looked after, wherever he was. An invocation. And then closer: she imagined him here, listened for his breathing along with Dolan’s on the other side of the door. If she’d never married Eric, if Daniel were Leo’s son.

  Safe at home in this house. His hair against the pillow, small fist curled and resting next to his mouth, lips parted, his breath sweet and damp.

  The idea settled her, left her calm and even. She could almost hear him, his exhalations coming soft and light. Sometimes, the nights he told her he wasn’t tired at all, she’d lay his hand on her diaphragm to let him feel the measure of her own breath. His head on the pillow next to hers, a few moments enough for his body to match the steady rhythm, her belly filling, then releasing, a kind of kinetic lullaby. This was not much different, what she did now. Listening for him. A soothing exercise, even if imagined.

  She brought the glass to her lips and sipped, turning back to face the hall. The sound still carrying from the bedroom. A gentle panting. And then stronger. Not Dani, of course, not really. Just Dolan’s own murmurs. Some people talk in their sleep.

  She stepped away from the door.

  But no. It was here, too, and stronger again, the farther she came down the hall. Perhaps there was a ceiling fan in another room, something she hadn’t seen, the sound of the blades catching against the walls and echoing. She moved carefully, tracking it, then turned abruptly. It seemed to come from the other direction again. She peered into the bathroom, but there was no fan there.

  She found herself moving back toward the staircase. If the sound was travelling, then it couldn’t be just an echo. There must be something here, a cat maybe, something almost silent but alive. She peered into the dark but nothing looked back at her.

  Following it. Low to the ground. A steady beat, not leading her now, but pulling her along. At the top of the stairs she stopped, her toes curled over the edge. Leaning out.

  She felt it then, next to her—not Daniel’s breathing at all, but the girl’s. Tessa’s. As though even thinking of her son had summoned the other child instead. A rasp at the back of the throat, more animal than human. Faster now and shallow, hot against Heike’s bare legs, the small of her back. The stairs running steeply down, and the floor far below, swimming before her, and the exhalation rhythmic, almost one long gasp. Pushing at her. Edging her forward.

  Heike stepped back quickly, gripping the top of the banister. The hallway was empty.

  A trick of the imagination. Wasn’t it? A trick of the ear?

  The door to the office stood open, and she stepped inside, shutting the door behind her and pressing back against it, the glass of water, still cold, held to her breastbone. What had Arden called it? The willies. But even here, she could feel it following her, throaty, a throttle. The sound of someone desperat
e for air. A drowning breath. She turned and moved away from the door, walking backwards past the open secretary, and came to stand with her back against the bookshelf that ran half the length of the room. She lay a hand against a stack of spines for balance. The long hiss of breath still there, always there. She moved down the line, so intent on listening that she barely noticed at first the little tug at her side. The fabric of Dolan’s undershirt rubbing at her. She flexed her shoulder to shake it loose.

  Then, roughly, the edge of the shirt lifted from her waist and pulled her back, hard against the shelf. When she tried to push forward again, she found she was caught there. Something held her fast. She pushed away again with a hip, the seams pulling and grating at her skin. A small hand, grasping, gripping her clothes. Tugging her down. The pressure great enough to make her bend at the knees, and she struggled to stay upright.

  She took hold of the shirt herself and spun around against it, breaking free suddenly, water from the glass in her hand splashing over her neck and chest. The sound gone, all at once, swallowed up into silence. She stumbled against the wall.

  Heike twisted the garment around her waist. The fabric was torn now. Not merely the seam, but a hole ripped in the cloth. She looked around. There was nothing on the shelf, anywhere, no nail or hook that could have done such damage. She set the water glass down to one side, inside the secretary, her hands shaking.

  There was a creak from the doorway and she started, falling back into the corner of the desk, water from the glass sloshing again and papers flying. Half on her knees, she looked to the entry, but the door sat snug in its frame. This seemed too much; she rocked back on her heels, almost crying. Making herself small in the room.

  It was from there that she saw it: a splintered place in the wooden shelf. She stood, slowly, to touch the jagged edge, just under the lip of a bracket. There was only the sound of Heike’s own breath now, and even that upset her. No thread knotted through the wood. Could this have been what caught and held her?

  There was a mess of papers on the floor, and Heike took a wary step away from the shelf and bent to retrieve what had fallen when she hit the desk. To try to restore order, for herself as much as anything. Receipts and jotted notes, blank postcards. A Venn diagram of discarded elastic bands: at its centre, a silver charm, meant for a lady’s bracelet. Not a pillbox, but a tiny San Francisco streetcar. She could see the white border of a photograph where it had been swept by momentum almost entirely underneath the desk. More than that: a small stack of photographs. She crouched, looking just once over her shoulder, and slid a hand into the spot to draw them out.

  There were three.

  In the first one, Dolan cuddled up to a dark-haired woman, his arm tight around her shoulder. The fingers of his left hand curled into view. On the fourth one he wore a ring: a wide, plain band. An old photo, then. His Spanish wife. Their honeymoon. Heike leaned slightly against the desk, low on her haunches, one hand still pressed against her side where the shirt was torn.

  A tall palm in the background, Dolan squinting against the sun. The woman did not wear a hat. They’d been shot from below, as though the photographer were crouched somewhere ahead of them. She remembered then that they’d met in a television studio in California, so perhaps this was not a holiday after all, but any day. The woman’s black hair swirled against one side of her face. There had been a breeze. She wore sunglasses.

  The other two photographs were family shots, posed and taken at a studio: Dolan, the wife, two small children. A little girl in a party dress. The baby in a sailor suit and held for the camera in his mother’s arms. In another, the family lounged together on a long chesterfield, the girl’s party dress a size bigger now, the boy wearing shoes. The children were both as dark as the mother, but their eyes were arctic pale, large and fringed with lashes. Dolan’s eyes the same light grey, setting only the mother apart.

  He’d never mentioned the children.

  For a moment, Heike imagined things differently: if the wife were not dark, but fair. What Daniel might have looked like with an Irish father.

  From behind her, the slightly wet sound of a throat being cleared.

  — They say the early bird gets the worm, ma’am. Now I see that it’s true.

  Heike stood up, banging her shoulder and dropping the photographs, the lid of the desk cracking at the hinges.

  — You start your day very early, Mrs. Hammond.

  Heike wrapped an arm around her belly and crossed the other over her chest, her hand flat and high against her collarbone. She had not meant to be seen like this, mostly naked and snooping about. She dropped her arms and threw a hand on her hip instead.

  — As do you, ma’am. The housekeeper stood in the shadow of the doorway, her own hands folded in front of her apron. She inclined her head slightly. But I have had the time to dress.

  Her voice was low enough to be a man’s. Heike lifted her chin to feel taller.

  — Does Mr. Dolan usually require his coffee at this hour?

  Mrs. Hammond stepped forward. Heike realized that she intended to pick up the photographs from where they lay at her own feet, and quickly bent down herself to get them. When she stood up, she found the other woman suddenly quite near. She stumbled back, the sharp corner of the desk jabbing her thigh.

  — You found Mrs. Dolan.

  — The children, Heike said. I didn’t know. She sorted the pictures neatly and lay them back inside the desk where they’d been hidden. Mr. Dolan must miss them terribly, she said. Then: I understand she’s run away to Europe.

  — With a jazz musician? Mrs. Hammond did not quite smile. Or perhaps you’ve heard instead that Mrs. Dolan took up with a prizefighter.

  — There was a man, Heike said. It’s what he told me. The other night at the clambake. The name came back to her in a rush: Renny Paulsen, she said. We were standing on the lawn.

  She stopped. Paulsen had, in fact, talked only about Dolan’s fight with the network over some script or other. The drama hour about the Till case; the sponsor ripping the Coca-Cola bottles off the tables on set. It had been Arden who’d told her Dolan was a divorcé. That first night, gossiping in the corner by the kitchen and spooning up caviar.

  There was a silence between them, the housekeeper saying nothing more, but waiting.

  — It’s not true, is it? Heike crossed her ankles and uncrossed them. She was cold, her hands and feet especially.

  — Jealous people tell jealous stories.

  Mrs. Hammond stepped up to the desk and straightened the little piles of receipts. Heike could see their bill from the Auburn Dinerant two nights before, sitting on top. The waiter had charged them for one egg cream; her own beer had been gratis. The housekeeper picked up the photos from where Heike had set them down.

  — I’ll put these away for you, she said. She paused, looking at the photo on top: Beautiful, isn’t she? She stays at the California house now. What with the children in school. Mrs. Hammond slid the photos into one of the desk’s little compartments. She turned to face Heike. Mr. Dolan prefers a less sedentary life, she said.

  She reached a hand into the pocket of her apron and produced a set of keys. The smallest of these went into the lock at the top of the desk, the little key turning until it clicked. She slipped the keys into her pocket.

  — He is quite devoted to her.

  Heike gave a slow nod. Her nakedness now seemed extreme, as though she’d been caught, not simply without a dress in what had felt to her like the dead of night, but rather in the middle of some more purposeful act. As though she’d been hired to jump out of a cake, and now the job was done and Mrs. Hammond would be paying the bill on the household’s behalf.

  — Yes, she said. Yes, I suppose he is.

  * * *

  The housekeeper kept a hard-nosed vigil at the top of the stairs while Heike toed her way back down the hall. It was unspoken between them that Heike was to return to the bedroom and was not to come out again; or, at least, not without Dolan. She could see now
that her introduction to the house—packed to the rafters with guests and hired staff both times—had not given her a dependable impression of the place. Empty, the house was half Mrs. Hammond’s.

  Dolan was still sleeping. There was some evidence he’d thrashed about the bed. Heike had left him lying calm and straight on a thin pillow, and now he was diagonal, corner to corner, with his own pillow folded in two and tucked under his neck and hers pressed sideways into his face. The strangeness of the dark house, only an hour or so before, the breath she’d felt against her skin—this all seemed very far away now. A story in a book, a tale for children, a fancy. The room smelled slightly of onions. She wondered if his pillowcase seam would leave a mark.

  Heike nudged the curtain aside and cranked open the window, shivering a little in the new breeze. Tearing her dress the other night—how brazen, how bohemian in the moment!— now left her in a cage. If only she’d thought to take anything else from the house, any bit of clothing, when she was riffling through her drawers, looking for the figurine. It wouldn’t have taken much. A negligée. A slip. If not respectable, she might at least have felt older, which was almost as good.

  She pulled back the sheet and slid in next to him, pushing at his shoulder a little so that he’d move without really waking. There was true daylight burning through the curtains now. Dolan ceded a small part of her pillow. He moved in his sleep and pawed at her, pulling her closer and curling up, his forehead lodged against her breastbone.

  How long had Mrs. Hammond been aware of her? Not just at dinner, surely, but yesterday morning, when Dolan had brought her coffee to the bedroom. She would have noticed then, the extra cup. Would, in fact, have arranged Heike’s cup on the tray herself, the little bowl of sugar cubes with a silver spoon, the light blue pitcher of cream. She may have been the one to carry the tray up the stairs, Dolan following behind her in his housecoat, the belt loosely tied.