He could almost hear her future song, and so abandoned his attempts to make conversation, lapsing into silence so that he could attend to that promise as he drove. He didn’t stop listening to it until Cecelia’s cry of, “Right over there, Mr I!”
The house looked like many another in the neighbourhood. There was nothing remarkable about it, and even from just a glimpse of the outside, he could tell that Cecelia and her father had obviously not been there long enough to individualize it. There were no curtains at the windows, no decorations on the porch. In fact, if Cecelia hadn’t led him to it, if he had just passed it in his wanderings, he would have taken it to be abandoned. Iz could visualize its layout easily, for he had surely been in one like it over the years, meeting with unsuspecting parents, bonding with children in preparation for his special sessions. Perhaps he had once even been in this very home, helping develop a unique talent in his unique way.
Before he could unlock his door and walk her to the house -he’d hoped that he’d be able to steal his first peek inside to begin his calculations for the next step - she had already sprung from his car and was up the path, giving him no time to follow. Cecelia turned in the doorway as if only as an afterthought, waved at him, and then slowly shut him out.
No matter. He now knew where she lived. There would be plenty of time to get acquainted later.
~ * ~
Iz called in sick the next day, the first time he could remember doing so, surprising both the school administrator and himself. He had just never found it necessary before. Not that he was actually feeling ill - he didn’t know whether that was even possible - but suddenly, he was not content to wait for the workings of his relationship with Cecelia to play themselves out at the usual pace. His need to better understand what was to come, and understand it quickly, had become an urge, and so instead of showing up at work to pretend that he cared any longer about the other students, he instead stole the time to retrace his path of the day before.
He rolled slowly by Cecelia’s house, then turned a corner on to a side street and parked as far away as he could while still being able to keep an eye on the front door. He watched intently as Cecelia left, walking in the opposite direction toward the school, keeping to her decision to avoid the bus, followed shortly thereafter by her father, leaving for whatever dead-end job of which he was still capable. Iz could not make out the man’s face as he drove off. He knew what the mother’s death had done to Cecelia. But what had it made of the husband? The inside of the house would tell him soon enough.
Iz circled the car around to a more remote section of the subdivision, one where it was less likely to be noticed, and walked through a dense stand of woods to approach Cecelia’s property from the backyard. The door and windows of the house were locked, but he entered easily anyway, one of the tricks that time had taught him. Once inside, he moved through the home slowly, for after all, he did have all day. As he pored over their possessions, he interpreted the meaning of each object, inventorying her soul, looking for that thing which when subtracted from her would add to her the most. His task that day wasn’t as easy as it usually was, however, because the environment into which he stepped had not yet developed a personality. The messy canvas of life was blank. The rooms were mainly filled with moving boxes, the contents accrued by father and child still hidden. Very little had yet been unpacked.
By Cecelia’s bedside was a family photograph, seemingly taken not that long ago, for Cecelia was basically unchanged from how Iz had just seen her. Both parents were hugging her, one on either side of the child, three smiling faces. The mother was beautiful, and Iz could see a sadness there, even with the smile, but it was a sadness that would be as nothing compared to that which would eventually visit Cecelia.
But how best to deliver it? He could not kill Cecelia’s mother, because the woman was already gone in a bizarre traffic accident. But if Iz studied Cecelia long enough, he knew that he would find something. He always did.
Iz spent the rest of the day peering into boxes, seeking a sign. But he could sense no direction in clumsily made summer-camp ashtrays, posters of movie stars too distant for any affecting tragedy to be possible, and paperback romance novels; or in the cache, found hidden under stained work shirts smelling of tobacco, of the father’s pornography. It was a good beginning, but with the heart of the home still hidden by the move, he saw that he wouldn’t be successful that day, no matter how much time he had to devote to it. He would have to wait as the house blossomed into a home, as the placement of each object told tales of their significance, to see if any further clues would be delivered.
When he felt he had lingered long enough, he moved the car back to his earlier vantage point and watched as first Cecelia, and then her father, returned home. He sat there until the sides grew dark and the lights inside Cecelia’s home spilled over on to the front lawn.
Then he closed his eyes and trembled.
~ * ~
The following week pulsed to a steady rhythm, one to which Iz tried with great difficulty to surrender. It was difficult to remain adagio when his heart screamed that all should proceed allegro. Too much time had to be spent in pretence, keeping up the outer shell of his life, but he had lived that way for too long to abandon the face the world knew, not even with the stakes so high. So he continued to spend his days attempting to teach the unworthy, while the afternoons which followed were filled with rehearsals with those he had cherry-picked for the Spring Concert performance. Only the evenings were truly his, and he devoted them to studying Cecelia.
He would park in the secluded back street he had found and walk to her house, always approaching the same way, from the woods by its backyard, and never from the street. Once he did what had to be done next, he did not want to have left behind the memory of any chance encounter with a bystander, which might expose his involvement.
He found a stump, well hidden and topped to just the right height, to act as his perch for the evening. He would stare at the well-lit windows that dappled the darkness, glad that the mother was gone, even though that meant he could not take her to give Cecelia the push she needed, because a woman would have put up curtains immediately upon moving in, and he would then have been unable to play voyeur. From this side of the house he could make out the kitchen and the den downstairs, and the two bedrooms upstairs. He watched for hours, rapt by the silent shadow play.
The action would begin on the first level of the house as Cecelia prepared dinner for her father, who sat dumbly in the breakfast nook, head down, while his daughter worked. Because of his angle of observation, Iz could not see just why his head was down. Was he lost in a fog of mourning for his wife? Or just reading a newspaper spread out upon the table? Iz hoped it was the former.
After they ate, they would sit together in the den, watching television. He could not make them out at all, just the flickering of the screen. He could not hear the sound of it, nor their conversation, but as he imagined it, there wasn’t any; they had been cut off from each other by the great tragedy which had staggered them both.
Occasionally, Cecelia would get up and move to the kitchen, returning with a beer for her father, then once more vanishing from view. After several hours of this, and more than several beers, the downstairs lights would be extinguished, and the two moved upstairs to their separate rooms. The father paced for a few minutes, then quickly became invisible. Iz imagined him falling asleep atop the unseen bed with the lights on, unable to bear the darkness.
Cecelia, however, would sit at the desk Iz had seen there, her face perfectly framed by the window. Alone in her room, with nothing to hide from, she would run her fingers through her hair, pushing it away from her face. She was beautiful, too, like her mother, but unlike her mother, she was one of those girls, would become one of those women, who obviously did not know she was beautiful. Sometimes she looked down, perhaps reading a book, or doing her homework, or even writing in a diary, for that last was what he had learned all young girl
s did, even though he had not found one yet.
Sometimes she just stared off into the darkness, not knowing that this time, the darkness was staring back. Iz would stay that way, soaking in her unconstructed essence, until her light would go off, and then he’d sneak quietly away, sleeping but little until the cycle resumed again.
~ * ~
Iz took Cecelia aside after class one day and offered to tutor her privately. She would need it, he told her, to catch up with those he had been teaching far longer and to be ready for the concert, even though she was in truth far more advanced than any of the others. But she seemed to accept what he had to say. He could not tell whether she actually agreed with him, or was just too stunned by life to care one way or another any longer about how that life proceeded.
During one of their sessions, while running Cecelia through her scales, scales which Iz had never heard performed so perfectly before, he thought that he could make out the incursion of a certain ... coarseness. And so he stopped her.
“What is it, Cecelia?” he asked. “You seem distracted.”
“It’s nothing,” she said, from beneath her curtain of hair. Now that he was seeing that face each night, even though it was from a distance, he found that her veil did not disturb him quite as much.
“I don’t believe you, Cecelia,” he said. “It’s something. Something is bothering you. A music teacher can always tell. You should know that. Your music teacher is the only one in the school who can truly see into your soul. No guidance counsellor, no school psychologist, can do that. You can’t hide from me, Cecelia. Now, what’s wrong?”
“It’s my father,” she said, so quietly that he would not have been able to hear her had his ears not been so well trained by the ages.
“Yes?” he said.
Her mouth opened, but no sounds came out. Her silence extended for many beats.
“What is it?” he asked.
But she would not reply further, no matter how many times he prodded her.
“Is your father hurting you?” he asked. “Is that what’s going on? You can tell me.”
Even as he told her that, Iz could see - no, she couldn’t tell him. There was just no way. So they sat there in silence until a tear dropped from her chin. He hadn’t even been able to tell that she’d been crying.
“Let’s just sing, Mr I,” she finally said.
“Yes, let’s,” Iz said. “You don’t have to worry any more. I know just what to do.”
And he did, realizing suddenly, as they returned to the scales, that the answer to how next to temper Cecelia’s talent was now his. He knew the final step. Whatever it would mean for his ability to see Cecelia in the future, the father had to go. Her voice demanded it.
~ * ~
Iz decided that he would take action the night of the Spring Concert, an event which would provide just the distraction he needed.
It had become a Helen Keller Middle School tradition that once any concert was over, the teachers would take the children out to Skiddoo’s for ice cream, with a few parents tagging along as chaperones.
Iz knew that Cecelia’s father wasn’t going to be one of them, but then, based on what Iz had seen, he had never expected him to be. Iz wasn’t even sure that the man was going to be able to stir himself to attend the concert itself. He had been lost to a fugue state ever since the death of his wife, and apparently hadn’t been really fully present since. Iz had no idea how the man had been able to summon the energy to move his truncated family to a new town. He barely had enough energy to make it to work each day. Iz didn’t see that Cecelia’s father would be that much worse off after what he had planned for him than he currently was.
Iz was too distracted to be fully present himself for the concert, because as far as he was concerned, the true performance would not be until later that night. If any of the children noticed, they didn’t show it, and as for the audience, most of them were too busy tinkering with the controls of their cameras and camcorders to be present themselves. After it was all over, the principal thanked him as usual, hollow compliments indeed. Iz then excused himself from the pack of squealing children, and hurried off to Skiddoo’s. He needed to arrive there first, so he could make sure that all was ready for his unseen departure.
Once the children and their chaperones were present, and having been served their rewards for having survived the experience, Iz tapped his spoon to one side of his ice cream sundae and stood.
“I’m proud of you all,” he said, surveying the children as he spoke, while struggling against dwelling overlong on Cecelia. “I know that, for many of you, it wasn’t easy. But nothing worth doing ever is. Enjoy yourself. You’ve earned this night.”
As the restaurant filled with applause, Iz slipped away to the men’s room, sneaking from there through a window he had previously made sure was unlocked. He sped out of the parking lot and rushed to Cecelia’s neighbourhood, and then returned to the house via his usual route, picking his way through the underbrush in the darkness. He would be quick about this, and be back with his group before it was time to settle the bill.
As he approached the home, the lone light inside came from the glow of the television. The father was obviously hypnotized by it, as he usually was of an evening. Iz slipped into his gloves, and opened the back door slowly and quietly, not that he’d have been heard over the din from the television even if he’d slammed the door open and rushed in.
He moved silently down the hall, wafted along by his memories of Cecelia’s voice earlier that day, pulled forward by the even greater song which would spring from tomorrow’s sorrow. Before entering the den where he planned to extinguish the father, Iz pulled a bowling trophy down from a nook where it had been placed during the previous week.
What was to occur had to look like the work of a random intruder. Iz would be there to comfort Cecelia, to show her what solace was to be found in music. He flexed his fingers around the base of the trophy, raised it over his head, and stepped quickly into the den.
Only - Cecelia’s father was not there. Just Cecelia herself, seated calmly on the couch, hands folded in her lap.
Then ... darkness.
~ * ~
When Iz woke, his head aching, the first thing that filled his field of vision was Cecelia’s face, fully revealed, her hair swept back and tucked behind her ears. They were no longer in a dark room lit only by a flickering television. He could see that they were now in the basement, where she knelt beside him as he lay on his back.
When he tried to touch the pulsing area behind his right ear, he found that he could not move his hands. Tucking his chin into his chest, he looked down the length of his body to see that he had been bound by piano wire. Iz heard a thud of footsteps behind him, but he could not turn to see the source. Then Cecelia’s father shambled into view, a baseball bat in one hand, the bowling trophy which Iz had last been holding in the other.
“What’s going on, Cecelia?” said Iz, speaking as steadily as the situation would allow.
Perhaps it would have made more sense to have talked to the adult in the room, but from the leaden look on the man’s face, one far more dull than any Iz had yet seen on him, no one was home to hear any appeal.
“You know, you’re not the only one who’s figured out how to sneak out of a party, Mr I.”
“Untie me, Cecelia.”
Iz struggled against the wires wrapped tightly around him, but no matter how much strength he put behind his movements, they would not snap. His years spent in exile might have given him the accrued knowledge he needed to plan his tasks, and a certain canniness necessary to carry them out, but he had never been made as a repository for might. He remained as vulnerable as any mortal. As he wriggled against his restraints, he knew that there was only one way out, and that was through Cecelia.
“Let me go,” he said to her.
“I don’t think so, Mr I,” she said. “For once, I think you’re exactly where you need to be.”
And then she closed her eyes and began singing a song so sad, he wept. Not for himself, even though that should have been the most proximate cause for weeping, with the wire cutting into his wrists and his future uncertain, and with a hulk of a man looking down at him blankly, a bloodied bowling trophy now hanging in his hands. Not for Cecelia either, who had in his presence become the song, transformed into a channel for sorrow. But rather for the whole human race, that it could produce such a voice. He cried for its beauty, and for those who would never get to hear its beauty, and for the miracle that he was lucky enough to be there in its presence, however bound.
Psychomania: Killer Stories Page 13
