The Clairvoyants

by Karen Brown

  “I do have a paper to write,” I said.

  I didn’t want to be around students with Del. She drew the wrong sort of attention. Charles Wu, with his wool blazer, his torn T-shirt, would ask to be introduced to her. But I also knew how bored she must be getting, while I was in classes or at the library, wandering around town, waiting for me in the little apartment; I had gathered that Ashley Manor sponsored a lot of activities for its residents. Del slammed the bureau drawer closed and tugged one of my wool sweaters over her head.

  “You can go,” I said.

  “I can’t without you,” she said. “The day would be ruined.”

  “Yes, you’d be missed,” Geoff said.

  I understood that neither of them wanted to go alone with the other. I hadn’t begun the paper—hadn’t even planned to write it for another few days. It was a poor excuse. I set my book on the couch.

  I changed into a pair of jeans and grabbed a sweatshirt. I took my bag with my camera. I met Geoff and Del downstairs, where Geoff’s car, an old Volvo, sat sputtering by the curb. The car had once been white, but rust, and a general accumulation of road dust and dirt, had transformed the paint into something dull and gray. It was a windy day, and the elm sent its bright leaves down onto the hood. In the tree’s shade Mary Rae stood, irresolute, twirling her necklace. I refused to look at her face, at that bald expression of longing, irritated that she would continue to appear to me, as if she might force my hand.

  She wanted to be found. And I hated to envision the state she’d be in, what might have happened to her. I had no idea where she was, and the idea of coming forward with the details that I knew seemed ridiculous. In the days after David Pinney disappeared, we’d learned that no one had thought to look for him. His father, his only parent, hadn’t reported him missing immediately. “He’s had his share of trouble,” his father was later quoted to have said. “I figured he’d run off with some friend or other.”

  I felt a chill in the air, and I knew the warmth of the last two days was gone and something else was blowing in. You could hear the Cornell chimes, ghostly and partly out of tune. Del was already in the front seat, so I climbed into the back, the door groaning on its hinges. The leather upholstery was cracked, and the floor mats were encrusted with dirt and dried leaves and sawdust that I assumed came from Geoff’s work in the furniture shop. I knew I was sitting in dog hair but was grateful that Geoff hadn’t brought Suzie along—possibly in deference to me. He lit a cigarette and headed out of town, down Route 13, so that it wasn’t long before we left the houses and the university, and Ithaca itself, behind.

  “This will be a taste of the countryside,” Geoff called out. He had the windows down, and the air blew in and whipped my hair over my face, making it hard to see where we were headed. I breathed in the smell of the dried leaves and roadside grass. We drove for what seemed an endless time, the road swinging in long, lazy curves past an old drive-in, its white screen blocked by tall spruce; past Cinda’s Bridal Shop, where the dresses were lit up in the two front windows—fuchsia moiré and the white sheen of synthetic silk falling in cascades from the waists of headless dressmakers’ dummies. A growing sense of anxiety pervaded the whole outing—we knew nothing about Geoff, and he could have just lured us into his car, and was now transporting us to some remote location to do whatever he wished with us. Del and I would be two more missing persons on the news.

  My chest grew tight, my face numb. The road went through harvested fields filled with stubble, crossed a bridge over a stream into a small village. Main Street consisted of turn-of-the-century houses decorated with mums and carved jack-o’-lanterns, a funeral home, the post office, a stone library. We approached the one intersection, its four corners occupied by a gas station, a diner, a church, and a grand Victorian house behind an iron fence. Geoff slowed and stopped for a red light, and we passed an old wooden three-story building with a sign that identified it as the Milton Hotel.

  “This is Milton?” I asked him.

  Geoff’s eyes, dark and alert, appeared in the rearview mirror.

  “Yes,” he said. “My friend lives here. She’s a painter. She teaches at the university. It’s not far now.”

  “This is where that girl is from,” Del said.

  We hadn’t discussed Mary Rae, but obviously Del had seen the flyers, and possibly read the newspaper accounts. There’d been no new discoveries, no new quotes from the girl’s mother hoping for her safe return.

  “You know, maybe she met someone and took off,” I said. “She might be sitting in a motel in Florida with some boyfriend watching the news reports.”

  Geoff eyed me again in the rearview mirror. “Not likely she’d take off.”

  I sensed he wanted to say more but thought better of it.

  “I heard she was murdered,” Del said. “Macabre.”

  Her earring caught the late afternoon sun, and I reached out and moved her hair away to expose it.

  “You still have those?” I said.

  Del shook her head and Jane Roberts’s Tiffany earrings flashed—pearls and tourmaline. “Mais oui,” she said. “I always carry them in case I’m invited to a party.”

  The light changed and Geoff pulled away from the intersection, turning soon after down a gravel road that proved to be the driveway of a picturesque yellow farmhouse. Dried sheaves of corn leaned against a lamppost, buttressed by bales of hay and lit jack-o’-lanterns, their grins toothless, their brows arched in ironic expressions of fear.

  “Welcome to Windy Hill Farm,” Geoff said.

  We pulled alongside a Camaro with a crystal rosary hanging from the rearview mirror, a GTO with a new paint job and racing stripes, all of the cars sporting various stages of rust.

  “It’s the night of the dead,” Del said.

  Geoff laughed and put the car in park. “The poor souls are freed from purgatory, allowed to return to their old homes.” He shut off the car and the keys jangled as he stuffed them in his pocket. “My grandmother used to say that after supper they would spread a clean cloth on the table and set chairs up for their returning loved ones. They’d recite the De Profundis and go to bed and you’d hear one of the townsmen ringing the bell.”

  “What was the bell for?” Del asked.

  “To warn everyone that it wasn’t safe to roam the streets at the time of the returning souls.”

  I worried about Del reading too much into the All Hallows’ Eve thing.

  “It’s just an outdoor party,” I said, trying to make her laugh.

  Geoff opened his door and slid out of the car. The driveway gravel crunched under his boots. “Whatever it is, we’re here. Come on, I’ll introduce you to Anne.”

  I had thought it was kind of Geoff to invite us to the party, but now that we were there I wondered why. Some people subscribed to the notion of “the more the merrier,” and as Del and I climbed out of the car, I told myself that was the case with Geoff. But was it odd that he would single us out? He walked ahead of us, his gray hair blowing around his head.

  “He must have noticed we hardly go out and he feels sorry for us,” I said, my voice low.

  “Maybe this is a coven,” Del said.

  “And we’re virgin sacrifices,” I said.

  Del snorted. “Speak for yourself. I was scourged and led down into the vault a long time ago.”

  As children, Del and I had read how the corrupted vestal virgins were taken to a vault furnished with a couch, a lamp, and a table with a small amount of food. They were sealed in and left to die. We used to joke that we’d sneak in a book to read in our lamplight, and we’d discuss which one we’d take.

  We followed Geoff across the lawn to a path that led around to the back of the house. There the brown grass was interrupted by scattered trees—ash and maple—nearly barren of leaves and roped with strung lights. In the center of the lawn, surrounded by folding chairs, was a bonfire, the smoke unfurling across the harvested cornfield like gray ribbon. Stone steps led to a terrace, where a linen tableclo
th covered a card table for a makeshift bar. About thirty people stood clutching bottles of beer or wine goblets, most of them young, a few others mixed in who were clearly not—men with graying hair, like Geoff, sporting button-down oxfords and suede slip-ons, women in bulky cardigans, glasses dangling from their necks on beaded strings. Geoff was greeted heartily by everyone, and he gave a sheepish wave and led us up the stone steps to the back door.

  “Is Anne inside?” he said to no one in particular, his hand on the sliding glass door.

  “I’m right here,” a voice answered, and an older woman stepped from a group of younger ones who all seemed preoccupied and sad. Anne tossed her arm around Geoff and kissed his cheek. “We’re all trying not to be morose,” she said, not to him, but to me and to Del. She took both of our hands in her own, her hand so light it felt insubstantial. “Anne Whiteside,” she said.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” I said.

  Anne wore a bright patterned headscarf. Beneath it I could see the delicate bones of her skull. It was evident that she was ill. Anne looked at me, her eyes clear and searching. Del was surveying the yard, taking in the groups of people, the illuminated lights between the trees, garish and out of place, like carnival lights.

  “I’m Martha,” I said. “This is Del, my sister.”

  “You look like twins,” Anne said. “Are you?”

  Del roped arms with me and pressed her cheek against mine. “Yes,” she said. “We are.”

  “That’s interesting,” Anne said. “I love twins. Maybe you’ll let me paint you.”

  “We’re not,” I said. “We’re not twins.”

  Someone started some music—it sounded like an old recording of a plaintive, classical cello piece—and it filled the backyard, the swirls of blown leaves, the line of pine trees beyond the shorn fields, with a sense of haunted sadness. Despite the few days of warmth it was too cold, really, to be outside, but everyone had put on sweaters and jackets, and were fortifying themselves with alcohol, moving their chairs closer to the bonfire. Geoff had gotten a glass of bourbon and ice. He looked at us. “I don’t really see the resemblance.”

  Anne seemed affected by the music. Her eyes grew wet. “Well, I see it,” she said.

  Del fluffed her dyed hair. “I’m not as curly.”

  “Well, you’re curvy enough,” Geoff said.

  Del laughed out loud, one of her exuberant laughs that offset the sad cello.

  “She said ‘curly,’” I said.

  “Regardless,” Anne said. “I would like to paint you.”

  I couldn’t discern where the music was coming from—and then I saw speakers in two of the lower-story windows. From this angle you could see the house’s blistered paint, its peeling wood siding, the way the house, like the landscape, seemed dead or dying. The wind picked up and jangled the glass bulbs of the strung lights together.

  “Who’s playing this awful stuff?” Geoff said.

  “I like it,” I said. I did like it. But Del gave me a strange smile, as if she thought I was making it up.

  Geoff and Anne went down the terrace steps, and it was just Del and me. There had been years of birthday parties when it was just Del and me, separate from the others—in paneled basement rec rooms, a long table covered with a paper cloth holding soft drinks and bowls of chips, the paper streamers drooping from the ceiling. Maybe our clairvoyant game had left its mark on the neighborhood children, or word had spread about us in the hallways at school. Were we really able to see their dead? Or was it all an elaborate hoax? The other children didn’t like either possibility. We were invited by their mothers out of a sense of decorum.

  In our teenage years, Del was sneaking off to upstairs bedrooms at parties, slipping away with boys in cars, leaving me to find my way home alone. She was a wonderful mimic, and she could pattern her conversations with boys on those she overheard with other girls, with actors on television—none of it very original. She learned to flirt at an early age and it annoyed me only because it seemed so dishonest. Much like her role in our clairvoyant game—Del was a fabulous fake.

  I stood by her on Anne’s terrace. She had no qualms about abandoning me, but I wouldn’t leave her side. No one approached us, and I wondered why we’d even come.

  Del said she wanted a whiskey sour, the drink our parents had at the cocktail hour.

  She stepped over to the bar. “I just love them.”

  I knew she was making fun of me for claiming I liked the music. I followed her to the bar and poured myself a glass of red wine, the glass monogrammed and too flimsy to be used outdoors. When I turned around, a man was so close that I nearly spilled wine on his wool sweater. Del was behind me at the bar, filling a glass with ice.

  “Did you find your cat?” he said.

  He had one of those smooth-cheeked faces that flush in cold weather. The kind that mislead you, instantly, into believing the person is younger than they really are, or that they retain a childlike innocence, and, so, are incapable of having any ulterior motives. His eyes were almost a gold color—a brown like ale. He was tall and broad-shouldered in his corduroy jacket, but the most unusual thing about him was his wide-brimmed beaver-skin hat. I wasn’t sure how he recognized me—it had been dark the first time we’d encountered each other, and I wouldn’t have known him without the lost cat reference. I considered pretending I wasn’t who he thought I was, but he was watching me, almost waiting for the lie. I suspected he would have a quick comeback, had even planned it out before I replied.

  “I didn’t find her,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Hopefully someone’s given her a new home.”

  And then Del appeared, taking my glass of wine, jumping into the conversation. “Or she’s been mauled by a loose dog, or struck by a passing car,” she said. She looked up at the man over the rim of her glass. Before we’d even introduced ourselves, Del was there. “Remember that book about the four kittens we used to have when we were little?” she asked me. She reached out and grabbed my wrist. “The house cat, the ship’s cat? The alley cat had to live through the traffic in the streets and the bad weather, and fight off the other bigger, angrier cats? I used to say that was me.” I could feel Del’s cold fingers.

  “No, I don’t.” I pulled my arm away. “Where’s your drink?”

  “You were the housecat,” Del said. “Muffy, or Miffy. Sipping milk from a china saucer.” Del held her hand like a paw and stuck her tongue out in a dainty way to imitate the cat sipping.

  “I’m William Bell, by the way,” William Bell said. He held out his hand and I took it in mine, aware of the heat of him, the brightness of his eyes.

  “Martha,” I said.

  “Or Muffy,” he said.

  Del held her hand out once he’d released mine. “I’m Delores, her sister.”

  William seemed hesitant to take her hand, suspicious of another lie.

  “We came with Geoff,” I said. “I rent an apartment in his house.”

  “Sure, Geoff,” William said.

  I wondered if Geoff had mentioned me to him. I wondered, then, what Geoff might have said.

  “The girl was from here,” Del said. “The missing one.”

  I could rarely predict what Del would say, or to whom. It was almost a comfort that this much of our relationship hadn’t changed.

  “She is,” he said. He looked around him as if to assess the group of people. “Most of these people grew up here.”

  “Did you?” Del asked.

  William slipped a hand into his jacket pocket. “I did,” he said. “Born and reared.”

  “So all of you knew her? She was a friend?”

  Del sipped my wine, and I wanted to reach out and dash it from her hand.

  “Everyone knows everyone in a small town,” he said.

  I understood then the somber tone of the group, the absence of costumes—that this was a sort of vigil for Mary Rae.

  “Oh, we know all about small towns,” Del said.

  I wasn’t s
ure when I might join the conversation. Should I mention where we were from, or tell him I was a student? Should I ask him what he did for a living? But Del continued on.

  “We can see if your friend has a message for anyone,” she said. “My sister and I can contact her.”

  William had raised his beer to his mouth. I’d seen him glancing around for a way to excuse himself, but now he lowered the beer and angled his head at Del. “Pardon?” he said.

  I should have stepped in and interrupted, but I found myself unable to summon the words to stop her. She went on to explain about the Spiritualists by the Sea, and how we received our training there as young girls. “I’m sure Martha wouldn’t mind a session. If your friends are curious, that is. Some people gain solace from a medium.”

  I could feel my face redden. “No parlor tricks today, Del,” I said.

  Del looked almost flirtatious. “She’s just being modest. We’re really very good.”

  William clutched his beer with both hands. “The majority here don’t talk about her in the past tense,” he said. “I don’t think anyone is seeking closure.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said to him.

  I watched him walk off across the lawn with a sense of a missed chance.

  8

  I did like boys. The story I told Detective Thomson had been just that—a story with a small bit of truth—one afternoon Jane and I had gotten high and kissed in her bedroom as practice for the boys we planned to take each other’s place. I’d started it, and Jane had been embarrassed after—so much so that she’d begged me never to tell anyone, her eyes filled with anxious tears.

  The sun lowered, and the sky darkened, and gray clouds slipped quickly across the horizon and out of view. Someone had added wood to the bonfire and tightened the ring of folding chairs around it. A grill on the terrace sent up smoke, the source of the grilled meat.

  Del drank the wine back in one gulp.

  “Another?” she said. She held the glass by its stem and twirled it. “This is fancy.”

  “I can’t believe you said that,” I told her.

  “It’s the night when lost souls return home,” she said. “It would be a perfect time to do it.”