In the Blink of an Eye

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  The two of them sit cross-legged on the carpeted floor, and Julia reads them to Dulcie, remembering to provide plenty of description for each illustration.

  “I’m going to buy these for you, Dulcie,” she says when she’s finished the third book.

  “You will? That would be great, Julia! Will you come over and read them to me again?”

  “Sure.”

  “When?”

  Julia hesitates. “Oh, I’ll be around, Dulcie. I’ll pop in.”

  “Maybe we can go down to the beach again, too,” Dulcie suggests, clutching the familiar Maurice Sendak book against her chest. “And Daddy says there’s a playground at Lily Dale. Will you take me there?”

  “Sure,” Julia says again, this time with a smile.

  “Maybe I’ll come, too.”

  Julia turns to see Paine behind them. She realizes he must have been there for a while, watching them.

  The tight expression he’s worn all afternoon has eased a bit, and when he smiles at her, she senses that he’s more relaxed now.

  “Are you ready to hit the road, ladies?” he asks, bending to help Dulcie to her feet.

  “All set.” Julia spies several books in his hand. “Looks like you found some reading material yourself.”

  He nods, but she notices that he shifts the volumes so that the spines are turned down.

  It isn’t until the cashier is bagging his purchase that Julia glimpses the titles. One book is on furniture restoration. The other is a history of spiritualism.

  THE PHONE RINGS inside just as Pilar finishes coiling the garden hose around its metal holder beneath the open kitchen window. She hurries in to answer it, leaving behind the dripping patch of garden and the lengthening rays of sunlight reaching over the back fence. It might be Christina wanting to talk about next week. Pilar is flying to New York in a few days to meet her daughter and son-in-law for their cruise, which leaves from Manhattan and will take them down the coast and into the Caribbean.

  But when she picks up the phone, it isn’t Christina’s voice on the other end.

  “Myra!”

  “Did I catch you at a bad time, Pilar? You sound breathless.”

  “I was outside in the garden and I hurried to catch the phone.” Pilar runs water at the sink, scrubbing the soil from her hands and beneath her fingernails.

  “Speaking of gardens, have you seen Iris’s yard? Maybe you can go next door in your spare time and weed out the beds. They’re an eyesore.”

  “I don’t think her son-in-law would appreciate my trespassing like that, Myra.”

  “Oh, he isn’t her son-in-law, Pilar. Didn’t you know Kristin never married him? They had the little girl out of wedlock.”

  “Did they really?” Pilar murmurs as though it’s news to her. She shakes her head as she dries her hands and pumps lavender-scented hand lotion into her palm. She begins rubbing it into both hands with a circular motion, noticing that her bare arms have turned a deeper shade of mocha in the past few hours. Thanks to her Latin blood, her skin rarely bums, but that doesn’t mean she’s any less likely to get more wrinkles—or melanoma. She should really have remembered to put on sunscreen. And she’ll need plenty for the cruise. She makes a mental note to pick up more in town before she leaves for New York.

  “Anyway, Pilar,” Myra is saying, “the reason I’m calling is to tell you that I’ve been asking around about Katherine Biddle, and nobody knows how to get in touch with her. I hear that she’s somewhere in the New York City area, but nobody knows exactly where. Maybe you should talk to Rupert again about it.”

  “I hate to do that. I don’t want to hurt him again by implying anything. Maybe I should just drop it.”

  “I don’t think you should, Pilar. I was walking by the Biddles’ earlier and I saw a van there. They were carrying oxygen equipment into the house. Nan doesn’t have much longer, Pilar. Don’t you think her daughter should be at her bedside when she passes?”

  “That’s not up to me or you to decide, Myra.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll have a word with Rupert if I see him tomorrow at the worship service. Or at the healing service at noon. He and Nan were going regularly, but I haven’t seen them lately.”

  Nan’s beyond healing, Pilar thinks sadly, absently pumping another dollop of pale purple lotion into her already moist hands.

  She realizes what she’s done and wipes it off on a paper towel, about to hang up the phone when Myra says, “I just thought of one more thing you might want to try, Pilar.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Katherine’s old flame—the troublemaker I told you about earlier?”

  “Yes?”

  “He’s a farmer. Somebody mentioned that he still lives around here—I think over in Sinclairville. Maybe he knows how to reach Katherine.”

  “I doubt it,” Pilar says. “If Rupert and Nan went to all that trouble, sending her to boarding school to get her away from him, they probably lost touch.”

  “Probably. He married somebody else years ago. But you never know.”

  “No,” Pilar muses, “you never do. You wouldn’t happen to know his name, would you, Myra?”

  “CAN I BRING you some tea, Nan?” Rupert asks, poking his head into the shadowy back bedroom and finding his wife awake.

  She shakes her head, her eyes meeting his. They are huge in her sunken face, and full of fear. He finds it hard not to stare at the clear plastic tubes disappearing into her nostrils, and the oxygen equipment newly ensconced beside the bed. It surprised him, how quickly the medical van arrived, and how quickly they set things up and then left again.

  Nan seems to be resting better now. She’s been sleeping for the past hour, more peacefully than she has recently, though her breathing is still noisy and labored. Rupert realizes he was hoping the oxygen would work miracles. It hasn’t.

  “Are you sure? I bought more of that blackberry tea you used to like—the one they haven’t had over at Shur-Fine lately.”

  “No . . . thanks . . .”

  Rupert notices that the sun has set beyond the window. He goes over and reaches for the cord to lower the blinds, gazing out over the lake, where a shimmering path of waning pink sunlight glistens on the water.

  A lump rises in his throat.

  How many sunsets over the lake has he shared with Nan?

  How many does she have left?

  How many will he witness alone, longing for the woman he’s loved from the moment he laid eyes on her when she was merely fifteen?

  She was a beautiful girl, with thick golden hair in a pompadour high above her forehead, the way all the girls used to wear it then. She had a tiny waist, emphasized by the full skirts and broad-shouldered blouses that were so in style in those years after the war. The New Look, they called it. All the girls in their Bronx neighborhood were wearing it, but Rupert only had eyes for Nan.

  He was in his early twenties, but he didn’t tell her that. Not at first. There was a lot he didn’t tell her. She had enough to worry about, the oldest daughter in an impoverished household with eight children and a widowed mother.

  It was so easy for Rupert—who had also been born in poverty—to spoil her. He knew from experience how much any treat was appreciated when you had nothing.

  Nan’s face always lit up when he gave her something, even if it was the smallest of gifts—a pack of chewing gum, a bouquet of daisies. He took great pleasure in making her smile.

  He still does.

  Swallowing hard, Rupert lowers the white Venetian blinds and turns away from the window.

  He reaches past the bottles of medication and the baby monitor on the nightstand and switches on a bedside lamp.

  “I have to go out for a short time, Nan,” he says reluctantly. “Will you be all right alone?”

  She barely nods.

  He senses her fear.

  She’s worried that something will happen while he’s gone.

  To her.

  Nothing will happen, Nan. You’ll be here when I
get back. Just as you always have been.

  “I’ll be right home again,” he promises. “Fifteen minutes.”

  He considers that. How long can it possibly take? Paine Landry will most likely be grateful for the offer.

  “Maybe only ten minutes,” he amends, and walks swiftly to the door.

  LEANING AGAINST A streetlight with a cigarette between his lips, Edward Shuttleworth feels in the back pocket of his jeans for a book of matches he’s certain he picked up earlier, at the White Horse Tavern. It isn’t there.

  He reaches into the other back pocket, then checks both his front pockets and the one on his gray T-shirt. Nothing.

  He curses softly, wondering how the hell he managed to leave the car without a light. It’s parked back on Dale Drive outside the grounds, and he’s not in the mood to hike all the way back through Leolyn Woods before he can smoke a freaking cigarette.

  He removes the pack again from its usual place in the turned-up sleeve of his T-shirt, takes the butt from his mouth, and slides it back in with the others. Only three left. He’ll stop for more on the way back to Jamestown.

  Edward sighs, frustrated by the wasted trip. Twenty miles’ worth of gasoline—no, forty round-trip—and all for nothing. That piece-of-shit car of his is a real gas guzzler, too. Not like that little red rental job parked a few yards away, at the curb in front of his stepmother’s house.

  He arrived here twenty minutes ago, just as the guy and his kid were getting out of it loaded down with packages.

  Lousy timing.

  Or maybe it was lucky timing.

  After all, if he had arrived a few minutes earlier, he’d have been inside when they came home.

  They would have caught him off guard.

  They might even have seen him.

  Well, not the kid, he cracks to himself, his thin lips tilting into a smirk. She’s never going to see him, or anything else, for that matter.

  When he saw them go into the house, he backed up to this streetlight and stood watching, thinking they might just drop off the packages and leave again. But after they disappeared into the house, lights went on, one after another, downstairs and up.

  Yeah, they’re staying put for a while.

  Well, he can come back tomorrow.

  No, not tomorrow. Tomorrow he’s working a paving job down in Bradford. It’s a Sunday—time and a half.

  So he’ll come back Monday. With any luck, the place will be empty.

  If it isn’t—well, he’ll figure out what to do then.

  SITTING CROSS-LEGGED ON the floor of her room, Dulcie carefully places an oblong bead—a purple one—into the compartment with the other purple beads. She has a lot of sorting to do before she can start on that bracelet for Julia. She’s decided to make a necklace, too—if she has enough beads. If she doesn’t, maybe they can buy more at Wal-Mart. Unless Margaret buys them at a special store back home. Maybe the beads at Wal-Mart all have smooth edges.

  She reaches for another bead and runs her fingertips over it. This one has a raised ridge around the middle.

  Blue.

  She can hear Daddy in the bathroom down the hall. She keeps hearing a clanking sound, like a metal tool banging against a metal pipe, and he’s been swearing a lot. Sometimes he does it under his breath, but other times he does it right out loud. She hears everything anyway.

  He’s trying to put a shower head over the bathtub.

  Another bead.

  Smooth and round.

  Red.

  “Dulc, I have to go down to the basement to see if I can find a different wrench,” Daddy calls, his feet already descending the stairs. “I’ll be back in a second.”

  “Okay.”

  An oval bead.

  Green.

  A flat-topped bead.

  Gold.

  Dulcie looks up suddenly. Someone is in the room.

  “Daddy?”

  But it isn’t him. She didn’t hear his footsteps coming back up the stairs.

  She didn’t hear anything at all.

  It’s just a sense that she isn’t alone.

  “Who’s there?”

  An image flits into her mind. A face. So pretty . . .

  Dulcie remembers faces. Dimly, but they’re there. Stored in her memory. When Daddy reads to her or describes things to her, those memories of her distant, sighted days help her mind to see what he’s seeing.

  She remembers colors, too.

  Now, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, she zeroes in on the picture her mind’s eye has conjured.

  Blue eyes . . .

  Light yellow hair . . .

  “Is that you?” she asks aloud, addressing the presence. “Am I seeing you?”

  Yes.

  The answer is little more than a whisper inside Dulcie’s head.

  This is how it always happens. This is what happened that night in her room, when Gram was there.

  And earlier, when she was in the kitchen and Daddy and Julia were in the cellar. At first, she was certain she had heard someone knocking on the door, and a man’s voice calling out. But when she found her way to the hallway, she realized someone was inside the house. By the stairs. And it wasn’t a man.

  It was a woman. Or a girl.

  Whoever it was had stolen Dulcie’s book. Whoever it was thought that was funny. The laughter echoes in Dulcie’s head again—or maybe she’s hearing it now. Maybe whoever is here with her in her room is still laughing about that.

  Then, with a sudden chill, Dulcie realizes it isn’t laughter after all.

  Somebody is crying. Hard, and loud. The way Dulcie cried when Daddy told her Gram was dead.

  She can see the pretty face with the light hair. And tears are coming out of those big blue eyes. They’re so sad.

  “What’s the matter?” Dulcie asks, reaching out in front of her, waving her arms, thinking she might encounter a person.

  There’s nothing but emptiness.

  Yet the room isn’t empty.

  She’s still here.

  Crying.

  Frightened.

  Dulcie can feel her fear.

  Goose bumps pop up on her own bare arms below the short sleeves of the new summer top Julia helped her pick out. Dulcie hugs herself, rocking back and forth, afraid.

  Not for herself.

  For her.

  Now there are words in Dulcie’s head along with the pitiful wails. Words that are screamed in a shrill, panicky voice.

  No!

  Stop!

  Help!

  There is music, too. Faint at first, but it seems to grow louder with the shrieks, until it explodes in Dulcie’s head along with one piercing scream . . .

  Only to be silenced abruptly.

  “I’m back, Dulcie,” Daddy calls, and she hears his heavy footsteps on the stairs once again.

  She opens her mouth, struggling to find her voice.

  “Dulcie?” He sounds worried. She hears him coming down the hall, toward her room.

  “I’m fine,” she calls back to him.

  “How’s it going with the beads?” he asks, nearer now. Not muffled. She knows that he’s poking his head in the doorway.

  “Okay.”

  “I can’t find the right kind of wrench. Looks like I won’t be able to take a shower again tomorrow. I have to go back to Wal-Mart.”

  Dulcie tries to focus on what Daddy’s saying. “But I thought you said we were going to go for a ride to that place where you used to live.”

  “Chautauqua. I did say that, didn’t I?”

  “You said Julia can come, too. Remember? And she said she will.”

  “I know. But she has to go to her church first. So you and I will find a hardware store first thing in the morning. Then we’ll come back here and get Julia and go to Chautauqua. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Finish your beads and then we’ll find something to eat for dinner. Maybe I can boil some elbow macaroni. We have butter to put on it. And then it’ll be bedtime. It’s getting late.”


  Dulcie nods.

  She doesn’t want to go to bed.

  Because sooner or later, she’s going to come back.

  It isn’t that Dulcie’s afraid of her.

  No.

  Remembering the aura of fear, and the crying, and the screams, Dulcie realizes that she’s afraid for her.

  RUMMAGING THROUGH THE cluttered wooden pantry cupboard beside the humming refrigerator, whose door he just closed in frustration, Lincoln Reynolds can’t find a thing to eat. What is all this stuff, anyway?

  He surveys the shelves, stooping his six-foot-four frame to see the lower few. Canned vegetables and soup. Cereal. A box of crackers that’s been open for months and has just crumbs left in the bottom. And countless cylindrical plastic bottles filled with spices and herbs—not the brands that cost four bucks in Shur-Fine, but the cheap kind that are only ninety-nine cents over at Wal-Mart.

  In this household, there never has been money to spare on brand names.

  Lincoln begins taking the containers down one by one, lining them up on the scarred red laminate countertop. There are three open containers of oregano. Two of cinnamon. And what the heck is cream of tartar? A waste of space, that’s what it is.

  What does he need all this stuff for, anyway? He never cooks, unless you count warming a can of chicken noodle soup or chili on the old gas stove. Corinne was the one who did all the cooking. She even made chicken soup and chili from scratch. Said it was cheaper that way.

  Lincoln rubs his tired eyes, realizing that she’s been gone almost a year and he hasn’t even cleaned out the cupboards yet.

  Hasn’t got used to doing the grocery shopping yet, either. That’s why there’s nothing good to eat at nine o’clock on a Saturday night when that take-out pizza he ate for dinner has long since been replaced with an unsatisfied rumbling in the pit of his oversize stomach.

  He’s hungry, damn it.

  He could go for some of those chocolate snack cakes Corinne used to buy him. Or some peanut butter smeared on crackers. Or a bag of chips.

  Lincoln glances again at the row of spices on the countertop, then crosses the room and takes the plastic trash container ftom the cupboard beneath the sink. He carries it over, positions it under the counter, and with one movement, sweeps all the spices and herbs into it.