by John Saul
In a way, Jeff felt relieved. It was annoying to have a mother who always knew what you were going to do before you did it, but on the other hand, he knew that she’d kept him out of a lot of trouble.
Like the time he’d been going to build a tree house, and she’d found him sorting through a pile of old lumber. “It won’t hold you,” she’d said. He’d looked up at her. “What do you mean?” She’d grinned at him. “Well,” she’d said, “if I were you, I’d be planning to build a tree house with that. But before I did, I’d put the boards across a couple of rocks and stand on them to see if they’ll hold me.” Jeff had tried it, and the boards had broken. Now he stared at the floor as he told his parents what was going on.
“Some of the kids are going to sneak out tonight,” he said.
“Are they?” Joyce said. So far, it sounded like no more than childish mischief. “And what are they going to do?”
“Go up to the mine and listen for the water babies,” Jeff said. Joyce and Matt looked at each other.
“I thought we already discussed the water babies,” Matt said.
“Aside from the fact that you know perfectly well you’re to stay away from the mine,” Joyce added.
“Unh-hunh.”
“And you were going to go up there anyway?” Joyce sighed heavily. “Jay-Jay Jennings dared you, didn’t she?” she continued before Jeff could answer.
Jeff stared at his mother in wonder. How did she know? He nodded his head.
“All right, who was going?”
“I—I don’t know,” Jeff said miserably. Then, as his father stared at him, he rattled off the names. When he was done, he turned to his mother, his eyes brimming with tears. “If they find out I told, they’ll be mad at me.”
Joyce realized he was right. That was the problem with kids. You raised them not to be tattletales, but then you had to get them to tattle so you could straighten out their messes. Somehow it didn’t seem fair.
Suddenly an idea occurred to her. She knew it was mean, but it was irresistible. Besides, there seemed to be a certain justice to it.
“This was Jay-Jay’s idea?” she asked. Jeff nodded. “Are you sure?” He nodded again. “All right,” she said. “I’m going to call everybody’s mother and tell them that Mrs. Jennings called me. Then everybody will think that Jay-Jay told.”
“Joyce,” Matt protested. “You can’t do that.”
“Of course I can,” Joyce said placidly. “I shouldn’t, but I’m going to.”
As Jeff watched in awe his mother went to the phone and began dialing.
She reached all the parents and explained to them what had happened. All of them agreed to keep an eye on their kids, except for two.
Claire Jennings insisted that her daughter wouldn’t even think of doing such a thing, and hung up on Joyce.
Diana Amber wasn’t home, but Joyce explained the situation to Miss Edna, who listened in silence.
“I see,” Edna said when Joyce was done. “Well, I’ll do what I can.”
“You’ll make sure Christie doesn’t go out tonight?” Joyce asked.
“I’m an old woman, Mrs. Crowley,” Edna replied. “Sometimes I fall asleep very early.”
As she hung up the phone Joyce had an uneasy feeling.
And yet, she reflected, she’d done what she could. Despite her inclinations, she couldn’t be responsible for everyone in town.
Particularly not for Edna Amber.
Besides, surely Miss Edna wouldn’t let herself go to sleep until Diana got home.
Would she?
17
Bill Henry finished the last scrap of his enchilada and leaned back. Across from him, Diana stared at her nearly full plate, then met his eyes. She smiled thinly.
“I guess I wasn’t hungry after all.”
“Not hungry, or can’t eat?”
“Is there a difference?”
Bill nodded. “Diana, what’s going on out at your house? I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s happening.”
“What makes you think I need help?” Diana asked guardedly.
Bill shook his head sadly. “I know you, Diana. I’ve known you all my life, even though I don’t see you much. And the look in your eyes tonight tells me that something is very much the matter. I think you ought to tell me about it.”
“There’s nothing much to tell. Mother’s just being extra difficult lately.”
“Because of Christie.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Because of Christie,” Diana agreed. “I guess you know she wants me to send her away.”
“She told me,” Bill said. Now Diana looked at him sharply.
“She told you? When?”
“The other day, when she got her hand caught in the rattrap.”
Diana toyed nervously with a fork. “She didn’t even tell me you were there.”
Bill shifted in his chair, wondering how best to approach the subject. As he ordered after-dinner drinks for both of them, he decided to be direct.
“Diana, Miss Edna told me something else that day.” Was it his imagination, or did Diana appear to flinch? “She told me you had a baby.”
For a moment Diana thought she was going to faint. She felt the blood draining from her face, and a bone-deep chill passed over her. “She told you what?”
Bill reached over and took her hand, and his eyes searched hers as he repeated his statement. “She said you had a baby about thirty years ago.”
Images began flashing through Diana’s mind. A man, a man not at all like Bill, but with a magnetism to him that she couldn’t resist. A broad chest and strong arms, and a chiseled face that was vaguely like her father’s had been when he was young and had posed for the faded daguerreotype that still sat on her mother’s dresser. But who was he? She couldn’t remember.
Another memory lapse. But was it really? Had there ever been such a man as she had just seen in the depths of her mind, or was it only her imagination? And then she heard Bill Henry speaking a name.
“Travers.”
Her mother’s words came back to her. Elliot Lyons’s house had once been the Travers house, but the name had meant nothing to her. “I don’t suppose it would,” her mother had said. But now the face, and the image of the strong torso, and the name all came together. There had been a man named Travers, and as Diana sat mutely at the table, barely comprehending the words Bill Henry was speaking, she began to have a sensation in her loins.
Heat.
Heat, and an odd sense of satisfaction.
Deep inside, Diana realized that what her mother had told Bill Henry was true. Though there was no trace of a memory, her instincts told her that she had once had a child, and that a man named Travers was the father. But what had happened to the child? She forced herself to concentrate on what Bill was telling her.
“She said the baby was born dead, and she buried it.”
Dead? She’d had a baby, and it was born dead?
Again a tide of memory rose, but this time her mind screamed out that her baby hadn’t been born dead, that it had been alive.
But why couldn’t she remember anything about it?
Why couldn’t she see the face of the child?
Why couldn’t she remember holding it against her breast, stroking it, nurturing it?
It was one more rent in her memory, but this time it wasn’t a small gap. This time it was a yawning black hole, threatening to swallow her up.
What did it mean? She had to think. Desperately she grasped at the threads of reason she could feel slipping away from her, and another image came to mind.
Christie.
What would happen to Christie?
They would take Christie away from her.
Surely, if they found out that she had had a baby, and the baby had died, and she could remember none of it, they would take her little girl away from her.
As that sure knowledge solidified in her mind she felt an unfamiliar strength begin to build in her. No one would ever know w
hat had happened. She would deny her mother’s tale, and she would be convincing. When she spoke, her voice was steady, and she even managed a faint smile.
“She never stops, does she?” she asked.
Bill Henry, who had been watching Diana carefully, and had seen a variety of emotions pass over her face, none of which he could truly interpret, let himself relax a little. “It isn’t true?”
Diana managed a humorless laugh. “Of course it isn’t. But it’s easy to see what Mother’s up to. Can you imagine me being allowed to keep Christie if that story were true? I’d be declared insane!”
Bill finished his drink and called for another round before he spoke again. When he did, he chose his words carefully. “It seems like a rather complicated tale.”
“But it’s perfect,” Diana pointed out. “They’d take Christie away from me, but leave me with Mother. Don’t you see? That’s the beauty of it. It all happened—according to Mother—thirty years ago. Since then, Mother’s been taking care of me and apparently doing a good job of it. Why send me off to an institution at this late date? Simply take Christie away, and put things back the way they’ve been for the last thirty years.” She laughed bitterly now. “It’s really Machiavellian, when you think about it.”
“But is it true?” Bill asked.
Diana’s eyes, clear and blue, met his, and search as he would, he could see not a flicker of doubt in them. “Bill, that’s not the kind of thing a woman forgets. It would mean a blank space of months in my life, and believe me, there isn’t one.” She gazed at Bill’s face, searching for a trace of the love she had once seen in his eyes whenever he looked at her. She thought she saw what she was looking for, and a pleading note came into her voice. “You believe me, don’t you?” She let her voice quiver a little. “Don’t you?”
Bill nodded and took her hand once more. “Of course I do,” he assured her. “And if Miss Edna spreads that tale any further, I can’t imagine anybody believing her.”
Now Diana smiled coquettishly. “But you did, didn’t you? Admit it.”
For the first time that evening Bill chuckled. “I don’t know. At first, not at all. But then I guess I must have believed her enough to think it was worth asking you. Anyway, it’s over.” He signaled the waiter for the check.
“Then let’s talk about something else,” Diana suggested while they waited. “Something a lot more cheerful than my mother’s tales of my sordid past.”
“For instance?”
“For instance, the Fourth of July.”
“What about it?”
Diana smiled at him, sure now that she was safe. “I’m taking Christie to the picnic. Want to come along? I haven’t been to a picnic in years, and haven’t the least idea of what happens at them anymore. You can serve as interpreter for me, explaining the native customs.”
“Sounds good to me,” Bill said, letting himself relax. But then a thought occurred to him. “But what about your mother? Will she be along?”
And suddenly, for Diana, the light moment was over.
“Not if I can help it,” she said bitterly. Then she laughed, even more bitterly. “I wonder if she’ll even let me go.”
Bill’s voice turned serious. “Diana, you’re a grown woman, and you can do what you want to do. She doesn’t own you, Diana. You can do anything you want to do, and she can’t stop you.”
Diana looked at Bill, and once more her mood swung. “I can, can’t I?” she asked. “She doesn’t run me anymore, and she never will again. Never.”
But inside, Diana still felt doubts lurking. Doubts, and the awful knowledge that there were many things she had no memory of.
What were they, and what might they do to her? She had no way of knowing.
* * *
At nine o’clock that evening Jay-Jay Jennings opened the window of her bedroom and slipped out into the night. The air was hot and dry, and the wind was blowing hard, but there was a full moon. She crept around to the front of the house. Standing in deep shadows, she peeked in the living-room windows. Her father was sitting in his large reclining chair, an open Bible in his lap, fast asleep. In a smaller chair next to him, her mother was knitting and watching a special on television that Jay-Jay knew wouldn’t be over until eleven. She had two hours before either of her parents would stop in to kiss her good night on their way to bed.
She returned to the backyard and climbed a picket fence to drop into the Gillespies’ backyard, then looked around for Susan. There was a light on in Susan’s room, but the shade was drawn.
Jay-Jay rapped on the window, then waited. After what seemed to be an eternity, Susan opened the window.
“Come on,” Jay-Jay said. “It’s nine.”
“I can’t go,” Susan whispered. “My parents found out.”
“So what?”
“They told me if I went, they’d cut off my allowance. Nobody’s going—Steve said his parents found out, too, and Mrs. Crowley called my mother.”
“She called my mother, too,” Jay-Jay said. “But my mom told her I wouldn’t do such a thing and hung up on her.” She giggled. “Are your folks watching T.V.?”
“I guess so.”
“Well, then, come on,” Jay-Jay urged. “They won’t even know you’re gone.”
Susan hesitated, torn. But then the door to her room opened. Jay-Jay ducked down into the shrubbery.
“Susan?” Florence Gillespie asked. “Are you talking to someone?”
“No,” Susan said, closing the window. “I just heard a cat or something. I was just looking.”
“Well, keep the window closed. I don’t want the wind filling the house with dust. Why don’t you come out and watch the movie with us for a while?”
Susan, knowing she was supposed to be in bed already, eagerly accepted.
“Can I watch the whole movie?”
“We’ll see,” her mother told her. She snapped off the light in her daughter’s room and pulled the door closed. As she led Susan into the living room Florence wondered how long Jay-Jay would wait in the shrubbery before going home.
But Jay-Jay, realizing that her friends had all chickened out, was already gone from the Gillespies’ yard and was hurrying along the street toward the road to the mine.
As she left the town behind, Jay-Jay veered off the road and cut across the big field. On the other side lay the Amber house. If Christie had chickened out, too, she might give up and go home. It wasn’t much fun, she decided, being brave all by yourself.
She approached the big old house slowly.
At night, silhouetted against the moonlit sky, it seemed even larger than it was. Lights glowed in windows on the ground floor, and on the third floor another window was lit. Jay-Jay decided that must be Christie’s room.
She picked up a rock and tossed it as high as she could against the side of the house.
She waited for a moment and then threw another.
Christie’s face appeared at the window.
“Christie!” Jay-Jay called softly. “It’s me! Jay-Jay!”
“Where’s everybody else?” Christie hissed back.
“They’re going to meet us up at the mine,” Jay-Jay lied. She was sure that if she told Christie no one else had come, Christie would back out of the adventure.
Christie thought about it. Would Aunt Diana have let her go?
No, she wouldn’t have.
Still, Aunt Diana wasn’t home.
“I’ll be down in a minute,” Christie hissed. She closed the window and pulled her jeans back on. When she was dressed, she crept down the back stairs and listened from the kitchen. All she could hear was the droning of the television.
She opened the back door and slipped out into the night. Jay-Jay was waiting for her.
“Come on,” Jay-Jay said. “Let’s go before we get caught.”
The two girls scurried around behind the barn, then began walking parallel to the road that led up to the mine. The wind, growing stronger, was howling out of the hills like some strange bo
diless monster. Christie suddenly reached out and took Jay-Jay by the hand.
“I don’t like this,” she whispered, but Jay-Jay knew the magic words.
“Don’t be chicken,” she said. “It’s only wind.”
Unhappily Christie kept going.
Twenty minutes later they stood outside the mine entrance, almost invisible in the shadow of the hill.
“Where’s everybody else?” Christie whispered.
Jay-Jay still didn’t want to tell her they were by themselves. “Maybe they went inside,” she suggested. She started toward the mouth of the shaft, but still Christie hung back.
“I don’t want to,” she whispered. “Jay-Jay, I want to go home.”
“Chicken,” Jay-Jay taunted her. “Chicken, chicken, chicken!”
Reluctantly Christie took a step forward, but Jay-Jay had disappeared into the darkness. “Jay-Jay? Where are you? Jay-Jay? Jeff?” She waited, but the only sound that came back to her was the moaning of the wind.
And then, in the dim light, something moved.
“Who is it?” she asked.
There was no answer, but again the shape moved. It seemed to be coming toward her.
Christie Lyons turned and fled down the hill.
Diana waited until Bill had driven away from the house, then let herself in the front door. It was just before ten. At least her mother couldn’t criticize her for being late. She was beginning to feel a headache coming on, so she went to the kitchen, found an aspirin, and washed it down with a glass of water. Then she went to the living room, where Edna was asleep in front of the television. Diana started to wake her, then decided to leave her alone. Instead she’d go up to the nursery and spend some time with Christie.
She climbed the stairs to the third floor and listened to the wind shriek around the eaves. Tonight they would probably lose some shingles.
The nursery door was closed, but a light showed beneath it. Diana tapped softly, then pushed it open.
“Baby? I’m home.”
The room was empty.
“Christie? Christie, where are you?”
There was no answer, and Diana dashed down the stairs. “Mother? Mother! Where’s Christie?”
Edna awoke with a start and peered sleepily at her daughter. “Up in her room, of course. What time is it?”
