by Jane Langton
“Not these days,” said Mary. “What is she here? Forty-five? Fifty? It’s not impossible.”
“If those two go together,” murmured Leonard, “then Frieda and the grown-up babysitter go together.” He pushed the pieces around with his finger. “There are really only two pictures. They must have been taken years apart, but they’re both in the same place. They’re all standing in front of the same door.”
Homer stared. “So which one goes with which?”
They shuffled them back and forth, making different combinations. “Mathematically,” said Leonard, “there are four possible pairs.”
“Right,” said Homer. “One would be the little girl and the older woman, who is probably Edward’s wife, the mother of Patrick.”
“Or,” said Leonard, “you could put together the older woman and Frieda.”
“What about Edward’s glamorpuss niece and the child?” said Mary.
“Which leaves Frieda and Glamorpuss,” said Homer, “as possibility number four.” He looked up at Mary. “The niece in the nursing home, did you get her name?”
“Oh, God,” said Mary, “let me think. I asked Dorothy, the head nurse. I know she’s a Fell, all right, but what was the rest? Oh, I remember, she’s Eleanor Fell. With a couple of initials in the middle. Eleanor Something Something Fell.”
“Oliphant,” whispered Leonard. “Eleanor Oliphant Fell.”
“Oh, Leonard,” said Mary, “how do you know that?”
“Because she arranged for Edward’s burial. Mrs. Thompson told me. You remember, Homer, Mrs. Thompson at the cemetery.”
“Mrs. Thompson told you that? She told you the niece’s middle name?”
“Yes, it’s Oliphant. She said this Eleanor Fell is really proud of being an Oliphant. She’s into the genealogy of her distinguished ancestors.”
“Yes,” said Mary, “I think one of her middle initials was an O. What was the other one?” She shook her head. “I can’t remember.” She brightened. “But Oliphant must be Patrick’s middle name too. Remember? He was listed in the death records as Patrick O. Fell? So he must have been Patrick Oliphant Fell.”
“Mmmm,” said Homer, bending over the snipped pieces again, trying to nudge them sideways. “Have you tried this, Leonard? Maybe the edges will tell us how the scraps go together. I mean, sure, it’s the same door, twelve years or so apart, but we ought to be able to see which goes with which.”
But too much was missing. They couldn’t match one side with another.
“Question,” said Mary. “Why didn’t Edward’s wife ever come to visit her husband? She writes those letters, so we know she’s still alive, but she never came to the nursing home. Edward’s niece came to see him, but not his wife.”
“Also,” said Homer, “who took the pictures? And whose door is it? Maybe it’s somebody else’s door, like maybe it belongs to some other person, like a relative.” He looked at Leonard, frowning. “And why did Frieda cut up the pictures and throw them away?”
Leonard shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
Giving up simultaneously, they all sat down. “Okay then,” said Mary, sinking into the sagging cushion of her chair, “what should we be doing? I mean from now on?”
“Well,” said Homer, “I suppose the ultimate objective is not to pursue the niece for killing her uncle, but to find Leonard’s girlfriend, right?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” whispered Leonard, staring at his knees, which were crossed the wrong way. He crossed them the other way, but they still didn’t feel right, and he put both feet on the floor.
“Well, whatever,” said Homer heartlessly. “There she is, standing beside the aunt or the mother or somebody, so what relation does she have with any of them?”
“The phone book.” Mary seized the arms of her chair and struggled to stand up. “Eleanor Oliphant Fell, the niece, she knows everything. We’ll call her up.”
“Sorry,” said Leonard dryly, “I just tried that. I called Cambridge information, and they found an E. Fell, but the number’s unlisted.”
With a mighty effort Mary hurled herself out of her chair. “Well, there’s still the mother. At least we can find Patrick’s mother, because she keeps leaving those crazy letters at her little boy’s grave. If we can only catch her there, we can find out who’s who and what’s what. And I’ll bet she could tell us where to find Frieda.” Mary looked keenly at Homer. “We’ve got to take turns in Mount Auburn, waiting for her to show up.”
“Take turns?” Homer looked at her, aghast. He had suffered through long vigils before.
“At the cemetery. We’ve got to wait around there, hoping she’ll come along.”
“Oh, God,” said Homer.
Leonard accompanied them downstairs and said goodbye. Then, thinking hard, he climbed slowly back up to his attic apartment, which was streaked with late afternoon sunshine, lighting up the puzzle pieces on his desk. A single ray shone like a spotlight on one of the Escher prints tacked to the slanting ceiling, the woodcut called Other World. It was a famous print incorporating three perspectives at once. Which world was which? Which way was up? It was a typical Escher puzzle.
Sitting down to his own puzzle, he huddled over the scraps again, trying them in different combinations. This one with that one, that one with this one, which way was right?
In the car on the way home as they waited for the light to change at Aberdeen Street, Homer glanced at Mary and said, “Tell me, does he seem all right to you?”
“Who, Leonard? Well, no, he doesn’t.” Mary watched as a couple of young mothers pushed strollers across the intersection, heading for the pleasant paths and byways of the cemetery. “At least he’s not the person we met that day in the crystal collection. He seems shrunken somehow. And his hair looks funny. And it’s odd the way he keeps sitting with his legs crossed one way, and then he tries them the other way, as though he couldn’t get comfortable. Maybe he’s in pain. Maybe something’s physically the matter.”
As it happened, Leonard’s sister had wondered the same thing when she dropped in on Leonard that morning. Hannah lived in Somerville and envied her brother his lucky attic on Sibley Road.
Afterward she called her mother in Cohasset. “He’s so remote,” said Hannah. “It’s like he’s living in a world of his own.”
“He’s always lived in a world of his own,” said her mother. “What’s wrong with that?”
“No, mother, it’s worse than that.”
“What do you mean worse?”
Hannah couldn’t explain, but she could see it clearly. Something really weird was happening to her brother.
While drawing I sometimes feel as if I were a spiritualist medium.…
M. C. Escher
32
The sign said—
GROTTO OF SAGITTARIUS
DONNA CARMELA, CLAIRVOYANT
PALM AND CRYSTAL READINGS
To the client the so-called grotto looked just right, not like the last place, which had been all wrong.
The room was dark and candlelit. Sparkling suns and moons hung from the ceiling, moving slightly in the warm air above the candles. A cloth woven with mystic patterns covered the table. In the center lay a crystal ball, sparkling with reflections of the candle flames. It was large and magisterial.
The client sat down and said at once, “I have two requests.”
The woman across the table was robed in black. Her grey hair hung in strings, her eyes were smudged with mascara, her fingers glittered with rings.
The dark eyes flashed, examining the client. In a moment Donna Carmela said softly, “Name them.”
Eagerly the client said, “Can you reach the souls of the departed?”
Again the eyes roved over the client’s face. “Sometimes.” Then Donna Carmela held up one hand and murmured, “Your other request?”
“I want to find someone.”
The blackened eyelids closed, then opened. “The second shall come first. Describe the person.”
<
br /> “A young woman.”
“Her appearance?”
“Homely, thin. Short dirty-blond hair, brown eyes, olive complexion. She’s run away.”
“She was in your care?”
“Well, no, not exactly.” The client leaned forward and whispered, “She has a secret. A dark secret, known only to me. Once she—”
The ringed hand rose again. The smudged eyes closed. “Stop, I do not need to know. Let us look.”
The client gasped. The crystal ball was beginning to glow, to rise from the table. The light within it grew brighter and brighter, and there was music, dim and shimmering, violins pizzicato.
“You are fortunate,” whispered Madame Carmela, “to consult the crystal during the time of full moon. Last night I recharged it in the moonlight.”
One by one the candles went out. Spirals of smoke rose upward and there was a smell of extinguished wax. Madame Carmela passed one hand over the ball, then the other. “I am magnetizing the crystal. Creating a link.”
“A link?”
“Close your eyes. When you open them again, you will see clouds in the crystal, then flecks of gold.”
The client closed her eyes, then opened them and stared at the glowing ball.
Madame Carmela was a fraud, but she was not a fool. Wryly she told herself that if anything were to appear in the center of her crystal ball it would be an image of her fierce and self-centered client. She was one of those people around whom the whole world turned.
But the client herself was satisfied. This was more like it. It was exactly what she had been looking for.
33
Homer was sick and tired of it. There was nothing of any consequence about the whole damned thing. It was just a teensy piece of insanity on the part of this otherwise intelligent young man. Leonard Sheldrake had met this female person for only a fraction of a second, so to speak. Why was he still so obsessed?
And now Homer’s demanding wife expected him to act like an idiot and spend the afternoon monitoring the baby’s grave.
“I haven’t got time,” he protested loudly. “I’ve got to bone up on my old lecture notes because I’ve forgotten all I ever knew about the European origins of New England transcendentalism.” He pointed an accusing finger at Mary. “Okay, woman, tell me where in hell it came from.”
“Don’t call me woman,” said Mary. “And anyway—”
“You mean I can’t call you either a female or a woman? What are you, some kind of female impersonator? Listen, my dear, I happen to have personal private knowledge that you are a member of the gentler sex. Although, I must say, gentle is hardly the right word in your case.”
Mary burst out laughing. “Oh, Homer, darling, it’s such a lovely day. You can bring a book along, study up on the European origins of transcendentalism. We’ve got Immanuel Kant around here somewhere. And, hey, you could take the folding stool. Remember the folding stool I bought in Venice?”
“The folding stool? Christ almighty.” Homer glared at his wife. “Why don’t you go? Sit on the damned thing yourself?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, dear, but it’s Wednesday. I’ve got three seminars this afternoon, one right after the other. Whereas you, Homer, have the afternoon off.”
The folding stool was too close to the ground. When Homer lowered himself on it with gingerly care, the crisscrossed wooden legs burst at once and dumped him on the grass.
Laboriously he got to his feet and looked around for something to lean on, here on the low hill that overlooked baby Patrick’s grave, thinking sourly that the only really interesting question in this cemetery was whether or not a telephone had been buried with Mary Baker Eddy. If so, did it ever ring? Was Elvis on the line?
An imposing monument to one Zachariah Winthrop was big enough to lean against, but its granite base was surrounded by begonias, leaving no room to sit down.
The chubby urn devoted to the Greenleaf family was adorned with a pious verse, I heard a voice from heaven, but it looked knobby and uncomfortable.
A tall pillar was promising. Homer sat down and tried to settle his bulk against the base of a monument dedicated to the memory of—
PHILIP MARETT
DIED MARCH 22, 1869, AGED 76
Founder of the New Haven Public Library
The man had obviously been a benefactor to the human race, but as a comfy sofa he was no good at all.
Homer struggled to his feet again and looked for a soft-looking place on the lawn. He found a grassy spot, sat down, unhitched his backpack and took out his old lecture notes on the European origins of New England transcendentalism.
The origins included a poem by Wordsworth. Homer remembered that part of the lecture with pleasure because of the passage about the sense sublime—
—a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns—
Yes, yes, of course. But the rest was more difficult, philosophical treatises by Immanuel Kant, selections from the notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Homer bowed his head and dug into it. The breeze ruffled his hair, the sun dropped flickering images on the white paper. Someone coughed.
Homer looked up. Was it Patrick’s mother? No, the little glen below his high perch was empty. He looked around, saw no one, and went back to his notes.
There was another cough.
Homer thought about it. Could he identify what language the invisible person was coughing in? No, of course not. Coughing was part of a universal language that included—Homer smiled and made a list in his head—
chuckling
laughing
gigging
tittering
sniffling
sobbing
weeping
moaning
screaming
howling
roaring—
He heard a sneeze, and added it to the list—
sneezing
hissing
growling
sputtering
snoring
snorting
belching
gasping
hiccupping
They were all animal noises like barking and purring, the same in every tongue. Homer preened himself on this new discovery. He might write a paper on The Esperanto of Nonverbal Speech, and deliver it to the American Philological Society.
“Excuse me.”
Homer looked around in surprise. This time the language was English.
An old woman was looking at him. Her eyes were wide, her smile was sweet. A folded newspaper was tucked under her arm.
Homer rose to his feet, the perfect gentleman, bowed slightly and said, “Good afternoon, Ma’am.”
Mrs. Winthrop put out one hand in kindly sympathy and touched his sleeve. “Have you lost someone dear to you? Has a loved one crossed the bridge to the other side?”
“Crossed the bridge?” Homer was confused for a moment, but then he hastened to explain himself. “No, no, I was just—I mean it’s so peaceful here. I was reading.”
“You’ve chosen such a lovely neighborhood,” said Mrs. Winthrop. “There are so many truly interesting men and women here on Willow Avenue. It makes a loop, you see.” She drew a circle in the air. “It goes around and around.”
She took his arm and drew him along, introducing him to the local residents one by one, beginning with her own eminent husband, Zachariah, then going on to the Lowells and the Norcrosses and James Bryant Conant, a president of Harvard.
Homer was stunned by a tall triangular monument. “Who’s this?”
“Oh, the Mountforts,” gushed Mrs. Winthrop. “I think of them as triangles, with funny little arms and legs.” She giggled, and Homer was charmed. Then Mrs. Winthrop pointed vaguely to the east. “And Mrs. Gardner is just down there.”
“Mrs. Gardner? You mean Isabella Stewart Gardner?”
“My mother was invited to one of her garden parties,” said Mrs. Winthrop proudly. “There we
re Japanese lanterns and tiny triangular sandwiches. Oh!”—she made a joke—“the Mountforts should have been there!”
Homer laughed and took her hand. The old lady was a dear. “Thank you, Mrs. Winthrop.” She was fluttering away, and he called after her, “I hope we meet again.”
But the afternoon had been a failure. The baby’s mother had not put in an appearance and the importance of Immanuel Kant to the flowering of New England transcendentalism was still a mystery.
34
Frieda’s new apartment was even grubbier than the old one, but she got to work at once with a paintbrush. Before long the smeared walls of the room looking out on the impacted intersection of Inman Square were bright and white, and she was beginning to work on the kitchen.
As a furnished apartment it was no worse than her old place on lower Sibley Road. Frieda made it her own by tacking up a poster of her favorite Escher print, part of the long woodcut called Metamorphosis. The poster showed the end of the woodcut, the part in which a chessboard turns into a city. The clever transition, the delightful metamorphosis, was the little bridge that reached across the water to the city from a tower that was also a rook on the chessboard.
Frieda’s new apartment was her rook, her tower, her stronghold of anonymity. Her absentminded landlord had not questioned his tenant’s new name, Frances Pole, and neither had the telephone company. Perhaps some day she would leave the tower and cross the bridge and reach the beautiful city, but not yet.
Inman Square was far from beautiful, but Frieda found a job around the corner as a file clerk for a wholesale distributor of manila envelopes. Her co-workers were neither highly educated nor artistically skillful, but they had the same range of human strengths and frailties as the friends of her former life, and some were wiser and funnier than the people she had known before.
