Hysteria

by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

  He said he’d stayed in Europe after the war. First in France—Avignon—and then farther west in Spain. He came home to finish his education, but it didn’t take.

  — So this is how you met your wife, she said. In Barcelona.

  — I met my wife in a television studio in California, Dolan said. She was someone else’s wife at the time.

  — It’s no way to start a romance, Heike said.

  — Didn’t do much for my career, either.

  Dolan got up to refill his glass and stretched a long arm out for hers. Heike reached it up to him without leaving her cushion, then, thinking better of it, got to her feet and peered out the window. Nervous, after all, that Eric might be looking for her.

  There was a neat crack as Dolan uncapped a fresh bottle.

  — So how’d you end up married to the mental?

  Heike twisted her body toward him but kept her eyes on Eric at his card table outside.

  — What?

  — Where’d you meet the brain doctor?

  — I lived in a convent in Switzerland, she said. After the war. I was sixteen years old, and they dressed me as a boy so I could drive back and forth to town to make deliveries. We had a big garden, and grapevines. I drove vegetables across the border to Austria, and sometimes even to Germany. The priests handed them out. The war was over, but the winters were very bad, two or three times in a row.

  She turned cautiously away from the window and sank back onto her cushion. Perhaps it was better to stay out of sight altogether.

  — People had no food, she said. There were no potatoes. In Austria there was a man who made a business selling the leftover breakfasts of French soldiers. He had almost a shop.

  — They let you drive a truck? Dolan stood over her, a drink in each hand. There was just a crack of light showing under the door, from the kitchen. The glow from outside filtered in through the high window and made the glasses shimmer.

  — The nuns taught me.

  — I’m not making fun of you.

  — Give me a truck, Heike said. I will drive it right now.

  — I wish I had a truck, Dolan said.

  He sat down cross-legged, and she took her drink from his hand. His shirt was still untucked where he’d pulled it up earlier. There was a noise outside the door, footsteps in the hall or else the clack of jars being moved about in the kitchen. Heike raised her eyebrows, but Dolan waved it off.

  He said he was surprised she got across the border so easily, and she said nothing was easy.

  — But it was one thing we could do. Maybe a small thing.

  In the bottom corner of the American zone, she met a pilot. His job was mostly flying supplies between American bases.

  — It was only 1946, she said. They weren’t really supposed to speak to us. Germans, you know.

  — But he thought you were Swiss.

  — Maybe in the beginning. But at the end of the year, the rules all changed, anyway. I left the nuns, she said. We got married in January, in Munich, and from there we took the train to Vienna. He had three days leave, and the American zone was there, too.

  It wasn’t until they were at the train station that she realized she’d left something behind, in his room: the billfold her mother had given her when she left Dresden. Tucked in with the false papers, there had also been a childhood photograph, Heike and her sister, together.

  — It was a night train, she said, and we’d booked the sleeper car. We had a first-class compartment. But I had to go back. It was a picture of Lena, my only one.

  By the time they got back to the station, the train was gone. They sat up half the night and took the next train in the morning. There were no compartments and only one seat.

  — So he stood all the way from Munich to Vienna. Her eyes flitted up to a high corner of the room; after a moment, she looked back at Dolan. Hours and hours. With his hand up here, she said. She lifted her own hand, as though pulling a bell. Holding on to the little rail.

  Outside, there were a few whoops and calls. Not laughter, exactly. The sound of someone winning their hand, gin all around. Heike glanced sharply at the window.

  — Lerner as gallant, Dolan said. It’s not what I might have guessed.

  — Oh, no. She crossed her legs and leaned forward, hands on knees. That’s not Eric. She rocked back again and drew her hands up through her hair. He died, you see. My first husband. After a year. And not even flying! Imagine, you fly a plane back and forth across a war for four years, and in the end, a car hits you in the street. Bam! she said.

  There was a little silence, her nostalgia and the sweetness of the previous moment gone.

  — I’m sorry.

  She nodded but didn’t say anything. Dolan waited for her to speak. She stared straight ahead of her.

  — But, she said. That’s what made me think Americans were good.

  — Makes sense to me.

  Her eyes flicked up to meet his.

  — Harry, she said. She pronounced it Hah-ry. That was his name. Harry Foster.

  — So you were Heike Foster.

  — Only for a short time.

  He leaned toward her, but it was a cautious thing.

  — Did they treat you well? The army, I mean.

  She didn’t answer, and after a time he tried again.

  — I mean, if you were living on a U.S. Army base. Where, in Munich? Must have been strange, to be back in Germany as an American. He tried to catch her eye. They’re usually very good to the widows.

  Heike nodded again once or twice, then stopped and looked up at him. Her vision felt watery, and she was embarrassed.

  — That’s just it, she said. The surge of brashness that had catapulted her into the room was gone now. I don’t know. I don’t know where we lived before the accident. I suppose it must have been on an army base, yes. But I don’t remember it. I don’t have a picture of it in my mind. There are a lot of things I don’t remember from that time. After the accident, I mean.

  — So you were hit, too.

  — Yes. Yes, I was. Or I think I was. She turned her head, as though the answer were written down somewhere just to her left. And then . . . And then somehow I went back to the convent. When I met Eric, he was studying in Switzerland. He was my doctor, for a little while. I came across the ocean with him on the boat.

  — Ah. Dolan downed the rest of his drink. And the rest is history, he said. Your Harry, he didn’t want children? Or I suppose there wasn’t time.

  She was still for a moment. Her head had stopped its pulsing, but the pain was there, dully, a band that stretched under her eye sockets from temple to temple. The ice in her glass was all melted, and she stirred the bit of water with a finger. She had the sense that she was forgetting something. There was something she was supposed to do; something she was meant to be thinking about. She sucked on the finger thoughtfully.

  — I have a son, she said. Then, after a moment: Daniel. I can’t stay here much longer.

  THERE WERE SHOUTS OUTSIDE.

  From the kitchen, they heard the scraping sound of chairs pushed back quickly. The sky looked softer than it had a few moments ago, the topmost branches of the trees sharply black against the blueish glass of the window. Neither of them stood up.

  — Do you think he’s hit her again? Heike said finally.

  Dolan got up on his feet to take a look.

  — It’s Lerner, he said.

  Heike brought a hand up to cover her mouth, then let it drop again, the hand wrapping across her body and coming to rest just under her breast. It did not occur to her to stand up. She could feel the soft pressure, almost liquid, of her heart under her ribs.

  — How long have I been here?

  — I’m afraid he’s quite upset.

  Dolan looked down to where she was sitting.

  — I’d better get out there, Heike said. For another moment neither of them moved, then Dolan stepped forward and extended an arm, to help her up.

  She came down through the kitchen and
out into the garden on her own, but Eric was already gone. The car was gone. The handful of remaining guests stood around, a staggery look to them. Dolan came out of the house and went to pick up the card table where it had been pushed onto its side. Renny Paulsen smacked him sharply across the shoulders, and Dolan turned with his elbow drawn back, but he only pumped Paulsen’s hand. The evening had been a success.

  Heike stood in the grass, with the dew seeping into the toes of her shoes. Around the front of the house, the last few cars started up. The sweep of headlights against the new greyness. There was a suspicion of dawn. No real light, but a softness to the dark. She thought about walking down to the water, wading in, her dress floating out from her body on all sides.

  Dolan appeared at the side wall.

  — Are you coming?

  — What do you mean?

  He had his hat ready in one hand, a straw Milan with a black cherry band wide around the brim.

  — I need to get you back to your own bed, he said.

  Heike stepped forward through the damp grass.

  — Before the neighbours get ideas, she said.

  — Something like that.

  9.

  They peeled back out of the drive in the red Eldorado. Heike had asked him to roll the top down so that she could see the night sky ending all around them, and the wind whipped at their shoulders and her hair came down and flicked around her face. She kept tucking it back, behind her ears. They weren’t driving particularly fast. Dolan was quiet.

  Then:

  — Will this be a lot of trouble for you?

  — That he couldn’t find me, or that you’re driving me home?

  — Any of it, Dolan said. Yes. All that.

  Heike drew a pin from her hair and then another. They weren’t holding anyway. She held them out over the road and let them fly away in the wind.

  — Yes, she said. Her hair blew across her eyes, and she pushed it back.

  They were driving west to Cayuga across the top of Owasco, the smaller lake somewhere to the south of them. A long enough trip: Heike had the better part of an hour to figure out what to do when she got home. She could hear water before she saw the bridge. As they were crossing, she asked him if this was the tip of the lake, but Dolan said it was a river that ran down into it, the river also called Owasco. They were driving through the town, Auburn. There was a stainless-steel diner car over the river, too, propped on stilts. A neon sign out front called it not a diner but a dinerant, the second n for some reason unlit. Heike folded over to take off her shoes, and when she came up again the town was gone. She curled up on the seat with her feet tucked underneath her skirt and leaned on the door, one arm outside the car. Dolan reached over and pressed down the lock button.

  — So, she said. Are you going back to California?

  — Undecided.

  — Your friend Paulsen says all you do is fight, fight, fight.

  — With him? I wouldn’t bother. He’s got a lousy left hook.

  Heike played with the lock button, pulling it up—click—then pushing it down again.

  — But the network is your boss, no?

  — No.

  — I see.

  She pushed the lock button down into place a final time and leaned out the window and looked at herself in the side mirror. Dolan kept his silence for another minute or so.

  — He’s talking about the Till story, he said. Kid from Chicago who got murdered visiting his Mississippi relations. I wrote it up as a play for the Steel Hour. Not just murdered, he said. Not just lynched. Atrocious things. But the town stood up and protected its own. The very act of violence was the symbol of this, this social evil. He paused for a moment, and his eyes moved up to the rear-view mirror and back down again. The point of the thing was to show exactly that: it doesn’t matter how bad your villain is; if he’s yours, the whole town will circle the wagons. I knew they’d never let me write it black and white; they wanted nothing to do with it. So I made it about an old shopkeeper, a Jew, and that was still no good. I kept changing it. By the time I was done, it was some unidentifiable foreigner in an unnamed town, and it was lukewarm, it was nothing, it was a bunch of shouting with nothing at all to be shouting about. And still at the end of the day, there they were, running around the set, pulling the Coca-Cola bottles off the tables. Dolan slapped the steering wheel with one hand. Because Coca-Cola reads South, they said. The viewer might figure it out.

  — They’re afraid of a bomb, do you think? The way they bombed those churches in the wintertime, in Alabama?

  — They’re afraid the show’s going to bomb, that’s what they’re afraid of. No one’s going to set fire to a television studio full of blond starlets.

  There was a little moment of quiet.

  — They can’t take the heat, Heike said.

  — In Los Angeles? It’s murder.

  — In the South. That’s why they drink so much Coca-Cola.

  She tipped her head back against the seat and pressed her lips together hard. It was a gesture of restraint, but she looked at him, delighted, all the same.

  — Continental on the outside, Dolan said. Wiseass on the inside.

  — I put it all behind me, she said. What are you writing lately?

  — What makes you think I’m writing at all?

  — You’re not? This is all you do, drink whisky in your hidden room and drive Continental ladies around the countryside?

  — There’s a script, he said. Sitting on the shelf at Desilu. A pilot. You know what that means?

  — I’m afraid I’m not really much . . .

  — For television. So I gather. A pilot is episode one. It’s the first show in a series, a series I’m thinking of. Something I’d control. The Mind’s Eye. That’s what I’m calling it. Many stories, a different story every week: fables, moral quandaries, things that can’t be explained.

  — Like a fairy tale? Is it for children?

  — I guess it could be. But I think it might also be frightening. Or some of the stories, anyway.

  — Some children’s stories are very frightening.

  — I guess you Germans know enough about fairy tales.

  — My mother told me so many stories when I was growing up. We never had books; just stories. Once you learn the rhythm, you can make them up yourself. I do. It’s easy.

  Then:

  — Daniel’s favourite stories aren’t even from Grimm. They’re from me. She thought about this, and her mouth curved. Not really a smile. It’s how we learn to understand ourselves, she said finally. By telling stories. So they must be frightening. You see that.

  — I see that. You might even say the best stories all start with a girl alone in the woods, Dolan said. I feel like I’ve heard that somewhere before.

  — You remember!

  — I remember. This one’s about time, though. The pilot episode, I mean. Someone who can appear years after he died, then disappear again.

  They had reached the top of Cayuga. Dolan turned the car south down the lake. Heike turned to look at him, and the little fingers of light that had been behind them now came into view, just beyond his jawline. On her side of the car, the trees lining the water stood heavy and tangled.

  — I should have offered to let you drive, he said.

  — No, Heike said. You are too afraid of me. She laughed, then mimicked steering with both hands, humming a little tune before dropping one to pull sharply on an invisible gear shift. I would get us there much faster, she said.

  They drove along without speaking, aware now of how close she was to home. Heike turned more firmly to the window. After a while she asked him to slow down.

  — I thought you liked fast drivers, he said.

  — Yes. But I’m looking for something. She leaned on the edge of her door, into the darkness. Can you turn here? Just for a little while.

  The car came almost to a stop before turning. It was a dirt road, pitted from the rains, with a thin stream running not far from it. You could hear the
movement of the stream but couldn’t see it. After a few minutes Dolan asked where they were going.

  — Just here. Where the trees are.

  The key clicked in the ignition, and there was a new stillness.

  — You must need a lot of stories, Heike said. She didn’t look at him, her face lit in outline only by what was left of the moon. It was still mostly dark in the woods.

  Dolan turned his body toward her.

  — Got something for me?

  — Can it be anything?

  — Sky’s the limit. Time, space. Whatever’s unknown.

  — You see? You do want to make people afraid.

  — Maybe. Sometimes. I want to make people stop. I want them to think.

  — What about a ghost?

  — A ghost story, sure. But there’s got to be more to it than that. The ghost has to connect, has to link up to a present situation.

  — A ghost story, for the television.

  He turned back to the wheel, both feet flat down, and looked out his own window for a moment before looking back at her. What light there was caught the light of her hair, the line of her cheekbone, her jaw. He set his hand back on the ignition but didn’t turn the key.

  — You’re laughing. That’s fine. That’s alright. I’ll take my lick. The stories are mine, and I’ll write them the way I want them.

  — I’m not laughing at you.

  — The idea has promise.

  She lifted her face.

  — You want me to tell you a ghost story?

  — Only if it’s a good one.

  Heike got out of the car and shut the door, walking forward to the edge of the gully. Her feet were still bare, but the gravel of the road gave way here to softer stuff, the ground sandy and mixed with pine needles and fallen leaves. The little house stood somewhere below them, maybe two hundred feet down, and behind it, the stream disappeared and opened out into the pond. The raft, too, would be there, although she could not see any of it in the darkness. There was a softer thud, Dolan’s own door closing.

  — I keep thinking someone must live here, Heike said. But there’s never anyone in the house when I go looking.

  She stepped back and against him, and he laid a hand high up on her back, between her shoulder blades. Almost brotherly, she thought. They stood looking down into the gully until her eyes adjusted and she was sure for a moment that she could make out every detail, the shingles overlapping on the roof. The light changed again, and the shingles turned to aspen leaves, shimmering like dark coins. She was aware that Dolan was watching her.