Hysteria

by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

  — Because of who knows what, Arden said. Yes, because of Dolan. Because of any number of things. Because you came back from the pond with dirty legs and didn’t want to go to a party with him. Because Eric is who he is. I don’t know. Mostly because of Dolan. To keep you in line.

  Heike looked down at the floor of the car, considering this. Inside her chest, something was swelling up, like a soft fruit that’s been left too long. The skin splitting. She opened her mouth to relieve the pressure, but no breath would come.

  — He told me he could have me arrested. For infidelity. Or committed: he’s told me that many times.

  She raised her eyes again, to where the police officer had been standing. He was gone now. Heike started.

  Arden kept on, speaking almost to herself:

  — Is it crazy to think this? That my brother would kidnap his own child? I don’t know if you could even call it kidnapping.

  Heike looked around. No: not gone after all. She could see the officer down on the sidewalk, leaning in to some other cop’s cruiser. She turned her body back to Arden but kept her eyes on the courthouse steps.

  — I used to dream all the time that we were fighting. Eric and I. We’re fighting and I’m trying to tell him something, something important, but he won’t listen. I am so frustrated that I start beating him, beating on his chest, but it does nothing. He only smiles. Like I was beating on a glass wall instead of a man. Heike’s hands, resting in her lap, curled now into fists. She peeled her eyes away from the courthouse to look at Arden properly. People don’t ask men like Eric a lot of questions, she said. You must know this, Arden. Look at John: it’s just the same. They move through the world, and the world steps aside, to open the path.

  Arden cut the motor and pulled out the key. For a moment she was quiet, the clink of the keychain the only sound between them.

  — You’re saying people will listen to him if he talks.

  — They will.

  — They won’t listen to you?

  — You are listening to me. But the sheriff? Heike indicated with a thumb out the window. The police?

  — I don’t know. I don’t know anymore. Arden tapped her fingers against the steering wheel. I suppose you have a point, she said. It depends what Eric has told them. She dropped her hand off the wheel: And what if you don’t go back?

  — I can’t. I can’t leave without Dani, Heike said. I know I can find him, Arden—

  Arden shook her head.

  — I don’t know what use you are to Daniel if you can’t get out of bed. That’s what’s at home for you. Or so it seems. She paused. Then: Has he ever wandered off before? Dani.

  Impossible not to think of Lena, also disappearing in the night. Heike pushed the thought away. Daniel usually followed after her, tugging at her skirt, his hand wrapped in her hemline. Quite the opposite. Always at her feet.

  — Only if he was looking for me.

  Lena perhaps also scared in the dark, looking for Heike.

  Arden tipped her chin at the cop on the sidewalk, matter-of-factly.

  — He’ll never have you arrested, you know. Eric. That’s an empty threat. People would talk. He couldn’t tolerate it.

  — But he will use it against me. If I leave him. He’ll say I’m an unfit mother.

  — You can go back if you want.

  Arden’s voice still a little flat.

  What Heike wanted was to go back and find everything reset, Daniel in the white room, clicking a little train along the track. For them to never have found the pond, or the raft, never seen the girl. For Heike to never have set foot inside that house. She thought of the little Dresden figurine, her cool almost-smile, stiff and unmoving, her reflection fanning out in the bedroom mirrors. Smiling again and again. A cold current moved through the car.

  Arden reached out for Heike’s hand, but found it curled tight. They sat there for a moment, Arden looking at Heike, almost fierce, and Heike looking out at where the cop now climbed the courthouse stairs, escorting someone to the door.

  — This is your brother, Heike said. So why are you helping me now?

  She hadn’t turned her head. Arden leaned out to try to catch her eye anyway.

  — I never had a sister, I suppose.

  Then:

  — I wonder if there hasn’t always been something wrong with him. I’ve always wondered. Since I was a child. Her voice was hard-edged. You’re right, she said. He’s my brother. It’s hard not to feel somehow responsible.

  It was late in the day. There were a few clouds in the sky, and they had begun to take on colour, the barest flush, the sun low but not yet setting. Heike focused on the stream of light through the trees, the shadows denser now. As though the trees overhead were drawing their veil around. Hard to say where any one branch began or ended.

  — If Dani is with Eric, at least that means he is safe, Heike said. The words rhythmic, a rosary: Eric would never hurt him. He’d never hurt his own son.

  — I think it makes a kind of sense, Arden said. I think it makes more sense than anything else. Something didn’t match up, when I saw him. Eric. He didn’t look worried when I arrived. He looked angry. He was angry that the maid had let me in. I know men react differently. I know that, but . . . his child is missing. Missing. For three days. You know? How is it possible that his child has disappeared and he doesn’t seem half as worried as you do right now? She wound the scarf around her wrist and pulled it tight. And there you were in bed, and your eyes were all black. There was no blue in them. Just soft and black, and he only wanted to rouse you to give you something else to drink.

  — And if you’re wrong? If he’s not with Eric?

  — We will find him. No matter what.

  Heike swung her legs down off the seat and sat straight up, feet flat on the floor. Her head was clearing; she watched without squinting the glint of sunlight where it flared in the side mirror. Her hands on the seat, to either side of her, arms pressing strongly into the vinyl.

  — I can’t go to the police.

  Arden hesitated.

  — Do you want to come home with me?

  — No. No, I’d only make trouble for you there.

  — But you’re not going home, are you? Is there someplace else you can go? To clear your head. A hotel or something. She wrapped the red scarf over her hair again, the ends of it batting at her throat as she wound them back into a knot. She stopped and turned, a sudden thought hitting her: Do you even have any money?

  Heike reached down for her purse where it sat on the floor of the car.

  — I’ve been skimming it off the top of the grocer’s bill, she said. It’s not much. Every week I tell Eric we’ve ordered something we haven’t. An extra chicken, or some eggs, or a couple of quail.

  The thought of this painstaking weekly operation struck her as suddenly ridiculous, shameful, and she pressed her lips together.

  — It’s not really funny. I’ve been hiding it in a ripped seam in my purse for a year. She slipped a hand into her bag so that she could widen the secret compartment, ripple the edge of the billfold hidden there. If you’d asked me, I couldn’t have told you why.

  — I guess we know why.

  — Imagine having to lie about chickens just to get a little spending money.

  There was a silence. Arden finished with her scarf.

  — It’s your nest egg.

  — My chicky bank. Is that it? She looked at Arden sideways, just out of the corner of her eye. A poultry subterfuge, Heike said.

  — You’ve been quailing it away for a rainy day.

  They rhymed this all off with serious faces, and for a moment it felt like a reprieve. Heike’s vision blurred, and she realized she was crying.

  — It’s not a lot of money. But it’s some. It’s something.

  She set the bag back on the floor. Then:

  — Eric keeps his car key in the drawer of the hall armoire.

  The words came out soft and slow. A risk, to go back at all, but he would not ex
pect her to take the car.

  Arden picked up the key where it lay in her lap and got the motor turning over again, then moved the gearshift into reverse, one arm along the seatback, looking over her shoulder. Down the way, a light had turned green, and she waited for the hum of a few cars to pass them by.

  For a moment, Heike tried to picture Dani, or feel him there next to her, as she sometimes did if she were out for an evening and bored, or Daniel was asleep and she felt lonely. His feet kicking the seat, the warmth of him curling into her. The image came slowly, somehow. How much wave to his hair? His eyes a flecked grey, or more blue? She ran through details as though she were taking inventory, but they broke apart like bits of china and lay separate the moment she tried to put them together. Even with her eyes shut, she could not quite see him.

  This alarmed her. She needed to picture him pristine, perfect, so that she would know for sure he was safe. It was like she could harm him by slipping up in her imagination. She looked over to Arden and then down at herself, counting out her own shoulder, her arm, then her thigh with a careful hand, as though checking to make sure she herself was still there.

  The officer had gone inside now. There was no cruiser waiting for them, no one left on the courthouse steps. Arden pulled the car out into the road.

  — Better to wait until dark, she said.

  WHEN THEY REACHED THE TOP of the driveway, Arden stopped the car without turning in. They were pulled close against the ditch, a few tree branches scraping the roof. Heike swung the door open and left it that way. It was dark enough that she would have liked a flashlight. Halfway down the drive she stopped and looked up to where she knew Arden was waiting, hidden in the trees at the side of the road, but she could not see her or the car and had to believe that she had not driven away.

  The sun was most of the way set, a brilliant streak on the west side of the lake, but the house, north-facing against the stream, was privy only to a dull sort of ambience, well filtered by trees. The front door was unlocked, and Heike went in, carefully rather than quickly, turning the knob in its latch as she closed it behind her so as not to be heard coming. Her movements still at risk of a leftover sedative clumsiness. There was no music on. Her ears felt full of cotton, and she strained to listen through the quiet. In the kitchen, the wall clock beat out the seconds, and her heart kicked too, so that it hurt to breathe. The girl, Rita, was not there.

  Heike eased the armoire drawer open. It was a neat little space and held only a few things: a long matchbox; a silver shoehorn; a set of handkerchiefs, corners embroidered (Heike’s own; she was surprised to see them there); a single key on a plain ring. She withdrew the key and slipped it into her pocket and left her hand on it, the key head wide and flat and cool. It was what she had come for, and she left the drawer open, not wanting to risk the sound of it sliding closed. She went to turn away, but something stopped her and she froze. There was someone there, behind the door.

  No sound, but she’d seen the light change, just to her left. A twitch. Heike pulled the hand from her pocket and left the key in there, her shoulder blades drawing back as she turned. Behind her was the door and then the entrance to the kitchen and a long strip of wall; on the wall, the hall mirror where she and Arden had stood a week or two earlier, Arden fussing at her dress.

  She was alone. The movement she’d seen just her own hair in the mirror, from the corner of her eye. She stared in at herself, eyes adjusting to the dark. Her reflection a pale shadow.

  If Eric was home, he had not heard her. She slipped a hand back into her pocket. The key was still there, safe. Her body was so tight that she could feel the bones of her hips curving up to meet her breasts, as though she were folding in on herself. She stepped outside, onto the front stoop, but left her hand on the knob.

  Arden was standing in the open now, at the top of the drive; Heike could see her there. She decided that they were caught: Eric had returned from a walk and found his sister waiting, was waiting now himself for Heike to come running up the drive with the key. But Arden merely waved to her. Impatient. What are you doing? It’s time to go.

  For the first time it occurred to Heike that Eric might not be at home, that Arden’s theory could have weight. If Arden was right, and Eric had somehow taken Daniel himself, was it possible that he’d hidden him away inside the house? What if Dani were there after all, alone? Had been there the whole time. Locked in a closet and frightened, and his mother walking away.

  She shouldered the front door open again, stepping backward over the threshold. Either Eric was home or he was not. He had heard her come in, the click of the door and now the small creaks of the floorboards, or he had not. She went up to the second-floor landing in the dark.

  There was a thin strand of moonlight in the hall, and Heike used it to paw through the linen closet, the cupboard under the bathroom sink. In Dani’s room she got on her knees and pulled his little bed out from the wall, as though his body could have flattened itself into that space. The act of hiding or being hidden almost the product of a magic trick. The bed frame rumbled across the floor, and she did not dare to push it back into place. She crawled to the back of the closet and swept her hands against the corners, the baseboards, flat out on the back wall. There was the soft click of her tongue against the roof of her mouth: Daniel, Daniel. Daniel, Daniel. An incantation.

  In her own bedroom the blinds were still drawn, and there was no light. What was shadow and what was solid rubbed up and ran together. As Heike crossed the room, something caught her ankle—not strong enough to be a hand, but twine, a trap, some flimsy thing that twisted and pulled tight, and for a moment she lost her breath. She tugged gingerly at her foot, and whatever held her gave in. Not a hand. Not Eric. The coil of bedclothes on the floor, untouched from when she’d run out earlier in the day. She kicked them away.

  She could see her outline in the vanity mirror, a bare silhouette, and remembered waking to her own reflection: a stranger, she’d thought. A strange woman, her hair over one eye. And something else: the little Dresden figurine, shining at her, pale in the afternoon light. Jarring somehow. She had not expected to see it there, posed against the three-way mirror, the figurine in multiplicity, not one Dresden doll but three, six, nine.

  Before everything: before the girl in the water, before Daniel’s game in the thorn bush. Before he disappeared. The girl, Tessa, nothing so much as a bad omen. And yet. Now Daniel seemed to have been swallowed up the same way Tessa had vanished into the pond, the surface closing over her, a smooth seal. The silence of the little house matching the stillness of the water. A sign, and the figurine somehow related.

  Heike had hidden it away, a treasure, a china pet.

  She wanted it now. She made her way across the room and waited for her eyes to focus, all the muffled shapes of things becoming clearer, her fingers finding every standing thing: the cut-glass bottle of perfume, L’Heure Bleue, the stopper cut to the shape of an upside-down heart, or else a spade; some small bottles of talc; a puff; her hairbrush; a glass bulb of cold cream. The thin cloth of the runner always there, spanning the length. She found herself peering, not down, but into the mirrors themselves, each item a false version. Her own hair, pale and loose around her face. Unkempt. She lifted a thumb to touch the line of her cheek in the glass. These few cosmetics, a tiny brush for her eyelids, a discarded scarf, blue silk. But no shepherdess. The figurine was gone.

  This gave Heike a jolt. She’d seen it just a few hours ago. Before she left with Arden. Hadn’t she? Standing in the curve of mirrors, the doll’s reflection moving out in three directions, over and over, like something pulled out to sea. The little waves lapping her away with the tide.

  Or something she thought she saw, before she was truly awake. She went to the wardrobe where she’d hidden the doll away on that first day, wrapped in the newspaper from the cabin’s cupboard, but her hands slipped through the drawer’s contents—underwear, a few silk corselettes—too easily. The thin straps of camisoles ran through her
fingers like hair. At the back of the drawer she felt something rougher: the newspaper wrapper, empty now. Heike pulled it out, wincing at the scraping sound. She folded the paper and slipped it into her pocket with the matches and the key.

  Outside, the breeze had picked up. Heike could hear it in the aspen leaves, a silver sound, shimmery. The house made its regular mild creaks. She went back down the stairs, only somewhat cautious. It seemed to her now that Eric could not be home, would have heard her by now: her movement on the stairs, or pulling out Dani’s bed, tripping over the bedclothes, her urgent whisper, calling Dani’s name. In the front landing the floor was cool under her feet. There was the swish of the wind in the trees again, and a light knocking. She’d left the front door standing open when she came in the second time; the wooden screen beating gently against the frame, unguarded.

  She turned and followed the hallway back to Eric’s office, one hand trailing on the wall. The barest glow, a slim band of lamplight, showed beneath his door. She stopped and shrank back against the wall across from it, watching for a flicker in the light, a movement, a shadow. Her hips pressing into the moulding on the high edge of the wainscot, the woodwork sharp against her tailbone. The light left on, absent-mindedly—or Eric himself in there, waiting in the wingback chair?

  Waiting for her. He’d known she would come back. Or come looking. She imagined him there, in his chair with a Scotch and soda. He curled his lips at her meanly. Or, if not quite mean, imperious. Like a man waiting for a dog that’s tired itself out.

  Heike closed her eyes and opened them. She was still in the hall, and she stepped forward and stopped again. Her hand lay on the doorknob and stayed there, the other hand on the wood frame close to her face. She counted breaths: three, four, five. When she turned the knob, it was slow and silent, and she pushed the door in.

  There he was. In the wingback, as she’d pictured, the reading lamp with its green glass shade shining down. But he did not sit staring. His head lolled back, nestled against the cushion. One hand sullenly hanging over the edge of the chair, and an empty tumbler lying on its side on the floor below.