Tangerine

by Christine Mangan

  A moment passed by, and another still, so that I wondered if she would ignore my words altogether. And then, she did not turn to me, did not take off her own sunglasses; instead she remained facing the ocean, her face as sturdy as the stone we had just stood upon. “I remember that,” she said, her tone a warning, a threat.

  I turned away from her and remained silent.

  IT HAD BEEN SNOWING HEAVILY that night. Of course, it was the Green Mountains, and in the heart of winter it seemed like it was always either snowing or threatening to snow, a blanket of ghostly white providing a permanent coat on the ground. But that night had been different. The snow stuck not only to the pavement but also to the lights, to one’s own person, so that everything passed by in a swirl as you fought and struggled to make your way through it.

  Lucy and I had been fighting.

  I had returned, earlier in the day, before the snow began, from a trip to New York. I had told everyone that it was an assignment for my photography class, but really it had been a chance for escape, a respite from the suffocating unease that had steadily crept between Lucy and me over the last year, so that it was suddenly all that existed between us. My aunt had not even been in town that weekend. I had arranged to stay at a boardinghouse in the city, one that I had passed numerous times and had deemed safe enough. I had thought, for a moment, of inviting Tom to join me, to make it a mini break rather than an escape, but in the end, I knew what I needed most was to be alone, from both of them, from the constant back-and-forth that I had begun to experience each and every day. As if I could actually feel it—my bones, my skin, being pulled between them, taut and threatening to break.

  In New York, unlike Vermont, the air was neither clean nor crisp.

  Instead it was heavy, laden with dust and grease and smoke. It seemed to hang, damp and thick, clinging to my skin. Stepping off the bus and into the city, I had smiled in relief. I spent the next two days roaming the streets, taking pictures. I finished all the rolls of film I had brought with me and ended up stopping into a camera shop to buy half a dozen more. Those, I finished too. There was something relaxing about being alone—finally alone—among a sea of people that I did not know and who did not know me. I lost myself in the facelessness of it all, thrilled to find myself surrounded by strangers. I sat on park benches, listening to the conversations that took place around me. I explored the stainless steel diners of the city, sitting at the counters, eating grilled cheese and sipping burned coffee, enjoying the weighty feel of the porcelain mug in my hand. And while rations were now a thing of the past, the notices still hung, fading and colored with grease—DO NOT ASK FOR BUTTER TODAY. NO HAMBURGERS, IT’S TUESDAY—an enduring reminder.

  Returning to campus Sunday evening, I went straight to the darkroom to begin developing, not yet ready to shed the feeling of calm, of peace, that I had managed to summon amid the chaos of the city. I hummed quietly to myself as I removed the film in the darkened room, my hands moving with quick, memorized movements as I wound it around the spool, feeling for that little groove where the film would catch. I placed each one, gingerly, inside the canister, and once developed, hung them carefully on the line. Almost an hour later, the chemicals returned to the correct shelves, the negatives dry, I made a contact sheet of each, eager to see whether I had managed to capture anything worthwhile during my short stay.

  It was then that I noticed her.

  At first I thought it was only my imagination, or a trick of the light. Perhaps my eyes were simply tired. I told myself that there was any number of explanations for what I was seeing, that it was not real. That the evidence of her—the back of her coat, the profile of her face—could not in fact belong to her.

  But then I found it: the one photograph where she hadn’t managed to step completely out of the way, where not only a glimpse of her could be seen but also the entirety of her face. It was her. It was Lucy. And she was there, following me—stalking me—present in each and every frame I had taken in New York.

  It was easy to miss, if I hadn’t been familiar with her long, tangled hair, if I hadn’t seen her peacoat draped over the chair in our room, day after day. Perhaps then I wouldn’t have noticed it. She was only in the background, after all, only in the corner of the photograph. She was never the focus, never in the forefront.

  But then, there was the one where she had not managed to avoid my lens, where her face stared up at me, her eyes large and unblinking. Watching me, always watching.

  I clasped the photograph in my hand, which was now trembling, and left the darkroom, not bothering to clean up, not bothering to switch off the lights, but walking out into the dark, out into the snow, the steady throb of it making even the short walk between the darkroom and our house nearly impossible. I kept the photograph, the evidence, hidden inside my coat. An effort to keep it protected from the elements, so that when I produced it, when I placed it in front of her at last, there would only be a streak here or there where it had been distorted by the snow.

  She had been sitting at her desk, head bent over a book, and made no move to rise at my abrupt entrance. She was silent for a moment, looking down at the photograph, a strange stillness to her movements as she raised her eyes and asked, “What is this?” Her face closed and unreadable.

  “Look,” I said, my hand shaking as I pushed the photograph closer to her. When I was met with the same stony silence, I thrust my finger toward the figure displayed before us. “I know it’s you, Lucy,” I said, doing my best to make my voice hard. “The photograph may be a bit grainy, but I know it’s you.”

  She did not speak, and in the absence of words, my eyes traveled to the photograph. I was struck, then, by just how grainy the photograph actually was. I scanned it again. Everything was just as I remembered, but it was as if the focus was off, just a tiny amount, so that the distinct lines of each face—her face, in particular—were blurry rather than sharp. Shadows.

  She frowned, standing now. “You saw me in New York?”

  No, that wasn’t what I had meant. I shook my head. “No, in the picture,” I said, fumbling for words. “You were there, I know you were.”

  “Alice, I’ve been here the entire weekend.”

  Her hands were on my shoulders, her fingers pressing into my skin. It was meant as a gesture of comfort, of concern, I knew, but instead I felt as though her fingertips were burning into my flesh.

  I had to get out.

  My heart had begun to beat, fast and unsteady. My throat felt as though it were closing up, and each breath was a struggle, a strain. I felt my skin begin to flush, and I wrenched myself free, desperate to put space between us, to remove myself from her touch. “You’re lying,” I said, heading toward the door, the words strangled in my throat.

  In the hallway, I found the pay phone and called Tom. Afterward, I struggled to recall what it was that I had told him, my voice low and urgent, words tumbling from my mouth before I could consider them. But I remembered, always, what he had said in return—that he would come, that it didn’t matter about the blizzard. That he would come and get me, that he wouldn’t leave me alone, he promised.

  I headed outside, into the freezing cold, the snow falling to the ground at a faster rate than I had seen in all my years in the Green Mountains, and Lucy followed, at first placating, then arguing and then begging—for me to stay, for me to forget the photograph. I did not relent, only stood, waiting until Tom eventually arrived, his face distorted from the melting ice on the car. I had turned to go then, when a hand, hard and unyielding, forced me to pause.

  “Don’t get in the car, Alice.”

  “Let me go, Lucy,” I commanded, wrenching free of her grasp.

  “Alice,” she said, her voice desperate now, I thought. “You can’t just go.”

  I spun around. “Why not?” I didn’t need a response, I could have simply gotten in the car and left, but I wanted to know, in that instance, what she would say, what words she would find to extract herself from this as well. She was silent, a
nd I shook my head. “I want you to leave me alone,” I shouted then, the wind burning my cheeks, stealing my words. “I want you to disappear and never come back.”

  Then I turned and got into the car.

  TOM WAS QUIET AS WE DROVE AWAY, perhaps sensing that I did not want to speak, that I did not want to discuss what had happened. I thought instead about where we would go—town, perhaps, to our favorite little diner, on US Route 7. We would sit and drink good, strong coffee and it would steady my hands, which now trembled in my lap. I shook my head, trying to dislodge whatever was left of Lucy there. No more, I promised myself. Instead I would concentrate on the future, on Tom. And once we reached that diner, perhaps I would finally tell him what I had once told Lucy, about the months after my parents’ death, the shadows, the asylum—and then, even those things I had not.

  I would tell him, I had decided, about the real reason for the bouts of anxiety—about the accident that had killed my parents and how I worried, still, even then, that I was the one to blame. After all, I had been the last one to use that wretched paraffin heater. I could still picture it in my mind: the little black contraption my father had brought home one day. He had been so proud, showing me how to carefully lift the lid in order to fill it with the paraffin, and from there, how to press the wick into the liquid on one end and light it on the other. It would keep us warm during the winter, he had promised. And what was better, it would save money, since the heater was portable and could be picked up and carried from room to room. But you must always be careful, he had warned me, the paraffin is highly inflammable. I still remembered my childish response: Inflammable? Does that mean it won’t catch fire? He had laughed at that, at his silly little Alice in Wonderland. He had pulled me into a tight embrace—the last I could ever remember receiving from him.

  That was what I had been thinking about—the ghosts of my past that I could never quite manage to dispel, along with the simple nagging question: had it been my fault, had I been the last one to use the heater that claimed my parents’ lives?—when it happened.

  We had reached the top of the hill and begun the descent down the drive, on the long twisting road that would lead us out of the college’s property and into the town, when Tom turned to me, panic flooding his eyes, and said, “They aren’t working.”

  “What aren’t working?” I asked, my voice lazy as I peered out of the car and into the darkness. It wasn’t yet six o’clock, but already the winter darkness had fallen, making it nearly impossible to see anything within a few feet without a light. I lifted my hand in front of me, wondering whether I would be able to make out all of its features. I exhaled, watching my breath emerge in a tiny cloud before dissipating into the air.

  “The brakes.”

  I dropped my hand. I took in Tom’s stricken face, which I could still make out, even in the darkness. That was what struck me first, in that strange little moment. But then I heard his foot, pumping away at the useless pedal and something inside me stilled. “What do you mean?” I whispered.

  “I mean they won’t work,” he said, his voice rising in panic.

  The car had nearly reached the end of the drive by then, that point at which the private pathway of Bennington’s road connected with the public one. In front of us, I watched as one car passed by, and then another, each one half-hidden, it seemed, by the darkness. I closed my eyes, held my breath. But I knew that even if we somehow managed not to crash into another car, there was still the problem of the road—which stretched immediately to the left and right, but not directly ahead. Instead, there was a flimsy barricade and beyond that—I swallowed nervously—our self-christened End of the Universe. My gaze quickly took in the sugar maples beyond the railing, standing in sinister formation.

  I turned then. Twisting around, peering back at the darkness behind us, knowing that I would not be able to see anything—that I would not be able to see her, even though I could feel her still, watching. I thought of her words, of her insistence that I not get into the automobile, and I felt my stomach lurch—though whether from the movement of the car or the realization of something greater, something darker, I was never entirely certain.

  And then Tom shouted, telling me to jump, so that my shaking hands reached for the cold handle. There was nothing then. Only the strange sensation of my body being lifted into the air, weightless and suspended. Afterward, there was blood and fire, broken bones and bruises, but I did not feel any of it. Only the snow underneath my face, the cold, biting pain of it against my cheek.

  And Lucy.

  Somewhere in the distance, looking at me—her eyes wide, watching—alive.

  It was the last thing that I remembered from that night.

  AUNT MAUDE ARRIVED in the days afterward. I was never sure how many had passed before she swept in, her stern, frowning face serving as a source of comfort, a return to normalcy in the swirling chaos that had surrounded me ever since I had woken. I had scarcely been left alone during that time, so it seemed there was always someone beside me, in the room, outside the room, peering in. And yet, not one of them ever spoke to me, with me—only around me, at me, instructions and directions, orders, but no information, nothing that told me what had happened, how it had happened, and perhaps most important, why.

  “Maude,” I whispered, my lips parched and cracked.

  She moved quickly beside me, though she did not take my hand. “Quiet, dear,” she said.

  I closed my eyes at the sound of her voice, at her familiar accent, so similar to my own. Her face, though decidedly feminine, still held something of my father, her brother, in it as well, such that I felt her reassurance wash over me, blanket me. My body sagged, and for the first time in days, I felt the adrenaline begin to seep from my pores, so that all at once I felt comforted, and I felt pain, the bruises and cuts I had ignored, that I had refused to feel, creeping upon me so that they could no longer be denied. I felt wetness against my cheeks and realized that I had begun to cry.

  “Lucy,” I whispered. “Where is Lucy?” But I was uncertain whether she could understand my words, distorted as they were by my increasing sobs. “You have to speak with her, to ask her about what happened.”

  “There, there,” Maude whispered, lowering herself into the seat beside me. She still did not move to touch me, though in that moment I wished that she would. “You’re overwrought, Alice, confused. But everything will be all right, my dear. I will take care of it, you have my word.”

  A week later, I was out of the hospital and on my way back to England. No one spoke of Tom, of his funeral, of an invitation I knew would not come. Only once was Lucy mentioned, when the police, bullied and cowed by Maude, were permitted to ask a few questions, under her direct supervision. My answers were short, clipped. They raised their eyebrows when I asked about Lucy Mason, about whether they had spoken to her—but then a sharp look from Maude silenced any further questions. “She’s confused, Officers, you must excuse her.” She turned to me and smiled. “You’re confused, Alice, dear.”

  At first, I had frowned at her words, but soon I had begun to wonder whether perhaps she was right. That night already seemed distant, the details lost to me, so the only thing remaining was the conviction that Lucy was somehow the key to it all, the answer to the question that I could not quite figure out. I searched my memory but could find nothing more definitive than the injured feelings of a girl that had been abandoned by her best friend, or the look she had given me that night as I had walked away, had crawled into the car, choosing another over her, severing whatever bond it was that had connected us. I pushed the image from my mind.

  Perhaps Maude was right.

  “You’re confused, Alice,” she whispered again, the crinkles around her eyes deepening. “Your grief is causing you to imagine things. But you must not allow it to—you must put them out of your mind.” She attempted a smile. “Do not worry, my dear. I will take care of everything.”

  I had nodded dully, still lost in a cocoon of my own grief. If Aun
t Maude said that Lucy did not hold the answers, then I would trust her, completely. I thought back to when my parents had died, how lost in grief I had been, how the shadows had stolen across my vision and I had howled for her to make them go away. And she had. She had fixed me, just as she had promised, if not completely, at least the best she could, gluing and taping back the pieces of me that had fallen apart in the aftermath of my parents’ death. And so now, now I would trust her again, to put me back together, just like the old nursery rhyme, to make things right. I found comfort in the thought, in the ability to let it go—my anger, my hatred, my conviction. There was a peace in letting it slip between my fingers, no longer a mass that I was forced to grasp, to cling to, with all my might. After all, Tom was gone, nothing else mattered. Not Lucy, not what had happened to her in those days afterward, her side of the room empty and still, not even the strange words that my aunt had spoken.

  And so, I did not ask her what they meant.

  IN THE QUIET, I could feel it again—the anger, just like that night—beginning to grow. I was tired of the elusive answers, of the bits of information that Lucy fed me only when it suited her. I still did not know why she was in Tangier, not really, or how long she planned to stay. I did not even know how she spent her days, only the stories she told me each night. I could feel my face start to flush, feel my hands start to tremble. I willed myself to remain calm, to instead focus on my mint tea, which had grown cold and thick, but I found I couldn’t concentrate. I was tired of the pretense and I could not continue, even if she could. I felt my emotions begin to well, begin to creep inside, to the hollow of my bones, the accusation sitting on the edge of my tongue.

  The truth was that nothing had felt right since the night of the accident. And between us, between Lucy and me, things had started to sour long before then, so that the time since we had been close was so long ago now that I struggled to remember. There were moments when I would catch pieces of it, glimmering in the distance, when I could feel that same pull toward her, strong and insistent—but then there was something else there as well, something hard and unyielding, so that I still did not entirely trust her, felt that I could never trust her, after everything that had happened, not even if I had wanted to.