“You’re going to run right to Renard,” she says. “Aren’t you?”
“I don’t want to,” I say.
“Oh, but you will,” Ana says. “You will because you think it’s the right thing to do. And you’re always so quick to do the right thing.”
I shut my eyes against her contempt. “What will you do, anyway?” I ask. “If you leave the Elysian Society, will you go with Rob? Will you—” I can’t finish the sentence. The possibility still feels too huge, tantalizing and terrifying in equal measure.
“Will I be forced to go permanent?” Ana asks.
After a second, I nod.
“Maybe so,” Ana says. I hear the rustle as she rises, the neat tick as she turns off the light. Even with my eyes closed, I sense the darkness deepen and lose texture. She moves past me, stepping over my legs as roughly as if I’m an inanimate object. Her sole meets my thigh, rolling clumsily against the bone; I wince with pain, but I don’t move.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Ana asks, her voice now floating above me. “You’d love to see me brought down to your level. More dead than alive.”
TWENTY-ONE
I sent Henry and the baby out of the house,” Viv says. “This can just be a girls’ talk.”
She’s poured pink lemonade into two champagne flutes. The stinging sweetness lands in a bubble at the back of my throat. Viv Damson surprised me today by calling to request another visit. After last time, I didn’t trust myself to reenter their home. But when Viv called me herself, it felt like a sign.
“I’ve been having a rough time lately.” She picks up her glass, swirling the pink into a froth. “The second anniversary’s coming up at the end of the summer.”
“How did you handle the first anniversary?” I ask.
“Ben was tiny at the time,” Viv says. “He wasn’t sleeping. We were in and out of the pediatrician’s office. We didn’t even remember the anniversary that year. What would we have done?”
It takes me a beat to understand that this is a genuine question. “You might have shared memories of her with each other,” I say. “Looked through photos.” The lemonade leaves a sweet skin on my teeth.
Viv shrugs. Looking more attentively, I register her tense posture, one arm hugged across her body, her legs knotted. Her eyebrows aren’t darkened today. Their natural color is a nearly invisible blond, giving her whole face a formlessness, as if she’s gradually vanishing.
“Would it help to talk about it now, Viv?” I ask. “Your experiences during that weekend, and the last time you spent with Sylvia before it happened.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Viv says. She gives an odd bump of a laugh, as if she’s trying to recapture a levity that didn’t exist to begin with. “God, I don’t remember much. Henry and I were just married, and then the pregnancy. It felt like—like everything was beginning, you know what I mean? Just like, oh, here it is.” She looks at a spot beyond me, at the window with its construction paper snowflakes, leftovers from the winter. “My life. Starting.”
The Damsons’ living room has yellow walls, a potted fern, a scattering of stuffed animals watching me with lopsided glass eyes from their exile on the floor. I wonder how the Braddocks’ house would look now if they’d never gone to the lake that August. If they’d have moved toward the same clutter of parenting magazines, graham cracker dusted into the rug.
“What I remember from that weekend is that I felt bad for her,” Viv says.
“How so?” I ask.
“Patrick and Sylvia seemed tense,” Viv says. “For Henry and me, it was an impromptu trip. We were celebrating the baby. I thought Patrick and Sylvia would be there for some similar reason. It’s a romantic place, like for anniversaries. But they were unhappy. I didn’t get it.”
I watch her hand on her lap, fidgeting with the hem of her blouse; her fingers tug at the silky material as if she’s trying to tear away a piece. “They were fighting?” I ask.
Uncertainty flutters across her features, as if she’d forgotten I was here. “Oh, not really,” she says. “They weren’t doing those couple things, touching each other, inside jokes. Henry and I were newlyweds, and the Braddocks had been together for years. Maybe that’s all it was.” In the distance, machinery whines faintly. “It makes me grateful to have somebody like Henry. Does that sound awful?”
“Not at all,” I say.
Her fingers still. Viv unwinds her arm, face brightening. “He’s been my rock. After Sylvia died, he was there for me, one hundred percent. If losing Sylvia taught me one thing, it’s that—” She pauses. “That I need to appreciate my husband.”
I finish the lemonade. Some part of her must have been secretly thrilled when Sylvia died, finally allowing Viv the chance to pity a couple like the Braddocks.
“Do you have someone special in your life, Lucy?” Viv asks.
The question wakes me up. A familiar apology rising behind my lips, I’m single right now. “I’m in a new relationship,” I say instead. “We’ve only been seeing each other for a few weeks.”
“Oh, that’s the best stage. You haven’t got sick of each other.” She laughs, revealing pink tongue, too-white teeth. “It doesn’t surprise me. You seem like a woman in love. That glow.”
I glance at my arm, as if my flesh might be lit up. Little needles of light shooting up through each pore.
“With your line of work, it must be especially big.” She goes on before I can react. “Working around people who are grieving must make you so aware of needing to cherish the moment.”
The front door opens, a crash and clatter in the foyer. Viv rises immediately; a moment later, Henry pushes a stroller into the living room. A big complicated structure of canvas and metal, the wheels muddied and flecked with grass. In the center of the stroller, Ben stares at me imperiously. When Henry catches sight of me, his face takes on a restrained wariness.
“Well, I should be going,” I say as Viv kisses Henry. She’s theatrical in the way she reaches up to throw her arms around his neck, the childish rise onto her tiptoes.
“Lucy is in love,” Viv announces.
“Congratulations,” Henry says, voice somewhere between polite, for her sake, and a shade too dry, for mine. Viv, sensing she’s being teased, swats at his arm.
The baby releases a tangled loop of syllables.
“Did Ben behave himself?” Viv asks her husband.
“He was fine,” he says. “But I’m spent. You’re going to have to take the reins for the rest of the night.”
“Hard day at work?” Viv asks, all sympathy.
“Oh, same old, same old,” Henry says. “Picking up the slack, as usual. Fixing other people’s mistakes.” He’s sweaty, his cheeks ruddy and hair ruffled; I can smell the sharpness of the outdoor air on him, the tang of his sweat.
“Because of—” Viv stops, darting a sidelong glance at me.
“Not because of Braddock, for once,” Henry says. I’ve been going through the vague, lingering motions of preparing to leave, smoothing my skirt, glancing back at the couch to see if I’ve left some trace of myself behind. But I look up sharply at this mention of Patrick, such an obvious gesture that I’m sure they’ve noticed.
“He’s doing better?” Viv asks.
“Just different these days.” Henry squats down to unbuckle his son from the stroller. His hands are hairy at the knuckles, his fingers broader and stubbier than Patrick’s. “Maybe he’s in love too. Maybe it’s contagious.”
Standing in the Damsons’ living room, I feel both vulnerable and conspicuous. My body is taking up too much space.
“It’s too early for him to be in love again,” Viv says.
Henry rises in a surprisingly fluid movement for his frame, holding Ben close against his chest. I’m stunned by the sight of Henry Damson with the baby. Something gluttonous and clawed unfolds inside me, wanting to reach out and take everything inside this house.
“Is it too early?” Henry asks; I twitch back to attention. “I mean, you
should know,” he says to me. “Being an expert in this.”
We hold eye contact for a long moment until Viv starts chirping and fussing at Henry’s elbow, plucking at the hem of Ben’s shirt.
“Everyone has a different timeline for moving on after grief, Mr. Damson,” I say. “But it’s certainly possible.”
I go to his home. It’s dusk. After I left the Damsons’, I was nearly home before I made a wrong turn at an intersection, and then another. I drove in the opposite direction of my own life.
As I enter Patrick’s neighborhood, a deep ease settles around me. I know his neighbors’ homes. The fusty gables on one side, the sterile lawn on the other, treeless and unadorned. And there’s his house. Our house. The enormous front windows stand darkened and bare this evening.
I pull up on the opposite side of the street.
Across the street, a window lights up. Patrick comes into the room, as if walking onto a stage. I know the details that soften his edges. The long lashes that tangle together, his habit of clearing his throat in short coughs. But from this distance, he’s a handsome stranger again. Intimidating, unknowable. I watch him cross the floor, stop next to the drape pull. He turns his head, saying something. He laughs.
Before I can make sense of this, someone else walks into the room.
It’s her. Me. Hair black as an inkblot, pulled back with a tortoiseshell clip. Her long neck and her pastel dress are as shocking to me as if she were dripping wet, stark naked, insects sliding from her lips and weeds trailing her like a bridal train.
I sit back as if I’ve been physically pushed, my mind a hot blank.
Patrick begins to pull the drapes shut over the windows. As the visible wedge of the room shrinks, the woman comes to stand behind him. She clutches a wineglass clumsily. I can see her more clearly from this angle. She’s less beautiful than Sylvia, her face highlighted too heavily with makeup. And she’s shorter, older. An unsatisfying substitute.
Yet there she is, with him. The drapes swing shut, swaying from the momentum. Patrick is hidden from me.
Late at night, I hang in a blurry exhaustion that refuses to plummet into the relief of sleep. Sitting in the bluish cast of the TV screen, I look through the Braddocks’ photos again. After being inside their house, I recognize the backgrounds more easily. It’s a disconnected intimacy. I’ve sat on the same couch that Sylvia curls on, smiling, with a plate of birthday cake. I’ve passed through the same doorway that she poses in, her dark hair tumbling back.
The house in the photographs is different. It’s larger. Brighter. As if Sylvia’s presence filled the rooms, demanding more space, drawing the sunlight to her. The house I know now is subdued and still. I don’t seem capable of bringing it back to this former glory.
From above me, a rushing clatter of footsteps, the starry jangle of dropped keys. Muted laughter, then the bump of bass. I glance up at the ceiling, the noises moving across it. I could be buried beneath them. Listening in on the music and life of another universe.
The low cadence of the newscaster’s voice pricks at my attention. I listen for the name again: Laura Holmes. I turn up the volume, the reporter’s voice strengthening by small degrees and then suddenly blaring.
. . . Authorities have verified the identity of the body discovered in March. The victim is nineteen-year-old Laura Holmes, who has been missing from her last known address since December. Following new information about Holmes’s murder, Candace Fowler, whose tip helped authorities uncover the victim’s identity, has publicly announced that she will no longer be involved with the investigation.
I wait for more details, but the screen goes dark. A commercial replaces the newscaster. A drab office-dwelling redhead drinks a soda, transforms into a busty blonde on a beach, face giddily empty.
TWENTY-TWO
I arrive at the motel Mr. O’Brien has specified on a gray morning, the air laced with rain so fine it’s invisible. I was hoping for an expensive place: a room with a sweeping view of the city, a concierge with averted eyes. But instead I recognize the name as a cheap roadside motel poised to attract tired families. I find a quiet parking lot; the fenced-off swimming pool collects water in its tarpaulin.
When Mr. O’Brien called this morning, I let myself hope that the recent coverage had scared him away. But he told me the room number and had me repeat it twice, instructing me to meet him here at noon sharp. The exaggerated hush of his voice left me feeling grimy. I imagined his sweet-faced wife somewhere else in the house: washing his dishes, folding his clothes.
Room 2B is tucked into the corner of the motel’s layout, rooms pressed tight on either side. I try the doorknob. It’s unlocked; I step into the room.
As bare-bones as it is, the space is cramped. A bed with its quilted bedspread, a framed watercolor of a meadow. Something isn’t right. I reach for the doorknob, fumbling. The woman rises from the chair.
“Please,” she says, softly urgent. “Don’t leave. I need to talk to you.”
She’s shorter than me, her stomach pressing against the front of her blouse. I take her in. I feel like I already know her, although this means nothing. Everyone seems familiar these days.
“My husband couldn’t make it,” she says.
Of course. “Mrs. O’Brien,” I say, although my mind fills with her first name. Lindsey.
Lindsey stays standing, awkward and shifting. “Can we just talk? That’s all I need to do, ma’am. I’ll leave you alone after that.”
I sit on the edge of the bed. She positions herself back in the chair with an uneasy stiffness. I cross my legs. Lindsey glances at my bare knees once, her eyes wide and prim like a child sneaking a glimpse at a pornographic magazine.
“Did your husband send you here?” I ask.
“No.” Quick, as if defending his honor. “It was my idea. I figured out where he was going, all this time,” Lindsey says. She twists her fingers together on her lap. I spot the busy sparkle of a wedding ring, too ornate for her blocky hands. “He said he was getting grief counseling. I wanted to believe him, but I knew it was wrong. He was so angry after Margie died. He only seemed to be getting worse. I can’t remember the last time he’s even touched me. Even a hug or a peck on the cheek.”
I clench my hands against my thighs.
“When I saw that place on the news one night, I just—I just knew. They were saying it’s a place where people can communicate with the dead? Stay in touch with their loved ones? And that’s when I knew what was happening.”
The walls seem to be closing in.
“At least Ken didn’t fight me on it. He confessed right away. And he said—” Lindsey squints at me. “He said this was the first time you two were meeting like this. Is that true? You have to be honest with me. I’m not going to do anything. I just need to know.”
Red patches are leaking up her skin from beneath her neckline. I look directly into Lindsey O’Brien’s eyes. “He’s being honest,” I say. “This was the first time we’ve met here. Every other time, your husband has been with me at my place of work.”
“Oh God,” she whispers. I can’t tell whether she’s relieved, or whether the ridiculousness and humiliation of her relief is hitting her. “Oh God.”
“Everything that’s happened between your husband and me has been innocent. He just wants to talk to your friend again.”
She stares into her lap.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. O’Brien.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for, ma’am,” she says. “It’s your job, isn’t it? You have to do your job.”
I focus on the watercolor painting above the bed: meadows that appear bubbled, like burning plastic, a segment of sea as black as rotting fruit. It’s a landscape cobbled together from other pieces, a crude representation of a place that’s never existed.
“Margaret didn’t love him,” Lindsey says. “It probably doesn’t matter to you. But I wanted to tell you.”
This startles me.
“Ken loved her,” Lindsey says. �
�I knew that within a month of dating him. It was obvious to everyone.”
“You know she didn’t return the feelings?”
“She told me she didn’t,” Lindsey says, with a painstaking gentleness, as if I’m the one who needs protecting. “Margie and I got along better than Ken knew. There were plenty of times we’d confide. We drank way too much one night and it all came out. She didn’t want to embarrass me or Ken. She had a kind heart. But she told me how she felt.”
“You never shared that with your husband,” I say.
“No.” Lindsey’s eyes widen. “No, why hurt him?” She looks at my body openly then, her gaze traveling from my ankles to my neck in a slow once-over that could have been sexual, except for the rueful appraisal in her eyes. “It’s a good thing you’re so thin,” she says.
“Why is that, Mrs. O’Brien?”
“Well, not for his sake,” she says. “For Margie’s.”
I shift against the bedspread, stray threads pricking against the flesh of my inner thigh. In the photos, Margaret was all angles and hollows.
“Margie worked so hard to be thin like that,” Lindsey says. “I have my mother’s genes. I could starve myself forever and never get that thin, so I thought, well, why not enjoy myself? But I know Ken wishes I applied myself.”
I inhale the thick, stale smell of the motel room. Cigarettes layered over cleansing agent layered over cigarettes, gumming up the air.
“I wonder if it bothers her,” Lindsey says, “that he’s bringing her back. She thought she’d escaped her body, and here she is again, right back where she started. That’s why I’m glad you’re thin, ma’am. Just so it feels familiar to her.”
“Mrs. O’Brien,” I say, standing from the bed. “We’d both be better off leaving this place behind for good and getting on with our lives. Agreed?”
She shakes herself as if she’s just waking up. “Oh, yes,” she says. “Yes, agreed.”
Mr. O’Brien entrusted a lifetime of hope to this room, his chance to be with Margaret. I’m closing the door on it all, the bedspread taut over the mattress, the plastic seals pulled meticulously over the mouths of the glasses. Despite everything, I feel a quick throb of regret as I walk away from all this, knowing that I’ve pulled Margaret out of his grasp just as his fingers started to close around her.
The Possessions Page 16
