The Possessions

by Sara Flannery Murphy

  And I find a square book with a satiny cover printed with pastel daisies. I flip through the pages. Bare, marked with tiny motifs and scraps of words. First Memories. People I Love. A baby book. Something slithers out from between the pages, drops to the floor. Small and flat, shiny plastic. I reach for it, sliding it into Patrick’s shirt pocket.

  When the noise comes in the doorway, I’m not even startled.

  “There you are.” His voice is thick with fatigue, but holds a splinter of alertness. I suspect Patrick is pretending to be groggier than he is. He moves closer, crouches on the floor next to me. “I haven’t been in here for months.”

  “You put all this in here?” I ask.

  “Her mother was supposed to help me,” Patrick says. “After a while, I did it by myself. I couldn’t keep walking into the bathroom and finding her toothbrush.” The boxes hulk over us, their lids askew. “She left behind so much.”

  I wonder if Ana’s client Rob has a room like this in his home. All the little pieces of his dead lover collected in one spot, waiting. Waiting for Ana to give the objects a purpose again.

  “What are you doing in here?” he asks.

  “I was looking for the room in the photo,” I say. “The one with the lipstick.”

  Patrick searches my face. “She wore lipstick in a lot of photos.”

  “It was a certain color,” I say. “The darker color. The color you gave me.”

  Patrick shrugs, impatient.

  “She was naked.” It’s only then that I understand just how much this has disturbed me: an itchy anxiety, a need for an explanation. “I remember it. A Polaroid, not like the rest. Most people don’t include photos like that. She was naked. Wearing that dark lipstick.”

  Patrick drums his knuckles against the edge of the nearest box, a muffled staccato that worms into my head. “She was naked when they found her,” he says. “After she drowned.”

  In the silence of the room, the moon and streetlight mingled white against the curtains, his words are exactly wrong. They’re heavy, abrupt as thrown punches.

  “I didn’t identify the body,” Patrick says. “I didn’t want that version of her in my head.”

  “Who did?” I ask.

  “A friend,” Patrick says. “Her family hadn’t come out to the lake yet. I didn’t want to tell them until we knew. Henry had stayed behind after Viv went home. He volunteered.”

  Shock moves through my skull. I imagine Sylvia’s bloated body, her face puffed into cartoon proportions, ugly for the first time in her life, and Henry staying with her in this vulnerable state. Recognizing her for the last time, giving her the dignity of a name. I’m suddenly furious at Patrick, that he couldn’t be the one to do this for her. The betrayal is as shocking as cold water rushing into my lungs.

  how could you not look at me?

  see me

  “When I collected photos to send you,” Patrick says, “I was barely paying attention. It was too painful. I gave you whatever Sylvia had lying around. She always had too many. Our whole life documented.” He stands, stretches, the skin stretched against his ribs for a second. “Bring me that photo? Maybe I can figure it out.”

  The anger still tight in my throat, I can’t speak.

  In the doorway, Patrick pauses. I take him in: the long planes of his torso. The wiry muscles beneath his shoulders. Beneath the coldness of the fury that has grown over me, rooting me to the spot, I melt. I give, cracking open like ice.

  “Are you coming back to bed?”

  “Of course,” I say.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The home hid its secrets well, but the attention has tapped at the weak spots. Now, everything comes to light. The house that sheltered Laura Holmes’s body was abandoned, but not empty. At night, the echoing rooms sometimes took on a temporary pulse of life. Drifters, the perpetually or temporarily homeless, runaways landing in the city before moving on: all of them would gravitate to the house, moving through its silence. The rooms held leftover furnishings. A floral sofa with its guts nibbled out by mice, a dining table wearing thick doilies of dust.

  The house was a squat. But according to the teenage boy who recently came forward, it was an innocent place. A refuge. The visitors cleaned up all traces of their time there, avoided attention. After the subdivision began construction, the pilgrimages to the abandoned house continued, though more cautiously, and then trickled to an eventual halt.

  I watch a video of the news report. The boy’s hair is dark red and ragged with split ends; he insists that nothing dangerous ever happened there. The discovery of Hopeful Doe was as much a betrayal to everyone who’d ever set foot inside the house as it was to the wealthy and self-contained neighbors.

  “I was scared to come forward sooner.” The boy’s eyes dart anxiously. “But once they started using her real name, it felt more— I don’t know. More real.”

  I understand now why Mrs. Fowler backed away, even after her fervent insistence on solving the case. Hopeful Doe was nameless, an angelic girl sprouting from thin air, her death such a mystery that it carried every potential danger along with it; Laura Holmes is a specific woman, a sullen misfit drifting from city to city. And now it’s turned out that her body showing up in the house is less an anomaly than the final, visceral consequence of many smaller transgressions. I imagine how chagrined Mrs. Fowler must be at her own involvement in the case. Her piety turned to rage, that she’d waste her time on someone like Laura. A woman who must have fallen in with the wrong crowd. Discarded in an abandoned house.

  Snapping off the TV, I move into my bedroom. It lies on top of my dresser, next to the wedding portrait. The remnant that fell from the pages of the baby book. I took it home with me, not telling Patrick. Of all Sylvia’s leftovers, this is the only object her husband hasn’t given me himself.

  A thin plastic wand, wrapped in a plastic bag. At the tip of the wand, a little indented window shows two blotchy pink stripes. One of them is faded as old ink; the other bleeds slightly into the surrounding paleness. A pregnancy test.

  Two lines for positive.

  Two lines indicating a second presence.

  I can’t tell how old the test is. Whether Sylvia watched these two lines develop years and years ago, or whether it happened only recently. Only a month before she left for Lake Madeleine, or a week, or a day. I don’t know if she ever told Patrick; maybe it’s been lying tucked within the book, swept inside a box, trapped where his gaze can’t reach.

  All I know when I look at the two lines is one simple reaction. The small, soft agony of a lost chance.

  I’ve been spending my time between clients half asleep in the waiting room. I’m tired these days. Whenever I swallow the lotus in Room 12, I feel the additional toll it takes. The pill has to push aside the gentle weight of Sylvia: prying loose her fingers, dulling her curiosity. I’m exhausted afterward.

  Today, I feel someone hovering just in front of me. A funny sadness shifts over me like a passing cloud. I open my eyes. “Lee,” I say.

  “It’s been a while, Edie,” he says. “How have you been?”

  “Why did you do it?” I ask. Lee inhales, nods, as if he’s been expecting the question. “I told you that Patrick Braddock wasn’t a threat.”

  “For what it’s worth, I never mentioned you when I went to Renard.” Lee sits next to me. “I was only asking about Patrick Braddock. I hoped she could reassure me about him.”

  “Did she?”

  He hesitates. “She looked into his records. Patrick hasn’t scheduled an encounter for several weeks.”

  “There you go,” I say. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m sorry, Edie. I know you cared about him as a client.”

  “He’s not the first client to leave the Elysian Society,” I say. “He won’t be the last.”

  Lee’s skin must still hold a trace of cologne from a recent encounter. His scent is rich and textured. I glance at his hands on his thighs, at the slight hollow of his throat, and heat stirs under
my skin. It’s disorienting to feel this way for Lee, the wrong reaction transplanted into my chest like a stranger’s beating heart. I imagine what Patrick would think if he knew that my hunger for him was spreading, indiscriminate, attaching itself to the nearest body.

  “Just know that I’m here for you,” he says. “If you need anything.”

  “I do know that, Lee,” I say. “Thank you.”

  May I ask your name?”

  “Sylvia,” I say.

  The receptionist’s face stays placid as she rises. I relax; there must be a thousand women named Sylvia in this city. “I’m an old friend,” I add, wanting perversely to establish specialness.

  She smiles, uninterested and polite.

  I follow the receptionist down a hallway. Tiled floor, stone-colored walls lined with framed newspaper clippings and embossed plaques. Out of the corner of my eye, Sylvia’s face dots the wall. Just once or twice, but I slow to study the images.

  In the first clipping, the Braddocks pose together on the steps. In this photo I haven’t yet memorized, Patrick’s youthfulness stands out with a flare of unfamiliarity. I assume it must be a much older photo, maybe from the first year of their marriage. But the caption suggests that the image is only two years old. Taken a mere six months before he lost Sylvia.

  The other photo holds the colorful blurriness of a candid. A tableful of people lifting their glasses, eyes caught shiny and unfocused. I see Henry Damson, face distorted with motion. It takes me a second to pick out the Braddocks, and I realize why: they’re separated, sitting on opposite sides of the table. Patrick gives an abstracted smile, as if automatically obeying a command. Across from him, Sylvia’s grin is too hectic, as obvious as a mask held over the lower part of her face. Her eyes hover thoughtfully above the smile, looking directly into mine.

  The receptionist opens a door. “Mr. Braddock, someone to see you. A Sylvia?”

  When I step into the office, Patrick is very still behind his desk, leaning forward as if he’s on the cusp of rising. He doesn’t speak. I’m barely aware of the receptionist shutting the door behind me. I smile, wanting to make it all into a joke. Not because of the fading shock clinging to Patrick’s features, but because of what I saw there just a second before: hope.

  “It’s you,” he says finally.

  “It’s me.”

  “You told her your name is Sylvia?”

  “It was the first name that came to mind,” I say.

  “You know better,” he says. “People here knew Sylvia. They’ll notice, Edie.”

  What’s happening between us is so close to politeness that I try to convince myself we’re fine.

  Patrick rubs his forehead. “I just—” He stops. “I don’t think you appreciate how much trouble you could make for me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Of course I am. It was never my intention to upset you.”

  He doesn’t answer for a long moment. “This is all a mistake,” he says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Asking you to be her, like this, it’s—” Patrick makes a sudden and frustrated gesture, lifting his hand. “It’s wrong. Hearing you with her name, here, in a place like this. In the real world. I don’t know. What am I making you do? What am I doing to myself?”

  When I sit, the leather is slickly cool on my bare thighs. Patrick’s office rises around us, tall and narrow, lined with bookshelves. The book spines are too uniform, like cardboard stand-ins. A fern browns on the windowsill.

  “Patrick,” I say.

  He looks at me, eyes holding a trapped glimmer of wariness.

  “It’s all right,” I say. “I won’t do it again. Don’t worry.”

  “Why are you even here?”

  It’s a weak excuse, but I’m glad to have it now. “I brought you the photo,” I say. “Of Sylvia. You asked to see it.”

  Patrick lifts his folded hand to his mouth, his eyes flicking to the closed office door. “Fine,” he says. “Let me see it.”

  I slide my bag open, disentangle Sylvia from the darkness. I hesitate before I pass her over the desk to her husband. In this harsh lighting, Sylvia’s naked body is too vulnerable. When he takes the photo, Patrick is brusque and businesslike. His face doesn’t betray any emotion. He could be examining courtroom evidence, a legal document.

  Patrick turns the photo around, reads the message on the back. A strain comes across his features.

  “Do you recognize it?”

  “Not entirely.” He hands the photo back to me. I accept, not sure whether I’m pleased or hurt that he doesn’t want to keep her. “The room,” Patrick says. “That room is familiar.”

  “She could have left the photo behind for you,” I suggest. “A gift.”

  “Maybe.” Across the desk, Patrick shuts his eyes as if something has hurt him.

  Outside, in the hallway, somebody calls good night. There’s a trail of muted voices and fading footsteps.

  “You can’t show up where I work,” he says.

  “Nobody knows who I am. I just said I was an old friend.”

  He laughs, and I understand. The idea of the Braddocks being friends with someone like me, pale and uninteresting, a vague ghost of a person: it’s funny. It’s a joke.

  “Why don’t you want to be seen with me?” I ask. “Am I a secret?”

  “I’m not ashamed of you,” he says.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  A muscle near his jaw jumps. “So do you talk about me?” Patrick stands, his chair scraping against the floor. He comes around the desk. In the evening light, his downturned features are heavy. “Your friends and family. Do they know what we do together?”

  In answer, I reach my hand toward his face, and Patrick intercepts the gesture, holding my wrist. He pulls me to standing. I feel how fast his breathing is. My own speeds up. I move to wrap my arms around him, but Patrick pushes me down until I’m on the edge of the desk. He slides a hand up my thigh.

  Up close, his eyes are blurrier than usual. He’s been drinking. It’s taken me a moment to recognize the smell of alcohol here, in his office, in the late afternoon.

  His hands against me feel thick and clumsy, lacking their usual precision.

  “Don’t you want her?” I ask.

  Patrick hesitates. He shakes his head, swift, without speaking. When he tips my mouth up to his, his breath is acrid and warm. I have to make myself ignore this.

  When it’s over and I’m gasping, my knowledge of my body coming back in pieces (the sore spot on my back where I was pressed into the desk, the slight headache behind my eyes), I also ignore the steep loneliness that winds itself around me.

  Patrick moves around the desk, opens a drawer. I watch as he retrieves his wallet from the jumbled depths.

  I’ve immunized myself to the shame when this happens. I’ve learned to navigate seamlessly between the two layers of our relationship: the immediacy of our time together, the distance of being paid for services rendered. I haven’t spent any of the money he gives me. I slip the bills in a dresser drawer, hidden from view, and I forget about it. A peace offering on the altar of Sylvia’s heart.

  But today I reach across the desk to still Patrick’s gesture, gripping his wrist hard enough to feel the bracelet of bones underneath. “Don’t.”

  He looks at my hand, follows the length of my arm to my face, my eyes. “You’re sure?”

  “You weren’t even with her, Patrick,” I say.

  “Well.” He moves his hand from the wallet, seeming to consider what I just said. “Next time, then.”

  I watch him on the other side of the desk, buttoning and zipping. The bite of alcohol still clings to the air around him.

  “You’d tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?” I ask.

  Patrick doesn’t answer, and I don’t ask again.

  Outside, the evening sky is muddy. The streetlights push through the shadows with effort.

  “I know yo
u, don’t I?”

  I turn, heart wedged in my throat. My impression is that he’s been waiting for me, standing in the mouth of the alley. He moves into the light now, keeping his eyes fixed on me as if I’m the dangerous one.

  “Mr. Damson.” I wonder if Henry was in the office when Patrick and I were together. If he heard anything.

  “Hello, Ms. Woods,” he says. I detect a slyness in his voice, but it could just be a shadow cast by my guilt. “I wouldn’t expect to run into you here. Were you looking for me?”

  “As a matter of fact, no.”

  Henry glances at the building I just left. “What brings you here, then?”

  I don’t answer.

  “I want you to stop coming to our home, Ms. Woods.”

  His voice is so casual it takes me a moment to make sense of his words. “Is there a problem? I was making good progress with Mrs. Damson.”

  “Viv’s been getting worse since you started showing up,” Henry says. “We’d left the past in the past. And then you come into our home, making her think about it. Forcing her to answer pointless questions. She’s getting depressed again. It’s even affecting Ben. I’m not going to do this again, not when we were reaching the light at the end of the tunnel.”

  My lungs tighten. “My impression is that your wife’s appreciated the chance to talk,” I say. “It’s better to address these issues than to hide from them—”

  “Nobody is hiding,” Henry says. “Don’t tell me what’s best for my wife. I’ve already been through this with her. I know what she needs. If you come to our house again, there will be a problem.” He shuts his eyes; when he opens them, he’s forced himself back from the brink of his anger. “I’ll tell Viv that you completed your study. We’ll all move on from this. Agreed?”

  There’s a noise somewhere behind us. We both turn, alert as deer. The street beyond is dotted with lit windows. When I left the office, Patrick was still working, claiming vaguely that he needed to catch up on a project. I have a sudden vision of him coming down the steps, seeing me and Henry together.