The Possessions

by Sara Flannery Murphy

“Very well, Mr. Damson,” I say. “I respect your wishes.”

  He turns to go and my brain surges with panic. Sylvia rushes through my body like a prisoner, hammering at the windows, trying all the doors, scratching and pounding.

  don’t turn your back on me

  don’t leave now

  “Mr. Damson,” I call, “could you do one favor for me?”

  “What’s that?” he asks, reluctant.

  “A while ago, you said the Braddocks were unhappy. I wish you’d explain what you meant by that.”

  “You already know what I meant.”

  We stand a few feet apart, the distance between us crackling.

  “He treated her badly,” Henry says. He’s careless with this confession. It falls from him, swift and meaningless as a dropped coin. “Cheating on her. Not uncommon.”

  “I see,” I say. The surprise that should be there isn’t, just an empty space opening up behind my eyes. “Well, thank you for your time.”

  “Of course.” Henry smiles almost politely. “I hope I could be some help, Sylvia.”

  The world around me stutters violently, then picks back up. “I’m sorry?”

  For a moment, his face in the shadows shifts. I see Henry Damson as if I’m lying beneath him, his features washed too bright in the coldly clinical light that surrounds us, burning away details. I’m pinned down like a butterfly.

  “That’s your name, isn’t it?” His shrouded eyes hold a hint of knowingness. “Have a good night, Sylvia.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I only remember a single clue about where Ana lives. Poplar Avenue is a long row of gas stations and strip malls, dreary under the sun’s fading fluorescence. I pass a stretch of weed-choked fields and undeveloped lots before I pull up to an apartment complex, shutting off the engine. The complex reminds me of my own. Layers of identical doorways marked with halfhearted attempts at individuality. A plastic chair, a stroller, a dog-eared welcome mat. Idling near the curb, I scan the silent eyelids of the windows for some sign of life.

  The sun deepens behind me, coating red and orange against the side of the building. Glancing down, my eyes snag on the pale underside of Sylvia’s photo. The corner sticks out from inside the glove compartment.

  I hesitate, then work the Polaroid loose. After all that’s grown between us, Sylvia still turns me stunned and breathless for a moment. Such a pure representation of the difference between a plain woman and a beautiful one. That luminous skin, her black hair sliced against her shoulders. The too-dark lipstick turning her mouth heavy as a secret.

  And I see it, this time. A shadow on the bedspread leaks up the edge. Against the deep purple sheen, the shadow is subtle. But I understand that there’s a specific body blocking out the light. The shadow is wavy and elongated.

  Someone was with her.

  A noise outside my car window distracts me. I drop the photo, turning in the direction of the sound. A woman walks across the edge of the curb next to the apartment complex, both arms wrapped around a trash bag. I’m struck by her quick gait, the lift of her chin. As if she’s proving to anyone watching that she’s fine. It’s a defiant aura that I recognize instantly and instinctively.

  Hurrying from my car, I call to her. “Ana?”

  The woman keeps walking with a slight waver in her steps, as if I’m a voice in a crowd, talking to anybody. She’s heading toward the alleyway.

  I touch her shoulder when I reach her. “Ana.”

  She turns. I take a step back, searching her features for a recognizable landmark. Her features resemble Ana’s, but older, exaggerated by her blunt red lipstick. Her hair is a brighter blond than my own, and stiff and shiny as a doll’s.

  She moves closer to me. One step, another. The lost, empty look in her eyes makes me want to beg her forgiveness: You shouldn’t be here.

  When she’s right next to me, so close that my skin warms with the breath unspooling from her mouth, she laughs. It’s Ana’s laugh, and I relax, feeling both foolish and furious.

  “God, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Ana shifts the trash bag in her arms. “Do you mind if I take care of this? It’s heavier than it looks.” I watch as she slides the bag over the lip of a dumpster and then steps back, wiping her hands along the tops of her thighs.

  “I’ve been cleaning out my closets,” Ana says, returning to me. “So many things I’m never wearing again. There’s something so freeing about just”—she sweeps her arm—“letting it all go.” She looks me up and down. “Anyway. What’s this about?”

  Now that I’ve found her, everything I could say gets knotted on my tongue. “We need to talk.”

  “A little late for that.”

  “It’s important.”

  “How do I know you’re not here to do her dirty work again?” Ana asks. She pushes her hair off her forehead with both hands.

  “It’s not about Mrs. Renard.”

  “She knows you’re here?”

  “Of course not.”

  Ana studies me a little longer. Depending on which feature I focus on, I can make her a stranger again. The near-white hair or the red mouth, she’s a stranger. Her fierce dark eyes, she’s Ana again.

  “Fine,” she relents. “God only knows why I still trust you. But make it quick.”

  Her apartment looks as if it’s been abandoned. A couch lies along one wall. Besides this, there are only boxes, shopping bags, a greasy paper plate in the center of the floor. A darkened square spreads across the wall above the couch: a sunless scar from a poster or painting.

  Ana collapses onto the couch, tucking one foot underneath her body. “You better be here to beg my forgiveness,” she says.

  “I’m sorry for any role I played in what happened.” I mean it, but the words are so stiff in my mouth that they turn insincere.

  “Maybe I’ve got it wrong,” Ana says. Her bare knee pokes out from beneath her red dress. “You came to see me paying for my sins. You wanted to make sure that I don’t have a future anymore.”

  A future: the bulging bag of clothes tossed into the darkness, the dyed hair, the abandoned apartment. “So you’re going with him,” I say. “With Rob.”

  Ana looks down.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I know you wouldn’t be doing this if I hadn’t forced your hand.”

  Her head comes up, and it takes me a moment to piece together her expression. Bright eyes, flushed cheeks. She’s laughing at me. “No way,” she says. “I’m never going to see that asshole again. I’m leaving town.” She gestures around at the apartment, as if it proves something undisputable. “New city. Blank slate.”

  For a second, I can’t manage a response.

  “I’d be insane to keep up with this,” Ana continues. “I’m insulted. In a sick way, you did me a favor, pushing me out when you did.”

  I sit cross-legged on the floor. The carpet is threadbare and scratchy, burping up stale nicotine. My real reason for being here keeps nudging at me.

  “You know, I didn’t do it for the money,” Ana says. “Out of everything, that bothered me the most. That you thought I did it because I was broke.”

  “You’re right,” I say. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “I never worked with clients like Fowler,” Ana says. “People looking for publicity. The guys I was with, they had more to lose than me if word ever got out. Vigilantes are different. You go into it knowing they’ll blab. There’s not enough money in the world.”

  “So why Fowler?”

  She bites down on her lip, leaving a fleck of bloody lipstick on her canine. “That police sketch. Every time I saw it, it nagged at me. I brushed it off, brushed it off, but when you told me about Fowler, it was like fate. I had to take the chance.”

  I’m curious, but my curiosity is a muted thing, half smothered under my instinct to be cautious. My awareness that it’s better not to know.

  “I came so close,” Ana says, a sudden blaze of frustration. “But it wasn’t enough. Fowler ditched me before we could g
et anything useful. Just turned her back on me.” Ana’s eyes flutter closed. “Three encounters, two lotuses each time. It was awful. I couldn’t stop throwing up when I came back. Even now, I get these memories. Moments of feeling wrong. I’m working through it, but it’s slow. I have to be hyperaware of who I am all the time. It’s like relearning how to walk. Staying so conscious of something that’s always been effortless.”

  Almost without wanting to, I look down at my hands in my lap. My hands, ordinary enough to be invisible to my gaze. For a second their bareness, the lack of a ring, the naked, unpolished nails: it all flickers into strangeness.

  “Fowler recorded the sessions so I could listen. We got her name. The whole city knows her name,” Ana says. “Big fucking deal. We couldn’t get much else. Laura couldn’t remember anything. Not how she died. Not who killed her. Mostly gibberish. Fowler was asking stupid questions, detective shit she’d heard on TV: Tell us who killed you, what did he look like. There was one thing Laura said. When Fowler was getting pissy, screeching about how’d you die, how’d you die, Laura said—” Ana snaps her head forward, opens her eyes to look right into mine. “She said, ‘I wasn’t there.’ ”

  I shake off my uneasiness. “Ana, the police are saying it could be drug-related. That house apparently attracted addicts. Maybe somebody killed Laura while she was high. Blacked out. It would make sense, right? She wasn’t there when she died.”

  “God, you’re as bad as Fowler,” Ana says. “You’re as bad as the cops. No. Worse. Because you, of all people, should know better.” She launches herself off the couch, moves over to one of the boxes, scrabbling through the papers inside.

  “OK, look at this,” Ana says. She comes back to thrust a crumpled piece of paper at me. I accept. It’s a printout, a gray-scale girl staring directly into the camera. Her hair is a shabby black. She wears too much makeup: eyes heavy with liner, brows shaped into apostrophes. “Do you recognize her?”

  “Should I?”

  “That’s a photo of Laura Holmes.” Ana’s eyes have a manic luster. “When they found the body, though, she was blond, like in the police sketch. Imagine her blond. No makeup. Come on. You know her.”

  Almost against my will, I rearrange the girl’s features. I wash Laura’s hair into paleness, turn her eyes bare and soft, her eyebrows sketched fine and light. Posing against a plain background. Hair pulled back. Barely smiling.

  “Well?” Ana asks.

  I look at Ana, seeing the desperation in her face, her naked need for me to believe her. The torn photograph in Jane’s office; the knowingness in those disembodied eyes.

  “Thisbe,” I say. “You think Laura Holmes was Thisbe.”

  Ana lets loose a quick gasp, as if she’s been released from some crushing weight.

  “Did Thisbe ever tell you her name?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “Never. I didn’t think to ask. But you see what I mean? It’s too much to be coincidence. Sundress, earring, police sketch. And Thisbe was in trouble. I sensed it. I just didn’t know it was so serious.”

  “What do you think happened?” I ask.

  “Some asshole killed her,” Ana says. “We’ve all had those clients. Someone who pushed his wife around until she escaped him by dying. He can’t take that, he goes after her again. Or someone whose relationship was fine until he brought his girlfriend back, but then he can’t take it, buying her affection by the hour. I’ve had more than a few clients tell me they hate thinking of me with other men.”

  There’s a rushing at the edges of my consciousness. For a moment, I can’t fight it off. It’s like trying to rise against a great pressure, a vastness between me and the life and light above.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now.” Ana sounds infinitely tired. “I had my chance to get answers and I couldn’t do it. The one time I’ve actually given a shit about something at that freak show, and look what happens.” A bitter smile. “Maybe there’s a lesson there.”

  I’m reminded of why I came here originally. “Ana,” I say, “I need to know if you have any lotuses left.”

  She blinks, startled. “Yeah. Rob pressured me into it. He wanted them on hand in case we went through with his plan.”

  My relief is followed instantly by a cold focus. I need them.

  “I’ll pay, Ana,” I say. “Just name the price.”

  She looks at me as if I’m a stranger accosting her on the streets. “Are you serious? What would you even do with extra lotuses?”

  “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important,” I say.

  Ana studies me. “So you’re here because you want a favor,” she says, as if to herself. “I should have known.”

  “You don’t have a use for them anymore. It would work out for both of us.”

  “I never said I didn’t need them,” she says.

  I realize that I’ve performed a dark little magic trick. I’ve driven away the version of Ana who was my confidante and instead summoned the woman I knew inside the Elysian Society walls. Calculating and careless. She surveys me with arms akimbo, elbows harsh angles.

  “So maybe I’m not using the lotuses anymore,” Ana says. “But they’re valuable. Renard must have competitors who’d love to get their hands on these things.”

  “I already told you I’d pay anything,” I say. “Just take this offer. Please.”

  “Will you tell me why you need them?” Ana says. “Little Miss Perfect. It has to be something juicy.”

  I’m barely listening. My mind is rushing ahead, the idea unraveling in front of me, almost too fast for me to keep pace. “All right,” I say. “What if I don’t pay you for the lotuses at all?”

  She laughs, a thin sound that folds quickly. “Your negotiating skills need work.”

  “I’ll help you channel Laura,” I say. “The right way this time. So that you can get your answers.”

  Ana drops her head toward her chest as she considers this idea, examining it from all angles.

  “I knew Thisbe,” I say. “I know the Elysian Society, and I know our clients. If you’re right, and Laura worked as Thisbe, then I’ll be able to ask all the right questions. Who else could do that?” When she continues to hesitate, I press on: “Did Mrs. Fowler have anything that belonged to Laura?”

  “Of course not,” Ana says. “What, you think she raided the evidence room?”

  “I know where to find something that belonged to Thisbe,” I say. Uncertainty plays across her face, along with a half-buried shimmer of hope; I dig my fingernails into that hope. Leaning forward, I catch Ana’s eyes and don’t look away. “Ana, this is your chance. If you walk away, you’ll always wonder. You can’t make a clean break until you have your answers.”

  She runs a hand down her face, gives a weak and perfunctory laugh. “God,” she says.

  I wait.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but fine.”

  Ana vanishes down the hallway. When she returns, she holds a small plastic bottle. A stark and utilitarian orange. A month’s supply of lotuses. More. Every nerve in my body is honed on that bottle.

  Ana shakes the bottle so that the lotuses rattle together. “We don’t have a lot of time to carry out this little plan of yours,” she says. “I’m leaving town, remember?”

  I stretch out my palm. “We’ll do it tomorrow, then. Meet me at 801 Sycamore. It’s an apartment complex.”

  “All right,” she says. “But I’m holding onto these until then. Leverage.” As I open my mouth to protest, Ana cuts me off, voice tightening: “Don’t push me on this, Edie. I’m already second-guessing this whole plan. Just take what you can get.”

  Reluctant, I withdraw my hand.

  She moves to the apartment door, holding it open for me. Dusk leaks inside and turns her red dress the color of old blood. “Listen,” she says. “Whatever you’re planning to do with those, watch out for yourself. I hope it’s not what I think. I hope you aren’t running off with some Mr. Lonelyhearts to be his dead sweetheart. Because after I’ve tol
d you—”

  “Don’t worry,” I say, rising. “I’ll be careful.”

  Ana smiles with one side of her mouth. “Of course you will,” she says. “What am I saying? It’s you.”

  We need to talk.”

  “Viv?” At the sound of her voice on the phone, my tiredness turns into a sharp crack of wariness; I remember Henry’s warning to stay away from his family. “I’m not sure we should be—”

  “Henry was overreacting,” Viv says. She’s speaking in a half whisper. I wonder if the baby is sleeping nearby or if she’s trying to hide this conversation from her husband. “He’s been overprotective since what happened with Sylvia. It’s sweet, but sometimes it drives me crazy.”

  “Even so, I need to respect Mr. Damson’s wishes,” I say.

  I’m in my bedroom, preparing for sleep. On my bureau, the Braddocks’ relics are arranged like a skewed timeline. The wedding portrait, the lipstick, the pregnancy test. And then the envelope of lotuses. The one object that I can fit into the timeline with confidence.

  My future.

  “Henry said he saw you at the office,” Viv says. “Are you working with Patrick Braddock?”

  I sit on the bed, my free hand gripping the edge of the mattress.

  “There are things I haven’t told you,” Viv says. “Maybe I’m crazy. I haven’t been able to tell anybody. Not all this time.” Her breath has a quick, wet rhythm, like the aftermath of tears. “But if you’re spending time around Patrick, you should know.”

  Still, I’m quiet.

  “Lucy?” The desperation in her voice is like a child waking up in a dark room, grasping for a nearby presence.

  “I’m here,” I relent.

  “Patrick was my friend for years,” she says. “I—I used to play in his backyard. I’d never hurt him. But I also care about Sylvia. She was my friend too. She should have been Ben’s godmother. Instead, Ben never even knew her.” She pauses. “I’m supposed to accept the whole thing was an accident, but part of me can’t stop thinking that it wasn’t.”

  My reflection lies trapped in the darkening window. A tree branch cuts through my torso, the spidery limbs fanned like veins and arteries spreading outward from my heart.