by Dianne Dixon
Micah’s voice is so unsteady she doesn’t recognize it. It sounds like it belongs to a stranger, somebody old and shattered. “You didn’t have to settle for brides and babies, Christine. You were better than that.”
“Really? I guess we’ll never know.” The statement is laced with resentment.
Micah’s reply is defensive, guilty. “It wasn’t the only job in the world—”
“—but it was mine. It belonged to me and you took it.”
On Christine’s face there is a look of insurmountable loss.
Micah recognizes it immediately. That’s the same look that was on her face the last time I saw her, Micah is thinking. In the apartment, that morning, back in Cambridge, when we were kids. When she was twenty-four and I was twenty-two.
The details of that morning are crystal clear to Micah. It’s as if she’s watching them play out on a reel of perfectly preserved film.
…our little apartment, our one room, is chilly. It’s late September but winter’s already in the air…I’m just coming out of the shower, stepping around the camera bags and lighting equipment—mine, and Christine’s. They’re in piles, all over the floor…Morning sun is pouring through a window that’s high in the wall above the kitchen area and I’m holding my fingers spread out, watching my engagement ring catching the light. I’m happy, I’m getting married this afternoon…The phone is ringing and Christine has a fork in her hand; she’s trying to pry a bagel out of the toaster, before it burns…She’s still jabbing at the bagel while she’s picking up the phone…Then all of a sudden she’s letting go of the fork, leaving it in the toaster, stuck in the bagel…I’m watching all the color go out of her face. I know what she’s just heard…I’m folding over like I’m going to puke, like there’s a bucket of acid sloshing around in my guts…The room is filling up with the stink of the hot fork and the toaster and the burning bagel but the only thing I can focus on is Christine—the look on her face while she’s hanging up the phone—while she’s asking me, “Why? Why did you do it?” And when I don’t answer—can’t answer—she’s backing away from me; staring at me like I’m a wild animal that somebody let out of its cage…She looks like she’s taken a beating and can’t breathe…She’s crying like she’s a little kid, telling me, “Micah, they’re the number-one rock band in the world. They’re from Boston and they wanted a Boston photographer. Somebody young, like they were when they were starting out. And of all the photographers who submitted photos, they chose me to do the cover shot for their final album—a cover that’s going to make history. Now, just like that, they’re saying I’m out and you’re in. How? You didn’t even enter the contest, Micah. How did you take it away from me?”…I’m listening to Christine crying, wailing like a war-widow—I’m seeing how betrayed she looks—it’s making me ashamed…Stuff is coming up from my insides, pushing into my mouth, thick, like bile, while I’m explaining to her, “I got their business manager’s address out of your bag. I grabbed a picture from my portfolio and took it over there on the spur of the moment, a couple of days ago. The manager went nuts for it—I guess the band did too.”
For a split second, I’m losing my train of thought. I’m realizing what’s just happened—my career has been launched. I’m about to be famous…And then I remember Christine—what I’ve done. And I’m trying to make it seem not so bad…I’m telling her, “Christine, you’ll still get the money. The manager promised. Since they haven’t officially announced the winner yet, he said if the band changed their mind, if they chose me, they’d pay both of us.”…But she’s not listening, she’s backed up against the counter where the toaster is, where the bagel’s on fire, where the air is stinking with the smell of hot metal and smoke…Her mouth is open, loose, like she’s drunk and she keeps asking me, “Why did you do it? Why?”…and I can’t tell her, I can’t even look at her…
Now, seventeen years later, in this candlelit massage room where the air is sweet with the smell of lavender and rose petals, Christine is asking the same question, asking Micah: “Why? Why did you do it?”
Micah still can’t answer her—still can’t meet her gaze.
And it’s because Micah isn’t looking at Christine that the slap comes as such a surprise. Banging directly into Micah’s temple. Causing her to howl with pain.
“Why?” Christine is shouting. “Why did you steal what was mine?”
When Micah can breathe again, she’s furious. And she calmly says: “When you entered that contest, you asked if I was going to enter too. I promised you I wouldn’t—I knew how much it meant to you. And then I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“Because as good as you were, I knew I was better. I was the one who deserved to make history.”
“You went there and stole it from me, without even telling me.” There is a look of soul-torn disbelief on Christine’s face. “You were my best friend, my dearest friend. I loved you with all my heart.”
Micah has turned away. She’s gazing into a mirror across from the massage table, observing the ugly bruise that’s forming on her temple.
“I’ve never known anybody like you, Micah. Never knew anybody as beautiful, or as talented.” Christine is speaking as if what she’s revealing to Micah is being said with great reluctance. “I spent years thinking about you—missing you—thinking about our friendship, the things we could’ve shared. Then, a long time ago, I stopped. It hurt too much.”
Micah is making a point of concentrating on the mirror. Her throat is tight; her face is flushed.
“I wish you hadn’t taken it from us, we had a friendship that could’ve lasted forever.” Christine is standing directly in front of Micah. In the candlelight, she looks the way she looked when they were young, when she adored Micah and was her best, and only, friend. She looks innocent. And open.
Suddenly Micah is experiencing an anticipation that’s magical. The separation between herself and Christine—the burden of the hurt Micah inflicted—feels like it’s slipping away. The priceless gift of their friendship is coming back.
Christine is bringing her face close to Micah’s—about to kiss her cheek.
For a moment Micah is dizzy with relief. Waiting to receive what she went searching for in Kansas. The reassurance that, among all the people she wronged in her youth, there’s at least one who still loves her.
But a faint rippling is in the air. A microscopic shift in atmosphere. Then Christine’s voice—low and emotionless. “Sorry. I can’t do this.”
She’s stepping away from Micah, telling her: “I’m glad I saw you. I’ll always miss you and there’ll always be a hole in me that’s shaped like you, but it’s a burned-out place—I never want to go back there.”
And Micah’s relief has become misery.
While the door to the massage room is opening, and before it closes behind Christine, Micah is seeing a flash of light from the hallway. In the space of the flash, Micah is again in that life-changing September day…in Cambridge. In the afternoon, after the awful morning with Christine. Micah is walking away from Jason, down the sun-dappled steps of the brownstone belonging to the Justice of the Peace: walking away because a handful of hours ago her future came calling. She’s poised to make history, to become famous—and afraid marriage will get in the way. She’s leaving Jason; knowing that he’s waiting for her to come back, thinking that he will always be waiting. Convinced that she’ll only be gone for a little while.
When the flash of light from the hallway is extinguished, and the massage-room door is closed, Micah’s face is impassive, her eyes dry. She is scorched, and empty.
She understands that this emptiness, the stillness, won’t last. She knows this is the time to act. Now. While she is almost unable to feel. While she’s less vulnerable to being seriously wounded, or doing unspeakable damage.
***
A shadowy portico crowded with potted palms, all of them in granite urns, all of them drooping and yellowed. A set of black marble steps. On the steps, a layer of dust,
and in the dust, faint lines. Cat tracks. Weaving and winding. Repeatedly looping back on themselves as if the animal who made them was lost; searching for something refusing to be found.
And there is a heavy brass knocker, vaguely shaped like a tongue, swinging toward a tarnished faceplate. Micah has let it drop from her hand and bang against the door.
This house on Bellevue Avenue is the end-point of Micah’s journey to Newport. And potentially the beginning of a nightmare.
There has already been a noise, a small squeak behind a second-floor window to the left of the portico. The drapes are being opened, just a crack.
The movement is disturbingly furtive. Simply witnessing it is making Micah afraid.
She is on dangerous ground.
AnnaLee
Glen Cove, Long Island ~ 1986
“You’re not going! It’s out of the question, it’s too dangerous.” AnnaLee is close to losing her temper. She has run out of the house without shoes, in late July, and the gravel driveway is burning the soles of her feet like a bed of hot coals.
Persephone, in flip-flops and a leopard-print bathing suit, with a beach towel slung around her neck, is belligerently asking: “Why are you making such a big freaking deal out of this? All we’re talking about is a party.”
She’s red-faced, indignant. “A party! Exactly like the one you’re planning to go to in a couple of weeks. The only difference is, instead of putting on fancy clothes and sucking up to snobs we don’t even know, we’re going to the beach. Then tonight a bunch of friends will come over to Tru’s house and—”
Persephone pauses. A battered pick-up truck is parked about twenty feet away, on the far side of the horseshoe-shaped driveway. She’s trying to make eye contact with the truck’s occupants—a tall, thickset teenage girl in a black bikini and a shirtless, rail-thin young man wearing jeans and a pair of high-topped sneakers. The young man, who has a flaming skull inked on his right bicep, is behind the wheel; the girl is lounging at the other end of the truck’s bench seat, her feet propped against the open passenger door. The vehicle is ancient, at least fifteen years old, a relic from the early 1970s. Crouched in the back, in the truck’s bed, panting in the heat, is an ugly, wolfish-looking dog with narrow, sharply peaked ears.
The girl in the black bikini is staring at Persephone, yawning, silently warning her, Pick up the pace or I’m moving on.
Persephone quickly turns back to AnnaLee. “All that’s going to happen at Tru’s house is people hanging out and listening to mus—”
AnnaLee cuts her off. “It will be a bunch of kids running wild.” AnnaLee has sounded angry, but anger isn’t what she’s feeling—it’s concern. “I want to keep you safe,” she tells Persephone.
“Why?” The question is a mocking sneer.
The mockery, the sting it inflicts, keeps AnnaLee silent. Prevents her from telling Persephone…“I want to protect you because in the six weeks that you’ve been here I’ve gotten to know you—to see who you are. You’re lonely. And lost. You don’t think anybody cares about you, and I’m starting to care deeply…”
“Hey, lady. I asked you a question.” Persephone’s sneer has now become a snarl. “Are you going to answer it or not?”
She’s posturing—performing for the audience in the truck.
AnnaLee understands that this isn’t the time for motherly tenderness and declarations of love. She turns to the girl in the black bikini, and says: “You’re Tru?”
The girl gives a bored shrug. “That’s what they call me.”
AnnaLee is suppressing the urge to walk over to the truck, slam the door shut, and send Tru packing. “You said your parents are away. Right?”
“Yeah. But they’re cool with me havin’ people over.” Tru stares off into space, as if trying to comprehend the depth of AnnaLee’s stupidity. “It’s kinda like…y’know…they trust me?”
The shirtless young man gives an amused snort and continues to gaze straight ahead. His sinewy right arm is extended over the top of the steering wheel, his hand hanging limply from his wrist, a cigarette dangling between his index and middle fingers.
There’s something about him that’s making AnnaLee’s skin crawl. He and Tru are people AnnaLee has never seen before—strangers Persephone met at the beach a couple of weeks ago. AnnaLee is trying make up her mind how to deal with them.
She’s shifting from one foot to the other, attempting to keep the hot gravel from blistering the soles of her feet, while she’s saying to Tru: “I don’t know what your situation is with your parents, but my concern is Persephone. I won’t allow her to be put at risk.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake!” Persephone is stomping around the driveway, grumbling: “It’s not like you’re my mother or anything—you’re married to my dad’s half-brother. You’re barely even a relative. What’s your problem?”
“The problem is you’re fifteen, Persephone, and you want to go to a party where there won’t be any adult supervision—”
AnnaLee is interrupted by a sharp whistle.
Tru has gotten out of the truck and is leaning against its front bumper, smirking at AnnaLee. “I’m eighteen, so technically I’m an adult. If that helps calm your nerves.”
AnnaLee is striding across the hot gravel, heading back into the house, and calling over her shoulder to Tru: “Check with me when you’re forty. Now get out of my driveway.”
Persephone is frantically trying to intercept AnnaLee. “Please. Wait! It won’t only be kids at the party.” She’s dragging AnnaLee to a stop, pointing to the truck. “Marco will be there. He’s Tru’s boyfriend. And he’s an adult. He’s twenty-six. He was even in the Army, I think.”
That Persephone would consider this information to be a selling point is breaking AnnaLee’s heart—reminding her how vulnerable and naive Persephone really is.
“I wish I could say yes. But I want too much to keep you safe.” AnnaLee has instinctively wrapped her arms around Persephone and kissed her on the forehead.
Persephone has jerked away, muttering: “Screw you.” She’s dashing for the truck, where Tru is now inside the cab, scooting along the bench seat, to make room for her.
AnnaLee is immediately sprinting across the driveway, toward the truck.
Just as Persephone is preparing to shut the passenger door, AnnaLee is yanking it open, doing what she would do if it were Bella who was in jeopardy—she’s pulling her to safety.
Persephone is tumbling off the edge of the bench seat and out of the truck. Almost knocking AnnaLee over. Spitting at her, glaring at her. Struggling to wiggle out of her grasp. AnnaLee, fighting to keep her balance, is glaring back, making it clear she has no intention of releasing her hold on Persephone.
Peals of laughter are echoing from inside the truck and its tires are being deliberately spun on the gravel—sending up a pepper spray of dirt and pebbles.
The truck is rocketing backward. Roaring down the driveway, the radio playing at ear-splitting volume. Blasting Metallica’s “Master of Puppets.”
While Persephone is in a cold fury, telling AnnaLee: “You’re going to wish you hadn’t done this.”
***
It’s almost noon. A full day since the showdown in the driveway—since Persephone rampaged into the house, pounded up the stairs into her bedroom, and slammed the door.
AnnaLee is noticing that an amended version of Persephone’s hand-lettered sign has been posted. The new warning is:
This is my realm. I am the one and only Persephone. Stay the hell out. Those who defy me will pay!
The sign is increasing AnnaLee’s ambivalence about the decision she has made while coming upstairs. It’s true that she has begun to have a motherly fondness for Persephone. Yet there’s still something worrisome about this girl. Something AnnaLee doesn’t quite trust. It’s why, at night, she can’t keep herself from locking her bedroom door, and Bella’s. It’s also the reason that, when AnnaLee and Jack go out to dinner or a movie, AnnaLee doesn’t leave Bella at home with a b
abysitter. Instead, she takes Bella to the babysitter’s house, then picks her up at the end of the evening.
In light of this uneasiness, the mistrust, AnnaLee is questioning her impulse to invite Persephone to become a closer part of the family. She’s wondering if it’s purely an open-handed gift. Or if it is at least partially a manipulation, a move calculated to bring the potential source of danger nearer. Putting it where it can be more easily monitored.
AnnaLee is hesitant—conflicted—as she’s opening the door and entering Persephone’s room.
Persephone is on the bed, facing the wall—buried in a jumble of wrinkled sheets and wadded pillows. Pretending to be asleep. The bed and floor are littered with crumpled, violence-filled sketches. The windows are closed, the shades drawn, creating a murky darkness. The air is stuffy, nearly unbreathable.
AnnaLee isn’t sure how to begin. She sits on the edge of the bed, tentatively. Hoping Persephone will acknowledge her presence.
Persephone doesn’t move.
After a while, AnnaLee picks up the only sketch that hasn’t been wadded up and discarded—the one placed safely on top of a pillow.
The sketch has been done in vibrantly colored inks and depicts a single, powerful figure. A beautiful, and hideous, Medusa. Her torso, vined in thorns. Her arms and legs, muscled and bare. Her teeth, razor-sharp. Her face, bent toward her upraised hand, in the act of savagely biting into a blood-soaked human heart. Sprouting from the Medusa’s head are masses of golden snakes. The eyes of the snakes have been so meticulously rendered that each of them is glittering—their glow crowning the Medusa with a sinister, shimmering halo.
The elegance of the piece, and its hostility, are overwhelming AnnaLee. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this. Did it take a long time to do?”
“Hardly any time at all,” Persephone says. “I did it from memory. It’s you.”
