Back behind her, she hears him shouting, and, perhaps, another car slowing, but she dares not tarry.
She has made it to the forest. One foot, other foot. She is flying past the trees, listening for pursuit, hearing only the night sounds of any woodland, the tiny animals skittering for safe haven, the breeze teasing the frozen branches. She runs. The forest is eerie and seems alive to her presence, aware and worried, uncertain whether she is friend or foe. But for her certainty that ghosts are all creations of obsessive adolescent girls, Julia would be certain that they are running beside her through the woods. When she turns to look, there is never anyone there, or anything: just a glimpse of moonlight prismed through the evergreens…and the distant glow of streetlamps.
Julia stumbles and realizes that she has hit a curb and is standing on tarmac. Suddenly, the trees are not woods at all, but just a thin greenbelt dividing the houses looming before her from the road behind her. She has emerged into a subdivision she does not recognize, not really the high-end, cookie-cutter neo-Colonials built by white neo-Colonialists on a tract of land once owned by the native people.
Stop it, she tells herself, recognizing delirium.
In the eerie winter silence of the street, Julia decides that she can work out the racial irony of the moment later; for now, she is relieved to be out of the woods and near people, because people mean telephones, and telephones mean police. She races across the quiet road, barges up to the nearest door, a light-blue house with pretty curtains and a toddler’s plastic three-wheeled bike half buried on the lawn.
Julia bangs frantically on the door, and then, realizing that a late-night knock might be misconstrued as scary, demurely rings the bell instead.
She waits, glancing warily over her shoulder.
Nothing.
She rings again, then bangs again, calls, tentatively, “Help!” and then the same again, louder.
After a moment, a worried pale face, glasses on and hair in curlers, peeks from behind the curtained windows next to the door. The frightened eyes are huge, magnified by the lenses. A child clings to the woman’s leg.
Julia calls out, “Please, I need help,” and then, when the face does not budge, she makes a hand motion to indicate a telephone and puts on the most charming smile she can manage with a walking corpse out there trying to kill her.
Eyes widening with alarm, the woman inside shakes her head. The child continues to cling to her leg. The woman makes a shooing gesture, then mouths the words so that there will be no mistake: Get away! she is silently screaming. She allows the curtain to fall closed, and Julia, backing, stunned, down the well-salted walk, sees her in the window of what she takes to be the family room, watching with desperate satisfaction the flight of the darksome intruder.
(IV)
REJECTED AT TWO MORE HOUSES, chased away by leaping dogs at a couple more, Julia has surrendered her dream that one of the homeowners, her fellow Landingers, might offer her shelter—warm fire, hot chocolate, maybe even a gun in the closet—while they await together the arrival of one of the town’s few police cars. Instead, she has watched through windows as the residents turned fearfully away, as though she is a terrorist, or a disease carrier, or black. Julia hurries toward the entrance to the cul-de-sac, far now from the greenbelt. Perhaps she should throw a rock through somebody’s window, on the theory that cowering owners might at least call the police for protection against a marauding Negro; but she has counted on sheltering in one of the homes, and does not dare risk hanging around waiting for the police to arrive, not with the Carrington-thing back there somewhere. Her cell phone is in the car. She is rushing, but not sure where she is rushing from, or to. Light snow has begun to fall, but, far more important, the wind has grown bitter. It is past ten, and this is getting ridiculous. She cannot possibly be so helpless in the middle of the town she has called home for the past six years. The moon, so bright half a lifetime ago, when she and Mary and Frank were riding along in the Escalade, has disappeared. She has no way to tell whether she is still being pursued, or, if she is, how close her pursuer might be. She only knows she dares not stop running.
For that is her posture now, a run, not a walk. Running through the crunchy snow in her high boots, certain at every step that she is about to take a spill. Leaving the U of houses, she realizes that the subdivision is larger than she thought, the identically cut wooden cookies going on for blocks. She must be in Cromwell Woods, the only development of this size in the town, named by some historically illiterate Anglophile builder for the regicidal Lord Protector who tyrannized England in the name of the people. She recalls that there are nearly a hundred homes in Cromwell Woods, priced to be affordable by the middling classes, and that the town fought like mad to keep them out.
Later, Julia. Think about it later. Concentrate.
You have to get out of here!
A subdivision in which you do not live is a bewildering and scary place, especially at night and on foot. You do not know the houses, or the trees, or the people. You do not know the names of the streets, which, in America, all sound the same: Belmont leads to Park leads to Colony. Never does a builder name a street Wojtyla or Montanez or Chen. It is as though all the nation, whatever its actual ethnicity, yearns to live in suburban Waspville. Julia Carlyle used to yearn, too; only, now that she does indeed live in Waspville, she finds it, in her moment of need, devoid of generosity, or, for that matter, of meaning.
She has stopped running, because she is so tired and because she does not know which way to go. Every street looks like every other street. Every time she thinks she has found the way out, she is curving back toward the trees, and Frank. Every time she thinks she has turned a new corner, she looks at the sign and finds she has been down this block before. Her legs tell her they have had enough. Her thighs tell her she is no longer entitled to give the orders in this body. It occurs to her that being shot by Frank Carrington is preferable to many other fates that could await her, like walking another step in this hateful weather. The snow is falling a good deal faster now, and Julia supposes that, were she to lie down right on the tiny lawn of the latest house to ignore her, she would shortly freeze to death. That might not be so bad.
She sits down.
Cold, but bearable. Over soon. At last.
Get up, Julia.
Go away. You don’t exist. You’re just a message from the other half of my brain. A throwback to atavistic times, when the left brain was not in charge. Julian Jaynes proved it, and I believe him. He was a psychologist, in case you don’t know, and my brother and I were named after him.
Julian Jaynes was a very wise psychologist, but he was misled. Now, get up!
She gets up, if only to silence the voice. But now her pants are covered with snow that will shortly begin to melt from her body heat, soaking her legs.
“This better be important,” she grumbles, but the voice does not answer.
She takes a tentative step. The chill wind batters her. Swaying on her feet, Julia looks around for Frank Carrington. Her weary body feels like a single congealed block of ice. She seems to be freezing from the inside out. She tries and fails to remember the word for this process. Her brain has had enough. She is so sick of this snow. And of this night. Maybe the best thing is to sit down once more and wait for the voice in her head to freeze to death.
Then she sees the worst thing she can imagine.
Frank has caught up with her. There he is, no more than a block behind, shuffling along the street. She tells her body to run, but her body is asleep. He drags toward her, foot twisting with every step. Nobody throws open a door. Nobody comes to her aid. She hears a shout, but it is only the angry wind.
She turns anyway, tries to run, manages only a step or two before she stumbles into the enfolding chill of the New England snow.
Frank Carrington looms over her, parka thick with blood, eyes ringed with joyful madness, gun hand flailing but pointing in her direction. Julia forces herself to her feet, determined not to go witho
ut a fight. She swings a strengthless hand at him, not sure whether she means to slap or punch. Either way, his head snaps backward very hard.
Then Bruce Vallely is holding her as she weeps, leading her away from the body lying broken-necked in the snow.
CHAPTER 65
THE ALL-PAY AUCTION
(I)
AND SO THE REPORTERS CAME TO TOWN, invading hordes rolling along leafy byways in search of the perfect interview, delighted at the opportunity to celebrate one of their own, who had selflessly placed her own physical body in harm’s way in order to trap the sinister, Mafia-connected antiques dealer she had come to Harbor County to track down. They considered it rather unsporting of the heroine, Mary Mallard, to refuse all visitors to her private room at the medical center, the extra expense paid for by the university, in gratitude for her services—because the dealer in question, the late Frank Carrington, was responsible for the slaying of Professor Kellen Zant and the brief kidnaping of the wife of President Lemaster Carlyle, whom he evidently intended to hold for ransom.
The school’s press office refused to make available for interviews either the wife in question or the director of campus safety, who had cracked the case, although some of the stories called him the chief of campus security, or some other variation. In the story’s early days, accuracy was not a strong point; for that matter, it was not in the later days, either. Mary Mallard, the press reported, had suffered multiple fractures and internal injuries when, forced to drive the first spouse’s black Escalade at gunpoint, she smartly and bravely smashed the car into a tree. Her refusal to be interviewed was seen, and envied, as an effort to keep the details private until the time arrived for the presumed book tour. The chief of university security—well, whatever his title was—had some sort of important supporting role, and the hordes clamored for his story, but, alas, he chose that moment to take his accumulated vacation, looking at properties in South Carolina for his coming retirement. As for the Carlyles, the invading horde besieged them for a few days. President Carlyle delivered a grateful and charming and witty statement for the cameras, but the invaders were otherwise kept at bay by a phalanx constituting the director of public information, a brace of something called Sister Ladies, plus the president’s cousin, Astrid Venable, and his somber new assistant, Katie Chu, who practically moved into the house for the duration of the siege.
A few intrepid reporters, turned away at Lombard Hall, snuck into Kepler Quad to chase down Julia Carlyle, only to discover that she had resigned her position. A statement from the dean said how proud the school was to count Julia Carlyle among its graduates, and how delighted the school was for her service, marked by such integrity and courage. The statement made it sound like Julia had been to war. All inquiries were directed to Iris Feynman.
The refusal of the Carlyle family or Mary Mallard to discuss the tragic events of that chilly New England night (as one cable anchor put it) still left the hordes with plenty to plunder. In the village of Tyler’s Landing, Vera Brightwood, proprietor of Cookie’s and unofficial town historian and conscience, gave one interview after another. Many of Julia Carlyle’s acquaintances from the city also had praises to sing, chief among them Tonya Montez, described by several print journalists as her close confidante, and by one evening news anchor as her cousin. Julia’s dear, dear friend Tessa Kenner filled a lot of airtime, not all of it on her own show, and hinted that she knew a lot more than she was telling.
Meanwhile, the popularity of President Carlyle on campus was soaring. None of the policies that had caused faculty discontent had changed, but the, ah, well, the context was different. No longer was he the tyrannical monster established in office by the right-wing alums. Well, all right, he was. But he had ascended to a new status, that most beloved of campus figures, the victim—an actual victim, an African American whose family had been endangered by a racist white man. True, the Carlyle family was modeled along lines both sexist and heteronormative, and therefore not a desirable example for exaltation, but the victimhood was perfect. (Even those among the oppressed peoples who try to live by the culture’s illegitimate norms are crushed in the end by the forces of reaction!) And so, despite the resistance of a few diehards, they allowed him to merge gender studies and women’s studies. They allowed him to toughen rather than weaken the school’s anti-drug policies. By the spring, however, when he proposed appointment of a committee to consider the desirability of returning ROTC to campus, the old battle lines would be redrawn: being a victim was one thing, but allowing the mildest trespass upon the sacred groves of academe by the most dangerous organization in the world was another matter.
None of the stories mentioned the President of the United States, a New England Senator who hoped to replace him, or an obscure Harlem men’s club fallen on hard times.
And then there was the quieter drama, well outside the scrutiny of the press, discreet emissaries from people who knew people who were connected to other people, slipping into town to confer, ever so quietly, with the Carlyles, making sure all was well, asking if they needed anything, promising assistance with whatever might arise, and inquiring, quietly, whether, by the way, any rumors of allegations had come quietly to light over the past few weeks that might tend to cast this candidate or that one in a—
No, no, and, no, said the Carlyles. We aren’t political. But if anything turns up, you’ll be the first to know.
(II)
MEANWHILE, Vanessa Carlyle’s new therapist announced that she would not be trying to “cure” the teenager of being a teenager. I’m somebody for her to talk to, said Dr. Jacobstein. At this point in our relationship, I’m not going to pretend to be anything else.
Then who’s going to set limits on her? asked Julia, very surprised.
Actually, that’s the job of her parents, said Sara.
And what about the trauma underlying her behavior?
It’s over, said Sara. Julia was stunned. The psychiatrist’s eyes were kind, but when she spoke she sounded like Lemaster. I would tell you if I could, she said. The rules don’t allow it. All I can say is that the trauma was based on an error in perception. Something Vanessa thought was true. Now she knows it wasn’t.
Julia asked if that meant her daughter was fine.
No, she isn’t fine. She has plenty of issues to deal with. But she’s tough. She’s going to deal with them.
And Gina? Is she coming back?
A distant smile. We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?
Back home, Julia watched her daughter closely. Vanessa kept reading about wars and listening to her dirges, and, in the wee hours, still danced with her mother. When Julia asked if it was true that she was feeling better, her daughter hugged her and said, Thanks to you. Julia asked what that meant. Vanessa, eyes glowing, assured her mother that she would figure it out.
Meanwhile Jeannie, now known as Jeans, continued her search for perfection, but after a few days of puzzled pining, asked first her mother, then her father, why Mr. Flew no longer dropped by the house. He’s moved away, they reminded her. Moved away where? she demanded, stamping a perfect foot, because she wanted to write him; and because she could not bear the thought that he had departed without saying goodbye. Julia did not know the answer, and Lemaster refused to say. Jeannie—Jeans—had always been able to charm her father, who at last agreed, reluctantly, to forward a letter if she wrote one. She wrote it, he forwarded it, and three weeks later she had an actual answer, addressed to her personally, posted from one of the more turbulent former Soviet republics.
He missed them all, wrote Jeremy Flew, but duty called.
As for the other children, the boys, Aaron wanted to come home, to rally round the family in the crisis, but his parents decided he should stay in school, and the headmaster assured them that Phillips Exeter Academy could protect him from the media: they had managed the miracle for others far more sought after. Preston did not manage to call, and when Julia finally reached him, he told her that he was on his way to Australia
, where he would be spending most of the next year at one of the world’s great observatories, and, oh, yes, one of the other grad students had told him something about how his family was in the news, but he had paid little attention, because they always were.
Will we see you before you go?
I’m leaving tomorrow, said Preston, but he always was.
Then, in the middle of March, after the reporters departed, the director of campus safety returned from his vacation, and Julia knew it was time for the next act.
CHAPTER 66
…THEN BEGGARS WOULD RIDE
“SO, WHERE DO YOU GO from here?” asked Julia Carlyle. “What’s next for the great Bruce Vallely?”
He blushed and shrugged and dropped his strong, gentle eyes. The weather had once more turned bright and fair, as sometimes happened in a New England winter before the thick gray walls closed in again. They were seated where the whole thing had started, the tavern on Route 48. The same disinterested crowd, the same uninteresting food, the same garbled hum of meaningless conversation, the same sputtering snow, as if the weather could not make up its mind.
When Bruce said nothing, but lingered over his coffee, Julia said, “Are you really retiring? Is that what people do when they run out of space on the shelves for their medals?”
“I don’t think they give medals for…what I did.”
“They should,” she said, and meant it.
“I broke a man’s neck, Julia, and another man”—he searched for the words—“another man I treated the way God never meant his creatures to treat each other.”
The reporter, Julia supposed—or whatever he really was—the man who accosted her while she pumped gas in Langford. She knew, now, that Bruce had worked out a deal of some kind with Tony Tice’s clients, and she had even supplied the envelope from Mona, with contents, to enable him to pay them off. But she had chosen not to pry too deeply.
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