by Lisa Tuttle
I am waiting, wondering if I will ever see her again. Jane is real; she exists; I know I didn’t imagine her. But did she imagine me?
STRANGER IN THE HOUSE
Sharon knew all the patterns of this neighbourhood. She was standing on the corner of Newcastle and Devon, near the house where she had once lived. She knew where she was, and what the women and children who would be home at this hour of a hot summer day would be doing, but she did not know why she was standing where she was. She felt dizzy and put a hand on top of her head, feeling the heat caught and reflected in her sleek dark hair, and wondered what were the realities of sunstroke.
She closed her eyes, trying to sort the confusion, but forcing memory made it more recalcitrant. She opened her eyes and again took in the familiarity of the neighbourhood she had lived in for the first twelve years of her life.
I must have blacked out for a minute, she thought. It was a temporary solution, not one she believed, but something to hold onto until she found the answer. It was not a serious problem, after all. She knew where she was.
She began to walk down Devon, towards the house she had once lived in. It seemed the logical place to go.
Bill drove with only one hand on the wheel. The other arm was draped across the back of the seat. ‘You’re the one who used to live here – so where do we go today?’
‘I haven’t been in Houston for years.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. What do you feel like doing?’
‘It doesn’t matter. What do you want to do?’ When she didn’t answer, or even look at him, his voice sharpened. ‘Come on, there must be something here you want to see – or some place you want to visit. You haven’t been here for . . . how old were you when your old man left?’
She lit a cigarette. A mistake: he saw her hand tremble.
‘Yeah, you told me once when you were drunk. The sad, sad story about your father skipping out. You don’t remember telling me, huh? What are you always so – ’
‘Would you keep your eyes on the road?’
‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve been driving since I was twelve. I know – let’s go see your old house. What do you think of that?’
She watched the buildings as they passed them, reading the signs, noticing a new shopping centre.
‘Wouldn’t you like to see your old home again? You can say hello to the rats and roaches – let ’em know you’ve come up in the world with one husband behind you already and working on – ’
‘Okay,’ she said, to stop the growing bitterness of the argument.
‘What?’
‘I said yeah.’
The house had not changed. The oak and mimosa still stood in the front yard; the ivy and honeysuckle still battled for possession of the front flowerbed; the gutters were peeling yellow paint and the magnolia by the kitchen door was in bloom. In almost thirteen years the house and yard had managed to remain exactly as she remembered them. It didn’t seem likely, but neither did the alternative: that her memory was faulty.
Sharon walked around to the side of the house where there were four windows. The first two were masked by curtains; the last two were the ones Sharon knew best, for they belonged to the room she had shared with her sister. She went to her old window and looked in.
Everything was so familiar, so right, that she did not at first feel surprise. Everything fit, everything was in its place: the scratched wooden play table in the centre of the room; the two beds, one beneath each window; the sheets of Manila paper covered with crayoned designs and taped to the blue walls.
She was home again, and unsurprised, until she remembered that she was twenty-four years old and had not even seen this house for half that many years. Her mind must be playing tricks on her. She was seeing things and her mind was tricking her into thinking that she remembered those same things.
Déjà vu, she thought. That’s what it’s called. It’s normal, it’s natural. I’m tired, the sun is hot, I’ve been smoking too much lately, and Bill . . .
Bill. An image in her mind suddenly of a dark-haired, scowling man leaning against a bright-red Mustang. She knew then that she must have come here with Bill, to look at the old house. But where was Bill?
The answer came quickly: With the car. She set off down the street. He wouldn’t have parked far away.
‘This seems like a pretty nice part of town. You never told me about your childhood.’
She was still gazing out the window. So much had changed.
‘Talkative, aren’t we?’
She thought of the wine he had insisted upon with breakfast. She had said nothing then, and would say nothing now. She knew her silences infuriated him.
‘I guess your father had a good bit of money.’
Those townhouses were new, and that office building.
‘You lived pretty well until the bastard skipped out.’
She folded her arms, holding herself.
‘You can’t blame me for guessing when you never tell me anything.’
She turned the volume up on the tape-player: ‘Home, where my thoughts are strayin’ . . .’
The car was not parked on the street. Other cars beamed reflected sun into her eyes, but there were no 1972 Mustangs. All the cars seemed to be at least ten years old. She went around the block, knowing that almost anything could have happened, for she could not remember the circumstances of their arrival.
A car drove past, an old green Ford that still looked shiny and new. She glanced at it, had a glimpse of a short-haired woman in sunglasses driving with two small girls bouncing in the back seat. The familiarity tugged at her mind.
The farther she walked without seeing either Bill or the car the lonelier she felt. It began to seem clear to her that they had quarrelled (their arguments had become too frequent lately), and she had demanded—— But, alone? Would he have left her alone?
Eventually she returned to the house on Devon. The green Ford was parked in the garage.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Bill pounded his horn; a woman glared. ‘The worst drivers in the world, around here. The number of people in this city who are allowed to drive cars . . .’
‘You ignored a yield sign,’ she said. Not asking for an argument.
‘The hell I did. If you’re so good, Little Miss Silence, why don’t you . . .’
‘Just drive,’ she said wearily.
‘You’re really suffering, aren’t you? I mean, I really give you a pain. Well, listen, lady . . .’
When she saw the Ford in the garage she remembered being nine years old. The car had been new, then.
She heard the kitchen door open and slam, and two little girls came running from around the magnolia tree. She saw them mount bicycles in the garage and moments later they sailed past her as she stood, feet curling on the hot street. One girl was dark-haired and thin, pedalling fiercely. The other was a plump, blonde, happy-looking child.
Sharon knew the blonde child. It was her sister Ellen, fifteen years ago. But the skinny kid——
‘That can’t be me,’ Sharon said aloud. Then she began to laugh.
‘So which street is it?’
‘That one. No, you passed it now.’
‘Well, why didn’t you tell me?’
‘You can circle the block.’
‘I know I can circle the block, goddammit; that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about you never telling me anything.’
‘You’ll miss it again if you’re not careful.’
‘Listen to me, you bitch,’ he said, turning to glare at her.
‘Watch out . . . !’
When the two little girls came riding back, Sharon was resting beneath a tree in the yard next door. She stared at them, knowing where they had gone, who they had seen, and what games they had played. They pretended not to see her; either that, or they did not notice her. Sharon knew that,
from shyness and parental warnings against strangers, they would feel themselves bound to ignore her. She watched the dark-haired child who pedalled with such single-minded intensity and felt no bond, no sympathy, no feeling of kinship. That little girl was not herself any more than she, Sharon, was again physically nine years old.
Not physically nine, no, but somehow she had come back to the happiest time of her life. She remembered the years between six and eleven as a sort of paradise where parents never quarrelled and little girls were never lonely or unhappy. She remembered fears, but they had been fears banished by daylight or the presence of a comforting grown-up.
Sharon waited under the tree until the sun had almost set, shedding worries like used skin. Bill was gone, her former husband did not exist, and her father had never left. When she saw the two little girls, released from the dinner table, ride past her again, she stood up – wanting with a sudden intensity to be on her bicycle again – and walked to the house.
The sun was out of sight, but had not completely set. She stood before the front door, gazing at the dark varnished wood, and touched the doorknob. It was still slightly warm where the last rays of the sun had rested. She opened the door and stepped inside.
The foyer and living room were empty. She could hear sounds from the kitchen where her mother was washing dishes. She rejoiced in the smell of the house; partly her father’s pipe from the den (she heard the crackle and rustle of newspaper), partly the lamb-chop-and-lima-bean smell left from dinner, partly indefinable but familiar.
Quick steps on the linoleum alerted her and she moved silently into her old hiding place: the space between the piano and the window. She felt awkward, too large for a space that had been fine when she was nine. As the room grew darker she made herself comfortable and hoped that a bit of protruding knee would not be noticed.
Time passed, and Sharon heard the two little girls come home laughing through the kitchen door. She tensed suddenly at the sound of a light footstep and then a sharp click. A light had been turned on. Sharon relaxed, knowing who it was. Sharon had always been frightened of the dark, and had liked, to the mystification of her mother, to have a light on in every room.
Sharon smiled slowly. The light wouldn’t help. She knew that light often was dangerous, for in lighting up the dark corners it forced the monsters to come out into the open. Nine-year-old Sharon still had a lot to learn.
Sharon stood up and stretched. From the den she could hear the television, and felt a sudden terrible loneliness that she could not run in and join her family. She could imagine her mother with Scott on her lap, her father with a detective magazine (through with his paper by now), and the two girls with red Popsicles, all watching television. They all belonged, and she was suddenly the outsider.
Sharon went into the hallway, and from there into her parents’ bedroom. She felt no fear, although the room was dark. Happy in her freedom from fear, she moved farther into the room and walked around. She even stepped into the closet. As a child she had been afraid to enter the room when it was empty, and nothing could induce her to walk past the open closet door after dark. It had always seemed to her the most likely hiding place for whatever lunatic or burglar needed shelter. She had feared that someone would be lurking in the closet, waiting for her, ready to grab a little girl for some mysterious purposes. But Sharon was no longer afraid.
Scott’s room was also dark. She walked past it and entered her bedroom. Both the ceiling light and the bedside lamp were burning. She turned off the ceiling light at the door. Suddenly she was flooded with the desire to have everything again as it should be. The room was right, the setting was perfect. Only she herself was out of place, in a too-old body. Sharon longed to be able to go to the dresser (with the painted-daisy drawer knobs) and pull out her blue cotton nightgown. She would take off her clothes and pull the nightgown on over her head. Then she would turn down the covers on the bed, go get an apple (afterwards she would have to brush her teeth), and kiss everyone goodnight. And then . . .
Sharon remembered the ritual. Always afraid that Something lurked under the bed – something with long arms and a penchant for grabbing small girls – she had devised a method of getting into bed safely. First, she would turn off the ceiling light. Then, beginning at the door, she would run towards the bed, leaping up and onto it from as far away as she could. That way her feet, her vulnerable legs, did not come too close to the edge of the bed, and nothing could grab them. Once in bed she would turn out the lamp and lie still, heart pounding, and wonder if perhaps tonight the thing under the bed would be able to come out and get her, sending long, bony arms up over the sides of the bed, creeping for her throat . . .
And then Sharon would dive under the covers, feeling that out of sight she was somehow safe. Ellen had never shared her fears, and Sharon had often envied her safety in ignorance.
But Sharon could not do that tonight. Now there was someone else to sleep in her bed, someone else who would be kissed goodnight and get to eat an apple. Her place was already filled. This was her home, the only place she wanted to be, and someone else had stolen her role.
Sharon felt dizzy. Her stomach growled. She had not eaten all day. And then she knew what she had to do.
She turned off the lamp and stood for a moment in darkness before rolling under the bed to wait. She did not mind waiting, and she was not afraid of the dark.
SUN CITY
It was 3.00 a.m., the dead, silent middle of the night. Except for the humming of the soft-drink machine in one corner, and the irregular, rumbling cough of the ice machine hidden in an alcove just beyond it, the lobby was quiet. There weren’t likely to be any more check-ins until after dawn – all the weary cross-country drivers would be settled elsewhere by now, or grimly determined to push on without a rest.
Working the 11.00 p.m. to 7.00 a.m. shift was a dull, lonely job, but usually Nora Theale didn’t mind it. She preferred working at night, and the solitude didn’t bother her. But tonight, for the third night in a row, she was jumpy. It was an irrational nervousness, and it annoyed Nora that she couldn’t pin it down. There was always the possibility of robbery, of course, but the Posada del Norte hadn’t been hit in the year she had worked there, and Nora didn’t think the motel made a very enticing target.
Seeking a cause for her unease, Nora often glanced around the empty lobby and through the glass doors at the parking lot and the highway beyond. She never saw anything out of place – except a shadow which might have been cast by someone moving swiftly through the bluish light of the parking lot. But it was gone in an instant, and she couldn’t be sure she had seen it.
Nora picked up the evening paper and tried to concentrate. She read about plans to build a huge fence along the border, to keep illegal aliens out. It was an idea she liked – the constant flow back and forth between Mexico and the United States was one of the things she hated most about El Paso – but she didn’t imagine it would work. After a few more minutes of scanning state and national news, Nora tossed the paper into the garbage can. She didn’t want to read about El Paso; El Paso bored and depressed and disturbed her. She couldn’t wait to leave it.
Casting another uneasy glance around the unchanged lobby, Nora leaned over to the filing cabinet and pulled open the drawer where she kept her books. She picked out a mystery by Josephine Tey and settled down to it, determined to win over her nerves.
She read, undisturbed except for a few twinges of unease, until 6.00 a.m. when she had to let the man with the newspapers in and make the first wake-up call. The day clerk arrived a few minutes after seven, and that meant it was time for Nora to leave. She gathered her things together into a shoulder bag. She had a lot with her because she had spent the past two days in one of the motel’s free rooms rather than go home. But the rooms were all booked up for that night, so she had to clear out. Since her husband had moved out, Nora hadn’t felt like spending much time in the apartment that was now
hers alone. She meant to move, but since she didn’t want to stay in El Paso, it seemed more sensible simply to let the lease run out rather than go to the expense and trouble of finding another temporary home. She meant to leave El Paso just as soon as she got a little money together and decided on a place to go.
She didn’t like the apartment, but it was large and cheap. Larry had chosen it because it was close to his office, and he liked to ride his bicycle to work. It wasn’t anywhere near the motel where Nora worked, but Nora didn’t care. She had her car.
She parked it now in the space behind the small, one-storey apartment complex. It was a hideous place; Nora winced every time she came home to it. It was made of an ugly pink fake adobe, and had a red-tiled roof. There were some diseased-looking cactuses planted along the concrete walkway, but no grass or trees: water was scarce.
The stench of something long dead and richly rotting struck Nora as she opened the door of her apartment. She stepped back immediately, gagging. Her heart raced; she felt, oddly, afraid. But she recovered in a moment – it was just a smell, after all, and in her apartment. She had to do something about it. Breathing through her mouth, she stepped forward again.
The kitchen was clean, the garbage pail empty, and the refrigerator nearly bare. She found nothing there, or in the bedroom or bathroom, that seemed to be the cause of the odour. In the bedroom, she cautiously breathed in through her nose to test the air. It was clean. She walked slowly back to the living room, but there was nothing there, either. The whiff of foulness had gone as if it had never been.
Nora shrugged, and locked the door. It might have been something outside. If she smelled it again, she’d talk to the landlord about it.
There was nothing in the kitchen she could bear the thought of eating, so, after she had showered and changed, Nora walked down to the Seven-Eleven, three blocks away, and bought a few essentials: milk, eggs, bread, Dr Pepper, and a package of sugared doughnuts.
