“I thought,” Sherry said quietly, “that it might have all been some kind of nightmare.”
We stood there for a long moment, our hands touching.
Finally I went to the nearest light switch and flipped it up. Light came blazing forth.
“Power,” I said, unnecessarily. I picked up the telephone. “Dial tone, too.”
“What about the door?”
I stepped to it, wrapped my hand around the knob. It turned easily. The door opened as always. I looked into the corridor—we both did—and then I closed it again.
We didn’t say anything. Finally Sherry started picking up the pans and emptying them into the sink. I followed suit, gathering the sodden towels and tossing them into the laundry basket, righting the Christmas bush, collecting the necklace and items from the shoe box and the tattered remnants of holiday card. When we were finished we sat at the table again. Our fingers touched, held.
“I need a shower,” I said at last.
“Yeah. Want me to make some tea?”
“I can do it. You’re my guest.”
She looked slightly hurt. “Am I?”
We looked at each other.
“No,” I said. “Sorry. Of course you’re not a guest.”
I stood and stepped into the bathroom while Sherry busied herself with kitchen things. I took my heart medications and then turned the water on hot, enjoying the sensation of soap and hot water on my slick skin. When I was nearly done Sherry stepped in with me, her clothes on the bathroom floor behind her.
“Mind some company?”
We held each other’s tired bodies for a few minutes. There was nothing erotic about it. We were two people trying to be a life raft for the other. At last I heard the tea kettle whistling.
“I’ll get it,” I said, stepping out and wrapping a towel around myself. I headed into the kitchen and prepared tea, pushed bread into the toaster for toast. She finished in the shower and turned it off. We both dressed and then sat at the kitchen table with breakfast.
“I want to go out, Ben. See how things are outside.”
“Yeah. Definitely.”
As I was finishing my tea the phone rang.
“At least it works,” Sherry said, as I stood up to get it.
“Yeah. Hello?” I said into the receiver.
“Hiya, buster! Am I calling too early?”
“My God. Barb. Hi. Didn’t expect to hear from you.”
“Are you kidding me? It’s January first, Ben! Y2K is upon us! My neighborhood is pretty much overwhelmed with roaming bands of savages. How’s yours?”
“Ha ha.”
“Seriously. Nice holiday?”
“Yeah. Very nice. How about yours?”
“Oh, family. You know. Nieces and nephews. It was fun. So what did you do for New Year’s Eve? Get on your knees in a church somewhere and pray?”
“No, we...we didn’t do much, actually.”
“We?”
“My fiancée and I.”
“Fiancée! When did this happen?”
“Over break. In the past few days.”
“Well, congratulations, big man. Do I know her?”
“No. You’ll meet her, though. I’ll bring her around to school sometime. Her name’s Sherry.”
“Well, you tell Sherry she’s a fool and a common vulgarian to get involved with the likes of you.”
I laughed. “She knows, Barb. Believe me, she knows.”
“Smart lady. So you’ll be in Monday?”
“Sure.”
“Great. We’ll see what kind of hell we can raise with paper and chalk this week. Put old Geiger-counter’s mind in a tizzy.”
“We sure will. It was really nice of you to call, Barb.”
“You don’t think I’m going to let up on the Y2K cracks, though, do you?”
“Not at all.”
“Good. Because I won’t. Happy New Year, Ben! Bye!”
“Bye, Barb. Happy New Year.” I hung up.
Sherry eyed me speculatively.
“Work friend,” I said. “Science teacher at school. I’ll have to introduce you two.”
She smiled. “I’d like that.”
“Ready to go?”
“Yep. Let me just get my coat.”
We both pulled on coats, hats, and mittens, and made our way out to the elevator, which was working perfectly, chuffing away in its usual fashion. Planes crashing, elevators in freefall...We’d made it, somehow.
As we passed through the lobby I said to the woman at the desk, “Quite a storm last night.”
She looked up blankly. “Huh?”
“The storm.”
“Hm? There wasn’t any storm last night, Mr. Fall. It rained some in the afternoon, that’s all.”
Sherry and I looked at each other.
“We didn’t lose power?” I asked.
“No, not at all. Is there a problem with the electricity in your apartment?”
“No...no. Never mind. Well, Happy New Year,” I said, as we pushed through the front door.
The streets were dry. There was no evidence of flooding amounts of water, just a few small puddles no doubt left over from the rain earlier. There was no sign of any wind damage to anything. It was a calm, clear, perfectly normal January morning in Washington.
“I want to see something,” I said, taking Sherry’s mittened hand. Locating my window eight floors up—it was easy, with the torn screen flapping its jagged fingers in the wind—I moved until we were standing directly under it.
The breeze blew just then, touching my face coldly, and some kind of—emptiness passed through me. In a moment it was gone.
Neither of us said anything for a time. There was nothing to say, and too much.
We looked at each other.
“I’ll have to tell them,” I said at last, “about the damage. The screen. The water.”
“Yes.”
“May cost us something. We’ll just have to see.”
“I’m sure it’ll be okay.”
We stepped some yards from the spot under the window, looking out at the New Year’s Day traffic in the Circle. There wasn’t a lot, this early in the morning. I remembered Rae, when I still called her the Rain Girl, weaving among the cars as she left, the first time she’d walked with me all the way to this building.
“I—I should call Alice this morning,” I said finally, just to say something. “Tell her about you. Us.”
“She’ll be surprised.”
I laughed a little. “Yeah, she will be. Maybe we could Metro out to her place. It’s in Arlington. I’m sure she’d love to see you.”
“I’d love to see her. It’s been so long.”
Silence descended. We stood there, mittens wrapped together.
“I did love her,” I said finally, my voice shaking. “Rae. I did.”
Ben, do I feel like a ghost to you?
“I know you did.”
“Only...only not enough.”
Do I, Ben?
“Ben, could anybody have loved her enough?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know. Goodnight, Rae, I thought. Goodnight...
“I love you,” I said, turning to Sherry. “Is that enough?”
“It’s enough, Ben.”
“Don’t you mean ‘George,’ Mary?”
She smiled. “Sorry. George.”
I stood with her for a long time in the January morning, the past and present mixing and swirling within me. I thought of Rachel, her piercings and poems, her doomed infant sister whose name she’d been made to borrow. I thought of Alice, of my mad father, my lost and vanished mother. I thought too of Mitchell and Jane, Robert and Robin, Mina; even of that old biddy Abigail McGillicuddy. Some of them, real or imagined, seemed far away. Others seemed as close as a voice in the next room. But over and above them all was Rae, my impossible daughter, who in some odd sense had been both real and imagined. Rae, the girl I’d loved with the whole of my bruised and battered heart, yet still had not been able to love e
nough...Rae...
In my mind I tried to sing to her those words, that melody I’d known for so many years: Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree top...
But I couldn’t keep it up. That lullaby was finished now, finished forever.
“Do you think she’ll ever come back?” Sherry asked.
“No,” I said, my voice little more than a whisper. “She’ll never come back.”
I felt Sherry’s mittened hand warm and strong in mine. The sun rose in the blue sky. It would not rain today.
About the Author
Christopher Conlon is best known as the editor of the Bram Stoker Award-winning Richard Matheson tribute anthology, He Is Legend. He is the author of two previous novels—the Stoker Award finalist Midnight on Mourn Street, which he recently adapted for the stage, and A Matrix of Angels—as well as two collections of stories and four books of poetry. A former Peace Corps Volunteer, Conlon holds an M.A. in American Literature from the University of Maryland. Visit him online at http://christopherconlon.com.
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Dark Regions Press
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