The beads rattled.
“Hey, Stace, what do you think of this?” She pointed at the sketch without looking up.
“Looks fine to me. What’s it supposed to be?”
She whirled and backed up, blinking rapidly as Rowan leaned over the table to get a closer look.
“You want to put elephants in the window?” He turned his head. “In a flower store?”
Caroline glanced at the doorway and saw Stacey watching her, the beads distorting most of her face save for the resentment that narrowed her eyes and set her chin. Then she was gone as the bells jangled, and Rowan shifted to lean a shoulder against the wall.
“I’m sorry,” he said, hands deep in his pockets. “I always seem to be scaring you or something.”
She nodded. She swallowed. She kicked herself without moving and took a deep breath. “It’s all right. It’s the weather, that’s all.”
“Well, look,” he said. “I mean, if you don’t mind, you were so good with those flowers and all, would you like to have lunch with me?” He looked startled. “To thank you, I mean,” he added quickly. “For what you did.”
Crazy, she thought; Jesus, what —
And she told herself to shut up. All the crying was over; she had done that yesterday, and who cared if he had someone else already. This, she decided, would be close to perfect. A friendly lunch. A new friend. No hassles, no games, because he was already taken.
“I . . .” She nodded. “Sure. Yes, I’d like that very much.”
He nodded back. “Okay. Fine.” Pushed away from the wall. “At the Cove? Is that all right? Unless you’d rather go to the Inn. I mean, if you’d prefer —”
“The Cove is fine,” she assured him before his babbling made her laugh and ruin it all. “I get lunch at one.”
“Okay.” He backed through the beads. “Okay. One.”
And immediately he was gone, Stacey came in, her expression sullen though her lips worked at grinning. “Got a date, huh?”
Several seconds passed before Caroline realized that it was true. A date. The first in three years.
“I’ll be damned,” she said, more to herself than the girl. “Son of a bitch.”
“Well,” Stacey said as she walked away, “at least you’re happy.”
Caroline debated following her and shaking her until all that smothering self-pity was gone, then remembered her own bath of the day before. Perhaps it would be best just to leave her alone. She’s a big girl. When she needs to talk again, she will.
And the rest of the morning dragged, and sped by too fast, and by the time it was one o’clock, Stacey back from her own break, Caroline was ready to take her car and head for Vermont. She didn’t want to do this. It was wrong. For several hours she had tried to tell herself that it was precisely what she needed, and at the end of that time she ordered herself to realize that the reason the detective attracted her was because he looked almost like Harry.
Almost.
The height, the leanness, the dance and quiver of the curls that refused obedience to a comb. The awkwardness with her. Eight married years, and Harry had never been able to shed his image of adolescence.
But there was, in Rowan’s face, far more experience, and his voice was too deep, his hands too large, the way he wore his clothes nothing at all like Harry Edlin.
“You’re gonna be late,” Stacey warned, still resentful, her face more pale in the grey light from the window. Then, as if contrite, held out her red umbrella. “You better take this or you’ll catch pneumonia.”
Caroline smiled her thanks, and in the lee of the recessed front door, she held up the umbrella and watched the rain strike the pavement, fill muddy puddles in the street, begin to slant as the wind strengthened and slapped raincoats against calves and sent a golf cap rolling into the gutter.
I will be cheerful, she vowed as she swung left and headed down to Chancellor Avenue; I will be witty, I will be interested, I will explain what I do and he will be fascinated.
And heat covered her cheeks when she wondered, for a moment, if he would take her to bed.
The Mariner was red brick and white columns, a low building on the corner, diagonally across from the police station. On the right was the Lounge, a darkwood and quiet place, no children allowed and no toleration for drunks; on the left was the Cove, a larger, lighter, more bustling place, true to its name by the decor that it boasted without seeming at all forced.
Many of the center tables were still occupied when she arrived, but against the lefthand wall were a few empty booths, and the hostess took her to one without comment, just a smile, and left a single-page menu behind. Caroline was mildly surprised that Rowan hadn’t made a reservation, or at least left his name, but she welcomed the time alone to get hold of her nervousness.
Control, she thought; control.
She ordered a drink, and when it came drank half of it before she ordered herself to stop.
She read the menu three times and nibbled on the bread and rolls left in a basket.
A waitress asked for her order; she told her she was waiting for someone, could she please have another cocktail?
Thirty minutes later she didn’t know whether she ought to be furious or crushed. It was obvious he wasn’t coming. Though she suspected he had been detained on some sort of police business, it was no excuse for at least not calling.
Harry wouldn’t have forgotten, no matter how busy he was.
Her eyes closed then, so tightly she saw not dark but whorls of orange, red, shifting islands of blues that sparked as she scolded herself. Control; she was losing control and she didn’t know why, and she wished to hell Harry would just leave her alone and wished he was with her and wished Glenn had called and wished she knew what was happening to her.
The grief wasn’t over.
The missing had just begun.
Fumbling in her purse for a bill. Dropping it on the table as she stumbled out of the booth. Composed herself. Swallowed. Strode from the Cove and into the light that made the afternoon seem too much like night.
Temptation turned her toward the police station and let her take a quick step, but she lashed it immediately behind her as she snapped up the red umbrella and hurried across the street, strode up the sidewalk past the shops and offices, forcing her gaze to those that were working on their facades, changing the common mansard roof lines to individual ones, old fashioned ones. The street looked like the aftermath of some monstrous devastation, the tearing down and the rebuilding, the pedestrians picking their way over and through brackish puddles, around clumps of tarmac and cement and stacks of paving stones covered with tarpaulin that stirred with the wind.
And once in the florist shop, umbrella furled and dripping, she realized she was alone.
“Stacey?”
No one in back. Adelle still hadn’t returned.
“Damnit, Stacey!”
There was a note on the register, hastily scrawled, taped to the top.
Caroline
I found him! He’s going to help, I know he will. Nick won’t leave now. See you tomorrow.
“Idiot,” she muttered, and crushed the note into a ball she threw across the shop. A great way to end the day. Nothing was going to get done now. Just as she got to work, sure as hell some dope was going to come in and take twenty minutes to decide what he wanted, fuss over the price like an old man, and be replaced by someone else.
At the worktable she buried the fingers of one hand into her hair. Had she ever been like that about Harry? Had she ever been so consumed by him that the rest of the world had gone to seed without her even noticing?
The answer came before the question was done: of course; and she still was, despite all her efforts to settle his memory in place.
A tear she flicked angrily away.
Another that fell onto a note card before she could catch it.
Maybe Stacey wasn’t all that far off the mark. Maybe she could use some spiritual guidance herself, someone to talk to about the p
rocess of getting on with it, of leaving the dead behind without killing herself with guilt.
The harness bells jangled.
“Shit.”
But the smile was there as the rest of the day went as predicted, and by the time she locked up a six, her cheeks were sore, her stomach was filled with acid, and her anger toward Rowan had multiplied every minute he didn’t call to apologize or explain.
The house was dark.
She was alone. Standing in the foyer, feeling the weight of the rooms above her. Swallowing so hard her jaw cracked before she began weeping, and slowly dropped to her knees, palms over her eyes while the neighbors came home, too, full of laughter and shouting.
She spun the dial, searching for the wind.
“Damn, where are you?” she said, almost yelling. And the preacher finally said, “Lay on your hands and feel the power, feel the dream.”
On Tuesday, Stacey didn’t show at all and didn’t call, and Caroline raged mindlessly through the shop, snatching up figurines and planters as though she was going to smash them, putting them back with great effort and forcing her fingers to release them. Then she slumped against the counter, and Adelle clucked over her, demanding to know what she’d been drinking, or smoking. When she protested without heat, the woman clamped an arm around her shoulder and said, “Darling, Corbin always says that a woman who lets herself go like you have is either a secret drinker, an addict, or a nympho.”
Caroline laughed loudly, only just able to control herself when she saw the brief frightened look on Adelle’s face. Then she said with a wail, “It’s Harry,” and began crying without caring, and they spent over an hour in the back room, crying together, hiccuping, crying again, while she said over and over, “1 miss him, I miss him, I don’t want to but I want him back, I want it the way it was, why can’t it be the way it was?”
Over.
And over.
Among the flowers in the vases, the flowers on the table, the flowers in the window that flared at the dying sun and kept on dying.
That night she had the dream, and she saw her husband’s face as he waited for her on the hilltop, smiling and nodding as she begged him to come home.
“I’m going to take some time off,” she announced Wednesday afternoon, her voice as grey as the clouds settling over the village.
Adelle didn’t argue, or offer a simple token protest. “Whatever you think is best, dear.” And smiled around her cigarette, through the smoke, and winked.
Caroline nodded. “You don’t get it, but I have to, Adelle. I’m cracking up, I’m losing control. I have to get it back or I’m going to go nuts.”
And that night she called Glenn, and hung up without a word when a woman answered the telephone.
She stood then in the kitchen, the wooded slope reflecting the sun and slanting shadows, and she turned away from the wall to look at the radio and shake her head. If you’d only give an address, she thought, I could write to you or something, or call maybe, or something.
And massaged her forehead with the tips of her fingers, as hard as she could, trying to force a headache, a burning, anything to drive off the feeling that a radio preacher could help her when she couldn’t even help herself.
It was cowardly.
It was Glenn.
If she hadn’t met him, hadn’t seen him, Harry wouldn’t have been resurrected and she would have carried on the way she had been, making progress, settling debts, finally ridding him of the blame she’d nailed to his leaving.
And when the telephone rang, she nearly screamed.
It rang again.
She lay a hand on the flat of her chest and waited for calm.
It rang.
She picked up the receiver and heard Stacey say, “Caroline, oh god, help me,” before the line went dead.
And the radio sputtered on.
It was too far to run.
The blocks in Oxrun were easily twice as long as any she’d seen in any city, and so she scrambled into her car and backed out of the driveway, paused for a moment to wonder if she was overreacting, then sped east on Thorn Road.
Deliberately not speculating.
Taking slow and deep breaths to maintain her composure as she wheeled around the second corner and headed up Raglin. Slowing only when a gang of kids in baseball uniforms streamed across the road, waving bats and empty gloves, streaking along the sidewalk toward the park.
At Woodland she swung right, and began to brake. A ball game between kids too young to have uniforms crowded the center of the street, giving way reluctantly, almost forcing her to use the horn.
Caroline, help me
And as she bumped over the curb into a graveled driveway, she hoped the girl hadn’t done anything stupid.
She didn’t think so.
Stacey hadn’t sounded worried; she’d sounded scared to death.
The door stuck.
Caroline punched it, it opened, and she nearly fell in her haste to get out of the car.
The house was small, overgrown with rambling ivy and evergreen shrubs that clawed toward the windows. The front door was unlocked, and she slammed in, and halted.
Silence.
The empty silence of a house that hadn’t been lived in for years.
“Stace?”
The living room was to her left, a staircase to her right, and she glanced up toward the second floor as she made her way to the back. Her hands tapped her legs, her upper lip was trapped between her teeth.
“Stacey, it’s Caroline!”
No echoes.
The silence.
And under it, as she stepped into the kitchen, a thrumming, faint and heavy, like a furnace gasping to work, or a wind working its patient way to a howl.
The kitchen table was littered with dishes dark with encrusted food. The faucet dripped in the sink. The back door was closed, the ivory curtains drawn and giving the room little light.
On the wall to her right, a dirt-streaked telephone — the receiver dangling, and swinging slowly, knocking lightly against the oven.
She put a hand over her mouth and turned around, undecided, until she thought she heard a footstep upstairs, the creak of a floorboard.
Oh god, suppose she’s been murdered, she thought, suddenly cold, her mouth abruptly dry and the urge to cough so strong she had to press her palm against her lips; suppose the guy’s still up there. Oh Jesus oh my god what the hell am I going to do?
As quietly as she could she made her way back to the stairs, looking up, squinting, listening so hard the back of her neck began to ache. Grabbing the newel post and feeling the grit, wondering how the hell two women could live like this, in such filth? It wasn’t like Stacey, and it definitely wasn’t like Marion, the undisputed queen of elbow grease, scrub brush, and hot-water pail.
Caroline
She blinked rapidly — did she hear it, her name, or was it just an echo of the call?
Behind her, muffled, the sound of the ball game.
Above her, muffled, the floorboard creaked again.
Oh Stace, she thought, and took the first step up, reaching into her skirt pocket as she did and pulling out her car keys, which she arranged between the fingers of her fist. She felt stupid, but it was the only thing she could think of, and if it worked . . . if there was something for it to work against . . .
Stop, she told herself; stop right now and call Glenn, or Nick.
There were only three rooms on the second floor: the first was Marion’s, the door open, no one inside; the second was the bathroom, the door open, no one there.
The third room was open as well, and Caroline pressed against the wall as she moved toward it.
The clouds thickened; the light dimmed.
And she could hear now the faint wind she’d heard before, pulsing, sighing, and abruptly dying the moment she stepped in the room and saw Stacey sprawled on the bed. She was naked, she was white, and her eyes stared at the ceiling, her mouth open in a hard smile.
There was no one e
lse in the bedroom.
Dark blue draperies covered the only window. Static hissed from a radio on the nightstand.
“Stacey?” she whispered, and moved to the foot of the bed. “Stacey, it’s me.”
Then she saw the flattened breasts, the flat stomach, the rough red of her soles, and the stains on the sheets crumpled around the girl. It wasn’t blood. It was dirt, and dried sweat, and the yellow of dried urine.
A whisper: “Stacey?”
The eyelids fluttered, cracked lips quivered, and she rushed around to kneel beside her, grabbing her hand to chafe the wrist.
“Stacey, hold on, I’ll get a doctor.”
The hand grabbed her as she started to rise.
The mouth opened.
A long weak sigh: “Won’t . . . leave . . . me.”
“I won’t, I won’t.” She searched the room for something, she didn’t know what, and whimpered when the hand tightened.
Longer, and weaker: “Nick.”
And the eyes closed, the mouth closed, and a sudden vile stench exploded into the room.
Caroline gagged and reeled, shaking the hand away, staggering to her feet and backing toward the door as Stacey’s body rippled from neck to knee, the breasts sagging further, the stomach sinking more, her ribs stark and her hipbones sharp and her face abruptly old while her hair turned white and feathered to the floor.
Caroline screamed. Just once.
And the radio light blinked on, and the preacher said, “Feel the power, daughter,” before the radio exploded.
There was little after that she could make sense of. A telephone call filled with sobbing; a running from the house to the yard where the boys playing ball watched her and moved away; red and blue lights; feet on the grass; doors slamming and brakes shrieking and hands that picked her up and hands that laid her down and faces that leaned over her and faces that frowned and voices that asked questions and voices that babbled and a voice that said, “You’re home now, Caroline, are you sure you want to be alone?”
The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant Volume 3: Dialing the Wind (Neccon Classic Horror) Page 5
