Jane Was Here

by Sarah Kernochan

  Seth has a hardon again, something that happens so often the fabric of his tight jeans has gone threadbare and faded from the strain.

  If he lived in India, he could be married by now. Even little children get married there. Then he would have someone to fuck whenever he wants—three, four times a day even.

  He presses his penis against the handle of the desk drawer. He has got to get laid. One of these nights he’ll swing by Marly Walczak’s.

  He looks up to see the mulatto kid come through the gate, waving eagerly to Gita and stripping to his swim trunks to get in the pool with her. He’s here every day. Maybe those two should get married.

  “VAMPIRES DON’T EXIST,” says Gita. Collin lies splayed on his back in the dead man’s float Gita has taught him. “But it could be Shaarinen taking the shape of a vampire to scare you. Shaarinen gets his power from fear. He needs it to take different shapes to make evil.”

  She keeps her hand under his body, not touching, just poised there in case he panics. But somehow she removes his fear with the power of Gana, the woman god. That makes Gita the personal enemy of Shaarinen; she goes around evaporating all the fear he has taken the trouble to create.

  “How do we know for sure that he’s Jane?” Collin asks.

  “When I see her, I’ll know.” She tosses aside her long thick black hair, the ends coiling like king snakes in the water. Drops of sweat cling to her moustache. He can’t help but be impressed by the implacable eyes, swooping brows, the fierceness jutting from the soft nascent curves of puberty, like rocks tearing through dough. She thumps her hand on her heart, just north of her budding breasts. “It feels like someone’s cold hand reaching in, right here.”

  “I felt it when she looked at me!” Collin is so excited he starts to sink. Gita’s hand meets his back, lifting his body back to the surface.

  “I have to see her myself.” She adds, “You can’t go around deciding everyone’s Shaarinen. You’re new at this.”

  Collin has trouble keeping up with her religious instruction. The strange names of her gods (Gana, Yenu Krisnu, Hotis) reverberate in his mind as vivid colors: magenta, lime, and gold; not at all like the gray uncertainty of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Their names create pungent flavors in his mouth, like the spices in the Poonchwallas’ kitchen: cardamom, turmeric, mace. Gana, Yenu Krisnu, Hotis.

  Gita has told him the legends and drawn their pictures, but Collin still has difficulty remembering who they are and what they do—except for Hotis, who has two penises where breasts should be and two breasts between his/her legs. Somehow he/she (Hotis is both male and female) and Yenu Krishnu (the Tawny One) are part of Gana the Mother. Only Shaarinen is separate, an outsider.

  It all makes sense when Gita is talking, but as soon as she stops, it goes right out of Collin’s head.

  He wants to bring Gita to the house to see Jane today. Not that he has any doubt Jane is Shaarinen: that cold hand has squeezed his heart not once, but twice.

  The first time was today at breakfast, and the second time was after his father sent him upstairs. Collin put on his clothes to meet Gita, then crept into his dad’s bedroom to swipe some change left on the bureau.

  “Put it back.” Suddenly Jane was behind him.

  The coins were already in his hand when he whirled around. His heart froze; he was in the presence of Shaarinen for sure. He thrust out his chin. “Dad said I could.”

  “Surely you know God’s commandment, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’”

  But Gita had said it was all right: the money was for tithing. Tightening his fist, he tried to push past her.

  Jane stepped to the side, blocking him. “I will give you some of my money instead.” She brought some crumpled dollar bills out of her pocket. “It’s already stolen.”

  “You took it?”

  She nodded shyly. “I had little choice. Therefore let me be the sinner, not you.”

  “A lotta shit over three quarters and a dime,” Collin muttered, but he replaced his dad’s change on the bureau and took the money from her.

  He is justified in hating Jane, he thinks as he and Gita wade to the shallow end of the pool. She’s nothing more than a thief.

  “Stealing is peanuts for Shaarinen,” says Gita. “He’ll commit any crime, ‘specially murder.’”

  She isn’t interested in inspecting Jane just yet; today she has planned for them to bike all the way to the Jewish synagogue in Huxberry Heights. Gita will talk their way inside. (Usually she pretends she’s writing a school paper on religion.) While the rabbi’s back is turned, Collin will take something.

  When they staked out the Catholic church near the mall last week, Collin snuck into the sacristy and stole a set of bronze altar bells. Gita rejoined him a block away after she finished interviewing the priest. She said Gana would be pleased by the offering.

  Their best heist was pedaling up Putman Hill to the big Meltzer estate and creeping onto the property to steal one of the tiki torches lining the path to the pool. Afterwards, they brazenly coasted down the hill with the torch balanced on Collin’s handlebars. Later they lit the wick and, by the light of the propane flame, chanted to Gana until the smoke detector went off in the vacant motel room they were using.

  The mission is going well. They’ll both be rewarded when they’ve presented Gana enough offerings.

  Unless Shaarinen intervenes.

  “There he is!” cries Collin.

  Gita’s eyes follow his pointing finger to the sidewalk across from the motel. Peering through the chain-link fence that surrounds the pool, she sees a skinny, pasty young woman walking down GraynierAvenue.

  “Jane,” whispers Collin. He glances eagerly at Gita. “Do you feel anything?”

  Gita starts to shiver as Jane walks out of sight. Wading out of the pool, Gita wraps herself in one of the motel’s skimpy sandpaper towels. Her teeth are rattling, shoulders trembling.

  “Gita…are you okay?”

  “Shut up. I got a tummy ache is all.” After a long moment she stops shaking. “Let’s get the bikes.”

  “You sure you’re not sick?”

  Ignoring the question, she’s already headed to the parking lot. “We’re gonna follow her.”

  AFTER CRUISING EVERY inch of Graynier on their bikes, with Collin pedaling Seth’s old banana seater, they give up. Jane is nowhere to be found. A day wasted. Back to Plan A: tomorrow they’ll head for Huxberry Heights and the synagogue.

  All the same, Collin feels strong. Gita believes him that Jane is evil, and the hunt for Shaarinen is on. His new friend has the courage of titans. If she’s not afraid, he won’t be either.

  He remembers how Gita helped him overcome his fear of water the first night they met. She led him down the pool steps, wading to the middle. The water came to his neck; the floor fell away steeply into the deep end.

  “In the name of Gana the Mother of Fire, Hotis, and Yenu Krisnu the Tawny One, I baptize you,” she whispered. Grasping the collar of his pajamas, she commanded him to hold his breath and step forward. As his toes met the abyss, she pushed his head under.

  Flailing and thrashing, Collin sucked water, his eyes popping open.

  He had a vision. Suddenly the bright underwater pool lights were gone: he was drowning in dim, murky water. He could see his legs, tangled in the skirts of a long dress he was wearing. One end of the sash around his waist was tied to a heavy object, which plummeted to the bottom as he struggled against its weight.

  With a long bubbling sigh, he gave up, his mind going black. Dying, like in the dream.

  Then he was hauled up to the surface, coughing water and gulping for air. Gita’s face loomed close, blurry except for her fearless, pitiless eyes. “Dawg, you baptized!” she laughed.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Dispirited, Jane trudges along Honeyvale Road. Except for the house on Sycamore, and the empty field she encountered with Brett, she recognizes nothing in Graynier; not a single memory awakes.

  It is like sensing the nearness of rain
. The memories are present all around, but cloaked in vapor, and I extend my palm, waiting for the first drops. I pray God for even the smallest sign—some glimpse, some clue to my past. Without it, I shall be forever a puzzle to myself.

  One drop of rain. Almighty, come to my aid.

  No voice replies; only the half-hearted warbling of birds in the limp trees, and the sudden rage of cicadas.

  The afternoon heat slows her steps; she’s thirsty. Passing a shabby ranch home set near the road, she notices a sliding glass door left open on the sun porch. She draws nearer. The window shades are down; no car parked in the driveway.

  “Hello?” Pushing the screen panel aside, she steps into the house.

  In the kitchen she finds a half-empty carton of pink lemonade in the refrigerator; she opens the lip, drinking deeply. When she is finished, she refills the carton with tap water. She uses the toilet, then wipes her face with a moistened washcloth.

  Back on the road, she passes a backyard body shop…a cottage with a sign offering furniture repair…trees swamped by bittersweet vines…

  She spots a tiny gleam near her feet. Bending down, she peers closer.

  Plucking the brooch from the gravel, she examines it: a wreath, two roses joined, each unfurling petal finely wrought of gold, their stems twisted together to complete the circle.

  Pleasure fills her. This is mine, she knows suddenly.

  When she turns the ornament, the pin arm swings free, bent, its catch broken.

  Suddenly there is no brooch, no Honeyvale Road: all disappears. In the blink of an eye, she finds herself in a different place. Climbing a hill.

  She’s following a low wall built of fieldstones. She must turn her head to glance left or right, her vision framed by a horseshoe shape. I’m wearing a hat, Jane realizes. A bonnet. The slope on her side of the wall is wooded; on the other side, a crowd of sheep observes her progress from a cleared pasture, bleating insistently as if to urge her on.

  She hastens her pace, eyes on the steep rise ahead. The little blue cape about her shoulders snags on the branches of trees. In one hand she holds a book with a black cover.

  The stonewall is her guide. It is familiar; she has mounted this hill many times before. Somewhere at the top lies joy—and terror. Bliss and treachery, both entwined, like the roses on the golden brooch fastened at her throat.

  And then a single word enters her mind. An odd sort of word.

  POSTING JANE’S PHOTO online, the one he surreptitiously snapped with his cell phone, was a whim. Brett had already surfed the missing adult and teen runaway sites, looking for her picture and description, with the usual pleas from family, friends, police.

  Nothing.

  Many of the posts featured playback of the vanished loved one’s favorite songs. He toyed with the idea of inserting the Rolling Stones’ “Lady Jane” on his post, but decided that mentioning her name would be too big a clue. He wanted to receive information without giving out any; to satisfy his curiosity without enabling anyone to find her. In the end he settled on the photo, accompanied by the caption: “Are You Looking For Her?”

  He checks it every morning. Only two cyber-strangers have posted comments: “no but wd like 2 nail her,” “she lookin for me? hey babe write me @” giving a prison address.

  On this particular morning, while Jane is out for a walk, he is startled to see a new comment: “This photo closely resembles a female, 23, 5’5”, gray eyes, dark blond hair, missing 2-1/2 weeks, last seen 7/20 at the Winchester Mall in Deer Run, PA. This young woman is unstable and needs attention. Her parents are anxious to bring her home. Please contact rfancher@fancherpi.com with whatever information you have.”

  His heart thumping, Brett quickly deletes his post. He tries to reassure himself that there was nothing contained in the listing that could lead anyone to her hiding place.

  It’s hardly shocking that she has parents. It’s the word “unstable” that throws him.

  Ten days ago, on the humid night when she rapped on the door, his first intuition had been that she was a mental patient—but that was before he loved her. Unstable? More like mysterious: enigmatic and strange.

  She’s deluded as well.

  “How old are you?” he asked her at breakfast this morning.

  She feigned not to hear, teasing a lump of scrambled eggs with her fork.

  “I’m twenty-eight,” he offered. “You’re younger than me, right?”

  “How can it matter?”

  “Because I think your memory is playing tricks on you,” he says gently. “Jane, Father Petrelli has owned this place over 30 years. You could have lived in Graynier—just not in this particular house.”

  “No!” Fork clattering onto her plate, her hands became fists. “Truly I was born in this house!”

  He held his ground unhappily. “That’s impossible.”

  “It is not impossible if…” She hesitated, regarding him cautiously. “If I lived here earlier than Father Petrelli.”

  “But you can’t be more than thirty.” With her naïvely earnest gaze, she looked all of 12.

  “Why not? Perhaps I’m 50,” she mused. “Or 150.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Why do I remember playing the seraphine?” Her voice was grave. “It’s possible I was born a very long time ago.”

  Don’t snicker. “You’d have to be, like, immortal.”

  She grew cool at his condescension. “Our souls are immortal. You may indulge me, at least, on this point.”

  Brett found himself on unexpectedly shifting ground here. He believed in the safety of numbers, the digital universe, not this woo-woo stuff. On the other hand…why not indulge her, her “memories,” her illogical claims? Accept them on faith, fall into step, and help her in her weird quest.

  How better to get inside Jane?

  He agreed to take her to the town’s Registry of Deeds tomorrow, where they could research the house’s prior occupants, going all the way back to the age of the seraphine. Then she left for her walk.

  Now he hears her calling his name, her sneakers drumming on the stairs as she rushes up to his garret. Logging off his computer, he checks his appearance in the screen’s reflection, rakes his sweaty hair back.

  She bursts in, flushed and out of breath. “I’ve had an other memory!”

  “Great. What?”

  “I must find a wall!”

  He’s bemused. “Any wall?”

  “One made of stone. It climbs up a hill. I shall recognize it when I see it. And I have a word! I heard it here—” she presses her hands to her temples, “—and very clearly, too.”

  “What did you hear?”

  She catches her breath. “Quirk.”

  “Just…’quirk’?”

  “Nothing more. Yet—truly it means something. I prayed for a clue, and now I have two! A rock wall. And quirk.”

  Brett has a word, too; it weighs on his mind. Unstable.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Hoyt brandishes a handful of remotes, testing the cable TV and DVD player in the Meltzer’s entertainment room, the windows’ motorized curtains, the sliding panel that reveals the screen. All working now.

  In the dining room, one of the track bulbs is out. To change it, Hoyt climbs up on one of the antique dining chairs. His boot goes through the rush seat, and he tumbles cursing to the floor, his leg stuck in the chair. When he manages to kick the thing off, it breaks into kindling. He stows the pieces in the truck bed next to the rubber trashcan, where another trapped skunk thumps around inside.

  His neck hurts like hell, worse than ever since the accident. Time for a drink. Red or white?

  Returning to the house, he proceeds to the wine cellar, where he selects a bottle of Montrachet. Jack Meltzer, being an oenophile, thinks of this wine collection as the jewel of all his worldly effects, and Hoyt has been chipping away at it all winter. A while ago Hoyt decided there were lower, unexplored depths to which he had not yet sunk. Ineptitude and kickbacks were not enough: the time h
ad come for blatant theft.

  Reclining on a pool chaise as he drinks, he admires his week’s work. The pool is crystal clear; the grass is on the mend, the underground sprinklers coaxing forth green shoots amid the dead brown. The one disappointment is the Montrachet, which fails to take the edge off his whiplash, now a blazing collar of pain. Only straight liquor will do. After he drops the wrecked chair off for repair, he’ll stop at the package store. Calling Pete away from the Canada geese, he heads back to his truck.

  At Iacovucci’s Furniture Repair on Honeyvale, Mr. Iacovucci strips the grass away from the frame to examine it more closely. “I can refit the joints okay, but the seat’s made of bulrush. I gotta order that. It won’t match the other chairs, ‘cause they’re pretty old and the rush is new. Come back in ten days.”

  The same day the Metzgers copter in, Hoyt thinks, getting back in his truck. He’s cutting it close.

  Driving through town, he spots two kids pushing their bikes up a long hill on their way from Huxberry Heights. They look spent. He pulls over.

  “Want a ride?” he asks. “You can stow the bikes in back.”

  The girl looks at the boy. Hoyt has seen her in the pool at the Poonchwallas’ motel, when he goes by to score weed off one of the welfare families living there. The boy has an exotic look: tawny skin, wide nose, a cloud of light brown curls—perhaps some blend of Hispanic, Caucasian, and African, though his limp, recessive manner could mean Asian (or possibly just nerd) blood. He seems to be in love with the older girl; he never takes his eyes off her.

  The girl nods her assent. Hoyt piles the bikes next to Pete and the skunk pail. The kids climb into the cab.

  Hoyt pulls back onto the road. “Am I leaving you guys at the motel?”

  “Yes, thank you,” says the girl.

  “You’re Seth’s sister, right? I don’t know your name.”

  “Gita.”

  He nods toward the boy. “Who’s your groupie?”