Black Out: A Novel

by Lisa Unger

  When I come back to myself sitting on the edge of my bed, my daughter sleeping down the hall, an hour has passed. I feel shaken and weak. I’m not sure I want to remember the things I have forgotten. But I know that the memories will come now, unbidden, the dead rising.

  26

  In music a fugue is a movement in which different voices combine to state or develop a single theme. These voices mingle and weave together, each tone complementing the other, creating a multilayered but unified part of the composition. In psychology the term refers to a dissociative state characterized by a sudden departure from one’s life, bouts of amnesia or confusion regarding one’s identity, significant distress, generally the result of a major emotional or physical trauma. I have no musical ability whatsoever, but I’m painfully familiar with fugue. Or so I’m told.

  Yet this is not a fugue, this most recent flight from my life. For the first time maybe, I am sure of who I am and what I must do. This has been a purposeful escape to protect my daughter from mistakes that I have made, to protect her from the woman I have been. If I can’t do that, then she’s better off without me.

  The boat is pitching horribly now, and I cling to the rail on the wall as I make my way back to my cabin. The wind is wailing, and I think of Dax on his little boat and wonder how he is faring in the big waters and if he’ll survive, if he’ll come back for me. My stomach is in full mutiny, and I hold back vomit as I move through the door, pull it closed behind me, and resume my crouch in the small triangle of space that will be created when the door swings open. I listen to the wind and the churning water.

  It isn’t long before I hear the thrum of a powerful boat engine, then footfalls on the deck above me. I take the gun from my waist and am comforted by its heft. I am aware of a tremendous sense of relief, something akin to the euphoria that sweeps over me when a migraine has passed, the wonderful lightness that follows the cessation of pain. It feels good to be Ophelia again, to face the things that Annie never could. My memories have come back to me; I remember it all. I am not proud, but I am whole, at last.

  It was Gray who gave me the name Annie Fowler. It was someone from his company who created the documents I needed—driver’s license, passport, Social Security card—to move about the world as someone else. But I made Annie what Ophelia always wanted to be—a wife and mother with a big house and a beautiful child, a husband who cherished her—someone totally different from who her mother had been. Annie had a past unmarred by shame and regret; she was not haunted by the things she had done or the things that had been done to her. I became Annie—rich and pampered, dependent on Gray for strength, dependent on Victory for a feeling of purpose. Like everyone else in her life, I abandoned Ophelia, left her to die in a fiery blaze.

  As the heavy footfalls draw closer, I am grateful that Ophelia has returned. She is so many things that Annie was not. She is temperamental where Annie was cool. She is angry where Annie was numb. And unlike Annie, the loving wife and doting mother, princess of suburbia, Ophelia March is a stone-cold killer.

  They’re kicking open doors now; there’s more than one man on this boat, and they’re searching the cabins one by one. I don’t know how many men or how many cabins they have to go before they get to mine. But I’m ready.

  When they kick my door open and enter the room, I wait for the door to swing back before opening fire. There are two men, both wearing black paramilitary gear—mask, vests, boots. I get one of them in the shoulder, and he issues a terrible scream. The other one takes a round in the vest and is knocked back hard against the wall with a groan. I break from the room but am surprised in the hallway by two more men. They disarm me quickly and bind my arms, slip a heavy hood over my head. It happens so fast I’m in darkness before I even know what hit me. I hear a dull thud, then see a flash of white. Before I lose consciousness, I have enough time to wonder if there’s more to what is happening here than I have imagined. I see my daughter’s face, then nothing.

  It’s not terribly hard to take a life. Or anyway, not as hard as you’d imagine. There are those who would tell you I was not in my right mind, that I had dissociated from reality, from myself, on the night I made this discovery. But I’m not so sure. In my memories I am quite willing. Of course, all I did was leave the gate open. But that was enough, wasn’t it?

  I don’t remember feeling anything, less than a week later after the night out in the woods, as I walked the drive on the horse farm to open that gate. I was basically sleepwalking.

  Marlowe told me to wait until the house was quiet, to get to the gate before midnight. I wasn’t afraid of the long road or the errand before me. And as I let the gate swing open before I walked back to the stable, where I was supposed to meet Marlowe, I didn’t feel any anticipation or excitement or dread—I just felt empty. Even when a black sedan passed me with its lights off, slow and deadly like a shark through dark water, I observed it with detachment.

  All the lights in and around the house were off, and a heavy quiet blanketed the night; even my soft footfalls seemed to echo. In the stable the horses were restless in their stalls again. I heard them shuffling, exhaling loud breaths from their nostrils. But Marlowe was nowhere in sight. The black sedan, a Lincoln I recognized as belonging to one of the protesters, was parked to the side of the barn, its engine clicking as it cooled.

  Something about that sound brought me into the reality of what we were about to do. I felt as though I’d been startled awake. That’s when I noticed a flickering orange glow in the windows that had been dark just moments before. The scent of burning wood began to fill the air. I started running toward the house, my legs feeling impossibly slow and heavy, the house seeming so far away. As I burst through the door, the air was already thick with smoke.

  “Mom!” I yelled, grabbing the banister and racing up the stairs. I covered my mouth and nose with my arm, but the smoke was insidious, burning my eyes, clawing at the back of my throat. By the time I got to the top landing, I was coughing and light-headed.

  I found my mother alone in her bed, passed out cold, oblivious to the fire raging through the house. I don’t know what I thought would happen to her in all this, but I couldn’t leave her to die. I shook her but couldn’t rouse her. Finally I dragged her until she stumbled from the bed, leaning her full weight on me.

  “What’s happening?” she muttered.

  “There’s a fire!” I yelled, struggling to get to the door. “Where’s Frank?”

  But she didn’t seem to hear. “Ophelia,” she slurred, “let me sleep.”

  I dragged her into the hall, where through the smoke I saw two figures on the staircase, one long and lean, the other smaller by far but holding a gun. The taller was Frank, halfway up the stairs, probably headed up to get my mother. Where he’d been, I had no idea. But he’d stopped and turned to face the figure behind him. As I moved closer, I recognized. There was a wild look to Janet Parker, desperate and so, so sad. She doesn’t care what happens to her, I thought. Her whole body was rigid, as though it took the strength of all her muscles to hold that gun steady.

  “You’re making a mistake, ma’am,” Frank said soothingly. He had one hand lifted as if to deflect the shot. His eyes fell on us.

  The scene seemed to sober my mother a bit. “What’s happening?” she said, groggy and confused. “Frank, what’s going on?”

  “You let my wife and her daughter leave the house,” he said to Janet Parker. “They’re innocent here.”

  I heard a crash come from behind us, and the shattering of glass. My mother let go a little scream.

  “Let them leave,” Frank said again. “They’ve got nothing to do with any of this.”

  Janet Parker nodded at us, barely seeing us, and I grabbed my mother’s arm, dragged her toward the staircase.

  “What are you doing?” my mother yelled as we moved past Frank down the stairs. My mother reached for Frank, and he clasped her to him, then pushed her away.

  “Go,” he told her.

  I saw th
en that they truly loved each other, and it shocked me. I’d seen them as these sick, damaged people who had formed an insane union. It never occurred to me that they’d actually cared for each other.

  “The only peace I had was knowing you’d burn in hell for what you done!” Janet Parker yelled when we reached the bottom of the stairs. These were almost exactly the words she’d said at the trailer park.

  “I didn’t kill your child, ma’am. I’ve never killed anyone. I swear it.” He sounded so sincere I almost believed him.

  “Frank!” my mother shouted as I dragged her out the door and away from the house. I could see the flames coming out of the roof now, and as we watched, my bedroom window blew out, raining glass onto the ground below. I stood staring, disbelieving my own eyes. The house was burning. Where was Marlowe?

  My mother broke away from me then and ran. I chased after her, but she moved back through the front door before I could stop her. I heard her screaming, a terrible howl of protest, and I came up behind her just in time to see Frank’s chest exploding as Janet Parker shot him dead center. He spun and seemed to pause in midstride, as though he’d decided to walk away from her but changed his mind. Then he fell flat and hard onto the stairs and slid down like a plank.

  I looked up at Janet Parker, and for the first time I saw her smile. Then she turned the barrel and stuck the gun into her own mouth and pulled the trigger. I saw an awful spray of red.

  My mother was wailing as I pulled her away from Frank’s body, and as we moved through the door, two more windows burst upstairs. She threw herself to the ground outside and wept as the fire raged. I stood beside her staring. The world seemed to lose all its sound, the ground was gone from beneath my feet and I was spinning. Regret and fear cut a valley through me. What did we do? Oh, my God, what did we do? The things I’d seen had changed something within me, like one bright red sock in a white wash. Everything in my world was a different color now.

  I saw him then, standing beside the barn, just another shadow in the darkness, licked by the orange light of the flames. He might have been laughing, he might have been crying. I don’t know—I couldn’t see his face. That was the thing about Marlowe, you could never see his face. I walked to him as if he’d called me. He’d cast and directed us all; we’d each played our roles for him perfectly. That was his gift.

  I got into the passenger side of the Lincoln and watched him climb behind the wheel. He looked at me as he started the ignition, didn’t say a word as we started down the long, dark drive. My mother didn’t even raise her head from the ground. She never noticed I’d gone.

  “Are you okay?” It’s Gray standing in our doorway.

  I am sitting on the edge of our bed in the dark, staring at the wall as though my memories are playing on a screen there.

  “I’m fine,” I tell him. “Just tired.”

  I don’t want to share my memories with him; I’m not sure why.

  “Look,” he says, “we’re going to find out what’s happening and put an end to it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to go see Harrison, find out what he wants, and give it to him.”

  He has come to sit beside me and is holding my hands in his. I’m surprised by what he’s saying. It sounds like a desperate move. It’s not like him. “Always operate from a position of strength”—that has been his motto as long as I’ve known him. It sounds to me now as if he’s waving a white flag.

  “Whoever came to see your father, whoever was on the beach, whatever happened to your psychiatrist—these are unknowns. Maybe you were right, maybe it’s all part of the same problem. I don’t know. But Harrison is a threat we can deal with. Buy him off, he goes away. Who knows? Maybe everything else goes away, too.”

  I feel a glimmer of hope, that maybe we just have to write a check and all of this disappears. I can go back to being Annie Powers and Ophelia can slip back into the darkness where she belongs. Maybe it’s really that easy.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “I’ll be home soon,” he says, kissing me softly on the mouth. I reach for him, pull him to me, and hold on tight. He leaves me, and I listen to him on the stairs and then watch as his car pulls from the drive. I get up quickly and grab my keys.

  “I’m going to run out for a second,” I tell Esperanza as I pass by the family room on my way to the garage. “Gray’s gone, too.”

  “It’s late,” she says.

  “I won’t be long,” I say. “Victory’s sleeping.”

  I don’t hear what she says as I leave. At the end of our street, I just catch a glimpse of Gray’s taillights as he makes a left. I’m following him. I don’t know why.

  27

  “He was gone most of the time,” Gray said of his father. “And when he was home, he was this brooding presence. Sullen, staring at the television or angry at my mother for something she’d bought or had done to the house while he was gone. I hovered around him, wanting and fearing his attention. Occasionally I’d get these quick pats on the back or we’d try to play catch or build a tree house, something that fathers and sons might do together. But it was never quite right. We always walked away feeling like we’d failed at something indefinable. We just couldn’t connect, not really. Not ever.”

  He used to spend time talking to me like this, even when he thought I might not be able to hear him or that I didn’t care. He’d sit in my room at the psychiatric hospital in New Jersey where he’d admitted me as Annie Fowler and talk. I’d stare off into space, not responding. I wasn’t exactly catatonic, but I’d sort of lost my will to exist. I didn’t speak, barely ate, just stared at the window in my room watching the leaves fall from the trees, the clouds drift past. I didn’t know why he’d talk to me, a stranger, like this. What does he want from me? Why doesn’t he just leave me here?

  “My mother was just so damned sad, all the time. She was clinically depressed, I realize now. But then, she was unsupported, didn’t even know she needed treatment. She never recovered from the loss of her daughter, my sister who I never knew. I suppose my father never recovered, either. Maybe that’s what happens to you when you’re born to parents who’ve lost a child. You just never fit somehow.”

  He’d talk, sometimes for hours, as though he’d been holding it in all his life, waiting for some silence where he could safely release the words. Maybe, in a way, I was his first safe place, someone in no position to judge him for his sins and loss of faith.

  “After high school I joined the navy. Everyone was pleased, proud. But I just wanted to get away from them. It seemed like the right thing to do. It was what my father did. I had no idea what I was doing, not really. Maybe I’m more like my mother than my father. I wasn’t cut out for the things that lay ahead.”

  I found myself listening even though, during that time, I hated him. He was six feet of muscles and hard places, scars and dark looks. I found him ugly, too harsh around the eyes and mouth. He smelled strongly of Ivory soap and sometimes alcohol. I couldn’t decide whether he was the person who’d rescued me or destroyed me. He’d killed Marlowe, the first person I’d ever loved. He’d saved me from a killer, brought me to this hospital, and stayed with me, came every day with books and magazines, candy and little gifts that sat in an untouched pile in the closet by the bathroom.

  He told me how a few years after the First Gulf War he was honorably discharged from the Navy SEALs. He left sick with rage and disillusionment with the military and the government. He was angry at his father for pushing him into a career he was never sure he wanted, angry at himself for not knowing any other way to live. He drifted from New York to Florida, drinking too much, doing some odd private-investigator work here and there.

  “I’d done and seen some truly heinous things,” he told me. “They didn’t seem to have any meaning or purpose. Nothing good ever came from the bad, not that I could see. It was making me sick back then. I didn’t know what I was going to do with the rest of my life, how long I could carry all the baggage I
had.”

  I cooperated with my admittance to the hospital and with my name change because I knew I didn’t have any choice. It was that or prison. The truth is, I didn’t have anywhere else to go; I knew that neither of my parents would help me. But more than that, I was eager to be rid of Ophelia and the things she’d done—what I could remember, anyway. Gray and I were alike in that respect, coming to terms with past deeds that seemed right at the time but under the glare of reality revealed themselves as dead wrong.

  “When I found you, I thought maybe you were the one who makes all the wrong things right,” he said one night about a month after I’d been in the hospital. “I thought, if I can do right by her, maybe it gives meaning to everything else.”

  “That’s bullshit,” I said, finally answering him. I didn’t want to be his penance. I didn’t want to be the one who made things right for him. “That’s not the way life works. There’s no balance sheet.”

  “No?” he said, sitting up in the chair where he’d been slouching. “Then how do we move on from our mistakes?”

  “We don’t get to move on,” I said, resting my eyes on him for the first time.

  He leaned his head back and gave a mirthless laugh. “So we just languish in regret until we die?”

  “Maybe that’s what we deserve,” I said, turning away from him again.

  He let a beat pass. Then, “I hope you’re wrong.”

  Tonight I stay far enough away from Gray’s car that he can’t see me but close enough not to lose him. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Someone like Gray instinctively knows when he’s being tailed. Maybe that’s because he’s usually doing the tailing. Takes one to know one. And, of course, if he sees my car in the rearview mirror, he’ll know right away that it’s me. I’m not sure how I’ll explain myself, since I have no idea what I’m doing.

  He’s moving fast, crossing the causeway and pulling on to the highway. He’s not stopping at the police station. He’s headed into the city, which seems odd. I never thought to ask him how he knows where Harrison lives. He has his methods.