The Society of S

by Hubbard, Susan

  While we waited for the elevator, my mother shifted her weight from foot to foot. She pushed her hair back from her forehead and made a funny noise (half cough, half imitation of the sound made by a surprised cat) in her throat. She hadn’t been nervous around me before. She made me nervous. I lifted my hair from my neck and moved from side to side.

  The elevator arrived empty. It had glass walls, and as it rose, the city of Sarasota emerged and shrank across the bay.

  “We can go back down,” I said. “We don’t even have to leave the elevator.”

  “Yes, we do.” She sounded as curt as when she’d done her Mary Ellis Root imitation.

  The elevator doors opened, and we walked down an open corridor — doors on the left, iron guardrails on the right. The wall had no windows. I could make out the roof of our truck far below, parked in a visitor’s space.

  The door of unit 1235 was painted white and had a peephole, like all the others.

  My mother rang the bell. We waited. She rang it again.

  Either no one was home, or the occupants of 1235 didn’t want company.

  “Now what?” Mãe said. I didn’t have the gumption to bang on the door.

  We retreated to the elevator. I felt deflated, but not surprised. How likely was it that we’d find him, based on hunches and lies?

  As we rode down, we didn’t look at each other. I watched the ground rising to meet us — and that’s when I saw her: a short, obese woman, dressed in black. She walked slowly across the parking lot, carrying a paper bag in both hands. No one else on earth waddled as she did. The sun made her greasy hair glisten.

  My mother saw her, too. She said, “When did I ever think I’d be glad to see Mary Ellis again.” She didn’t sound as surprised as I might have expected. “I must have conjured her when I imitated her voice.”

  “What will we do?” I asked.

  Mãe pushed the button for the fourth floor. The elevator had just slid past the sixth. When the car stopped at four, I followed her out. We stood for a moment, facing a tattered notice for ballroom dancing classes taped to the elevator doors. Digital numbers above the doors marked the elevator’s descent. It hit one, paused, and began to rise again.

  She said, “This should be interesting.”

  What will Root do when she sees us? I wondered. I’d spent my childhood being taught the importance of compassion. But for her I felt nothing but contempt, and I knew it was mutual.

  My jaw tightened, my back tensed. “Is she one of us?” I asked my mother.

  “Who knows what she is.” Mãe’s lips pressed together tightly.

  Then the elevator stopped at our floor. The doors slid open, and we stepped inside.

  Mãe moved behind me to block any exit. She said, “Imagine meeting you here.”

  Root clutched her paper bag. She didn’t look any older, only greasier. Did she ever wash that dress? But something about her had changed, I noticed at once: she’d trimmed back the three hairs that grew on her chin. They were less than an inch long now, mere bristles compared to their former state.

  Neither my mother nor I knew what to say, so we said childish things, obvious things.

  “Surprise!” I said.

  “Look what the cat dragged in.” Mãe folded her arms.

  I ended with, “Small world, isn’t it?”

  Root’s eyes moved from my mother’s face to mine. Her pupils seemed dark and deep as wells. “Yes,” she said, speaking directly to me. “It’s a small, small world. We expected you yesterday.”

  When Root unlocked the door of 1235, a familiar metallic odor floated out to greet us. The smell of the night kitchen in Saratoga Springs, I thought. Whatever stuff she’d brewed in the basement there was being made here.

  The condominium itself was modern and minimalist — white carpets and walls, black leather and chrome furniture. We passed the kitchen — and yes, a saucepot was simmering on an electric range — and went down a corridor lined with closed doors. It ended in a large room with an entire wall made of glass; outside it a balcony overlooked the bay. Facing the glass, three men sat on a sectional sofa.

  The first to take notice of us was Dennis; as he turned toward us, the other two also turned. My father’s eyes blazed at me, but turned surprised and soft when he looked at Mãe. If I’d been expected, she clearly hadn’t been. I took a deep breath, watching him watch her.

  The third man was someone I didn’t know. He was tall and blond, wearing a rust-colored linen suit, and he smiled as if he enjoyed being himself. Next to me, my mother suddenly seemed taller, more rigid.

  The stranger stood up. “We’ve met, but we were never formally introduced,” he said to me. He walked over and stretched out his hand. “I’m Malcolm.”

  His smile and voice seemed artificial, designed to create a charismatic effect. I knew I’d seen him before, and a second later I remembered where — he was the man who’d sat at the Marshall House bar in Savannah, drinking Picardo.

  I didn’t take his hand.

  He shrugged and withdrew it. He nodded at my mother, then turned to Root, taking the paper bag from her. I glimpsed the tops of two bottles of Picardo inside. He said, “If you’ll get the ice, I’ll mix the drinks.”

  Sometimes the ability to hear thoughts confuses, rather than clarifies. So many thoughts flew across that room, all of them charged with emotion. I looked at my father and thought, I knew you weren’t dead.

  None of us bothered to block our thinking — except Malcolm, and Dennis, who didn’t know how. Malcolm sat down again, drink in hand, with an air of satisfaction that I found intolerable. I suspected he’d engineered this meeting, brought us all together for a reason only he knew.

  My father’s feelings were the most muted, yet the strongest. He looked exactly the same — dark hair falling back from his forehead, profile as severe and elegant as a Roman emperor’s on an ancient coin. Any relief he felt at seeing me — and I did sense some — was buried beneath disappointment. The sight of me seemed to pain him.

  About my mother, his feelings were raw, confused, as were hers about him. The only thoughts I could pick up were bursts of static, flying between them like sparks.

  And Dennis? He was easiest to read of all. He felt guilty. He hadn’t said hello, but he looked at Mãe and me with shame in his eyes. He sat at the end of the sofa, a bottle of beer in his hand, ill at ease.

  Root handed me a glass of Picardo on ice. As I took it, I saw something in her eyes that made no sense: respect. Root respected me?

  The room, ice-cold from air-conditioning, suddenly felt suffocating. I backed away from Root and went outside, onto the balcony. The sun felt more intense, and the air more tropical, than in Homosassa. Far below, the water sparkled, and the sailboats skimmed along like toys. I took a deep breath.

  “Did you know I saved your life once?” Malcolm’s voice had a faintly nasal quality to it.

  I didn’t turn around.

  “You were pretty young then. Much too young to be alone outside after dark. But the others were wrapped up in some experiment — one of Dennis’s efforts, I’d bet, because it ended with an explosion. Wood and glass were flying, and there you were, watching. You could barely walk. I carried you to safety and brought you back when they’d put out the fire. Do you remember?”

  I remembered the explosion, and the wool coat of the man who carried me away. And for the first time, I remembered why I’d wandered outside that night. From my window I’d seen fireflies in the garden, and I wanted to touch one.

  “So that was you,” I said.

  He came closer, and I turned to look at him. I suppose he was handsome, with his smooth skin, wide eyes, and high forehead. But his smile seemed mocking, and in his eyes was clinical calculation. I moved away, next to the railing.

  “I didn’t expect you to thank me,” he said. “Oh, it might have been a nice gesture. But it’s not important. Besides, you have too much to thank me for. I’ve made your family what it is.”

  “Leave he
r alone.” My mother stood in the doorway.

  He turned to her, looked her up and down. “A lovely dress, Sara,” he said. “Have you missed me?”

  “Leave us alone.” She took a step toward us.

  Then my father appeared. I’d thought his suit was black, but now I saw its silver pinstripe. “You’re making so much noise,” he said, although their voices in fact were low. “Malcolm, it’s time for you to go.”

  “But we still have business —”

  “Business will wait.” Although his voice was pitched low, it resonated.

  Malcolm looked at me. “We’ll talk again.”

  My father took one step toward us. Malcolm left without saying more.

  My father sat on the suede sofa, bent forward, elbows on knees, head in his hands. My mother and I sat at the other end, watching him.

  Dennis and Root had left us to ourselves. Somewhere, the sun must be setting; our window faced east, but the light outside began to deepen, and a few crimson clouds scudded across the sky.

  Nothing in the room was familiar. The place must have been rented already furnished. The walls were bare, but here and there I saw picture hooks.

  When he finally sat up, my father’s eyes were dark, and I couldn’t read his mood. “Well,” he said. “It’s all rather complicated, isn’t it. Where to begin?”

  I opened my mouth to say, With your death?

  But Mãe spoke first. “Did Malcolm tell you about taking me away?”

  His mouth twisted. He stared at her, hearing her thoughts.

  I heard them, too. She told him about the night I was born, about Dennis helping her into Malcolm’s car, about the house in the Catskills and all that followed.

  He listened. When she stopped, he looked as if he wanted to put his head in his hands again. “It’s worse than I’d thought.” The words sounded even starker because his voice had no feeling in it.

  “But it’s better to know, isn’t it?” Mãe leaned forward. The ceiling lights made her long hair glisten.

  I haven’t mentioned how exciting it was to see them in the same room, even if they weren’t — how do I phrase this? They weren’t together. Of course I’d entertained a soppy fantasy of them embracing, all the years of estrangement falling away. I hadn’t believed it would actually happen, but I’d indulged myself in that fantasy many times.

  Even if I couldn’t read his eyes, I sensed that my father’s feelings ran deep.

  He looked from my mother to me. “I suppose,” he said, “that we’d better go to dinner.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  We sat outside at a restaurant called Ophelia’s, down the road from Xanadu. We ate oysters and red snapper and drank red wine by candlelight. Sarasota Bay lapped a few feet away. We must have made a pretty picture, I thought: a well-dressed, good-looking American family.

  Our server said as much. “Special occasion?” he’d asked, when my father ordered the wine. “What a lovely family.”

  If he’d known what we were thinking — or what we were — he would have dropped his tray. I felt happy that he didn’t know, that someone thought we were ordinary.

  My father let us know that he wasn’t shocked by what he thought of as “the betrayal of my best friends,” and he thought the word friends with dark irony. (When I hear thoughts, sarcasm and irony sound deep red or purple, depending on the degree. Is it the same for you?)

  “I might have deduced it, from the way Dennis behaved,” he said. “I suppose that I chose not to figure it out. It was more convenient for me not to know.”

  My mother twisted a napkin between her hands. She wanted him to forgive her for leaving, for becoming other. Even if her thoughts hadn’t been loud, her feelings were plain on her face. The couple at the next table gave her a curious look as they left.

  But my father instead turned to me. What about these murders? he thought.

  Without saying a word, we discussed the death of Robert Reedy. I killed him, I thought. But I didn’t cut him up. And the other murders — I had nothing to do with them.

  The server asked if we wanted anything else. My father looked at Mãe and me. “Bring more oysters,” he said. “And another bottle of mineral water.”

  By this time we were the only party left on the veranda. “It’s safe for us to talk now,” Mãe said. “I like to hear your voices.”

  “I’ve never seen you eat before,” I said to my father, feeling shy. “You’re not a vegetarian.”

  “No.”

  “Then why did you raise me as one?”

  “I wanted to give you as much chance as possible to grow into a normal human.” He spoke the words as if part of him were listening and disapproving of his phrasing. “I feared that meat might over-stimulate your appetite.”

  The candles flickered in the breeze from the bay. A crescent moon hung low in the sky. “A fine setting for a talk about blood and murder,” my father said.

  “How did you know about the murder?” I knew he wasn’t likely to have read the newspapers.

  “My friend Malcolm told me all about the deaths.” My father ate an oyster with astonishing elegance. By contrast, Mãe and I slurped ours down.

  “How did he know?” I didn’t picture Malcolm as a newspaper reader, either.

  “He knew because he was there.” My father lifted another shell to his lips and deftly ingested its contents without pursing his lips. “He’s been following you for years, Ari. You sensed his presence, remember?”

  Mãe said, “Wait a minute. You knew he was stalking her, and you let it happen?”

  “Hardly.” He refilled our wine glasses. “Malcolm told me about it when he turned up last week to talk business.”

  “You’re doing business with him?” Mãe shook her head.

  “Wait, let’s get back to the stalking,” I said.

  “Thank you, Ari. Yes, let’s try to sort through this mess with a semblance of coherence.”

  I didn’t like the tension between them. “When I sensed an other in the Sarasota house, that was Malcolm?”

  “Most likely. But not necessarily. Vampires often look in on each other, you know. I don’t happen to be that sort —”

  My mother made a funny sound, as if she were suppressing laughter.

  And then my father did something so unlike him, so unprecedented, that I nearly fell off my chair. He winked.

  So this is how they were, I thought. He exaggerated his mannerisms to amuse my mother. She pretended to be irritated. They were almost cute — a word I’d never used even once before. It made me uncomfortable.

  “Malcolm told me about the murders,” my father said. His voice was deep and calm. “He said he saw you commit them, while he was invisible. He even commented on the delicate way you carved the bodies; he said he was reminded of ikezukuri, a technique used by Japanese sushi chefs he’d watched in Japan. A whole fish is carved live, reassembled on a plate, and consumed while its heart is still beating.”

  “But I didn’t —”

  “She couldn’t —”

  “Do you think I believed him?” He sipped his wine. “My daughter capable of such barbarism?”

  My mother was shaking her head again. “I’m confused.”

  “Think it through, Sara.” Their eyes met and held steady. “Malcolm has created a narrative in which he’s the hero. For years he’s been voluntarily acting as Ari’s guardian angel, if you will, concerned only for her welfare. Now he comes to me with a proposal: he wants us to collaborate on developing a new oxygen delivery system. And by the way, he mentions that my daughter happens to be a serial killer, but that he certainly won’t tell anyone else. It’s a kind of blackmail, and he’s awfully good at it.”

  “So you’re playing along with him?”

  “I’m not sure I’d phrase it that way. Yes, I’m going along with his scheme, for now. I want to know where it leads.”

  I pushed back my chair. “Father, who did kill those people? Do you think it was Malcolm?”

  “I think
it might well be Malcolm.” He looked at the white tablecloth, smoothed out a wrinkle near his plate. “He’s capable of killing without qualms. He has nothing but contempt for humans.”

  “Then he killed Kathleen.” I said it softly, but inside I felt knives tearing at me. Mãe put her arms around me, and I leaned against her.

  My father sat back and watched us. We didn’t need to talk further.

  Back at Xanadu (I enjoy using the name whenever possible), my father showed me the room where I’d be spending the night. He said my mother would be across the hall.

  “We’re going to talk a bit more,” he said.

  My parents went into the room that served as my father’s study, and I walked out onto the balcony. Stars glittered in the night sky; I could see Polaris and Ursa Minor. Somewhere out there, I knew, were dark nebulae, dust clouds that absorb light and block our view of objects that lie beyond. I thought of asking for a telescope as a birthday gift.

  A sound behind me made me whirl around. It wasn’t Malcolm, as I’d expected. Dennis stood there, his eyes bleary, holding a bottle of beer. His shirt was only half tucked into his jeans. His face wasn’t shaven, and he needed a haircut.

  “So you found her,” he said.

  It took me a second to understand. “Yes, I found her,” I said. “It wasn’t hard.”

  He said, “Yeah?”

  “One thing led to another,” I said. “And there she was. It wasn’t hard. You and my father could have found her any time.”

  He came to stand next to me. We gazed down at the dark water and the lights of buildings on the other side of the bay.

  “Ari, I need to ask you something,” he said. “I need your help.”

  I waited. It was hard to remember how much I’d liked him, not so long ago.

  “I want you to make me…” He hesitated. “Like you,” he said.

  With effort, I kept my voice low and steady. “What makes you think I’d do something like that?”