The Feel of Echoes

by Mari Labbee

  Angela Buonaterra was seated behind a Queen Anne desk with her head down, writing. It was a few degrees cooler in her office than it had been in the waiting room, and though this room was decorated in warm, inviting colors, it felt sterile. Angela finally looked up and smiled. She did not look at all like she had in the newspaper photograph from so long ago. All the baby fat had disappeared, and so had the dark hair. The frumpy, awkward-looking teenage girl in the picture had become a chic and slender woman with perfect posture. Even seated, she was impossibly straight. Flawlessly coiffed, she wore a beautifully tailored suit and just the right amount of delicate gold jewelry. She stood up, extending her hand. Bri walked up quickly.

  “Ms. Hall,” Angela acknowledged as she shook Bri’s hand.

  Flustered at the formality, Bri responded, “Oh no, please, just Bri.”

  “All right. Bri. Please have a seat.”

  Angela gestured to the two chairs across from her desk. Bri chose the one on the left and immediately regretted it when she felt the draft from the air conditioner blowing directly onto her neck and shoulders.

  Angela settled back into her leather chair.

  “So you purchased the house at Jackal’s Head Point?”

  Bri nodded. “Yes.” She coughed and cleared her throat. “Excuse me, Doctor. Yes, yes, I did.”

  “Please call me Angela. I’m sorry, but I don’t have that much time. I’m expected at a dinner conference and will have to leave shortly. So what can I help you with today?”

  There it was, the reason she’d come all this way. How should she begin? Where would she begin?

  “Well…” Bri said, glancing down at the floor and then back up at Angela.

  “I…um…I needed to ask you if…”

  She was at a loss for words, and Angela made no move to help her, waiting, as Bri struggled. Then Bri noticed the diplomas on the wall. Angela was a psychiatrist. That was interesting—no better person to talk to about this, or perhaps the worst.

  She doesn’t have that much time, Bri reminded herself and quickly collected her thoughts.

  “How long did you live in the house, Doctor…um…Angela?”

  Angela looked up, recalling.

  “We moved in sometime in the spring or summer of 1960 and moved out just after my eighteenth birthday in 1965. So it was about five years.”

  Bri felt a little surer of herself, more in control now that she was asking questions.

  “And since then it’s been closed up?”

  Angela nodded. “More or less. Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you sell it earlier?”

  Angela looked at Bri without answering the question. She was thinking about it, about whether she wanted to answer it or not.

  “It simply wasn’t possible until now.”

  Bri got the feeling she would have to work to get what she came for.

  “Why did you move out?”

  A small smile appeared on Angela’s face.

  “Have you had trouble since moving in?”

  Now Bri was sure that Angela knew something.

  Have I ever. Where do I begin? “Well, I guess you could say I have.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Angela asked slowly.

  This kind of questioning could go on forever. Why was she playing games?

  “Look, Angela.” Bri moved forward in her seat. “I think there’s something strange about the house. Or maybe not the house itself, but me, since I moved into the house. I just want to know if…while you lived there…was there anything strange going on? Or…did you feel strange?”

  Angela began playing with her Cross pen, an odd Mona Lisa smile on her face, as if she had all the time in the world now, responding before Bri finished.

  “We moved away because of my mother. Actually, she moved out, forcing my father to follow. She had been asking him to move for years, but he didn’t want to leave the house.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Yes, my mother. She was…” Angela hesitated, thinking carefully before continuing. “Well, she became ill soon after we moved there.”

  Angela thought about her mother. The young, energetic, robust woman, who had more energy than both her daughters put together. The woman who sang all the time as she worked around the house and whose cheeks looked like they had been pinched by cherubs. She remembered how the changes, gradual at first, more pronounced as time passed, turned her mother into a nervous, ashen-faced woman completely drained of her life-force. This transformation of her mother had shaken her and ultimately pushed Angela into the study of psychiatry. She’d spent a lifetime trying to unravel the mystery of what had caused her mother to change so drastically.

  Bri thought about what Angela had just said. If Angela’s mother had been going through what she was, or worse, for five years—my God! Bri couldn’t imagine it.

  “What happened to your mother?” she asked pointedly.

  The Mona Lisa smile faded. “Well, in the end, she said that there was a woman in the house, and she was trying to steal her soul.”

  Bri stopped breathing.

  Angela leaned back in her chair, swiveling it slightly away to look out the window.

  “My father saw the house while on a trip and bought it almost immediately. He sold our pizza restaurants in Boston. There were three of them. He got it in his head to retire early. He said he didn’t want to be an old man to live his dream, so he sold everything, and we moved into the old house. It was a complete wreck. The first year was terrible. Most of the roof was gone, so we lived cramped up in two rooms on the second floor. The rest of the house was uninhabitable, mice everywhere.

  “Getting in and out of the place was a nightmare because of the woods. My father cleared a path out almost immediately so we would be able to bring in the car, but we still had to walk a path to the house at first. It took nearly all of the first year to cut the woods back and clean up the clearing around the lighthouse. We did that after adding the kitchen, though. That was the first thing he put in; there wasn’t one.

  “But he and my mother made it fun. They were both so young, adventurous, and happy, and we were just girls. Like most children, we really didn’t notice the hardships. It all felt like a game.

  “My father worked on the house constantly, and even though he hired help, he did most of the work himself. The thing I remember most was how happy he was, always smiling and whistling. It really was his dream.”

  As she spoke, Angela looked out the window, absently reliving the moment. So her father was the one who replaced the roof, redesigning it while he was at it, for a more modern look. And now she knew why the kitchen, with its heavy Italian look, seemed out of sync with the rest of the house.

  Angela continued. “About a year and a half after we got there, he began repairing the badly deteriorated facade of the lighthouse.”

  She laughed lightly. “Oh, I remember him hanging from a scaffold that swung wildly during high winds, and I remember my mother praying out loud and crossing herself constantly whenever he worked hanging alongside the lighthouse. But he loved every second of it.” She took a breath.

  “The iron stairs were an exact replica from old pictures he’d found of the interior of the lighthouse; he recreated everything to look exactly as it appeared in those pictures. He meant to paint the interior of the lighthouse, but he never got the chance.” Angela paused again.

  “At first my mother was as happy as he was. Oh, they argued when he first told her of his idea to sell everything and move out to the middle of nowhere—it was so drastic. But she always did whatever he wanted, and, truthfully, she had a bit of an adventurous spirit too. Even though it was terribly run-down, we were all happy he’d made us move.”

  Outside, it was a wall of water. The rain had intensified. Angela leaned forward and flicked on her desk lamp.

  “I can’t tell you exactly when the changes in my mother began, but I remember several months after we moved, she woke up while sleepwalking and she’d never done that before.
Then slowly, my mother began acting…strangely. She was always tired. I remember how she never had time for me and Fanny—Francesca—my sister, like she used to. Then she became distracted. Sometimes it was as if she wasn’t there. Anyway, that’s how it started.”

  A knot formed in Bri’s stomach. Angela’s mother must have been having the nightmares.

  “I remember an odd incident,” Angela said, frowning a bit, almost forgetting Bri was there, “one that stuck with me. Years later, when I asked my mother about it, she said she had no memory of it. My sister, Fanny, fell and broke her arm. I wasn’t with her when it happened, but when the doctor showed up to set it, and my mother reached out to hold Fanny’s arm down, my sister backed away, almost as if she was afraid of her. My mother stood back, crossed her arms, and said, ‘Well, fine then,’ but she had the strangest smile on her face. It was completely out of character. She was doing a lot of things that were out of character then. One night my father found her out by the lighthouse sleepwalking in nothing but her nightgown, out in the rain. I have to admit that seeing her so…so different was a great shock. I was only thirteen and had no idea what was going on. None of us did.”

  Angela straightened in her chair.

  “Soon after the lighthouse incident, we were waking up almost every night by my mother’s screams. That’s when she first mentioned a woman in her dreams and that the woman wanted to steal her soul.”

  Bri worked to stay calm but furiously wrung her hands together. She found herself too petrified to utter a word about what had been happening to her. This office where people paid Angela to hear all their secrets was the perfect place to spill her guts out, but she found she’d gone mute.

  “You have to understand Sicilians,” Angela said with a smile. “I don’t care how modern, they still believe in the evil eye. One of the first things put on me as a baby was a gold Italian horn on a bracelet for good luck. My mother would never let me take it off, telling me it would ward off bad luck and evil spirits. I wore it as a bracelet, then as a necklace until the chain broke off sometime during graduate school, but old habits die hard, and I still carry it on my keychain.”

  Bri listened, hanging on every word.

  “Did anyone…um…other than your mother have any dreams or see anything strange?”

  “No.”

  “Did your mother ever share any details about the…”

  “No,” Angela answered before Bri finished asking the question.

  “So your mother never told any of you what she saw? Or…”

  “No.”

  “You said your mother wanted to move away. When did she first suggest moving away?” Bri asked.

  “It was soon after my father found her roaming outside the first time. I’d say that was about two, maybe three, years after we got there. They fought a lot after that, horrible fights, but by that time, the house was done, and he was working on the lighthouse. He found a doctor who would come out to the house to see my mother regularly. I think he might have been a psychiatrist, but I can’t say for sure. He prescribed pills, and for a while she was better, almost back to normal, but then she got worse.”

  “Why didn’t your father just sell the house?”

  Angela shifted in her seat.

  “I think my father just thought my mother was lonely. He thought she just missed Boston, the old neighborhood, and her sisters. He encouraged her to invite people over for visits, weekend stays, and holidays. We didn’t know it, but he had used all the money from the sale of the restaurants to buy and fix up the property. But, ultimately, it wasn’t about the money. It was his dream and he was unwilling to let it go.”

  Angela’s cell phone rang; she glanced at it without answering.

  “I have to leave soon.”

  Bri needed more. She tried speeding it up.

  “Was it your mother who put the wallpaper up to cover the painting on the wall?”

  Angela nodded. “Ah, you’ve discovered it.”

  Bri nodded, desperate to know more.

  “We all had different opinions about that wall. My father adored it. He thought it was unique and added character to the house. I didn’t care about it one way or the other, and my sister, Fanny, was afraid of it, and my mother was mostly indifferent to it—at first. She thought it was gaudy but left it alone to keep my father happy. Later, though, my mother refused to set foot in that room because of it. One day she sent my father on an errand to Boston and insisted he take both my sister and me with him. We were gone all day and got back late that night. When we returned, she had covered the wall. She said she was going to bury the woman in her dreams, and this was a start. That day I think we all realized that my mother would not stay. She moved out at the end of that year and went to live with my aunt in Boston, leaving all of us behind. She told my father she would not return.”

  “Did you all move away then?”

  “Of course. My father wouldn’t live out there without her. So what choice did he have? We moved back here in 1965.”

  Angela suddenly looked tired. “My mother was never really well after that. She never told us exactly what had happened to her, what had frightened her so much. She stopped talking about the house altogether when she left. In today’s world she would’ve been diagnosed with manic-depressive disorder, what they call bi-polar today, or maybe something else.” Angela shrugged. “It’s hard to say; the tools for testing just weren’t available then. And, of course, there was the stigma. If she had anything that others might call crazy, she didn’t want to know about it.”

  Bri nodded, agreeing. But she was confused about something.

  “Why didn’t your parents sell the house then?”

  “My father wouldn’t allow it. Off and on through the years, he’d drive up there on his own, do some work, and spend the day—alone. He said one day he’d return to live there for good.”

  “But your mother never would,” Bri interjected.

  “No.” Angela nodded. “So his plan was to wait it out. But time took a toll. He developed diabetes and survived two heart attacks. Still, whenever I broached the subject of selling the house, he refused. By the time my mother died, he was bedridden himself and would never be able to live out there, but he was a stubborn old Sicilian and wouldn’t allow me to sell it, holding out hope for…I don’t know,” she said, throwing a hand up. “He died last spring. That was when I called the real-estate agent to have it sold.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Angela waved dismissively. There was a long pause where neither said anything, and Bri had to dig deep to find the courage to say what came next.

  “Doctor…”

  “Angela, please.”

  “Oh, right, Angela…um”—Bri looked down at the floor—“I don’t think your mother was…”

  Angela abruptly looked at her watch, pushed her chair away from the desk, and stood up.

  “I am so sorry, but I do have to get going to make this conference. Is there anything else?”

  Angela had regained the steeliness Bri had seen when she first walked in, and every inch of her regal composure was back. Bri knew there would be no more said on the subject.

  “No. There’s nothing else. I can’t thank you enough for your time.”

  “Well, I hope I’ve helped.”

  “Yes,” Bri said, “yes, you have.”

  Angela came around the desk, signaling that their meeting was over.

  “Well, if there isn’t anything else, let me show you the way out.”

  “I know the way; no need to.”

  Bri extended her hand and thanked Angela once more before turning to leave. It hadn’t taken much to cajole Angela to tell her story, but maybe she really needed to tell it—tell what had happened to her mother in that house all those years ago. Maybe it was the first time she’d ever told anyone, but it was also obvious that it wasn’t anything Angela allowed herself to dwell on. Whatever happened to her mother was beyond the realm of psychiatry, something the discipline couldn’t fix
. And Bri felt sure of one more thing: Angela knew perfectly well that her mother hadn’t been crazy.

  The rain fell in sheets, and traffic had all but stopped; she had moved less than a mile in over an hour. Thick clouds obscured the sun, and it was already dark. This was impossible. She turned off at the next exit and decided to stay in Boston overnight. Tomorrow she’d go by the historical society on the way back to Jackal’s Head Point.

  In the hotel room, she filled the tub with almost scalding water and soaked. She closed her eyes, and leaning back against the porcelain, she let the memory of last night transport her back in time—her body reliving every moment of it. She didn’t want to lose Matt. She would explain herself. She picked up her cell phone and dialed all but the last digit of Matt’s number before clearing it. She just wasn’t ready yet.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Matt finished showering and found himself skipping down the stairs, feeling better than he had in a long time, fully expecting to find Bri downstairs. As he turned the corner of the dining room on his way into the kitchen, he caught a glimpse of the lighthouse lantern shining like a mirror in the early morning sun. It would always look different to him now. The memory of last night sailed into his mind like the breeze floating in through the open windows, and he breathed it in.

  When he didn’t find her in the kitchen, he figured she was somewhere outside, but he looked everywhere, even in the lighthouse. A half hour after coming downstairs, he found the note under the coffee mug on the kitchen counter. She probably hadn’t wanted to wake him. He was sure he’d hear from her later, so he got to work.

  Matt worked at the house all day. It wasn’t until late afternoon that he began wondering where Bri had gone to. Why hadn’t she called? Had he done something to offend her? Nothing jumped out at him and he was sure he hadn’t, so what was it? All day he’d been checking his phone—no text, no call. He didn’t expect her to check in with him or tell him everything, but it just seemed odd, especially after last night.

  She confused him. Lighthearted one moment, strangely quiet and distracted the next. If she had somewhere to go, why not just tell him in person? Did she decide that maybe theirs should remain a business relationship and was afraid to tell him?