Softspoken

by Lucius Shepard

  Allowing Louise to move about the kitchen, free from scrutiny, forces Sanie to read what she has written and, to her surprise, it’s not bad. Too mannered, perhaps, but not bad at all:

  “The casement window in Elise Cardozo’s bedroom overlooked a section of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, a stretch of walking path framed by maples and ash, and lined with concrete benches, one of which served each morning as the meeting place for a slender young woman—a shopgirl or waitress, judging by her shoes and her flannel jacket—and a middle-aged man with a full salt-and-pepper beard, who dressed rather more expensively. They would arrive (the woman first, usually) shortly after nine o’clock and, without the least preamble, they would begin talking with animated intensity, as if continuing a conversation broken off the day before. Since Elise was in the habit of taking a second cup of coffee sitting at the window, she became a witness to the relationship, such as it was.

  “She assumed that the man and woman were lovers going through a difficult patch, but she soon discarded this notion. Though they held hands on occasion, the contact had about it a formal air, and Elise came to think that the man must be an uncle or a cousin who was counseling the woman, ministering to her in some way. Yet the urgency of their speech, the forceful gestures that seemed expressive of anger and dismay, did not support her interpretation. Nor did the cursory manner in which they tended to part, the man standing, buttoning his overcoat, glancing this way and that as if to reorient himself, then striding off into the park without a backward glance, and the woman, her manner betraying frustration, remaining on the bench a minute or so before moving briskly away in the same direction.

  “Elise’s curiosity about the pair did not rise to the level of fascination. They posed a trivial puzzle, one she used to clear her mind of the clutter that accrued from breakfast with her husband and chasing her twelve-year-old off to school. Imagining a past for them and scripting their dialogue was just the sort of whimsey that served to rev up her mental apparatus, helping prepare her for a day of more rigorous thought at the computer. She provided them with a detailed family background, with lives hemmed in by dark secrets; she supposed them to be related yet not close, distant cousins—in essence, strangers—driven to complicity in order to combat an evil whose origins were rooted in the intricate history of the blood they shared.

  “If there had been more variance in their behavior, she might have sustained her interest, but each successive meeting was identical to the previous one, half an hour of talk leavened by a spot of hand-holding, and after several weeks she became bored, even resentful of the couple’s interruption of her view, to see them as an impediment rather than as an aid to clarity, and she might have stopped watching them altogether if she had not unearthed a pair of binoculars while rummaging through a closet, searching for a box of CDs.

  “Motivated partly by the hope that she might catch them at some impropriety, something that would give her the leverage necessary to drive them away, she went to the window and trained the binoculars on the bench where the couple was sitting, focusing first upon the man. He was older than she had presumed. Sixtyish. A dark, deeply lined face with a hooked nose, fleshy lips, and hooded eyes. A face that called to mind images of Byzantine royalty. His clothes were stylishly cut, and on his right hand he wore a massive gold ring with a raised design—like a coin made into a ring. When he spoke, he inclined his head and stared intently at the woman, as if trying to beam his message into her brain. Elise had the idea that whatever the exact nature of the message, it was nothing the woman wished to hear.

  “The woman listened, downcast, features veiled by the fall of her unfashionably long brown hair; but when she lifted her head, Elise recognized the face as her own. Although the woman was ten or twelve years younger (she appeared to be in her early twenties), in all other aspects, the resemblance was startling. She had Elise’s strong cheekbones, her generous mouth, and large hazel eyes. Even the eyebrows were hers, sharply slanted toward the bridge of the nose at what seemed exaggerated angles, and too thick (Elise kept hers plucked). And the nose itself, straight and unremarkable…Elise had always considered it a flaw, but now she saw that it modulated the exotic character of the face’s other elements, unifying them, lending sweetness and innocence to what might otherwise have been a seductive mask. She had the urge to run to the bathroom mirror, to determine whether her own face retained these girlish qualities; but she remained at the window, taking in every detail of the woman’s appearance. Her jeans and cheap wool coat; her imitation leather bag; her gloveless hands pale and raw from the cold.

  “Before Elise could come to terms with the bewilderment that arose from seeing this apparition of her younger self, the man stood and made his customary abrupt departure; acting on impulse, Elise threw on sweats and tennis shoes, grabbed a coat, and hurried down the stairs, across the street, and out into the park. The woman had left the bench and was already well along the path leading toward 11th Street…”

  A writing teacher once told Sanie, when she was distressed by her lack of progress, that writers improve in quantum leaps, that they go along in their daily grind, churning out their usual uninspired stuff, and then suddenly one day they’ll spot a glint of gold among the dross, a flicker of the real quill. “Keep at it,” the teacher said. “You’ll get there.” She hadn’t believed him, but now…Exhilarated, she reads the passage again, making minor changes that reduce the Victorian flavor. The biggest leap of all, she thinks, is that she knows where the story’s going. Sort of, anyway. The distance in the house, the tiny space she’s carved out in the marriage by virtue of the war with Jackson, it’s permitted her to think more clearly. The sound of chair legs scraping startles her and she looks up to see that Louise has taken the seat across from her. Sanie’s curiosity overrides her aggravation at being interrupted, and she waits for her sister-in-law to speak.

  Louise’s helmet hair lends her squarish, jowly face an unfortunate masculinity; her hands, clasped beneath her breasts, wrestle with one another, the fingers flexing as if trying to gain an advantage. The floral pattern on her housecoat is, Sanie estimates, about twenty percent old foodstains. Seconds lag past and finally Sanie says, “Hey.”

  Louise says, “Hey,” back, but it seems a reflex response, a fearful one, a yip.

  Baffled, Sanie asks if Louise found what she was after, thinking this may be the problem—she’s forgotten where the spoons are kept, where the oatmeal cookies are shelved.

  Louise stretches out her hand, trembling a little, and rests it atop Sanie’s. “I used to be like you,” she says, and nods vigorously as if to assure Sanie of this improbability.

  “Used to be?” Sanie chooses her words carefully, not wanting to spook her. “You’re like me now.”

  “No.”

  Announced in a half-whisper, with a tremor that hinges it in the middle, it’s the saddest “no” Sanie has ever heard, seeming to embody a world of miserable experience.

  “It happened here.” Louise casts her eyes up to the ceiling, darts them about, reminding Sanie of a cat tracking an airborne mite.

  “In the kitchen?” Sanie hasn’t a clue as to what Louise is going on about, but figures it will be easier to pin down location before trying to clarify the nature of the event.

  Louise nods. “Everywhere, but here first.”

  At a loss, Sanie gives up on location and asks, “Does this have anything to do with the ghosts?”

  Louise’s eyes widen. “You see them?”

  “I did once.”

  “They’re not ghosts. ’Least not all of them.”

  Jackson bursts into the room so forcefully that the door smacks against the wall, and Louise snatches her hand from Sanie’s grasp. An imperious glare, contrived for Sanie’s benefit, lapses when Jackson notices his sister. He pauses, allows himself a smirk, and says, “Ladies.” Then he opens the refrigerator and begins to rummage inside it. “We don’t have any cheese?”

  “You should know, you’re the only one eats it,” sa
ys Sanie.

  “The youngest have it the worst,” Louise whispers, a comment that Sanie relegates to the realm of daft utterance; she’s been put on edge by Jackson’s unexpected appearance.

  “Pick some up, will you.” Jackson closes the refrigerator door; he’s holding a carrot stick. “And some of those stone wheat crackers. Get enough to last.” He rolls his shoulders, working out the kinks. “So what are you up to?” After an interval during which no one speaks, he says snidely, “That question was for the entire panel.”

  Louise looks up pertly and Sanie says, “Talking.”

  “Talking, huh?” Jackson has a bite of carrot. “What about? Cold temperature physics? Economic infrastructure in the Horn of Africa?”

  Both women stare at him, Louise in bewilderment, Sanie with veiled contempt.

  “Sharing recipes, perhaps?” Jackson leans on the refrigerator, bemused, munching his carrot.

  “I’ve got a recipe for blackberry pie that Daddy said could save the planet,” says Louise.

  This reference to his father appears to unsettle Jackson, but he covers it up and says, “You’ll have to fix it for supper sometime. We could do with a little saving around here.”

  “Blackberries aren’t in season,” says Louise mournfully.

  “Any sort of home-cooking would be nice.” Jackson looks pointedly at Sanie. “Maybe you can make us some of your spoonbread.”

  “I don’t think…I’ve got all the fixin’s. But…I…”

  Louise falters and Jackson says, “Sanie’ll pick up whatever you need. Just give her a list. Why don’t you go write one up?”

  “A list. I…” All the solidity, the energy that funded Louise’s coherence, is broken by Jackson’s demand. She stands, raises a hand in a partially completed gesture, and says to Sanie, “I’m going now.”

  She continues to hover beside the table, her mouth working silently.

  “Off you go, sis! Down the rabbit hole.” Jackson gives her a delicate push, like he’s setting a toy boat adrift. As Louise scurries for the door, he steps close behind, steering her with his palm and says to Sanie, “Pick up some corn muffins, too.”

  After he’s gone, Sanie sits fuming. Jerk. Asshole. Bastard. Once she calms down, she wonders if Jackson intended to disrupt the conversation she was having with Louise. When they first arrived, he encouraged her to get to know his siblings. Then she realizes that such a turnaround is in keeping with his pattern of behavior. He wants what she wants until she begins to achieve it. Like with her writing. She used to show him things from time to time, and it was always, “I really like what you’re doing here,” blah blah blah, but since she’s sold a few pieces, though he has been effusive in his praise, there’s a subtle restraint in his voice, an undertone of indifference, inquiries as to how much she was paid (not much), all of which acts to reduce the effect of his praise to a pat on the head that keeps her tail wagging, but causes her to question the worth of what she’s done. She tries to put her head back together by rereading the passage she wrote that morning, but on this pass it strikes her as overwrought and juvenile. Obviously, it’s a wish-fulfillment story, number three on Professor Demery’s list of Things-A-Novice-Writer-Should-Avoid. Her protagonist is a standin for her. Removed from life, having to view it from a window or through binoculars. Escaping her cloistered existence by running after her younger self. Gah! It’s sappy, crappy, unhappy housewife stuff. Sanie sees no way to make it anything other than what it is, but she doesn’t crumple it up and throw it away. Obeying Demery’s Fourth Dictum (Save Everything), she turns the page. She’s tempted to blame Jackson for souring her on what she thought was competent, but she can’t make him the fall guy for every failure—though his shadow darkens everything she undertakes, she has to outface that reality. She understands that her success is ultimately up to her and, with this conviction in mind, she addresses pen to paper.

  There’s a character she’s been thinking of attempting, a woman, not her at another age, not a shell that embodies her wishes, her desires, but a woman she knew when she was a girl growing up in Asheville, before her family moved to Chapel Hill. A spinster in her fifties, a doctor who would travel up into the hills to treat the backwoods people, the snake worshippers, the rickety fiddlers and dobro players, the untutored and the unwashed, the natural, native survivalists who did not survive into the new millennium…A woman about whose habituations and appetites implausible tales were told, tales that posed a contradiction to her outward manner, which was decorous, gentle, attentive to whoever was speaking with her. The tales may not have been true, but the woman knew about them and never sought to deny them, perhaps because she couldn’t be bothered with what people said about her. Sanie, age eleven, asked her if one story, especially scurrilous, were true, and the woman, she was called Melora by everyone, said, “Honey, don’t you believe if I did all those things you heard about, I did ’em the right way?” At that moment, for no reason Sanie could fathom, Melora seemed powerful and, though ancient, incredibly beautiful. For several years she was something of an icon for Sanie, until Sanie discovered that boys liked her, albeit mostly not the right boys, not the boys she liked, and all the derangement and obsession and terror that passes for high school set her a’spin. Now she’s inclined to take a more clinical view of Melora. She wants to believe all the stories and to imagine the interior life of a woman capable of consorting with hillbilly devils and murderers, at once violent and tender, nurturing and dangerous, deviant and high-principled, laboring like a saint and sexually voracious. It’s the way she assumes many women would be if they didn’t have the soul squeezed out of them by new age diets and religion and more sophisticated targeted marketing schemes. Sanie sometimes thinks that she’s like Melora—she has, after all, a similar sensibility. But then she’ll catch sight of herself in the special mirror Jackson’s fabricated for her and that notion goes glimmering. She concentrates, trying to capture Leilah with a few deft strokes of the pen, but it’s tough-going. After a while, she looks out the window. Bird mess streaks the glass. It’s still raining.

  THIRTEEN

  …Sanie…

  “Go away! Shoo!”

  Sanie…won’t you look at…

  “Shush!”

  Sanie…Sanie…

  “You know what? Shut up!”

  I wish…

  “So what would happen, huh? If I could see you. What’s the big deal?”

  Sanie…

  “You think I’d throw myself at you? You probably look like crap, being dead and all.”

  It’s been so long…

  “Yeah, my heart aches so bad! If only we could be as one.”

  I wish you could see me…

  “If you don’t hush, I’m going to read to you again. I know how much you hate that.”

  Don’t be afraid…

  “Okay. You asked for it. This is called ‘The Unexamined Life.’ It’s something Demery wanted me to try, something I wouldn’t do normally. Write from a male perspective. A hard-boiled detective story. My protagonist used to be a cop, but he had a bad experience. I haven’t figured out what exactly yet, I don’t know if it’s crucial to the story. But it was bad, you know. Seriously, life-changing bad. So the guy’s quit the force and he’s become a beachcomber.

  “‘Thirty-eight bucks was a good day for November. A few years back I could have counted on twice that, despite the cold weather, but beachcombing wasn’t what it used to be—now all that environmental crap had been mainstreamed, even the dumbass crackers who came to Florida to sell Dilaudid and rip off tourists now believed in their hearts that it was wrong to litter and tossed their cans and bottles into recycling bins. Fuck a bunch of Greenpeace was my feeling. But thirty-eight bucks was enough to cover my expenses and a couple of drinks, so with dusk coming on, I stowed the metal detector in the van and walked up from the beach to Tuck’s Tavern on Main, where I ordered a draft and a shot of well-bourbon.’

  “‘It was too early for the evening crowd. The jukebox was
quiet; two hookers were playing Ski-Ball in back. The only other customers were an old man wearing an eyeshade and a windbreaker, who seemed to be talking to someone who wasn’t there, and sitting directly across from me, this Seminole-looking guy. Big muscular fucker in his thirties, with greasy black hair down to his shoulders and a stolid expression and black markings on his forearms that looked like ants, but I figured must be tattoos. He challenged me to a staring contest, but I ignored him and struck up a conversation with Erroll the bartender. Erroll had flown down to catch the Heat game the night before and was a fountain of insult concerning Shaquille O’Neal’s performance. “Typical nigger bullshit” was his capsule review. He then told a racist joke, to which I responded with a polite chuckle. This being America, if you choose not to be friends with racists, you’re not going to have a lot of friends, and though Erroll was not exactly a friend, he poured me a lot of free drinks.’