Death Trance

by R. D. Zimmerman

  Pulling back slightly, trying to see Toni's tear-streaked face, I asked, “Dead? What do you mean?”

  “The Mississippi… she drowned.”

  I vaguely remembered seeing something in the paper a week or two ago about a young woman's body found in the river. I'd stopped reading, however, when I got to the part about the corpse having been mangled. I'd been eating breakfast and so hadn't gotten to the name, which I wouldn't have missed. Anything even faintly resembling Toni's last name—Domino, D’Amico—had always jumped out at me. I guessed I'd always been looking for another Domingo in my life.

  “Oh, my God,” I said, shutting the door behind her and ushering her in. “Come on in… let's sit down.”

  My apartment was a Pullman kind of place, long and occupying the length of one side of the building. Sun-porch up front, living room, two bedrooms with connecting bath, then the dining room and kitchen in the rear. I ushered Toni down the hall, past the bedroom I'd converted from a guest room to bike central, into the living room, and to the couch. I didn't want to push things, so I sat in a chair next to her. When she reached out, I didn't hesitate to hold her hand on my knee. Same hands, just as soft, though slightly wrinkled. As were the eyes, with lines streaking from the corners like sunbursts. Yes, the same Toni, and yes, she had aged. We both had, only I hoped, but wasn't so sure, I'd deteriorated as well as she had.

  She sucked in a lungful of air, let it out, said, “Oh, God, Alex, I'm sorry.”

  “Don't be silly,” I said, though I was a bit surprised because I'd never seen her cry before.

  “It's just that…” She withdrew her hand from beneath mine and sat back on the couch, threw back her head, stared up at the ceiling. “Liz drowned about two weeks ago, Alex.”

  That much I knew already.

  “She'd been living up here for almost five years.”

  Now, that was news, and from the way Toni said it, from the way she spoke the words without looking at me, I knew that Toni had been up here during that time. Perhaps lots of times. I was silent, caught in a flurry of rejection. And anger. Couldn't she at least have called?

  “The funeral was last week. My parents can't handle anything more—they're getting a little old—so I drove up yesterday to close up her apartment. I'm staying at a hotel over by the U.”

  The U meant the university, so I was sure of it now. “You've been up here before?”

  She nodded, and I left it at that. Why, however, had she contacted me now? Why not earlier or later? What had Liz's death set in motion, made it necessary for her to see me?

  “I just went over to Liz's apartment, Alex,” she continued. Then she stopped, caught her breath. “I didn't know it was going to be so hard—going in there, seeing all her stuff. It freaked me out, you know? It looked like she'd be back in just a moment—there was a cup of coffee and a half-eaten sandwich in her kitchen! I mean, a goddamned peanut butter sandwich just sitting there with bites taken out of it!”

  As I sat there in silence, more of the newspaper story was rolling out of my memory. I remembered the headline. Well, not exactly. Not all of it, just the one scarlet word: Suicide. Which started me thinking back. Liz. There'd been problems in high school. Hadn't she dropped out or… No, she'd attempted suicide back then, hadn't been successful because she'd been found and her stomach pumped. She'd taken a whole bottle of sleeping pills. Sure, that was it.

  Liz. I remembered her as some five years younger than Toni, and while she had the same thick, dark hair, she wasn't quite as pretty, face a little rounder, body a little shorter. She was wilder, too, than Toni. Much more so. More verbal as well. Right. She'd been kind of a mouthy kid, said whatever came to her head. Not rude, though. I thought back. Hadn't the family always seen Liz as the little girl who wouldn't grow up? Yes, but that really hadn't been it, had it? Liz and Toni's mother was an alcoholic, a wine queen, one of those who never got truly blitzed but always had that glow, wore a tiara of inebriation. And while Toni had been more the caretaker sort—which, I was sure, was why she'd gone into medicine—Liz had been the angry one, the one who saw the truth and wanted to battle it. So had she finally lost? Was that why she had killed herself?

  “I went over to her place, Alex, but I couldn't stay. It was too much. I told my parents I'd go through everything, but I don't know. I don't know if I can. I walked in there, and when I saw that sandwich sitting there, I flipped out. I had to see someone. Someone who knew me and her. I'm sorry. I hope you don't mind. I got your address out of the phone book and just came straight over. I…I needed to see someone out of the past.”

  “I'm sorry about Liz, but I'm glad you're here,” I said, and for whatever reason I truly was. “I remember reading about someone drowning in the river—it was downtown, right?”

  She nodded.

  “But I didn't know it was Liz. I would have called you or come down for the funeral or…”

  Toni was bending her head forward, shaking it furiously. “It wasn't how they said it was,” she said, having not heard my condolences. “Alex, everyone thinks it was a suicide—the police, her friends, even her shrink. But it wasn't, Alex. I know Liz. I know she was screwed up, but I also know she didn't jump off any bridge.”

  What was I supposed to say? What could I?

  I muttered a cool, “Oh?”

  Dr. Toni Domingo started wiping her wet eyes with the back of her hands, then went on to her nose. Most unhygienic, most unsuccessful.

  “Let me get you some Kleenex,” I offered.

  I jumped up and hurried down the hall, through the extra bedroom and into the bathroom, where I pulled a long, flowing loop of toilet paper. Toni, here at last in my apartment. Unbelievable. And why, I wondered as I rushed back, had I offered Kleenex when all I ever used was good ol’ T.P.?

  Toni seemed not to notice my manners. I handed her the ribbon of toilet tissue. She mopped her face. Blew her nose. She seemed not to notice because she was holding something that was infinitely more important than my etiquette.

  “I know Liz didn't kill herself because of this,” said Toni, shaking the envelope at me.

  It was a small envelope, note-card size, torn across the top, now dirtied and bent. A letter. How many times had it been read and reread?

  “Is that from Liz?” I asked.

  Toni nodded, drew in a trancelike breath. “I got it the day after—after— she supposedly killed herself.”

  “My God.”

  “We didn't even know she was dead yet—her body wasn't found until the next day. So…so here I get this great letter about her wanting me to come up and do some photos and—”

  “Still doing that?” I asked, remembering Toni with either a stethoscope or camera always hanging from her neck.

  “Whenever I can. It's my escape from medicine. Anyway… anyway, she wanted me to come up. Liz was always writing poetry, but she decided to try and break into free-lance journalism. She said she had this great story she wanted to write, and she wanted me to come up and take some pictures for her. This was going to be her big break, she said, and… and…”

  I turned away, felt myself not wanting to know any of this.

  “Stay with it, Alex. Let yourself stay with that experience, let yourself hear that conversation with Toni. What did you learn that's relevant to now?”

  I asked, “Is there a date on the letter?”

  Nod. Sigh. “The day before. It sounds,” said Toni, pulling the letter itself from the envelope and studying several lines, “like she wrote it that night. I don't know.” Then again, “I don't know.”

  Neither did I. We sat there in mournful silence. Toni blew her nose, gave it a good tweak. Then I knew what was coming. Sensed it quite clearly. This was why Toni had come. I understood now. But it was a mistake. The whole goddamned thing was a mistake. That didn't change anything, though. It didn't keep her from asking and it didn't keep me from doing what I wanted to do.

  “Alex, I have a favor to ask.”

  I sat there in stony silence.<
br />
  “Would you come with me to Liz's? I'm… I'm kind of creeped out about going over there alone. I'm sorry, you know, to show up after all this time and impose like this.”

  “Nonsense.”

  I could cancel my dinner plans. The woman I was supposed to have Thai food with at Sawatdee Restaurant wouldn't forgive me. But that didn't matter. I'd cancel, absolutely.

  “Let me make a quick phone call,” I said, rising.

  I at least owed my would-be date that; it would have been our first date, so this was really nipping it in the bud. What was I going to say? My old girlfriend just buzzed her way back into my life and she was still the one to whom I compared all? Could I be that honest?

  I stopped, one hand on the back of the couch, and asked the obvious. “There's only one thing: If Liz didn't kill herself, then what happened? Was it an accident?”

  Toni shook her thick dark hair. “No. Nobody else seems to think so, but I think she was murdered. In fact, Alex, I'm sure of it.”

  My eyes scanned the floor. Over the winter, when chilly Minneapolis's crime rate was usually at its lowest, four or five young women had been hideously murdered, their butchered bodies found in snowy woods and fields. Everyone was reading about it, talking about it. Could Toni's sister have been the next victim?

  “So will you go with me? I mean, to Liz's?”

  My heart skidded to a halt. All my internal warning bells went off, screamed like my intercom-doorbell thing. It was like I knew what was going to happen, like I knew going over there—particularly right then—was not only stupid but dangerous, that it was another step along a path that led only to death. But hadn't I been waiting all these years for this, the opportunity to prove both my devotion and love for her, for Toni?

  So I eagerly said, “Sure, just let me put on some pants.”

  And I was so excited that I rushed to change and forgot all about Thai food and making that one quick phone call.

  Chapter 5

  After that, it hit me, the realization that I was reliving it all hit me, and I started twisting and groaning. Toni in my arms? Toni to be killed? How was any of this possible? How could I stop it? I had to warn her, had to help her!

  “Alex, let's take a break. I'm going to count from—”

  No! I couldn't leave Toni. If I left her now, I'd lose her forever. I knew that much. I had to stay with her, protect her.

  “Just a short break, Alex. A pause. Then you'll come back and Toni will still be there.”

  But…

  “Ten… nine…” she cooed. “When I reach one, you'll be back in the present and you'll remember everything, Alex. Everything will be fine. Eight…”

  I tried to battle that godlike voice calling me, tried not to hear her. But I couldn't block her out—she kept chanting, kept pulling me back, going on and on, reaching into the mesmerizing black hole I was hiding in, counting abracadabralike, grabbing and pulling me out of the darkness. I felt as if I were being sucked down a whirling drain from which I couldn't escape, from which—

  “And one.” Maddy paused a moment. “You're awake and you're in the present.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  Where was I? I opened my eyes, just as quickly shut them because I saw that I was back in Madeline's attic on Madeline's island. I groped for the recliner's lever and pushed it, which in turn catapulted me forward, head into hands.

  “Are you all right?” asked Maddy.

  “No, I don't think so. Am I really back here?” I said, glancing over.

  “Yep.” She lay motionless on her extended chair. “Well, I don't think you've forgotten a thing about hypnosis—I think you're just as good as ever.”

  “No shit.” I shook my head. “That was a hell of a practice run, if you want to call it that.”

  A hell of a trance through time, through memory, whatever, to that night when Toni had shown up at my place back in Minneapolis. How was it possible? Yet even more so, how was it possible that I was back here?

  I opened my eyes a bit, squinted at the bright light streaming in through the French doors. Heard the waves of Lake Michigan out there, bashing and rolling. Turned, and saw around me the huge empty attic, rising like a Viennese ballroom totally stripped of ornamentation. And my sister was right next to me, sunglasses over her failed eyes, her frozen legs completely still, of course. She looked every bit the elegant movie star resting on the deck of a luxury liner. So innocent, so lovely, yet what a sorceress.

  “It was all so real. I mean, I was back there in my apartment, back then, in April. But it's August now, and I'm here, with you.”

  I stood, went to the screen door, looked out at the vast blue sea of Lake Michigan. It was like magic, all of this. Black magic. Witchcraft. What I'd just experienced, witnessed, seen—it hadn't just happened. No, it had happened long ago, months ago.

  “She's dead,” I said.

  “Yes, I know. And I'm sorry.”

  “Do you remember her?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “She's dead… and yet I just had her in my arms. I was just holding her, touching and smelling her. It was all so real.”

  “Isn't the mind amazing?” said Maddy. “I bet you thought you were beginning to forget her.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “But there she was in your imagination, just waiting for you to reach out to her. I hate our Western way of thinking—that life is linear and once you experience events and people, you leave them behind.”

  “Maddy… please.”

  “No, I mean it. Toni's out there somewhere, in a dimension just out of our sight, beyond our grasp.”

  A heavy depression was hitting me, washing through me. I couldn't bear Maddy's philosophy, not now. I didn't want anything to do with the methods Maddy had adopted to cope with the tragedies of her life. Toni was my tragedy, and she was dead, murdered, and nothing else really mattered.

  I distanced myself from my sister, stepping out onto the balcony, where I was embraced by the strong afternoon sun, the powerful breeze. In the distance I saw a huge ship, probably coming up from Chicago, heading for the top of Lake Michigan, where it would pass into the other lakes, out the St. Lawrence Seaway, and to the ocean. To a world beyond. God, I felt numb with despair, as if I'd just held Toni—which I had—and as if I'd just lost her again—which was also true.

  From inside, Maddy called, “Alex, do you want anything to drink?”

  “Sure.”

  “Iced tea?”

  “Sure.”

  I glanced inside, saw Maddy stretching to her wheelchair, reaching for a phone in a holster. She needed assistance, and I began to turn.

  “No,” firmly said my sister, hearing my steps and stopping me. “If I need help I'll ask for it.”

  Same old Maddy, I thought, turning back to the blue, watery vista. Hadn't changed since she was five. And sure enough, behind me I could tell she had the phone in hand, could hear her bleeping a couple of buttons on the phone and calling downstairs.

  “Hi, Solange,” said my sister. “Could you bring us a couple of iced teas? Wait, make that a pitcher, and bring extra lemons, if you would. Yes, we're still upstairs. Thanks.”

  I watched the whitecaps on the lake appear and disappear, little blips of white, and then I noticed something moving down below on the lawn, right in front of the house. Two big, long, tan things. Oh, yes. Fran and Ollie, the dogs. Was I going to be able to take a walk here, or was I trapped inside, Maddy's prisoner now?

  From behind the screen door, Maddy said, “You loved her a lot, didn't you?”

  “Yeah,” I said over my shoulder. “But it was very complicated. Kind of weird, I guess. There's a whole bunch of stuff I never told you. Maybe it was a sick relationship, I don't know.”

  “Trust me, Alex, all relationships are weird.”

  I turned around, stared at her inside, and wanted to say—and was just about to—oh, yeah, how do you know? Maddy had dated some, might even have had a few flings, but as far as I knew she'd had no
Mr. Wonderful.

  Before I could blather my insolent superiority, however, she surprised me, confessing, “I had someone like Toni in my life. A man I cared for as much as you cared for her, I mean.”

  “What?”

  “I fell very much in love with a man, and it was wonderful… and agonizing.”

  “You're kidding.”

  I stayed outside, on the other side of the screen door, as if I were in one side of a confessional booth and she were in the other. I hadn't thought it possible, or rather, if Maddy had been in love I assumed she would have told me, which she definitely hadn't. I'd kept secrets from her, to be sure, but she never had from me. Or so I thought. Then again, why should I have been surprised? She'd been a shrink, and shrinks were obsessive, even fascistic, about guarding secrets. They carried all their clients’ deepest and darkest, a veritable fortune of dirty admissions, so why shouldn't she keep something about herself from me?

  “It was before the accident.” Which meant before the CTA bus. “About six months before, I guess.”

  Suddenly I heard a gentle knock. Iced tea. Maddy called out, and Solange stepped in. Through the screen door, from my vantage in the sun, I could see her dark shape. An attractive woman, skin a deep black. A gentle soul who moved with competence and attentiveness. She and her husband, Alfred, were in good employ here, and my sister was in their good care.

  “Hello, Alex,” she called to me.

  “Nice to see you, Solange.”

  She set the tray down on the floor between the two leather recliners, poured one glass, lifted it carefully into Maddy's hands, poured the other, then left.

  “Thank you,” called Maddy.

  We were alone again, and I stepped inside, sat on the edge of my chair, picked up my glass, sipped at it. And cut to the quick.

  “But he was married?”