A Stir of Echoes

A Stir of Echoes Page 11

THE LETTER WAS DELIVERED SHORTLY AFTER TEN THE NEXT MORNING.

I took it into the kitchen to Anne, wondering why I felt so uneasy about it. I could see, from the handwriting on the envelope, that it was from her father. For a moment, I thought about my telling Elsie we were going to see Anne's mother that night; and wondered if it had been more than a coincidence. Anne opened the letter and started to read it. I watched the expression of worry come into her face.

"Oh, no," she said.

It is your mother. I almost spoke the words aloud; then, quickly, closed my mouth before she noticed. She looked up.

"Mother's ill," she said.

I stared at her. I could hear the clock ticking on the cupboard.

"No," I said.

She thought I was referring to the letter. She went on reading it and I felt a great weight dragging down inside of me. I kept staring at Anne, beginning to feel sick.

"Dad say she's-"

She stopped instantly and looked at me in blank surprise.

She started to speak, stopped again. She did this several times. When, at last, she managed to force it, I knew it was against her will.

"What is it?" Her voice was low and frightened. I shook my head suddenly.

"Nothing," I said. My voice sounded brittle and artificial.

She kept looking at me. I felt my heart thudding heavily. I couldn't take my eyes from her. I saw her chest shake with uncontrolled breath.

"I want you to tell me what it is," she said.

"It's nothing." I felt dizzy. The room wavered around me. I thought I was going to fall.

"What is it?"

"It's nothing." Like a brainless parrot repeating. I kept staring at her.

"Tom-"

That was when the phone rang.

The sound that came from me was terrible. It was a moaning sound, a guttural, shaking exhalation of fright. Anne actually shrank back from me.

The phone kept ringing.

"What is it?" Her voice was hollow, ready to shatter. I swallowed but the lump stayed in my throat. The phone kept ringing, ringing, I tried to speak but couldn't. I shook my head again. That's all I could do; shake my head.

Suddenly, with a gasp, she pushed by me and I stayed rooted there as she ran across the living room into the hall. The ringing stopped.

"Hello," I heard her say. Silence. "Dad!"

And that was all. Absolute silence. I pressed both shaking palms down on the sink counter and stood there staring at the spread ringers.

I heard her hang up. I stood waiting. Don't, I thought. Don't come in here. Don't look at me. I heard her footsteps, slow and heavy, moving across the living room rug. Don't, I begged. Please. Don't look at me.

I heard her stop in the kitchen doorway. She didn't speak. I swallowed dryly. Then I had to turn. I couldn't bear it, just standing there with all her thoughts assailing me.

I turned.

She was staring at me. I'd seen a stare like that only once before in my lifetime. It was on the face of a little girl who was looking at her dog lying crushed in the street; a look compounded of speechless horror and complete, overwhelming disbelief.

"You knew," she said.

I reached out an imploring hand.

"You knew" she said-and there was no hiding the revulsion in her voice now; the fear. "You knew this too. You knew before he called."

"Anne-"

With a gagging sound, she whirled and fled the living room. I started after her. "Anne!" She rushed into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. I banged against it just after she'd locked it. Inside, I heard the start of her dry, chest-racking sobs.

"Anne, please!"

"Get away from me!" she cried. "Get away from me!" I stood there, shaking helplessly, listening to her heartbroken sobs as she wept for her mother who had died that morning.

She left for Santa Barbara early that afternoon, taking Richard with her. I didn't even ask if she wanted me to go along. I knew she didn't. She hadn't spoken a word to me from the time she'd come out of the bathroom till the time she drove away. Dry-eyed and still, she'd packed a few of her and Richard's things into an overnight bag, then dressed Richard and herself and left. I didn't speak to her. Can you speak to your wife at a time when you are a horror in her eyes?

After she'd gone, I stood on the lawn looking at the spot where the car had turned left onto the boulevard. The sun was hot on my back. It made my eyes water the way it glinted metallically off the sidewalks. I stood there a long time, motionless, feeling empty and dead.

"You too, haah?"

I twitched sharply as someone called to me. Looking across the street I saw Frank in his shorts coming out of his garage with a lawn mower.

"I thought you were a staunch supporter of Saturday work," he called. I stared at him. He put down the mower and started toward me. With a convulsive shudder, I turned away and went back into the house. As I closed the door behind me, I saw him picking up the mower again, squinting quizzically toward our house. He shook his head and then bent over to adjust the grass-catcher.

I turned from the door and walked to the sofa. I sat down and lay my head back. I closed my eyes and saw, in my mind, the look on her face when she had come back from the telephone. And I remembered something I'd said to Anne the night after Phil had hypnotized me. Maybe we're all monsters underneath, I'd said.

About two-thirty I got the lawn mower out of the garage and started working on the front lawn. Staying in the house was more than I could manage; it was a closet of cruel reminders. So I put on my shorts and tennis shoes and tried to forget by labouring.

It was a fruitless effort. The monotonous act of pushing the whirring mower back and forth across the grass, if anything, enhanced introspection. Then again, in the state I was in, I doubt if there was an activity in the world which could have made me forget.

To put it simply-life had become a nightmare.

Not even a week had passed since that party at Elsie's house; yet, in those short days, more incredible things had happened to me than had happened in the previous twenty-seven years. And it was getting worse; much worse. I dreaded the coming days.

I thought about Anne, about the horror in her eyes as she realized that I'd known her mother was dead-even before her father had phoned. I put myself in her position. It wasn't hard to see why she'd reacted as she had. The double shock of dread and grief could have snapped anyone.

"Hey, there."

I started and looked around. Harry Sentas was standing on his porch looking at me and I realized that I was halfway onto his lawn, cutting a crooked swath lower than the level of his grass,

"Oh, I-I'm sorry," I said, flustered. "I must have been dreaming." He grunted and, as I turned with a nervous smile and started back again, I saw, from the corner of my eye, Sentas step down off his porch to examine the damage.

I kept mowing without looking up until he'd gone into his house again. Then I dropped the mower and went in for a towel. I sat on the edge of the cool cement porch, mopping at my face and staring across the street at Frank's house.

I thought about picking up his and Elizabeth's thoughts. I thought about his having an affair with a redhead at the plant. I thought about Elsie hiding the carnal clutter of her mind behind a face of bland innocence; about her brow-beating her husband mercilessly. I thought about Sentas and his wife and the tension that always seemed to be between them. I thought about the bus driver up the block who was an alcoholic who spent half his weekends in jail; about the housewife on the next street who slept with high school boys while her salesman husband was on the road. I thought about Anne and myself, about the incredible things that were happening to us.

All these things taking place in this peaceful neighbourhood of quiet, little houses basking in the sun. I thought of that. It reminded me of Jekyll and Hyde. The neighbourhood was two creatures. One presented a clean, smiling countenance to the world and, beneath, maintained quite another one. It was hideous, in a way, to consider the world of twists and warps that existed behind the pleasant setting of Tulley Street.

So hideous that I got up and started mowing again and tried to blank my mind. It was about then, I think, that I considered the possibility that I was losing my mind. I mean considered it. Before that it had been a droll fancy to smile about. It was no longer that. It was something I had to face. My mind was a prism. It broke up thought rays and scattered them into visions and impressions. That was simple enough. The difficult part lay in determining where those rays came from-without or within.

While I was finishing up the lawn, Ron came out of his house and got into their Pontiac convertible which was standing in the driveway. He made a little gesture of greeting with his hand and squeezed out a smile. I smiled back.

"May I borrow your edger?" I called.

He looked blank a moment, then nodded.

"Is it in the garage?" I asked.

"I think so."

After he'd driven off, I finished up the lawn, emptied the grass-catcher and put the mower back in the garage. Then I went into Elsie's garage (like the house it, too, seemed to belong only to Elsie). I looked around in the gloom but couldn't find the edger. I stopped for a few moments and thumbed through a magazine from the pile of true confessions and screen romances which were Elsie's only mental fare. Once, when she'd brought herself a small, wrought-iron bookcase, she'd come over and asked if she could borrow some books to display that night at a party-books with pretty jackets, she'd specified. She didn't notice that I'd slipped in Ulysses and The Well of Loneliness. For that matter, I doubt if any of her guests noticed either.

I tossed down the magazine, looked a little more for the edger, then went outside again. As I came out, Elsie was just closing the kitchen door.

"Hi," she said, brightly. "What are you doing in my garage?"

"Setting a fire," I said.

"Oh, yeah? You better not," she said. She was wearing that clinging bathing suit again. Her shoulders and upper chest were well tanned. She went to the beach three days a week with Candy.

"Do you want something?" she asked.

At first I was going to say no, then I decided I was being absurd about her. I told her I'd like to borrow the edger.

"Oh. Didn't you find it?" she asked as she came up to me. She looked up at me with those brown eyes that always seemed to be searching for something. You're cute. I felt the words stroke at my mind. I had the momentary urge to say, No, Fm not just to see what her reaction would be. It would have been, I'm sure, one of apparent surprise. She would have sworn on the Bible, of course, that she'd never thought any such thing.

"No, I don't think it's in there," I said.

"Sure it is. Come on. I'll show you."

I followed her into the dim, oily-smelling garage.

"I know it's in here somewhere," she said, hands on hips. She walked around the wall, looking behind the old blanket-covered refrigerator, the washing machine, the arm chair.

"I know," she said. She knelt on the old, sheet-covered sofa and looked behind it, the bathing suit growing drum-taut across her hips.

"There it is," she said. "Candy put it there the other day." She reached down and the bathing suit slipped a little, exposing the white tops of her breasts. She looked up at me as if she were concentrating on reaching the edger. I felt my stomach muscles tightening of their own accord. Come to me. The words seemed sharply distinct in my mind. They might have been spoken aloud. Come to me, Tommy baby. I'll do something you'll like.

I let out a shaking breath.

"Can't you reach it?" I asked.

It was a weird feeling to stand there play-acting, sensing the levels beneath this outwardly ordinary scene. To stand there talking casually when all the time I knew what she was thinking. She slumped down on the sofa. "I can't," she said.

You're lying, I thought. I knew she could reach it. I didn't say anything. I started forward, robot like. I knelt on the sofa and looked over the back. I saw the edger lying on the floor. With a grunt, I reached down. Elsie got on her knees again and I felt the warmth of her leg touch mine.

"Can you reach it?" she asked. I swallowed dryly. Her thoughts were like hands on my mind.

"I think so." I wanted to get up and walk out of there but I couldn't. As a matter of fact, it was a little difficult to reach. I leaned over further. Elsie pressed closer. Now her side touched mine. It made my flesh crawl. I could smell the odour of her slightly sweaty body, of her hair. I could hear her breathing and feel the tickling drift of it across my shoulder and neck. My hand closed over the edge.

"There," she said and her leg seemed to nudge me. Her cheek was almost against mine. "You've got it now," she said, Tommy. My breath caught as the sentence was finished in my mind. I straightened up and turned to her. Tommy? It was a question now. As if she were speaking it in a low, husky voice. Tommy?

"Well..." I said.

I hesitated too long. I couldn't help it. Her thoughts seemed to thread themselves around me in great, tangling swirls. My heart was thudding like a slowly beaten tympani.

She seemed to lean forward. To this day I don't know if she really did or if I just imagined it. I felt dizzy. It could have happened either way.

"Anything else?" she asked.

No! The word scaled across my mind like a hand toppling the blocks of hungry thought she was building there. I drew back and saw how her breasts surged slowly against the binding of her suit as she drew in a deep breath.

"I don't think so," I said. I was startled at the strained sound of my voice.

"Sure now?" she asked. I felt her breath clouding warmly across my face. I felt as I had when Phil's hypnosis had begun to work; devoured by an invisible, enervating force. I stood up limply.

"Yeah, I-think so," I said.

She stood too. She was close to me. I'm sure it was imagination but it seemed as if her body were radiating heat.

"All right then," she said.

The garage seemed to fall into place again. She was no longer a strength-draining incarnation of lust but only plump Elsie, our next-door neighbour, with a slightly silly smile on her face. I turned for the door.

"If there's anything else," she said, "let me know."

"Okay," I said. I felt my legs shaking a little under me.

"Get back in the house, Candy," I heard Elsie say calmly as I moved down the alley. I walked back to the house, left the edger on the porch and went in. I sank down on a chair and sat there weakly.

I felt like some sort of fantastic actor who could play two scenes simultaneously using not only the same setting but the same dialogue. That was the frightening thing about it. Anyone could have stood there and watched us and thought it innocuous; a pleasant summer's day flirtation which lasted a few moments, then ended. They wouldn't have seen the part of it that went on underneath. I began to shake. Because, suddenly, I knew that Elsie's mind had so overwhelmed mine that my reaction had been one of shock and ineffectual defence. I had been vulnerable. Which meant that I was a pawn. Up till that moment I had been under the somewhat comforting delusion that I had some power over this new capacity. Now it had become terribly clear that I didn't. It was not, as I had said to Anne, an increase. It was not a strength added to me; a strength which I could manipulate. It was as if a brainless monster had been set loose in my mind and was roaming, uncontrolled. I was helpless.