A Stir of Echoes (12 page)

  "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 edger.

  "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.

TWELVE

  NIGHT.

  I sat in the kitchen, drinking beer and staring at the tablecloth.

  Hating Anne for leaving me alone.

  "Why," I remember saying, as if she could hear me, "why didn't you let me go with you? Was it my fault I knew your mother was dead? Did I ask to know it? Was that enough reason to leave me here alone?"

  I closed my eyes. I'd walked a mile and a half to a local movie just to get out of the house. I'd gone to a bar after that and had a few beers and watched the fights on television. I'd stopped at a liquor store on the way back and bought two quarts of beer and the Sunday papers. I'd read the papers through, glancing at everything, assimilating nothing. I'd finished one quart of beer, then been unable to see clearly enough to read. I'd watched television, staring glumly at a panel show, insulting the performers angrily. Finally, I'd turned it off and stood there, staring at the contracting blob of gray light, watching the few remaining flickers before the tube grew black. Then I'd gone into the kitchen where I was now, sitting, working at the second quart of beer.

  And waiting.

  I knew there was no escaping. I couldn't sleep in the street. Sooner or later I had to lie down on the bed and go to sleep.

  When I did, she'd return.

  It was as much an assurance in my mind as it was an assurance that, after the funeral, Anne would come back with Richard.

  "Too late," I berated her from eighty miles away. "Too late. You'll come back and it'll be too-"

  I stiffened. Was that a sound in the living room? I bit my teeth together and listened so hard my eardrums hurt. I sat there frozenly, staring at the tablecloth, unable to look into the semi-lit living room.

  "Are you in there?" I muttered. "Are you?"

  I flung up my head suddenly.

  "Well,
are
you!"

  She wasn't. Something that sounded terribly like a sob broke in my chest. I heard it. I was afraid. I was a baby terrified of the dark, a little boy afraid of ghosts. All the years of reason and dogma had been stripped away. I'd been drinking beer in the hope of stultifying awareness. It had only increased it by lowering the barriers of conscious resistance. Don't ever get drunk if you want to avoid the tensions within; I found that out. Drinking only opens the gates and lets out the prisoners you can keep locked in with conscious will.

  "I hate you," I said, drunkenly. "I hate you for leaving me. What kind of wife are you who'd leave me here alone? You know she's here. You know she wants me for something. You-"

  I gasped as I heard a loud laughing in the next house. I heard Elsie saying brightly, "Oh, you
stop
that now!"

  I shuddered. We are all monsters underneath, I thought.

  "And the most monstrous of monsters is the female monster," I mumbled, "because they are shrewd monsters, because they are monsters of deceit, because they can lurk monstrously, hiding themselves behind a veneer of falsity, because they are monsters of deception."

  I slumped forward, resting my head on my arms and wondered, for a moment, if I should go across the alley to Elsie's party. I knew I couldn't, though. To be exposed to her mind with all those people around; that was more than I could take.

  "Anne, I don't want you to-"

  I stopped. I stood dizzily and carried the beer bottle to the sink. I poured out the beer and watched its amber frothing as it disappeared down the drain. Then I put the bottle down.

  Alone.

  "I'm alone in this house."

  I drove down a fist onto the sink counter. "Why'd you leave me alone?" I asked furiously.

  I turned and walked weavingly to the kitchen doorway. Here, Anne had stood that very morning, staring at me in horror. I remembered that look. In detail.

  "I asked for it, I suppose," I said. "I suppose I-"

  My head snapped as I looked around the living room.

  "All right, where are you?" I yelled. "God damn it, if-!"

  I jolted as the phone rang. I stood rooted there, staring toward the hall.

  Then, abruptly, I was running wildly across the rug, I was lurching into the hall, jerking up the receiver.

  "Anne?"

  "Tom. Where have you been? I've been calling all night."

  I closed my eyes and felt the tension draining off

  "Tom?"

  "I've been out," I said. "I… couldn't stay in the house. I went to a movie."

  "You sound sick."

  "It's nothing," I said. "I'm all right. I'm…just happy to hear from you."

  "Tom. I… I don't know what to say. Except that-hearing about mother and then, on top of that…"

  "I know, I know. You don't have to explain, darling," I said. "I understand perfectly. Just tell me you don't hate me, you don't-"

  "Darling, what are you saying?" she asked. "Of course, I don't hate you. I was foolish and-"

  "No, no, no. Don't blame yourself. It's all right. Believe me, it's all right. As long as I know you don't hate me."

  "Oh… Tom. Darling."

  "Are you all right? Is Richard all right?"

  "Yes, of course, Tom. You sound so upset."

  "Oh…" I laughed weakly. "It's just two quarts of beer talking. I've been consoling myself."

  "Oh, darling, I'm so sorry," she said. "Please forgive me. I didn't mean what I said, you know I didn't mean what I-"

  "It's all right, baby. It's all right." I swallowed. "When… when is the funeral?"

  "Tomorrow afternoon," she said.

  "Oh. How's your father?"

  "He's… taking it very well." She paused. "I wish you were here with me. It was terrible of me to leave you like that
."

  "I wish I
was there too. Shall I come up by bus?"

  "Oh, no. I'll be home tomorrow evening. I don't want to ask you to-"

  "I will, though. I will."

  "No, darling. Just stay home. And… take it easy."

  It was her last three words that did it.

  I don't know what it was about the way she spoke them-but it made me stiffen defensively. And, as she went on, I began to realize that she was hiding something. By the time we said good night and she'd hung up, I felt almost as bad as I had before she'd called.

  What was it? I stood there holding the receiver, listening to the thin buzzing in my ear.

  As I put it down, it came to me.

  She thought I was losing my mind.

  I sat down heavily on the sofa and sat there trembling. I couldn't adjust to this, I just couldn't. Yes, I'd given it consideration myself but I didn't believe it. Anne did. So much so that she hadn't even told me she was thinking it. She'd humoured me; patronized me.

  My hands closed into fists.

  "Speak gently to the foaming madman," I muttered tensely. "Talk to him in honeyed words lest he rise up and slay you. Oh…
God!"

  I drove down white knuckled fists on my legs.

  It was in that state of hurt and rage that I felt it start in me.