What Dreams May Come (20 page)

I wanted her to realize her isolation and to question it.

She questioned nothing, turning from me as though my words had offended her. I followed her inside the house and shut the glass door. As I did, Ann turned to look at me and Ginger growled again, her neck fur raised, A vision of endlessly futile attempts to reach Ann’s mind assailed me. I struggled with despair again.

Then I became aware of the dozens of framed photographs on the walls and another idea occurred. If I could get her to look at one of the photographs of me, the obvious similarity to my present appearance might impress her.

Ignoring Ginger’s growl, I moved to the nearest wall and looked for a photograph of myself.

All the photographs were faded and impossible to make out.

Why did that happen? I wondered. Was it part of Ann’s self-denying punishment? I was going to mention it, then changed my mind. It could only disturb her.

Another idea. I turned to her and said, “I wasn’t really telling you the truth before.”

She looked at me, suspiciously uncertain.

“My wife and I are separated,” I said, “but not in the way you may think. We’re separated by death.”

I felt myself wince at the spasmodic shudder my words caused in her; the look on her face as though a knife had just been plunged into her heart.

Still, I had to pursue it, hoping I was finally on the right track. “Her name was Ann too,” I said.

“You like it here in Hidden Hills?” she asked as though I hadn’t spoken.

“Did you hear me?” I asked. “Where did you live before?” “I said her name was Ann.”

The shudder again, the expression of staggered dismay.

Then the empty look returning. She moved away from me, headed for the kitchen. Ann, come back, I wanted to say; I almost did. I wanted to shout: It’s me, don’t you understand?!

I didn’t. And, like a cold weight in my chest, depression returned. I tried to resist but, this time, I was less successful. Some of it remained.

“Look at this place,” Ann said. She spoke as though she was alone, her voice mechanical. I had the feeling it was part of the process she endured; constant repetition of the details of her plight reinforcing her bondage to them. “Nothing works,” she said. “The food is spoiling. I can’t open cans because there’s no electricity and the hand opener is gone. Without water, I can’t do the dishes and they keep piling up. There’s no TV; I think it’s broken anyway. No radio, no phonograph, no music. No heat except for scraps of wood I burn; the house is chilly all the time. I have to go to bed at dark because there are no lights and all the candles are gone. The rubbish company never picks up anymore. The whole place smells of trash and garbage. And I can’t complain about anything because the phone is out.”

She broke off her somber catechism with a laugh that chilled me.

“Put up a Sparklett’s bottle?” she said. “They haven’t made a delivery in such a long time I can’t remember the last one.” She laughed again, a dreadful, bitter sound. “The good life,” she said. “I swear to God I feel like a character in some Neil Simon play, everything around me falling apart, everything inside me shriveling.”

A sob shook her body and I started toward her instinctively. Ginger blocked my way, teeth bared, a fierce growl rumbling in her chest. She looked like a hound of hell, I thought, despair returning again.

I looked at Ann. I knew exactly what she was doing but I had no strength to stop her.

She was fleeing from the truth by immersing herself in the relative safety of afflictive details—the sheltering of melancholy.

Yet pain and blood

“WHAT DO YOU drink?” I asked her as another idea came.

She looked at me as though I were a fool.

“What do you drink?” I repeated. “If the water’s off and you have no Sparklett’s.”

“I don’t know,” she muttered, glaring at me. “Juice or—“

“Isn’t it spoiled?” I interrupted.

“Canned juice; / don’t know.”

“You said—“

She turned away from me.

“What do you eat?” I persisted.

“I can’t cook without electricity,” she said as if it were an answer rather than an evasion.

“Are you hungry now?” I asked.

Again, that baleful look.

“Are you ever hungry?”

“Not often,” she answered coldly.

Was any of this getting through to her? I was growing weary of tortuous effort. Rashly, I made my point direct. “Do you ever eat or drink?”

She averted her eyes with a hiss of irritation. “What do you think?” she snapped.

I tried walking closer to her only to stop as Ginger growled again. “Why does she keep doing that?” I asked. I sounded irritated now. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

“You couldn’t if you wanted to,” she said.

I almost answered in kind. God help me, Robert. There to assist her and I almost responded with anger. Closing my eyes, I fought to regain my motivation.

When I opened my eyes again, I noticed her car outside and yet another notion came.

“Is that the only car you have?” I asked.

For the third time, that critical look. “We all have cars,” she said.

“Where are they then?”

“Being used, of course.”

“By your children?”

“Obviously.”

“What about your husband’s car?”

“I told you he was in an accident,” she said, stiffening.

“Someone said you have a camper.”

“We do.”

“Where is it?”

She looked at the place where we had always kept it parked and a look of confusion distorted her face. She’d never even thought about it before, the realization came.

“Do you know where it is?” I prodded.

She turned on me in annoyance. “It’s being repaired,” she said.

“Where?” I asked.

She blinked, looked momentarily disturbed. Then the vacant look was back again. “I don’t remember,” she said. “I’m sure I have it written down some—“

She broke off as I pointed at her car. “How did it get dented?”

“Someone hit it in a parking lot while I was shopping.”

Her smile was bitter. “That’s the way people are,” she said. “Whoever did it just left without telling me.”

“You were shopping?” I asked. “I thought you said you never left the house.”

I heard a tinge of instability in her voice as she answered, “That was before the battery went dead.”

We were back where we started, the convoluted turnings of her mind endlessly thwarting me. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t make a point she’d recognize much less react to. This gray world she existed in made sense to her. Horrible, depressing sense but sense nonetheless.

The wheels in my mind were turning more slowly now. I could think of nothing new to try and, so, returned to an earlier approach. Maybe if I pushed it harder.

“You never told me what your children’s names are,” I said.

“Don’t you have to leave?” she asked.

I started, not expecting that. I’d forgotten this was life to her. In life, she would have wondered why a strange man lingered in her house.

“I’ll leave soon,” I said. “I just want to talk to you a little longer.”

“Why?”

I swallowed. “Because I’m new in the neighborhood.” It seemed like a feeble answer but, for some reason, she didn’t question it. “What did you say your children’s names are?” I asked.

She turned from the window, walking toward the living room.

It was the first time she’d avoided a question by refusing to answer, I thought. Was this a positive sign? I followed her and Ginger, asking, “Is your younger son named Ian?”

“He’s in school,” she answered.

“Is his name Ian?”

“He’ll be home later.”

“Is his name Ian?”

“You’d better leave. He’s very strong.” “Is his name Ian?”

“Yes!”

“My son’s name is Ian too,” I told her.

“Really?” Disinterest. Was it feigned or actual?

“Is your older girl named Louise?” I asked.

She glanced across her shoulder as she moved into the living room. “Why don’t you—?”

“Louise?”

“Why don’t you go home?”

“Louise ?”

“What if it is?” she demanded.

“My older daughter’s name is Louise too.”

“How interesting.” Sarcasm as resistance now. She walked to the glass door, Ginger at her heels. Was she retreating from me bodily now? And did she know that she was doing it?

“Is your older son’s name Richard?”

“Look at that pool,” she murmured.

“Is your older son’s name Richard?”

She turned, an expression of resentment on her face. “Look, what do you want?” she asked, her voice rising

I almost said it all—unvarnished, laid out in a row. Then something stopped me. It was amazing I still had that much awareness. My perceptions were becoming more and more blunted as time passed.

I smiled as nicely as I could. Love, I thought. It has to be done with love. “I’m just interested in the remarkable similarities in our lives,” I said.

“What similarities?” she lashed out.

“That I look like your husband for one.”

“You don’t.” She cut me off. “Not at all.”

“You said I did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Then I was wrong!” she flared. Growling, Ginger showed her teeth once more.

“All right, I’m sorry,” I said. I had to be more careful. “I wasn’t trying to make trouble. It just seemed remarkable to me.”

She gazed out through the glass door again. “I don’t see anything remarkable at all,” she muttered.

“Well… my wife named Ann. My children’s names the same as yours.”

She turned on me again. “Who said they were the same?” she demanded.

“And my name Chris,” I said.

She twitched sharply, gaping at me. For an instant, something lifted from her eyes instead of settling over them. I felt my heartbeat jolt.

It passed as quickly as it came.

A burst of raging anguish filled me. Damn this filthy place! I thought. I shuddered with the rage.

And felt myself grow denser with it.

Stop! I thought. I couldn’t though. I had no ability to reverse the process. Instead of helping her, I was descending to her world.

No, I thought. I won’t do that. I was here to take her from this place, not join her there.

She’d turned away again by then, staring through the murky glass, once more drawing her oppression around her like a guarding mantle.

“I don’t know why I don’t just put this place up for sale and leave,” she said. Another sound of embittered humor. “Who’d buy it though?” she continued. “The best real estate agent in the world couldn’t sell it.” She shook her head in disgust. ‘ The best real estate agent in the world couldn’t give it away.”

She closed her eyes now, lowering her head.

“I keep polishing the furniture,” she said, “but dust keeps settling on it. It’s so dry; so dry. We haven’t had a drop of rain in such a long time, I—“

She broke off. That, too, I thought, despondently. Of course that would be part of Ann’s particular hell: lack of rain and browning greenery.

“I can’t stand filth and confusion,” she said, her voice beginning to break. “Yet all I see is filth and confusion.”

I started forward once again and Ginger braced herself to leap.

“Damn it, can’t you see I only want to help,” I said, my voice rising.

Ann jerked around, recoiling from me and I felt a burst of agonized reproach inside myself. I drew back quickly as Ginger started for me, snarling. “All right, all right,” I murmured, raising my hands in front of me.

“Ginger,” Ann said sharply.

Ginger stopped and looked at her.

My mind felt numb with defeat. Everything I’d tried had failed. Now this blunder. For all I knew, I was farther from helping Ann now than before I’d arrived. How vividly I saw what Albert had meant.

This level was a cruel and cunning trap.

“People borrow books and don’t return them,” Ann said, continuing as though nothing had occurred. “My best jewelry is gone. I can’t find it anywhere. My best clothes are missing.”

I stared at her with no idea whatever what to say or do. She was hiding again, holding the details of her plight between herself and any possible understanding of them.

“I don’t know who took those chessmen either,” she said.

“My wife had a chess set like that made for me,” I told her. “One Christmas. A man named Alexander built it.”

Ann shuddered. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

I lost control.

“You must know why I’m here,” I said. “You must know who I am.”

That maddening look in her eyes again; the filming away, the blind withdrawal.

“Ann,” I said. I reached out, touching her.

She gasped as though my fingers burned and, suddenly, I felt Ginger’s teeth clamp hard into my arm. I cried out and tried to pull away but she tightened her grip so that I dragged her across the carpeting by her hind legs. “Ginger!” I “shouted.

My voicing of her name came simultaneously with Ann’s.

Immediately, the bite was released and she was back beside Ann, trembling with reaction.

Raising my arm, I looked at it. Yes, pain was definitely possible there. And blood. I watched it oozing darkly from the punctures.

Afterlife, I thought. It seemed a mockery.

No flesh, yet pain and blood.

There is only death!

I LOOKED UP from my arm to see Ann start to cry. She was stumbling across the room, tears running down her cheeks. As I watched, she slumped down on the sofa and pressed her left hand over her eyes.

The pain in my arm seemed slight now compared to the new despair I felt. Without thinking, I started toward her again, then jerked to a halt as Ginger made a lurching movement toward me, her growl now mixed with a frantic wheezing sound which told me how disturbed she was. I drew back hastily as Ann looked up, her face a mask of wretched anger.

“Will you go?” she cried.

I backed off slowly, watching Ginger. As she settled down into a nervous crouch, I stopped. Looking behind me, I saw that I was standing near the piano bench and, backing up another few feet, I lowered myself onto it slowly, my gaze still fixed on Ginger.

“I want Chris,” Ann murmured, sobbing.

I stared at her, completely helpless.