MICHAEL CLIMBED PAST the second-floor hallway and mounted the stairs to the attic. The door to the studio was closed, a crack of light showing above the sill. He knocked, twice, and entered. Jennie was lying in a filmy nightgown on the bed, drinking a glass of milk, a book open on her lap.
He took the chair beside the bed, feeling vaguely sheepish. “I get lonely down there,” he said. “I miss you.”
She reached out to take his hand. “I’m sorry. I know I’m a burden to you. I try not to be.”
“You’re not a burden to me. I just worry about you.”
“Please don’t worry about me, Michael. I’ll be all right, no matter what happens.”
That sounded ominous. He thought of that elusive man, his imaginary rival, and felt resentment rising. She leaned up to put the glass on the bedside table, and he saw the round curve of her hip, the long sweep of her thigh, the soft liquid jostle of her breasts beneath the cloth, and the thought of her giving that body to another man, even in fantasy, sent a flare of jealous anger burning through him like flames through a flue.
“A book I got from the library.” She showed him the title: Other Times, Other Worlds.
“Do you think you should be reading something like that?”
“I’m trying to understand what’s happening to me, Michael.”
“I thought you had Dr. Salzman for that.”
“Dr. Salzman is trying to help me the best he knows how.”
He could tell from her tone how little confidence she had in Salzman’s help. It depressed him to realize he loved her more now than he ever had, made him angry that he was the way he was, so that under the illusion of competing for her with another man, even an imaginary one, he could feel more loving toward her than he had when it might have done some good, might have prevented this from happening.
“Have you learned anything from the book?” he said.
“I thought there might be something about time-travel, about whether you could go back and change history. But there’s nothing like that.”
“Tell me what’s happening to you now, Jennie.”
“You don’t want me to tell you, Michael. It would only hurt you, and I don’t want that.”
“Tell me, and let me worry about the hurt. I have a right to know.”
“You’d only say I’m going crazy, you and Dr. Salzman both. Believe me, Michael, I wish I could tell you, I wish I could tell you everything, because I’m afraid and I need somebody to talk to. But you would never believe me.”
“You still think it’s all really happening, don’t you?” Anger seeped into him again. “You think he’s real, and you think you’re in love with him, and that’s why you’re afraid to tell me, isn’t it?”
“Don’t use that tone of voice, Michael. If we’re going to talk about this, you have to try to understand, you have to try to believe.”
“How can I believe? How can you believe anything so ridiculous?”
“Because it’s happening to me. It’s been happening to me for a long time. I go back for days now, Michael. I’m part of his life. I don’t care what you think, or what Dr. Salzman thinks, it’s real. It’s real, and I have to deal with it.”
“Jennie, how can it be real?” He was dimly aware that he was entering areas Dr. Salzman had warned him against, but his frustration would not let him stop. “Can’t you see how crazy that is?”
“I don’t know how it can be real, Michael, but it is. It’s happening to me, and whatever’s coming is going to happen to me, too, and if you want to help me you’ll try to understand. You wanted to know, Michael, you wanted to know, so I’ll tell you. Yes, I’m in love with him, and he’s in love with me. He wants me to go away with him. But I can’t, Michael, because he’s going to die unless I find some way to stop it. I’ve gone back, Michael, and I’ve seen it start and I can see it coming. There’s this girl, his sister-in-law, Rachel, that he’s going to help elope, and unless I find some way to stop it her father is going to kill him, just like Mrs. Bates said.”
“Jennie, Jennie, I can’t believe any of this. Can’t you see that all this is fantasy, that you can’t go back to 1899 or wherever it is? That’s not possible, Jennie.”
“It’s possible, Michael, because I’ve been there. The man I love is there. I’m sorry, but you wanted to know. I can’t help being in love with him. And he wants me to stay there with him, in 1899, he wants me to go away with him. And if I can find some way to do it, I will. I don’t want to live here anymore, in this time. I feel warmed there, Michael, by everything—him, and the way the world was then, and the kind of life I could have with him. There’s no warmth in modern life, Michael. If I can’t find some way to stay there with him, if I can’t save his life, then I don’t want to live either.”
“Jennie, he doesn’t exist. He’s not real, Jennie. Please try to see that.”
“But he is real, Michael. He’s real in every sense of the word. I can see him as clearly as I can see you. The last time I saw him I was standing in the little park just before you get to the train station, not the station now but the way it was then, because you see I told him I live in town, in the Henry Hudson Hotel, and I always go back there so he’ll think I told the truth. And this time he let me off at the park because I told him you were at the hotel, my husband was at the hotel, and I said let me off here so we won’t be seen together. And when he let me off I watched him drive away, and when he got even with the train station, the station master came out and said something to him, and he stopped the buggy. He didn’t know I was still watching, because it was so dark, but I heard them talking. And I heard him laugh about something, something the station master said, and he looked so young and alive—he was happy because he thinks everything is going to be over and we’re going to go away together. But all I could think of was maybe that’s where it happened, maybe right there where he’s so happy now is where it’s going to happen, because you see he’s supposed to drive Rachel to the station, and I thought maybe that’s where Rachel’s father discovered them and that’s where it happened. I found out today that it happened at a concert, at a band concert near the lake, but all I could think of then was maybe this is where it’s going to happen. Because you see, Michael, it hasn’t happened yet, he’s still alive, he’s back there expecting me to leave you and go away with him. And what can I do, Michael? I have to do something. I can’t let him die. I know this is all very strange, and very unfair to you. I never wanted to hurt you, Michael, but I didn’t choose for this to happen. It was meant to happen, I know that now. Sometimes I feel I’m being tested, that something in my destiny depends on whether I can find a way to save him.”
As he listened to her talk, watching the emotions flicker across her face, a strange and chilly feeling seemed to invade his mind, leaving it cold and frighteningly clear. She really believed it; she had surrendered totally and finally to it; she was beyond any reach of his persuasion. It was like watching her from a great distance, cold and objective, seeing her as she really was: a woman going insane, talking about the unbelievable with the fierce intensity of someone on the very edge of madness.
Something within his strange coldness warned him to be cautious, to humor her fantasy. “But even if everything you say is true, Jennie, you can’t save him, you can’t go away with him. According to Mrs. Bates’ story, he’s already dead. He was murdered in eighteen-ninety-nine.”
“But couldn’t he survive some way, Michael? It wouldn’t matter that I didn’t go away with him if only I knew he survived. Oh, Michael, if the past still exists and I can go to him there, couldn’t other things be true, too? Do you remember what Beverly said about parallel worlds, Michael? She said there was a theory that people who die naturally, of old age, pass on to a higher level of existence, but people who die young pass on to a world just like this one, so they can fulfill the purpose of this incarnation. Couldn’t that be true, Michael? Couldn’t he live on like that even if I’m not able to save him?”
Her intensity frightened him, the strange talk of levels of existence and parallel worlds, ideas so alien to the person she was before this began. Gently, he said, “I love you, Jennie. I don’t want you to go away from me.”
“I know, Michael. I know you love me, and I’m sorry you have to go through this, too. I don’t understand it, but if it was meant to happen to me, it must be meant to happen to you, too, don’t you see?”
Trying gently, almost humorously, to convey affection, he said, “But how would I ever know what happened to you if you went away with him, if you just disappeared and I never saw you again?”
But even this was a serious consideration to her. “I would find some way to tell you, Michael. I would find some way to get through and let you know. It’s possible to break through the barriers of time and space. David did the night he broke the cupboard.”
She talked on about the need to save David Reynolds’ life, but he was no longer listening. He felt a great sadness wrench his heart; there was no doubt now that despite her ability to function day to day she was approaching genuine insanity. It was frightening to watch, but stronger still was his feeling of immense fatigue, a kind of hopeless acceptance that there was nothing he could do. But there was one thing that was absolutely imperative to do: to talk to Dr. Salzman. And that as soon as possible.
“You’re going back to Fire Island tomorrow, aren’t you?” he said.
“Yes, it’s Beverly’s vacation. I promised to spend some time with her.”
“Do you think you ought to do that, feeling the way you do?”
“I promised, Michael.” Her face was suddenly pale. “I’ll only stay the day. I’ll be home sometime tomorrow night.”
For a moment he considered forbidding her to go, but even the implication of his question seemed threatening to her. Forbidding her would cause conflict, an argument, and he couldn’t risk that now. It might endanger her mental state even more. And she would be with people there who were not involved in this, who didn’t know about it, who would take her mind off it. It had worked out before; she had been going regularly without mishap. Possibly getting away from this house, this town, had kept her stable longer than if she hadn’t gone. He would let her go this one last time, and then talk to Salzman tomorrow and decide what to do.
“I wish you had told me all this before,” he said.
“I tried to tell you, Michael. You wouldn’t believe me.” She smiled gently, and even her smile had an intensity he had never seen before. “You don’t believe me now, do you?”
“I don’t know,” he said, disconcerted by the quality of her smile. “Would you mind if I discussed this with Dr. Salzman?”
“No, Michael, I don’t mind. Do what you have to do. I know I’m making you very unhappy, and I’m sorry. I’ve never been sorrier for anything in my life. But I’m very grateful you came up here tonight. I wanted you to. I heard you on the stairs, and I wanted so much for you to come up here so I could talk with you, and you came. And I’m glad.” She reached out to take his hand again. “I don’t know how, but you’ve helped me very much. I’m afraid, Michael, I’m afraid because I don’t know if I can do what I have to do. But I’m glad we’ve talked about it.”
He felt an immense tenderness for her sweep over him, the kind of tenderness he knew she had always wanted him to feel; and before he could close it off, remembering all the times he had resisted this, wanting now finally to express those feelings in himself she had always wanted to see and he had never been able to show her, he leaned down to take her in his arms and hold her, feeling in a strange way a kind of peace, the peace of relinquishing resistance.
“I wish this didn’t have to happen, Michael,” she said. “I wish things could have been different between us.”
“Won’t you come downstairs? Come back down to the bedroom?”
“No, Michael. It’s better this way. It’s better not to rekindle what we had. Because you see, Michael, something doesn’t want it to be. Something is calling me elsewhere, and I have no choice but to go.”
“Jennie, don’t talk like that.”
She moved so that she could see his face, and again he was struck by the intensity of her look. “Maybe it’s not a bad thing, Michael. Don’t you see? Maybe it’s true that I’m being tested. Maybe you’re being tested, too, in the way you react to what’s happening to me. And even though it’s very frightening, maybe it’s not a bad thing. Maybe it means there’s more than we’ve always believed, that there are things about this life that we don’t know, more than we can comprehend with just our minds.”
“If I could believe that,” he said, “all this might even be worth it.”
He felt they were surrounded by an aura of tenderness that seemed to come not from her or from himself but from some awesome commingling of the two and, overcome with that tenderness, he took her in his arms again, not understanding what this was or why he should feel such strength in her strange air of unreality, but only surrendering to it for as long as it should last. Tomorrow, he thought, tomorrow I can discuss all this with Dr. Salzman, and maybe then I’ll understand.
It was a long time before he could bring himself to kiss her good-night and return down the stairs to the cold and lonely bedroom on the second floor.
• • •
Dr. Salzman was surprised and shocked at the extent of what he had learned.
“She hasn’t told me any of this,” he said. “Once, she described a hallucination in which she’d talked to this man, but nothing with this complexity. And that was weeks ago. Since then, she’s given me every reason to believe the hallucinations had stopped.” He sighed, looking strained and tired in the shadowy light of the lamp. “It’s hard for me to acknowledge what this means.”
“You mean—she’s been lying to you.”
“I’m afraid so. And that’s a very bad sign. I don’t like all this talk of staying in the past, of going away with this man she calls David Reynolds, or of not wanting to live if he dies. Children sometimes invent imaginary playmates, you know; they give them names and seem to believe the playmate actually exists. And sometimes they announce the playmate is going to die, or has already died, and that’s a healthy sign that the child is growing beyond that particular phase. But that is obviously not the case here. Jennie, or I should say her subconscious, has devised this other world as a means of escape; I don’t want to alarm you, but this talk of returning to it permanently has very ominous implications. And I’m afraid this calls for more than just the weekly sessions in my office.”
“You’re suggesting—having her committed?”
“I’m recommending that she be hospitalized, if only to prevent her becoming a danger to herself. I think it’s imperative she be some place where she can have twenty-four-hour observation, at least for the immediate future. If you agree, I’ll set the process in motion. There’ll be papers for you to sign, of course, and examinations by other doctors first, but I think it should be done as quickly as possible.”
Michael tried to assimilate the enormity of this decision. “If you recommend it, of course I’ll agree. It’s just more than I can handle now. But what should I do in the meantime?”
“Try to arrange things so that Jennie is alone as little as possible. It would be best if you could take a leave of absence and be with her yourself, but if that’s not possible, get someone to come and stay with her. Again, I don’t want to alarm you, but the human mind is capable of willing itself to die. You’ve no doubt read of aborigines mysteriously wasting away and dying after a witch doctor has placed a curse on them. Well, I assure you, such things are feasible; they’ve been documented. I could explain it to you, go into Freud’s theory of the death-instinct and so forth, but I’m sure that’s not necessary. Just be gentle with her, and don’t give her opportunity to be alone.”
Outside, in the hot and oily air of the street, Michael watched the people striding past, aloof and oblivious in their normal workaday world. He couldn’t go back to the office, not now, facing the necessity of telling Jennie, imagining the look in her eyes when she realized what he and Dr. Salzman were going to do. But there were still a few days before he would have to do that. Luckily, he had brought the car to the city today; he could drive to Bay Shore in an hour, could bring her home from Fire Island himself, so that she wouldn’t have to take the train. It seemed very important not to waste any of the time they had left together before she would have to be told.
He hailed a cab to take him to where he had garaged the car.