Chapter Two

Katherine stepped closer to the sliders, sipped more coffee and continued to watch the snowfall. She remembered that last time she’d visited Carlo’s apartment, and how it was always so cramped in there, as if the walls were just waiting to snap shut on her like some giant mousetrap. It had begun to rain as they discussed the theories behind the madness James had experienced. Katherine sat in her usual chair, watching the blurred windowpanes rather than her friend’s noncommittal expression. The rhythm of the rain along the roof relaxed her, reminded her of times she would awaken on rainy mornings next to James and how the rain always made her feel safe and protected. “I’ve forgotten what it feels like,” she said softly. “Feeling safe.”

“You mean you feel unsafe?”

“There are days I do.”

“Well, we all—”

“This is different.”

“Why are you feeling unsafe then?”

“The madness.”

“Madness in general or James’s madness?”

Her eyes found him. “I’m beginning to think they’re the same.”

“How so?”

“Sometimes I think the madness he experienced has become mine too.” She forced a smile and nonchalantly crossed her legs. “It sounds silly, I know, but—”

“Not really.” Carlo let the silence linger awhile. “Actually, it’s not that unusual for two people who have a strong connection—love, for example—to experience a shared psychosis. There have been specific case studies with married couples, for instance, examples where one began to suffer acute mental illness, and over time, as the partner attempted to care for the one afflicted, he or she too began to suffer from identical or curiously similar symptoms, the same illness, as it were.”

This time when Katherine smiled it was not forced. “Contagious insanity?”

“That’s an interesting way to phrase it,” Carlo said, “but in a sense, yeah. Sometimes when the love or emotional connection between two people is so intense, their emotions can reach beyond traditional forms of understanding and empathy and into a realm where what is real and what is only in the mind, so to speak, become one in the same or so similar it’s difficult to find a discernable difference. To the subject, that is.”

“So if two people can transfer madness from one to the other—”

“Well, that’s not what I said, I—”

“But if one were to become insane and the other loved that person so deeply that they could literally share their insanity—assume it, in a sense—how much further would you have to go to take that concept to its logical conclusion?”

Carlo seemed wholly amused. “And what would that be?”

“Wouldn’t it also make sense to at least consider that the illness might be something more than a condition? Wouldn’t it redefine insanity—or at least that particular, specific form of it—change it from some disease lurking in the depths of a tortured mind into something more tangible? Wouldn’t it—couldn’t it—make it real, literal, rather than conceptual?”

Carlo gave a subtle nod. “I assume you mean to the person experiencing it?”

She had not meant that at all but rather than correct him she continued with her train of thought. “And if that were true, then what would become of it once the source, the conduit through which the madness was originally born, ceased to exist? Where would the madness go? Would it lie dormant, waiting for the opportune time to show itself? Would it manifest itself at all? And if it did, how—and when?”

Katherine left her chair. There was something freeing about movement, about space. It felt good to be standing by the two tall windows on the far wall, watching the rain through aged sheer curtains. Carlo hadn’t said a word since she’d stood up, but she could feel him watching, studying her.

“You haven’t answered,” she finally said.

“About where madness goes once its host is gone?” He smiled. “Well, I’m not a psychiatrist, Katherine. I’m not even a psychologist. Christ, I pump gas for a living.”

“And what a waste that is,” she said sadly.

“True, but it is honest work, and since we’re talking about you, let’s stick to that. So, as a gas-pumping professional, this is only layman conjecture, of course, but a belief in the premise that—”

“You don’t believe the illness James experienced might somehow now be attempting to become my experience?”

“I think you might want to consider that you’re assigning emotion and human traits to something void of either.”

“But that in itself is an assumption, Carlo.”

“But a fairly safe one, don’t you think?” His eyebrows arched up the way they often did when he was attempting to be ironic. “Look, it might be better to assign those emotions to yourself, as something shared between you and James. Guilt, for example, you mentioned James had this tremendous guilt over the drowning death of the boy.”

From the second-floor apartment Katherine could see the street below, a ragged public basketball court to the north, and in the distance beyond, the state highway. She focused on the car headlights, blurred by the rain, and wondered about the people behind each wheel, who they were, where they were going, and why. So many lives being waged in haphazard unison, connected yet solitary. “He did feel a lot of guilt,” she answered.

“And you?”

“No.” She looked over her shoulder at him, sitting in his rummage-sale recliner. Though not unattractive, poor Carlo seemed perpetually self-conscious—uncomfortable in his own skin—in a subtle but unmistakable manner. She adored her old friend, and it had been so long since she’d had the chance to immerse herself in a genuine, intelligent and provocative conversation, but sometimes Carlo came across so lonely and isolated she often felt guilty discussing her problems while seldom inquiring about his own. “The boy wandered off from the cabin in the middle of the night, we had no control over that. I felt badly that he died, of course, but I didn’t feel guilty. My heart broke for the parents. They were vacationing in the United States for the first time and spoke very limited English. Before it all happened they were very polite, formal, and the little boy was so innocent and beautiful, always smiling.” She turned back to the window, back to the rain and the cars and the faceless phantoms imprisoned within them. “The parents were devastated, but they maintained this sense of etiquette and restraint that was amazing to me. In some ways it angered me because I got the impression the man in particular was behaving as if their child had shamed them somehow—by drowning, for God’s sake. It was a cultural thing, I suppose, something I couldn’t understand but…their child was dead, I had no right to judge them or interpret their grief. All they wanted to do was take their little boy and go home, and who could blame them?”

“It’s so hideous when a child dies the mind just shuts down at the thought of it.”

The sound of Carlo’s voice again distracted her from the rain. “James was never the same after that little boy drowned.” She reached out, touched the cool window glass and watched the rain on the other side glide between her fingers. “He spent even more time alone, like he was purposely segregating himself from the world. He wrote in his journal constantly, but he stopped reading his work to me, his poems. He became protective of his journal and paranoid of my reading it. I had to continually tell him I had no interest in reading it unless he wanted me to.”

“Did James believe you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Did you ever read the journal?”

“No, it disappeared with him.”

“You were saying James was never the same after the boy drowned.”

“He became distant, cold, more so than he’d been prior.”

Carlo sighed softly. “I don’t exactly think it’s a stretch to suggest that there was always a bit of coldness to James.”

“Not a coldness, really, but a—a bit of a wall, I suppose. You knew him, Carlo, I—”

“I don’t think I knew him, particularly.”

“We were all friends, I’m just saying—”

“You and I are friends, Katherine. James and I were, at best, acquaintances.”

“But you knew him, that’s what I’m getting at. As warm and wonderful as James could sometimes be, there were other times when he was remote and somewhat cold.”

“That’s true of everyone to a degree, but maybe a bit more so when it came to James.”

Katherine nodded.

“What about you? Do you believe you knew James very well?”

The question should have offended her, but it didn’t. “We were married for years, so of course I’d like to think so. But from the time we met we were a bit of an odd couple. Then again, it was right after college and that’s an awkward transitional time for nearly everyone. We just seemed to click. Maybe it was because we were both English majors.”

“I didn’t major in English, and you and I got along great.”

“You got along great with everyone,” she said, smiling as she remembered the college version of Carlo, the slightly thinner version, with more hair—a lot more hair—long and wild like a rock star, the dangle earring and the then bright smile, a roguish smile that made you feel like he was tap-dancing on the edge but that everything would be all right as long as you stuck with him. “You were always the life of the party.”

“But you and I were close, that’s what I meant. And still are, despite our differences.”

“It’s not the same though.”

“Yeah, I—you’re right.” Carlo nodded clumsily and looked away.

“And besides,” she said, “you first met him right around that same time and thought he was a strange choice. I could tell.”

“Well, I never—”

“It’s all right. Like you, I was still considering teaching in those days and James was focused on being a poet and author, so we had different plans at that point, but he was always eccentric.”

“All artists are. Shit, nothing wrong with that, I’m an accomplished eccentric myself.”

“So it wasn’t his eccentricity then?”

Carlo shook his head in the negative.

“What then?”

He hesitated a moment, thinking his answer through. “In my eyes, I guess nobody was ever quite good enough for you.”

She smiled even though her back was to him. “You’re the sweetest person I know.”

“Now that’s depressing.”

Katherine removed her hand from the window and studied the lines crisscrossing her palm. They reminded her of barbed wire.

Stay away from the windows, James had told her days before his disappearance. They can see you.

Who, James? There’s no one there, sweetheart, no one watching.

He’s crawling around. That’s what they do, but they can still see us from there.

What are you talking about? From where?

His lips had trembled into a grimace as he pointed through the window to the lake. There.

She pushed the memories of him away, swept them into darkness. “I knew James from a very particular and personal perspective,” Katherine told him. “But sometimes it was as if his life began when he met me, as if his past, his life before me, before us, was something totally separate, an entirely different life.”

“Maybe it was,” Carlo said. “How much do you really know about his past?”

“James rarely spoke about his life before us. I know the basics. He was originally from the western part of the state. He was put up for adoption by his birth mother, who he never knew, and was raised in a series of foster homes. One couple in particular, the Covingtons, raised him from the time he was nine until he turned eighteen. He referred to them as his ‘parents’ but they weren’t close at all. They didn’t even attend our wedding.”

“I was going to say I didn’t remember them being there.”

“James didn’t really want them there and I doubt they wanted to attend anyway, so I never interfered. His childhood was a touchy subject for him, he could be sensitive about it, and who could blame him?”

“Did you ever meet these people?”

“Only once, and it was very briefly a few weeks before we were married. He rarely saw them or even spoke with them on the telephone. They just weren’t a part of his life after he turned eighteen and moved out, and in the end, I got the impression that was just fine with both sides. The one time I met them was the only time I ever spoke to either of them, and that was twenty years ago.”

“Sounds like an awkward situation.”

“It was.” Katherine nodded. “They were really odd together, this mismatched older couple and their foster son. There was a distance between them, a kind of formality that was a bit unnerving. It was clear they weren’t that comfortable around each other.”

“It’s sad,” Carlo said. “I mean, that was the only family the guy had.”

“Yes, until he met me.” Katherine remained quiet awhile. “They were from a small rural town in the western part of the state, simple people who struck me as really uncomfortable out of their element, which constituted nearly everywhere other than their own hometown. His foster father, Darren was his name, was this tall, razor-thin guy with really pointed features. Like a bird, you know what I mean? He worked as a mechanic if I remember correctly. He was one of those quiet and reserved types, but almost to the point of being comatose. His foster mother Josephine was a housewife, but I remember she worked part-time as a teacher’s aide or something along those lines, something with kids. She seemed very aloof to me, but also seemed to carry around a lot of resentment too. When I met her I couldn’t be sure if that was directed toward James, me, or the world in general. Later James assured me it was the latter. She just seemed like one of those people that life and time leaves bitter and angry, you know?”

“I’m vaguely familiar with the concept.”

“So am I…now.”

“You only met and spoke to them that one time then? You didn’t contact them after James disappeared?”

“No, as I say, I haven’t seen them in twenty years and they hadn’t been a part of James’s life in all that time so it seemed unlikely they’d know anything about his disappearance. And it seemed even more unlikely to me that James might contact them. But even if I’d wanted to I wasn’t sure how to locate them. I know Darren died a few years ago, I remember James got a call from Josephine one day while I was out. He was surprised to have heard from her, actually. He said something about Josephine planning to move to some small town in Rhode Island—apparently that’s where she’d grown up—but I don’t know what town it was. The thought of trying to find her to see if she’d heard from him or knew anything else did actually cross my mind but only briefly, because as I mentioned, I thought the odds were very low that she’d know anything, and I wasn’t even sure where to find her or if she was even still alive herself. She was an older woman when I met her two decades ago, for God’s sake.”

“Do you know if the police contacted them after the disappearance?”

“Not to my knowledge, but I can’t say for sure. I tend to doubt it.”

Carlo let their lingering thoughts die down a bit before speaking again. “I certainly didn’t know James well, but he usually seemed to be a really sweet guy.”

“He could be.”

“But he also was a hard person to get close to. As you say, he had walls.”

“Thicker than most, you’re right.” She sighed long and hard. “Carlo, I knew James as well as anyone did or ever had, but there was this point with him I was never able to penetrate either. No one could. That’s true of everyone to some extent, though. No one ever knows anyone else completely, utterly. None of us are ever totally revealed.”

“That’s because nobody’s ever completely what they seem to be,” Carlo said. “We all keep secrets.”

Katherine turned back to him and gave a slow nod. “And we all tell lies.”

“Even you?”

“Even me.”

“Even James?”

“Especially James.”