The next morning, it was raining. The air was the color of pussy willows. Helen was reminded it was Saturday by the fact that no one had knocked at her door to hustle her out of bed.
Just as she reached to push open the swinging door to the kitchen, she heard her name mentioned in conversation. This was getting to be an uncomfortable habit, catching news of herself while hidden behind a door.
“How can you be so sure, Nanny, that Helen wouldn’t have been hurt?” Walter was saying.
“You heard how Emilie begins by calling on good spirits,” Ursula answered.
“But bad spirits can show up anyway,” Emilie reminded her.
“Bad,” Ursula mused. “We must be careful to judge when we do not understand all.”
“I judge someone who would choke a young girl as bad,” Walter insisted.
“He was perhaps only inexperienced in making contact. Suicides do not like to be called.”
“I’m not convinced spirits were involved at all,” Walter replied. “Maybe Helen’s gift, as you call it, is in reading thoughts. Maybe somehow the agonies of that wretched woman emptied into Helen’s innocent mind.”
“Maybe,” Ursula admitted. “But what about Iris?”
The conversation seemed stalled, so Helen entered the kitchen. Everyone was at the table, though they’d obviously
finished breakfasting. As usual, her father and grandmother had newspapers spread in front of them. Walter gave Helen a nod in response to her “good morning,” then turned his attention to the front page, and Ursula answered “guten Morgen” quite normally before taking up her morning ritual of memorizing obituaries. Emilie smiled at Helen, put down her coffee mug and got up to fix some Wheatena.
“Feeling better?” she said from the stove.
Helen stared at her mother’s back, unsure how to respond. She did feel differently this morning from how she’d felt last night. Quieter. Cleaner. Was that better? Should she call last night bad? She’d been dizzy on the way home, had leant her head against her mother’s shoulder as they walked, but that hadn’t been bad exactly, only odd, as if she’d just gotten off a fast merry-go-round. At home, her mother had helped her out of her clothes and into bed. Her freshly laundered sheets had smelled lovely.
And before, at Mrs. Durkin’—to say that she’d felt badly then was not a big enough description. The sensation of choking was frightening, but it hadn’t lasted long. And she’d gotten to see Iris again, which was nice, though now that she considered, she didn’t like that Iris had come unasked. Was the mere act of sitting at a seance table invitation enough?
Helen rubbed her forehead. No, she wasn’t feeling better. She was muddled and embarrassed and uneasy in her own skin.
“Yes, I am better, thank you,” she answered anyway.
Emilie set a steaming bowl in front of her. Helen watched a pat of butter melt into the brown sugar, which in its turn was melting into the hot cereal. One by one, the three adults exited the kitchen to attend to separate errands, and she was left with only the thrum and drip of the rain to listen to.
The adults’ careful casualness annoyed her, especially after what she’d just overheard. Suppose she had suddenly sprouted
wings? Would her family fail to mention them as long as she kept them neatly folded on her back whenever she was in the house? Would it be deemed her problem to figure out how to deal with them in the bathtub? Would her mother simply remake her blouses and quietly set a bottle of preening oil on her dresser?
Helen began to eat. The first few swallows were tight. She wondered what she really wanted. To be sized up face-to-face and fussed over, or to be granted privacy? Probably a bit of both. She sighed. She’d had no preconceived notion of what this business of contacting spirits would be like, but she’d never thought it would leave her lonely.
The rain and muted light continued all day, which suited Helen’s slack frame of mind. When Rosie called with a plan to go to a matinee, Helen declined. The idea of a crowd and bright noise and commotion was as unappealing to her today as it would have been irresistibly enticing on any other rainy Saturday.
By late afternoon, she was contentedly ensconced in the living-room window seat, reading the latest Nancy Drew mystery. Her mother was in the armchair by the fireplace knitting. Her father had gone out for tobacco, and Nanny was napping.
Coming to the end of a chapter, Helen lifted her head and looked out the window. The movement of someone in a yellow slicker on the Mackeys’ back porch caught her eye. It was Lloyd, stuffing rolled newspapers into a canvas sack in preparation for going out on his route. Helen watched him hoist the sack over one shoulder and trudge down the wooden steps to his bicycle. She watched him pedal down the driveway. He made a crooked path, hitting every puddle. She imagined him laughing, not caring whether his corduroy pants got wet and muddy, not worrying
about losing his balance or dropping his bag. Lloyd was a joker and a daredevil. Mrs. Mackey said every gray hair she had was because of him, but everyone inside the family and out knew he was her favorite. When Lloyd turned out of sight, Helen opened her book again.
Nancy Drew was just jumping into her roadster in order to pursue a mysterious stranger she’d spotted lurking near the railroad station, when the print on the page swirled. Trying to focus, Helen saw a flash of yellow. Feeling nauseated, she shut her eyes. Immediately, an image of Lloyd on his bicycle was before her. Lloyd just a block away, making a quick veer as a large black car rounded the corner. Car and bike skidding on the slick street. Lloyd flying over the handlebars. Then motionless and twisted on the wet macadam.
Helen leapt up and ran out of the house. She took the Mackeys’ front steps two at a time and pounded on their door with both fists. Billy opened the door with a bewildered look. His mother was right behind him. She was balancing her youngest, Linda, on her hip, and in her other hand she held a mixing spoon coated with chocolate batter. Helen pulled Billy’s wrist.
“Come on!” she shouted and ran down the steps.
Billy followed without hesitation. At the end of the block, a small crowd was gathering around a black Hudson. When Billy spotted his brother’s bicycle sprawled at the curb, he picked up his pace and passed Helen. Her speed was hampered by being in her stocking feet. She looked back at Mrs. Mackey standing in front of her house peering up the street.
“It’s Lloyd,” Helen yelled to her.
Mrs. Mackey screamed. Frightened, Linda began to cry. Helen saw her mother coming out of their house with an umbrella. She took the little girl from Mrs. Mackey, who rushed up the street. As she dashed by, Helen noticed she was still holding the chocolate spoon.
“Helen?” her mother was calling. “Helen!”
But Helen ignored her. A siren sounded in the distance, getting nearer. Helen walked to the accident scene. There was Lloyd, just as he’d appeared in her mind’s eye, one leg turned at a sickening angle, a smear of blood at his temple, his newspapers spilled around him. The only addition was Mrs. Mackey, kneeling beside him sobbing, with Billy next to her, gripping her shoulders. And the babble of people telling and retelling versions of what had happened.
Helen forced herself to look at Lloyd in order to check the accuracy of her vision. As she stared at him, she discerned a band of pale light around his body. She glanced at the sky, thinking the clouds had opened and let through a beam of sunlight. But the gray cover was uniformly dense. Looking at Lloyd again, she noticed that around his bent leg and his head the light had a greenish cast. No one else nearby was touched by the soft glow surrounding Lloyd. Was he dying? As soon as she thought it, Helen sensed that wasn’t the correct interpretation. To the contrary, it came to Helen that the strange halo meant just the opposite.
When the police arrived, the onlookers were pushed back, and most moved on. Disregarding the wetness, Helen sat down on a low wall one house down from the accident corner. Mrs. Mackey climbed into the back of the ambulance. Billy watched it pull away, then he began walking slowly home. When he reached Helen’s spot, she joined him. Neither of them spoke. They stopped at his front walk.
“He looked bad, didn’t he?” Billy said.
His voice broke on “bad.” He looked up at the roof of his house as if he were inspecting it for loose shingles. Helen knew he was trying to hold back his emotions. He swallowed, and she saw his Adam’s apple slide up and down under the stretched
skin of his throat. She’d never noticed before that Billy had an Adam’s apple. She looked away quickly, as if she’d seen something she shouldn’t have. Billy lowered his head and swiped his sleeve under his nose.
“Where’s Linda?” he said.
“My mother’s got her.”
“Do you think she can keep her a while? I want to go inside and … I want to find my Mom’s rosary and …”
“Don’t worry. I’ll help with Linda. You can come get her later.”
“Thanks. You’re a pal.”
He turned toward his house, then turned back. His eyes were filling up with tears.
“He looked … broken. Why does he always have to be so … ? Oh, geez, Helen, I don’t know what my Mom’s gonna do if anything happens to Lloyd.”
Helen took both his hands in hers.
“Listen to me, Billy. Lloyd will be all right. You’ll see. He’s gonna be fine. I’m sure of it.”
He looked at her questioningly for a moment, then nodded and managed a half-baked smile. She let go of his hands, and he stuffed them in his pockets.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
After he’d gone inside, Helen stood on the sidewalk a while pondering. A pal. That’d been good enough before, and it would have to be good enough again. It was clearly better than their recent estrangement. She wouldn’t let herself think any more about the kiss or his Adam’s apple or the way his hair sometimes fell over his forehead. Pals didn’t think about such things, and they certainly never mentioned them if they did think about them.
“Okay,” she said aloud, encouraging herself. But even at that moment of resolve, she was aware of a cranny in her heart where
a tiny part of her sat waiting for the time to come when such things could be thought of and mentioned.