18
It was a half hour before Susan dared enter her bedroom.
It was filled with it.
She ran to her closet, trying not to listen, not to succumb, but it was useless. Her hands shook so violently she could barely remove the clothes she would need to escape the apartment.
She slammed the bedroom door behind her and dressed in the kitchen (two closed doors between her and it), but the knowledge that it was there, that it was filling one room and might spill out into the hallway, prevented her from calming herself and the dressing took time.
She thought she heard it as the elevator doors closed but she couldn’t be sure; her head was trembling, she might have imagined it.
On the corner of West End Avenue and Seventy-seventh Street the pay phone had been repaired. She lifted its receiver.
It was there.
She hailed a cab and went to Harriet.
There was an ambulance in front of the building as she arrived. And a red van pulling away.
“My God,” Tara said softly. She had said it many times since Susan burst into her office and told her it had killed Harriet. “My God.”
She believed, at last.
They planned. Though she hated the idea and feared it, Susan would have to go away, alone—to remove herself (and it) from Andrea and Lou. (Though Tara said nothing, she silently added her name to the list.) Then they, at least, would be safe.
“You’re one gutsy lady,” Tara said, reaching for her hand.
It was decided she would go to Tara’s parents’ country house, two hours up the thruway.
“Maybe it won’t find you there,” Tara said, expecting no response and getting none.
They called Olin’s and reserved a car for Susan. Tara drew a map to the house (“My God,” she still muttered) and they prepared to leave the office. Tara would go to her parents’ apartment and get the keys to the house, then pick up Andrea at school. Susan would hire the car, go to the apartment (the phones had to be dealt with) and pack.
As they entered the reception area, Maudey was there.
“Susan, dear, how are you?” She extended a perfectly manicured hand. “Off for the day, Tara?” And an I-dare-you smile flashed across her face.
“Off for the day, Commissar Ninotchka,” Tara answered, guiding Susan to the door.
The car parked downstairs, Susan entered the apartment. She went into the kitchen for the shears (the white phone, still dead, watched her in silent anger) and quickly sliced through its cord.
The same in the living room.
Then to the real test, the live phone in the bedroom.
As she walked slowly down the hallway, the Silence, still there, grew thicker and more oppressive. She found herself perspiring, starting to tremble (as always), and she held tight to the comforting hardness of the shears.
It was done quickly, but not before a wave of nausea washed over her that nearly caused her to vomit. The power of the thing, if anything, was increasing.
She packed quickly and sat in the living room to await Andrea.
Andrea, whom she would not see for . . . but it did no good to think of it and so she dismissed it from her mind. Tara would make the arrangements. Her mother, after school, Lou, evenings and weekends.
Lou.
No, she decided. She wouldn’t face him yet. Later, when she returned. For now, Tara would explain it to him (would try to explain it to him; even Harriet’s death might not penetrate his arrogant defenses).
At three-thirty, Tara and Andrea arrived.
“But where are you going?” Andrea, petulant at the news, scowled at her.
“Sweetheart, it’s business. A little business trip, that’s all. I’ll be back in a week . . . or two. . . .”
“Do you have to go?”
“Yes, I’m afraid I do.” And she took her in her arms, glancing helplessly over the child’s shoulder to Tara.
“I don’t want you to go.”
“I know, darling, but I have to. You’ll have Daddy and Grammy to take care of you. . . .”
“Want to go to the circus with me, honey?” Tara tried to help.
Andrea held fast to her mother, resisting the offer. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I love you, darling. I love you so much.”
“If you love me, don’t go.”
“I have to, sweetheart. I have to.”
Hours later, on the highway, the scene returned to Susan and for a moment she had difficulty seeing the road.
She left the thruway at New Paltz and drove through the small college town looking for Route 32. The sun, low on the horizon, bathed the one- and two-story buildings in a pale yellow-white light (a light hardly ever seen in Manhattan, where the larger buildings blocked it out, forcing evening), and she felt as if she were in a completely alien landscape. But a beautiful one, she acknowledged, finding Route 32 and starting north again. She vaguely remembered Ulster County from her childhood (summer camp, a weekend with her parents at Mohonk Manor) but had forgotten its special charm. It was a down-at-the-heels area with none of the pretensions of Connecticut or Westchester. There were farms, honest-to-God farms, dotting the rolling hills, and white stone houses that dated back to the eighteenth century, all interspersed with modest split-levels and tacky Victorians. It seemed to her the area had been frozen, timeless, since she was a child, and that feeling comforted her.
She crossed a covered bridge over a pond. The sky was streaked now with arrowlike clouds and there was a gold glow on the horizon, giving way to the palest blue-green she had ever seen. Susan ached at that moment to be an artist again. To be anything again, rather than what she was: a displaced person, running uselessly from what could not be escaped.
Or could it? There, in the midst of grandeur (the grandeur that was the only possible proof of God), she was not so sure.
She turned west at Rifton (Tara had spelled it wrong on the map: Riftone) and followed the winding road down its course beside a river (exquisite, untouched), a series of stone buildings (Norman Rockwell had not made it up, after all) and the thickness of woods (real woods, not the simulated miniature patches she was used to).
She rolled down the window and inhaled the fragrance of leaves and decay and new growth.
If anywhere was to be safe, surely it was here. Perhaps, if so, she could send for Andrea. Perhaps the nightmare had an end.
The house sat back in the woods on a cliff over the river. It was three stories high, a stone hunting lodge, a fantasy house from movies she had seen as a child (Cary Grant, coming down the staircase, framed in hand-hewn beams, Irene Dunne at the fireplace, hopeless at lighting a fire). She had no idea Tara came from money. The living room was on the second floor, cathedral ceiling, with two small bedrooms upstairs on an open balcony. There was a covered terrace, arched stone walls, overlooking the river and the hill beyond. The view reminded her of Switzerland: spruce and pine and other evergreens as far up and down the river as she could see; not another house, no signs of civilization . . . except . . . Susan shuddered at the sight of the electrical lines crossing the river far upstream. Telephone lines.
She went back inside and searched for the phones. One in the small bedroom on the balcony; another in the living room, on the piano.
She went downstairs, through a Mediterranean sitting-dining room (completely at odds with the rest of the house) into its kitchen. A third phone, on the wall next to the refrigerator (just as in her apartment—kitchen, living room, bedroom).
She contemplated cutting them but rejected the thought for the moment, being a guest in a stranger’s home. Nonetheless, she searched the room’s drawers until she found a pair of scissors and left them out.
Then, darkness descending rapidly, she turned on lights, brought wood in from the terrace and made a fire. (Unlike Irene, Susan was adept at it.) She settled in a beige chaise beside the fire, looked around at the soft country elegance of the room and, as if the house itself would protect her, closed her eyes and was asleep.
She was wakened by the ringing of the phones.
Opening her eyes, finding herself in a strange place (it took a moment to recall where she was and why), Susan lay there, refusing to answer, staring at the glowing embers in the fireplace, feeling cold.
She did answer, eventually.
“Susan, what the hell is going on?” It was Lou, calling from the apartment.
“Didn’t Tara tell you?”
“She told me a lot of crap, that’s what she told me.”
“It isn’t crap, Lou. Harriet thought it was crap and now she’s dead.”
“Jesus, Susan, what’s the matter with you?” And they argued.
To no avail. At Lou’s insistence that she come home (“I’ve had it, Susan! Enough already!”) she stonily refused. In the end, she promised to consider it and to call (if it was safe). Lou would come up on the weekend; again, if it was safe.
She went downstairs and searched the refrigerator. It was empty.
Thus, having nothing to eat and not knowing where a restaurant or store might be (afraid to attempt finding one in the dark), Susan went upstairs to the large bedroom (the one without a phone) and miserably went to bed.
And a quarter of a mile upstream, a beaver woke from its sleep and hurried to the telephone pole near the river. With frenzied eyes, against its will, it started to chew.
Susan woke late to find the house even lovelier in sunshine than it was by firelight. She had hardly noticed the bric-a-brac the night before, but now, coffee in hand (there was coffee, a small blessing), she wandered through its rooms, examining it. There was a small collection of wooden and pottery ducks, a turn-of-the-century black boy with a fishing pole and a large simpleton’s smile (the bigoted fashion of the day), framed silhouettes and flowers. Charming, all.
She played “Für Elise” on the piano (hopelessly out of tune) and again grew aware that she was hungry.
She drove back to Route 32, turned north toward Rosendale (Rosendale cement occurred to her, a bit of trivia from her past) and found a roadside diner.
The sign over the counter read “Special Breakfast: Two eggs, orange juice, coffee, toast, potatoes. $1.35.” The area was definitely frozen in time.
Having finished her meal and listened to the loud cheery voices of the regulars (“You planting roses this summer, Rico?” “Nah, too much trouble, too much trouble.” “What’s trouble? Plant climbers.” “Yeah, maybe climbers”), Susan left, got back in the car and decided to drive through the area.
She found herself in High Falls, a one-street hamlet straight off a turn-of-the-century postcard. She parked the car in front of the Egg’s Nest (a pub, here in the middle of the woods, a wonder) and strolled across the road to its two antique shops. In one of them she found a star-covered quilt and stood before it, remembering another time.
“Lou, if we don’t buy it, it’ll haunt us the rest of our lives.” They were younger then, in their twenties, as yet childless.
“Two hundred dollars? For a rocking chair?”
“Would you pay two hundred dollars for President Kennedy’s rocking chair?”
“If he was in it.”
“Let me put it to you this way. Either we buy it or I’ll kill you.”
“How?” and he cupped her behind in his hand. “You wanna fuck me to death?”
“Stop.”
“Nobody’s looking.”
“Stop.” She pushed his hand away.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said, moving the displaced hand to her waist. “I’ll buy it if you come back to the hotel with me.”
“Now?”
“Yeah.”
“We just did it.”
“I wanna do it again till we get it right.”
“You creep.” She laughed. “You’ll really buy it?”
“You’ll really come back to the hotel?”
“No deals, just buy it.” And she summoned the proprietor.
As Lou struggled to wedge the chair into the back seat of their car, Susan said, “Hurry up. We have to go back to the hotel.”
She woke from the reverie as a cat, large and red, pushed the length of its body against her leg. She ran her hand over it, saw its shedding hair fly off, and walked on.
She drove through farmland all afternoon, down roads busy with housewives scratching at their gardens in preparation for the spring show, past rivers and waterfalls, Wyeth barns, white stucco taverns, trees that seemed centuries old, a field of grazing cows (which looked up at her en masse).
She returned to the house at four in the afternoon, peaceful, joyous, purged.
At five, after a short nap, she woke, yearning to walk in the woods. Dressing for it (it had never occurred to her to bring proper shoes—never mind), she knew that if they lived here, away from the city, they would be safe.
She thought briefly of how to convince Lou and fought a momentary depression caused by the hopelessness of trying.
The woods (across the circular driveway, behind the unexpected barn) were everything she hoped they’d be: silent, untouched, brown with dead leaves (a carpet, she thought, smiling at the cliché), the trees just starting to renew themselves. She heard the shrill scream of two blue jays berating each other, high above. The ferns were coming up quickly, uncoiling small tentacles of lush green. It was so lovely she wished she could cry from the beauty of it, but of course, she could not. No one ever could.
She climbed a small precipice and, standing on its peak, saw the river and the woods on the other side.
And then, motion.
A terrible shattering of the silence as something across the river, on its steep wooded slope, ran, crashing among the trees.
It shivered the branches as it descended to the river.
Susan, taken unawares, frightened, saw a doe running, slipping down the embankment. It seemed to be having a fit, legs kicking, trying to right itself, losing the battle.
It plunged into the river as she watched, horrified. And then, struggling with its deformed legs, it crawled out of the water and lay on its side on the rocky shore, panting, emitting a low rasping sound.
She had never seen a wild animal die, and it shocked her; the unreasonableness of it seemed unnatural. Nature’s death should be swift or calm—not like this.
The doe raised its head, arched its neck and turned, looking straight across the river at Susan.
She saw its red eyes, its tongue protruding, the nostrils pumping air.
And on its face, even that distance away, she recognized Sweet William in the closet, driven mad while he waited for her.
And she knew she had brought her obscenity with her.