20

The Rhinecliff Bridge spanned the Hudson at a particularly wide spot. Driving across it, midmorning the next day, Susan glanced down and saw the river, still unspoiled, and the mansions that dotted its shores, their tended velvet lawns that sloped down to the water, their porticos and elegant columns.

“Doric, Ionic, Corinthian,” she said aloud, refusing to think, forbidding it, rejecting it completely.

(If these were her last days on earth, she would no longer waste them on fighting back. She would take away with her what she could—the memory of beauty and love. She would gather them as luggage, the only luggage possible.)

She drove the better part of the day, choosing back roads that would bring her closer to the lives she wished to see.

The old people (the lucky ones) whose children had grown up before their eyes and whose grandchildren now grew; and the middle-­aged ones settled into comfort; and, of course, the children.

She stopped the car on the main street of one small town to watch the children. When the ache became too sharp, she drove on, joining Andrea, in her mind, at her drawing board.

As dusk settled over the country, she found a small motel (she was vaguely on the way to Albany) and registered.

“Mrs. Reed? Oh, yes.” The clerk, a portly man in his sixties who had glanced down at her signature through thick bifocals, turned to a stack of papers beside him. “Just got a message for you. Maybe a minute ago.”

“For me?”

“Mrs. Susan Reed?”

“Yes.”

He handed her the paper.

Call Harriet Walgreen. 212-­733-­4020.

“Room 214. Here’s your key. Mrs. Reed? . . .You hear me, Mrs. Reed?”

Susan looked up from the paper into the thickness of his lenses, her own vision blurred at that moment as her eyes filled with tears.

“You all right, Mrs. Reed?” He extended the key.

“No—I’ve changed my mind,” she said, turning and walking away quickly.

He snorted and as she pushed through the front door she heard him mutter, “This isn’t an answering service, ya’know.”

She drove for another forty-­five minutes, north, knowing it was watching her. It had called as she pulled into the motel; it would call again, no matter where she went.

Of course she was right.

At the second motel (larger, part of a renowned chain) the clerk (younger, robust) handed her the message.

Call Harriet Walgreen. Urgent. 212-­733-­4020.

She allowed the clerk to hand her a key and went to the room. There, sitting on one of its double-­size twin beds, she stared at the phone, the grotesque message in her hand.

She dialed.

She listened to the ringing (it sounded as if it were coming from a distance, but an earthly one). And then—

“Susan? Honey, thank God you called.” It was Harriet’s voice, unmistakably.

“I’ve been so worried about you. I know what you must be going through. . . .”

She listened, numbly.

“But Susan, you mustn’t be afraid. Please, honey, listen to me. . . .”

She hung up, breathless.

And then, like Tara, she was sick.

It didn’t call her back that night and Susan slept deeply and dreamlessly for the first night in weeks.

The following morning, Susan breakfasted at a pancake house along a busy road. (Caldor, Sears, Wanamaker’s, she counted the familiar names, still gathering her luggage.)

As she finished her second cup of coffee (she was pleased that they brought her a pot of her own, an unexpected nicety) the waitress—who, had she lived in the city would have been pretty but here in the country already tended to stoutness—came up to her.

“Excuse me, is your name Reed?”

The look of apprehension on Susan’s face caused her to take a step backward.

“Mrs. Reed?”

“Yes,” Susan answered curtly.

“There’s a phone call for you.”

“I’m sure there is.”

“Back there.” The waitress smiled, pointing.

“Tell them I’m not here.” Susan returned to her coffee.

The girl hesitated. (Here in the country, where things were simple, people answered their calls obediently.)

“Tell them I just left,” Susan said, not looking at her.

The girl obeyed, confused. (Later she would tell a friend about it, when it made sense to her. The city woman was waiting for a man to join her; he was calling to cancel; perhaps his wife had found out about them.)

Susan finished her coffee slowly, angrily. (How dare they use Harriet’s voice against her. How dare they insult her memory!)

She overtipped the girl (none of it was her fault, she hadn’t deserved Susan’s rudeness) and left.

On the road again, heading nowhere, angry and wary (not frightened any more, though—that had been burned out of her), she decided to face her persecutors. She would answer the next call.

It came early that evening as Susan was shown to her room in a somewhat luxurious hotel across the Massachusetts border. (She would treat herself better from now on.)

She was sitting on a wicker settee, looking out the window at the hotel’s pond, on which two ducks (wild or placed there) slowly paddled, dipping their bills occasionally into the water, when the phone rang.

She stared at it angrily, aware that she was still not frightened, not in the least—the bully had lost its power over her in that, at least.

“Susan? Please don’t hang up,” Harriet’s voice (only her voice, not Harriet, she reminded herself) said as she held it up to her ear.

“I’m not going to,” Susan replied.

“Thank God for that,” Harriet said.

“You’re blaspheming, dear.” And Susan sat on the bed and lit a cigarette.

“What’s the matter, honey? You sound mad.”

“Do I?”

“Are you mad at me?”

“Why would I be mad at you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you?”

“Susan, please, I only called to help.”

“Did you?”

“Of course, why else?”

“That’s true. You’ve always been such a help, Harriet.”

“Why are you being sarcastic?”

“I’m not. You have always helped me, haven’t you?”

“I’ve tried to.”

“And you’ve succeeded. And now you want to help me some more, is that it, Harriet? Is that why you keep calling me?”

“Of course.”

“Harriet?”

“Yes?”

“Fuck you.”

There was a pause before Harriet’s voice (only her voice, Susan repeated to herself, only her voice) reacted. “Why did you say that?”

“Dunno.”

“Susan, I’m your friend!” And the voice feigned hurt.

“Fuck you, friend.”

Another hesitation and then, “Wait a minute. Tara wants to talk to you.”

Stunned, Susan waited.

“Susan?” It was Tara’s voice. “What’s going on?”

“Tara?” she said, for the moment believing it.

“Yeah. Harriet says you’re mad at her. Why?”

“Tara, what are you saying?”

“Listen, will you just listen? Stop running away and listen to us. . . .”

“What?” Susan shouted into the phone.

“First of all, calm down, will you? There’s nothing to be afraid of, Susan. I swear to you. I swear on my life there’s nothing to be afraid of. . . .”

“What are you saying?”

“It’s all so simple when you really understand it. Look, we can’t talk over the phone. Come back to town and meet us. Let us talk to you.”

“No,” Susan said.

“Will you listen to me? Honey, please.”

“Fuck you!”

“Susan, stop it. It’s Tara! Will you just listen to me, for crying out loud.”

“Fuck you!”

“Susan, we’re trying to help you. . . .”

“Fuck you both!” And she slammed down the receiver.

Later, after an hour’s fitful sleep, Susan woke, and a horrible thought presented itself.

It had used Harriet’s voice and Harriet was dead. It had used Tara’s voice as well.

Shuddering, Susan reached for the phone. If she could speak to Tara, to the real Tara, and assure herself that she was unharmed—

But it would expect that, surely.

She let her hand drop short of the phone.

She lay there, half awake, her mind trying to sort it out. (Whoever she called, wouldn’t it know? Wasn’t it there, inside her phone, waiting? Could any phone be trusted?)

Still unclear (a weakness was coming over her, of limb and mind, a succumbing to a dread she couldn’t resist) she decided to call Maudey; she could tell her if Tara were all right.

She lifted the phone.

“If you want to know about me, Susan, why didn’t you just ask me?” Tara’s voice said before she could dial. “Why go behind my back?”

“Oh, God, don’t do this to me. . . .”

“We’re not trying to do anything to you. We’re trying to help you.”

Susan lay back on the pillow, the phone still to her ear, her eyes filling with tears.

“Did you kill Tara?” she wept.

“Honey, this is Tara. . . .”

“Did you kill her, too?”

“You know my voice, honey.”

“Have you no pity? No decency?”

“Susan, stop it and listen to me. Come back to town. Harriet and I can help you . . .”

“Our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be . . .”

“Don’t do that, Susan, please.”

“. . . Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth . . .”

“Susan, that’s not going to help either of us.”

“. . . Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us . . .”

“Susan, if you don’t stop that, I really will have to hang up.”

“. . . As we forgive those who trespass against us . . .”

“I’m not kidding, Susan. Stop that!”

“. . . Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil . . .”

“Look, I tried to help you, I really did.”

“Deliver us from evil!”

“Susan . . .”

“. . . For thine is the power and the kingdom and the glory forever . . .”

“I’ll call you later. When you’ve pulled yourself together.”

It hung up, leaving her weeping for two slain friends instead of one.