3
The first time it happened, it had the full force of an attack, a fit.
It had been a disagreeable day to begin with. Susan’s mother met her for lunch, spent the entire hour and a half trying not to complain of her loneliness and consequently made Susan feel responsible for it. Then, as if that burden weren’t enough, her editor (“Call me Maudey, darling”) conned her into working at home over the weekend (“It’s a divine idea; you’re the only one who can do it justice”) even though she’d promised to spend Saturday at the Bronx Zoo with Andrea.
Susan dragged herself home at five-thirty, avoided open hostilities with Mrs. Diamond (Andrea’s drill sergeant) and hit the kitchen. She was pouring out frozen french fries when the phone rang.
Weeks from then, Susan would still be unable to verbalize how she knew there was evil on the other end of the line, but she knew.
There was no sound. Nothing. No background noise, no voice, no static, no air, no white noise.
Nothing but a presence. A despicable presence.
She listened to it, shocked.
It was as if sound and time and space had imploded. She was listening to a black hole.
Mesmerized, stunned, she took almost a minute before she spoke.
“Yes?” she said and her voice came out thick and fear-laden only to be sucked into that black hole.
She hung up quickly. The entire call had lasted a little more than a minute, but as Susan came around from the shock of it, she found herself drenched in perspiration. Her hair was matted to her neck; sweat from her upper lip dripped into her mouth.
“My God,” she whispered, as much to relieve her tension as to hear sounds again.
And blessedly, other sounds came to comfort her; the TV in the living room that Andrea was watching, the traffic in the streets, the shuffling of Sweet William’s paws as he came into the room.
He looked at her and whined.
She became aware that she was holding tight to the counter top, holding on.
Sweet William, his tail drawn up between his legs, hurried to her. He pulled at her hand with his paw, pushing his face into her, whining, smelling panic.
When Susan came fully around, Sweet William was in a panic himself, pacing the kitchen, whining, peeing small puddles on the floor. Something was boiling over on the stove and she could smell gas. She turned off the stove and comforted the dog—“It’s all right, it’s all right, boy—” but he started to shiver and would stop only when she held him close to her. But she was shivering, too.
Lou entered the kitchen at six o’clock and, seeing Susan sitting at the table, staring at its surface, went to her.
“What’s happened?” he said, instinctively putting his arms around her.
She looked up at his face, at the concern there, at the man she loved and trusted and would spend her life with, and she tried to speak.
“What is it?” he asked, tightening his grip on her, preparing both of them for the dread news that would shortly have to be dealt with.
And she wept.
Later, when she was calm, and Lou had sent Andrea next door to have dinner with friends, she tried to explain it to him.
“What do you mean, there was no sound?” he asked, relieved and perplexed.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know!”
“Come on, honey, calm down. As far as I can tell, nothing’s happened, so what’re you so upset about?”
“I’m trying to tell you, something did happen.”
“What?”
“There was somebody there! There was some thing!”
They went on for almost an hour before Susan, exhausted and unable to explain her terror, went into their bedroom and lay down. Lou, confused, felt the beginnings of fear for her (not of any thing on the phone, but of what Susan was making of it) and, unable to help in any other way, started to prepare dinner.
Susan didn’t imagine it. She didn’t. She didn’t. She sat up in bed and lit a cigarette. There was something there. There was!
Lou came into the room (after three cigarettes had been lit and prematurely crushed) carrying a wicker tray.
“It’s insult-to-injury time,” he said, smiling weakly. “My cooking.”
She was in his arms as soon as he put the tray on the night table.
“I can’t explain it, Lou. I just know something terrible happened.”
“Maybe it did. . . .”
“It did!”
“But it’s over now. You’re here and I’m here and even the dog has shut up. Can’t you calm down?”
“I want to.”
“Let me help.” He kissed her, the kiss that had eased all sorts of pain out of her for eleven years, but this time it failed.
“I’m better now,” she lied, out of gratitude, but was immediately resentful when he released her.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“No.”
“You’ll feel better if you eat.”
“You’re Catholic. You’re not supposed to talk like that.”
“I’ve been living with a Jew for a long time. It’s catching.”
She meant to smile at that, he deserved a smile, but she couldn’t.
In a little while Andrea came hollering into the apartment and life returned to a semblance of normalcy. But Susan knew she would spend many days waiting. Waiting for it to happen again.
And it would.
“It’s the damndest thing I ever heard,” Tara said the next morning. “Real ‘Twilight Zone.’ ”
“I know.” Susan finished her coffee. “I don’t even know how to explain it. It was just so . . . horrifying.”
“Jesus.”
“Don’t tell anybody, huh?”
“Why not? I was just about to get on the phone.”
“Because it sounds so stupid. Everybody’ll think I’m on drugs or something.”
“Hey, there’s an explanation. You on drugs or something?”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Listen, if you can’t fight it, joke about it.”
But Susan didn’t feel like joking about it. She went back into her cubicle and tried another defense: work. After two hours, she had sketched out a Thanksgiving dinner party that was a cross between Norman Rockwell and Edward Hopper. She used her father’s face (as he had been before his death) on the man behind the turkey, and her mother’s (the worry lines removed, the mouth lifted from its now characteristic droop) on the proud woman at his side. And there she was, Susan at twelve, sitting at the table expectantly. Beside her, the brother she had never known, who had been miscarried a year before her birth. This brother, the one she had often felt love and guilt for, was reaching across the table, grabbing at biscuits, while a grandmother (a fabrication—Susan had never seen either of hers) scolded him. And there, behind the table, waiting for scraps, Sweet William, who had whined far into the night. She studied the sketch for a long time, taking calm from its serenity, adding touches, a bottle of catsup (she mistakenly gave it the 1920s Campbell’s label), an apron for her mother, freckles on her brother. It had not been like that, really. Her parents were not truly happy together, no matter how vociferously her mother mourned her husband’s passing. There was, of course, no brother, no grandmother, just a series of tedious aunts and uncles who complained a great deal about each other. And no dog. Her father had squelched all pleadings for one, saying that dogs had to be walked (“I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” she had implored to no avail) and messed up an apartment. Of course, he was right—she remembered cleaning up Sweet William’s puddles that morning. But there, in her own sketch, were all her nearly forgotten longings: for the closeness, the gaiety, the security. Once denied, they were denied for good. Not even Lou and Andrea could touch that secret scar.
Susan felt melancholy; it was a good feeling, an honest one, unlike the imagined panic of the night before. (Imagined or real, what difference did it make? Lou was right. Nothing had changed. She’d had a bad time, but it was over. Now, to forget it.)
“Hey, Mrs. Rembrandt,” Tara called over the glass, “you wanna cut out?”
“I don’t think so.” Susan stared at the sketch. “I think I’ll work through lunch.”
“Like I said, are you on drugs or something?”
“Bring me back a sandwich, will you?”
“Dainty tuna or liberated roast beef?”
“Middle-of-the-road chicken salad.”
She worked the outlines of the sketch in ink, carefully, taking enormous pride in her pains. And then the base colors and shadings and textures. It was shaping up beautifully. Had she honestly been Rockwell or Hopper, she couldn’t have felt more pleasure at her task. The re-creation of her childhood—done right this time. Done with love and peace. No subterranean angers. No silences filled with resentments. No dead babies.
“Myself, I think chicken salad is too noncommittal,” Tara said, plopping the bag too close to the wet gouache.
Susan had been working for almost two hours and hadn’t felt the slightest passage of time.
“Hey, that’s nice.” Tara studied the picture casually. “But where’s the cat and the priest?”
The phone on Susan’s drawing board rang.
“Jesus,” Tara said, seeing her reaction, “relax, will you?” She picked it up. “Susan Reed’s line. . . .” Susan studied her face anxiously. “Hi ’ya, handsome . . . yeah, she’s here. Hold on.” She handed the phone to Susan. “I don’t hear a thing.”
“Bitch.” And Susan accepted it.
It was Lou, suggesting they meet after work and have dinner out. He’d already checked with Mrs. Diamond and she’d be delighted with the extra money.
“How come?” Susan asked.
“I hate your cooking.”
“And my carrying on?” And she realized how ungrateful that sounded. “Thanks, honey, I’d love to. I’ll meet you in the lobby at five-thirty.”
“How will I recognize you?”
“I’ll be the calm one.”
She hung up, and Tara, half out the door, said, “It isn’t concern, it’s guilt. We’re having an affair.”
“The hell you are. Your complexion isn’t that good.”
“And you call me a bitch?”
They dined at the Fleur De Lis, a small West Side restaurant whose duck in cherry sauce had served them well in the past for minor reconciliations and celebrations. This time, Susan thought ruefully, it was a bribe—the kind one might offer a child to behave. Nonetheless, she was grateful. It was only recently that her consciousness had been raised (damn that phrase) to the point of recognizing Lou’s condescension to her, but resentment hadn’t yet built up and anger was far off. It was with a clinical acceptance that she realized she and Lou were part of a now, to be hoped, dying breed: the strong man and the little woman. But he was strong, and she felt, at that moment, very little indeed.
They had martinis, always a sign that giddiness was not far off, and she felt, as she had when working on the Thanksgiving sketch, a release of tension.
“Hey, we haven’t played the game in ages,” Lou said, almost finished with his second drink. “I think it’s your turn.”
The game had started years before and consisted of fantasizing aloud to each other; building their dream homes and careers and life style. It was more than a game, though. It helped them tell each other, through daydreams, where they were.
“Yeah? What was I up to?” Susan swirled her olive and noticed how absolutely lovely its shape was.
“You were decorating the solarium in the country house.”
“Ah, yes, dear old Ravenhurst. Well, I think the floor should be tiled. White tiles, pure and pristine . . .”
“With little yellow stains from the dog.”
She cocked her head at him, realizing something. “Why do you always call Sweet William ‘the dog’? He’s got a name. Do you call me ‘the wife’ when I’m not around?”
“No, I call you ‘the punishment.’ ”
“Very funny.”
“It was intended to be.”
She scowled. “I shall continue. The walls will be white stucco, the furniture wicker, not new wicker, old wicker from the twenties with some personality to it, the upholstery green, with flowers . . . oh, shit, I never called your mother back.”
“Flowers remind you of my mother?”
“No, upholstery. She wants to buy us a bedspread.”
“Yeah? What’s wrong with our old bedspread?”
“She didn’t give it to us.”
Their duck arrived and aborted the game, but it was over, anyway, or soon would be, for Susan was not enjoying it. You couldn’t insult Sweet William and expect his mistress to remain in the mood to play.
Soon Lou wandered to the subject of his work, as always, and told Susan a mildly interesting story about a writer client who was thinking of suing his producer, who was thinking of suing the writer, and Susan drifted off into her own thoughts.
She was back in the solarium, carefully examining swatches for the chairs. The sun was pouring in through the glass walls, the rosebushes outside were astonishing, Andrea and Sweet William were cavorting on the lawn, her first one-woman show had sold out, she had accepted a commission to do a mural on the facade of the State Theater, her breasts had suddenly lifted to their previous contour. Why can’t life be like that? Why is it when you get what you want (Lou, Andrea, the job) it’s never enough? What more is there, anyway?
Susan was about to feel guilty (for possibly the hundredth time that week) when the check arrived.
“I’ll pay,” she said, reaching for it.
“Don’t be silly.” Lou glanced at the waitress who held back a step from the table.
“It’s not silly. I work, too.”
He didn’t argue the point, but as Susan withdrew two twenties from her purse and put them on top of the check, Lou said, “If you let me charge it, I can deduct it.”
“Deduct this.” And she held up the middle finger of her left hand.
Lou was not amused, but the waitress was.
They strolled up Broadway, arms around each other, loose, warm, a little high still, looked in shop windows, played another of their games (if-you-had-to-live-with-something-in-the-window-for-life, what-would-it-be?) and generally enjoyed themselves. There were a lot of people to look at on the streets: old women in out-of-date clothes, young people hurrying to and from sex, beautiful exotics, tawdry welfare-hotel dwellers, streetwise New York children. Could anyone possibly want to live anywhere else? Was there anywhere else?
They arrived home a little after nine. Lou paid Mrs. Diamond, Susan checked on Andrea, who was snoring to beat the band, and she remembered that she was not only a mother but a daughter-in-law. She went into their bedroom to call Lou’s mother.
It was there.
As she lifted the receiver, she heard it.
The implosion. The evil. The threat.
“Lou!” she screamed with such force that he ran into the room.
“What?”
She pointed at the phone, which now lay on the bed, having dropped from her hand as if it were molten.
At first he looked at her, not understanding, and then suddenly he did, and he grabbed the receiver. He held it to his ear as Susan backed away.
“Do you hear it?” she whispered.
Lou looked at her and on his face was a hint of the panic she felt.
After a moment, he spoke. “Honey, it’s just a dial tone.”