The Clairvoyants(82)

“The Peterson field,” she said.

Anne went to the door of the studio, and I gathered the negatives and followed her. In her hurry she neglected to turn off the light. We went down the snow-covered stairs and then back to the house, Anne scuttling along. Inside she dug through her bag, searching for something.

“I can’t find my keys,” she said. “The keys to the Jeep.”

“Where are we going?” I asked her. “What about the Wellington?”

Anne ignored me. “We’ll just take the Mercedes,” she said. “It will have to do.”

I couldn’t understand Anne’s reaction to the negatives. We stepped out into the night. The snow had stopped falling but the cold was piercing and viselike. I worried about Anne in her thin scarf, but she seemed even less concerned about the cold air than I was.

We got into the little car and the space filled with our exhalations—white clouds ballooning out from our mouths. The windshield was hoary with ice. Anne turned on the heat and used the wipers to scrape it clear. I trembled in my coat, but as the heater did its work I felt my alertness overtaken by a dreamy malaise. “I have to cancel our plans for dinner,” she said, finally. “I’m going to take you home.”

“Why are you so upset?” It didn’t seem as if she planned to explain anything to me.

The tires slid a bit as we took off from the driveway.

“I’m a fine driver under any circumstances,” Anne said, her gloved hand fumbling with the dashboard gauges. “I’m sorry about this. I really am.”

“You haven’t told me what’s wrong,” I said.

Anne drove on and passed under dark trees, the moon occasionally appearing between the boughs, the only sound the hum of the engine. Her demeanor had changed—from friendly to preoccupied, almost severe. I felt a slow, building dread. Her gloved hands clung to the wheel. We drove for a long time, it seemed to me, but I had become a poor judge of distance and of time. I grew warm in the little car, my unease building. I watched the side of the road but saw nothing familiar.

“This doesn’t seem the way,” I said.

“I gave Mary Rae that necklace,” Anne said.

I’d admitted I knew about it. I suspected that the next thing Anne would ask me was how I knew. But she didn’t.

“She’d seen it in a jewelry store window in Ithaca and told me about it. It was her birthstone, an early birthday gift,” Anne said. “The next day she was gone. No one could find her.”

I was about to mention that I’d found the necklace in Geoff’s car, but then we hit the second patch of ice, and neither of us had much chance to even voice our surprise. From Anne, just a small “Oh.” I felt a swirling disorientation as we spun, and then the whipping and cracking of tree branches as the car slid sideways down what seemed to be a hill. We stopped, abruptly, a jolt that took my breath away.

The headlights lit the underside of a pine, its branches laden with snow, and I wasn’t sure how we were situated. The engine had stalled and the silence of the woods we’d fallen into was thick, muted by the snowy boughs. Just beyond the headlights’ misaligned beams, a shadow flickered, and I imagined the elk and deer from Anne’s wall stepping delicately over the limbs we’d broken to nose the debris of the car that enclosed us. I watched, waiting to glimpse their bright eyes at the windshield. My cheek pressed against my own window, and the cold came through, numbing the side of my face. The inside of the car began to fill with our scent—a mix of fear and alcohol, of the beef Wellington that clung to our coats. Anne’s beautiful car.

I pushed myself upright, away from the window, and shuffled my legs and shifted my hips. I felt for Anne and found her arm and I shook it and called her name. The two of us were wedged in the sideways-leaning car, the headlights weak beacons. In the dim light inside the car her face leaned close, her eyes hooded. The space was tiny and warm from our bodies. She reached out and moved my hair from my face and cupped my cheek.

“Such a pretty girl,” she said. “You’re bleeding.”

I must have banged my forehead on the window when we stopped. I felt the blood on my face.

“Are you OK?” I said.

“Just fine,” she said. She laughed a little. I felt her shift in her seat, and then she made a sound that frightened me—a small cry—and she fell still.

“Anne?” I said. “Anne?”

I dug around in my bag and found my cell phone, but the battery had died. I was as irresponsible as Del. My door was tight against a tree. I had to struggle with Anne’s door, and then clamber out over her into the snow, apologizing inanely for having to do it. We’d slid into a ravine. Briefly, I tried to pull Anne from the car, but I couldn’t dislodge her and figured that it was best to leave her there and get help. I managed, somehow, to climb out of the ravine, clinging to saplings, sinking into snow up to my knees. Lit only by moonlight, I reached the road.

I had no idea where I was, where Anne had taken me. I had been lulled into a martini stupor, and now Anne was trapped in her little car, with me her only hope of survival. A figure appeared ahead and I called out, believing it was someone walking their dog, or someone who had stepped out into the night for a cigarette. But the person simply stood in the road and my feelings sank as I approached and the figure materialized in the moonlight as Anne, or not Anne, a version of her that seemed to bubble and warp like an image seen through plastic wrap. She wore her skirt and blue sweater and black boots. Her scarf had fallen off, and her bald head shone cold and white, wisps of fair hair remaining in patches. On her hands she wore her black driving gloves. This incarnation of Anne didn’t care about her uncovered head, her damp, wrinkled clothing. More sorrowful to me than this evidence of her death was that her plan to come back as a cardinal had not come to fruition, and a terrible hopelessness stole over me, and I began to cry.