The Clairvoyants(92)

35




I was certain that once the semester was over I would leave the apartment. I emptied the bureau and stacked my clothes on the floor. I piled my books and papers. I was waiting for more from William, waiting for him to make some move, whatever that might be. I began to look for him at the Korean place, walking up College Street, or through the Commons, mingling with students. We were playing a game. I wouldn’t leave the apartment until the game was finished.

One afternoon I came across the old flyer of Mary Rae, pinned to a pole on State Street. And, like the first time I’d touched one tacked onto the Wegmans bulletin board, when I grabbed it down, I saw the Silver Streak, the snow falling beyond the window. I was almost sure that William had left Mary Rae there to die. Though I hadn’t seen his face, I recognized the angry huffing sound he’d made. That was William’s impatience, his irritation with the sequence of events, his inability to start over, his helplessness.

We’d both done terrible things. After David Pinney’s death, when it seemed I wouldn’t be caught, my sentence came from the astral world. When Del was admitted to the hospital, I worried that I would emerge unscathed once again, and then I worried about the repercussions of emerging unscathed. How would the balance be righted?

The weather grew warmer and people shed their clothes, revealing whitish limbs. They sunbathed on the flat rocks in the gorge. At night they sat on balconies and drank, lining their empties on the wooden railings. And then exams were over. I was restless, ready to leave, but so much remained unresolved, and I didn’t feel I had a place to go. One evening, Del called.

“It will be summer soon,” she said. “The Spiritualists will be back.”

She laughed, pretending she was joking, but I suspected she thought this might really lure me home.

“She’s spring cleaning,” Del said, about our mother.

She told me that our sisters came over to the old house and stood around complaining while our mother made a big pile for the League of Mercy.

“If you don’t take these things now, they will be gone,” our mother said.

Boxes came up from the basement, down from the attic. One full of ice skates, the white leather cracked, the blades dull. Out of others came the relish trays; old spectator pumps; a seersucker sport coat; a fox stole with the head intact, its tiny teeth still vicious; piles of old high school texts with illegible penciled marginalia; heating pads with frayed wires; eyeglass frames missing the prescription lenses; my mother’s discarded handbags; the dresses she wore to her senior prom, her spring wedding, a formal dinner, a cocktail party on New Year’s. Spread out on the living room floor were years of our family’s lives—mildewed Barbie doll clothes, snowsuits and red plastic boots, gloves and hats I could donate to the people in the encampment. My mother discarded these things with vigor, her eyes shining, her movements quick.

“I hardly know her,” Del said.

I didn’t want to live with my mother and Del, with a baby that might or might not have been my husband’s. My sisters, my father—they had separate lives. Del mentioned Detective Thomson, briefly. He was reviewing old evidence—especially a long, blond hair found on David Pinney’s body. He’d come by and “sat and chatted, as usual,” Del said. She’d done her bland replies, her struck-dumb stare.

“He must have gotten bored with me,” she said. “He asked when you were coming home.”

But our mother did not want to be bullied. She called her attorney, who discovered the strand of hair contained no root or follicle and that conclusive DNA could not be acquired from it. “Lots of long-haired blond girls in town six years ago,” the attorney said.

I wasn’t sure that would be the end of Detective Thomson. I couldn’t sleep, and some of the disturbance seemed to come from worry about where I’d end up.

Then, one afternoon I came in from the grocery store and my mother’s travel alarm clock was missing. I glanced around the room, wondering what else might be gone. I opened a bureau drawer and sifted through my clothing. Then I knocked on Geoff’s door, and he stuck his head out, his hair dirty and wild.

“Did you borrow my clock?” Geoff’s apartment was oppressively dark, though it was a bright, spring day outside.

“If I borrowed it, I would have asked first, correct?” he said.

“Where could it be?” I said.

Suzie thrust her head out from behind Geoff’s pant leg, and he blocked her from leaving the apartment. “How should I know?” he said, closing the door on me.

The next day my mirror was gone, and the day after that the lamp that sat on my end table. I felt part of some art installation, the contents within the frames dissolving piece by piece. I told Geoff I wanted to change the locks. This time when he came to the door the window blinds were open in the apartment behind him. He’d washed his hair.

“That’s a chore,” he said. He yanked Suzie’s leash and stepped around me into the landing.

“Someone is coming into my apartment,” I said.

Geoff moved to the stairs and started his way down. “Are you sure you didn’t misplace these things?”

“A mirror?” I said. I found I was shouting, and I’d never gotten angry at Geoff before.

He paused on the stairs. “No need to raise your voice.”