The Clairvoyants(95)

I awoke, startled, and sat up. Gray light filled the window, and the tree’s leaves fluttered in shadows on the wall. The room with its cracked plaster and blown dust made me think of the asylum, as if I had come to live inside one of my photographs. The throaty rev of a motorcycle idled outside my window, and it took all I had to restrain myself from looking out. Downstairs, I found Professor Whitman at home, and he admitted that he’d come in the day before to witness an old box truck at the curb, and two movers on the stairs.

“Can you describe the men?” I asked him.

Professor Whitman adjusted his glasses over his nose with his age-mottled hands. “I don’t know. I didn’t pay attention. It’s that time of year, people moving in and out.”

When I talked to Geoff later that morning, he was lugging grocery bags up the stairs. “Your mother probably sent movers,” he said, huffing. He unlocked his apartment door and disappeared inside.

My mother had bought me an airline ticket. I tried to call her, but she wasn’t home, and I left a message. My flight left the next day, and I wasn’t sure what to do in the meantime. Then I remembered the woman who had helped me after the accident with Anne, her hopes that I would come by to pick up my clothes. I called her back, and we arranged to meet. Outside, I stood in the gravel drive under the elm’s shade. I looked into the tree’s branches. Once, I had imagined myself in love, my heart warm and rapt. The elm had chafed in its coat of ice, and the frozen world had held a silent promise. I went down to the end of the driveway and glanced at the back of the house. William’s Triumph was no longer there. Like my furniture, it was gone.





36




The woman’s name was Marcia Fuller, and her house was on a road that wound around Cayuga Lake. I drove, troubled by the missing furniture, the motorcycle, but told myself Geoff had been right—my mother had sent the movers. Someone had stolen the motorcycle, like he’d said—they’d seen it there, unused, and had wheeled it off in the dead of the night. I had a hazy memory of the lake from the night of the accident—the snow and the darkness, the sense of wind blown off a frozen surface. I’d followed Anne for what turned out to be over two miles, according to the officer who found her car. I recalled, vaguely, the house at the bottom of a long set of steps. The road now was bordered by verdant green—brambles and trees and heavy brush. Though I searched as I drove, I couldn’t find the place where Anne’s Mercedes went off.

I’d dropped Geoff at his shop so I could use his car. He’d gotten out and patted his pockets and realized he’d left his phone behind. “Don’t forget to come for me at five,” he’d said. “I can’t call to remind you.”

At two thirty I arrived at Marcia’s, a pretty mid-century ranch at the top of a long, sloping tarred drive. Nothing about the house seemed the same except the front door, painted bright yellow, a stand of white birch which that night had been lit in the landscape spotlights. I parked in the street and went up the front walk. Marcia answered the door right away and took my hand. I recognized her dark hair, her smell—like freshly ironed clothes.

“You look healed up,” she said.

“Thanks to you.” The scar on my forehead was all that remained from that night.

She drew me inside and offered me a drink, a glass of wine, a cup of tea or coffee. She had some crackers and cheese set out, and the late afternoon sun came in through wide windows at the back of the house in a cheery way. “Sit down,” she said. “I’ve thought about you a lot since that night.”

I asked her why, and she explained that she’d read the newspaper report of the car and the woman inside. “It was eerie, in a way,” Marcia said. “After you’d told us your friend led you here.”

Much of the night had dissolved out of a desire to forget. “Did I say that?” I said. I took a sip of the wine she’d poured me.

Marcia nodded, emphatically. “Oh, you did! We all heard you!”

“I must have been delirious,” I said.

She seemed a little disappointed. Something dimmed in her eyes. She had wanted me to confirm some ghostly evidence she might share with her guests like a party trick, and I would not. We talked a little about Anne and her work. There once was a showing in a gallery downtown, and Marcia had attended and enjoyed it. Then I told her I had to get going, and she left the room and came back with my clothing in a soft, laundered pile—the sweater I’d had on, the blouse and my jeans. I felt a welling of emotion I couldn’t explain, as if that incarnation of myself was lost forever. Marcia reached out and squeezed my hand. “You were lucky,” she said.

Then she took out an envelope and handed it to me. “This was in the pocket,” she said.

It was Mary Rae’s necklace. I’d lost track of it after the accident. I might drop it back into Geoff’s car for him to find again, its cycle as evidence completed.

“Thank you!” I said. “I thought I’d lost it.”

Marcia, trying to be kind, slipped the necklace out of the envelope. “Let me,” she said, and she undid the clasp and fastened it around my neck before I could really protest. I felt the weight of the stone, the cold, gold chain, and twirled the pendant in my fingers. Then Marcia saw me to the door, and I went down the walkway to the street. Here the trees shaded the road, and I felt the chilly presentiment of evening—even the summer evenings were cold. I paused at the car, placed the clothing inside, and then crossed the street to the long set of stairs leading down to the house on the lake. Faintly, music played. It was the same cello piece from Anne’s party on the night of All Hallows’ Eve. Orange lilies bloomed along the slate steps, and the trees were green and full, their leaves flapping. The night Anne died the snow had covered the grass, the stone steps. The trees had been stark shapes against the night. Along the lake that night I’d seen the lights of other houses. Now, the motor of a boat puttered past on the water.