The Clairvoyants(96)

The notes of the cello piece that drifted up the long flight of steps and the familiarity of the house frightened me. Yet, I gripped the iron railing and started down. Some of the house’s old clapboards, faded gray, were missing in spots. Paint chipped from the window ledges. On the terrace beside a pot of snapdragons I listened to the music. There was a wooden screen door, the main door propped open behind it with a doorstop, an iron dachshund. For some reason, perhaps because of the things I could see in the room beyond the screen, rather than knock I pulled the screen door open and stepped inside. The house was cool, with a breeze blowing through its opened windows. The sound of the cello played with the sunlight on the ceiling. The walls were covered with William’s photographs. His little metal tin sat on the desk, books of his lay on the coffee table. The duck-carved chair was tucked into a corner. A pair of his shoes were aligned in the mudroom as if he’d just slipped them off.

My heart beat wildly.

A table from my apartment was being used as a desktop. On it was my mother’s little clock, which I closed and held in my hand. Prints of sleeping women were spread on the tabletop, and I reached out, tentatively, and shuffled through them with my fingertips, recognizing those I had in the portfolio and others I’d never seen before. William had developed photographs of the asylum, but within the frame, placed in that empty, decaying place with its tumble-down walls and snow on the floor—was a superimposed image of a sleeping woman. There were several of these. The mattresses had been excised, and only the woman’s form, her bare arms flung out, her legs entwined with sheets, remained. One lay in the middle of a hallway. The chips of salmon-colored paint from the asylum walls surrounded her on the floor, a strange litter of leaves. I’d always suspected he’d photographed me, but it was a surprise to find this image of myself—the last afternoon sunlight striping my bare thighs, my arm thrown out in sleep—taken the day he’d slipped into my apartment. He’d placed this image of me into the photograph of the octagon-shaped room we’d seen in the asylum, the walls the color of the bottom of a swimming pool. Even in sleep I looked troubled, as if my dreams would not let me forget my waking life.

I set the print down, distracted by one beneath it of Del. Up until this point I’d not known for sure if she and William had been together, and not even the image of a nude Del tangled in sheets was evidence of that. She was asleep. But I knew she would not have volunteered to be photographed. She’d been duped, lured to sleep the way the other Miltons had been—only to awaken in the spare room the next day to Anne’s waffles and gourmet maple syrup. Del had mentioned an old tale to me weeks ago—“Sun, Moon, and Talia”—a version of Sleeping Beauty. A piece of flax beneath the girl’s fingernail threw her into an unconscious state, and she was placed in a country manor by her father, who could not bear to lose her. A king from another land was hunting in the woods, and when his falcon disappeared inside the manor, he broke in to retrieve it and discovered the girl. Overcome by her beauty, he attempted to rouse her, but when he could not he raped her and returned to his kingdom. The sleeping girl became pregnant.

Across the open room, through a set of sliding doors out to a porch over the lake, William appeared. The glass separated us, and I thought of the dead that had appeared to me through windows and doors, staring in with their pining looks. William wore a gray T-shirt, faded jeans. His hair was long and his gaze through the glass level, calculating. Then he slid the door open, and he stepped through the doorway into the house. I could smell the soap on his skin. His face was flushed from the sun. He held a glass of water in his hand, and he set it down, carefully, on the top of the counter in the kitchen. He came toward where I stood in the living room, his leg with that perceptible drag, and he took a seat in the duck-carved chair, his head thrown back, listening to the anguished cello.

“It’s Elgar,” he said.

The sound of the concerto filled the room. I wasn’t the slightest bit relieved we hadn’t left him to die in the asylum.

William crossed his legs at the ankles. He put his hands behind his head. “I’m not one of your spirits.”

It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment how similar William was to David Pinney—the coldness behind their eyes, their need.

“You thought I didn’t know that?” My hand shook holding the print of Del, and I set it down on top of the others.

William moved his arms to his knees and leaned forward. “I’m not sure how you found me. Anne was sworn to secrecy.”

“You have my chair,” I said.

“I ran into Geoff, and he told me you were leaving. I figured you wouldn’t need it.” He patted the ducks’ heads on the arms. “We’re married. Equitable distribution.”

He smiled at me, sadly. “That’s all you care about? A silly chair?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I’m so happy to see you.”

“Really? Geoff seemed to think you were over me completely.”

Geoff had been sworn to secrecy, like Anne. He must have told William that Officer Paul was asking for him. I looked around at the house, the pine wood floors, the light coming in through the glass doors.

“You photographed Mary Rae here,” I said.

William groaned. “Stupid of me to keep the negatives.”

“She died that night,” I said.