The Woman in the Window(37)

I can do this, I think as my knees go slack. Come on: up, up, up. One, two, three, four.

I falter forward—a tiny step, but a step. I watch my feet, the grass springing up around my slippers. I will promote healing and well-being.

Now the night has my heart in its claws. It’s squeezing. I’ll burst. I’m going to burst.

And I will place others’ interests above my own.

Jane, I’m coming. I drag my other foot ahead, my body sinking, sinking. One, two, three, four.

Sirens whine in the distance, like mourners at a wake. Blood-red light floods the bowl of the umbrella. Before I can stop myself, I twist toward the noise.

Wind howls. Headlights blind me.

One-two-three—





Friday, November 5





35


“I guess we should have locked the door,” Ed mumbled after she fled into the hall.

I turned to him. “What were you expecting?”

“I didn’t—”

“What did you think would happen? What did I say would happen?”

Without waiting for an answer, I left the room. Ed’s footsteps followed me, soft on the carpet.

In the lobby, Marie had emerged from behind her desk. “You folks okay?” she asked, frowning.

“No,” I replied, just as Ed said, “Fine.”

Olivia was lodged in an armchair beside the hearth, her face rinsed with tears, filmy in the firelight. Ed and I crouched on either side of her. The flames snapped at my back.

“Livvy,” Ed began.

“No,” she answered, rattling her head back and forth.

He tried again, softer. “Livvy.”

“Fuck you,” she shrieked.

We both recoiled; I nearly edged into the grate. Marie had retreated behind her desk and was doing her best to ignore us folks.

“Where did you hear that word?” I asked.

“Anna,” said Ed.

“It wasn’t from me.”

“That’s not the point.”

He was right. “Pumpkin,” I said, smoothing her hair; she shook her head again, buried her face in a cushion. “Pumpkin.”

Ed placed his hand on hers. She swatted it away.

He looked at me, helpless.

A child is crying in your office. What do you do? First pediatric psych course, first day, first ten minutes. Answer: You let them cry it out. You listen, of course, and you seek to understand, and you offer consolation, and you encourage them to breathe deeply—but you let them cry it out.

“Take a breath, pumpkin,” I murmured, cupping her scalp in my palm.

She choked, spluttered.

A moment drifted past. The room felt cold; the flames shivered in the fireplace behind me. Then she spoke into the cushion.

“What?” Ed asked.

Lifting her head, her cheeks smeared, Olivia addressed the window. “I want to go home.”

I watched her face, her quaking lip, her streaming nose; and then I watched Ed, the creases in his forehead, the hollows beneath his eyes.

Did I do this to us?

Snow beyond the window. I watched it fall, saw the three of us collected in the glass: my husband and my daughter and me, huddled by the fire together.

A brief silence.

I stood, walked over to the desk. Marie looked up and shaped her lips into a tight smile. I smiled back.

“The storm,” I began.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is it . . . how close is it? Is it safe to drive?”

She frowned, rattled her fingers over her keyboard. “Heavy snowfall isn’t due for another couple of hours,” she said. “But—”

“Then could we—” I interrupted her. “Sorry.”

“I was just saying that winter storms are tough to predict.” She glanced over my shoulder. “Are you folks wanting to leave?”

I turned, looked at Olivia in the armchair, Ed crouching beside her. “I think we are.”

“In that case,” said Marie, “I’d say now’s the time to go.”

I nodded. “Could we get the bill, please?”

She said something in reply, but all I heard was the skirling wind, the crackle of flames.





36


The crackle of an overstarched pillowcase.

Footfalls nearby.

Then quiet—but a strange quiet, a different quality of quiet.

My eyes spring open.

I’m on my side, looking at a radiator.

And above the radiator, a window.

And outside the window, brickwork, the zigzag of a fire escape, the boxy rumps of AC units.

Another building.

I’m in a twin bed, sheathed in tucked-tight sheets. I twist, sit up.

I back into the pillow, telescope the room. It’s small, plainly furnished—barely furnished, really: a plastic chair against one wall, a walnut table beside the bed, a pale-pink tissue box on the table. A table lamp. A slim vase, empty. Dull linoleum floor. A door across from me, closed, frosted panel. Overhead, a quilt of stucco and fluorescents— My fingers crumple the bedding.

Now it begins.

The far wall slides away, receding; the door within it shrinks. I look to the walls on either side of me, watch them ebb from each other. The ceiling shudders, creaks, peels off like a sardine tin, like a roof rent by a hurricane. The air goes with it, whipping from my lungs. The floor rumbles. The bed trembles.