The Marriage of Sticks

      The stone was almost to the floor. Letting it thud down, she spun around. She was remarkably beautiful.
      “Dr. Zabalino?” She had a marvelous smile. When she saw us, it fell noticeably. “Oh, hello. I thought you were my doctor.”
      McCabe stepped into the room and looked quickly behind the door to check if anyone else was there. “Why are you lifting a rock? In your hospital room? Is that good for you?”
      “It’s part of my meditation.”
      “ Meditation? Who’s your guru, Arnold Schwarzenegger? Ooh!” He smiled lewdly and reached into a pocket. “My telephone’s ringing. I love vibrating phones. I could let it ring all day.” He took out a small gray one. It sprang open in his hand. “Hello? Well, hi, Frances. Where are we? Not far. We could be there in, oh, eight seconds. Yeah, we’re here. Next door to you, with the woman who picks up the rock? Uh-huh. No problem.” He closed the phone and looked at me. “Frances says she’d like to talk to you first. I’ll wait outside.”
      The woman put her hands on her hips and frowned. “Excuse me, but who areyou two?”
      Walking toward her, McCabe spoke quickly, as if he didn’t want her to get a word in edgewise. “We’re visiting your next door neighbor, Frances Hatch. Would you mind if I tried that before we go?” Bending down, he put his arms around the stone and made to jerk it up. His eyes widened and he spluttered. “How heavy is this thing?”
      “Seventy kilos.”
      “A hundred and fifty pounds! You can lift it up and down like that? How do you do it?”
      I caught his eye and gestured I was going. The woman asked me to close the door. Outside, I walked the few steps to Frances’s room. As I reached for the knob, someone nearby went, “Psst!” and I looked up.
      Hugh and Charlotte’s little boy stood in a doorway across the hall. He wore the same striped swimsuit he’d had on when I saw him on television in the kitchen. His feet were bare. Worse, there was a small puddle of glistening water beneath each foot. As if he had just stepped dripping wet out of a swimming pool.
      Instinctively, I looked at his hands to see if he held another rock.
      “I’m not gonna go away.” His voice was a child’s, and held the terrible note of unending threat only a child’s voice can. Do you remember that? Do you remember how frightening and all-encompassing it was to be threatened by a classmate you hated because you feared them all the way into the marrow of your bones? You knew you could never defeat them, never, because they were stronger or prettier (or stronger andprettier), or smarter or bigger or horribly, monstrously mean. And because you were young and knew nothing of life, you knew this person your own age—seven, eight, nine—would always be nearby and a permanent menace until the day you died.
      That is what I felt and the feeling was not small. A paralyzing dread came over me because this boy did not exist but was there nevertheless, ten feet away, looking at me with loathing in his eyes.
      He began to sing. “In Dublin’s fair city / Where the girls are so pretty—” His voice was sweet, mischievous.
      I took a step toward him. “I don’t know what you wantfrom me! What can I do? What do you want me to do? I don’t understand.” Unintentionally I reached out toward him. Arm extended, palm up, a beggar’s hand: Please help.
      His face was blank. He gave me a long look, then stepped out of the doorway and walked away. His feet left wet prints on the linoleum all the way down the hall. He began to sing again. “—I first laid eyes on Sweet Molly Maione.”
      “Please stop.”
      Nothing.
      “ Tell me what I can do!”
      He never turned. Reaching the door, he pushed it open and was gone.
 
 
      WHEN I ENTERED the room, an imposing woman stood above Frances, taking her pulse. She had a big sweep of lustrous black hair spun up and around her head like a cone of soft ice cream. Thick eyebrows, large eyes, small features, white skin. She wore a black Chanel suit that contrasted vividly with numbers of gold rings on her fingers and bracelets on her wrists. If I saw her on the street I’d have thought, Money, showoff, businesswoman, or wife with an attitude. Attractive without being special, her black eyes announced she knew exactly what she was doing. When she spoke the timbre and authority of her voice reinforced that.
      “Can I help you?”
      “Doctor, this is my friend Miranda Romanac. Miranda, Doctor Zabalino.”
      The doctor turned one of the bracelets on her arm. “The boy is telling the truth: he won’tleave. You must make him go away.”
      Appalled that she knew what had happened outside, I barked back, “How do you know about that? Who are you?”
      Frances feebly propped herself up on her elbows. “Don’t be afraid, Miranda. I called you here because I’m sick. Very sick. The doctor says I might die, so I have to tell you some things. It’s essential you know them.
      “The first is, if anything happens to me, Zabalino can help you. If you need advice, or a place to stay, you can always come here and you’ll be safe. From anything.
      “But now you have to go back and live in the house. Stay there until you’ve found who you are. After that it’s your decision whether to stay or leave.”
      “What am I supposed to do there? Help me, Frances. Give me some direction!”
      “I can’t because I don’t know. But the house is the key, Miranda. The answers are all there.”
      “Is that why you gave it to us?”
      She shook her head. “No, but it’s the place where Hugh died and that’s its importance. The same thing happened to me in Vienna with Shumda fifty years ago. I had to stay until I discovered who I was.
      “Tell Frannie I can’t see him today. But tell him his wife is very ill and must have a thorough examination. She can still be saved but mustbe checked immediately.”
      The door opened and McCabe strode in like the mayor of the place. “Hiya, Frances. What’s going on, girls? Am I supposed to stay next door with Rock Woman?”
      I heard something. I couldn’t recognize whatbut instinctively knew it was bad. The way your head snaps back from a revolting smell before the brain registers.
      The noise got louder.
      “What is that?”
      They all looked at me. The women traded glances.
      McCabe shrugged. “What’s what?”
      “Don’t you hearit? That breathing sound? Loud breathing?”
      He rubbed the side of his chin and smiled. “Nope.”
      Frances and the doctor were not smiling. They looked as upset as I felt. “Miranda, you have to go. Right now, get outof here! Take Frannie. Go back to Crane’s View. Go to the house.”
      McCabe was facing me, his back to the two women. “What’s goin’ on?” He looked happily baffled, as if a prank was being played on him.
      Behind him, Frances called his name. He turned. Nothing passed between them—no look, touch, word, or gesture. But he suddenly spun back to face me and his expression was four-alarm fire. “We gotta get out of here! Miranda, come on. Come on!” He took my arm and tried to push me toward the door.
      I hesitated now, certainly frightened, but also determined to find out something. “What is it, Frances? What is that breathing sound?”
      Zabalino spoke in a warning rush. “It’s you. It’s part of your self waiting outside. You must go now and find answers. It won’t hurt you, or us, if you leave now.”
      “But Frances said if I was in trouble I could come here—”
      “Later. Not now. Until you find out certain things and then decide what to do, none of us are safe while you’re here. It’s waiting. It can’t touch you while you’re inside. It’s as close as it can get and wants you to know that. Fieberglas is a haven, but not for you yet.
      “Frances never should have asked you here. First you need to know who you are. Until then, it—” Zabalino pointed outside, where a frightening and unknown part of myself was breathing loud and close against the walls of this dubious place.
      Fear made my feet feel like they weighed two hundred pounds. Strangely, a line from childhood shoved its way to the front of my mind and kept shouting itself over and over. It was the Big Bad Wolf’s threat to the Three Little Pigs as he stood hungry and full of murderous confidence outside each of their houses, knowing he was about to eat the inhabitant: “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.”
      “Miranda, come on.” McCabe took my arm. I shook him off.
      “Frances, did I cause Hugh’s death?”
      “No, definitely not.”
      “But you have to help me! I don’t know what’s happening!”
      Outside the noise got louder. The breathing faster, somehow thicker.
      “Go back to Crane’s View, Miranda. The answers are there. If not, then I don’t know anything. It’s the only thing I can tell you that might help.” She was about to say more but Zabalino touched her arm to stop. Frances Hatch licked her thin lips and stared at me with pity. And apprehension.
 
      WHEN I WAS a girl I contracted meningitis. One summer day I came in from playing with Zoe Holland to tell my mother I had a headache and my neck hurt. She was watching television, and without taking her eyes from the set, she told me to go lie down. When her program was over she would come in and take my temperature. I went to my room and quickly fell asleep. When my mother came in she could not rouse me. The most interesting part of the experience was that although I had slipped into a coma, all the while I was completely aware of what was going on around me. I simply could not react to it. When mother panicked because she could not wake me up, I heard everything. I just couldn’t open my eyes or mouth to say, I’m here, Mom, you don’t have to scream.
      I was aware of the ambulance men coming in and working on me, of being carried out of the house and the sounds we made while leaving, of the ride in the ambulance to the hospital, everything. It was not like a dream so much as like being behind glass or some kind of thin curtain, half an inch away from the regular goings-on of life. Two days later I woke from the coma when I felt the urge to go to the bathroom.
      Riding back to Crane’s View with McCabe, I thought about those days and what it had been like to be conscious but in a coma at the same time. There but not there—cognizant but completely cut off. Now much the same thing was happening. Since witnessing the phantom boy’s birthday party, I had been watching my life take place from the other sideof something. Something impenetrable and mysterious. My life was over there, not where I was. Or it was life as I had once known it. And there was nothing I could do to get back to it. What would going back to the house in Crane’s View do to help? But what alternative did I have?
 
      THE ACCIDENT MUST have happened only minutes before we came around the bend. Smoke was still rising in a sinuous cloud from beneath the crumpled silver hood. A sharp thick smell of hot oil and scorched metal filled the air. The song “Sally Go Round the Roses” blared from inside the car. No one else was around. The song bored through the strange silence surrounding us on that narrow road a few miles outside of Crane’s View.
      McCabe cursed and slewed hard to the right a hundred feet behind the wreck. We bumped onto the unpaved shoulder of the road and stopped amid a loud whirl of flying stones and dirt. Without saying anything, he jumped out and ran across the road to where the BMW was rammed so hard into the telephone pole that its front end was two feet off the ground. Some kind of grim liquid dripped steadily out the bottom of the car. I assumed it was water until I saw the dark color. I looked up the length of the telephone pole. Strangely enough, birds were perched on the black wires, looking busily around and chirping at each other. The wires jiggled a bit under their slight weight.
      McCabe ran to the passenger’s side and bent down to look in the window. I was right behind him, my hands pressed tightly against my sides.
      He spoke calmly to whoever was inside. It was almost beautiful, how sweet and warm his voice was. “Here we are. We’re here to help. Anybody hurt? Anybody—” He stopped and stepped abruptly back. “Bad one. Bad one.” Before he turned to me, I saw inside the car for the first time.
      Hugh Oakley was impaled on the exposed steering column. His head was turned in the other direction so I couldn’t see his face, thank God. Charlotte Oakley had not been wearing a seat belt and had gone full force into the windshield. The safety glass had stopped her, but her head had hit with such impact that there was an enormous crystal spiderweb on the glass. What was left of her beautiful face looked like a piece of dropped fruit. A section of the black steering wheel lay in her lap, evilly twisted, looking like some odd tool. The child, their boy, was in the backseat, dead too. He lay on his back, both arms above his head, one eye open, one closed. He wore a T-shirt with a picture of Wile E. Coyote holding a stick of dynamite in one paw. The boy’s head was bent at a fatal angle. But most important, he was older than when I had seen him only an hour before in the hall at Fieberglas. He had aged.
      Staring into that car full of bodies, I knew what this was.
      What would have happened if Hugh had lived, eventually left me, and gone back to Charlotte? This.
      They would have had the boy and been happy for some years. Maybe eleven or twelve, maybe thirteen. Then one day they would go for a ride in the country in their elegant new silver car. And it would end like this: a face like a burst plum, Wile E. Coyote, the wrong beauty of a cracked glass spiderweb.
      When McCabe walked back to his car to get a cell phone and call in the accident, my “coma” still surrounded me, protecting me. In any other situation, seeing Hugh Oakley like that would have driven me mad. Now I just stayed by him and listened to the eerie, beautiful song coming from the radio. I didn’t even feel bad, because I knew this was not true; this was nothow it happened. He had died with his hand on my head, quietly, just the two of us, at the end of a summer evening rainstorm. That way was better, wasn’t it? Quietly, in love, with the second half of his life to look forward to, living with someone who loved him more than she ever thought possible? I would have given him everything. I would have pulled down planets to make our life work. I looked at him. I had to ask a question he could never answer because he was dead. Dead everywhere. Dead here, dead in my life.
      “Which life would have been better for you? Which one would have kept you whole?”
      Unconcerned, the birds above us hopped on and off the wires, chatty and busy with the rest of the day.

9. THE SLAP OF NOW

      I RETURNED TO Crane’s View with a member of the town’s volunteer fire department. McCabe remained at the scene of the accident. After the fire truck and ambulances had arrived and the personnel had done everything they could, he’d arranged for me to go home with a friend of his.
      We rode in silence until the man asked if I knew the victims. I hesitated before saying no. He tugged on his earlobe and said it was a terrible thing, terrible. Not only because of the accident, but because the Salvatos were fine people. He had known Al for years and even voted for him when he ran for mayor a few years before.
      Baffled, I asked whom he was talking about. He threw a thumb over his shoulder. “The Salvatos: Al, Christine, little Bob. Hell of a nice family. All dead in one crash like that. Heartbreaker.
      “Being on the fire department, we gotta be at most of the pile-ups. ‘Specially the bad ones. But these are the hardest. You come onto an accident scene, which is bad enough, but then you look in the car for the first time and you knowthe people? Jesus, there they are, dead. I’m tellin’ you, sometimes it makes me think about maybe quitting.”
      I turned 180 degrees in my seat and gaped out the rear window; then I turned back. “But did you look insidethe car? Did you actually see your friends in there?” It was a demand, not a question, because I had seen it too, them– Hugh, Charlotte, the whole horror.
      “Sure I saw it! Lady, waddya think I’m talkin’ about here? I pulled Al off a steering column that was about two feet deep up his chest! Damned rightI saw. I was six inches away from his face.”
      I watched him silently until it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything else. I swiveled in the seat again to look out the back window. We were almost to Crane’s View.
      When we drove through the center of town I remembered how excited Hugh and I had been the day we moved in. We wanted to do everything at once—unpack the truck, go into town and check out the stores, take a long walk to get a feel for what Crane’s View was really like. Because it was a nice day, we chose the walk and ended up by the river watching boats pass. Hugh said, “Nothing could be better than this.” He took my hand and squeezed it. Then he walked away. I asked where he was going but he didn’t answer. I watched as he wandered around, his eyes on the ground. Eventually he leaned over and picked up a small brown stick about the size and width of a cigar. Holding it up, he waved it back and forth for me to see.
      “I’ve been waiting for just the right moment to look for this. Now’s the moment. Here with you, the water, the day… The perfect time to find my first Miranda stick.”
      He came over and handed it to me. I rubbed my thumb over its surface and then impulsively kissed the stick. “I hope there will be a lot more.”
      He took it back and slid it into his jeans pocket. “This is one of the big ones for me. I’ve got to take care of it.”
 
      I GOT OUT of the car wondering where Hugh’s stick was. I waited until the car had gone around the corner before I turned to look at our house. I felt nothing—no dread or anxiety, not even the slightest shred of curiosity. Judging by the events of the last two days, there was no other option but to go back inside and face whatever was waiting for me.
      Staring at the place I had so recently and happily thought would be our house, our home, for the rest of our lives, I remembered something Hugh had done that disturbed me.
      One night in my New York apartment, he called to me from the bedroom. When I got there, he stopped me with an arm across the door.
      “Do exactly what I tell you, okay? Look quickly and tell me what you see on the table next to the bed. Don’t think about it. Just look and say.”
      Puzzled, I complied. Something dark and odd-shaped was exactly where my bedside lamp usually sat. I squinted once to see better but it didn’t help. I had no idea what it was. My wondering went on until he dropped his arm, walked to the bed, leaned over, and switched the lamp on. It wasmy lamp, only he had laid it on its side in such a way that it was impossible to recognize from a distance.
      “Isn’t that strange? Just the smallest twist of the dial away from normal—one click—and everything we know for certain vanishes. Same damned thing happened to me this morning. There’s a vase in the office we’ve had for years, a nice Lalique piece. But someone knocked it over or whatever. When I saw it like that today, on its side, it was unrecognizable. I couldn’t tell whatthe thing was. I stood in the hall glued to the spot, wondering, What-the-hell-is-that? Then Courtney walked up, righted it, and there it was again—the vase.”
      I wasn’t very wowed and he must have seen that in my expression. He put both hands on my face and squeezed my cheeks. “Don’t you see? Nothing is ever finished. It’s all evolving; everything has a hundred new angles we’ve never seen. We get jaded, but then something jarring like this happens and we’re bewildered by it, sometimes even pissed off, or delighted. That’s what I keep trying to be—delighted by what I don’t know.”
      It was a sweet and very Hugh insight, but it didn’t do much for me. I kissed him, straightened the lamp, and went back to cooking our dinner.
      That night I was awakened from a deep sleep by a touch—across my face, between my legs, up and down my side. My tingling body and foggy mind were rising in happy concert and I was moaning. When it happened, either the sound or the cause froze me and I threw my arm out to the side as hard as I could. It smacked Hugh on the forehead a great resounding wap! Crying out in surprise, he fell back holding his head. A moment later we were laughing and touching and then ended up doing what he had intended in the first place.
      Afterwards, Hugh went back to sleep but I was marooned awake. In the silent boredom of three in the morning, I reran the events of the day, remembering what had happened earlier with the crooked bedside lamp and what he said about it. Waking to his touch was the same thing. Unlike him, I had not been delighted by what I didn’t know. On the contrary: unexpectedly caressed by my lover in the middle of the night, I had come awake swinging. Unable to stop the line of thought, I scrolled through other memories, realizing I could apply this dismal insight all over the way I had lived. I lay there feeling as stiff and inflexible as an old woman’s neck.
 
      ON THE SIDEWALK in front of our house, I remembered this. What would Hugh have said? What would he have done if he’d been in my shoes the last few days? I didn’t know anything about what was going on in my life anymore. He was dead and that same crooked lamp sat by our bed upstairs. Such a nice house too—square and solid like a dependable aunt. With a porch that was perfect for a hammock and small talk, iced tea in the summer, a battered bicycle leaning against the wall. A porch for children to play on. If I closed my eyes I could hear kids chasing each other across the wooden floor. Be careful! Slow down! How many children would we have had? How many bikes would have been leaning against the wall, sleds?
      I took a step toward the house, hesitated, then took another. Finally I took big fast strides. A car horn honked nearby. I jerked my head but raced up the stair. At the top I avoided looking in the windows. What if there had been something inside, something new that would deter me from going in again?
      Jamming my hand into my back pocket, I pulled out the New York Mets key ring Clayton Blanchard had given me when I worked for him. Just thinking his name calmed me some. If there was still Clayton, then there was still New York and old books, some kind of order that existed, hot coffee and cold soda, a place where you could step and not fall off the edge of the suddenly flat earth. Love was in that place, sanity too. I needed to get back there both for myself and our child. Memories and this baby were Hugh’s legacy to me. Neither could function in the strange reality I had been shoved into.
      I put the key in the lock and turned. Or tried. Because the key would not turn. Couldnot turn. I tried again with no success. I twisted the doorknob. It would not turn but it was warm. As if someone had been holding it just before I touched it. I shook it, pushed in and out, tried the key again, tried turning the knob. Nothing.
      Leaving the key in the lock, I stepped over to one of the windows and looked in. Nothing. Inside, the house was dark. I could just make out the shadowy shapes of our furniture in the living room: Hugh’s new chair, the couch. Without warning I felt a sheer need to be inside the house, no matter what waited in there. I went back to the door and tried everything again, this time with the fury and strength of impatience—the lock, the knob, push, shake. Nothing.
      “Temper, temper! What are you doing, trying to kill the door?”
      Both hands on the knob, I looked over my shoulder. McCabe stood on the sidewalk with his arms crossed. He slipped a hand into a pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes.
      “What are youdoing here? I thought you had to stay… back there.”
      “I did what was necessary. You tell what you saw; they fill out their forms.… Only so much you can do. I was worried about you, so I thought I’d come by and see if you were all right before I went down to the station.”
      “Thanks for your concern! Listen, did you know the people in that accident?”
      “The Salvatos? Sure. She and the kid were sweet, but Al’s no loss to mankind.”
      “Salvato? That was the name? They’re from Crane’s View?”
      “Yeah. Al owned a couple of stores downtown. Green Light Al Salvato. We grew up together. Why?”
      “I… don’t know. When I looked in the wreck, I thought I knew the people.”
      McCabe took a deep breath and let it out quickly, his cheeks puffed out. “That’s a tough moment for anyone. Especially if it’s your first time. I never get used to it. I guess you were confused.”
      I knew full well it wasHugh and his family in the silver car. There was no doubt about it.
      “I saw you fiddling with the key. Is there a problem?”
      Gesturing toward the door, I gave a defeated laugh. “I can’t get into my house. Something’s wrong with the lock. The key won’t turn and neither will the doorknob.”
      “Can I try?” Flicking his half-smoked cigarette away, he climbed the stairs to the porch, took the key, and tried it himself. Once. Nothing. It was a small gesture but I liked him for it. He didn’t try to be a manabout it by fooling with the key for five minutes until the lock submitted and he had shown me up. He tried once, failed, handed back the key.
      “You got two choices, then. We call a locksmith for, like, fifty bucks even though I know a guy who’ll give you a discount. Or you can pretend you don’t see this.…” He brought something out of his pocket and showed it to me. A lock pick—I recognized it from a hundred TV shows. “You want to give it a shot?”
      “I’m happy to save fifty dollars.”
      “Well, let’s see.”
      He slipped the awl-like thing into the lock and wiggled it around a couple of times. He stopped, made one more small movement with his hand, and there was an audible click. He turned the knob and the door opened.
      “Cha-cha-cha.” Standing back, he made a sweeping gesture toward the door. “Open sez me.”
      I started in but stopped. “Look, I’m sure you’ve got a million other things to do. But would you mind coming in with me just for a few minutes? I’d feel so much better if I had company in there awhile.”
      He looked at his beautiful watch. “Sure, I got time. We’ll give the place a once-over.” Without waiting he walked in. A moment’s hesitation and then I followed.
      “Uh-oh, did you leave something on the stove?”
      “No.”
      “We better look in your kitchen first.” He went right toward it. For a second that confused me until I remembered McCabe had often been in the house when Frances lived here.
      As if reading my mind, he said, “This house used to be full of weird smells. You never knew what would hit you when you came in. Sometimes ambrosia, sometimes Perth Amboy. Frances ever make you pecan pie? Sometimes great, other times absolute dog food. You’d be cleaning your teeth for three days. She was the damndest cook. Great soups, terrible meat. Never let her cook you meat! Once for my birthday—” He shoved the kitchen door but nothing happened.
      “You lock this?”
      “No.”
      We stared at each other.
      “Interesting.” He pushed again, but nothing happened. Under his breath he began whistling the Beach Boys song “Help Me, Rhonda.” He slid his hands into his pockets and immediately took them out again. He gave the bottom of the door a small kick that sounded way too loud in the silent house. He whistled some more. “This is interesting. Maybe it explains why you couldn’t get in from outside.” Taking a magenta credit card out of his pocket, he slipped it in the crack between the door and the frame and slid it upward. There came a small metallic clinkon the other side.
      “There you go! I remember there’s a hook and eye on this one because I put it in for Frances years ago.” He pushed the door open.
      First came the smell, then the smoke. Not much of it but enough to stiffen the neck and make you scared. Brave McCabe walked straight into the room. Seconds later there was a metallic scraping, a crash, and he fell down right in front of me.
      “What the fuck–“
      Pieces of metal covered the kitchen floor; glass too. Some were whole, others broken or in jagged fragments. Many were blackened, others actually smoking. The largest was immediately recognizable—a silver trunk lid from an automobile with the BMW insignia emblazoned on it. There were more silver pieces among the others—the silver of Hugh’s wrecked car.
      McCabe stood up, hands bleeding. Dazed, he looked at me. “What is this shit?”
      I knew what it was. I knew too well. I never should have brought him into the house. Whoever was in here, whoever was in charge, wanted me alone in the house. Without knowing it, I had broken the rules. Now poor McCabe and I would pay for my mistake.
      I turned and walked quickly out of the room to the front door. Of course it was locked. I grabbed the doorknob and tried turning it, but nothing moved, not an inch. It felt welded shut. I knew it was useless to try finding another way out of the house.
      I went back to the kitchen. McCabe stood at the sink washing his hands. He did it slowly and precisely. Despite what was happening, he appeared in no hurry. I couldn’t think of anything to say because whatever came out would sound absurd.
      With his back to me, he murmured, “It’s here again, isn’t it? That’s what this is all about.” He took a red dish towel off a hook by the window. Drying his hands, he waited for my answer.