The Brownstone, page 20
“The business of answering a question with another question.”
“I didn’t hear you ask a question!” Chandal was beginning to react hostilely.
Now her mother spoke in a low, childlike way. “Do you really want me to come and stay with you?” she whimpered.
“I said so, didn’t I?”
“All right, I will.”
It was nearly ten o’clock when Chandal stepped from the cab in front of the brownstone. Relieved to be home, she paid the driver, carefully climbed the icy steps, and entered through the front door.
She spent the rest of the evening straightening up the spare room. From time to time, she crossed into the kitchen, where the red light over the basement door was always on now. She wanted to let Justin know that her mother was coming to live with them, but, Lord, how could she tell him? It was after twelve when she finally went to bed. Justin remained in the basement.
She lay in bed unable to sleep. She pushed the pillows around. Her breasts were starting to swell, the nipples red and aching.
Last night, no—Tuesday night; the days were becoming all mixed up in her mind. Even time. Sometimes a minute seemed like an hour, and then again sometimes hours slipped away, like tiny droplets of water running down a windowpane on a rainy night, mingling with countless other droplets, losing their significance. She gathered in a breath and imagined that there was a sickish sweet odor of lavender to the air.
She felt her heart racing. I’m isolated. Cut off from everybody. Perhaps that was really why she had insisted that her mother come live in the brownstone. Sick or otherwise, her mother always made her feel safe. Yes, her mother’s presence would calm things, bring a certain sense of order into her life. Or would it? She rolled over, buried her head in the pillow.
The last thing Chandal heard before she slept was the seer’s voice—Go far away—tell no one where. Chandal made up her mind. As soon as her mother was well, she would press Justin to move. If not California, Florida, or—She fell asleep, her thought incomplete....
...The crying wasn’t really crying at first, just a whimpering, a childlike sobbing that went unnoticed, until the thin shadow in the corner grew in intensity, in sharpness, and then Chandal saw Sheila standing in the doorway of the office, Kleenex in hand, weeping. Her eyes glistened with tears.
She appeared to be covered with a white haze that rose from the snow-covered floor of the office. How strange. The office was completely covered in icicles, crystallized into a purplish-blue ice palace.
“What’s the matter, Sheila?” asked Chandal.
Sheila looked away down the hallway, turned back to Chandal. “Help me.”
“What?”
Sheila moved into the hallway out of sight. Through the thin walls of the office, Chandal could still hear her sobbing. Chandal stirred from her chair. She went to the hallway. She looked down the long corridor, watched as Sheila disappeared around the corner to her left. Her green woolen dress trailed off behind her, leaving a light flicker of color, a green dot before Chandal’s eyes.
She followed, the hue of purple and blue light parting, as if she were walking through a thick fog, and then closing in behind her, shutting her off—allowing her no passage back to the office.
As she rounded the corner, she saw Sheila standing frozen, suspended in the “Exit” doorway, whimpering in pain. Something suddenly seemed to reach out and grab her arm, hurling her into the stairwell, dragging her up the stairway, her image splintering into fragments—gone.
“Sheila!” Chandal screamed, running toward the exit. The door slammed shut, blocking her way. She pulled on the door. It wouldn’t open. But she could still hear Sheila crying. Higher up, above her.
Breathlessly, Chandal raced to the stairs to the right, started to climb. She climbed without thinking, up the labyrinth of stairs, stairwells, hallways, higher, the sound of Sheila’s crying always just ahead of her.
She paused for a moment to catch her breath. Her legs shook, her hands and face numb from the cold.
She pressed on.
At the end of the corridor on the fifth floor, she watched a door swing shut. It closed with a loud thud, and then the hallway seemed to fall into an ominous silence.
Chandal felt increasingly drained of energy as she moved cautiously toward the door. The light had fallen away into a reddish glow, making it impossible to identify anything clearly. Chandal used her hands now, feeling her way down the long hallway to the door.
She placed her hand on its brass doorknob and shoved gently. The huge oak door swung open, slowly, until it stopped itself midway between open and shut.
Chandal saw Sheila standing at the far end of the room. She was still crying, but making no sound. Her chest heaved in short, spasmodic thrusts, her hands reaching out to Chandal for help.
“Sheila, come here.” Chandal beckoned her to move forward, to move away from the huge airshaft that dropped down to the basement six floors below, directly behind her.
“Help me!” Sheila screamed.
“Sheila!”
“Help me!’’ And then something sucked her body straight back, smashing it against the wall, then letting it drop into the abyss below her.
“Sheila!”
Chandal moved forward. Stopped. She couldn’t bring herself to look into the blackened hole that opened up before her.
Red fumes swarmed before her eyes.
Her body remained frozen, her limbs unable to budge. Her head was nearly exploding.
And then around her, she felt the eyes. Thousands of eyes all watching her. In panic, she spun—and saw she was standing in a room filled with paintings. Ancient painting from another age. Panels, flat, faded—Christ’s face tender and compassionate; the Virgin Mary with the child, the image blackened, halo, hands, only the child’s eyes seeming untouched by age; Christ upon the cross, body limp, blood flowing freely from his wounds; nude bodies, twisted, tormented, fighting to free themselves from the raging, flooding river; a mummified body lying in its bier, grief-stricken mourners frozen in despair and a human skeleton astride a white horse, lance in hand, smiling, and Christ, and pigs, and angels, and Christ again, and again...
And Chandal burst out crying in her sleep. The dream was over.
Intake Interview 4 (Excerpt)
I. Luther, M.D. 33236
While patient did permit psychological testing, cooperation would be best described as limited. Sarcasm, accompanied by a resentful attitude, made little else known to us.
Nevertheless, there were enough Rorschach and T.A.T. responses to permit some theoretical conclusions. Patient found being read aloud to more tolerable and at times became involved, even interested, in the material being read.
General knowledge is extensive and characteristic of a scholar. However, the naïveté inherent in a child is always present. Narcissistic preoccupation and much infantile omnipotence also present. There is also much sexual confusion, especially regarding own sexual identity. Evidence of considerable hopelessness and underlying depression.
Conclusion: patient seems to be responding to treatment at least superficially, though many safeguards to protect ego are employed. In view of patient’s previous trauma, prognosis must still remain guarded.
I. Luther
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE SKY WAS HAZY WITH SMOG AND THE SUNLIGHT was diffused in a yellowish smoke of its own. Already a chill burned her hands and face and tugged at her coat. She felt herself go lightheaded and dizzy, but she clenched her teeth and moved on.
The intense cold seemed to put the day in tune with her own feelings. She sniffed. The wind carried a sudden, strong pungency of tar to her nostrils. She lifted her eyes slightly to take in three workers huddled around a generator for warmth, its motor coughing in a sharp, even rhythm—chuk-ah, chuk-ah, chuk-ah—as the steamroller smashed tar into submission in the street outside the front doors of the museum.
It was Friday, the twenty-sixth of January.
Chandal nodded to the attendant.
“Good morning, Mrs. Knight,” he said with an open smile.
Down the hall to the elevator. She glanced around the museum. Lots of people here already. The freshly painted sign on the front desk read: SUGGESTED CONTRIBUTION: $2.50. God, they keep making it more money every time you turn around.
She kept working on trivial observations, hoping to drive away the memory of last night’s dream. Slow elevator, dark hallways. She reached the office, removed her coat. The trouble with this place is the closets. They’re not big enough, she thought. She pushed her coat in between the others, barely managing to get the door closed. Saw Sheila falling. The door sprung back open; she pushed it shut. Saw Sheila falling. The door popped open again. The hell with it!
“Morning,” she said on the way to her desk.
“Morning,” accompanied by darting, flickering eyes.
“Morning.” Chandal sat.
“Morning,” accompanied by a mocking smile.
Up yours, sweetheart! Chandal dropped into her usual slack position, elbows leaning on the desk, hands toying with her bangs.
The office boy hurried by on his way to the Xerox room.
“Where’s Sheila?”
“Called in sick.” He smiled.
Chandal looked down and regarded her nails. “Sick?”
“Yeah, and the boss is p.o.’ed.” He snorted once, grinning.
“Why?”
“He thinks she just said that to add a few more days to her vacation.” He sat on the corner of her desk.
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“You think she’s really sick?” He slouched down lower, fooling with her pencils in her green plastic cup.
“Listen, don’t you have work to do?”
The young kid grinned. “Sure. Sure I got work to do. Loads of it.”
“Don’t you think you should get started?”
“That’s what I like—nice friendly people!” He got up in a huff. Chandal watched him go out the door and turn right down the hallway. The same doorway she’d watched Sheila walk through last night in her dream.
She picked up the phone and dialed Sheila’s number. Waited, tapping her thin fingers nervously on the blotter. No answer. She hung up.
The moving had started again, that subtle shifting of weight within her body, the buzzing and then the sudden stillness... impossible to figure out, and the day continued. She called Sissy, canceled lunch—“I just can’t, Sissy.... Yes, all right, next week. I’m sorry... it’s hard to explain. Yes, next week.” And saw Sheila falling. God, I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I’m sorry, shall I retype the letter? That’ll be fine. Called Sheila. No answer. Be sensible, Chandal... and then saw Sheila falling. Called Justin. No answer. Typed another four letters. Called Sheila. No answer. What time is it? You’re kidding!
She stood in front of Sheila’s building. She stared into the lobby at the heavy-paunched doorman; he sat hunched over, reading a magazine. She tapped on the glass with her key. The dark-looking man gazed up at her with visored eyes, blank, remote. Chandal indicated that she wanted to speak with him. It took him forever to crack open the door. “Yes?”
“Ah, Sheila Marsh—is she here?”
“Not sure, Miss. Should I buzz her?”
“Yes, please.”
He let Chandal in and moved to the intercom. Pressed. Waited. Pressed again.
Come on, come on, thought Chandal, her two hands twisted into fists inside her coat pockets.
The old man flashed her a charming smile. “She’s not home.”
“Are you sure?”
“She doesn’t answer.”
“She was supposed to go away on vacation. You didn’t happen to see her leave during the day, did you?”
“I just came on.”
“Oh, I see. Thanks.”
It had been an awful day. Chandal walked forward in a kind of stupor, watched as the man anxiously opened the door for her, fearing that she was going to perform some outrageous outburst. She stood for a moment, like a mummy, seeming not to care what happened next. And that was the frightening thing. She was starting not to care. Without definite purpose, without instruction, cut off and isolated, she stood there in the hallway fighting to care, fighting to understand. What else could she do?
“Any problem?” he asked.
“No. Not really. Thank you.”
He stared at her for a moment, his mouth slightly open. “So that’s it, then?”
“Yes. That’s it.”
Chandal left the building. The old man went back to his reading and she saw Sheila falling.
Six-fifteen P.M. Chandal stood in the lobby of the hospital and waited. Hesitation, procrastination. The point was she still hadn’t told Justin her mother was coming to stay with them.
What followed was a bureaucratic nightmare.
Dr. Margolin hadn’t signed a release form. “Can’t I just take the responsibility?” asked Chandal. Glares from the nurse behind the desk. “If you want to pay the bill in full. The insurance won’t protect you.”
She tried to reach the doctor by phone. No, he wasn’t home, said his bored-sounding wife over the telephone. “He’s at the Harvard Club.”
“Hello, Harvard Club?”
“He’s having dinner.”
Finally the doctor’s annoyed voice came on the line. Words like inadvisable, foolish. “All right”—finally, reluctantly, he agreed, dripping suggestions of I-wouldn’t-want-to-be-you. “But I wash my hands of the responsibility. Good luck.”
The out-patient clerk had misplaced her mother’s records. It took forty minutes to locate them and another thirty minutes to finalize the bill. It now had to be approved. The administrative assistant had gone to dinner. He was the only authority capable of signing the final release. When he returned, a discrepancy was found which had to be checked. The entire procedure took three hours and fifteen minutes.
After that, Chandal’s mother insisted on walking out of the hospital of her own free will. The head nurse demanded that she be placed in a wheelchair. A nasty argument took place, the head nurse won, and Chandal’s mother was put into a wheelchair and delivered to the lower lobby. Exhausted, the two women left the building, collapsed into a waiting checker cab and rode side by side in silence.
Arriving at the brownstone, Helen Briar sat tense and uneasy as the cab driver got out, removed her suitcase from the trunk, and dumped it briskly on the frozen sidewalk. She looked the other way as he held the passenger’s door open, waiting for the two women to emerge.
From inside the cab, Chandal could sense the driver’s annoyance. His breathing labored heavy in the darkness as his fingers tapped nervously on the outer edge of the door. “Come on, Mom.” She stepped into the street, turned, and extended her hand to her mother, who refused to move. Instead, she took a faded brown envelope filled with old photographs from her pocketbook and began shuffling them.
“Look at this one, Chandal. Remember?”
“Mom, the man’s waiting.”
Helen shook her head. “No.”
“Hey, listen, lady—I gotta make a livin’.” He shot Chandal a bland and discouraging gaze.
“No. Justin won’t want me here. I know it.”
“Of course he will.” Chandal handed the driver an extra dollar and indicated that he should carry the valise up the steps.
“Are you sure?” Helen asked.
“Positive.”
“But you should have told him. You really should have.” Helen refused to look at Chandal, preferring to stare at the top photograph—Chandal as a cheerleader at Columbia High School, the red and gold colors sparkling in her memory.
“Mom, he was asleep when I got home last night.” Helen looked up sharply, as if questioning Chandal’s last statement. Chandal wondered if her mother knew that she was lying.
“What if Justin disapproves? What then?”
Chandal smiled. “He won’t. I promise you.” Gently, she helped her mother from the cab and closed the door. Fingers clenched tightly around Chandal’s arm, Helen paused for a moment to take in her new surroundings. Behind them, the front door to the cab slammed shut, an engine suddenly revved up, then sped away. Most of the neighboring buildings loomed dark. A dog barked somewhere, encouraging others. When they stopped, there was a moment of silence, followed by Helen’s sigh. “Come on, Mom,” Chandal said.
Arm in arm, they climbed the slab steps. It was six minutes to ten. Chandal glanced sideways at Helen and slipped her key into the lock. At the last possible moment, Helen broke away, ran down the steps, and into the street. Instinctively, Chandal hit the doorbell to alert Justin, then dashed after her mother. “Mom, please, what is it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know... she said. Her words trailed away, her two hands clutched tightly around the collar of her coat. Half-dressed, Justin appeared at the doorway.
“Justin—help me!” Chandal tried to take hold of her mother.
“No, leave me alone!” Pulling away, Helen almost stumbled and fell. Chandal screamed. “Mom!”
Justin was down the steps, taking hold of Helen’s arm. “Helen, here. Let me help you.”
“No, I’m afraid. I can’t. When I’m ready—not now!” She struggled to free herself. Justin tried to convince her that everything was going to be all right. That he wanted her to stay. A small crowd gathered to watch.
“Are you sure? Are you sure I’ll be all right in there?” she asked, trembling from the cold.
“Of course. There’s nothing in there to hurt you.” Justin steered her by the elbow closer to the brownstone.
“How do you feel, Mom?” asked Chandal, opening the front door.
Her mother started to cry. Justin allowed the two women to enter the brownstone first. He turned to see the people still staring at him, Nickles Mayo standing center in the crowd.
“What the hell are you looking at? Jerks!” He slammed the door in their faces.
Wearily, Chandal gave Justin the facts, having settled her mother into the spare room. Her voice appeared to be echoing in her head as she spoke, sounding shrill and harsh. Out of stillness and darkness, any sound becomes inflated, she reminded herself. Justin never said a word, allowing her to talk—to rattle on.
