Part 17 (1/2)
You left us, and we heard your footsteps on the creaky attic floor, followed by an eerie silence.
I felt restless; I wanted something. Oh, yes-I wanted to know more about your wife. People like you didn't get married any more, they just moved in together, hung out. ”When did he get married?” I asked Patrick.
”I don't know. Around a year ago, I guess.”
”Was there, you know, a wedding?”
”No. Or at least if there was, I wasn't invited. He got married in L.A.”
”What's she like-Gloria?”
”She's beautiful.”
”Beautiful! I've never heard you say that about anyone.”
”Well, it stands out. I think she was a model.”
”I'm tired,” I said. ”It's the country air, and that long walk. What about you, Rosie?”
”I feel wide awake. I think I'll stay up a while longer.”
Inside a dream, Rosie's voice was calling me. ”Maya?”
But sleep was reining me in, and I couldn't answer.
”Maya? I took something after everyone went to sleep-now I feel weird.”
”What do you mean?” I mumbled. The words were drawn from a floating dictionary, page eleven fifty-nine.
”I took something from the counter. You know, all that stuff Tony brought.”
I hauled myself to the surface, tried to sit up. ”Well, how do you feel?”
”Energetic. I feel like swimming.”
”No, don't go swimming. I'll come with you, we'll go for a walk.”
With clumsy fingers I pulled on my jeans and s.h.i.+rt, grabbed my knapsack. Outside, a large albino animal squatted in the dark-it was Patrick's Mercedes; and behind it, fender touching fender, your funny yellow jeep. I knew Patrick kept a flashlight in his glove compartment, but he'd locked the car and I wasn't sure where the keys were.
I had better luck with your jeep, which you'd left unlocked. The light came on when I opened the door. There was a briefcase on the back seat, its lid up, and papers were spilling out of it in disarray. The glove compartment gave off a faint scent of perfume, and the tingling guilt of an intruder crept over me as I rummaged through ghostly female relics: makeup, hand lotion, blue-framed sungla.s.ses. No flashlight.
”I guess we won't need one,” I said. It was a cloudless, moonlit night, and little quartz stones glimmered on the road. ”But the mosquitoes are going to eat us alive. Let me get you a sweater.” I went inside and found someone's old pullover in the closet. When I came back out, Rosie was nowhere in sight.
”Rosie, where are you?” I called out.
I heard her laugh softly, but I couldn't tell where the sound was coming from.
”Come over here, to the car.”
”Here I am,” she said, emerging from the shadows. ”I was in the lost forest. There are such strange birds in the sky. Black and blind, like clocks.”
”Give me your arms.” I helped her into the sweater. As usual, I'd stuffed my knapsack with emergency provisions, including a bottle of mosquito repellent. I rubbed the repellent on our clothes-Mimi's old trick. As we set out, an oppressive feeling came over me. It was loneliness. That's what drugs did: they distanced you from everyone. Rosie was light years away, but she'd been that way always, and the drugs were only a neon billboard's flas.h.i.+ng bulletin, because over the years I'd managed to forget.
”I'm sorry I got you out of bed,” she said.
”I don't mind.”
I reached out for her hand and held it in mine so she wouldn't escape again, and also because we couldn't see clearly. It was instinctive, holding hands in the dark; it helped you navigate, and Rosie's grat.i.tude as she moved closer to me made me feel better. The numinous forest on either side of the road was like the entrance to heaven, the entrance to h.e.l.l. Halfway through this mortal journey- Halfway through this mortal journey- Partway through it, anyhow, we came to the gas station. The light of a single lamppost cast long shadows on the pump apparatus. A good setting for a play, I thought-a stumbled-upon sign of tenuous civilization, in the middle of nowhere, on a summer night.
”I think we're in Oz. Oh, if only I could get into the flea market!”
The letters on the side of the warehouse wavered like hieroglyphics from the underworld. I tried the door, not expecting it to yield, but it swung open, seemed in fact to be hanging somewhat precariously on its hinges. Miraculously, I found the light switch. In an instant, like G.o.d's creation, the flea market came into existence. The castoffs of an entire city seemed to lie before us. Attics and bas.e.m.e.nts, the closets of children now married and grandparents now deceased, vacated bedrooms and kitchens: all had been emptied and the contents brought to rest in Marcel's brother-in-law's flea market.
”Maybe Daddy's things are here,” Rosie said, ”The things he lost-you know.”
”No, I don't know. Let's go before you start seeing things.”
”I want to stay here. I'll bring him back some plates.”
”You can't get those things back,” I said, pus.h.i.+ng away the apparition of the cashmere sweater in my mother's dresser drawer.
She began strolling down the aisles, collecting dented high-heeled shoes and old wallets.
”We can't take these-there's no one to pay,” I said. ”We'll come back tomorrow, I promise. You can put them here in the meantime.” I handed her an empty laundry basket and she filled it with her treasures. Then she dropped an embroidered pillow on the dusty floor and lay down on her back. She said, ”Daddy played the violin, and that's how he survived. They liked his playing. He says he only did it because he thought his parents might be alive somewhere, or his sisters. So he made the effort, because for himself he didn't care. He played, and he forced himself to be half-blind. He found a way not to see, he made everything blurry. And things are still blurry for him. Because he said if he had seen he wouldn't have been able to play, or to stay sane.”
”Get up, Rosie. We have to go home.”
”He envied the people who threw themselves against the electric fence or found a way to hang themselves. Or volunteered to replace someone during a selection. Some of the people who volunteered were heroes, but some of them just didn't want to live and Daddy wished he could volunteer too. But he thought there was a chance at least one of his sisters was alive because she made it across the border.”
”I wish I could phone Patrick,” I said. ”He'd come get us.”
”I can't move. I've been buried alive.”
”Come on, let's go.” I gripped Rosie's wrists, helped her up, and led her out of the warehouse.
As we walked back, she sang her Magic Flute Magic Flute aria about vanis.h.i.+ng love. aria about vanis.h.i.+ng love. Nimmer kommt ihr, Wonnestunde, Meinem Herzen mehr zuruck. Never again will the hour of bliss return to my heart. Nimmer kommt ihr, Wonnestunde, Meinem Herzen mehr zuruck. Never again will the hour of bliss return to my heart.
”It feels good, this stuff,” Rosie said when we were back in the house.
”That's the point. That's why people do it. Don't take any more pills.”
”I only took one.”
”Who knows what's in that stuff! You can't trust the people who make those drugs. Will you stay in your room now?”
”Yes, I'm very sleepy,” she said.
I checked the clock in the foyer; it was four in the morning. Soon it would be light. I drew the curtains in my attic room and slept until noon the following day.
There was no one downstairs, and I thought at first that everyone had gone for a drive and left me behind. Then I realized I was the only one who was awake.