It’s the landline.
Not the kitchen landline, rotting downstairs in its dock, but the one in Ed’s library. I’d forgotten it entirely.
It rings again, distant, insistent.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe.
Who’s calling me? No one’s called the house phone in . . . I can’t remember. Who would even have this number? I can barely remember it myself.
Another ring.
And another.
I shrivel against the glass, wilt there in the cold. I imagine the rooms of my house, one by one, throbbing with that noise.
Another ring.
I look across the park.
She’s there, in the parlor window, a phone at her ear.
Looking right at me, hard.
I scuttle from my seat, grip the camera in one hand, retreat to my desk. She holds her gaze, her mouth a terse line.
How did she get this number?
But then how did I get hers? Directory assistance. I think of her dialing, speaking my name, asking to be connected. To me. Invading my house, my head.
The liar.
I watch her. I glare.
She glares back.
One more ring.
And then another sound—Ed’s voice.
“You’ve reached Anna and Ed,” he says, low and rough, like a movie-trailer announcer. I remember him recording the message; “You sound like Vin Diesel,” I told him, and he laughed, and pitched his voice lower still.
“We’re away right now, but leave us a message and we’ll get right back to you.” And I remember how as soon as he’d finished, as soon as he’d pressed the Stop button, he’d added, in a god-awful Cockney accent, “When we bloody feel like it.”
For an instant, I close my eyes, picture him calling to me.
But it’s her voice that fills the air, fills the house.
“I think you know who I am.” A pause. I open my eyes, find her looking at me, watch her mouth shape the words boring into my ears. The effect is uncanny. “Stop photographing our house or I’ll call the police.”
She removes the phone from her ear, slips it into her pocket. Stares at me. I stare back.
All is silent.
Then I leave the room.
49
GIRLPOOL has challenged you!
It’s my chess program. I give the screen the finger and press the phone to my ear. Dr. Fielding’s voicemail greeting, brittle as a dead leaf, invites me to leave a message. I do so, enunciating carefully.
I’m in Ed’s library, laptop warming my thighs, midday sun puddled on the carpet. A glass of merlot stands on the table beside me. A glass and a bottle.
I don’t want to drink. I want to stay clear; I want to think. I want to analyze. Already the past thirty-six hours are receding, evaporating, like a bank of fog. Already I can feel the house squaring its shoulders, shrugging the outside world away.
I need a drink.
Girlpool. What a stupid name. Girlpool. Whirlpool. Tierney. Bacall. It’s in your bloodstream now.
It certainly is. I tip the glass to my lips, feel the flood of wine rushing down my throat, the fizz in my veins.
Hold your breath, cross your fingers.
Let me in!
You’ll be all right.
You’ll be all right. I snort.
My mind is a swamp, deep and brackish, the true and the false mingling and mixing. What are those trees that grow in heavily sedimented swampland? The ones with their roots exposed? Man . . . mandrake? Man-something, definitely.
David.
The glass wobbles in my hand.
In the rush, in the rumble, I’ve forgotten about David.
Who worked at the Russells’. Who could have—must have—met Jane.
I set the glass on the table, bring myself to my feet. Sway into the hall. Down the stairs, emerging into the kitchen. I lob a glance at the Russell house—no one on display, no one watching me—then knock on the basement door, gently at first, again with force. I call his name.
No response. I wonder if he’s asleep. But it’s midafternoon.
An idea flares in my brain.
It’s wrong, I know, but this is my house. And it’s urgent. It’s very urgent.
I move to the desk in the living room, slide open the drawer, and find it there, dull silver and jagged with teeth: the key.
I return to the basement door. Knock once more—nothing—then push the key into the lock. Twist it.
Pull the door open.
It whines. I wince.
But all is quiet as I peer down the stairs. I descend into darkness, softly in my slipper feet, grazing one hand along the rough plaster of the wall.
I reach the floor. The blackouts are drawn; it’s night down here. My fingers brush the switch on the wall, flip it. The room bursts into light.
It’s been two months since I last visited, two months since David arrived for a tour. He scanned it all with his licorice-dark eyes—the living area, with Ed’s drafting table front and center; the narrow sleeping alcove; the chrome-and-walnut kitchenette; the bathroom—and nodded once.
He hasn’t done much with the place. He’s scarcely done anything with the place. Ed’s sofa is where it was; the drafting table has stayed put, although it’s now level. A plate rests on its surface, plastic fork and knife X-ed across it like a coat of arms. Toolboxes are stacked against the far wall, next to the outside door. On the topmost box I spot the borrowed box cutter, its little tongue of blade glittering beneath the overheads. Beside it a book, spine broken. Siddhartha.
A photograph in a slim black frame hangs on the wall opposite. Me and Olivia, age five, on our front steps, my arms wreathed around her. Grinning, both of us, Olivia with her summer teeth—“summer here, summer there,” Ed liked to say.
I’d forgotten about that picture. My heart twitches a little. I wonder why it’s still hanging.
I tread to the alcove. “David?” I ask quietly, even though I’m certain he’s not here.
The sheets are roiled at the foot of the mattress. Deep dents in the pillows, like they’ve been scissor-kicked. I catalogue the inventory of the bed: filigree of brittle ramen noodle coiling upon pillowcase; prophylactic, wilted and greasy, snagged upon the newel; aspirin bottle lodged between bedstead and wall; hieroglyphs of dried sweat, or semen, inscribed across top sheet; a slender laptop at the foot of the mattress. A belt of condom packets is looped around a floor lamp. An earring beams on the nightstand.
I peek into the bathroom. The sink is brindled with whiskers, the toilet yawning wide. Within the shower, a gaunt bottle of store-brand shampoo and a shard of soap.
I retreat, return to the main room. Run a hand along the drafting table.
Something nibbles at my brain.
I grasp at it, lose it.
I scan the room once more. No photo albums, although I suppose no one keeps photo albums anymore (Jane did, I remember); no CD wallet or DVD tower, but I guess those are extinct as well. Isn’t it amazing how according to the Internet, some people might as well not exist? Bina had asked. All David’s memories, all his music, everything that might unlock the man—it’s gone. Or, rather, it’s all around me, floating in the ether, but invisible, files and icons, ones and zeros. Nothing left on display in the real world, not a sign, not a clue. Isn’t it amazing?
I look again at the picture on the wall. I think of my cabinet in the living room, packed with DVD slipcases. I’m a relic. I’ve been left behind.
I turn to go.
And as I do, I hear a scratch behind me. It’s the outside door.
And as I watch, it opens, and David stands before me, staring.
50
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I flinch. I’ve never heard him swear. I’ve barely ever heard him speak.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I back up, open my mouth.
“I was just—”
“What makes you think you can just come down here?”
I take another step back, stumble. “I’m so sorry—”
He’s advancing, the door behind him wide open. My vision rolls.
“I’m so sorry.” I breathe deep. “I was looking for something.”
“For what?”
Breathe again. “I was looking for you.”
He lifts his hands, drops them to his sides, the keys flailing in his fingers. “Here I am.” He shakes his head. “Why?”
“Because—”
“You could have called me.”
“I didn’t think—”