I don’t answer.
“And when you wanted me to save those blueprints, those were for a dead guy?”
I don’t answer.
“And . . .” He points to the stepladder braked against the basement door.
I say nothing.
He nods, as though I’ve spoken. Then he hitches his bag farther up his shoulder, turns, and walks out the door.
Norelli watches him leave. “Do we need to talk to him?”
“He bothering you?” Little asks me.
I shake my head.
“Okay,” he says, releasing my hand. “Now. I’m not really . . . qualified to deal with what happens next. My job is to shut all this down and make it safe for everyone to move ahead. Including you. I know that this has been hard for you. Today, I mean. So I want you to give Dr. Fielding a call. I think it’s important.”
I haven’t uttered a word since Norelli’s announcement. Your husband and your daughter are dead. I can’t imagine what my voice might sound like, must sound like, in this new world where that sentence has been spoken, been heard.
Little’s still talking. “I know you’re struggling, and—” He stops for a moment. When he speaks again, he’s hushed. “I know you’re struggling.”
I nod. So does he.
“Seems like I ask this every time we’re here, but are you okay to be left alone?”
I nod again, slowly.
“Anna?” He eyes me. “Dr. Fox?”
We’ve reverted to Dr. Fox. I open my mouth. “Yes.” I hear myself the way you do when you’ve got headphones on—remote, somehow. Muffled.
“In light of—” Norelli begins, but again Little raises a hand, and again she stops. I wonder what she was about to say.
“You’ve got my number,” he reminds me. “Like I said, give Dr. Fielding a call. Please. He’ll want to hear from you. Don’t make us worry. Either one of us.” He gestures to his partner. “That includes Val here. She’s a worrier at heart.”
Norelli watches me.
Little’s walking backward now, as though reluctant to turn away. “And like I said, we’ve got a lot of good people for you to talk to, if you want.” Norelli turns, disappears into the hall. I hear her boots click on the tile. I hear the front door open.
It’s just me and Little now. He’s looking past me, out the window.
“You know,” he says, after a moment, “I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to my girls.” His eyes are on mine now. “Don’t know what I’d do.”
He clears his throat, raises a hand. “Bye.” He steps into the hall, draws the door closed behind him.
A moment later I hear the front door shut.
I stand in my kitchen, watch little galaxies of dust form and dissolve in the sunlight.
My hand creeps to my glass. I pick it up gingerly, rotate it in my hand. Lift it to my face. Inhale.
Then I throw the fucking thing against the wall and scream louder than I’ve ever screamed in my life.
76
I sit at the edge of the bed, staring straight ahead. Shadows play on the wall before me.
I’ve lit a candle, a little potted Diptyque, fresh out of the box, a Christmas present from Livvy two years back. Figuier. She loves figs.
Loved.
A ghost of a draft haunts the room. The flame shifts, clings to the wick.
An hour passes. Then another.
The candle is burning fast, wick half-drowned in a soft pool of wax. I’m slumped over where I sit. My fingers are cradled between my thighs.
The phone lights up, shivers. Julian Fielding. He’s supposed to see me tomorrow. He won’t.
Night falls like a curtain.
That’s when your troubles started, Little said. Your problems going outside.
At the hospital, they told me I was in shock. Then shock became fear. Fear mutated, became panic. And by the time Dr. Fielding arrived on the scene, I was—well, he said it simplest, said it best: “A severe case of agoraphobia.”
I need the familiar confines of my home—because I spent two nights in that alien wilderness, beneath those huge skies.
I need an environment I can control—because I watched my family as they slowly died.
You’ll notice I’m not asking what made you this way, she said to me. Or, rather, I said it to myself.
Life made me this way.
“Guess who?”
I shake my head. I don’t want to talk to Ed right now.
“How you feeling, slugger?”
But I shake my head again. I can’t speak, won’t speak.
“Mom?”
No.
“Mommy?”
I flinch.
No.
At some point I keel to one side, sleep. When I wake, my neck sore, the candle flame has dwindled to a tiny blot of blue, shimmying in the cool air. The room is plunged in darkness.
I sit up, stand up, creaking, a rusty ladder. Drift to the bathroom.
As I return, I see the Russell place lit up like a dollhouse. Upstairs, Ethan sits at his computer; in the kitchen, Alistair seesaws a knife across a cutting board. Carrots, neon-bright beneath the kitchen glare. A glass of wine stands on the counter. My mouth goes dry.
And in the parlor, on the striped love seat, is that woman. I suppose I should call her Jane.
Jane’s got a phone in her hand, and with the other she slashes and stabs at it. Scrolling through family photos, maybe. Playing solitaire, or something—games these days all seem to involve fruit.
Or else she’s updating her friends. Remember that freak neighbor . . . ?
My throat hardens. I walk to the windows and tug the curtains shut.
And I stand there in the dark: cold, utterly alone, full of fear and something that feels like longing.
Tuesday, November 9
77
I spend the morning in bed. Sometime before noon, bleary with sleep, I find my fingers tapping out a message to Dr. Fielding: Not today.
He calls me five minutes later, leaves a voicemail. I don’t listen to it.
Midday ticks past; by three p.m. my stomach is cramping. I ferry myself downstairs and pluck a bruised tomato from the fridge.
As I bite into it, Ed tries to speak to me. Then Olivia. I turn away from them, pulp dribbling down my chin.
I feed the cat. I swallow a temazepam. Then a second. Then a third. Fold myself into sleep. All I want is sleep.
Wednesday, November 10
78
Hunger wakes me. In the kitchen I tilt a box of Grape Nuts into a bowl, chase it with some milk, expiration date today. I don’t even much like Grape Nuts; Ed does. Did. They pebble-dash my throat, scour the insides of my cheeks. I don’t know why I keep buying them.
Except of course I do.
I want to retreat to bed, but instead I aim my feet toward the living room, tread slowly to the television console, drag the drawer open. Vertigo, I think. Mistaken identity—or rather, taken identity. I know the dialogue by heart; strangely, it’ll soothe me.
“What’s the matter with you?” the policeman bellows at Jimmy Stewart, at me. “Give me your hand!” Then he loses his footing, plummets from the rooftop.
Strangely soothing.
Midway through the film, I pour myself a second bowl of cereal. Ed murmurs at me when I close the refrigerator door; Olivia says something indistinct. I return to the sofa, dial up the volume on the TV.
“His wife?” asks the woman in the jade-green Jag. “The poor thing. I didn’t know her. Tell me: Is it true she really believed . . .”
I sink deeper into the cushions. Sleep overtakes me.
Sometime later, during the makeover sequence (“I don’t want to be dressed like someone dead!”), my phone shakes, a little seizure, rattling the glass of the coffee table. Dr. Fielding, I presume. I reach for it.
“Is that what I’m here for?” Kim Novak cries. “To make you feel that you’re with someone that’s dead?”
The phone screen reads Wesley Brill.
I go still for an instant.
Then I mute the film, press my thumb to the phone, and swipe. Lift it to my ear.
I find I can’t speak. But I don’t need to. After a moment’s silence, he greets me: “I hear you breathing there, Fox.”
It’s been almost eleven months, but his voice is as thunderous as ever.
“Phoebe said you called,” he goes on. “I meant to get back to you yesterday, but it’s been busy. Very busy.”
I say nothing. Nor, for a minute, does he.