Black Out_A Novel

7

Impossibly, I have drifted off in my crouch behind the door. That’s the level and nature of my fatigue. I am not sure how long it has been since Dax came to tell me about the other boat. Might be minutes, might be hours. Through my porthole I can see that the sun has not risen, that there’s not even a hint of morning light in the sky.

My feet and legs are aching with that horrible tingle of having too much weight on them awkwardly for too long. I stand painfully and stretch, try to walk it off. As I make tight circles in my small cabin, trying to get blood flowing to my limbs, I have a growing sense of unease. Something’s wrong. It takes another minute of anxious pacing, but I realize eventually what’s bothering me: I can’t hear the engines anymore. The boat has come to a stop.

I’m not sure what this means, but suddenly I’m a fox in a trap; I’m stuck in the box of my cabin. When he finds me, I’ll have no place to hide. It’s almost as though he choreographed it that way, like some elaborate dance that we do, that we have always done. But for the first time since we’ve met, I won’t allow myself to be led, to be circled around and dipped at the finale. Tonight I’ll take the lead.

I open the door just a crack and peek out into the empty hallway. As I do this, I hear the boat power down, and everything falls into pitch black. There’s not even a pinprick of light, and I’m rendered blind. I draw my gun, step into the corridor, and put my back to the wall, then start edging my way toward the staircase that leads to the deck.



8

After an early and incredibly healthy dinner of fish sticks, macaroni and cheese, and a side of broccoli spears that no one eats, Esperanza, Victory, and I make chocolate chip cookies. Or Esperanza and Victory make cookies and I watch with rapt attention, sitting on a stool at the bar that separates the kitchen from the family room. It still thrills me to watch Victory walk and do things like hold the hand mixer from her stepstool. She’s such a little person that it’s already impossible to imagine she came from my body.

“I don’t think you put enough vanilla in there,” I say, trying to be helpful.

“Oh, Mommy,” says Victory with a sigh. I smile into my cup of chamomile tea. After the last couple of days, I’ve decided no more caffeine for me. I clearly don’t need any extra stimulation.

The sun is setting, painting the horizon purple and pink. I have pushed my dream as far away as it will go and focus on being present for this time with my daughter. When the cookies are ready, the three of us eat them together on the deck. I’ve built a fire in the chimenea, and we help Esperanza practice her English as the sun makes its final bow. When the air gets too cold, we all go inside.

“When does Daddy come home?” Victory asks as we head upstairs for her bath.

“Soon,” I tell her.

“Soon when?” she asks, dissatisfied with my answer.

“Soon,” I say, resting a hand on her hair.

She nods and looks a little sad. I feel bad that I can’t tell her more. But the truth is, I don’t know the answer to her question, and even if I did, I still wouldn’t be able to tell her where her daddy goes.

By the time she’s lathered up and playing with her bath toys, I’m off the hook; Victory has forgotten all about poor Gray. She’s far too wrapped up in the drama unfolding between Mr. Duck and Mr. Frog, who are in a heated debate about who is faster. I’m cheering for Mr. Frog when Esperanza comes in.

“Telephone for you, Mrs. Annie,” she says, coming to take my place beside the tub.

“Who is it?”

She shrugs and looks uncomfortable. She searches for the words in English, then finally gives up. “No sé. Pero pienso que es importante.”

“She says she doesn’t know but she thinks it’s important,” translates Victory, my little bilingual.

I nod and go to the phone. My heart is thudding as I walk down the hall to our bedroom. I am always afraid when the phone rings while Gray is away. I’m always waiting for the call. I remind myself that if anything were really wrong, they’d come in person.

“Hello.”

“Annie.” It’s my father. He sounds tense, urgent. He’s not supposed to call me. In fact, I’m not really supposed to call him, either. But every once in a while, like the other day, I can’t help it. In recent years we’ve become a little careless. Part of the overconfident phase I’ve been going through.

“Where are you calling from?”

“From a friend’s place.”

“What’s wrong?”

“There was someone looking for Ophelia today. He came by the shop, said he was a cop. But he wasn’t. A bald, beefy guy making a show of himself with a big gun in a holster.”

“Okay.” This is the hard part. I don’t know if he’s lying or not.

“Seriously,” he says into the silence. “No bullshit.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that my daughter has been dead for over five years.”

“Okay.” This seems to be the only word I can manage. I realize that my whole body is tense, that I’m gripping the phone too hard.

“He didn’t believe me. He wasn’t just casting for information; he knew something. He got all friendly with me, said there was a reward, a big one, for any information about you. I went crazy on him, started to cry and shit about how you were dead and how dare he play these kinds of games with an old man. Then he left in a hurry.”

“But he wasn’t a cop.”

“No way. You can always tell a cop, even the bad ones. They think they got the law on their side. This guy was too dirty even to be a dirty cop.”

“Okay,” I repeat again, not wanting to say too much.

“Be careful,” he says, and hangs up.

I sit for a second with the phone in my hand. I’m not sure what to think about what he’s told me. Ophelia has been dead for so long. After so much time I’d come to believe that everyone had forgotten her except me. I hang up the phone and then pick it back up, punch in a number I know very well.

“Hello?” says Drew.

“Can you come by later? It’s Annie.”

“Sure,” he says after a second’s hesitation. “Something wrong?”

“I don’t know.”


Drew always looks at me as though I’m an unwelcome solicitor at his door asking for a donation to a charity in which he doesn’t believe. I don’t like the woman I see reflected in his gaze. She’s someone unworthy, not to be trusted. But maybe I’m just projecting, as my doctor might say.

He sits at our dining-room table, a bottle of Corona nearly disappearing in his big, thick hand. His brow furrows with deep lines as I tell him what my father told me. He is a heavier, harder version of Gray. He has the same storm-cloud eyes without any of the wisdom or kindness I see in his son’s.

“Could just be someone fishing,” he says with a shrug. He takes a long swallow of his beer, puts the bottle down heavily on the table. “Unfortunately, the circumstances of Ophelia’s death wouldn’t hold up to any real scrutiny. We never expected anyone to come looking.”

I feel a little jolt at hearing that name from him. I hate the way it sounds coming from his mouth, the way it bounces on the walls of this house.

“But there might be a few people who haven’t forgotten her,” he says when I don’t say anything. He rests his eyes on me, and I fight the urge to shift beneath his gaze. I hear the television playing in Esperanza’s room; she’s watching one of her novelas. I can tell by the staccato of Spanish and the strains of melodramatic music. (?Ay, Dios! Esperanza will exclaim about one of the characters. She is so bad! ) Outside, a strong wind bends our palms, whispering through the fronds. I wish I hadn’t called Drew.

“I’ll have someone look into it,” he says finally.

I realize I haven’t really participated in the conversation, though he doesn’t seem to have noticed. “Thanks,” I say.

“In the meantime,” he says after draining the rest of the beer, “tighten up around here. Keep the system armed, no doors or windows left open. No more phone calls to Ophelia’s father or anyone from her past. You’ve gotten careless by talking to him. That phone call you made last week might be the reason someone’s looking for her.”

“Okay,” I say, feeling contrite. I know he’s right.

He gets up to leave.

“Any word on Gray?” I ask.

“No news is good news,” he says, patting me on the shoulder in an uncommonly friendly gesture. I wonder if our relationship might be improving.


It stormed the day Frank’s son came. Of course it did. One of those storms that roll in from the coast and make a blue day turn black suddenly, as though someone drew a curtain. Wind kicks in and turns the leaves white side up. The barometric pressure plummets, and the sky starts to rumble. We were alone, me and Mom. She’d worked the morning shift, I’d had a half day at school because of some teachers’ conference. We sat on her bed and watched As the World Turns on the tiny black-and-white television that we’d moved in from the kitchen, eating fried-bologna sandwiches. This was a ritual we’d practiced as long as I could remember; I’d been watching the soaps with her for probably longer than that. Even now I’ll sometimes turn one on guiltily in the middle of the day and disappear for a little while, remembering what it was like to be close to my mother, to smell her perfume and hold her delicate white hand.

I heard the knock on the door before my mother did.

“Was that the door?” I asked.

“Uh-uh,” she said absently, eyes glued to the screen. “I don’t think so.”

I heard the knocking again. “I think it is.”

“Well, go check,” she said, patting me on the ass. “I’ve been on my feet all morning.”

I walked to the door and looked through the small window. He stood there, leaves and rain blowing around him, his hair tousled. He carried a large bag over one shoulder and had on a worn blue sweat jacket over T-shirt and jeans. Something about his face, his whole bearing, made my heart lurch. I’d never seen anyone so beautiful, the features of his face smooth and flawless as if he’d been blown from glass. I thought he’d turn and I’d see a pair of wings grow from his back. He lifted his hand to knock again but saw my face in the window.

“Frank said I should come!” he yelled over the wind. His eyes were so dark they seemed almost black from where he stood; his long hair was the same inky black, in deep contrast to the white of his skin.

“Why?” I asked him. Something about him was frightening, too. True beauty is like that, as terrifying as it is mesmerizing. I didn’t want him to come in. I wanted to lean my weight against the door and brace it against him.

“He says I should see Carla.” He adjusted the heavy bag on his shoulder. His hand was like a boulder, big and round with large, long fingers.

I looked at him, examined the thin line of his mouth, the square of his jaw. I couldn’t tell how old he was. “My mother,” I said.

He looked down at his feet, back at me. I felt the full weight of his gaze. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

My mother came up behind me. “Let him in,” she said to me, but didn’t reach for the door herself.

“Who is he?”

“He’s Frank’s boy,” she said, looking at me sheepishly, then at him.

“You knew he was coming?”

“I knew he might come,” she said, turning her face back to me but keeping her eyes on him, as though she couldn’t pull her gaze away.

“And?” I said, feeling my stomach clench.

“And now he might stay on here awhile.”

“Where?” I said. “There’s no room for him.”

She nodded over toward the couch. It was small and dirty, uncomfortable even to sit on, never mind sleep. “There. Just for a few nights. Don’t worry; I’m not going to give him your room.”

“Hello?” he called from outside. “It’s raining pretty hard.”

“Well?” my mother said.

I turned and looked at him through the window. Even then something deep inside me knew not to open the door, but I did. He brought the storm in with him, dripping on the floor and smelling like rain. He was tall, taller than he’d seemed standing outside. He didn’t have to slouch to come in through the door, but almost. He dropped his bag on the floor and it landed with a heavy thump.

My mother made him a fried-bologna sandwich, then another. I watched while he inhaled them as if he hadn’t eaten in days. He had a thick neck and broad, heavily muscled shoulders. He wrapped his free arm around the plate, gazing up every so often, as if he were afraid someone would come and take the food away from him.

“I’ve only got six months to emancipation,” he told us, making his childhood sound like a kind of slavery. But he didn’t look like a boy, as my mother had called him. At seventeen going on eighteen, he was more man than child, I suppose. There was something feral about him, something hungry and knowing.

I stood in the corner sullen, angry, but watching him with secret interest. The look on my mother’s face, vacant and eager to please, made me sick. This is how she acted around men.

“Then I’m going to join the Corps,” he said. “No one’s going to f*ck with me after that.”

“Wow, the marines!” my mother gushed, twirling a strand of her hair. “Frank didn’t tell me.”

“How long are you planning on staying here?” I asked with naked annoyance.

He shrugged and gave my mom a hangdog look. It was so fake. Couldn’t she see that?

She patted his shoulder and gave me a warning glare over his head. “You can stay as long as you need to, Martin.”

“My name’s Marlowe,” he said quickly, angrily. I saw the ugly in him for a second, a dog baring his teeth. Then he softened, turned a sweet smile on my mother. “Please call me Marlowe.”

“Sure, honey,” she said, petting him again. “Marlowe. Do you want something else to eat?”

“Yes, please,” he said to her, and then he moved his eyes over to me.

My recall of Marlowe’s arrival has a funny, sepia-toned quality. I remember weird, hyperfocused details, like my mother’s cuticles, jagged from her endless gnawing at them, and that the tag on her shirt was turned out. I remember hearing the dramatic voices from the soap opera blaring from the other room. But it’s as though I’m remembering something I saw on a television screen, all of it happening behind a thick piece of glass. I don’t feel like I was a participant, but rather an impotent observer watching mute and helpless as things unfolded. It was another of those moments that I had dissected again and again with my shrink. Another place where I might have made a difference.

“Try to remember,” Dr. Brown says, “you were a child; your mother was the adult. You didn’t have any power. Your mother was responsible for inviting these men, her boyfriend and his son, into your lives.”

“I opened the door.”

“If you hadn’t, she would have.”

He was right. My mother was not a smart woman, not intelligent, not instinctual. She lived in her own little world. She never saw him coming.



9

The next night I force myself to go to Ella’s cocktail party. In spite of my efforts to isolate myself from the crowd and appear generally antisocial, an older woman clad entirely in white drifts over to me and asks me what I do. She looks as though someone sprayed her with shellac, so unmoving and stiff are the various parts of her—her flesh, her bobbed hair, the muscles in her face. She’s so thin I can see the tiny bones in her wrist.

“I’m a housewife and a mother,” I say without the sheepish tone in which I’ve heard so many women deliver this information. What I don’t say is that I’m a housewife who doesn’t do much cooking or cleaning. And that my daughter is in preschool most days. My life consists of these big blocks of free time while I wait for Victory to be done with the various activities in her busy little life. It’s dangerous for someone like me; I should really think about getting a job. The devil would find work for idle hands, my mother used to say when she was in one of her Jesus moods. Or, in my case, work for idle minds.

“That’s wonderful,” the woman in white says with a smile, real or fake, who can tell? “It’s the most important job in the world.” Everything about her is perfectly manicured: her fingernails are square and pink, her lips lined and glossed, her eyebrows plucked into high arches. A huge diamond glints on her hand. She is painstakingly casual in a flowing linen skirt and top, leather thongs on her feet.

The conversation falters, mainly because I don’t participate, and she moves away, raising her glass and muttering an excuse. I’ve come alone to this party because I promised Gray I would attend just to “get out of the house and be with people other than Victory,” but I’d rather be home with her and Esperanza watching The Incredibles on DVD for the hundredth time.

I lean on the fence that edges the pool deck and look out onto the black stretch that ends in the Gulf. I can’t see the water because of the elaborate lighting and landscaping on the property, but I can hear it and smell the salt in the humid air. My mind is full of thoughts I’m trying not to have—my black patch, my dream, Gray, the man looking for Ophelia. I shouldn’t be here. I’m not cocktail-party material even on my best days. I endure things that other people find entertaining.

My eyes fall on a girl standing alone a few feet away. She’s leaning on the fence like I am and lost in thought looking out into the night. She must have felt my eyes on her, because she turns to look at me. I recognize her then, but I can’t place her. I suddenly feel a terrible need to remember who she is; my heart starts to beat a little faster with the urgency I feel. She’s pretty and far too thin, wearing just a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, a ratty old pair of sneakers. She’s not the type to be at one of Ella’s cocktail parties—too young, not enough money. I wonder if she’s the new maid Ella’s been complaining about. We’re staring at each other, neither one of us looking away. Finally she smiles. But it’s not a friendly smile; in it I see some combination of malice and pity. My gut lurches a bit. I look away quickly.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re not a very social person?” Ella says, coming up behind me. I jump slightly, and she laughs, surprised. “You need another drink,” she says, patting my back. “You’re too tense.”

“Who’s that girl?” I say, looking back over in the stranger’s direction. But she’s gone.

“Who?” Ella asks, following my eyes.

I scan the crowd. I don’t see her among Ella’s well-dressed guests.

“She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Pretty, young, too thin?” I’m still looking for her. In fact, I feel almost desperate to see her again.

“If she’s here, we should kick her out,” says Ella, mock jealous.

“Your new maid?” I say, hopeful.

“No, she’s off tonight.”

I can feel Ella’s attention shift from curious to concerned.

“You okay?” she asks after another moment.

“Yeah,” I say, smiling a bright fake smile. “I just thought she looked familiar.”

She gives me another rub on the shoulder, then returns my smile. “When’s Gray coming back? You’re lost without him at these things.”

“At the end of next week,” I say vaguely. I’m still looking over her shoulder.

“I never realized insurance executives had to travel so much,” she says. I snap back to the conversation and listen for signs of skepticism in her voice. But there’s just her usual light and musing tone, the wide-open expression on her face.

“Client risk assessment, large claim investigations,” I say with a shrug, as if this should explain it. She nods.

“Still,” she says, “he leaves you alone too much.”

She’s not looking at me. She’s looking out into the night. I can’t tell if she’s just making conversation.

“You’re one to talk,” I say with a smile. “You’re gone as often as he is.”

“True. But my trips are important,” she says. “Shopping in New York City, detoxing at Canyon Ranch, sunning in Fiji.”

“Hmm,” I say. She laughs.

“Where is he this time?”

“Cleveland,” I answer.

“See? What could possibly be important in Cleveland?” she says.

We both laugh. I wonder whether she’d be laughing if she knew how easily lies come to me.

“Can I get you a refill?” she asks, pointing to my empty glass after a minute of us both staring into the night. “Seems like you could really use one, girl.”

“No thanks,” I say. “I’m going to sneak out of here and walk home down the beach.”

She knows better than to argue that I should stay, have another drink. She’s right; I’m lost without Gray at these things. I don’t know how to do Friday-evening cocktail parties, make small talk with neighbors and strangers, network, mingle, whatever it is one is supposed to do. There’s too much going on in my head for that sort of thing.

Even though I know I shouldn’t, even though this is not the type of behavior Drew would see as “tightening up,” after we say good night, I slip out the back gate, walk down a paved path lined with palms and recessed lighting that leads to the beach. I give one last look back at Ella’s gathering, but there’s no sign of the girl I saw.


Marlowe slept on the couch, his feet hanging over the edge, the sound of his deep breathing filling the whole place. Not for days, as my mother promised, but for weeks, with no sign of any intention to leave. I hated him and was fascinated by him in equal measure. He didn’t go to school, had dropped out and gotten his GED, he claimed. He spent his days writing and sketching in a collection of battered, mottled notebooks. But somehow he always had money, bought groceries, little gifts for my mother. He’d cooked dinner for us a couple of times, which basically sent my mother into convulsions over him. She raved about his pork chops and Rice-a-Roni like he was Julia Child; she was overcome by his consideration and sweetness. Meanwhile, the fact that I’d cooked dinner five days out of seven (the other two days we had pizza or fried-bologna sandwiches) for I don’t know how long had never even been acknowledged. It made me furious, and I raged about it.

“You’re just jealous,” my mother said, patting my shoulder. “He’s sweet. And we’re all he has right now. Try to be nice.”

God, she was pathetic. She’d do anything for a man—even a teenage boy—who showed her the smallest amount of attention. And there was nothing sweet about him, as far as I could see. The act he put on for my mother, he didn’t bother to use on me. For me Marlowe saved furtive looks—menace or desire, I couldn’t tell. But those eyes, those looks kept me up nights thinking about him, listening to him breathe out on the couch.

I was in a constant state of anxiety—worry about my mother, fear about this killer who might be coming to live with us, hatred for his son who was crashing on our couch, and yes, some secret fascination with Marlowe, too.

He awakened something within my body that was thrilling and unfamiliar. I was spastic around him, clumsy and prone to emotional outbursts or awkward laughter. I hated myself, couldn’t seem to get a grip when he was in the room. The half smile he wore when we were together told me he knew it.

At night our trailer park came alive with sound: singing frogs competing with television sets and rock music, our neighbors yelling and fighting, later stumbling in drunk and noisy, slamming doors. I would lie awake some nights just listening, wondering why I had been exiled to this life. I knew enough to know that I didn’t belong among these poor and angry people, living such ugly lives. But that knowledge wasn’t enough to lift me out.

“Get me out of here, Dad,” I pleaded during one of our weekly telephone conversations. It was a Sunday night; my mother was working late. I cradled the phone to my ear and kept my back to Marlowe, whose presence in our trailer seemed as eternal and unpleasant as the roach problem. He was always there. Watching. Listening.

“Just hang in there, Opie,” my father said calmly on the other line. “It’s all going to work out. You’ll see.”

“Okay,” I said miserably, believing he was alluding to some master plan he was concocting to rescue me, something he couldn’t discuss over the phone.

I was still young enough to hope that he was going to show up one day and demand custody of me. I didn’t understand back then that though my father loved me, he wasn’t really father material. He didn’t have the strength, the selflessness it takes to be a real parent. Neither one of them did. But my mom at least wanted me with her—some of the time, anyway.

The conversation ended, and I went into my room to cry into my pillow.

“He’s not coming for you, you know.”

I turned, startled and embarrassed to see Marlowe standing there in the narrow doorway. He leaned against the frame, hands in the pockets of his faded, dirty jeans. He wasn’t smiling; his expression was grim.

“I mean, I’m sorry,” he said, looking down at his feet and then back up at me. “I can see you’re clinging to that. But he’s not coming.” His voice was bass and throaty. There was an odd accent to his words, not quite a southern twang. Florida cracker, my mother told me, all their family born and raised in this hot, miserable swamp of a state.

“Shut up,” I said. “What do you know about anything?”

My voice shook; his words were a blow to the solar plexus, the pain spreading, taking my breath. In my deepest heart, I was afraid that he was right—and I hated him for it.

“If he was going to come, he’d have come by now. He has money, right? And time? As long as I’ve been here, he’s never even once called you. It’s always you calling him. How long have you been waiting for him to come?”

“Shut up!” The words just burst from me in an angry scream, a belch of rage. I got up and pushed past him, ran out of the trailer into the night.

I ran clumsily, crying, until I got a pain in my side and came to a stop at the ancient strangler fig that stood at the end of the park. I put my hand against its textured bark and rested, trying to catch my breath. The wide canopy of the tree sheltered me. The carpet of fallen and rotting leaves at its base was wet and stinking. Behind it was a teeming forest of palms and ferns, pond cypress and loblolly pine, surrounding a stream. I knew that the wooded area was rife with snakes and citrus rats, a terrible sampling of insects and spiders. Part of me wanted to enter its cover and be consumed by it. It seemed wild and barely contained, like most of Florida, as if it were only waiting for us to stop moving and clearing and digging, manicuring and trimming, for even just a minute, so that the lush greenness of this place could swallow all our silly structures, take back its rightful place on the earth. I sank between the thick roots of the tree and wept against its bark, ignoring the damp that seeped through my jeans, the mosquitoes making a meal out of my blood.

“Crying is not going to lift you out of this shithole.”

He’d followed me.

“If you want to get out of this place, this life,” he said as he swept his arm toward the trailer park behind him, “you’re going to have to do it yourself.”

I looked up at him, wiped my eyes on the sleeve of my shirt. He moved closer until he was standing right in front of me, our feet nearly touching. He offered me his hand.

The strangler fig, native to Florida, begins its life as an epiphyte, a plant that grows on another living plant. Its seeds make a home in the cracks and crevices in the bark of a host tree. At first the strangler grows slowly, insinuating itself gradually into the systems of the other tree. Over time, the strangler begins to cover the trunk of the original tree, forcing it to compete with the strangler for light, air, and water. Eventually the host tree dies. But the strangler doesn’t die with it. By that time the strangler has planted its own roots, grown its own branches, formed an intricate latticework of living tree around the host’s withered and hollow shell.

I gave Marlowe my hand, let my fingers entwine with his, let him hoist me off the wet ground.


I walk up the beach from Ella’s. I can see the lights from my own house just ahead, not more than two or three hundred feet away. I see that Victory’s bedroom light is off, and I smile to myself, wondering how Esperanza always convinces her to go to sleep without any fuss. I generally wind up lying on the floor of her bedroom, chatting with her quietly as the colored fish from her rotating night-light swim on the walls and ceiling.

“Aren’t you tired, Victory?” I’ll ask her.

“No, Mommy. I’m not,” she’ll say, then fall asleep a few minutes later.

The problem is, I love that time. I don’t mind staying with her until she falls asleep. And she knows it. I’ve rocked her and nursed her to sleep since she was a baby. They tell you not to do that, that then you’ll have to do it for longer than you want, that they’ll never learn to “self-comfort.” But I always figure the day will come when I’ll ache for those moments. And I figure if you don’t have a half hour to be with your child as she goes to sleep, if you think she’s better off crying alone in her bed so you can be sure of who’s in charge, then maybe you shouldn’t have kids. I’m thinking about this when I hear it.

“Ophelia.”

I stop, startled, and spin around to see the empty beach. The word, my name, cuts through me. My eyes scan the beach. The grass and sea oats rustle slightly in the wind, just as they did in my dream. There is no one ahead of me or behind me. My heart is jackhammering in my throat. The voice was low and male, more like a growl. I take a deep breath and start a light jog.

“Ophelia.” I stop and turn again. Except my father on the phone the other day, no one has called me by my real name in years. Even Drew used it with a kind of distance, referring to someone who was long gone. No one else in this life even knows about that name.

That’s when I see it—the long, bulky shape of a man rising from the grass. I can’t discern a thing about him, not his face, not the color of his jacket; he is a black shadow emerging from other black shadows like a plume of smoke. We stand there that way for a moment. The whole world is on an ugly, pitching tilt.

My mind grasps at the situation. Is this real? Another dream? The terrible twilight between the actual and the imagined?

I decide to figure it out later and break into a dead sprint for home. I don’t even look back to see if he has given chase. I just think about getting home to Victory.

With my lungs aching in my chest, I race up the wooden walkway that leads to my house and crash through the rear gate. I pause there and see the black form moving slowly toward me still far behind, just a shade, silent and ephemeral. There is no urgency to his progress.

“Ophelia.” I hear it on the wind. The word doesn’t seem to come from anywhere at all. At the back door, I fumble with the keys, my hands clumsy with adrenaline. I look behind me, but I don’t see him. When I finally get the door open, I slam and lock it after me, activate the house security system with shaking fingers. I think about bringing down the hurricane shutters, but Esperanza comes up behind me and I turn to look at her.

“Mrs. Annie! What’s wrong?” Her face is a mask of alarm; she must have heard the door slam. She wraps her robe about her pajamas, glances first at me and then through the glass panes in the door.

“There was someone out there. On the beach,” I say in a fierce whisper. I turn off the lights and look outside, scanning the darkness. Esperanza watches me with an expression somewhere between pity and fear.

“Mrs. Annie,” she asks carefully, “are you sure?”

“I’m sure, Esperanza,” I answer, though now, in the safety of the house, I’m not. Everything’s already fading away as if it never happened. The truth is, I can’t be sure. Too much bad history with myself.

She looks again out the window. Then her eyes go wide. She backs away from the door and turns to me, incredulous. “There’s someone.”

I see the form at the end of our walkway to the beach. He is just standing there. A terrible tide of fear battles with an odd relief that it isn’t just my mind playing tricks on me again.

“Is everything else locked?” I ask her. I feel suddenly solid and sure of what to do next. You can keep the earthly threats at bay with locks and security systems…at least for a while.

She nods vigorously, not looking away from the figure.

“You’re sure?”

She nods again. Then, “I’ll check.” She scurries off and I hear her tugging on doors and checking windows. I move to the kitchen, keeping my eyes on the form through the window, reach for the phone, and dial Drew, my heart a running engine in my ears. I tell him what’s happened.

“He’s still there now?” Drew asks sharply.

“Yes. Esperanza sees him, too.” I feel like I have to add this for credibility.

“Don’t call the police. I’ll be right there.” The line goes dead.

I stand there still watching as I put the phone down.

Esperanza returns, holding her cell phone. “I called the police,” she says, looking out the window. My heart sinks. I want to tell her that she shouldn’t have done that, but I don’t. It would seem suspicious. I’ll just have to play it out.

I look back at our visitor. He is so still. He radiates an aura of calm, the predator so sure of his prey that there’s no need for frenzy. When I hear the distant whine of sirens, he seems to sink into the blackness from which he emerged. And he is gone.

Tonight is the five-year anniversary of his alleged death. The doctor is right: Though I remember nothing about the events of that night, something that lies dormant in my memory resurrects itself as regularly as seasons. Both a terrible dread and a terrible longing dwell side by side within me. I’ve been here before, this is true. But not like this.


The clinically depressed and functionally mentally ill do a little dance, a kind of two-step with their meds. I need them; I don’t really need them. I need them; I don’t really need them. Cha-cha-cha. After you’ve been on them for a while and the chemicals in your brain have normalized somewhat, you’ll read an article about the dangers of long-term use of the particular medication you’re taking, or you’ll just start to feel like maybe all those times when you couldn’t get out of bed for three weeks were simply a lack of self-discipline. You convince yourself that you’re not as creative, productive, mentally sharp as you are when you’re off them. So maybe you miss a dose, then two. The next thing you know, you’re off them altogether. Again.

Of course, some people don’t really need to be on medication long-term. Maybe they took something to get them through a bad patch—the death of a loved one, a divorce, even a nervous breakdown. Maybe some irresponsible doctor suggested an antidepressant for a general malaise that could have been addressed by taking a hard look at their lives. When those types of people choose not to take the medication that has been prescribed, it’s not such a big deal. But for some people it’s quite the opposite. I guess I’m not sure which of those people I am. I do know this much: If Esperanza hadn’t seen the man I’d seen, I’d have no way to be certain if he’d actually been there or not.

In my life I have suffered periods when, due to cumulative and acute trauma, I have dissociated from reality and essentially disappeared, figuratively and literally. I have seen a number of doctors and received as many diagnoses for these “episodes”—one called them fugues, another psychotic breaks. One doctor believed I was bipolar. None of the diagnoses have agreed with the others or quite fit the nature of my episodes, and I suppose I don’t really know what’s wrong with me, clinically speaking.

I have suffered dreams that seemed like reality and endured realities that might have been dreams. I have found myself on buses headed for parts unknown, on park benches in unfamiliar cities, with no idea how I arrived there. I have lost huge pieces of my life; there are black, gaping holes in my memory that have swallowed months, even years. I have not had these episodes since Victory’s birth, but I know they are always waiting on the periphery of my life, like vultures circling a limping coyote in the desert.


I watch the cops on the beach using their flashlights to look for the man or some trace of the man who followed me home. I sit on the couch with Victory on my lap. She has curled herself up into a little ball and, half asleep now after being awakened by the sirens and the men at the door, is sucking on the ear of her stuffed puppy. I hold her tight; she is my anchor in the world. Ella sits on the other couch, looking anxious and gnawing on the cuticle of her thumb.

“I just can’t believe this,” she says absently. She looks over at me. “You seem so calm.”

Esperanza’s call had resulted in three screaming cruisers and a couple of plainclothes officers showing up, attracting the attention of all the neighbors. It’s a quiet beach town, not much going on usually; this was making everyone’s night. Most of the neighbors had called or come by to see if everything was all right. Ella had left her husband to tend to the stragglers at their party while she came down to be with us.

“It was probably nothing,” I say lightly. “Some vagrant.”

Drew throws me a look from the chair by the window. He’s tense and not hiding it well, with a white-knuckled grip on the chair arm. Vivian stands behind him looking out into the night, frowning with worry.

“I told you not to call the f*cking cops,” he’d whispered harshly on his arrival. He took me into his arms so that everyone in the room thought he was embracing me. He smelled of cigars. “What were you thinking?”

“It was Esperanza.”

He pushed a disdainful breath out of his nose. “And I told you two to hire an illegal. They don’t call the police.”

He’d released me and given me a disapproving scowl, reminding me how much I actually dislike him. Drew is a cold mountain of a man, as distant as the summit of Everest and about as easy to reach. Even if you got there, you’d want to leave right away.

“Annie,” Ella says, looking at me gravely, “someone followed you home. It’s something.”

One of the plainclothes officers walks in through the open door leading from the pool deck. We’ve already been through how I couldn’t identify the man, haven’t noticed anyone following me at any other time, and have no history with a lover, old boyfriend, or stalker. Of course, I do have a history—just not one I can share.

“To be honest, Mrs. Powers, there’s really not much we can do,” he says, closing the door behind him. I find myself liking him for some reason. He has a quiet air and seems like a careful person, observant and slow to react.

“I do see tracks leading from the beach; a smaller set leads up to the door to your house. They’re yours, I’m assuming. The larger set stops at the edge of your property. Technically, whoever followed you didn’t set foot on your land. And even if he had, we wouldn’t be making molds and tracking down boot manufacturers unless…”

“Unless he’d killed me,” I say, feeling Drew’s eyes on me. Wouldn’t that have made his day?

The cop clears his throat, runs a tan hand through salt-and-pepper hair. “That’s right. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t be here at all except that there’s been a rash of break-ins over the last few weeks. Usually the uniformed officers would have come to take a report.”

“That’s great,” says Ella. “That’s just great.” She has the sense of entitlement that pampered, wealthy people have, but not in that awful way. Just na?ve. “How is she supposed to sleep at night?”

I look at her. I want to tell her I haven’t slept in years.

“This house has a good security system,” he says. “Keep the doors locked, and you might think about getting a dog.”

“A dog?” says Ella. “That’s your advice?”

I give the cop an apologetic look.

Drew stays silent. Vivian walks over and sits beside me, rests a hand on my leg. I examine her face for signs of judgment and disapproval. But I just see compassion and worry. And the shade of something else I can’t quite put my finger on.

“Mrs. Powers,” says the cop. Everyone’s looking at me. He has asked me something that, lost in thought, I didn’t hear. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sorry,” I say, rubbing the bridge of my nose with my free hand. “Sure of what?”

He lets a beat pass. “That you have no idea who might have reason to follow you.”

“Yes, of course,” I say.

His expression tells me he doesn’t believe me. He has picked up on something; he glances over at Drew, then back at me. I feel my shoulders go stiff at the tension in the room.

“All right,” says Ella, rising. “She said she’s sure. If there’s nothing else you can do, you might as well just go and let her get some rest.”

I focus on Victory, who has somehow, in spite of all the talking, drifted fully asleep in my arms. I listen to her deep, restful breathing.

He places a card on the coffee table, throws another glance at Drew. “If you need anything tonight, Mrs. Powers, give me a call. I’m on all night.”

“Thanks,” I say. “You’ve been a big help. Really.”

He looks at me uncertainly. If I sound sarcastic, I don’t mean to.


After the police have left, I put my daughter in her bed and convince Ella to go home.

“Did you call Gray?” Ella asks as we stand on my front porch, waiting for her husband to pick her up.

“Yes,” I lie.

“Is he coming home?”

“He says he’ll try,” I say with a shrug.

She doesn’t seem to like my answer but reserves comment. She takes me in her arms and holds me tight. “Anything? You call. I mean it. Anything.”

“I will,” I promise.

I watch her glide down the stairs as her husband pulls up. He gives a wave from the street but doesn’t get out of the car; he always holds himself aloof, gives me odd looks. He doesn’t seem to like me very much, and I’m not sure why. Maybe he senses that I hold most of myself back, too. Maybe it makes me seem untrustworthy. As much as I try to blend in, I guess I don’t.


I can’t convince Drew to leave. Vivian is going home, and he intends to sleep on the couch until morning. He couldn’t care less about me; it’s Victory he’s worried about. I’m sure they’d try to take her home with them if they thought I’d let them.

“It’s not necessary, Drew.” I might as well be talking to a gargoyle.

“It’s his pleasure,” says Vivian, pulling her bag over her shoulder. “Give the old watchdog something to do. Unless you, Victory, and Esperanza want to come home with us?”

“No. We’re okay,” I say. She pulls me into a hug.

“Don’t let Drew get to you,” she whispers. “He does care about you, in spite of how it seems. More than you know.”

I nod and wonder what good that kind of caring is to anyone. She leaves, and I stand at the door with my hand on the knob for a second. I feel Drew’s eyes on me.

“This could be a shitstorm.”

I turn to face him. From where he’s standing, I can just see the dark bulk of him, not the features of his face.

“Was it him, Drew?” I ask. The house sighs as the air-conditioning kicks on, and I feel its cold breath on my neck.

Drew crosses his arms across his chest. “He’s dead. You know that.”

“Then who? Who knows that name?”

“Someone’s f*cking with you, girl. We’ll find out who. Don’t worry.” His words are benevolent, but his tone doesn’t quite make it. He doesn’t move closer or step into the light.

“Okay,” I say.

“Get some sleep.”


In the dim light of my bedroom, I get down on my knees and reach into the hole in my box spring. I search around until I find what I’m looking for, a small velvet box. I open it. Inside is a gold necklace, half of a heart.

There are some other, more useful items in my box spring as well: a Glock nine-millimeter and some ammunition, a Canadian passport with my picture and someone else’s name, twenty thousand dollars in cash in four neat bundles of five thousand each. There’s also a small black notebook containing vital pieces of information, among them the account number and PIN for a bank account where I’ve saved a bit of money, and the name and contact information for a man who promised me a long time ago that he’d help me disappear—for good, if necessary.