My sleep was restless afterward. My phone didn’t ring, but I dreamed that it had, and I quickly answered, noticing that it was Esme’s number. But when the caller spoke, it was Belinda. I woke up fuddled, and stumbled through my days.
I don’t believe in ghosts. But now, with what I hoped would be a reckoning so near, Belinda was everywhere. A figure walking away from me on a quiet street transformed as if made of water into Belinda, her spine neat as a viola, her stride, her long bright hair. The TV picture faded to a shadow but the outline of her face seemed to waver in the dark glass. A voice in a crowd set itself apart from the others, raised in a cry. Was that how Belinda cried out when Esme attacked her? My mind shied from the thought. There were nights when she seemed especially close, when small strange things happened. A curtain of shells that hung mostly forgotten from the porthole window in my room began to clatter and shiver, without the breath of a breeze to stir it. I lay down in the gloaming to read and I felt a warm breath at my cheek. Portents are another thing I don’t believe in, but it was as if Belinda herself wanted something from me. I knew full well that this was a delusion. I also knew that it felt true. And it scared me.
It reminded me of when I was a new mother, going through a phase of being afraid of the dark. Jep and I traded sides on the bed so that he was nearer the door and could protect me from what he teasingly called “the black rectangle of doom.” Now, two decades later, I shamefacedly asked him to do the same thing, not sure why it made me feel better to know that an assailant would have to take three extra steps to cut my throat, not certain why the assailant wouldn’t just cut Jep’s throat instead. I didn’t ever want to see that slight young guy in the hoodie again. But I wondered what he was up to if it wasn’t scaring me.
“I keep waiting for somebody to do something else to us. What are they waiting for?” I asked Jep one morning, as we ate our oatmeal. “But I guess, it makes sense, if you were going to really hurt somebody, would you do it while that person was on guard or when that person was confident that the worst was over?”
“May I ask what you’re talking about? And could you please talk about it in English?” Jep said. “You brought this up as if we were in the middle of a conversation, not as if one of the things on your mind suddenly came out of your mouth.”
“I’m sorry. I thought we were having a conversation. I was just having both sides of it.”
“They have medicine for that, Thea.”
“Come on! Did you even listen to my question? Do you think if someone wanted to hurt you, he would wait until you were all relaxed and thought that...”
“If I was this stalker, I’d just wait until the person died from the bleeding ulcer he got worrying about it.”
“Gee, thanks for taking this all seriously,” I said.
“I’ve got you for that.”
He finished his breakfast, tossed Molly the last bite of toast and disappeared up the stairs. But he came back down promptly with a garment bag in hand.
“Where are you going, Jep?” I asked. “Are we getting a divorce?”
“Gee. Hadn’t planned on it. I’m just going to Tulsa for the same meeting I go to every year. And I’ll be back tomorrow night. If you want a divorce, we’ll have to find a way to synchronize our calendars.”
He leaned over my chair and hugged me and kissed me on the back of my neck. He sat down, whistling under his breath, checking his phone, going through his departure ritual. I thought about how, for years, I looked forward to Jep’s short absences. When he was gone, and Stefan was up to his own devices, it was freeing to stay up late reading and eat roasted beets and panzanella salad, what Jep and Stefan called “girl food,” instead of having to baste slabs of steer. Now I wanted Jep near, more than when we were newlyweds. I didn’t want him away from me. It didn’t feel safe, for him or me, for him to...well, fly so much. And...what if my visions of Belinda persisted?
“Please don’t go this time, Jep,” I said.
“What’s wrong Theaitsa? Are you not feeling well?”
“No, I’m fine. I’m fine.” I kissed him.
“You don’t seem fine. You’re fretting yourself into the ground, honey.”
“You go, I’m really fine,” I said and hugged him briskly. “No, don’t go this time. I have a bad feeling.”
He looked me over, as if assessing my balance. All our lives together, with a few exceptions, I’d been sturdy, right there, upbeat rather than given to agitation or angst, even in the valley of the shadow, I was sturdy, not liable to capsize. All that seemed to leak out of me, all at once, as if my hardy emotions were hemorrhaging, leaving me husked, shivering in the heat.
“Mom!” Stefan yelled, pounding his way down the stairs. “Don’t we use heat anymore? It’s like forty degrees in here and I’m dying.”
I’m dying.
After Jep left, I went upstairs and lay with my head back to staunch the tears which kept coming, wetting my hair, wetting the pillow. The ceiling was a pristine pale peach cove, but I could see bloodstains all over it.
Jep was right. Maybe I needed some medicine.
“Mom! Are you okay?” Stefan was standing in the doorway of my room.
“Sure, sure,” I said. “You know, in truth? I don’t feel so good. I’m going to...to take a nap, okay?”
“Do you want some tea, Mom?”
“No, no...”
“I’ll bring you a glass of water anyhow.”
“Oh, okay, thanks, sweetie.”
He was so sweet. It was on my lips to tell him right then. What if I could baptize him innocent? What the hell was wrong with Pete Sunday? How long could this take?
With Molly at his heels, Stefan pounded back down to the kitchen. For perhaps only the third or fourth time in my life, I decided to pretend to be asleep. I just couldn’t trust myself not to spill everything about Esme. I heard Stefan quietly set the water down on the leather mat I kept on my nightstand, smelled the scene of his lavender aftershave...nausea boiled up my throat again. I must have fallen asleep.
Thea, she called. Thea? Where are you?
I had thought I didn’t remember her voice. But I did.
The wrought-iron fence, the heart-shaped headstone.
Beautiful Dreamer...
I woke up, stumbled to the bathroom and rinsed my face. Whatever changed in the coming days, the fact of Belinda’s death would endure. I could not imagine ever being free of the dark bloom that shadowed everything else, chilled everything else, every graceful moment, every clear-eyed glance, laced every laugh with a suspect syrup.
Damn it.
What was going on with Esme? What was going on with Pete Sunday? I promised myself I would call him first thing tomorrow.
Finally I lay back down, but I shook and sweated in my sheets. I slept and woke, exhausted. The house was dark and chilled. I didn’t dare go back to sleep. Yet, sleep overcame me, hauling me down. When I awakened in the dark, she was sitting in my chair near the window, her back to me. I could see her plainly in the silver light from the streetlamp. She didn’t turn around. “Thea,” she whispered. “Thea, you are the door.”
I snapped on my bedside lamp. Then, I stayed up the rest of the night, drinking so much tea and eating so much cinnamon toast that my stomach washed side to side like a water balloon when I walked.
When Jep came home, I climbed and clung to him, voracious, unable to wait even for him to shower the road off him. “What did I do right?” he asked me afterward, naked and streaked with new sweat.
“Don’t leave,” I pleaded. “Don’t go to any more camps. Don’t even go down to get a snack. I’ll bring you pie. I’ll bring you coffee. Stay up here, please. Remember when we were going to put a little refrigerator in our bathroom?”
“And then we decided it was too decadent?”
“Why did we decide that?”
“Because it is too decadent. We’re people with limits, Theaitsa.”
“Just stay by me.”
“What’s wrong tonight? What’s gotten into you? Not that I mind.”