Trumbull, of course, didn’t quiz me about Audrey, an unlikely source of either occult wisdom or historical documentation. Neko teased me gently about my would-be acolyte, but that I could withstand.
Once we were alone in our room, she turned more serious. “What’s going on with Caleb?”
I turned off the lights and sat on the bed. Electricity probably wasn’t dear for Trumbull’s budget, but it was a hard habit to break. “He’s angry. And frustrated, even now that we have access to our books.”
“I don’t mean that. He’s always been angry and frustrated. He was angry and frustrated in the … in the camp … but he didn’t hold me at arm’s length.”
I stared, though I doubted she could see. “He’s more comfortable with you than he is with me.”
“And more comfortable with Deedee than with me.”
“Deedee?” I asked.
“You know, the negro girl. Dorothy. Dean Skinner’s maid.”
“Oh,” I said. “Miss Dawson.”
“Well, he was calling her Deedee on the way home.”
“Was he, now?” I thought about them leaning together over a book, and frowned. “Does she like that?”
“He didn’t say.” She threw herself on the bed beside me, claiming a patch of moonlight. “He teases me, but he doesn’t really tell me anything. I think he’s hoping I won’t notice.”
“That does bode ill.” I ran a finger along the bright square in which she lay. “I’m sorry he’s pushing you away too. I know you were close.”
“Going out behind the cabins wasn’t even a big part of it. It was…” She trailed off.
“I know you were courting. Casually. It’s all right.” In fact, I had backed my brother into a corner and demanded to know whether he was planning to breed with her. But he’d known, as well as I did, how our captors would have leapt on a mist-blooded child and its mother.
“Do you think he’s courting Deedee? Miss Dawson?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But maybe I should ask.” After all, we were no longer in the camp. And we had what our elders would consider duties. I felt a sinking nausea at the thought.
She rolled over onto her stomach, making the mattress bounce. “I don’t even know if I’d want to—to be romantic with him. When we came out here, I was hoping. But I don’t want to stay here. I like Arkham, but what I like is being in a new place. Everything looks different. The houses are different, the food is strange, everything smells new. I was right, I want to keep doing that.”
I dragged my thoughts away from my own concerns. “And you want someone who will travel with you?”
“Or at least understand why I’m going. Or maybe I don’t want anyone at all. Maybe there aren’t any men who would put up with me. Men want a wife like Mama…”
“Innsmouth men want—wanted—a woman who could keep impeccable house, but also knew her texts.” A clever woman, like my own mother, who could track the myriad traditions that held a proper home together. That wasn’t an option for Caleb in any case.
I leaned over, awkwardly, to hug Neko’s shoulders. We didn’t often discuss either of our fathers. Talking about their lives came perilously close to talking about their deaths.
“I’m so grateful that Mama Rei is who she is,” I said. “But not everyone … can or should be of the same kind.” Not everyone’s gills grow in the same, my mother would have said.
“I can just eat hot dogs and frozen food from boxes,” she suggested. “Or become a glamorous star and eat all my meals at the fanciest restaurants.”
“You cook perfectly well.”
“Not the point. It’s not what I want to spend all my evenings on.”
“Dive for fish and eat sushi every night,” I suggested, and we both giggled. Having raw fish on a regular basis still felt presumptuous: at home such treats had been offered only occasionally by my elder relatives. And I loved Mama Rei’s stories of her own grandmother, who dove for abalone in the deep waters off the Japanese coast.
“I’m just the opposite,” I said. “I thought I would be pleased to be back in Massachusetts, and I am. It’s been so long since I’ve seen a proper winter. But I miss San Francisco constantly.” The feeling had been growing in me all day. “The store and Mama Rei and Anna and Kevin, the shape of the hills … It’s all right to travel a little, but that’s where I want to stay. Life there feels so comfortable. Safe. I suppose I’m more attached to comfort than I should be.”
Neko flipped onto her back again. “Aphra, you’ve dealt with more discomfort than anyone I know. Well, you and Caleb, but he handles it differently. You’ve…”
“I’ve what?”
“You’ve never gone back anywhere, have you? We aren’t living exactly where we were before the war, but we did go back to San Francisco, and Mama Rei does the same tailoring work she did before.”
“Innsmouth wasn’t there to go back to. Even though Caleb has tried.” I lay back beside her. “You’re right. A part of me assumes that I’ve left San Francisco forever.”
She put a hand on my arm. “You do get to go back, you know.”
“You’re right. Thank you.” My eyes widened to drink the moonlight, and I closed them to hold it in. I imagined the steep streets, the rocky beach, the well-organized shelves of westerns and cookbooks and dubious esoterica, all waiting for me as surely as the ocean. And in good time, I slept better than I had since getting on the plane.
The next day Dawson met us at the Miskatonic library, and let us know with a sort of demure smugness that she’d found Upton. He had originally been placed in the Arkham Sanitarium, but later moved to a more isolated asylum in the countryside where his apparent disturbance, if not exactly improved, at least exhibited a less desperate shade of distress. There he remained. On Friday, after only a week in Massachusetts, we would put aside our books in favor of a less pleasant and more personal form of research.
CHAPTER 9
Pickman Sanitarium dominated the surrounding cornfields and pastures: a gated compound of crumbling brick edifices with gabled roofs. Fallen shingles protruded from the snow like gravestones, and the smell of manure pervaded all.
We made a more imposing party than I would have liked. While Neko and Miss Dawson had chosen to stay behind, pleading a need to organize our notes from Hall, no one else could be dissuaded—even Trumbull, whom I would have preferred to leave behind for this particular expedition. But Spector’s ID elicited a flurry of excited cooperation from the attendant, who led us to a solarium. He evicted two patients who’d been attempting a tryst and promised that he’d bring Upton shortly, adding with a sharp look at Spector: “A sweet old gentleman, never tried to harm anyone.”