Holland Suggestions (2 page)

I flipped back the canvas to look at the painting behind it. This one I knew well; it was the seascape that had won first prize in the freshman competition two years ago. Behind that was another new one, a full-face portrait of Vivian. It was so real and so good that I was truly shocked. It was called
Self Portrait by J. Ryan.
That was a relief, but when I looked at it again, the relief dissolved. She had painted a small mole over the right cheekbone, where Vivian had always had a mole but where she, Judy, never had. I stood there looking at it for a long time, remembering small things about Vivian that I had put out of my mind years before. In almost every respect the portrait more closely resembled Vivian, just twenty-one years old the last time I had seen her, than it did her sixteen-year-old daughter. I studied it for so long that I had to rush to work; only as I was backing my car out of the garage did I remember my morning schedule of the vital meeting with the boss and an important new contract.

Harper Brothers Construction Company is located in the valley, on the far side of town. The company actually is owned by Al Harper, who bought out his brothers Joe and Vic more than twenty years ago, when all were struggling young builders. Nobody is struggling anymore. Al has grown fat and prosperous, and he pays his employees well. At least, I’ve got no kick. For a contractor located in a medium-sized semi-Southern town, Al Harper has done all right. He’s still a hustler, and he gets plenty of jobs away from the big outfits in Richmond and even in Washington, D.C. But I’ll write Al’s success story some other time. After my initial reaction to the lateness of the hour, my thoughts came back to personal matters. Before I was halfway across town I had made a decision: The time had come, was long overdue, to get everything about Vivian out in the open. By now I had no doubt that what I was observing was an early symptom of something unhealthy, and it bothered me more the longer I thought about it.
Tonight
; I would start it tonight: throw out the subject myself and see where it led us. Perhaps that was all that was needed; maybe it would resolve itself. Judy’s reaction would tell me everything. If she accepted it, we were still on solid ground. If she withdrew, we might be in trouble. That might mean that what I was observing was not an early symptom, but some advanced indication of her identity involvement with her mother. It was not a thought to start a big day with.

I pulled into the Harper parking lot just behind Sharon Welles. Sharon had parked near the door and was walking briskly into the office before my car had even stopped. Her aloofness was almost part of my life; after all, our little cold war had been going on for almost a year, and there was no reason for her to change tactics now. I shrugged it off, got out, and went through the main office. The working offices at Harper are along a narrow corridor that leads from the showroom to the shop; mine was at the end of the corridor, a two-room job that allowed me to keep a door between Sharon and me. These days, that had to be a plus. I walked through without speaking. She was turned away from me, as always, this time ostensibly looking through the filing cabinet for some document, so there was no need for any morning greeting between us. She would fake it like that until we got through the unpleasant business of beginning the day; then the momentum of the job would carry us through to the end. Sharon played an excellent woman scorned.

With the door closed between us I loosened my tie, hung up my coat, and sat down at my desk. The phone rang immediately.

“Jim? Al Harper.”

“Al. You been trying to reach me?”

“Just once; no sweat. Look, we’ll have to postpone our meeting this morning. I’ve got to fly to Richmond.”

“If you want to, but I can handle it.”

“I’d like to be there. I’ve already called them and moved it back to next week, okay? So just hang tough till I get back.”

That was that. I had blocked out the whole morning for the meeting, and now I had nothing on my agenda until one. I sat at my desk, doodling on my notepad, for about half an hour. Then Sharon came in with the morning mail and the coffee. As usual, we had nothing to say. She poured my coffee, then put a stack of mail on my desk and left, with a malignant glare at the portrait of Judy in my bookcase. That annoyed me; it always had, but there was no way I could thin the bad blood between Judy and Sharon now. So I would have to live with it or find myself a new secretary. Often I thought that that might be the best answer for both of us.

There followed more doodling and a superficial examination of the mail. Sharon had opened and thinned it for me, handling by herself the kiss-off letters and passing on the rest, in order of importance as she judged it. I sifted through it quickly. There wasn’t much; there never was on Monday: the usual engineering crap, sales pitches from field agents. Nothing even mildly interesting until, at the bottom of the stack, I found a thick, padded manila envelope. I turned the package over and examined it The postmark was New York, two days ago, and on both sides someone had stamped the word
PERSONAL.
Naturally, Sharon had not opened it. I tore it open and pulled out a large photograph, wrapped twice around with a long rubber band and protected on both sides by corrugated cardboard panels. I slipped off the rubber band, pushed away the cardboard, and turned the picture face up. I expected it to be some technical shot of one of Harper’s big jobs, but instead I saw a primitive mountain trail that dead-ended at the base of a wall of rock. The trail seemed to drop away into a canyon. The drop was sheer and I knew it was deep. There was a cave among the rocks at the end of the trail, and as I looked at it a strange sensation passed over me; the feeling that everyone has at some time in his life of knowing a place where he’s never been. In this case it was nonsense. I have a slight problem with heights, and I knew I would never go out on a ledge like that.

I looked inside the envelope for some explanatory note, but there was nothing. There was no writing, other than my name and
HARPER BROTHERS CONSTRUCTION COMPANY
and the address. I examined the cardboard and the back of the print. Nothing. The picture was intriguing in a vague sort of way. I looked at it again, carefully this time. It was not a particularly good shot. The sun had probably been behind the mountain; at any rate, there was too much darkness. But it was clear enough. The trail looked treacherous. Scattered along its length were many loose rocks; any of them might send a careless climber plunging into the canyon. The thought gave me the shivers. It was difficult to get a perspective from the print, especially since there were no people in it, but I guessed that the trail was no more than three feet wide. Again I felt a wave of distinct familiarity. Absurd.

The buzzer. “It’s your daughter,” Sharon said coldly.

“Put her on, please.”

I had time for just a brief reaction: mixed surprise and apprehension. There was a click and a loud background noise; a shuffling of feet and the hollow sounds of hallway talk.

“Judy?”

“Hi.”

“Something wrong?”

“No, everything’s fine.”

“Well, then, what’s the occasion?”

“I just wanted to apologize for running out like that.”

“I didn’t even notice.”

“Look, I know you’re busy and all.”

“As a matter of fact, my whole morning’s suddenly free. What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing really. Just what I said.”

There was a long pause while I gathered my thoughts. Obviously she was fishing, groping for an opening to discuss whatever was bothering her. Just as obviously, she wasn’t finding it

“Listen, I’ll be late for class,” she said.

I pondered it. It would have to be done, but not now and certainly not by phone. “Okay, you run on then. But don’t cook anything tonight. I just might be in the mood for a night out. How about dinner at the Roadhouse?”

“Really?”

“Sure. Just the two of us, okay?”

“Great.”

That little gesture, I told myself as I hung up, was a stroke of genius. I felt confident again, and I decided to work the Vivian thing out in my mind now, as long as I had a free morning. But then Sharon came in, dropped some drawings on my desk, and went out without a word. I made a mental note to get her replaced, absolutely and irrevocably; to have her shifted into someone else’s office, even if I had to answer the goddamn phones myself. With that decided, my mind wandered and settled, strangely, on Robert Holland.

Actually, some of the things I had learned long ago from Robert might be of help in my little family crisis. Hypnosis had always scared the hell out of me, and now, considering it half seriously, I felt like a kid about to make a wild dash through a cemetery at night. I had not done it in fifteen years, yet there was not the slightest doubt in my mind that it would be as easy now as it had been then. I fought with it for another minute, then got up and turned off the lights. My fingers tingled with the excitement of it, and I sank back in the comfort of my chair, still too nervous to try anything. Gradually I relaxed, staring at the opaque window, and I went into a light trance immediately the first time I tried. I went deeper. The room darkened around me, and the window became a point of light in the darkness. I deepened the trance again, and Vivian’s face came into focus. Or Judy’s. At first I couldn’t be sure. Then I saw the tiny black mole and knew it was Vivian. I heard her voice, though I could not yet make out the words. I had almost forgotten the soft quality of her voice. Such effective camouflage for deadly poison. One level deeper and I would have her. I would see her and hear her, and if I wanted to I could reach out and touch her. Robert Holland had said that
you can relive any experience in all five senses under hypnosis,
and I knew the truth of it. I’d done it.

In the outer office I heard a filing cabinet drawer slam shut and Sharon swore, but the image of Vivian did not fade. My mind wrestled with both worlds at once and handled them with ease. I went deeper and the image sharpened; now I could see the little red lines above her green eyes, and the holes in her earlobes where the earrings went through. Behind her, the apartment where we had lived then, with the battered red sofa and the picture on the wall never hanging quite straight. She said
Hello, Jim;
it was letter perfect, precise, like a video-tape replay fifteen years later. I wanted to go closer, to step into the apartment with her, but instead I backed away from it. That cold, unreasonable fear forced me back, the apartment faded to an obscure black and white, and Vivian melted and became part of the blur. I came out of it very fast. The window focused in my eyes, and I saw that in the few minutes I had been under, it had started to rain. I sat there for a long time, just listening to the rain falling on the pavement outside. My mind was all a mixture of Robert and Judy and Vivian. Sharon pushed her way in by slamming another filing cabinet and saying “goddammit” just loud enough for me to hear.

All right. Enough.

I barked into the intercom: “Sharon.”

“Yes.”

“Get the hell in here.”

I was surprised at the toughguy sound of my own voice, but the scene itself was carried through without emotion, as I knew it would be. We had come to a point where we could no longer communicate, and I wanted another secretary as soon as possible. She could handle it any way she liked: with a request to Al Harper for a transfer or with a resignation. I didn’t care what she did. She took it without a word and left me alone. Finished, and it felt like scratching a sore that had itched for a long time. Done. After simmering for a year, the matter of Sharon Welles was settled and disposed of in thirty seconds. Vivian might be as easy, once the preliminaries were out of the way. My eyes fell on the mountain photograph, and in a quick flush of impatience I swept it lightly, wrappings and all, off the desk and into the wastebasket. Then I picked up my coat and walked out, asking Sharon to
please
cancel my afternoon appointments.

I did a lot of driving and thinking that day. When I got home Judy was already dressed for the Roadhouse. She waited for me in the living room, reading her new
Seventeen
while I showered and changed. Then we were off. The restaurant was an old favorite, located ten miles out of town on a hill overlooking the valley. We sat at a window table with a view of the patio. I was calm and confident right up to the moment when I had to face it. A bad case of nerves set in, and I ordered a strong Scotch to help get me started. I was halfway through my second drink before I decided to bite the bullet and do it.

“I know you’ve been wondering about your…mother…for a long time.” My voice cracked and the words seemed to stick. I looked at her, but she was staring down at her water glass and would not meet my eyes. “Look at me, Judy,” I said.

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can.”

With that she did look up, and I saw that her eyes were filling with tears.

“Isn’t this what you want?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll do it together. I’ll tell you about Vivian, anything you want to know.”

“When?”

“Soon. I want to go through some papers first. I’ve got some stuff filed away that might help. Sometime in the next few days we’ll get it all out and go through it together, okay?”

She nodded. Both of us were relieved to have that initial thrust behind us, and we looked for a new topic of conversation. We unwound slowly through the night and got home sometime before midnight. It was after two when I went up to bed; I fell asleep immediately.

I awoke in a panic. I jumped up and ran to the bedroom door, stumbling over a chair that blocked my way. The hallway was dark. Judy’s door was closed, and there were no sounds or lights from the lower part of the house. I went back and sat down on the bed.
Now what the hell?
I looked at my bedside clock; the luminous dials said three-thirty. I had not slept two hours.
The dream.
I had been dreaming, not about Judy or Vivian, but about Robert Holland and that mountain trail in the photograph. A strange, screwy dream, but coming with it was one of the strongest impulses of my life, an overpowering need to save that picture from the janitor’s fire. Morning would be too late; the janitor would have come and gone by the time I got there. I dressed, crept quietly downstairs, opened the garage, started the car, and drove to the office. I let myself in with my side-door key and went straight to my desk. The picture and all its wrappings were still in my basket, just as I had left them. I gathered up everything, cardboard, envelope, even the rubber band. By the time I got home it was almost five o’clock. I went into my den, unlocked the filing cabinet, and filed the photograph in the drawer marked
ROBERT HOLLAND.
Then I pulled the drawer handle to be sure it was locked and retired to my room for what little remained of the sleepless night.