Nine Women (4 page)

On the low table there was a bottle of Scotch, ice, two small bottles of soda, and two glasses.

Two glasses, he thought, two. So she hadn’t forgotten him.…

She said, as if she’d heard his thought, “No, I really had forgotten you. Elizabeth leaves the bar things here before she goes home, just the way she’s done for the last eight years.” A pause so long that he lifted his head. She smiled vaguely. “It has been a while since anyone used Robert’s glass.”

She fixed his Scotch and soda quickly, handed it to him with a linen napkin tucked neatly beneath, then poured hers on the rocks. “Do you know, for a while when I first came back, after the accident, I would pour Robert’s drink and then I would sit here and wait for him to come in.” She smiled gently, self-deprecatingly. “I thought somehow that if I arranged things the way they used to be, I could compel Robert to come back.” Again a shrug. “Is that drink all right?”

“Yes, ma’am, it’s fine. I was just admiring your garden.”

“Robert liked it so very much. You know, Mr. Flanders, you can’t do a story. I don’t want any publicity, none at all. I didn’t think of that when I talked to you, or I could have saved you the trouble of driving all the way here.”

“My station doesn’t want to do a story. That isn’t why I came. I just wanted to see, well, how things had come out.” His words sounded silly. And his Scotch and soda tasted very strange.

She listened politely, faintly puzzled, not very interested.

“You see, I was the first person to reach the plane.”

He had expected some reaction from her—surprise or disgust or anger. But she did not react at all. She went on patiently waiting, sipping her drink.

He took a deep breath and tried again. “I was the one to find you.”

“I don’t remember,” she said.

“Nobody expects you to, I guess. But still I thought you might.”

“No.”

“I came to the hospital but they said no visitors, and I didn’t want to intrude on you here at home.”

“Until now.”

“Until now when I had a special reason.” How could he tell her that he’d come because she haunted his dreams and kept him awake at night.

The telephone rang. He jumped, the ice rattled in his glass. “Is the bell too loud?” she said. There was a wall phone behind her; she answered it while he stirred his drink with one finger.

“No,” she said crisply, “no, I’m not coming in next week. I’m sure I told you.” She listened, one hand absentmindedly patting her hair. “I explained it all to the doctor.… No, no matter who pays for it… It’s a waste of time.” She laughed out loud, a startling girlish sound. “He thinks I
should
… how silly. Now, please, I’m busy and I haven’t time to argue.”

She sat down, the pleats of her navy skirt falling neatly and precisely to each side. “That’s rather amusing. My psychiatrist thinks I should continue treatment.… Have you ever been? No? A very strange treatment, talking and talking.”

“I’ve heard it’s very expensive.” Thinking: That was a different woman on the phone, firm, steady, no nervous flutters or forgetfulness.

“They thought it was a matter of money, too. So they reminded me that the insurance would continue paying the bill. Rehabilitation, so to speak.”

“Of course.” This was a good beginning. Nothing like dollars and cents to settle people down.

“They decided that if I wasn’t hurt physically I had to be injured mentally.” She smiled pleasantly. Just a trace of fluttery vagueness now.

“Were you?” Too abrupt. Careful, he thought.

“No,” she said quietly.

“I read somewhere that common carriers are liable for their passengers’ safety.”

“I suppose so.” She did not sound interested. “My brother Stephen took care of that. It does seem to be quite simple. A price list, really. How much a person is worth, up to a limit of some sort. I don’t exactly know how, but it seems that everyone pretty much agrees how it’s got to be done.”

A price list. Her choice of words disturbed him. He took another sip of his drink. Awful. And then he saw the label on the small soda bottle: TONIC. He was drinking Scotch and tonic … He wondered whether to tell her and decided not to.

The phone rang again. “Yes, Stephen, I’m just about to leave for the airport. Yes, in a very few minutes. Just as soon as Mr.—What was your name?… Flanders—leaves. No, you don’t want to talk to him. Really, Stephen, you do get so excited. Yes, of course. Good-bye, Stephen.”

A quiet return to her seat. “He is a nice man, my brother. He hates to see me disturbed.” She smiled, waiting for him to speak.

Sam Flanders said, “I’m a little surprised that you’re still flying, and so casually. I imagined you’d think more about it.”

Her eyes were a deep blue, shiny as tears, but there were no tears there. “I have to fly. And I do think a great deal about it.” Abruptly the bright blue eyes lost their glitter. They grew dull and slate-colored and flat as frozen pond ice. “I will tell you,” she said, “but I wonder if you will understand.”

He took a short breath; you’d think he was afraid. “I could try. If you could tell me.”

“When the plane crashed, a flame came down the aisle, a pillar of flame; no, not even that, it didn’t have a real shape. It was just a light in the center of the plane and people were reaching for it, to touch it. And then there was a pause.”

She looked at him. “I’ve thought about ways to explain it to other people, to myself too. It was like there was a drum, beating very fast, very even, without emphasis. Then one of those beats was missing. Sometimes I imagine it written on a sheet of music, that one missing beat.”

“Yes,” he said, “yes.”

“And I was tossed out, right there.”

She nodded to herself, emphatically. “I should have died, you see.”

He was beginning to believe her. He was beginning to be as crazy as she was. No wonder the psychiatrist wanted her to stay in treatment.

“There was no way I could have survived,” she said flatly. “Everybody told me that.”

That was true, he thought. She was alive, and she ought not be.

“At first—in the hospital—I thought I was dead. I expected to fall down any minute. I thought there was just some sort of delay, a temporary suspension.

“But it wasn’t that.”

Her eyes had the funny color of newborn babies’, the no-color of darkness.

“When I kept on living, then I began to understand.”

“What?” he said. “What?”

Now she spoke rapidly and mechanically, as if she’d thought about this so often it no longer interested her, it was just a fact learned and repeated like a child’s multiplication tables. “Time is smooth and steady. Usually, that’s the way it is, but not always. There are flaws in everything, even time. I fell through one and was left behind.”

He sat silent, watching the blue color return to her large round eyes.

“You know,” she said, “I think you believe me.”

“You know,” he said, “I think I do.”

She smiled at him, kindly, maternal. “We can have one more drink and then I must get to the airport.”

Automatically he took the drink, sipped. The peaty taste of good heavy Scotch filled his mouth. He glanced at the bottle: soda this time. He took a few comforting swallows. “Why do you say you have to fly?”

“You can’t get beyond the fact that I came back to this house without a scratch on me,” she said soothingly. “That’s very misleading, you know. I died on that plane, I’m just not dead. I was supposed to be with my family. Now I have to go back and catch up with them. They’ll be expecting me, they’ll be wondering where I am.… Do you go to church?”

“No, ma’am,” he said.

“I used to go before, but I haven’t since.”

“Did you think of killing yourself?” He regretted saying it, he wouldn’t want to give her ideas.

“Yes, of course. I have a bottle of Seconal just for the purpose. But that wouldn’t work.”

“It wouldn’t?”

“Then I’d be lost and without them forever. You’ll understand if you give yourself time to think about it.” The round blue eyes urged him to try. “I have to find the right spot to enter.”

She wiped the condensation off her glass. “They’ll wait for me, they’ll know I’m looking for the way. And one day I’ll find it. Do you see?”

He shook his head.

She took a deep patient breath. “There are airline fatalities, predictable ones. Inexorable. Unchangeable. So I fly.”

He put his drink down abruptly. “You’re looking for a crash.”

“I was almost on that plane in Chicago a few months ago … I fly constantly. It’s about the only way I have to spend my money.”

“But the other people,” he said. “Don’t you ever think you’re killing the other people?”

She laughed, clearly, brightly. “No, I don’t think I’m bad luck, or anything so ridiculous. If anyone dies, it’s chance. It’s not because of me.”

“But you’re looking forward to it.”

“Yes.” She spread her fingers, studying her fresh manicure. “Yes. With each and every flight.”

“I believe you,” he said.

“And now I really must go, or I’ll miss my connections. This is going to be such a busy trip. First I go to Denver, then St. Louis. I spend the night there and go on to San Francisco, and Los Angeles and San Diego. The following day I go to Phoenix and Midland and New Orleans. And then—I’m not sure where I spend the night—I go to Miami and Jacksonville and Atlanta and Louisville, then Washington, New York, Boston, and back home.”

She would have covered the country, he thought. “Looking,” he said aloud.

She patted his arm. “I thought you’d understand. I suppose it has to do with your being there.… You were out of time too, weren’t you? You don’t ordinarily drive by the airport?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “That wasn’t my regular way to work.”

“You see? These little irregularities happen all the time. Mostly they’re like a stumble and you pick yourself up and you’re fine. It’s not often serious.”

Her bags were in the hall, packed and waiting. He put them in her car. “Good-bye,” he said. “Maybe you’ll find it, you know. What you’re looking for.”

“Oh yes,” she said, “I’m quite certain. On one of those planes, I’ll find it. Good-bye, Mr. Flanders.” She was radiantly happy, a perfect bride on the morning of her wedding.

Jesus, he thought, she is crazy, out of it, spaced …

“There’s just one thing, Mr. Flanders. And I’ve been wondering if I should say this, but are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said, “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? That first Scotch was made with tonic—Elizabeth put out the wrong bottle again. You couldn’t have liked it, could you?”

“I must not have noticed.” So who was crazy? Why hadn’t he said anything? Why had he drunk the damn stuff?

She began to giggle, hesitated, then laughed out loud.

He tried to look offended, gave up, and laughed with her.

For a few seconds their voices shook the nearest rose petals and raced out across the leaves to spend themselves against the closed and locked house door.

She finished, sighed, nodded to him and drove away. In the silence, the startled birds began to sing again.

Nancy Martinson watched him in her rearview mirror. He stood for a moment, flicked his fingers at the nearest rosebush, then got into his car.

He seemed a nice young man, she thought. And really quite handsome.

She glanced in the mirror again. His car was pulling out of the driveway.

Just the sort of young man her daughters would have dated. The sort of son-in-law she would have had. She would have liked grandchildren. It must be very pleasant to think of your blood continuing in an endless link to the future.

Still, it wasn’t so bad for her, she thought. Her life was more than half lived. But it was terrible, dreadful about the girls. They’d had so little time.

When they met, she’d tell them about that young man. But then, perhaps not. It might be best for her to say nothing at all.

That young man would have beautiful children one day. They just wouldn’t be hers.

She reached the stop sign at Cobbs Hill Road. As always her heart began to sing with joy and expectation and secret knowledge: Maybe this time. She was getting so tired. It was taking so very long. Still, maybe now. She smiled at the sky and the trees, at the neat flower gardens, at everything. And she turned down the road to the airport.

She glanced once more in the mirror. The road behind her was empty. The young man had gone the other way.

As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—

First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go
—

EMILY DICKINSON

E
XCEPT FOR A COUPLE
of cruising sea gulls, the entire north shore of the bay was empty and still—the tumbled concrete blocks of the erosion barriers, the wide mud flats, ripple-covered now by high tide. Far offshore, a mile or so, the silver gray water darkened into the slate gray of the deep buoy-marked ship channel where oil tankers passed in slow procession against an always hazy horizon.

Mary Margaret knew every line and shadow out there. She’d grown up watching—sitting on the front porch in summer, and in winter rubbing a little frost-free spot on the windowpane. She’d wished for a ship to come sailing right up to the shore, a pirate ship with blood red sails and a big black flag. Or a white and gold yacht, its crew dressed in navy and braid. But this part of the bay was only a few feet deep, and good for nothing but summer fishermen. Their outboards left shimmering oil stains on the quiet surface and their beer cans drifted to the beach and caught in the breakwater.

She sniffed the familiar decaying smell of salt shore as she parked in front of her parents’ house and checked her watch. Right on time. They were expecting her, they knew she was always prompt. But no front curtain moved, no front door opened. The house looked as it always did—small, gray, like a nun with folded hands, waiting or sleeping.

She thought: Just once they might be looking for me. I come every Wednesday for supper and the novena. Perpetual novena. That was how I learned what eternity was—like the novena, it goes on and on without end.

She climbed the narrow concrete driveway, barely wide enough for a car, cut deep into the slope, terraced carefully and secured by creeping greenery, perfectly clipped. All as neat as an ironed handkerchief.