The Deep End (15 page)

“Invasion of the Body Snatchers,”
Lulu answered.

“Tell me you’re joking.”

“It’s supposed to be real good.”

“I’m sure it’s wonderful. It’s just that I don’t think I’m up for that kind of movie tonight. Isn’t there something else that we could watch?”

“Mom …” The word contained at least three more syllables than necessary and Joanne understood that to argue would be to waste one’s time and breath.

“What did
you
think of Scott?” Lulu asked while they waited for the program to begin.

“He seems like a nice boy,” Joanne replied truthfully. “I just wish he were a few years younger and still in school.”

“Then you wish he was someone else,” Lulu said simply.

I guess I do, Joanne agreed silently, thinking that Scott did seem like a nice enough young man. He was polite;
he’d been sweet to Lulu; he acknowledged Joanne’s rules if not her presence.

“Oh no,” Lulu cried suddenly. “It’s in black and white.”

“It must be the original.”

“I don’t want to see the original,” Lulu wailed. “I want to see the one that’s in color.”

“I hear the original’s better,” Joanne told her, trying to recall where she had heard that. From Eve, of course. Joanne peered through the bookshelves on the far wall as if she could see into the house next door, wondering how her friend was feeling.

Eve and Brian had purchased the house as soon as it had gone on the market, shortly after their marriage seven years ago. Actually, it had been Eve’s mother who had given them the money for the down payment and who was continually slipping them extra dollars even now to keep them in comfortable extras. Eve had confided all this to Joanne and sworn her to confidentiality. Brian would be mortified, she explained unnecessarily, if he knew anyone else knew that he was being virtually supported by his mother-in-law. Joanne never told anyone, not even Paul, who would have pronounced Brian a fool to make himself so indebted to a woman he could barely tolerate. Joanne wondered which came first—the debt or the dislike.

“I don’t want to see some old movie,” Lulu stated flatly, returning Joanne to the present. Lulu pressed the remote control unit and began flipping mechanically through the various channels. Joanne was about to protest when she remembered that she didn’t especially want to watch either version. Was I like that? she wondered as her daughter impatiently sifted through the different offerings. So quick to turn off the past?

Joanne squirmed in her seat, hypnotized by the visual assault of quick flashes and blurred impressions that sprang from the television screen. “Can you please stop doing that?” she implored her younger daughter, whose thumb seemed stuck to the remote control unit.

“I can’t find anything that I want to watch.”

“So turn it off.”

Lulu stared at her mother as if the woman had gone mad. “All right, we’ll watch this.” Lulu returned the dial to its original channel.

They watched the movie in silence, Joanne’s initial reservations disappearing as the simple tale chillingly unfolded. She watched, mesmerized, as a young Kevin McCarthy struggled valiantly against an alien evil dropped into the small California town in the form of giant pods which had the ability to assume human form while their potential victims slept. Come morning the takeover would be complete, the body intact but the emotions vanished. I don’t want to live in a world without love, without feeling, a distraught but lovely Dana Wynter cries into young McCarthy’s arms as the film nears conclusion. Don’t fall asleep, he cautions her, leaving her side momentarily to check their surroundings. But of course she does fall asleep, and when he returns, she is a different person than the warm, loving woman he left. I fell asleep, she tells him, then shouts, He’s in here! He flees—”Run!” Lulu urged from beside her, and Joanne wondered at what point in the proceedings her daughter had joined her on the sofa—and is eventually picked up on the highway and driven to a hospital in a nearby town, where he tells his story to a disbelieving medical staff. “Why won’t they believe him?” Lulu
wailed. Sure, Joanne thought, an unwanted image of her own mangled corpse suddenly flashing before her eyes, ask people to believe their lives are being threatened by a bunch of giant egg rolls!

“That was fantastic,” Lulu enthused as she and Joanne lifted their weary bodies off the sofa and headed up the stairs to bed.

“Could you just check under the bed for me?” Lulu asked timidly as Joanne tucked the covers under her daughter’s chin. Joanne lifted the white dust ruffle to peer under the bed.

“No egg rolls.” She smiled, kissing Lulu’s forehead. “Good night, sweetie. Sleep well.”

Joanne began undressing even before she reached her bedroom, discarding the last of her clothing as she opened the middle drawer of her dresser, then searching through it for her white cotton nightgown, remembering it was in the wash. Her hand stumbled across an old T-shirt of Paul’s that lay scrunched at the rear of the drawer. She pulled it out and put it on, feeling it hug her body loosely, reassuringly. She turned back toward her bed and screamed.

Lulu, standing alone in the doorway, screamed loudly in return and jumped into her mother’s arms. “It’s all right,” Joanne laughed and cried simultaneously. “You just scared me. I didn’t expect you.”

“Could I sleep with you tonight?” the child asked plaintively, and Joanne nodded. “Did you check under the bed?”

“Not yet,” Joanne smiled, doing just that.

“No egg rolls?”

“Not even a cracker.”

As they cuddled together in the king-size bed, Joanne was struck anew at how empty the bed had felt these last several weeks. It felt good to have someone beside her. She leaned over and kissed her daughter’s forehead. “Good night, darling.”

“Mom,” came the small voice in the darkness, “do you think I’m fat?”

“Fat? Are you kidding me?”

“Robin says I’m fat.”

“Robin says a lot of things. You don’t have to believe all of them.”

“But …”

“No buts. We’ll talk about this another time. Now go to sleep—you’re not fat.”

Within minutes, Joanne became aware of her daughter’s soft, steady breathing beside her, while she herself could only drift in and out of sleep until she heard Robin come through the front door at ten minutes to one. Only then was she able to give in to her fatigue. Quickly, she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, her arm stretched comfortably across her younger daughter’s back.

The phone rang.

Joanne jumped up immediately and grabbed the phone, pressing it to her ear before she was either fully awake or knew what she was doing. Lulu stirred and rolled onto her back, but did not wake up. “Hello,” Joanne whispered, the thumping of her heart sounding louder than her voice.

“Mrs. Hunter,” the voice teased, jolting Joanne into full consciousness. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out your new number?” An unpleasant chill, like a trail of cold water, ran down the length of Joanne’s spine.

“Stop bothering me,” Joanne replied forcefully, glancing at the luminous face of the bedside clock and seeing it was 4 a.m.

“Your new locks won’t keep me out.” Joanne felt an involuntary loosening of her bowels. “Sweet dreams, Mrs. Hunter.”

Joanne jumped from her bed and raced down the stairs. Moving like a woman possessed, she checked the locks on the front door and the sliding glass door in the kitchen. Then she hurried down the steps to the family room. Everything was secure. She peered through the vertical blinds into the darkness, the quarter moon only barely illuminating the outline of the pool. Was her tormentor somewhere out there hiding? She returned to the front hall, glaring at the numbered buttons of the alarm system on the wall. There was a way of turning on the system while you were in the house without setting off the alarm, she remembered, trying desperately to recall what Harry had told her. There was another button she could push. Her eyes darted frantically across the small box. “The bottom button,” she said aloud, hearing Harry’s voice gently against her ear. The one without a number. Simply press it and the alarm would be set. It would go off if someone subsequently opened one of the doors or downstairs windows. Slowly, Joanne’s trembling finger moved toward it. She pressed down, watching the small green light flicker on. Holding her breath, she waited for the unwanted shriek of the alarm. But none came. I did it right, she sighed, releasing the air in her lungs, her legs shaking their way back up the stairs to check on Robin before crawling into bed. At least now they would have some warning if he tried to break in.

Was
it a he? she asked herself as her head sank into the soft pillow. The voice was such an obvious disguise, and there was something so … neutered … about it. What was the current word? Androgynous? That was the term she kept hearing with regard to the current fashion scene, to hairdos, to rock singers …

The image of a boy as thin as a sharpened pencil greeted her newly closed lids. He looked past her as if she weren’t really there, then promptly disappeared. Joanne remained awake for the balance of the night, watching a young Kevin McCarthy embrace a beautiful Dana Wynter for the last time and warning her not to fall asleep.

“Y
ou should have seen us,” Joanne was saying. “Robin didn’t know the alarm was set, and poor thing, I think it’s the first time she’s woken up before ten in her entire life”—Robin groaned loudly from somewhere beside her—”and she opened the front door to get the paper and the alarm went off, you had to hear those damn sirens, and she started screaming, and Lulu and I were blasted out of bed and, of course,
we
started screaming and everybody was running around like inmates of a lunatic asylum, and naturally I couldn’t remember how to turn the damn thing off, so it rang for over half an hour and finally,
finally
, the police came, and I had to explain to them what happened, and, needless to say, they weren’t exactly thrilled.”

“Mom,” Robin said wearily, “he doesn’t hear you.”

“He hears me,” Joanne replied stubbornly. “Don’t you, Pa?” Joanne stared into her grandfather’s soft blue eyes, eyes that managed to stare just past her no matter where she placed her body. “Anyway, I had to call Paul and explain what happened and ask him how to shut the alarm off because I couldn’t find the phone number for
the alarm company—I don’t know where I put it—and so he had to do all the telephoning and call me back, and the alarm people came over and explained the whole thing to me again—that only cost sixty-five dollars—and now Paul is mad at me and the police are mad at me and Robin is mad at me …”

“Who said I was mad?” Robin demanded angrily.

“Anyway,” Joanne continued, trying to laugh, “at least we know the alarm works.”

“And I’ll never forget the date of the start of the Boer War,” Lulu piped up from beside the window. Joanne smiled, grateful that at least one of her children was trying to take part in the conversation. She glanced to the other side of the room, where old Sam Hensley sat berating his daughter and grandson, then back at her grandfather, who lay still under a mountain of covers. Where had his fight gone? she wondered, thinking she might have preferred a little of Sam Hensley’s feistiness. Come on, Pa, she pleaded silently, hearing her mother’s voice, let’s see some of that old team spirit.

“Mom,” Robin whined, “can’t we go now?”

“No, we can’t,” Joanne said sharply. She immediately softened her voice. “Look, you don’t come here very often. It’s not going to kill you to sit still for a few minutes.”

“He doesn’t know who I am,” Robin protested.

“You don’t know that.”

“Linda …” the weak voice called out, the old face all but swallowed up by the stiff white sheets that crept up past the once sturdy chin, the blue Chairman Mao hat that someone had perched on his head falling low across his layered forehead. Who had given him that hat? Joanne wondered now.

“Yes Pa, I’m here,” she replied automatically.

“Who are all these people?” His eyes were unable to focus on anyone in particular though his voice was instinctively wary.

“You see,” Robin muttered, not quite under her breath.

“These are my daughters, Pa,” Joanne said proudly. “You remember Robin and Lulu.” She reached out her hands in their direction, drawing them to her. “You probably don’t recognize them, they’ve gotten so big. This is Robin …” Robin smiled meekly, as if she were confronting a mythical troll and was afraid to get too close. Or perhaps it was his age she was afraid to get close to, Joanne postulated, afraid in some vague way that it might be contagious. It is, Joanne thought. Aloud she said, “And this is Lulu, my baby.”

“Mom!” Lulu protested. “Hi, Grampa,” she whispered, not sure how she should address this man she barely knew, this ancient artifact who had already lived through eighty-four years by the time she was born.

If only you could have seen him thirty years ago, Joanne thought as her daughters withdrew quickly into their previous positions.

“Nice, very nice,” her grandfather murmured, his eyes clicking into focus. He suddenly pushed himself up on his elbows to stare at the bewildered girls. “Do you children play cards?” he asked clearly.

Joanne felt a smile spring to her lips, a sudden giddiness seize her spirits—how many rainy afternoons at the cottage had she and her grandfather passed playing gin rummy?

But before her mind could formulate an answer, Joanne was aware it was no longer relevant. Her grandfather, his
old eyes vacant once again, his unsteady head returned to the safety of his pillows, had slipped back into the only world with which his frail body was currently able to cope. The room was suddenly silent.

Joanne looked over at the other bed, saw old Sam Hensley propped up by several pillows, his visitors gone, his eyes clouded with tears. “Mr. Hensley,” Joanne said softly, slipping her hand out of her grandfather’s and crossing to the other bed. “Are you all right? Are you in any pain?” Slowly, Sam Hensley brought his head around. “Do you want me to call the nurse?”

Sam Hensley said nothing. But as he continued to stare at Joanne, his emaciated, hawklike features underwent a subtle though swift and thorough metamorphosis, curiosity becoming indifference, indifference disappearing into animosity, animosity ultimately being swallowed whole by a palpable hatred so intense that Joanne actually felt herself stumbling backward, as if she had been physically pushed away. Large, bony hands reached up toward her as if eager to encircle her throat, and a low wail, which seemed to start at the floor, began to fill the room, forcing those standing to flee the area for lack of space.