The Deep End (41 page)

“Just like the old days,” the voice cackles.

“Where’s Brian?”

“Who?”

“Are you alone?”

“Just me and my pains,” Eve laughs, sounding like herself for the first time in the conversation. “Want to join us?”

“Do you
want
me to come over?” Joanne asks in return.

“I’m dying, Joanne,” Eve suddenly cries.

“You’re not dying.”

“Yes, I am,” Eve screams. “I’m dying and I can’t get anybody to believe me.”

“I’ll come over.”

“Now!”

“Right now.”

“I’m dying, Joanne.”

“Hold on till I get there.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You can. You can,” Joanne repeats. “Hold on, I’m coming right over.”

“Hurry.”

“I’m coming now.” Joanne throws the receiver back into its carriage and races toward the front door, almost forgetting her house keys, returning to the kitchen to fish them out of her purse, returning to the front door, suddenly aware that she has left the sliding glass door in the kitchen wide open. “Stupid,” she mutters, hurrying back into the kitchen to close it, quickly securing the locks. “You’d forget your head if it wasn’t attached,” she says out loud.

The phone rings as she is scurrying past it. Her hand shoots out automatically to pick it up.

“I’m leaving right now,” Joanne promises quickly.

“Mrs. Hunter …” the voice begins, and Joanne feels her heart stop. She says nothing. “Did you like my flowers, Mrs. Hunter?”

Joanne squeezes the keys in her hand, feels them digging into her palm.

“I was sorry to hear about your grandfather,” the voice continues. “Still, I bet you’re glad. One less obligation to meet. Gives you more time to have fun.”

“Who are you?” Joanne asks steadily.

“Well now, if I told you that, it would spoil the surprise, wouldn’t it, Mrs. Hunter? And we wouldn’t want to do that, would we? Especially since I’ll be there so soon, and you’ll be able to see for yourself. I’m coming for you, Mrs. Hunter.”

Joanne feels an involuntary sigh escape her throat.

“Oh, I like that, Mrs. Hunter. That was sexy. Sexy with fear. My favorite combination.”

“You’re crazy!”

The voice loses its tease. “And you’re dead.” There is a second’s pause before the soft lilt returns. “I’m coming for you, Linda,” it repeats, capturing its former rhythm.

“Wait a minute—my name’s not … You have the wrong …”

What was she about to say? she wonders as the line goes dead in her hands. You have the wrong number? It’s another Mrs. Hunter you want? What difference does it make if she’s the Mrs. Hunter who’s going to wind up dead? “And you’re dead,” she hears the ugly voice repeat.

Racing toward the front door, her keys firmly in her hand, she sets her alarm and rushes out of the house.

J
oanne cuts across the two front lawns, stealing a hurried glance down the street as she tucks her keys into the back pocket of her jeans. There is a phone booth at the corner. From this distance, in the dark, it is impossible to make out whether or not someone is inside it. The street lights clarify little, only serving to define and accentuate shadows. Is there someone there?

I’m coming for you, Linda.

Just her luck, she thinks sardonically, running up Eve’s front steps and knocking loudly at the door. She’s not the woman he really wants. The story of my life, she decides. The story of my death.

No one answers her knock.

“Eve!” she calls, pressing down on the bell and then knocking again. “Eve, it’s me, Joanne. Let me in.”

I’m coming for you, Linda.

Joanne’s head spins. “Eve, open up. Come on. I’m not going to stand out here forever.”

“I can’t answer the door, Joanne,” she hears faintly from inside the house.

“Why not?”

“I’ll die if I answer the door.”

And I’ll die if you don’t, Joanne thinks. “Eve, for Christ’s sake, open the door.”

I’m coming for you, Linda.

“I can’t.”

“Open the goddamned door!” Joanne screams, and immediately the front door falls open. Joanne pushes her way roughly inside and slams it behind her. “What is this nonsense about dying if you answer the door?” Joanne demands angrily, relieved at finding herself safely inside.

“I’m so scared,” Eve whines, backing toward the stairs and falling into a semifetal position on the bottom step.

Joanne stares at her friend, her hair pinned erratically back from her gaunt face by a series of oversized bobby pins, her cotton housecoat stained and smelling of perspiration, her feet bare beneath old, shabby slippers.

“Of what?”

“I don’t want to die.”

“You’re not going to die.”

“I want to live, Joanne. What’s happening to me? Help me.”

Joanne joins Eve at the foot of the stairs. “Listen to me, Eve,” she begins. “Hear me out.” Eve nods. Joanne feels Eve’s body give an involuntary shudder as she puts her arms around Eve’s shoulders. “You probably won’t like what I’m going to say …”

“Say it,” Eve urges, surprisingly docile.

“You’re having a nervous breakdown,” Joanne tells her as gently as she can. “You’re
not
dying. I know that’s how you feel, but you are
not
dying.”

Surprisingly again, Eve does not argue. Instead she
stares questioningly into Joanne’s eyes. “How do you define a nervous breakdown?” she asks quietly, clinically.

Joanne almost laughs, thinking that she could well be having one herself. A classic example of the blind leading the blind. “I’m not sure,” she begins honestly. “I’m not sure how a psychiatrist would define it, but I would say that someone who’s having a breakdown is someone who has ceased to function.”

“And you think that’s me?”

“Isn’t it?”

Eve says nothing.

“Four months ago,” Joanne explains, “you were an active, vital woman, a psychology professor taking extra courses at night toward a Ph.D., a powerhouse who crammed thirty hours into every day, who took tennis lessons and went to exercise classes and was always busy. I’d look at you in awe. I couldn’t believe one person could do so much.”

Joanne is aware of a stiffening in Eve’s shoulders. “And now?” she asks dully.

“And now you do nothing,” Joanne states simply. “Your whole identity is wrapped up in being sick.”

“I’m in pain!” Eve retorts, pulling out of her friend’s grasp. “What do you want from me? You think that I enjoy being an invalid?”

“I don’t think you have any control …”

“What am I supposed to do, Joanne? What am I supposed to do about the pain?” Eve struggles to her feet and begins pacing the front hall like an animal in a cramped cage. “I know you don’t believe me about the pain …”

“I
do
believe you …”

“But you think that my mind is creating it.”

“Yes,” Joanne says directly, watching Eve roll her eyes in frustration. “But let’s say that I’m all wet,” Joanne continues, getting up, trying to keep time with Eve’s frantic pacing. “Let’s say there
is
a physical source to your pain that all the doctors have missed. Eve, thousands of people across this country suffer from chronic pain that doctors are unable to diagnose or treat. Ultimately, these people have to make a choice. They can either make the pain the center of their lives, which is what you’ve been doing, or they can accept that the pain is there, that it’s going to stay there, and that there’s not a whole lot that they can do about it except
get on
with their lives.”

“I’m supposed to ignore the pain …”

“As best you can. I know you think that’s very easy for me to say …”

“Only because it
is
very easy for you to say …”

“No,” Joanne argues. “No, it isn’t. It isn’t because I’ve been going through the same sort of thing for the past few months.”

Eve stops pacing. “What are you talking about?”

Joanne hesitates. “The phone calls,” she says finally.

It takes Eve a few seconds to understand Joanne’s reference. “The phone calls,” she repeats with disdain. “You’re convinced that you’re the strangler’s next victim and
I’m
the one who’s crazy?!”

“All right,” Joanne concedes, “maybe
I’m
the one who’s crazy. I honestly don’t know anymore. The point is that it doesn’t really matter.
I
think I’m getting these phone calls from someone who says he’s going to kill me. He called me tonight, in fact, just before I came over. He says he’s coming very soon.”

Eve laughs out loud.

“The point is,” Joanne repeats, “that this has been going on for months now and nobody believes me, or if they do believe me, they say there’s nothing they can do about it. And the thing I finally realized is that there isn’t a whole lot that
I
can do about it either. I’ve done everything I can—I’ve informed the police, I’ve changed my phone number twice, I’ve put in new locks and installed an alarm system. So now I have a choice. I can either lock myself up in my house forever, or I can make the most of what’s left of my life, and just
get on
with it.” She searches Eve’s eyes for a glimmer of understanding, but they remain blank, reveal nothing. “I don’t want to die,” Joanne admits. “My grandfather made me see that. But there are certain things that are beyond my control, and I guess that part of being an adult is learning to accept which things those are. I don’t like it. It scares the shit out of me, to be perfectly frank. But what choice do I have? I can either make my fear the center of my life or I can …”

“Get on
with it,” Eve interrupts, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

“Okay, I’ll stop. I’m starting to repeat myself.”

“Our situations aren’t at all comparable,” Eve informs her decisively.

“I think they are.”

“Who gives a shit what you think?” Eve demands angrily, suddenly pushing past Joanne and running up the stairs.

“Eve!”

“Go home, Joanne.”

“Let me help you,” Joanne urges, following Eve up the stairs and into the larger of the front bedrooms, the room Brian uses as an office. “My God, what happened in here?”

Joanne stares in bafflement at the once tidy room, which now bears all the earmarks of a bungled burglary attempt. Books lie scattered across the floor; the chair behind the desk has been overturned; the large Oriental rug is carpeted with papers and file folders, their contents spilled indiscriminately about and trampled on. “What happened in here?” Joanne repeats in a whisper.

“Hurricane Eve,” Eve tells her and smiles, her hand reaching over and swiping at the few papers that are still clinging to the top of Brian’s desk, sending them scattering to the floor.

“But why?”

“He said he was going to have me committed,” Eve sneers, sitting down in the center of the mess, scooping a fistful of papers into her hand. “He uses a bottle, you know,” she adds cryptically.

“Who? What are you talking about?” Joanne is already on her knees, gathering papers.

“The Suburban Strangler,” Eve whispers, her voice a singsong. “It seems he can’t do the job on his own.” She holds up a few random papers, as if they somehow back up her words. “I’ve been doing some reading. They say it could even be a woman.” Her voice has an eerie, nasty undertone. Joanne stops what she is doing, finds herself staring at the woman who has been her closest friend for thirty years. “It could even be me,” Eve smiles, obviously enjoying herself.

“Don’t talk nonsense,” Joanne says curtly.

“How do you know it’s not me? You already think I’m crazy. Why couldn’t it be me?”

“Because I know you. Because I know that you couldn’t hurt anyone except …” Joanne breaks off.

“What?” Eve asks quickly. “You stopped. Finish what you were going to say.”

“You couldn’t hurt anyone,” Joanne continues softly, “except yourself.” She lets the papers she has gathered into her hands slide back onto the floor. “Eve, you had a miscarriage,” she says quietly, staring deep into her friend’s eyes. “That doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t mean that you failed. It means that something was wrong that was beyond your control. How long are you going to punish yourself for it?”

“For as long as you continue practicing psychiatry without a license,” Eve quips humorlessly, kicking at some file folders with her feet.

“All right then, since I’ve come this far, I’m going to go all the way …”

“I look forward to it.”

“I don’t think you’re afraid of death,” Joanne states. “I think you’re afraid of life.”

“Interesting theory,” Eve says, her right foot beginning to twitch nervously.

“I think that you set impossible goals for yourself. You’re not the only one. I’m as guilty as you are. Somewhere we got the notion that it’s not enough to be wives and mothers, we have to be
perfect
wives and mothers. And while we’re running our perfect little households, we’re also expected to be perfectly successful businesswomen. Oh, it also helps to stay young and beautiful while we’re doing these things. Well, the hell with it! We get old. We put on weight. We get veins and lines and, goddamn it, we get tired. We are not perfect. But that doesn’t make us failures either. Eve, do you understand what I’m trying to say? It wasn’t your fault that you had a miscarriage …”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

Eve lowers her head into her lap, rocking back and forth. When she speaks, her voice is a low moan. “Any idiot can have a baby, Joanne. Why couldn’t I?”

Joanne says nothing. She moves slowly to her friend’s side and puts a comforting arm around her. “Our mothers had it easier in a perverse kind of way,” she whispers absently as Eve begins to sob. “They had rules to follow, roles to play. And not
all
the roles either. They … my God!” Joanne drops her hands to her sides.

Eve is momentarily startled by the sudden cessation of soft soothing words. “What’s the matter?” she asks through her tears.

“Our mothers …”

“What about them?”

“My mother’s name was Linda.”

“Joanne, are you all right?”

Joanne is suddenly on her feet. “He called me Linda. It wasn’t a mistake.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It wasn’t a mistake. He called me Linda because he thinks that’s my name. And why wouldn’t he? It’s the only name he ever heard my grandfather call me.”