The Judas Glass (13 page)

I landed hard, but on my feet. A small field stretched before me, recently plowed. Some of the clods curled, slightly gleaming, while other were round and full-bodied, and crushed gently under my steps. At the edge of the plowed land a small army of saplings crowded together, an orchard in the making, due to be planted in a day or two, I guessed, each tree's roots wrapped in a cloth ball like a boxing glove.

I made my way across the grounds of a rambling house, the main building far ahead, the lights on upstairs. As I approached the house I crossed a well-established garden. Rose bushes sprouted new, dark-red growth, and the pungent, creosote-scent of basil surrounded me, a row of young herbs.

A sound reached me from inside the house, music, a symphony, I supposed, the music unreal and distorted in my ears. A few dandelions punctuated a lawn, a garden hose wound up into a tight spiral, the brass nozzle drooling water on a sidewalk. I nearly tripped over a wooden spindle and wire hoops stuck into the grass, the relics of a game I recognized with only a little difficulty, croquet. This was a grand building. I had explored it as a child, from the tidy guest bedrooms, to the rough-finished cellar, the furnace huffing on with the authority of a generalissimo.

I opened a sliding glass door and stepped inside. I was eager, now, feeling that this night's journey was about to end. I knew this place. I had sat in this chair as a boy, my feet unable to reach the floor, and as a young man, watching the Superbowl.

A step creaked the floorboards, and a chair scraped the floor, muted by carpeting. A faint rustling followed, paper, I thought, a book or a magazine.

A bony thing, a mallet with a long handle clattered as I tread upon it. A wooden ball fled my foot, and as it rolled it began to gain momentum. The sound of its orbit across the hardwood floors echoed, until at last it reached a carpet. Its career across the floor halted, then continued across the rug, but quieter, now, almost silent.

The only light reached me from upstairs, and from the peculiar silence I could tell that the rolling wooden ball had made too much noise. The sound of the orchestra died. I could hear what happened next, a long moment of suspense, as though human attention itself was a presence in the room. He was listening.

The dim light delineated drinking glasses, the too-sweet perfume of liquor in the air. I held a wineglass by the stem, and tapped it with my finger. He heard me, there could be no question. I wanted him to know there was someone in the house—I did not want to startle him more than I had to.

I settled some drinking glasses into a tray, gathering them from the comfortable clutter of magazines and newspapers. I did not bother to keep the glasses from tinkling, hoping he would come down to see what guest had returned to help clean up.

“Who is it?” It was so good to hear him speak! But I did not like the quaver in his voice, the uncertain quality that made him sound vulnerable.

I took a wheezy breath to answer him. I spoke. But I could make no sound, only a wet rasp. “Don't be afraid,” I repeated, still making no sound a human ear would recognize.

I coughed, gagged briefly, and tried again.

“Who's there?” asked Dr. Opal, this time coming halfway down the stairs. I could see him! He hunched sideways, peering. “Susan?” Then, in an altogether different tone, the tone of someone sure that he is not alone. “Susan, if it's you, say something.”

I was embarrassed, aware that I was trespassing on his private sense of security. I had no idea who Susan was. I had no right to intrude on him. The tone of his voice was no longer simply questioning. He was concerned, growing frightened, turning to go upstairs again, and I called out as loudly as I could, “Wait! Don't be afraid. It's only—”

But I could not project a sound, my whisper shrieking in the room, as he hurried back up the stairs, across an upstairs room and snatched up a telephone.

He identified himself to someone on the phone. Taking action was something that steadied him. Emergency room crises over the years must have accustomed him to assuming control. “I think I have an intruder,” said Dr. Opal.

I did not know how I was able to fling myself upstairs so quickly. I was in the room with him. His back was to me, and he was repeating his address, the cross street, Grizzly Peak Boulevard. I did not recall Dr. Opal's hair being so white. I hesitated, shrinking back to the doorway.

It was an amiably cluttered room, piles of manuscripts and quarterlies, computer software and bills. I recognized two of the faces on the wall, black-and-white snapshots enlarged so the casual smiles and wind-mussed hair were imposing and slightly out of focus. My father, in a white, short-sleeved shirt, a blurry hint of masts and sails behind him. My mother in a dark dress and her favorite pearls, inappropriately dressed for what she was doing, brandishing a badminton racket. The shadowy grid fell upon her cheek, her eyes, as she held the racquet to ward off the photographer's attention.

The sight of the filing cabinets, the coffee mug on the desk beside the old IBM Selectric, made me feel welcome. I had enjoyed this room as a boy, my father and Dr. Opal leaning back in their chairs to swap medical tall-tales. A sink sparkled in the corner, the porcelain chipped, a black half-moon along one edge. Perhaps the more youthful Dr. Opal had considered seeing patients here, or perhaps professional habit made him uncomfortable in a room where he could not scrub his hands with Betadyne.

He hung up the phone, and turned. I could tell by the way he moved, one hand out to the chair for support, that he knew at that instant he was not alone.

I said, “Dr. Opal, I need your help.”

This time my voice was a healthy stage whisper. Dr. Opal froze, moving only his hand, which kept searching for support, fumbling beside the box of paper clips and the half-lens reading glasses.

Then he seized the desk chair. He rocked back, leaning against the big metal desk, and held the oak captain's chair between us. His white hair was uncombed, and his bathrobe was hanging open, the cloth belt dangling. It was an expensive-looking robe, blue with gold piping, and his pajamas were silk, dark blue to match the robe.

“What is this?” he said, planting his feet, ready to defend himself with the heavy oak chair. It was the tone of outraged authority, a medical professor discovering an unemptied bed pan. I had never seen this side of Dr. Opal. He looked older, drawn, but at the same time stronger than I would have expected, an adrenaline boost making his voice that of Hercules. “What do you want?”

I would have chuckled, and congratulated him for his spirit, except for my concern for him. Only one light illuminated the room, a crook-neck desk lamp. The lamp did a good job on the array of papers on the desk, but I stood just out of its range. As I drew closer, putting out my hand to reassure Dr. Opal, the sight of my own fingers, the back of my hand, made me thrust my hand into my jacket pocket.

“I'm sorry,” I coughed. The words were impossible to distinguish, but my voice was stronger. “Please don't be afraid,” I urged. This time I sounded human, almost like my usual self, except for a syrupy rattle in my voice. I could be a man recovering from a bad chest cold, nothing worse.

He let the chair fall with a crash, and I was at his side as he collapsed, easing his fall, so that he would not hurt himself. At once he tried to scramble to his feet, grasping at the leg of his desk.

Don't be afraid
. I touched his cheek, his skin hot. Be
still. Please help me
.

For some reason I expected my thoughts to cause some change in him. “What is this?” he gasped.

It was just like Dr. Opal, I thought, to speak in questions that demanded answers. And yet his heart was pounding. I felt remorseful. I should have thought of a better way to step into his life. “There was a mistake,” I said.

For a long moment he fought nausea, and struggled to keep from fainting, staring at me, blinking.

“I need you to step back,” he said at last.

“I know how hard this is for you,” I said, wanting to add more, to tell him everything.

“Step back,” he said. “So I can get up.”

I did as he asked, all the way to the wall. When he was on his feet he wrenched the desk lamp so its blinding vector of light was directed at me. I could not see anything but the bright knob of the bulb. I cringed, but stayed as I was for a long moment of his ragged breathing.

“Tell me who you are,” he said. But he knew. Already he could tell.

A knock. At the front door downstairs. Dr. Opal did not move. When I tried to say another word I coughed, and I spat into the sink. I was unable to suppress the thought:
necrotic
. I got the faucet to work and rinsed it down.

A police radio squawked somewhere outside, a stutter of static making a noise like a footstep in gravel. A hushed rumble reached us, the sliding glass door. One of the croquet balls rolled again, this time all the way down a hall until it met a wall with a pleasing
pock
, like the distant kiss of baseball against bat.

“It's Richard,” I said. “Richard Stirling. Please help me.”

19

Please help me
.

Downstairs a male voice was muttering. It was easy to imagine the police speaking into their transmitters, telling the dispatcher that there was no one here, or that they had arrived too late, the owner was not responding to their arrival, send more units.

I'm really here
.

Dr. Opal took one step, and then another, approaching me. There was a long, indecisive moment. He put his hand on my sleeve, feeling my arm through the damp cloth. “Tell me your mother's maiden name.”

He said this evenly, steadier now that the police would be in this room in seconds if he raised his voice. His manner told me that he expected, or hoped, that I would be stymied by this question.

“Reed,” I said. “Her maiden name was Reed. She loved pink marshmallows. She died of a burst appendix.”
No one else can help me
.

He did not examine me closely as he passed me, heading out into the dark stairwell. He had a determined quality to his stride, a man braced to get something done. A flashlight beam caught him.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “I'm Dr. Opal. I'm sorry I troubled you. I thought there was an intruder, but I was mistaken.”

He gave this brief speech from the top of the stairs, resembling an admiral addressing his staff as he leaned on the rail. He gathered his robe around him. If you didn't know him well you would not detect that falseness in his tone. He sounded cheerful, a man apologizing with grace. “It was a cat, knocking over some of the dinner glasses.” He gave a forced laugh. “I can't tell you how embarrassed I am.”

It sounded completely fake to me. I could hear that tone underscoring each word, the barely suppressed desire to flee from the house.

The cops didn't believe it either, even though Dr. Opal went downstairs and turned on the lights, complaining with phony heartiness about a neighbor's tom cat, “The boldest animal I've ever seen. And so smart.”

There was something wrong, and the police knew it. Dr. Opal
expanded
on the subject of cats, their mischief, and the neighborhood crime you heard about, burglars and worse. I had trouble making out what he said as he led the officers into the front yard, thanking them, apologizing for the state of his nerves.

An office is a pleasing hideaway, both apart from the world and linked to it by telephone, computer, correspondence. One of the photographs on the wall was a young boy holding a cowboy hat the way an adult would hold a birthday cake. The boy was smiling, but it was the way children often smile for cameras, dutifully, not really very happy.

A small mirror hung on the wall beside the door. It had not been cleaned recently, and was dotted with flecks of lint. Go ahead, I urged myself. Take a look.

Dr. Opal was still somewhere outside, making conversation, stalling, I supposed, not wanting to come back into his house. He was the sort of person people enjoyed talking to, and I could picture the police relaxing, happy to delay their own return to duty, while Dr. Opal disguised his own panic.

Take a peek in the mirror, I told myself. Don't you want to know how you look?

The glass answered the room with a second world, a twin room, but reversed, papers, reading glasses, a stapler on the edge of the desk.

Nausea. I picked up the chair, set it down on its four legs, and sat.

When Dr. Opal stood in the doorway. I had to ask, “What happened to
me
?”

Did I catch a whiff of liquor, a quick stiffener before he faced me again? “A better question would be—what happened to me?” Dr. Opal shook some small yellow pills from a vial. “Why did I do what I just did?”

“That little boy in the picture,” I said. “With the cowboy hat. It's me.”

He returned the vial to his shirt pocket and took the pills without bothering to get a glass of water, popped them into his mouth and swallowed.

“Yes,” he said, after a long silence. “It's you.”

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I'm terrific. Just wonderful. I just take pills for recreational purposes. And to make sure I don't have a cerebral hemmorhage.”

“How long ago did it happen?”

It
.

When he did not answer, I said, “How long have I been gone?”

“You collapsed,” he said, haltingly, “outside the restaurant about nine months ago.”

A digital clock on a bookshelf displayed the time, but I had trouble making sense of the numbers.
Nine months
. “I didn't know who else to turn to.”

He reached for my hand, felt for my pulse. His touch was warm, his fingers gentle. There was the slightest hesitation, a suppressed shudder, as he felt my throat, searching for evidence of heartbeat there. He fumbled briefly in his desk drawer and found a penlight. He held his breath as he leaned close to me, shining the light in first one eye, and then the other. The light pained me, searching, probing, but I steeled myself until he was done.