Again (11 page)

D
avid knew before he turned who had entered his room. He smelled the perfume right away. Tabu. After fifteen years, it was her signature scent.

“Who called you?” he asked, knowing the question was abrupt and ungrateful. The EMTs had brought him in only a couple of hours ago, and he had not given any information other than his name, address, and insurance data. The fewer people who knew, the less embarrassed he would be. He already felt ridiculous as it was. He didn’t need his mother checking in on him.

“Does it matter how I found out? I’m here.” He thought he heard a tremor in her voice. Also anger.

Had to have been one of the nurses or someone at the health club who called her. Maybe someone had gone through his wallet and found her number.

She stood near his bed looking down. Then, suddenly, she slapped his head, lightly. “Idiot!”

“Hey!” He sat up. “What kind of mother love is that?”

“The kind that will keep you from doing something this stupid again! Damn it, David, I’ve warned you too many times about going swimming alone! Why do you take chances like that? I lose you, I’ve got nobody.”

David lay his head down with a sigh. On top of this disastrous morning, he was going to have to deal with mother guilt again. Damn that nosy ass who called her.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry, and again sorry. Jeez, I just wanted to get some laps in before I went into the office.”

“What happened? You get a cramp?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I probably shouldn’t have been out there today. Wasn’t feeling at my peak.”

He saw the tears brimming in her eyes. They pooled there, refusing to travel down. His mother was resistant to emotional shows, and she probably wasn’t going to start now.

“David, I’ve been going about this all wrong. Trying to protect you. You could’ve ended up drowned like Terry.”

He looked at her, confused. She wasn’t making any sense. What did his friend Terry have to do with anything?

“Ma, you’re getting worked up over nothing. I’m OK.” He
was
OK. No point in telling anyone about what he had envisioned. Since being brought in he had gone over the scene again and again, and was slowly convincing himself that it had been a hallucination. He had read about these types of delusions, usually brought on by the delirium of oxygen deprivation.

“OK? You’re laying here in a hospital, almost drowned, and I’m supposed to let you lie to me about being OK. David, you’re not OK. Far from it.” She paused, reached up to wipe the tears from her eyes. She was silent. He could tell she was pondering something; her eyebrows met the wisps of her bangs.

She walked over and pulled the only chair in the room closer to his bed. She looked determined and he girded himself for a sermon or a diatribe, or a combination of the two.

“David, remember when Bess went away?”

“Bess? What are you bringing up Bess for?” He hadn’t thought about his old Labrador in years. She ran away shortly after his father left, and he searched for her for weeks, months even. There hadn’t been a tree or storefront window that didn’t carry the picture of the two-year-old Lab his father had given him for his eighth birthday. He had gone from door to door within a five-mile radius, asking his neighbors if they had seen his dog. He stopped searching only after the fire the next year. After everything seemed destroyed. Only then did he relinquish any hope that things could go back to the way they used to be. That his father would come back. That was also the year Terry drowned. He shut off the memories; they were too painful. He didn’t see why his mother was taking this trek down memory lane, bringing up things he hadn’t thought about for a long time, didn’t want to think about now. He was irritated and tired.

“I’m leading to a point, so just bear with me. I need to make you understand before something worse happens. I know to you I’m just an obligation…”

“Ma…”

“Stop interrupting!” she leaned forward and he thought she was going to slap his head again, but then she sat back, her face set like that of a narrator about to impart some heretofore unknown folklore. “I know you love me. I know you do. But I also know you’ve been carrying around a lot of baggage, not the least of which is your blaming yourself for your father and me breaking up. That would be too much for any ten-year-old to handle, and I tried to tell you then that it wasn’t your fault, but you wouldn’t set down that burden. You still carry it with you after all these years. And if I haven’t said this enough, your father left me, not you. He was an asshole David, and I tried very hard to make sure you didn’t grow up to be like him. I think I’ve been doing a good job…so far. If it wasn’t bad enough that your father left, Bess goes up and runs away—or so we thought.”

His initial resistance wavered at this last sentence. More than anything, he wanted to get up, get dressed and leave, but the doctor wanted to keep him here for at least a day “for observation.” He was a prisoner of his own making, and now his mother’s captive audience. He had thought he was through with the hurt, but his mother’s allusion to Bess’s disappearance just brought home the loneliness he had felt at the poolside, the questions he’d asked himself again and again: Why did the ones he love or care about eventually leave him? His father, Bess, even Karen, to an extent—although that had been his own fault. Still, there had been others.

“What do you mean, ‘so we thought’? You know something?”

She remained quiet for a few seconds, contemplating. He thought he heard his heartbeat rev up. At least he was alive, but he could only take so much.

She finally spoke. “You remember that house about two blocks down from ours? The one with the blue and white door, yellow awning?”

David nodded. He remembered the house vaguely, remembered specifically how hideous it was. He barely ever passed there, but it had been one of the homes he canvassed in his search for Bess.

“Well, remember there was an an old man who lived there with his daughter? They hardly ever came out. I’m pretty sure he was the one who took Bess.”

“What?” Dave jolted up, his pique giving way to anger, and suddenly his inertia was gone. “And you knew this?! You knew all this time and you said nothing! Letting me walk around putting up flyers, knocking on people’s doors! Why didn’t you tell me before?”

He wanted to lash out at someone, her, the old man. He felt as though his head was about to rip open. He tried to remember the old man, to remember features, coloring, something. He needed some other face to focus his fury on. Someone other than his mother, who was just sitting there calmly.

“I didn’t know about it until some time after the man died, David. Bess was gone by then. But—”

“But what?”

“I saw her in my dream. I saw her collar, the red one you bought her the Christmas before she was taken. I felt something was going to happen, but didn’t know what. I knew how much she meant…your last connection to your father.”

This was getting confusing again. “In your dream—what are you talking about?”

His mother’s shoulders rose up, her back stiffened. “I saw her in the dream—but too late, and I kept this secret because I didn’t think you would understand. But the time’s come for me to stop keeping secrets—just as you’ve been doing. Just like you never told me about the fire, the one that destroyed our home.”

His first impulse was to deny it, a vestige of the fear of an eleven-year-old who had taken so much from her. Then he remembered.

“Terry, he told you. Or he told someone else—his parents—and they told you…” he reasoned, trying to make the pieces fit into neat little compartments again. Trying not to deal with whatever was coming.

“No. Terry never told anybody, just like he promised you. But I know Terry got you into a lot of other things, things you didn’t think I knew about. But I did. I saw. I may not dream or see as much as I once did, but I still see some things.”

“See things?” It was worse than he had thought.

“Like this morning. I saw you floating facedown.” She said this like a pronouncement, like the crescendo everything else had been leading to. “I tried to think maybe it was just a dream and my irrational fears playing with my mind. But then I knew when I saw you lying in a hospital, this hospital. I knew that I’d almost lost you. I didn’t see it in time though, and I’m afraid that something else is going to happen, something worse than this.” The tremble was back in her voice.

Disbelief crept in as a small smile on his lips. He had always known his mother was a little eccentric. Actually, more than a little eccentric. He remembered the tarot cards alongside the rosary beads on her bureau and never once growing up questioned the contradiction. Because that was just his mother. Her oddities were a part of her, just like the smoking, or those pearls she always wore whenever she went somewhere upscale. But there had been times…

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“You want to know why your father left? He left because he didn’t want to believe. Or rather, because he started to believe. He never liked my having an edge over him. It interfered with his agenda of getting women and getting drunk. I mean what’s the fun of cheating if your wife knows beforehand?” She paused, took a breath, continued.

“Actually the main reason he left was that I told him to get out. I didn’t want him influencing you about women. Not that your father was a bad man, he was just a dick. Why we ever got together is still a question in my mind. Anyway, I worked so hard to conform to him, to be how he wanted to see me. But it gets tiring after a while, David. And as much as I love you, I can’t keep playing this little suburban mama sitting at home drinking tea with a little scotch on the side. I am who I am.”

He didn’t want to prolong this drama anymore. He didn’t want to hear this ranting arising from what he was beginning to suspect was some sort of mental breakdown.

“And who are you supposed to be?” he finally asked, already closing his mind to the answer.

“I am a seer, clairvoyant, a psychic if you will. To put it simply, I see the future, and yours isn’t looking too good right now.”

He blinked quickly, three, four times in succession. A rumbling started in his guts, quickly surged up, then burst from his lips in a laugh that nearly rent him apart and shook the bed. It poured from him like a gusher, taking his breath away.

Finally it ebbed away, and when the laughter finally deserted him, she was still sitting there. She wasn’t smiling.

Instead she stood up and said, “I got things to tell you, David, and I’m not leaving here until you’ve heard everything I know about you. And I’m not the only one who knows you’re in trouble. My friend Jennifer DiMello has been seeing things about you, too.”

Jennifer? Who was Jennifer? And what the hell was his mother talking about?

Suddenly, he was afraid.

J
ennifer went through the stack of answers to the questionnaire Simensen had distributed to its employees a month ago. The questionnaire was ostensibly an assessment of skill levels to determine that each employee was suited to his or her job. In fact, it had been peppered with “flags,” specific questions innocuous on the surface but that pinpointed those particular employees who might be prone to unethical behavior. “Might be” was a broad categorization, and it was Jennifer’s job to critique the answers and follow up with interviews to ascertain the probability that any of these “flagged” employees would be future trouble.

Simensen, a major Midwest pharmaceutical, was particularly sensitive to the reality of unethical employees. Last year, a shipment of a new FDA-approved drug, Biloxin, was stolen; the boxes were later found in the apartment of a delivery driver. Simensen execs had breathed a sigh of relief at escaping certain liability. Biloxin was a stimulant that was highly toxic at inappropriate doses and might have resulted in deaths had it reached the street.

Jennifer had been with Simensen for almost a year. Ironically, her title was psychometrist, even though it was far removed from her ability as a feeler. In her official capacity as pyschometrist, she was simply someone who administered and interpreted assessment tests. That’s how the nonbelievers defined the term. In this capacity, she was more than qualified for the position with a BA and Master’s in psychology.

No one here knew about her other ability. The dullheads in charge would hardly be amenable to having a clairvoyant of any kind on staff. Not to say she didn’t use her ability now and then. Always by accident though. Like now.

Just a slight impression. A bit of lipstick in the corner of one of the pages. But it was enough. The woman, dark hair, over forty, maybe a few years younger, two bluish pills—no, actually capsules—in her hands. Wariness in her eyes as she swallows the capsules. The sweat bead on her brow and the shakiness of her hands give her away. Possible addict. Maybe doing some personal testing of the product. Jennifer looked at the name. Marilyn Puchinski. The questionnaire is not flagged, but she would put it in the follow-up stack for a possible interview. Better to waylay this one right now then let it fester.

The phone rang. Even before she picked up, she had a feeling of urgency. Something about the ring, which seemed more shrill than usual.

“Jennifer DiMello,” she answered.

“Jen? I need your help again.” It was Carmen Carvelli. She sounded breathless. Jennifer’s stomach lurched, and she immediately felt guilty for the reaction. But there wasn’t anything she could do for Mrs. Carvelli’s son. It was enough they had identified part of the problem. Past life regression was more than a little out of her expertise. Still, she felt that irritating pull of loyalty.

“I would love to help, Mrs. Carvelli, but if your son’s resistant to the whole idea of psychic phenomenon, then I don’t see how I can help him.”

“I talked to him, Jen. I told him about me. He still says he thinks everything I told him is crazy…but I think I convinced him on some level. He’s not going to admit it, but I told him things that only he would know. I think I can get him to sit down with you.”

Jennifer began tapping fingers on the pile of papers sitting in front of her. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I’ll be able to do anything with so much resistance.”

“That’s what I’m telling you. I think part of him is willing to listen now. Please. I told him to come to the house this Friday. It would really help me if you could be there. To feel him out, especially those things I can’t pick up.”

“I…” Jennifer started, wanting desperately to find a way to back out.

“Jen, he almost died today.” The voice, strident before, was calm, a fatalist’s calm. “If we don’t get to him now, I don’t know what’ll happen next. He needs to be fully prepared, and he can’t be unless we know what he’s dealing with.” Pause. “Please Jen. Don’t make me beg past this point.”

“Ummm…” She hesitated using time she didn’t have, adding another questionnaire to the pile. A quick flash of a man, thirty, brownish hair, regular features, staring into a mirror, tears running down his face. Jennifer put the paper down with a sigh. So many people in need.

“OK, I’ll be there,” she finally said.

“Thanks, Jennifer. I appreciate this,” Mrs. Carvelli said, then finally hung up.

Jennifer reached into her special drawer, pulled out a bottle of pink liquid. In the privacy of her office, she took another long sip of Pepto-Bismol.

Tyne crossed her legs, attempting to appear casual, then regretted the move as the other woman focused on their length for a couple of seconds, seconds that made Tyne’s breaths constrict before the woman looked away again.

“Nice.” Sherry said. Tyne didn’t know whether she was talking about the resume or her legs. She shook the thought off. Of course, the woman was referring to the resume.

She glanced over the office while Sherry perused the resume. Impressive. Georgia O’Keeffe reproductions on the walls. A combination of light oak and glass opened up the office’s space. Then there was the dazzling view of Lake Michigan. She could see several boats in the distance. All of it served to good effect, which, of course, was the intent. Usually small start-up magazines had to forgo the luxury of décor, directing all monies to production.

“So, you basically did copy editing while at the
Clarion
? But no writing?” Sherry looked up and Tyne knew she was already losing her.

She took a cleansing breath. “I know my history is a bit sketchy, but I have written in the past. You can see that I did some contributing at the
Chicago Herald
before I came to the
Clarion.
”

The woman didn’t look convinced. “So why did you leave the other paper?”

“More money. And I was told that my position at the
Clarion
would be just a starting point, that my responsibilities would grow from there but that never happened. I promise you though that I can handle whatever you give me. If you’re not convinced, give me a probationary period. You assign me whatever…”

But Sherry was already shaking her head, peering through the articles Tyne had attached from her days at the
Herald
. “I’m not sure about this. We’ll be dealing with some tight deadlines, and this is the first issue, so it’s going to have to kick ass. I mean you only have a few samples here, which I have to admit are pretty good…still…”

Tyne needed to clinch this. This was her job. She knew it. She just had to get over this hurdle. “Give me an assignment, no matter how big or small, and I promise you you won’t be disappointed. I really want…no, I really
need
…this. Just give me a chance to prove myself.”

There was silence while Sherry once again peered over the resume as though she wasn’t sure she hadn’t missed anything the first few times around. Tyne felt a ping of guilt at the masked hope that her association with David would help her clear the hurdle. Especially since she had been so adamant at not owing him anything and doing this on her own. She knew coming in that she could do the job, but that other applicants would probably have a better track record. Yet they weren’t as desperate as she was, and she knew now that she was desperate enough to exploit whatever ties she had to get this.

“OK.” Tyne sat up at the one word. Sherry’s eyes were still elsewhere on the resume, and Tyne wondered if she had heard the word at all.

Sherry looked up, settled back in her seat. “I’ll give you a chance to show me what you can do. First of all, let me tell you a little about the magazine and what we’re going to be about. The magazine will be called
Elan
. The audience I’m aiming for will be diverse in race, orientation, marital status and income level. I don’t want the same fluff the other women’s magazines offer. So we’ll be focusing on relevant issues that affect all women whether they’re a young college student just starting out, a married mother of two, a lesbian facing discrimination, a black woman dealing with harassment, or a retiree grandmother wondering how to make her pension stretch past a couple of years. Many editors usually center on one market and that alone. But I think that we can do better without diluting our impact. I’m only going to bring on about eight writers. That’ll include you. But again, this is provisional, a test period. If I like what you do, we’ll talk about salary and benefits. And if I don’t…” Sherry shrugged.

“I understand,” Tyne quickly filled in. “So where do we go from here?”

Sherry reached over her desk, nearly knocking off a small statuette of two intertwined women as she reached for a folder. “Here’s an article I actually had planned to do myself. Let’s see what you can do with it.”

Tyne tried to hide the smile as she reached for the folder being handed to her. She didn’t want to seem satisfied. But inside, she was kicking up heels and doing somersaults. She opened up the folder, read the notes, saw the address. She nodded, and at the same time wondered what she had just let herself in for.

David sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the rays of a new sun barely breaking the horizon. Last night, he hadn’t dreamed at all, and when he awakened, his body felt as though he had fought a battle in which he was fairly throttled. He was still recovering from his near-drowning, but had been able to go into the office yesterday for a few hours to do some follow-up calls. When he checked his e-mails, he wasn’t surprised to find one from Clarence officially giving notice that he was terminating the partnership. Rick had been out of the office most of the day with meetings, saving both of them an awkward confrontation. He hadn’t told anybody about his close call; instead he told Debbie that he had taken a day off to fight a cold.

He didn’t want to go in today. It just didn’t seem worth it. He loved being an architect, but he didn’t like the hassles of keeping a business afloat, especially when others in the boat were tearing holes in it. Sometimes, he thought it might be better if he just walked away and took a position with another firm, a well-established firm where someone else had to deal with the headaches and all he had to do was design buildings.

He hadn’t let himself think about the last couple of days. He didn’t want to deal with Friday coming up. Why had he let his mother talk him into it?

But he knew the answer. She had told him things about himself. Things she shouldn’t possibly know. Yet she did. In the hospital, she had regaled him with events that happened in high school and college—including the near-suspension he had never told her about, fights he’d gotten into, stupid daredevil stunts that had almost cost him a limb or two. Hell, she even knew when he lost his virginity and to whom, which was something considering he barely remembered the girl’s name.

He was fighting to keep his world straight. There were rules that were supposed to operate, reactions that by logic should follow certain actions. But those rules were breaking down. As angry as he had been with his father for leaving, he probably understood a little better why the man had walked away from the marriage, from his mother. He had to fight not to take flight himself, just get on a train or plane and not look back. But he was different from his father; he knew his responsibilities. He would never leave her, no matter how crazy things got.

He got up, put on his robe, went downstairs creaking like an old man. He needed to get back to the gym, work out a little. His muscles were atrophying.

He stopped at the answering machine. He had forgotten to pick up his messages yesterday. There was only one. From Sherry. He listened as she filled him in on the new employment status of his “girlfriend.” He blinked at the emphasis on the last word.

Surprisingly, he was ambivalent at the news. He should be glad but he wasn’t certain how he felt. Just a couple of weeks ago, Tyne had attached to every thought, shadowing his work and his play. He had jerked off continuously to the image of her. But the dreams were fading now, and oddly, when he thought of her, he thought of green organza and tight curls. But that image was not hers.

He remembered the kiss and her subsequent shock. He had seen himself in smoky eyes, seen a man driven by passion. He’d stepped back that time, and he wasn’t sure he could do that again.

He strolled to the kitchen, put coffee in the coffeemaker, then sat down and waited for it to brew. He ran fingers over tired eyes, through his hair, yawning. It was as though he hadn’t slept at all. By the time the aroma of coffee filled the kitchen, he had already decided he wasn’t going into the office. He got out the bowls, eggs, butter, the makings for homemade pancakes. The day was blossoming like a marigold, yellow and white against a clear sky. The clouds were lacy, the kind that adorned rather than obscured a mellow sun. This was a day to go jogging, throw around a football, or go swim…The thought cut off. It would be some time before he ventured into the water again. One day he would. But not today. Today, he would enjoy being alive. There was something about nearly dying that put priorities in perspective. Today, work wasn’t a priority. He would let Clarence walk, let him take his damn money without any argument. If Rick wanted to leave, too, then fine. They could both go. He’d deal.

But today, he didn’t have to deal. He wanted a time-out. No calls or meetings. No confrontations. Just a chance to enjoy a beautiful day. But he didn’t want to enjoy it alone.

He mixed the batter, turned on the radio to the soft jazz station. Boney James’s sax weaved around the pop and sizzle of butter, of batter being poured into the skillet. He whistled along. He felt like a picnic. Maybe he’d pack up some cheese and crackers, wine, find some good company. He played with the idea, let it loiter in his mind, at turns rejecting then calling it back. Her number was upstairs, but would she be home? More important, would she come? He didn’t know when she was due to start her new job, didn’t know much about her at all. He flipped a pancake, caught it in the pan.