Ash Wednesday (34 page)

"It doesn't bother you?" Alice shook her head. "This one," Ellen went on, "is . . . well, bad. One of the worst I've seen."

Then he's here, then he's here
. . .

"In fact, I think that's why the
Reardons
left. They've got a summer home up in Clinton County they went to. Now, it's in an upstairs room, and you wouldn't have to see it at all—just keep the door shut."

"It's okay. I'd just like to see the house."

Ellen
Brouther
babbled about the house's good qualities as they crunched through the autumn leaves on the sidewalk. Inside, the house was chilly, the furnace off, and though the furniture was still in place, all the books and knickknacks that enlivened a home were gone. Only an
unfaded
patch of wallpaper remained to mark the family portrait that Alice remembered hanging over the fireplace.

"Everything's still hooked up," Ellen said. "Electricity, water, even the phone. And the furnace is full of oil."

"It's very nice," Alice said, and her words, despite the carpet and draperies and overstuffed furniture, still echoed as though the house were empty.

"This was the parlor, just a sitting room really. The living room's a little bigger, right through here, and then back into the dining room, and of course the kitchen, nice big kitchen. The cellar's unfinished, but there's a washer and dryer down there. Would you like to see?"

Alice shook her head. "That's all right. I'd just like to see the upstairs."

At the top of the stairway a hall ran the length of the house, with two doors opening off each side and another at the end. Ellen showed Alice a large bedroom done in a soothing green, a smaller daisy-yellow one with twin beds that was obviously a guest room, another room with only a few chairs remaining ("They used it as a den," Ellen told her), and a fair-sized bath with an old, claw-footed tub.

Alice waited until Ellen was moving toward the stairs before she asked about the room at the end of the hall.

Ellen licked her lips nervously. "That's the room where the apparition is. The one I told you about."

"I'd like to see it."

"Are you sure? I mean, you could just leave it closed. You'd never even have to look at it."

"No. If it's here in the house, I have to know what it is."

Ellen
Brouther
sighed. "It's not pretty," she said, moving slowly toward the door. "It's the son of the people who lived here. He was . . . hurt badly in Vietnam." She put her hand on the knob and looked at Alice.

Last chance, Alice thought. Last chance. Do you want to? Do you want it? And something made her nod, and Ellen
Brouther
opened the last door.

It was worse than she had imagined, yet her response to it was not one of revulsion, horror, nausea. She saw Tim on the bed, his body honestly laid before her, with no tubes or prosthetics that over a dozen years before had drawn a film over her recognition of him, so that she had gone away certain that this was not, could not be, Tim Reardon. Youth and pride and insensitivity to the fact that this heap of stumpy flesh was still human had blinded her to other things as well, and she had laughed, laughed at the terrible joke someone had tried to play on her. And then she had started to cry as the twisted face puckered in an emotion she couldn't read, and weeping, she had told the
Reardons
to let her know when Tim came home, and had walked out of the room under their shocked stares.

I was wrong. You've waited all this time because you knew I'd realize it someday. That I'd come back
. Her lips curved upward in a slight smile as she saw him as he was all those years before, whole and strong.

But Ellen
Brouther
had no memory of that. She saw only a flagrant obscenity. Only a torso, head, and right arm remained of what must at one time have been a strong, young man. Both legs ended near the tops of the thighs. Where the genitals should have been was only a folded-over flap of skin that accentuated the incised pockets that further wrinkled the parchment-like abdomen. The pockets gaped roundly, as though invisible hoses were still there to suck away ghostly wastes. The chest was thin, the ribs visible, the skin sallow and sickly; the face was a rag
doll's
, torn and sewn up without skill, so that the seams showed whitely. "Why make him pretty?" Ellen imagined the surgeons saying. "Who will want him like this?" All this she saw in seconds, before turning away to look at her client, to see how
she
responded.

"Miss," she said, not at all surprised at how hushed and weak her voice seemed. Alice did not turn. "Miss Meadows?"

The girl looked at her then, and Ellen
Brouther
shivered. There was a beatific smile on the young woman's face, and her red hair framed that placid mask like a halo, glimmering in the light, so that Ellen felt she beheld a Madonna, but a scarlet one, with secrets deeper than motherhood.

"All . . . all right?" Ellen said. "Have you seen enough?"

Alice nodded and they left the room, Alice closing the door softly, as one secures the door of a room holding a dearly loved collection. "I'll take the house," she said when they had returned downstairs.

"You will?" Ellen could not hide her surprise. "But . . . we haven't talked about the price."

"How much, then? To rent it."

"Well, it'll rent furnished. Actually, the
Reardons
preferred
to rent. They had wanted two-fifty a month."

"That's fine." Alice's three-room apartment in the city was twice that.

"How long are you planning to stay in Merridale?”

“I'm not really sure."

"Well, the lease has a condition that the
Reardons
can move back in on thirty days' notice."

"That's all right," Alice replied. "One thing though—is there any way that you can avoid telling the
Reardons
my name?"

Ellen's eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"I knew the family when I lived in Merridale. I wouldn't want them to . . . be embarrassed."

"You knew the
Reardons
?"

"Yes. Slightly."

"Miss Meadows, is there something you're not telling me?"

"No. I like the house, and I've no problems with the boy upstairs. I'll just keep the door closed, that's all." Alice Meadows was a consummate actress, and Ellen
Brouther
believed her, allowing her to sign the lease under the name of
Dorean
Oates. Alice could imagine what might happen if the
Reardons
learned who their tenant really was. They'd storm down from upstate and evict her personally.

After she left the realty office, she bought cooking utensils at the hardware store and groceries at the Acme, then drove back to the
Rankins
'. Bob was on duty, and Kay was just finishing the lunch dishes. "I found a place, Kay. Moving in today."

"What?" Kay turned from the sink, tea towel and glass in hand. "What do you mean you found a place?"

"I just can't mooch off you and Bob anymore. I don't know how long I'll be here, and—"

"Alice, are you crazy? You can't stay here in Merridale, not indefinitely. What about New York, your career?”

“I can pick it up again. That's no problem."

Kay set down the towel and glass, and stood directly in front of Alice. "What house did you rent?"

"There's no point in lying. The
Reardons
'."

"Oh, my God," Kay said quietly. "Did you see him?”

“Yes."

"Oh, Jesus. Alice, how can you . . . I mean, you shouldn't do this."

"We already talked about it, Kay. I've already done it."

"All right!" she cried. "You've seen him! Now isn't that enough? Alice, you are my friend and I
love
you. But I don't understand this."

"I don't either. But I will."

~*~

She didn't.

Ultimately she experienced, but she did not understand, not to the point where she could put it into words, or even conscious thoughts. The ease of it all astounded her. From the first evening when she walked into his room and sat there beside his bed and looked at him until his grotesqueness seemed natural, commonplace, it had been easy. She sat and watched and wept for the lost time, wept for his loss, wept for herself for going away when it would have been easier to stay.

She floated on her own tears and they bore her up so lovingly and with such kindness that she thought how foolish she'd been to live all those years trying to banish the memory when it would have been so simple to accept it, to return and drink it in.

She looked most often at his hand. Although his torso and face did not repel her, they were far from beautiful, while the hand was truly lovely. She wished that she could touch it, but when she tried, she felt nothing. Still, she frequently placed her hand under his, so that it looked as if they were holding hands once more.

Alice Meadows then drifted into an existence that bore traces of both vampirism and necrophilia. She was the
necrophiliac
, but it was Tim Reardon's pale, inconsequential wraith that drank the life blood from her. She seldom left his side, only to sleep a few hours each night and to buy food and cook it. She'd started out eating three meals a day, but a short time later that had shrunk to two, and finally to one, a small repast of a sandwich and perhaps a bowl of soup taken in the afternoon.

Alice, unlike Eddie Karl, did not talk to her dead lover. She only sat at his side, looking at his hand. She sat there for seven weeks, eating little, bathing seldom, answering the phone when Kay called to see how she was, and hanging up almost immediately. To those in Merridale who knew of her tenancy at the
Reardons
', she was an enigma, though most believed she remained inside for fear of coming out. No one knew she was Alice Meadows; no one had recognized her on her infrequent trips in and out of the house.

It was the nearing of Christmas that broke the spell that bound her. Pastor Craven had organized a hayride and carol sing for the Friday evening before Christmas. There had been a heavy snow the week before that the poorly manned Merridale street crews had not been able to thoroughly expunge from the roads, so the sound of horses' hooves and heavy wooden wheels outside was as soft and delicate as the new snow that had started only an hour before. It was a new, unaccustomed sound, and Alice turned from Tim's hand and listened.

On Christmas Night all Christians sing

To hear the news the angels bring

News of great joy, news of great mirth,

News of our merciful King's birth.

She stood and walked to the window, pushing back the curtain.

Then why should men on earth be so sad,

Since our Redeemer made us glad?

When from our sin He set us free,

All for to gain our liberty.

It was a moment with a dark magic in it; not a magic of the childhood religion she had learned and long ago dismissed, but a magic of time and place, certain words and sounds that lifted a thick veil from her face. It was a magic of snow and dark and candlelight, young voices pure as crystal, clean as the flakes that drifted onto the glass, melting in ecstasy at the touch of warmth.

All out of darkness we have light,

Which made the angels sing this night;

"Glory to God and peace to men,

Now and forevermore. Amen."