Boundaries (9 page)

She stands, goes to the window. The curtains are drawn. She reaches tentatively, hesitates, parts the curtain a little. Daylight shines on part of her face. She lets the curtain go, turns her head, looks at David. "Tell me what you saw there, David. On the other side."

He’s confused by the question. He doesn’t know where to begin, doesn’t know where she wants him to begin. He says nothing, tries to formulate an answer, and while he’s silent, Anne continues, "Is it a very
big
place? Is there lots of sky, David? Is there lots of
space
?"

He looks helplessly at her. He doesn’t know what to say.

She continues, in a rush, "I imagine that there is. I’ve
always
imagined that there is. Lots of wide open spaces. A wide sky and open spaces." She pauses only briefly. "My God, my God!"

David goes to her, embraces her. "I don’t know, Anne. It wasn’t . . . " He pauses. "I don’t remember," he lies. "I just don’t remember."

She pushes away from him, looks into his eyes, and he can tell that she knows he’s lying.

I
n Anne’s house, Jackson found his way to the third floor, where the martins were; he didn’t see them at first. But the martins saw him. After several minutes, one of the martins dive-bombed him, taking him by surprise. Jackson reared back and lashed out leadenly with one large paw. He couldn’t do much with it. His erstwhile owners had had him declawed early in his
kittenhood
, but the instinct was still very much alive. Indeed, Jackson spent much of his time kneading the carpets or the edges of doorways in Anne’s house, blissfully unaware that his claws were gone.

It was dusk when Jackson padded up to the third floor; this made him very cautious because, unlike most cats, his night vision was all but nonexistent. The night frightened him. Since he had come here, the night had brought him dim recollections of the room at the house of his former owner; there had been a bright nightlight in the room, and it had soothed him into sleep.

He squinted up at the martins. They were on a curtain rod high above him, at the top of a very tall window. They watched him squinting at them and, after a moment, the one that had dive-bombed him dive-bombed him again, again catching him by surprise, even though Jackson’s eyes had been trained on them all the while.

The martins had decided, in their canny, bird way, that Jackson was different from other cats they had tangled with. He was slower. There was not the aura of death about him that hung so heavily around most other cats. So, they had decided that Jackson could be a source of fun.

Jackson, in his dim way, knew that the birds were not afraid of him. But this was all right, because night was falling rapidly, and as it fell, his fear rose. There were no nightlights in this house (he had looked), so the next best thing was a spot in a clothes closet where the walls on two sides of him and his awareness of the all but closed door in front of him gave reassurance that he was well hidden. Because of his night blindness, Jackson was an agoraphobic after dusk. He needed the comfort of walls and closeness. In daylight, it was very different. In daylight there were
possibilities
; there was movement, there were boundaries, there was color.

Jackson turned and trotted from the room where the martins were tormenting him. He went to the top of the stairs and looked down, toward the second floor, but he saw very little, only rectangular blacks and grays.

Something raked along his back. He whirled. He saw a swiftly moving shadow flit away, toward the room he had just left. He gave the shadow a confused, gurgling meow, then, because the light was failing quickly now, made his way to the closet on the second floor, where he would spend the night. The martins followed him.

~ * ~

For David, it was not, now, a matter of sliding up through the tunnel, as if he were sliding down it on a stream of water. Now it was a struggle, a chore, and he felt a tug from behind; a rope might as well have been holding him, its strength not quite the match of his own. So he made progress, though in a slow and agonizing and dreamlike way.

Like a single bright star in the black fabric of the night, there was the mouth of the tunnel.

"Anne," he said, because it was the only name for him to rightfully say now.

"Anne."

He didn’t
hear
his words so much as believe that he said them. But there was reassurance in that. Proof of himself. Proof of where he was and what he was and
that
he was.

Somewhere beyond his sight or caring a body lay still. Something random, deep in its bioelectronics, had made it stir occasionally, and had made it mutter words, names. But none of it made any more real sense than did the
scratchings
of chickens which might form letters in the dust.

He was not aware of the movements of his body as he made his way toward the mouth of the tunnel. He told himself that it was up, that he was climbing to it, but this was no more true than it would have been to say that the future was above him. It was
beyond
him and telling himself that it was
up
, that it was
above
him, merely gave him parameters. Because he knew what the tug from behind was. It was the earth. Mortality. It was the body in the bed.

Just as he told himself, too, that he was wearing corduroy pants, white shirt, shoes. He was wearing nothing; nor was he naked. He formed for himself the image of his hands as he moved, the right and left inward curves of his shoes as he moved. He conjured up the sounds of his feet trudging over hard earth. But there was no sound except the whispers of his past.

He might have been floating, immersed. But that would have had temperature, and he would have felt a sense of motion, of being
inside
, as if in a womb.

He could only
approach, will
himself closer,
be
closer, higher, and, so, closer to that mouth. That opening.
Into. Out of
—

The earth. The body in the bed.

Past blindness into sight.

It could have been days or no time at all that he had been here. Only the body in the bed counted such things and it was beyond counting. It breathed. It perspired. It evacuated for its own sake. It had taken over its own care. It counted nothing. It was the
moment
that it lived. The
moment
. The inhale and the exhale but not the counting of it—the memory of it, and, so, the
naming
of it.

The body in the bed named nothing. It had no awareness of names; a wave does not call itself a wave, nor did the body in the bed have a name for itself.

It was the body in the bed that was, at
this moment
, an exhale, and, at
this moment
, an inhale.

~ * ~

Christian Grieg looked through the Plexiglas at the body of his friend. It was lying very still.

Christian asked, "Would you say that he’s close to death?"

David’s doctor answered, "No, sir. He’s in a coma. It’s not deep. We expect that he’ll come out of it soon." The man spoke with a calm and practiced reassurance.

Karen Duffy asked, her eyes on David, though she turned her gaze to the doctor halfway through her question, "How long has he been like this?"

"Eighteen hours. Approximately eighteen hours," the doctor answered.

"But that’s a very long time, isn’t it?" Karen asked.

The doctor didn’t answer at once. He seemed to be weighing his response. After several moments, he said, "Under some circumstances, yes. But not in his case. As I pointed out, the coma is very light. He has, in fact, shifted out of it momentarily. He’s even spoken to us."

"Spoken?" Christian asked.

"A name," the doctor said. "His sister’s name, I believe."

"Anne?" Christian asked.

The doctor nodded. "Yes. Anne. That’s his sister? The one who was murdered recently?”

“Yes," Christian said. "Anne."

"A tragedy," said the doctor.

I
t was easier now. The tug from behind was lighter, weaker, as if he were about to float.

And the mouth of the tunnel, the opening, was . . . nearer. In easy reach. He could reach for it, touch it.

He tried.

But the opening was no closer. It was at a distance. Above him,
beyond
him, as if it were a reflection in water. He reached for it again. He saw the image of his hand reaching and his hand was like white clay. Then there were veins on it, half moons, lines. It was a hand complete.

~ * ~

Christian Grieg said to Karen Duffy, "I always maintained that he was weak and this is proof of it."

David’s doctor had just waddled off and disappeared left down a corridor, and now there were soft bells announcing that visiting hours were at an end in the nearby intensive care maternity wing.

Karen said, "I don’t believe it; you resent him. I wouldn’t have thought that that was possible, Christian."

Christian shook his head. He scowled. "I don’t resent David. Why should I?"

Karen said, "I have no idea why, but it’s what I just saw in you."

Christian smiled. It was flat and resentful and there was no humor in his eyes; they were hard and accusing. "You’re
psychic
, Karen?" His smile vanished. "I didn’t know that."

Karen looked at him a moment without expression. She shook her head. "I’m sorry. Clearly I’ve touched a nerve—"

"That’s an accusation, Karen. What are you accusing me of?"

She shook her head. She was confused; this was so unlike him—baiting her. She said nothing.

Christian said, "But we’ll let it drop. I’m feeling magnanimous. My friend"—he nodded quickly to indicate the body in the bed—"is ill." He paused. "And I’m concerned."

~ * ~

It occurred to Detective Fred Collins that Anne Case had much the same effect on him that girls in high school—whom he had loved from afar and in vain—had once had; she intrigued him, she filled his mind and his senses. He imagined that he could
smell
her, not just in her house but around it, too, and then in his car as he drove off, and later, at his apartment, while he prepared for bed. As if she were lingering nearby,
watching
him, as if she found
him
intriguing and unapproachable.

It had been two weeks since her death and he had gone to her house three times, not including his initial visit, when he had seen her body, so many wounds in it, her face in peaceful repose. His logs noted each visit, and gave each visit a purpose—"Extension of on-scene investigation," one said—but he realized that his purpose was to know her from being where she had lived and died.

It was not the first time he had formed such an attachment, but it was the first time that it was so intense, and he fought it because it seemed morbid to him, and unproductive.

So he did not go into her house today. He looked at it from his car, looked at the white clapboards and green shutters, the red-tiled roof, the lawn that had grown tall. He looked past the yellow tape surrounding it; the tape read: POLICE LINE, DO NOT CROSS.

The house was sturdy and attractive; people would live in it, they would be told what had happened in it; at night they would pass through it from room to room, and they would imagine that there were shocking and remarkable things to see, if only they had the courage to look.

Fred Collins lingered with his gaze on the house for several minutes. His hand went to the car door handle once, and he gripped it as if he were ready to open it. But he stayed where he was. He was upset with himself, and confused; for being obsessed with a ghost; for creating for himself a woman to love out of the corpse of Anne Case and the leftovers of her life.