Fool's Journey (20 page)

           
He paused a moment before exiting and fixed her with a
hard stare. “You think I’ve met my match, don’t you? You think you’re off the
hook. For the moment perhaps. But one way or the other, I’ll see you writhe
beneath me. I’ll drown you in all that hair.”

XXV.

           
Deirdre slammed the door behind him, pulled the deadbolt,
then stormed through the apartment throwing the windows open. The wind was cold
and wet, but she didn’t care. She had to get rid of the stench.

           
 
In the kitchen,
she filled a pan with water and dumped in whole boxes of cinnamon, nutmeg,
allspice and set it to boil. Then she pulled a box of baking soda from the
cupboard and made her way to the living room. She tore the box open and
scattered its contents on the chair where Freemont Willard had sat. Long cigar
ashes sat like piles of gray dog manure on the carpet. Angrily, she emptied the
remainder of the box on them.

           
Everything in her life felt touched, defiled, permeated
with this other, horrible presence. Could she ever wash it away, paint over,
regain what had been hers? Not in the way it had been. Regardless of the
outcome, this place had been ruined for her. She’d have to search again to find
another. It could be done. That would be easier than finding that calm place at
her center that seemed beyond her grasp forever.

           
The telephone began to ring and she let it go. She had to
wash. She needed a long shower to steam away the insult to her spirit. She
turned on the faucet and set it for as hot as she could stand. Dropping her
clothes to the floor she stepped into the cascade of hot silver needles and let
it beat on her. The steam swirled around her mixing with the smell of cigar
that rose from her hair. It gagged her. She reached for a bottle of shampoo and
emptied it on her head. The light herbal scent was swallowed almost immediately
by the stronger cigar smoke and the combination rose up like the reek of damp
leaf rot.

           
She rinsed the soap away and tried again with a bar of
soap, squeezing the suds through the thick seaweed of her hair. When she
stepped from the shower, pink and perspiring, the chill air refreshing her,
Deirdre wrapped her head in a thick towel and threw on her robe. At least her
body felt clean.

           
She began to towel her hair dry, running her fingers
between the long strands. Years of hair, falling about her shoulders. It was a
history in a way, separating curl by curl in multiple versions of itself, a
mask of memory that fell before her eyes now. Her hair had always been so
important to everyone around her. Her father, certainly. Now Freemont. Long
curling masses of red hair—it was part of their definition of her. It was
beautiful, but it had never brought her joy. From the time her father had cut
it away, she'd let it grow. Its length represented distance in time but didn't
erase his action. If anything, it was a link to that horrible moment, a
palpable reminder she could have been rid of so easily.

           
She shook her head as she turned on the hair dryer and
began to run it through her hair. As it dried and fell in a thick curling mass,
she thought she could smell the cigar smoke again. Would it never go away? Or
was she just imagining it?

           
"This isn’t enough. I have to do something,"
she whispered. She flicked off the hair dryer and twined her fingers up through
her hair. She had to erase what had just happened. She had to disarm the
horrible poem this day had been.

           
 
She examined
herself in the mirror beneath the fluorescent light. Her face looked pale and
pinched, an alien lavender in the artificial light. Gathering her long hair in
both hands, she pulled it away from her face and studied the effect for a
moment. Then, she let her hair drop about her shoulders again.

           
"No, Freemont," she whispered. “I won't let
anyone have any more of me.”

           
From the drawer, she pulled a pair of scissors. Then, she
took a handful of hair in one hand, twisted it back, close to the scalp, and
cut. Took another, and cut. And cut. And cut.

           
A mere inch of hair remained when she was finished, a
close cap that waved about her head; she left just one long tendril trailing
over her shoulder, a reverse image of what had been taken earlier in the week.
A symbol.

           
Standing before the mirror when the job was done, turning
her head from side to side, she could see that her face seemed more angular
now, and her eyes more prominent and aware. She smiled in a thin, grim line,
knowing that she looked harder, too, and more powerful. From Lady Godiva to
Joan of Arc. Good.

           
With deliberate movements she gathered the mounds of
curling hair that had fallen into the sink and onto the floor, and piled them
into a paper bag. What to do now? Carry them out to the trash? No. Anyone could
find it there. The hair was hers. She wanted to build a bonfire and throw the
whole lot on it, watch it sizzle and shrink, exude the stink of years saved up
and gone bad. A cleansing ritual.

           
It would have to be later, though. For now, she rolled
the bag shut and carried it back through the dark series of rooms to her
bedroom. In the shadows, she shoved the bag under the bed. That was that, for
now. It would feel odd and lonely to go to bed without braiding her hair as she
had done every night for as long as she could remember. Rituals must change,
she knew, but this one was as embedded as stepping over the cracks in a
sidewalk. Her hand crept up to her head to feel the absence of heavy hair, just
as, when a child, she had probed with her tongue the space where a tooth had
fallen out.

           
Deirdre was about to sit on the bed when she had another
thought. Freemont had been in her bedroom. He’d said so. She pulled the cord on
the overhead light and saw the impression on the bedspread. Her journal sat
open on the bedside table. The penetration was complete. What else had she
expected?

           
No. She could not force herself to crawl between those
sheets tonight, perhaps not ever again. She yanked open a drawer and found a
sweatshirt with a hood, and pulled it on and covered her head, a token comfort
against the sense of cold exposure. Then she left the room and shut the door
behind her.

           
In the living room, the light was blinking on her
answering machine. It didn’t matter who it was. There was a limit to how much
pain and anger a person could feel before they became numb to all of it. What
use would avoidance be now? She clicked the playback button, expecting to hear
Freemont’s taunting voice.

           
Deirdre, this is
Rosa Ruiz
, the voice said instead.
I’m
sending Manny over to get you. You should sleep here tonight
.

           
Relief rushed through her soul to her knees. She could
run away. She went quickly to pack a small bag. She’d be waiting on the curb
when he got there.

XXVI.

           
 
Half an hour
earlier, Rosa Ruiz had walked into Manny’s room and said, “Go get Deirdre.
Something’s wrong.”

           
Manny hadn’t asked questions, just closed his book,
reached for his car keys and driven through the rain, fear churning in his
blood. When he pulled up to the curb he saw her lights go out and before he
could get to the stairs, she was locking the door behind her. Now, as she
turned to him under the porch light, hair cropped short, her eyes pinched, he
knew that Auntie Rosa had been right. Anger and a fierce protectiveness mingled
in his heart. Silently, he picked up her small bag, put his arm around her and
led her to the car.

           
Deirdre allowed Manny to gather her up and whisk her away
through the night. The steady hum of the wipers held her attention like a
soothing, hypnotic voice. She didn't want to think about things now. The
daylight would come soon enough. For all her detachment, she knew the need to
analyze, react and plan would plague her dreams and wake her in the morning.

           
At least she wasn't alone now. And nothing, she sensed,
would happen until she was alone again and vulnerable. She glanced at Manny's
profile in silhouette as they passed under streetlights. He looked strong,
determined and protective. Thank God for Mrs. Ruiz and her sixth sense. This
blessed feeling of security couldn't last long, but, for the moment, someone
else was taking care of her and it felt good.

           
They drove over the top of Queen Anne Hill, down the
steep, winding back slope, and finally across the Fremont Bridge into the
University District. Strange, she’d never thought of the bridge’s name until
this moment. Stranger yet, several years earlier, an artist had modeled an
enormous troll under the bridge. It was something of a tourist attraction now.
Manny’s car sailed across, however, without even the shadow of a gray arm
creeping up over the railings. The Ruiz magic was around her.

           
 
The familiar
places where she spent her days as a professor slipped by and faded away into the
rest of the night. In a few moments, Manny had driven past the environs of the
university and now was entering neighborhoods she was unfamiliar with. Most of
what she knew of Seattle was limited to what she had seen from the window of
the city bus on her daily route to and from classes. Except for her occasional
outings with Panda, her routine was a repetitive one. Little wonder anyone with
sufficient curiosity could learn the pattern of her comings and goings so
easily.

           
Manny turned off the main street and entered a pleasant
area of roomy bungalows with large front porches and manicured lawns. It was a
pocket of 1920's architecture, a distant yesterday preserved in the glow of
amber streetlights. One or two yards even boasted plaster gnomes, smiling self-consciously
as if aware of their role as middle-class cultural icons.

           
When they passed a red brick school, Manny slowed and
broke the silence at last. "That's where I learned English," he said.

           
She pictured him, a dark-eyed, intense boy, entering those
huge doors. "Good memories?" she asked.

           
He shrugged. "As good as anyone's memories are of
grade school. Some happiness, some pain. A lot of confusion."

           
"Same as adulthood," she commented. "Your
aunt's stayed in the neighborhood all these years?"

           
"Both of us have. She needs to stay in one place so
the people who need her can find her. I need to be there to help, so I live
there, too." He glanced over at her and read the questions she knew must
have registered on her face. "You'll see what I mean in a minute."

           
He eased the car to the curb, in front of a large pink
two-story. In the glow from the porch light, she could see well-tended
shrubbery and rose bushes pruned back for the winter. At the sound of the brake
being set, two cats, one ginger striped and the other black and white spotted,
sprang from the darkness and paced expectantly at the front door.

           
"This is it," he said. "You go on in.
Looks like Aunt Rosa's still up, and the cats think it's time for treats. I'll
grab your bag and follow you in a minute."

           
The door opened before Deirdre even reached the front
steps and Mrs. Ruiz bustled her inside. "Shhh!" she warned, nodding
at a sofa where two dark-haired children slept, foot to foot under a crocheted
afghan. "Let's go to the kitchen."

           
Deirdre glanced at the children curiously, then followed
her hostess through a hallway lined with boxes, their contents overflowing:
coats, scarves, and jeans. Little tennis shoes. Toys. She didn't know what she
had expected to find at Mrs. Ruiz' house—religious pictures, perhaps, lace
doilies on tidy tables, anything but this. It was like walking through a thrift
store warehouse.

           
The kitchen felt right, though. Bright red linoleum,
yellow cupboards with white chickens stenciled on them. It smelled like coffee
and cinnamon. Good, wholesome smells. She heard the front door open and close
again, and knew that Manny had come in now, too.

           
"You sit down a minute," Mrs. Ruiz said softly.
She placed a hand on Deirdre's head and let it rest there a moment before
ruffling the short curls. Deirdre felt a sense of calm wash over her, better
than sleep. “I think the haircut is good. A good change. Good to feel
different. I make you some special tea. It takes the dreams away—just lets you
sleep."

           
"Tea sounds good," she said, giving Mrs. Ruiz a
quick embrace. "How did you know I needed to get away?”