Horoscope: The Astrology Murders (8 page)

Michelle put her arms around her and hugged her tightly. She hadn’t realized how thin Kelly was; it made her seem more fragile than she appeared. “Why didn’t you tell us before?”

Kelly broke away from Michelle’s embrace and looked at her
and Mark. “I keep trying to convince myself I’m overreacting.” She saw the caring in her friends’ eyes and knew that if she was ready to, she could tell them not just about the phone call, but about the fear that was confining her to her home. She felt her chest tighten again and took another deep breath. “Ever since Julie left for college, and with Jeff already away, I’ve been alone in the house, except for Emma downstairs in her apartment …” She was still looking at her friends. She wanted to tell them. She really did. But she couldn’t. Instead, she took another breath and said: “I haven’t been myself.”

“Why don’t you come home with us tonight?” Michelle asked.

There it was. The question that always came up. Why don’t you leave your house like a normal person would? “No, I can’t. I mean I don’t need to. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“But what if he calls again?” Mark asked.

Kelly shook her head. “He won’t. That’s what I was trying to say. I’ve just been nervous lately, so everything puts me on edge.”

As if to prove her point, Kelly practically jumped in response to the sudden knock on the study door. It was Emma.

“Sorry to startle you, Kelly. I’m about to close up the kitchen before I take King for a walk. Anybody want anything?”

Kelly turned to Mark and Michelle. Her look told them to drop the subject they’d been discussing.

“No, thanks,” Mark responded.

Michelle smiled warmly at Emma. “It was a wonderful dinner, Emma. Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

As Emma left the doorway and headed toward the elevator that would take her downstairs, Kelly called after her, “See you in the morning, Emma.”

“See you in the morning,” Emma’s voice called back to her.

Mark glanced at his watch. “We have to go,” he said apologetically. “We promised the babysitter we’d be home fifteen minutes ago.”

Michelle turned to Kelly again. “You’re sure you won’t come home with us? It wouldn’t be any trouble—”

Kelly shook her head. “No. Really. It was probably just some drunk who didn’t like what I said in my column, looked up my office number, and called to spook me. I’ll probably never hear from him again.”

She couldn’t tell from their faces whether Michelle and Mark believed what she was saying; she certainly didn’t believe it herself. In an effort to convince them, she added, with more confidence than she felt, “I’ll be fine.”

F
IFTEEN MINUTES LATER
, K
ELLY
stood in the front doorway, her feet on the inside edge of the threshold, watching her friends walk down the steps of the brownstone toward the street. This was as far as she was able to go. She felt the anxiety rising within her and knew that if she tried to step out the door onto the front stoop, her mind and body would rebel in panic that she would die. Her toes just touching the portal, she pretended nothing was wrong, and she waved and did her best to smile when Michelle waved to her from the sidewalk.

“How about meeting for lunch on Wednesday?” Michelle offered. “I only have patients in the morning.”

Kelly shook her head again. “No, I … I’m sorry. Wednesday’s impossible.”

Michelle looked disappointed. “I’ll call you.”

Kelly saw that Mark had already gotten a cab to stop, and he was about to open the passenger door. She couldn’t wait for him and Michelle to get into the cab and go home; the stress of having to stand in the doorway without being able to move a millimeter farther outside was beginning to make her feel short of breath.

“If that man calls again,” Michelle was saying, “come to our place, okay? It doesn’t matter what time it is.”

Kelly nodded. “Okay.” She could feel her heart beating faster,
and she was relieved when Michelle finally turned away from her and got into the cab. Mark gave her a final wave before he started getting into the cab, too. She stepped back into the house and closed the door before the cab even pulled away. She locked the top and bottom locks on the door and started up the stairs. She was happy that she’d had her friends over, but now that they were gone, she was aware once again of how lonely she felt and how helpless to deal with the terror of the outside world that was keeping her in her home, more a prisoner there than her grandmother in her wheelchair had been. She wished she didn’t feel so ashamed of her condition, but she did, and even knowing that hiding it only contributed to her loneliness, she felt unable to do anything else. She couldn’t talk about it with Emma or Sarah; now she’d avoided the opportunity to talk about it with Michelle and Mark.

She walked up to the second floor. When she reached the landing, she stopped and looked toward Jeff’s and Julie’s bedrooms. Their doors were open, but the rooms inside were dark, emphasizing her children’s absence. The time they had all lived in the brownstone together had gone by so quickly. While it was happening, it seemed as if they would be children forever, but now they had embarked on their own lives and, except for school vacations, they might never live in the house with her again. She was still their mother, of course, but their relationship would change. It had already changed. They loved her, and she loved them, but they didn’t need her on a daily basis as they once had. They were becoming independent. She was pleased about that; it was part of what every parent wanted for her children. But she hadn’t realized until Julie had left for college how dependent she had become on at least one of them being there and needing her.

She went into Julie’s bedroom and flipped the light switch
beside the door. The room was all Julie. Julie had picked out the peach paint for the walls, the oak bedroom set that she had spotted in an antique store in upstate New York the summer that she turned fourteen, and the white lace curtains. Her dresser held the trophies she’d won on Dalton’s swimming team. Kelly’s eyes went to the teddy bear that had fallen off the bed onto the blue and peach hook rug. She picked it up and placed it where it belonged, sitting against the pillows on the bed. Kelly had given the chubby brown bear to Julie after her first frightening trip to the dentist to have a cavity filled. Julie had hugged the bear, and it had made her stop crying.

Kelly left Julie’s room and walked toward Jeff’s. His bedroom was at the front of the brownstone, with windows looking out onto 85th Street, and the street lamp threw a large swath of light across the room. This had been Kelly’s bedroom when she was a child, and when she’d moved back to the brownstone after her divorce, it had become her bedroom again. Jeff and Julie had been babies, and they’d shared the room that eventually became Julie’s. The bedroom Kelly had now, one floor above, had been her grandmother’s, and Kelly hadn’t moved into it until a year after her grandmother had died. Jeff’s windows looked out on the same trees that Kelly saw from her bedroom, but instead of just seeing the treetops, Jeff saw the trees’ strong trunks and their graceful leaf-covered branches, which would soon be bare. Kelly remembered seeing the same view so many nights and days and mornings when she was younger.

She stood at the window and thought about the seasons, the seasons of the year and the seasons of life. This was her work as an astrologer—to see clearly the relationships between the seasons as expressed in the movements of the planets and the lives that were affected by these inevitable movements. She looked
at Jeff’s varsity football letter that he’d pinned to his bulletin board and the other souvenirs he’d collected: a trophy he’d won for being the football team’s most outstanding player, an award that had made his father especially proud; a ceramic ashtray he’d made in eighth grade; a picture of the view from his window that he’d drawn with a pen and India ink; photos from his high school prom. Now he and Julie were in a new season of their lives.

She walked out of Jeff’s room to the staircase and up to the door that led to the third-floor landing. Even before she reached it, she heard King running up the stairs to join her. As she opened the door, he leaped up on her and licked her hand affectionately. She petted the thick white fur on his head and said, “Good boy, King. Did you enjoy your walk with Emma tonight?” As if to answer
yes
, he gave her a short, bright howl and looked up at her with his light blue eyes. “Good,” Kelly told him.

King followed her into the bedroom. She turned on the lamp on her bureau and saw Meow jump up onto her bed. She watched King pad over to his dog bed and lie down. As always, having King and Meow near her comforted her. She took off her dress and hung it in her closet; then she took off her necklace and earrings and placed them in the jewelry case in the top drawer of her bureau. In her bra and panties, she headed toward the bathroom, stepping into her slippers along the way. It was an unseasonably warm night, but she felt a shiver move through her body. She hadn’t thought about the disturbing phone call since she’d talked about it with Michelle and Mark, but now it was almost midnight, and she wondered if the man would call her again tonight.

There were seasons, and there were seasons—and her chart told her that in this season, with the movements of Pluto and Mars, she was in mortal danger. She knew that meant she had
to be cautious, but the question was, cautious about what? And cautious of whom?

She unhooked her bra and threw it in the hamper along with her panties. She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. She’d lost four or five pounds since August, but she looked slender, not skinny. Her breasts were still full and her waist was slim, which emphasized the womanly curve of her hips. At forty-one, her body looked much the same as it had when she and Jack had gotten married. But so much had happened since then, and feeling as she did now, she wondered if she would ever share herself with a man again.

She opened her jar of makeup remover, lifted out a piece of the moist cotton, and began taking off her makeup. When she finished, she went over to the bathtub and turned on the water for a bath. She was about to get in when she heard the ringing. She stood at the tub, shivering, and listened as the phone rang again. She turned off the water and forced herself to walk back into her bedroom, where the phone was ringing on her night table. Her naked skin all over her body contracted into goose bumps as she answered it. Bringing the phone to her ear, she found that she couldn’t speak.

After a moment, she heard her daughter’s voice. “Hi, Mom.”

Kelly almost laughed with relief. “Hello, darling. I was just thinking about you and Jeff.”

“When you didn’t answer right away, I thought maybe you were out on a hot date.”

There was something in the way Julie said this that made Kelly wonder if her daughter was just making conversation or probing. It was unlike Julie to be indirect, and it made Kelly uncomfortable.

“I was about to take a bath,” she said. “Michelle and Mark
were over for dinner. They just left.”

“I’m glad you had company. Say hi to them for me next time you see them.”

Kelly sat on the bed. “Is everything okay with you, honey?”

“More than okay,” Julie said, a smile in her voice now. “I started seeing this guy who lives down the hall. His name is Roger Green. He’s a junior and a history major. He’s been telling me about the English Renaissance and the problems with succession to the throne. He’s fascinating. And I wanted to thank you, Mom.”

Kelly began to relax again. “I’m glad you want to thank me, but for what?”

“For supporting me when I wasn’t sure if I should break up with Billy.”

Kelly thought back to last spring and remembered Julie staying up late one night to talk with her about why she wanted to break up with the boyfriend she’d gone out with since her sophomore year in high school. She remembered how clear her daughter was about feeling that ultimately she and Billy didn’t have enough in common and that she didn’t want to be tied to him when they went off to college.

“Oh, you were sure,” Kelly said. “You just needed me to tell you that you weren’t a bad person if you broke up with him.”

Julie laughed. She didn’t speak right away. When she did, she said, “Are you all right, Mom?”

Kelly felt herself shiver again. She pulled the cover up around her and spoke into the receiver with an equanimity that she hoped would cover her true feelings. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know,” Julie said. “You always used to go to the theater and out to dinner, but now every time I call, you’re home.”

Meow, who had already fallen asleep, had stirred when Kelly
first sat on the bed, and now she was awake and purring loudly. Kelly watched the fat red cat walk sleepily across the bed toward her; it helped her to keep the lightheartedness in her voice. “I’m busy, that’s all. I’ve got the column to write and clients to see, and—”

Before Kelly could continue, Julie interrupted her. “How about coming out to Los Angeles for a long weekend?” she asked enthusiastically.

Kelly felt her face grow hot; she hated lying, and now she had to lie again to her daughter. “I’d love to, honey, but I couldn’t. And you and Jeff will be home soon anyway. It’s practically Thanksgiving.”

“Thanksgiving is a month away! I’d love to show you around campus and introduce you to Roger and my other friends.”

Kelly didn’t say anything. Julie remained silent for a while, too. When Julie finally spoke, she was uncharacteristically quiet and serious. “I keep thinking about why you don’t go places anymore. It’s like you’re … I don’t know … afraid. You’re not afraid to go out of the house, are you, Mom?”

It was the question Kelly had been dreading. Now her daughter was asking her directly. It shouldn’t have surprised her that Julie would sense this; she and Julie were so close. She felt drops of perspiration forming on her forehead. Of all the people she didn’t want to talk to about her problem, the two she most wanted to spare any worry about it were Julie and Jeffrey.

She made herself laugh. “Of course not!” She didn’t know how much longer she could bear to be on the phone. “My goodness, darling, I’ve got to go! I just realized I left the water running in the tub and it’s going to overflow. I’m glad you called.”