In the First Early Days of My Death (14 page)

The voices of the dead grew more persuasive. I didn't try to make out the words. I wasn't even sure if they were speaking English, but it didn't matter. Their tone said everything. It was seductive, persistent, promising. I wondered sometimes if I was supposed to answer. But I'd never known anyone who'd died, and I didn't know how to talk to them. What would I say?

Would I have to account for myself, the way Mrs. Keller always said I would? And what could I really say about my life, anyway? What had I accomplished? It occurred to me I'd barely skimmed the surface of the earth while I was there. I swept and the dust came back. I weeded and the weeds came back. I cooked dinners and people ate them. Even my marriage, which I'd thought meant an end to being alone, was done and undone in a twinkling. I'd loved Alika for one entire year and yet I scarcely knew him.

Gradually, Evelyn was starting to suspect that the freezer binding spell had failed. Even though Wendy was lying there as good as dead, none of the bad effects of her power were diminishing. If anything, Evelyn's troubles had only increased. Alika still paid no attention to her. When she called, he barely mumbled into the receiver at her, two or three words at a time, before he hung up. He always said he wanted to keep the line free. And Evelyn was developing a guilty conscience. Her remorse — or some kind of restless presence — hounded her at night and drove her from her bed to see what she could see through Alika's curtains. But instead of enjoying the fact that he was all alone at last, instead of revelling in her victory, Evelyn had begun to worry about him. She worried about herself, too. Why did she bother sneaking around like this? Alika didn't even know she was alive. One afternoon, on her way to work, she decided it was time to show herself in daylight.

There was Alika on the front steps, fiddling with some red cloth and sticks of wood.

“Hi,” Evelyn said.

He looked up briefly. “Hi, Evelyn.”

“What are you doing?”

“I'm fixing Wendy's kite,” he said.

“Oh. Wendy's better, then?”

“She will be.” He kept his head low, eyes averted, concentrating on a thin stick of balsa wood.

No matter what Evelyn said, Alika answered only in short syllables. He kept his focus on the kite. Here she was, right in front of him, free and available, his for the taking, and he couldn't even see her. Wendy was completely unavailable, thanks to Evelyn, but this had only made her more desirable. Alika was living inside a house chock full of Wendy's things. Evelyn's meagre offerings — a single stocking, a comb — didn't stand a chance against the arsenal of Wendy's worldly possessions, against her underwear, against that kite. Evelyn said goodbye as casually as she could and turned away, tears stinging her eyes.

The freezer binding spell had worked all right. It had worked too well. It had backfired, and now Alika was under Wendy's power more than ever before. Evelyn should have seen the risks. The spell wasn't specific enough. It prevented Wendy from doing Evelyn harm, but it also prevented her from doing anything else.

Now, Wendy would never nag Alika or neglect him or become unfaithful. She would never grow fat and boring, like the wives the firemen complained of. She wouldn't ever age. Alika would always remember her the way she was the day that Evelyn had cast the spell on her — young and healthy, and in love, surrounded by morning glory in full bloom.

Wendy had become immortal.

It was many years since Rosa had worked in a garden. Since the car accident, her back had been weak, prone to slipped disks and bouts of sciatica. But if she didn't do something soon, all of Wendy's work would be in vain. Wendy would be appalled, when she came home, to see her garden like this. Rosa had finally watered it yesterday, but water wasn't enough. Even if the rains came, the vegetation would rot. The lettuce and cabbage leaves would grow slimy and full of slugs. She fingered the tangle of yellow beans that had dried out and were now inedible. Yes, something needed to be done. She retrieved some tools from the shed and stood for a few minutes, trying to decide where to begin.

Rosa dragged a hoe across the weeds between the potatoes. The weeds were tall and growing strong. Hundreds of baby elm trees had sprouted since Wendy's fall, and their little stems were already tough and woody. Rosa had to use the trowel to dig them out. Her back began to ache.

“Alika! Look!” Noni stood at the kitchen door, pointing. Alika looked up and saw his mother in the garden, working.

“Mum, you'll hurt your back,” Noni called.

Rosa didn't answer. She waded through the crabgrass into the spreading tomato plants, picking tomatoes as she went, until her pail was full. She pulled up three enormous onions and placed them on top, careful not to bruise the delicate skin of the tomatoes, which were overripe. Then she forged her way through a veritable hedge of thistles into the cabbage patch. What had Wendy done to these plants to make them grow so large? Rosa remembered her mother's stock answer to any questions about where babies came from: “
Je t'ai trouvée en-dessous d'un chou
.” I found you under a cabbage. Well, Wendy's cabbages were easily big enough to conceal a baby. Rosa stooped and lifted a leaf, inspecting the underside for slugs. The leaf was clean and dry. No slugs. And no babies. But she did find, snug up against the stem of the cabbage, a 35-millimetre automatic camera, one of Alika's cameras. How did that get there? Rosa tucked it safely into her apron pocket. She wondered whether her son was losing his mind.

In the darkroom, Alika submerged a set of prints in a tray of developing fluid. Noni often liked to watch this process, and today she was curious about the results. When he'd opened the camera Rosa had found in the garden, he'd discovered a roll of film. He doubted it would be any good, but Rosa insisted he try to develop it. The work would be good for him, she said. It would keep him in practice for when he went back to the studio. She had lately decided that work would be good for all of them, especially work that they did together. She went to Noni's apartment and did laundry while Noni finished making the tangerine dress she'd neglected and caught up on the alterations. At Alika's house, Rosa assigned a number of tasks, washing and mending Wendy's clothing, fixing her kite. Tomorrow, they were all supposed to start canning the pumpkins. But creative work, Rosa said, was best of all. It would ease Alika's mind. As in most things these days, Rosa had been wrong about that. Alika was as gaunt and silent as ever.

Noni stood behind her brother and placed a hand on his shoulder as she watched the transformation in the developing tray. An image started to lift to the surface of the floating paper. At first, the patterns were arbitrary, stray threads of darkness gathering where the absence of light had brushed the surface of the film and disappeared. Then Noni could make out a set of teeth, a pair of eyes — a man's face. And there was a woman beside him.

“Who are these people?” she asked.

Alika shook his head. “I don't know,” he said. “But I'm going to find out.”

I'd never watched Alika in his darkroom before. I'd never seen him measuring chemicals, shaking containers so carefully, timing things. I knew he went into the darkroom and emerged with photographs, but I'd never thought about how he made it happen.

Alika had always seemed to me so mysteriously dense that I hadn't thought it possible to know him. Maybe I'd preferred not to know him. I'd been able to spend a lot of time imagining the murky depths of his being. When he stared blankly at the ceiling or the sky or the blades of grass, I'd thought of him as hopelessly impractical, sweetly lost without my guidance. But he wasn't lost. He was looking at things.

I remembered the stack of pictures he'd taken of those autumn leaves, their fragile veins, the sunlight bleeding through their golden skins like fire. That was what he'd seen, what he'd brought to light here in the darkness.

On the rare occasions when Alice left her work to go out, Felix had taken to reading her manuscript compulsively. He felt guilty about it, but he couldn't stop himself. Alice didn't end the story with the solving of the crime, or even with a brief account of what happened to the principal characters. She went on and on, telling the story of Felix's convalescence, her slow, deliberate courtship of him.