Invisible Ellen (25 page)

She spotted the errant ring on the coffee table just in front of her. Rupert was still fumbling and muttering as he slapped his pockets and turned in a circle, keenly embarrassed.

Almost without thinking, Ellen reached out, picked up the keys, and stood. “Here they are,” she said. Her voice came out soft, almost shaky. Rupert looked up and saw her across the big room. He started, blinked. For a moment Ellen thought she had made a terrible mistake and her hand flew up to resmooth the hair over her scarred face. But when the large, round man started ambling toward her, he
looked so lost and uncomfortable that Ellen wanted to pat him on the head and tell him it would all be okay, the way J.B. had done with Curtain Connie's faithful little dog. When he finally arrived on the other side of the coffee table, he looked into her eyes fleetingly, reddened, and looked down, as though it pained him for her to see him, and Ellen almost dropped the keys. She ran the thought through her spongy mushroom brain again. It pained him for
her
to see
him
.

“Thanks,” he mumbled. “I'm always losing stuff, sorry. Um, I'm Rupert.” It was more of an apology than an introduction. He took the keys, stuck them in his pocket, and offered his hand. His eyes never once strayed to her ravaged cheek but flicked again and again to her eyes, as if trying to make them stick there but finding himself lacking the bonding adhesive. It was clearly an effort for him to make any kind of contact at all, and Ellen saw no disgust or fear, only timidity. She was stunned.

“I'm Ellen,” she managed to whisper.

“Nice to meet you. Thanks,” he said shyly, his spots reddening to a deeper shade of crimson, and then spun and moved away with surprising alacrity, as though safety was on the other side of that door in the protective camouflage of a sheltering thicket.

She could relate.

R
upert was gone in twenty seconds. Neither Justice nor Temerity said anything. Ellen walked over to the kitchen and sat down on one of the high stools at the counter. After a moment of trying to solidify the thought, she said, “He didn't seem to mind my face.”

Justice drank his wine and appeared to be applying considerable effort to keep from grinning. “Lots of people, like Rupert, are too self-conscious about their own appearance to even notice anyone else's.” He sipped, the corners of his mouth twitched and he sipped again.

Temerity also gave the impression of trying to contain herself. She shifted from foot to foot and rubbed her hands together. She said, “Rupert is very gifted but very shy.” She tried to busy herself in the kitchen, but her curiosity was palpably animating her, and after a minute it burst out. “Did he see you before you spoke?” she asked in a torrent.

“I don't think so,” Ellen said.

“What made you decide to let him see you?” she pursued.

“Uh, I didn't really think about it. He just seemed like he needed help, I guess. So, I said, ‘Here they are.'”

Justice was watching her over his wineglass. “You want to know what I think?” he said.

“Not really,” Temerity said.

“Well, we don't always get what we want, do we?” he quipped back. “I think that the more Ellen realizes and uses her own strengths, the more visible she is. I think she's materializing.”

Ellen shuddered, then remembered the cashier who had said,
Have a nice day, ladies
, and wondered if it might be true. The idea felt like an assault to Ellen. It was one thing to speak to a shy individual in a safe place, another thing altogether to say
Ta-da
to the general public.

“I don't want that,” Ellen said quickly.

“Then you won't.” Justice shrugged. “I'm just saying.”

“Well, I'm saying this,” Ellen said, and the siblings both reacted slightly at the confidence in her voice. Ellen announced, “I'm buying dinner tonight.”

“Okay, thanks,” Temerity said.

But Justice pretended to be offended. Shaking his head, he said, “You are so bossy!”

Was she? It was, after all, the second time she had given a command. Ellen discovered that it was a relief to be decisive for a change.

After dinner, Temerity went to her room and Justice said he had some reading to do. He asked Ellen if she wanted him to set her up with the TV or a movie, but she said no. But she knew it would be hours before she could sleep again, and it had started to mist lightly outside with the promise of heavier precipitation. She was standing near one of the big windows that had been cracked open to let in the fresh air, and she breathed in the soft, exhilarating weather. Ellen had always loved the rain. She didn't understand why people rushed
through it, avoided it and ducked out of it, but she was glad. It left the sidewalks and the parks blissfully deserted, just for her.

“I think I'll go out for a while, actually,” Ellen said.

Justice squinted at her. “You're going to walk in the rain.”

She tilted her head and tried to justify what she assumed Justice would find a silly impulse. “I just like to. It feels like . . . I'm a part of it.”

He nodded. “That's what I like about it, blending right into the air and water around me.”

Her breath caught, surprised that he understood. “Exactly.” It was strange, almost threatening, to have someone claim as their own a sensation Ellen had thought of as so uniquely personal, but the unpleasant gust of possessive jealousy faded quickly away, dissolving into a warm, breezy sense of companionship.

Justice offered her a big black umbrella, checked to make sure she had her key, and told her to be careful. Ellen took all three suggestions, thinking this is what it must be like to have a big brother, or anyone, who worried about you. The responsibility of his concern made her uneasy because she wasn't used to accounting for anyone but herself. So she told him she wouldn't be too late and he said she'd better not be or she'd be grounded.

Ellen went down the stairs at a good clip and opened the heavy fire door into the alley. Her first deep breath of the moist air surprised her with its cloying sweetness, and then she realized that the heady smell of musky blossoms was not coming from outside but from under her huge army jacket. The perfume had marinated into her skin during her two-hour bath and had intensified as her body warmed from the walk down the stairs. When she paused it wafted about her like a cloth of fragrant garden swathed around her shoulders. The image of a scarf knit of roses made her giggle as she stepped out into the night.

She went along, admiring the way the light danced on the wet sidewalks and how beautiful the city looked washed clean and glimmering. She wandered to the little park where she had gone into the dog run with Runt and Temerity and sat on a bench, still dry, under a huge weeping willow. The sound of the rain on the branches was lush and full of some mystery that felt sacred to Ellen, who knew no religion except this, but she knew that it was true.

After a while, she was jogged by a niggling sensation that there was something she should do, or maybe had forgotten. The feeling wasn't specific, so she got up and started walking again. Letting her feet carry her where they wanted to go, not thinking about it, just feeling and following the vigorous currents of the shiny world around her.

So it seemed completely natural when she found herself outside Saint Vincent's Hospital, though she recognized with faint surprise that she had walked so far.

Through the glass front, she could see into the lobby. The guard's desk was deserted. On the counter, a printed sign was propped up that read
BACK IN FIVE MINUTES. DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT A PASS
.

Ellen glanced around. No one. She went in, hurried past the security desk and went up in the elevator. The halls were almost empty and only the stray nurse or doctor passed her with purposeful strides, absorbed in their concerns and responsibility. Having been there once before, Ellen found the room she was seeking without difficulty. She listened at the closed door for a moment but heard nothing, so very slowly she pushed it open a crack.

It was muted and dark. The only light came from the monitor and a silvery, filtered sheen from outside lights glowing through the wet glass. Ellen could make out a ghostly silhouette in front of the window. The person's back was to her, the hands raised and laid flat
against the glass and forehead pressed between them, as though willing her body to flow through it and escape.

Ellen pushed the door open only enough to slip through and advanced inside, closing it behind her. When she was a few feet in, she stood in reverent silence, recognizing the desperation that pervaded the small room.

Then the form at the window spoke softly. “You smell of Peterhof garden in spring.”

Ellen smiled in spite of being caught out. “Irena?” she asked.

The woman did not turn, but her silver-gray figure lowered her hands and pressed them against her face.

“Yes?”

“Are you doing okay?”

“I'm want for sleep, that is all. Is it time for medicine?” she asked, her voice exhausted and befuddled.

“I don't know. I'm not a nurse. I'm . . . I know you, from work. My name is Ellen.”

Irena turned now, but Ellen could make out nothing of her face except a gray featureless oval, deep with shadows, and Irena couldn't have seen much more of her. The announcement didn't seem to have any effect on Irena, or maybe, Ellen thought, she just didn't have the will left to care. So it was a shock when the Russian woman said the last thing she expected: “Yes. I know you.”

“You do?” Ellen was taken aback, but not as much as she thought she would be.

“Sit down, if you want.” Irena sank into the chair next to the crib. She reached in almost automatically and adjusted a blanket. “He is breathing okay now,” she said.

“That's good.” Ellen moved through the dimness to the other side of the raised cradle and looked in. Her eyes were adjusting to the
low light and she could make out the outline of tiny fists and the tubes that led under the blanket. Remembering what Irena had told the Crows, and wanting to understand the situation, Ellen asked, “Where is his, you know, real mother?”

Irena twitched slightly. “Dead,” she said quietly. She drew a sharp breath and added, “His father don't want complication.” She shivered slightly.

“Oh.” She didn't press Irena for details. It was obvious anyway. Curious of what bond might be between them, Ellen asked, “Do you love the baby?”

In the gloom, Irena sighed. “I don't want for him to be sick, but I don't want to be mother.” It was simple and honest, but not complete.

“And you can't give him up, because, well, because of what happened to his mother,” Ellen said, then went on, “and you can't let yourself love him, because he won't stay.”

“They never stay,” Irena said, her voice distant and detached.

“That's true,” Ellen said. “Or, it has been for us, hasn't it? I don't think it's that way for everyone.”

“Why did you come here?” Irena asked.

It was Ellen's turn to shrug. “I'm not sure. I guess I wanted to see how you're doing. I knew it was your night off too, and I thought you'd be here. I know you don't know me.”

“You don't like for anyone to know. You don't want to be seen, but some small times, I do. I understand, so I say nothing.”

“You see me?” Ellen asked.

“Sometimes, but then I forget you are there. You are not like the others. You always watch, so you know.”

Ellen wasn't sure what to make of that. “I don't know much,” she said with a deep breath, looking down at the crib and feeling very ignorant indeed.

“You know that I am . . . too much . . . uh . . . like a bird . . . in cage.”

“‘Trapped.'” Ellen fed her the word. “I was too,” she added. “I guess I still am. Maybe that's why I came tonight, to tell you that sometimes something can happen in a minute, and then everything is different.”

From the shadow in the chair came a long, ragged exhale. “Not for me,” Irena whispered. “One way only . . . to get away . . .” She trailed off, leaving the dark thought unspoken. Then she said, “I want, I try to hope, but . . . it is . . . too much pain.”

“I understand,” Ellen said. And she did, she had lived with so much anguish and so little hope her whole life that she really did know what it was to shut that off because the hurt was just too heavy, too dense to carry if she acknowledged its massive presence. She had survived her isolation by looking outside herself. But her advantage, ironically, had been that she was alone. She'd been able to slough off her tormentors by shutting them out. Irena did not have that option.

They sat in silence for a few moments while the drizzle pattered softly at the window. Then Irena said, “I don't want to go on.”

“I know,” Ellen said. She didn't plead with Irena not to end it. She didn't say she should hold on or believe that things would get better.

Because she didn't know if they would. And it wasn't for her to judge how much pain someone else could live with before they had to make it stop.

So she said nothing, only sat quietly and listened to the constant consolation of the rain. Much later, when she heard the deeper breathing of Irena's fitful sleep, she got quietly to her feet and went out, leaving only the lingering perfume of roses.