Lightfall (2 page)

“Me?” Tim scoffed, returning to his paper. “I never had the time myself. Too poor.”

And something fell into place: they'd come to the ground where they always fought. She eased the stack of dishes into the sink. She let the water run a bit, then turned and took the chair beside him. Pretending to read the news, which made no sense at all, she struggled to put the shards of him together.

He had no truck with the psyche whatsoever, perhaps because he suffered no extremes. He seemed to steer an equal course to the world at large. He never second-guessed himself. He slept from eleven to seven without a moment's stir. He was given to saying a man was marked by how he acted, not by how he behaved.

“What are you thinking?” he threw out suddenly, almost as if he knew she hadn't read a word.

“Nothing,” she said, for the thousandth time. “It's just … I don't suppose I could ever survive alone. On my own, I mean.”

“You don't have to,” Tim said firmly.

“Really? What if you died?”

“I won't.”

“But what if I got
lost?
” insisted Iris, looking away at her rack of spices, eighty bottles strong. “Say there's a war, and we end up separated.”

“Well,” Tim said, not a moment's pause, “I guess I'd have to come find you, wouldn't I?”

She didn't press it further. Tim was grinning playfully, as if he'd aced a set of tennis. He folded the paper neatly, tucked the sections together, and laid it down as good as new. Clearly, this was the usual way they went about it. He laughed off all her fears with fast talk, freeing the road ahead of all the masques of death she might imagine. Iris didn't doubt it used to give her comfort just to hear him.

He didn't seem to see that they were past laughing now. The nightmare bided its time, indifferent alike to terror and defiance. It had no other purpose but to make its kingdom ready. How could a man like Tim be blind to such immensity? She felt a surge of helpless anger, to think what a circle he wandered in. He had led them ever deeper into dreams. In the end, perhaps, the danger was greater here.

He pitched back now on the legs of his chair and reached around to the high buffet. He rooted among the papers strewn inch-deep along the top. The thin-ribbed chair creaked horribly. It rode so close to the breaking point that Iris clutched the table leg to keep from crying out. When she heard the dog start scratching at the door, it was too much. She made as if to plump her hair, meaning to stop her ears, when something made her listen close.

Surely that was the strangest note the dog had ever sounded: half like a whimper and half a howl. Iris could have sworn it was a warning.

Just then Tim found what he was looking for. He snatched it up and brought it forth with a thump on the table before him. Iris stared, and her heart went cold. Whatever was he doing with a Bible? She cast back over everything she'd said. She twined her feet on the crossbar under the chair. The bones along her spine went taut, as if she had to undergo an inquisition.

“I won't be home till nine,” he said heartily, standing up and lifting down his trenchcoat off a peg. “I've got a vestry meeting starts at six.”

He was some sort of priest, was he?

She doubled her guard as she watched him button his coat. It was obvious she'd been tricked. For all she knew he'd watched her since the moment she woke up. Had she answered something wrong? Did he mean to turn her in? She could no longer state with certainty the customs of the churches hereabouts. Could they put her to death for drawing a blank?

Out of nowhere a searing pain she could not fathom stropped across her shoulders, leaving welts like strips of fire. She gritted her teeth and would not wince. It was some kind of test. If he saw her flinch, he would doubtless call her godless. This was the law. She remembered now: there were wives discovered every day who had one foot in hell.

“You know what I'd really like to do?”

“What's that?” she said abstractedly as she picked the broken blossoms out of a pot of winter flowers.

“We'll go skiing,” Tim said with maddening cheer. “Say the week after Christmas—okay?”

Christmas, thought Iris suddenly, apropos of nothing at all. Just four days after the solstice. Four days after— “Fine,” she said, standing up to face him. Smiling, though the whip marks stung like salt.

She meant to fly upstairs and pack, without another word; she'd risked enough. She watched him gather up his book of dreams—black leather, tattooed with a thin gold cross—and tuck it in his pocket. She watched his shallow, laughing eyes and knew she had not betrayed a thing. By the time he got home, in the moonless dark, she would have cut loose. Some devil had sent this pain to keep her free.

“You better hurry,” Tim said as he turned to go. “You're late.”

For what? she wondered coolly, grabbing up the bread knife from the counter. She lifted it like a dagger above her head. She danced up close as he pulled the door wide, ready to face the morning. All her fears were gone. She hovered there like an angel and gashed at the glittering air—half a second late. The dog bowled by and threw Tim back, so he lost his footing and fell against her. The knife flew out of her hand and clattered against the counter. She watched it land by the loaf of bread.

Tim saw nothing.

He turned around as if to chase the dog, as if for him the ordinary ring of life sounded on the hour. All he had to do was catch one sight of Iris—dreamy-eyed and vivid, all his own, the country wife with her countless weathers. He breathed her in like morning air. He swept her up in his arms and carried her half across the kitchen, master of all the luck he lived by. Feet off the ground, her breath knocked out, Iris was near delirious to think that he was safe. She did not question the freaks of fate, or thank them. She merely twined her arms about his neck and mimicked his every laugh, as if the world were dumb and simple after all.

The dog barked brightly, prancing about their feet. The bowl of oranges gleamed like money. In the cupboard above the sink she saw a dozen jars of pickles, mincement, honey, plums, the weight of which stood ready to see them through to spring. Though everything in her shrank from him, though voices scored and choked her, Iris knew the truth now. All these forces, whatever they were, had thought to make her give him up beforehand, so she'd run from here unburdened by regret. They didn't want her sorrowing for Tim.

But she had won this one concession from the darkness: now they knew she would not kill for the sake of kingdoms. Heaven and hell did not engage her, either one. She would not go at all unless they let her believe in nothing whatsoever.

“Why not just stay home?” she murmured in his ear. “We could spend the day in bed.”

The pain tore up and down her like a madman in a cage.

“Don't tempt me,” Tim said happily, as he set her lightly back on earth.

Please help me, she thought. Don't go.

But when she moved to speak it, silence shivered through her. He was gone before she could make a sign—some gesture of withdrawal, so he would always know she'd stayed to say good-bye. If only she had some moment of the past to give him back. Yet the years, it seemed, had fallen off a tree. The snow had bedded them deep, like sheets on summer furniture. She stood at the back door watching Tim go off. The air was smoked with his breathing, all the way to the barn. He backed his black car out and drove away. He receded like the far horizon, sweeping her out to sea.

She must not linger. She must not care. She had to be on a plane at four o'clock. Except for this—her one tenacious deadline—the amnesia lay like cotton on her brain. As she reached a canvas suitcase down off the closet shelf, she understood she was not allowed to search out any memories. The details were all off limits, as well as the taking of souvenirs.

When she passed her desk in the dining room she felt as if a wall of fire had sprung up out of the carpet, holding her at bay. In the hall behind the stairs, where the books rose floor to ceiling, she found she couldn't recollect a single title. She picked up papers here and there—letters and lists and homework, strewn across the parlor. A blur had flared like a virus in her head till her finer vision was slightly off. The words wouldn't hold together. The simplest phrases didn't work anymore.

She realized she was meant to pack for rainy weather. The outer gear—knee-high boots and a yellow slicker—took up all the room. There was hardly space left over for a heavy sweater and sheepskin vest. No fancy clothes required. No personal effects. Yet even here she would not give up the past without a fight. She found that when she happened on the odds and ends of this life—came on them incidentally, without the will to know—there occurred a moment's break in the fog. As she went to get her checkbook out of a drawer beside the bed she uncovered a wrinkled calling card. She caught a quick glimpse as she turned away:
Timothy Ammons, Rector, St. Andrew's, Killingworth Common.
Episcopal, it looked like.

A few minutes later she stood in the bathroom, stocking a quilted bag with necessaries. Toothbrush, aspirin, soap, and a fistful of pills for any number of overnight conditions. She might have been planning a weekend jaunt. Turning to go, she noticed a pile of magazines on the ledge behind the toilet,
Vogue
on top. The mailing label on the cover was printed with her name:
Dr. Iris Ammons.

Doctor of what, she wondered. As she went to the bed to zip her suitcase, she cast about in her mind to figure what she had the power to heal. Her hands were numb; her aim was squeamish. She shied from sickness generally, as being too like death for comfort. Who'd ever pay good money to a doctor who was scared?

The dog stuck close to her heels when she left the house. He seemed to think she'd let him come along. She found his air of expectation vaguely threatening. The wagging tail, the panting tongue—what was he anyway, some kind of spaniel? He scratched at the door of the station wagon as she slipped inside and started it. He appeared to have some notion she would need him.

A wolf perhaps, or a red-eyed owl, but not this eunuch sentimental mutt. He clearly didn't have it in him to go for the vitals. As she wheeled around the drive and picked up speed, he trotted close to the car. He gave a playful yap, still sure she was only kidding. Just at the last, she gunned the engine and swerved—so he had to scramble squealing out of the path of the racing wheel.

She drove to town over roads she could have sworn she'd seen in photographs. She didn't know how she knew the way, but this was sure: she would never be able to retrace it. She skirted a grove of birches, crested a hill, and saw the village square spread out below. That's not it at all, she thought. Not what? She couldn't say. As she drove downhill, she passed beneath an arch of leafless elms, most of which were cut to the bone to halt the spread of blight. They stood like broken sentries, handing in their arms.

She turned in at a red-brick bank designed to look like a sweetshop. The young teller didn't bat an eye when she wrote out a check for fifteen hundred, cash. All he said was: “Getting an early start on Christmas, are you, Dr. Ammons?”

To which she replied she would have it in hundreds. She would not stop to small talk. The kid got very apologetic, counting out her bills. As if he'd gone too far, somehow, and feared she'd turn him in.

Across the square, outside the drugstore, Iris slipped into a phone booth to call in her reservation. “Where to?” the airline clerk asked patiently. “San Francisco,” said Iris like a dutiful child. Till she spoke the name, she had no clue where she was meant to go. She mulled it over as the airline man rang off to consult his computer. She'd been there once before, of course, when she was … twenty, twenty-five. One of her summers in college, perhaps. A flattish sort of travelogue ran dully in her mind. Did she have some friend there? Some connection?

She looked across the street to the village grocery. A portly man in a spotless apron pyramided his bins of fruit. Two old women picked through a burlap sack of onions. A small child, too young to go to school, toddled in the doorway. It wasn't clear who he belonged to, but he seemed to sense that nobody here was watching. He reached inside the grocer's open toolbox. He brought out a pair of steel-gray shears that would have cut a chicken up like paper. Iris stared with growing fury, but made no move to stop him. He pulled the scissors open. The blades were as long as his arms.

“The four o'clock is filled,” announced the tight-lipped clerk. “I have a space on the five-fifteen.”

“The five-fifteen is perfect,” Iris said. She felt a thrill of power to think there were systems out of their control. The forces still had limits. Remember that, she thought.

The little boy stood at the grocer's knee, holding up the slack-jawed shears. He only wished to be helpful. He did a sort of jig, to get the other's attention. The blade points grazed the belly of his parka.

“Just one way,” she told the clerk.

As she hung up the phone, the grocer turned and nearly stumbled. The child fell back, the shears beneath him. Iris cocked an ear for the cry and watched for the gout of blood. But it seemed the deadly drift of things had not caught on in the country towns, or not around these parts, at least. The blades fell flat, so he fell without harm. The grocer stooped and heaved the child up, laughing. No one took note of the shears at all. Now the two went barreling through the door to fetch the boy a chocolate bar. The elderly ladies clucked at the price of tangerines. In the grocery window, the hands on the clock met tight at noon, and all the shadows vanished.

Why was it, then, that Iris shook with horror, if all the danger was safely passed? Couldn't she see how solidly the bricks were mortared here? The circle of shops that bordered the square took care of the people's every need. The village streets connected each to each, so no one even had to turn around. In the center of the square, a polished granite obelisk rose out of a boxwood hedge. It bore the names of the town's war dead—four wars, one to a side—and showed they were ever mindful of the sacrifice that kept them safe. The wells were deep with water sweet as honey. The school won all the tournaments. The taxes were a song.