Lullaby for the Rain Girl (33 page)

She fell silent. It swirled in my mind for some time.

“A catastrophe,” I said at last, “like the mother’s death?”

“Not usually. Death usually takes a long time. Longer than people realize.”

“But sometimes it doesn’t.”

“No, sometimes not.”

“Like if a woman were suddenly obliterated by...by an explosion or something.”

“Something like that.”

“Or...or a fall. From a high place.”

“Something like that. Yeah.”

“The instant of impact.”

“Yeah.”

“If it had been a millionth of a second before or after...”

“Either it would have been a person who died immediately or it just would have been a bunch of cells that never really lived. That never had a soul.”

“But in that millionth of a second...while the—the soul-catcher is open...”

“Yeah.”

I looked at her for a long time. She held my gaze steadily.

“My God,” I said finally. I tried to absorb what she’d said, the enormity of it, but I couldn’t. Not really. “Then where...where have you—you
been?
All these...?”

“Years? I’ve been around. I’ve been near you the whole time.”

“But I’ve never...not until you showed up at school...”

“No. Not like that. Someone like me—we’re not exactly alive and not exactly dead. We’re frozen. Caught. In between. The living can’t see us. Neither can the dead. We’re lost, that’s all. Wandering.” She paused, then looked at her hands again. “I can remember everything, though. I can remember suddenly...suddenly
being,
there on the sidewalk, with Rachel—Mom—there next to me. Her eyes were open, but she was gone. She’d landed...”

“Face down.” It was strange how easy it was for me to say it.

“Face down,” she said quietly. “Her face was...”

“Yes. I know. I saw it.”

“When you came down.”

“When I came down.”

“That was the first time I ever saw you.”

“But...” I tried to formulate my question in words. “What—
were
you? A fetus? A baby? A...”

“I wasn’t any
thing,
Ben. I just
was.”

“You were—”

“I couldn’t think. I didn’t have any language. I was just a mass of impressions, that’s all. But I knew a few things. I knew the body on the cement was my mother. I knew you were my father.”

“How? How did you know?”

She frowned, knitted her fingers. “How does anybody know anything? I don’t know. I just
knew.”

“So you...?”

“I stayed with you. Nearby. Not always in the same room, but sometimes.”

I smiled slightly, puzzled. “A guardian angel?”

“No, not at all. I didn’t have any power to protect you. I still don’t. That’s not how...
people
like me are. But we’re not exactly people. But I stayed near, though.”

“Watching me?” Absurdly, I felt embarrassed: thought of the endless liaisons I’d enjoyed in the years after Rachel, thought of the humiliations, the paid girls (like Tracy, the one I’d had here only a week or two before), the...

“Not watching. It’s hard to explain. Just...being. Near. Most of the time I didn’t actually know what you were doing. You know,
doing.
Like right now you’re sitting on the sofa, drinking tea. I wouldn’t have known that. It’s more like...” She sighed. “It’s hard to explain. It’s more like
sensing
you. Your presence. I stayed near in that way. It...” She shrugged. “It made me feel less lonely.”

“How did you—how did you learn things? Reading, writing?”

“It’s easy to learn things when you’ve got nothing else to do.”

“So you
are
a ghost.”

“A ghost is the spirit of somebody dead who once lived. I never lived. And so I never died.”

“You’re...in between.”

“In between.”

I sat for a long time, looking at her, this impossible girl, my
daughter.

“What about—Rachel? Your...mother? Have you ever...seen...?”

“Seen her? No. If she were to show up, she’d be a ghost.” She smiled. “That’s a different department, you might say.”

“Are there ghosts?”

She shook her head. “I don’t really know.”

We sat in silence for a very long time. I listened to the elevator, to the distant traffic.

“Want some more tea?” she asked finally, gesturing at my empty mug.

I chuckled. Then I laughed aloud.

“What?” she said, grinning curiously. “What’s funny?”

“I—” My heart was racing, but in an inexplicably happy way, a
good
way. “Honey, you drop all this about—about Rachel and...and soul-catchers and...being with me ever since and...and you ask me if I want more
tea?”
I chuckled again, shook my head.

“Well? Do you?”

I looked at her, smiled. “As a matter of fact, that would be nice.”

She jumped up from the sofa and, taking our mugs, went to the kitchen. I heard her rustling around with the tea kettle. The scene suddenly seemed so ordinary, so pleasantly mundane, so prosaically
real.
At last I got up and followed her, stood watching her in the kitchen as she fussed with the tea bags.

“So you haven’t been...watching me, exactly. This whole time.”

She shook her head. “I told you, that’s not how it works.” She grinned. “Don’t worry. Your sex life is your own business.”

I laughed and felt myself redden. “Thank God for that.” I thought. “But the tape—Rachel’s and my tape...that’s when...”

“When you made me. Or what would become me. Whatever I am.”

“My God. A child witnessing her own conception.”

“Not a child, exactly. But yeah.”

She stood profile to me, staring at the mugs with the waiting tea bags. The water roiled in the kettle.

“So...” I struggled again for words. “So...now you’re here.”

“Now I’m here.”

“But how? If you were just this...floating...I don’t know, spirit, or whatever...You weren’t really in this world...No one could see you, right?”

“No one could see me.”

“Then why can I see you now? You’re
here.
You’re...” I reached out, touched her shoulder. “I can feel you. You’re real. Why the—the change? What brought you—
here?”

She was silent for a moment. She didn’t look at me. Then she said, quietly: “You did.”

“Me? How?”

Finally she looked up. “You needed me.”

“I...? Honey, I didn’t know you existed...”

“That doesn’t mean you didn’t need me.”

“I...” I scowled, trying to think it out. We stood there for a time.

“People like me,” she said, her voice low, “or, not people, but—whatever we are—we’re not ghosts. We’re not spirits. We’re...we’re fragments. Partials. Incompletions.”

“That doesn’t tell me...how you came here.” My throat was tight. “What I had to do with it.”

“You called to me. From a deep place. Deep calling to deep. Need calling to need. You didn’t know it was me you were looking for. But when you found me you brought me here.”

“Without knowing it?”

“Part of you knew. Didn’t you?”

And I realized in that moment that she was right. Part of me
had
known, from the first day I ever saw her. Known that we were connected. I had no way of expressing or understanding it. But I’d realized it somewhere, yes, deep within myself. Deep calling to deep....

“But how can I have that power?” I asked. “To conjure...to call...”

“It’s not a power,” she said quietly. “It’s more like a lack of power. Weakness. Despair. Need.”

“And you...decided to come...?”

“I just came. There was no deciding.”

“Your...your face, your body...the way you look...?”

“I have your DNA, you know. And Rachel’s. When I came I took on the appearance I would have had, if...”

“If Rachel hadn’t...”

“Yes. Or most of it, anyway. My appearance. I haven’t actually lived for sixteen years in this world, so I don’t have the lines and the...the
look
of someone who has. I seem sort of—unfinished.”

“You look beautiful.”

She grinned then, suddenly, hugely. “Thank you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before, though? When we first met? In my classroom?”

“Come on. How would you have reacted? You would’ve thought I was a nut. I had to be careful. You weren’t ready.”

“But...you said—before...‘need calling to need’...”

“Uh-huh.”

“What do
you
need, honey?”

“I need you,” she said, “to love me.”

“That’s all?”

“What else is there?”

“Just—to love you?”

“If you can love me—really love me—I might be able to become complete.”

“Complete...?”

“I might be able to become a—person. A real person. I don’t know if it’s possible. I think it might be. Maybe.”

“If I love you?”

“I was never born,” she said. “I never died. My mother’s gone.” She stepped close, looked up at me. “You’re my dad. You’re all I have. I don’t have anything else.”

Involuntarily I took a step back, frightened at the immensity of it.

She stood with her hands at her sides, looking years younger than she was, yet more defined, more specific than before. She looked, good God, like me. A small female incarnation of me.

“Dad? Please—love me,” she said.

Something cracked in me then. Something shattered. Hot tears sprang to my eyes and I stepped to her again, my impossible girl. I wrapped my arms around her and pressed her head to my chest, feeling her hair between my fingers. I felt her arms tightly around me. She was crying. I was crying.

“Dad,” she whispered. “Oh, Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad.”

“My daughter.” I choked out the words somehow. “My daughter. My little girl.”

At last the tea kettle whistled and we pulled away from each other slowly. She smiled, wiped her face, laughed slightly, turned and poured the water for tea. We stood there for a long time.

“What,” I said, using a paper napkin to dab at my eyes, “what’s your name? My God, I don’t know your name!”

“I don’t have a name,” she said.

“Because you were never—never born?”

“Because I was never born.”

“What—what do I—call you? I can’t just call you the Rain Girl. I can’t go up to friends and say, ‘Hey, I’d like you to meet my daughter, the Rain Girl.’” I chuckled. “It would sound stupid.”

“You’re my dad,” she said. “You have to name me.”

“I...I don’t know how. I don’t know...know
you.”

“You know me better than anyone else on earth.”

I thought about it. I blew my nose into the napkin and threw it into the waste basket. “I guess I do, at that.”

“Any name is fine,” she said. “Any name that comes from you.”

“I...” I looked at her, noticed again her cheekbones, lips, chin—the parts of her that didn’t come from me. “When I look at you, honey, I—I think of your mother. You look a bit like her, you know.”

“Mm-hm.”

“But I can’t—can’t call you
Rachel.
It would be too...too weird.”

“Hm.” She seemed to think about it as she removed the tea bags, tossing them in the waste basket, and sweetened each mug. “How about ‘Rae’? For short.”

“ Rae.” I let it play on my tongue. “Rae. I like it.”

“Short for Rachel. You don’t have to call me Rachel. Just Rae.”

“Rae.” I nodded.

“Do you want me to have a middle name?”

“You should.” I thought for a moment. “Grace.”

“Grace.” She pondered it. “Rachel Grace Fall. I like it.”

“Grace was my mother’s name.” For an instant I thought of her: her hands, her skirt swaying as she turned a corner, walking away from me....

“Oh.” She looked at me. “Wow.” Then: “I love it, Dad. Really. I love my name. It’s perfect.”

I sat at the kitchen table. She joined me. “This is an—an unreal conversation,” I said.

“It’s all real, Dad.”

“I know it is.” I studied her. “How do I—explain you? To people?”

She shrugged. “I was born in California. My mother’s dead. You never knew I existed. I was raised by relatives. Or in an orphanage. Finally I made contact with you. We decided that I’d come to live here.” She grinned. “That’s not
too
far from the truth.”