Nightmare Child (7 page)

Rather than use the doorbell, she pounded thunderously—taking out some of her frustration—on the door. Jeff answered.

She was startled that he was already there. Even more startling was that he was fully dressed in blue cardigan sweater, white shirt, gray slacks, and comfy red-lined leather slippers.

But what did the images really mean?

Had such a thing—his fleeing the house naked, his diving into the brook—really taken place, or was it just her imagination?

"Hello, Diane. Kind of late for you to be out, isn't it? Everything all right?"

He spoke to her through the narrow crevice created by the chain.

"Me? Am I all right?" Diane said, knowing she sounded as if she were about to explode. "You're the one I'm concerned about!"

He offered a confused smile. "Diane, I'm fine. I've been in the basement working late on a campaign. Why would you worry about me?"

"But just a few minutes ago you were—"

She stopped, shaking her head.

"I was what, Diane? What were you going to say?"

She knew how foolish she would seem, telling him that he'd been wandering around in the bitter night naked, when obviously—when obviously he would tell her he'd been in the basement all that time working on a new campaign.

"Nothing," Diane said. "Nothing. I'm sorry I bothered you."

"I appreciate your concern."

"Right. Yes," Diane mumbled. "My concern."

Then she put her head down, started to push back into the freezing night for the last part of her journey back to her house.

I don't want to be this way. Help me.

Turning around, intending to ask Jeff if he had just said something, she found herself facing a closed door. Jeff hadn't said anything at all.

But words had imposed themselves distinctly on her mind. But whose words? And what had they meant?

Exhausted, Diane trudged the last yards back to her place. Neither a handsome law officer nor a steaming cup of tea awaited her.

Next morning, the headache started for Jeff
McCay
while he was fighting cross-town traffic on the expressway. Over the past few months, he had suffered headaches regularly and inexplicably. Before bed each night, he took three aspirin, and during the day he consumed as many as ten.

He was listening to a new rock song by Fleetwood Mac when the images began flashing before his eyes. Squeezing his head between his hands, Jeff's mind flashed and filled like a movie screen bombarded with Technicolor scenes of a nightmare…his nightmare:

Naked. Snow. Diving into the brook…a woman…Diane from next door… bending over him. An over-coat thrown over his shivering body. Pain. Fear. His own bed at last. Trembling from the cold even under the covers.

His first reaction was that he had suffered some kind of stroke and that his mind was playing dark tricks on him. Fighting the wheel to the left, he pulled off the macadam, letting cars whisk by him, their drivers straining curiously to see why a fellow yuppie was temporarily downed. Certainly, there couldn't be anything wrong with his BMW.

Shaking now, and suddenly covered with a pasty sweat, Jeff dropped the car back into gear and proceeded cautiously back onto the expressway. Just ahead, a yellow city truck dispensed sand, the expressway treacherous from last night's snow.

Last night's snow…

Diving head first into the brook…

The bruised, tender spot he'd found on the right side of his head this morning while shaving…

 
What was going on? Was his terrible loss of Brenda finally getting to him?

Or was it what he and Mindy had done to little Jenny this summer? Was his guilt finally taking its toll?

Fishtailing, a car behind him blaring its horn, Jeff made his uncertain way to the agency.

He snapped off the intercom, glanced around his office. Ray Culhane despised this particular office—"All those fruity paintings," as he liked to laugh, which translated to a Picasso, a Chagall, and a Monet print. The furnishings were inoffensive enough, traditional Eames lines and patterns, running to grays with complementary subdued blues. And a window that looked out over the frozen, frosty city as a fat, round, yellow sun beamed down on it.

There was a knock and then the door opened. No chance to say
Hello!
or
Come in
or
Up yours.
Just the knock and the virtual simultaneous opening of the door.

Today, Culhane was dressed in his oil-millionaire outfit, sleek western dress suit, string tie, white Stetson, and small unlit cigarillo to complete the picture. Ray Culhane liked to play dress-up just as much as any other eighty-year-old.

"Hope I'm not disturbing you," Culhane said, closing the door and sliding into a chair on the other side of the desk.

Not bothering to hide his irritation, Jeff said, "No, I was just trying to get some work done."

Culhane smiled unpleasantly. "You'd really like to throw me out that window, wouldn't you, kid?"

Jeff put his elbows on the messy desk and faced Culhane squarely. "What can I do for you?"

"You want the good news or bad news first?"

"How about the good news? I could use some."

"Well, the good news," Culhane said, fingering his Stetson, "is that I absolutely love that new ad campaign you boys came up with."

Eight complete campaigns later, they'd finally devised one that Ray Culhane liked. There had been some worry that they'd never come up with one that Culhane approved and that he would, uncle-in-law or not, take his business to some other agency.

"That is good news," Jeff said.

"I thought you'd like to hear that." Culhane angled his beefy body forward. "And here's something else you'll like to hear, son. We like that campaign so much we're going to double our spring budget."

"Really?"

"Really."

"That's fantastic."

"You boys hunkered down and delivered the goods. Now it's our turn to repay your hard work."

"I really appreciate this."

"I know you do, and that's why it's a pleasure to do business with you. You appreciate things, and that's hard to come by these days."

Jeff almost felt guilty over Ray
Culhane's
uncharacteristic burst of flattery. All the things he'd said and thought about the overbearing older man.

"Now the bad news," Culhane said.

"Will I need a cup of coffee?"

"Make it easy on yourself"

Jeff smiled, anxious, and picked up a stick of gum. "I guess this will do."

Culhane didn't smile. His lips were pressed together tightly and his eyes were narrowed and almost hostile.

"I'm ready," Jeff said, still trying to sound unconcerned about whatever bad news awaited him. "Go ahead."

"I want to know why my niece won't return any of her aunt's phone calls. Or mine, for that matter."

For the first time in all the years he'd known Culhane, Jeff saw real hurt in
Culhane's
eyes.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about," Jeff said.

"You don't?"

"No. Why wouldn't Mindy return Irene's phone calls?"

"That's what I'm asking you."

"Mindy and Irene are friends."

"Mindy sure doesn't act that way anymore. No matter what time of night or day Irene calls, she gets that damned answering machine. She always asks Mindy to call her back and Mindy never does. What the hell is going on over there, anyway?"

Naked. Snow. Crashing through the ice in the brook Diane throwing coat around his shoulders.

"Nothing special," Jeff said cautiously.

"Do you know we haven't seen Jenny once since she got back?"

"I'm sorry. It's just all the shock—the doctors say that seeing people right now is just too stressful for her."

"We don't even get one peek at her in nearly three months?"

Jeff sat back, steepled his fingers, tried to exude the air of a relaxed, forthright young man. "We're planning to invite you over for dinner."

"You are?"

"Yes," Jeff said. He'd never been much of a liar, which was why he'd given up copywriting and had become an account executive.

Ray
Curhane
managed to look pacified and irritated at the same time. "Then why the hell doesn't Mindy call Irene and tell her that?"

"I'll see that she does it tonight," Jeff said.

But Culhane wasn't finished. "Do you have any idea how much we love you people?"

Jeff blushed. This definitely wasn't the kind of conversation he expected to have with former football great Ray
Cuthane
. "I appreciate your concern."

"And everything's fine?"

The snow. The brook. The curious light in the upstairs hallway.

"Fine."

"No…marital trouble?"

"No."

"No…drug problem or…psychiatric problem?"

Jeff shook his head. "Everything's fine. Everything. Honestly."

Mindy's screams, hiding in the closet. Hearing the footsteps come closer, closer…

Culhane sat back and sighed. He looked relaxed now, fingering the hard brim of his Stetson, glancing around the office. "Still haven't gotten rid of all those fruity paintings, I see."

Jeff laughed, almost grateful for the more familiar, arrogant Culhane tone. "I guess I'll have to burn them someday, won't I?"

Culhane, standing up, laughed, too. "You wouldn't get any objections from me if you did." After setting his Stetson back on his head, cocked at a jaunty angle, Culhane put out his hand. Jeff took it. "You're like my own son, Jeff. I know how corny that sounds, but you are. And Mindy's like my own daughter. When my brother and his wife died…"
Culhane's
eyes dropped for the moment. He had never made his peace with his brother's accident. The slightest mention of that terrible day always plunged him into what appeared to be clinical melancholy. He raised his eyes again. "When my brother died, I vowed that the one thing I could do for him was to see that his family was raised properly—and that meant not only Mindy and Jenny, but when you came along, you too."

Jeff smiled. "We know that and we appreciate it, Ray." He had never called him "Ray" before.

"I apologize for my anger a few minutes ago."

"I understand. I would have been angry, too. I'll see to it that Mindy starts returning those phone calls." Culhane met Jeff's eyes squarely. "You sure everything's all right?"

The blood over Mindy's face. Hiding in the attic. The footsteps.

"Everything's just fine, Ray. Fine."

Jeff walked him to the door, clapped him on the shoulder, and then held the door for him as he went out.

Dropping back behind his desk, picking up his Cross pen so he could get back to work, Jeff realized suddenly that for the first time in all the years he'd known the man, Jeff actually felt good about knowing Ray Culhane.

He tried not to notice his headache or the terrible vivid images that kept cutting through his consciousness every few minutes.

Everything was fine, just as he'd told Ray.

Fine.

He had to remember that.

Had to.

Unless he jogged at noon, afternoons were generally lost to Jeff. Listless, sluggish, he generally found himself trying to sustain interest and energy by ingesting generous amounts of Snickers and Diet Pepsi.

This afternoon proved no different. Stranded at his desk, the sunny day having been replaced by a gray, oppressive one, Jeff worked through his papers with a mixture of anxiety and depression. Occasionally, the violent images still rent his mind; even more occasionally, he felt drained, as if he could lie right down on the floor and take a nap.

He was catching himself dozing when his intercom buzzed. He felt like a schoolboy who'd been caught sleeping through history class.

"Yes?"

"Your wife on line three."

"Oh. Thanks."

He paused a moment, staring at the phone, trying to remember why he felt so nervous about speaking with Mindy. As if he had been drunk last night, he had spent a fourth of this day trying to reconstruct memories that seemed impossible to connect.

Snow.

Naked.

Brook

Ice.

Crash.

Diane.

Overcoat.

And for some reason even more unfathomable than the murky memories that teased at him…for some reason, Mindy was upset with him…though he had no clue as to why.

He picked up.

She said, "You didn't do it."

"Mindy?"

"You didn't do it, you bastard. You promised and you didn't do it."

"What do you mean, I didn't do it? I don't even know what you're talking about."

"Oh. Right. Don't even know what I'm talking about. Right."