Smoke Ghost & Other Apparitions (41 page)

"Think you'd be up to it?" Vi asked her playfully, but with the distance again, her chuckle throaty. "Like your foster mother terrorized her husband, eh? But worse than that, of course."

"I'm not sure," Rose confessed flusteredly, her face relaxing. "All the archetypes can be pretty frightening sometimes, just to think about. But to actually be one..." She hesitated, then blurted out, "You know, Vi, I've sometimes imagined they really existed. The archetypes, I mean. Not just in my mind, but somehow outside where I might see and touch them."

"Why not?" Vi asked lazily yet soothingly, apparently still playful. "That's how everything exists – outside. Nothing's just in the mind and nowhere else. Witches are real people, aren't they? Then why not demons and other so-called spirits? Jesus was a real person, wasn't he? – but also God. Then why not a real Jungian shadow moving around, a real anima? And a real animus."

There was a sudden rushing, whirring sound and something struck one of the black casement windows with a jar and rattled the pane sharply. Rose started to clutch at Vi, then checked herself, her face twisted towards the night.

"Relax," Vi said with a gentle chuckle. "That was just a bird. A lost and mixed-up pigeon, probably."

"If it had been a pigeon, we'd have seen a flash of white. Did you?" Rose said rapidly, breathily. "Or a dove. They're white too. Some of them nest here, under the eaves."

"There are black pigeons – and black doves too, I suppose," Vi said. "Relax."

"Yes, and black hawks and eagles ... and other things. Besides, that was too heavy for a dove or pigeon."

Vi sat up a little, smiling with a mixture of amusement and tenderness, and slowly reached out a hand, saying, "A black eagle in Manhattan! What would it do, Rose? Fly in ominous circles over Wall Street?" but before her fingers quite touched Rose there came a sudden fluttering whistle which swiftly grew louder and shriller. Rose got up hurriedly and crossed to the kitchenette, her hands ahead of her and her eyes closed or rather almost closed, like a person walking into a dusty wind.

"What's the matter, Sis? Are you getting more lilac flashes?" Vi asked solicitously, watching her.

Rose lifted the steam-jetting kettle off the heating element. The whistling quickly died.

"Yes, I was – bright ones that hurt," she answered sharply and a shade defiantly, reaching down a brown jar of coffee crystals out of the cupboard. "They started green, then went through blue to violet as the pitch rose. With streaks of red – the pain."

"I'm truly sorry," Vi said. "That must be very strange and frightening, what you have – and also very painful, your?..."

"Synesthesia," Rose supplied. "How big a teaspoon do you take? Level, mounded, or heaping?"

"It doesn't matter–" Vi began. Then, "No – heaping."

Rose brought the two steaming mugs over and set them on the table. "Watch out," she said rather huffily, "they're hot." Suddenly her eyes flashed and she grinned like a naughty girl. "Suppose I put a little brandy in them," she whispered loudly to Vi. "There's some left from a bottle I bought for Christmas."

"I think that would be fun," Vi told her.

Rose's eyes got bigger still with the mischief of it as she fetched and added the brandy, a pony apiece and then a little more at Vi's suggestion. They took a burning, aromatic, eye-moistening swallow together, looking at each other, and Rose confessed, "I got a little mad when I got scared and you just told me to relax. But now I'm feeling wonderful."

"And so am I," Vi assured her. "What is that mournful night sound?" she asked, eyeing the windows.

"Oh, that's the doves," Rose said. "Whatever it was must have waked them up. They nest under the eaves, as I told you, and this apartment is right under them."

"I'd think you'd be afraid of someone getting in that way," Vi suggested, serious eyed. "You know, down off the road, around the eaves, and in through the windows. Though he'd have to have a good head for climbing."

"Don't think I'm not," Rose assured her aggressively. "But they've each got a hook and also a bolt bar which can't either be unfastened from the outside when I leave them partly open in warm weather like this."

"That sounds completely safe," Vi said neutrally, drinking her coffee royale.

Rose took a big swallow of hers and said, "I know you think I'm silly, Vi, for being so scared and fussing so about my locks and bolts. But really, Vi, if anyone ever got in and raped me, I know I'd die, or else go crazy."

"You think so now," Vi said softly and bitterly, eyeing the floor. "Your locks and bolts – I think they're sensible."

"What do you mean?" Rose demanded. Then her eyebrows went up. "You mean that you?..."

Vi nodded.

"Oh, you poor thing," Rose gasped. "Oh my God, how horrible, how terribly horrible. How did it happen, Vi? Did someone con his way into your place, get you to take off the chain? Or were you out alone late at night on some dark street? Or–"

Vi shook her head. "I was home in my own bed, being a good girl," she said with a sour smile and wrinkled nostrils. "I told you that my foster father had a lech for me–"

"Oh, my God," Rose breathed.

"Well, one night when he was drunk – and after getting my foster mother dead drunk, of course – he just came into my bedroom and satisfied it. Afterwards–"

"Didn't you try to fight him off, Vi? Were you so terrified that–?"

"Of course I did and in every dirty way I knew," Vi said harshly, "but they weren't dirty enough and he was stronger."

"Oh my God, Vi, did it hurt?"

"It hurt like hell," Vi said savagely. "But even that wasn't as bad as the way he slobbered over me afterwards, telling me how sorry he was. There wasn't even much blood. No, the worst thing was being touched – and not only touched, but invaded – where only you have ever touched yourself before, and then only very gently, very tentatively, almost reverently, a special thing, just like (I suppose) a man touches his–"

"I know, I know," Rose groaned, rocking back and forth. "I've dreamed of it."

"Anywhere else, almost, they have to cut you with a knife to get inside you," Vi said viciously. "But there–"

"I know, I know," Rose echoed herself agonizedly. "I
hate
to be touched there, even by cloth."

Vi caught her breath, drank the last of her brandy and coffee, and said in another voice, a more open and even roughly humorous one, "I'll give the gays this. At least they know what it's like to be raped."

"How do you mean?" Rose asked, gulping the last of hers.

"Oh, come on, Rose," Vi said impatiently, but with a little grin, "you've got the books right out there, dear identical: the Masters and Johnson,
The Joys of Sex
, even
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
– you know, that's the only other copy I've ever seen of that oldy besides my own."

"Yes, I do know how you mean," Rose admitted, looking away, "but really, it's all so horrible and disgusting and frightening. Oh, I don't see how you managed to stand it, Vi."

"I wasn't asked whether I wanted to," the other said shortly.

Rose said, "At least you got back at that horrible beast a little by telling your foster mother?"

Vi replied cynically, "She'd have been the last one to believe he would ever have had to rape me. She had her own evaluation of Sweet Fourteen.

"Now, come on, Rose, it's not so terrible," Vi continued, "or rather, yes, it was just that terrible, but it's all over now. It happened long – well, fairly long ago. As for the gays, they're mostly quite charming, or at least funny. The make-up boy I mentioned has breasts, for instance – cute little silicone ones. Of course the nipples are a little small."

"I don't believe that," Rose protested, clapping her fingers to her mouth to smother a nervous giggle.

"True, just the same," Vi settled back and her face got a tight little smile. "Besides," she said, breathing deeply, "I got my own back at my loving father, let me tell you, in my own sweet time and way. After–"

She broke off because there was a repetition of the whirring, rushing sound and again the black pane was jarred and rattled with no flash of white, as if a ragged portion of the night had launched itself down at it, only this time the sounds kept up – there was a frantic beating and loud rapid brushing at the pane and then a series of higher and higher pitched, skirling, inhuman cries.

And this time Rose clutched at once at Vi through the bright magenta flashes that had invaded her eyes.

Her twin clasped her protectively, saying, "There, there, Rose, it's all right. It's just a bird again, only this time it's somehow caught itself. My God, your heart is pounding. I'm looking over your shoulder straight at the windows and I can't see anything through them or in the space between them, except maybe a sort of black flashing. There, there, I'd better go and try to release the thing. No, let me go, Rose, it's the only way we can make the noise stop."

Terrified, palms pressed to her ears, Rose watched through slitted, lash-blurred eyes and purple floods as Vi went to the windows and stood before them, a slender blue figure against the big black square they made, turning sideways to thrust a shoulder through the narrow space between them and all that arm and her cropped blonde head and her other arm to the elbow. Between the torturing, skirling cries, which rose in volume, and the beating, which became still more frantic, she heard Vi give a sharp exclamation, then both cries and beatings were receding rapidly, the pitch of the former dropping, and then the sounds were cut off completely, almost abruptly.

In the shocking though very welcome silence that followed, Vi withdrew her upper body from the night and turned around and said, returning towards Rose, "It was a large black bird I didn't know, some kind of predatory hawk, I'd think, a
raptor
, though certainly not an eagle, perhaps a crow or raven. Its wing was caught under one of the bolt bars. While I was loosing it, it struck me twice with its beak, but–" (She lifted her hand towards her eyes and rotated it)

" – it didn't break the skin."

All this while Rose was staring at her as if hypnotized and without moving a muscle except that her hands dropped slowly away from her ears.

Vi seated herself on the day bed close beside her, between her and the window, and put her arms around the frozen form and pressed her chest against hers firmly and, turning her face sideways so their noses missed, kissed her upon the lips.

A distant foghorn sounded, a car turned a corner far below, a dove mourned, and then time began to move again.

Vi reached for the brandy bottle and the miniature goblet of the pony glass, saying, "After that fright you need another drink."

Rose said, as if still half in a dream, "That was the first time that we ever kissed. Identical twin sisters. Imagine that."

Vi said companionably, but with her voice a shade brisk, like that of a nurse, "Here, drink this down. You need it straight. No, all at once."

Rose complied, shuddering.

"That's a good girl," Vi said and kissed her quickly on the corner of the mouth.

After a moment Rose returned the kiss in the same way.

Vi left one arm lightly beside her twin's waist. Her other hand lay against Rose's knee. She asked, "During that ruckus did you have your synesthesia?"

"Yes, very badly," Rose replied, wincing in recollection. "I never had it quite as bad, in fact."

"What color were the lights this time?"

"Violet. I never had so much violet before."

"Perhaps I am responsible for that," Vi joked with a chuckle. "My name, you know."

"Silly," Rose said indulgently, giving the hand that lay against her knee an affectionate squeeze. Then, more seriously, though still a shade dreamily, "I wonder if those were our real names from the start. Could be, you know. They're both flower names."

"Maybe," Vi said, "or maybe not. Maybe our real mother never had time to give us any."

"Do you suppose we're illegitimate?" Rose asked solemnly.

"I'd think so," Vi replied. "That's where most foster children come from."

"But maybe they were married," Rose said happily, her elbow pressing Vi's hand against her waist. "Maybe our father died early in the Vietnam War."

Vi said, frowning a little, "There's one thing bothers me about your synesthesia."

"What's that?"

"That I don't have a trace of it. Which is strange, seeing we have so many other twin identicalities."

Rose said consolingly, "You probably have some other equally distinguishing peculiarity or ability or trait to match my colored sounds thing. There's your ballet dancing – how about that? You're terribly graceful and strong and competent-fingered ... and brave too," she added, looking over Vi's shoulder at the black windows and remembering the slim blue fingers fearlessly thrust between them. "By comparison, I'm clumsy as a cow."

"No, a big floppy dog," Vi decided, running her fingers lazily into the pageboy bob and twice pushing the side of Rose's head – who sketched a bowwow comically and said, "That's right. And you're a kitty cat."

"But dancing and finger dexterity and all that are things that are learned," Vi said more seriously. "You could develop them too if you practiced and exercised instead of sitting inside all day making your indexes – and reading all night." She nodded towards the bookcase. "They're not like your synesthesia," she finished regretfully.

"You think that's so great?" Rose challenged lightly. "You should try it some time. But maybe you've got a mix-up on some other senses." She pulled away a moment to gesture at the thickest book on the table between the collie book ends –
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
. "I remember the case of a girl there who heard odors as sounds. Or was it sounds as odors? I forget. Or maybe you've got absolute pitch or are double jointed or–"

"Oh, if you're using
that
book, anything goes," Vi asserted happily. "Maybe I've got supernumerary nipples, or a little hairless tail, like that noble European family – I haven't looked today. Or six fingers on each hand – no, five, I just counted. And then there was that woman who had a clitoris four inches long when stimulated."