Strangers (22 page)

The corner guest suite—bedroom, reading alcove, and bath—in which Ginger had been settled for the past ten days, was simpler than many chambers in Baywatch, and there she was almost as comfortable as in her own apartment. Most of the pegged-oak floor was covered by a figured Serapi carpet in shades of blue and peach. The walls were peach, the ceiling white. The maple furniture, which consisted of various kinds of chests used as nightstands and tables and dressers, had all come off 19th-century sailing ships owned by George’s great-grandfather. There were two upholstered armchairs covered in peach-colored silk from Brunschwig & Fils. On the nightstands, the bases of the lamps were actually Baccarat candlesticks, a reminder that the apparent simplicity of the room was built upon an elegant foundation.

Ginger went to the dresser and stared down at the black gloves that lay upon the doily. As she had done countless times during the past ten days, she put the gloves on, flexed her hands, waiting for a rush of fear. But they were only ordinary gloves that she had bought the day she had been discharged from the hospital, and they did not have the power to bring her to the trembling edge of a fugue. She took them off.

A knock sounded at the door, and Rita Hannaby said, “Ginger, dear, are you ready?”

“Coming,” she said, snatching her purse from the bed and taking one last quick glance at herself in the dresser mirror.

She was wearing a lime-green knit suit with a creamy white blouse that had a simple lime-green bow at the throat. Her ensemble included a pair of green pumps that matched the suit, an eelskin purse that matched the pumps, a gold and malachite bracelet. The outfit perfectly complemented her complexion and golden hair. She thought she looked chic. Well, perhaps not chic, but at least stylish.

However, when she stepped into the hall and got a look at Rita Hannaby, Ginger felt at a disadvantage, a mere pretender to class.

Rita was as slim as Ginger, but at five-eight she was six inches taller, and everything about her was queenly. Her chestnut-brown hair swept back from her face in a perfectly feathered cut. If her facial bones had
been more exquisitely chiseled, she would have looked severe. However, beauty and warmth were assured by her luminous gray eyes, translucent skin, and generous mouth. Rita was wearing a gray St. John’s suit, pearls, pearl earrings, and a broad-brimmed black hat.

To Ginger, the amazing thing was that Rita’s fashionable appearance did not seem planned. One had no sense that she had spent hours getting ready. Instead, she seemed to have been
born
with impeccable grooming and a fashionably tailored wardrobe; elegance was her natural condition.

“You look smashing!” Rita said.

“Next to you, I feel like a frump in blue jeans and a sweatshirt.”

“Nonsense. Even if I were twenty years younger, I’d be no match for you, dear. Wait and see who the waiters pamper the most at lunch.”

Ginger had no false modesty. She knew she was attractive. But her beauty was more that of a pixie, while Rita had the blueblood looks of one who could sit upon a throne and convince the world she belonged.

Rita did nothing to cause Ginger’s newfound inferiority complex. The woman treated her not like a daughter but like a sister and an equal. Ginger’s feelings of inadequacy were, she knew, a direct result of her pathetic condition. Until two weeks ago, she had not been dependent on anyone in ages. Now she was dependent again, not entirely able to look after herself, and her self-respect slipped a bit further every day. Rita Hannaby’s good humor, carefully planned outings, woman-to-woman
shmoozing,
and unflagging encouragement were not enough to distract Ginger from the cruel fact that fate once more had cast her, at thirty, in the frustrating role of a child.

Together, they descended to the marble-floored foyer, where they got their coats from the closet, then went out the door and down the steps under the portico to the black Mercedes 500 SEL in the driveway. Herbert, who was sort of a cross between a butler and a Man Friday, had brought the car around five minutes ago and had left the engine running, so the interior was a toasty-warm haven from the frigid winter day.

Rita drove with her usual confidence, away from the old estates, out of quiet streets lined with bare-limbed elms and maples, through ever-busier thoroughfares, heading to Dr. Immanuel Gudhausen’s office on bustling State Street. Ginger had an eleven-thirty appointment with Gudhausen, whom she had seen twice last week. She was scheduled to visit him every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until they got to the bottom of her attacks of fugue. In her bleaker moments, Ginger was sure she’d still be lying on Gudhausen’s couch thirty years from now.

Rita intended to do a bit of shopping while Ginger was with the doctor. Then they would go to lunch at some exquisite restaurant in which,
no doubt, the decor would seem to have been planned to flatter Rita Hannaby and in which Ginger would feel like a schoolgirl foolishly trying to pass for a grownup.

“Have you given some thought to what I suggested last Friday?” Rita asked as she drove. “The Women’s Auxiliary at the hospital?”

“I don’t really think I’m up to it. I’d feel so awkward.”

“It’s important work,” Rita said, expertly slipping the Mercedes out from behind a
Globe
newspaper truck, into a gap in traffic.

“I know. I’ve seen how much money you’ve raised for the hospital, the new equipment you’ve bought…but I think I’ve got to stay away from Memorial right now. It’d be too frustrating to be around the place, too constant a reminder that I can’t do the work I’ve been trained for.”

“I understand, dear. Don’t give it another thought. But there’s still the Symphony Committee, the Women’s League for the Aged, and the Children’s Advocacy Committee. We could use your help at any of those.”

Rita was an indefatigable charity worker, ably chairing committees or serving on them, not only organizing beneficent societies but getting her hands dirty in the operation of them. “What about it?” she pressed. “I’m sure you’d find working with children especially rewarding.”

“Rita, what if I had one of my attacks while I was with the children? It would frighten them, and I—”

“Oh, pish posh,” Rita said. “Every time I’ve gotten you out of the house these last two weeks, you’ve used that same excuse to try to resist leaving your room. ‘Oh, Rita,’ you say, ‘I’ll have one of my awful fits and embarrass you.’ But you haven’t, and you won’t. Even if you
did,
it wouldn’t embarrass me. I don’t embarrass easily, dear.”

“I never thought for a moment you were a shrinking violet. But you haven’t seen me in this fugue state. You don’t know what I’m like or—”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, you make it sound as if you’re a regular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—or
Ms.
Hyde—which I’m sure you’re not. You haven’t beaten anyone to death with a cane yet, have you, Ms. Hyde?”

Ginger laughed and shook her head. “You’re something else, Rita.”

“Excellent. You’ll bring so much to the organization.”

Although Rita probably did not think of Ginger as another charity case, she had approached this recuperation and rehabilitation as a new cause. She rolled up her sleeves and
committed
herself to seeing Ginger through the current crisis, and nothing on earth was going to stop her. Ginger was touched by Rita’s concern—and depressed by the need for it.

They stopped at a traffic light, third car from the intersection, with cars, trucks, buses, taxis, and delivery vans crowding them on all sides. In the Mercedes, the cacophony of the city was muffled but not silenced
altogether, and when Ginger looked out the window at her side to search for the source of a particularly annoying engine roar, she saw a large motorcycle. The rider turned his head toward her at that moment, but she could not see his face. He was wearing a helmet with a tinted visor that came all the way down to his chin.

For the first time in ten days, the amnesic mist descended over Ginger. It happened much faster this time than it had with the black gloves, ophthalmoscope, or sink drain. She looked into the blank and shiny visor, and her heart stuttered, and her breath was pinched off, and she was instantly swept away by a massive wave of terror, gone.

•

First, Ginger became aware of horns. Car horns, bus horns, the air-horns of trucks. Some like the high squeals of animals, some low and ominous. Wailing, whooping, barking, shrieking, honking, bleating.

She opened her eyes. Her vision swam into focus. She was still in the car. The intersection was still in front of them, though evidently a couple of minutes had passed and the traffic ahead had moved. With the engine running but the gearshift in park, the Mercedes was ten feet closer to the crosswalk and angled slightly into the next lane, which was what was causing the horn blowing as other vehicles tried to get around.

Ginger heard herself whimpering.

Rita Hannaby was leaning across the console that separated the driver’s and passenger’s seats, very close, gripping both of Ginger’s hands, holding them down and holding them very tightly. “Ginger? Are you there? Are you all right? Ginger?”

Blood. After the jarring blasts of the horns, after Rita’s voice, Ginger became aware of the blood. Red spots marked her lime-green skirt. A dark smear stained the sleeve of her suit jacket. Her hands were gloved in blood, as were Rita’s hands.

“Oh, my God,” Ginger said.

“Ginger, are you with me? Are you back? Ginger?” One of Rita’s manicured nails was torn off, with only a splintered stub sticking up jaggedly from the cuticle, and both her hands appeared to have been
gouged.
Scratches on the woman’s fingers, on the backs of her hands, and on her palms were bleeding freely, and as far as Ginger could tell, all of the blood was Rita’s, none of it her own. The cuffs of the gray St. John’s suit were wet with blood. “Ginger, talk to me.”

Horns continued to blare.

Ginger looked up and saw that Rita’s perfectly coiffured hair was now in disarray. A two-inch-long scratch furrowed her left cheek, and blood tinted with makeup was trickling along her jaw to her chin.

“You’re back,” Rita said with obvious relief, letting go of Ginger’s hands.

“What’ve I done?”

“Only scratches,” Rita said. “It’s all right. You had an attack, panicked, tried to leave the car. I couldn’t let you go. You might’ve been hit in traffic.”

A passing driver, maneuvering around the Mercedes, angrily shouted something unintelligible at them.

“I’ve hurt you,” Ginger said. Sickness throbbed through her at the thought of the violence she had done.

Other drivers sounded their horns with increasing impatience, but Rita ignored them. She took Ginger’s hands again, not to restrain her this time but to offer comfort and reassurance. “It’s all right, dear. It’s passed now, and a little iodine will patch me up just fine.”

The motorcyclist. The dark visor.

Ginger looked out the side window; the cyclist was gone. He had, after all, been no threat to her, just a stranger passing in the street.

Black gloves, an ophthalmoscope, a sink drain, and now the dark visor of a motorcyclist’s helmet. Why had those particular things set her off? What did they have in common, if anything?

As tears spilled down her face, Ginger said, “I’m so sorry.”

“No need to be. Now, I better get us out of the way,” Rita said. She pulled handsful of Kleenex from the box on the console and used them to grip the wheel and gearshift, to avoid spreading bloodstains.

Her own hands wet with Rita’s blood, Ginger sagged back against her seat and closed her eyes and tried to stop the tears but could not.

Four psychotic episodes in five weeks.

She could no longer glide placidly through the gray winter days, defenseless, docile in the face of this vicious turn of fate, merely waiting for another attack or for a shrink to explain what was wrong.

It was Monday, December 16, and Ginger was suddenly determined to
do
something before she suffered a fifth fugue. She could not imagine what she possibly could do, but she was sure she’d think of something if she put her mind to it and stopped feeling sorry for herself. She had reached bottom now. Her humiliation, fear, and despair could not bring her to any greater depths. There was nowhere to go but up. She would claw her way back to the surface, damned if she wouldn’t, up toward the light, out of the dark into which she had fallen.

CHRISTMAS EVE–CHRISTMAS DAY

1

Laguna Beach, California

At eight
A.M.,
Tuesday, December 24, when Dom Corvaisis got out of bed, he went through his morning ablutions in a haze resulting from the lingering effects of yesterday’s indulgence in Valium and Dalmane.

For the eleventh night in a row, he had been troubled by neither somnambulism nor the bad dream that involved the sink. The drug therapy was working, and he was willing to tolerate a period of pharmaceutically induced detachment to put an end to his unnerving midnight journeys.

He did not believe he was in danger of becoming physically addicted to—or even psychologically dependent on—Valium or Dalmane. He
had
been exceeding the prescribed dosage, but he was still not worried. He had almost run out of pills, and in order to get another prescription from Dr. Cobletz, he had fabricated a story about a break-in at his house, claiming that the drugs had been taken along with his stereo and TV set. Dom had
lied
to his doctor in order to obtain drugs, and sometimes he saw his action in exactly that harsh and unfavorable light; but most of the time, in the soft haze that accompanied continuous tranquilization, he was able to dress the shabby truth in self-delusion.

He dared not think about what would happen to him if the episodes of somnambulism returned in January, after the drugs were discontinued.

At ten o’clock, unable to concentrate enough to work, he put on a light corduroy jacket and left the house. The late-December morning
was cool. Except for a few unseasonably warm days now and then, the beaches would not be busy again until April.