SUMMER of FEAR (42 page)

"It's not that bad."

She said nothing. She remained seated, hands on her lap and
her long legs crossed beneath the table. She looked at the mirror, gave whoever
was watching a little wave, then sighing deeply and rested her arms on the
table in front of her.

"I'm tired."

"They working you over pretty good?"

She nodded. "It's just the hours. They can sleep and work in
shifts. I have to sit here and look at my ex-stepfather's cowlike face. Sorry,
Marty," she called toward the mirror. "It's a cute face, too. I mean,
I always liked cows. I got some cow napkin holders at home. Somewhere."

"How long were you and Wald together?"

"I was thirteen when he was seeing Mom. It started then. You know,
I've told
them
all about that. I might not have been a consenting adult,
but I was consenting. I grew up fast. So what?" She yawned.

"Did it start as a way to get back at
Amber?"

Grace nodded.

"Who hatched the idea of getting rid of
her?"

"We never
had
that idea, Russell. That's what I've been
saying for a day and a half now."

I sighed myself
then, partly out of frustration, partly out knowledge of the pain that I was
certainly causing my girl. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Make them let me go."

"They think you killed Alice. They're not going to let you go until
you tell them what really went down."

"In that case, Russell, what on earth
could
you do for

me?"

"I've been thinking about that."

"And?"

"Could I just offer some thoughts?"

"Offer away."

"It seems to me that the hatred you felt for your mother
was...
well founded. There were bad times,
lots of misunderstanding, jealousy, competition. Amber admits as much."

"Large of her."

"And what I think happened was that Erik manipulated you with that.
Did you know they found the netsuke you and Amber fought over so long, in
Erik's house? They also found some phone records that establish communication
with the two men who burned your feet. Amber didn't hire them. Wald did. It
took him years to feed your fears but only a few months to twist your mind to
the point where you were scared enough to commit a murder. He used you,
girl."

She looked at me rather blankly then, and I fully realized the despair
of her heart and the fatigue of her body. "I actually loved him."

"I understand that. Some things about Erik can
be loved."

"You're not so dumb, after all."

"It doesn't take a genius to see a girl can fall in love with a
guy. Handsome. Smart. Mommy's castoff."

"Gad," she said quietly. "Love."

"Yeah."

She breathed deeply and leveled her beautiful eyes on
me. I wanted only one thing more than to put my arms around her, and that one
thing was to hear her acknowledge the truth

"You know, the first time we talked about
it...
it was kind of a joke. A perfect-crime fantasy. It was fun
to...
speculate. But then when Mom started
getting the men after me and threatening me, it all of a sudden started
sounding reasonable. It kind of takes you over. Like, if you talk about
something enough, plan it enough, you pretty much have to go through with it
some point.
It...
gets real. And I
was so afraid."

Oh, how I understood the insane logic of that statement! Had I passed it
down to Grace through my genes, this compulsion to make the imagination real,
to act upon thoughts so that thoughts
became
acts? Was there perhaps in
Grace, as myself, some weakness of the faculties dividing impulse from action?

"I know. Can I tell you a true story?"

"Sure, Russ."

"About three weeks after Izzy was diagnosed, I got real drunk and
went out to the hillside with my revolver. I wasn’t sure why. I sat down and
looked down at the house, the light of the city. I prayed to God that He'd make
the nightmare stop, that He'd cradle Isabella in His healing arms. I offered
Him my soul instead. Then I emptied all the cartridges but one from the
cylinder, closed it and spun it and put it to my head. If He let me live, it
was my sign that He was with us. If not, it was simple trading of one life for
another. A stupid idea, right? But the more I thought about it, the more sense
it made, and the more actual that gun became. I had gone that far, and I
had
to
follow through. At the last second, I lowered the gun, pointed it at the
hillside, and pulled the trigger. My hand jerked and the sound blasted into my
ears. I had my answer then, at least to my own satisfaction: Go home, get
sober, take care of your wife, and don't fuck with the Lord anymore. That's as
deep as my faith ever got. I didn't even think another prayer until that night
we went out swimming in the ocean."

Grace betrayed no emotion to me, but something about her exhaustion
seemed to deepen even more. Then, a wry smile came to her lips. "I'm sorry
for all that's happened to you and Isabella. I wish there was something I could
do to make it better."

"There is."

She waited.

"Tell these men what happened. And understand that Erik will do
everything he can to make you take this fall alone."

Grace drew a deep breath.

I could only imagine the silence behind our one-way mirror. Grace eyed
the thing, then returned her gaze to me. Her eyes were moist.

"Would you do one more thing?" I asked.

"Why not?"

"Call me Dad, or Pop, or anything but
Russell."

She smiled very
weakly. "I would accept a hug now, Pops."

That Tuesday evening, I picked up my
mail and headed directly into town to do the grocery shopping. In the market
parking lot, I fanned through the letters, bills, and catalogs—you might imagine
how Izzy, confined to a wheelchair, loved those catalogs— and found to my great
dismay a postcard canceled in New York City, July 10. The picture on the front
was of the Flatiron building, New York's first "skyscraper," and
where my editor works. On the back was the following, in an almost illegible
scrawl:

Dear
Russell—New York a lovely city with so
many...
possibilities!

Aren't your publishers in this building? Am flossing regularly and considering minor
cleansing action, but it would take an army of crusaders such as myself to dent
this cesspool of humanity. Miss OC. Cuddles, ME
.

My scalp actually
crawling in the heat, I set the card carefully the glove compartment of the
car, knowing that the Eye had wiped it clear of fingerprints. But it would
never hurt to try. The people in Documents—Handwriting Analysis, to be specific
would be more than happy to have it.

As
I walked the familiar aisles of our grocery store, a deep, if fragile, sense of
contentment began to come over me. I shopped with Isabella in mind, picking out
all the things she loved to eat. Few things can soothe a troubled soul like the
simple act of loving another person. Every bag of produce, can or jar, I
touched with the knowledge that it was for Isabella, and that if I could not
stem the sickness in her head, I might at least comfort her body with the
fruits of my labor. There were other blessings to be counted: the
Journal
checks had begun to come in, Nell, my agent, had gotten a modest offer for the
Midnight Eye book and I accepted it—while both my publishers and realized that
the end of that book was far from being written; I had witnessed the beginnings
of surrender in my daughter stopped by the health-food store for some tea that
Isabella especially liked.

Then
I loaded the groceries into the car and walked down to the beach to watch the
sunset. It was an odd hour, because the dry, searing heat of the last week was
getting ready to break. Far out over the horizon, a bank of moist dark clouds
hovered and as the sun dipped into them, its bottom flattened and the cloud
tops seemed to ignite. When the sun had fallen fully behind the bank, it glowed
there, softly, like an orange wrapped tissue, and sent angled bars of light
down onto the ocean, few minutes later, it emerged beneath the cloud bank and
touched the water. As it sank, the clouds caught fire from below and soon the
whole western sky was a blanket of black and orange patchwork settling over a
flame-touched sea. I took a deep drink from my flask.

I began to see more clearly the tasks that lay ahead. Isabella would
require more and more care, and there would be victories as well as defeats. I
hoped that what joys we could find together would mitigate the agonies; I
prayed that through it all we would keep our love alive; that if it was the
desire of the heavens to kill her here on earth, we could still manage a laugh,
a smile, a touch. My feelings of just a few weeks ago, of wanting so badly to
escape, had diminished. The tug of the whiskey was still there, but it was a
tug—not an irresistible yank. I felt slower as I sat there on the boardwalk
bench, more able to occupy the moment. Amber had given me something in her
desperately sweet surrender: She had broken the bonds of my own making, allowing
me to grasp the heart of an obsession and understand that once possessed so
fully, an object of desire can no longer hold such a tidal sway. Did I want
Amber again? Oh, yes. One cannot eradicate genetic imperatives. But I no longer
believed that she, or the secret life that went with her, was an antidote to
the actual one I would now begin to live. As I looked out over the darkening
water, it occurred to me that the core of a life is not what one will lose but
what one will fight to keep.

And I realized one more thing as I sat there, which was this: I would
never truly lose Isabella. Because some people never shine, no matter how much
they are given and others will shine forever, no matter how much from them is
taken away. Isabella was a light. Shine on, my dearest wife!

The car
phone rang as I was heading out Laguna Canyon Roe

"Hello, Russell."

I felt my scalp tighten and a cool sweat moving from my palms to the
steering wheel.

"I told you not to call."

"That was rude. I just wanted to ask you one more thing .In your
article about my departure, will you remark that queers of either sex will not
be safe when I come back? I didn't mean to discriminate against them, but I
couldn't remember if I'd been specific."

"You can't come back. Everyone knows your face. Everyone knows your
name. It's just a matter of time before the New York cops come to your door.
Then it's back to California for long trial, a couple of appeals, plenty of
prison time, and the gas chamber. Winters offered me a front-row seat for that,
I’ll be there."
"Sh-sh-sh.
You cutups! I wish there was a way
for me show you how important this last article is. Just because I've left the
county doesn't mean I don't care. I want to be remembered accurately. Remember
to be accurate, Russell. You have professional codes to live up to."

With this, he hung up. I dialed the Sheriff's Department immediately and
got Carfax.

"It was a
Brooklyn number," he said, the excitement clear in his voice. "We've
got the address. He's meat."

Back home, arms
loaded with grocery bags, I managed to let myself in the front door. I had just
kicked it shut behind me when I turned and saw Dee lying on the stairway with a
bullet hole in the middle of her back and a streamlet of blood dripping down
the steps.

In front of me, through dim light, something moved. A light went on. The
Midnight Eye loomed not ten feet from me, bearded, bewigged, wrapped in a
rotting green blanket, pointing a small automatic with a large silencer
directly at the bags still clutched to my gut.

"Hi, Russ."

My first reflex was to look up the stairway, past Dee's body, to the
bedroom where I had last seen my wife alive. The bags dropped to the floor. I
leaned in the direction of the stairs, then held myself.

"She's s-s-sleeping," said the Eye. "I looked in on her.
Don't worry.
Sh-sh-sh.
Now, step toward me slowly, with your hands away
from your body."

I did so. I stopped to look upstairs again, to perhaps see a shadow cast
by her breathing body, perhaps hear some tiny sound that would indicate life.
The rage that rang from my stomach, up my backbone, and into my ears nearly
deafened me. My breath was short.

"Yes, like that," he said. "Here...
sit at your table."

I saw that my
typewriter and a fresh stack of paper had been placed on the dining room table.
I walked toward it, still straining, even through the dreadful ringing in my
ears, for some sound from the bedroom above. "Sit."

"I need to see Izzy," I said.

"I told you, she's sound asleep. Deeply
asleep."

"May I see for myself?"

"You may not, you shit-sucking liar! You cheat. You coward. You
sit!"

I pulled back the heavy dining room chair and sat before the typewriter.