Towering (7 page)

Even though I’m not.

I’ll leave soon, though. I know I will.

I worry that I won’t be ready, that I won’t know the things I need to know and that people (people!) will think me stupid. I’ve been doing exercises, trying to remember what I knew of the outside world. If I read a book, I try to picture the objects mentioned. Some things are easy to envision for they are things I own. Chair. Hairbrush. Picture. Others, I cannot visualize at all. Like, in
Emma
, when Mr. Knightley sent his carriage to pick up Harriet, I thought and thought of what a carriage might look like, but I completely failed to envision it. I am certain I have never seen one.

And then, there are items in the middle, items I might remember if I only try hard enough. Dog. When Mr. Rochester meets Jane Eyre for the first time, he has a dog with him, Pilot. At first, I could not think what a dog might be, though I assumed it was some sort of animal, a furry one like the animals I see from my window, which Mama tells me are called squirrels (the small ones) or deer (the larger ones). But, gradually, if I closed my eyes, if I reached back into the far recesses of my memory, I thought I could remember a creature, larger than I had been at the time. I could feel its rough fur between my fingers, and its tongue on my face. It made me happy to think about the dog, so happy I wished for a moment that I could have a dog myself.

But, of course, that wouldn’t do. A dog can’t live in a tower. Dogs, I now remembered, were vigorous creatures. They needed to run, to play.

But didn’t I? I had never tried to escape, had always just listened to Mama. What would happen if I had?

Yesterday, I had quite a shock. I was rereading
Wuthering Heights
, which is my favorite book. I especially like the part where Catherine, who never seems to leave the house either, sneaks out with Heathcliff to spy on the Linton children. Their dog (dog, again), Skulker, bites Catherine on the leg, and she must stay with the Lintons until she recovers.

I liked that part because Catherine is like I am, sheltered from the world. But as soon as she meets the Lintons, they like her. They take her in, and she ends up marrying the charming and wealthy Edgar.

But what upset me was, when I turned to the end of the book, for the first time I noticed there was a page about the author, Emily Brontë.

And it said she was dead!

Long dead from the look of it. It said she had died in 1848.

Which motivated me to look through my other books to learn about
their
authors. The authors, after all, seemed the most like friends of anyone. I learned that Daphne du Maurier was born in 1907, almost sixty years after Emily Brontë had died. And her characters, unlike Brontë’s or Austen’s, drove around in motorcars!

I could picture a car. Mama had one, and when she took me to this tower on a rainy, gloomy day, it was a car that brought me here. Or, at least, most of the way. The last part, we walked.

I remember the feeling of being in the car. Mama made me put my head down so I couldn’t look out, but I felt the motion of the road beneath me, and when we arrived, I felt the grass and rocks beneath my feet. It was the last I’d felt them.

When Mama arrived to see me, I had some questions for her.

“Mama, what year is it?”

She stepped back a bit at the question. “Please, Rachel, you must allow me to catch my breath before you bombard me with questions.”

“I’m not bombarding,” I said, thinking I probably didn’t question enough. But then, I apologized. My tower, I knew, was over fifty feet high, and Mama reached it by walking up steps from the bottom and crawling through a trap door. When she came, she was out of breath and needed to rest. She hadn’t always been so out of breath but, she explained, she was getting older.

Sometimes, I wondered what would happen if Mama died. Did anyone else know I was here? Would I die too?

But I didn’t ask that question. I would leave before that happened.

When she caught her breath, she reached for a book to read to me. She always read before we ate. She said it was therapeutic. But before she started reading, I said, “Mama, you forgot to answer my question.”

“What question is that?”

“What year is it?”

She fidgeted through the pages of the book. “Why do you care so much?”

“Why would I not care?” And yet, it was difficult to put my reasons into words. “Because it is . . . strange not to know such a thing. I understand that you are trying to protect me from . . .”
What? Life? The world?
“. . . those who would do me ill.” Mama had told me that the man who had killed my mother had also tried to have me killed, but she had saved me. “Yet, someday, I must go out into the world, and I do not wish to be thought strange. I wish to be ordinary. I’m not mad, after all, like Bertha Rochester, who needed to be locked in an attic.”

I wasn’t mad, was I? What if I was and I only didn’t know it because of the level of my dementia? Did madwomen know they were mad? Or did they think they were sane, and it was the world that was off-kilter? What if everything, my tower, the trees, even the squirrels were all figments of my mad imaginings?

But if these were my imaginings, why would I not imagine something else, something better?

“Am I mad? Is that why you keep me here?” I twisted my neck to see her, for she had moved behind me.

“Of course not, darling Rachel.” She reached to stroke my cheek and, simultaneously, to move my face so that I was not looking at her. Yet I detected a strange expression on her face, an expression like panic. “It is not you who are mad but the world, Rachel.” She reached for my hairbrush. Even though she no longer had my special brush, she sometimes brushed my hair when she came, for old time’s sake. But this time, the brush caught on a knot. I clutched my head.

“Ouch! You’re hurting me!”

“I’m sorry, my dear Rachel, so sorry. I do not wish to harm you. I only . . . you must stay here a bit longer. Perhaps you do not trust me.”

“Oh, no, Mama. I do trust you.” Up until this minute, I had. But why was she becoming so agitated when all I wanted was a few answers to my questions. If she intended to release me, I would need to know.

“I only want what is best for you. I only . . .” She broke down, crying. “I can’t lose you, Rachel! I can’t. I have already lost so much.”

Her face looked so old and sad that I began to weep too. I wept so easily lately, wept reading books, even books I knew very well.

“I’m sorry, Mama. I don’t want to leave. I am happy here with my books and with . . . you. I just wondered . . .”

“What, Rachel?” Her face was stormy. “What is it you wonder?”

“It’s only that the books I have, I have read so many times. Not that Mr. Dickens and the Brontë sisters do not seem like old friends, but I thought, perhaps, there might be different books, newer books.”

It is not what I wanted. I wanted what I had said I wanted, to know what year it was. To know who I was. To know where I was and when I would be released. In many ways, I could see I was becoming a young lady, old enough to marry and have children perhaps. In other ways, though, I was a child, a child who knew nothing and had everything kept from me, and I was sick of it. But I was also trapped, trapped and at her mercy. I couldn’t have what I wanted, so I would have to settle for newer books until I found a way.

She paused in her brushing, and I heard her take a deep breath in, then out. “Oh, is that all? I can get you new books, all you want. How thoughtless of me not to realize that an intelligent young lady must have some occupation for her mind. What sort of books do you want?”

I shrugged. I didn’t know what kind there were. “I want books . . . that show what it is like to be human,” I said, “because I am not sure I know. And if the author is alive, I would very much appreciate it.”

“Very well,” Mama said. “Should we have dinner now?”

I nodded. Our days were a routine pattern. She came to visit me in darkness. She brushed my hair. We ate dinner, played chess or cards. I sang to her and played the harp. I had taught myself to do both, and I practiced day and night, even if it was only to please her. She said my voice was beautiful. That used to be enough.

But then, I stopped singing, stopped playing the harp when Mama wasn’t around to hear. What was the point, I reasoned, of singing when no one was there to hear? Who knew if my singing was even real and not a figment of my imagination? Who knew that
I
, my entire existence, was not a figment of my imagination?

Then, she left, leaving my breakfast for the next day and taking with her my chamber pot, which I was old enough to be embarrassed by. That was all.

Wasn’t there more to my life than that?

“I brought ham, your favorite.” She smiled and nodded, inviting me to do the same. “I want you to be happy.”

I smiled back at her. “Thank you, Mama. I am.”

When she left, I began to sing again, and to play my harp. Even though no one was there.

Strangely, I felt that someone could hear me.

And, last night, when I was singing, I thought I heard a voice in my head.

New Year’s Eve, the night was clear with so many stars it looked like the sky in the movie
Titanic
, when the ship had gone down, and they were waiting in the dark water to die. It was just as cold too. The idea of spending the two-degree night in what Josh called a three-season house (the three seasons being spring, summer, and fall) seemed a little crazy, but the idea of spending it alone, watching Times Square on TV, seemed worse.

Last year, we’d gone into the city. This wasn’t a typical thing Long Island kids did, but Tyler had suggested it. One day, during winter break when we were bored, he’d said, “Hey, let’s go to Times Square tomorrow.”

“I never want to do that, man,” I said. “I hear it’s suffocating there.”

“Never’s a long time,
MAN
,” he said. “You want to be one of those people who live in New York your whole life and never see the Statue of Liberty or the Macy’s parade or New Year’s in Times Square?”

“Well, I’ve seen the Statue of Liberty,” I said, “on any one of five field trips with five different teachers who thought I needed to learn—yet again—about how they dewormed the immigrants at Ellis Island. As far as Times Square, if it means getting felt up by street people in twenty-degree weather, I’d seriously rather eat glass.”

“Not me,” Tyler said. “It’s on my bucket list.”

I shrugged. “You’ve got time.”

But he just kept pushing, pushing, pushing, and finally, when he said his sister, Nikki, would go with us, I gave in.

In fact, it hadn’t been cold. Far from it. Millions of pressing bodies had taken care of that. But everything else had pretty much come true. We were shoulder to shoulder with sweaty strangers, no bathrooms, no food. People who got there after us tried to shove in front.

“Really,” a nasal-voiced woman said, “we’re meeting friends.”

“Yeah?” Tyler said. “Call them on your cell phone and have them raise their hands.”

The woman called Tyler a word I don’t even say.

“Happy New Year,” I told her.

Tyler and I were tall, so at least we could see and stuff, but his sister, Nikki, was smaller. “I can’t even breathe,” she said.

“Like that’s important.” Tyler rolled his eyes.

But I said, “Are you okay? You want me to put you on my shoulders?”

“I can’t ask you to do that. There’s still an hour until midnight.” Around us, people were gyrating to music we couldn’t hear over the talking. Someone jostled me, separating me from Nikki.

“Wyatt!” Her voice sounded panicked, yelling for me, not her brother. I reached through the crowd. I’d taken off my gloves because of the heat, and I felt for her nubby wool coat. My hand brushed another hand. “Is that you?”

I felt her fingers grip around mine. She squeezed hard.

I couldn’t see Tyler. There was someone separating us. I moved closer to Nikki. Finally, I shoved past and found her. “You want to leave?” I asked.

“How can we? Besides, Tyler really wants to stay, but all these people are making me dizzy. Can you just . . . hold my hand? It makes it easier to breathe.”

“Maybe if you closed your eyes,” I said, “or looked up? Maybe if you didn’t see everyone.”

“I’ll try that.” She tilted her head back and looked straight up. I did too, so I could see what she saw. The sky was clear but starless. The buildings cast too much light. She squeezed my hand harder, then looked me in the eyes. “That’s way better. Thanks.”

I squeezed her hand back, and in that moment, I knew something had changed. She wasn’t the girl I’d grown up with. She was someone else.

But the next day, when I’d asked her out, she’d said no.

“I don’t want to complicate things. I like what we have. I don’t want to ruin it.”

It made sense, of course. I was friends with Tyler, and Nikki was his sister. Awkward didn’t begin to describe it. Still, it felt like a rejection.

Not that it mattered now.

Josh was picking me up, good since no way could Mrs. G’s car navigate the hills in the dark and snow. Still, I figured I should clear it with her. I mean, maybe she’d wanted to watch
New Year’s Rocking Eve
together.