А Финн - The Woman in the Window

The bucket rolled away from me, clattering to the carpet, spattering cubes across the floor.

“Shit.”

“Forget it,” he said. “I don’t want anything to drink.”

“I do.” I knelt to rake the cubes back into the bucket. Ed watched me.

“What are you going to do with those?” he asked.

“Should I just let them melt?”

“Yes.”

I stood and set the bucket atop the machine. “You seriously want to do this now?”

He sighed. “I don’t see why we—”

“Because we’re already here . We’re already . . .” I pointed to the door of our suite.

He nodded. “I thought about that.”

“You’ve been thinking a lot lately.”

“I thought,” he continued, “that . . .”

He went quiet, and I heard the click of a door behind me. I twisted my head to see a middle-aged woman moving down the corridor toward us. She smiled shyly, eyes averted; picked her way through the ice cubes on the floor, walked on to the lobby.

“I thought that you’d want to start healing right away. That’s what you’d say to one of your patients.”

“Don’t—please don’t tell me what I would or wouldn’t say.”

He said nothing.

“And I wouldn’t talk that way to a child.”

“You’d talk that way to their parents.”

“Don’t tell me how I’d talk .”

More nothing.

“And as far as she knows, there’s nothing to heal.”

He sighed again, rubbed at a spot on the bucket. “The fact is, Anna,” he told me, and I could see the weight in his eyes, that broad cliff of his brow near collapse, “I just can’t take this any longer.”

I looked down, stared at the ice cubes already softening on the ground.

Neither of us spoke. Neither of us moved. I didn’t know what to say.

Then I heard my voice, soft and low. “Don’t blame me when she’s upset.”

A pause. And then his voice, softer still. “I do blame you.” He breathed in. Breathed out. “I thought of you as the girl next door,” he said.

I braced myself for more.

“But right now I can barely look at you.”

I screwed my eyes shut, inhaled the cold tang of ice. And I thought not of our wedding day, nor of the night Olivia was born, but of the morning we harvested cranberries in New Jersey—Olivia shrieking and laughing in her waders, buttery with sunblock; slow skies above, the September sun drenching us; a vast sea of rose-red fruit all around. Ed with his hands full, his eyes bright; me clutching our daughter’s sticky fingers. I remembered the bog waters risen to our hips, felt them flood my heart, surge into my veins, rise within my eyes.

I looked up, gazed into Ed’s eyes, those dark-brown eyes; “Completely ordinary eyes,” he assured me on our second date, but to me they were beautiful. They still are.

He looked back at me. The ice machine thrummed between us.

Then we went to tell Olivia.

31

thedoctorisin:Then we went to tell Olivia.

I pause. How much more would she want to know? How much more can I bear to tell her? My heart already hurts, aching within my chest.

A minute later, there’s still no response. I wonder if all this is hitting too close to home for Lizzie; here I am talking about a separation from my husband when she’s lost hers irrevocably. I wonder if—

GrannyLizzie has left the chat.

I stare at the screen.

Now I have to remember the rest of the story on my own.

32

“Don’t you get lonely up here by yourself?”

I wriggle from sleep as a voice questions me, male, flat. I unpaste my eyelids.

“I was born lonely, I guess.” A woman now. Creamy contralto.

Light and shadow flicker in my vision. It’s Dark Passage —Bogie and Bacall making bedroom eyes across a coffee table.

“Is that why you visit murder trials?”

On my own coffee table stand the remnants of my dinner: two drained-hollow bottles of merlot and four canisters of pills.

“No. I went because your case was like my father’s.”

I swat at the remote beside me. Swat again.

“I know he didn’t kill my stepmoth—” The TV goes dark, and the living room with it.

How much have I drunk? Right: two bottles’ worth. Plus lunchtime. That’s . . . a lot of wine. I can admit it.

And the drugs: Did I take the right quantity this morning? Did I take the right pills ? I’ve been sloppy lately, I know. No wonder Dr. Fielding thinks I’m getting worse. “You’ve been bad, ” I chide myself.

I peek into the canisters. One of them is almost depleted; twin tablets crouch within it, little white pellets, at either side of the bottle.

God, I’m very drunk.

I look up, look at the window. Dark outside, deep night. I cast about for my phone, can’t find it. The grandfather clock, looming in the corner, ticks as though trying to get my attention. Nine fifty. “Nine fiffy,” I say. Not great. Try ten to ten. “Ten to ten.” Better. I nod to the clock. “Thanks,” I tell him. He gazes at me, all solemn-like.

Lurching toward the kitchen now. Lurching —isn’t that how Jane Russell described me, that day at the door? Those little shits with their eggs? Lurch . From The Addams Family . The gangly butler. Olivia loves that theme song. Snap, snap.

I grasp the faucet, duck my head beneath it, jerk the handle toward the ceiling. A whip of white water. Plunge my mouth forth, gulp deeply.

Drag one hand along my face, totter back to the living room. My eyes wander across the Russells’ house: There’s the ghost-glow of Ethan’s computer, with the kid bent over the desk; there’s the empty kitchen. There’s their parlor, merry and bright. And there’s Jane, in a snow-white blouse, sitting on that striped love seat. I wave. She doesn’t see me. I wave again.

She doesn’t see me.

One foot, then the other, then the first foot. Then the other—don’t forget the other. I melt into the sofa, loll my head on my shoulder. Shut my eyes.

What happened to Lizzie? Did I say something wrong? I feel myself frown.

The cranberry bog stretches before me, shimmery, shifting. Olivia’s hand takes my own.

The ice bucket smashes on the floor.

I’ll watch the rest of the movie.

I open my eyes, unearth the remote from beneath me. The speakers exhale organ music, and there’s Bacall, playing peekaboo over her shoulder. “You’ll be all right,” she vows. “Hold your breath, cross your fingers.” The surgery scene—Bogie doped up, specters revolving before him, an unholy carousel. “It’s in your bloodstream now.” The organ drones. “Let me in.” Agnes Moorehead, rapping at the camera lens. “Let me in.” A flame wavers—“Light?” suggests the cabbie.

Light. I turn my head, look into the Russell house. Jane is still in her living room, on her feet now, shouting silently.

I swivel in my seat. Strings, a fleet of them, the organ shrilling beneath. I can’t see who she’s shouting at, or at whom she’s shouting—the wall of the house blocks my view of the rest of the room.

“Hold your breath, cross your fingers.”

She’s really bellowing, her face gone scarlet. I spy my Nikon on the kitchen counter.

“It’s in your bloodstream now.”

I rise from the sofa, cross to the kitchen, paw the camera with one hand. Move to the window.

“Let me in. Let me in. Let me in .”

I lean into the glass, lift the camera to my eye. A blur of black, and then Jane jumps into view, soft around the edges; a twist of the lens and now she’s clear, crisp—I can even see her locket winking. Her eyes are narrowed, her mouth wide. She jabs the air with one finger—“Light?”—jabs again. A lock of hair has swung from her head, flopping against her cheek.