Kathryn Davis - Duplex

She was no longer young but something about the situation made her feel even older than she was. That much she knew, that and the fact that she wasn’t far from a large body of water, the sky a shade of blue-violet more usually thought of as coming from a dactilo port, with handfuls of things falling loose beneath it that turned out to be seagulls. Every now and then she was able to catch sight of a tall structure that seemed like it might be the old water tower she used to walk past on her way to and from school; it was too far away to tell, and the base of the structure was hidden under the horizon.

She had discovered the wall only a day or so ago. It was made of stone that had been stuccoed over and white washed, and in some places there was a dusty-looking vine growing up it that had cracked the surface, leaving crumbled stucco at its base. The ground was dry and hard-packed and the color of mustard — it was hard to imagine anything thriving under those conditions.

There was something she was supposed to be doing, only she couldn’t remember what. She could remember the names of all the students she’d ever taught and she could remember the way her classroom smelled — that was about it. Even in spring with the windows open her classroom smelled like varnish and sour milk. Someone had always thrown up somewhere and then the smell mixed with the smell of the janitor’s mop. They were children and they couldn’t help it. They couldn’t help growing up and becoming adults either.

But this was her life, after all. This was the life of Marjorie Vicks, also known as Miss Vicks to the numberless students she had taught, Vicks, M. to the robots, Vicky Dear to the sorcerer. It was her story and she had many ways to tell it, and woe to anyone who tried to say otherwise.

Nor did it make her feel any better to know that everyone was supposed to be doing something — once you reached a certain age that was the way a life was meant to be lived. People who weren’t doing anything were sick or insane or babies, though nowadays even the babies had projects. School was out for the summer, so that couldn’t be it. But she hadn’t been a teacher for years. There had been a retirement party, balloons, presents. It seemed like for some time now she could barely recall what happened from minute to minute, while the distant past was as clear as the Alpine scene in the snow globe that had been a retirement present from one of her students, which as far as she knew was exactly where she’d last seen it, on her coffee table, gathering dust. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe you left home and it was like the song the girls had been singing right before she rode off on the photographer’s horse. The name of the musical the song came from was escaping her — the whole world vanished and everything that had ever been yours vanished with it. Your little dog! But there had been a good reason to leave the dog behind. “And this is what happened,” the song said, “the strange thing that happened, to two weary hunters that lost their way.”

Not long after she left the street and crossed the vacant lot it had begun raining, lightly at first, a drop here, a drop there, and then heavily, like there wasn’t any more air, only rain. The horse moved at a steady pace, the great bellows of its rib cage expanding and contracting between her legs, a feeling she used to love when she was young. The neighborhood changed, rows of houses giving way to shops and the shops to large flat windowless buildings. Gradually the traffic thinned out; the road she was riding on turned to dirt and became narrow, hemmed in on either side by the shapes of tall waving plants. Every now and then there would be a cottage, a mailbox, the glowing eyes of an animal. Marjorie was getting drenched, her suit ruined, and the road was becoming the color of oxblood; her horse was having trouble keeping his footing.

Which way were they headed? She had left in a hurry, without the proper maps. All at once the road took a sharp dip and disappeared under a wide plane of cloudy water. The only way to the other side was by ferryboat, but the ferryman hollered across the water to her that it was a car ferry and she was on a horse.

“I can get off,” she hollered back, dismounting.

There was no shelter on her side of the water. On the other side, overhung by a very large shade tree with something white like a banner or a bed sheet hanging from the lowest bough, there was an open shed in which the ferryman stood, perfectly dry, as he proceeded to set a large engine in motion. He didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry. The ferry was like a barge hooked to an underwater cable that drew it back and forth; it, too, seemed to move at a snail’s pace, though it probably took no more than five minutes to cross to Marjorie’s side of the river.

No one ever melted from standing in the rain, she reminded herself as she climbed aboard the ferry’s unstable deck. She could lift her face to the sky and let the rain wash it the way she used to when she was a girl. Children weren’t afraid of rain; they enjoyed getting wet. People didn’t always know what they were doing, that much was clear — most people would have known better than to ride away from home on a horse. When Marjorie turned to look back the way she’d come she could see the horse standing on the riverbank, bending his neck to graze, his hide rippling in an involuntary fluid motion like incoming tide. He’s better off without me, she thought, and it made her happy to see how delicately his lips moved across the grass.

Once the ferry arrived on the other side she realized that the thing hanging from the tree was an advertisement for a hotel that offered “nightly surprises.”

“I don’t suppose they’re referring to mints on the pillow,” Marjorie reflected aloud.

“If they are, I wouldn’t eat them,” replied the ferryman, taking her hand to help her from the boat and pointing her way to the road, which recommenced at some distance behind the shed and could be reached by means of a narrow gravel path that disappeared into a thick clump of bushes.

Marjorie set off with a renewed sense of purpose. Almost immediately the road bent sharply left to follow the same body of water she had just crossed. The distance from shore to shore widened and long narrow islands appeared, shade trees heavy with dark green leaves growing along their banks, black-and-white spotted cows grazing beneath them. On one of the trees she saw another advertisement for the hotel, this one promising “special services.” At some point the rain had stopped and a small blurry sun came out, tangled in clouds. A bell began tolling and sections of sky were drifting over the water, making it blue.

It seemed like the road might go on this way forever, following the course of the river — and then all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, it came to an abrupt halt at a high, stuccoed wall. Marjorie looked back and thought she could see the ferry slowly making its way across. Maybe it wasn’t the ferry; maybe it was one of those islands and it wasn’t moving. She didn’t think she was that far from where she’d been when she got off the horse, even though she also felt as if she’d been walking for years. One thing was clear, if she didn’t want to go back the way she she’d come she had to leave the road and turn right to follow the wall. The minute she did so the weather changed, taking her completely by surprise. It was exactly like what happened when you opened the oven door to check on whatever was baking inside and a blast of hot air hit you in the face.

Time was either not passing at all or it was passing in one huge lump like a lifetime. The wall showed no sign of coming to an end. Eventually Marjorie got close enough to see that the tower was much bigger than the water tower back home and that it had a flag flying above it. In this latitude everything was lit differently; even when night started to fall everything remained brighter, the sky doing its best to absorb the various colors from the landscape in order to turn itself black.