Читать книгу The Look of Love - Jill Egizii - Страница 7

“Well are you ready?” Anna asks as Betsy runs up to the car window after school.

Betsy looks confused, “Ready? For what? I just came to tell you that I forgot to tell you that our intramural volleyball game is today…so…sorry Mom but I have to stay. I am our only decent defensive player after all.”

“Betsy,” Anna chides. “We are supposed to go get your first-grade art portfolio from Grandma’s today…right now. She’s expecting us.”

“Aww Mom!” replies Betsy. “Can you just go? I mean I’m sorry but I forgot about the game this afternoon. And I need need need those files. The project is due in two days. I’ll only have today and tomorrow to work on it as it is. Please…” Betsy asks. A few girls come clamoring out the door calling Betsy, urging her to hurry. The game is starting any minute.

“Fine. Fine. I’ll go get what I can find. But don’t blame me if something’s missing.” Anna says.

“Thanks Mom.” Betsy throws over her shoulder as she bolts away. She stops when she reaches the glass doors and turns to shout. “Oh and Mom, you will be back to pick me up at 5:00 right?”

Anna nods. As soon as the girls trail out of sight Anna lays her head on the steering wheel and takes seven deep breaths. She remembers hearing something about seven being the key number.

Anna dreads the errand. In fact she’s been putting it off for days, ever since Betsy told her she needed her elementary school art files. Together the two of them searched every nook and cranny of the basement, attic, and storage in the barn hoping they were wrong. But to no avail. The kids’ elementary school files with their report cards, homework highlights, stage programs with their names in them, and what Betsy needed now, artwork, are stored in Erik’s childhood home. Apparently these are in the few boxes left behind after being stored with Mother Reinhardt during the renovations to the farmhouse.

Betsy’s assignment is to update an early work of art for class demonstrating the skills she’s acquired and how much she’s changed. ‘What kind of teacher requires eight-year-old artwork?’ Anna wonders as she heads for the gray house on Holt Avenue. She is sorely tempted to go home and scrawl on construction paper in crayon with her wrong hand and try to pass that off as Betsy’s. But of course Betsy has in mind a particular item she remembers. If it was for anything else but homework Anna would do just that, but she’s trying to teach her kids to take assignments seriously. What kind of role model would Anna be if she didn’t even try?

The house sits on a vast corner lot in one of the oldest neighborhoods in town. A stone tribute to eras gone by. Before she ever met Erik she’d thought of this gray monument on Holt as her personal image of The House of Seven Gables. She just happened to be reading the gothic tome for her college coursework at the local university when she was learning her way around town and spotted the thing.

She spent her sixteenth and seventeenth years at the big state college which both she and her parents realized was too much too soon. Then, at eighteen, Anna moved to Cambridge to work part time at her Dad’s state rep office while finishing up her classes at the local university. He’d been the state representative for their rural district for as long as Anna could remember. For most of her life he lived away half a year at the capitol, coming home only every few weekends during voting sessions. At the time she was thrilled to finally get a close look at how the system worked. Working with her father was what inspired her to change her major from theatre to political science. She was in fact making up humanities credits that first semester, reading Hawthorne. Never in a million years could she have anticipated that her very own local gothic mansion would be her future husband’s childhood home.

As she rolls up the long driveway Anna sees Mother Reinhardt hovering in the doorway. She takes more deep breaths on the walk to greet her, hoping it will keep her voice light and keep her from chewing a hole through the inside of her mouth.

“Oh Anna! Hello. You’re late dear. I’m afraid I have to leave this minute. I’m already late for Helen Gilchrist’s husband’s wake. Mrs. Delahey and Mrs. Rossi have been ringing my phone off the hook wondering where I am.” She practically shouts all this as Anna walks through the door. Mother Reinhardt has her overcoat on and is halfway out the door. “Oh dear, Anna. You just need to move your car for me. See you’ve blocked me in. I’ll leave the back door unlocked for you on my way out to the carport. If you could just…oh and be absolutely sure you lock up when you leave. You can’t be too careful these days you know.” Mother Reinhardt says pointing at Anna’s car with her keys.

Anna obliges with all requisite haste. She is rather relieved at not having to keep company with Mother Reinhardt, but not at all pleased to be in the house alone. Anna pulls her car all the way around after Mother Reinhardt’s ancient Mercedes sedan clears the driveway.

The word mausoleum pops into her head, which is odd as Anna had never actually been…no wait that’s right in Italy in the catacombs. She tries to keep her mind on Italy, the trip Erik sent her on years ago after…after…after she had that fling; the unmentionable affair. Granted she was only twenty at the time, married and raising the two children of a woman she never met. But that was no excuse. The whole incident still filled her with shame and if she was truly honest with herself, a little bit of excitement. Peter. She still runs into Peter now and then, but not so often since his lobby firm went national. He matured into a good man. Although Anna made it a policy to never regret anything, giving up Peter is the closest thing to regret she ever felt. But she made her choice.

She made her choice when Erik begged and bargained for her loyalty. He said he loved her, even though he often called her by his first wife’s name…in bed. He said he loved her and would do anything to convince her. He suddenly decided it was time for Anna to take her European tour to Italy, France, and Holland. “Take some time,” he said. “Think it through while you’re away. Take Janet with you, take Lena, whoever you like, take Evelyn.” He insinuated this would help her grow up to his mental level. He was, after all, ten years her senior.

Of course the friends he encouraged Anna to invite were essentially banned when Erik or his kids were around. She took all three of them with her. But Anna never made it out of Italy. Maggie, only two years old at the time, came down with the measles and Erik had a conference in South Carolina. So Anna went home early leaving Janet, Lena, and Evelyn to finish the five star, first class, prepaid tour without her.

‘Oh what is it with this house?’ wonders Anna as she makes her way to the basement door. She doesn’t want to disturb any of Mother Reinhardt’s knickknacks or raise dust from her ancient carpet runners. Anna takes a deep breath as she ducks down the narrow steps into the basement. Wait hang on. Anna jogs back up the stairs into the kitchen. She finds a taper candle, lights it, and takes it back downstairs with her. This will help. Sure, yes the lights are on and it’s broad daylight but…but…

Now where are those boxes? Anna tiptoes around trying to imagine where the stack of boxes they left behind might be. She finds some boxes, but not the right ones. If she remembers correctly she put the kids’ portfolios in Rubbermaid containers to protect the art from the damp in this old house. She heads further into the gloom away from the stairs and utility sink out from the shelter of the antique furnace, exposed to the light seeping in the filthy window wells.

Oh that’s right there’s a so-called storage closet behind a wooden door in a crumbling brick wall at the far end of the basement. Anna makes her way across the dusty floor. As she walks she gropes the air for more light bulb strings that might be hanging. But all she gets is handfuls of cobwebs. Now she feels pretty smug with her candle. See, it came in handy.

It takes some doing to get the door open, simply from disuse. Yep, there they are—stacks of blue and gray Rubbermaid boxes in the corner. Anna is just about to fully enter the vast closet when she remembers a precaution. She finds an old brick not too far away and props the door open. Better safe than sorry she thinks. As she checks through the boxes to find the one or two she needs she thinks she hears a noise; a slam or a thunk. Well the closet door is ok. She waits to hear footsteps. Maybe Mother Reinhardt forgot something. After a few moments of silence Anna rifles through the boxes faster. Since she’s here she isn’t about to leave without her booty. But wait. What’s that? It sounds like a ‘ka-ching’ metal striking a pipe maybe? Still, no footsteps or other sounds.

Anna starts dragging the stack of blue boxes toward the door. No need to do this here. She can take them all and find what she needs later. She gets them over the threshold of the closet and goes back for the other stack. Luckily they aren’t too heavy. She gives the stack of containers a lift over the threshold and goes back for the last stack. Then she hears it, a clear distinct slam. A door shutting. A click. A metal clanging. She checks the closet door. It’s still open.

Oh no, the door at the top of the stairs. Anna creates a flotilla of Rubbermaid boxes, blows out the candle and puts it on top. She slides the whole thing across the expanse of the basement toward the light. Doing this kicks up a lot of dust, but it’s quick. Anna is close to the finish line when she sees a shadow from the corner of her eye. Something blocks the wan light from the dirty window on her right.

Instinctually she crouches behind the stacks of boxes and peeks around. The shadow is the shape of a tall, tall man. He appears to be doing some kind of dance, his midsection swaying just a bit. Although she’s frightened, it comes to her that this isn’t a person. It’s definitely not a dimensional living breathing human. It must be a garment bag or something she didn’t notice on her way in. She shoves her pile of plastic boxes, keeping it between her and the shadow. At last she reaches the anteroom bound off by the utility sink, the furnace, and the ring of light over the steps.

She bounds up the steps to get—wait. The door’s shut. The door is stuck shut. She wrenches the handle this way and that, yanking and pulling the door with her five-foot tall frame and… nothing. Deep breaths. She tries turning the handle both ways, this time more calmly. Nothing. Goose bumps ripple across her skin. She feels them crawl across her back and over her stomach. She sits on the steps and peeks over at the hulking shadow. Now the dust motes she raised swirl everywhere.

She remembers something…feels a sense of déjà vu she can’t quite…yes she remembers now, finally. This inspires her to throw herself at the door one more time, again to no avail. This happened to her before when she was pregnant with Betsy. This happened before, but last time it wasn’t an accident. All those years ago. Erik trapped her down here. He was drunk and they were watering the plants and taking in the mail while his mother was out of town.

He wanted to convince Anna that he grew up under the oppressive presence of his father, and he succeeded because there it was again. It was no garment bag. It was Erik’s father, the shade of the man hanging by the neck from his belt, secured over the water pipe. She peeps over the banister in his direction, and faint and shady though it is, he is there. He’s little more than an outline, the shadow of a large man’s body hanging from the neck, dead.

How could she forget this? How? How? She’d been seven months pregnant when Erik terrified her by locking her in the basement for what seemed like hours while he paced and ranted and raved about his father. Erik had been only seven when he’d discovered his father there in the basement. At first she screamed and begged to be set free, but she quickly realized she was wasting her breath. Erik would never hear her over his own shouting. And even if he did hear her he wouldn’t let her out until he was good and ready. She gave up and sat on the middle step, right where she sits now.

How many times did he tell her that story? How many times did the pitiful image of that brokenhearted little boy trapped inside the man convince her to forgive, to forget, to show godly compassion toward the victim.

He came home from his paper route to a strangely silent house. Normally his mother would be clamoring around frying eggs or if he was lucky bacon. His father would be reading the paper muttering about the news. They might argue about some unimportant detail. Then again they might scream and yell and lob pots and crockery at one another. But silence was a rarity.

That particular morning Erik junior came home to silence. He tiptoed around the silence to find his mother. She wasn’t in the kitchen or the bathroom by the back door. He took the hallway towards her bedroom. Perhaps she was sick, lying in bed. She wasn’t there, but he was shocked. The room was torn apart. Every drawer was pulled out, every shred of clothing flung about. Lamps were overturned, and the mattress almost shoved off the frame. He was young, but not naïve. Once he was certain she wasn’t there hiding somewhere he headed back to the kitchen. There he would telephone his aunt as his mother had instructed him to do in an emergency.

But something caught his eye, drawing him instead into the sitting room (what his mother called it anyway). More overturned lamps and end tables. Ahh, there she is. He caught sight of her shoes and ankles from behind the reading chair. “Mother?” he cried out. “Mother, are you alright? Shall I call Aunty Jean Mother?”

As he rounded the couch and could finally see over it he realized mother was not fine. Mother was awash in a pool of blood bubbling from her head. He knew immediately she was dead because she wasn’t moving, or talking, or screaming. She must be dead. There was so much blood. Blood everywhere.

Erik junior realized he was standing in a puddle of his mother’s blood and leapt free only to realize he was leaving tracks. This made him realize there was another set of tracks already there. Bigger tracks heading…he followed them…toward the basement door, which was flung open.

The tracks disappeared, worn away, nothing left. But momentum carried little Erik forward through the door, down the stairs. At first he saw nothing amiss. Figured he misunderstood the tracks, and he turned around to retrace them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw it, the dark shadow where streaky light should have been. His father dead, hanging by his neck from his black leather belt absolutely still, silent.

Erik junior didn’t call Aunty Jean. He called an ambulance. Then he called the police. Then he went to get Mrs. Hartford next door, and she called Aunty Jean who took Erik home with her where he stayed for nine months while his mother recovered from the two gunshot wounds to her head and spent some time gathering herself in a sanitarium. Erik senior was quietly cremated and his ashes buried unceremoniously in a rural pauper’s graveyard, where they could bury sinners and those certainly damned to hell.

Anna couldn’t count how many times he had slurred his way through that story in a drunken stupor. How central that story was to the man he’d become was clear to Anna perhaps for the first time as she sat staring at the shadow in the dim light. Only now, she can see there is nothing more than a shadow, a memory, a dense fear hanging like a ghost in the dusty air.

Anna shakes her head at her own naïveté. How had she managed to forget that her own husband had locked her in a basement he believed was inhabited by the ghost of his homicidal father? How had she managed to use this childhood incident to excuse every terrible thing Erik had become?

What she sees now for the first time instead of pity, sorrow, compassion, or anything else is that Erik is potentially dangerous. All these years she felt only for the pain of the boy, never fully realizing the boy had become a man—a man who had inherited a wide streak of family madness with the potential to inspire mortal hatred.

No longer afraid, Anna carries her strength to the door and not surprisingly this time it opens…as if by magic. She does, however, prop it open before she retrieves her boxes of memories from that dingy basement once and for all.