Aftersight (9 page)

Becky

Bridgeport, Connecticut

November 28

I sunk lower in the passenger's seat. If it wasn't for the seatbelt, I'd have been cowering under the dash. I hated driving at night in a strange town, even if it was Mom doing the actual driving, with Gwen in the backseat for support. What had started as a mild aversion to large crowds had deteriorated into a fear of venturing out in public at all,
esp
e
cially
after dark. It had been months since Mom and I'd been shopping, and even longer since we'd all gone out to dinner. Even my walks around the neighborhood had stopped. If it wasn't for my parents and an occasional visit from Gwen, I'd be a total hermit.

"Here it is, Mrs. Reynalds," Gwen said, fumbling through the printed directions that had guided us to Bridgeport. "On the left."

Mom navigated into the left lane and flipped on the turn signal. She glanced sideways at me and squeezed my leg encouragingly. "You doin' okay, babe?"

I shrank from her touch. "I guess so."

"It's okay," Gwen piped up from the back. "We're almost there."

I closed my eyes and tried to pretend I was home, safe in bed, but it didn't drive out the sick feeling of being out, exposed, and vulnerable. This had all been Gwen's idea. I trusted her completely, but it took everything in me not to panic. The ghostly voices that had been haunting me had grown worse in the past several days. I felt certain that if they got any worse Mom and Dad would surely find out and it would be a one-way ticket to the funny farm for me.

I was getting worse and it was becoming harder to keep it a secret. Lately, I'd been trying to distract myself with my artwork. I was painting now, art supplies provided by Dad, who had starting to treat me like a caged lab rat. He didn't know yet that I wasn't quite all
there
when I was sketching or painting, but I'm sure he suspected.

My artwork was doing more to keep me sane than all the meds and psychotherapy combined. I didn't like the way the antipsychotics made me feel, and I wasn't completely honest with my therapist, who would surely take the increased number of disembodied voices that I was hearing as a sign that I was losing my grip. Only Gwen knew I was having conversations with more than just Jenny, but she had sworn an oath of silence. I didn't like lying to everyone but if it was enough to keep me out of the crazy patch, I'd do what I needed to do.

My first paintings were a little neurotic. They were all of Jenny — Jenny sitting for a portrait, Jenny petting a grey bunny, Jenny standing near a bright white window. The styles varied widely. Some were abstract. Some were so realistic they looked like photographs. I didn't really understand that painting so many pictures of Jenny might be a problem until Gwen looked over my collection one day and told me to cool it. "Are you trying to get busted with OCD? Paint something else."

I didn't have the heart to tell her I didn't pick the subjects of my artwork.
They
picked me.

My latest — thankfully
not
of Jenny — was an oil on canvas that I'd completed Halloween night. It looked to be of some kind of courtroom scene from a time period I couldn't identify. The Renaissance? Medieval times, maybe? In it four young women sat behind a carved wooden table, wearing coarse dresses in drab browns and greys.

The girls' heads had all recently been shaved bald, and if you looked closely enough, you could see stubble on their pale skulls. All four of them looked bony, sick, and miserable. Their sad expressions drew attention to the uniform position of their hands; four pairs of palms resting flat on the table in front of them like children forced to show their parents that they'd washed up for dinner.

Perhaps the creepiest part of the painting had been the old man in the foreground, a man dressed entirely in black — black robe, stockings, pointy shoes, and round, brimless cap. His long, wispy white locks parted to reveal a white complexion of clefts and wrinkles. His face was shaped in an open-mouthed grimace, his right hand pointed upward, as if calling on a higher order for justice.

The painting had been unlike anything I'd painted before. Realistic but without dimension, it was full of contrasting shades of light and darkness. The girls behind the table were so radiant they seemed to glow with faint gold auras. I called the piece
Inn
o
cence Accused.
When I showed it to Gwen, she told me to go back to painting Jenny
.
No one else but she had seen it.

"Here it is, on the right," Gwen said. "The address is one forty-two."

The car slowed in front of a white, sixties-style bungalow with a flat, stacked-stone exterior. The porch lamp was on, the windows brightly lit, and cars were lined up here and across the street, as if there was a gathering in progress within. Mom cut the engine and coasted to the side of the road a few houses down, where there was an empty space. She put the car in park and shut off the headlights.

"Are you sure about this?" Mom asked, looking in the rearview mirror at Gwen.

Gwen nodded. "I'm sure. It'll be okay."

I felt suddenly like a child, with grownups spelling to keep the meaning of their conversation hidden. But I was, frankly, beyond caring. Again, I thought longingly of home.

We got out of the car and moved down the street in the dark There weren't any sidewalks or streetlamps here. The only light came from the windows of houses on either side of the road. The cold autumn wind was laced with the smell of fireplace smoke and the sickly-sweet scent of decay, like rotting apples. Dry leaves swirled along the pavement with a sound that made me think of fingernails raking over a rough surface.

Gwen led the way up the walk. The front door featured opaque yellow windows in a pebblestone pattern. Shapes moved beyond the glass. I heard the mumble of voices and wondered if they came from inside the house or inside my head.

The woman who answered the door appeared to be in her seventies, with short silvery hair threaded with darker hues. "Hi, Mrs. Hawkley?" Gwen extended her hand. "I'm Gwen. We spoke over the phone."

Mrs. Hawkley stared blankly at Gwen's empty hand for a moment before understanding animated her face. "Gwen, of course. Come in, please. This must be Becky."

"Hello."

"And I'm Becky's mom, Kathy."

"Hello and welcome," Mrs. Hawkley said as she ushered us inside. "Please, take a seat wherever you'd like. There's food if you're hungry."

The living room's fireplace and wood paneling had all been painted a cheerful color of antique white to match the room's Berber carpet. Chairs representing every decade from the past sixty years had been arranged here as if for an amateur theatrical. At the room's far end stood a buffet with a range of serving dishes, potluck fare in a broad variety of salads and casseroles. There were perhaps two dozen men and women in their fifties, sixties, and seventies chatting, eating, and drinking.

I swallowed deeply. I felt like I'd taken a bite of something too big to chew. Dizzy, I grasped for the nearest wall.

"Beck, are you okay?"

"I think I'd better sit down."

The room was warm but not stuffy, yet it was hard to catch my breath. My knees felt suddenly unable to support my weight, and I slid gratefully into a chair at the side of the room.

Gwen's face was suddenly large before me. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe you'd feel better if you ate something." Mom's voice, from somewhere to the side. "Something besides your ponytail."

Gwen gently pulled the strands of wet hair out of my mouth.

"I'm all right."

"Are you sure? If you had something in your stomach, it might settle you down."

"Mom, I'm not hungry." I knew without looking at my reflection that I looked ill. The weight loss that at first made me slender and attractive now made me look sick. Dark patches shadowed my eyes like bruises, and my complexion looked yellow and unwell. I was never hungry. My stomach was always upset.

After a few minutes I started to feel a little better. I liked having my back against the wall, with Mom and Gwen sitting on either side of me. My vision steadied long enough to check out the crowd.

As always, information about the people around me filled my head. I knew instantly that the earthy-looking woman with the plate full of potato salad was stealing money from the small veterinary clinic whose books she kept. The distinguished man standing next to his wife near the fireplace, the one holding the glass of white wine, had over the past six months fallen in love with an intern at his law firm, a young college student named Paul, who clerked for one of the senior partners. And Mrs. Hawkley, the woman who had opened the door for us, was very ill — or would be shortly. Pancreatic cancer would claim her in a year's time.

I picked up this and other snippets, too many and too fast to digest all at once, from every corner of the room. I started to get dizzy again, and put my head between my knees to prevent passing out and making a scene.

Mom's cool, soft fingers lightly tickled the nape of my neck, gradually drawing me back to reality. After another ten minutes, people began to sit down. Mrs. Hawkley turned off lamps and dimmed overhead lights, and the room quieted to a series of faint murmurs and whispers.

"Thanks, everyone, for coming tonight," Mrs. Hawkley said in a stage voice as she stood in the pool of track lighting before the fireplace. "Some new faces, I see. Welcome. Tonight we have as our special guest Catalina Romero from Brooklyn. I know some of you have had a chance to have private sessions with her and can attest to her gifts. Please help me welcome her."

Applause filled the dim space. As we waited for Catalina to appear, I felt the sudden stab of attention fall on me, as if someone was watching. My eyes darted automatically to the back of the room, the source of the feeling, and saw him, an old man sitting in the room's shadowy far corner. He had white hair, a neatly trimmed goatee, and black-rimmed glasses from another generation. When I caught his gaze, he grinned at me, a kindly smile that I liked right away.

Catalina appeared at the front of the room. Slender and pretty, she had straight, chin-length hair that was so blond as to be almost white. Her large green eyes and triangular face gave her face a cat-like appearance. She immediately climbed on a stool that Mrs. Hawkley had provided and rewarded us with a warm laugh.

"Hello, everyone, and thank you for coming," she said with a soft-spoken voice that immediately silenced the room. "I know you've had guest speakers here before. I don't know how they worked, but I prefer to let things unfold naturally. I discovered a long time ago that the only time I get befuddled is when I try to direct what happens. It's much easier when I step aside and get out of my own way and just let things take place at their own pace."

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let her arms relax in her lap. I glanced at Mom, who rolled her eyes. Despite everything, I giggled silently, looking back at the old man in the corner. It was too dark to tell for sure, but he seemed to be observing me coolly, the slightest hint of amusement on his whiskery lips. There was something startlingly familiar about him. I felt suddenly sure that I'd seen him before. But where?

Again, I felt the slightest hint of warmth from him but nothing more. No information, no omens of his future, only a hazy sense of goodness. Unsatisfied, I attempted something I'd never done before: I tried purposefully to read him, casting out my mind in his direction, hoping to pluck something important out of the darkness that might give me a better idea of exactly who he was. Yet an invisible barrier seemed to block me, muddying everything about him but a faint feeling of kindness. Who was this guy?

"Jorge," Catalina said from the fireplace spotlight. "Do I have a Jorge here?"

There was a gurgle from the middle of the room, a throat clearing, and then a voice. "I'm Jorge."

"Okay, good," Catalina answered. "Will you stand up please so I can get a better focus on you?"

A thick-waisted Latino man with a dense shock of black hair and a bristly walrus mustache rose to his feet. He awkwardly clasped his hands in front of him.

"
That's him."
A whisper, disembodied, directionless.
"
That's my boy."
I looked around the room, trying to locate its source. There was a vague Spanish accent to it.

"You know a Maria?" Catalina asked.

"Yes," the man answered.

"Your mother?"

"Yes."

"Maria," Mom whispered sarcastically in my ear. "What are the odds?"

I patted her knee to silence her.

"
Tell him that I love him. Tell him that I miss him. Tell him that I'm sorry
.
"
The ghostly voice again, as if the owner sat somewhere out in the darkened audience.

The Latino man was maybe fifty years old, wearing stylish glasses, a tieless suit and dress shirt. He looked successful enough now, but I felt a toughness about him. I sensed early gang violence. Drugs. Jail time. Despite his sheen of success, he clearly wasn't someone people messed with. This was a guy who could deal out pain if you crossed him.

"She passed when you were young, yes?" Catalina asked.

"Yes," answered the Latino man.

"You were her only son, her only child. Is that right?"

"Yes," the Latino man acknowledged.

"
I abandoned him,"
the bodiless voice cried.
"
Tell him I'm sorry."

"Do you hear that?" I murmured to Gwen.

"Hear what?"

"That voice? A Spanish lady's voice."

Gwen shook her head.

Catalina continued. "You remember your mother but she was sick a lot."

"Yes."

"She passed very young, didn't she?"

"Yes."

"Oh, Jorge, I'm so sorry," Catalina said empathetically. "It looks like you had a terribly tough time."