Stranger With My Face (19 page)

“She’s sick, and she’s not going to get better. If you came here, you couldn’t see her. She’s not allowed visitors. My advice
to you, Miss Stratton, is to concentrate on your own life—”

There was a loud beep, and the line went dead.

For a long time I stood, unmoving, holding the silent phone against my ear. The lines must have gone down. How was it possible
that I could have come so close to the knowledge I was seeking, only to have it slip so suddenly through my fingers? Mom had warned me. We all knew what storms could do.
There were periods every winter when we were isolated for hours, and sometimes even days. But why, I asked myself, did it
have to happen now? In one moment I could have asked Arthur Abbott the name and location of Lia’s hospital!

Was that information necessary? Was it possible that I could reach Lia without it? I didn’t know. The projection experience
was so new to me that I wasn’t certain how much control I actually had. I’d been able to travel to Helen at will, but I’d
known precisely where to find her. My second attempt had been less successful. Was that because I hadn’t directed myself toward
an exact geographical location? Or was it because fear had diverted me? I had known there was no danger connected with my
visit to Helen.

Lia had told me that our mother had searched the state of California for our father. She had found him, or so Lia supposed.
And Lia, herself, had managed to locate me. Had she had leads to go on? If so, what?

I did have some idea of where I should be looking. “Even if you came here,” Mr. Abbott had told me, “you couldn’t see her.”
He had not said “if you went there,” but “if you
came here
.” Lia was in a hospital somewhere in the vicinity of Albuquerque. And I would no longer have my fear of her as a deterrent.
Lia was no threat if she was as ill as her foster father had indicated.

What illness could it be that had come upon her so violently and quickly? To me, she had seemed invincible. The thought of
her in a hospital bed was almost impossible to contemplate.

“But she
is
human,” I reminded myself, speaking the words aloud in an effort to make them more convincing. “Somewhere she exists as a
real person, subject to viruses and infections like the rest of us. But for him to say that she’ll never get better—”

How could that be? Had she been in an accident? Had she been stricken with some progressive disease? Surprisingly, this conjecture
brought me no pleasure. It was a relief to feel unthreatened, and there should have been satisfaction in the thought that
one who sought to injure others would receive punishment.

At the same time—

We are the two sides of a coin. We floated together in the same sea before birth.

Despite everything, the fact remained that Lia was my sister.

My sister.

If the other elements had not been there—if I hadn’t had some idea of where to search—if I hadn’t become, in some strange
way, so close to her—still, I would have found her. I am as sure of that as I have ever been of anything. We were identical
sisters, drawn together by a force that transcended logic.

“She’s nothing to you,” Mr. Abbott had said, “except for the fact that one woman gave birth to you.”

That was true. But it was enough.

It couldn’t be done right away. Megan was already shouting up the stairs that my French toast was getting cold. I entered
the kitchen, and as though that were a signal, the electricity went off.

That was the catalyst that always triggered Mom’s decision to clean out drawers. It made sense, actually, because during normal
times she and Dad were too occupied to think about such things, but when light was gone and the computer wouldn’t operate,
they were left with all this creative energy and nothing to focus it on. So she got my father out of bed, and we all took
candles and flashlights and shoveled out drawers in the kitchen and the bathrooms. It wasn’t dull work. We are a family that
doesn’t throw things away. The drawers contained a multitude of notes recalling earlier times—“Gone to Kimmie’s—be back by
5”; “Agent called—Finnigan wants film option on
Lord of the Stars
”; “Defrost hamburger!” There were receipts and corks and empty toothpaste tubes and newspaper clippings. We filled two trash
bags, and then Dad decided we had worked long enough, so he built a fire in the living room fireplace and suggested we tell
stories.

Of course, he went first, and it was really a form of cheating because what he told was a book plot he was mulling over and
wanted to try out on us. When he was done, Meg took the floor and gave us a tale about a day when the sun blew out and the
world grew colder and colder until our whole family had to cram into the bathtub and turn on the hot water.

“And then that froze,” she continued, “and we were trapped there in the ice, and we starved to death because the box of cookies
we had brought in with us was up on top of the sink.”

Neal’s story was about dragons, and it never went anywhere because he got so wrapped up in their physical description that
he forgot to have them do anything.

The turn passed to me. I told a story about twin sisters who were separated at birth and who found each other because one
of them knew a secret. She could lift herself from her body and fly.

“And she crossed the land,” I said, “and found her twin, in the far place where she lived, and she started by visiting her
at night, so at first the other sister thought the whole thing was a dream. But then the visiting twin grew stronger in the
use of her talent, and she was able to appear in the daylight. And she told her sister, ‘You can do this also, if you try.
And you must try. You must learn, so that you will be able to travel the way I do, with the speed of thought, leaving your
body behind.’”

Everyone was silent when I had finished. Then Neal said, “You make it sound almost like it’s true. It isn’t, is it? People
can’t do that?”

“No, people can’t do that,” Mom said decidedly. She turned to me accusingly. “You just can’t let it drop, can you, Laurie?
You’ve got to keep throwing it back at us. And what an unfair way to do it, during this family time!”

“Now, Shelly,” Dad said, “I’m sure Laurie didn’t mean it that way.”

“Yes, she did,” Mom insisted. “It’s the same awful story she tried to tell us that first day about visitations and dreams
and spirits coming and going. She’s obsessed with the idea of locating her roots.”

“What roots?” Neal asked, his eyes brightening with interest.

“Now, see!” Mom said. “You’ve brought the children into it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. I hadn’t imagined the story would upset her to this degree. “I’m not trying to ‘throw’
anything back at you. I swear it. Astral projection is a fact, Mom, and people from my sort of background are particularly
adept at using it. I have books on the subject that you can read if you’d like to. And this morning I made a phone call—”

“Please, drop it,” Dad said quietly. “You know how your mother feels about the idea of digging up the past. Putting it into
a fictional context doesn’t make it any more palatable to her. She’s right; it’s an unfair maneuver, and I can’t see what
you think there is to gain by it. We’ve already given you all the information we have.”

“What if I told you it was true?” I said. “What if I could prove to you that Lia had really taught me—”

“That’s enough, Laurie,” Dad said emphatically. “Your turn is over. It’s come round to you, Shelly. What’s your story going
to be about?”

“I can’t think of one,” Mom said in a strained voice. “We’ve spent enough time on this. How about lunch? Neal, bring the flashlight.
The bulb won’t go on when we open the refrigerator, you know. It will be like playing Go Fish to find makings for sandwiches.”

They would never believe me. The realization struck me with a kind of hopeless finality. Their creativity—the very thing that
should have made them receptive—was what closed them off. My parents were used to building worlds for other people, and they
fashioned these like expert craftsmen, conscious always that what they were creating was not to be confused with reality.
Stories were fiction—Meg’s frozen bathwater, Neal’s platoon of dragons. I was breaking the rules if I took the game beyond
that and insisted that the incredible might be true.

Suddenly I wanted Jeff. He was the only one I could talk to, and I wanted him so desperately that I was tempted to rush out
and brave the storm.

“I’m not hungry,” I told my parents. “I’ll get something later. I’m going upstairs to read for a while.”

I was halfway to the landing when I heard footsteps behind me.

“Laurie?” Megan asked. “Is ‘Lia’ the name of the ghosty?”

I turned. The round face, raised to mine, was solemn and worried, and the pale brows were drawn together in a frown.

“You believe me, Meg?” I asked her.

“Yes,” Megan said. “What I don’t understand, though, is why she wanted so much for you to learn how to go away.”

“Well, because—because—” To my surprise, I found that I was unable to come up with an answer. I had accepted Lia’s insistence
without questioning it. “Try again, Laurie,” she had kept telling me. “Tired or not, you must keep trying.” Why had it mattered
to her so much? I hadn’t known then, and I didn’t know now.

“It scares me,” Meg said.

“She can’t hurt me, honey.” I took three quick steps down the stairs and put my arms around her, pulling her sturdy body against
me in a hard hug. “She’s far away and very sick. The part of her that comes here is just the thinking part. She can’t hurt
people with that. It’s like—well, like a shadow maybe. A shadow can’t do anything, can it?”

“I guess not,” Meg said, but she sounded unconvinced. “You be careful, okay?”

“Of course I will.” That tone of reassurance, I can hear it now, ringing out confidently in that darkened hall. And beyond
my voice, the sound of the wind, and beyond that—

Was there another sound? Muffled, as though a hand had been pressed quickly over unseen lips? Was it laughter?

Did Megan hear it? Was that the reason she clung to me so tightly for that extra moment after my own arms had released their
hold?

“You be careful,” she said again before she left me, and, again, I assured her that I would be.

I climbed the rest of the stairs and went down the hall to my room. The wind was louder here, and the glass of the balcony
doors was so plastered with snow that I had the disconcerting feeling I was sealed off from the world. Even so, I pulled the
bedroom door shut and then reached automatically for the light switch. It made an ineffectual clicking sound, and the room
seemed to grow even darker.

I groped my way across to the unmade bed and stretched myself out on top of the rumpled blankets.

“I’m coming to find you, sister,” I whispered to Lia.

The safe time, Jeff and I had decided, was the morning, but did that matter now? As I’d said to Megan, there was nothing Lia
could do to hurt me. Just as her shadow could cause no harm to my body, there was no way her body could cause injury to my
spirit self. I was wise to her. She couldn’t fool me with illusions. She couldn’t trick me into a disastrous situation as
she had Jeff and Helen. I knew too much about her. I wouldn’t allow myself to be drawn into danger.

Laughter?

No, it was the wind. It was water rushing across the rocks beneath the window. It was the whisper of snow piling layer on
layer on the slanted roof of Cliff House.

I closed my eyes and put my mind into focus. And like an arrow snapped from a bow, I went.

It was all so fast I had no chance to weigh what was happening. There was no entrance to make—I was simply there. The place
was a hospital, but it wasn’t the same as the one where Helen had been. At first I couldn’t ascertain what the differences
were. There were the same white walls, the same sterile atmosphere with the immaculate waxed surfaces of linoleum floors reflecting
the glow of the fluorescent lights on the ceilings. Nurses and orderlies moved efficiently through the halls, carrying charts
and hypodermics and wheeling trays of medications.

But there were no flowers, and that was surprising. At Duke the front desk had been loaded with them—baskets of blooms, vases
of cut arrangements, potted plants—all tagged and awaiting delivery to patients.

Here there were none. The desk was bare. And the doors to the patients’ rooms were closed.

I moved slowly down the hall. Nurses passed me or walked straight through me, unaware of my existence. I no longer found this
startling; it was what I expected. The doors were strange in that the upper portions of them were made of glass. I could look
through and see the people in the rooms beyond, standing, sitting, staring out of the windows or at the walls or moving restlessly
about. No one seemed ill in any serious way.

She’s sick—she’s not allowed visitors—

Mr. Abbott’s words came back to me, and I found it hard to make sense out of them. The people on this ward did not appear
to be sick enough to warrant such a rule. Yet he was right. There were no visitors, and it was a time of day when there should
have been.

I passed one door after another until I came to the one I was seeking. I didn’t have to look through the glass to know whose
room it was. It was as though a voice were calling out to me.

I passed through the door and moved across to the bed and stood beside it, gazing down in wonder at the familiar figure.

She was a duplicate of myself.

She was sleeping so soundly that it hardly seemed possible that she was alive. Her chest didn’t appear to be moving, and there
was no quiver of eyelids or nostrils. I bent closer to examine the contours of the face. The starkly defined bone structure,
the olive complexion, the thick fringe of lashes lying motionless against the smooth cheek might well have been my own.

Yet there were differences.

This girl’s ears were pierced, and mine were not. Mom and I had gone through a few rounds on that issue, and she had won.
“There are enough natural holes in a person’s anatomy,” she had said firmly, “so that it’s a sacrilege to make new ones unless
you absolutely have to.” I didn’t agree, but it hadn’t seemed worth waging an all-out battle. It would be easy enough to get
the job done when I went off to college.

There was a tiny scar on the chin that might have been nothing more than the result of scratching an insect bite, but it was
a scar that I didn’t have.

There was a mole on the neck at a spot where I had no mole.

I continued my inspection. The girl lay on her side with her knees drawn up against her stomach. She was covered with a blanket,
and one hand was curled around its edge. She had perfect fingernails, the kind that had always filled me with envy. My own
had a scraggly look, not exactly “bitten to the quick,” but “slightly gnawed.”

Small things. Unimportant. Almost unnoticeable, yet they spelled the difference between Lia Abbott and Laurie Stratton. This
body was not mine, and the girl who dwelt in it was someone else. Her genetic makeup might be identical, but she had lived
a different life and made her own marks upon the body’s surface.

“Lia?” I spoke the name, but no sound came.

Could she hear me?
I wondered. I had heard her when I was sleeping. Her voice had become a part of my dreaming and as it had grown stronger
had expanded into my waking consciousness.

“Lia?” I said again.

Behind me there was a tiny, metallic sound. The door swung open, and a nurse came into the room. She crossed to the foot of
the bed and stood there a moment, staring down at the figure of the sleeping girl. Then she turned and left. She pulled the
door closed and paused on its far side to glance back through the glass.

There was another sharp click, as though a key were being turned in a lock.
Was it possible,
I asked myself incredulously,
that they were locking Lia in?