Brass Ring (19 page)

“Where are you getting that picture from?” Randy asked. “The blood, I mean. Is it from something you read? Something you’ve seen?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t care. I just want it to go away.” She looked down and was mortified to see that she had drawn his hand onto her knee, her fingers digging into the flesh. She let go quickly. “I saw it for the first time in the little theater,” she added. “The first time I met you there.”

“
Really
?” He looked upset, as though he might somehow be responsible for her discomfort.

Claire tried to stand up, but he caught her arm, held her down. She was finished with this conversation. If she thought about it any longer, the image might reappear and steal her sanity again.

“What did you mean about mirrors?” Randy asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Randy, please. Can we leave?”

“Not quite yet,” he said. “First I want to tell you something.” He shifted on the hard bench and waited for a line of small children to pass by them before he spoke again. “For the longest time, I would get this…picture in my head,” he said. “Sometimes I’d go a month or so without it, but at other times I would see it a dozen times a week. This went on from my late teens until just a few years ago, and sometimes I still have it.”

“What was it?” she asked. “Was it horrible, like the blood?”

“It was very strange. At least it was strange to me at the time. I would see this sort of gray blur in the lower field of my vision, with something pointed and silver jutting up from it.”

Claire thought of saying “how bizarre,” but caught herself. She was in no position to criticize the figments of someone else’s imagination.

“The vision was always accompanied by a sick feeling. A horrible sense of doom.”

“Yes.” Claire studied him, completely alert.

“Then one day a few years ago, I chaperoned Cary’s field trip to Harpers Ferry.” He let out a mirthless laugh. “LuAnne was always helping out at the school, so I’d promised to chaperone the next trip. I wanted to back out when I found out where they were going. Once I left Harpers Ferry, I never intended to set foot in that place again. But I couldn’t see a way out of it without disappointing Cary. So anyway, we’re on this bus and going across that shitty bridge, and it’s winter, and I’m on the right side of the bus, and I happen to look out I the window toward the town and what do I see?”

Claire was sitting on the edge of the bench, eyes wide. “What?”

“A gray blur with something pointed and silver jutting up from it. The blur was the trees. The deciduous trees. Just a blurry mass of gray at that time of year. And there was a church steeple sticking up from the trees. That was the same view I’d had from the bridge the day Charles fell.” Randy laughed again. “I couldn’t stop staring at it. I wanted to shout and laugh and cry. All those years, that image had been locked in my mind, and I suddenly felt like I’d been set free.”

“But you said it still comes some—”

“Yes, but I know what it is now, and I can tell it to take a hike. It has no power over me anymore.” He leaned back against the wall, letting his words sink in.

“So you think that what I’m seeing might be some sort of…flashback to something that happened in the past?” she asked.

“Has it only been happening since the night you were with Margot?”

“Yes.”

He frowned. “Maybe it’s tied to that night somehow, then. But you didn’t see any…any blood that night, did you?”

“No.” She thought suddenly of Susan’s horrendous bicycle accident. Susan had been ten or eleven, riding down the hill on Center Street when a car pulled out of a driveway, directly into her path. Susan had flipped over her handlebars onto the hood of the car. Claire had arrived on the scene as the paramedics were loading her stoic, bleeding daughter into the ambulance. She remembered that scene vividly, though, and it felt very much a finished part of the past. Nothing was hidden or haunting.

“Maybe it’s something from very long ago,” Randy suggested. “From your childhood.”

“No.” Claire shook her head. “There’s an extremely unpleasant quality to it. Nothing that horrible ever happened in my childhood.”

“Ah, I forgot,” Randy said. “The long carousel ride.”

She ignored the mocking tone. She was going to leave now, whether he came with her or not. She wanted to be done with this. “So,” she said, “how about that movie?”

“Let’s follow this through, Claire.” Randy seemed to have no interest in leaving. “Think about the image, or flashback, or whatever it is. Let’s try to figure out—”

“No.” She stood up. “I just got rid of the damn thing. I’m not going to try to reproduce it.”

“But it’ll come back. You said yourself that it’s getting worse.”

“I’ll go to a movie by myself, then,” she said.

Randy folded his arms across his chest. “I haven’t known you very long,” he said, “but one thing I figured out about you right off the bat is that you like to pretend everything is fine even when it isn’t. Are you aware of that?”

She pursed her lips. “I have an optimistic view of things, if that’s what you mean,” she said.

“Like a childhood where your parents got divorced,” Randy continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “and your father took your sister away, never to be heard from again. That’s not fine. That’s not even tolerable.”

Claire felt unexpected tears burn her eyes, and Randy reached up to lightly squeeze her hand. “Did you cry when your father took Vanessa away?” he asked. “Did your mother cry?”

She wanted to fight him, to turn and walk away, but she felt drawn in by the questions. Had she cried? She had no memory at all of that day. Had Mellie? She could only picture Mellie laughing. Loving. She couldn’t recall her parents arguing, could see no picture of them other than their embracing in the kitchen of the farmhouse, her father telling Mellie she was the most beautiful woman in the world. That picture warmed her, here in the cool corridor of the Smithsonian. Randy was wrong. She was grateful to him—for listening to her, for not making her feel like a lunatic—but he was wrong.

“I’d like to leave,” she said again. Something in her voice must have told him she couldn’t bear another second of his interrogation, because this time he simply shrugged, stood up, and slipped his arm lightly across her shoulders, and they walked down the hall toward the exit.

VIENNA

OUTSIDE THE MUSEUM, THE
air was blustery cold. It was only six o’clock but dark as midnight, and Claire would have sold her soul for another few hours of sun. She’d longed to step out of the museum into bright, fresh air and leave the memory of the last hour inside with the horses.

They were not going to a movie. She sensed Randy had no interest, and she didn’t push it, although she would have welcomed the escape. They walked the short distance to his car in silence. He opened the door for her, and she got inside, shivering. Randy took off his coat and laid it carefully across the backseat before getting in himself. She had the urge to touch him again, to crawl once more into that solid, warm embrace he’d offered her in the museum. She needed some of that warmth right now. She was freezing.

She folded her arms above the seat belt and looked out the window as the car pulled away from the curb, and soon they were on 66, heading toward Vienna. It was several minutes before Claire realized how carefully she was riveting her eyes on the cars ahead of them, avoiding any glimpse into the sideview mirror next to her.

She glanced over at Randy, drew in a breath. “Can I tell you about the mirrors?” she asked, surprising herself. Hadn’t she said she didn’t want to think about this any longer?

Randy nodded without taking his eyes from the road. “Of course.”

“Well, right now I’m trying not to look in your sideview mirror, because when I look in small mirrors, I see them filled with green.”

Two long frown lines cut across Randy’s forehead. “This is new, too?” he asked. “Since the night with Margot?”

“Yes.” She waited for him to speak again, hoping he had some simple explanation for this phenomenon.

“Weird,” he said.

“This morning I was over at a friend’s house and she had a small mirror in her bathroom. When I looked at it, it was filled with green. It shook me up so much, I dropped the glass I was holding.”

He nodded toward the window next to her. “Take a look at the mirror,” he said.

“No.”

“What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

“It could be green.”

“And?”

“And I’ll feel crazy and nauseated—it nauseates me, for some reason—and I’ll get sick in your car.”

He smiled, reached over to briefly lay his hand on hers, as if he could transfer some of his strength to her through his touch. “Look at it,” he repeated.

She turned her head slowly until the mirror was in her line of vision and squinted at the glare of headlights from the cars behind them. She smiled. “It’s just a mirror,” she said.

“Well, damn, girl.” He laughed. “I was hoping it would be green. How are we going to solve the puzzle if half the pieces are missing?”

She liked his willingness to take on her problem. She glanced in the mirror again. Headlights. “Maybe this morning was the last time I’ll see the green.”

“Right, Pollyanna.” Randy turned onto the exit ramp for Vienna. “What’s it like?” he asked. “Green as in trees? Or like paint on a wall? Cloth? Does it have a texture?”

She forced herself to think about it. “It’s a kelly green,” she said, pleased she could recreate the image in her mind without feeling the terror. “And it’s smooth, I think. It moves, though. And sometimes there are other colors.” She felt wonderfully free, saying all of this out loud. Randy nodded as she spoke, as if he heard this sort of thing every day.

“It must all be connected somehow,” he said, his eyes on the traffic ahead of him. “The colors in the mirrors, the bloodstain, the dizziness. Don’t you think?” He glanced over at her, and she shrugged. “Either they’re all tied somehow to the situation with my sister, or else those few minutes on the bridge triggered something you experienced yourself or read about or saw somewhere.”

“Maybe,” she said. Right then she didn’t care. She felt fine. The car had warmed up, the sideview mirror was just that, and she could say any damn crazy thing to Randy that popped into her mind.

As they drove through Vienna, she studied him openly. His hands circling the steering wheel were large but well shaped. The streetlights and shop lights shone in the glassy blue of his eyes and outlined his profile with one perfect, unbroken white line.

“You’re beautiful,” she said impulsively, then colored when he looked at her with raised eyebrows. “I’m not trying to be…provocative,” she said. “I just think you’re a wonderful person.”

“Well, thank you.” He grinned. “It means a lot to me to hear someone say that. You can’t know how much.”

He turned onto her street, and she continued watching him as he pulled into her driveway, where they were immediately surrounded by the dark shelter of the trees. Randy stopped the car in front of the garage and turned in his seat to look at her. “I’m very glad you went with me today, even though it was hard for you some of the time.” He looked down at the steering wheel, ran a finger along its curve. “I’ve been lonely for a long time. It was great having some adult company for a change.”

“You need to meet people,” she said. “There are billions of organizations for singles. Lots of ways to meet potential friends. What have you tried so far?”

“So far?” There was sadness in his smile. “I’ve tried two things: work and avoidance. They’re the safest ways I know of to cope with being single again.”

“Cop-out,” Claire said.

“Guilty.” He nodded.

She thought again of Amelia but immediately discarded the idea. Even if Amelia could muster up the interest, Claire wasn’t ready to share Randy with anyone yet.

She looked up at the dark windows of her house. She didn’t want him to leave.

“Would you like to come in? I could scrape together something for dinner.”

He didn’t hesitate. “I’d like that,” he said, and he was out of the car before she could change her mind.

Inside the house, she hung up their coats and bustled around the family room, straightening things that were already straight, fighting an odd sense of guilt that she was doing something wrong by being alone in the house with the one person Jon would least like to be there. And she felt, too, an undeniable hint of danger—she was happier than she should be to have him there. She didn’t want him as a lover, true, but the closeness, the safety she felt with him had the potential to be equally as intimate.

In the kitchen, she opened the pantry door and stared at the shelves, then walked back to the door of the family room. “Pasta?” she asked.

Randy turned away from the bookshelf that was holding his attention. “You know”—he pointed to the fruit bowl on the dining-room table—”I would be very content with an apple.”

She frowned at him. “That’s it?”

He nodded, and she took two apples from the bowl, washed them, and walked over to where he stood next to the bookshelf. He was looking at a photograph of her and Jon and Susan. The three of them were sitting on a rock next to a creek. They had gone canoeing that day—the yellow bow of the canoe was visible in one corner of the picture. Susan couldn’t have been more than twelve. Had it really been that long since they’d all canoed together? They used to do so many things as a family.

“Susan’s really cute,” Randy said, taking the fruit from her hand.

“Thanks.” She bit into her own apple and sat down on the arm of the sofa.

Randy looked up from the photograph. “May I ask a rude question?”

She knew what he was going to say before he said it, and she smiled. “Yes, she’s Jon’s.”

He laughed. “I guess that’s not the first time you’ve been asked that.” He lifted the picture from the shelf and held it toward the kitchen light. “I was trying to see if she looked like him at all.”

“She looks more like him than she does me,” she said. “She has those big moony eyes of his.”

“I didn’t realize…I thought, you know, that if you were paralyzed from the waist down, that automatically meant you couldn’t…” He shrugged his shoulders, and she felt his discomfort.