The Judas Glass (16 page)

I tried to roll over, to cry out, and I was made of dirt.

The water heater whispered, a ring of blue flame illuminating the cellar. I was standing unsteadily. I didn't go anywhere, looking down at my shoes, dark, dress oxfords.

How many times had I hiked a hill, and found a hole, dirt flung wide, and wondered what creature had excavated such a hiding place, and how it knew, in the busy hive of its genes, how to mine such a sanctuary.

A phone rang. I put my hands to my ears. I was in a hallway, in a familiar house.

When I put one hand out to support myself I left a dirty handprint. Someone answered the phone. It was Dr. Opal's voice. I could not make out the words. I was leaving footprints, faint, dark tracks across the brightly lit kitchen, into a room lined with bookshelves.

Dr. Opal's library was crowded with volumes, hundreds of books. I bumped into a dictionary stand and the thing fell over, the unabridged dictionary landing heavily.

“Let me call you back,” said Dr. Opal, somewhere in another part of the house.

I righted the lectern, and put the book back where it belonged, having a little trouble with it, the book falling open, almost too heavy for me. Beyond the curtained windows it was evening.

“I was worried,” said Dr. Opal from the doorway. “I spent the whole day convinced that you'd never wake again.”

I wondered if this was something Dr. Opal wished for, in one corner of his mind. I found a box of tissues and tugged until one tore free from the box. It startled me, the way another sheet sprang halfway from the slot, like an eager thing. I blew my nose, and was troubled by what I saw in the tissue.

He asked, “How are you feeling?”

This was not simple social courtesy. The question had profound medical implications. I dropped into a leather chair, a soft trap I would have trouble escaping. Dr. Opal turned on a lamp beside me, lifted one of my eyelids. I stuck my tongue out as a dim joke, the eager, cooperative patient. But he examined my tongue briefly, smelling of liquor and looking defeated.

“I want to know how this happened,” he said.

Yes, I thought—so would I.

One of his shirt cuffs was unbuttoned, and it flapped as he ran his hand over his hair. “Don't you wonder how you happen to be here?”

He seemed to want me to say something. I did not feel quite able to respond.

He took a swallow from a brandy snifter. “Where did you go last night?”

It was time to talk again. I coughed, took a breath, gave it a try. “I went for a walk,” I said. I sounded pretty good, a man needing that first cup of coffee.

He sat down across from me, sinking into an overstuffed chair of his own, the leather old and wrinkled, flakes of it peeling at the seams. “Where did you go?”

“Not far.” I didn't like lying to him. “How far do you think I could go, in my condition?”

He gave a skeptical smile. “I have some … sustenance for you. I think you need it.”

“I can wait.” My voice sounded flat, my tone too even, the voice of a man weary or depressed to the core.

“I'm surprised you aren't asking more questions. Of course, that was always my own personal game. I saw life as a list of questions in one column, followed by spaces in which we are supposed to pencil in the answers. You must be curious. You must want to know the etiology of this—”

The legal phrase was
proximate cause
. “I never knew you drank heavily,” I said.

“I don't.” He lifted his hand, the sleeve flowing around his gesture: usually.

“I know this is a terrible strain. And an interruption.”

As though I had just given him permission he drained the rest of his brandy. “I have a series of lectures starting this week at Stanford. ‘The Function of Intuition in Diagnosis.' I cancelled my first lecture. I said I had the flu.”

“Please don't do that sort of thing. Come and go as you normally would.”

“You are already in the news,” he said.

I gave him a questioning glance.

“There was a tiny little article among the washing machine ads. Something about vandalism in Fairmount Cemetery. One or two markers defaced, and a body possibly stolen. Possibly. They are investigating. The article makes it sound like a juvenile prank. Doesn't mention you by name.”

“So much else happens in the world.”

“Exactly.”

“I want you to find the location of something important,” I said. “Will you be able to remember what I'm telling you?”

“You don't suppose I have practiced medicine for so many years without developing a certain talent?”

“You've had quite a bit to drink. You really ought to take care of yourself.”

“I feel pretty good, but entirely too sober.”

“I want you to find a mirror.”

“I have mirrors, Richard. Although to be honest, I am a little surprised you would find them useful.”

“Do you remember that cut in my finger?”

“I remember.”

I examined what remained of it, a fine line in my finger, like the mouth of a lizard. “I want you to find the location of the mirror that arrived the day before my accident at the restaurant.” I could see him weighing the word.
Accident
. The unexplainable—birth defects, plane crashes, my presence there in his study.

“Connie knows where it is,” I said. “Ask her.”

“You think she'll tell me, without wondering?”

“Tell her you want to buy it.”

“Maybe she's forgotten about it,” he said. “Months have gone by—”

“She doesn't forget that sort of thing. Also, I want to know what is happening in the investigation. Rebecca's murder.”

“Actually, I think I've heard about the investigation recently. The police haven't forgotten about it, far from it. Rebecca Pennant, wasn't that her name?”

I must have nodded.

“She was one of those people who matter to a community, especially when they are gone. There was a scholarship set up in her name by her parents.”

My memories of Rebecca kept me silent.

“What else do you need?” he asked gently.

I needed more than I could say, and we both knew it. “Clothes.”

“Of course.”

“George Good's on Bancroft Avenue carries my size, jacket size forty-three; my waist is thirty-four, inseam thirty.”

“Very good, sir,” said Dr. Opal, doing a very decent English valet, Jeeves on too many tranquilizers.

“I think I owe you something,” I said. “For all your help.”

“You don't owe me anything.”

“I feel deeply indebted to you.”

“You would do the same for me. If I—”

“Somehow it's hard to imagine you … doing what I did. Coming back.”

He gave a short laugh. He was coherent, but much more intoxicated than I had thought. “You think I lack the persistence.”

“No, it seems characteristic of me, somehow. The kind of thing that was always going to happen.”

I meant this as little more than an unfunny joke, but Dr. Opal looked thoughtful. He said, “You have a theory.”

“Theory is too elaborate a word. I want to understand what happened.”

“So do I. And you think it had to do with the mirror?”

“I'd rather not speculate,” I said.

“Secrets within secrets.” He smiled sadly. “Do you know who really grieved for you, Richard? Connie was very badly shaken, of course. We all were. But the woman I thought would have to be sedated was the attorney, the pretty one—”

“Stella Cameron.”

“She was stricken.”

“I need a good attorney. We have a lawsuit against the mortuary. We have a suit against the restaurant. And I want to know what happened to my estate.”

“You left a will?”

“I never got around to writing a will. Committing one to paper, I mean.”

Dr. Opal cocked his head. “You should have seen a lawyer.”

“I want to know if Connie is going to sell the house. She has her sights on better places. And we had some investments. Not as many as people might think. Connie's porfolio was all in Polynesian war clubs, and I tended to have clients who weren't exactly rich.”

“What bothers me, Richard.…” He paused. “Is that you're envisioning returning to a normal life.”

“If the Farmer's Life Insurance policy paid off I suppose I owe them a lot of money. Or Connie does. That brings me to the subject of divorce, I owe Connie at least some sort of reasonable settlement.”

“Richard, I think you misunderstand your situation.”

“I'm just reviewing some areas of concern.”

“I don't think it's going to be that easy,” said Dr. Opal.

“I'm alive.”

“You are plausibly alive, yes. As a legal entity you may be more alive than you are from a medical standpoint. On the other hand, there was a death certificate issued.”

“I have legal rights, Dr. Opal. You'll certify that I'm alive, and then the death certificate will be rescinded—”

He was shaking his head. “And you want to stay secret. One word of this. To anyone. Anybody at all. We'll have television helicopters overhead, crashing into each other, in less than five minutes.”

“I shouldn't have put so much pressure on you.”

“You know what you owe me? Fairness. Honesty. To me, and to yourself. You won't be able to sell a house, you won't be able to open a bank account, you won't be able to get a library card.” He lifted a hand. “Well, maybe a library card. But you get my point.”

I did get his point, but I didn't like it. He was right, of course, and I had known this instinctively. But I didn't want to accept what he was saying just now.

“I was there,” he said. “I helped pick out the casket. I helped Connie pick out that tie. Connie insisted on a new suit, don't ask me why. I planned the service with Connie. We included that passage I thought you always liked, the poem by George Herbert. I got up and I had to read it. I don't know how I managed without breaking down. It was that kind of memorial service, people sharing what they remembered about you—”

“Thank you for being such a help,” I said.

I thought for a moment he was going to break into some powerful emotion, anger or sorrow.

“You're thinking of getting married,” I said.

“Susan's a lovely woman.”

“You're very lucky.”

I parted my damp, three-button jacket, summer-weight wool. It was not a bad choice. What sort of conversation had passed between them?
No, not the pinstripe, not navy blue. Too bad he doesn't have a nice, dead black three-piece
.

“Please don't go anywhere tonight,” he said. “I have all those cartoons you used to like, Road Runner, and Bluto getting beat up. They're up in the game room.”

I couldn't help feeling pity for Dr. Opal. He actually thought I could spend the night watching classic cartoons. I couldn't keep the affection from my voice. “Maybe I'll take a look at them.”

“Rest awhile. That's the best thing a doctor can tell a patient.”

I waited until he was asleep, and covered him with a blanket, tucking it carefully around him.

Then I opened the sliding glass door and gazed at the field. It was not a flat plain of clods, anymore. The young orchard was in place, rows of trees. A small tractor was parked near the lawn. The sounds I had heard during the day, the voices, the sound of the iron drill—this was the result.

From far away, beyond the garden, down the street somewhere, there were voices, laughter—people.

I left to join them.

24

My body was dry inside, my organs working against each other, dust against dust. I folded myself into a crouch beside a barbecue, old ash in a brick fireplace.

On the other side of the wall were the sounds of laughter, a woman's voice. It was not a laugh of mirth as much as a social sound, flirtatious. A glass chimed, champagne. It was good wine, judging from the fine fizz of the bubbles.

I was over the wall effortlessly, with a thought. Beyond the lawn a house was brightly lit. The windows threw light on the stepping-stones. A man in a dark suit was putting out glasses, dozens of them. Someone carried an ice bucket. A woman was bent over a table, arranging napkins, and as I looked on there were sounds of voices lifted in greeting, people arriving.

I watched for what might have been a long while, too rapt to attempt much, fascinated by the theater beyond the dark. People were gathering. People were accepting drinks. People were eating little finger-sized sandwiches. I felt like a child at the head of a stairway, looking down at a party and thinking: the adult world.

I could not resist the desire to enter the party. More people had arrived, and I wanted to be among them. I belonged there, among the attractive women, their necks and jewelry and slender wrists.

There were sordid implications in what I was experiencing, but I did not allow myself to consider them. I persisted in the fantasy, clear as a scripted scenario in my hands, that I could walk into the party, introduce myself, and be welcomed, a man with a really interesting story to tell.

I strolled over to the potted daphnes. They were flowering, the perfume of the tiny lavender-white trumpets so strong it was almost unpleasant. I felt loose-limbed and ready for whatever might happen.

I did not have to wait long. A woman detached herself from the growing crowd, stepped to the sliding door, and, finding it slightly open, did not have to do more than slip out. She found her way across the stepping-stones.

She was sporting narrow heels, and her step was mincing as she made her way out of the glare of the electric lights and opened her handbag. The clasp released, and she selected a cigarette with care, as though each one was significantly different from the others. When the cigarette was between her lips, she snapped a lighter and took a moment to touch the tip to the flame.

She wore a black dress with black lace sleeves, her satin handbag glittering, accented with what I took to be rhinestones. I fit into a shadow cast by a wall, and then quietly matched the shape of a shadow thrown by a giant urn, a red clay container of earth. I moved on, fitting almost exactly within the shadow of a birch tree, the spindly twigs still bare.