“I didn’t know it bothered you.”
“A little.”
“Can we go in there?”
She thought for a moment, then shook her head.
“Open the door and let me look in? Roberta won’t know and I won’t actually go inside if you don’t want. Please?”
She sighed. “Open it if you want. I don’t want to look. And promise you won’t walk in?”
“Sure. You want me to cross my heart?”
She turned away and regarded the far wall for a few moments. The door to Caleb’s room opened. Erskine said nothing. Then there was the sound of the door closing and Ariel turned toward him again.
“I see what you mean,” he said.
“Do you?”
“Yeah.” His eyes swam out of focus behind his thick lenses. “Hey,” he said, “where’s the attic?”
“On top of the house. We were going to keep it underneath but the basement was already there and the two of them would have crowded each other.”
“Don’t be a cunt, Jardell.”
“Oh, charming,” she said. “You haven’t called me a cunt since the day before yesterday.”
“I didn’t call you a cunt. I told you not to be one. Where’s the stairs to the attic?” She pointed. “What’s it like up there?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t go up there?”
“No. There’s just things that haven’t been unpacked. Suitcases and things.”
“But you’ve never explored up there?”
She shook her head.
He flung open the door and took the stairs at a dead run. She hesitated for only a moment, then trudged up after him.
The attic was unfinished, with no insulation beneath the rafters. Accordingly it was very cold and uncomfortable up there. Ariel would have been perfectly happy to take a quick look around and go back downstairs, but Erskine was in his element. He couldn’t get over the fact that Ariel had lived in the house for the better part of a year without once investigating the attic.
“People leave valuable things in attics,” he said. “It happens all the time. They hide something and then die before they have a chance to tell anybody where it is. Or it’s not valuable when they put it there but it becomes valuable years later.”
“Like True Confession magazines,” Ariel offered.
“Very funny.”
But it turned out to be more interesting than she had thought it would. There were no lights, which made things difficult, and the cold certainly interfered with her enjoyment of the project, but it was definitely interesting. The dozen or more Jardell cartons were off on one side, easily ignored once they had been identified. And the other cartons and bushel baskets and heaps of articles were all the debris of previous occupants of the house.
There was a steamer trunk filled with old curtains and drapery, all smelling of must and mold. There was a stack of local newspapers with dates in the forties. There were several cartons of old clothing, all of them smelling as uninviting as the drapes.
And there was the picture.
It was lying flat in a corner and she very nearly missed it. Then she happened on it and just gave it a quick glance, not wanting to waste any time on it, not really wanting to waste any more time in the cold attic. And then she saw what it was.
“Hey!”
“Find something?”
“It’s a picture. I think it’s a painting.”
“Of what?”
“I can’t tell. Help me get it over to the window, will you? I want to see it in the light.”
“Can’t you manage it?”
“The frame weighs a ton.”
Together they got the picture over near the window where enough light filtered through to illuminate the painting. It was a portrait. The frame was a massive wooden rectangle with an oval opening. The frame had been gilded, and most of the gold paint still adhered.
The oil portrait was of a woman who looked to be in her twenties or early thirties. Her perfectly straight light brown hair flowed down onto her bare shoulders. Her face was wedge-shaped, her skin very pale but glowing with vitality. Her hands, narrow and long-fingered, were clasped at her waist, holding a single red rose. Her eyes, small and pale, looked directly out of the picture at the viewer, burning with a passionate intensity.
“I wonder who she was.”
Erskine shook his head. “Must be very old.” He extended a forefinger, touched the painting where the woman’s hair met her shoulder. The surface sported a web of tiny cracks. “All dried out,” he announced. “It could be a hundred years old. Maybe older.”
“I wonder if she lived here. In this house.”
“Maybe. She could have lived here a hundred years ago. Or maybe she lived in England and never saw this house and ten years ago somebody found her in an antique shop and bought her and stuck her in this attic.” He giggled. “There’s no way to tell, is there? Unless there’s a signature on the painting and we can find out something about the artist.”
They looked, but there was no signature visible.
“She lived here,” Ariel announced.
“Maybe.”
“She did.”
He looked at her curiously. “Whatever you say,” he said. He extended his forefinger again but this time he touched the woman where her cleavage began just above the top of her gown. He moved his finger down over her breasts. “Nicely built,” he said.
“You’re disgusting.”
“I know.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Are you crazy, Jardell? All of a sudden I’m not allowed to feel up a picture?”
“Just quit it, okay?”
“Okay, but I think you’re nuts.”
“Help me carry her downstairs.”
“Why?”
“So I can see her better.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to get a flashlight and bring it up here? Remember how much trouble we had dragging her over to the window.”
“If you don’t want to help me, just say so.”
“I didn’t say that. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said. She didn’t know what was the matter but the picture was having an effect on her. And she wanted it downstairs in her room.
“I’ll help you, Ariel.”
“Not if it’s too heavy.”
“No, we can carry it. If we got it this far we can carry it downstairs.”
“Maybe it’s too heavy. I’ll ask David to do it. Your delicate condition and all.”
“You fucking shit.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”
“You’ve been weird all day. Have you got your period or something, Jardell?”
She started to giggle.
“What’s so funny?”
“As a matter of fact I do,” she said, blushing. “But I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Can we please take her downstairs now? Please?”
Carrying the portrait downstairs to Ariel’s room turned out to be less of an ordeal than either of them had anticipated. Once they had the right sort of grip on it the weight was not difficult to manage. They placed the picture on the floor, leaning it up against Ariel’s dresser for support. She got a towel from the hall cupboard and wiped all of the dust from the picture and its frame.
The woman’s visage, arresting enough in the dimly-lit attic, was positively imperious in a bright room. The woman’s gaze was almost hypnotic.
“She’s beautiful,” Erskine said. His voice was pitched higher than usual, and he sounded as though he was surprised at the beauty of the woman.
“And she belongs in here.”
“Not on the floor, though.”
“On that wall.”
He looked where she pointed. “It would fit there.”
“I’ll get David to hang her for me.”
“You figure they’ll let you keep it?”
“Why not? She belongs in this room.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Look at her,” she said. “Who does she look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look at her.”
He shrugged, studied the painting once again. Ariel tried to watch his eyes but his glasses concealed their expression. Then Erskine wheeled abruptly and scanned Ariel’s face. He looked at the painting, then back at Ariel again.
“Oh,” he said.
“It’s true, isn’t it? I’m not just imagining it?”
“She looks like you.”
“She really does, doesn’t she?”
“The shape of the head, the way the mouth is formed, the eyes. But you don’t stare that way.”
“Just watch me,” she said.
Her eyes burned into his. Erskine held her stare for a moment, then took a step backward and took his eyes away. “Don’t do that,” he said. “I don’t like it.”
“All right.”
“She really does look like you. It’s incredible.”
“I know.”
David hung the picture for her after dinner. She had been prepared for an argument from one or both of them but none was forthcoming. Roberta had started to ask what she had been doing in the attic in the first place, but Ariel’s vague reply that they had just been looking around evidently satisfied her. David at least showed a certain amount of interest in the picture, while Roberta barely glanced at it, merely wondering aloud why Ariel would want a gloomy thing like that on her wall.
David pointed out a few interesting things about the picture. He showed her how the artist had painted the foliage of the rose in such a way that part of the model’s hands were concealed. “Hands are sometimes hard to paint,” he explained. “A lot of old portraits are the work of amateur artists, gifted people who taught themselves how to paint. They lacked academic training and so they don’t always get proportions correct. They don’t know much about perspective and they don’t understand anatomy. This artist had more of a feel for his subject than most of them. There’s a lot of character in her face.”
She summarized the events in her diary before going to bed, noting David’s comments:
But he didn’t see the resemblance. He looked at how the hands were painted but never noticed who she looks like. But Erskine didn’t notice either until he really took a good look at her.
I saw it right away.
No I didn’t either. What happened was this: I looked at the picture and I recognized her. That’s what it was. I never saw her before but I recognized her and it felt strange. I got dizzy for a minute. Then I was looking at her and I realized why I recognized her, namely that she looked like me.
But I recognized her before I knew that.
She is the beautiful stranger.
I’m not beautiful. But she really is beautiful and she really does look like me.
When I look at her I get the feeling she has things to tell me. If only she could talk. But if she really could talk she’d probably just say how boring it was to spend fifty years in a dusty attic.
I wonder how long she really was up there waiting for me to find her. I wonder who she was or is or whichever it should be.
I keep writing a few words and then looking up at her again.
Tonight would have been a good time to ask David about my mother. He was in a good mood, explaining to me about the painting. Then he went downstairs to his study and I thought about going in and sitting on his lap like I used to do, and lighting his pipe for him. But I just didn’t feel up to it. I wanted to be alone in my room. Alone with her, I mean.
She put her diary aside, played the flute for a few minutes, then had her bath and went to bed. Her room was quite dark, but for a moment she fancied she could see the eyes in the portrait, beaming down at her in the darkness. Before she could entertain this thought for any length of time she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Sometime in the middle of the night she got out of bed and went to the bathroom. After she had used the toilet she went downstairs to the kitchen. The stairs were silent beneath her feet. Without turning on a light she went through the kitchen drawers until she found a small box that contained five of its original six candles. The candles were four inches long and made simply of ordinary white wax. She took one of the candles from the box and put the rest back in the drawer.
There was an empty applesauce jar in the garbage. She washed and dried its lid, then lit a match and melted the bottom of the candle enough to affix it to the center of the jar lid.
Back in her room, she positioned her bedside table so that it was centered directly beneath the portrait. She cleared everything from the table and placed the candle in its center. She lit the candle with another match and sat cross-legged on the floor so that her eyes were level with its flame. She folded her hands in her lap and looked up at the portrait.
When the candle had burned to within an inch of the jar lid she blew it out and got back into bed. And fell asleep immediately.
When she awoke in the morning she remembered what she had done but the memory was hazy and she thought it might all have been a dream. But the bedside table was underneath the portrait and there was a jar lid on it with the stub of a white candle on it.
Quickly she got out of bed and placed the candle in her bottom dresser drawer. She returned the table to its usual position beside her bed and restored her lamp and clock to their usual places. She had to hunt for the folder of matches; they turned up underneath her bed, and she put them in the dresser drawer with the candle.
If they knew about this they’d lock me up, she thought. They’d think I was really crazy.
THIRTEEN
There was a sound that woke her, a sharp dry sound like a tree branch snapping. Then she was awake, and sitting up in bed, and the woman was in the corner of the room near the window. She was perfectly defined now, her pale face gleaming, her eyes fiery. The shawl covered her shoulders and was draped over her décolletage.
She was holding a rose.
Roberta stared at her, heart pounding, throat dry. The woman’s image shimmered, swayed in the darkened room, the pale face glowing as if illuminated from inside. Roberta tried to avert her eyes but the woman’s gaze held them.
“Jeff!” she called out. The name echoed in the room and she realized she had made a mistake. “David … I meant David!”
There was no response. She tried to cry out again but the two names fought one another and no sound escaped her lips. Roberta looked at the woman’s eyes, dropped her own eyes to the rose clasped in her hands. Its petals were red as blood, and drops of blood hung from its thorns.
Again Roberta tried to call out and could not. With an effort she turned her eyes from the woman and looked across at the other twin bed, one hand extended to rouse her sleeping husband. But there was something wrong with the other bed. Roberta couldn’t touch the body lying on it because there were rails in the way, as if it were not a bed at all but an oversize crib.
And who was it who lay on top of the bed? David? Jeff?
No, it was a skeleton. Bare bleached bones lying uncovered on the bed, and she wanted to scream, and she looked at the woman and saw the pale face grow larger and more vivid, remaining where it was but seeming to come closer, so close that Roberta could see brushstrokes on the forehead and the sides of the face …
Brushstrokes?
Crib rails on her husband’s bed?
With a great effort she hurled herself up out of sleep. It had been a dream. Sleeping, she had dreamed an awakening but had emerged only into the dream itself. Now she sat up in bed and of course there was no apparition in the room, no rails on David’s bed. He was deeply asleep, his body giving off its familiar night-sweat scent of alcohol, his breathing slow and regular. He had not awakened because she had not made a sound. A dream, all a dream.
She wanted to get up. Drink a glass of water, smoke a cigarette. But the dream had been exhausting and the relief at having escaped from it had a profoundly sedative effect. She heaved a sigh, lay back for a moment, close
d her eyes for a moment, and was instantly asleep again.
When she awakened hours later at her usual time, she did not remember the dream. Perhaps she repressed the memory; perhaps she had been so briefly awake and had fallen asleep again so quickly that the dream had had little opportunity to impress itself upon her conscious mind. In any event, she went downstairs and had breakfast and set about the business of the day without any thought of the terror that had interrupted her sleep.
Then, shortly before noon, it came back to her in a flood. She remembered what she had experienced and how it had felt, and her chest and throat constricted at the recollection. She could close her eyes and picture the woman, standing just as she had stood in the dream, her features clear as they had never been during her three appearances immediately before Caleb’s death. Then she had been wispy and insubstantial, like the ghost Roberta had assumed her to be. In the dream she looked as though she’d been painted.
Painted!
The brushstrokes she’d seen just before wrenching herself up out of the dream. And the rose she held in her clasped hands.
She ran to Ariel’s room, barely aware of the furious creaking of the stairs beneath her feet….
Moments later she was on the phone to Jeff. They had spent the previous afternoon at a motel, an enervating and ultimately unfulfilling afternoon, and had not planned to meet today. But she was insistent. He had to come to the house. Not to pick her up, but to come inside.
When he arrived she sat him down in the front room and told him about the dream. When she had finished he didn’t bother to mask his irritation.
“So it was just a dream,” he said. “I broke an appointment to get here, Bobbie. I’m sure it was a scary dream, but I can’t rush over and hold your hand every time you have a bad night.”
“Come upstairs.”
“I don’t see—"”
“Just come with me.”
She led him up the stairs and the length of the hall to Ariel’s room, then pointed to the picture. The woman’s eyes glowed, catching the light in the room, throwing it back at them. “There,” she said. “That’s her.”
“It’s who?”
“It’s the woman I saw last night. It’s the same face, the same pose.”