“What are you talking about?”
“Surely you know they’ve come to have their revenge for what you did to each of them in the past. Abandoned Dolly out of pridefulness. Murdered Jane for a few doubloons. Sent Alice to the gallows, kept Marie a slave, drove Flo to the poorhouse. You let your anger get you killed and left poor Adele brokenhearted, and then you ratted out Bunny. Oh, you are a piece of work. I sort of see their point of view.”
“But you’ve always been on my side.” I addressed the women. “What about last night and the eight women in the bed?”
Bunny pulled the hammer back on the revolver. She was ready to pump me full of lead.
The old man laughed. “You double-backed from the moment you hit your head, Sonny, and let loose a crack in time. There was no night before, only this one. Let me ask you: which is closer to the truth—your infantile fantasies or the words right out of their mouths?”
A soft push behind me and the door opened a whisker, and I thought for a moment it might be that mysterious eighth woman from the bed come to save me, but instead Harpo the cat squeezed between my legs, purring a greeting. The old man sneezed. Bunny’s eyes began to water. She dropped the gun and reached for a tissue. The crowd in the room, upon seeing the cat, panicked. A few more sneezed violently. Shock and terror marked their expressions. Someone squeaked “Eek!” Suddenly the room seemed too small and confining. All of them, the old man and the boy included, tried to squeeze past me to the door. They were mad with conniptions and paroxysms of desire to escape the deadly cat. At the threshold there was a momentary logjam of bodies, and the wooden frame creaked and threatened to crack as we all tumbled through the opening in a rush of knees and elbows, landing in a heap in the hallway. Once they were out of the safety of the bathroom, the women simply vanished, pop-pop-popped into oblivion, as did the child, and, at last, the old man. Not so much as a smile or a wave good-bye. Each person made a small puff like the sound of a kiss upon air as they departed, and the spell was broken. I was quite alone, crumpled on the floor as in the beginning.
The cat crept over like a fog and sat squarely upon my chest. He seemed to be grinning. The show was over, the curtain drawn, and I passed out from sheer exhaustion.
When I came to, it seemed the time had changed at last, but since my wristwatch had gone dead, I could not be certain. Harpo leapt to the floor as I sat up, and he stretched his whole length, a ripple of tension traveling from his front paws to the tip of his tail. The bathroom fan hummed politely, and overhead the light shone on utter empty order. Everything had been restored to its pristine state. There was no gun, no baseball bat, no miner’s pick. The war club and the frying pan, the broom and the harpoon had been removed. The martini glasses had been put away, not so much as an olive left behind.
I swiveled on my bum to see if the others had somehow reappeared in the hallway, but they were gone for good, though to where I do not know. Back, I suppose, to where they’d come from, slipping through the cracks, phantoms of time. Perhaps to other space, other lives to right old grievances or guide another transitory visitor from one life to the next. A sense of relief settled like a mist. No gun, no bullet. The threat of my imminent demise had been thwarted once again. But as I sat there, other thoughts haunted the equipoise of the moment.
It hadn’t always been so bad. Surely the odd moments of love and affection over the centuries count for something.
Bunny and I had shared some good times. Not just in the sack, though those stolen moments were delicious. No, half the fun had been in anticipation and in the secret thrill of planning our assignations, whether or not we could carry off the whole affair. I may have enjoyed the game more than the final score. What a thrill to seek her on some busy street corner for a rendezvous and suddenly spot her blonde hair bobbing along in a crowd. Or to furtively hold hands on a park bench on a morning in December bright and cold. She had a funny way of pronouncing the letter s—just the hint of a lisp so oddly endearing. I felt sorry for cheating on Claire, of course, and sorrier still for poor Jerry, but in the beginning at least, we were too full of each other to realize that someone was bound to get hurt.
I wished that Adele and I had tasted that same forbidden love, and I wonder now what might have been had we met in a less repressive age. She was such an innocent girl and a good sport to put up with all the baseball. And my temper, too. But there was no one lovelier than Adele in the summer sun at the old ballpark, her face framed beneath some outrageous hat, cheering along with me. Had I known any better, I should have paid her more heed than the sports and the drink. Charlie Wells wasn’t such a bad fella after all, but what I wouldn’t give to have one more chance at rounding the bases. To her credit, she loved me to the bitter end, and I think Adele was glad to see me, despite that swing of the bat.
Flo, dear Flo, what a helluva gal. Sprightlier than a jenny mule and stronger, too, but the belle of the epoch in her finery. More than all the gold and silver, we had shared something precious in the struggle west and building our empire together. And don’t forget our babies, little John and Jess, and the others. What fine young men and women they turned out to be. Surely family is some recompense, though how could I ever repay her for my risk and speculation? Remember old Kentucky, then, and how we tricked your pap, and how far we came from those hills to the grand octagon house in San Francisco? Just lost my will in the end is all, forgive me.
Or perhaps I should save such petitions for absolution from Marie. I can’t look back now and condone the tragedy of slavery, but that was the custom in those days, the natural order of things, and I was always a man of my time. But no excuses, eh. We treated her well in New Orleans, as best we knew. We loved her like family, and I can still taste the sweetness she baked into the cornbread, and the spice in her étouffée. Who do that voodoo that you do so well? Surely there is some affection in those menus, a soupçon of love for old LaChance.
I was just playing my part in society, understand, just as I had for poor Alice Bonham. She was the youngest of the witches and fairest of them all, and I can admit now how sorry I was to send her to the gallows. In truth, I envied Mr. Bonham for his pleasures, for I was bewitched, indeed, and carried the memory and curse of her to the end of my days. The whole sad story is one of the madness that sweeps us all when we are afraid of the changing world. And yet, I cannot shake the look in her eyes when she was in the docket, the recognition I daresay that you found me guiltless, and that mercy could be but one kiss away. How can I say I’m sorry, Alice?
Or to Jane, perhaps most deserving of my apologies. Dear boy, dear girl, dear one. Would that the discovery of ambergris had not come between us, nor Waters either. Once upon a time, we were Adam and Eve in our Eden, and looking back upon it, we could have long lingered in the Garden. Would it be any consolation that I had nightmares ever after, that the sound of the blow from the oar lingered in my ears, and I drowned in regret as she drowned in the ocean? I’d give all the riches due me for one more night of her boyish figure, and I know in my heart she loved me better than that old cur Waters.
And there is no doubt about Dolly. She followed me into the rain forest, over the mountains, and into the valley of the grizzlies. How’s that for love? Leave hearth and home and enter into the realm of myth. We had two fine cubs together, slept all winter, and made hay in the spring. Not many women could put up with such a bear as me.
After they were all gone, I missed them.
Even the baby, who seemed to grow up in an instant.
The disappearance of the old man left me particularly bereft. Through the unending morning, he had been a true friend, protecting me from harm, and patiently listening to my stories. And we had a few laughs, eh? Couple of tramps wandering through life’s comedy. A man is lucky to have even a handful of good friends in one life. How long has it been since I had such a heart-to-heart with my brother? When had I last seen my father? When those we love exit, we are a solitary player upon a bare stage, muttering our lines to ourselves.
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Such reveries at five in the morning torture the soul. Disturbed from deep sleep and the uncontrolled dreams of the unconscious and not yet ready to face the day, if we are awakened, we are caught between the mind’s dwelling places. Too early to get up, too late to go back to bed. On any other day, I would have padded around the house in my routine, made an early coffee, read the paper, and thought of how to avoid work. But no such comfort came my way. The house itself seemed a foreign place, crouching as if to expel me from this space. The seven women, the baby boy, and the old man had been a big part of my life for such a long time that their sudden absence grieved me most particularly. Despite their nefarious intentions, they were good company with stories to share, and now the house felt both empty yet too small, as though I was trapped within its walls, restricted in time and space. The cat returned and, uncharacteristically, nestled in my lap. I scratched the soft fur behind his ears.
Far off a ticking sound like a heartbeat kept pace with the rhythmic inspiration and exhalation of air, but that just may have been summertime rushing through the windows. I listened to the silence and became a part of it, and the silence filled me with dread.
Everything slowed down. In the absence of the storytellers, the pell-mell of the immediate past ceased, and my mind became my own again. Like the nautilus, I withdrew into my spiral shell and curled up in the fetal position. Once, when I was a boy no more than three years old—perhaps this is my earliest memory or perhaps I have re-created it as a memory out of the telling and retelling of the story by my parents and older brother, so who’s to verify its authenticity?—but on this particular occasion, I had invaded my father’s forbidden study and sat at my father’s desk and found some papers there. Turning over the sheets marked with strange glyphs and letters and symbols, I discovered the obverse gloriously blank. Like some saboteur, I uncapped his fountain pen and proceeded to scribble on page after page, drawing no doubt some design from the shoals of my imagination. At some point, I realized that this creative explosion might be unwelcome by my father, who was in certain respects a fairly stern figure. So I took the papers and threw them in the trashcan, leaving behind some forensic evidence in mislaid sheets and inky splatters. Minding my own business with some wooden blocks in my room upstairs, I was alarmed by the raised voices and commotion when he returned home from work and discovered the crime scene. I sensed I was in trouble, and so found the most hidden spot to crawl into and lie there as snug as in a grave, and there I stayed during their frantic search for me, ignoring the calls of my name, and there I slept till I was discovered hours later and carried to bed in my mother’s arms. In memory, that hidey-hole was as dark and safe as a womb.
Someone was crying. The weeping started softly and grew louder and louder till I could discern the source of such sorrow. Behind my closed bedroom door someone wept. Of course, the eighth woman in the bed. I had nearly forgotten she was there. Shooing the cat from my lap, I rose and sought the answer to my questions. Without hesitation this time around, I opened the door and found her there, lying on the bed.
Her back was turned to me as before, but she was no longer naked. Now clad in a simple white sari, the Hindu color of mourning, she appeared to be deep in her grief. Afternoon light streamed through the window and an elongated rectangle illuminated her body from the crown of her black hair to the curve of her hip. I knew who it was, had known I suppose all along, for I was in love with her. “Sita,” I called, but she did not stir.
The cat was at my feet, rubbing against my ankle. “Sorry, she can’t hear you, mate. Or see you or nuffin. You’re not here.”
Funny, but I expected some grander special effects. A more spectral nature, the ability to pass my hand through objects, chains to rattle, or the wind creaking through the walls. But it was fairly much the same as it had been since time had stopped. “Like a ghost.”
“Exactly like that.”
We strolled to the other side of the bed so I could see her face. She was lying atop the quilt of many colors, her bare feet drawn beneath her, arms across her breasts. Her eyes were open, and her makeup was smudged from the tears. Upon one of her hands, she had an intricate henna design that I would have liked to ask her to explain. I crouched down next to her, touched her hair, but I did not feel a thing, and she did not feel a thing, not even a sense of my spirit in the room. She looked sad and beautiful, and I had a thousand things to tell her, but there was no longer any way to talk with Sita. Silence blew right through me. Though it did neither of us any good, I stayed there with her for a long time.
“Why is she crying?” I asked Harpo.
“Because of the hole in your head.”
“Because I am dead?”
A figure appeared in the doorway. Tall and thin with hair brushed straight back, he looked like a Giacometti sculpture or a young Samuel Beckett. When he saw Sita crying on the bed, he bowed his head for a moment, and as he lifted it, he revealed his identity at once. Sam. My brother, Sam. As soon as I saw him, I remembered the old man in the bathroom and realized at once that he had been an older version of my brother from some distant future who had slipped in through the same crack of time. Now he was as young as yesterday. He walked into the room without acknowledging me and crouched next to her and said her name. “Sita.”
She smiled briefly and held out her hand, which he took and pressed to his face. She smiled again, holding his palm there a beat longer, and then she let him go. “Stay for a while,” she said. “Keep me company.”
“Everyone was wondering where you went off to.” He sat down beside her.
“I couldn’t stand another well-wisher. Another person of good intentions but little imagination. He would have wandered off, too, at his own wake. Without saying good-bye. Suddenly I just missed him and wanted to come up here and see if the bed still held his shape. His scent on the pillow.”
My brother clearly did not know what to do or say. As he searched the corners of the walls before him, he knitted his fingers together and crossed his legs at the ankles. She had always made him slightly uncomfortable. The cat leapt upon the bed and meandered to my pillow, where he curled like a dish and settled into the dent left by her head.
Sam patted her hand. “You know it was an accident. He was gone right away. Maybe the cat got underfoot, and he fell backward and hit his head. Must have been the cat.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Harpo said from the pillow.
Downstairs there was a party going on. Someone had finished a joke and the punch line released a tide of laughter that rose and fell away and left behind a deeper silence. Stories at funerals seem to me to be the surest sign of our resiliency. That we want to, and can, make each other laugh. I almost wished to be down there among my friends and relatives, to hear what might be said about me and set the record straight, but I could not bear to leave her, even in my brother’s good care. As for the cat, I could strangle him, but what’s the point? He was forever underfoot. Sita had been there with me all night, not the others, just Sita. I must have risen from the bed, careful not to wake her, and stumbled in the darkness to the bathroom. I tripped over the cat, hit my head, and would not get up.
“I cannot believe Jack is gone,” she said.
Jack, of course, she called me Jack. That’s my name. My brother’s name is Sam. He moved out when things started getting serious between me and my girlfriend, Sita. Who was now speaking of me in the past tense.
The cat read my thoughts. “Because you are definitely not in the present, at present.”
“It’s like a bad dream,” she said. “Wouldn’t he have found some humor in the situation? Awakened from his dream only to fall out of the world. Since he was nothing but a dreamer.”
I was taken by her flat assertion. I always fancied myself a man of action.
“Come now,” said Harpo. “It’s just the two of us now. You can be honest with me.”
A debate with a cat was out of the question, but at the very least I felt I should express my gratitude.
“Thank you, at least, for saving me back there. From the mad woman with the gun.”
He coughed on a hairball. “Don’t mention it, mate. Just an accident that I showed up at all.”
At last, Sam cleared his throat. “He was a dreamer, but such a serious one. When he was a little boy, he liked nothing more than to draw these elaborate designs of his own imagination on this brown paper Mother gave him. From the time Jack could draw, he would sit all day at our father’s desk, sketching out his dreams.”
I had dreams, all right. Skyscrapers and museums, whole cities, and cities connected to other cities. Or simply the perfect house.
“I often dreamt of something better for myself,” Harpo said. “Don’t be so incredulous. Cats have nine lives, you know.”
“Then there’s hope for you yet.”
“Even housecats dream of becoming tigers. As long as there’s the chance of starting all over again, there’s hope, mate.” With that, Harpo began to lick at the fur near the base of his tail, the first step in a grooming process that always seemed to last forever. I could not watch, for it made me a little sick to my stomach.
My attention strayed to the commotion going on downstairs. A man’s voice, loud with drink, began some apocryphal story to regale the house of mourning. I wondered who else had come to the funeral but knew that I should not leave the room. Part of me wished to reach out and comfort her, say a few words to my brother, but there was no way to do so from this separate plane. This whole ghostly situation—or whatever one calls it—is quite frustrating.
“When we first met,” Sita said, “he was so funny and charming and smart. I am so angry that he would leave me all alone like this. What am I to do now?”
My brother had no good answer.
She considered his silence and folded her hands, as if in prayer. “I have a story to tell you,” she said. “About your brother and me.”
Leaning back against the pillows, in a gesture I had seen before on this night, Sam settled in for the tale.