Blackwood Farm (18 page)

“And this astounding discovery was that she could communicate with me privately and secretly by typing out on the computer what she had to say using very big words. On that day she wrote something on the order of:

“ ‘Our gallant and ever vigilant doppelgänger may not perceive the many perambulations that run through the cerebral organ of his much cherished and sometimes misused Tarquin Blackwood.'

“And it was plainly obvious from Goblin's nearby dumb appearance that Lynelle was perfectly right. Goblin, for all his early gains on me, couldn't interpret such messages. Lynelle typed out more, something like this:

“ ‘Comprehend, beloved Tarquin, that your doppelgänger, though once he absorbed all that you absorbed, may have reached the limits of his power to master fine distinctions, and this allows you a luxurious measure of freedom from his demands and intentions when it is desired.'

“I took over the keyboard and, as Goblin watched suspiciously, being very solid and curious, I wrote that I comprehended all of this, and that we now had the computer for very rapid communication of two kinds.

“It could be used for Goblin's tapping out simple messages to me using my hand, and by Lynelle and me communicating with a larger vocabulary than Goblin could grasp.

“About this time in my adventures with Lynelle, she tried to explain these mechanisms to Patsy but met with a flat-out ‘You're crazier than Quinn is, Lynelle; both of you ought to be locked up.' And when Lynelle approached Pops and Sweetheart they appeared not to understand the significance of Goblin not knowing everything that was in my mind.

“Because that was it: Goblin didn't necessarily read my thoughts! When I look back on it now it seems an earthshaking discovery, but one that I should have made a long time before.

“As for Pops and Sweetheart, I think they caught on that Lynelle believed in Goblin, which we'd withheld from them before, and they issued a couple of warnings that this ‘side of my personality' oughtn't to be encouraged, and surely a high-quality teacher like Lynelle ought to agree. Pops got tough about it and Sweetheart started to cry.

“I took time alone with Sweetheart in the kitchen, helping her dry her tears on her apron and assuring her that I was not insane.

“The moment is deeply inscribed in my memory because Sweetheart, who was always pure kindness, said softly to me that ‘things went terribly wrong with Patsy' and she didn't want for things to go badly for me.

“ ‘My daughter could have had a Sweet Sixteen Party in New Orleans,' Sweetheart said. ‘She could have made her debut. She could have been a maid in the Mardi Gras krewes. She could have had all that—Ruthie and I could have managed everything—and instead she chose to be what she is.'

“ ‘Nothing's going wrong with me, Sweetheart,' I said. ‘Don't misjudge Lynelle or me either.' I kissed her and kissed her. I lapped her tears and kissed her.

“I might have pointed out to her that she herself had abandoned all the refinements of New Orleans for the spell of Blackwood Manor, that she had spent her whole life in the kitchen, only leaving it for paid guests. But that would have been mean of me. And so I left it with assurances to her that Lynelle was teaching me more than anybody ever had.

“Lynelle and I gave up on the question of insight or commiseration with others as to Goblin—except for Aunt Queen—and Lynelle believed me when I complained of how difficult it was sometimes to stop Goblin's assaults.

“For instance, if I wanted to read for any length of time, I had to read aloud to Goblin. And that, I think, is why I am a slow reader to this day. I never learned how to speed through a text. I pronounce every word aloud or in my head. And in those times I shied away from what I couldn't pronounce.

“I got through Shakespeare thanks to Lynelle bringing the films of the plays for me to see—I particularly loved the films with the actor and director Kenneth Branagh—and she took me through a little Chaucer in the original Middle English, but I found it extremely hard all around and insisted we give it up.

“There are gaps in my education which no one could ever get me to fill. But they don't matter to me. I don't need to know science or algebra or geometry. Literature and music, painting and history—these are my passions. These are the things that still, somehow, in hours of quiet and lonesomeness, keep me alive.

“But let me close out the history of my love of Lynelle.

“A great high point came right before the end.

“Aunt Queen called from New York on one of her rare visits to the States and asked if Lynelle could bring me there, and both of us—along with Goblin—were delirious with joy. Sweetheart and Pops were glad for us and had no desire themselves to be away from the farm. They understood Aunt Queen's wishes not to come home just now, but they wanted her to know that they were having her room entirely redone, as she had requested, in Lynelle's favorite color blue.

“I explained to Goblin that we were going away, much farther away than New Orleans, and he had to cleave to me more closely than ever before. Of course I hoped that he'd stay at Blackwood Manor but I knew that wouldn't happen. How I knew I can't say. Perhaps because he was always with us in New Orleans. I don't know for sure.

“No matter what my hopes, I insisted that Goblin have his own seat beside me on my left on the plane. We flew first class—the three of us, with the stewardesses serving Goblin graciously—to join Aunt Queen at the Plaza on Central Park, and for a great ten days saw all that we could of wondrous sights, museums and the like. Though we had suites as big as Aunt Queen's, eternally filled with fresh flowers and boxes of Aunt Queen's beloved chocolate-covered cherries, Goblin and I bunked in with Aunt Queen as we had in the past.

“I was sixteen by this time, but it doesn't much matter to people like my people whether or not a teenager or even a grown man bunks in with his great-aunt or his granny; those are our ways. In fact, to be utterly frank, I was still sleeping with Jasmine's mother, Little Ida, at home, though she was now very old and feeble and sometimes dribbled a bit of urine in the bed.

“But where was I? Yes, in New York with my great-aunt, at the Plaza Hotel, cuddled in her arms as I slept.

“Goblin was with us for the entire trip, but something peculiar happened to Goblin. He became more and more transparent as the trip progressed. He seemed unable to be anything else. He lacked strength to move my hand, too. I learned this when I asked him to write for me how he liked New York. He could not. And this meant that there could be no pinching and no hair pulling either, though I had pretty much punished him—by silence and scorn—for those acts in the past.

“I pondered this, this uncommon transparency in a spirit who has always appeared to me to be three-dimensional and flesh and blood, but in truth I didn't want much to worry about Goblin. I wanted to see New York.

“The high point of our trip for me was the Metropolitan Museum, and I will never forget no matter how long I live Lynelle taking Goblin and me from painting to painting and explaining the relevant history, the relevant biography, and commenting on the wonders we beheld.

“After three days in the museum, Lynelle sat me down on a bench in a room full of the Impressionist paintings and asked me what I thought I'd learned from all I'd seen. I thought for a long time and then I told her that I thought color had died out in modern painting due to World War I and II. I told her that maybe now, and only now, since we had not had a Third World War, could color come back to painting. Lynelle was very surprised and thought this over and said perhaps it was true.

“There are many other things I remember from that trip—our visit to St. Patrick's Cathedral, in which I cried, our long walk through Central Park, our roaming Greenwich Village and SoHo, our little trek to obtain my passport just in case I might soon be drawn off to Europe—but they don't press in on this narrative, except in one respect. And that is that Goblin was utterly manageable all the time, and in spite of his transparency seemed to be as wildly stimulated as I was, appearing wide-eyed and happy, and of course New York is so crowded that when I talked to Goblin in midtown restaurants or on the street, no one even noticed.

“I half expected to have him show up beside me in my passport photo but he did not.

“When we returned, Goblin appeared solid again, and could make mischief, and danced himself into exhaustion and invisibility out of sheer joy.

“I felt an overwhelming relief. I had thought the trip to New York mortally wounded him—that my inattention to him had been the specific cause of his fading severely and perhaps approaching death. And now I had him back with me. And there were moments when I wanted to be with no one else.

“Just after I passed my seventeenth birthday, my days with Lynelle came to a close.

“She had been hired to work in research at Mayfair Medical in New Orleans. And it would henceforth be impossible to keep up with her work, and with tutoring me.

“I was in tears, but I knew what Mayfair Medical meant to Lynelle. It was a brand-new facility, endowed by the powerful Mayfair family of New Orleans—of which you know at least one member—and its laboratories and equipment were already the stuff of legend.

“Lynelle had dreamed of studying human growth hormone directly under the famous Dr. Rowan Mayfair and being accepted by the revolutionary Mayfair Medical was a triumph for her. But she couldn't be my teacher and boon companion anymore, it was simply impossible. I'd been lucky to have her as long as I did.

“The last time I saw Lynelle I told her I loved her. And I meant it with all my heart. I hope and pray that she understood how grateful I was for everything.

“She was on her way to Florida that day with two fellow female scientists, headed to Key West for a week of childless and husbandless relaxation.

“Lynelle died on the road.

“She, the speed demon, was not even at the wheel of the car. It was one of the others who was driving, and they were in a blinding rainstorm on Highway 10 when the car hydroplaned into an eighteen-wheeler truck. The driver was decapitated. Lynelle was pronounced dead at the scene, only to be revived and linger on life support for two weeks without ever regaining consciousness. Most of Lynelle's face had been crushed.

“I only learned of the accident when Lynelle's family called to tell us about the Memorial Mass that would be said for her in New Orleans. Lynelle had already been buried in Baton Rouge, where her parents lived.

“I walked up and down for hours, saying ‘Lynelle' over and over. I was out of my mind. Goblin stared at me, obviously bewildered. I had no words. Just her name: ‘Lynelle.'

“Pops and Sweetheart took me to the Mass—it was in a modern church in Metairie—and Goblin became very solid for the event, and I made space for him in the pew beside me, but he agitated me considerably, demanding to know what was going on. I could hear his voice in my head and he kept gesturing. He shrugged, turned his palms up, shook his head and kept mouthing the words ‘Where is Lynelle?'

“The Mass was said by a very elderly priest and had a certain elegance to it, but for me it was a nightmare. When people went to the microphone to speak about Lynelle, I knew that I should step up, I should say all that she'd meant to me, but I couldn't overcome my fear that I would stumble or cry. All my mortal life I have regretted that I didn't speak at that Mass!

“I went to Communion, and as I always did after receiving Communion, I told Goblin flatly and furiously to shut up.

“Then came a frightening moment. As you might not expect, I believe strongly in the Catholic Church and in the miracle of the Transubstantiation—that the Priest in the Mass turns the wafers and the wine into the true Body and Blood of Christ.

“Well, as I knelt in the pew after having received Communion, and after telling Goblin to shut up, I turned and saw him kneeling right beside me, his shoulder not an inch from my shoulder, his face as vivid and ruddy as my face and his eyes sharply glaring at me; and for the first time in all my life, he frightened me.

“He appeared quickened and cunning, and he gave me the creeps.

“I turned away from him, trying not to feel the obvious press of his shoulder against mine and his right hand slinking over my left. I prayed. I wandered in my mind, and then, when I opened my eyes, I saw him again—dazzlingly solid—and I felt the coldest escalating fear.

“The fear did not pass. On the contrary, I became vividly aware of all the other people in the church, seeing those in the pews in front of me with extraordinary peculiarity, and even glancing to the sides at others and then turning boldly to look over my shoulder at all those behind. I had a sense of their normality. And then again I looked at this solid specter beside me; I looked into his brilliant eyes and at his sly smile, and a desperate panic seized me.

“I wanted to banish him. I wanted him dead. I wished that the journey to New York had killed him. And who could I tell this to? Who would understand? I felt murderous and abnormal. And Lynelle was dead.

“I sat in the pew. My heart went quiet. He continued his efforts to get my attention. He was just Goblin, and when he cleaved to me, when he gave up the solid image and wrapped his invisible self around me I felt myself relax in his embrace.

“Aunt Queen flew home for the Memorial, but, as she was coming from St. Petersburg, Russia, and there was a delay out of Newark, New Jersey, she did not make it in time. When she saw her room decorated in Lynelle's favorite blue, she cried. She threw herself on the blue satin comforter, turned over and stared up at the canopy, and looked like nothing so much as one of her own many slender flopping boudoir dolls, with her high heels and her cloche hat and her wet vacant weeping stare.

“I was so devastated by Lynelle's death that I fell into a state of silence, and though I knew that as the days passed those around me were concerned about me, I couldn't speak a single syllable to anyone. I sat in my room, in my reading chair by the fireplace, and I did nothing but think of Lynelle.