Crying Child (22 page)

We were all silent, thinking this over; then Will cleared his throat.

“What exactly do you have in mind?”

“It’s only a suggestion; I’d certainly have to consider it from several angles before proposing it seriously,” Anne said. “But if you insist, Doctor—I am thinking of a ceremony during which Mary’s ghost could be reassured—and could reassure her.”

“A dramatic performance, in short,” Will said in a peculiar voice. “With a record of the Sistine
Chapel choir at the end fading off into celestial silence. Where would we get a ventriloquist at such short notice?”

“I know it’s unorthodox therapy,” Anne said tightly. “But sometimes shock treatment is necessary. Mary’s case is extraordinary. I’ve never seen anything quite like her behavior, and I can assure you I’ve had a great deal of experience. I also have a feeling, although I can’t justify it logically, that she is approaching a crisis of some sort. Rapidly.”

“I have the same feeling,” Will muttered. “Oh, hell, I don’t know what to say. I’ll tell you frankly, Anne, the idea of a fake séance repels me. I know, I know, it might work. But I don’t like kidding my patients.”

“You’d lie to a child, wouldn’t you, if the truth would hurt it beyond endurance?”

“Just a minute,” Ran said. There was an authority in his voice that stopped all discussion. “You two are the experts, I know; but I’m the one who has to make the final decision, isn’t that right? Anne, I want to apologize to you for putting you in an awkward position. All I can say in extenuation is that we didn’t see this thing taking shape until after I had consulted you. Of course I’m hoping that you’ll bear with us. We need your expertise, and your skepticism; maybe we’re all a little bit crazy. But at this time I am definitely against a séance.”

“You’re a very honest man,” Anne said, giving him a charming smile.

“Me, too,” Will said quickly. “I agree with Ran.”

She transferred the smile to him and gave him her hand as a bonus.

“Let’s be friendly opponents, then,” she said. “All open and aboveboard.”

They gazed into each other’s eyes over their clasped hands. I stood up. I had to move to keep myself from saying something disagreeable.

“I’m honest, too,” I said. “But I’m not open-minded. I’m a mass of prejudices, and what I want to do right now is talk to Jed. He’s the only one in this house who knows what he thinks, and why.”

I had heard his footsteps in the hall, so his appearance wasn’t the conjuring trick it appeared to be. Standing in the doorway, he greeted us with a collective nod.

“Mary’s asleep,” he said. “Bertha sent me down to report.”

“Good,” Ran said. “Jed, we’ve been leveling with Dr. Wood. She thinks we’re all out of our minds, but she’s being very tactful about it.”

“That’s fine.” Jed sat down. “You know how I feel—the fewer lies the better. We’re going to have to start making some progress on this thing. I don’t like the way it’s moving in on Jo.”

“Neither does Jo,” I said. “It isn’t just getting
closer, it’s getting clearer. I saw the face as distinctly as I see yours.”

“That plain?”

“Down to the mole on her cheek,” I said, and shivered involuntarily. “It was fantastic, Jed; like a life-sized photograph, that was how it was.”

“Describe it, then,” Will said. “While it’s fresh in your mind.”

Jed coughed.

“Didn’t somebody tell me Jo was an artist?” he inquired of the room at large.

“I’m not thinking,” Ran said ruefully. “Jo, can you do it? Can you sketch the woman?”

“I’m not sure. Portraiture was never one of my strong points, I’m just a hack….”

Jed got up and began to ransack the walnut escritoire by the window. He came back with a handful of Mary’s stationery and an assortment of writing materials. I found a pencil that wasn’t too hard, though I really needed something softer for those shadowy outlines; but after the first few tentative lines the picture took shape with a speed that scared me a little. It was almost as if some outside force were controlling my hand.

They all watched, peering over my shoulder. Anne had forgotten her skepticism, and leaned over the couch breathing down the back of my neck as I sketched the pale face, wide at the cheekbones, narrowing to the small delicate chin; the
fine shape of the nose, and the smooth black hair. I couldn’t do much with the eyes; I shaded the sockets and smudged them with the ball of my thumb, and then went on to fill in the body, increasingly absorbed as the pencil moved, producing details that seemed to come from some other source than my conscious memory. When the sketch was done I sat back and looked at it, and was amazed at what I saw. There was no doubt about the costume. It was a plain dark dress, high-necked, with long tight sleeves and a skirt gathered at the waist—a full, bell-shaped skirt, but without hoops. The white I had observed at the neck and wrists were collar and cuffs—plain, without lace or ornament. Even the hair style was distinctive, drawn back from a central parting in sloping wings across temples and ears into a heavy knot or chignon at the back.

I glanced at the others to see how they were reacting; and found Will looking at me with respect.

“You’re good,” he said.

“I’m not really that good,” I admitted. “I’ll cast modesty to the winds and admit that this is the best portrait I’ve ever done. And there are things in it I don’t remember seeing. Do you suppose I’m inventing—filling in, restoring?”

“I think you’re doing just that,” Jed said, without looking up from the drawing. He scratched his chin
reflectively. “Restoring. That doesn’t mean you’re inventing anything, but your trained muscles dredge up details you think you’ve forgotten.”

Ran was staring at the drawing.

“You didn’t say she was beautiful.”

Startled, I glanced at the drawing.

“Beautiful is not exactly…Oh. Well, the bones are good, aren’t they? But the mouth, I don’t remember it as being quite so—so soft. Damn it, Ran, you’re right. She is beautiful in a strange, haggard sort of way—and the thing I saw wasn’t, believe me. So I haven’t got it right.”

“Wait a minute.” Jed’s long fingers caught my hand as I reached for the pencil. “It is right, Jo. Don’t start messing it up.”

“Jed, do you recognize it? Do you know who she is?”

“No, I don’t know who she is. But I’ve seen that face somewhere. I know it. That’s how I know it’s right.”

“What about you, Ran? Maybe she’s an ancestress.”

“No…” Ran sounded uncertain, though; and Will said,

“Jed, are you sure it isn’t the general appearance of the lady that’s familiar to you? I’ve seen dresses and hair styles like that—even the pose—in old daguerreotypes. I had that same feeling of half recognition myself, till I realized what it was.”

“Yes,” Ran said. “That’s right, Will. That was why I hesitated.”

Jed shook his head.

“No, I’ve seen that face. If I could only remember where!”

II

It was a nice day to spend in a graveyard—gray and cool with ground mist gathering among the trees. I don’t think I’d have had the nerve to go by myself. The wisps of pale vapor coiling among the dark tree trunks were too suggestive.

Not that Will was the most cheerful companion in the world. I assumed he was sorry he was with me instead of being back at the house admiring Anne’s professional brilliance and her blue stretch pants. But I really didn’t care. I was tired and depressed, and the weather made me feel mournful, and I didn’t believe in happy endings.

Mary’s condition was as ambiguous as it had been after the other midnight adventure. She was still pretending not to remember. Will was ready to admit that she might be suffering from a form of amnesia. He said that when people found it impossible to accept something, they just cut it out of their memory. Mary’s fixation could affect her that way, because her rational mind must know
the illogic of what she wanted. I suggested tentatively that maybe this was a good sign—that part of her mind, at least, was still able to distinguish fantasy from reality. Will said he was damned if he knew what it was.

“You may not like this,” he said gloomily, pushing a dead branch out of the way as we went along the narrow path, “but I have the feeling that Mary is putting on a big fat act. I get glimpses of something sly and furtive in her expression. I never felt that way in the beginning.”

“I feel it too. Some hostile mind looking out at me through Mary’s eyes.”

“For God’s sake, Jo, you aren’t suggesting—”

“Possession? No. That’s the worst of it. There’s nothing alien about that look, it’s Mary; but it’s as if something had concentrated all the nasty side of Mary, all the meanness and hatred we all have in us somewhere. She’s baiting Ran; I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d socked her one this morning.”

“You mean those cracks at breakfast about the way he’s been drinking?”

“Yes, and all expressed in the sweetest, most solicitous terms. He’s not an alcoholic, Will; he used to be almost abstemious. But to hear her, you’d think she had to pour him into bed every night.”

“It’s partly defensive, I think,” Will said. “She wants to make the rest of us look bad so we can’t
criticize her. She’s not openly hostile toward you, but she’s not precisely forthcoming, either. That’s a disappointment. I was hoping she’d talk candidly to you.”

I kicked at a stone in the path.

“I goofed,” I said, without looking at him. “I had a chance and I muffed it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The very first day she was trying to reach me. When she appealed to me not to let you and Ran take her away, she was sounding me out. I was so dumb; I thought she meant—oh, well, I might as well get all my evil thoughts out in the open. I thought you two were planning to have her committed, shut up in a mental institution.”

“You thought Ran would do a thing like that?”

“But it might have been necessary. I did have some doubts about Ran; you aren’t the only one who considered ordinary human wickedness as the only alternative to the supernatural.”

“Touché,”Will said drily. “So long as we’re indulging in an orgy of self-recrimination, I’ll admit the possibility did pass through my mind.”

“I thought it did. That Ran and I were conspiring to get rid of Mary.”

Will stopped so suddenly that I bumped into him. He turned.

“You and Ran? I thought of Ran, but…”

I stared up into his face, warmed by an absurd
wave of pleasure; and then Will proceeded to spoil it by adding coolly,

“You were in San Francisco when the trouble began. Oh, hell, Jo, it was just a passing thought; I know Ran too well to take it seriously. I was surprised—is that a good word?—when I came on you two the other night, but I didn’t need Ran’s explanation to understand what had happened, once I had time to think it over. That’s true, Jo.”

“Will, you don’t think Mary could have seen us, do you?”

“I didn’t see any sign of her. Oh, I suppose she could have; or maybe she suspected something from your behavior…. Why? Do you think that’s why she stopped trusting you?”

“I don’t know. Something happened; or maybe it was just my response, or lack of response, to her statement about hearing the crying. If I had only tried…Well, it’s futile to think about that now. I’ve lost her. The only one she seems to want around is Anne. And I don’t like that.”

I regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. I sounded as if I were jealous of Anne’s influence with Mary. And maybe I was.

“You ought to be pleased,” Will said reproachfully. “If Anne weren’t baby-sitting Mary, the rest of us couldn’t be out pursuing our no-doubt futile research.”

“Do you really think it’s futile?”

“Oh, today is one of those days when I think everything is futile. Don’t mind me. We have to do this, so let’s not argue about whether it’s worth doing.”

“You did show Mrs. Willard the drawing?”

“Yeah. Same reaction Jed had; it’s familiar but she can’t remember where she saw it.”

“Too bad the old ladies donated so many records and pictures to the museum.”

“It’s less convenient having them there, but Ran won’t have any trouble getting at them, even today. The old guy who runs the museum fawns on Frasers.”

The path broadened out as it reached the graveyard, and Will waited for me to catch up with him. He had preceded me because of the obstructed condition of the path. Instead of entering the clearing he leaned against the fence and reached for his cigarettes. In silence he offered me the pack and in silence I took a cigarette and waited for him to light it. I was no more anxious to enter the cemetery than he was. In fact, I wasn’t sure why I had wanted to come.