Invisible Ellen (5 page)

Except her head, which smacked against the corner of the wooden coffee table. From Ellen's point of view it went like this: panic, flight, surprise lateral ice-skating, whoosh of air, sharp stab of pain, flash of red inside her brain, and then nothing.

Something wet and cold was pushing against Ellen's left ear, accompanied by a high whine that cut into the ache in her brow like a hot blade. With a groan, Ellen rolled to one side and looked into a dark mass of curly hair with a sloppy, pink tongue lashing in and out of it. “Runt, get away,” a man's voice ordered. The dog whined, gave a last lick, and sat back on his huge haunches. The face that replaced the dog's had wide gray eyes and was surrounded by the same shining black hair as Temerity's, only shorter. They were concerned eyes, and they were looking directly at her. Ellen jerked in alarm, causing pain to pound through her head like a piston, pumping the other fears from the chamber of her brain, and she clutched at her forehead.

“Don't sit up, not yet,” the man said. Behind him, Temerity stood, leaning forward, offering him a pillow from the sofa. He took the pillow and slid it under Ellen's head. Using his hand to support her neck, he eased her down onto it. “Ice pack, Tem,” he said.

Temerity hurried across the floor and Ellen heard the freezer door open and close. The man brushed his hand lightly over the tender spot on Ellen's forehead, making her shudder. “That was quite a stunt. How do you feel?”

“Clumsy,” Ellen said, wincing.

“You're not seeing double, are you?”

Ellen tested it out, squinting through one eye and then the other. “No, it's fine.” The scrutiny and his proximity were distressing her. She closed her eyes tightly to escape, pressing her hands over her face, but she could still hear breathing all around her, the quiet,
steady exhalations of Temerity's brother, and the unrestrained panting of the shaggy mutt, Runt.

Temerity came back with the ice pack and her brother took it, holding it gingerly against the bruise.

Ellen fumbled to relieve him of it and risked a peek. He was turned away, looking up at his sister. “I take it this is your knight in shining armor?”

“Ain't she great?” Temerity asked with pride. “You freaked her out when you came in. She wasn't expecting to see you, and she wasn't expecting you to see her either.”

The gray eyes turned back to Ellen. “I'm Justice,” he said gently. “Sorry I startled you.” He looked her up and down as he tried to decipher his sister's cryptic statement discreetly, but Ellen caught it. He thought she was embarrassed by her clothes. Ellen hadn't bothered to improve her appearance any more than usual, why would she? Even if Temerity knew she was there, she was blind after all. “Please.” Justice waved a hand. “We're very casual here. You should see some of the outfits my sister comes up with.”

“Like I care.” Temerity snorted. “But that's not what I meant, Just. Usually, nobody sees Ellen. She's invisible.”

Justice turned back to look at Ellen with genuine interest. “I see,” he said.

“And he really can,” Temerity told Ellen with a short bark of a laugh. “He should have been a detective. He sees things other people don't. I told you.”

“Like me,” Ellen said quietly, meaning both that she was one of those things and that she too saw things other people didn't.

“Though I suppose crashing into the coffee table might have drawn his attention even to someone less visually challenging,” Temerity said wryly.

“Possibly.” Justice was nodding.

“Just a stab in the dark,” Temerity said. “As always for me.”

“Uh, can I get up now?” Ellen asked.

The siblings rushed to lever her to a sitting position and then helped to heave her to the sofa, where Ellen held the ice pack to her head and wished for a duck blind.

“Do you feel nauseous at all?” Justice asked.

Ellen shook her head—a mistake—so she held it still and it didn't ache so bad. The ice was helping a great deal. Not only was she not sick to her stomach, the heavenly smell of the pasta sauce was opening a sinkhole in her gut. She was empty and unsteady. She needed food, something to weigh her down, to anchor her to the ground.

“I'm wondering if she should go to the hospital and get an X-ray. Concussions are no joke,” Justice said to his sister.

“No!” Ellen cried out in alarm.

“Okay, okay, let's just keep an eye on you for a while.”

“Do you want some Advil or something?” Temerity asked.

The smell of the simmering sauce was making Ellen's stomach bubble. “No, I'll be fine once I eat something.”

Temerity twirled and headed for the kitchen. “Pasta's going in!” she called over her shoulder.

Runt, the large, mop-headed mutt, inched his way closer to Ellen until his huge head was resting on the sofa next to her thigh. Through the mass of curls, Ellen could make out brown, soulful eyes. Justice sat down on the other side of her. He reached out toward her hand, but she snatched it back out of his reach.

“I was just going to take your pulse,” Justice said, moving more slowly. “I'm almost a doctor—of anthropology, it's true—but I started out premed.”

“Oh.” Ellen allowed him to rest his fingers on the inside of her
wrist. His touch was light, but it was all she could do not to rip her hand away from the unfamiliar sensation, and her pulse began to race.

“Uh, what is anthru . . . that you're studying?”

“Anthropology? It's the study of human behavior, socially and culturally as well as individually.”

“Oh, I do that,” Ellen said without thinking, and then reddened and stared at her lap. She held the ice pack so that it shielded her face from his view. “I mean, not at school or anything, just . . . you know, watching.”

“Cool.” Justice looked down at his watch. From the corner of her eye, Ellen could see his lips moving silently as he counted. She forced herself to endure the conscious burn of his touch until he took his fingers away.

“Your heart is going a little fast.”

Ellen could feel the pounding in her chest. She made a fist of the hand in her lap, pressing it hard into her yielding thigh. “I'm just . . . not used to . . . attention,” she mumbled.

“Not much of a social butterfly?”

“Not much,” she conceded. She had always wondered about this strange expression. She'd never noticed that butterflies were especially social creatures; of course, her experience of them was limited to the occasional park sighting.

“You live alone?”

“Yeah. Well, I have a cat. Usually people don't . . . see me.”

Justice nodded. “So I understand. Even though my sister neglected to tell me that.” He raised his voice and directed this reproach over his shoulder at Temerity.

“Like I would know!” she shot back.

Justice studied Ellen. “Why do you think
I
can see you?”

“What Temerity said, maybe,” Ellen ventured.

“You know what I think?” He regarded her seriously and she couldn't detect any mockery in his voice. “I think I can see you because my sister told me about you, and so I knew you were here.”

“I guess,” Ellen agreed, feeling completely baffled by the strange night, the unusual people, the unaccustomed acceptance. Nothing was normal, and she was drifting. She needed mooring, the stabilizing ballast of carbohydrates and the hull of solitude.

“Does it make a difference if you want people to see you?” Justice asked. “Can you choose?”

Ellen looked up at him hesitantly with one eye. “Kind of,” she said. “I mean, if I really make the effort, talk first, you know, like when I have to buy something. Then, people don't look at me much, but they respond, usually. Not always,” she said, thinking of several situations at stores or markets where she had waited to be next, to be noticed, or just to pay, for so long that she had finally given up and left. “But not if I don't want them to.”

“How does that work?” he asked simply.

Ellen shrugged. “I just, you know, go fuzzy, kind of.”

“Do you feel fuzzy now?” Justice asked, his brow creased with concern.

“No,” Ellen said, wishing fervently that she would.

“Good. And when you go invisible, or opposite, when you go visible, can you feel it?”

“Yes, to the second one. I . . . I'm sorry, I don't know how to describe it. It just sort of happened, you know, over years.”

Justice nodded. “How's the bump?”

Ellen lowered the ice pack and tested the bruise. It wasn't so bad. She opened her mouth to say
Better
, but unfortunately her stomach chose that moment to growl so loudly that Runt raised his head and
looked around for the source of the noise. Ellen wanted to melt into liquid and drip down into the dark space under the sofa.

But Justice sat forward, raising both hands in delighted agreement. “Exactly what I was thinking! I'm so hungry. C'mon, Tem!” he called. “How's that pasta coming?” He beamed at Ellen and she was so taken aback that she could only sit looking at him, wondering what that expression in his eyes was. “Thank you for helping Temerity last night,” he whispered. “It means more to me than you know. I worry about her.”

“She seems pretty tough,” Ellen said, thinking that, compared to her, Temerity was Hercules.

“‘Tough' doesn't mean you don't sometimes need help,” Justice said. “We all need friends.”

Before she could puzzle out his meaning, Temerity called out, “Pasta's up! Come sit down.”

Justice walked with Ellen to the table, he didn't try to touch her again, but she suspected he was staying near enough to catch her if she stumbled or fell. Being seen was making her feel ridiculously enormous and ungainly. She tried to fold herself into a smaller shape as they sat at the table.

The whole time they ate, the delicious flavors and bulk of al dente pasta filling the hole in her middle with satisfying heft, Ellen thought about Justice's statement,
We all need friends
, and she wondered, so hard it made her dizzy, how those words could possibly be true and she could still exist. Maybe, she thought, friends made you more solid.

But her musing was interrupted by Temerity. “So, where do you live?”

“In a studio, Morningside.”

“Tough neighborhood,” Justice commented, taking a swig of beer.

“I don't go out that much. Just to work, so it's not bad.”

“And what do you do for fun?”

Ellen was surprised at the question. She'd never really thought about it. What did she like to do? “I keep notebooks,” she said.

“Oh, you write?” Justice looked approving. “Stories?”

“Not really, just record things that I see. I like to keep track, you know.” It sounded lame.

But Justice was nodding. “I
do
know,” he said. “You sound like me when I was a kid. I used to spend hours watching the neighbors, or my teachers at school, and writing down all the things they did all day. I actually had a map of the schoolyard and would write down which groups of kids spent how much time where. Of course, now I know I was documenting play patterns, but my family thought I was nuts.” He laughed. “I can't tell you how relieved I was to find out that there was actually a science that suited my particular obsession.”

Temerity skewered some pasta, raised the fork to her mouth, and sucked in a mouthful of spaghetti, getting sauce on her chin in the process. She left it there. “Lucky jerk,” she said.

“Well, you didn't do too badly either,” Justice said.

“Right. I don't need vision to play. . . . Jackpot!”

“Seriously, Tem, you are as good as you are because of your ear. It's remarkable.”

“Tell it to Itzhak Perlman. He's got an ear, two actually, and two good eyes.”

Justice grinned at Ellen. “But Itzhak doesn't have your good looks.”

Ellen was curious who the hell Itzhak was, but she was used to being left out of a conversation, so it didn't occur to her to ask.

“He's the most famous violinist in the world,” Temerity explained, as though Ellen had asked. “And he is not ugly.”

“Okay, fine,” Justice agreed. “Let's just say he won't be modeling swimwear anytime soon. And, anyway, how do you know?” her brother taunted.

“Because no one who plays that beautifully could possibly be an unappealing human being. It's only your dependence on vision that makes you so myopic.”

“Ooh, that's a good one,” Justice conceded, as though she'd scored off him.

“Besides, it would be lame of me to feel superior about my appearance when I can't see it.”

“You're really pretty,” Ellen stated, surprised that Temerity wouldn't know that.

“I know you mean that as a compliment, so thank you. And I know that physical appearance is important, though highly overrated, in the world of the seeing. It's just not a world I participate in. And besides . . .” She swung her wineglass precariously without spilling a drop. “. . . bitching about life's challenges would be like shouting at the sea for making waves, and I guess I like the slap of salt water.”

Ellen had never felt salt water, or indeed seen the ocean. From what she'd seen on TV and read about it, it just seemed . . . too big. But not for Temerity. She could picture her rushing out into it, though the very thought made her shudder.

They finished the meal and Ellen checked the time on her men's Timex. Beneath its scratched crystal, it read 8:20. She said, “I wanted to ask you something before I leave, and I should go soon.”

“Not yet,” Temerity said, shaking her head firmly. “You said you don't have to be at work until ten, and I wanted to play you something. Do you mind?”

Not seeing a way out, Ellen said, “I guess not.” She felt trapped.

Temerity pushed her plate toward her brother. “I cooked, you clean up,” she said, then turned in Ellen's direction. “What did you want to ask me?”