Raveling (41 page)

It was a look Katherine recognized in me.

Finally, in another piece two days later, the paper identified the detective. It was the name Eric had given her. Detective
Jerome Cleveland. He even sounded like a cop. “In comments to the press,” this little news item said, “Detective Cleveland
indicated there have been advancements in the case but nothing definitive. ‘We have not yet resolved whether Fiona Airie was
abducted and is presently alive somewhere or if she was killed.’”

Katherine wondered if Fiona had been kept alive up to
this point. Was she tortured before she was killed? There were cases of abduction, she knew, where the trauma actually led
to a complete loss of memory. Fiona could be alive somewhere, not even aware of the first seven years of her life. It had
happened before. But where would the little girl have been taken? And by whom?

Behind her, Edward, the young librarian, stuck his head in the door. Katherine could see his reflection in the glass of the
microfilm machine.

“Everything going all right in there?”

She realized now she’d been in here for more than an hour.

“Perfectly,” Katherine said. “Thank you.”

She moved forward in time again, going day by day through the weeks that followed. Only small items about the case appeared
now. Katherine had to replace the scrolls of microfilm several times. Eventually, though, nearly a year from the day my sister
was taken, an article announced that a memorial service was to be held in her honor. It wasn’t long after that, Katherine
knew, that I had my first episode of psychosis. It was more likely a case of severe dissociation, she thought, probably misdiagnosed.

I had forgotten how to speak. I had been discovered eating raw steak on the kitchen floor.

Katherine pictured Hannah and my father, me and Eric, all of us standing at the front of the town Presbyterian church, our
neighbors and the community behind us, the lawyers and dentists and insurance salesmen of East Meadow, their wives and children,
and possibly even the person who abducted my sister.

Eric stood on the flagstones by the filled-in pool and considered the things our mother had planted that summer—the rhubarb,
red beets, parsnips, and russet potatoes. These were
fall vegetables, food that should have been reaped and stored away for winter by now. The garden was overgrown, though, untended
since Hannah’s blindness, and the vegetables were rotting in the hardening earth. He sighed. He’d have to come out here himself
one of these days and tear everything up before a frost came and made it impossible. He remembered the pool here before it
had been filled in, the water in the summers, the light flashing across its surface, blue and gold. Across the lawn, next
door, were the new neighbors. Their two girls—what were their names?—just six or seven years old, squealed and screeched as
they ran around together playing some convoluted imaginary game. They’d sit quietly for a few moments and touch each other’s
hair, and then they’d leap up, shrieking, their voices like whistles. It always startled Eric to hear children playing. Especially
girls. It sounded to him like they were being hurt.

Like someone was after them.

Like what happened to Fiona. Only she didn’t scream, did she? Or someone would have heard.

“What are they doing?” It was our mother’s voice behind him. Eric turned around and saw Hannah standing on the patio by the
kitchen door. She wore her yellow robe and soft moccasins. Her gray-laced chestnut hair was in disarray.

“What?”

“Those girls, why are they screaming?”

The two little girls actually stopped what they were doing for a moment and looked at Hannah. She was the crazy old lady next
door, my brother thought—a fearful, timid thing, seldom seen.

“They’re just playing, Mom.” Eric smiled in the girls’ direction. “Just playing.”

“What are
you
doing out there?” It was an accusation.

“I’m not doing anything.” He began to walk toward the
house, his shoes making stiff sounds on the slate. “I’ll have to come out here and take care of this garden for you one of
these days, that’s all.”

“I haven’t been able to—”

“I know, Mom,” he said, “it’s all right.”

“—do anything around the house. I haven’t been—”

He walked up the steps to the kitchen door where she stood, and he lowered his voice. “How is your vision? How is it today?”

“Nonexistent,” our mother told him. “All blurs and swirls.”

“I made an appointment for you,” Eric said.

“Another neurologist? Another ophthalmologist?” This was derisive, sneering. She had been through two cycles of antibiotics.

“A psychiatrist.” She moved from the door, and Eric slipped by her. “Close the door, Mom,” he said. “It’s getting cold.”

She saw Fiona rising from the side of the pool in a flash of sunlight. Hannah shut the door quietly, knowing this was not
possible, knowing this was winter, the pool was a garden now. She began to shake. “I’m not going to take anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“I won’t take any medication. Not from you.”

“Mom,” Eric said. “What are you talking about?”

They were in her yellow-teapot kitchen. She shuffled across the tile floor, hands exploring the air in front of her, until
she reached the counter. She placed her hand flat and turned to face her oldest son. Her blindness was so great today that
she couldn’t find the eyes in his face. It was just a smear of pink. “What did you give to him?” she said.

“What did I—”

“You know what I mean,” she said, her voice a bit louder, shaking. “What did you give to him? To Pilot?”

“Mom.” Eric’s voice was going up in pitch, his throat
closing. “Pilot’s on antipsychotics. I wouldn’t give him anything—”

“What did you give him?”

“Mom,” Eric said, “what are you talking about?”

She reached for the stove and grabbed the kettle off the burner. She moved to the sink and filled it with water. “I’m having
tea,” she said unsteadily. “Do you want some?”

Eric sat down at the kitchen table, put his elbows on his knees and his hands together. “Mom,” he said, “come on.”

Hannah was crying, just a couple of tears running down her face. She heard the two girls squealing next door. Our mother thought
she heard her own daughter out there with them. Could they see her, too? Could those little girls be playing with Fiona? “You
gave him something,” she said. “I know you did.”

“How could I do that,” he said, “and what on earth would I give him?”

Hannah put the kettle back on the stove and lit the burner. “I don’t know what you gave him exactly,” she said. “How would
I know?”

Eric sighed. “My whole family has gone nuts,” he said to himself. Then, to Hannah, “Take it easy, Mom, all right?”

“I know,” she said. “I know I’m nuts.”

The two of them waited for the water to boil, waited while the little girls next door played in shrill, high-pitched delight.
When the kettle whistled, too, it was almost indistinguishable from the siren whistle of those little girls.

Hannah said, “Honey, do you want some tea?”

“Oh, Mom,” Eric said to her, but not really to her.

At the base of her optic nerve, the little cancer cells divided and multiplied, the mathematics of death mounting against
her.

Where did it begin? Was it something inside her? Or was it something inside Eric? Did he look away when he told her how he
felt? Did his eyes dial left, even a single notch, when he said that he loved her? Or did his pulse flutter the wrong way?
Did it fail to flutter? Doubt begins like a single cell, then splits and multiplies and enlarges exponentially until it is
a question. And a question, no matter how absurd—
consider these: is there a God? did Eric kill Fiona?
—implies belief.

In doubt there is faith.

Katherine was starting to believe me.

For some reason, this question had been pressing. For some reason, the telephone felt cold against her ear. “I was wondering
if I could speak to a detective,” Katherine said. “I don’t even know if he works there anymore. His name is Cleveland.”

“Please hold.”

Katherine sat at her desk at the clinic and waited with the cold phone to her ear while the police receptionist put her through.
There was also the thin, barely audible drone of a radio announcer on the line. The announcer’s voice was smooth and steady,
but coming from so far away she could barely make it out. “This is Detective Vettorello,” a young man’s voice said finally.
“How can I help you?”

“Actually, I was holding for Detective Cleveland.”

There was a slight pause during which the radio announcer announced the next record, something by the Staple Singers. “Detective
Cleveland. Um, Detective Cleveland has retired,” the man said. “Quite a while ago. Perhaps there’s something I can help you
with?”

Katherine cleared her throat. “Well,” she said, “it’s about a case that Detective Cleveland worked on many years ago, and
I’m not sure if—”

“Are you a reporter, ma’am?”

“No,” Katherine said. “No, I’m not.”

“What case?”

“It was an abduction case, many years ago, as I said, here in East Meadow, a little girl named Fiona Airie was—”

There was a sound of paper shuffling on the detective’s end. There was faraway laughter. There was something going by on squeaky
wheels, a mail cart, Katherine imagined. “How many years ago did you say that was, ma’am?”

Katherine said, “About twenty.”

“That’s
way
before my time,” Detective Vettorello said, laughing. She could hear those wheels squeaking again. Perhaps it was his chair
moving around the tile floor. “I have to ask, though, ma’am, why you are interested in this case.”

“I think I may have some new evidence.” She hardly believed it herself.

“You have evidence for a case that’s twenty years old.” Obviously, he didn’t believe her at all.

“Maybe,” Katherine said. “Well, a piece of it, anyway.”

“What’s your name again?”

“Katherine DeQuincey-Joy.”

“Very nice.”

“Thank you.” Now there was a noise. At her door, she could see that Elizabeth was motioning. Someone was waiting outside.
Katherine tried to wave her away. Whatever it was, it could wait.

“I’ll have to check into that,” the police detective said. “What was the kid’s name again, the one that was—”

“Fiona Airie,” Katherine repeated. Elizabeth was making a face at her. “Elizabeth,” Katherine said, “whatever it is can—”

The door was pushed open from behind her and Eric walked in.

“Hello, Katherine,” he said.

“Eric.” Katherine held up a finger, indicating that he should
hold on a moment. Had he heard her use Fiona’s name? “I’ll have to call you back.”

“Miss DeQuincey,” the detective said, “if I can just get your num—”

“Really,” Katherine said. “I’ll call back. I have to go.” She put the phone down softly. Had Eric heard her?

He was standing over her desk. “Who was that?”

Katherine tried to smile. “Nothing important.”

Eric slumped down on the hideous brown couch. He put his face in his hands.

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“My brother, and now my mother.”

“Your brother’s out of your hair,” Katherine said. “At least for the moment.”

“How did all of this happen?” Eric looked at the ceiling.

Was that it? The look up, the eyes casting about for answers?

Katherine got up from her desk and sat down beside him on the couch. She put her arm over his shoulders. “I really think Pilot
is much better now.” She wasn’t sure if she was lying or not. She wasn’t sure about anything.

Eric sighed. “Now my mother is crazy, too, and she won’t take anything for it.”

“They can’t figure out what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong with her. It’s entirely psychosomatic.”

“Will she see a psychiatrist?”

He shook his head.

She allowed a moment to pass. “I have a patient coming.”

“I want to see you.” He put his hand on her leg. “I want to see you tonight.”

Katherine hesitated. “It’s just that—”