The Tangled Bridge (20 page)

Josh said to her, “Listen. That kid is what's kept you in that no-end night auditor job at the Hilton. Messing with all the appointments and the soccer practice by day so you have to work at night. It's why you've spent years without sleep.”

And Lin added, “It's over. You can't take care of him. You always knew it was too much.”

Esther said, “I need a new car. If I could just get enough together to get a new car I could tell Mare to move along and it'd be Bo and me again.”

“That's right,” Lin said. “It's impossible without a new car. That's the only thing that'll get you out of this.”

Josh said, “Go on ahead and leave that old Buick on the side of the road and let the city of New Orleans have it.”

Esther looked long at the Buick, then turned and gazed down the ragged shoulder.

Lin said, “Go on, you can walk it.”

Esther paused. She went to the trunk of the Buick and opened it. An umbrella, some tools. Bo's scooter in there. And his books, too.

Lin said, “Braille isn't easy to come by. Maybe you should carry it with you.”

Esther gathered up the books and the scooter and left behind the rest to die with the car. Now, loaded down, she began to walk.

“I guess we walkin all the way to work like this,” Zenon said.

Josh said, “It's gotta be three or four miles, at least.”

And Lin said, “In this heat.”

Esther's brow wrinkled. Oh, she was listening alright. Hadn't listened to Lin in years, but look at her now. Zenon could see it on Esther's face. How she recognized the feel of listening to a devil. She'd probably been so sure she'd become a different person.

“I know you out here,” she said aloud. “You can just go on and get.”

And then Esther paused as if waiting for the devils to obey.

Lin slinked up good and close. This was her Esther. She knew this woman better than anyone else.

Lin leaned over to Esther's ear and whispered, “You remember what hurt the most? Remember? That Mama hadn't lived to meet Bo.”

Esther said not a word but her eyes filled afresh.

They would have liked each other
, her expression seemed to say.

Lin said, “If only Mama had lived a little longer. When she died her daughter was a nothing but a junkie and a whore.”

Zenon marveled at how random the thoughts seemed. Lin was just pushing all the familiar buttons at once. From this perspective, here in the briar, it sounded ridiculous and completely unrelated to the car breaking down.
But look at Esther. Just look at her!
She was listening alright. She wasn't just listening, she was letting it stick.

Esther said, “Just keep my son safe, dear God, that's all I ask.”

Zenon studied her. Speaking those words was a clear indication that Esther knew she was being whispered. And yet saying them also sounded a whole lot like giving up.

They walked.

*   *   *

TWICE MORE, PEOPLE OFFERED
Esther a ride. Twice more she refused. She ignored the buses, too. Kept marching with the devils. Sure, Zenon could make pigeons of anyone on a bus or any driver that picked her up, or hell, anyone on the road could swerve and hit her. Little lady had to know walking didn't make that much difference. The effect was purely psychological. Made her feel like she was in control. Downright endearing, it was. She kept it up the whole way, carrying heavy blind kid books and that scooter in the boiling heat. Wasn't gonna lay aside her load for nothing. And that was fine, just fine. She didn't realize she was helping them along.

When Esther finally showed up for work an hour later, she got in trouble for being late. And she showed up plumb wore out and blistered. And she hadn't slept since the night of the levee.

Better yet, Zenon noted, she'd talked herself into all stripes of worries. It took that slippery element right out of her, that residual glow from her son.

No, they didn't need to round up pigeons and sic them on Esther. By that point she was ready to turn on herself.

 

twenty-three

NEW ORLEANS, NOW

“
A
LITTLE WALK, YES?”
Severin said.

“Alright,” Madeleine answered in her mind.

And her room was no longer her room. She kept with her physical body for a moment, lingering in the warmth of Ethan's caress. He'd already fallen asleep. She loved ending her day with him, that moment when they changed into bedclothes and slipped into the clean white sheets; they would talk or read or make love. And then they'd hold tight to one another while he drifted into sleep and she drifted into the bramble.

He'd changed the belt for Esther's car, but had since been unable to get her on the phone and no one was home this evening when he'd stopped by again. Madeleine watched his face as the division between moonlight and shadow grew deeper, the darkness blacker. In the briar, the light levels were always that of a full moon evening but without the moon itself.

She lifted her gaze and saw that Jasmine was already disappearing behind curls of thorns. The walls were going. Above, the ceiling fan remained suspended in place but the ceiling itself was receding. Those kinds of surface planes, they didn't exist in the bramble. Not walls, ground, ceilings, or even the illusion of sky stretched overhead. Planes belonged to the physical world. In the briar, there was no sky. No day or night. Only black, black trees, tall and thin and draped in thorns where the branches should be. The trees had no tops. They stretched forever. And the lightness between their ascent wasn't sky, only silver fog, and it rolled endlessly like ocean waves.

As she watched the ceiling plane go and the trees stretch to infinite heights, it occurred to her that this was her favorite part of going into the briar.

And, strange that she should have a favorite part. The river devil's world was a world of dread. Had been.

The ceiling fan, now attached to nothing at all, spun round, round, round.

It seemed the more time she spent in the briar, the more it came into focus. There were creatures in those woods—river devils of course, but other beasts, too. Brilliant winged and hooded reptiles the size of garden snakes that looked like Chinese dragons. They darted between the trees just beyond reach.

And the gravity that held her tight to Ethan, it abandoned her. She was lifting away. Her physical self still lay with him, yes, but the other parts of her were rising, stepping, turning, following off with that rolling mist. The pull of it all was just too strong.

She called for Zenon.

*   *   *

ZENON TESTED HER ON
pigeon games. Madeleine was good at it but Zenon was masterful. Their ghosts walked the streets of New Orleans while their bodies lay in their respective beds. Madeleine manipulated rats and mice and sleeping pigeons. Zenon showed her how to manage two at a time. Together they made pigeons play leapfrog, rats hang by their clawed feet.

This is my half brother
, Madeleine thought.
He's just like me.

As much as she would ordinarily loathe any interaction with Zenon, in the briar she lost that sense of revulsion. All was intrigue. Fascination. Disconnection. It was probably why Zenon both wanted her company but would think nothing of killing her. Intrigue, fascination, disconnection.

And beneath it all she hoped that if Zenon was working with her—training her, as he liked to call it—he was leaving Bo alone.

It seemed strange. Both he and Chloe seemed so anxious to school Madeleine in the ways of the briar.

When she returned to her body she almost felt a sense of loss. One problem with the briar was that it wasn't always terrible. It had been, in the early days of Severin, but lately the river devil's world was just a time span of wanderings or fascinations, often downright pleasant. Oh, it still held perils—devils, Zenon, ghastly reflections of the physical world—but not all the time. Also, the river devil's world was plush, rich, and it sometimes invoked a kind of ecstasy. Coming back to reality was almost like giving up a whole spectrum of colors. There came a temptation to linger. Madeleine had to remind herself not to let down her guard.

Her mind and spirit having returned to her body, she lay with Ethan, a tangle of limbs colored to softness in the moonlight. His skin was so light against hers. On the other side of the room, Jasmine lay curled in her daisy bed. Madeleine watched Ethan's ribs rise and fall, rise and fall; Jasmine's rose and fell, too, twice for every one of Ethan's breaths.

Madeleine knew she should sleep. But the funny thing about sleep, it refused to be forced.

How to draw Zenon toward her, away from Bo? The very thought led her to imagine dozens of dangerous outcomes, each one ending in pain or getting herself or Bo killed, or both. No new ideas, only dread and fear. It was a perverse ecstasy, wallowing in the worries. The needless, needling worries.

She remembered the creatures who'd descended upon her when Zenon had dragged her underwater—those dragonfly-like things that had stung her and heightened the panic.

Zenon spent all his time in the briar now. For him, it had become a constant training ground. How would she ever keep up with him?

Rise and fall. Madeleine matched her breathing to Ethan's. Her hand went to his chest. She could feel his heart beating inside. The breath, the blood, the lungs, the heart, the brain. Altogether they did not equate to life. Life was something beyond this collection.

The moonlight darkened as a cloud rolled in, and then the only illumination came from streetlights beyond the window. Madeleine kissed his temple. Jasmine lay sleeping on the other side of the room.

This was part of it, she knew. Somehow, this quiet feeling was what kept the briar from seeping into her heart.

The clock switched its blue digital display to 2:43
A.M.

Raining outside now. The streetlight illuminated droplets streaming down the window and cast fractals across the wall. A flash of lightning and then thunder. The rain intensified with the electrical surge in the atmosphere, and the sound of it was divided between rushing in the trees and pelting on the roof. She drew in a breath.

Across the patter of raindrops, her cell phone rang.

Madeleine turned her head toward it. Ethan blinked awake and rose up on his elbow. The beautiful feeling vanished. But she could get it back; another quiet moment and she could feel that softness in her heart again.

She slid back from him and stepped toward the kitchenette for her phone. Didn't recognize the number that appeared on the caller ID.

“Hello?”

“Doctor LeBlanc?” Madeleine knew the woman's voice but could not place it.

“Yes?”

Ethan had followed her into the kitchen, and he passed his fingers along her shoulder as he made his way to the cupboard. He frowned at the phone. Madeleine shrugged.

“Hello, Doctor LeBlanc,” the voice finally said.

Then, silence again. And Madeleine knew.

She said, “Is this Esther? Esther Ramirez?”

“Yeah.” Esther's voice hung in a clench, and it sounded like she'd been crying.

“Tell me what's happened. Is Bo alright?”

Esther's words were slow and careful. “Mare says he's just fine. But I don't know what to do. I'm at Ochsner.”

“You're in the hospital?”

Ethan's brow deepened as he listened to Madeleine's end of the conversation.

Esther's voice held steady. “Yeah. The night nurse was kind enough to let me use her phone. I just called Mare. She says Bo's fine, but…”

And then her voice broke.

Madeleine said, “It's alright, just tell me.”

She could hear Esther's breath hitching. “I've done something terrible, Doctor. I can't say why. I took someone's stash and shot up yesterday. Was a coworker, he kept his paraphernalia in the laundry. I found it and used it and he beat me pretty good. I just now woke up, or … came down. Mare been watchin Bo for me, she says. And Doctor, there's things…”

When the silence stretched on, Madeleine said, “I understand.”

“You do, huh? You understand. Well I'm glad for that. You came to warn me, I know, but you could've told me more about this, I think.”

Madeleine pressed the palm of her hand into her forehead, listening.

Esther said, “I'm calling to ask you to go see to my boy.”

Madeleine said, “Sure. I can do that.”

“You and Doctor Manderleigh both, OK? Is he there with you now? Can I talk to him?”

Madeleine said, “Hang on.”

She handed the phone to Ethan. “She wants us to check on Bo.”

She remembered the moment when Severin had conjured the thoughts of violence against Bo as he was escaping the bullies, that flicker of savagery Madeleine felt in her heart. Esther had seen it. Smart that she was insisting Ethan go, too.

“Yeah,” Ethan was saying, and then, “You mean, take him home? With us?”

Madeleine looked up, surprised.
Take
him? Ethan looked puzzled, too. He lifted his brows at Madeleine, and she nodded.

He said, “OK, we'll do it … Yeah … Hang on.”

He passed the phone back. “Wants to talk to you again.”

“Yes,” Madeleine said into the receiver.

Esther said, “I know I'm asking a lot. But I prayed about it and I think you two might be the only ones who can actually do something here.”

Madeleine swallowed. “That may be true. Have you made arrangements with Mare?”

“Gonna call her again right now. I imagine she'll be relieved. But if she ain't, I'll tell the police if I have to. I'll tell them that my boy needs to be with you, not her.”

“We'll be there first thing in the morning.”

But Esther said, “No ma'am. Please go now.”

Madeleine looked toward the window where the rain had escalated to a steady pour. “Now?”