Rob turned over, burying his face in the pillow, and did not answer. Helen had no heart to try to explain what she meant, to struggle with his anger and sleepy incomprehension. He had not heard and he would not understand. She lay back down, longing for the oblivion of sleep.
But she couldn’t stop thinking of the chest. It was almost as if it was calling to her. She wanted to go to it and raise the heavy lid and look inside yet again, to assure herself that there was nothing there. But she knew there was nothing inside. How many times did she have to look before she believed?
There is no baby there, she told herself. No crying, no newspapers, nothing. I will stay here in my bed and go back to sleep.
Helen heard Julian’s footsteps on the landing, going towards his room.
It’s over, she told herself. Even Julian knows that. And this is the last night I will suffer this. In the morning the chest goes.
She did not sleep again. She lay in bed until it was light, and the thought of the chest was like a suffocating weight. When she heard Julian stirring in his room, she knew it was time to get up. While she was in the bathroom, she heard the front door open and slam and knew that Julian had run outside, as he often did, to bring the morning paper in for his parents.
In the kitchen she went through the motions of making a pot of coffee while her mind puzzled over the fact that she had not yet heard a sound from Alice, and the oddity that Julian had not rushed into the kitchen, eager to be praised for bringing her the paper. Moving slowly, wearily, Helen went back to check on her family.
Rob, she saw from the doorway, was still sacked out, the alarm buzzing steadily and to no effect directly into his ear. The interruption of his sleep during the night meant she would have another battle to wake him, and he would be grumpy all day.
And Alice –
– was not in her crib.
Helen stared down, disbelieving, at the bare sheet. Alice was much too small to have got out of bed on her own. ‘Julian,’ she called, rushing into the living room. ‘Julian!’
He was sitting on the floor beside the open chest, the newspapers spread out around him. He was tearing the newspaper into strips and dropping them into the chest.
Already understanding, Helen stepped closer to the chest and looked down into it. It was no longer empty, but nearly half-filled with newspaper. The strips Julian had so industriously shredded lay like packing over and around the central bundle, something which had been wrapped in sheets of yesterday’s paper. All the paper Julian had found in the house had not been enough to make the interior of the chest an exact replica of the image he had seen, but it was quite enough to do the same job the second time. Only there was no smell now. It was too soon for that.
As Helen reached down into the chest for the bundle, Julian let out a loud noise of displeasure and stood up. It wasn’t supposed to be taken out; it was supposed to be hidden away in the chest forever. He tried, futilely, to get the bundle away from his mother.
She held it up out of reach. It was still warm. Her hands shaking, Helen began to unwind the many layers of newspaper that Julian had wrapped around her baby.
A FRIEND IN NEED
Photographs lie, like people, like memories. What would it prove if I found Jane’s face and mine caught together in a picture snapped nearly twenty years ago? What does it mean that I can’t find such a photograph?
I keep looking. My early life is so well documented by my father’s industrious camera work that Jane’s absence seems impossible. She was, after all, my best friend; and all my other friends – including one or two I can’t, at this distance, identify – are there in black and white as they run, sit, stand, scowl, cry, laugh, grimace, and play around me. Page after page of birthday parties, dressing-up games, bicycle riding, ice-cream eating, of me and my friends Shelly, Mary, Betty, Carl, Julie, Howard, Bubba, and Pam. But not Jane, who is there in all my memories.
Was she ever really there? Did I imagine her into existence? That’s what I thought for twelve years, but I don’t believe that anymore.
I saw her in the Houston airport today and I recognised her, although not consciously. What I saw was a small woman of about my own age with dark, curly hair. Something about her drew my attention.
We were both waiting for a Braniff flight from New York, already five minutes late. A tired-looking man in uniform went behind the counter, made a throat-clearing noise into the microphone, and announced that the flight would be an hour late.
I swore and heard another voice beside me, like an echo. I turned my head and met her eyes. We laughed together.
‘Are you meeting someone?’ she asked.
‘My mother.’
‘What a coincidence,’ she said flatly. ‘We’ve both got mothers coming to visit.’
‘No, actually my mother lives here. She went to New York on business. Your mother lives there?’
‘LongIsland,’ she said. It came out as one word; I recognised the New Yorker’s pronunciation.
‘That’s where you’re from?’
‘Never west of the Hudson until two years ago.’ Her sharp eyes caught my change of expression. ‘You’re surprised?’
‘No.’ I smiled and shrugged because the feeling of familiarity was becoming stronger. ‘I thought I knew you, that’s all. Like from a long time ago, grade school?’
‘I’m Jane Renzo,’ she said, thrusting out her hand. ‘Graduate of Gertrude Folwell Elementary School and Elmont High, class of ’73.’
Jane, Jane Renzo, I thought. Had I known someone by that name? There were distant resonances, but I could not catch them. ‘Cecily Cloud,’ I said, taking her hand.
‘What a great name!’
Our hands unclasped and fell apart. She was grinning; there was a hint of a joke in her eyes, but also something serious.
‘But it doesn’t ring any bells?’ I asked.
‘Oh, it does, it definitely does. Sets the bells a-ringing. It’s the name I always wanted. A name like a poem. I hated always being plain Jane.’ She made a face.
‘Better than Silly Cecily,’ I said. ‘The kids used to call me Silly until I got so used to it that it sounded like my real name. But I always hated it. I used to wish my parents had given me a strong, sensible name that couldn’t be mispronounced or misspelled or made fun of – like Jane.’
Jane. Memory stirred, but it was like something deep in a forest. I couldn’t get a clear sight of it.
‘We all have our own miseries, I guess,’ she said. She looked at her watch and then at me, a straightforward, friendly look. ‘We’ve got time to kill before this flight gets here. You want to go and sit down somewhere and have some coffee?’
The rush of pleasure I felt at her suggestion was absurdly intense, inappropriate, as if she were a long-lost friend, returned to me when I had nearly given up hope of seeing her again. Trying to understand it, I said, ‘Are you sure we haven’t met before?’
She laughed – a sharp, defensive sound.
Hastily, afraid of losing our easy rapport, I said, ‘It’s only that I feel I know you. Or you remind me of someone. You never came to Houston when you were a kid?’
She shook her head.
‘College?’
‘Montclair State.’ We had begun to walk together in search of a coffee shop, down the long, windowless, carpeted, white-lit corridor. It was like being inside a spaceship, I thought, or in an underground city of the distant, sterile future. We were in Houston, but we might as easily have been in New York, Los Angeles, or Atlanta for all the cues our surroundings gave us. It was a place set apart from the real world, untouched by time or season, unfettered by the laws of nature.
‘It’s like the future,’ I said.
Jane looked at the curving walls and indirect lighting and gave me an appreciative smile. ‘It is kind of Star Treky,’ she said.