“Uh-huh.”
“Plus we could keep one recorder here and one at your house instead of dragging them back and forth all the time.” He thought it over, then nodded decisively. “What we need is another tape recorder,” he said. “I’ll get one.”
“How?”
“I’ll tell them I need one.”
“Your parents?”
“Who else, Santa Claus?”
“You just tell them you need something and you get it?”
“Sure. What do you do when you want something?”
“Nothing.”
“Does that work?”
“I don’t want many things,” she said.
The next day he told her everything was taken care of. “They’ll get the tape recorder. You can keep the other one in the meantime. I told them you needed it for a project.”
“And that’s all you had to do?”
“Sure. When I was younger I used to have to throw tantrums, but after you do that a certain number of times you get them trained. I didn’t have to scream or kick my feet or anything.”
“No carpet-chewing, huh?”
“Nothing like that.” He looked up at her. “So we’ve got you a tape recorder, Jardell. Now what are you going to do for me in return, my proud beauty?”
She giggled.
“Nothing in return, Ariel?”
“I took care of Graham for you, didn’t I?”
He stared at her.
“You think he just happened to get hit by a car,” she said. “That kind of accident doesn’t just happen all by itself, you know. I had to arrange it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, I concentrated very hard, and I said a little prayer to the woman we found in the attic, and look what happened.” She dilated her nostrils, widened her eyes, hit him with an out-of-focus stare. “I have special powers,” she announced.
“You’re really weird, Jardell.”
“Special weird powers.”
“You’re spooky, did anyone ever tell you that?”
“Weird spooky powers. You said you wanted to kill Graham, so I thought I’d help you out. After all, you’re getting the tape recorder. I figured I owed you a favor.”
“He wasn’t killed, anyway. Just hit by a car.”
“My powers aren’t fully developed yet,” she said. “I’m only a child.”
“A weird child.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“Graham got a broken leg and three broken ribs and a ruptured spleen. What’s a spleen?”
“Something gross. Something yucky and disgusting.”
“It’s good people have skin,” Erskine said, “or all that stuff would show.”
That night she hadn’t planned to write in her diary. Roberta had gone out after dinner and David was in his den with the door closed, and she’d planned on doing her homework and then watching television. But the homework didn’t take long and when it was finished she didn’t feel like watching anything on television. Without really being aware of it she got her spiral notebook and her pen and sat down on her bed.
For a while she wrote about her music, about the tape recorder Erskine was going to get. Then she wrote:
We didn’t see Mr. Channing today. I kept expecting to see him. I would look around for him on the way to school and on the way to Erskine’s afterward. And on the way home from Erskine’s I kept looking around for his car. There is something about him and I don’t know what it is. I’m scared of him but at the same time I like seeing him. I don’t understand it.
Graham Littlefield was hit by a car yesterday. He is in the hospital and is not going to die. Broken legs, broken ribs, and a ruptured spleen, whatever that is. I looked in the dictionary and it says the spleen is a ductless gland at the left of the stomach in man, and near the stomach or intestine in other vertebrates. People used to think that the spleen caused low spirits, bad temper and spite.
I suppose having your spleen ruptured would cause all of those things. I suppose Graham’s spirits are low and his temper is bad. Mine certainly would be.
A car hit him and drove off without stopping. Some of the kids were saying that he ran into the street without looking, so it wasn’t the car’s fault, but it was certainly the car’s fault for not stopping.
I spooked Erskine. Telling him I had powers that caused Graham’s accident. He didn’t really believe me, but there was a minute there when he wasn’t absolutely sure.
Suppose Graham was hit by a maroon Buick with a black roof?
Except the other kids just said it was a dark car. Nobody got the license number or anything.
I wonder.
I wonder what would happen if I pretended to have powers. Erskine talked about killing Graham and Veronica, and now Graham’s in the hospital, and what would he think if something happened to Veronica?
This is crazy why am I thinking about this I should stop it right now—
Suppose I concentrated very hard on Veronica. Suppose I got up in the middle of the night and lit a candle under the portrait and concentrated very hard.
Nothing would happen.
Would it?
She gave her head a sudden shake, dismissing the train of thought. For a moment or two she sat with her eyes closed. Then she resumed writing.
I have to wait until I’m eighteen to find out who my real mother is. Erskine says maybe there’s a way before then if only he can figure it out. I don’t think he’ll be able to.
It does not seem so important anymore.
Here is what happens. I think about my mother or start to have an imaginary conversation with her. Then I look at Her.
I mean the portrait. Her.
I don’t know what to call her. I wish I knew her name. Sometimes she is me and sometimes she is my mother. Of course she is neither of us, not really. She could not have been my real mother because the portrait is too old.
But something happens when I look at her.
She closed the notebook, turned to look at the picture. It had an effect upon her which she did not begin to understand. But she did know it suited her to have the picture in her room. As if the woman was back where she belonged.
This must have been her room long ago, she decided. And she got up and walked to her window, drawing back the curtain and looking out at the street below. It had rained earlier, and a streetlamp cast a yellow glow over the wet pavement. She imagined that the woman in the portrait must have stood like this, looking out like this. Of course there would not have been cars then, just carriages pulled by horses. And the streetlamp would have been a gaslight.
She left the window, sat on her bed. At least she hadn’t gotten up in the middle of the night lately to burn any more candles. That incident had disturbed her for a while, until she finally decided it had been just one step removed from a dream, like walking in your sleep. Nothing to get all shook up about.
She turned, then, and raised her eyes to meet the glowing eyes in the portrait. She did not break her silent concentration until she heard David’s footsteps on the stairs....
David was restless. Roberta had gone out shopping, but the currents she’d stirred were still in motion.
She wanted to move. She’d come to his study immediately after dinner, just as he was preparing to settle in with pipe and brandy, and made her little announcement. This house, she explained, had been a mistake. They never should have bought it in the first place. It was a hostile environment, an unhealthy place physically and spiritually, and the only solution was to cut their losses and run. The Traphagens, anxious for a quick sale, had enabled them to buy at a good price. Now, even allowing for realtor’s commission and closing costs, they could very likely turn the house over at a small but tidy profit.
And move where, he’d asked.