“I — believe that my mother is dead. But—”
“But—?”
“My — my father—”
“—isn’t?”
Sybil said, stammering, her cheeks growing hot, “I just want to know. I want to see a, a — grave! A death certificate!”
“I’ll send to Wellington for a copy of the death certificate,” Aunt Lora said slowly. “Will that do?”
“You don’t have a copy here?”
“Honey, why would I have a copy here?”
Sybil saw that the older woman was regarding her with a look of pity, and something like dread. She said, stammering, her cheeks warm, “In your — legal things. Your papers. Locked away—”
“Honey, no.”
There was a pause. Then Sybil said, half-sobbing, “I was too young to go to their funeral. So I never saw. Whatever it was — I never saw. Is that it? They say that’s the reason for the ritual — for displaying the dead.”
Aunt Lora reached over to take Sybil’s hand. “It’s one of the reasons, honey,” she said. “We meet up with it all the time, at the medical center. People don’t believe that loved ones are dead — they know, but can’t accept it; the shock is just too much to absorb at once. And, yes, it’s a theory, that if you don’t see a person actually dead — if there isn’t a public ceremony to define it — you may have difficulty accepting it. You may—” and here Aunt Lora paused, frowning, “—be susceptible to fantasy.”
Fantasy! Sybil stared at her aunt, shocked. But I’ve seen him, I know. I believe him and not you!
The subject seemed to be concluded for the time being. Aunt Lora briskly stubbed out her cigarette and said, “I’m to blame — probably. I’d been in therapy for a couple of years after it happened and I just didn’t want to talk about it any longer, so when you’d asked me questions, over the years, I cut you off; I realize that. But, you see, there’s so little to say — Melanie is dead, and he is dead. And it all happened a long time ago.”
That evening, Sybil was reading in a book on memory she’d taken out of the Glencoe Public Library: It is known that human beings are “possessed” by an unfathomable number of dormant memory-traces, of which some can be activated under special conditions, including excitation by stimulating points in the cortex. Such traces are indelibly imprinted in the nervous system and are commonly activated by mnemonic stimuli — words, sights, sounds, and especially smells. The phenomenon of déjà vu is closely related to these experiences, in which a “doubling of consciousness” occurs, with the conviction that one has lived an experience before. Much of human memory, however, includes subsequent revision, selection, and fantasizing...
Sybil let the book shut. She contemplated, for the dozenth time, the faint red marks on her wrist, where Mr. Starr — the man who called himself Mr. Starr — had gripped her, without knowing his own strength.
Nor had Sybil been aware, at the time, that his fingers were so strong; and had clasped so tightly around her wrist.
11. “Mr. Starr” — or “Mr. Conte”
She saw him, and saw that he was waiting for her. And her impulse was to run immediately to him, and observe, with childish delight, how the sight of her would illuminate his face. Here! Here I am! It was a profound power that seemed to reside in her, Sybil Blake, seventeen years old — the power to have such an effect upon a man whom she scarcely knew, and who did not know her.
Because he loves me. Because he’s my father. That’s why.
And if he isn’t my father—
It was late afternoon of a dull, overcast day. Still, the park was populated at this end; joggers were running, some in colorful costumes. Sybil was not among them, she’d slept poorly the previous night, thinking of — what? Her dead mother who’d been so beautiful? — her father whose face she could not recall (though, yes surely, it was imprinted deep, deep in the cells of her memory)? — her Aunt Lora who was, or was not, telling her the truth, and who loved her more than anyone on earth? And Mr. Starr of course.
Or Mr. Conte.
Sybil was hidden from Mr. Starr’s gaze as, with an air of smiling expectancy, he looked about. He was carrying his duffel bag and leaning on his cane. He wore his plain, dark clothes; he was bareheaded, and his silvery hair shone; if Sybil were closer, she would see light winking in his dark glasses. She had noticed the limousine, parked up on the Boulevard a block away.
A young woman jogger ran past Mr. Starr, long-legged, hair flying, and he looked at her, intently — watched her as she ran out of sight along the path. Then he turned back, glancing up toward the street, shifting his shoulders impatiently. Sybil saw him check his wristwatch.
Waiting for you. You know why.
And then, suddenly — Sybil decided not to go to Mr. Starr after all. The man who called himself Starr. She changed her mind at the last moment, unprepared for her decision except to understand that, as, quickly, she walked away, it must be the right decision: her heart was beating erratically, all her senses alert, as if she had narrowly escaped great danger.
12. The Fate of “George Conte”
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays Lora Dell Blake attended an aerobics class after work, and on these evenings she rarely returned home before seven o’clock. Today was a Friday, at four: Sybil calculated she had more than enough time to search out her aunt’s private papers, and to put everything back in order, well before her aunt came home.
Aunt Lora’s household keys were kept in a top drawer of her desk, and one of these keys, Sybil knew, was to a small aluminum filing cabinet beside the desk, where confidential records and papers were kept. There were perhaps a dozen keys, in a jumble, but Sybil had no difficulty finding the right one. “Aunt Lora, please forgive me,” she whispered. It was a measure of her aunt’s trust of her that the filing cabinet was so readily unlocked.
For never in her life had Sybil Blake done such a thing, in violation of the trust between herself and her aunt. She sensed that, unlocking the cabinet, opening the sliding drawers, she might be committing an irrevocable act.
The drawer was jammed tight with manila folders, most of them well-worn and dog-eared. Sybil’s first response was disappointment — there were hundreds of household receipts, financial statements, Internal Revenue records dating back for years. Then she discovered a packet of letters dating back to the 1950s, when Aunt Lora would have been a young girl. There were a few snapshots, a few formally posed photographs — one of a strikingly beautiful, if immature-looking, girl in a high-school graduation cap and gown, smiling at the camera with glossy lips. On the rear was written “Melanie, 1969.” Sybil stared at this likeness of her mother — her mother long before she’d become her mother — and felt both triumph and dismay: for, yes, here was the mysterious Melanie, and, yet, was this the Melanie the child knew? — or, simply, a high school girl, Sybil’s own approximate age, the kind who, judging from her looks and self-absorbed expression, would never have been a friend of Sybil’s?
Sybil put the photograph back, with trembling fingers. She was half grateful that Aunt Lora had kept so few mementos of the past — there could be fewer shocks, revelations.