Then they lowered the mahogany box into the ground, and they all stood there, watched as the mourners filed out, and waited for the men to begin filling the hole.
They returned to the bungalow around eight. Mary sat out on the porch with a book, and after hiding a while in her room, Jenn came out to the living room, sharing the couch with her father. He hid his smile behind his hand.
"What"cha watchin"?"
He muted the television. "The news."
"How"s the world."
"Unchanged."
"You remember, before it happened, you promised me something."
He nodded. "I remember."
She placed a hand on his knee, leaned forward, caught his eye. "Where were you?"
Robert waited. He didn"t know how to continue. Finally, he figured the only thing to do was tell the truth. She would either buy it or not. "You know about my mother, right?"
Jenn nodded. "She died young."
"Turns out it wasn"t that simple."
"What wasn"t?"
He paused, looking over. Jenn"s eyebrows were raised. "Do you believe in ghosts?"
Her eyebrows drew together. Her face was unreadable. "I don"t know."
"I don"t know, either." A bald faced lie.
"So why"d you ask?"
Robert buried his face in his hands. How could he explain it?
She scooted over, took his hand, rubbed over the veins on top of his hand. "It"s okay," she told him, continuing to knead his hand.
With Jenn rubbing his hand, he found the courage to explain. He started way back, back in a forgotten, mythical West, in a town called Tempest.
He told her everything. When he"d finished, she asked him what she was, and he did his best to tell her. Jenn seemed frightened, a little shocked, but like Mary, perhaps because of Mary, she accepted it far easier than he had imagined possible.
When he"d finished, Jenn put her arm around him. "I missed you, Daddy. I missed you so much."
He wrapped his arms around her and began to cry.
They cried and he apologized, again and again, and finally Jenn asked him if he was all better. Robert laughed and cried, and Jenn joined him.
Around midnight, Mary came inside. She and Robert recounted the funeral, pretended it was beautiful, but then Mary snorted. "G.o.d, it was horrible, wasn"t it?"
Caught off guard, Robert laughed, nodding his head.
"She would have thought it was horrible," laughed Mary. "She would have liked everyone to get together, tell stories about her, and toss back pitchers of beer."
"Got any beer?"
Mary smiled at him, a gleam in her eye. "She drank Pabst," she told him, the laughter suddenly taking hold of her. The gleam became a tear. She shook with it, the laughter.
Robert chuckled, opened the refrigerator, took out two cans, popped the tops, handed one to Mary, and they clicked them together. "To Grady," he said, and they took long, slow swigs. When they lowered their beers he asked, "Got any stories?"
"Oh yeah," said Mary, grinning, a tear streaking her cheek.
It didn"t take Robert long to ease into the habit of just living again. He might have thought it would, but routine is a magic thing. At first he noticed it one morning when he opened his eyes and felt little or no anxiety. It was a slight peace to be sure, but it was there just the same. He laid still for the better part of an hour, not moving from the couch because he didn"t have to.
At ten minutes to noon, Mary strolled into the kitchen, asking how he liked his coffee. He told her he liked it the same way he liked his men: hot and black. He smiled at her, hoping she recognized a joke when she heard one, and she smiled back. To Robert this moment seemed like one a husband and wife shared. Provided they didn"t hate each other.
"How long you been up?"
"Exactly one minute."
"Me too. Nice to sleep in."
"Can"t remember the last time I could."
Mary filled the pot with water, set the decanter beneath the spout, and began to scoop coffee into the filter, started the brew cycle, then came over and joined him on the couch, where they spoke of the mundane a while. When Robert noticed that she was scooting closer every few minutes, he wondered if his earlier thought had been right on. He"d wanted to kiss her for days, but hadn"t believed she was interested. Even now, as the sweet smell of her perfume neared, he wasn"t sure. But then he felt her hair on his shoulder. He kept on talking, nervous now, and then her hair was on his neck and she was kissing it. He turned and she kissed him on the lips, on the chin, on the cheek, and soon a familiar feeling came over him.
"Why do you think they call it having s.e.x?" asked Mary, leaning over him, her long hair brushing his stomach.
Robert looked over. "What?"
"You have lunch, you have a baby, but don"t you do s.e.x?"
He laughed, shook his head.
"No, really, the only way you can make s.e.x sound like a verb is if you say the F word. Otherwise, it sounds like a buffet."
"I would definitely say," he said with a weary sigh,. "that we did s.e.x."
"Good," said Mary, then she rose, threw on a robe, and went into the bathroom.
Robert fell back into his pillows, still not quite believing what had just happened.
Dan had left many things up in the air-chiefly, what had happened to his mother, and to Montague Greer. After a number of weeks, he finally decided to head to the local library.
Once there, he got on the Internet and found the site of the local Simola Straight paper. Over the next hour, he filtered through the mundane, prosaic life of a town, only stopping to rub his eyes, or to get some water from the fountain by the restrooms. He found nothing until the second hour, as he shuffled back two years into the town"s past. He came upon this headline: PROMINENT Ca.s.sADAGA CITIZENS VANISH.
Robert blinked, rubbed his eyes, staring at the glimmering screen. He thought about the door. Had Greer truly opened it, or had the old man channeled some latent gift within Robert? A combination of the two? After all, the second time he had touched that mysterious ocean, he had been able to control the current. Had the door been there, invisible, all along? A door to a new perception, a new way of seeing, a way to journey inward, toward the dominant part of his genetic code? Had Greer merely placed his hand on the k.n.o.b?
He thought further back, to the dreams he and Mary had shared. His mother had reached them from that still sea: when the letter arrived it had been blank at first, but then she"d pushed through, and the message hadn"t been I"m out there, but I"m inside. If she had been able to somehow cross over, to communicate from some far off yet close place, then what might his abilities entail? He thought of the scales, and the evening after Veronica"s death, how the porch had been ripped apart; what if his subconscious, so upset, had caused these things? He"d seen his mother rip apart a town while a preacher threatened her parents, so it wasn"t out of the realm of possibility. Robert smiled. It was all out of that realm, but it didn"t really matter now, did it? It was all in the realm of is.
Again, he stared at the screen, wondering if it was a door. He stared at each letter in turn, concentrating on the story they told, and the town it all had taken place in, the man the story was about, and then he reached out, touched the screen.
Nothing. Just a warm, hard monitor screen. He looked down, thought of his mother again, how she"d controlled the fire somehow, touched a flame and commanded it to envelope her hand, and how she"d used what Durham had meant to be the instrument of her death to cause his own. From the inside out. The power, the connectedness of it . . . .
So he slowed down, took each word separately, slowly, concentrating violently, and his skin began to p.r.i.c.kle, his gut to burn, and when he reached up to touch the screen it finally happened and he nearly screamed.
His fingers weren"t touching the screen at all, but when they reached the spot where it should have been, the world shimmered like the surface of a pond shaking and reflecting a plane pa.s.sing overhead. He reared back, blinking madly, watching everything before his eyes roll with tiny waves of disturbance.
And then he was standing in the dark.
A reading light sat on a wooden floor, casting its brilliance up and out, revealing the thick leg of a man seated in a folding chair: Montague Greer.
Robert tried to take a step, but found his feet weren"t on the floor. He raised his arm, could feel his arm, but could not see it. His arm did not exist here. His body did not exist here. Only his eyes were here.
The huge leg lifted and descended, tapping the floor in heavy strokes. The sound was drum-like, and the old man hummed a melody above it.
Then the black changed somehow, grew lighter without altering its color. The black seemed to bend, to shift, to part, and suddenly Robert noticed another figure standing there in the dark.
Greer stopped tapping, humming. "h.e.l.lo, Sarah," he said.
Robert opened his mouth, but no sound came forth; he noticed he wasn"t even moving the air around him.
First, he saw his mother"s foot as she stepped toward the light; next, her leg and her hip, and her skin was youthful, flush, vibrant; finally, the floor-lamp threw light on her face. As she had been while rising from the sea, Sarah Lieber was nude. She was resplendent.
"I can"t say I expected to see you," said Greer.
She stepped to within a foot of the old man, looked down, her hands clenched by her sides, fixing her eyes on his slack but strangely powerful form. She seemed to be not staring so much as appraising. She said nothing.
"You kept an eye on your boy all those years. Impressive." Greer"s voice was changing, rising. He seemed, if only a little, startled. Perhaps even afraid.
"He"s my son," said Sarah. Her voice was small; it was as if she hadn"t used it for years. And maybe she hadn"t.
Montague Greer leaned forward. He stood. His face was inches from Sarah"s. Her eyes gleamed in the upcast light.
Again, the darkness seemed to change, to lighten somehow. At first, Greer kept his eyes on Sarah"s, but then as the darkness slowly gathered he looked around, backed up a step, watching as the blackness began to slowly move within itself, like water. It began to spin, slowly at first, then quick as a cyclone it swirled around them, beating back against the walls of the room, splashing onto them like paint.
And the room was bright.
Sarah bent over, retrieved the lamp from the floor, removed the shade. The bulb was blinding, but then she blew on it. It snuffed out, went dark. She set the lamp back, and now Monty was backing up, heading toward the staircase. She stepped toward him.
"Don"t, Sarah. Don"t do this."
"Don"t do what? Aren"t you tired of waking up every day? Don"t you dream of release?"
"What I dream-"
Sarah stopped, bowed her head, closed her eyes, her hands clenched by her thighs. She made a popping sound with her lips.
Montague Greer grimaced. Cords stood out on his neck. His eyes bulged.
Slowly, Sarah raised her hands.
Greer threw his head back, moaning, and clenched his fists, punched one into the center of his forehead. A trickle of blood ran from his nose.
Sarah opened her mouth. An impossibly high-pitched sound came from it, and the walls and floorboards shook.
Greer"s mouth snapped open, and blood poured from it. It was dark, the blood, and it spewed like oil from the ground. Sarah"s wail continued and Greer collapsed to his knees, then forward, onto his palms. On all fours now, blood running from his mouth, he slapped around in a pool of it.
Slowly, Montague Greer pitched forward.
Sarah stood over him, panting. "Rest, Monty," she whispered. "Rest."
Suddenly, she straightened, stiffening. Her eyes shot to the ceiling, then over. If he"d had a corporeal form, she would have been staring right at him. "Robert?"
He tried to speak. He couldn"t. He existed only in the vacuum of souls.
But still she stared, her eyes clear and focused, her lips trembling. "You"re there," she said. A tear rolled down her cheek. "I"ve watched you, son. For so . . . long." She wiped the tear away, shook her head as if she was angry at her display of emotion. "I"m sorry, so sorry, I couldn"t be next to you as you grew." Her tear flowed freely now, but he didn"t think she noticed. "There"s a girl," she continued. "I"ve watched her, son, watched her all along. She"s right," Sarah said, smiling now, a tender, soft smile. "Mary"s the one."
The room brightened, and she stepped back, looked down.
In the center of Greer"s chest was a circle of light. It pulsated, it grew. Sarah calmly watched as the light engulfed his form, and he slowly disappeared within it.
She turned back to him, raised her hand, waving, and for a moment she stood there, perfect and white as the light surrounding her, but then her skin shaded over and her eyes darkened. Her hair began to fade, blending into the gray, and her form blurred and wavered. Soon the light overtook her, and Sarah Lieber, for the second time before her son, began to vanish. Her skin whitened until all he could make out was the outline of her body; it was as if he was seeing her through a veil.
Suddenly, Robert moved, rising, breaking through the house, sifting into the air above it, feeling the heat of the midday sun, the quickening of a breeze.
He overlooked the town. Below, citizens were peeking from windows, they were parting drapes, they were stepping outside and looking around. As if they sensed it.
In minutes, the citizens of Ca.s.sadaga had left their offices and homes. They were chatting on the streets. Their movements had a purpose.
They formed a line and were marching toward the house. Entranced, they were silent now, their faces expressionless, and, as they turned down the driveway bracketed by two white fences, the white fire in the attic of Greer"s home grew.
Montague Greer and Sarah Lieber had pa.s.sed on, and their pa.s.sage had left a doorway.
When Robert arrived home, he felt blank. Thankfully, only Mary was home. She was in the kitchen, dicing onions.
He stood in the doorway. In the doorway, he thought. Life was about doors. Which ones you entered, which ones you pa.s.sed by.