Glimmering (5 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Hand
“There’s IZE; I know you can’t have tried that. Or heroin—I could teach you to shoot up! I could probably get a cover feature out of it,” he would say thoughtfully, watching the Japanese dirigibles make their test flights through the crimson air above the river. “‘Former Deb Now Centenarian Junkie . . .”
Now Jack watched as Keeley drank her whiskey. “Up in Stonington they call it March Hill,” she went on. Her pale blue eyes went to gray, the way they did whenever she spoke of the family’s summer cottage in Maine, long since sold to developers to keep
The Gaudy Book
alive. “Every spring the obituaries come, and you read them in the paper, so many of them it seems, and the old folks say, ‘Oh old Virge, you know, he didn’t make it over March Hill.’”
The Gaudy Book
alive. “Every spring the obituaries come, and you read them in the paper, so many of them it seems, and the old folks say, ‘Oh old Virge, you know, he didn’t make it over March Hill.’”
The luster dimmed in her gaze. Jack knew she was thinking of her husband James, who twenty-six years before had not made it over March Hill. “Ah, but what am I saying? It’s just the weather, Jackie. Spring snow, that’s all.” She patted his hand. “You go to bed now; Larena will help me later. Go on, now.”
Jack yawned and draped an arm around her thin shoulders. “You sure?”
She kissed his cheek and shoved him gently. “
Go
.”
Go
.”
He went. Behind him he heard his grandmother calling to Larena and the housekeeper’s plaintive reply.
“Yes, Keeley, I am
coming
.”
coming
.”
Jack smiled in spite of himself. He slung his hands in his pockets—it was always cold at Lazyland—and nodded as Mrs. Iverson bustled past him. He had this, at least: loving grandmother and faithful retainer, guarding him in his castle from the storm outside. In the middle of the entry room he paused, listening to make sure Mrs. Iverson had not fallen. Her health was more precarious than Keeley’s, though at eighty-nine Larena was a full decade younger. Then he walked to the broad curving staircase.
At its foot he paused. To one side of the stairs loomed Lazyland’s grandfather clock.
The
grandfather clock, so called to distinguish it from the dozens and dozens of other clocks that Jack’s grandfather James Finnegan had collected. Grandmother clocks and case clocks, gallery clocks and shelf clocks, cottage clocks and tourbillion watches. A clock with a white mouse that ran down its side when it struck one. A gold- and velvet-encrusted clock that had been made for the Shah of Turkey. An Athenian water clock. They filled the house not with staccato ticking but with a gentle undercurrent of sound like waves upon a beach. Jack usually did not notice them at all, any more than he noticed the sound of his own breathing or the even beating of his heart.
The
grandfather clock, so called to distinguish it from the dozens and dozens of other clocks that Jack’s grandfather James Finnegan had collected. Grandmother clocks and case clocks, gallery clocks and shelf clocks, cottage clocks and tourbillion watches. A clock with a white mouse that ran down its side when it struck one. A gold- and velvet-encrusted clock that had been made for the Shah of Turkey. An Athenian water clock. They filled the house not with staccato ticking but with a gentle undercurrent of sound like waves upon a beach. Jack usually did not notice them at all, any more than he noticed the sound of his own breathing or the even beating of his heart.
But it was difficult to ignore the huge grandfather clock, especially if you were standing at the foot of the stairs. James Finnegan used to joke that he would like to be buried in it. In fact it would have swallowed him, with room for his Irish setter Fergus, too. The clock dated from the early nineteenth century, but its face had come from an eighteenth-century astronomical clock he had found in a wooden box of oddments purchased at Christie’s in 1937. The main dial had dragon hands to tell the hour, tiny golden salamanders on the twelve concentric hour-position dials, sun and moon effigies, moonballs, indicators to indicate the hours of light and darkness, the month and day and year, mean and solar time, and a Julian perpetual calendar.
There was also, just beneath the clockface, a holy-water font that had been in the same box. Jack’s grandfather (with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, save that manufactured a sentimental nature; he was a famous weeper at weddings) decided the clockface had come from the High Court Monastery in Vienna during the reign of Empress Maria Theresa. Sadly, the immense clock itself had not worked for some years now. Jack’s best efforts to keep Lazyland’s clocks running could not duplicate the love that James Finnegan had lavished upon them. Their gears rusted, their levers warped, without his nimble, nicotine-stained fingers to soothe them.
The font was quite old, fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Italian, of very fine blue-glazed porcelain aswarm with adipose cherubim and small flowers like violets. When his grandfather was alive, it was always filled with holy water from Sacred Heart up on Broadway. Whenever he visited Jack would take some and flick it onto his forehead; not from any sense of spiritual devotion but because it was such a heady novelty, to be in a
house
that had holy water. Back then Lazyland was always filled with priests, their shouting laughter from his grandfather’s study and their marvelous smell, frankincense and cigarette smoke and Irish whiskey, the crisp retort of their street shoes on the highly polished wooden floors. Whatever private sorrows and torments they endured, they had never shown Jack or his brothers anything but kindness and how to throw a football so it soared.
house
that had holy water. Back then Lazyland was always filled with priests, their shouting laughter from his grandfather’s study and their marvelous smell, frankincense and cigarette smoke and Irish whiskey, the crisp retort of their street shoes on the highly polished wooden floors. Whatever private sorrows and torments they endured, they had never shown Jack or his brothers anything but kindness and how to throw a football so it soared.
But then they had failed to save his grandfather during his brief final illness. After that there were no more priests at Lazyland, except for old blind Father Warren. Grandmother Keeley drove them away, Jack’s mother said. Jack always thought of the picture of Christ driving the moneylenders from the temple: Grandmother wielding a cat-o’-nine-tails, as myriad black-clad figures fled out onto North Broadway.
So, no more holy water. For years a fine film of dust had clung to the ancient porcelain, and Jack had been able to invoke the ghost of a scent from his childhood. Now even that was gone. Still, he couldn’t resist probing the font with a fingertip.
Nothing, of course. He smiled wryly and began the long ascent up curving staircases to his room on the third floor.
For most of his life he’d taken those stairs at a run. A habit carried over from childhood, when he and his brothers and cousins would race up the first set of broad golden oak steps, kept polished to a near-fatal slickness by Mrs. Iverson, and then continue in a sort of exhilarated terror up the second, darker, narrower curved stair, like the innermost chamber of a nautilus. A twelve-point elk shot by Jack’s father was mounted high above these steps, its glass eyes sanguine with the glimmering’s reflected glow. As he approached the third-floor landing he felt the same primal dread that had gripped him as a boy: that huge gray muzzle with its blackened lips, the long shadows of the elk’s tines, like dead tree limbs. Jack shuddered, heart hammering and chest tight from the effort of climbing, and took the last few steps two at a time.
His bedroom door hung open. He bumped against it, staggered to his bed, and collapsed, one hand automatically switching the light on the nightstand as the other grabbed his inhaler. He gave himself two jolts of his asthma medication, then pulled the drawer open and scrabbled amongst his stockpile of bottles until he found the alprazolam. He took one pill, swallowing it dry, and flung himself back upon his pillow.
After a minute the inhaler began to take effect. He breathed slowly, deeply, then opened the nightstand again and took out a bottle of over-the-counter cold medicine from Emma’s private stash—she had a huge closet full of drugs she’d been hoarding since the glimmering began. Emma had told him to use this instead of sleeping pills, and so he swallowed two capsules, chasing them with the dregs from last night’s water glass.
Too late he wondered if this perhaps had been a mistake, one of those badly mixed pharmaceutical cocktails that would send him to Saint Joseph’s in the middle of the night. But within fifteen or twenty minutes he felt better. He could breathe again; soon the alprazolam would calm him. Maybe he was just sick (
of course
he was sick! he could hear Leonard shrieking); maybe he just had a cold. Without moving from the bed he nudged his shoes off and heard them drop onto the worn old oriental rug. He sighed and yawned, stretching luxuriously. The yellow light from his bedside lamp gave everything a sweetly nostalgic look: burnishing the dark arabesques of the walnut sleigh bed, showing off the cobwebs and dust filigreeing the old Indian headdress hanging on the far wall. More than a few of its regal feathers had been purloined over the years by Jack and his brothers and cousins, to be used for quill pens and darts. Other than that, nothing much had changed.
of course
he was sick! he could hear Leonard shrieking); maybe he just had a cold. Without moving from the bed he nudged his shoes off and heard them drop onto the worn old oriental rug. He sighed and yawned, stretching luxuriously. The yellow light from his bedside lamp gave everything a sweetly nostalgic look: burnishing the dark arabesques of the walnut sleigh bed, showing off the cobwebs and dust filigreeing the old Indian headdress hanging on the far wall. More than a few of its regal feathers had been purloined over the years by Jack and his brothers and cousins, to be used for quill pens and darts. Other than that, nothing much had changed.
It had been his father’s childhood bedroom, the room where Jack had always slept during childhood visits, and it was his room now. A small tucked-in spot on the third floor, catty-corner to the airy nursery attic and the other bedroom, the one where his cousins used to sleep. The walls held a framed picture of dogs playing poker, an exquisite black-and-white print of one of Leonard’s flower studies, a photo of Jack’s aunt Mary Anne, who went to California in 1967 and disappeared, a painting by the San Francisco artist/activist Martin Dionysos, who had briefly been Leonard’s lover. Beside the window hung a spavined pair of wooden snowshoes. The floor still bore round scorched scars like bullet holes, where Jack and his brothers once lit Black Cats on the Fourth of July.
Now it was March. Outside the wind railed at the eaves. Even with the two old Hudson Bay blankets pulled up to his chin, and a nearly new down comforter (his Christmas present from Jule and Emma), Jack felt cold—Lazyland was famously uninsulated. As boys, he and Jule and Leonard had sat in this same room and watched snow sift through the walls, covering the floor like fine white silk. Things were no different tonight, save that he was alone.
Once again he yawned, reached for the tipsy stack of magazines and manuscripts that held his bedside reading. No matter that the written word was dead (Leonard and the other mori artists had held its funeral at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, where copies of
The Gaudy Book
,
The New Yorker
, and the
Paris Review
were ignited within a brazier, their ashes dispersed in the adjoining cemetery); hard-copy submissions for
The Gaudy Book
continued to arrive whenever the mail got through. Jack tried to draw solace from them—“the claustrophobic, fascistic tyranny of the written word,” some WIRED wag had called it—but it was difficult. He recalled his grandfather railing, “Don’t they teach these kids to
read
anymore?”
The Gaudy Book
,
The New Yorker
, and the
Paris Review
were ignited within a brazier, their ashes dispersed in the adjoining cemetery); hard-copy submissions for
The Gaudy Book
continued to arrive whenever the mail got through. Jack tried to draw solace from them—“the claustrophobic, fascistic tyranny of the written word,” some WIRED wag had called it—but it was difficult. He recalled his grandfather railing, “Don’t they teach these kids to
read
anymore?”
But of course now they
didn’t
. After all these centuries, children finally had shaken off the yoke of inauspicious words and replaced it with whatever it was they did with their goggles and retinal implants and drugs, so many drugs even Leonard couldn’t keep up with them. Jack preferred not to know. Jack preferred to hide within the failing fastness of Lazyland and muddle through his manuscripts, waiting to die.
didn’t
. After all these centuries, children finally had shaken off the yoke of inauspicious words and replaced it with whatever it was they did with their goggles and retinal implants and drugs, so many drugs even Leonard couldn’t keep up with them. Jack preferred not to know. Jack preferred to hide within the failing fastness of Lazyland and muddle through his manuscripts, waiting to die.
Which it didn’t seem he was to do this evening. The alprazolam kicked in, its sedative effect boosted by antihistamine. He felt a pleasantly perverse sensation-of febrile drowsiness. Emma, who had done time as a freelance chemist working with local motorcycle gangs before attending medical school and becoming a neurosurgeon, had explained to him once how the drug worked.
“These gates in your brain, the gates are on the neuronal membranes, and the Xanax, I mean the alprazolam, it closes the gate on one of these neuronal channels, and that causes a, a hyperpolarization of the postsynaptic neuron. So
that
neuron
doesn’t
fire, d’you see?”
that
neuron
doesn’t
fire, d’you see?”
Emma got very excited, talking about how psychotropic drugs worked; especially since Emma and Jule’s daughter, Rachel, had been killed by a drunk driver three years before. It was like listening to a recovering addict rave about Narc-Anon. “And all across your
entire brain
, that particular neuron doesn’t fire—it’s like a pinball game, think of it like a pinball game: it’s all about gates, gates opening and closing, so only certain balls can get through, only certain
perceptions
get through . . .”
entire brain
, that particular neuron doesn’t fire—it’s like a pinball game, think of it like a pinball game: it’s all about gates, gates opening and closing, so only certain balls can get through, only certain
perceptions
get through . . .”
Right now Jack felt as though all the balls were at rest. He had a disturbing momentary glimpse of them as eyeballs, the reflected sheen of falling snow upon their moist curves; but then that, too, faded. He dropped the unread manuscript upon the nightstand and within minutes was asleep.
Much later he awoke. A sound had disturbed him, but he waited to open his eyes, uncertain if he was asleep or dreaming. His various antidepressant and antianxiety drugs had an odd side effect on Jack. They made him feel curiously detached from his dreams, the emotions he experienced while asleep weirdly inappropriate, almost fetishistic, so that he would find himself being aroused to orgasm by the sight of a stone, or moved to tears by the smell of lighter fluid. Sometimes these bizarre emotions would carry over into his first waking moments. So Jack had learned to lie in bed and purge his mind of whatever strange fragments it had acquired during the night.
He was sure that he had heard something. The wind, maybe, nudging around the chimneys. He had almost drifted back to sleep when he heard it again and was shocked to full wakefulness, as though someone had yanked the covers from him.
It was a flute. No, not a flute. Something more primitive, a wooden instrument like a recorder or panpipe. He could hear the faint intake of breath between the notes, and the notes themselves, rich and plangent and somehow
solid
in a way that other sounds were not, rising into the air. The tune was simple, almost childish—four notes played over and over again, with a sweet refrain.
solid
in a way that other sounds were not, rising into the air. The tune was simple, almost childish—four notes played over and over again, with a sweet refrain.
Yet for all its simplicity there was something terrifying in the music. It was like a recessional, like the subdued yet ominous tolling of a bell sounded at the end of the Latin Mass. With a muffled cry Jack sat bolt upright.
The room was still. The sound of wind had died, and the rattling gutters; but the piping music went on. Jack snatched at the bedclothes. The air was so cold he could feel his lungs tighten; he grabbed for his inhaler and sucked at it. After a minute or two his breathing eased. He shut his eyes and tried to slow his heartbeat, but it was keeping pace with those four notes—
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