Here I Stay (20 page)

The supermarket was crowded. Andrea stormed up and down the aisles bumping people with her cart and demanding, "
Would you mind? Excuse me!"
in tones that turned the smiles of greeting to puzzled frowns. When Mr. Bliss, the manager, said cheerfully, "Got quite a cold, haven't you?" she froze him
with a look.

At the end of the aisle devoted to paper goods, where she had gone in search of more tissues, she saw a familiar form scuttle out of sight, like a large crab who has spotted a fisherman. Andrea wondered why Reba was trying to avoid her, but since she didn't want to see Reba either, she did not go in pursuit. It was pure misadventure that they met at the checkout counter.

"Poor kid, you look terrible," Reba said sympathetically. The sympathy softened Andrea a trifle, but she noticed Reba seemed to be in a hurry; she jerked her shopping cart back and forth, endangering the woman ahead of her in line.

"I'm in a bad mood," Andrea admitted. "I told you about the party I was expecting this week?"

"Yeah." Reba started piling oranges on top of the previous order. With a martyred look, the woman ahead of her put a divider in place.

"You can't imagine what happened," Andrea said.

"I heard."

"How? Martin! I'll bet it was Martin."

"Uh—well—"

"I didn't handle it too well," Andrea admitted. "But can you imagine the gall of that woman? This could be disastrous for me."

"Oh, now," Reba said uncomfortably. "I mean, I see why you're upset, but—"

"Upset? Can you imagine how my dear little grandmas and grandpas will react if they hear the inn is haunted? Peace and quiet is my stockin-trade; they aren't going to patronize a place where shrieking specters are apt to pop out of the closet in the middle of the night. I just wish I could get my hands
on the fink who told Starflower Crazyhorse to look me up."

Reba bent to retrieve a lone orange from the bottom of her basket, but Andrea saw her face. Guilt was written over every feature.

"Not you!" Andrea exclaimed.

Reba straightened. Her face was dull crimson. "I better tell you or you'll think it was somebody else...God, I'm sorry, Andy. I never thought—"

"You told her?" Andrea's voice was very quiet.

"She's an old customer," Reba said wretchedly. "I didn't do it on purpose, honest to God. It was that night—when I got sick—I wasn't sick, not to my stomach, I...It was the house. It just got me, I can't explain how I felt..."

"An overpowering sense of spiritual malaise?"

"Yeah, that's it." Too late, Reba realized that the question had been ironical. "No—1 mean—not exactly. Martin brought me home—you remember— well, I felt better once I was out of the house, but I was still queasy, and when I stopped by Starflower's—Ruby's—table, like I always do, she asked me what was wrong, and I...She claims to know about things like that. But I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't felt—"

"How many other psychic nuts have you told?" Andrea asked.

"None. I swear. Look, Andy, if there's anything I can do—"

"You've done plenty already." Andrea turned her shopping cart in a sharp curve and went to the end of another line. By the time she finished checking out, Reba had left the store.

She told Martin the story when he came to help
her carry in the bags of groceries. She owed him an apology, implied if not explicit, for suspecting him. At least that was her excuse for clumping her troubles on him after she had vowed not to do it again. Her real reason was that she wanted a sympathetic ear.

She didn't get as much sympathy as she had hoped for. "Reba wasn't trying to make trouble," Martin said. "You didn't see her at her worst. She broke down while I was driving her home—shivered and gibbered and babbled...I've never seen her like that."

"She told you how she felt? And you didn't tell me!"

"Tell you what? That our tough-minded, hardheaded friend has a hidden streak of..." He hesitated, and then said frankly, "I don't know what to call it. You'd say 'superstition,' I imagine."

"What exactly did she say? Did she see something—hear a voice, or—"

"You want everything in black and white, don't you? It's not that simple. I asked her the same thing. She wasn't too coherent, but I gather the sensation was not a sensory impression. Rather, a growing awareness of something wrong—abnormal..." He shrugged helplessly.

"An aura of spiritual malaise," Andrea murmured.

"That's more specific than anything I got out of her."

Andrea didn't contradict his assumption that she had heard the phrase from Reba. Starflower and her disciples were all frauds, deliberate or self-deluded; their testimony didn't count. Yet the coincidence troubled her, and there was a note of appeal in her voice when she spoke.

"You wouldn't call it superstition. What would you call it?" Martin didn't answer at once. Andrea said, "If you tell me you have had the same feeling..."

"No. Quite the reverse. When I got back that night, I gave it the old college try. I stood there in the dark trying to reach out with my spiritual pseudopods, or whatever one does—feeling, I might add, like a complete jackass. To me this house is friendly, homelike, welcoming. Professional psychics like Ruby give me a sharp pain in the derriere. But Reba is a woman I know and admire. What happened to her was real—for her, I can't deny that reality just because I haven't experienced it myself."

"I'm not interested in philosophy," Andrea said rudely. "If people have hallucinations, they ought to keep them to themselves."

"Well, the damage is done, and in my opinion— which you don't want but are going to get anyway— you are overreacting. Can't you forget it? You won't improve matters by picking fights with Reba."

The truth of this was so evident, Andrea didn't bother to answer. When she and Jim sat down to an early supper she heard the front door slam and said angrily, "There he goes, off to Peace and Plenty; I suppose he and Reba will sit around getting soused and talking about what a bitch I am."

Jim put a roughened hand on her forehead. "You feel hot."

"I don't have a fever, and I'm not going to bed! Jimmie, do you think I'm being unreasonable?"

"No. That's what you want me to say, isn't it?" He stood up, adjusting the crutches. His face was that of a stranger, remote, distant. "See you later."

If he had shouted at her she would have gone after
him, explaining, defending herself, apologizing—for what, she wondered? She hadn't done anything. It was Martin's fault. Jim admired him and tried to emulate him. He was always on Martin's side, against her.

Wearily she cleaned the kitchen and began making muffins—loathsome things, she couldn't even stand the sight of the gooey gray batter, much less eat them. Tomorrow she must start looking for help. She couldn't go crawling to Reba now.

Jim had not come down when she finished her chores. Her body ached from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, and her nose felt like a raw wound. As she brushed her teeth and wincingly scrubbed her face, she realized she dreaded going to sleep. If there was a time for nightmares to attack, this was it, when she was worn out physically and emotionally.

When she opened the medicine cabinet to look for dental floss, her fingers found a small bottle on the top shelf. She had forgotten about the sleeping pills. The doctor had prescribed them for her—had virtually forced them upon her—during the weeks after the accident. The first one she'd taken had left her drowsy and depressed all next day and she'd decided not to take any more.

Her hand seemed to move of its own volition, opening the bottle, tipping out a single capsule, putting it to her lips.

She read for a while, and then the soothing drowsiness came. It felt wonderful. Mind and muscle alike unfrozen went limp and loose, floated in a soft, warm haze. The book fell from Andrea's hand. Her eyes went to the end of the room, where Mary's portrait watched the door.

"That's right," she murmured. "Keep a lookout. Don't let 'em in. And while you're at it, maybe you could make it stop raining."

Martin was willing and far less limited; it was Andrea who was unwilling to let him help. She told him she appreciated the offer and then sent him about his business. After a few rebuffs Martin returned to his typewriter and the company of Satan, whose indifference to him, if just as great, was not so forcibly expressed.

Despite her growing exhaustion and shortening temper, Andrea stuck grimly to her intention of supervising her guests whenever they occupied the public rooms. There would be no more seances in her house! She flushed out one suspect, a little gray woman with staring blue eyes whom she found stretched out at full length on the leather couch in the library talking to the ceiling. And on the following Sunday Starflower's column was devoted to the psychic's thrilling encounter with "a house of evil, not fifty miles from the nation's capital, where ancient crime and modern skepticism fill the ancient walls with a grisly miasma of doom." Starflower wasn't stupid enough to mention names, but the hints she dropped would have enabled any interested parties to identify the house.

Andrea raged, but she knew it would be a mistake to challenge Starflower. Bland ignorance was her best course; eventually the interest would die down. She redoubled her efforts to weed out potential psychics. The task was made easier by their naivete; one woman called and inquired, "Is this the haunted house Starflower mentioned in her column?" Andrea was pleased to inform the caller that she was fully booked for an indefinite period.

Such incidents didn't improve her disposition, already soured by overwork. One evening, as she drooped half asleep over Jim's inevitable hamburgers, the breaking point came. Jim jogged her elbow, saying, "You aren't listening. I said, I finished stripping the woodwork. I need—"

Andrea's elbow gave way, her chin slipped off her
hand, her neck jerked back, and she bit her tongue. Her eyes filled with tears. Jim, who had been on the verge of laughing, exclaimed, "Jesus, Andy, I'm sorry—don't cry—"

"It's all right. I bit my tongue. It hurt."

"You're bushed, that's what's wrong with you. And I'm no goddamned use at all," Jim said bitterly.

"But you are! And you could do more if you—"

She bit her tongue again, on purpose this time; but Jim knew what she had been about to say.

"If I'd get an artificial leg."

"I'm thinking of you, Jimmie. You could do so many more things—"

"My knee is gone," Jim said quietly. "That makes it a lot harder. I'll never be able to do the things I wanted to do. Never. And I won't go back to that hospital. I'd rather be dead than go back there."

"Was it that bad? No—" She shook her head. "That was a stupid, stupid question. Forget I asked."

"I'd just as soon forget the whole thing."

"Me too." Andrea wiped her eyes and tried to smile. "What were you going to say before we got off the track? You need what?"

"I'm ready to start painting," Jim said. "Except for one thing—I have to replace one of the windowsills. I thought I'd go to town tomorrow, pick up some lumber, primer, and like that. I need some..." He paused, and then went on smoothly, "Some advice. How about coming with me, and giving me your expert opinion?"

Next morning Andrea primped and fussed over her
appearance as she would have done for a party. This was the first time in months that Jim had asked her to go anyplace with him. It was partly her fault; she had not taken enough interest in his work, or tried to encourage him to confide in her. She hadn't realized how he felt about the hospital. Absorbed in her own anguish, she had not been sufficiently aware of his.

But that was over and done with—forgotten. From now on she would try harder to help and to understand.

Jim drove. Andrea stared straight ahead and talked about the weather and the advantages of latex versus oil-based paint. It wasn't far, only a mile.

Jim didn't need her advice after all. He and Mr. Burton, the manager of the hardware store, were old friends; they greeted one another by name and retired to the back of the store, where they plunged into an animated discussion. Left to her own devices, Andrea wandered up and down the aisles inspecting the merchandise and pretending not to listen. "Yeah, well, old wood like that, you'll need two coats, unless you use a primer...Probably softwood, a house that age, they only used hardwood on the main floor..."

When their purchases had been loaded into the trunk of the car, Jim nudged Andrea. "Look there."

Framed by boxwood and cherry boughs, the facade of Peace and Plenty glowed pale gold in the sunlight. On the steps stood the most disconsolate figure Andrea had ever seen. Reba wore an ancient sealskin coat. Her arms hung limp at her sides and her shoulders sagged. She looked like a sad old black bear.

Jim waved one of his crutches. "Hey, Reba."

A furry arm lifted in a tentative greeting.

"Stop that," Andrea hissed.

"Oh, come on. It's time you two made up."

Reba was a motionless black blot of depression in the sunny fall landscape. A smile tugged at Andrea's mouth. "You set this up, didn't you?" she said.

"Holding a grudge is immature," Jim said.

"Well..."

As they approached, Reba's shoulders straightened. She looked hopefully at them.

"Good morning," Andrea said.

Meaningless courtesies were not Reba's style. "Are you still mad?" she demanded.

"Of course not. I've forgotten all about it."

"Thank God! If it makes you feel any better, I've punished myself worse than you could. Come on in. Have a cup of coffee. You still need somebody to work for you? I've got a couple of ideas..."

Grinning triumphantly at the success of his coup, Jim declined the invitation. "I haven't got time to listen to a couple of broads gossip. Call me when you're ready, Andy, and I'll come pick you up."

It would have taken a heart of stone to be unmoved by Reba's pleasure at being back on good terms with a friend. Andrea's heart was not of stone, though it had acquired a fairly flinty covering over the years. A layer of it dissolved as Reba fussed over her, offering every delicacy the restaurant had available and putting into her coffee twice as much sugar as she wanted.

"You want one of the girls?" she asked, like a professional white slaver. "Any one of 'em—take your pick."