Last Summer at Mars Hill (42 page)

I drank my water and stared at the latticed roof of the pagoda, imagining Andrew and Anna without me. I took the chocolate wafer from my pocket and began to nibble it.

The server rolled back with a sweating silver bucket and opened another split for Dr. Harrow. She sipped it, watching me through narrowed gray eyes. “Wendy,” she said at last. “There’s going to be an inquest. A military inquest. But before that, one more patient.” She reached beneath the table to her portfolio and removed a slender packet. “This is the profile. I’d like you to read it.”

I took the file. Dr. Harrow poured the rest of her champagne and. finished it, tilting her head to the server as she stood.

“I have a two o’clock meeting with Dr. Leslie. Why don’t you meet me again for dinner tonight and we’ll discuss this?”

“Where?”

She tapped her lower lip. “The Peacock Room. At seven.” She bowed slightly and passed out of sight among the trees.

I waited until she disappeared, then gestured for the server.

“More chocolate, please,” I ordered, and waited until it returned with a chilled marble plate holding three wafers. I nibbled one, staring idly at the faux vellum cover of the profile with its engraved motto:

HUMAN ENGINEERING LABORATORY

PAULO MAIORA CANAMUS

“‘Let us raise a somewhat loftier strain,’” Andrew had translated it for me once. “Virgil. But it should be
deus ex machina
,” he added slyly.

God from the machine.

I licked melting chocolate from my fingers and began to read, skimming through the charts and anamnesis that followed. On the last sheet I read:

Client requests therapy in order to determine nature and cause of these obsessive nightmares.

Beneath this was Dr. Harrow’s scrawled signature and the HEL stamp. I ate the last wafer, then mimed to the server that I was finished.

We dined alone in the Peacock Room. After setting our tiny table the servers disappeared, dismissed by Dr. Harrow’s brusque gesture. A plateful of durians stood as our centerpiece, the spiky green globes piled atop a translucent porcelain tray. Dr. Harrow split one neatly for me, the round fruit oozing pale custard and a putrescent odor. She grimaced, then took a demure spoonful of the pulp and tasted it for me.

“Lovely,” she murmured, and handed me the spoon.

We ate in silence for several minutes beneath the flickering gaslit chandeliers.

“Did you read the profile I gave you?” Dr. Harrow asked at last, with studied casualness.

“Mmmm-mmm,” I grunted.

“And…?”

“She will not make it.” I lofted another durian from the tray.

Dr. Harrow dipped her chin ever so slightly before asking, “Why, Wendy?”

“I don’t know.” This durian was not quite ripe. I winced and pushed it from my plate.

“Can’t you give me any idea of what makes you feel that?”

“Nothing. I can’t feel anything.” I took another fruit.

“Well, then, what makes you think she wouldn’t be a good analysand?”

“I don’t know. I just—” I sucked on my spoon, thinking. “It’s like when I see my name—the way everything starts to shiver and I get sick. But I don’t throw up.”

Dr. Harrow tilted her head thoughtfully. “Like a seizure. Well.” She smiled and spooned another mouthful.

I finished the last durian and glanced around impatiently. “When will I meet her?”

“You already have.”

I kicked my chair. “When?”

“Fourteen years ago, when you first came to HEL.”

“Why don’t I remember her?”

“You do, Wendy.” She lifted her durian and took the last drop of custard upon her tongue. “It’s me.”

“Surprised?” Dr. Harrow grinned and raised the flamboyant sleeves of her embroidered haik.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, fingering the flowing cuffs enviously.

She smiled and turned to the NET beside my bed. “I’m the patient this morning. Are you ready?”

I nodded. Earlier she had wheeled in her own cot, and now sat on it readying her monitors. I settled on my bed and waited for her to finish. She finally turned to me and applied electrolytic fluid to the nodes on my temples, placed other wires upon my head and cheekbones before doing the same to herself.

“You have no technicians assisting you?” I asked.

She shook her head but made no reply as she adjusted her screens and, finally, settled onto her cot. I lay back against the pillow and shut my eyes.

The last thing I heard was the click of the adaptor freeing the current, and a gentle exhalation that might have been a sigh.

“Here we stand…”

“Here we stand…”

“Here we lie…”

“Here we lie…”

“Eye to hand and heart to head,

Deep in the dark with the dead.”

It is spring, and not dark at all, but I repeat the incantation as Aidan gravely sprinkles apple blossoms upon my head. In the branches beneath us a bluejay shrieks at our bulldog, Molly, as she whines and scratches hopefully at her basket.

“Can’t we bring her up?” I peer over the edge of the rickety platform and Molly sneezes in excitement.

“Shhh!” Aidan commands, squeezing his eyes shut as he concentrates. After a moment he squints and reaches for his crumpled sweater. Several bay leaves filched from the kitchen crumble over me and I blink so the debris doesn’t get in my eyes.

“I hate this junk in my hair,” I grumble. “Next time I make the spells.”

“You can’t.” Loftily Aidan stands on tiptoe and strips another branch of blossoms, sniffing them dramatically before tossing them in a flurry of pink and white. “We need a virgin.”

“So?” I jerk on the rope leading to Molly’s basket. “You’re a virgin. Next time we use you.”

Aidan stares at me, brows furrowed. “That won’t count,” he says at last. “Say it again, Emma.”

“Here we stand…”

Every day of Easter break we come here: an overgrown apple orchard within the woods, uncultivated for a hundred years. Stone walls tumbled by time mark the gray boundaries of a colonial farm. Blackberry vines choke the rocks with breeze-blown petals. Our father showed us this place. Long ago he built the treehouse, its wood lichen-green now and wormed with holes. Rusted nails snag my knees when we climb: all that remains of other platforms and the crow’s-nest at treetop.

I finish the incantation and kneel, calling to Molly to climb in her basket. When my twin yells I announce imperiously, “The virgin needs her faithful consort. Get in, Molly.”

He demurs and helps to pull her up. Molly is trembling when we heave her onto the platform. As always, she remains huddled in her basket.

“She’s sitting on the sandwiches,” I remark matter-of-factly. Aidan shoves Molly aside hastily and retrieves two squashed bags. “I call we break for lunch.”

We eat in thoughtful silence. We never discuss the failure of the spells, although each afternoon Aidan hides in his secret place behind the wing chair in the den and pores through more brittle volumes. Sometimes I can feel them working—the air is so calm, the wind dies unexpectedly, and for a moment the woods glow so bright, so deep, their shadows still and green; and it is there: the secret to be revealed, the magic to unfold, the story to begin. Aidan flushes above me and his eyes shine, he raises his arms and—

And nothing. It is gone. A moment too long or too soon, I never know—but we have lost it again. For an instant Aidan’s eyes gray with tears. Then the breeze rises, Molly yawns and snuffles, and once more we put aside the spells for lunch and other games.

That night I toss in my bed, finally throwing my pillow against the bookcase. From the open window stream the chimes of peepers in the swamp, their plangent song broidered with the trills of toads and leopard frogs. As I churn feverishly through the sheets it comes again, and I lie still: like a star’s sigh, the shiver and promise of a door opening somewhere just out of reach. I hold my breath, waiting: will it close again?

But no. The curtains billow and I slip from my bed, bare feet curling upon the cold planked floor as I race silently to the window.

He is in the meadow at wood’s edge, alone, hair misty with starlight, his pajamas spectral blue in the dark. As I watch he raises his arms to the sky, and though I am too far to hear, I whisper the words with him, my heart thumping counterpoint to our invocation. Then he is quiet, and stands alert, waiting.

I can no longer hear the peepers. The wind has risen, and the thrash of the beech trees at the edge of the forest drowns all other sounds. I can feel his heart now, beating within my own, and see the shadows with his eyes.

In the lower branches of the willow tree, the lone willow that feeds upon a hidden spring beside the sloping lawn, there is a boy. His eyes are green and lucent as tourmaline, and silvery moths are drawn to them. His hands clutch the slender willow-wands: strong hands, so pale that I trace the blood beneath, and see the muscles strung like young strong vines. As I watch he bends so that his head dips beneath a branch, new leaves tangling fair hair, and then slowly he uncurls one hand and, smiling, beckons my brother toward him.

The wind rises. Beneath his bare feet the dewy grass darkens as Aidan runs faster and faster, until he seems almost to be skimming across the lawn. And there, where the willow starts to shadow the starlit slope and the boy in the tree leans to take his hand, I tackle my brother and bring him crashing and swearing to earth.

For a moment he stares at me uncomprehending. Then he yells and slaps me, hits me harder until, remembering, he shoves me away and stumbles to his feet.

There is nothing there. The willow trembles, but only the wind shakes the new leaves. From the marsh the ringing chorus rises, swells, bursts as the peepers stir in the saw grass. In the old house yellow light stains an upstairs window and our father’s voice calls out sleepily, then with concern, and finally bellows as he leans from the casement to spot us below. Aidan glances at the house and back again at the willow, and. then he turns to me despairingly. Before I can say anything he punches me and runs, weeping, back to the house.

A gentler withdrawal than I’m accustomed to. For several minutes I lay with closed eyes, breathing gently as I tried to hold onto the scents of apple blossom and dew-washed grass. But they faded, along with the dreamy net of tree and stars. I sat up groggily, wires still taped to my head, and faced Dr. Harrow already recording her limbic system response from the NET.

“Thank you, Wendy,” she said brusquely without looking up. I glanced at the BEAM monitor, where the shaded image of my brain lingered, the last flash of activity staining the temporal lobe bright turquoise.

“I never saw that color there before,” I remarked as I leaned to examine it, when suddenly an unfocused wave of nausea choked me. I gagged and staggered against the bed, tearing at the wires.

Eyes: brilliant green lanced with cyanogen, unblinking as twin chrysolites. A wash of light: leaves stirring the surface of a still pool. They continued to stare through the shadows, heedless of the play of sun and moon, days and years and decades. The electrodes dangled from my fist as I stared at the blank screen, the single dancing line bisecting the NET monitor. The eyes in my head did not move, did not blink, did not disappear. They stared relentlessly from the shadows until the darkness itself swelled and was absorbed by their feral gaze. They saw me.

Not Dr. Harrow; not Aidan; not Morgan or Melisande or the others I’d absorbed in therapy.

Me.

I stumbled from the monitor to the window, dragging the wires behind me, heedless of Dr. Harrow’s stunned expression. Grunting I shook my head like a dog, finally gripped the windowsill and slammed my head against the oaken frame, over and over and over, until Dr. Harrow tore me away. Still I saw them: unblinking glaucous eyes, tumbling into darkness as Dr. Harrow pumped the sedatives into my arm.

Much later I woke to see Dr. Harrow staring at me from the far end of the room. She watched me for a moment, and then walked slowly to the bed.

“What was it, Wendy?” she asked, smoothing her robe as she sat beside me. “Your name?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I stammered, biting the tip of my thumb. Then I twisted to stare at her and asked, “Who was the boy?”

Her voice caught for an instant before she answered. “My brother Aidan. My twin.”

“No—The other—The boy in the tree.”

This time she held her breath a long moment, then let it out in a sigh. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “But you remember him?”

I nodded. “Now. I can see him now. If I—” And I shut my eyes and drifted before snapping back. “Like that. He comes to me on his own. Without me recalling him. Like—” I flexed my fingers helplessly. “Like a dream, only I’m awake now.”

Slowly Dr. Harrow shook her head and reached to take my hand. “That’s how he found Aidan, too, the last time,” she said. “And me. And now you.” For an instant something like hope flared in her eyes, but faded as she bowed her head. “I think, Wendy…” She spoke with measured calm. “I think we should keep this to ourselves right now. And tomorrow, perhaps, we’ll try again.”

He sees me.

I woke with a garbled scream, arms flailing, to my dark room bathed in the ambient glow of monitors. I stumbled to the window, knelt with my forehead against the cool oak sill and blinked against tears that welled unbidden from my burning eyes. There I fell asleep with my head pillowed upon my arms, and woke next morning to Dr. Harrow’s knock upon my door.

“Emma,” he whispers at the transom window; “Let me in.”

The quilts piled on me muffle his voice. He calls again, louder, until I groan and sit up in bed, rubbing my eyes and glaring at the top of his head peeking through the narrow glass.

From the bottom of the door echoes faint scratching, Molly’s whine. A thump. More scratching: Aidan crouched outside the room, growling through choked laughter. I drape a quilt around me like a toga and lean forward to unlatch the door.

Molly flops onto the floor, snorting when she bumps her nose and then drooling apologetically. Behind her stumbles Aidan, shivering in his worn kimono with its tattered sleeves and belt stolen from one of my old dresses. I giggle uncontrollably, and gesture for him to shut the door before Father hears us in his room below.