Lorelei's Secret (7 page)

‘He said “house of Paul.”’

‘No way,’ I said. ‘It’s “House of Lords.” “Lords” doesn’t even sound like “Paul.”’

‘Play it again and listen for it. He says “Paul.”’

So I picked up the needle and dropped it back at the beginning of the song. And I heard it clear as day, my own name. ‘Nobody was really sure if he was from the house of Paul.’ A chill went through me.

‘Oh, man,’ I breathed. ‘He does say “Paul.”1

Paul and I sat there on opposite ends of the line and listened to the rest of the song in silence. It was a holy moment, a moment weighted down by the truth we had

found. The house of Paul. It was really true.

Of course, it came out soon afterward that the whole conspiracy thing was a hoax and that Paul McCartney

was very much alive. But to this day, I can’t hear that song without hearing ‘house of Paul.’ I believe that what I learned that afternoon was true. I would swear it on any pile of books you gave me.

Thirty years later, I’m still searching for hidden meanings in the ordinary objects that fill my life. Only now, I don’t have a nation of DJs and keen-eyed teenaged fans to help me. I’m all alone in this. All I have is forty-nine books arranged on a shelf. And what do I think they mean?

Something. Or nothing at all.

Back in Disney World, back among the nightly fireworks and the children in mouse-eared hats, Lexy and I walk hand in hand forever. I sometimes think that if I could, I would round up all of the people who visited the park during the days we were there, and I would ask them to show me their photos and videotapes, just on the chance that one of them might have caught us on film. I feel certain, looking back, that we must have walked through someone’s family grouping at the exact moment the shutter closed; surely, some father wielding a video camera must have captured us somewhere, climbing into a teacup or reading the gravestones outside the Haunted Mansion, while his children, fidgety and drunk with excitement, ran around people’s legs in the foreground. What would I give for that, to see how we looked, the two of us together, when we had known each other barely a week? Me in my Eeyore shirt, and Lexy with the sun in her hair. Everything.

I would give everything.

We stayed in Orlando for four days. We arrived on a

Sunday afternoon and didn’t turn back for home until Thursday morning. And all the time, we ate nothing but appetizers. Appetizers, snacks, and side dishes. We didn’t eat a meal until Friday night, when, almost home, we stopped again at the same Italian restaurant we had gone to the day of the wedding. We ate a big dinner, with entrees and desserts, wine and coffee, and then I dropped Lexy at her house and went home to grade my papers in an exuberant, generous mood. That was the end of our first date.

I haven’t mentioned sleeping arrangements yet; I haven’t told you how we slept in the same tiny motel room for four humid Florida nights, and how it wasn’t until our last night there that Lexy crossed the room and came into my bed. How she whispered to me, ‘I don’t usually do this on the first date’ as she ran her hands over my long-forsaken body. I mention these things, the warm air and cool sheets, the fresh joy of Lexy lying beside me, in the interest of not skipping over anything that might prove to be important.

But in truth, they are not things I can speak of very easily.

I touched her and it felt like coming home. What more is there to say?

On Sunday afternoon, two days after our return, I arrived at Lexy’s house with flowers and a chew toy for Lorelei.

The flowers, the first I ever gave her, were dahlias, so dark and red they were almost black.

‘Wow,’ Lexy said as she took them from me. ‘These are gorgeous. I’ve never seen flowers this color. They kind of remind me of the devil.’

‘The devil?’ I said. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I was going for. It’s a test, to see if you’re receptive to the black arts.

Now I can introduce you to the other members of the

coven.’

She laughed. ‘No, don’t you see what I mean? They’re this deep blood-red color, and they’ve got these kind of seductive honeycomb petals that just draw you in further and further.’ She waited a moment and then added grandly, ‘I believe I shall carry these flowers at my wedding.’

I only paused for a moment. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you’d better get married quickly. These are only going to last a day or two.’

She laughed and put her arms around me. ‘Oh, I don’t think you’re going to get off that easily,’ she said. ‘But see what I mean about these flowers? They seduced me into asking you to marry me on our second date. I think we’d better put them in the other room before I lose control completely.’

‘Oh, let’s keep them here and see what happens,’ I said, and pulled her with me onto the couch.

Later that afternoon, she took me down to see her basement workshop, the place where she made her masks. There was a large table in the center of the room, covered with an untidy litter of newspapers and jars of paint. Unfinished faces, bare and ghostly, were stacked in piles on the floor.

Everything was coated with a fine white dust. I remembered the mask I had worn at the wedding.

‘I meant to ask you,’ I said. ‘What does that mean, “You have taken the finest knight in all my company”? Is it from something?’

‘It’s from “Tarn Lin,”’ she said. ‘Do you know that

story?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘It’s from an old Scottish poem, but I first heard it as a fairy tale. There was a version of it on this record I used to have when I was a kid - I’ve always had trouble falling asleep, and I’d listen to these records of people reading stories, kind of life books on tape. It was always these washed-up actors doing the reading, people I’d never heard of but later saw on TV in old movies and stuff. Anyway, I loved this one. It’s the story of a woman named Janet who falls in love with a knight named Tarn Lin, who’s been abducted by the fairy queen or the elf queen or something, and Janet has to rescue him and steal him back to the mortal world. She goes and waits for him in the woods at midnight on Halloween, and all the fairies ride by on horses, and Janet has to pull Tarn Lin down from his horse and hold on to him while the fairy queen turns him into all kinds of horrible things - she turns him into a snake, and a snarling beast, and a red-hot bar of iron, but Janet has to hold on as tight as she can, until finally he turns into a “mother-naked man” - isn’t that a nice phrase, “a mother-naked man”? - and then he’s hers forever.’

‘So she’s standing in the woods at midnight with a naked man in her arms? And this was a children’s story?’

Lexy laughed. ‘That’s nothing,’ she said. ‘When I was in college, I went and found an early version of the poem, and it turns out that Janet was pregnant. That’s something they left out of the kids’ version.’

‘So what about the “finest knight in all my company”

stuff?’

‘Oh, that’s the best part. After Janet rescues him, and everything’s okay, the fairy queen throws a fit. The way it went in my version was, Out then spoke the fairy queen, and an angry queen was she: “You have taken the finest knight in all my company.” And then there’s this scary part that I found absolutely thrilling, where the fairy queen says to Tarn Lin, “Had I known but yesterday what I know

today, I’d have taken out your two grey eyes and put in eyes of clay. And had I known but yesterday you’d be no more my own, I’d have taken out your heart of flesh and put in one of stone.” It still gives me goose bumps.’

‘Lighthearted little story,’ I said. ‘I can see why that would stick in your mind.’

She sank down onto a long, beat-up couch that ran along one wall. I sat down next to her. There was a series of soft thuds from the staircase as Lorelei loped down to join us.

She came over to the couch and jumped up, insinuating her large, dense body into the small space between us.

‘Can I help you?’ I said to the dog as she wedged

herself against my knees. Lexy stroked Lorelei, looking thoughtful.

‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘I always identified with the fairy queen.’

‘Why is that?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe Janet was too goody goody for me.’

‘Except for the getting knocked up part.’

She smiled. ‘Except for that.’ She was quiet for a moment.

‘No, I guess I kind of identified with her anger. You know, she gets so mad, and it’s presented like she’s behaving totally inappropriately, but I can understand her point of view.’

I considered it. ‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘She’s just doing her thing, being the fairy queen, and Janet comes along and steals away her finest knight.’

‘Right.’

I watched her scratch Lorelei gently behind the ears. I thought of the queen in the story, stamping her feet and yelling into the night wind, and I thought of Lexy in the Magic Kingdom, leaning against a fiberglass tree, close to tears, trembling with all of an elf queen’s fury. I picked up her hand and kissed it.

here is a kind of grieving that dogs do, a patient waiting for homecoming, a sniffing for a scent that is no longer there. Since Lexy died, I have often seen Lorelei sitting at the top of the basement stairs, listening for noises from the workshop below. This morning, I find her in the bedroom, sleeping stretched out on one of Lexy’s sweaters. I must have left the closet door open, and I can only assume that Lorelei, drawn by the scent of Lexy’s perfume, her hair, her skin, still lingering on her clothes, jumped up and tugged at the garment until she had freed it from its slippery padded hanger. I don’t take the sweater away from her. Instead, I walk quietly out of the room and leave her to breathe in her memories, whatever they might be.

Today I have to go to the university to pick up some papers I left in my office. It’s the first time I’ve been back since the day two months ago when I announced

my research plans to my colleagues. It wasn’t a very good day, the day I presented my proposal to the department; when I got to the part about canine language acquisition, the whole room turned very quiet, and people began to examine inanimate objects - their pens, their wedding rings, the conference table - with alarming intensity.

I’m hoping I won’t run into anyone today, and in fact I’ve planned my trip for a time when I thought no one would be around, but it seems that in my absence they’ve changed the day on which faculty meetings are held. I arrive to find every professor in the department standing in the hallway outside the conference room, drinking coffee and talking. They grow silent as, one by one, they see me approaching.

Julia Desmond is the first to speak. Julia is a tall woman, blessed with family money and prone to wearing extravagant jewelry. Today it’s rubies.

‘Paul,’ she says brightly, coming toward me with her arms outstretched. ‘How are you?’

I accept her embrace and kiss her lightly on the cheek.

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Just fine.’ I look around at the group of people staring at me, smiles fixed on their faces. ‘I just came by to pick up a few things,’ I say.

‘Great, great,’ says Julia. ‘We’ve missed you around here.’ She smiles at me a moment longer, her hands still on my arms. She seems unsure what to say next. ‘Well, good to see you,’ she says finally. She retreats into the conference room.

I make my way to my office, the crowd parting for me as if I were a holy man. Matthew Rice, the head of the department and a good friend of mine, comes up and stands beside me as I unlock the door. He follows me inside.

‘So how are you really doing, Paul?’ he asks, shutting the door behind him.

‘So-so,’ I say.

‘We’ve all been worried about you,’ he says. ‘But you’re looking good.’

‘Thank you,’ I say. I’m pretty sure he’s lying. I haven’t been paying much attention to my appearance of late. I know I’ve lost weight since Lexy’s death, and my clothes hang on me quite loosely.

‘Are you keeping busy?’ he asks, and seems immediately to regret it.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘My research has been occupying most of my time.’

He nods and looks away from me. ‘Are you still working on that … project?’ he asks. ‘The one with the dog?’

‘Yes,’ I say, perhaps too brightly. ‘It’s going quite well.’

He doesn’t meet my eyes. ‘That’s great,’ he says, after a pause. ‘You know, Eleanor and I have that little beach house in Rehoboth, and you’re welcome to borrow it if you’d like. It might do you good to get away for a while.’

I think about it. Early morning walks on the beach with Lorelei running ahead of me, evenings bathed in the scent of sea air. It’s not an unwelcome idea.

Matthew goes on. ‘The only thing is,’ he says, ‘Eleanor’s allergic to dogs, so you wouldn’t be able to bring Lorelei.

But you can always board her or something for a week or two. Julia has dogs; she might be able to give you the name of a good kennel.’

Of course, I think. Of course. ‘Thanks anyway,’ I say.

My voice sounds thin and brittle as glass. ‘But I don’t think I can leave my research at this particular point.’

Matthew nods, looking down at the floor. ‘All right, then,’ he says, turning toward the door. He looks stricken.

I soften a bit.

‘Really, I’m fine,’ I say. ‘I’m sure this whole thing sounds crazy to you, but I really think there’s something there. I feel like I’m on the verge of something important. I just need some time to work it out.’

He smiles doubtfully, but at least he’s meeting my eyes.

‘Just imagine,’ he says, ‘what it will mean if you succeed.’

He pauses thoughtfully, considering it. ‘Well, I’ve got to get back to the meeting. Keep in touch, okay?’

‘I will,’ I say. ‘Give my love to Eleanor.’

I gather up the things I need and prepare to leave. On my way out, I notice a scrap of pink paper that has, apparently, been slid under the door. I pick it up. It’s a While You Were Out slip. Scrawled across the top it says, ‘Your dog called.’

In the message space below, there are two words: ‘Woof, woof.’ I crumple up the note and throw it away.

Back at home, I pick up Lexy’s sweater from the bedroom floor and hold it to my face. I wonder what she would think of the turns my life has taken. Lorelei wanders in to greet me, and I give her a little scratch behind the ears.