Puppet (29 page)

The light is still on in her old bedroom. She moves directly to the window and stares out at the driveway that runs between her mother’s house and the house next door, thinking of poor old Mr. Walsh and trying to recall the details of his face. But beyond the wrinkles that drooped across his face like heavy curtains, and the limp strings of white hair that fell across the top of his mostly bald head, all she can see is the massive stomach that strained at the buttons of his short-sleeved shirts and poured over the tops of his perpetually stained Bermuda shorts in summer. While the setting is clear, the man’s features are fuzzy and indistinct, like a photograph in which the background is in focus but the main subject is a frustrating blur. Amanda can picture a dark green sedan pulling to a stop in the middle of their mutual driveway; she can see a giant walrus of a man pushing himself out of the car; she can make out the sweat dripping off his forehead as he casts a furtive glance over his shoulder toward her mother’s house and hears his derisive snort. For an instant, Amanda even thinks she sees a sneer playing with the corners of his lips. “Why, you miserable son of a bitch,” she says out loud. “You parked there on purpose.” No wonder my mother put a curse on you.

“Please don’t tell me I’m actually sympathizing with my mother,” Amanda moans loudly, unpacking her few belongings and spreading them across the bed. “Now I know I’m sick.” Certainly I must have been suffering from some sort of delirium when I bought this, she thinks, holding her new purple sweater out in front of her. Purple, for God’s sake. And mohair. When is she ever going to wear it? “I’ll wear it to bed,” she decides, stripping off her clothes and pulling the sweater over her
head, feeling it toasty and warm against her bare skin.

She grabs her toothbrush and walks into the bathroom, stares at herself in the mirror over the sink, surprised to see how good the purple sweater looks on her, how nicely it meshes with her blond hair and compliments the delicate blush in her cheeks.

I don’t think I’ve ever told you how beautiful you are.

I certainly don’t look very beautiful now, Amanda thinks, brushing her teeth and washing her face, then pushing her face close to the glass, examining her skin for tiny lines. “You’re never too young to start moisturizing,” she tells her reflection, opening the medicine cabinet and staring in openmouthed amazement at the rows of pill bottles that line the shelves.

Scattered among the usual over-the-counter medications, she finds numerous bottles of Tylenol 3 and Percodan, as well as prescriptions for a host of well-known antidepressants, several of which have lately been found to induce psychosis in an alarming number of people. Is her mother one of those people? Was she under the influence of one or more of these powerful narcotics when she shot and killed John Mallins? Amanda checks the dates on the various bottles, noting that each has long since expired. Is it possible her mother had been taking these drugs for a long time, then stopped cold turkey, resulting in a chemical imbalance that rendered her incapable of rational thought, thus making her a victim of diminished capacity and clearly not responsible for her actions?

Amanda races back into her bedroom, grabs her cell phone from her purse, about to call Ben and share with him her latest discovery and apologize profusely for having failed to check the medicine cabinet the last time they
were here. What was the matter with her? How could she have missed anything so obvious?

Except:

What difference does it make that her mother might have been abusing prescription drugs, if her mother persists in claiming she knew what she was doing and knew it to be wrong? What difference does it make if her mother went off the drugs cold turkey, or that she was taking drugs that had long since passed their expiry date, if her mother refused to consider a plea of diminished capacity, which she undoubtedly would?

Still …

Amanda presses in Ben’s telephone number, listens to its repeated rings, and hangs up before Ben’s voice mail can click on. No point in leaving a message. She’ll probably be asleep by the time he gets home. With Jennifer undoubtedly glued to his side. And why not? Why shouldn’t they be together? Jennifer is attractive and smart, and it’s unlikely her mother goes around shooting people in hotel lobbies. Clearly, she’s a much saner choice, a much safer bet. Undoubtedly, Ben’s mother would have approved. And his father, she thinks, picturing the handsome, senior Mr. Myers, now on his honeymoon with her former history teacher.

So funny how things work out.

Ben’s father is about the same age as her ex-husband, Sean, she realizes, grimacing at the disconcerting thought as she wanders into her mother’s bedroom and flips on the light. Whatever had possessed her to marry Sean anyway? More to the point, what had possessed Sean to marry her? True, she was young and pretty, but Florida was full of young and pretty women, and smart and
sophisticated men like Sean weren’t easily impressed. So what had he seen in her? And how could he love her—how could any man really love her?—when her own father had been so indifferent? When her own mother had looked at her and seen right through her, deemed her unfit to love?

Amanda walks toward the alcove beside her mother’s bed, her eyes scanning the miniature crystal knickknacks sitting on the shelf, her fingers gently caressing a small glass poodle with tiny black beads that serve as its eyes and nose. “Okay, enough of this. This is getting us nowhere.” She marches over to her mother’s dresser, begins rummaging impatiently through the drawers. “Same stuff that was here last time I looked,” she mutters, closing the last of the drawers and glancing out the window, staring at Mrs. MacGiver’s house across the street.

Someone is standing in the upstairs window, Amanda realizes, taking a step back even as her body leans forward to catch a better glimpse. “Mrs. MacGiver, is that you?” she whispers, inching back toward the window, leaning her forehead against the cold pane of glass. The figure in the opposite window retreats, disappearing behind layers of curtains. Seconds later, the lights in the room go out.

Amanda stands for several minutes staring into the darkness, wondering how many of her old neighbors are still around, if any of them is watching her now. Maybe she should canvass the street tomorrow, talk to people who know her mother. It’s possible someone might be able to shed some light on the situation. People often know more than they think they do. Although experience has taught her they generally know less.

“Okay, enough of this,” she says to anyone who might be watching. “For all those who are interested, I’m going to bed now. How does everyone like my new sweater, by the way? You like the color? Don’t think purple’s too much? Good. Okay. Well, sleep tight, and pleasant dreams.” She flips off the light, returns to her old room, and crawls into bed. “Who am I kidding? I’ll never fall asleep,” she says, the words barely out of her mouth before she drifts into unconsciousness.

Amanda?

Amanda opens her eyes to see a skinny boy with a big wooden head and a high pompadour of black painted-on hair walking toward her. He is wearing a crisp white shirt tucked inside a pair of stiff denim jeans, and his eyes are as green as his smile is wide.

Dance with me
, he says, his hands jerking into position in front of him.

Amanda climbs out of bed and curtsies, the boy responding with a low bow. Seconds later, she is securely fastened inside the boy’s wooden arms, and he is spinning her around a tall stage.

I like your new sweater
, he tells her as a gust of cold air blows against her face, freezing her smile, and causing her skin to harden, like ice. Her arms and legs begin moving in careless abandon, without thought or grace. First her right knee lifts into the air, then her left hand, then both legs together. Then her right arm shoots out to one side, her mouth opening and closing, although the voice that emerges is no longer her own.

Puppet, puppet
, the unfamiliar voice chants, the muscles in her back starting to twitch, as if a fishhook
were lodged between her shoulder blades.
Who’s my little puppet?

“Shit,” Amanda says, jumping up and reaching for the lamp beside the bed, watching the dream evaporate in a burst of bright light. She runs her hand through her hair and tries to calm the wild beating of her heart, every muscle in her body starting to ache. “Should never have shoveled all that damn snow.” Despite the fact she’s now wide-awake, the strange voice continues to reverberate in the recesses of her mind. Whose voice? she wonders, pushing herself out of bed, and walking into the hall, shaking her shoulders in an effort to free herself from the uncomfortable feeling that someone is still pulling her strings.

A
MANDA
shuffles into the bathroom, where she turns on the tap and splashes several handfuls of cold water across her face, a face that she is startled to realize is already wet with tears. “What the hell am I crying about?” she asks her reflection impatiently, watching the familiar shake of her head in the glass, her head continuing to twist feverishly back and forth until her hair wraps itself around her eyes, like a surprise pair of hands—“Guess who?”—and the offending image disappears. She stands this way for several seconds, her head bowed, her hair clinging to her damp skin, her breathing punctuated by a rhythmic series of stillborn cries that threaten to burst from her body, like the final ticks of a bomb strapped uncomfortably around her chest. Her left hand reaches blindly toward the towel rack, her veiled eyes noting the time on the watch she forgot to remove when she crawled into bed. She’s surprised to realize it’s just past eleven o’clock. “Not even midnight,” she grouses, drying her face with a scratchy white towel, and filling the pink plastic glass at the side of the sink with water, drinking it down in one long gulp. “What am I supposed to do till morning?”

She thinks of going downstairs and getting something to eat, but then she remembers the state of her mother’s fridge and decides that Granny Smith apples don’t exactly cut it as comfort food. Too healthy. Too good for you to be of any good to you in times of crises, when what you crave is something rich and gooey and overflowing with calories, like the macaroni and cheese she has already dispensed with. Of course, she could get dressed and try to find an all-night grocery store, although she’s not sure Toronto even has such things. Or she could simply order a pizza. Surely there are restaurants that are still open and prepared to deliver at this hour. It’s hardly the middle of the night. Or better yet, she could call Swiss Chalet. How long has it been since she had one of their half-chicken dinners with french fries smothered in tangy barbecue sauce? Much too long, she decides, returning to the bedroom and reaching inside her purse for her cell phone, already feeling her mouth watering in anticipation. She flips open her phone, is about to call information for the restaurant chain’s number, when she sees she has a message waiting.

“Hi. It’s me. Ben,” his recorded message states without emotion, although the fact he deemed it necessary to add his name carries an inherent hint of recrimination. “I just wondered how you were doing, but since you’re out and about, I guess you’re fine.” A slight pause, then: “Call me in the morning.”

“Out and about,” Amanda repeats in Ben’s Canadian twang, so that the words emerge as
oot
and
aboot.
“Yes, I’m oot and aboot all right.” Oot and aboot in nothing but my new mohair sweater, wandering the upstairs halls of my mother’s house, like some big purple ghost, she continues
silently. Salivating over the thought of a greasy fast-food dinner, my second of the night, incidentally, so quite obviously, there’s nothing wrong with my appetite, which I guess means I’m doing fine, thank you so much for your concern.

She replays Ben’s message three times before erasing it. “When did you call anyway?” she asks the tiny phone, angry at herself for going to bed so early, for not taking the damn thing out of her purse, for not hearing it ring. She checks her watch again, decides it’s not too late to call him back. Surely he doesn’t go to bed before midnight.

Call me later?

Absolutely.

Amanda presses in Ben’s number, her finger poised to disconnect should his answering machine pick up.

“Hello?” Ben asks before the first ring is completed. His voice is warm, welcoming. She wants to curl up inside it.

“It’s me.” Unlike her former husband, she doesn’t bother to clarify who “me” is. “I just got your message.”

“Where are you?”

“Home,” she says, the word teetering awkwardly on her tongue. “My mother’s,” she corrects instantly. “When did you call?”

“A few hours ago.”

“I fell asleep. I didn’t hear my phone ring.”

“You feeling all right?”

“Yeah. A little hungry.”

He laughs.

“I don’t suppose you feel like going out for something to eat?”

“Can’t,” he says without further explanation.

An annoying habit, Amanda decides, picturing Jennifer gazing at him from the other side of the room, her head tilted quizzically in his direction, as if to ask, Who’s calling at this time of night? She swats the unpleasant image aside with a flick of her wrist, watching Jennifer fly into the air and explode, like cheap fireworks, before being swallowed by the dark night sky.

“So, have you had a chance to look around?” he asks as Amanda struggles to recall the details of her day. “You find anything we missed last time?”

“Yes,” she says, her voice rising with excitement as the contents of her mother’s medicine cabinet pop clearly into view. “I found pills.”

“Pills?”

“At least ten bottles of them. Antidepressants, painkillers—you name them, they’re in her medicine cabinet. Most of them expired years ago, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been taking them. Did she ever say anything to you about being on medication?”

“The only pills I’ve ever heard your mother mention are her calcium,” Ben says, and Amanda can almost see him shaking his head in wonderment.

“Do you think we have a shot at diminished capacity?”