The Dark House (20 page)

“No. I told you. He's out West someplace. We're out of touch.”

Marj took a moment to digest that. “It doesn't make sense, Rolo. What is going on?”

“Maybe it's
your
father.”

“Mine? God. I haven't even met him.” She picked up the note again. “It's the same handwriting.”

A woman's hand, Rollins was still convinced. But he found it hard to focus. He remembered how his father had popped up unexpectedly on his Johnson file, too.

“Well?” Marj asked.

“I was just thinking,” Rollins replied.

“
Don't think
,” she said angrily. “You think too much already. You've got to do something!”

Tina turned to Marj. “Is he always like this?”

Marj sighed, then turned back to Rollins. “Look, Rolo, we may need to go to the police.”

“Marj, please—”

“Don't worry, I didn't call anybody yet,” she told him. “I figured you'd like some time to think over what you wanted to say.”

Now Rollins was seriously alarmed. “What do you mean by that?”

“Rolo, we can't keep going like this.”

“I never should have gotten you involved,” he said.

He reached for her hand, felt the gentleness of it, the soft palm, the delicate fingers. She didn't move, and he gently drew her to him. He wanted to plant a kiss in the soft hollow of her neck. He ached to, but he held himself back. He knew it wasn't what she wanted. She was through with him, he could tell.

“Christ, I need a drink,” Tina announced. “Want one, Marjie?”

Marj stood, slipping free of Rollins' grasp. “Sounds good.”

As she retreated from him, Rollins became aware of the space all around him in the hall. He took in the newel post, the banister, the muted floral print on the wallpaper, the thin carpet. Marj was slipping
away, leaving him alone with these things. Rollins could tell he was not wanted in Tina's apartment. No invitation had been extended to him. The proper course would have been to turn toward his own door, undo the locks, step inside, and close the door behind him, setting the burglar alarm, as always, against intruders. And that would be it. Marj would call the police, Rollins would be ruined, and she would be a memory.

He watched her go, the sadness thickening in his chest. She was nearly to Tina's apartment by now, the door open. She was moving through it, as if in slow motion. The door was swinging lazily toward him. He had only a moment.

“Wait!” he called out. He leaped down the hall and caught the door just before it closed. He slipped inside without a word, shutting the door behind him as Marj disappeared around a corner.

He passed through the narrow foyer into the sparsely furnished living room, a sharp contrast to his own. Heather was curled up under a blanket on the lumpy couch, her mouth open, her frayed teddy clutched under one arm. Marj watched her and paid him no attention.

“I finally got her to sleep,” Tina told Marj quietly. If they were surprised to see Rollins, neither let on. They had become their own private sorority. Tina passed through a swinging door into the kitchen. Marj went in after her, and, aware that he was pushing his luck, Rollins followed.

The kitchen was nearly empty, with none of the appliances and cookbooks that Rollins had come to expect. It was also extremely hot, as if the oven had been left on. Tina fetched a bottle of Southern Comfort from the cabinet over the refrigerator and poured out a couple of glasses.

“How can you wear all that?” Marj asked Rollins. He was still in his blazer and tie. “I'm about to melt.” She pushed open the window over the sink, then flapped the bottom of her T-shirt to circulate a little air. “Why's it have to be so hot all the time? God! Boston is the
worst
. Why did I ever come here?” She turned the tap to release a torrent of cold water into the sink, then put her head under, sending spray in all directions.

“Here.” Tina handed Marj a rumpled dish towel when she finally turned off the tap and straightened up. Marj dried her hair, then
draped the towel over her shoulders to catch the last drips. Her hair falling every which way, her clothes disheveled, Marj looked all the more fetching to him. He imagined she needed his tending.

Tina passed a glass to her. “Drink up. You'll feel better.” Tina filled one for herself, then another for Rollins.

“Mommy?” a voice came from the other room.

“Oh, jeez,” Tina said. “Excuse me.” She passed out of the kitchen.

Marj took a slurp of the whiskey liqueur, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“So, now what do we do? Any bright ideas, big guy?”

“I think you should stay with me for a while,” he said.

With a sudden, frightening motion, Marj grabbed the dish towel and smacked it down on Rollins' shoulder, sending a bit of spray onto the side of his face.

Rollins thought for a moment that he might break, burst like porcelain into a thousand pieces. Not just from the blow itself, but from the blind rage on her face when she delivered it. Marj had caught a bit of the flesh on the side of his neck, too, and it stung. He blinked to clear the moisture from his eyes.

“You just don't get it, do you?” she shouted at him.

“Look, you don't dare go back to your place, so I figured you could stay with me.” He tried desperately to sound calm, reasonable. “That's why you came, isn't it?”

She smacked him with the towel once more, letting go of it this time. “I'm
not
going to sleep with you. Can't you get that through your thick head?”

“I wasn't suggesting that.” He picked up the dish towel and draped it over the lip of the sink. He hoped she wouldn't see that his hands were trembling.

“I'm staying here.”

“With Tina?”

“She offered, and I said okay.”

“But you don't even know her.”

“I don't know you.” She glared at Rollins until the hinges on the swinging door squealed and her eyes moved to the doorway.

Heather stood there, yawning, her teddy bear in her hand. “You okay, mister?” she asked sleepily. “I heard somebody shouting.”

“I'm fine, thanks,” Rollins answered, calmed a little by the sight of her. “You should be in bed.”

Tina came in. “That's what I keep telling her.”

Heather came over closer to Rollins and looked him over. “You're not sick?”

“Just tired.”

She came closer still. “But you're all sweaty.”

Rollins smiled as he looked down at his jacket, darkened at the shoulder where Marj had swatted him. “It's tap water, actually. We had a little accident.” He glanced over at Marj, and Heather's eyes followed his.

“Mommy said I shouldn't get near you because you were sick.” Heather touched the back of Rollins' hand. “But you don't feel hot.”

“Actually, I didn't want her to make
you
sick,” Tina clarified.

“No,” Heather protested.

“Ssh. That's enough, little lady.” Then, to Marj: “She had a fever just a few days ago.”

“It's all right,” Rollins said. He reached for the girl, but Tina came over to pull Heather away. “Okay, now out of here, you.” She led her firmly by the hand toward the kitchen door.

The little girl turned back to Rollins before she left. “You can show me baby pictures again sometime, if you want.”

“I'd like that,” Rollins replied.

Heather waved to him, one quick sweep of her little hand. “Bye.” Tina gave out a groan, as if she were sorry to miss the action. Then they were gone, and the door swung shut behind them.

“Baby pictures?” Marj asked Rollins.

“My little sister,” he said. “Heather reminded me of her.”

“You didn't tell me you had a sister.”

Rollins let the silence gather for a moment. She was right there, just a few feet away, but seemed so much farther, with plate glass separating them. He wasn't sure he could reach her, but he took a breath all the same and started in. “She died when I was very young. I should
have told you, but it was such a long time ago. I don't think it matters anymore.”

“Then why can't you look at me when you say that?”

It was true: He'd dropped his head to stare at the floor, a speckled linoleum. He looked up at her.

“How'd she die?” Marj asked.

“She drowned.” He could hear his mother's screams ringing faintly in his ears and feel his father's stony, accusing stare. But the feeling was dimmer now, with Marj there.

She looked at him skeptically. “Don't toy with me, Rolo. I'm not in the mood.”

Rollins dug into his back pocket for his wallet. He pulled out Stephanie's photograph and passed the photo to Marj, who studied it.

“Where'd it happen?” Her voice was softer now.

“In the bathtub,” Rollins said quietly. He had to concentrate on the words, since he'd never used them out loud before. Not with anyone, not even with the child psychiatrist, Dr. Ransome, he'd seen for nearly a year afterward. They talked about a lot of things, but never about that. “She drowned in the bathtub,” he repeated. It was a terrible strain to push the words out toward her. Marj was still so very far away. He thought of reaching for her hand, the one holding the photograph. He needed something to grab on to, something warm, with life in it. But he didn't quite dare.

No one had ever looked at him so intently as Marj did right then. “Tell me about it.”

 

Stephanie's tiny back all white and slick-looking.

 

“It was horrible.” Stephanie was drowned again right in front of him, and it frightened him all over again. “She was floating, facedown in the—” He wanted to reach for his sister, plunge into the water, scoop her out.

 

Her hair like spilled ink. Her little rubber ducks—bright yellow—bobbing slowly around her.

 

“You saw her?”

He nodded. “From the doorway.” He was there again, watching. It was a terrible sight. “My mother pulled her out.”

 

A great wave of water over the bathtub wall, drenching her clothes, as Stephanie flew up in his mother's arms toward her chest…

 

He had to steady himself to speak. “She set her down on the floor and tried to resuscitate her.”

 

Stephanie's little all-white body down on the tiled floor, his mother gasping, wailing as if she were drowning herself, pressing down sharply on Stephanie's belly with the heel of her hand, then brought her lips down to her child's.

 

Rollins didn't think he could go on. It was too awful. He closed his eyes, hoping to clear the memory, but it was still there, brighter even, when he opened them again. “She pushed on her belly, all that. I thought she was doing it too hard. That she'd hurt her.”

“Oh God, Rolo.”

 

His mother's pearls draped across Stephanie's throat when his mother bent down, then lifted again when she rose up.

 

Rollins reached a hand up to his face; he needed to remind himself that this was the present and that was the past. “Then she yelled for my father, and he came running in and kind of jerked my mother away,” Rollins mimed the motion. “And he tried to bring Stephanie back.”

 

Blowing and blowing. His mother holding her, so she wouldn't slip across the tiles.

 

Rollins gripped the edge of the kitchen table. Otherwise, he was afraid he might collapse.

“It's okay, Rolo.” The sound of Marj's voice made him want to cry, but he managed to control himself.

“Finally, they called the medics, but by the time they got there, there was nothing they could do.”

“Oh, Rolo, I'm so sorry.”

She moved toward him a little, and, after some hesitation, reached out to him, curving a hand around behind his neck.

He noticed the ends of her hair, spilling down to her shoulders. “Stephanie's hair curled at the tips just like yours. When it was wet.”

The two of them fell quiet, watching each other. “I've messed up your jacket,” Marj said at last. She ran a finger down one lapel, then tapped on it. “You just make me so crazy sometimes.” Marj got up to pour herself another drink. When she returned to the table, she stood behind him and returned her hand to the side of Rollins' face. “That whole thing with your sister—God. That sounds really hard.”

Rollins nodded, suddenly unable to speak. He reached up to touch the back of her hand as she lightly caressed him. But by then, she'd withdrawn it.

 

“I'm sorry, am I interrupting something?” Tina declared when she burst back through the swinging door and found Marj standing so close to Rollins. She reached into the freezer for some ice.

“We were just having a conversation.” Rollins drew out the last two words.

Tina dropped the ice into her glass and poured herself another drink. “Oh yeah. I used to have those, before Heather was born.” She turned to Marj. “Did you ask him about the tapes?”

That was a shock. No one was supposed to know about his tapes. Rollins was afraid he might be sick.

“Oh, now—don't look so surprised,” Tina said. “Mrs. D'Alimonte told me all about them. She thinks you're so interesting. She said they were stacked up on this big long shelf over your bed. Hundreds of them.”

Rollins brought his hands to his temples. He feared a migraine coming on. “When did she—?”

“Don't sweat it, Rolo,” Marj reassured him. “It's not like I couldn't guess a lot of this stuff.” She leaned back against the counter, her pelvis protruding.

This was precisely the scenario that Rollins had dreaded for years, the reason that he had been so careful about locking his door, setting the burglar alarm. Certainly, he had other valuables in his apartment, but the tapes were by far the most precious of all. They were his secrets. “How did Mrs. D'Alimonte—?”