"It's probably just a hose on the washer that fool didn't tighten," Papa said. "I think I can fix something that simple. Sit on the stairs, honey."
So Alison had sat down and Papa had placed the laundry basket beside her. Then he had waded into the water. His shoes made squishy sounds and he muttered and fussed and uttered words Alison knew he wasn't supposed to say in front of her. She twisted a lock of her silky white-blond hair around her finger the way that always annoyed Mama.
"Okay, you infernal beast," he said dramatically to the washer, making Alison giggle, "let's see who's boss."
Papa stepped behind the washer, facing her, and leaned on the machine. Abruptly blue-red light flared around him. The fluorescent light dimmed. Papa went rigid. A small, agonized sound escaped the rictus in his face, his body shook, and his eyes looked as if they were going to explode from his head. Alison heard a clicking sound nearby. The fluorescent bulb shut off. Papa fell on the concrete floor, his head making a sickening thud as his skull fractured and skin split. Blood rushed out and mixed with water swirling around his motionless body.
Slowly the world went fuzzy for Alison. She felt as if a heavy, swirling fog enveloped her. She loved the fog because it shut out the awful sight of Papa.
A day later, when Viveca returned from her trip, she found her husband in full rigor mortis, a stiffened corpse collapsed beside the washing machine. Her little girl sat on the basement stairs, rocking back and forth, twisting her hair around her finger. She'd soiled her clothes and her lips were chapped from dehydration. But the worst, what had choked off Viveca's horrified scream, was the child's eyes-wide, vacant, unblinking. Viveca had rushed her to the hospital. Alison remained unresponsive for nearly a week. Afterward came years of psychiatric care-clinics, medication, endless analysis, even hypnotherapy. But Alison had never been the same since that day in the basement when Papa had tried to fix the washer.
"Are you going to wear black to Tamara's funeral?"
Viveca looked up from the magazine she'd been staring at blindly. Whenever Alison mentally left this world, Viveca sat patiently waiting for her to return. Sometimes it took a few seconds. Sometimes it took hours. Today it had been fifteen minutes.
"I think I'll wear navy blue."
"I'm wearing black. Even black jewelry. My marcasite and onyx brooch that belonged to Ariel."
The brooch had not belonged to Ariel, but Alison could not be convinced of this. It didn't matter. It made her happy to think she owned a piece of Ariel's jewelry. But Alison's train of thought was disturbing.
"Dear, I've been thinking," Viveca said carefully. "Tamara's funeral might be too depressing for you. Perhaps you should stay home."
Alison looked outraged. "Stay home! I can't. Warren will need me."
Viveca had been increasingly aware of Alison's interest in Warren. At first she'd been pleased. Alison had hated all of her doctors. Then through Oliver's daughter Tamara she'd met Warren Hunt and wanted to be treated by him. Viveca didn't like Warren, but Alison violently refused to continue with her present psychiatrist or any other. Viveca realized she would either have to relent about Warren or send Alison off to a clinic once more.
Alison seemed to improve for a while. Then Alison began talking about Ariel again. After her father's death, she talked incessantly of Ariel and even believed she was Ariel. Time and drugs seemed to alleviate the delusion and finally she had completely stopped talking about Ariel. Until lately. First Alison had found a brooch in Lily Peyton's antique shop she was certain belonged to Ariel Saunders and insisted her mother buy it. Last week Viveca had found a book on reincarnation in Alison's room.
Now there was her preoccupation with Warren Hunt. There was something in the way she said his name, an almost caressing quality, that tripped alarm bells in Viveca's mind. And in the last few months Alison had grown cooler toward Tamara. In fact, cool was too mild a word. Almost hostile was more like it. Hostile and-Viveca cringed at the word-competitive.
"Dear, Warren will have plenty of moral support," Viveca said soothingly. "He wouldn't want you to go. Funerals are so sad."
"You mean like Papa's?"
"Yes."
"And Eugene 's?"
Viveca's face tightened. "You were not supposed to attend Eugene Farley's funeral. You did that against my strict orders."
"I think it's terrible that you didn't go. After all, he was one of your boyfriends."
"Alison!"
"Why do you keep squawking 'Alison!' at me? He was your boyfriend. What are you so embarrassed about? That he was young enough to be your son or that he got convicted of embezzlement and killed himself?"
"He was not young enough to be my son," Viveca said tiredly. "And his death was tragic, but we were no longer together. I really don't want to talk about that sad time."
"No wonder. You deserted him. I didn't. I loved him."
"I know. He was like a brother to you."
Alison let out a peal of laughter with a note of hysteria beneath it. "I did not think of him as a brother, Mama."
Viveca had trouble conceiving of Alison as anything except a child. The idea of her having a sexual interest in anyone was repugnant, like picturing a five-year-old girl lusting after an adult man. But as much as she hated to admit it, Alison had a libido. Maybe an overactive libido.
She had first noticed it when Alison was around Eugene Farley. Eugene had been the head accountant at the Bishop Corporation. Handsome, intelligent, funny, he had been sought after by all the single females at Bishop and some of the married ones, too. Before long and against her better judgment, Viveca found she couldn't resist him, either.
He'd come to her home several times and treated Alison like any normal young woman. He'd talked about literature and music with her, trading books and CD's. They laughed and the girl seemed to blossom. Viveca had thought they acted like brother and sister and she was delighted. She didn't even care that Eugene indulged Alison's taste for rock music.
Then Viveca saw the way Alison looked at Eugene. A crush she told herself, but self-deception had never been her forte. She couldn't hide from the truth. Her perpetually, innocent child looked at Viveca's lover with a naked carnality that made her sick.
Eugene was gone now. First she'd banished him from her life and then he had taken his own. As bad as Viveca felt about Eugene 's death, she had been relieved to see the hunger vanish from Alison's eyes. But now it was back, flaring uncontrollably whenever Warren Hunt's name was mentioned.
"Mama, you will let me go to Tamara's funeral, won't you?"
It wasn't really the question it seemed. It was a threat. When Alison did not get her way, she would inflict the punishment of her illness on her mother, and it always worked. Viveca's guilt over Alison's emotional state was crushing because she had not been attending a meeting when her husband died. She had gone off for a weekend with another man and in the throes of her passion, she had not bothered to call home during the twenty-eight hours when Alison sat on the basement steps staring at her father's body as she slowly descended into the mental hell from which she would never rise.
"Of course you may go, Alison."
"Good. Warren needs me now." Her lips twitched. "Especially now that she's gone." Viveca stiffened but before she could reply, Alison announced, "I'm going to my room."
To do what? Viveca wondered. The girl was getting agitated. "Alison, why don't I make tea and heat up some croissants and we can have a girl talk?" she tried feebly.
"I don't know how to make girl talk. You never let me have friends. You've always kept me a prisoner." Alison rose from the piano bench and stomped up the stairs to her room.
She was prone to sudden rages and the look in her eyes was dangerous. Viveca stood, anxiously fingering her topaz pendant until she heard Alison's door slam.