Finally I couldn’t bear it any longer — I mean, not knowing what you looked like. And so one night I paid you a little visit. Oh, Robert neglected to mention that? How careless of him.
It must have been toward the end of July, the second or third week after Robert’s famous little confession. I was still in a strange state, drifting through the house, never really sleeping, never really awake. Ghosts are like that, I imagine. Do you think ghosts are like that? I remember it was a hot night: a hot summer night, the kind I had always liked, back in the days when I was among the living. Robert was asleep in the study; I came down and sat here, on the porch. I was still running a low fever. I was dressed, I remember that, jeans I think and a blouse, and I tried to listen to the sounds of the night, but I was too restless for that. It was impossible to breathe, and I thought I’d go out and take a little walk.
I was struck by the peacefulness of the night, and I thought maybe — just maybe the peace would enter me and calm me a little. And I was struck, you know, by how much it looked like a summer night. I could feel myself smiling, the way you do when something is so much itself that it seems a little. . contrived. Somebody’d put a big white moon up there in the sky, and for some reason it reminded me of the round white top of a Dixie cup, the underside — the way the ice cream sticks to it and makes little patterns like mountain ranges — and you could see the shadows of chimneys slanting along roofs and the shadows of trees thrown up against the fronts of houses. I could smell things very sharply: the leaves of a big Norway maple, fresh tar from a driveway, wet grass and gravel under a sprinkler. Of course I knew where I was going. Robert had told me your name, and one night I’d looked it up in the phone book. Right here in town! How fortunate for both of you.
I knew it was on the other side of town, out past the cemetery. I wasn’t exactly sure where. It seemed to me that I’d been walking for hours; it may be that I lost my way. But when you have a fever, when you’re walking in a waking dream, through a summer night made up of nifty stage props — streetlight, moon, tree — then what does it matter whether you get there sooner or later or never or always, your husband asleep in the study, your front door open, your mind disordered, your heart opening and closing like a fist, the hair of a dead woman streaming from a tree — or was it a kite string, a ball of unraveling twine, rope of a hanged man; not for me to say. Then I was there, in front of her house — your house — the house of the wicked witch. Go awaaay, my voices sang in me. Oh staaay, my voices echoed. I took in the front porch — wicker sofa, the two plants hanging like. . oh, like anchors. . and shutters. . with those little grooves in them. I went around the side toward the back. Two garbage pails with little wheels, tomato sticks with nothing growing, one of those grills that look like a diving bell. Magnolia in back yard. Round glass table, metal chairs. Two doors! The back door at the top of the steps: locked. But the cellar door — really, people ought to be more careful, why only the other day. . It opened so easily, as if you’d been expecting me. Were you? Up the little stairs. Moonlight in the kitchen. So tired! I was, you know: tired, I mean. Everything was strange. The edges of the plates in the dish rack caught the moonlight. I realized that I was in an enchanted cave. Clock ticking like a stick knocking. Bick bock. Bick bock. Knife handles sticking out of a block of wood, as though the knives had been thrown at a target. But where was the knife thrower, where was the woman on the turning wheel? I took one out — the sort of thing you do, in a fever-dream. The hall led to three doors, all open. Three: just like a fairy tale. I looked in the first. Empty! Looked in the second. Empty! Of course! I wanted to shout: Oh, I know where you’re hiding! Can’t fool me! Through the third door I could see you lying in your bed. I went in — just like that — and stood over the bed, looking at you. I was surprised to see a knife in my hand. Where had it come from? I felt that I was on a stage, and people were watching: the crazy lady with the knife, bent over the sleeping witch. You had stolen my husband. Broken my heart. Ruined my life. Why shouldn’t you die? I felt the moon turn suddenly red, bleeding great red drops into the sky. I was exalted. I was an angeclass="underline" wrathful. I looked at you. Robert didn’t tell you this? Your face was on the pillow, turned a little to one side, your hair loose, flowing. You were younger than I was, but not young, not the way I had imagined. Light hair, straw not blond. The covers were partway down, sheet turned over the spread to form a border. Your hand on the edge of the sheet, as though you were stroking it. Your bare throat, your nightgown. Not the silky clingy thing I’d expected, but a cottony smocky sort of thing. I could see you were an attractive woman, handsome not beautiful, not drop-dead gorgeous, nothing little-girly about you — character in the mouth. I stood there. I stood there. What came over me then. . it was. . I had a sense that all this. . the moonlight in the room, the stillness, the hair on the pillow. . it was as if I’d crept into the room of a sleeping child, or. . something along those lines. Call me a sucker for cheap effects. But suddenly I was the wicked witch and you were. . only you. A woman sleeping. I looked at you. I tried to make you dream me. I saw something in my hand. I left the room and never looked back.
That was our first meeting.
And when I got home, it was the strangest thing. Robert was there in the doorway, waiting for me. Isn’t that just too much? He looked worried to death, poor man. So I told him— where I’d been, I mean. I left out the part about the knife. Then I went up to bed.
But, good lord, listen to me! — nattering on and on. You’d think a person had nothing better to do all day than sit and listen to stories. You can stay a bit longer, can’t you? I’m so glad. I haven’t even shown you the upstairs. But first the dining room. This way, this way.
DINING ROOM
I promised you bookcases. Well, take a look. Uno. Due. And please observe the top shelf of the hutch. Book junkies, both of us. I started reading at five and forgot to give it up the way I gave up everything else — my tutu, my ballet slippers — so long, piano music, goodbye, ice skates, Ginnie doll, tennis racket. . I can remember in sixth grade sitting holding Anne of Avonlea open on my lap, pretending to memorize the products of Central America. Chicle. Or was that South America? I had bangs back then — down to my eyebrows, like a helmet. I kept reading in high school, and college — where I majored in guess what — and then came the bookstore, and Robert, and good old marriage — still turning those pages. Do you think people can read too much? I’m grateful for it, myself, but you know what? I haven’t opened a book for nearly a year. One day I simply stopped. That’s right. Just when you’d think I needed it most, reading deserted me. Books just didn’t like me anymore. Betrayed by literature! But really, among so many betrayals, what’s one more?
This table is also from Robert’s grandmother. Solid mahogany — and will you look at the carving on those legs. Still, there’s a heaviness, don’t you think? We ate breakfast and lunch in the kitchen, dinner always here. Robert complained about the table at first — said it made him think he was eating roast pig with Queen Victoria — though really there’s nothing actually Victorian about the thing. But it was too fine a piece just to let go. It always got on his nerves a little. I kept it covered with a cheerful tablecloth, which helped.