Ariel

Fourteen

“That was him,” Ariel said. Erskine looked at her. “The funeral man, the lawyer, you know.”

“Channing?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t see him. Where?”

She pointed down the street. “In his car,” she said. “In fact all I really saw was the car. He just drove on by. I don’t think he even saw us. Maybe he was at my house.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe Roberta asked him over to check out the stove.” She hefted the flute. “It’s a shame he couldn’t stop and say hello. I could have played for him.”

“You still haven’t played for me.”

“I told you,” she said. “Today’s your lucky day.”

She had brought the flute and the tape recorder to school with her that morning in order to save time. Now she was anxious to get to Erskine’s house. As soon as they were settled in his attic room she opened her flute case and fitted parts together, then set up the tape recorder.

“I taped this last night,” she said. “Then when I played it back I accompanied myself. Listen to this.”

She started the tape, sat back on her heels, put the flute to her lips. After the tape had run for a few bars she joined in, hesitantly at first, then with confidence.

It was just so much fun playing along with herself this way. She didn’t even have to think about what she was doing. She had played against this particular tape twice the preceding night, and now she was doing it again, but playing entirely differently from the way she had played then. Her musical mood was different, just as it differed from the track on the tape recorder, but all the same everything seemed to fit together just right. Her fingers automatically selected the notes that would fit into the right places, as if all the music was happening simultaneously in her brain and she could sit back and decide what spaces to fill in and what spaces to leave empty in order to make the musical picture take whatever shape she wanted it to have.

She continued playing for ten minutes or so. Then the intensity of her concentration became painful. Her head ached and she had to put the flute down at her side. Erskine reached to stop the recorder.

“That’s really far out,” he said. “You played two completely different things and made them go together, so that they wound up being parts of the same thing.”

“You could tell.”

“Sure. I don’t understand music, but I could hear what it is that you do.” He frowned. “This is no good. We need another tape recorder. Then you could tape back and forth and lay one track on top of the other the way they do when they make records. Of course you wouldn’t get professional quality because the surface noise would pile up but at least the music wouldn’t just run off in the air and get lost. You see what I mean?”

She nodded. “I don’t know if there would be room for a third track,” she said. “Let me think.” She closed her eyes. “Maybe it would fit in,” she said.

“The thing is you could experiment.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Plus we could keep one recorder here and one at your house instead of dragging them back and forth all the time.” He thought it over, then nodded decisively. “What we need is another tape recorder,” he said. “I’ll get one.”

“How?”

“I’ll tell them I need one.”

“Your parents?”

“Who else, Santa Claus?”

“You just tell them you need something and you get it?”

“Sure. What do you do when you want something?”

“Nothing.”

“Does that work?”

“I don’t want many things,” she said.

The next day he told her everything was taken care of. “They’ll get the tape recorder. You can keep the other one in the meantime. I told them you needed it for a project.”

“And that’s all you had to do?”

“Sure. When I was younger I used to have to throw tantrums, but after you do that a certain number of times you get them trained. I didn’t have to scream or kick my feet or anything.”

“No carpet-chewing, huh?”

“Nothing like that.” He looked up at her. “So we’ve got you a tape recorder, Jardell. Now what are you going to do for me in return, my proud beauty?”

She giggled.

“Nothing in return, Ariel?”

“I took care of Graham for you, didn’t I?”

He stared at her.

“You think he just happened to get hit by a car,” she said. “That kind of accident doesn’t just happen all by itself, you know. I had to arrange it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, I concentrated very hard, and I said a little prayer to the woman we found in the attic, and look what happened.” She dilated her nostrils, widened her eyes, hit him with an out-of-focus stare. “I have special powers,” she announced.

“You’re really weird, Jardell.”

“Special weird powers.”

“You’re spooky, did anyone ever tell you that?”

“Weird spooky powers. You said you wanted to kill Graham, so I thought I’d help you out. After all, you’re getting the tape recorder. I figured I owed you a favor.”

“He wasn’t killed, anyway. Just hit by a car.”

“My powers aren’t fully developed yet,” she said. “I’m only a child.”

“A weird child.”

“Look who’s talking.”

“Graham got a broken leg and three broken ribs and a ruptured spleen. What’s a spleen?”

“Something gross. Something yucky and disgusting.”

“It’s good people have skin,” Erskine said, “or all that stuff would show.”

That night she hadn’t planned to write in her diary. Roberta had gone out after dinner and David was in his den with the door closed, and she’d planned on doing her homework and then watching television. But the homework didn’t take long and when it was finished she didn’t feel like watching anything on television. Without really being aware of it she got her spiral notebook and her pen and sat down on her bed.

For a while she wrote about her music, about the tape recorder Erskine was going to get. Then she wrote:

We didn’t see Mr. Channing today. I kept expecting to see him. I would look around for him on the way to school and on the way to Erskine’s afterward. And on the way home from Erskine’s I kept looking around for his car. There is something about him and I don’t know what it is. I’m scared of him but at the same time I like seeing him. I don’t understand it.

Graham Littlefield was hit by a car yesterday. He is in the hospital and is not going to die. Broken legs, broken ribs, and a ruptured spleen, whatever that is. I looked in the dictionary and it says the spleen is a ductless gland at the left of the stomach in man, and near the stomach or intestine in other vertebrates. People used to think that the spleen caused low spirits, bad temper and spite.

I suppose having your spleen ruptured would cause all of those things. I suppose Graham’s spirits are low and his temper is bad. Mine certainly would be.

A car hit him and drove off without stopping. Some of the kids were saying that he ran into the street without looking, so it wasn’t the car’s fault, but it was certainly the car’s fault for not stopping.

I spooked Erskine. Telling him I had powers that caused Graham’s accident. He didn’t really believe me, but there was a minute there when he wasn’t absolutely sure.

Suppose Graham was hit by a maroon Buick with a black roof?

Except the other kids just said it was a dark car. Nobody got the license number or anything.

I wonder.

I wonder what would happen if I pretended to have powers. Erskine talked about killing Graham and Veronica, and now Graham’s in the hospital, and what would he think if something happened to Veronica?

This is crazy why am I thinking about this I should stop it right now—

Suppose I concentrated very hard on Veronica. Suppose I got up in the middle of the night and lit a candle under the portrait and concentrated very hard.

Nothing would happen.

Would it?

She gave her head a sudden shake, dismissing the train of thought. For a moment or two she sat with her eyes closed. Then she resumed writing.

I have to wait until I’m eighteen to find out who my real mother is. Erskine says maybe there’s a way before then if only he can figure it out. I don’t think he’ll be able to.

It does not seem so important anymore.

Here is what happens. I think about my mother or start to have an imaginary conversation with her. Then I look at Her.

I mean the portrait. Her.

I don’t know what to call her. I wish I knew her name. Sometimes she is me and sometimes she is my mother. Of course she is neither of us, not really. She could not have been my real mother because the portrait is too old.

But something happens when I look at her.

She closed the notebook, turned to look at the picture. It had an effect upon her which she did not begin to understand. But she did know it suited her to have the picture in her room. As if the woman was back where she belonged.

This must have been her room long ago, she decided. And she got up and walked to her window, drawing back the curtain and looking out at the street below. It had rained earlier, and a streetlamp cast a yellow glow over the wet pavement. She imagined that the woman in the portrait must have stood like this, looking out like this. Of course there would not have been cars then, just carriages pulled by horses. And the streetlamp would have been a gaslight.

She left the window, sat on her bed. At least she hadn’t gotten up in the middle of the night lately to burn any more candles. That incident had disturbed her for a while, until she finally decided it had been just one step removed from a dream, like walking in your sleep. Nothing to get all shook up about.

She turned, then, and raised her eyes to meet the glowing eyes in the portrait. She did not break her silent concentration until she heard David’s footsteps on the stairs....

David was restless. Roberta had gone out shopping, but the currents she’d stirred were still in motion.

She wanted to move. She’d come to his study immediately after dinner, just as he was preparing to settle in with pipe and brandy, and made her little announcement. This house, she explained, had been a mistake. They never should have bought it in the first place. It was a hostile environment, an unhealthy place physically and spiritually, and the only solution was to cut their losses and run. The Traphagens, anxious for a quick sale, had enabled them to buy at a good price. Now, even allowing for realtor’s commission and closing costs, they could very likely turn the house over at a small but tidy profit.

And move where, he’d asked.

The question didn’t seem to concern her. Back to Charleston Heights, if he liked, or any comparable suburban neighborhood. A year-round beach house on Isle of Palms might be nice if he didn’t mind the commuting time. Just so they got out of where they were — that was all she cared about.

That and proximity to Channing, he thought.

He couldn’t sit still. He got up, carried his brandy glass through the downstairs rooms of the house. There was, he decided, nothing wrong with this house and a great deal right with it. The three of them ought to be capable of being very happy in it. They’d been a family once, a happy and complete family. Roberta’s affair and Caleb’s birth had interfered, had changed things, but Caleb was gone now (think of God’s will, good and acceptable and perfect) and if only Roberta were herself again—

And there was the problem.

She was seeing Channing. She was behaving curiously, her voice edged with brittle anxiety, her face sharp and drawn. She barely spoke to Ariel, treating her like an unwelcome stranger. And through it all she maintained poor Caleb’s room as some sort of morbid shrine, dusting it almost daily, insisting that he and Ariel stay out of it. He’d almost suggested she hang a padlock on the door, only refraining out of fear that she’d take him at his word.

If they were to sell the house, he had thought of telling her, she’d have to let strangers into her precious Caleb’s room. You couldn’t very well expect a prospective house buyer to leave one of the upstairs rooms uninspected. And, when the house sold, she’d have to clear out the room. The new owners might not want to maintain the room as it was, giving it National Landmark status.

He finished his brandy, but instead of pouring another he set down his pipe and climbed the stairs. They creaked underfoot. Ought to be able to do something about that, he thought, but the sound didn’t really bother him. An old house ought to have its repertoire of sounds. They were like gray hairs on an old man’s head.

Ariel was in her room, sitting on her bed with her notebook open on her lap.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said. “I suppose you’ve got a lot of homework?”

She shook her head, closed her book. “I’m all finished, daddy,” she said. “I was just looking over what I wrote.”

“They keep you pretty busy at this school?”

“I don’t mind it.”

He nodded absently. “I just felt like talking,” he said. “Unless you’ve got something you wanted to do.”

“No.”

“Some program on television you wanted to watch.”

“No.”

He sat on the bed beside her, looked at the portrait he’d hung for her. It was disproportionately large for the room, but she seemed to like it and that was all that really mattered. What had Roberta been saying about the portrait? He hadn’t been paying much attention, only recalled that she didn’t like it and seemed to find it symbolic of everything that was suddenly wrong with the house.

“Well,” he said. “What’s new, honey?”

“Nothing much.”

“School coming okay?”

“Sure.”

He put an arm around her and she snuggled her head to his shoulder. He felt a rush of warmth to his chest not unlike the sensation he obtained from swallowing a generous measure of brandy. His voice suddenly husky, he said, “Then everything’s okay with you?”

“Everything’s fine.”

“You like it here, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“Better than our other house?”

“Tons better. I love this house.”

“How about your school?”

“It’s better.”

“Better teachers?”

“They’re about the same. The kids are better, though.”

“And you’ve got a best friend.”

“Erskine.”

“I haven’t really met him yet.”

“Well, he’s shy around grownups.”

“I was the same way when I was a kid.”

“You? Honest?”

“Honest.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Something I wanted to talk about with you,” he said. “Your mommy’s going through a hard time lately. I suppose you’ve been able to sense that yourself.”

She didn’t say anything.

“It’s the shock of what happened to your brother,” he went on. “She’s having trouble getting over it. It’s given her bad feelings about this house and—”

“Are we going to move?”

“I don’t think so. You don’t want to move, do you, honey?”

“No!”

He smiled at the determination in her tone. “Neither do I,” he admitted. “And I don’t really think it’ll come to that. It’s just something your mother has to go through right now, and we have to go through it with her. She’s been short-tempered with me and probably with you, too. She’s under a lot of emotional stress and it’s very difficult for her.”

“How can I help?”

“Just be understanding.”

“Okay.”

“And if you’ve got problems of your own, don’t keep them bottled up inside you. Bring ’em to me, hear?”

“Sure.”

He gave her another hug. “I love you so much,” he said “Your mother and I both love you. You know that, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

He glanced at his watch. “Rhoda’s going on in a minute,” he said. “Want to watch it with me?”

“Okay, sure.”

“You go ahead downstairs,” he said. “I’ll be down in minute.”

He walked into the upstairs bathroom while she hurried downstairs. What Roberta had said was true, he noticed — the stairs made no sound when Ariel used them. She weighed less, he thought, and walked lightly.

He didn’t really have to use the bathroom. He just wanted a moment alone, so he rinsed his hands and dried them and stood for a moment in thought.

“Your mother and I both love you. You know that, don’t you?”

Did Ariel believe it?

Was it true?

He loved her, certainly. And never more than he did tonight.

But Roberta?

He left the bathroom, walked the length of the hallway to the closed door of Caleb’s room.

And remembered.

Roberta at the hospital right after she’d had the baby. They were wheeling her to the recovery room and she was still delirious from the anesthetic. People always said crazy things when they were coming out from under anesthesia. It didn’t necessarily mean anything.

“David? David, there’s something you have to do.” And, when he’d leaned forward to catch her words, she’d whispered, “Get rid of Ariel, okay? We have a real baby now so we don’t need her anymore. Okay? You get rid of her. You take her back where she came from and I’ll bring the real baby home from the hospital. Okay, David?”

It didn’t mean anything. That’s what he told himself now and what he had assured himself at the time. People said crazy things under such conditions, and she was delirious and had no idea what she was saying.

“Your mother and I both love you. You know that, don’t you?”

He stopped to pour a glass of brandy and fill a pipe, then joined Ariel in front of the television set. They were still watching Rhoda when Roberta returned, barely acknowledging their greetings. She brushed past them into the kitchen, set down a bag of groceries, then swept past them to carry the rest of her purchases upstairs. The two of them went on watching television. David was on the point of saying something to Ariel, something about having to understand her mother’s behavior, but he couldn’t find a sentence that would improve the situation. He took a small sip of brandy instead and drew contemplatively on his pipe. It was perhaps ten minutes later that they heard Roberta scream.