I want to know what it says
After dating that unusually complete statement, he flipped pages, looking back through the notebook, reading not the dates but just some of her words.
lambs could not forgive
beef-faced boys
my infant tongue
the authority of his tombstone
Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, prism
season of darkness
it swells forward
one great heave
all flashes away
twenty-three, twenty-three
In her words, Billy could find neither coherence nor a clue to any.
From time to time through the weeks, the months, she smiled faintly. Twice in his experience she had laughed softly.
On other occasions, however, her whispered words disturbed him, sometimes chilled him.
torn, bruised, panting, bleeding
gore and fire
hatchets, knives, bayonets
red in their eyes, their frenzied eyes
These dismaying utterances were not delivered in a tone of distress. They came in the same uninfected murmur with which she spoke less troubling words.
Nevertheless, they concerned Billy. He worried that at the bottom of her coma, she occupied a dark and fearsome place, that she felt trapped and threatened, and alone.
Now her brow furrowed and she spoke again, “The sea…”
When he wrote this down, she gave him more: “What it is…”
The stillness in the room grew more profound, as if countless fathoms of thickening atmosphere pressed all currents from the air, so that her soft voice carried to Billy.
To her lips, her right hand rose as though to feel the texture of her words. “What it is that it keeps on saying.”
This was the most coherent she had been, in coma, and seldom had she said as much in a single visit.
“Barbara?”
“I want to know what it says…the sea.”
She lowered her hand to her breast. The furrows faded from her brow. Her eyes, which as she spoke had roved beneath their lids, grew fixed once more.
Pen poised over paper, Billy waited, but Barbara matched the silence of the room. And the silence deepened, and the stillness, until he felt that he must go or meet a fate similar to that of a prehistoric fly preserved in amber.
She would lie in this hush for hours or for days, or forever.
He kissed her but not on the mouth. That would feel like a violation. Her cheek was soft and cool against his lips.
Three years, ten months, four days, she had been in this coma, into which she had fallen only a month after accepting an engagement ring from Billy.
Billy did not have the isolation that Lanny enjoyed, but he lived on an acre shrouded by alders and deodar cedars, along a lane with few residences.
He didn’t know his neighbors. He might not have known them even if they had lived closer. He was grateful for their disinterest.
The original owner of the house and the architect had evidently negotiated each other into a hybrid structure, half bungalow, half upscale cabin. The lines were those of a bungalow. The cedar siding, silvered by the weather, belonged on a cabin, as did the front porch with rough-hewn posts supporting the roof.
Unlike most bipolar houses, this one appeared cozy. Diamond-pane, beveled-glass windows—pure bungalow—looked bejeweled when the lights were on. In daylight the leaping-deer weather vane on the roof turned with lazy grace even in turbulent scrambles of wind.
The detached garage, which also contained his woodworking shop, stood behind the house.
After Billy parked the Explorer and closed the big door behind it, as he walked across the backyard toward the house, an owl hooted from its perch on the ridge line of the garage roof.
No other owls answered. But Billy thought he heard mice squeak, and he could almost feel them shivering in the shrubbery, yearning for the tall grass beyond the yard.
His mind felt swampy, his thoughts muddy. He paused and took a deep breath, savoring air redolent of the fragrant bark and needles of the deodars. The astringent scent cleared his head.
Clarity proved undesirable. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but now he wanted a beer and a shot.
The stars looked hard. They were bright, too, in the cloudless sky, but the feeling he got from them was hardness.
Neither the back steps nor the floorboards of the porch creaked. He had plenty of time to keep the place in good, tight condition.
After gutting the kitchen, he himself had built the cabinets. They were cherry wood with a dark stain.
He had laid the tile floor: black-granite squares. The granite countertops matched the floor.
Clean and simple. He had intended to do the whole house in that style, but then he had lost his way.
He poured a cold bottle of Guinness stout into a mug, spiked it with bourbon. When he did drink, he wanted punch in both the texture and the taste.
He was making a pastrami sandwich when the phone rang. “Hello?”
The caller did not respond even when Billy said hello again.
Ordinarily, he would have thought the line was dead. Not this evening.
Listening, he fished the typewritten message from his pocket. He unfolded it and smoothed it flat on the black-granite counter.
Hollow as a bell, but a bell without a clapper, the open line carried no fizz of static. Billy couldn’t hear the caller inhale or exhale, as if the guy were dead, and done with breathing.
Whether prankster or killer, the man’s purpose was to taunt, intimidate. Billy didn’t give him the satisfaction of a third hello.
They listened to each other’s silence, as if something could be learned from nothing.
After perhaps a minute, Billy began to wonder if he might be imagining a presence on the far end of the line.
If he was in fact ear-to-ear with the author of the note, hanging up first would be a mistake. His disconnection would be taken as a sign of fear or at least of weakness.
Life had taught him patience. Besides, his self-image included the possibility that he could be fatuous, so he didn’t worry about looking foolish. He waited.
When the caller hung up, the distinct sound of the disconnect proved that he had been there, and then the dial tone.
Before continuing to make his sandwich, Billy walked the four rooms and bath. He lowered the pleated shades over all the windows.
At the dinette table in the kitchen, he ate the sandwich and two dill pickles. He drank a second stout, this time without the added bourbon.
He had no TV. The entertainment shows bored him, and he didn’t need the news.
His thoughts were his only company at dinner. He did not linger over the pastrami sandwich.