Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7
Just another two stops and I would be on Clarendon Drive.
I stared out the window into the evening’s darkness, wrapped. People were walking their dogs. People were coming home late from work. People were jogging. People weren’t worrying about ghosts.
A week after Richie and I had nearly drowned, Richie began to change, and I stopped spending time with him. He took down all of the model planes in his room. He became meaner, more spiteful. In school he often stared out windows for long periods of time. And he never threw clumps of dirt at my window again.
But it wasn’t until a year or so later, that I really understood what had happened, really understood that Richie was gone. The boy I knew as Richie had died in the ocean. Late in 1944, Richie began calling himself Johnny. His mother was hardly in the condition to fight with him, so everyone else humored him and also called him Johnny. By 1947, few remembered that his name should have been Richie. And by 1952, Richie Callahan had moved away to some city in South Carolina and had legally changed his name to Jonathan Shlizback. That was the last I ever heard of him.
Just one more stop till Clarendon Drive.
It took almost two weeks for my feet to fully heal. I told my folks that I had accidentally walked over some broken glass. I’m not sure if they believed me, but they didn’t argue. And I endured my father’s nightly foot-cleansing parties with clenched teeth.
But that wasn’t the worst of it for me. No, not by a long shot. Every day that has passed since I watched the sky blaze from under sheets of ocean, has been a day passed in semi-terror. I have lived under my own scrutiny and inspection. I have been on the lookout. I have been on the lookout for Elizabeth.
Every nasty turn of emotion, every unpleasant blurb of thought, every stomachache, hand cramp, and ingrown toenail I attributed to the evil girl who lived inside me. Yes, there had been one set of footprints leading out those rocks, but why not? Couldn’t she do that just to spite me? Couldn’t Elizabeth, who had set the sky to boom and the sand to boil, put a set of footprints there just to drive me mad before taking control?
It was an eraser that nearly sent me over the top. One morning, while making a grocery list in 1958, I found myself chewing on the eraser tip of the pencil I was using. “Elizabeth,” I yelped. The incident nearly sent me to the loony bin. And it took three weeks for me to realize that even normal people sometimes nibble at erasers.
The thought of Elizabeth kept me from dating until I was twenty-six. The thought of Elizabeth kept me from pursuing any job during a time when women were doing more and more of that. It was Elizabeth who kept me from changing my last name to match my husband’s — the idea of changing my name to anything at all seemed more terrifying than any bodily takeover.
And now it might all have been coming to an end. If the heavens were shining just right, each respective angel singing from his or her respective seat, then I might lay that semi-terror to rest before the night was through.
“13th Street and Clarendon Drive,” the voice over the intercom churned, and I exited the bus.
If my thinking was right, then 21 Clarendon Drive would be right off of 12th Street. It seems that twelve is my apocalyptically unlucky number.
I walked the street slowly, smiling apologetically at each car that roared past. In the absence of a Styrofoam cup to clutch in my hands, I clutched my purse. And my hunch turned out true. The house, number 21, was right on the corner of Clarendon Drive and 12th Street in Beachwood Bay, Virginia.
It looked cozy enough. A Volkswagen Jetta adorned the driveway. There was one big pine tree at each corner of the house. The roofing shingles looked a bit worn. The white siding needed replacing; brick would have been nice. A television flickered in the living room. Its light flashed against the walls the way the lightning had flashed against the ocean so many years gone by.
After about ten minutes of standing out there, gathering myself and clutching my purse, I walked towards the front door. My shoes clopped against the cement hoarsely, almost as if in protest.
And I found the doorbell. It prattled its ring inside, and a lady answered the door.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“Mrs. Morison?”
“Yes?”
“My name is Janie Sallersby. I really just came by to see how little Rebecca was doing.” My hands were trembling awkwardly, still clutching my purse at chest level. I consciously made the effort to drop it to my side.
“I’m sorry, you are?”
“Yes,” I said, “I’m Jane Sallersby. I was just reading the paper from a few years back and saw that she almost had an accident at the beach. I knew those two children who died at the beach when I was twelve years old. I know how tough it can be.” I was rambling, but couldn’t stop myself. “I nearly drowned myself a year later.”
The woman looked me over, and then satisfied herself that I couldn’t be a murderer or psycho. She smiled, “Yes, that was horrible, wasn’t it? What happened to them exactly? I hear that they were jumping off some rocks. Is that right? They were jumping off some rocks and they broke their necks.” Her smile weakened a little. “Please, come in, Ms. Sallersby.”
Rocks? Elizabeth and John had broken their necks? “Oh, no, I couldn’t.” And I meant every word of that.
“All right. Let me get her for you.”
“Well, Mrs. Morison…”
The woman stopped mid-turn. “Yes?”
“How has she been? Nothing strange has been happening?” And suddenly I felt like Richie. I felt like poor little Richie, asking whether or not I believe in ghosts and things like that. I was fighting tears again.
She looked at me a bit oddly again.
“No. Nothing strange.” And now she looked unsure of my trustworthiness. “Why should you ask?”
“She hasn’t started calling herself any names other than Rebecca, has she?”
And now the woman’s smile completely disappeared. “Other than Rebecca? Why in the world would she do that?”
I stuttered, “Well, it’s just that. I don’t know why. But — ”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Sallersby, I’m afraid I’m going to have to close my door now. There’s a draft. I trust that you can show yourself down the driveway?”
And Mrs. Morison was gone.
The tears rolled freely. And I walked slowly, haggardly. My one chance was gone. I had bungled it up. Or maybe she, maybe Elizabeth had bungled –
“Hi there,” came a voice from above me.
I spun around and found a girl in one of the second story windows. Three years ago she would have been twelve years old. Her long brown hair twisted in the breeze. Her eyes were wide and inquisitive. And she was holding something in her left hand, something I couldn’t quite make out.
She looked nothing like Elizabeth. But there was something similar between them. Maybe in the eyes, in those loon-like eyes.
We stared at each other, tears drying on my face. There was measurement, and then recognition in her roomy eyes. She smiled vapidly.
“Didn’t know that, did you? Didn’t know that it wasn’t the storm? Who would have ever thought? — the rocks. Stupid kids.”
I kept staring, not knowing what to say and not wanting to say anything. I just started walking backwards. Turn my back on that thing up there, never again.
“Hell, the whole town thought that the storm killed us. They convinced themselves of it. The storm had broken our necks and washed the life out of us.” The years of spectral solitude had made her talkative. “Crazy, huh? I should know. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”
I kept right on walking. And I realized a very strange thing: already I was mourning. It’s not easy, you know? Here she was. The tormentor of my dreams and the breath of my nightmares. Here she was, not a part of me, but of someone else. Joy and hatred, fear and sadness all swept over me.
“And yes, you’re right, sometimes I like to call myself Liz, or Eliza. Sometimes Beth.” Now she raised the thing in her hand and put it into her mouth, nibbled the tip of it gingerly, still smiling over the eraser. I raised my own hand up to cover my mouth. The joy was gone — I was worried I might scream. “Sometimes… Elizabeth,” she concluded.
I was at the sidewalk. I started sidling along it. And yes, I mourned the loss of Elizabeth. For years she had been my scapegoat. For years she was the one I blamed for every fault. I had no one to blame but myself anymore.
“You’re in an awful hurry. Well, I’ll let you go. Don’t want to keep you. But do come back and visit. I find there are very few people I can be friends with these days. But you might be one of them.” She waved, still smiling wolfishly, pencil back in hand. And she closed the window halfway before sticking her head back out. “I almost forgot to ask,” — her voice dropped into a snarl — “Did this secret within you die?”
Elizabeth chortled in the window, and then was gone.
I walked back to the bus stop, sat down, and sobbed until it came. When I got on, I sobbed some more. And when I got home, I found that the sobbing had just begun. Sometimes sobbing is torrential.
About Tony Dvorak
