the death of the night.
I knew when I put my head on the pillow that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I would mime it for Mimi’s sake, since she was obviously at the end of her rope. I would keep watch over us.
The next second I was asleep.
8
WHEN I AWOKE there was a man standing over me. I drew in my breath to scream.
‘It’s all right, Nickie,’ Cully said urgently. He knelt beside the couch. ‘It’s all right. It’s me.’
After a moment my pulse slowed, my breathing eased. ‘Better in a minute,’ I whispered. We waited.
I could tell by the slant of the sun across the floor that it was afternoon. Cully was wearing blue jeans. I wondered why he didn’t have a suit on, and realized it was Saturday. I felt slovenly in my wrinkled nightgown. I wrapped the light blanket around me as firmly as I could and swung my legs to sit up. My breath whistled in sharply. Movement brought pain. I stared at a dust mote dancing in the air until I had adjusted to this pain.
Cully observed me silently. He sat on the couch beside me. I knew what my face must look like by now; I turned it to him. Directly, deliberately, for once with no artifice, I looked directly into his eyes.
I watched his own face change. I had finally gotten to Cully. The wound healer saw a massive gash in a human being he knew.
I watched him search for something to say. Cully, the articulate psychologist, was struggling for words. I waited, full of unused anger, my eyes fixed on his face.
He’d never been a toucher, by inclination and by training. But when the words didn’t come, he touched me. He searched out a square inch of my face that wasn’t damaged and he kissed it very gently.
I remembered thinking once that I would have to survive a bad car smashup to rate a kiss. Well, I’d done it. I turned from him, ashamed of my anger. It shouldn’t be focused on him, of all people. He was the one man in Knolls I could acquit of being the rapist. No matter what the circumstances, I would have known Cully.
‘Where’s Mimi?’ I asked quietly. It seemed an eerie echo from two months ago.
‘Trying to calm Mother down. They’re in the kitchen.’
I told him bluntly that I didn’t want to see Elaine.
‘I know. We’ll try to keep her out.’ Then he said tentatively, ‘I think I’m going to move in here for a while.’
I felt a vast indifference. During the long night my edifice of pride and independence, my integrity, had collapsed after the voice had come from the darkness. Today another structure, called Cully, had slid to the ground. All the feelings I’d built up around Cully’s image seemed to crumble in the space of five minutes. For the first time in fourteen years he was just Cully, Mimi’s brother, comforting a female he’d known for years, his little sister’s best friend.
Now I was a grown woman with no girl left. No structures at all, and I had to start all over again.
I didn’t know the first thing about the man at my side. And I wondered for a bleak moment if I really knew Mimi. I suspected I didn’t even know myself.
I had no frills left.
At this illuminating and painful moment, Elaine Houghton went out of bounds and swept into the living room, Mimi on her heels with hands outstretched as if she were thinking of physically restraining her mother.
* * * *
Today I looked at Elaine bare. I’d always tended to think of her as a one-dimensional comic-book villainess. Of course, she was human – perhaps not a good mother, but capable of moments of generosity and sympathy. Elaine squatted before me, took one of my hands in hers, and said, ‘Nickie, I’m so sorry this happened to you. It upsets me no end that this has happened to you in our little town, while you’re Mimi’s guest.’ To her credit, she did no more than clench her teeth and swallow hard when she got a close-up of my face.
That’s Elaine, I thought. Really sorry it happened at all, but even sorrier that it happened in Knolls in a family home.
I knew when I put my head on the pillow that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I would mime it for Mimi’s sake, since she was obviously at the end of her rope. I would keep watch over us.
The next second I was asleep.
8
WHEN I AWOKE there was a man standing over me. I drew in my breath to scream.
‘It’s all right, Nickie,’ Cully said urgently. He knelt beside the couch. ‘It’s all right. It’s me.’
After a moment my pulse slowed, my breathing eased. ‘Better in a minute,’ I whispered. We waited.
I could tell by the slant of the sun across the floor that it was afternoon. Cully was wearing blue jeans. I wondered why he didn’t have a suit on, and realized it was Saturday. I felt slovenly in my wrinkled nightgown. I wrapped the light blanket around me as firmly as I could and swung my legs to sit up. My breath whistled in sharply. Movement brought pain. I stared at a dust mote dancing in the air until I had adjusted to this pain.
Cully observed me silently. He sat on the couch beside me. I knew what my face must look like by now; I turned it to him. Directly, deliberately, for once with no artifice, I looked directly into his eyes.
I watched his own face change. I had finally gotten to Cully. The wound healer saw a massive gash in a human being he knew.
I watched him search for something to say. Cully, the articulate psychologist, was struggling for words. I waited, full of unused anger, my eyes fixed on his face.
He’d never been a toucher, by inclination and by training. But when the words didn’t come, he touched me. He searched out a square inch of my face that wasn’t damaged and he kissed it very gently.
I remembered thinking once that I would have to survive a bad car smashup to rate a kiss. Well, I’d done it. I turned from him, ashamed of my anger. It shouldn’t be focused on him, of all people. He was the one man in Knolls I could acquit of being the rapist. No matter what the circumstances, I would have known Cully.
‘Where’s Mimi?’ I asked quietly. It seemed an eerie echo from two months ago.
‘Trying to calm Mother down. They’re in the kitchen.’
I told him bluntly that I didn’t want to see Elaine.
‘I know. We’ll try to keep her out.’ Then he said tentatively, ‘I think I’m going to move in here for a while.’
I felt a vast indifference. During the long night my edifice of pride and independence, my integrity, had collapsed after the voice had come from the darkness. Today another structure, called Cully, had slid to the ground. All the feelings I’d built up around Cully’s image seemed to crumble in the space of five minutes. For the first time in fourteen years he was just Cully, Mimi’s brother, comforting a female he’d known for years, his little sister’s best friend.
Now I was a grown woman with no girl left. No structures at all, and I had to start all over again.
I didn’t know the first thing about the man at my side. And I wondered for a bleak moment if I really knew Mimi. I suspected I didn’t even know myself.
I had no frills left.
At this illuminating and painful moment, Elaine Houghton went out of bounds and swept into the living room, Mimi on her heels with hands outstretched as if she were thinking of physically restraining her mother.
* * * *
Today I looked at Elaine bare. I’d always tended to think of her as a one-dimensional comic-book villainess. Of course, she was human – perhaps not a good mother, but capable of moments of generosity and sympathy. Elaine squatted before me, took one of my hands in hers, and said, ‘Nickie, I’m so sorry this happened to you. It upsets me no end that this has happened to you in our little town, while you’re Mimi’s guest.’ To her credit, she did no more than clench her teeth and swallow hard when she got a close-up of my face.
That’s Elaine, I thought. Really sorry it happened at all, but even sorrier that it happened in Knolls in a family home.
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