success.
She wished Tom would come back.
The telephone tempted her. Maybe a good talk would help. But she had lost her most recent male friend from half-intentional neglect, and the thought of falling back on him now only made her feel trapped. She could count on him to listen, though. Richard. Tall, sweet, sloppy in love. A sexual sentimentalist, capable of waxing talkatively nostalgic about the most private moment of love.
His love might be sticky, but it was also simple, and that she respected.
When his phone didn’t answer, she supposed it was fate and hung up.
Didn’t George ever come home from his lab? Everywhere she looked in this house she saw evidence of more deterioration. She had found newspapers from over a year ago lying beside a chair in the game room. George’s sheets were slick with dirt; she doubted he had changed them since Kate left. There was a stack of Persian Society magazines on the floor of his bedroom with, oddly enough, all the pictures of the cats cut out.
She imagined that she heard his tread, saw his gaunt, haunted figure. She remembered the hate and terror in his voice when he had found the remains of his frog.
George had wept. Afterward, in his misery, he had stared longingly at her. He was full of tormented need. Any young, attractive woman, if she wished, could make him worship her.
Worship. A cold, distancing word. She would rather have passion from a man. But from George, nothing. The idea of being intimate with him made her want to bathe.
Even so, she wouldn’t have minded a nice chat.
An hour passed. Nine o’clock and the old family clock that still dominated the living room chimed eight rusty hours.
The clock had been too massive for her parents to keep when they moved to their trailer retirement in Florida. It told die cycles of the moon on its face, the sickle, the half, the full. They rode a landscape dusted with small blue flowers. Dim within it there could be seen twelve shadowed figures dancing about a thirteenth.
Nine o’clock, Friday, October 18, 1987. The silence that followed the chimes seemed invested with obscure dangers, as if it were there to prove the menace of the house. Mandy thought again of the cat.
A search for him wouldn’t hurt. She went out into the backyard.
Overhead, stars cluttered the racing gaps in the clouds. A sickle moon had risen and rode the quick sky.
Wind swept leaves to running like night smoke from the trees, rustling over eaves and dancing branches against windows. The cat was nowhere to be seen. Mandy drew the collar of her sweater close about her neck and went back to the house.
She locked the porch door behind her. All the windows were locked already; she had done that earlier.
The house was as tight against intrusion as she could make it.
She found herself returning to the mudroom. The ceiling light darkened the windows and made the white walls glare. The mystery of the cat bothered her more in the dark. There was no place in here it could be hiding. Certainly not under me sink, which was the only enclosed space. Even so she checked there, finding a moldering box of Spic & Span and a pile of dirty, dried rags made from old undershirts.
Before the sink was the trapdoor to the cellar. She had not opened it earlier—what point, the cat could not have gone down there. She did not want to be alone here, not with the shadows and the moon clock.
Maybe the trapdoor had been ajar, falling closed as the animal passed. When she pulled the ring, the door came up with oiled ease. From below rose the familiar odor of me basement, unchanged since her girlhood. She peered down into the darkness. There was a click, followed by the faint roar of the furnace starting. Yellow, flickering tight from the firebox reflected off the walls.
“Kitty?”
There was no other sound.
Mandy reached into the dark and felt for a light switch, then remembered that there was only a string at the bottom of the stairs. She began to descend the rough
She wished Tom would come back.
The telephone tempted her. Maybe a good talk would help. But she had lost her most recent male friend from half-intentional neglect, and the thought of falling back on him now only made her feel trapped. She could count on him to listen, though. Richard. Tall, sweet, sloppy in love. A sexual sentimentalist, capable of waxing talkatively nostalgic about the most private moment of love.
His love might be sticky, but it was also simple, and that she respected.
When his phone didn’t answer, she supposed it was fate and hung up.
Didn’t George ever come home from his lab? Everywhere she looked in this house she saw evidence of more deterioration. She had found newspapers from over a year ago lying beside a chair in the game room. George’s sheets were slick with dirt; she doubted he had changed them since Kate left. There was a stack of Persian Society magazines on the floor of his bedroom with, oddly enough, all the pictures of the cats cut out.
She imagined that she heard his tread, saw his gaunt, haunted figure. She remembered the hate and terror in his voice when he had found the remains of his frog.
George had wept. Afterward, in his misery, he had stared longingly at her. He was full of tormented need. Any young, attractive woman, if she wished, could make him worship her.
Worship. A cold, distancing word. She would rather have passion from a man. But from George, nothing. The idea of being intimate with him made her want to bathe.
Even so, she wouldn’t have minded a nice chat.
An hour passed. Nine o’clock and the old family clock that still dominated the living room chimed eight rusty hours.
The clock had been too massive for her parents to keep when they moved to their trailer retirement in Florida. It told die cycles of the moon on its face, the sickle, the half, the full. They rode a landscape dusted with small blue flowers. Dim within it there could be seen twelve shadowed figures dancing about a thirteenth.
Nine o’clock, Friday, October 18, 1987. The silence that followed the chimes seemed invested with obscure dangers, as if it were there to prove the menace of the house. Mandy thought again of the cat.
A search for him wouldn’t hurt. She went out into the backyard.
Overhead, stars cluttered the racing gaps in the clouds. A sickle moon had risen and rode the quick sky.
Wind swept leaves to running like night smoke from the trees, rustling over eaves and dancing branches against windows. The cat was nowhere to be seen. Mandy drew the collar of her sweater close about her neck and went back to the house.
She locked the porch door behind her. All the windows were locked already; she had done that earlier.
The house was as tight against intrusion as she could make it.
She found herself returning to the mudroom. The ceiling light darkened the windows and made the white walls glare. The mystery of the cat bothered her more in the dark. There was no place in here it could be hiding. Certainly not under me sink, which was the only enclosed space. Even so she checked there, finding a moldering box of Spic & Span and a pile of dirty, dried rags made from old undershirts.
Before the sink was the trapdoor to the cellar. She had not opened it earlier—what point, the cat could not have gone down there. She did not want to be alone here, not with the shadows and the moon clock.
Maybe the trapdoor had been ajar, falling closed as the animal passed. When she pulled the ring, the door came up with oiled ease. From below rose the familiar odor of me basement, unchanged since her girlhood. She peered down into the darkness. There was a click, followed by the faint roar of the furnace starting. Yellow, flickering tight from the firebox reflected off the walls.
“Kitty?”
There was no other sound.
Mandy reached into the dark and felt for a light switch, then remembered that there was only a string at the bottom of the stairs. She began to descend the rough
Similar Books
