Stranger With My Face (11 page)

At the landing we found we had just missed the ferry and had over an hour to wait for the next one. Most of that time we sat
in silence. I don’t know what Jeff and Mom were thinking, but in my own mind I was reliving the months since September when
a gawky, red-haired girl had offered me lunch money. Had I ever paid it back? I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t even recall
how much it had been. Had I given her anything in return for her other gifts—her friendship, her understanding, her tireless
willingness to share my problems? “Helen’s best friend,” Mr. Tuttle had called me. He had been mistaken. Helen had been a
friend to me, but I hadn’t been much of one to her.

What had happened last night? There were so many unanswered questions and so few facts to tie them to. Helen had been to the
movies. She had returned home in a taxi. She had gotten out, or so we could assume, and paid the driver—and then what? The
park was kitty-corner to their town house. Why would she have crossed the street to go there? It had been cold, and a wind
had been blowing. There had been no moon. Why cross to the park and run down a path in absolute darkness?

What had Helen been doing there? Would she ever be able to tell me?

Of course,
I assured myself.
Of course she will
.

But I wasn’t sure that I believed it.

On the ferry, Jeff fell asleep. He slid sideways on the seat, and his head came to rest against my shoulder. When we landed
he came abruptly awake, jerking up straight, embarrassed.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“That’s okay,” I said. “You must be exhausted.”

“Why don’t you come home with us for dinner?” Mom asked him.

“No, thanks,” Jeff said. “My dad’ll be wondering what’s happened. Besides, I’m not hungry.” He paused and then added, “Thanks,
anyway.”

“You’re welcome anytime,” Mom told him.

We went back to Cliff House, and Mom made dinner. I sat at the table, listening to the chatter of the children and shoving
food around my plate with a fork. I glanced across at the spot between Neal and Dad where Helen had once sat and tried to
picture her there. “I enjoyed it,” she had told me later. “I’m an only child, and things can get pretty boring around our
house.” Why hadn’t I invited her back?
As soon as she’s well, I will,
I told myself.
I’ll have her out to the island every weekend if she wants to come
.

Loneliness swept over me. Here among the people I loved most, there was someone else I needed.

I lay in bed that night and waited for Lia. I called to her silently, “Come—please, come!” But the room remained empty, and
the only sound was the crash of the surf against the rocks.

Finally, I must have dozed off, because I never actually saw her, but at some point during the night I had a dream.

Lia was in it.

“I’m here,” she told me. “I will always be here. Hold on tight to me, Laurie. I’m your only friend now.”

From then on I slept more peacefully, and when I awoke, the previous day with its painful happenings had become fogged, like
a film over which an oily thumb has been drawn, leaving the picture smudged, distorted and unreal.

December moved forward, leading, as it
inevitably does, to Christmas.

Christmas is an absolute. There is no displacing it. No matter what may have occurred during the year, no matter what changes
have taken place, Christmas stands at the end of it like the final punctuation after a long and rambling sentence.

“It is over,” Christmas tells us. “It is time now to take a deep breath, discard the past and start again.”

I’ve always loved Christmas, every part of it, the sight, the sound, the smell. This year, however, I couldn’t get into it.
Carols slid past my ears unheard. Tinsel glittered unappreciated. The traditional spruce imported by boat from the mainland
and decorated by Megan and Neal with familiar handmade ornaments looked out of place in our living room.

“Take me shopping?” Megan begged me. It was our special ritual, established when she was in kindergarten.

“Not this year,” I started to respond, but then, seeing the bright expectation on her face, I couldn’t disappoint her. We
went into the city after school one afternoon and poked through the department stores while Meg made her selections.

“Everything’s so beautiful, I just can’t decide,” she kept saying.

I made my own purchases quickly and with little sense of pleasure—matching shirts for my parents, a game for Neal, a gray
stuffed seal for Megan’s animal collection, paid for surreptitiously while her back was turned and shoved hurriedly to the
bottom of a shopping bag. I saw an emerald green scarf that would have been perfect for Helen, but I didn’t buy it. I stood
looking at it for a long time before deciding not to.

“It’s pretty,” Meg commented, and I said, “Yes,” and turned away. I couldn’t bring myself to confront God with a deadline.

Each day either Mom or I would call the hospital. There was no new information. Helen’s vital signs continued to be “stable.”
She remained unconscious and in intensive care.

The day before school let out for the holidays, I was called to the office to find Mr. Tuttle there waiting. He was holding
a small box wrapped in silver paper.

“Helen’s mother was going through her things,” he told me. “She found this with your name on it.”

“Oh—please—no!” It was like having somebody slam me hard in the stomach. All the breath went out of me. “I can’t take a present.
Not now. Not with things the way they are.”

“She meant for you to have this, or she wouldn’t have bought it.” Mr. Tuttle thrust the package into my hand. His face looked
tired, and there were lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth that I couldn’t remember having seen there before. “That’s
Helen for you. She always did things early. I never knew her to be late, did you?”

“No,” I said. “No.” I was shaken by his use of the past tense.

“I stopped by the school because I wanted to be sure you got this,” Mr. Tuttle said. “I also wanted to say good-bye. We’re
having Helen transferred to Duke University Hospital in North Carolina. There are doctors there who specialize in head injuries.”

“You’re taking her away?” It had never occurred to me that Helen might be removed from the vicinity. “You’ll be back, though,
won’t you? As soon as she’s better?”

“I think that’s unlikely,” Mr. Tuttle said.

“But you have a job here, and a home!”

“We rent the town house, and one teaching position is pretty much like another.” He shook his head. “We moved here because
we thought it would be good for Helen. We were wrong.”

“Then you’ll be moving back out west?”

“I can’t say now. The first thing is to get Helen the best care we can. We’ll get an apartment near the hospital and see how
things go. The school here has released me from my contract, and Mrs. Tuttle and I can both substitute until we’re in a position
to make further plans.”

I regarded him helplessly. “Will you call or e-mail me to let me know how Helen’s doing?”

“If there’s something definite to report.”

“Do you have my information?” I could tell by his expression that he didn’t.

“I’m not thinking too clearly these days,” he said apologetically. “Everything’s happened so fast.”

I tore a page from my notebook and wrote down my e-mail address and our phone number. Mr. Tuttle folded the paper and stuck it in his pocket, and I couldn’t help wondering if he
would ever think of it again.

“You have a nice Christmas,” he said. “Give my best to your mother. She’s a nice woman. I’m sorry we never had the chance
to get to know each other.”

We said good-bye, and I put the package in my purse and went back to class. At home that evening I transferred it to the closet
shelf where I was storing gifts I’d bought for the family. I couldn’t bring myself to open it. It was strangely comforting,
though, to know that it was there, a final link between Helen and me.

At dinner that night the kids were overflowing with holiday excitement. There had been school parties that afternoon, and
both were so full of sugar that they were more ready to talk than to eat. Mom was half with us. She had been commissioned
by Natalie Coleson’s father to paint a seascape for him to give his wife for Christmas. She’d been working on it since early
morning and was still too caught up to be able to focus on dinner-table conversation.

As often happens with my parents, their moods balanced. Dad had reached a plateau with his new book and was ready to think about other things. He was expounding on his childhood
Christmases, starting with the first he could remember, and had worked his way up to his twelfth (“when I got a book of short
stories by Ray Bradbury”) when the doorbell rang.

Neal went down to answer it. When he came back he looked puzzled.

“It’s Jeff Rankin,” he said. “He wants to talk to Laurie.”

“For heaven’s sake, invite him up,” said Mom, coming out of her fog.

“I did,” Neal told her. “He said he’d rather wait.”

“I’ll go down,” I said. “I was done eating, anyway.” I did not have any great desire to relive my father’s next thirty Christmases.

Jeff was standing in the entrance hall, looking so surly that I almost turned and went upstairs again. He was leaning against
the wall with his hands crammed into the pockets of his parka. His jaw was set, and his eyes held that dark, angry look that
meant he was ready to lash out at somebody.

His greeting was a question.

“Why didn’t you tell me they were moving Helen?”

“I just found out today,” I said. “It seems like you did too.”

“Who told you? Mrs. Tuttle?”

“No, it was Helen’s dad. He came by school at noon. Helen got me a Christmas present back before the accident. Mr. Tuttle brought it over to give to me, and he told me then.” I resented
the accusation in his voice. “I would have told you this afternoon if I’d seen you, but you weren’t on the ferry.”

“I had to stay late for a makeup test.”

“Then what are you mad about? How could you expect me to tell you when you weren’t there to tell?”

“I thought maybe you’d known about it before.” The fury seemed suddenly to go out of him. “Okay, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have
come over. It was just—just—”

“Just what?” I asked more gently.

“Just that I never expected them to take her this way. I never even got to say good-bye.”

“I know.” I paused, trying to think what to say next. “Do you want to come upstairs for a while? We’re finished eating. Dad’s
in one of his storytelling moods tonight.”

“No thanks.” But he made no move to leave.

There was something more wrong here than just his discovery of Helen’s transfer. I couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but I could
feel the vibrations of some concentrated emotion.

“Let’s walk outside,” I suggested.

“It’s cold.”

“It’s always cold. We don’t have to stay out long.”

I didn’t wait for him to answer, but went to the closet and got out my jacket and put it on. When I turned back he was still
standing in the same position. The scars on the right side of his face were mottled and ugly under the glare of the overhead
light. I remembered how he’d looked the first time I’d seen him gunning his motorcycle down Beach Road. One of the summertime
girls had been seated behind him, squealing in excitement, with her arms clasped tightly around his waist. He’d glanced back
at her, laughing, shouting something I couldn’t hear over the roar of the engine.

I wondered how long it had been since the last time he had laughed.

“You’d better tell your parents where you’re going,” he said gruffly. “They’ll want to know to come looking if you don’t come
back.”

“Why wouldn’t I come back?” I asked.

“Your friend Helen didn’t.” He opened the door as though offering me a dare.

“You’re being ridiculous.” I stepped out past him into the night.

Jeff followed me out and pulled the door shut. We stood without speaking while our eyes became adjusted to the dark. Gradually
the world began to grow lighter, and I realized there was a moon, a thin sliver of one, slicing through the edge of a cloud.
The air was clean and cold, and the night was still.

“There wasn’t any moon for Helen,” Jeff said, echoing my thoughts. “It must have been pitch black in that park. Why the hell
would she have gone there?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Nobody does.”

“Her mother’s figured it out, or thinks she has.”

He began to walk, and I fell into step beside him. The path along the side of Cliff House was so familiar that my feet knew
it by heart. It was Jeff who stumbled, and I took his arm to steady him.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“She called me earlier tonight. That’s how I found out about Helen. She said they were getting her out of here, away to a
‘safe place’ where I couldn’t get to her.”

“Mrs. Tuttle said that?!” I exclaimed. “But it’s not true at all! They’re taking Helen to Duke because there are specialists
there who can help her. Mr. Tuttle told me that himself.”

“Mrs. Tuttle thinks I did it,” Jeff continued. “She thinks I was with Helen in the park.”

“She can’t believe that,” I said, outraged. “The cabdriver must have a record of the trips he made that night. He knows whether
he carried one passenger or two. If the facts he gave didn’t fit with your story, the police would have followed up on it.”

“She said she warned Helen about me. She said the moment she saw me she knew I was going to be bad news. ‘But I couldn’t stop
her,’ she said. ‘Helen was sorry for you. She was trying to be kind, and then you attacked her.’”

“Oh, Jeff!” I tightened my hold on his arm, aching for him, wishing that somehow I could absorb the pain. “She didn’t mean
that. She just needs to blame someone. Helen didn’t go out with you for any reason except that she liked you.”

“I shouldn’t have let her go home alone.”

“It made sense. You had no way of knowing she wouldn’t go straight into the house.”

We reached the end of the path. Cliff House stood solidly behind us, a great, dark hulk, and before us lay the rocks and beyond
them the sea. The moon kept playing at the cloud’s edge, sending sparkles of silver to reflect in the pools in the rock hollows,
and the sea made a sighing sound as it moved rhythmically in and out of the mermaids’ caves.

“You don’t go out there anymore, do you?” Jeff asked suddenly.

“Out on those rocks?” I was disconcerted by the abrupt change of subject. “I never have. I told you that.”

“Don’t give me that, Laurie. I saw you there myself.”

“No, you didn’t,” I insisted. “Really.”

“I know what I saw,” Jeff said. “I know what you look like by this time. You were either there in person or using astral projection.”

“What?” I was so startled that I dropped his arm and stepped back to stare at him. The moonlight came from behind him, and
I couldn’t make out his expression. “Why did you say that? What do you know about projection?”

“Nothing personally.” He seemed surprised by my reaction. “Helen used to talk about it sometimes, that’s all.”

“What did she say?” I demanded. “What did she tell you? Why would Helen have talked about something like that with you?”

“Hey, calm down, will you?” Jeff said. “I didn’t mean anything. I was just talking to be talking. It’s an interest of Helen’s,
not mine. I don’t even believe in it.”

“Something had to make you bring it up!”

“I was reading about it today, and the word stuck in my mind. Helen picked up some books about it the night she had her accident.
I ran out of things to read and started leafing through one of them.”

“She bought them the night of the accident?”

“That’s what made us late,” Jeff said. “We were headed for the movie theater when we passed this secondhand store with books
in the window. Helen wanted to go in and look. She said she had a friend who was into that sort of thing. She bought a couple,
and by the time we got to the theater the movie was half over, so we stayed for the next showing. I was carrying the books,
and with all the confusion of finding a cab and everything, I forgot to hand them to her.” He paused. Then realization dawned.
“Oh, I get it now. You must be the ‘friend.’ Do you want me to bring them over?”