The Demonologist (14 page)

This one looks nice. Weed-free picnic area, only a few balls of hamburger paper rolling around the overflowing bins. I park in the far corner of the lot and speed-dial.

“You okay?” O’Brien asks when she picks up. The worry in her voice triples my guilt.

“Fine. Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t make it this afternoon.”

“So you understood my code.”

“Oh yeah. That was good, by the way.”

“I’m blushing.”

“I was on my way downtown when . . . I had to change my mind.”

“What happened?”

How to answer that? “I got a sign,” I say.

“A sign. From the heavens sort of sign?”

“Not heaven, no.”

“David, could you please tell me what the hell is going on with you?”

How to answer
that
? How about the truth? The impossible truth I’m halfway to believing but haven’t allowed myself to say aloud or even think to myself until now.

“I think Tess might be alive,” I say.

“Have you heard something? The Italian police—they’ve found her? There’s been a sighting?”

“Not a sighting, no.”

“Oh my God! David! Has she
contacted
you?” At the next thought, O’Brien darkens. “Is it a kidnapping? Does somebody have her?”

Yes, somebody has her.

“Nobody has called me,” I say instead. “The police haven’t found anything. In fact, they’ve more or less given up looking. All they’re waiting for are her remains to show up. They think she’s dead.”

“And you don’t?”

“Part of me knows she must be. But there’s another part that’s starting to think otherwise.”

“Where is she, then?”

“Not in Italy. Not here either.”

“Okay. Pretend I’m holding a map. Where should I look?”

“Good question.”

“You don’t know?”

“No. But I’m feeling something. That she’s alive, but not alive. Waiting for me to find her.”

O’Brien breathes. It’s something like a sigh of relief. Or perhaps it is the breath that signals the summoning of the energy she requires to carry on a session with a friend who is now, with these last words, confirmed to be certifiable.

Yet it turns out to be something else. She is adjusting the direction of her mind so that she can travel along my line of thinking. Not that she’s accepting what I’m saying. She’s just gone into diagnosis mode.

“Are you talking about her spirit?” she starts. “Like a ghost?”

“I don’t think so, no. That would imply she’s already fully gone.”

“Purgatory, then.”

“Something like that.”

“She told you this?”

“I tried to take my life yesterday,” I say, and it comes out simply, matter-of-factly, like I’ve just confessed to having my teeth cleaned.

“Oh, David.”

“It’s okay. Tess stopped me.”

“The memory of her, you mean? You thought of her and couldn’t do it.”

“No.
Tess stopped me
. She threw a photo off the wall to let me know she was there. That I had a job to do.”

“And what job is that?”

“Following signs.”

“How does that work, precisely?”

“There’s nothing precise about it.”

“How does it
imprecisely
work?”

“I think it’s about opening my mind. Using what I know of the world, of myself. All that I’ve studied and taught, all that I’ve read. Thinking and feeling at the same time. Screwing the lid off my imagination so I can see what I’ve trained myself—what we’ve all trained ourselves—not to see.”

“Darkness visible,” she says.

“Maybe. Maybe it’s hell I’m being lured into. But if it is, maybe Tess is there, too.”

O’Brien sighs again. Except this time I know what it is. A shiver.

“You’re scaring me,” she says.

“Which part? The me believing Tess wants me to search for her in the underworld part? Or the me as runaway mental patient part?”

“Can I say both?”

She laughs a little at this. Not because it’s funny, but because she’s just heard some things any sane person would have to laugh at.

“Where are you now?” she asks.

“Pennsylvania. I’m on the road.”

“You think Tess might be there?”

“I’m just driving. Looking for signs that’ll take me closer.”

“And you’re going to find them in Pennsylvania?”

“North Dakota, I’m hoping.”

“What?”

“It’s complicated. I’d feel like a bit of an idiot if I told you.”

“David? The truth? You already sound like a bit of an idiot.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Seriously. I don’t know what to make of all this.”

“I’m crazy.”

“Maybe not entirely crazy. But I have to tell you, you’ve got me worried. Do you hear what you’re saying?”

“Yes. It’s got me pretty goddamn worried, too.”

A pause now. It’s O’Brien readying to go where she has to go.

“David?”

“Yeah.”

“What really happened in Venice?”

“Tess fell,” I say, deciding I’ve said far too much already. “I lost her.”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about what took you there in the first place. Why Tess did what she did. Because you
know,
don’t you? You don’t believe it was suicide.”

“No, I don’t.”

“So tell me.”

I want to. But the story of the Thin Woman and the man in the chair and the voice of the Unnamed is all too much to share. It would risk alienating the fragile link I still have to O’Brien, and I need her to be on my side. And then there’s the matter of her safety. The more she knows, the greater danger I am putting her in.

“I can’t,” I say.

“Why not?”

“I just can’t. Not yet.”

“Fine. But answer me this.”

“Okay.”

O’Brien takes a breath. Slow and rattling. She doesn’t want to ask what’s coming next, but she can’t stand with me if she doesn’t.

“Did you have any part in what happened to Tess?”

“Any part? I don’t understand.”

“Did you
hurt
her, David?”

As stunning as this question is, I immediately see where it’s coming from. My talk about signs and spirits and purgatory may be the result of guilt. O’Brien’s doubtlessly seen it before in her practice. An unbearable conscience that seeks relief through fantasy.

“No. I didn’t hurt her.”

As soon as this is out I’m struck by its not-quite-truthful aspects. Wasn’t I the one who brought the Unnamed back to the hotel from Santa Croce 3627? Wouldn’t Tess be here today if it weren’t for my accepting the Thin Woman’s money? I didn’t harm my daughter. But there’s still guilt.

“Forgive me,” O’Brien says. “But I had to ask, you know? To clear the deck.”

“No apology necessary.”

“This is just a lot to digest.”

“I get that. But O’Brien?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t call the guys in white coats to bring me in. Please. I know how I must sound. But don’t try to stop me.”

This isn’t an easy one for her. I can tell by how long it takes her to
calculate the risks of making such a promise, the responsibility she now carries if something bad were to happen to me. Or, it occurs to me now, if I were to do something bad to someone else.

“Okay,” she says finally. “But you have to call me. Got it?”

“I will.”

She wants to know more, but she doesn’t ask. It gives me a chance to ask about how she’s feeling, what the doctors are saying, if she’s in any discomfort. Other than “a little stiffness in the mornings,” she reports she’s feeling fine.

“And who gives a shit about the doctors?” she says. “They’ve given me enough opiate scripts to entertain a dozen rehab patients for a month. The doctors are done with me. And I’m done with them.”

With O’Brien, I know she’s serious. She will manage her illness and, when the time comes, her death, with defiance and dignity. Yet when speaking about the cancer, buried just beneath the surface of her words, there is a serrated edge of anger, too. Just like me. We’ve both decided to get pissed off at the invisible thieves that have sneaked into our lives.

“I’m going to get back on the road,” I say when I can tell she doesn’t want to linger on the topic any longer.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“Even if you think it’s a mirage.”

“Sometimes mirages turn out to be real. Sometimes there’s water in the desert.”

“I love you, O’Brien.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she says, and hangs up.

I
TRAVEL ON INTO THE IRON BELT OF
P
ENNSYLVANIA, THE INTERSTATE
cozying up to the outskirts of pulp mill and foundry towns, the faded billboards promising them as
A GREAT PLACE TO LIVE!
and suggesting I
STOP ON BY
 . . .
YOU’LL BE GLAD YOU DID!
But I don’t stop. Keep rolling on into early evening, the sun drowsing behind the smokestacks and tree lines.

At one point, a ladybug lands on top of the dash. The windows are
closed, and I hadn’t noticed it before. And yet there it is, staring back at me.

It makes me think—as nearly all things do now—of Tess. A memory that surprises me in its possibilities for rereading. What it says about her. About us. The things she might have been able to see from almost the very beginning, even as I was perfecting my blindness to them.

Once, soon after she’d turned five, Tess asked me to leave the bedside lamp on when I was putting her to bed. Until then, she’d never displayed any fear of the dark. When I asked her about it, she shook her head in you’re-not-getting-it-Dad frustration.

“It’s not the dark I’m afraid of,” she corrected me. “It’s what’s
in
the dark.”

“Okay. What’s in the dark that’s got you scared?”

“Tonight?” She pondered this. Closed her eyes, as though summoning a vision to her mind. Opened them again once she got it. “Tonight, it’s a ladybug.”

Not ghosts. Not the Thing That Lives Under The Bed. Not even spiders or worms.
A ladybug
. I tried to stifle it, but she caught me laughing anyway.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, honey. It’s just . . . ladybugs? They’re so small. They don’t sting. They have those cute little spots.”

Tess looked at me with an intensity that pulled the smile off my face.

“It’s not how a thing
looks
that makes it bad,” she said.

I promised her that, good or bad, there were definitely no ladybugs in the apartment. (It was the middle of winter. Not to mention I’d never seen one the whole time we’d lived there, or anywhere else in Manhattan for that matter.)

“You’re wrong, Daddy.”

“Yeah? How are you so sure of that?”

She pulled the bedsheet up to her chin and turned her eyes to the bedside table. When I followed her line of sight, it led to a single ladybug on its surface. Not there a moment ago.

Thinking it a toy or the dried husk of some long-dead creepy crawler discovered under a rug—and placed there by way of clever sleight of hand on Tess’s part—I leaned closer in to inspect it. With my nose only a couple inches away, it scuttled around to face me. Opened its shell to test its black wings.

“Sometimes, monsters are real,” Tess said, rolling over, leaving me alone with the ladybug staring up at me. “Even if they don’t look like monsters.”

W
HEN THE
M
USTANG STARTS TO BUCK AND
I
GASP AWAKE TO FIND
I’ve drifted onto the gravel shoulder, I figure it’s time to look for a place to spend the night. The next town coming up? Milton. Pop. 6650. Another sign. Or empty coincidence. I’m too tired to decide.

There’s a Hampton Inn just off the highway
(“FREE CNT. BKFST! CBL TV!”)
and I check in, buy a six-pack and a burger and eat in my room, the curtains drawn. Outside, the interstate hums and yawns. Television advertising alive within the walls.

When she was younger, one of the games Tess and I used to play together was Warmer/Colder. She would choose some item in the apartment and whisper it to Diane—her princess hand puppet, the kitchen juicer—and I would have to search for it with only her calls of “Warmer!” and “Colder!” as a guide. Sometimes, the secret item would be herself. And I would shuffle closer to her, hands out, feeling the air like a blind man.
War-mer! Waaaaar-mer! Hotter! RED HOT!
My reward was a giggling hug as I mercilessly tickled my prey.

Now here I am, in Milton, Pennsylvania. Searching in the dark.

“Am I getting warmer?” I ask the room.

The silence brings on a new wave of worry. And a gnawing in my gut unquieted by the double bacon-and-cheese. Missing someone feels like hunger. An insatiable emptiness right at the core of yourself. If I linger here, thinking about her, it will swallow me up.

And I can’t disappear yet.

I grab Tess’s journal from the car. Start from the beginning this time. Much of what she records is what you’d expect. The normalcy
of her observations—the “dippy” boys in her class, the loss of her best friend who moved to Colorado, the at-the-blackboard humiliations of her “onion smelly” math teacher—are a relief to me. The longer her entries remain on this ground, the longer I can entertain the possibility that she was as she appeared. A smart, bookishly aloof girl, defender of fellow nerds, happy in all the ways that matter.

Yet even the recollection of happiness can have a countereffect. Knowing a moment is not only past but never to be spoken of again brings a whole new kind of pain.

I’m probably the only kid in school who likes going to the doctor and the dentist and the guy who checks your eyes. Not because I like dentists or doctors or eye guys. It’s because most of the time when Dad signs me out to do this stuff, we’re actually skipping school.

It started maybe a year or two ago. Dad had to take me to the dentist, and when we were done instead of dropping me back at school we took the rest of the day off and visited the Statue of Liberty. I remember the wind was so strong on the ferry going over that his Mets ball cap with the sweatstain around the edge that drives Mom INSANE blew off his head and dropped into the river. Dad pretended he was about to jump in after it and this lady thought he was really going to do it and
screamed her head off!
After Dad calmed her down he told me only an idiot would jump into the Hudson to get a Mets cap back. “If it was the Rangers? Then maybe . . . ”