The Elementals (13 page)

We sat at Melinda’s small kitchen table; it had a vintage cloth with a map of California on it. She had made poached salmon, salad and baked potatoes but I didn’t want any of it. The thought of fish or other animal protein made my stomach turn. I realized, and not really until then, that I hadn’t eaten any meat since Halloween, since I’d been to the house in the hills. I tried to eat the potato but even that got stuck in my throat, a mealy mass of poison whiteness.

“Can I make you something else?” Melinda asked, but not defensively; I could tell she wasn’t taking it personally.

“I’m sorry. This is lovely. I just don’t eat fish.”

“Are you a vegetarian? Vegan? Raw? I’m sorry. Everyone eats so differently here. You should have told me.” She moved the platter of fish to the other side of her. “Can you eat the salad?”

“Yes, thanks.”

She frowned. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m good, really,” I told her. “It’s just been a little stressful.”

“School can do that. Are your classes okay?”

“Yeah. Except Portman. He thinks I kind of suck.”

“I would guess you aren’t the one who sucks in there.” Melinda grinned. “But seriously, you’re a good writer, Ariel.” I had given her a few things I’d done, including the description of my first Halloween in Berkeley. “Portman can be tough on the ones he thinks have potential.”

I wasn’t so sure about that but I thanked her anyway.

After dinner we went into the living room. There was a statue I recognized as the Chinese goddess of compassion, Quan Yin, surrounded by many photographs of a younger Melinda with an Asian woman. The woman was tiny, with a round, sweet face. Melinda picked up one of the framed pictures and handed it to me.

“Who’s she?” I asked. “She’s so pretty.”

“That’s Annie.” Melinda lowered her voice when she said it. I understood that tone; it was how I would have sounded if someone asked me about a picture of Jeni.

Melinda went on. “When I wasn’t eating much, a few years ago, it had to do with what happened to her.”

Suddenly cold, I reached for my sweatshirt that was draped over the arm of the couch.

“What happened?”

“I’m not telling you this to scare you. I want to bring it up to show you that I’ve been where you are and that things can get better.”

Melinda’s usually dreamy eyes were focused intently on my face. “She was my girlfriend. We were living together as undergrads. She disappeared.”

My mind began to race, trying to put everything together so it made sense. But I sucked at puzzles, I always had, especially when most of the pieces were missing.

“What?”

“It was six years ago now. She was out running and never came home. They questioned her ex. She hated him. But he was cleared.”

“I’m so sorry.” Words were lame sometimes.

“Thank you. It was really hard.” Melinda had that flat tone people use when they’re repeating something shocking for the five-hundredth time but she blinked a film of tears out of her eyes and wiped it away with the back of her hand.

“I became a machine,” she went on. “Did really well in school. I wanted to stop feeling.”

I nodded.

“But it doesn’t work. The only way is to feel it.”

I wanted to tell her about John, Tania and Perry. They were a way I could stop feeling fear and sadness about my mom and Jeni. But I didn’t know how to begin.

“I’m in therapy,” I said, just to get her to stop. “And I have a good support system of friends.”

“I wanted to let you know I’m here if you need me.”

“Do you think there’s a connection? With Jeni?”

She leaned forward as if she were going to touch me but then drew back. “I almost didn’t tell you because of that. I don’t think there’s any connection.”

“Why?”

“It was a long time ago. And when that happened to your friend. To Jeni. I spoke to the police. I do whenever something … happens. They didn’t think there was a link.”

I shook my head. “Everything keeps getting worse.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said. When it came from her mouth or from John’s it didn’t sound empty at all.

When I left, Melinda hugged me. “Be careful getting back.”

But I decided to run instead of taking the bus. I didn’t know if it was safe or not. But I was motivated by the same thing that John and Tania and Perry made me feel, the last thing, the thing it was hard for me to say, even to myself. The desire to escape.

*   *   *

The next day I went to see Officer Liu. I had to wait for almost an hour before he invited me into his office.

“Anne Berman-Chang,” I said as soon as I sat. I had Googled Melinda’s Annie.

He folded his pale fingers under his chin. “Yes?”

“I was wondering if you think there’s a connection.”

“You’re a tenacious young lady.”

“I can’t stop.” I lowered my face; the tears behind my eyes felt boiling hot but it would not help to cry. “I’m sorry.”

He leaned forward. “Listen, I understand how hard this is. But have you ever heard the expression about accepting what you can’t change? This is one of those times.”

“The case is unsolved!” I tried not to scream; it seemed I was always trying not to scream at cops. “Annie’s! Maybe they’re related. Has anyone looked into that?”

He shook his head. “We always check into past incidents. There wasn’t anything. Between you and me”—he leaned closer—“and I do mean that. There was allegedly a boyfriend involved. On the football team. We haven’t been able to pin anything on him but this is an entirely different kind of murder—” He stopped himself, but too late. “Missing-persons case.”

Murder. A chill of nausea spread across the surface of my skin.

His phone rang and I got up and ran to the ladies’ room, where I knelt before the toilet and vomited up what little I’d eaten of Melinda’s dinner.

16. I lay here before and he watched over me

The flowers were strewn across both beds; they were in glass jars on the desks and dressers. Daisies, lilies, dahlias, freesia, jasmine. All white. There were even long-stemmed roses covering the floor. The smell was overpowering; I felt slightly faint.

Lauren came up behind me as I stood in the doorway looking around.

“Oh my god!” she squealed. “Dallas! Thank you so much.”

He was behind her and I stepped inside, trying not to crush rose petals.

“What the fuck,” Dallas said.

Lauren was hugging and kissing him. I began picking stargazer lilies off my bed. The pollen left a sticky, rusty dust on my hands and on the bedspread but I didn’t mind. Why had Dallas put flowers on my side of the room?

“Chill out,” Dallas said, moving her away from him.

“What’s wrong, baby?”

“These aren’t from me.”

They paused for a moment, staring at each other. I kept gathering up the lilies but I could feel Lauren’s evil eye boring through my back.

“Maybe you’ve got some secret admirer or some shit,” Dallas said. The words
secret admirer
brought back the memory of the tampon note. Hooves kicked inside my stomach as Dallas crushed the roses under his feet. I resisted the impulse to stoop down and move them away from him; I didn’t want one petal to be bruised.

Lauren put her hands on her hips. “I have no idea who that would be.”

“Why? Because there are just
so
many guys who want you?” Dallas’s shoulders were up around his ears and a vein in his neck looked ready to explode.

“Maybe they’re for Ariel.” Lauren laughed. But her laugh was as nervous as it was sarcastic.

“Yeah, right.” He turned and walked out. Lauren followed him.

I picked up the phone and dialed my parents.

“Did you send me something?”

Now I didn’t feel ambivalent about them giving me flowers, even if they were the only ones who did; I wanted anything they could give me.

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” my mom said.

“No, it’s okay.”

“We just have been so busy. I didn’t think about it.” She paused. “It’s Valentine’s, isn’t it? We were at the doctor’s all day.”

“Are you okay, Mom?” My mother might not have sent me flowers in her condition, but she never forgot holidays. I reached for a rose and ran my fingers along the smooth stem. Someone had removed all the thorns.

“Oh, yes, everything will be fine. I’m just a little tired. Did you have a nice day? Are you going to do something with your friend tonight?”

I had managed to keep the Bean myth alive all this time but sometimes it caught me off guard when my mom brought her up because it made me think of John. “Oh, yeah. No. I’m just going to go to bed soon.”

“But you got a present from someone?” she asked.

“Well, there were these flowers in the dorm room but I think they’re for Lauren.”

She was quiet for a moment. “We used to give you flowers all the time. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Mom. Stop. You have other things to think about.”

“But you’re my valentine,” she said. “I love you, sweetheart.” Her voice sounded pale.

“I love you, too. I’m going to get ready for bed now.”

We said good night and the click of the phone echoed down through my body as if I were hollow.

I gathered up all the roses that weren’t in water and put them in the vases with the other ones. The scent of the flowers filling my head made me dizzy. I could taste them on my tongue. Suddenly, as I was putting the last ones in water and sweeping up some stray leaves, I felt it. The crushing mass that I’d been carrying in my chest breaking up into shards. I put a hand to my heart and slumped down on the floor with my back against the bed.

My mom had said she’d been at the doctor all day and that everything
would
be fine. That wasn’t how she usually talked. Nothing was fine.

The thought of being alone in the room, even with all the flowers for company, made me want to run. I took one white rosebud that had broken off and tucked it inside my shirt, in the lace trim of my bra. Then I locked the door behind me and fled downstairs into the night.

*   *   *

The atmosphere around the house in the hills was charged, almost ionized for me in some way. The air felt different, alive on my skin as I walked up the path, and a bluish mist seemed to gather in the trees. It was John Graves who answered the door. He was unshaven, a scratchy-looking dark stubble on his cheeks and chin, and his lids were puffy, with shadows under his eyes. No glasses this time. He wore a white pleated tuxedo shirt and black jeans. There were tiny rhinestone buttons on the shirt and my eyes fixed on the bright dots to avoid his gaze. One button was missing and I could see his chest. I reached inside my bra and pulled out the rosebud.

“Greetings,” he said, his eyes lingering for a discreet moment on my breasts.

I gave him the flower and waited.

“Come in,” was his only answer to my unspoken question.

The house felt even more current-filled than the garden; the air seemed to vibrate. There was a large bouquet of white lilies and roses in a glass vase on the table.

“So you got them,” he finally said.

“They were from you?” I looked into his eyes for the first time since I’d gotten there. He smiled a small, nervous smile and nodded.

“Thank you. They’re beautiful.” I looked around the room, wondering where Tania and Perry were, if they’d pop out at any moment.

John was watching me carefully from a few feet away. Then he came forward, reached out suddenly and grabbed my hand. “Come upstairs,” he said. His voice was a rumble.

I let him lead me. I wanted the sharp feeling in my chest to go away. I wanted him to make it go away.

Even as I followed John up the stairs I told myself that I should be doing something else, be back in L.A. spying on Kragen, talking to the cops, tracking down people who had been on the trip with Jeni. But it was pathetic. What did I think I was? Some kind of amateur sleuth trying to investigate what had happened? If so, I had failed miserably so far.

His room was a low-ceilinged sunporch. Leaves hung over it, casting shadows through the glass panes, branches tapping lightly as if they wanted to get in. Light from many candles shimmered into the illusion of more candles reflected in the glass. We sat on a futon. There was no other furniture except a low lacquered chest with dark flowers painted on it and hundreds of drawers fitted with silver rings.

“You look so sad,” John said.

I lowered my eyes. All I could think about was being in my dorm room surrounded by white flowers and my mom’s voice on the phone, fading from me like a ghost.

I had almost never been away from her, even overnight, for seventeen years unless I was at Jeni’s. Once I had tried to go to sleepaway camp but I had cried so much, paralyzed with loneliness in the dark, that my parents came and got me after two days.

“May I show you something?” He spoke softly and moved closer, turning so that I could have collapsed against his chest if I let myself. My spine felt weak; I wanted to sink into him.

He poured a glass of water from a pitcher and held it up to the light, turned it slightly. Clear. Then he pulled a blue silk scarf out of his breast pocket and draped it over the goblet. I sat mesmerized by his hands, his eyes half-closed with concentration. When he removed the cloth red crystals, like pieces of ruby, sparkled at the base of the glass. He passed his hand across it and the glass was filled with red liquid. He handed it to me.

It smelled like poppies, growing wild on a summer hill. A cold version of the winter brew. I took a sip and every sinew of my being loosened right away.

“How did you do that?” I asked. This time I wasn’t drunk or high yet; I was sure I’d seen the water transform.

“Tania showed me some tricks. She’s been studying magic since she was little. Her stepfather taught her.”

“Lucky.”

“Not really,” he said. “There was a price.”

I remembered Tania’s question about sexual abuse.
My stepfather.

“What happened to her?” I asked.

“What happens to every kid who’s abused, I guess, in one way or another. He lured her in until she trusted him. In this case he used magic tricks. She was just a kid. And then he messed with her.”