The Remains (8 page)

Michael closed his laptop and sat back in his
chair.

“Explanation.”

I put myself back beside the ‘See’ painting.
“This happened.”

Stealing another sip of beer, Michael got up
from his desk. He approached the painting with squinty, focused
eyes, the fingers on his right hand smoothing out his mustache.
After a time, he nodded, cocked his head toward one shoulder, then
the other as if to carefully choose his words.

“This is what I see,” he said. “I see
Franny’s version of a rural landscape.” He tossed me a glance. “But
I’m guessing you’re seeing something inside the landscape that I’m
not.”

I took another drink and bit my bottom
lip.

“Yes,” I said. “And no.”

“Which is it, Bec?”

I gazed down at the painting, used extended
index finger to point to a specific area of tall grass that
appeared to be swaying in the wind.

“There’s a word in there,” I said. “See…
S-e-e.”

He stood back as though to gain a different
perspective. It was not unlike the way someone might look at their
own image in a funhouse mirror. He dug into his pocket for his
Chapstick. He uncapped it, ran it across his lips, capped it back
up and returned it to his pocket.

“Ah, don’t you think you’re stretching it a
little?”

He thought I was bonkers. No two ways about
it.

I started to cry.

Setting the ‘See’ canvas back down against
the ‘Listen’ canvas, I stormed into the kitchen, pulled a paper
towel off the rack, dried my eyes, and blew my nose.

I heard
Michael doing something out in the living room.
Was he looking at the ‘See’
painting?
I could only
guess that it had to be the case.

After about a minute, he met me in the
kitchen and placed his now empty beer bottle in the sink. He stood
over me, looking me in the eye.

“In the tall grass,” he said. “The rays of
sunshine, burning patterns into the grass. You look close enough,
you make out the word ‘See.’ It’s not completely obvious, but it’s
there.”

I felt a spark of hope. But then, maybe he
was just playing along with me. Making me feel better.

“No kidding,” he said. “You have a keen eye.
That’s your job after all. I see it. More than I saw the word
‘Listen’ yesterday.”

He leaned into me, wrapping his arms around
me. First time in a long time.

“You’re not nuts,” he said. “But…”

It was one of those ominous dangling
‘Buts.’

“But what?”

He released me and looked into my wet
face.

“We’re not married anymore, but I still love
you. Because I love you and still want to be near you, I also know
you’ve been holding out on me.” He crossed his arms over his chest,
brown eyes peering down at the floor. “Truth is Bec, I’ve sensed
for a long time that you’ve been holding out on me.”

Drying my
eyes again, I bit down on my bottom lip.
Oh God Mol, what do I do
now?

I wanted her to talk to me, send me a sign,
let me know it was okay if I revealed the secret to Michael. For a
second or two I waited for my cell phone to chime. But that was
stupid. There would be no text messages from heaven. The decision
to tell Michael everything would have to come from me and me alone.
It had been thirty years since the assault on Molly and me. Thirty
years that I—we—had held onto a secret that by now had bored a hole
in my heart. Now that secret was consuming me with paranoia, making
me nuts.

Molly was gone now.

So were my mother and father.

Who would it hurt if I spilled everything to
someone I trusted?

No one.

Not a soul other than those who had already
vanished from my life.

My decision made, I looked up at my
ex-husband and gave him a glare that might have melted those brown
eyes if only they were made of ice.

“You’d better plan on staying for dinner
tonight.”

A HALF-HOUR PASSED. Or had it been half the
night? Only when I had nothing more to reveal did I realize that
Michael hadn’t touched his beer. It occurred to me that I hadn’t
touched mine either.

Michael’s face wasn’t pale. It had turned
bed-sheet white.

We occupied the living room, him seated on
the Providence College desk chair, me on the arm of the couch.
Barely three feet separated us. He pressed open hands against his
face, rubbed them up and down over stubble and white skin as though
it better helped him absorb the truths about myself, Molly and a
dead man named Joseph William Whalen. I knew then that he was
trying to hide the fact that he was wiping away tears.

“You never told me,” he whispered. “All the
years, months we were together. The three years we were married.
You never said a single word about it.”

For an instant I thought he might try and
hold me. Comfort me. But I was glad somehow when he didn’t. Instead
he fisted his now warm bottle of beer, drank the whole thing down
in one swift chug.

“What exactly do Franny’s paintings have to
do with Whalen’s attack on you and your sister?”

I stood up from the armrest. I went to the
paintings, repositioned them side by side against the bookcase so
that they could be viewed together beneath the light from the
stand-up lamp.

“At first I didn’t make the connection. It
just seemed strange to me that I could clearly see the word
‘Listen’ in the center of the first canvas and other people—even
Robyn—had to be coaxed into seeing it.”

“But the design is an abstract Pollack sort
of thing.” He wiped his eyes again.

“Not abstract enough for me to see through
the abstraction,” I explained.

Michael perked up his eyebrows. “In the same
way a colorblind person can pick out certain words in a pattern
that a person without colorblindness cannot,” he suggested. “Or
vice-versa. Are you colorblind, Rebecca?”

I shook my head.

“Not that I’m aware of. But then I don’t
think what’s happening has anything to do with colors and how
they’re put together to make an image.”

“So what do you think?”

I swallowed a deep breath, exhaled it.

“I think Francis Scaramuzzi is trying to
connect directly with my mind.”

IT WAS A BOLD statement, admittedly. And I’m
not sure Michael knew how to react to it. He stood stone stiff,
eyes wide open, unblinking. He’d gone silent.

“Let me get this straight. You think an
autistic guy like Franny is trying to send you subliminal messages
through his work.”

“Except there’s nothing sublime about them. I
can read them just like I can read a stop sign. Even you can read
them when pushed.”

“Let me ask you a question,” he jumped in.
“When was the last time you had a conversation with Franny that
lasted more than a few sentences?”

“That would be never.”

“But he has the ability to paint secret
messages or at least words inside his design of his paintings.”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? Is Franny
purposely putting words into those scenes? And if he is, how can he
be sure I’ll recognize them?”

Michael cocked his head.

“Maybe it’s something he feels compelled to
do. You know, like instinct.”

I grabbed my beer and, like Michael before
me, took a very long drink. Wiping my mouth with the back of my
hand, I said, “This is what I believe: come Friday it’ll be thirty
years since Molly and I were abducted. Maybe thirty years bears
some larger significance than say, twenty-nine years for
instance.”

“Why?”

“Because for weeks now I’ve been having these
vivid dreams about Molly, Whalen, the attack in the woods, the
events leading up to it.”

“Vivid dreams.” Michael nodded. I got the
feeling I was losing him.

“Yes, vivid dreams. And I also think that
somehow Franny, despite his autism, has somehow found a way to turn
his emotional disconnectedness around. Whether he’s aware of it or
not.”

“So what are you saying, Bec?”

“I guess what I’m saying is that Franny knows
something I don’t. He’s somehow perceived something. The future
maybe. Now the only way he can warn me about it is through these
paintings.”

Michael shook his head.

“Franny has a sixth sense?” Yet another
question.

“From what little I know about savants, I
know that they use their brains differently than you and me.
They’re able to tap far deeper into certain wells of talent and yet
not at all in others. Thus his unusually gifted talent for
painting, for creating images, for putting together colors.”

Retrieving his empty beer bottle, Michael
went back into the kitchen. He got a Pepsi, popped the top, and
came back out into the living room with it. The difference between
the new Michael and the old Michael was that now he could stop
drinking after one beer.

Scratching his head, he said, “How can you be sure about
any of this, Bec? Sounds like science fiction to me.
Isaac Asimov
Magazine
.”

I pointed to the first painting on the left.
“Listen.”

“Only a few hours after he gave me this
painting, I dreamed of a field with a thick wood on its far side.
Molly was walking ahead of me, leading us into the woods that my
father forbade us to enter.”

“That’s no dream,” Michael said. “That really
happened.”

“I was woken up from that dream to the sound
of my cell phone ringing. I also thought I heard a voice.”

“Now you’re scaring me.”

“It was his voice. I swear it was Whalen’s
voice.”

“Do you remember Whalen’s voice?”

I shook my head.

“No. But I knew it belonged to him.”

“You must have been dreaming. He’s dead after
all. Isn’t he?”

“Yeah, I was dreaming. But my eyes were open.
I couldn’t move. I felt like I was glued to the bed.”

Now pointing his index finger at me to
further stress his point, he said, “But that doesn’t mean you
weren’t dreaming?”

“I agree. It’s not unusual to have your eyes
open and be caught up in a dream state.”

“So who was calling you at that hour?”

“In the morning I checked the phone. There
was no record of anyone having called.”

Michael smiled. But I knew he wasn’t happy
about anything. “Then it all must have been a bad dream.”

“True, but…” My voice trailed off, as if it
had a mind of its own.

“But what, Bec?”

“
Then
this afternoon Franny gives me another painting. This one matches
precisely the scene of my dream—the landscape—almost precisely. He
calls it ‘See’ of all things as if he wants me to
see
what’s about to
happen.”

“Yesterday he wanted you to listen. The
squiggly Sharpie lines. Maybe they represent sound waves.” He said
it half joking, half serious.

I
giggled. But it was a nervous giggle.
Sound Waves… Listen…
Michael had a point. He crossed
his arms, rolled his eyes. I was freaking him out.

“What else, Bec?” he pushed. “I know you’re
not done.”

“And tonight, in the parking garage as I was
heading for home, I saw the shadow of a man.”

“Becca.”

I wasn’t talking now so much as ranting.
Michael was staring at me, shaking his head. Not like he didn’t
believe me. More like things were moving too fast for him.

My lungs were working overtime, my heart was
pounding and there was a buzzing inside my skull.

“There’s one more thing,” I said. “Over the
past few months I’ve received more than a few odd texts.”

“How odd?”

“Some contained only my name. Rebecca. More
recently I started getting the word, ‘remember.’”

“Who forwarded them?”

“When I try to find out the sender’s
information, all I get is ‘Unknown Caller.’”

“Then whoever is doing this knows how to
block it. Did you know that if we had a number, we could
cross-reference it on the web for a home address?”

I told him I had no idea. But then, what
difference did it make? At least Michael knew everything now. At
least I had finally been able to free the secret.

Silence draped over us for what seemed
forever. Until my ex-husband escaped into the bathroom and washed
his face. When he returned to the living room, some of the color
had returned to his cheeks.

“I thought you told me Whalen was dead?” he
said. “Isn’t that exactly what you told me a few minutes ago when
you revealed the secret?”

“
I’ve
always
assumed
he was
dead. That he died an old man in prison.”

“So Whalen didn’t just disappear,” he posed.
“He was arrested and put in lock up?”

“Arrested and convicted in the abduction and
attempted rape of an Albany woman if I remember correctly. Happened
not six months after his attack on me and my twin sister. They put
him away forever. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. When
you’re twelve years old, thirty years sounds like a lifetime. Or in
this case, a death sentence.”

Michael exhaled and once more crossed his
arms.

“It’s been thirty years, Rebecca,” he said.
“The lifetime is over, death sentence commuted.”

I felt a brick lodge itself in my stomach.
The brick turned into nausea.

“You think it’s possible Whalen has been
released from prison?” I said, voice trembling. “Michael, do you
believe he could be alive? That maybe he’s stalking me? Texting me?
Do you think Franny’s hyper-sensitive brain has somehow picked up
on it, and the only way he knows how to warn me is through his
paintings?”

He never said a word. Because just like
Franny, I believe he already knew the answer.