Tales From the Darkside Part 19

"I don't need any help." They are nearing the city; traffic was building up and structures outnumbered trees along the highway. "I'm not afraid, Chris. When I'm gone, every thing will be in the place that was intended for it. At least that's how I feel. I've made my peace."

Wood took his eye off the road. "Dammit, stop!" he blurted. "You're sick but you're going to get better. Just grab on to that thought, all right?"

"That car is stopping," Hall said in measured tones.

Wood glanced back at the road. "Idiot drivers," he said, braking and honking the horn. He looked in the side mirror, saw that the next lane was clear, and swung the car out of danger with a twitch on the steering wheel. The screech of tearing metal said that the car behind them had not done as well.

To his credit, Wood did not cause an accident himself when he saw that his pa.s.senger was gone.

The apartment door opened only moments after he knocked.

"I'm sorry, Elaine," Wood said. "I had him, and I lost him. I was distracted by traffic, and he must have taken that moment to jump out. I couldn't look for him very long, because he was on foot and I had a car back on the highway."

"Find him? Find who? What are you talking about?" she said, kissing him perfunctorily.

The kiss had the emotional impact of a heavyweight's best punch. "Richard, of course." When she showed no recognition or understanding, he added, "Your husband."

"You have a strange sense of humor sometimes," she said stiffly. The phone rang. "Come in and sit; I'll be ready in a few moments."

Wood stared as she disappeared into the kitchen, the folds of her long dress swishing with her precise steps. Then he looked at the rest of the room, seeking some clue that would relieve him of his confusion.

Almost immediately his eye fell on the picture that hung by the front closet. It had been a huge print of Richard and Elaine's wedding picture. Had been. Had been. Now there was a graduation photo of Elaine, and beside it in a second frame, her college diploma. Why had she changed it? Noa"how had she done ita"the diploma she had never earned, because she had married Richard.

Wood felt beside him for a chair and fell back into it.

He held his head in his hands, fighting the pain of accepting the unacceptable. Then he looked back at the photo and diploma, and was confused. It had been a fine graduationa"a beautiful clear day, a wild party at night.

Elaine returned from the kitchen. "Now, will you please explain your joke about Richard? You make me feel like such a dummy sometimes."

Wood looked up at her and frowned. "Richard who?"

Elaine sighed. "I'm not going through that again. Do you have the tickets? I'm ready to go."

Wood patted his pocket absently, as though something had happened that he had missed. "Yes."

That night they enjoyed each other as though it were the first time.

THE SHRINE.

by Pamela Sargent.

Christine heard the childish, high voice giggling out an indistinct sentence; the woman's voice was lower and huskier. She waited. A door squeaked open and then she heard her mother's rapid footsteps on the stairs.

Christine stepped into the hall and peered at the slightly open door.

Her mother had been in Christine's old room again; she had been there last night when Christine first heard the voices and had recognized one as her mother's. She went to the door, pushed it all the way open, and gazed.

Her mother had done no redecorating here, as she had everywhere else.

Christine entered, turning to look at the wall of framed photographs and doc.u.ments above the slightly battered dresser. A young Christine with wavy blond hair and a wide smile stood with a group of other little girls in Brownie uniforms. A thirteen-year-old Christine wore a white dress and held a clarinet; an older Christine, slightly broadshoulder but still slender, grinned up from a pool where she floated with other members of the Mapeno Valley High Aquanettes; a bare-shouldered Christine in a green formal stood at the side of a tall, handsome boy in a white dinner jacket. Her high-school diploma was framed, along with other certificates; another photo showed her parents beaming proudly as they stood behind Christine and her luggage at the t.i.tus County Airport, waiting for the plane that would take their daughter to Wellesley.

There, as far as the room indicated, Christine's life ended. She had lasted less than one year at Wellesley.

She gazed at the top of the dresser, where her high-school yearbook had been opened to her page. A pretty girl with flowing locks smiled up at her.

Matthews, Christine "Onward and Upward!"

National Merit Scholar; National Honor Society, 3,4; Student Council 2,3; Cla.s.s Vice-President, 4; Aquanettes, 3,4; a.s.sistant Editor, Mapeno Valley Clarion, 3,4; Dramatics Club, 3,4; Orchestra, 2,3,4; Le Cercle Francais, 2,3,4; Yearbook Staff, 4.

She closed the yearbook. The room was suddenly oppressive. She was surrounded by past glories; the room, with its embroidered pillows and watercolor paintings, was a shrine to what she had once been.

Her mother could drive to her brother's house, only forty-five minutes away, to view his athletic trophies and his various certificates, but Christine's had remained here. She had been a good daughter, as Charles had been a good son. He was still a good son. Christine had not been a good daughter for a long time.

"Just coffee for me," Christine said as she entered the kitchen. Her mother looked up from the stove.

"Now, Chrissie, you know how important a good breakfast is."

"I never eat breakfast."

"You should."

Christine sat down at the small kitchen table while her mother served the food. "Well," she said, and sipped her coffee.

"Well," Mrs. Matthews replied. She poked her eggs, took a bite of toast, then gazed at her daughter with calm gray eyes. "So it really is over between you and Jim."

"He moved all his stuff out."

"I was sorry to hear it. Maybe if you and JIm had gotten marrieda""

"Oh, Mom, that would have been great. The lawyers would have made everything even worse. I suppose you think a divorce would have been more respectable." Christine caught herself, too late. "I'm sorry."

"I meant that if you had been married, you would have had more of a commitment, and you both might have worked harder to stay together."

Mrs. Matthews lowered her eyes. "Your father and I had almost thirty pretty good years. Maybe we wouldn't have had that much without a strong commitment. We had more than a lot of people have.

Actually, I'm not alonea"I think a third of my friends are divorced. Or widoweda"that's probably worse."

Christine ate part of an egg, then nibbled at some sausage. "You haven't redone my room. You've redone every other room in the house.

Every time I come here, the whole house is different."

"I only do a little once in a while. If you came home more often, you'd see I don't redecorate that much."

"You know I don't have time." Christine's voice was harsh.

"I know, dear. I was only making a point, not an accusation."

Christine sighed, trying to thing of what else to say.

"You never hung up my degree from State."

"I guess I never got around to it."

"You didn't put it up because you expected more from me."

"Now, Chrissie, you know that isn't true. I only wanted you to be happy."

Christine said, "I heard voices last night, in my old room."

Her mother's head shot up; Christine saw fear in her eyes. Mrs. Matthew's once-blond hair was nearly all gray. Her face was thinner, too, the hollows in her cheeks deeper; her long blue housedress deemed looser. One blue-veined hand pushed the plate of sausage and eggs aside; Mrs. Matthews had barely touched her breakfast.

"It was the radio," the older woman said at last. "One of those plays on the public station."

"It didn't sound like the radio. I heard your voice, and someone else's.

A child's."

"It was the radio." Mrs. Matthew's voice was unusually firm.

"Maybe it was." Christine drummed on the tabletop with her fingers, then stood up. "I'm going for a walk."

"I'll clean up here. Your brother jogs now, you know. Three miles a day."

"I don't jog. I only walk."

Colonial houses stood on each side of the winding road. Christine searched the neighborhood for signs of change. Three houses now had solar panels; others had cords of wood stacked in yards under tarpaulins.

A young woman hurried down a driveway, juggling a box and a large purse.

"Toni!" Christine shouted.

"Chris!" The woman opened her car door, threw in the box and the purse, and strode toward Christine.

"G.o.d, I haven't seen you in ages. You haven't changed."

Christine smiled at the lie, grateful that her raincoat hid her heavy thighs. Toni was stockier, her dark hair shorter and frizzed by a permanent. "Mother told me you were back."

Toni hooted. "Back! What a nice way to put it. I guess she must have told you about my divorce."

"She mentioned it."

"My parents have really been great. Mom takes care of Mark when he gets home from school. I have a job at the mall now, with Macy's." Toni glanced at her watch. "How's that guy you're living with."

"We broke up."

"G.o.d, I'm sorry to hear it."

"Don't be. I wasn't." Christine tried to sound hard and rational. "This place looks the same."

"It'll never change. It's stuck in a time warp or something. There's a couple down the street with four kidsa"can you imagine anyone having four kids nowadays? I don't know how they afford it. Mrs.

Feinberg's running a day-care thing in her housea"you can't afford these houses without two incomes.

Maybe a few things have changed." Toni paused.

"How is your mother, by the way?"

"She's all right."

"I don't want to sound nosy. She looks kind of pale to me. She's in your old room a lot."

Christine looked up, started.

"I can't help noticing," Toni went on. "I see the light at night. She's in there almost every day after she comes home."

"She likes to listen to the radio there while she does her sewing."

Christine hoped that she sounded convincing.

Toni looked at her watch again. "Hey, why don't you come over tonight?

We can talk after Mark goes to bed?"

Christine saw two girls standing by a pool, giggling; they would swim through life as they had swum through the blue, chlorinated water. "I can't. We're going to Chuck's for supper."

"Maybe tomorrow."

"Mother has tickets for the symphony. And I'm leaving the day after."

"Well. Next time, maybe."

"Next time."

"See you, Chris."

As she approached her mother's house, Christine looked up at the window of her old room. The window was at the side of the house, overlooking the hedged-in-yard.

A shape moved past the window; a small hand pressed against the pane. A little girl was looking at her through the gla.s.s; her long blond hair curled over her shoulders. The child smiled.

Except for the child's bright, golden hair, thicker and wavier than hers had ever been, she might have been looking at herself as a little girl.

The child continued to smile, then reached for the curtains and pulled them shut.