Sandy fell into her old way of making Thea her confidante. She talked as if there were no one else she could really talk to, no one else who would quite understand. Thea knew how seductive women with highly developed social skills could be and that it was possible Sandy confided in all her friends this way. But not about Lyle. When Sandy talked about Lyle, her words rushed over Thea as if a long-stoppered bottle's fecund contents, grown too large and squeezed too long into their confined, well-guarded s.p.a.ce, had been suddenly released. Talk like this would pa.s.s around Sandy's social circle like an infectious disease. Thea was certain that it was only her status as an outsider that made her privy to Sandy's intensely private world gone horrendously wrong.

The morning Sandy came over to help Thea with the bookcases there were no workers downstairs at the house. There were two painters in Aunt Althea's old bedroom and a third man replacing rotten wood and ripped screen on the second-floor porch. Zora was also upstairs, running the vacuum cleaner. The motor droned directly above them as Sandy stood in the center of the room that was to be the library. She made a slow pivot as she scanned the room, a forefinger resting at the side of her mouth.

She narrowed her eyes at a corner. "It is a difficult room," she said to Thea, but after more thought, accompanied by pacing and squinting, she came up with an ingenious solution: window seats, cushioned seats that were also cabinets, so the motif of the columns could go all around the room, unbroken except by the doors.

Sandy had other ideas too. She walked to the door of the living room. "The mirror's okay," she said, "but you've got to get rid of that chandelier. You should have pitched it out with those Gone-with-the-Wind curtains." She told Thea she had a catalog of the most marvelous contemporary light fixtures.

Thea was disappointed to hear Sandy say this about the chandelier. She'd gotten up on a ladder and cleaned each of the crystals, nearly two hundred ovals and b.a.l.l.s cut like faceted jewels. She'd shined the bra.s.s structure, taking the better part of two days to do the job, and she'd been pleased with the results, the crystals sparkling and catching the afternoon sun coming through the long, uncovered living room windows, throwing color on the white walls and ceiling until twilight. She thought the chandelier was so beautiful and such a part of the room that it would look good no matter what else was in the room. Now Sandy was saying the chandelier wouldn't do at all.

"I thought you liked the idea of blending the old with the new," Thea said.

"Oh I do, but you have to be very careful about what you keep. The chandelier is so big and fussy, and the room has clean, tailored lines now."

"But I like the chandelier," Thea said, and she had a sudden longing for her memory of the room, with all its fussy furniture and the red velvet curtains like the lining of a womb.

"Oh well, if you like it . . ." Sandy said, but she sounded disappointed with Thea.

Sandy walked farther into the room, her flowered tea-length skirt touching lightly against her legs. The sofa and chairs were off to the side, pushed there so Thea could clean the chandelier. Sandy went to the center of the room and stood under the huge, heavy fixture. She held her arms out, swinging around to face Thea. "Don't you just love it when a room is empty like this?" she asked. She looked around with an expression that approached beatific ecstasy. "So full of potential!" She turned her face upward as if at any moment she would be struck with a vision coming down out of the cut gla.s.s.

It was Thea instead who was struck with the vision: she saw Aunt Althea's furniture back in the room, but reupholstered and refinished, leaving the dark-stained wood and worn red brocade to the past. The second she thought of it, she knew it was right, the right way to fold her memories into her present life, to turn her former childhood palace of pretend into a place where the memories of her future could happen. She was about to suggest to Sandy that they go up to the third floor to look at the furniture, but at that moment the vacuum cleaner went off, and as if deflated, Sandy's arm fell limp to her sides. She said, "Thea, really-" and came back to the doorway where Thea stood "-you should call my architect. He'll do everything for you, design the bookcases, the window seats, do the contracting. He'll show you things you can do with this house you never would have dreamed you could do."

Thea was very aware of the silence upstairs, their voices, so loud in these empty downstairs rooms, carrying up the stairwell straight to Zora and the workers.

"I've already hired a contractor. I thought you knew." Thea pointed upward.

Sandy missed only a beat. "Oh, you did tell me. I forgot."

Thea suggested coffee. As soon as they reached the kitchen Sandy lowered her voice considerably, though no one upstairs could hear them now. "Sorry. I completely forgot you hired Delzora's son. I wish you would have talked to me first."

"I don't need an architect, Sandy. After these bookcases are finished, I want to stop working on the house, settle into it, try to feel that it's mine and not Aunt Althea's."

"I understand," Sandy said, "but you need someone really good to do your library."

Thea was pouring coffee. She put the pot down and asked Sandy, "Is there something wrong with the work that's been done?"

"No, no, of course not, but it's just some painting, floating the walls, hanging shutters-you need a really good finishing carpenter for those bookcases."

Thea handed Sandy a cup of coffee and walked out to the back porch. She turned on the ceiling fan and she and Sandy sat in the wicker rocking chairs, side by side, across a small table with inlaid green tiles.

Thea took a sip of coffee, put her cup on the little table, and said, "Burgess has a good finishing carpenter."

"You've seen his work?"

"No, but-"

Sandy flipped her hand, dismissing whatever else Thea had to say. "The carpenter my architect uses has his work in at least a dozen houses right in this neighborhood. He'll show you."

"And if Burgess and his carpenter never get any work, how will they ever have anything to show?"

"That's their problem, not yours. You should hire the best you can get."

"And what if they're as good as the best?"

Sandy made a face as if Thea were talking utter nonsense. "You won't know, will you, until the job is done and paid for."

"So far, Burgess has gone out of his way to make sure I've been satisfied," Thea said. Sandy indicated with a shrug that this cut nothing with her, so before she could argue anymore Thea told her, "I'm already committed to Burgess anyway."

"Yes, I can see that. Well, just be careful and-"

Thea held up one hand. "Please. You don't need to tell me. Lyle comes over at least twice a week to tell me to be careful."

Sandy's voice rose with exasperation. "I was going to say, don't let them take advantage of you; don't front them any money-it causes them to disappear, like magic. Until they need more."

Thea thought about the saw she'd told Burgess she'd front the money for, not exactly what Sandy was talking about but close enough that she was sure Sandy wouldn't approve. She frowned, annoyed that Sandy and Lyle's approval always seemed to be an issue these days.

Sandy didn't notice her frown; she was frowning herself, staring off toward the gazebo. "Lyle comes over here that much?" she asked.

For a moment Thea feared some sort of accusation of an illicit relationship. "He's just trying to get me to install a burglar alarm," she said. When Sandy didn't react, she added lightly, "Are you sure he's not moonlighting for one of those security companies?"

It was as if Sandy had not heard her. "Has he told you that if you don't get an alarm, Burgess is likely to break in one night and slit your throat, or better, shoot you in the head-execution-style-before he takes everything of value in your house?"

She shot this out rapid-fire. Thea, thrown back into her confusion about Burgess, didn't answer.

The heat in Sandy's eyes died down in the silence, and she suddenly looked horrified. "Oh, Thea, I'm sorry. I didn't mean . . . your parents . . ."

Thea, distracted still, touched Sandy's forearm. "No, no, it's not my parents, not that. It's . . . I can't explain it." It was not her parents' death but something bigger. She did not know how anything could be bigger, but she knew that she was being compelled to look at something and to look hard, and that looking frightened her.

Sandy was crying softly. "I'm becoming as morbid as Lyle is, saying things to you that are terrible to say, the same way he talks in front of the children about terrible things." She stopped to wipe her tears away before her words were rushing again. "He talks in front of the children about the murders he's seen until they can't sleep anymore, then he takes off in his police car, Mr. Tough Policeman," she spat, "and leaves me to deal with their nightmares."

She had been speaking out toward the gazebo but now she turned to Thea. "They're so little, Thea, they don't know what he's talking about when he talks about crack and ghetto violence and little children getting shot with a.s.sault weapons. It just scares them."

She looked intently at Thea, asking for understanding. Thea nodded. Sandy went on. "I asked him the other night please not to talk in front of them." She stopped, biting her lips to keep her crying under some control. "The b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she said with barely controlled rage. "I asked him not to talk in front of those babies, so he stopped talking. He comes in with that horrible scowl on his face just long enough to change his clothes, and he won't talk to me at all. That's how he gets back, the coldest, the meanest-I hate him. I'd divorce him but he'd force the sale of the house. He'd ruin everything we've worked for, everything we've built. He'd tear it all down to nothing without a second thought. Everything would change. I'd have to start all over again."

"That might not be such a terrible thing," Thea said.

Sandy's lower lip trembled. "But I like my house. I want to stay there. Except for the way Lyle is acting, I like my life the way it is. I don't want to lose it."

Sandy cried again, and as Thea tried to comfort her she realized she would not know who Sandy was if Sandy were without her house and her marriage, one as much a possession as the other, together providing an answer to the question, Who is Sandy Hindermann?

Sandy was what she had.

19.

Thea had another night of waking in a sweat, the sheets twisted around her legs, her heart sending vibrations down through the bed. A dream had waked her, a dream that began with the realities of her days and nights. She dreamed of going to sleep, and she slept on the cusp of waking, drifting in and out, never quite certain what was real and what was not.

The dream was real enough at the start, beginning with a man coming to see her about installing a security system, the same man who had come to the house that very day to give her an estimate, but in the dream his eyebrows were arched peculiarly, drawn up nearly to triangles, the eyes underneath them mad, spittle foamed white at the corners of his mouth.

In the dream she was nervous. She wished the man would hurry and finish, but he seemed to be delivering a canned sales pitch, determined not to miss a word. She kept glancing toward the door, and every time she did, the speed of his delivery would slow down and his voice would deepen, as if he were a record being played at slow speed. She wanted him to finish before Burgess arrived. But his words came slower and slower, his eyes got madder and madder, and she began to feel an urgency and a frustration that centered itself in her groin, as if at any moment an o.r.g.a.s.mic explosion would lift her right off the red brocade sofa and send her crashing into the crystal chandelier.

What had actually happened that day was that Burgess and his girlfriend had arrived as the salesman was leaving. As Thea was showing him out, the man remembered a brochure he'd meant to give her and put his briefcase on the hall table to rifle through it. There were some awkward moments, the four of them in the hallway, Burgess introducing Thea to Janine, and Thea not certain whether to introduce them to the salesman or not. If she did, it would prolong his being there and her embarra.s.sment-an irrational feeling that Burgess had caught her doing something wrong. If she didn't, they might feel she was in some way slighting them. In the end she didn't because the salesman snapped his briefcase shut, told her he'd send her the brochure, and departed hastily enough to make Thea think he was uncomfortable too.

It was Burgess, that way he had of always looking amused by whatever was going on around him. It was, Thea decided, another way of being inscrutable, and inscrutable people always had such a commanding presence, drawing people to them, at the same time intimidating them.

"Getting one of them alarms put in, are you?" Burgess had said in front of the salesman. When he said that, his girlfriend smiled a tight, rather contemptuous smile, as if Burgess had said one thing but implied another.

Thea looked from one to the other of them before she said, "I'm thinking about it," but she was thinking this had turned into a ludicrous situation: she'd been scorned by Sandy for hiring Burgess and his not-very-expert men in the first place, frightened by Lyle because she'd even let them in the house, now laughed at by Burgess and his girlfriend for putting in a burglar alarm to keep them out, because it was them, all of them, the alarm was supposed to keep out; it was, after all, them against us.

She offered them tea, but Burgess declined, saying he'd just come by to talk about the bookcase and check on the upstairs work. She gave him money for the saw. He folded it and it disappeared into his pants pocket. Then he and Janine left in the oxi-dized-red pickup truck, the putt-putting of the m.u.f.fler growing louder by the day. A little while later the workers left and the Cadillac came for Delzora.

Yes, it was all ludicrous, nothing more so than Burgess' buying a flashy, souped-up Cadillac so his mother could be chauffeured to her job as a maid while he himself drove a beat-up old truck that needed a new m.u.f.fler.

Her dream was full of these realities given an odd, sinister twist-Burgess and his girlfriend arriving while the salesman, determined, was finishing his slow-speed pitch, the two of them laughing openly at her, though Thea did not think they were at all amused, herself babbling incoherently, trying to be heard over the loud rumbling of the salesman's deep voice, trying to explain to them it was all Lyle's idea, since Bobby had been attacked in front of the house. Janine said, "Burglar alarm won't do much good out there," and she and Burgess laughed some more. Thea kept trying to explain, but she was speaking so fast they could not understand her.

And then there was a leap in the dream to herself asleep in her bedroom, next to the cabinet full of dolls. She dreamed of a deep sleep brutally interrupted by a sudden and insistent shrieking, a sound so loud and intense that it seemed three-dimensional in its ability to grab her body and make her fight to be released, all of her muscles bunched and pulsating against its huge and pervasive force. It was the new burglar alarm going off in the middle of the night. As her eyes snapped open, the gla.s.s of the curio cabinet shattered and the frightened faces of the dolls cracked into spidery black lines from the high pitch of the Gestapo-siren wail of the alarm.

She dreamed that Burgess, Janine, and the salesman being there before was only a dream, but that now she was really awake, wide awake, and someone was either in the house or trying to get in. She must do something: first, get out of bed.

She felt her way across the carpet of her room, her toes digging in, holding on for dear life, and made her way down the stairs-so many stairs, she didn't remember so many flights-the darkness filled with the scream of the alarm, so that if she screamed, no one could hear her.

She groped her way down, down endless flights, cowering, expecting an attack, to the panel where she shut off the alarm. Outside the front door she could see the police already there. She ran to the door and down the walkway in her long white gown, the light from the police cars casting supernatural blue on the street, the houses, and the foliage. She thought she saw Bobby lying under the oak tree, but it was only the light playing tricks.

She ran to the nearest policeman, whose head was bent as he wrote in a small booklet he held in his hand. He stood in the shadows of the big oak so she wasn't sure at first, but yes, it was Lyle. She began to laugh with relief, to tell him how glad she was to see him; she wanted to fall on him, have him hold her.

He cut into her laughter. "We've checked the premises, ma'am." He spoke as if he did not know her, his hard impa.s.sive face showing no recognition of her. "No sign of entry, all doors and windows closed and locked. It is the responsibility of the homeowner to make certain the security system is in proper working order." He tore a page from the booklet and handed it to her. It was a ticket for improper use of a burglar alarm and disturbing the peace.

She started to reach out to him, to say, Lyle, don't you know me, but he turned and went back to his police car, only it was Burgess' customized Cadillac he got into instead. He stuck a blue light on top and he was gone, his siren blaring, his light flashing, the chromed Cadillac streaking off into the night.

The other policemen left too, and the lights went off behind the neighbors' windows. All alone again, Thea walked slowly back to the large foreboding house, gloom settled on it so that it looked for all the world like one of those scary Victorian houses on the covers of the Gothic novels in the supermarkets, and she, like the heroine standing before the house in her thin white gown, was caught between whatever sinister forces were inside the house and the unknown, invisible ones outside. The only thing missing from the picture was a man.

She went back inside, locked the door behind her and started down the hallway. And there, standing in the shadows, waiting for her, was a man.

Was there something familiar about him? The way he held himself? The c.o.c.k of his head? His thinness-or was that just the darkness camouflaging his bulk? She couldn't be sure, the shadows pitching his face into blackness, his features, as long as he stood back, remaining unknown. Her heart pounded wildly. Outside, in the distance, was the putt-putting sound of a bad m.u.f.fler. Thea woke up.

The dream had been so real, and she'd been so certain she was already awake, that she lay in bed thinking the man must be in the room with her. She strained to see into the darkness, a block of ice in her stomach, her skin cooling rapidly without covers over her. She was too afraid to move. She remembered the sound of the m.u.f.fler and wondered if that had been part of the dream or if she'd really heard it. She wanted to get up and look outside but she couldn't.

It took a long time to calm down, to feel that there was no threat in the house. It took until daybreak. And as she lay there Thea tried to understand why she was so frightened so often. She'd never been frightened like this in Ma.s.sachusetts. Of course, there were no ghettos where she'd lived, no housing projects; in fact, hardly any sign of poverty, and hardly any sign of blacks, some students, a few professors, a poet or a musician in town every now and then. It was not the way it was here in New Orleans, people living so close together, their lives intersecting and connecting frequently, more frequently than anyone liked, if they would admit it. Take this neighborhood, so many of the blacks dependent on the whites for jobs and not enough jobs to go around, some of those same whites dependent on the blacks to keep up their huge houses, their lawns and gardens, even their children, and not wanting to give up their easy way of life.

But there was something that reached farther than that, beyond the exteriors of everyone's lives. Thea could hear Sandy referring to them, and alone now, she heard all the fear and hate, the racism, that one word carried. There was no denying the fear, no denying it was real, and easy enough to see how such fear could turn into hate. There was no denying, either, the unjustness of that hate and the basic unfairness of the often vast differences in the way the two races lived, the haves having so much, the have-nots having it always in their faces. No one had been concerned about the people in the Convent and their lives of violence and deprivation and misery. No one had been concerned until they came out, threatening and dangerous in their poverty and need.

Her dream had cleared some of her confusion and left a small crystal of understanding about what she was trying to come to terms with: not only the lives of blacks and whites, but the fates of both races were connected by their dependence upon each other. No matter how either race would try, there could be no separation. What one did affected the other; neither could thrive unless both did. Her parents' death forced her to face the fact that their fates, all their fates, were connected, and that this truth transcended her personal loss.

Yet she was struck by a piercing aloneness, as if these thoughts were more responsible for her aloneness in the world than any death. She got up and pulled back the curtain, letting the first light of day into the room. She found herself wishing Michael were there, but he had not even called, just boxes arriving now and again, no letters, no communication, as if he were the one offended, the one who had been abandoned. She cried thinking about him. But Michael was only another kind of aloneness. She stood at the window and pressed her eyes with the heels of her hands until her tears retreated, catching in her throat.

20.

Thea did not know what she was going to do about getting a security system. She could imagine herself lying awake at night waiting for the alarm to go off, in bed cringing against the antic.i.p.ated blast of noise. On the same morning after her dream, Bobby solved her dilemma. He arrived at the house and surprised her with a dog. He also brought a cat, a canary in a cage, and a Corinthian-style plaster pedestal.

Thea hung the birdcage so that the canary had a view of the trees from one of the living room windows. She put the pedestal on the porch so that when the kitten was old enough to get on top of it, he could jump to it from the backs of the wicker rockers. It seemed unlikely, though, that he would ever use it to escape from the dog: on the afternoon of the first day the kitten curled up against the dog to take a nap. The sight made Thea so happy that her throat got tight and her chest got full. The dog, no longer a puppy but not yet full grown, looked comfortable. When she stretched out she was like a tawny bear rug. She was a mixed golden retriever and Labrador with a rich chestnut coat.

"That dog jus the color of a nice dark roux," Zora said.

So Thea called the dog Roux.

She stayed busy getting the animals adjusted to the house-and the house to the animals-and she forgot for a while how irked she'd been that the carpenters had failed to show up that morning. Neither had Burgess called or come by to tell her why. It had never happened before; nevertheless, all she could hear was Sandy saying, "You front them money, they disappear."

Later that afternoon she asked Zora to help her clear out the last of Aunt Althea's personal belongings from the closet of one of the unused bedrooms upstairs.

Roux followed them up, behind her the kitten, who stopped to mew every couple of steps and had to be coaxed to come along.

As they reached the upstairs hallway, one of the painters, Jared, the one who sang, came out of what had been Aunt Althea's bedroom, paint can in one hand, brush in the other. He saw Roux and froze just outside the doorway. Roux rushed forward, the hair raised on the back of her neck. She stopped about the middle of the hall, planted her front legs, her hind legs ready to spring, and barked fiercely. The kitten, not to be left out of the action, arched its back and hissed. Jared stepped backward, his free arm held out in front of him as if to ward off an attack. He tripped on the threshold and the paint can swung on its wire handle as he jerked his arms upward to maintain his balance. Paint sloshed onto the hardwood floor.

"Roux!" Thea yelled, but Roux rushed forward again, stopping short of stepping in the paint, but barking louder and more insistently.

"Miss, please," Jared said, his voice a plaintive whisper.

Thea moved up beside Roux, telling her it was all right, running her hands over the dog's head and neck. Roux backed off but continued a low growling until she let Thea lead her into the spare bedroom. Thea closed the door behind them and hugged the dog, glad that she'd won Roux's loyalty already but feeling bad about Jared. She went out to the hall. Jared was cleaning up the spilled paint, Zora watching.

"I'm sorry my dog scared you, Jared," she said. His eyes darted up at her and back to the paint spill.

"Liked to scared me to death too," Zora said.

The other painter working with Jared came to the door grinning. "All dogs scare Jared," he told Thea. "They all want to eat im up." He laughed.

Jared turned and said something to him that Thea didn't catch but didn't sound too nice. The other painter didn't stop laughing, but he moved back inside the room.

Thea tried to think of something else to say to apologize. Before she could, Jared said, "I don' like dogs."

"I understand. I'll keep her away from you."

"I'd 'predate that," he said and went to get more clean-up cloths.

Thea and Zora went into the spare bedroom where Roux sat waiting. She jumped up to lick Thea's face.

"Bobby Buchanan done give you a good watchdog," Zora said. Roux jumped on Thea again. Thea patted her and told her to get down. Zora closed the door and said, "Maybe she don't like them black mens."

"No," Thea protested. "That's not it. She knew Jared didn't like her. She knew he was afraid of her too." She didn't know if it was true, nor was it her first concern at the moment. She said, "I wonder if she would have hurt him."