Lisey’sStory Read online

  And Lisey, who was expecting company in her husband’s study only six hours from now, didn’t have time for it. She took a sip of her largely flavorless drink, wished for a Coke—verboten here because of the caffeine—and set it aside. She looked around to make sure they were alone, then leaned forward and plucked Amanda’s hands out of her lap, trying not to wince at the slimy feel of the salve and the lumpy lines of the healing slashes just beneath. If it hurt Amanda to be held so, she didn’t show it. Her face remained a smooth blank, as if she were sleeping with her eyes open.

  “Amanda,” Lisey said. She tried to make eye-contact with her sister, but it was impossible. “Amanda, listen to me, now. You wanted to help me clean up what Scott left behind, and I need you to help me do that. I need your help.”

  No answer.

  “There’s a bad man. A crazy man. He’s a little like that sonofabitch Cole in Nashville—a lot like him, actually—only I can’t take care of this one on my own. You have to come back from wherever you are and help me.”

  No answer. Amanda stared out at the croquet players. Through the croquet players. The power-mower blatted. The paper cups of bug-juice sat on a patio table that had no corners, in this place corners were as verboten as caffeine.

  “Do you know what I think, Manda-Bunny? I think you’re sitting on one of those stone benches with the rest of the gorked-out goners, staring at the pool. I think Scott saw you there on one of his visits and said to himself, ‘Oh, a cutter. I recognize cutters when I see em because my Dad was a member of the tribe. Hell, I’m a member of the tribe.’ He said to himself, ‘There’s a lady who’s going to take early retirement here, unless somebody puts a spoke in her wheel, so to speak.’ Does that sound about right, Manda?”

  Nothing.

  “I don’t know if he foresaw Jim Dooley, but he foresaw you ending up in Greenlawn, just as sure as shite sticks to a blanket. Do you remember how Dandy used to say that sometimes, Manda? Just as sure as shite sticks to a blanket? And when Good Ma yelled at him, he said shite was like drat, shite wasn’t swearing. Do you remember?”

  More nothing from Amanda. Just a vacant, maddening gape.

  Lisey thought of that cold night with Scott in the guest room, when the wind thundered and the sky burned, and put her mouth close to Amanda’s ear. “If you can hear me, squeeze my hands,” she whispered. “Squeeze just as hard as you can.”

  She waited and the seconds passed. She had almost given up when there came the faintest twitch. It could have been an involuntary muscle spasm or just imagination, but Lisey didn’t think so. She thought that somewhere far away, Amanda heard her sister hollering her name. Hollering her home.

  “All right,” Lisey said. Her heart was pounding so hard she felt it might choke her. “That’s good. That’s a start. I’m going to come get you, Amanda. I’m going to bring you home and you’re going to help me. Do you hear? You have to help me.”

  Lisey closed her eyes and once more tightened her grip on Amanda’s hands, knowing she might be hurting her sister, not caring. Amanda could complain later, when she had a voice to complain with. If she had a voice to complain with. Ah, but the world was made of if, Scott had told her that once.

  Lisey summoned her will and concentration and created the clearest version of the pool she could, seeing the rocky cup in which it lay, seeing the clean white arrowhead of beach with the stone benches stepped above it in mild curves, seeing the break in the rock and the secondary path, something like a throat, that led to the graveyard. She made the water a brilliant blue, sparkling with thousands of sunpoints, she made it the pool at midday, because she’d had her fill of Boo’ya Moon at dusk, thank you very much.

  Now, she thought, and waited for the air to turn and the sounds of Greenlawn to fade. For a moment she thought those sounds did fade, then decided that really was her imagination. She opened her eyes and the patio was still rah-cheer, with Amanda’s cup of bug-juice on the round table; Amanda remained in her deep catatonic placidity, so much breathing wax within her mint-green pajamas, which closed with Velcro because buttons could be swallowed. Amanda with the matching green ribbon in her hair and the oceans in her eyes.

  For a moment Lisey was assailed with terrible doubt. Perhaps the whole thing had been nothing but her madness—all except for Jim Dooley, that was. There were no screwed-up families like the Landons outside of V. C. Andrews novels, and no places like Boo’ya Moon outside of children’s fantasy tales. She had been married to a writer who died, that was all. She had saved him once, but when he got sick in Kentucky eight years later there had been nothing she could do, because you couldn’t swat a microbe with a shovel, could you?

  She began to relax her hold on Amanda’s hands, then tightened it again. Every bit of her strong heart and considerable will rose up in protest. No! It was real! Boo’ya Moon is real! I was there in 1979, before I married him, I went there again in 1996, to find him when he needed finding, to bring him home when he needed bringing, and I was there again this morning. All I have to do is compare how my breast felt after Jim Dooley finished with it to what it feels like now, if I start to doubt. The reason I can’t go—

  “The african,” she murmured. “He said the african was holding us there like an anchor, he didn’t know why. Are you holding us here, Manda? Is some scared, stubborn part of you holding us here? Holding me here?”

  Amanda didn’t answer, but Lisey thought that was exactly what was happening. Part of Amanda wanted Lisey to come get her and bring her back, but there was another part that wanted no rescue. That part really did want to be done with all the dirty world and the dirty world’s problems. That part would be more than happy to continue taking lunch through a tube, and shooting poop into a diaper, and spending warm afternoons out here on the little patio, wearing pajamas with Velcro closures, staring at the green lawns and the croquet players. And what was Manda really looking at?

  The pool.

  The pool in the morning, the pool in the afternoon, the pool at sunset and glimmering by starshine and moonlight, with little trails of vapor rising from its surface like dreams of amnesia.

  Lisey realized her mouth still tasted sweet, as it usually did only first thing in the morning, and thought: That’s from the pool. My prize. My drink. Two sips. One for me and one—

  “One for you,” she said. All at once the next step was so beautifully clear that she wondered why she had wasted so much time. Still holding Amanda by the hands, Lisey leaned forward so that her face was in front of her sister’s. Amanda’s eyes remained unfocused and far-seeing beneath her straight-cut, graying bangs, as if she were looking right through Lisey. Only when Lisey slid her arms up to Amanda’s elbows, first pinning her in place and then putting her mouth against her sister’s mouth, did Amanda’s eyes widen in belated understanding; only then did Amanda struggle, and by then it was too late. Lisey’s mouth flooded with sweetness as her last sip from the pool reversed itself. She used her tongue to force Amanda’s lips open, and as she felt the second mouthful of water she had drunk from the pool flow from her mouth to her sister’s, Lisey saw the pool with a perfect daytime clarity that beggared her previous efforts at concentration and visualization, fierce and driven though they had been. She could smell frangipani and bougainvillea mingled with a deep and somehow sorrowful olive smell that she knew was the daytime aroma of the sweetheart trees. She could feel the packed hot sand beneath her feet, her bare feet because her sneakers hadn’t traveled. Her sneakers hadn’t but she had, she had made it, she had gotten over, she was

  8

  She was back in Boo’ya Moon, standing on the warm packed sand of the beach, this time with a bright sun beating down overhead and making not thousands of points of light on the water but what seemed like millions. Because this water was wider. For a moment Lisey looked at it, fascinated, and at the great old hulk of a sailing ship that floated there. And as she looked at it, she suddenly understood something the revenant in Amanda’s bed had told her.

  What�
�s my prize? Lisey had asked, and the thing—which had somehow seemed to be both Scott and Amanda at the same time—had told her that her prize would be a drink. But when Lisey asked if that meant a Coke or an RC, the thing had said, Be quiet. We want to watch the hollyhocks. Lisey had assumed the thing was talking about flowers. She had forgotten there had been a very different meaning for that word, once upon a time. A magical one.

  That ship out there in all that blue and shining water was what Amanda had meant…for that had been Amanda; Scott would almost surely not have known about that wonderful childhood dreamboat.

  This was no pool she was looking at; this was a harbor where only one ship rode at anchor, a ship made for brave pirate-girls who dared to go seeking treasure (and boyfriends). And their captain? Why, the brave Amanda Debusher, to be sure, for once upon a time, had not yonder sailing ship been Manda’s happiest fantasy? Once upon a time before she had become so outwardly angry and so inwardly afraid?

  Be quiet. We want to watch the Hollyhocks.

  Oh, Amanda, Lisey thought—almost mourned. This was the pool where we all came down to drink, the very cup of imagination, and so of course everyone saw it a little bit differently. This childhood refuge was Amanda’s version. The benches were the same, however, which led Lisey to surmise that they, at least, were bedrock reality. Today she saw twenty or thirty people sitting on them, looking dreamily out at the water, and roughly the same number of shrouded forms. In daylight these latter bore a sickening resemblance to insects wrapped in silk by great spiders.

  She quickly spied Amanda, a dozen or so benches up. Lisey skirted two of the silent gazers and one of the scary shrouded things in order to reach her. She sat down beside her and once more took Manda’s hands, which weren’t cut or even scarred over here. And, as Lisey held them, Amanda’s fingers closed very slowly but definitely upon hers. A queer certainty came to Lisey then. Amanda didn’t need the other sip from the pool Lisey had taken, nor did she need Lisey to coax her down to the water for a healing dip. Amanda did indeed want to come home. A large part of her had been waiting to be rescued like a sleeping princess in a fairy tale…or a brave pirate-girl cast into durance vile. And how many of these other unshrouded ones might be in the same situation? Lisey saw their outwardly calm faces and distant eyes, but that didn’t mean some of them weren’t screaming on the inside for someone to help them find their way back home.

  Lisey, who could only help her sister—maybe—shuddered away from this idea.

  “Amanda,” she said, “we’re going back now, but you have to help.”

  Nothing at first. Then, very faint, very low, as if spoken out of sleep: “Lee-sey? Did you drink…that shitty punch?”

  Lisey laughed in spite of herself. “A little. To be polite. Now look at me.”

  “I can’t. I’m watching the Hollyhocks. I’m going to be a pirate…and sail…” Her voice was fading now. “…the seven seas…treasure…the Cannibal Isles…”

  “That was make-believe,” Lisey said. She hated the harshness she heard in her own voice; it was a little like drawing a sword to kill an infant that lay placidly on the grass, hurting no one. Because wasn’t that what a childhood dream was like? “What you see is just this place’s way of catching you. It’s just…just a bool.”

  Surprising her—surprising her and hurting her, Manda said: “Scott told me you’d try to come. That if I ever needed you, you’d try to come.”

  “When, Manda? When did he tell you that?”

  “He loved it here,” Amanda said, and fetched a deep sigh. “He called it Boolya Mood, or something like that. He said it was easy to love. Too easy.”

  “When, Manda, when did he say that?” Lisey wanted to shake her.

  Amanda appeared to make a tremendous effort…and smiled. “The last time I cut myself. Scott made me come home. He said…you all wanted me.”

  Now so much seemed clear to Lisey. Too late to make any difference, of course, but it was still better to know. And why had he never told his wife? Because he knew that little Lisey was terrified of Boo’ya Moon and the things—one thing in particular—that lived here? Yes. Because he sensed she would find out in time for herself? Again, yes.

  Amanda had once more turned her attention to the ship floating in the harbor that was her version of Scott’s pool. Lisey shook her shoulder. “I need you to help me, Manda. There’s a lunatic who wants to hurt me, and I need you to help me put a spoke in his wheel. I need you to help me now!”

  Amanda turned to look at Lisey with an almost comical expression of wonder on her face. Below them, a woman wearing a caftan and holding a snapshot of a smiling, gap-toothed child in one hand looked back and spoke in slow, drifting remonstrance. “Be…quiet…while…I think of…why…I…did it.”

  “Mind your beeswax, Betty,” Lisey told her briskly, and then turned back to Amanda. She was relieved to see Amanda was still looking at her.

  “Lisey, who…?”

  “A crazy man. One who showed up because of Scott’s damned papers and manuscripts. Only now what he’s interested in is me. He hurt me this morning and he’ll hurt me again if I don’t…if we don’t…” Amanda was turning once more toward the ship riding at anchor in the harbor and Lisey took her head firmly in her hands so they were looking at each other again. “Pay attention, Beanpole.”

  “Don’t call me Bean—”

  “Pay attention and I won’t. You know my car? My BMW?”

  “Yes, but Lisey…”

  Amanda’s eyes were still trying to drift toward the water. Lisey almost turned her head back again, but some instinct told her that was a quick fix at best. If she really meant to get Amanda out of here, she had to do it with her voice, with her will, and ultimately because Amanda wanted to come.

  “Manda, this guy…never mind just hurting, if you don’t help me I think there’s a chance he might kill me.”

  Now Amanda looked at her with amazement and perplexity. “Kill—?”

  “Yes. Yes. I promise I’ll explain everything, but not here. If we stay here long, I’ll end up doing nothing but gawking at the Hollyhocks with you.” Nor did she think this was a lie. She could feel the pull of the thing, how it wanted her to look. If she gave in, twenty years might pass like twenty minutes and at the end of them she and big sissa Manda-Bunny would still be sitting here, waiting to board a pirate ship that always beckoned but never sailed.

  “Will I have to drink any of that shitty punch? Any of that…” Amanda’s brow furrowed as she struggled for memory. Then the lines smoothed out. “Any of that bug-juuuuuice?”

  The childish way she drew the word out surprised Lisey into another laugh, and once more the woman wearing the caftan and holding the photograph looked around. Amanda gladdened Lisey’s heart by giving the woman a haughty Who you lookin at, bitch? stare…and then flipping her the bird.

  “Will I, little Lisey?”

  “No more punch, no more bug-juice, I promise. For now, just think of my car. Do you know the color? Are you sure you remember?”

  “Cream.” Amanda’s lips thinned a little and her face took on its Just A Little Home Truth Whether You Like It Or Not expression. Lisey was absolutely delighted to see it. “I told you when you bought it that no color shows the dirt quicker, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  “Do you remember the bumper-sticker?”

  “A joke about Jesus, I think. Sooner or later some pissed-off Christian is going to key it off. And probably put a few scratches in your finish for good luck.”

  From above them came a man’s voice, heavily disapproving: “If you need to talk. You should go. Somewhere else.”

  Lisey didn’t even bother turning around, let alone shooting him the bird. “The sticker says JESUS LOVES ME, THIS I KNOW, THAT IS WHY I DON’T DRIVE SLOW. I want you to close your eyes now, Amanda, and see my car. See it from the back, so the bumper-sticker’s showing. See it in the shade of a tree. The shade’s moving because it’s breezy. Can you do that?”

  “Ye-e-es…I
think so…” Her eyes cut sideways, taking one final longing glance at the ship in the harbor. “I guess so, if it will keep someone from hurting you…although I don’t see what it can have to do with Scott. He’s been dead over two years now…although…I think he told me something about Good Ma’s yellow afghan, and I think he wanted me to tell you. Of course I never did. I forgot so much about those times…on purpose, I suppose.”

  “What times? What times, Manda?”

  Amanda looked at Lisey as though her baby sister were the stupidest thing going. “All the times I cut myself. After the last time—when I cut my belly-button—we were here.” Amanda put a finger to her cheek, creating a temporary dimple. “It was something about a story. Your story, Lisey’s story. And the afghan. Only he called it the african. Did he say it was a boop? A beep? A boon? Maybe I only dreamed it.”

  This, coming so unexpectedly out of left field, jolted Lisey but did not derail her. If she was going to get Amanda out of here—and herself—it had to be now. “Never mind all that, Manda, just close your eyes and see my car. Every damn detail you can manage. I’ll do the rest.”

  I hope, she thought, and when she saw Amanda close her eyes, she did the same and gripped her sister’s hands tightly. Now she knew why she’d needed to see her car so clearly: so they could return to the visitors’ parking lot rather than to Amanda’s room in what was your basic locked ward.