Audrey's Door Part 21

"Julian?" she asked again, though she knew it was impossible. Still, it might be the past calling, and this was his death rattle. She could right the wrong, and hear it now and console him, like she should have done then.

Sniffles. "Puh-" The voice said. It sounded feminine, and was followed by panting.

"Who is this?" she asked while Tom switched on the light. Their room was awash with funereal white flowers that smelled worse with each day they ripened. Rancid sugar air.

"Huh, huh, huh," someone-it sounded like a woman-half breathed, half cried over the line.

"Who is this? Tell me who you are!" Jill said.

"Help me," the woman begged. Then the line went dead.

Jill's stomach turned. Something urgent. Something terrible. Her own self, perhaps, calling her from a parallel future, to warn her of what was to come. Only it was too late. Her son was dead. She got up fast and started down the hall to check on the rest of them.

She and Tom had bought the apartment with his trust fund back in the late nineties. Seven thousand square feet in a doorman building in the East Seventies. A long hall connected all the rooms. Up until yesterday, the place had been crammed with relatives. She missed their clutter and hushed voices. The way they cooked and doled out hugs that did not comfort but at least distracted. But Tom's parents had caught a car back to Greenwich, Connecticut, last night, and for the first time since Julian's death, her shrunken family was alone with its grief.

She went to Xavier's room first, and sprung open the door without knocking. One hand clutched a Hustler, Hustler, the other lay hidden beneath the covers. A freshman at New York University, he hadn't been ready to leave the nest and live in a dorm. She'd hoped college would bring friends, or unearth a latent talent, but so far, no dice. His bare chest was hairless and pale. Something about its softness seemed unformed. There was a vacancy behind his eyes. She liked to think he was ditzy, but she suspected it was more than that. His mind traveled to solitary, unfathomable places. No matter how many presents or hugs he got, he was always convinced that the world had done him wrong. the other lay hidden beneath the covers. A freshman at New York University, he hadn't been ready to leave the nest and live in a dorm. She'd hoped college would bring friends, or unearth a latent talent, but so far, no dice. His bare chest was hairless and pale. Something about its softness seemed unformed. There was a vacancy behind his eyes. She liked to think he was ditzy, but she suspected it was more than that. His mind traveled to solitary, unfathomable places. No matter how many presents or hugs he got, he was always convinced that the world had done him wrong.

She'd been so busy with Julian that it had only occurred to her at the funeral, when Xavier had sat away from the family and off to himself, that there was more wrong with him than spoiled-kid syndrome. "Why isn't Mercedes coming to clean today?" he asked after the burial, his affect flat as the oil in a level. "I needed somebody to vacuum my room."

Now, in his own world as usual, he pumped under the covers without seeing her. Even in this, his movements were clinical. Though he held the magazine, she did not imagine he was thinking about the black woman with bright pink nipples on the cover, or even of a boy. Nothing so human as that. Just an itch to be scratched. She shut the door and moved on, hating herself as she thought it, but thinking it nonetheless: Why Julian? Why not Xavier? Why Julian? Why not Xavier?

Next, Clemson's room. She found him sleeping soundly. He'd come home from his last year at Harvard for the funeral, and would be leave again in a few days. You'd think he'd have gotten c.o.c.ky with those smarts and looks, but no. Like Tom, he made a point of putting people at ease. Less like Tom, he always had to win, be it lacrosse, grades, or squiring the best-looking girl to the University Club. If she had any complaints, it was that he was too perfect. People like that, you always wonder what lies beneath. Probably, they wonder, too.

Farther down the hall. She didn't turn on the light, and instead felt her way with her hands through the dark. Last year, when her parents had visited from Dayton during Julian's first round of chemo, her father had asked, "What does the mortgage on this place set you back a month? Forty grand? You know, there's kids starving in Africa." Then he'd looked her up and down like she wasn't his daughter, but a stranger, and said something she still hadn't forgiven. "There's kids with cancer. Leukemia. You sell this place for something half the size and donate the difference to charity, you could save some lives. Maybe start going to church again and say a prayer to St. Jude, and you could save his his life." life."

"Shut your fat mouth before I shut it for you," Jill's mother had answered, but by then, Jill was already in tears. Not a day had gone by since, that she hadn't remembered those words and wondered if they were true.

Finally, she checked on Markus. He'd moved into Julian's bedroom after the diagnosis, to keep him company. They'd slept in narrow beds separated by a night table like an old married couple, and after only a few weeks, had been finis.h.i.+ng each other's sentences. Irish twins separated by ten months. Markus had been the most present during Julian's illness, and perhaps the only one to understand how much that time had mattered. But the end stages had wrecked him. In sympathy with Julian, or maybe in grief, Markus, too, had lost so much weight that his ribs protruded. He'd even shaved his head. In a matter of months, both boys had shrunken inside their skins like mirror-image ghosts.

She opened the door and saw that Markus was not alone. He'd sneaked his boyfriend Charles through the service entrance. In sleep, they were pressed together like spoons in the far bed. She sighed.

She might have found Charles more palatable, were he not so limp-wristed and fey. So easy to bully, with simply a frown. The boy was a runaway that Markus had met in Times Square. His parents had disowned him at fifteen, and he would have become a street walker if Markus hadn't helped him get a job waiting tables. He lived with a bunch of kids in a studio apartment in the Bronx now, didn't go to school, and dyed his hair platinum blonde. A white cotton sheet concealed their nakedness.

She cleared her throat. Dead brother or no, if she'd done something like this back in Dayton, her mother would have made her pick her own switch, then s.h.i.+pped her to a convent. It occurred to her that she had erred. Nurses, nannies, the house in Amagansett, private schools, then the Ivy League. The b.o.o.b lift last year that'd had nothing to do with back pain. The constant diets that left the refrigerator bare: four (now three) growing boys, and not a single sandwich fixing. Her job at Vesuvius, which provided her the excuse to neglect her family, when she should instead have quit as soon as she'd gotten pregnant and raised them right.

If she'd been around more often, Xavier might not have gotten lost in the shuffle. Clemson wouldn't be so smug. Markus might have learned affection for the fairer s.e.x. Tom might not have cheated with his secretary, and almost lost his job after that s.e.xual hara.s.sment suit that had cost the company millions. The things she'd traded, all for vanity.

The morning Julian died, she'd known it was coming. Had been able to smell the scent of it on his loose skin. She'd opened the window a crack even though it had been frigidly cold, just for some relief from that relentless death stink. She'd understood she ought to stay, but so often these last twenty-two years, her intuitions had proven false. The product of unfounded worries, and guilt for not having been there often enough. Just as easily, the day might be tomorrow, or next week, or fifty years from now. She could not succ.u.mb to such fretting when she had work on her desk, and a life to be lived. So she'd left her son with his nurse, and six hours later gotten the call that he was dead. It had taken her more than a day to call family and friends because she hadn't wanted to say the thing out loud.

"Is there an afterlife?" He'd asked, and now she wished she'd swallowed her terror, and told him: Don't worry, my love. There is a heaven for you on the other side of the stars, and if there is not, I will make one. Don't worry, my love. There is a heaven for you on the other side of the stars, and if there is not, I will make one.

Would leaving him to die alone be her greatest regret? Or would there be more, unfathomable, that would pile over the years so that when she died of old age, she would see two lives, the one she'd lived and the shadow path, full of all the things she should have done. The truth her father had implied: if she'd been a more righteous person, her favorite son would not have died.

In the old sickroom, Markus opened his eyes. Average grades, average looks. No special skills except an ability to put other people at ease, because he so rarely spoke, but always listened. He was the wild card of all her children-stronger than his frail body appeared and kinder than the rest of them, too. His eyes bulged now, and he startled. Next to him, fey Charles grunted.

"I'm sorry," he mouthed.

She waved, to let him know she didn't intend to make a scene. The tips of her fingers flagged up and down in unison. "Ice mother," Julian had once called her, and to her dismay, the others had laughed. Julian was the only one who'd ever teased her, and now she wondered if the rest, even her husband, were afraid.

She leaned in the doorway. Julian's bed was empty and stripped of sheets. On the bureau were piles of clothes that she planned to take to Goodwill. A poster of the Dubai Tower was tacked to the wall, because it sc.r.a.ped the sky, and had reminded Julian of Babel. He'd wanted to build bridges and skysc.r.a.pers. Plan the cities of tomorrow. She could smell him in here. Poor Markus, this room was haunted by a ghost.

Markus sat up. His eyes were wet with grief, or maybe shame, as if he believed that for this transgression with Charles, she might love him less. Still sleeping, Charles snuggled against Markus' bare chest, and kissed it.

To her surprise, she wasn't angry. Just grateful to Charles, for transforming this miserable room that would live forever in Markus' memory, into something bittersweet. At least he would not have to be alone on this terrible night.

"I love you," she whispered, because he looked so much like Julian. Because she did love him. Because there was a reason, after all, that she'd left Ohio, and made a new life for herself in New York.

She shut the door. When she got back, Tom was dressed. He'd heaped the white flowers into a black Hefty bag. She nodded her approval, then sat next to him on the bed. "What was that all about?" he asked.

"The person on the phone. She was so sad. I got worried one of the boys was hurt." She weaved her fingers between his and squeezed. These last few days, they hadn't been able to stop touching each other. In their way, returning to the source of their lost son. "I should have been there for him. I wasn't a good enough mother," she said.

He sighed, and she wasn't sure if he agreed or was too tired to answer. "No," he finally said. When she opened her mouth to reply, he interrupted. "No. No. No. No. No."

Now it was her turn to sigh.

His face was clean-shaven, and his hair freshly washed. They were alike in that way: even in tragedy, they firmly believed in the rituals of living. Over the last week, not a single bill had gone unpaid, or report card unchecked, or e-mail unanswered. "When's the last time we were on a date?" he asked.

She shook her head. "It's three in the morning."

"Not for at least a year. Not since he got sick. Let's go to Monteleone's. Have a cold Guinness."

"Is it open?"

Tom tossed a pair of overalls in her direction, along with her twenty-five-year-old Who T-s.h.i.+rt. It was what she'd been wearing when they met, and no matter how much she'd changed since then, he told her he would forever remember her that way: an innocent kid from Ohio who still wrote letters to her grandmother once a month, and loved the Pinball Wizard. The only girl he'd met back then who'd made men wait in the lobby of her building before dates instead of inviting them up. What she hadn't told him was that she'd been working seventy-hour weeks; she hadn't had time for dating. He was the only man who'd stuck around long enough to propose and find out what her apartment in Queens had looked like. Still, it was nice that one of them remembered her youth so fondly.

She pulled the s.h.i.+rt over her head and buckled her overalls. When she stood, she pressed the side of her face into the crook of his arm. Above her, he sneezed. Then said, "I saved the lilies because I know you like them, but let's take out the rest of the flowers when we go."

She and Tom had weathered big fights and big egos, badly trained dogs, sick parents, sick kids, and a yearlong separation. She knew then that they would weather this, too. It rea.s.sured her that she could believe in that, in him. She'd been wrong last week when she'd told Audrey that nothing lasts because not everything dies. Sometimes love endures.

"Forget Monteleone's. We'll just wind up crying in our beers. Let's walk down Broadway 'til we get hungry."

"Deal," he said.

It did not occur to her until three hours later, as she sat across from her husband eating b.u.t.termilk pancakes at Around the Clock on 8th Street and Astor Place, that the voice on the other line had belonged to Audrey Lucas. Street and Astor Place, that the voice on the other line had belonged to Audrey Lucas.

33.

Bones Break All the Time A week after Audrey discovered Jayne Young's body, Saraub Ramesh was high on Vicodin, watching the Vikings hose New York. His hospital bed was one of those Craftmatic adjustable jobs, just like he'd seen on TV when he was a kid. The game wasn't nearly as disheartening as it might normally be. Then again, Vicodin. week after Audrey discovered Jayne Young's body, Saraub Ramesh was high on Vicodin, watching the Vikings hose New York. His hospital bed was one of those Craftmatic adjustable jobs, just like he'd seen on TV when he was a kid. The game wasn't nearly as disheartening as it might normally be. Then again, Vicodin.

In the wooden chair next to him, Sheila fiddled. She'd come to visiting hours every day since the accident, and even feigned an interest in football. Tuesday and Wednesday had been season recaps narrated by Mike Ditka. His sisters and their husbands had sat through that. His excuse, as he'd silently watched the b.o.o.b tube instead of entertaining them at his bedside, had been his drug-induced stupor-it made conversation hard, and ESPN easy. The truth was, he'd never much cared for grand shows of affection, and they'd all kept staring, like the second he turned his head from the screen, they'd pounce, and weepingly declare their love for him.

His cousins, the new Ramesh and Ramesh, had come Thursday and Friday during NCAA rerun games. They'd razzed him about being the only person injured on the entire plane: You always were a spaz. You always were a spaz. Then they'd gotten teary-eyed, which he hadn't expected. Then they'd gotten teary-eyed, which he hadn't expected.

"Why are you always flying all over the place? Why can't you just stay still?" his cousin Frank had asked.

"Because," Saraub answered.

Frank, a man with three kids, a nice house, a cashmere coat, and a smart, efficient wife, had sighed. "And your girl puts up with that. I envy you."

Until that moment, Saraub had always considered himself the black sheep of the family. Over the years, he'd seen less of them because on a very fundamental level, they'd stopped understanding each other. Now, he reconsidered that a.s.sumption, and he reconsidered them, too.

That weekend-all twenty-six of them visited. Sisters, brothers-in-law, cousins, nieces, nephews, aunts, and uncles. They brought several four-hundred-dollar bouquets, made a racket, then tromped off for lunch at Ottomanelli's. Their arrival had made him realize what had been missing from his studio apartment in Audrey's absence: noise.

And today, Monday. A week since the accident. Sheila sat next to him, her glazed eyes on the game. Through it all, to his surprise, and perhaps hers, she'd been his constant. She'd cheered teams she didn't care about, yelled at nurses to make sure he got his meds on time, interrogated doctors about their diagnoses, and in general, irritated everyone who worked at New York-Presbyterian into giving him special treatment. It was like an alien had possessed her and forced her into acting like a parent again.

"Here," she now said, and handed him the heel of some fresh-baked bread while they watched the game. When he dozed sometimes, he woke to find her reading Vanity Fair Vanity Fair or or Better Homes and Gardens. Better Homes and Gardens. Until then, he'd never imagined she was capable of entertaining herself. Always at home, she spent her time dining with friends, preparing meals, or on the phone with her daughters, foisting child-rearing advice and inquiring whether their husbands were spending enough time at home. Until then, he'd never imagined she was capable of entertaining herself. Always at home, she spent her time dining with friends, preparing meals, or on the phone with her daughters, foisting child-rearing advice and inquiring whether their husbands were spending enough time at home.

He took the bread and chewed. The Vicodin waned in the afternoons, and he was usually a little more coherent. "What's the spice in that? Clove?"

"No spice. It's Pillsbury Italian Loaf. Easy peasy."

He nodded. She put her hand on the bar of the bed, which was as close as she'd gotten, so far, to touching him. Even when he'd first arrived, she'd only leaned over the bed and bent her face close to his. Open your eyes: Open your eyes: she'd commanded, presumably to make sure he was alive. So he'd opened them. she'd commanded, presumably to make sure he was alive. So he'd opened them.

The landing a week ago had been lucky. If the pilot of the 767 hadn't caught a patch of cold air at thirty-five hundred feet, they might have crashed. Most people wound up unharmed, but like an idiot, Saraub had unbuckled his seat belt to try to catch the flying parakeet. He got thrown, broke three ribs, a cheekbone, and both arms. On the plus side, he'd managed to save the stupid bird.

He'd stayed overnight at the hospital in Bethesda while they waited for Hurricane Erebus to pa.s.s. He'd been badly hurt, but none of the injuries were serious. Instead of waiting at the airport, his cameraman Tom Wilson wandered off, then showed up drunk at the hospital the next morning. "Your movie almost got me killed," he'd croaked, then pointed at a mosquito-bitesized cut on his forehead. "I'ma sue your a.s.s off!"

Saraub had looked at Wilson's red-threaded eyes right then and said what he should have said a long time ago. "You're fired."

Incoherent and raging, Wilson didn't leave until security escorted him out.

After he was gone, Saraub was not sad, even though they'd worked together side by side for years. He was relieved.

That afternoon, American Airlines flew him first cla.s.s to JFK, and checked him into New York-Presbyterian Hospital on their insurance company's dime. Probably, he should have been discharged by now, but since he'd signed a waiver agreeing not to sue, they were giving him gold-star treatment. His room was private, he had his own nurse, and his dinner came with a sixteen-ounce bottle of gourmet beer.

His cell phone and laptop were destroyed on impact, so aside from his family and agent, he hadn't talked to anyone in a week. He'd called Audrey every day and left a message from his bedside hospital phone. So far, she hadn't called back. A lot had happened lately. His girlfriend moved out on him, he'd almost died in a plane accident, he'd fired his a.s.sistant, and overnight, his promising film debut had morphed into a lemon. These things had given him a new, no-bulls.h.i.+t lease on life. In keeping with that, Audrey's silence didn't hurt his feelings; it p.i.s.sed him off.

He had one interview left to conduct for Maginot Lines, Maginot Lines, with the former CEO of Servitus. Unfortunately, he'd missed the appointment because he'd been in the hospital, and the guy was now in Europe on an indefinite holiday. Suns.h.i.+ne Studios wasn't returning his agent's calls. Still, as soon as he got out of the hospital, Saraub had decided to finish what he'd started and edit the movie. A recovering idealist, he'd given up high hopes for a wide release, or any release at all, but would instead take one step at a time. with the former CEO of Servitus. Unfortunately, he'd missed the appointment because he'd been in the hospital, and the guy was now in Europe on an indefinite holiday. Suns.h.i.+ne Studios wasn't returning his agent's calls. Still, as soon as he got out of the hospital, Saraub had decided to finish what he'd started and edit the movie. A recovering idealist, he'd given up high hopes for a wide release, or any release at all, but would instead take one step at a time.

"Lamb?" Sheila asked, then pulled out a Tupperware container from her Metropolitan Museum tote bag. She looked older than he remembered, and smaller, too. She'd stopped dyeing her black hair and let it go white. He admired her more now than he ever had before. She was a strong woman, and on day five of her vigil, while she'd shooed the family out so he could get some rest, it had occurred to him that if he'd acted more like a man from the start, instead of always borrowing money and begging approval because the road he'd chosen was so different from anything the Ramesh family understood, maybe she would have treated him like one. But such is the nature of bones and families alike; they break all the time, and it's how and whether they knit back together that counts.

Sheila opened the Tupperware. "I baked it last night," she said.

He smiled. "They feed me here, Mom. I'll just be full. But maybe you could give it to the nurse, and ask her to serve that, instead of my dinner." On-screen, Biddle caught Manning's pa.s.s.

"Oh, I didn't think of that. Good idea," she said, and placed the Tupperware back in her bag. Her hand moved closer to his. "It's not this girl, is it?" she asked.

"What?"

"She didn't put you on a diet, did she? Why doesn't she come? Is her job too important for you?"

Saraub shook his head. He'd called at least ten times this week, and was starting to wonder the same thing. "Leave her out of this."

Sheila sighed. Then sighed again. Saraub looked at her and realized she wasn't sighing, but crying.

"Hey, stop! I'm not dead. It's not even serious. I promise."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry!" she'd told him.

"For what? You didn't make the plane cras.h.!.+ I'm fine, Mom. Really."

Her hand clasped the parts of his fingers that poked through the cast. He'd missed his mother; he'd missed the rest of his family, too. "Do you love this woman?" she asked.

He shook his head, like he was disappointed in himself. "Yeah. I do, Mom."

"Well then, I'll try to love her, too." On-screen, the Giants scored a touchdown, which, high on pills, he decided was a sign from G.o.d.

"She's had a rough time. She could use somebody being nice to her."

Sheila nodded. "I'll bake her some lamb."

Saraub smiled. Sheila let her hand drop. For the rest of visiting hours, they watched New York steal a victory from Minnesota. When it was over, she reached between his plaster-cast arms and hugged him good-bye.

"I'm glad you're back," he said.

"Me, too, sweetie."

Just two miles away, trapped and bleeding, Audrey Lucas pressed her body against the locked turret window of 14B and screamed into the void.

Part V

Audrey's Door

Not a Case for the Psychic Friends Network July 11, 2001 I read Phil Egan's story on the hauntings in The Breviary apartment building with deep concern. He seemed under the misapprehension that ghosts and demons are the same thing: they're not. Ghosts are the lingering stain that humans leave on earth once their mortal coil is abandoned. Demons were never human and don't exist in this dimension. They can only interfere with the lives of men when invoked by seances, or through some other means, offered a portal. The nature of the haunting Mr. Egan described is not specific to any one person, nor does its author seem to want redemption. So you see, it's not a ghost haunting the tenants at West 110th Street. Ghosts can be reasoned with. It's a demon, and the building itself is the portal. I strongly caution against exorcism or the use of psychics under these circ.u.mstances, as attention gives these beasts strength. I'd also recommend an immediate evacuation of the building. Street. Ghosts can be reasoned with. It's a demon, and the building itself is the portal. I strongly caution against exorcism or the use of psychics under these circ.u.mstances, as attention gives these beasts strength. I'd also recommend an immediate evacuation of the building.

Sincerely, Ronald McGuinn, University of Edinburgh, Parapsychology Ph.D.

Letter to the editor, Star Magazine Star Magazine

Fire on the Fifteenth Floor May 4, 2004 Once again last night, The Breviary rea.s.serted its infamous reputation. This time, a fire broke out on the fifteenth floor after a group of tenants got together and ignited lighter fluid along the hallway carpet. The flames claimed the lives of seven victims, and three more are in critical condition from smoke inhalation.