Decimate, p.9
Decimate, page 9
“I was eleven, so . . . a year before the divorce. It was one of our last happy memories together. Poe and I loved Pier 39 so much they brought us there every day of the trip. I remember my mother danced.”
Phil’s eyebrows arch. “Susan danced?”
“The carousel, it was playing that song ‘Hooked on a Feeling.’ It was one of her favorites. She actually got up off the bench and started busting a move.”
“A lot of people think that song’s about getting sober,” Phil says.
“Really?”
“Yeah, B. J. Thomas, he didn’t write it, but he made it famous, and he sang it a lot after he stopped drinking. Maybe that’s why Poe’s—”
“Let’s make a statement,” Melissa says, back still turned to them. The force with which she slaps the rag into the sink makes a strange accompaniment to her suddenly cheerful tone. Phil reacts to the sound as if his wife just slapped him.
“What kind?” Claire asks.
“I don’t know. Something that says this is just teenagers getting worked up. You know, something that’ll make them all go away. I’ll go out there and read it myself. I don’t care.”
“I don’t know if that’s what this is,” Claire says.
Melissa turns to face them, carefully avoiding her husband’s expectant puppy-dog look. “OK, then. Walk me through it. Seriously. I’m trying to understand here. So at 11:40 or 12:40 or . . . whenever the plane has its . . . issue, you had this moment at the whiteboard where you saw—”
“No,” Claire gently interjects. “No, I didn’t see anything at the board. I wrote something. Against my will. And around the time of the actual crash, I hit the floor.”
“Hit the floor,” Melissa says, as if she thinks getting Claire to repeat the words will make her realize how ridiculous she sounds.
“Yeah, it was like the floor was ripped out from under me and I just face-planted. Later, on the ride home, that’s when I started seeing things.”
“Him,” Phil adds.
“But now it’s both,” Melissa says. “You’re writing things . . . from him, I guess. And you’re seeing things. But you didn’t see things before the crash.”
“No.”
“So whatever this is, it’s never involved hallucinations before.”
Phil says, “Honey, that’s not exactly true—”
“Um, honey, why don’t you let Claire and me—”
“Why don’t you take me out of the doghouse so you can ask these questions of the guy who’s actually been talking about this stuff for a year.”
“OK. OK, fine, Psychic Detective Man. Has any of this involved hallucinations before now?”
“Like I said, Poe was drawing things he couldn’t have possibly seen, so maybe that qualifies as—”
“Unless he went online and looked for them.”
“And why the hell would he do that, Missy? Why would he try to perpetuate some fraud on—”
“Because he’s been a drug addict since he was fifteen! Because he came to Susan’s funeral and stood over her coffin and read a poem about his sex life that included the line ‘my molten, serpentine penis always seeks the light.’”
Melissa’s eyes go wide as she realizes that she’s just spoken ill of the dead. And with incredible volume. And specificity.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “It just . . . it was a very upsetting moment.”
Nobody speaks for a while, but Claire can feel the morbid laughter building, threatening to erupt. “But you remembered it,” she says, “so maybe that’s the sign of a good poem?”
“No,” Phil says, “it isn’t.”
“You’re right,” Claire says, “it was a horrible poem.” She can’t contain it any longer. She doesn’t care if it means delirium is setting in. But suddenly she’s laughing into her palms, and Phil’s doing the same, and now it looks like Melissa’s on the verge of giving in too.
Once she catches her breath, Claire says, “It was one of the worst I’ve ever heard. I mean, it was one of the worst things I’ve ever heard, not just one of the worst poems. Like one of the worst sounds. Or series of sounds.”
Melissa’s hands fly to her mouth, a sign that she, too, is laughing against her will.
“He apologized for it every time we talked,” Phil says. “He said that was part of why he was coming home. To make it up to you, Claire.”
A new silence falls. Melissa pulls back her chair and takes a seat.
“Where does this go?” she finally asks, sounding winded. “I mean, come on. We all know where this road’ll take us. Right back to your dad and his ‘theories,’ and this whole thing about how it wasn’t a bear that night and—”
“It wasn’t a bear that night,” Claire says.
Melissa is stone-still. Phil looks up at Claire as if she’s just clapped her hands. For a while no one speaks.
“Claire,” her stepsister finally says, “for as long as I have known you you’ve said it was—”
“Because it was the only answer my mother would accept, and I didn’t want to lose her.”
“So . . . aliens?” Melissa finally asks.
“I don’t believe that either,” Claire answers.
“What do you believe?” Phil asks.
“I think we don’t know and that’s worse. I think that’s what drove my father crazy. The not knowing.”
Another long silence falls.
Melissa says, “Your mom always said that when she and your dad decided to get divorced that they let you two—”
“They didn’t decide,” Claire says. “She told your father that story because she didn’t want him to think she was impulsive and rash. The truth was, when she found out how far we were from a designated campsite that night, that Dad had to leave us alone and unconscious for hours to go get anyone who could even call for help, she picked up the phone and called a divorce lawyer. From the hospital. When she told Poe we were going to live with her, he lost his mind. They actually had to sedate him.”
“He wanted to stay with your dad?” Phil asks.
“Because he didn’t think it was a bear either?” Melissa asks.
“He was ten. He didn’t want anything to change. He wanted us all to stay together forever.”
“You were only twelve and you picked your mom,” Phil says.
“Because she didn’t leave the room,” Claire says. “Dad kept leaving my hospital room to yell at people and fight with people, and Mom stayed. I thought that’s what a real parent does no matter what the truth is.”
“So she just let Poe go?” Melissa asks.
“She said it was worth it to get me. She said Poe was always a daddy’s boy anyway. Poe told me later he thought that was code for she knew he was gay even then and didn’t want him around. But she never said a bad thing about gay people her whole life. I think she said it because she knew it would make the custody dispute easier. You know, if they each got one kid.”
Claire feels guilty about abandoning the most stable family she’s known. Melissa’s got a savior’s spirit, and the discovery that her stepsister was concealing various wounds from her has got to sting. And Melissa’s the last person she wants to hurt.
But Claire feels relaxed for the first time in hours. It’s a little far outside the regular window for it to be caused by the pills. The delirious laughter, the unloading of secrets, it’s calmed her, and as a result of her muscles loosening, she feels the call of nature.
“I need to use the bathroom.”
“Yeah, um, alone?” Melissa rises to her feet as Claire does.
“I’ll be fine, seriously. I’ll use the guest bath, not the one in my room.”
Melissa follows her down the hall, and when Claire goes to step inside, Melissa gently grips her shoulder. “OK,” she says. “Just . . . if you’re going to break a mirror, call us and we’ll break it for you.”
“Is that the plan?”
“I don’t know. Just don’t break another mirror. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“I won’t.”
Suddenly Melissa hugs her with quick force. When she pulls away, Claire’s stunned by the tears in her sister’s eyes.
“Listen,” Melissa whispers, “I just need to say something.”
“I won’t hurt myself. I promise.”
“I know, it’s just . . . I’m your sister no matter what you believe, OK? Don’t you ever forget that.”
Claire hugs her back. “Deal, but you have to do something too.”
“Anything.”
“Forgive your husband. Please.”
“Fine, but he’s not getting sex for a week.”
“A week? You guys are doing better than I thought.”
“Ten minutes and then I’m coming in after you.”
She smiles, but keeps watching Claire until the door is closed.
Claire never thought she’d be so grateful to sit on the toilet and go to the bathroom. It’s not like she’s been holding it in for hours. But it’s a relief to have something about her body work exactly as it should.
When she finishes, she finds herself staring at the perfect job Melissa did of covering the mirror above the sink. She used one of the spare flat sheets for Claire’s bed, tucking it neatly around the mirror’s edges, primly draping the excess along the back of the basin and letting it spill over the edges in roughly equal amounts on each side.
She’s touched by the attention Melissa gave the job. But the overall effect seems silly now. Was Claire’s order about protecting herself, or hiding her visions from Melissa and Phil? Now that TV viewers all over LA are in on Claire’s crazy, what’s the point of hiding it? As invasive as it felt at first, the news story has had a paradoxical effect. She no longer feels alone.
No longer feels as alone as she felt for fourteen years, hiding the truth of what she thought about that night.
Would her mother have sent her off to live with her father if she’d expressed doubts about the bear attack theory? Maybe not, but the trauma of seeing how quickly her mother cast Poe aside stuck with Claire like a form of PTSD. During her mother’s final days, spent under hospice care in the living room of this very house, she’d thought about raising the subject. Thought about telling her mother about the shadows she saw that night in Glacier, the ones that suggested a light source of incredible size came roaring toward her and Poe out of the dark. But every time, it had felt like an attempt to make her mother’s suffering about herself, and she resisted the urge. And then her mother was gone.
Is Poe gone now too?
She tells herself she’s got no choice but to take the sheet off the mirror. Slowly, she untucks the top of the sheet from the mirror and lowers it.
It begins to happen almost instantly, but with leisurely speed, like it’s been waiting for her.
First comes the fog, and then here comes little Poe, walking toward her, small enough to fit inside her chest at first, then growing larger as he gets closer to the glass. Same orange jacket, same wind-tousled hair. Behind him, a blur of golden light swirls through the fog. She thinks it might be the old carousel at Pier 39, and she can faintly hear the strains of the song that made her mother get up and dance.
Her heart races, and the scream that wants to rip from her is making her gut clench.
Don’t fight it, she tells herself. Do like you did with the sketch. Don’t drown in it. Ride the wave.
Poe’s eyes are glowing. A fierce shade of blue she’s rarely seen in nature. He’s raising his hand, and for a second she thinks his palm might flatten against the other side of the glass. Instead, his fingers open. He’s extending his hand to her and as she focuses on it, she feels the nerves on the back of her neck jangle, as if there’s a presence behind her, feels the tension spread up the back of her neck, across the crown of her skull and down the sides of her face. Maybe it’s a panic reaction, or maybe it’s getting stronger because she’s lifting her hand to the glass. Just to see. Just to see if something might happen if she tries to interact with this vision. Tries to touch it.
There’s a pounding on the door so loud Claire cries out.
“It’s your dad, Claire!” Phil shouts through the door.
She expects to see the mirror empty. It’s not. Instead, little Poe is lowering his hand and backing away. The glow in his eyes is gone, and she wonders if it left the second she broke eye contact. Because that’s what seemed to light up his ghostly eyes—eye contact. Her refusal to look away, her refusal to give in to fear. She sees him mouthing words as he backs into the fog. She can’t hear them, but the movements of his lips are short and simple.
Get it, he’s telling her.
And then she’s staring at the reflection of the bathroom again. Of her. And she can see how much effort it’s taken her not to lose her shit. Her eyes are wide and bulging, her nostrils flaring.
She didn’t end the vision this time.
He did.
Phil knocks again.
“I’ll be right there,” she says. She’s not sure why but she covers the mirror again. If whatever’s in her head is capable of turning these visions on and off, then her only real power resides in keeping the glass covered.
She steps out into the hall and almost runs smack into Phil. Melissa’s a few feet away, holding the portable phone in one hand.
“It’s some woman,” Melissa says. “But she says she’s calling for him.”
“Did she give a name?” Claire asks.
“Margot Hastings,” Melissa says.
Claire takes the phone from Melissa.
“You know her?” Melissa asks. “She’s not a crank?”
“I know her,” Claire says.
8
Margot Hastings is the most recent in the long line of her father’s indulgent girlfriends, and the only one who’s ever tried to build a relationship with Claire. Abram Huntley has never suffered from a shortage of women willing to tolerate his imbalanced behavior. Probably because for most of his life he’s looked like a cross between Brad Pitt and Sam Elliot, and, according to some comments Claire’s mother made after too much wine—comments Claire wishes she could unhear—he’s a dynamo in the sack.
“Smart women don’t marry the one who blows their doors off,” her mother used to warn her on a regular basis. “They marry the one they can count on, and they’re almost never the same guy. Don’t make the same mistake I did. You’ll save yourself a lot of time.”
Margot is also insanely rich, which Claire discovered when she Googled the woman’s full name after her first email arrived. She’s the sole heiress to a Pacific Northwest timber fortune, and she’s dedicated her privileged life to studying the paranormal—which means funneling her money into the study of topics no university is willing to explore. It’s not a mystery how she met Claire’s dad. Over the course of her correspondence with Claire, Margot has made it gently clear that she thinks Abram’s life would improve if he reconciled with his daughter. Claire doesn’t agree, but she hasn’t said so outright because she wants to keep the communication flowing. When Margot first wrote to her, the debacle of Claire’s mother’s funeral had banished Poe from her life, and Margot became Claire’s only source of information about a father she barely knows.
Margot’s references to their day-to-day life have made it sound like she and Abram are on a luxurious and protracted retreat together at her Mercer Island mansion. Apparently they spend hours in what Margot describes as “study,” which is when Claire’s father devotes himself to various hobbies: pottery classes, getting his pilot’s license. Claire figures there’s also a lot of weed involved, but she’s never asked. It all seems like proof that with great money comes great boredom, and she would have picked a far different fate for her father’s later life, one that involved lots of I’m sorrys and thank yous and hours spent volunteering at soup kitchens and pretty much anything else that might teach him to put other people’s needs ahead of his personal obsessions.
When she answers the phone, Claire hears car sounds and the gentle ticking of a turn signal. “How are you holding up, sweetheart?” Margot asks. But the woman’s crisp, businesslike tone doesn’t match the term of endearment.
“Well, have you seen the news? About me, I mean.”
“I have. And so has your father.”
“Wow. So it’s gone national.”
“It has.”
“Where are you guys?”
“We’re not together, Claire.”
“Like at all?”
“He moved out several months ago.”
“Oh, OK.”
“I’m in LA working on a documentary. That’s why he called me. He wants us to go see him.”
“Where?”
“Montana.”
The state, which her family visited so many times by car that it started to feel more like a suburb of Spokane in their minds, used to invoke warm feelings of campfire smells and gorgeous vistas and clear, crisp mountain air. Every time she’s heard the name since that night, it’s felt like a slap across the back of the head, a reminder of all she lost and all she doesn’t know.
“What is he doing in Montana?” Claire finally asks.
“I don’t know exactly, but he’s been there since he moved out of my place.”
“Why? Why does he want me to go to Montana?”
“He says he’s got some things he needs to tell you.”
Margot’s sense of detachment from Claire’s father is jarring, a stark contrast to their previous emails, in which Margot spoke of Abram as if she were obtaining a doctorate in his moods.
“OK, well, no offense, but if my father has something he wants to tell me, he should really call himself.”
“I’m not offended, and I understand, and that’s exactly what I’ll tell him.”
Oof, Claire thinks, this was a bad breakup.
“Thank you.”
“I’m so sorry, Claire.”
“Thank you,” she whispers.
Claire hangs up, turns to find Melissa and Phil watching her like cats watching the food can open.
The thought that her father might call sets her heart to racing. They’ve seen each other only once since the divorce. Claire was allowed to join him and Poe for a single meal at a restaurant of her mother’s choosing—even though her mother refused to attend—a restaurant located almost exactly midway between the hotel where her dad and Poe were staying and her mom’s new house in Eagle Rock. Her aunt Eileen drove them to the meal so her mother wouldn’t have to lay eyes on Abram.
