False Memory

The downstairs was cold because the kitchen door wasn’t closed. He found it too easy to imagine that part of the chill resulted from the presence of an icy spirit that had come through another door, one not visible, from a place infinitely stranger than the back porch.

The silver candlesticks on the dining-room table appeared to be as translucent as they were reflective, as though carved from ice.

The living room was filled with the wintry glitter of glass bibelots, brass fireplace tools, porcelain lamps. The grandfather clock had frozen time at 11:00.

On their honeymoon, they had found the clock in an antique shop and acquired it for a reasonable price. They weren’t interested in its value as a timepiece, and they didn’t intend to have it repaired. Its hands were stopped at the hour of their wedding, which seemed like a good omen.

After silencing Valet, Dusty decided to leave the dog on the front porch for now, and he quickly climbed the stairs. Although he ascended into increasingly warmer air, he brought with him the chill that had pierced him at the sight of Martie’s tortured face.

He found her in the master bedroom. She was standing beside the bed, with the.45 pistol.

She had ejected the magazine. Muttering frantically to herself, she was prying the bullets out of it. Jacketed hollow points.

When she extracted a round, she threw it across the room. The cartridge snapped against a mirror without cracking it, rattled onto the top of the vanity, and came to rest among the decorative combs and hairbrushes.

Dusty couldn’t at first understand what she was saying, but then he recognized it:“. full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women..

In a whispery voice, pitched high with anxiety, a voice almost like that of a frightened child, Martie was reciting the Hail Mary, fingering another round out of the magazine, as if the bullets were rosary beads and she were paying penance with prayer.

Watching Martie from the doorway, Dusty felt his heart swell with fear for her, swell and swell impossibly until the pressure made his chest ache.

She flung another bullet, which cracked off the dresser — and then saw him in the doorway. Already sufficiently white-faced for a Kabuki stage, she grew even paler.

“Martie —”

“No!” she gasped, as he stepped off the threshold.

She dropped the pistol and kicked it across the carpet so hard that it traveled the length of the room and clattered noisily against a closet door.

“It’s only me, Martie.”

“Get out of here, go, go, go.”

“Why are you afraid of me?”

“I’m afraid of me!” Her fingers, sharp and white, plucked at the pistol magazine with carrion-crow tenacity, extracting one more cartridge. “For God’s sake, run!”

“Martie, what —”

“Don’t get close to me, don’t, don’t trust me,” she said, her voice as thin, shaky, and urgent as that of a high-wire walker losing balance. “I’m all screwed up, totally screwed.”

“Honey, listen, I’m not going anywhere until I know what’s happened here, what’s wrong,” Dusty said as he took another step toward her.

With a despairing wail, she threw the bullet and the half-empty magazine in different directions, neither at Dusty, and then ran to the bathroom.

He pursued her.

“Please,” Martie pleaded, determinedly trying to close the bathroom door in his face.

Only a minute ago, Dusty would not have been able to imagine any circumstances in which he would have used force against Martie; now his stomach fluttered queasily as he resisted her. Inserting one knee between the door and the jamb, he tried to shoulder into the room.

She abruptly stopped resisting and backed away.

The door banged open so hard that Dusty winced as he stumbled across the threshold.

Martie retreated until she bumped against the entrance to the shower stall.

Catching the bathroom door as it rebounded from the rubber stop, Dusty kept his attention on Martie. He fumbled for the wall switch and clicked on the fluorescent panel in the soffit above the twin sinks.

Hard light ricocheted off mirrors, porcelain, white-and-green ceramic tile. Off nickel-plated fixtures as shiny as surgical steel.

Martie stood with her back to the glass-enclosed shower. Eyes shut. Face pinched. Hands fisted against her temples.

Her lips moved rapidly but produced not a sound, as if she had been stricken mute by terror.

Dusty suspected that she was praying again.

He took three steps, touched her arm.

As dire blue and full of trouble as a hurricane sea, her eyes snapped open. “Get away!”

Rocked by her vehemence, he relented.

The seal on the shower door popped with a twonk, and she eased backward over the raised sill, into the stall. “You don’t know what I’ll do, my God, you can’t imagine, you can’t conceive how vicious, how cruel.”

Before she could pull the shower door shut, he intervened and held it open. “Martie, I’m not afraid of you.”

“You should be, you’ve got to be.”

Bewildered, he said, “Tell me what’s wrong.”