The New Yorker Stories

Brenda had turned her ankle. Dale helped her up, dusting wetness from her own jacket on Brenda’s back, wanting to delay the moment when Brenda would say she couldn’t walk. “Some God-damned maniac,” Dale said. “Can you put pressure on it? How does it feel?”

“It hurts, but I don’t think it’s broken,” Brenda said.

Dale looked into the distance, Brenda’s hand still on her shoulder. “Shit,” Brenda said again. “I’d better take these things off and walk home in my tights. You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d say that was Jerome, zeroing in for the kill.”

Kill. With a worse chill than the night air explained, she had realized that the car must have been speeding away from Janet’s house. That they would have to go on—she, at least, would have to go on—and see what had happened.

“It’s something bad—” Dale began.

“I know,” Brenda said, crying now. “But the worst thing is that I’m pregnant, and I don’t dare tell him, he’s been so shitty lately. It’s like he hates me. I feel like he’d like it if my ankle was broken.”

“No,” Dale said, hearing what Brenda said, but not quite hearing it. “Something at the house down there. Janet’s house.”

Brenda’s hand seized Dale’s shoulder. “Oh, my God,” she said.

“Wait here,” Dale said.

“No! I’m coming with you,” Brenda told her.

“I’ve got a very bad feeling,” Dale said.

“We don’t know,” Brenda said. “It could have been kids—drunk, playing a game with the lights out.” From the tenuous way she spoke, it was clear she didn’t believe herself.

Slowly, helping her to walk, Brenda’s boots in one of her hands, the other around Brenda’s waist, the two of them walked until the little house came in sight. “Not exactly a wedding cake,” Brenda said, squinting at what was hardly more than a clapboard shack. There was one light on, which was an ambiguous sign: it could be good, or it could mean nothing at all.

The front door slightly ajar was the worst possible sign. Dale surprised herself by having the courage to push it open. Inside, the wood fire had burned out. A cushion was on the floor. A mug lay near it, in a puddle of whatever had been inside. The house was horribly, eerily silent. It was rare that Dale found herself surrounded by silence.

“Janet?” Dale said. “It’s Dale. Janet?”

She was on the kitchen floor. They saw her when Dale turned on the light. Janet was breathing shallowly, a small trickle of blood congealed at one side of her mouth. Dale’s impulse was to gather Janet in her arms, but she knew she should not move her head. “Janet? Everything’s going to be okay,” she heard herself say dully. She meant to be emphatic, but instead her voice was monotonic. Her ears had begun to close—the warning that she would soon have an attack of vertigo. But why? She had drunk no wine; she had eaten no sugar. Panic attacks had been ruled out when Meniere’s had been ruled in. “You must learn the power of positive thinking,” she heard the doctor saying to her. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but it works. I’m not a mystical person. It’s more like biofeedback. Say to yourself, ‘This will not happen to me.’ ”

The room was quivering, as if the walls themselves were vibrating because of some tremor in the earth. Dale repeated the words, silently. She could see Janet’s chest rising and falling. Her breathing did not seem to be labored, though whoever had been there had tried to strangle her with a piece of rope. From the color of her face, it was obvious she had been deprived of oxygen. Her long fingers were balled into fists. Blood oozed from a cut on her arm. An ankh cross dangled from one end of the rope. The Dictionary of Symbols lay on the floor, a blood-smudged chart beside it. Beside that, torn from the wall, was a photograph Dale had taken of Janet’s hand holding the fine pearwood brush she used to draw symbols. The photograph had been ripped so that the brush was broken in half. Remembering, suddenly, what she must do, Dale went to the wall phone and dialed 911. “Someone is unconscious at the end of Harmony Lane,” she said. It was difficult to tell how loud, or soft, her words were. Harmony Lane—was that what she had just said? What ridiculous place was that? Some fake street in some ridiculous Walt Disney development? But no—they hadn’t gone there. They had rented a house in Maine, that was where they were. She squinted against the star shining through the kitchen window, like a bright dart aimed at her eye. It was not a star, though. It was the light from Portsmouth.

The woman who answered told Dale to stay calm. She insisted she stay where she was. It was as if all this was about Dale—not Janet, but Dale, standing in Janet’s kitchen. For a second the voice of the woman at 911 got confused with the voice of the doctor saying, This will not happen to me.

There was a shriek of sirens. They sounded far, far away, yet distinct: background music that portended trouble. Dale was so stunned that, instead of hanging up, she stood with the phone in her hand, imagining she’d hung up. She had seen Janet two days before. Three? They had talked about squash. The squash Janet would appreciate Dale’s buying for her at the Farmers’ Market. “This is her neighbor, Dale,” she said, in what she thought was an answer to the question the woman was asking, faintly, on the opposite end of the phone. Why didn’t the woman ask about Janet? “We saw a car,” she heard herself say, though her mouth was not near enough for the 911 operator to hear.

That was the moment when Tyrone burst out from underneath the two-seat sofa, charging so quickly he overshot Dale and knocked Brenda down. She screamed with fear long after she might have realized it was only a dog. Tyrone was as afraid as they were; everything was made worse by Brenda’s high-pitched scream.

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” Brenda said, apologizing to the cowering dog, its back legs shaking so pathetically, Dale could not see how he remained upright. “Oh, God, here,” Brenda said, inching closer, reaching in the jacket pocket with trembling hands for a doughnut hole and holding it out to the dog, who did not approach but stood shakily leaning into Dale’s leg. No one looked at Janet’s body. Wind rattled the glass, but the louder sound was that of sirens. Dale saw Brenda cock her head and turn, as if she could see the sound. Brenda turned back and threw the doughnut hole to the dog, missing by a mile.

“It’s okay,” Dale said, moving her leg astride the dog and edging the doughnut hole toward him with the toe of her boot. It was a powdered-sugar doughnut hole that left a streak of white on the floorboards. By Janet’s hand had been a streak—no: a puddle, not a streak—of blood. Dale did not look in that direction; she was so afraid Janet might have stopped breathing.

Dale looked across the room at Brenda. Brenda, dejectedly, was about to throw another doughnut hole. Dale watched as she tossed it slowly, repeating Dale’s words: “It’s okay.” Then she took a step forward and said to Dale: “Make him forgive me. Make him like me again.”