Her Fearful Symmetry

“Come here, sweet,” he said, and she flew to his side, suddenly happy. He felt her as a proximity, a cold presence. How did I not understand, before? She was here, and I left her alone. Robert thought of all his visits to her grave, thought of himself sitting for hours on the steps of the Noblin mausoleum chatting away pointlessly, remembered his evening by the river with Valentina and felt foolish and a little nauseated. But I didn’t really believe she was there. Did I? He stood shaking his head. He stopped when he realised he was doing it. “Tell us what it’s like…How is it?…How are you?” Robert wanted to say things he could not say with the twins present. Elspeth positioned herself over the piano and began to consider the question. How am I? Well, dead. Um, try to be positive about that. Hmm… She made a little spiral in the dust while she thought about it. Robert remembered her pages and pages of spirals doodled whilst talking on the telephone. You’re here, really here.

Valentina and Julia watched the shiny spiral appear, bystanders. We’re, like, the sheep at Jesus’ birth, Julia thought. Valentina wondered if Elspeth watched them all the time. What does she know about us? Does she like us? It all seemed very uncomfortable. Valentina tried to remember if either of them had ever said anything unkind about Elspeth. When the twins were tiny they had scared each other with the idea of God watching them every minute of every day. You could never be good enough… She watched Robert’s face. He had forgotten her. He was waiting for Elspeth to write again.

Letters began to appear: LONELY. TRAPPED IN FLAT. HAPPY TO SEE V & J. MISS YOU.

Julia said, “Is there anything you want?”

READ BOOKS. PLAY GAMES. PAY ATTENTION.

“Pay attention to you?”

YES. TALK TO ME, PLAY WITH ME. Elspeth wrote as quickly as she could. Her writing was uncontrolled and large, and she could see that the surface of the piano was not going to allow unlimited conversation. Just then the Kitten leapt on the piano keys with a musical crash and up onto the middle of the piano lid, obliterating Elspeth’s writing as efficiently as a duster. “Ugh,” said Valentina, scooping her up, “bad girl.” She threw the Kitten onto the sofa. The Kitten, thus rejected, went under the piano to sulk.

Now half the dust was gone from the piano. Elspeth wrote along the edge of the music stand: R-seances-Ouija?

“Right, the Victorians used Ouija boards. And automatic writing, spirits would possess the medium and speak through them. I mean, that’s what the mediums pretended they were doing. But they were frauds, Elspeth.”

MAYBE.

“Right, okay. Do you want to try?”

OUIJA?

“I’ll have to make the board.” He turned to the twins. “Do you have a large sheet of paper? We need a notebook, a biro and a drinking glass to be the planchette.” Julia went to the kitchen and returned with a juice glass and a pen. Valentina brought the notebook and a few sheets of white paper from the computer printer. She taped them together.

Robert wrote the letters of the alphabet in three rows. He wrote the words Yes and No in the upper corners of the paper. He put the paper on the coffee table and the glass upside down in the centre of the paper.

Elspeth thought, That glass is too heavy. She managed to rattle it as though it were having its own private earthquake, but she could not make it glide even an inch.

Robert said, “We need something that hardly weighs anything. Perhaps a bottle cap?” Julia ran back to the kitchen and returned with the round blue plastic safety strip she had peeled off the milk bottle that morning. “Yes, brilliant,” Robert said. He placed it where the glass had been and it began to skitter around the paper like it’s glad to be out of the garbage can, it’s like a happy water bug, Julia thought. It was easy to imagine Elspeth here in the room when she wrote on the piano; when she moved the plastic strip it seemed as though the thing itself had become a creature, moving under its own volition. Julia and Valentina sat down on the floor next to the coffee table. Robert sat on the sofa and leaned over the board. The plastic thing stopped expectantly, as though listening. The Kitten came over and began marching her hind legs and preparing to pounce. Get that animal out of here, Elspeth thought. As though Elspeth had spoken out loud, Valentina got up and put the Kitten in the dining room and shut the door.

When she had settled again Valentina asked, “What do you mean you’re trapped in the flat? Have you been here all the time?” She didn’t say, Are you watching us all the time? even though she wanted to.

The plastic thing spelled slowly. No one touched it; it moved with intention along short straight paths. YES ALWAYS HERE CANT LEAVE Robert wrote down the letters in the notebook as the plastic circle paused over them. He thought that he should have included punctuation on the board.

Julia asked, “What about heaven? Or, you know, all that stuff they tell you in church?”

NO EVIDENCE PRO OR CON JUST HERE WAITING

“Ugh,” said Julia. “Forever? Does anything change?”

I GET STRONGER

“Does this happen to everyone who dies?”

DONT KNOW ONLY ME HERE Elspeth wanted to ask questions, not just answer them. Hows Edie, she spelled before Julia could ask anything else.

The twins exchanged glances. “She’s fine,” said Valentina. “She was sad that you said she couldn’t visit us here,” said Julia.

The plastic circle spun around the paper aimlessly. Finally Elspeth spelled, DONT TELL EDIE

“Don’t tell her what?” asked Robert.

DONT TELL IM GHOST DONT TELL ANYONE

“Nobody would believe us,” Valentina told her. “You know Mom, she would think we were totally lying. And she would think it was, you know, mean.”

YES MEAN DO YOU SPEAK FRENCH

“Yes,” said Julia.

LATIN

“Uh, no.”

VENI HUC CRAS R UT TECUM EX SOLO COLLOQUAR

Robert smiled. Julia said, “No fair having secrets.” Valentina thought, They have years of secrets already. She wanted to throw up. Robert reached over and stroked her hair. She looked at him doubtfully. Julia and Elspeth each felt a twinge of jealousy, and each felt strange about that for her own reasons.

Elspeth spelled out TIRED

“Okay,” said Robert.

GOODNIGHT

“Goodnight, sweet.”

“Goodnight, Aunt Elspeth.”

Robert and the twins stood up. There was an awkwardness; they had nothing to say to each other in front of Elspeth. They each would have liked to go somewhere else and burst into exclamations over the strangeness, how peculiar and how exciting and disturbing, and what about it? “Well, goodnight, then,” Robert said, and went downstairs to his own flat. “Goodnight,” said the twins, as they watched him leave. He shut his door and stood looking at his ceiling, completely gobsmacked. Then he started laughing and couldn’t stop. The twins heard him. They sat at the little coffee table, flicking the planchette back and forth, not speaking. Elspeth lay on the floor in the hall for a while, listening to Robert laughing, worrying about him. When he quietened down she went back to the front room. She touched each twin on the crown of her head. Goodnight, goodnight. Elspeth curled up in her drawer in an ecstasy of satisfaction.

The next morning was still damp and drab. Robert lay in bed listening to the twins walking around their flat. He was afraid they might stay in, the weather was so unpromising. He could hear their kitten galloping through rooms at random. How can a creature that sounds like the cavalry look like an oversized lab rat? Robert hauled himself out of bed. He made coffee and showered. By the time he had dressed and drunk his