Chapter 35 35

It had snowed all morning—a gloomy day, but a fine day for writing. Jessie glanced up in amazement as a ray of sunlight fell on the keyboard of the multi-access computer, all thoughts gone.What she saw from the window not only fascinated her, filling her with emotions she had not experienced for a long time, and which she did not expect to experience again for a long time to come.That was joy—a deep, complex joy that she couldn't even explain. The snow hadn't stopped, not quite, anyway.But overhead, the bright February sun had broken through the clouds, turning the six inches of freshly deposited snow on the ground and the flakes that were still dancing in the air a diamond white.Standing in front of the window, the sweeping view of Portland's East Main Street fascinates and comforts Jesse in all weathers of the seasons.But she had never seen anything like it—sunlight and snow turning the gray Casco Bay sky into a fabulous jewel box of interlocking rainbows.

In that snowy world, a blizzard could blow up at any time.If anyone actually lived there, they would see this weather all the time. She laughed, and the sound was as strange to her ears as joy was to her heart.She thought about it for a moment and realized why: she hadn't smiled at all since last October.She referred to those times, the last of those she had intended to spend by Lake Kashwickmark, simply as "my hard times."This phrase, she felt, said all that had to be said and said it just right.And that's exactly how she likes it. Everyone hasn't laughed at all since then?not laughing?Didn't laugh at all?Are you sure?

Not absolutely sure.no. She figured she might have laughed in her dreams—God only knew she had cried enough in them—but so far as she was waking, she had kept her laughter off.She vividly remembers the last time she laughed: when she reached across her body with her left hand to get her car keys out of the right pocket of her culottes.She told the windy dark night that she would split apart like an amoeba.As far as she knew, that was the last laugh she'd ever had. "Only that one time, never laughed again." Jessie muttered.She took a pack of cigarettes from her shirt pocket and lit one.God, how that phrase "my hard times" pulls everything back.She found that the only thing most capable of doing it quickly and thoroughly was that terrible song by Marvin Gaye.She heard the song on the radio once when she was driving back from a doctor's visit.On the surface, her endless appointments with the doctor have become the content of her life this winter.Marvin sang in his flattering soft voice, "Everyone knows...especially you girls..." She turned off the radio immediately, but her hands were still shaking so badly that she couldn't drive.She stopped the car and waited for the worst of the shaking to pass.They finally disappeared.But on those nights, when she woke up, she either muttered lines from "The Raven" over and over again to her soaking pillow, or heard herself saying "Witness, Witness" over and over again.For Jesse, the two are equal.

She took a deep breath, exhaled three perfect smoke rings, and watched them slowly rise above the buzzing computer. When the stupid, uninteresting people even asked about her ordeal, she told them she couldn't remember much of what happened.After the first and second interviews with the police, she began repeating the same words to the police, except to one of Gerald's colleagues, the only exception being Brenton Millhallan.She told him the truth, partly because she needed his help, but mostly because only he showed a very limited understanding of what she had been through...what she was still going through.How comforting it was that he wasn't wasting her time with sympathy.Jesse also discovered that sympathy was cheap and tedious after a tragedy was over, and that all the sympathy in the world was worth less than a place to pee in the snow.

Regardless, the police and newspaper reporters embraced her amnesia — and her other stories, why not?People who are traumatized physically and mentally often have blocked memories of what happened.The cops knew it even better than the lawyers, and Jesse knew it better than any of them.Since October last year, she has learned about and studied a large number of traumatic events.Books and articles helped her find plausible reasons not to talk about topics she didn't want to talk about.If they weren't, they wouldn't be of much help to her.Or maybe she just hadn't read the proper case notes -- the ones involving handcuffed women forced to watch their husbands become prey to dogs.

Jessie laughed again, startled—this time laughing heartily.Is that funny?Obviously yes.But it's also one of those funny things you can never, never tell someone.Like how your dad got so sexually aroused during a solar eclipse that it unburdened the crotch of your panties.Or how you - and this thing is really disgusting - think that a little cum on your pussy will make you pregnant. Regardless, most case records show that the human brain tends to respond to extreme trauma the way a squid responds to danger—by covering an entire area with obfuscating ink.You know something happened, but it wasn't like a walk in the park, that's all.Everything else was gone, covered by that ink.There are many case records where people say that - people who were raped, people who got into car crashes, people who got caught in fires, people who crawled into closets and died, even a woman who skydived and her parachute didn't open and fell into He fell into a soft swamp, was rescued with serious injuries, but miraculously survived.

How does it feel when you fall?They asked the skydiving lady.When you realize your parachute didn't open, and won't open, what do you think about?The skydiving lady replied, "I don't remember. I remember the starter slapping me on the back, and I think I remember rushing out. But the next thing I remember was lying on a stretcher and getting one to take me to the One person who got into the back of the ambulance knew how badly I was hurt. Everything that happened in between was just a fog. I think I prayed. But, I can’t even remember exactly that.” Maybe you really remember everything, my skydiving friend.thought Jesse.Just lied about it like I did.Maybe even for the same reasons as me.For all I know, in all the damn books I've read, the damned in every case record has lied.

That may be the case.In any case, the fact remained that she did remember the moments when she was handcuffed to the bed—from the click of the key in the lock of the second pair of handcuffs to the final, horrifying moment.At the last moment she saw in the rearview mirror that what was in the house became what was in the back of the car, and during the day she remembered those moments and at night she relived them in horrifying dreams.In the dream, the water glass slid past her along the sloping headboard and shattered on the floor.Wild dogs skip cold meals on the floor, preferring warm meat on the bed.That scary night visitor in the corner asks in her daddy's voice, do you love me?baby?Maggots squirmed on the head of his erect cock.

But remembering an event, reliving it doesn't entail an obligation to tell it, even if memories make you sweat and nightmares make you scream.She's lost ten pounds since October (well, that kind of belies the truth, it's probably seventeen pounds), and she's started smoking again (a pack and a half a day, plus a joint), her skin went from bad to worse, and her hair suddenly turned gray.Not just at the temples, but all over the head.That latter thing she could handle—hadn't she been doing that for more than five years?But so far, she just hasn't been able to muster up enough courage to call Pretty Woman in Seabrook to book an appointment for a color and haircut.Besides, who is she doing beauty for?Maybe she's going to patronize some bachelor bars and prove herself a local beauty?

Good idea, she thought.Some guy would ask me if he could buy me a drink.So I said yes.Then, while we were waiting for the bartender to bring our drinks, I told him - just casually - that I had a dream in which my dad ejaculated not with semen but with maggots.With such interesting chitchat, I'm sure he'll immediately ask me to come back to his apartment with him.He didn't even want to see my doctor's note confirming I was HIV negative. In mid-November, she came to believe that the police were really going to let her go and that the neutral angle of the incident would be left out of the file (she was very slow to believe this because her biggest fear was public attention ), after which she decided to try Nora Calligan's therapy again.Maybe she didn't want to rot with it, and spend the next thirty or forty years sitting in the house like this, reminiscing about nightmares.How different her life would have been if she had tried to tell Nora what had happened on the day of the eclipse?How different would it have been, for that matter, if the girl hadn't been in the kitchen that night when she attended the meeting at the Vicar's church in Nevonne?Maybe there is no difference...but maybe a lot.

Maybe very big! So she called "New Today, New Tomorrow".It was a loosely organized consultancy society in which Nora had been a part.When the receptionist told her that Nora had died of leukemia last year, she was speechless in shock—some weirdly devious mutation managed to hide in the back alleys of her lymphatic system until it was too late to do anything about it up.Maybe Jesse would like to meet Laurel Stevenson?asked the receptionist.But Jessie remembered Laurel—a tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty in stiletto heels who looked as if she only enjoyed sex when she was on top of a man.Jessie told the receptionist she would think about it.This is the end of the consultation. In the three months after she learned of Nora's death, she had good days (when she was just scared) and bad days (when she was so terrified she couldn't even leave the house let alone go out) , but only Brenton Millhallan had heard the nearly complete story of Jesse Mechter's lakeside ordeal, and Brenton didn't believe the wilder parts of that story.He sympathized with her, all right, but didn't trust her.Anyway, I didn't believe it at first. "No pearl earrings," he said to her the next day, after she had first told him about the stranger with the long pale face, "and no muddy footprints. At least not on the paper." Jesse shrugged and said nothing.She could have said something, but it seemed safer not to.In the weeks following her escape from the summer house, she had desperately needed a friend, and Brandon had filled that spot.She didn't want to alienate him, or drive him away entirely with a lot of nonsense. And there was something else, something simple and direct: maybe Blanton was right.Perhaps her visitor was nothing more than a shadow of moonlight after all. Gradually, she was able to convince herself that this was the truth, at least in her waking hours.Her space cowboys are a kind of inkblot quiz graphic, made not with ink and paper, but with wind-blown tree shadows and her imagination.She didn't blame herself for that, however, on the contrary, if it hadn't been for her imagination, she would never have seen how she would have gotten the water glass—and even if she had, she would never have thought of using a magazine insert as a straw.No, she thought, her imagination had fully earned its own right to certain fanciful thoughts.It was important to her, though, to remember that she was alone that night.She believed that, if anything, her spiritual recovery began in the ability to distinguish fact from fantasy.She told Brandon some of these things.He smiled and hugged her, kissed her temple, and told her that she was getting better in every way. Then, last Friday, her eye happened to fall on a front-page story in the county-wide news section of the Herald.All her thoughts began to change.As the story of Raymond-André Hubert began to hit the papers, so did her thoughts.Raymond's story went from a filler in the Community Chronicle to a scoop in the county Police Gazette, and finally to the front page of every newspaper.Then, yesterday, seven days after Raymond's name first appeared in the county paper— When someone knocked on the door, Jessie's first instinct was to cringe, as she always did.It was there, and she was gone almost before she knew it.Almost...but not quite gone. "McGee? Is that you?" "It's me, ma'am." "come in." Maggie Landis was Jessie's housekeeper in December (when her first big insurance payment came by registered mail), and Maggie came in with a tray with a glass of milk on it.Next to the cup was a small gray and red pill.At the sight of the glass, Jesse's right wrist began to itch violently.This doesn't always happen, but it's not entirely an unfamiliar reaction either.At least, that twitching, weird "my skin is about to peel off my bones" feeling is almost gone.She felt that way for a while before Christmas.Jessie really believed then that she would spend the rest of her life drinking from plastic cups. "How's your hand feeling today?" McGee asked, as if she'd sensed that Jessie's hand was itching by some kind of telepathy.Jesse didn't think the idea was funny.At times, she found McGee's questions—intuitive questions—a little creepy, but never funny. The hand in question was now lying in a beam of sunlight, the hand had been writing on the computer keyboard, and the sunlight startled her away.On her hand was a black glove stuffed with some space-age frictionless polymer.Jesse figured the bum glove—because that's what it was for, had been perfected in one hateful little war after another.She wouldn't refuse to wear the gloves for that, and she wasn't ungrateful.She did appreciate Dade, and after the third skin graft, you'll know that an attitude of gratitude is one of life's rare protections against madness. "It's fine, McGee." McGee raised his left eyebrow, which was at the level of "I don't believe it". "Okay? If you've been here, typing on the keyboard for three full hours, I guarantee your hands are singing 'Hail Marys.'" "I actually typed here—" She glanced at her watch and saw that it was.The computer image showed the page notification at the top of the terminal screen, and it was page 50 of the document she had opened since breakfast.It was almost time for lunch, and the most amazing thing was that she wasn't far from what McGee's raised eyebrows suggested: Her hands really weren't that bad.She can wait another hour to take her medication if necessary. However, she took the medicine anyway and washed it down with milk.She drank the last few sips of milk, moved her eyes back to the video display terminal, and read the text being displayed on the screen: No one found me that night.Just after dawn the next day, I woke up by myself.The engine eventually died, but the car was still steaming.I heard the birds singing in the forest, and through the bushes I saw the lake, as level as a mirror, with a little mist rising from the lake, which looked very beautiful.But at the same time I hated the sight, as I've hated it ever since.Ruth, can you understand?I really don't understand what's going on. My hands ached like hell - the help I'd gotten from the aspirin had long since worn off - but despite the pain, what I felt was the most unbelievably peaceful and peaceful.However, something was eroding that feeling, and at first I couldn't remember what it was.My mind doesn't want me to remember it either, I think.Then, I suddenly remembered.It had been in the back seat, it had leaned forward and whispered in my ear the names of all the voices in my head. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the back seat was empty.That loosened my mind a bit, but then I... The sentence ended here, and just after the last sentence that was not finished, the small cursor flickered with anticipation.It seemed to beckon her, urging her to write on.Jesse suddenly remembered a poem from a wonderful little book written by Kayneth Parkin.The title of the book is "Even So" and the poem reads: "Come on, my boy, if we were going to hurt you, do you think we'd be lurking by this darkest path in the woods?" That's a good question.Jess thought, her eyes wandering from the terminal screen to Maggie Landis's face.Jessie liked this feisty Irish woman and was very fond of her.However, if the little housekeeper was caught looking at what she was writing on the computer, McGee would walk down Forest Avenue with her fire money in her arms, before she even had time to read a sentence she had written: "Dear Ruth, I think, so You'll be surprised to hear from me years from now." However, McGee was not looking at the computer screen.She was looking at the sweeping view over Eastern Avenue and Casco Bay.The sun was still shining, and the snow was still falling, though it was evidently swirling lightly now. "The devil is beating his wife." "What did you say?" Jesse asked with a smile. "My mother used to say that when the sun came out before the snow stopped." McGee looked a little embarrassed.She reached out to catch the empty glass, "I'm not sure what this sentence means." Jesse nodded.The look of embarrassment on Maggie Landis's face turned into something else—in Jesse's mind it was uneasiness.For a moment she wondered what it was that made McGee look that way, and then she figured it out—it was so obvious that it was easy to ignore.That was the smile, and McGee wasn't used to seeing Jesse laugh.It seemed odd to Meggie, as if she was going to jump out of her chair and try to grab Meggie by the throat. Yet McGee just told her: "My own mom used to say, 'Every day, the sun doesn't shine on the same dog's asshole.' And I had no idea what that meant." Now, the housekeeper did look in the direction of the computer.It was just a glance that told her to stop, though.It's time to put your toys aside, ma'am.That's what she said with a glance. "If you've taken your medicine, it'll make you drowsy if you don't add some food. I've got sandwiches for you, and the soup's hot on the stove." Soups and sandwiches - this is what kids eat.This is your lunch after a long morning of sledding when school is out for the big nor’easter.This is what you eat when you have a cold and your cheeks are still burning like campfires.Sounds absolutely great, but... "I'm done, Maggie." McGee frowned, and the corners of his mouth drooped.Jessie had often seen that look on her face when she felt so badly needing another painkiller in the early days of hiring McGee that she would cry out.However, McGee never gave in to her tears.This, Jess thought, was why she had hired the little Irishwoman—she had guessed from the start that Maggie was not a man to give in to.In fact, she's a hard potato in the spring when needed...but this time McGee won't be able to hold her back. "Jessie, you need to eat, you're already a scarecrow." Now, the overflowing ashtray was under the stern whip of her gaze, "And you need to quit that shit too. " I want you to quit it, my proud beauty. Gerald said in her head.Jesse shuddered. "Jessie? Are you okay? Exhausted?" "No. Goose walked over my grave. That's all." She smiled languidly. "We talked a lot of old things today, didn't we?" "You warned me over and over again not to overwork—" Jesse stretched out his black-gloved right hand, and tentatively touched Maggie's left hand with it: "My hand is really getting better and better, isn't it?" "Yes. If you can hand-type on that machine, even part-time, and I show up here after three-plus hours and you don't ask for painkillers, then I suppose you're back Sooner than Dr. McGlio expected. But..." "It's getting better and better, too. That's nice... isn't it?" "Of course." The butler looked at Jesse as if she was crazy. "Well, now I'm going to try to get the rest of me back together. The first step is to write to an old friend of mine. I made a promise myself - last October, during my ordeal - if I'm out of the woods, and I'll write. But I've been putting it off, and now I'm at last at work. I dare not stop, and if I do I might lose my nerve." "But this medicine—" "I figured I'd have enough time to wrap this up and put the typed letter in an envelope before I was too sick to work. Then I'd be able to take a long nap. When I woke up, I'd eat Have an early dinner." She touched Maggie's left hand with her right hand again, this comforting gesture was clumsy but kind, "A good early dinner." McGee's brows were still frowning: "It's not good to skip a meal, Jesse, you know." Jessie said very kindly, "Some things are more important than eating. You know that as well as I do, don't you?" McGee glanced at the computer terminal again, then sighed and nodded.She spoke again with the tone of a woman who has succumbed to a conventional view she herself did not really believe in. "I think so. Even if I don't know, you're the boss." Jessie nodded, realizing for the first time that this wasn't just a reasonable setup they both kept for convenience's sake. "So, I guess I'm the boss." McGee frowned slightly again, and said, "Shall I bring the sandwich and put it on the corner of the table?" Jesse grinned, "Okay!" This time McGee smiled back.Three minutes later, when she delivered the sandwiches, Jessie was back in front of the flashing screen.Her skin was an unhealthy comic-strip green in the reflection of the computer, and she was engrossed in the letters she was slowly selecting on the keyboard.The little Irish housekeeper made no effort to be quiet—she was the sort of woman who might not be able to walk on tiptoe, if her life depended on it.Still, Jessie didn't hear her coming and going.She took out a stack of newspaper clippings from the top drawer of her desk, not going through them anymore.Most of the clippings were accompanied by photographs, of a man with an oddly narrow face, tapering at the chin and bulging at the forehead.His deep-set eyes were black and round, and very vacant.Those eyes reminded Jesse of both the comic book waif Dondy and Charles Manson.Beneath his razor-sharp nose protruded lips as thick as sliced ​​fruit. Maggie stood by Jessie's shoulder for a moment, waiting to be told, then left the room with a low hum.About forty-five minutes later, Jesse glanced left and saw a grilled cheese sandwich.Now that it's cold, the cheese has curdled.However, after only five mouthfuls, she quickly gobbled it down.Then she turned back to the computer, and the cursor started bouncing forward again, leading her steadily deeper into the forest.