Second Sight Read online

  The waiter brought their orders, and while they ate, Beverly brought her up on all the gossip. Jocelyn, the third girl in the apartment they had shared five years before, had just separated from her husband but was doing well in the ad agency she worked for; Gary, a guy Beverly had dated for a while before Don, had come out of the closet and was living with his lover on the Upper West Side; Beverly’s magazine was planning a spinoff devoted to the inside world of show business, and she had a chance at the top slot. Jennie listened, content to let Beverly fill the silence with that verbal energy she had always been somewhat in awe of. With her ambition and her model’s looks, Beverly was the quintessential New York woman, the kind Jennie had finally decided she wasn’t. She didn’t have that driving ambition; she wasn’t good at the kind of politics it took to get ahead. She had begun to realize that after only a year in the city, and at the time she had been so unhappy she had considered leaving. Then, of course, she had met Michael.

  After lunch, Beverly walked her to Second Avenue, where she hailed a cab to take her to Grand Central.

  “When do I get to see you in your new dress?” Beverly said, holding the door open for her.

  “I’ll wear it when you and Don come up. Can you make it next Sunday? That’s a week from tomorrow.”

  “It’s a date. That ought to prove how much I care about you, kid, if I give up a weekend at Fire Island to spend it up in farm country.”

  “You have a house in Fair Harbor again?”

  “For the whole summer. You get tired of hayfields and cows, come spend a few weekends at the beach.”

  “Okay,” Jennie said, “I will.”

  The train home took only a little more than an hour; by four o’clock she was in her upstairs bedroom, sitting at her dressing table, fixing her hair into an upsweep atop her head. The drapes at all the windows except one were closed against the sun. The light falling through that one window created a warm afternoon feeling in the room. From downstairs came an occasional outburst of sound from the living room, where Michael was watching a ball game on TV. She ducked her head to place a barrette in her hair, looking up through her lashes at her reflection. A faint flutter of anticipation danced in her stomach, an excitement heightened by her impatience. In the mirror she could see the dress laid out long and beautiful on the bed. She tucked the last hairpin into place, gave herself a quick examination in the mirror, and went to slip it on. Fastening the tiny buttons up the back was awkward and difficult, but only when she had fumbled each one into its loop did she step to the full-length mirror by the door.

  She was entranced: she hardly recognized herself. The high lacy collar lifted her chin and made her neck seem longer. The sleeves ballooned slightly outward to just below the elbow, then tucked into long slim cuffs that ended in ruffles about the base of the hands. A wide, ruffle-edged band of lace ran up the center of the bodice from waist to neck; all that white seemed to turn her hair from its natural dark blonde to a kind of burnished gold. Light fell through the window at her feet so that she seemed to rise up out of it, a slim, almost luminescent figure in the dimness of the room, reminding her of all those romantic Impressionist paintings—Degas’s dancers like white flowers in the shadowy light of the studio, or Monet’s Cliff Walk: two women in just such dresses as this, standing under a parasol in a breeze on a bluff overlooking the sea.

  The sight of herself so changed brought a confused rush of feelings welling up in her: happiness, excitement, eagerness, a yearning ache she hadn’t felt so strongly since she was a girl. Somehow just wearing the dress unlocked all those emotions inside her. She had never looked more beautiful and romantic in her life. Eagerly, she picked up her skirts and went out and down the hall toward the stairs.

  2

  * * *

  IN THE LIVING ROOM, his feet up on a hassock, Michael sipped the last of the Scotch from his glass, keeping his eye on the TV set across the room. It was the top of the fourth, the Yankees one to nothing against the Chicago White Sox. He watched Kaat, the White Sox pitcher, go into that sudden sidearm, with hardly any windup, and there was a sharp crack of the bat as Graig Nettles popped a grounder to second. He was about to go get himself another drink when he heard Jennie come down the stairs and into the room.

  She stopped just inside the door, expectantly, holding the long white skirts up ever so slightly, as if about to curtsey.

  He unwound his legs from the hassock and stood up, the glass still in his hand. “Is that it? I like it.”

  “Isn’t it beautiful, Michael?” She twirled giddily, eyes delighted.

  He grinned. “You look like Julie Christie in The Go-Between.”

  “Roberta did a fabulous job, don’t you think?” she said, turning from side to side like a fashion model.

  “Marvelous. It looks just like the sketches.” He made a complete circle around her, examining the dress, one eye cocked toward the TV screen. The Yankees had just scored, making it two to nothing. “Did she do all that just from the sketches?”

  “Uh huh. She made her own pattern. She said it’s what they wore in the eighteen-nineties.” She spun completely around, the frothy skirts swishing against her legs. “Do you think I’d look good with a parasol?”

  The picture on the screen was beginning to blur. “I think you’d look great with a parasol,” he said, fiddling with the dials. “I like your hair up like that.” The set adjusted, he returned to his chair and put his feet up on the hassock again.

  Jennie was floating in slow circles around the room now, eyes closed, humming to herself. “It’s amazing—just wearing it makes me feel light and buoyant. No wonder the waltz was so popular in those days.” She stopped and held out her arms. “Dance with me?”

  “Sorry. I never learned how to waltz.” He jiggled the ice cubes in his glass. “You’re standing in front of the set. I can’t see.”

  She came over and leaned down to give him a kiss. “Interesting game, huh? Who’s winning?”

  “The Yankees, so far.” He watched the Chicago left-fielder shading his eyes to catch a pop fly and retire the side.

  “Which ones are they?”

  “They’re just taking the field. The White Sox are coming to bat.”

  She watched for a moment, then took the empty glass from him. “Can I get you another?”

  “Thanks, I’d like one.”

  It was only when she’d left the room that he realized she must be disappointed, expecting some special response to the dress. It was an old sore spot between them: her need for a show of emotion he couldn’t provide. She had a way of going all soft when she looked at him that always made him shy away. She seemed to melt in love-making, her face shining pure and vulnerable, and confronted with the depth of that emotion he was sometimes afraid he would drown in it.

  That was the good thing about Elaine, the girl he had had the affair with: it was pure sex with her, no pretense between them of tenderness and adolescent romance. She was a tall and lanky twenty-seven-year-old who lived in the Village, and it had been the kind of experience he had missed when he was single, but he was glad it was over. She was, ultimately, depressing. She was attracted to him, he sometimes thought, perversely, because as a stockbroker he was, like her father, a successful member of that straight world she professed to hate, and sometimes after a bout of sex that had lasted an hour, remembering her guttural cries and her teeth clenched at the moment of climax almost as if in hatred, he had wanted nothing so much as to steal out of bed and leave. But her availability had always drawn him back, until Jennie’s finding out had caused him to put an end to it. Occasionally now, he regretted that he couldn’t reach that level of excitement with Jennie, but the kind of intensity she wanted was something altogether different.

  She came back in with another drink and took the chair beside him. “How’s the game?”

  “Chicago just had another scoreless inning.” The picture on the screen had switched to a Miller High Life commercial.

  “It’s a beautiful day out,�
� she said, perched on the edge of the chair, smiling at him. “I drove down Bond Street coming back from town and ended up in the middle of a street festival right beside the lake. They’ve got rides and booths and a sort of flea market. People were paddling around the lake in those little boats you paddle with your feet. It was so lovely.”

  “Must be some kind of local thing,” he said, watching the TV picture beginning to blur again. “I wonder if that thing is going on the blink. I think I’ll see if we can get the cable here.”

  “I was thinking of going back there,” she said. “The two of us. We could walk around the lake. It’s not that far.”

  He got up to fiddle with the dials again. “Anywhere I have to walk is too far.”

  “It’d be a beautiful way to celebrate my new dress.”

  “That dress?” He grinned. “You get it dirty, it’ll cost a fortune to clean.”

  “But wouldn’t it be fun?”

  “Frankly, walking a mile to a flea market’s not my idea of fun. Now do you mind? I want to watch this game.”

  She sat through another inning, but when a commercial came on again, she came over and put her arms around him from behind his chair. “I think I’ve had enough baseball for today.”

  “Sorry about the walk.”

  “Oh, it’s okay. I may go by myself.”

  “I think the dress is beautiful,” he said, but she had already left the room.

  • • •

  Back up in the bedroom, she stood at the window looking out across the back yard and the field flanking Summer House Road. Sunlight tinged the roof of a neighbor’s house, beyond a thicket of trees at the other end of the field. It was late afternoon, the tree outside the window casting long shadows across the flower beds at the edge of the yard. She went to look at herself in the mirror again, but the sight of herself in the dress failed to excite her now. Her thoughts had begun to seem subversive. Beverly had called her a romantic as if it were some kind of abnormality, but was it abnormal to want your husband to allow some softness in his eyes when he looked at you, to express real feeling in a kiss? Sadly, she turned away from the mirror and went to sit on the bed.

  It had been a mistake to come to New York. Maybe things would have been better if she had stayed in the Midwest. People were different there, more open, more willing to show emotions. She realized what she was thinking and made herself stop it. It wasn’t Michael’s fault if he wasn’t demonstrative; she had known that when she married him. She became aware of an ache at the base of her neck, thick dull pain seeping up from the muscles in her shoulders. The headaches again—the first time since they had moved to the country. Depressed, she lay down on the bed and curled up on the satiny bedspread, one hand pressed against the back of her neck. Even as she fell asleep she could feel the headache working its way up into her temple.

  • • •

  The pain seemed to burst in her head. She was wrenched from sleep, full of an agony so overwhelming it was like a blinding white flash just behind her eyes, causing her to cry out and arch her head back against the bed, her hands clutching her face. And then it was gone, abruptly subsiding back into that dull ache again, and she seemed to rise upward through shifting panels of orange and lavender light, as if out of some great inner depth. In the sluggish confusion of her mind something struck her as strange, and she fumbled through her daze to focus on what it might be. Then she heard it, clear and distinct: a steady tock-tock-tock-tock coming from the other side of the room.

  Even with her eyes closed she knew something was wrong. The bed felt different, softer, shifting like a pillow beneath her weight. The bedspread was rough and quilted, not satiny at all. Then she opened her eyes and saw it, across the room: a dresser she had never seen before and on it a large old clock, more than a foot tall, the pendulum behind its glass face swinging steadily back and forth: tock-tock-tock-tock-tock-tock-tock-tock.

  She lay completely still, afraid to move. Near the dresser was a tall narrow chair with a wicker seat. An ornately trimmed chifforobe stood in one corner. The very quality of the air seemed changed, so that even though she recognized the dimensions of the room it didn’t seem like the same room at all. She felt panic enter stealthily into her. Only her eyes seemed able to function, darting to the unfamiliar curtains at a window divided now into unexpectedly tiny panes, to a strange rag rug on the floor, to the iron railing of the bed she was lying on. I’m dreaming, she thought, this is a dream, but it was too real to be a dream. She turned on her back to look at the ceiling, trembling, waiting, feeling the blood rise to her ears, panic reaching for her throat.

  Then she heard a door burst open downstairs; the high, wild whinny of a horse outside; voices, shouts, footsteps in the living room.

  “Lay her down!” someone shouted. “Put her on the couch!”

  “Pamela? Pamela?”

  She felt panic spinning inside her, taking hold of her in a way she thought she recognized, and she grasped at that answer, that proof, thinking it’s a dream, this is a dream, this is the kind of fear you feel in a dream. And then the panic rose up and took her completely, and the blood pulsing in her ears drowned everything else out.

  And she woke up.

  Fearfully, she stilled her breathing and listened. There was no sound. Slowly, carefully, she turned and looked across the room. There was no clock. The dresser was the one she had brought from the city, sitting blandly in the light from the window. The window was the way it had always been, divided evenly into two large panes. Her Scandinavian rug was back in place on the floor, the bed was her own, and the bedspread was the satiny one she had put on herself, only that morning. Gratefully, she realized the headache was gone.

  • • •

  Downstairs, Michael punched the on-off button and watched the picture on the screen contract to a tiny dot of light. The Yankees had won it, four to one. He took the empty glass into the kitchen and put it in the sink. The house was silent; Jennie must have gone for her walk. Probably his refusing to go had hurt her; it was hard to keep in mind how easily hurt she had become in the last year. He had just decided to go out and find her when she came down the stairs into the dining room, dressed in jeans and a shirt.

  “Hey,” he said, “where’s the dress? I thought you were going for a walk.”

  She laughed, a little nervously. “I fell asleep.”

  “You fell asleep?”

  She put her arms around him and laid her head against his chest. “Honey, I feel so strange.”

  He eased her back a bit so that he could see her face. “What’s the matter?”

  “I just had the oddest dream.”

  “Is that all—a nightmare?”

  “Not really a nightmare. I fell asleep, and then I woke up with this terrible headache—or at least I thought I was awake. But everything was so strange. The room was different. The furniture was all old, like antiques, and then there was all this noise downstairs and somebody shouting, ‘Pamela! Pamela!’ It was so real.”

  He made her look at him. “You haven’t been getting those headaches again?”

  “No, no, it wasn’t the headache, it was the dream. It was so strange.”

  He laughed. “Doesn’t sound like such a bad dream to me. You should see some of the ones I have.”

  “But it was so real. It was just now, and I can still see it, like it really happened to me.”

  “I was just going to go out and join you,” he said. “I thought you’d gone down to the lake. You still feel like a walk?”

  “Not now, it’s too late.” She slipped away and with delicate fingers began nipping dead petals from a bowl of flowers on the dining-room table. “I’ve never had a dream like that before, where everything is so real and specific. I felt like I was back in another century.”

  “It’s that dress and this house. They put you in a nineteenth-century mood.”

  “I suppose so. I guess these are dying.” She carried the bowl of flowers into the kitchen and poured the water out in the si
nk.

  “I’m sorry I was so glued to that ball game,” he said.

  She dumped the dead flowers into the trash bag below the sink and wiped her hands on a towel. “I guess I should know by now how you are with ball games.” She smiled again, to show he was forgiven. “It’s too late for a walk, but we could have a drink together.”

  “I think that’s an excellent idea,” he said.

  While he rummaged in the refrigerator for ice cubes, she went for glasses to the old corner cupboard. “I love this cupboard,” she said, fingering the glass-paned doors. “The real estate broker said it’s been in the house almost a hundred years. Can you imagine that?”

  He got the Scotch bottle out of the liquor cabinet. “You’ve got old on the brain. No wonder you’re dreaming about it.”

  The drinks made, they sat at the kitchen table. She seemed shy, revolving her glass on the table top, as if seeking some way to show she really had forgiven him. The sun was setting outside, sunlight stretching long tentacles through the trees at the other end of the house.

  “I love this light,” she said. “It’s always like this about this time of day. It reminds me of my grandparents’ farm in Ohio, when I was a girl, because they never turned on the lights until it was almost dark. I used to love that, sitting in those shadowy rooms watching the afternoon change into evening. I always made believe we were in pioneer times, when they had oil lamps and feather beds and things like that.”

  “That dream really did put you in a nineteenth-century mood, didn’t it?”

  “I suppose so. I never realized how much I missed things like that in the city.”

  “Why don’t we go out on the patio? It should be nice out there now.”

  “It was so real, though,” she said, getting up from the table. “The dream, I mean. That’s what gets me.”

  “You’ve just got a bad case of nostalgia, that’s all.”

  “But why Pamela?” she said, as she opened the door onto the patio. “I don’t even know anyone named Pamela.”