Electric Elizabeth: A Novel

  ***

  That night, the street was alive with vapors that floated over the road and congregated in the short trees and low bushes across the street. They gathered in a green glow that seemed to set the branches afire before they moved away and slipped around the curve in the road. I watched them disappear around a bend, their light pulsing and dimming.

  Liz worked behind the locked door of the study. I imagined her hunched over a book, writing notations in the margins and underlining paragraphs of importance, scribbling solutions on paper, calculating formulae on the computer or on her calculator. The light beneath the study door flickered intermittently, and I reminded myself to replace the bulbs in the study the following evening before Liz got home.

  Later, I lay in bed, waited for her to fill the space beside me, to warm me with her body, to brush my lips with hers, to take away the heaviness of my day and the emptiness of the night. I smoothed over, then stared at her pillow and thought of the nights without her in my old bedroom with the door locked, the curtains drawn, when my dreams were dark and the only warmth was from heavy flannel blankets.

  My eyelids drooped, then closed. I don't remember when I fell asleep.

  I opened my eyes to a cantaloupe-orange morning light in the windows, an empty space next to me—Liz's pillow indented from her head—and the rough sound of Liz's VW Bug sputtering down the road.

  Chapter Ten

  When I began work at the Blackbridge Banner, I sat at my desk in the far corner, new computer humming on the metal desk, windows on both sides of me affording a wide view of the eastern and western hills. My eyes rested on the long black bridge from which Mom leapt, then traced the icy Susquehanna riverbank. A locomotive with the yellow and black Chessie System kitten logo painted on its side pulled into the railyard and coupled with a small line of boxcars before switching its line to the southern bridge. The corners of the office windows iced over with frost, and the last leaves of autumn clung to trees with brittle stems. I'd sit and wait for assignments from Bentley but would often create my own, driving to town hall to collect information on any recent news, looking at police reports to see what had transpired overnight, if anything. After a week, I'd begun to fear that I made the wrong decision, and my mind flooded with thoughts of unemployment, unpaid bills, uninsured health.

  Bentley sat in his office most of the day, door closed. He often arrived at the office an hour or two before I did and stayed there hours after I left. Through the office windows, I'd see him shuffling through papers, looking at layout mockups, marking them up, setting them aside. I'd thought the overall design of the Banner was already completed, but it seemed Bentley wanted to make more modifications. An outside design agency was finalizing it, and all of us were waiting for the finalized design so we could begin dropping photographs and copy into it, but after another half-week, nothing had been sent our way.

  On the Friday of the second week, I knocked on the door to his office and walked in.

  "Bentley," I said, "it's been two weeks, and we're all just sitting out there."

  He looked up from a legal pad on his desk. "Oh," he said. "Yes, I know. The design is completed. I think you'll like it."

  "Really," I said, sitting down in the chair across from him. "Well . . . we're not quite sure what you want us to do. I've just been going out and—"

  "Did you know that some newspapers used to publish creative work?"

  "Sure," I nodded. "Long time ago, but not so much anymore. I really don't know of any who do that these days."

  "I think we should do that," he said. "Bring in creative work from writers. Poets, fiction writers, that sort of thing."

  "Bentley, just what are we doing here?" I asked softly. "I thought we'd have a newspaper."

  "I was reading about colleges getting rid of their literary journals. Those two sections in the mock-up? Fiction and nonfiction. Poetry as well."

  "Bentley—" I closed my eyes "—I'm not sure what you're putting together. We need to know what to do. Two weeks without a paper. We don't have a lot of subscribers to begin with—"

  "And we won't get any more unless we reflect who we are," he said. "We're not like any other town out there, so why have a paper like any other out there? Why get swallowed up in the crowd?"

  "You're talking about publishing something from some bygone era, Bentley."

  "Milton, as long as we're in this town, we'll always be in a bygone era."

  I sat back and rubbed my eyes. "You're going to need a fiction and poetry editor," I said. "Someone who could sort through the pieces, someone to acquire them—"

  "My wife can do that," he said. "She's got her doctorate in English from Chicago. You still haven't met her yet, have you?" He gazed through a window, as if trying to remember.

  "No, I haven't. Can she handle all that work?"

  "I'm sure she can."

  "Okay," I said, holding my hands out as if steadying myself. "You need to tell us what every section is, what our jobs are, what our assignments are. You're our owner and editor-in-chief. If you don't have a direction, we won't have a newspaper. I'm not sure what we have right now, and I'm getting worried."

  "Everything'll be fine, Milton."

  I left his office unconvinced.

  ***

  "I think I made a huge mistake, Liz. Please call me when you get the chance."

  After leaving the voicemail, I hung up the phone, left the Banner offices, and walked out into the street, collar turned up over my nose and mouth. The air was dry, the sky clear, but the skylight still had that dark Blackbridge quality, as if the hills soaked up the wavelengths and let only a few rays seep into the town. I walked up Polaris Avenue, past Shrike, Crow, Raven, and Rook streets, and up to the town's northern edge. The road continued on for another half mile past the town limits before breaking up into gravel and dirt. Ahead lay the dark pine forest of The Swamps. I stared at the dense green-black line stretching from the steep, nearly vertical feet of the eastern hills, to the churning brown of the Susquehanna riverbank. I looked to my right at the blocky buildings of Blackbridge Junior-Senior High School, at the hilltop antennas rising into the late autumn blue, then directly up at the sky as if expecting it to tell me what to do next.

  A thin contrail crept east to west like a silver pin floating in sunlight.

  ***

  Back at the office, I checked my voicemail. Liz hadn't yet responded. It was almost five in the afternoon. I sat at the desk, stared at the telephone, at the computer, then tapped a pen against the edge of the desk in a random rhythm.

  Bentley sat in his office, the door and window blinds closed. He remained there when I left the building and drove home for the evening.

  The house was empty and cold. I turned on the front porch, living room, and kitchen lights. I straightened out the study for Liz, dusted the desk, arranged the paper and pens. There were more cloud doodles on the blotter, and the desk light was burned out. I replaced the bulb, left it on, then went to the kitchen, made dinner, and waited on the living room loveseat. I fell asleep sometime around ten o'clock.

  ***

  I awoke in darkness. Above me, footsteps creaked through the floorboards. I walked up to the study. The door was closed. Under the door, blue-white light flashed, and a deep hum vibrated through the doorframe. I reached for doorknob and turned it, but the lock was engaged. I knocked once, then again, then a third time until there was a click and the door swung open.

  "What are you doing?" Liz asked. She stood in the doorway dressed in a blue Coxton College sweatshirt and blue pajama pants.

  "What am I doing? I'm wondering why you didn't return my message today. I'm wondering why you got home so late. And I'm also wondering why you didn't even bother to wake me up."

  "First answer," she said, "I didn't check my phone today since I was busy. Second answer is that I was busy, and the third answer is that I didn't want to wake you." She smiled.

  "I
t's not funny."

  "Milt, what's the matter?"

  "The matter? The matter's that you're gone before I get up, you're in the study all night, you don't even bother to return messages I leave for you, and I don't know what's going on."

  "Wait," she said, "you knew I'd be busy for a while and that we wouldn't see much of each other—"

  "How much time does it take to return a call or to say 'Hello' when you walk in the door? Every day you leave, every day I wait, and every day you get home later and later. I see less and less of you."

  She folded her arms. "You don't need to wait for me, Milton. You shouldn't always be waiting for me. Do you just go to work, come home, and wait for me every day?"

  "What else should I do?"

  She opened her mouth, then closed it, biting her lower lip. "You sit on that couch every day waiting for me."

  I shrugged. "I sit wherever, sure."

  "You don't go anywhere or do anything."

  "Go where?" I asked. "With whom?"

  "Anywhere, with anyone, Milt. How long have you been just sitting around the house?"

  "How do you think the house gets clean, how there's always food in the kitchen for you, how the study's always clean and how it has new light bulbs, how your mail's waiting for you on the coffee table, and how you have all this time for your classes?" I barked the last word.

  Her eyes moved back and forth, taking in information, then looked at me. "You really have no one else to talk to, do you?" she asked.

  "I thought I did have someone," I said, turning away.

  ***

  I was in bed an hour before she slipped under the covers. I faced the windows, tree shadows crisscrossing in the moonlight. Liz took in a deep breath, then rolled toward me and ran her fingers through my hair. I remained silent, watching the shadowy veins waver over the walls and floor, feeling Liz's fingers gently brush my scalp as I drifted to sleep where I thought I dreamt of a short woman with dark hair and wearing a white slip who faced the bedroom's western window, tree shadows cutting her body like black rivers, blue arcs crackling over her skin.

  ***

  Bentley called me down to the office the next day, and I left Liz to sleep while I made my way to the Banner offices, the morning air swirling with cold wind that scattered dry leaves and paper down the quiet streets. When I walked up the warehouse stairs, wind howled through the corridor.

  He sat in his office in the same clothing he'd worn the previous day, his hair freshly combed back, but his face darker with stubble. Beside him sat a tall red-haired woman dressed in a blue-green flannel shirt and jeans, her face heavily freckled. "Milton," Bentley said, "this is my wife, "Claire."

  She sprung up, extended a hand to shake mine. "Hi," she said, "good to finally meet you." Her voice was somewhat husky, and the slight scent of cigarette smoke explained why.

  "Hello," I said. "Bentley said he met you at University of Chicago."

  "He did. Finishing my doctorate when he became a senior. I think he's got a thing for older women." She sat down. "You know we've been working on finalizing the newspaper format."

  I sat down and combed my hair with my hands. "I thought it already had a format, I said. "I'm also a bit worried that it seems to be changing every day."

  "Not every day," she said. "Bentley and I just thought that if we're going to do something different then let's do something different."

  "Okay," I said, waiting for her to continue.

  "We have the sections finalized," Bentley said, his voice soft and tired. "The Banner will have news in its front section, but the remaining two sections will be a creative nonfiction section, which you'll have complete control over, and the third section will be the literary section; that's Claire's. Front section will be usual local news, but since there's not a lot of it, it'll all be lumped together broken down into subsections."

  "This is going to be an odd newspaper," I said.

  "Like the town," said Claire.

  "How d'you feel about Blackbridge so far?" I asked.

  "I like its quirks."

  "I guess that's one way to describe them," I said.

  "How would you describe them?"

  "I just put everything under the category of insanity."

  Claire nodded again. "I see."

  "You know," I said, "my book comes out next week. It's not going to make the town look pretty. Lots of people are going to hate me, if they get around to actually reading it. If that's the case, what makes you think they're going to keep reading the Banner?"

  "They won't be our primary audience," Claire said. "For the first section, sure, maybe. But we're looking at the first section as a way of giving the paper a bit of local flavor. We want the fiction, the poetry, and your section to reflect the character of Blackbridge and towns like it."

  "A literary journal with reports of creepy local phenomena and high school football scores attached to it," I said. "I don't know."

  "Are you still afraid?" Bentley asked.

  "You sound like my wife."

  "Were you afraid when you wrote that book?" he asked.

  "Not really."

  "Then don't be afraid now," he said. "Fear"—he paused, glancing up at the ceiling—"fear locks things in place. Chains you can't feel. Wraps around your arms and legs." Claire was watching him from the corners of her eyes. She reached over and rubbed his arm like Liz would rub mine.

  "Fear can also keep you alive," I said.

  "That it can," he said, eyes still on the ceiling. I wondered if he looked to the sky for answers as well.

  I drove home, and The Heights seemed to loom over the town larger than ever, like a mountain shaped by shifting bends of light, its slopes steeper, its summit higher, its mass greater. I glanced at the Burke house perched on the ridge cut into the hillside, the abandoned hospital mere yards away.

  Chapter Eleven

  A week before Christmas, I'd finally received a small box containing copies of my book. When I opened the box, it smelled of library bookshelves and dust. Twenty books shrink wrapped, the hardcover cover an illustration of a small town nighttime skyline of roofs, windows illuminated blue by television glow, and black background hillside shapes silhouetted by a crescent moon. I ran my hands over the title at the top and my name at the bottom:

  Darkened Windows: Memories in a Dead Town

  by Milton Conroy

  I sat on the living room floor and stacked the books on the carpeting. When the twin stacks of ten were completed, I looked at them for several minutes, realizing I had very few people to whom I could actually give copies. I put one aside for Liz, pulled off the plastic wrap, and opened it to the dedication page where the publisher had typeset a single line of black text on a sea of white:

  To Elizabeth, who lights lanterns in the windows and leads me home.

  I took out a pen and wrote beneath it: All my love. —Milton.

  I placed the book on the desk in the study then closed the door. I sat in the kitchen and listened to the wall clock tick away the twilight hour into the late evening until I walked up to the bedroom and fell asleep on the covers. I awoke to feel Liz move beside me, an arm draped across my chest.

  "I thought classes are done for the semester," I whispered.

  "They are," she said, her head resting on my shoulder, her breath warming my neck. I reached over and rubbed her arm with my hand.

  "My book arrived today," I said.

  "I see you left one on the desk. It looks lovely."

  "Did you open it yet?"

  "I didn't get a chance, Darling. I will this week, I promise." She let out a deep breath, rubbed my chest up and down. "What do you want for Christmas?" she asked.

  "I got you. That's enough." She stopped rubbing my chest, buried her nose in my shoulder. "What do you want for Christmas?"

  "I don't know what I want, Milton," she whispered, then rolled over. "I don't know what I want."

  ***

  Cl
aire stood over my desk as I typed. I looked up, saw she was dressed in a black sweatshirt and jeans. "You busy?" she asked.

  I stopped typing, looked at the words on the computer screen, the legal pad notes strewn over my desk. "Not too busy," I said.

  "We just got some real news. Chief Lorenzo died early this morning."

  I saved my work, then leaned back. "Oh," I said. "Something for the local section?"

  "Exactly. Bentley would like it if you wrote up a piece on Lorenzo. Human interest and news. Bio, probable cause of death, speak to family—"

  "I'm not speaking to his son," I interrupted.

  "That's right, forgot about your vendetta. You really dumped a pile on him in your book."

  "It was honest and accurate. It's okay, there're enough Lorenzos around," I said. "I'll get enough." I started gathering up my notebooks, recorder, and camera.

  "You going now?" she said.

  "Of course."

  "Mind if I go along? I'd like a break from sorting through manuscripts."

  "It won't be exciting."

  "Damn. And here I was hoping for a drive-by shooting." She reached into a back pocket and pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

  ***

  The town was ringed with gray-green clouds, snow readying an assault on the streets and hilltops that night. The ground was hard-packed from the cold, and the rivers were beginning to pancake with ice. As Claire and I drove through the town, we saw residents stocking up on groceries and preemptively tossing salt onto stairs, sidewalks, and driveways. Through windows, Christmas trees blinked and tinsel twinkled.

  "Did you know Chief Lorenzo at all?" Claire asked.

  "Not well. He helped a bit after my mom died, but I mostly just knew his son and daughter," I said. "You know your husband used to hang around with his son?"

  "That's what he told me."

  "What else he tell you? I mean, about the town, about himself?"

  "Whatever he feels like telling me," she said, pushing her red hair out of her eyes. "I asked him who his friends were once. Know what he said? Said he really didn't have any."

  "For a guy who had a lot of people around him, that's an odd thing to say."

  "Maybe, but people in close proximity aren't always friends. When I met him in Chicago, I used to see people gathering around him, and I used to see this look in his eyes, like someone looking for the exit door. Except when he saw me. Just came up to me and started talking, asking who I was and all that."