Houdini Heart

  She couldn’t have reached the turn at the end of the corridor. This section is half a block long. Not enough time. I imagine her crouched inside one of the doors on the High Street wing, her ear pressed hard against it, listening for me. She knows where I am. Where else would I be? Does she imagine herself safe? I imagine she does.

  But this is my movie now.

  ~

  It used to be his movie. It was his needs we tended to, his talent we made room for, his dream we followed, his demons tormenting us. For the longest time, I questioned none of this. Of course he came first. He was a genius. He was a Golden Globe, Spirit Award, Bafta Awards, Oscar winning movie star.

  We met on the set of The Windigo’s Daughter. I was there as the writer. Lowly writers aren’t usually allowed within a mile of a movie set, but this day was the director’s idea of an “open house.” He was there because he had a small, but exceedingly crucial, part. It was my idea to get him to play it: after all, I wrote it for him. Somebody must have told him that, because during a break he came looking for me. Bold as chili. Sober as water. Nothing coy, nothing worked out beforehand, just a straight forward try for a quick fuck. If he were here now, he’d tell you different, but he didn’t get laid the day we met. The day we met we sat and talked in canvas chairs provided by whoever provides canvas chairs on movie sets (mine said “Visitor;” his said “Mr. Nelson” which meant it was the director’s chair), and then in his dressing room because we were pissing off the director by making him stand. And then, when the set shut down late in the day, we talked all the way to my Topanga Canyon rental where I picked up something to swim in (cut-offs and a tank top), and then all the way to his place in Malibu where we got towels so we could lie on the narrow beach in front of his house and watch the sun go down over Santa Catalina and the fog roll in. We talked through every moment of all this. He made me cry because he scared me. I thought I’d found a mentor, someone to help me grow up. I thought he saw me. I thought he saw through me. It scared me half to death to be seen, but I couldn’t stop myself letting him look. He got laid the day after we met: on the pebbled beach, near the deep sea stink of the pilings under his beach house. It was cold and sticky and exposed and stupid so we went inside, showered off, and did it again in his nice big unmade bed overlooking the hissing sea. Much better.

  Innocent me. I knew he drank. But I had this truly naive idea that talking as we had talked and fucking as we fucked would give him reason to stop drinking. Or, second best, slow it down a little.

  ~

  None of the doors on either side of the High Street second floor hall are open. They wouldn’t be. She had time to close a door.

  I creep along in the eternal light—the halls of River House are kept lit all day and all night. Dim light, yet I see everything: the stains on the worn brown carpet, the dull gleam on the dun painted walls, the scuffs on the dark brown doors—kicks? drunken falls? Overhead the ceilings are lowered just as they are in the rooms. Thin yellowed tiles. Exposed sprinkler systems. An exit sign far away at the turn of the hall.

  It’s as if River House quietly breathes. Like an old man breathes, lying in bed, covers up to his chin, waiting.

  Shall I knock on the first door I come to—or the last?

  I choose the first door. I square up to it, preparing myself for what is bound to come when you knock on a door in the dead of night. Head up, eyes steady in their sockets, words steady in my throat, my arm raised, my knuckles ready—but just as they begin their descent, I hear something. It’s behind me. So faint a noise, it seems nothing more than a change in air pressure, but I hear it, and I turn. A door has opened along the hall. A door that was firmly shut a moment ago is now open a crack.

  Determined, I begin my stride towards it. And then suddenly stop. It’s the door to Benjamin Willow’s office.

  ~

  Back in my room again. I could not go there. I cannot go there. Did she know that? She knew that.

  In a horror movie, someone always plays the one person who hears something in a haunted house—and walks towards it. This someone—usually young, usually female, usually half-dressed—is called the “idiot-in-the-attic.” She climbs the blood drenched stairs up into the creaking attic, or down into the moaning pitch-black cellar, or opens the door to the closet. And all the while the audience, knowing better, pleads with her: Stop! Get out of there, you moron. Run for your life!

  I’m not an idiot-in-the-attic. But I might be an idiot.

  If I were fully alive, I’d leave. Right now. In the middle of the night. If I weren’t who I am, hadn’t done what I’ve done, I wouldn’t spend another night here. All those years ago, I was right. There’s something wrong with River House. Somewhere inside it there’s a world of lunatic darkness that no longer allures. It no longer seems enchanted. It’s not a palace. It’s a madhouse. I am sick with fear.

  I was braver at twelve than I am at my eternal thirty-six. This isn’t what I planned.

  Here I am, in my room, and I laugh. I lean against my feature wall and I laugh and laugh. I’ve seen all this in movies. The laughing lunatic scene. And what do you know…lunatics do laugh. Lunatics laugh until they throw up. If there is nothing wrong with River House, then there is certainly something wrong with me. Hell. Of course there’s something wrong with me. There is something very wrong with me. There are some things you do in a life that you cannot undo. There are some things that are unforgivable. Aside from that, I’m suicidal. I’m sure that qualifies as a problem.

  What would a therapist say?

  In Malibu, he had a therapist. As a healer, his therapist was useless. As a drug dispenser, she was invaluable. I could use one of her prescriptions now. Or an exorcist.

  An exorcist?

  I’m at my closet door, flinging it open, dragging out the locked leather bag. Large but not that heavy, it comes away easily, so easily that I stagger with it, fall on my ass. If the woman who walks the halls and hides in rooms isn’t driving this building batty, I certainly am. Whoever lives beneath me must have heard that. What the hell.

  Back up again, trying to open the bag. Christ, I remember. I locked it after I removed the hammer. I wasn’t quite as crazy then. I still knew enough to lock things. And then I put the key somewhere safe. But where? In a frenzy now, I stand, spin where I stand. There’s so few hiding places. It must be obvious. Why can’t I remember?

  There is a single knock at my door—and at the same moment the light comes on in the back of my closet. I’ve already forgotten what I hoped to find in my bag.

  ~

  When I came home that day, he was asleep. Not a nap, or a snooze, but a coma…deep deep into the reeking pit of a drunk’s complete oblivion. He was sprawled on the floor of her room, lying on her toys, on her scattered bedding. On the remains of her lunch. Her tiny spoon was still in his hand, creamed corn congealing on the soft tufted carpet. And Kate wasn’t anywhere. She wasn’t anywhere. I ran through the rooms, calling her name. And when she wasn’t in the house, I ran outside. We lived in Malibu, but had no pool. She couldn’t be in the pool. But she could be in the road, over a cliff, in a sack on the back of a madman.

  “Katy! Katherine! Kate!”

  By then I was screaming, my throat already shredded with the power of my shrieks.

  I found her. We had no pool yet she had drowned anyway. Beyond an oleander hedge our next door neighbors had a pond. A large pond filled with goldfish. Untended, uncared for, unwatched, Kate must have tumbled in looking at the fish.

  Our neighbor found me cradling Kate. I have no idea how long I had held her, talking, urging her home, willing her back into her small cold body.

  She never came back. And neither have I.

  ~

  The light is on again. It becomes obvious. If I am not insane, and even now I might not be, then I am being called. Something wants me to climb the stairs. If there are no stairs, if there never were any stairs, there are stairs now. Maybe they’re my stairs. Maybe they show themselves only to me.
One thing’s for certain—I can see them as clearly as I can see my bare feet, dark gray on the bottom from running on the filthy carpets of River House.

  But what, in anyone’s life, is “real”? How much of what is yours is shared with others? We each see through our own unique eyes, feel with our own isolated hearts, perhaps we create our own personal reality by our own personal thoughts, our feelings? Perhaps everyone’s an artist. Perhaps the whole world is a movie, and we are all screenwriters. Perhaps I created the stairs.

  If I screamed, would they go away? If I climbed them, would I go away?

  Sentences form in my mind. They are not whispered. They are not quietly declarative. They are a shout from the inside.

  “You have nothing to lose. You have already lost it all. You’re still a writer. Follow the story.”

  I climb the stairs. Which are not circular, not lit at the top, not filled with the music of Cole Porter. These stairs are very old and very bare. They are silent and narrow, wedged between the inner and outer walls of River House, and barely wide enough for my shoulders, barely lit enough to see each worn stair as I climb it. These stairs smell of mold.

  ~

  Over the years I have had the same dream. Or versions of the same dream. I dream about a house. It ought to be my house, but it isn’t. Someone has somehow taken it from me, changed it, made some rooms cozy, some strange. Put some in very out of the way places, left other rooms to rot. No matter how the house looks, I always know it is the same house and I wander around in it, never wondering at how big it is inside, how complex, when outside it seems so small. No matter how many stairs I climb, there is always another, higher, floor. No matter how deep I go into the cellar, there is always a deeper cellar.

  I sob in my dreams. Whoever owns it or lives in it does not want me there. I am always the outsider sneaking around in someone else’s house. It was my house once, and now I am an intruder in it. I am lost in it.

  When I awake from one of my house dreams, I often think of Shirley Jackson who must have had similar dreams. In her house, whatever walked there walked alone. In my house, I have company. In my house, and years and years before Kate drowned, I’ve looked for a lost child.

  I think I am that child.

  ~

  I don’t know what I’m looking for now as I climb the stairs that lead up, and down, behind my closet. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I thought I had something to do. Before it was too late to make choices, I would come to River House, I would write something, anything, one last time. I would see where that led me. I thought it was obvious. It would lead me to my final fatal “fini.” It would be my big fadeout.

  Now? Now, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

  I’ve lost track of time. I could have been climbing these stairs for five minutes. I could have been climbing them for five hours. Looking back down at the stairs I’ve climbed, they seem endless. Looking up towards those I’ve yet to climb, these also seem endless. No doors have led off from the odd little landings I’ve come to, narrow and without purpose, no windows have looked out at anything, or in at anything. The walls of the staircase are bare of paper, almost even of plaster. In many places the ancient lathe shows through. I can scarcely breathe for the dust, as thick as chaff. Glancing down at my pajama bottoms, I see they’re coated with powdery debris. My feet are almost black, my hands gray.

  It all smells of darkness, yet there is light. Not bright. Not coming from anywhere in particular. Maybe there is no light. Maybe I can see merely because I can see.

  I ought to be still terrified, but I’m not. I’m numb. Not only have I lost track of time, but of purpose. Why am I climbing these stairs? What was I doing before I started climbing these stairs?

  I can’t remember. It seems I really am the ultimate idiot in the attic.

  ~

  Fade to black.

  I can almost count on it by now. I’m back in bed. I’m lying in my bed on the floor in my room in River House—no, wait, it’s not on the floor. It’s a proper bed, a double four-poster bed. Bit saggy, just the tiniest bit shabby, but it has decent sheets, a rather charming counterpane, and there’s a nice little nightstand next to it. Oh look, a little handmade doily. I haven’t seen one of those since Wichita. Mother covered everything in doilies, especially the top of her fucking piano. There’s the book I brought with me. I went to sleep reading Forever Amber, by some fellow female named Kathleen Winsor. Seems appropriate. The heroine, Amber (and what kind of name is that?), sleeps her way higher and higher in the world. Wish I’d learned to do that. I’ve slept my way lower and lower. And there’s the bottle of pills. Sometime today I’ll take them. And then I’ll see if I can finish Forever Amber before the barbiturates finish me.

  Hah. I’m really a hoot today.

  The phone on the nightstand rings. I won’t answer it. I don’t want to answer it. If I answer it, it’ll be someone I don’t want to speak to. It’s never anyone I want to speak to.

  I took a frigging bus all the way from New York City to get away from the phone, from the never-ending city bustle and heave, from the same questions I’ve been asked now for years, from my own stupid pointless mortality, and where does it get me? The phone that’s ringing keeps ringing until it stops ringing. As soon as that happens, I pick up the hand receiver, dial 0 for the desk.

  “This is room 36. Yes, that’s right, it’s me, the one who used to be a famous actress. Don’t put any more calls through, please. I don’t care. Tell them I’m sleeping. Tell them I’ve gone out. No, better yet. Tell them I’m dead. Yes, even calls from New York. No calls at all, you understand. Thank you.”

  That crack about telling ‘em I’m dead…no one takes you seriously when you say things like that. And thank heavens they don’t, or I’d have half this town in my room. Fucking Hollywood press. They’ve killed more than me in their time.

  Bless bloody Greta. She knew when to get out. And so did I. Trouble with me and not with Greta, is I didn’t know enough not to come back. But here’s a true blue fact: Greta would have backstroked through mud if those fat boorish buck-on-the bottom-line Jewish boobs had asked her real nice. And stopped with the lesbian smut. So she liked muff? So do I. Enough, anyway, for an evening’s amusement. So fucking what?

  I’ve got two packages of Chesterfields on the dresser and a fifth of Gordon’s gin in a drawer in the big wardrobe by the door to the bathroom. I’ve got all I need, don’t have to go out for anything. I can’t stand going out. Every time I go out, it’s always the same. Samuel L. Christ, I haven’t made a moving picture for years, and there’s still someone who stops me on the street.

  What the hell is the terrible row outside the window? You’d think this was Paris the day the Germans showed up, not some nothing little town in Vermont.

  I go to the window. It’s not Paris. The German army isn’t out there. It’s just Vermont where a couple of working joes are busy dismantling a perfectly splendid iron balcony one floor down from my window. No doubt it’s getting turned over to the government as scrap metal so the government can beat it into tanks. As Tallulah would say, “Too fabulous.” I do wish someone had told me they were doing this before I checked in last night. I could have found somewhere else to drop dead in.

  Oh for God’s sake, now what? Someone’s knocking on the door. I’ll have to answer. I can’t sulk in here forever like some people I can think of. Plus, I’m not dead yet.

  On the third knock, I yank open the door. Not quite what I expected, but bad enough.

  “Miss Brooks?”

  “Yes.”

  The woman is trembling. She’s clutching her little menu, crushing it, she’s so thrilled it’s me, really me. Poor silly foolish thing.

  “Management asked me to tell you if you wanted anything, anything at all, please don’t hesitate to ask. I mean, it’s you. You’re her.”

  “So I am.”

  She thrusts the menu at me, but I’m already shutting the door. If I don’t she’ll be weeping soon, and I
’ll have to invite her in, and then she’ll tell me I’m her favorite movie star and why oh why don’t I make any more pictures?

  As I’m sliding the little whatsit that dead bolts the door, and catching sight of the bottle of pills on my nightstand, I give the woman an unspoken answer to her unasked question. Because they don’t want me, that’s why, girlie. They don’t want me in their movies. They don’t want me on their radio shows. They don’t even want me behind their counters in Saks fucking Fifth Avenue. But I’ll show the bastards.

  Pad over and get the gin out of the wardrobe drawer, pad back to the four-poster. Don’t need a glass. Straight out of the bottle will do. Set that down on my nightstand. Pick up the pills, shake a few into my hand. How many are lethal? Who knows? Who cares? I’ll take ‘em all. But not yet. Like to enjoy a drink or two, a few more chapters of my book. I’ll take two pills, see how that feels, and then take the rest when I’m feeling really calm and sleepy. What could be easier?

  I’ve got all day to die. Why rush it?

  So here I am in some big old hotel in little old Vermont with birds on the wallpaper, birds and vines and flowers, and I’m reading Forever Amber. It’s only just come out, and bingo, already whoever this Winsor dame is, she’s rich and famous. Now that’s a field I should have gone into, rather than dancing since I was a little kid. And especially rather than acting. Stupid thing to do, act. Always felt like a damn fool. Plus writers don’t get told they’re too old to write, or that nobody wants to see their sorry face on a giant screen anymore. Writers just write. And they don’t kill themselves.

  You know, this is a great book. I’m supposed to be dying here, and I can’t put down the book. Wish I could write something people couldn’t put down. Say, what a joke that would be. What a laugh. If I wrote something that sold like this. Or even if I just wrote something that’d make their Hollywood hair stand on end. Inside stuff. The straight dope.