Intensity

  Woltz had stopped, shifted the Cadillac into reverse, and backed up to where the Mercedes was swiftly sinking. He and Anne had gotten out of the car to watch. Chyna’s mother had insisted that she watch too: Come on, you little chicken. You don’t want to miss this, baby. This is one to remember. The passenger’s side of the Mercedes was flat against the muddy bottom of the canal, and the driver’s side was revealed to them as they stood on the embankment in the humid evening air. They were being bitten by hordes of mosquitoes but were hardly aware of them, mesmerized by the sight below them, gazing through the driver-side windows of the submerged vehicle.

  “It was twilight,” Chyna told Laura, putting into words the images behind her closed eyes, “so the headlights were on, still on even after the Mercedes sank, and there were lights inside the car. They had air-conditioning, so all the windows were closed, and neither the windshield nor the driver-side window had shattered when the car rolled. We could see inside, ’cause the windows were only a few inches under water. There was no sign of the husband. Maybe he was knocked unconscious when they rolled. But the old woman…her face was at the window. The car was flooded, but there was a big bubble of air against the inside of the glass, and she pressed her face into it so she could breathe. We stood there looking down at her. Woltz could have helped. My mother could have helped. But they just watched. The old woman couldn’t seem to get the window open, and the door must have been jammed, or maybe she was just too scared and too weak.”

  Chyna had tried to pull away, but her mother had held her, speaking urgently to her, the whispered words borne on a tide of breath sour with vodka and grapefruit juice. We’re different than other people, baby. No rules apply to us. You’ll never understand what freedom really means if you don’t watch this. Chyna had closed her eyes, but she had still been able to hear the old woman screaming into the big air bubble inside the submerged car. Muffled screaming.

  “Then gradually the screaming faded…finally stopped,” Chyna told Laura. “When I opened my eyes, twilight had gone and night had come. There was still light in the Mercedes, and the woman’s face was still pressed to the glass, but a breeze had risen, rippling the water in the canal, and her features were a blur. I knew she was dead. She and her husband. I started to cry. Woltz didn’t like that. He threatened to drag me into the canal, open a door on the Mercedes, and shove me inside with the dead people. My mother made me drink some grapefruit juice with vodka. I was only seven. The rest of the way back to Key West, I lay on the backseat, dizzy from the vodka, half drunk and a little sick, still crying but quietly, so I wouldn’t make Woltz angry, crying quietly until I fell asleep.”

  In Laura’s Mustang, the only sounds were the soft rumble of the engine and the singing of the tires on the blacktop.

  Chyna finally opened her eyes and came back from the memory of Florida, from the long-ago humid twilight to the Napa Valley, where most of the red light had gone out of the sky and darkness encroached on all sides.

  The old man in the Buick was no longer in front of them. They were not driving as fast as before, and evidently he had gotten far ahead of them.

  Laura said softly, “Dear God.”

  Chyna was shaking uncontrollably. She plucked a few Kleenex from the console box between the seats, blew her nose, and blotted her eyes. Over the past two years, she had shared part of her childhood with Laura, but every new revelation—and there was much still to reveal—was as difficult as the one before it. When she spoke of the past, she always burned with shame, as though she had been as guilty as her mother, as if every criminal act and spell of madness could be blamed on her, though she had been only a helpless child trapped in the insanity of others.

  “Will you ever see her again?” Laura asked.

  Recollection had left Chyna half numb with horror. “I don’t know.”

  “Would you want to?”

  Chyna hesitated. Her hands were curled into fists, the damp Kleenex wadded in the right one. “Maybe.”

  “For God’s sake why?”

  “To ask her why. To try to understand. To settle some things. But…maybe not.”

  “Do you even know where she is?”

  “No. But it wouldn’t surprise me if she was in jail. Or dead. You can’t live like that and hope to grow old.”

  They drove down out of the foothills into the valley.

  Eventually Chyna said, “I can still see her standing in the steamy darkness on the banks of that canal, greasy with sweat, her hair hanging damp and all tangled, covered with mosquito bites, eyes bleary from vodka. Laura, even then she was still the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. She was always so beautiful, so perfect on the outside, like someone out of a dream, like an angel…but she was never half as beautiful as when she was excited, when there’d been violence. I can see her standing there, only visible because of the greenish glow from the headlights of the Mercedes rising through the murky canal water, so ravishing in that green light, glorious, the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen, like a goddess from another world.”

  Gradually Chyna’s trembling subsided. The heat of shame faded from her face, but slowly.

  She was immeasurably grateful for Laura’s concern and support. A friend. Until Laura, Chyna had lived secretly with her past, unable to speak of it to anyone. Now, having unburdened herself of another hateful corrupting memory, she couldn’t begin to put her gratitude into words.

  “It’s okay,” Laura said, as if reading Chyna’s mind.

  They rode in silence.

  They were late for dinner.

  To Chyna, the Templeton house looked inviting at first glimpse: Victorian, gabled, roomy, with deep porches front and rear. It stood a half mile off the county road, at the end of a gravel driveway, surrounded by one hundred twenty acres of vineyards.

  For three generations, the Templetons had grown grapes, but they had never made wine. They were under contract to one of the finest vintners in the valley, and because they owned fertile land with the highest-quality vines, they received an excellent price for their crop.

  Sarah Templeton appeared on the front porch when she heard the Mustang in the driveway, and she came quickly down the steps to the stone walkway to greet Laura and Chyna. She was a lovely, girlishly slim woman in her early or mid forties, with stylishly short blond hair, wearing tan jeans and a long-sleeved emerald-green blouse with green embroidery on the collar, simultaneously chic and motherly. When Sarah hugged Laura and kissed her and held her with such evident and fierce love, Chyna was struck by a pang of envy and by a shiver of misery at never having known a mother’s love.

  She was surprised again when Sarah turned to her, embraced her, kissed her on the cheek, and, still holding her close, said, “Laura tells me you’re the sister she never had, so I want you to feel at home here, sweetheart. When you’re here with us, this is your place as much as ours.”

  Chyna stood stiffly at first, so unfamiliar with the rituals of family affection that she didn’t know quite how to respond. Then she returned the embrace awkwardly and murmured an inadequate thank-you. Her throat was suddenly so tight that she was amazed to be able to speak at all.

  Putting her arms around both Laura and Chyna, guiding them to the broad flight of porch steps, Sarah said, “We’ll get your luggage later. Dinner’s ready now. Come along. Laura’s told me so much about you, Chyna.”

  “Well, Mom,” said Laura, “I didn’t tell you about Chyna being into voodoo. I sort of hid that part. She’ll need to sacrifice a live chicken every night at midnight while she’s staying with us.”

  “We only grow grapes. We don’t have any chickens, dear,” Sarah said. “But after dinner we can drive to one of the farms in the area and buy a few.”

  Chyna laughed and looked at Laura as if to say, Where’s the infamous Look?

  Laura understood. “In your honor, Chyna, all wire coat hangers and equivalent devices have been put away.”

  “Whatever are you talking about?” Sarah asked.


  “You know me, Mom—a babbling ditz. Sometimes not even I know what I’m talking about.”

  Paul Templeton, Laura’s father, was in the big kitchen, taking a potato-and-cheese casserole out of the oven. He was a neat, compact man, five feet ten, with thick dark hair and a ruddy complexion. He set the steaming dish aside, stripped off a pair of oven mitts, and greeted Laura as warmly as Sarah had done. After being introduced to Chyna, he took one of her hands in both of his, which were rough and work worn, and with feigned solemnity he said, “We prayed you’d make the trip in one piece. Does my little girl still handle that Mustang as if she thinks it’s the Batmobile?”

  “Hey, Dad,” Laura said, “I guess you’ve forgotten who taught me to drive.”

  “I was instructing you in the basic techniques,” Paul said. “I didn’t expect you to acquire my style.”

  Sarah said, “I refuse to think about Laura’s driving. I’d just be worried sick all the time.”

  “Face it, Mom, there’s an Indianapolis 500 gene on Dad’s side of the family, and he passed it to me.”

  “She’s an excellent driver,” Chyna said. “I always feel safe with Laura.”

  Laura grinned at her and gave a thumbs-up sign.

  Dinner was a long, leisurely affair because the Templetons liked to talk to one another, thrived on talking to one another. They were careful to include Chyna and seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say, but even when the conversation wandered to family matters of which Chyna had little knowledge, she somehow felt a part of it, as though she was, by a magical osmosis, actually being absorbed into the Templeton clan.

  Laura’s thirtyish brother, Jack, and his wife, Nina, lived in the caretaker’s bungalow elsewhere in the vineyard, but a previous obligation had prevented them from joining the family for dinner. Chyna was assured that she would see them in the morning, and she felt no trepidation about meeting them, as she’d felt before she’d met Sarah and Paul. Throughout her troubled life, there had been no place where she had truly felt at home; while she might never feel entirely at home in this place either, at least she felt welcome here.

  After dinner, Chyna and Laura went for a walk in the moonlit vineyards, between the rows of low pruned vines that had not yet begun to sprout either leafy trailers or fruit. The cool air was redolent with the pleasant fecund smell of freshly plowed earth, and there was a sense of mystery in the dark fields that she found intriguing, enchanting—but at times disconcerting, as if they were among unseen presences, ancient spirits that were not all benign.

  When they had strolled deep into the vines and then turned back toward the house, Chyna said, “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

  “Me too,” Laura said.

  “More than that…” Chyna’s voice trailed away. She had been about to say, You’re the only friend I’ve ever had, but that made her seem so lame and, besides, was still an inadequate expression of what she felt for this girl. They were, indeed, in one sense sisters.

  Laura linked arms with her and merely said, “I know.”

  “When you have babies, I want them to call me Aunt Chyna.”

  “Listen, Shepherd, don’t you think I should find a guy and get married before I start pumping out the babies?”

  “Whoever he is, he better be the best husband in the world to you, or I promise I’ll cut his cojones off.”

  “Do me a favor, okay?” Laura said. “Don’t tell him about this promise until after the wedding. Some guys might be put off by it.”

  From elsewhere in the vineyards came a disquieting sound that stopped Chyna. A protracted creaking.

  “It’s just the breeze working at a loose barn door, rusty hinges,” Laura said.

  It sounded as if someone were opening a giant door in the wall of night itself and stepping in from another world.

  Chyna Shepherd could not sleep comfortably in strange houses. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, her mother had dragged her from one end of the country to the other, staying nowhere longer than a month or two. So many terrible things had happened to them in so many places that Chyna eventually learned to view each new house not as a new beginning, not with hope for stability and happiness, but with suspicion and quiet dread.

  Now she was long rid of her troubled mother and free to stay only where she wished. These days, her life was almost as stable as that of a cloistered nun, as meticulously planned as any bomb squad’s procedures for disarming an explosive device, and without any of the turmoil on which her mother had thrived.

  Nevertheless, this first night in the Templetons’ house, Chyna was reluctant to undress and go to bed. She sat in the darkness in a medallion-back armchair at one of the two windows in the guest room, gazing out at the moonlit vineyards, fields, and hills of the Napa Valley.

  Laura was in another room, at the far end of the second-floor hall, no doubt sound asleep, at peace because this house was not at all strange to her.

  From the guest-room window, the early-spring vineyards were barely visible. Vague geometric patterns.

  Beyond the cultivated rows were gentle hills mantled in long dry grass, silver in the moonlight. An inconstant breeze stirred through the valley, and sometimes the wild grass seemed to roll like ocean waves across the slopes, softly aglimmer with lambent lunar light.

  Above the hills was the Coast Range, and above those peaks were cascades of stars and a full white moon. Storm clouds coming across the mountains from the northwest would soon darken the night, turning the silver hills first to pewter and then to blackest iron.

  When she heard the first scream, Chyna was gazing at the stars, drawn by their cold light as she had been since childhood, fascinated by the thought of distant worlds that might be barren and clean, free of pestilence. At first the muffled cry seemed to be only a memory, a fragment of a shrill argument from another strange house in the past, echoing across time. Often, as a child, eager to hide from her mother and her mother’s friends when they were drunk or high, she climbed onto porch roofs or into backyard trees, slipped through windows onto fire escapes, away to secret places far from the fray, where she could study the stars and where voices raised in argument or sexual excitement or shrill drug-induced giddiness came to her as though from out of a radio, from faraway places and people who had no connection whatsoever with her life.

  The second cry, though also brief and only slightly louder than the first, was indisputably of the moment, not a memory, and Chyna sat forward on her chair. Tense. Head cocked. Listening.

  She wanted to believe that the voice had come from outside, so she continued to stare into the night, surveying the vineyards and the hills beyond. Breeze-driven waves swelled through the dry grass on the moon-washed slopes: a water mirage like the ghost tides of an ancient sea.

  From elsewhere in the large house came a soft thump, as though a heavy object had fallen to a carpeted floor.

  Chyna immediately rose from the chair and stood utterly still, expectant.

  Trouble often followed voices raised in one kind of passion or another. Sometimes, however, the worst offenses were preceded by calculated silences and stealth.

  She had difficulty reconciling the idea of domestic violence with Paul and Sarah Templeton, who had seemed kind and loving toward each other as toward their daughter. Nevertheless, appearances and realities were seldom the same, and the human talent for deception was far greater than that of the chameleon, the mockingbird, or the praying mantis, which masked its ferocious cannibalism with a serene and devout posture.

  Following the stifled cries and the soft thump, silence sifted down like a snowfall. The hush was eerily deep, as unnatural as that in which the deaf lived. This was the stillness before the pounce, the quietude of the coiled snake.

  In another part of the house, someone was standing as motionless as she herself was standing, as alert as she was, intently listening. Someone dangerous. She could sense the predatory presence, a subtle new pressure in the air, not dissimilar to that preceding a viole
nt thunderstorm.

  On one level, six years of psychology classes caused her to question her immediate fearful interpretation of those night sounds, which conceivably could be insignificant, after all. Any well-trained psychoanalyst would have a wealth of labels to pin on someone who leaped first to a negative conclusion, who lived in expectation of sudden violence.

  But she had to trust her instinct. It had been honed by many years of hard experience.

  Intuitively certain that safety lay in movement, she stepped quietly away from the chair at the window, toward the hall door. In spite of the moonglow, her eyes had adjusted to darkness during the two hours that she had sat in the lightless room, and now she eased through the gloom with no fear of blundering into furniture.

  She was only halfway to the door when she heard approaching footsteps in the second-floor hall. The heavy, urgent tread was alien to this house.

  Unhampered by the interminable second-guessing that accompanied an education in psychology, reverting to the intuition and defenses of childhood, Chyna quickly retreated to the bed. She dropped to her knees.

  Farther along the hall, the footsteps stopped. A door opened.

  She was aware of the absurdity of attributing rage to the mere opening of a door. The rattle of the knob being turned, the rasp of the unsecured latch, the spike-sharp squeak of an unoiled hinge—they were only sounds, neither meek nor furious, guilty nor innocent, and could have been made as easily by a priest as by a burglar. Yet she knew that rage was at work in the night.

  Flat on her stomach, she wriggled under the bed, feet toward the headboard. It was a graceful piece of furniture with sturdy galbe legs, and fortunately it didn’t sit as close to the floor as did most beds. One inch less of clearance would have prevented her from hiding under it.

  Footsteps sounded in the hall again.

  Another door opened. The guest-room door. Directly opposite the foot of the bed.

  Someone switched on the lights.

  Chyna lay with her head turned to one side, her right ear pressed to the carpet. Staring out from under the footboard, she could see a man’s black boots and the legs of his blue jeans below mid-calf.

  He stood just inside the threshold, evidently surveying the room. He would see a bed still neatly made at one o’clock in the morning, with four decorative needlepoint pillows arranged against the headboard.

  She had left nothing on the nightstands. No clothes tossed on chairs. The paperback novel that she had brought with her for bedtime reading was in a bureau drawer.

  She preferred spaces that were clean and uncluttered to the point of monastic sterility. Her preference might now save her life.

  Again a faint doubt, the acquired propensity for self-analysis that plagued all psychology students, flickered through her. If the man in the doorway was someone with a right to be in the house—Paul Templeton or Laura’s brother, Jack, who lived with his wife in the vineyard manager’s bungalow elsewhere on the property—and if some crisis was unfolding that explained why he would burst into her room without knocking, she was going to appear to be a prime fool, if not a hysteric, when she crawled out from under the bed.

  Then, directly in front of the black boots, a fat red droplet—another, and a third—fell to the wheat-gold carpet. Plop-plop-plop. Blood. The first two soaked into the thick nylon pile. The third held its surface tension, shimmering like a ruby.

  Chyna knew the blood wasn’t that of the intruder. She tried not to think about the sharp instrument from which it might have fallen.

  He moved off to her right, deeper into the room, and she rolled her eyes to follow him.

  The bed had carved side rails into which the spread was tightly tucked. No overhanging fabric obstructed her view of his boots.

  Obversely, without a spread draped to the floor, the space under the bed was more visible to him. From certain angles, he might even be able to look down and see a swatch of her blue jeans, the toe of one of her Rockports, the cranberry-red sleeve of her cotton sweater where it stretched over her bent elbow.

  She was thankful that the bed was queen-size, offering more cover than a single or double.

  If he was breathing hard, either with excitement or with the rage that she had sensed in his approach, Chyna couldn’t hear him. With one ear pressed tightly to the plush carpet, she was half deaf. Wood slats and box springs weighed on her back, and her chest barely had room to expand to accommodate her own shallow, cautious, open-mouth inhalations. The hammering of her compressed heart against her breastbone echoed tympanically within her, and it seemed to fill the claustrophobic confines of her hiding place to such an extent that the intruder was certain to hear.

  He went to the bathroom, pushed open the door, and flicked on the lights.

  She had put away all her toiletries in the medicine cabinet. Even her toothbrush. Nothing lay out that might alert him to her presence.

  But was the sink dry?

  On retiring to her room at eleven o’clock, she had used the toilet and then had washed her hands. That was two hours ago. Any residual water in the bowl surely would have drained away or evaporated.

  Lemon-scented liquid soap in a pump dispenser was provided at the sink. Fortunately, there was no damp bar of soap to betray her.

  She worried about the hand towel. She doubted that it could still be damp two hours after the little use she had made of it. Nonetheless, in spite of a propensity for neatness and order, she might have left it hanging ever so slightly askew or with one telltale wrinkle.

  He seemed to stand on the bathroom threshold for an eternity. Then he switched off the fluorescent light and returned to the bedroom.

  Occasionally, as a little girl—and then not so little—Chyna had taken refuge under beds. Sometimes they looked for her there; sometimes, though it was the most obvious of all hidey-holes, they never thought to look. Of those who found her, a few had checked under the bed first—but most had left it for last.

  Another red droplet fell to the carpet, as though the beast might be shedding slow tears of blood.

  He moved toward the closet door.

  Chyna had to turn her head slightly, straining her neck, to keep track of him.

  The closet was deep, a walk-in with a chain-pull light in the center. She heard the distinctive snap of the tugged switch, then the clinking of the metal beads in the chain as they rattled against the light bulb.