12

“You took a tumble!”

My vision fills like a Polaroid print. I’m looking at the ceiling, at a single recessed light socket staring back at me, a beady eye.

“I’m getting something for you—one second…”

I let my head loll to one side. Velvet fizzes in my ear. The living room chaise—the fainting couch. Ha.

“One second, one second…”

At the kitchen sink stands a woman, turned away from me, a rope of dark hair trailing down her back.

I bring my hands to my face, cup them over my nose and mouth, breathe in, breathe out. Calm. Calm. My lip aches.

“I was just headed next door when I saw those little shits chucking eggs,” she explains. “I said to them, ‘What are you up to, little shits?,’ and then you sort of… lurched through the door and went down like a sack of…” She doesn’t finish the sentence. I wonder if she was going to say shit.

Instead she turns, a glass in each hand, one filled with water, one with something thick and gold. Brandy, I hope, from the liquor cabinet.

“No idea if brandy actually works,” she says. “I feel like I’m in Downton Abbey. I’m your Florence Nightingale!”

“You’re the woman from across the park,” I mumble. The words stagger off my tongue like drunks from a bar. I’m tough. Pathetic.

“What’s that?”

And then, in spite of myself: “You’re Jane Russell.”

She stops, looking at me in wonder, then laughs, her teeth glinting in the half-light. “How do you know that?”

“You said you were going next door?” Trying to enunciate. Irish wristwatch, I think. Unique New York. “Your son came by.”

Through the mesh of my eyelashes I study her. She’s what Ed might call, approvingly, a ripe woman: hips and lips full, bust ample, skin mellow, face merry, eyes a gas-jet blue. She wears indigo jeans and a black sweater, scoop-necked, with a silver pendant resting on her chest. Late thirties, I’d guess. She must have been a baby when she had her baby.

As with her son, I like her on sight.

She moves to the chaise, knocks my knee with her own.

“Sit up. In case you’ve got a concussion.” I oblige, dragging myself into position, as she sets the glasses on the table, then parks herself across from me, where her son sat yesterday. She turns to the television, furrows her brow.

“What are you watching? A black-and-white movie?” Baffled.

I reach for the remote and tap the power button. The screen goes blank.

“Dark in here,” Jane observes.

“Could you get the lights?” I ask. “I’m feeling a little…” Can’t finish.

“Sure.” She reaches over the back of the sofa, switches on the floor lamp. The room glows.

I tip my head back, stare at the beveled molding on the ceiling. In, two, three, four. It could use a touch-up. I’ll ask David. Out, two, three, four.

“So,” Jane says, elbows on her knees, scrutinizing me. “What happened out there?”

I shut my eyes. “Panic attack.”

“Oh, honey—what’s your name?”

“Anna. Fox.”

“Anna. They were just some stupid kids.”

“No, that wasn’t it. I can’t go outside.” I look down, grasp for the brandy.

“But you did go outside. Easy does it with that stuff,” she adds as I knock back my drink.

“I shouldn’t have. Gone outside.”

“Why not? You a vampire?”

Practically, I think, appraising my arm—fish-belly white. “I’m agoraphobic?” I say.

She purses her lips. “Is that a question?”

“No, I just wasn’t sure you’d know what it meant.”

“Of course I know. You don’t do open spaces.”

I close my eyes again, nod.

“But I thought agoraphobia means you just can’t, you know, go camping. Outdoorsy stuff.”

“I can’t go anywhere.”

Jane sucks her teeth. “How long has this been going on?”

I drain the last drops of brandy. “Ten months.”

She doesn’t pursue it. I breathe deeply, cough.

“Do you need an inhaler or something?”

I shake my head. “That would only make it worse. Raise my heart rate.”

She considers this. “What about a paper bag?”

I set the glass down, reach for the water. “No. I mean, sometimes, but not now. Thank you for bringing me inside. I’m very embarrassed.”

“Oh, don’t—”

“No, I am. Very. It won’t become a habit, I promise.”

She purses her lips again. Very active mouth, I notice. Possible smoker, although she smells of shea butter. “So it’s happened before? You going outside, and… ?”

I grimace. “Back in the spring. Delivery guy left my groceries on the front steps, and I thought I could just… grab them.”

“And you couldn’t.”

“I couldn’t. But there were lots of people passing by that time. It took them a minute to decide I wasn’t crazy or homeless.”

Jane looks around the room. “You definitely aren’t homeless. This place is… wow.” She takes it in, then pulls her phone from her pocket, checks the screen. “I need to get back to the house,” she says, standing.

I try to rise with her, but my legs won’t cooperate. “Your son is a very nice boy,” I tell her. “He dropped that off. Thank you,” I add.

She eyes the candle on the table, touches the chain at her throat. “He’s a good kid. Always has been.”

“Very nice-looking, too.”

“Always has been!” She slides a thumbnail into the locket; it cracks open, and she leans toward me, the locket swaying in the air. I see she expects me to take it. It’s oddly intimate, this stranger looming over me, my hand on her chain. Or perhaps I’m just so unaccustomed to human contact.

Inside the locket is a tiny photograph, glossy and vivid: a small boy, age four or so, yellow hair in riot, teeth like a picket fence after a hurricane. One eyebrow cleft by a scar. Ethan, unmistakably.

“How old is he here?”

“Five. But he looks younger, don’t you think?”

“I would have guessed four.”

“Exactly.”

“When did he get so tall?” I ask, releasing the locket.

She gently shuts it. “Sometime between then and now!” She laughs. Then, abruptly: “You’re okay for me to leave? You’re not going to hyperventilate?”

“I’m not going to hyperventilate.”

“Do you want some more brandy?” she asks, bending to the coffee table—there’s a photo album there, unfamiliar; she must have brought it with her. She tucks it beneath her arm and points to the empty glass.

“I’ll stick with water,” I lie.

“Okay.” She pauses, her gaze fixed on the window. “Okay,” she repeats. “So a very handsome man just came up the walk.” She looks at me. “Is that your husband?”

“Oh, no. That’s David. He’s my tenant. Downstairs.”

“He’s your tenant?” Jane brays. “I wish he were mine!”

The bell hasn’t chimed this evening, not once. Maybe the dark windows put off any trick-or-treaters. Maybe it was the dried yolk.

I subside into bed early.

Midway through graduate school, I met a seven-year-old boy afflicted with the so-called Cotard delusion, a psychological phenomenon whereby the individual believes that he is dead. A rare disorder, with pediatric instances rarer still; the recommended treatment is an antipsychotic regimen or, in stubborn cases, electroconvulsive therapy. But I managed to talk him out of it. It was my first great success, and it brought me to Wesley’s attention.

That little boy would be well into his teens now, almost Ethan’s age, not quite half mine. I think of him tonight as I stare at the ceiling, feeling dead myself. Dead but not gone, watching life surge forward around me, powerless to intervene.