WHEN SHE SPOKE at last, I couldn't tell whether she was addressing me or herself.
"My pine trees died too," she said. "People kept telling me they would but I didn't believe it. I believe it now." She shook her head slowly. "I try to water them but the pressure is off. They must be repairing pipes in the neighborhood or something."
I don't know why it struck me with such vivid force at that moment. Perhaps the mundane quality of what she said. But I remembered Albert's words.
There is no point in your trying to convince her that she's not alive; she thinks she is.
That was the true horror of this situation. If she knew that she'd committed suicide and that this was the end result, some kind of approach might be made. As it was, there could be no possible meaning to this plight for her, no logic whatever to this dismal state in which she found herself.
I really didn't know what to say, yet, once more, heard myself speaking. "I have water in my house," I told her.
She turned as though surprised by my continued presence. "How can that be?" she asked. She looked confused and irritated. "What about electricity?"
"I have that too," I said, realizing, then, why I'd spoken as I had. I was hoping that she'd discover, by comparison, that what was happening in her house was, logically, unrealistic and, thus, be led to examine her surroundings more closely.
"What about your gas service?" I asked, pursuing the idea.
"That's off too," she said.
"Mine isn't," I replied. "What about your telephone?"
"It's ... out of order," she said. I felt a momentary glimmer of expectancy at her tone-- one which asked of itself: How can this be?
"I don't understand," I said, trying to press my advantage. "It doesn't make sense that all your services would be out at the same time."
"Yes, it's ... odd." She stared at me.
"Very odd," I said. "That only your house would have none of them? I wonder why ?"
I watched her carefully. Was any degree of awareness reaching her? I waited anxiously to see.
I should have known.
If convincing her was all that simple, in all likelihood someone would have done it already. I knew that as a look of apathy replaced the one of doubt--replaced it instantly. She shrugged. "Because I'm on a hilltop," she said.
"But why--?"
She broke in. "Would you call the phone company for me and tell them my service is out?"
I stared at her, confounded by my own frustration. For a moment, I had a reckless urge to tell her everything directly--who I was and why she was there. Something held me from it though, sensing the peril of attempting to convince her that way.
Another idea occurred.
"Why don't you come to my house and call them yourself?" I asked.
"I can't," she said.
"Why?"
"I... don't leave," she said. "I just--"
"Why not?" My voice was edged with impatience now, I was so disturbed by my failure to help her in the least.
"I just don't leave," she repeated. She averted her face but, before she did, I saw the beginning of tears in her eyes.
I didn't think but reached out automatically to comfort her. Ginger growled and I drew back my hand. Would I feel it if she attacked, the thought occurred? Could I bleed, suffer pain?
"The pool looks so awful," Ann said.
That sense of cold despair again. How terrible her existence was, spending endless days in this place, unable to do anything to ease its drab appearance.
"I used to love it out here," she said, unhappily. "It was my favorite place. Now look at it."
My question was answered. I could suffer pain at that level. I felt it deeply as I looked at her, recalling how she used to come out on the deck each morning with her coffee, sit in the sunshine in her nightgown and robe and gaze across the crystal water of the rock- edged pool, looking at the lush planting we'd put in. She had loved it; very much.
Her tone grew sardonic. "Some exclusive area," she said. "Yet everything works at my house," I said, trying again.
"How nice for you," she responded coldly; and I knew, in that instant, that no approach could work twice. I was back to square one in mis dreadful game, forced to start all over again.
Silence once more. Ann standing motionless, looking across the ugly expanse of the pool, Ginger beside her, eyes fixed on me. What was I to do? I wondered in discouragement. It seemed as though the more time passed, the less aware of possibilities I became.
I forced myself to concentrate. Was that the danger Albert had warned me about? That I would let these dismal surroundings draw me in and make me part of them?
"You have children?" I asked on impulse.
She turned to look at me with distant appraisal. Then she answered. "Four." Looking away again.
I was going to ask about them when I decided to attempt, once more, to set up, in her mind, a series of provoking "coincidences." The area of children hadn't been approached yet.
"I have four children too," I said. "Two daughters and two sons."
"Oh?" she said without turning.
"My two girls are twenty-six and twenty," I told her. "My sons are twenty-three and seventeen." Was I pressing too far? I wondered.
She was looking at me again. Her expression hadn't changed but it seemed to me there was a tightening around her eyes.
I braced myself and said, "My children's names are Louise, Marie, Richard and Ian."
Now she was drawing back again, a distrustful look on her face. The expression of a woman who sensed that she was being baited but didn't know how or why. I felt a pang of fear at that expression. Had I made a dreadful mistake?
Even as I wondered that, I heard myself ask, "What are your children's names?" She said nothing.
"Mrs. Nielsen?" I said. I'd almost called her Ann.
That look of filming across her eyes again--and sudden, gut-wrenched realization on my part.
No matter how close I came, I could never reach her. Whenever I came too close, something built-in would affect her, causing her to cut herself off. Already, she had mentally shrugged off my words, perhaps blanked them out entirely.
Yet still I went on with a kind of blind, unwilling dread. "My older girl is married and has three children of her own," I said. "My younger girl--"
I broke off as she turned away and started toward the house, the dead bird dropping, unnoticed, from her hands. I started after her but Ginger, at her heels, looked back with a warning growl. I stopped and watched Ann moving off from me.
Had the end already come?
Suddenly, Ann glanced aside and made a sickened noise, then ran inside the house through the family room doorway, sliding the glass door shut with a bang.
I looked at the ground where she'd glanced and saw a huge tarantula crawling over a rock.
I groaned, not out of fear of the tarantula but at the realization that one of Ann's deepest fears was embodied here. She'd always been terrified of tarantulas, made virtually ill by the sight of them. How hideously predictable that her private hell would include these giant spiders.
Walking over to the tarantula, I looked down at it. Bulbous and hairy, it clambered sluggishly across the rock. I looked around and saw Ann at the glass door, looking at it in panicked revulsion.
I looked around again and saw a shovel leaning against the house. Moving to it, I picked it up and returned to the tarantula. I angled the blade in front of it until it had crawled onto the metal. Then, carrying the shovel to the edge of the deck, I flung the spider as far as I could, wondering, as it arced across the pool and into the ivy, whether it was real or not. Did it exist on its own or only because Ann feared it? I looked toward the family room door as it was opened slightly. And my heart leaped as I saw a look of childlike gratitude on Ann's face. "Thank you," she murmured. Even in Hell there can be gratitude, I thought in wonder.
I moved quickly to strengthen my position. "I noticed that your Sparklett's bottle is empty," I said. "May I put up a new one for you?"
She looked immediately suspicious and I almost groaned at the sight. "What do you want?" she asked.
I forced myself to smile. "Just to say hello," I told her. "Invite you to my house for coffee."
"I told you I don't leave," she said.
"Don't you ever go for walks?" I asked, trying to sound pleasantly casual. She and I had walked a lot in Hidden Hills.
I wanted her to realize her isolation and to question it.
She questioned nothing, turning from me as though my words had offended her. I followed her inside the house and shut the glass door. As I did, Ann turned to look at me and Ginger growled again, her neck fur raised, A vision of endlessly futile attempts to reach Ann's mind assailed me. I struggled with despair again.
Then I became aware of the dozens of framed photographs on the walls and another idea occurred. If I could get her to look at one of the photographs of me, the obvious similarity to my present appearance might impress her.
Ignoring Ginger's growl, I moved to the nearest wall and looked for a photograph of myself.
All the photographs were faded and impossible to make out.
Why did that happen? I wondered. Was it part of Ann's self-denying punishment? I was going to mention it, then changed my mind. It could only disturb her.
Another idea. I turned to her and said, "I wasn't really telling you the truth before."
She looked at me, suspiciously uncertain. "My wife and I are separated," I said, "but not in the way you may think. We're separated by death."
I felt myself wince at the spasmodic shudder my words caused in her; the look on her face as though a knife had just been plunged into her heart.
Still, I had to pursue it, hoping I was finally on the right track. "Her name was Ann too," I said.
"You like it here in Hidden Hills?" she asked as though I hadn't spoken.
"Did you hear me?" I asked. "Where did you live before?" "I said her name was Ann.''
The shudder again, the expression of staggered dismay.
Then the empty look returning. She moved away from me, headed for the kitchen. Ann, come back, I wanted to say; I almost did. I wanted to shout: It's me, don't you understand?!
I didn't. And, like a cold weight in my chest, depression returned. I tried to resist but, this time, I was less successful. Some of it remained.
"Look at this place," Ann said. She spoke as though she was alone, her voice mechanical. I had the feeling it was part of the process she endured; constant repetition of the details of her plight reinforcing her bondage to them. "Nothing works," she said. "The food is spoiling. I can't open cans because there's no electricity and the hand opener is gone. Without water, I can't do the dishes and they keep piling up. There's no TV; I think it's broken anyway. No radio, no phonograph, no music. No heat except for scraps of wood I burn; the house is chilly all the time. I have to go to bed at dark because there are no lights and all the candles are gone. The rubbish company never picks up anymore. The whole place smells of trash and garbage. And I can't complain about anything because the phone is out."
She broke off her somber catechism with a laugh that chilled me.
"Put up a Sparklett's bottle?" she said. "They haven't made a delivery in such a long time I can't remember the last one." She laughed again, a dreadful, bitter sound. "The good life," she said. "I swear to God I feel like a character in some Neil Simon play, everything around me falling apart, everything inside me shriveling."
A sob shook her body and I started toward her instinctively. Ginger blocked my way, teeth bared, a fierce growl rumbling in her chest. She looked like a hound of hell, I thought, despair returning again.
I looked at Ann. I knew exactly what she was doing but I had no strength to stop her.
She was fleeing from the truth by immersing herself in the relative safety of afflictive details--the sheltering of melancholy.