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"As I said I would do, I went around to the apartment. Usually, the curtains are drawn and the shade is down on both windows, so it's impossible to see into the place, but the shade was up a good four or five inches, so I was able to kneel down and look into the place."
"And?"
"I could look into the bedroom. It's really not much more than a studio apartment."
"Weren't you ever in there?"
"No. I told you, his mother wasn't happy Harry married my mother and took me into their home. I don't think I ever looked at her without her looking back at me with an expression full of disapproval. I avoided her. She was just an older version of a zero."
"What did you see in the apartment?" I asked.
"On the bed, on the pillow, was one of his mother's wigs with one of those manikin heads people use to keep their wigs on."
"Really?"
"The head had as much makeup on its cheeks and lips as his mother used."
I couldn't speak or swallow. I just shook my head. "That's not all."
"What else?" I managed.
"Under the, blankets, there must be more pillows or something. It looks like . . ."
"What?" I practically screamed.
"Like someone is under the .blanket. You know. Bunched up like a body. There was a chair beside the bed, which I imagined is where he sits when he goes in there."
I stared at her.
"What are you saying?" I finally asked, because she just stood there with a half-smile on her face. "Are you saying he's deliberately making it seem as if his dead mother is in that bed?"
"That's what I'm saying. Only, he doesn't think of her as dead."
I brought my hand to the base of my throat and stared at her with my mouth open. She smiled.
"Why are you so happy about this?"
"Don't you see? He is nuts. He will believe his mother is moving about. He really thinks she's still there!"
6 Nightmares
"W here do nightmares come from? I wondered. Some people believe they're caused by something you eat that's disagreeable, but doesn't there have to be something scary and horrible already in your head, stuck in your brain, something dormant that gets nudged and comes gleefully up, rising like some dark sea creature?
"The first nightmare for everyone is being born," Jesse once told me after I had suffered a bad dream and cried. I think I was eleven.
"That's stupid, Jesse," I said.
"No, really. Just think about it. Here you are, happy, content, well fed, warm, and comfortable floating around in your mother's womb, and suddehly, for no reason, you get shoved and pushed, squeezed and pulled, until you're out in this. bright, noisy place called the world. That's why babies cry as soon as they're born."
"Don't tell her things like that," our mother chastised, but she smiled at him and shook her head. "Spreading that story will hurt the feelings of everyone in the maternity ward in my hospital."
I remember wondering if Jesse were right.
Right at the moment, listening to what Karen was telling me about what went on in her stepfather's mother's apartment, I felt as if I could crawl back into the safety of my mother's womb. Who wanted to be in a world where such things were happening?
"My guess," Karen continued, obviously still very excited about her discovery, "is that Harry crawls into that bed just the way he did when he was a little boy and something frightened him He wanted to be with his mommy.
"And he still does!" she added. Her face turned angry, sour. "Wait until his mommy finds out what he's been doing to me. She'll throw him out of the bed."
