arty was not just Sid’s roommate, though they did share an apartment together. In the past, Sid hadn’t done too well on his own. Marty’s role was broadly defined. Friend. Practical nurse. Errand boy. Sounding board. Calming presence. Only Marty didn’t feel very needed as much more than a friend and errand boy, ever since Sid started the graduate program. It was a positive outlet for Sid’s sense of mystique and high, sometimes manic, intelligence.
When Sid proposed a research trip, Marty wanted to go along, but after all, Sid was his employer, not his ward. And it seemed like a positive step, towards independence. In the end, Marty encouraged Sid to go. They talked on the phone every day, and Sid seemed to be doing okay. Then came the manuscript, with its scrawled note. Then nothing. Marty started to feel a sickening worry.
He followed Sid to Redlands. He couldn’t find Charlotte Rowe’s address or phone number anywehre, so he started at the room Sid had rented.
“I thought I’d got me a nice young boarder,” said the landlady, mournfully. Her house was stuffy and close, with a crocheted blanket on the old couch. “I never expected Sidney to just disappear like that, no notice. The room was paid up for the month, but you understand I can’t hold a room. No forwarding address, never heard from Sidney again. If you’re a relative, there’s a lot of stuff left behind.”
Marty looked through the things that were left there. There was nothing helpful, still no address. Marty only knew the name “Orange Blossom Road.”
When he couldn’t find Orange Blossom Road on any map of Redlands, he began to be concerned. If there was no Orange Blossom Road, then had Sidney made up the name? What else was untrue? Still, it seemed unlikely that Sidney would have or could have written a lengthy manuscript. Redlands wasn’t very large, and Marty decided to drive around the southeastern area of town, where this road supposedly was.
Just as he’d decided the attempt was pointless, Marty realized that he’d gotten turned around. He was lost. After taking a couple of turns that he thought would get him back to familiar territory or a main road, Marty saw it. “Orange Blossom Road.” It was an old, wooden sign, different from most of the street signs in the area. On private land, probably, not owned by the city. Marty turned onto it and was driving through an orchard of oranges. It was an early spring, and the scent of orange blossoms was so powerful that it was almost poisonous. The orchard was close, impinging on the narrow road.
When Marty arrived at the end of the road, the house appeared much as Sid had described it. There were tumble-down stone walls, a stone tower, and stone structures still standing. It did not look like someone’s house, just an old building.
Marty got out of the car and went to the door. The day was warm and silent, and the heavy fumes of orange blossoms made it stifling. He knocked and waited. He was just turning to go when he heard a noise from inside.
A plump woman opened the door. She said, “Yes?” The French accent was very slight, but it was discernable.
“Nanette Goddard?” Marty asked.
“Yes,” she said again.
“Hi. My name is Marty Ackerman. I wonder if I could speak to you, and, er, Miss Rowe if that’s possible.”
“Oh!” said the woman.
“I know that you don’t usually receive visitors, but I’m looking for Sidney Hayes. I had hoped—”
She opened the door.
“Come in, come in.”
Marty stepped inside, and she led him to a room with a stone fireplace and asked him to sit.
“Perhaps,” said Nanette, “I should explain to you. It will not be possible to speak to Miss Rowe. Miss Rowe has passed away in sleep last night.”
“Oh,” Marty said. “I’m very sorry.”
“She was old,” said Nanette, “and it was her time to pass on.”
“Perhaps I can ask you about Sidney Hayes?”
“Ah, yes. Sidney has been here a number of times. I think Miss Rowe enjoyed talking about herself, enjoyed the visits.”
“I’m trying to locate Sid.”
“That, I’m afraid, I cannot help you with. It’s been a while since Sidney’s been here.”
“Perhaps you can help me by telling me about this,” Marty said. He took out the manuscript from his bag and put it on the coffee table. Nanette looked surprised.
“Where did you get that?” she asked.
“Sid sent it to me.”
“Sidney had this?” she asked, turning over a page of the paper.
“Did Charlotte Rowe write it?”
“I think so,” said Nanette, with a dreamy tone in her voice. “She wrote many things, you know.” Nanette looked up. “Or perhaps you didn’t know.”
“No,” Marty said.
“Charlotte worked for many years as a writer of stories. She wrote them for magazines, after she gave up her work as a medium, you know. She wrote under another name, a disguised name, a nom de’plume, what do you call it, a pseudonym. She always planned to write a novel.” Nanette looked down at the manuscript again. “She had been working on this for several years, but her health diminished as she got older. She was able to write less and less as time went on. It was very hard for her.”
“This is her novel?” Marty asked.
“It must be,” said Nanette.
“She gave it to Sid?”
“I suppose she must have, but I don’t know why. Perhaps just to read.”
“Perhaps,” Marty echoed.
“Have you read it?” Nanette asked.
“Yes,” Marty replied. “Sid asked me to read it.”
There was a pause. Nanette broke the silence.
“Sidney was looking ill, I think, the last few visits.”
“Oh?” Marty asked. “Like a cold?”
“No,” said Nanette. “Pale and drawn. Perhaps not sleeping well. Perhaps a stomach flu or fever?”
This did not raise Marty’s hopes or spirits.
“Well, thank you for your time,” he said, rising from the seat.
“I hope that Sidney is all right,” Nanette said.
“I’m sure everything is just fine,” Marty replied. “I’m sure there’s nothing wrong.”
There was another pause as they stood in the room.
“Would you like, perhaps,” asked Nanette, “to see her? Charlotte, I mean. Since you have heard so much about her, perhaps you would like to see her.”
Marty was about to decline, but he found himself saying, “Yes, I would.”
Nanette turned and started toward the stairs, as the mantel clock above the fireplace began to chime twelve noon.
Marty followed her out of the room and up the winding stairs, with a strange feeling of fulfilling an ancient ritual. In the crescent-shaped hall at the top of the stairwell, Nanette opened the single door.
They entered. Charlotte lay in the bed, looking small and sunken. Her hair was snow white and wispy, like cotton candy. Though lined and wrinkled, her face was relaxed and had an air of smoothness. Her eyes, closed, were sunken into her face, underscored by great dark, bruised circles.
Marty looked over at the mirror, a natural and human reaction. It was just a mirror, large and ornate. It reflected the room around it, his own haggard and disheveled appearance, and nothing else. He turned back to the figure on the bed.
They stood there for a moment, looking at Charlotte Rowe in death.
“I thought maybe you were coming to pick her up when you came to the door,” said Nanette. “Now that she’s gone, I don’t know exactly what will happen next. You know, I haven’t really anywhere to go. I’m alone in the world. So was she. None of her family left, alone here for years. I don’t even know who owns the house now, or what will happen to it. I don’t even know who might own that manuscript you have.”
“Did she never try to publish it?”
“She never seemed to think it was finished. She was always adding onto it, adding new things and then taking things away. She would be sitting up by her mirror and brushing her hair. And then, she’s sit up straight and say, ‘oh!’ surprised like. I guess it meant she’d just thought of something, because then she’d want to write something down. It’s a wonder where she got all her ideas from.”
“Was any of it based on her life?”
Nanette shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t really know. She took some of it, I know, from stories she’d heard, people she’d known and met. Things that happened.” Nanette smiled briefly and suddenly. “She liked to listen to stories. There’s a legend in my family, you know, in my mother’s family about a girl found wild in the hills, with child. My mother used to say, ‘Nannie,’ they called me Nannie when I was young, ‘Nannie, your wild-child is showing! Our family curse, we all are wild from the woods. When will you ever be civilized?’ Charlotte used to love to hear stories about it, stories about France and about my family.”
“But you said you were all alone in the world?”
“I am now, yes. I am an orphan. My mother was an orphan, too.”
There was yet another pause.
“Women,” said Nanette, “who are alone in the world spend a lot of time inside their own minds.”
Marty didn’t seem to have a reply to that. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for talking to me.”
“I wish you luck in your search,” she said.
They left the room, an empty room with an empty shell in it. As Nanette closed the door of the house behind him, Marty paused again. Somehow, he could not shake the feeling that he was not quite ready to leave yet.
He stood in the driveway, meandering. The scent of the orange blossoms had paled, overshadowed by the sounds of bees buzzing among the orange trees. Marty looked up to the bell tower. It was completely quiet and still. There was nothing, nothing but the smell of orange blossoms and the sound of bees, nothing but ghost stories around the campfire.
Turning to get into his car, Marty saw a movement out of the corner of his eye, not in the bell tower, but in the orange grove. He walked over towards the trees, but he didn’t see anything.
Marty moved into the shade of the trees. It was cool there, and he remembered Sid’s comments about the heat of the summer. The sound of the bees was louder, and the smell of the orange blossoms came over him again. He moved further into the orchard, and the trees obscured his view of the car and the house. The orange trees encompassed him, and he felt the timelessness of an orchard like that.
Marty looked around and realized that he could not see the house, the car, or the road. In the middle of the symmetry of the orange trees, he was not sure which direction he had come from.
Marty saw a figure dressed in black coming towards him through the orange trees, a smooth and quick black shape moving in and out among the orange trees. It was coming towards him. For some reason he would never know, Marty panicked. He fled.
Marty ran through the orange trees, and the figure in black pursued him. Orange blossoms fell in his face, and he stumbled over the uneven ground, grasping at tree trunks to hold him up.
He ran for what seemed an interminable time. Why didn’t he find the road? Why didn’t he find the edge of the orchard? Marty went deeper and deeper into the sweet smelling oranges, the sound of bees buzzing filling his ears. The world inside of that orange grove was a strange world, an old world that smelled of soil. The trees as he moved deeper into the grove seemed older, larger, more gnarled. The ground seemed to grow spongy with the decayed rinds of oranges dropped, over decades. His feet seemed to be sinking into the mire of old oranges.
Abruptly, Marty stopped. Something clicked inside his head, a failsafe. He turned around and faced the figure that was coming towards him through the trees.
The figure in black saw that Marty was no longer running and stopped at the edge of a tree, in the shadows.
“What do you want?” Marty asked. His voice seemed high and unnatural.
The figure stepped forward.
“Sid?” Marty practically shouted. “Sid! What are you doing here? Where have you been? I’ve been worried about you.”
“The thing that is inside won’t go away.”
“Oh.”
“The thing that is inside won’t go away. The thing that is inside won’t go away.”
“It’s okay, Sid. Calm down.”
“It is a red thing. A red thing. The red thing is inside. It’s crying, all the time, it’s crying, an angry crying. The red thing inside won’t go away.”
“Come here, Sid.”
“The blood was everywhere. The blood was all around. It was the baby’s blood. The baby owned it, and now it is inside, the red thing, and it won’t go away. Marty, is that you?”
“Yes, Sid, it’s me, and everything is going to be okay.”
“I won’t have to go back in the room, will I? I don’t want to be in the room again.”
“Let’s get you home and safe, Sid, and calm. You didn’t try to hurt yourself did you?”
“No, no, I didn’t hurt anyone! I didn’t kill anyone! I didn’t, I didn’t. I’m not a murderer like they are.”
“Don’t worry about that now, Sid.”
“It’s the baby. It’s angry. The baby is angry, and it won’t leave me alone.”
Marty calmed Sid as best he could. This seemed like a mental break. It seemed the problems were deeper, worse than Marty had thought. Sid had always shown symptoms of magical thinking, but they had been mild and countered by a strange rationality, a desire to explain them away that led to intellectual study.
“You are fine. Don’t worry about the baby,” Marty said.
Suddenly, Sid was calm, looking around, looking at Marty.
“You think that this is all in my mind, but it’s not. I’ve been waiting here, talking to it, trying to find a solution. I don’t think that there is a solution.”
“Maybe you’d better come home.”
“I guess I’d better. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
“Don’t think about it right now. Don’t worry,” Marty said as he led Sidney out of the orange orchard, back in the direction from which he’d come, towards the road, towards his car, towards home, “all of the things in heaven and earth are dreamt of in the human mind.”
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