I’d Know You Anywhere

But the more striking aspect of Albie’s nightmares was that Iso usually appeared, and always in peril. Tonight, between heaving sobs and sips of water, he told a chilling story. The family had gone to a new bakery and Iso had refused to wear her glasses, not that Iso wore glasses in real life. (Eliza and Peter glanced at each other over Albie’s head; they recognized this detail from The Brady Bunch, the movie, which Albie loved beyond reason. He did not experience it as a hip, winking joke, but as an honest exhortation to live exuberantly, indifferent to what others thought was cool. Burst into song, chat up carjackers, be nice to everyone, and you will prevail.) The family could not enjoy the new bakery with Iso gone, and they searched for her frantically. They found her in a storeroom filled with bags of flour and she was flat, as if someone had rolled her into a gingerbread girl-and taken her legs.

“She had no legs?”

Albie nodded guiltily, as if he knew the dream could be interpreted as evidence of conflicted feelings toward his accomplished sister, whose strong, fleet limbs had granted her effortless entrée into a new peer group, while he was still struggling to make friends here. But Eliza believed Albie wasn’t the least bit conflicted about Iso. He loved her, he wanted to be her. He would never hurt her, even in his imagination. He was genuinely worried that she might be harmed. What did Albie know, or suspect, about his sister? Did he have insights that Eliza lacked? Or was he simply mirroring the anxiety she felt?

“Are you concerned about Iso? In life, not in your dreams.”

Albie thought about this. “No, I never worry about Iso. And she doesn’t seem to worry about me. I wish she did, sometimes.”

That was interesting. “In what way?”

“I wish she would ask me about school, how my day went.”

“Do you ask her?” Eliza asked.

“I do. We all do. Except Iso. You ask Daddy, and Daddy asks you, and you both ask me, and you both ask Iso, but Iso never asks anyone anything anymore.”

“She’s a-” Peter began.

“A teenager,” Albie finished for him. “You say that all the time, but what does that mean???”

“That’s a big question for the middle of the night,” Peter said.

“It’s not even midnight,” Albie pointed out. Their little dreamer could be quite literal.

“Okay, I’ll tell you this much,” Peter said. “When you’re a teenager, there is so much going on in your body that it makes you a little different, for a while.”

Albie thought about this. “Like a Transformer?”

“Sort of, but it’s all on the inside. It wears you out, growing so much so fast. That’s why Iso is cranky sometimes.”

“She’s cranky all the time.”

Eliza wanted to defend Iso, but Albie was right. She was cranky all the time. It was sad, hearing this spoken aloud, and having to admit that Iso wasn’t merely moody. She had one mood, at least at home, a snarling grouchiness.

“Do you want to sleep in our bed tonight?” she asked instead, knowing it would make for a cramped, sleepless night for the two adults. Plus, Reba had started sneaking into their bed.

“No, I’m too big,” Albie said. “But may I leave the real light on?” The real light meaning his bedside lamp, not the night-light that guided his way to the hallway bathroom he shared with Iso. They left him there in the glow of the real light. He was asleep by the time they crossed the threshold, but Eliza did not backtrack to turn out the light. If he awoke again, it would be important to him that the light was still on, that the promise had been kept.

“It’s my fault,” Eliza said when they were back downstairs. “He’s so sensitive he can tell that I’m jumping out of my skin these days.”

“Maybe. But it could also be a coincidence.”

“He might have read the letter,” she said guiltily, as if her carelessness with the document indicated some subconscious agenda of her own.

“What?”

She explained how she had come to lose track of it, Albie’s drawing on the back. “Truthfully, I’m fearful that Iso is the one who threw it in the trash can by the desk, although I suppose I could have thrown it out by accident, forgotten what I had in that pocket. She’s a terrible snoop. She’s been going through my purse lately, and lord knows what else.”

“Okay, but here’s the thing,” Peter said, pouring himself a glass of wine and putting on the teakettle for her, rummaging behind the pots and pans for a brand of high-end cookies that Eliza hoarded, one of the few things she refused to share with her children because they ate them too carelessly, too quickly. “If either one of them had read the letter, they wouldn’t be able to hide that fact from you for long. Even if they were worried about getting into trouble for snooping. Albie, especially. So put that out of your mind for now. What’s the real issue here?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t put her worries out of her mind just by drinking a cup of tea, eating one of her beloved biscuits. She wasn’t Albie.

“This is how I see it,” Peter said. “Walter wants to make actual contact with you. He’s not entitled to that wish, which he realizes. He says as much. Yet what he’s doing is threatening you, implicitly. He keeps circling closer, letting you know how much he’s learned about you, that he can get to our family via this LaFortuny person. If he made a direct threat, or even a demand, you could go to the prison authorities and complain. You could get him in trouble for what he’s done to date, but you haven’t because you believe that every person who knows about your past exponentially increases the possibility of the story getting out, which bothers you because you don’t want the kids to know.”

“Or anyone, really. People change, when they find out.” She thought of the one girl from high school she had taken into her confidence just partway, and how badly that had ended when they decided they liked the same boy. The other girl, who knew Eliza had been raped, started a whisper campaign that she was a slut, a girl who would do it with anyone, and that’s why the boy had chosen her.

“Walter wants to see you,” Peter repeated. “And the point of all this-the letters, the phone calls, his accomplice-is to let you know that if you don’t come see him, then maybe he will go public. Grant an interview. Start dropping hints again that he’ll reveal at last how many girls he’s killed. Yes, I think the Washington and Baltimore papers will protect your privacy if you decline to be interviewed on the record. But, as you said, all sorts of unsavory types won’t. I think Walter is suggesting that if you go see him, he’ll spare you that.”

“That’s so unfair,” Eliza said.

“It is. But you have to focus on what you want, not what’s right or principled. You don’t want to tell the kids yet what happened to you, but you don’t want the kids to find out from someone else. How do you best achieve that goal?”

“Maybe Walter wants money, cash to purchase some privilege or item he can’t afford on his own.”

“Maybe. But his friend Miss LaFortuny is well fixed, right? I think Walter would be offended if you offered him money.”

“Walter has no right to be offended by anything I do.”

“Agreed. Walter has no right to anything. And if you’re prepared to weather the consequences of ignoring him, I say go for it. If you’re ready to bring the kids down here and give them the PG-13 version of what happened to you when you were fifteen, I’ll back you up. We can even ask your parents to point us to some experts in the field, get their advice on how to talk about it. We always knew this day was going to come. We just didn’t expect Walter to be the one who forced the issue.”

“No,” Eliza said, nibbling at her biscuit, trying to make it last. “Albie can’t handle it, and Iso won’t be able to keep the secret if we tell just her.”

“Iso’s very good at keeping secrets. Too good, in my experience.”