Not a Creature Was Stirring(111)

“Maybe that’s true.”

“It sounds terrible, listening to the breathing on the intercom. It sounds like something from a horror movie. Do you remember when you made me take you to that horror movie, when we were children?”

“The old Empire Theater in Philadelphia. We went to see The Tingler. But you weren’t such a child.”

“I was child enough. I can still remember that movie. Where the man scares his wife to death.”

“You take things like that too seriously.” Bennis stood up and went to the sideboard again. She filled a bowl of soup and then another one, two immense bowls full of split pea Anne Marie didn’t think anyone could eat. Bennis put them on the table and went back for spoons. “Eat,” she said, handing Anne Marie a spoon. “You look terrible.”

Anne Marie put the spoon down next to her bowl. The breathing seemed to be getting louder and louder. The house seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. She was so very tired, she didn’t understand how she was staying awake at all. She wished she could be Bennis, always ready for anything.

“When she’s like this and I sit with her I talk to her. I tell her—things. About when we were children, you know, and about our coming out. You never liked coming out.”

“I hated it,” Bennis said.

“You never liked anything here,” Anne Marie said. “I never understood that. It’s the most wonderful life in the world.”

Bennis stirred more sugar into her coffee. It had to be syrup by now. “I didn’t have any control over it. It had nothing to do with me. It wasn’t something I’d earned. It wasn’t something I’d invented. It was just a dance made up a million years ago by people I didn’t know and probably wouldn’t have liked very much.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being rich, Bennis.”

“I never said there was anything wrong with being rich. I like money.”

“Just money?”

“I like a man in Boston, but that probably won’t last very long.”

“I don’t like men at all,” Anne Marie said, “but I don’t like women, either. That way.”

“I know.”

“I wish I knew what you thought about,” Anne Marie said. “I watch you walk around here and it’s—it’s like you came from Mars. And it shouldn’t be. You’re more like Daddy than any of the rest of us.”

“I know,” Bennis said again.

Anne Marie looked up. She had been staring at her plate of soup, thinking how thick and impenetrable it was. There could be rocks or ground glass in it, and she would never know. She wished Bennis would eat some. She wished Bennis would stop staring at her—except that Bennis wasn’t staring at her. Bennis was looking in the other direction entirely, fussing with her cigarettes and her green Bic lighter. A flame went up, too high, and Bennis jumped back. She didn’t turn around.

“Do you like it,” Anne Marie said, “being like Daddy?”

“I like the single-mindedness. It gets me a lot of things I couldn’t live without.”

“Funny, I never thought of him as single-minded. He always seemed to have his hand in everything, to be everywhere. He always seemed to be spread out and spread thin.”

Another flame went up. This time Bennis caught it, leaned close to it, sucked. Anne Marie watched. Bennis’s face was lit up more than her cigarette was. The flame shuddered and licked. Bennis’s cheekbones went in and out of shadow. She looked Slavic, or like a vampire.

Yes, Anne Marie thought. That’s what they’re both like. Vampires. They suck people up.

Except that Daddy was dead.

Bennis put the cigarette lighter down. “Are you all right?” she said.

“I’m fine,” Anne Marie said.

Bennis got up and went back to the sideboard. Anne Marie could hear her putting together a sandwich, scraping a knife against the edge of the mayonnaise pot. The breathing got softer suddenly and louder suddenly, making them both jump.

“She’s dying,” Anne Marie said.

And Bennis said, again, “I know.”

In and out, in and out, in and out. Normal. For just this second, it was going to be all right.

Anne Marie looked down at her soup. She picked up her spoon. She put it down again. Split pea, heavy and thick.

“Bennis?” she said.

“I’m here, Anne Marie. I’ve always been here. I always will be here.”

“Yes,” Anne Marie said.

She felt very floaty, very floaty, adrift on an imaginary sea. It was all right. It really was. It was just Bennis here, after all. Nobody she had to be afraid of. Even though she was afraid.