Electric Elizabeth: A Novel Read online

  ***

  Though the sky was clear blue, morning wind raked the roof and snapped at the copper wire as I threaded it over the roof from the study window to a plastic sewer ventilation pipe at the rear of the house. The gray shingles were free of ice but were also brittle, my feet pulling away small white pebbles from their surface. I steadied my way over the apex, sometimes lowering myself to my knees and crawling across the roof when my right leg burned. I made it to the plastic pipe, drilled two small holes two inches from its top, through which I threaded the wire. I passed the wire through a cylindrical white ceramic insulator, then dropped the remaining length of the wire to the ground.

  I made my way back to the study window, following the wire that was now tautly strung two feet above the roof's apex. It sliced the wind with a low whistle as it vibrated. I crawled the remaining few feet to the window and looked down at the road where Maria Lorenzo stood next to her patrol car, looking up and waving.

  "Bit early in the year to be stringing up Christmas lights, Milton," she said.

  I slipped into the window and made my way downstairs, my feet kicking aside opened boxes and wire spools. Before I opened the front door, I noticed I was still wearing my bathrobe over my black T-shirt and jeans. I whipped off the robe and threw it onto the chair.

  "Do your doctors know you're walking over rooftops?" Maria asked as I opened the door.

  I motioned for her to come in. She pulled off her cap, and it seemed her hair had grown another two inches since the last time I saw her. She stopped as soon as she walked in and surveyed the room. "The doctors said I couldn't drive for a month or lift anything heavier than fifteen pounds," I said. "They didn't say I couldn't run antennas over the roof."

  "I don't think those were the only restrictions, Milt. She pulled out a small manila envelope from her coat pocket. Where'd all the boxes come from?"

  "Just ordered a few things," I said, putting my hands in my pockets. I led her to the kitchen where we sat at the table, the coffeemaker burbling and gasping as it brewed.

  Maria draped her coat over a chair and sat down. "When're you heading back to work?"

  "I am working," I said. "From, you know, home. I send them my essays over the network, they lay them out. It's working okay so far." I didn't tell her that my essays were old ones that were just in need of revising. I'd not written much new work since arriving home.

  "That's good, Milt, that's good." Her eyes darted around the kitchen, taking in the unwashed dishes, the unwashed dishtowels, the dust that formed layers on the countertop below the window. She opened the envelope and pulled out a few sheets of white paper. "The phone company gave us a list of all the times you initiated a trace in the past month," she said. "Over three hundred phone traces." She ran her finger down the papers, flipping from one page to the next before she placed the paper on the table and clasped her hands together. "Not one successful trace, Milt."

  I rubbed my eyes. "So they're saying no one called and that I'm wasting their time."

  "Not saying that at all," Maria said. "They saw someone using the lines to call you. But they don't know where they came from. I called them, asked if someone maybe could be using computer software to disguise numbers and locations, and they said it's possible but that that wasn't what was happening."

  I leaned forward, put my hands on the table. "So what is happening?"

  "They said they came out to your house, checked the circuits going in and out, everything looked fine, nothing physically attached to your lines. They checked the neighborhood phone cable boxes, everything looked fine. They kept checking every physical link. Seems they were really interested in your case, Milton. Prank phone calls are one thing. Messing with phone company hardware is another."

  I said nothing, only motioned for her to continue.

  "They found the calls weren't coming in through the phone lines from outside Blackbridge, she said. They were originating from two of their microwave relay antennas. One on the western hills on the other side of the Susquehanna, one on the eastern hills above The Heights."

  "They're saying someone bounced the calls off them?" I asked.

  "No," she said. "They're saying that that's where the calls originated from. They had workers check the antennas, all the hardware, even had a couple workers watch them overnight to see if someone was physically breaking in and somehow getting calls to you. They saw no one, even when the calls were being made to your house."

  I nodded. "So what do you think, Maria?"

  "I don't know, Milt. In this town, strange things happen every day. When I make the late night or early morning patrols, I see the vapors and the wisps around every corner and tree, just wandering by themselves. I hear the whispers when I'm sitting in my car drinking coffee. Sometimes I think I hear my dad walking the hallways at night. Sometimes I drive down one street then drive by an hour later and see that someone's put up one of those roadside shrines all lit up with candles." Maria put her elbows on the table and her hands under her chin. "And this morning I drove down your street and saw a guy in his bathrobe stringing a wire on his roof."

  "I still have to ground it," I said.

  "My point is, is that I can't make sense of half the things I see. Growing up here, I just accepted it as part of life in this town, and now that I'm faced with these things every day, I've no idea what to think about any of it."

  "She wants me to find her."

  Maria nodded. "Okay," she said, "let's assume you're right, that she's still out there in one form or another, let's ask ourselves what she might want. We, and it's still so weird for me to be saying this, think she may have been, I don't know, turned into something that allows her to communicate through every electrical device. It happened suddenly, without warning. You two go for a walk, one of you comes home."

  "I don't think it was sudden," I said.

  "No?"

  "Let me show you something."

  ***

  We stood in the center of the study, the air still cold from the window having been opened. I'd moved the bookcase next to the desk, and on it I placed the desktop shortwave receiver, an antenna amplifier, and an antenna switch. On the desk, the computer screen glowed white, the word processor open, lines of "Please find me, Darling" filling the screen. Maria stared at the floor and spun slowly in place. "Jesus, Milton," she said. "What is this?"

  I pointed to the still-opened books on the floor, their ink clouds filling half the room. "Every book that she was supposed to be using in grad school is filled with this, page after page," I said. "The blotter on the desk, same thing. Maria stepped over the books and looked at the clouds covering the blotter. About three weeks ago I called someone up at Coxton College. I know it's not legal, but I asked him if he could tell me what courses Liz had been taking in her first graduate semester."

  "And?"

  "And Liz wasn't enrolled. She got her bachelor's degree, then nothing. She wasn't working, she wasn't doing research, she wasn't going to class, nothing. Everything I thought she was doing she wasn't."

  Maria puffed air from her mouth, looked down at the books again, pulling at her hat in her hands.

  "For months," I said, "Liz was disappearing every night, going somewhere, coming home late, then sitting in this room for hours drawing clouds. That's it."

  "Any idea where she was going?" Maria asked.

  I shook my head. "No, none." I leaned against the wall. "You know, I used to have these dreams. I thought they were dreams, anyway, but now I'm not so sure. Used to dream that I'd see her standing in front of the windows in the middle of the night. She'd run her fingers over the glass and this blue glow, like welding sparks would come out of her fingertips. I'd dream about seeing this blue flashing light coming from under this door when she was in here by herself," I said, pointing to the study door. I took in a deep breath and exhaled. "I used to have really vivid dreams as a kid. They'd get really bad when I was sick. Then, af
ter a while, I stopped remembering my dreams, at least until I met Liz, and then I thought I was remembering every dream that she was in.

  "My first big story at the college paper was when I saw this bright light on a hillside. Just had to go see what that light was. To this day, I still don't know why. I just drove up there the next day. It was this porch light, brighter than it should have been."

  Maria rolled her tongue in her mouth as she seemed to think to herself. I remembered the day she tried to help me up off the sidewalk when I gathered my things off the ground and ran home. She stood where my bed once was, where I sat that evening with an ice pack on my head in the dark.

  "A few days after the story gets published and after a hell storm breaks out, I get this letter from a student in the physics program named Elizabeth thanking me for my article. Interesting, isn't it?"

  "What is?" Maria asked.

  "How electricity brought her into my life and then took her out of it."

  "I don't know," Maria said. "It looks like it's still keeping her in it, for better or worse."

  ***

  The calls continued that night, Liz's laughter and whispers filling my ears.

  I'd strung the dipole antenna into the study, had grounded it to a copper pipe in the backyard. I began to construct a shorter indoor antenna, ringing it around the study and securing it with wall staples. I surveyed the roof for another antenna, a longer dipole that would stretch off the roof and into the side yard and began to measure for a third antenna radiating from the southern end of the house. With each length of wire, her voice became clearer, sharper. She blared over the local radio station and crowded out frequency after frequency.

  At night I slept in the study among the books, the warmth from the electronics rippling over me in waves. My hypnagogia was filled with her laugh and whispers, and my dreams were black and empty. I'd awake to the sounds of cable and amplifier hum, to the telephone ringing with the same voice and the same message:

  "Find me, please, Darling. Find me."

  Chapter Sixteen

  The knock at the front door was slow and soft. Three raps, pause, three raps.

  I opened it and was greeted by Bentley Burke standing at the edge of the porch dressed in a long gray overcoat, white shirt, black tie, black slacks, black shoes. His usual palette.

  "I have another essay on the way," I said.

  He nodded. "Oh," he said. "That's good." He was rubbing his hands together, his eyes wandering as if searching the porch for something.

  "You want to come in?" I asked. He nodded again, slowly stepped forward, and entered the living room. "It's," I said, "kind of a mess." He looked at the empty boxes piled in the corner, the Slinky antenna, the wires stapled and nailed to the walls, the new antenna amplifier atop the television. "I've been busy with . . . things."

  "Yes, yes," he said softly. "I see." He stood, fidgeting with his gloves.

  "You want to take off your coat?" I asked. "Maybe sit down?" I pulled a pile of plastic packing materials off the living room chair and placed it on the pile of boxes. He thanked me, then sat down. I sat on the loveseat across from him. "Can I get you something?" I asked, knowing all I had to offer were coffee and water.

  He shook his head. "I see you have a lot of antennas on the roof now. Four?"

  "Five," I said, pointing to the television.

  "Antenna amplifier," he said, then pointed to the large book now on the coffee table. "The Lightning Field. Ever been there?"

  I'd ordered the book the week before, a hardcover picture book dedicated to the large land artwork in New Mexico, on its cover a picture of the artwork's grid of four-hundred stainless steel poles. On the desert horizon, a lightning bolt stabbed at the earth. "No," I said.

  "I have," he said. "You know they make you stay there all day? You stay overnight, you watch the sun rise overhead, the poles making their shadows on the ground, the colors in the sky and in the desert. Went there five times, can you believe that?"

  "I didn't think you were a big art fan."

  "I'm not. Wasn't my idea. My dad's idea. You never met my dad. No, most people haven't. He was . . . he was okay as far as fathers go. I didn't have the . . . situation . . . that you had to deal with. He wasn't an art fan, either. Real estate, bonds, that sort of thing. Mostly real estate."

  "I never—"

  "He was really locked into real estate," Bentley continued. "Loved to visit all the family holdings from here to Philly. "And when he wasn't visiting those, he really liked checking to see how his real estate investment trusts were doing. The man liked real estate."

  I waited until he paused. "Haven't seen Claire in a few weeks," I said.

  "I know," he said. "She's fine. She's always fine. She's stronger than both of us, you know." Bentley shoved his gloves in his coat pocket and leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees and aiming his eyes at the floor. "I asked her not to come over here," he said.

  "Why's that?"

  "Because she can't help you."

  "Help me?"

  "Help you." He looked up, his dark eyes sunken, almost empty. "My father—no, my mother. You heard about my mother?"

  I searched my memory. "I heard she'd died in a boating accident. Long time ago, right?"

  "Long time ago," he said. "Not a boating accident." Bentley looked around the room, peered out to the kitchen. "Looks like the sink's piled up," he said. I stared at him, folded my arms. "You got the antennas strung in the kitchen, too."

  "If you're here to critique my housekeeping—"

  "Last time I came here," he said. "Remember? Your house was so clean. You can string antenna wire on the roof but can't wash dishes."

  "Maybe I should hire a maid, Mister Burke?" I said, my voice rising. "Tell me, just why are you here?"

  "Liz disappeared, what, two months ago?" he asked. "Maybe a bit longer?"

  "About."

  Bentley stood up and walked to the television. "Does she come through the television as well?" I said nothing, only watched him tap his fingers on the small black antenna amplifier box. "My mom," he said, "she mostly came through the television." He turned to me. "My mother?" He pointed to the ceiling. "She's out there somewhere too. No boating accident, no death."

  He bent down and whispered in my face: "Lightning."

  ***

  As I said, my father was . . . okay. A decent man. He took care of us. Took care of the family fortune, even expanded it. We never wanted, never had to worry about the coal mines closing or the railyards shutting down. Had enough to live forever. Still do. Dad kept his eye on all that, all the ledgers, the properties, very analytical. They say I picked that up from him. I don't know about that. I hate analytical things. I don't want to look at a spreadsheet or a ledger or a currency exchange chart ever again.

  But for Dad, well, he loved it. He could shift money from Column A to Column C and wind up with a fifteen-percent profit in Column E. He showed me how it was done, how to watch for good prices and how to watch out for false prices. Every day it was a new lesson. See? This is a production possibility curve and this is what it means. See? This is what Eurodollars are.

  Mom was there, in the house and in our lives. She was a good mother, but sometimes she was like the air, substantial, but . . . not. She sat in the windows all the time looking out at Blackbridge. The town looks like circuitry up there, you know? A grid with light that never seems to really light anything. When the mental hospital was open, she'd sit next to the windows facing it and throw them open wide. Sometimes you could hear the patients in there. I was a kid when they closed the place, but I still remember the weird things I'd hear, and I'd plug up my ears with my fingers or cover my head with a pillow. Mom would just say, Honey they can't hurt you. They're sick, Honey. The things that can hurt you? They're not out there. They're in here, and she'd point to my head and my heart.

  We didn't have maids or cooks.
Mom never wanted other people in the house except friends, but we really didn't have friends. None that I remember. Dad would take us to these investor parties in Scranton or Pittsburgh or New York City. Big, fancy parties. Mom would be all dolled up, I'd be in a tux—Dad, too. We'd sit there, and Dad would talk about cash flows, revenues, stuff like that. Mom and I'd sit off to the side, listening, eating, and drinking whatever was there, and then we'd come back to Blackbridge, and she'd sit by the windows, all quiet.

  There were never fights in the house. No tension, either, just routine. Dad got up, went to work, came home. Mom got up, made her rounds through the house, got me off to school, then stayed in the house. Sometimes she'd come down from The Heights, maybe shop at one of the stores. People thought she was spooky because she didn't say much, but she wasn't spooky. She just thought a lot to herself, her head just filled with all kinds of ideas. I'd ask her what she was thinking about when she looked out the windows, and she'd just say, Everything, Honey.

  It was like that for years. Sometimes Mom and Dad would talk behind closed doors about this and that. No shouts, no threats, just discussion. Dad's voice even and steady as if he was at a shareholder's conference, Mom's voice quiet and a bit sing-songy. Years and years of quiet and routine. I guess, considering, it was fine. We had everything we needed, right?

  One summer—I was in seventh grade then—Mom wanted to take a boat trip. A Chesapeake Bay boat trip. No, a yacht trip. She was from Maryland, you know? She used to tell me about riding on boats all up and down the Virginia and Maryland coasts on the bay. My mom had this long red hair, like Claire, and all these freckles. She said she got so many freckles from the water and the sun off the Chesapeake. She said she'd dreamt of taking a skipjack and sailing off into the sunset when she was a little girl.

  Dad hemmed and hawed but eventually took us down to the bay for a few weeks. Mom showed me the lighthouses and the inlets and the sunsets that lit the water like fire. She fed me crab and oysters, held my hand while we walked over these shorelines that had these tall grasses that reached my chin.

  Take me sailing, she'd say to my dad, and he did. Rented a small crew and a yacht that sliced through waves so smoothly that after a while you'd think the waves were moving out of the way just for us. You ever see the stars from the deck of a boat, Milton? It's like floating in space. Lie on that deck long enough, and you're with the stars. Mom pointed out the constellations, and then she started saying strange things. Things about how when I look at them I might see her someday. I just thought it was Mom being back in her element on the bay.