THE

MYSTERY OF KAYLA MARCH

By

R.F. Marazas

 1.

I’d been away too long. Nothing quite matched the images I’d tucked
back in memory. Twice I stopped for directions. After I left the second gas
station, I hiked my skirt back up to catch the breeze on my bare legs. Axton
Road was a half-mile from Setonsville’s town line, a narrow two-lane
diagonally left off Route 59. Sloped hillside on the left, dense trees marching
down to the shoulder blocking the setting sun. Farmhouses and their lush
fields spaced a mile apart on the right. It was the sixth house in at the end of a
right hand curve, an imposing Victorian, surrounded by trees slanted away in
rows. A dirt driveway wound past the house to the barn. Inside a small riding
mower sat. A red VW squatted near the open door. I looked out across five
acres of recently mown grass. To the left sat a fenced in plot at the edge of the
receding trees. Between the barn and house a lovely garden bloomed, bursting
with flowers and vegetables. Planters hung everywhere on the porch. Twilight
settled. The house stayed silent. As I parked next to the VW the barn spotlight
came on, and two porch lamps sent out soft glow.
I walked back to the house and knocked. Nothing. I peered across the
field. A figure silhouetted against the last light inside the fence, stark between
what appeared to be two headstones. I left the porch and walked past the
garden and the barn, along the line of trees to the fence, through the open
wrought iron gate. Kayla March knelt and plucked weeds from the ground. A
smudge of dirt streaked one cheek. The trees rustled, slow motion in the
cooling breeze. A river rushed by to the left where the land sloped.
She looked up and smiled and nodded at the head stones. The names
were weather faded. “I’m told they were distant relatives, another branch
actually. Some mysterious family scandal generations ago forced them to
immigrate to America and change their name to Marchwell. They lived here
and farmed. No one seems to know anything else. These last two, brother and
sister, were already gone a long while when I arrived. I would like to have
known them.” She stood up and brushed dirt from her jeans, barefoot,
frowning. A pair of laceless canvas shoes lay on the ground. “I’m delighted
you’re here.” Radio voice, honeyed, throaty, British accented. The sound made
me shiver. She took my hand with cool slender fingers and left it tingling.
“Carolyn Oldyng? I’m Kayla March. Mrs. Zachry expected you’d be here
later.” She wore an unzipped black windbreaker, blood red tee shirt with white
lettering stretched across small breasts: WAXT Has The Sound For Me. I was
too stunned to speak. Rising moon shimmered on copper hair as short as mine.
Sea green eyes pulled at me, whirlpools beckoning.
“It’s beautiful here,” I managed to say
She stepped into her shoes and we walked back in the quiet dark. Thirty
years of my life was crammed into two large suitcases in the backseat and
strapped to the trunk of my Triumph. I’d left other things in storage, with the
vague thought of claiming them someday. Not much to show. Kayla insisted
she carry one of my suitcases. The house was old but comfortable, roomier
than I’d imagined. I followed her up narrow carpeted stairs and down a long
dimly lit hallway to a room on the right. A small pleasant room. Cool breeze
drifted through the open window, ruffling the curtains. We left the suitcases. I
followed her downstairs and wondered about her sudden silence and coolness.
I had the feeling her earlier friendliness had been staged. She left me standing
in the living room. I heard her in the kitchen. She returned with two glasses of
wine and put them on the coffee table and announced she was going to
shower.
Mavis had told me little about her. I wandered the downstairs rooms but
found nothing except her large music collection and a book of Emily
Dickinson’s poems. I jumped when the phone rang. Ten rings. Should I answer
it? Another ten rings. I reached for it and it stopped. I sat on the couch and
willed my mind blank.
Kayla appeared in the doorway wrapped in a full-length robe, toweling
her hair. She sat away from me on the couch but close enough for me to
breathe her freshness. She sipped her wine.
“Are the arrangements to your liking?” I heard resentment.
“Fine.”
“I rarely eat here, so I’m afraid you’ll have to make---there are many
fine restaurants and diners in Setonsville and Axton.”
“That’s fine.”
“I’m usually at the station by eleven thirty. No one else is there so I’ll
have a duplicate key made for you tomorrow. I apologize for not having one
now but your aunt didn’t inform me of her decision until late this morning.”
“Decision?”
“This is a large house. I assure you I won’t invade your privacy.”
“Is something bothering you?”
She looked at me, bitterness hard in her green eyes. “I’ve lived here and
worked for Mrs. Zachry for ten years. I wasn’t quite prepared for such a
drastic change.”
“Then maybe you should take it up with her. I didn’t ask for this. I
needed a job and a place to stay and she said she’d take care of it.”
“Are you here to replace me?”
“Look Miss March, I don’t know what your relationship is with my aunt
and I don’t care. This is a bad time in my life and she’s kind enough to help. I
didn’t know I’d be living here. I don’t want your job or your house. I don’t
want your friendship or anything else from you. I’ll talk to her and find
something else as soon as I can and be out of your life.”
She lowered her head. I was sorry I’d blown up. We sipped our wine in
silence stretched taut.


2.

The raw wound burrowed deep, a dull ache, a reminder. Let it ache. I lay
on the four-poster bed dressed in my traveling clothes, suitcases still packed,
and waited for my first night on the job. The house was quiet. Home was no
haven, the last place I should be. Why had I done it? I heard my desperate
voice on the phone, heard Mavis Bane Zachry’s breathing as she listened to
me plead and dictate terms in the same breath. I needed to come home, could
she find me a job at the station, anything would do, engineer, anything, could
she find me a place to stay, anywhere but her house or my house, could she
please do it now because I was leaving now and I’d call her when I was close
to Axton. When she agreed I almost broke down with relief. No questions. It
would be taken care of.
I drove nonstop from Washington to New York State except for gas and
coffee and rest room breaks, dazed until my radio picked up WAXT about
thirty miles out. My heart thudded with the pain of surrender and I stopped on
the shoulder and cried. Through tears I watched my life fall apart in one week.
One endless week and it was gone, Jody, job, apartment. I pounded the
steering wheel until my hand hurt. Then I stopped crying and called Mavis
from a diner phone booth and drove the last stretch to Axton.
The knock came at the edge of hearing. I opened the door and Kayla
stood wearing the same unzipped black windbreaker over a black tee shirt with
the station logo, fresh jeans and the same canvas shoes with no socks. There
were smudges under her eyes I hadn’t noticed before. Her lovely face was
drawn. She seemed embarrassed.
“I’m terribly sorry for being such a twit. Having a bad patch of days is
no excuse for my poor behaviour. I assure you it won’t happen again.”
I wasn’t giving ground. “I’ll take my car and follow you.”
She looked away. “New beginnings can be overwhelming. Best to let
them run their course.”
Traffic was light on Route 59 through Setonsville and Axton. Nothing
looked familiar. Just before the town line where the road swung left through a
curve west toward Buffalo I recognized Axton College campus. It had
changed, expanding in ten years since I’d left. I hit the brake hard to avoid
ramming the VW as Kayla turned right onto a dirt track that sloped up to an
acre shelf of land isolated above the highway. The station sat on an oval gravel
parking lot, a squat one-floor building and broadcast tower winking its faint
red light. We parked away from the building, wheels nudged against railroad
ties. In the moonlight I saw the hard packed dirt path slanted down to the
college campus. A patch of lake through the trees reflected moon. We walked
across the lot, feet crunching gravel.
“Shall we?” She unlocked the door. Night-lights glowed along the
corridor. Reception desk right, Studio A across from it left, then my aunt’s
closed office, row of cubicles, Studio B, stock room, record library. Kayla
pushed through the Studio B door and flicked on soft ceiling lights. A spare
room, claustrophobic. My prison cell, a small half glass engineer’s booth. I’d
be trapped here forever, exiled. The rest was hers, worn leather swivel chair,
long desk with a hanging mike and the board, phone console with six buttons.
On the windowless wall a large round clock with a sweep second hand clicked
steady toward midnight.
We stood close in the booth, going through the equipment check,
everything I needed to know, selections already stacked and ready. Nothing to
do but watch for her signals. “This is new for me as well. I’ve never worked
with an engineer. I’m sure you’ll be fine.” Her voice had turned icy again.
She left me and hung her jacket on a coat rack and sat in her chair and
watched the second hand. I watched it and her. At last she leaned forward into
the mike. “I’m Kayla March and this is Night Images, the show for those of
you who understand how the world changes at night. I know you’re out there.”
I cued Sinatra, saloon ballads, wee small hours things, and followed
with Beethoven, Willie Nelson, Dakota Staton, the Beatles, Alec Wilder tone
poems, all uninterrupted. Between albums her voice returned low and sinuous
in brief introductions to the next album. No news or sports or weather or
traffic, and quick canned commercials. The phone buttons began to light ten
minutes into the show and never stopped blinking through the night. She took
call after call, lips moving occasionally. Mostly she listened, hung up, and
pressed another button. I cued album after album and listened for her voice
and stared at her profile, bare olive toned arms, hair wispy across her forehead,
breasts rising and falling with slow even breaths. Six hours clicked by one tick
at a time. I was mesmerized.
“Will you join me for breakfast?” Her voice jolted me again. I stood at
my car and watched dawn break. I shrugged. She didn’t wait, but settled into
the VW and drove off. I followed. We drove eastbound past the campus into
Axton, vaguely familiar now in the quiet dawn. We drove past fog-shrouded
farmland into Setonsville. There was more traffic and the town was grittier
than I remembered. She passed the turnoff to the house. Where the hell is she
going? Another stretch of farmland. Suddenly the Axton County Mall loomed
in the distance. I’d never seen it. On the left the All Night Diner blazed its
neon. Was I ever here? I followed her into the lot.
As the sun came up bright and clear she donned dark sunglasses. She
went in past the counter diehards staring into their coffee to the last booth, an
apparently familiar ritual. A gray haired waitress was already at the booth,
waiting. Sunlight slanted through the windows, highlighting Kayla’s copper
hair. I slid in facing her as she ordered tea and toast. I ordered coffee.
“Can you take those glasses off, I like to see who I’m talking to.”
“Actually, no. Sunlight bothers me.”
Icy again. Her mood changed by the minute. “I’ll see my aunt this
morning and try to make other arrangements.”
She looked at me but all I saw was my reflection in her glasses. “As you
wish.” She finished breakfast in silence. I let my coffee get cold, enjoying her
obvious discomfort. She wanted to say something but didn’t know how. She
looked out the window.
 “Mrs. Zachry has been good to me over the years. I would never do
anything to offend her. Please don’t put me in a bad light with her. Please
stay.”
I didn’t know what to say. The desperation in her voice puzzled me. She
sighed and pushed her tea away and stood up. I watched her walk out to her
car, erect, shoulders back, long legs striding. She pulled away and turned left
onto Route 59 going eastbound, away from home. I sipped my cold coffee and
decided that her accent wasn’t phony after all. And I wanted to hear that voice
again.


3.

I hated Mavis’ house. Large Victorian on a dead end street behind the
college, antiques crowding every available space. At some time in the past I’d
lumped this house and mine together, hating both though they were nothing
alike. Too many bad memories kept my dislike alive. Mavis Bane Zachry
hadn’t changed in ten years. Still intimidating as she opened the door and
hugged me and stepped back and held my arms and scrutinized me. She had
the familiar cap of gray hair sculpted close to the shape of her head. Rimless
glasses enlarged her spit gray eyes. Thinner now, almost gaunt, but business-
like in earth tone pantsuit and sensible heels. My brother Jon once told me I
was more like her than like my mother. I used to doubt they were sisters.

“You look terrible.”
That got her a smile. “I know.”
She led me to the dining table. “But you’re home now, that’s all that
matters. Have you had breakfast, Marie can make you something.”
“Just coffee.”
Her gruff voice softened as she poured. “I’ve waited for your call for ten
years. I won’t pry or interfere, I just want you here where you belong.”
I didn’t believe her but she stayed true to her word as we sat at opposite
ends of the table. No mention of the past, Benjamin Zachry’s suicide or
Morgana Bane Oldyng’s untimely death or Craig Oldyng’s grief madness. I
had missed my father’s funeral but she asked for no explanation. Just another
day, aunt and niece having breakfast before going off to work. She chatted
about the town and the station, day to day operations, budgets, lineups,
deejays. Just like the monthly letters for the last ten years.
“So. Are you satisfied with the house? And the job?”
“Doesn’t matter. Kayla March isn’t happy.”
Mavis smiled. “The mysterious recluse.”
She told me that everyone in Axton County knew Kayla’s voice but she
doubted that more than three people knew whose voice it was. For the last ten
years Kayla arrived at the station before midnight. The show before hers
ended at eleven so the deejays never saw her. She left at six when the morning
crew was already on in Studio A so no one saw her then either. She’d never
been to one of Mavis’ monthly staff meetings. Each year Mavis renewed her
contract and Kayla worked Monday through Saturday until the next renewal.
“When I spoke to her about this she had no objections,” Mavis insisted.
“You spoke to her, or threatened her?”
“Threatened?” Her voice was brittle.
“You own the station. She obviously wants to keep her job.”
“And?”
“She thinks you’re going to replace her with me.”
She dismissed that. “I’ll talk to her again and reassure her that her job’s
secure. I suggest you get along because you’re going to live there. I won’t
have you in a motel or some low rent hovel, and you’ve made it obvious that
you won’t stay here or in your own home---”
I heard an accusation. “I told you I can’t live here and I can’t live with
Jon.”
“Why not?”
I blurted before I could stop myself. “Jon hates me.”
Her narrowed eyes pinned me. “Then perhaps it’s time to go home and
settle it.”
“Home?”
“Your house, Carolyn, the one you grew up in.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“There are ghosts there.”
“Then perhaps it’s time you banished the ghosts.”
We backed off, deflated. I choked back tears. Mavis’ face was drawn
with fatigue. “I’m sorry I accused you of bullying Kayla March. I know it was
short notice and I appreciate your help.” She waved away the apology and
took a shuddering breath and sat straighter.
“Is she really from England?”
She nodded. “Kayla came here from London as an exchange student the
same year you left for Iowa. She moved into that house, enrolled at Axton
College, graduated and stayed on. Apparently I inherited her from your
father.”
I stiffened. “My father?”
Mavis told me that Craig Oldyng met Kayla’s father at a London
convention. They got on very well and kept in touch. By the time Kayla
arrived here my father was dean of Axton College. She was alone in a strange
country and he took an interest in her and watched out for her. Mavis assumed
he was doing a favor for an old friend. Kayla was a communications major
and my father asked Mavis to hire her and Mavis agreed. Odd jobs around the
station while she got her degree, then engineering for other deejays. When she
graduated she asked for the midnight to six slot. In those days it was zero
revenue and bubblegum music from machines and dead air whenever they
broke down, so Mavis decided it couldn’t get worse letting Kayla work it.
“And father bought the house for her?”
She shook her head and explained that the house actually belonged to
the March family because the original owners were distant relatives. When
they died, the house and land were willed to the March family. As another
favor for an old friend, my father hired people to keep the empty house
maintained. When Kayla came to America she was able to move right in.
“Strange.”
“It gets stranger.”
Soon after my father died Mavis got a call from London. He’d been
communicating with a John Boswell, a solicitor with a law firm representing
the March family. There was an account at the Axton Bank and Trust that paid
Kayla’s tuition and living expenses. My father spoke to Boswell at least
quarterly, giving an update on Kayla, how she was doing, her health, and
whether she needed anything. Now Mavis inherited that too. Whether my
father talked to Mr. March Mavis didn’t know. She had never spoken directly
to March. But she still updated Boswell every three months.
Mavis laughed. “A useless exercise because there’s never anything to
tell. And Boswell is as closemouthed as a clam about Kayla and the March
family. Come to think of it, his regular call is overdue.”
“So you’re stuck with her but don’t know anything about her or how my
father got involved.”
Mavis insisted there was no mystery about my father’s involvement. A
favor for an old friend. What she did know was that for the past seven years
from midnight to six, six nights a week Kayla March hosted a show that
shouldn’t be on. No one knows why it’s the second most popular show on
WAXT, right behind the morning drive time people, and most months Kayla
pushes them hard. The logs prove that more people call her than any other
deejay. She’s on that phone all night. And the ad revenue generated for the
other programs keeps increasing. Strange perhaps, but Mavis wished her other
programs showed numbers nearly as good. She didn’t need to know anything
else.
Okay, fine, who cares? I was in no mood for mysteries. What annoyed
me was my father taking an interest in a stranger instead of his own children.
Add that to the ache I had to get used to living with.


4.

We shared the house but little else. Midnight to six I cued her selections
and watched her and blanked my mind. She ignored me. Six to midnight I
slept too many hours, woke when dreams got nasty, stared unthinking out my
window, ate in grungy places in Setonsville where no one recognized me. I
dreaded the thought of a day off, the coming Sunday night and first family
dinner. Mavis had insisted. There was something important she needed to tell
us. I suspected her of scheming to bring Jon and I together since I dragged my
feet about the reunion with my brother.
On the last show of the week Kayla was in a big band mood. Goodman,
Dorsey, Miller, Shaw, Herman, Kenton, screech brass and runaway
dissonance. Her range of tastes amazed me. Stacks of albums from the station
record library and her personal collection waited for cueing. I watched her on
the phone, lips moving, listening, head tilted toward the clock. She
mesmerized me and my pulse slowed as an odd lassitude wrapped itself
around me. I could have sat in the booth forever.
She signed off with a quick goodnight and opened the booth door. Her
smile was thoughtful. “I’ve remembered something extraordinary. When I first
arrived here I was so numb and disoriented, terrified really, and I was walking
across campus trying to get my bearings, and this girl came out of one of the
buildings, Old Main it was, and I just stopped and stared. She was putting on
her sunglasses and I saw her face and thought, how lovely she is, and I wanted
so much to meet her.” Her smile widened, mischievous. “And now ten years
later here you are.”
In the diner I endured a murky dawn, an ugly carpet of low clouds
rucked up, mimicking my mood. Kayla didn’t need her glasses, her green eyes
bright with searching, as she studied me and sipped her tea. “I’ve never been
to your aunt’s house. Is it so horrible?”
“It’s gloomy inside, crowded and depressing. Even as a little girl I hated
to go there. It scared me.”
No wonder people called her. She listened, blocking out the world to
hear what you needed to say. She murmured gentle urgings, tell me more,
confess, tell me. I found it too easy to talk to her. I was wary.
“I guess that’s stupid.”
“Not in the least. Do you feel the same way about your house?”
“That’s not an option!” My voice was strident. Heat rushed to my face.
“I’m just not---comfortable there---it’s not my house anymore, too much
time’s gone by---” I signaled the waitress for the coffee refill I didn’t want and
turned back to the window.
“Well then, the farm should be perfect, it’s quite isolated and there’s
more than enough room.”
I turned back expecting mockery. What had Mavis told her about me?
What did Mavis actually know or suspect, and had she shared it with this
complete stranger? Kayla’s face was calm, her eyes sympathetic. I laughed.
“God I can just hear the gossip, this town loves stuff like this.”
She didn’t smile. She finished her tea. “Indeed. I shouldn’t worry, few
people know I exist. Oh, and should you misplace your key, there’s a spare in
the hanging planter to the left of the door.” She got up. “Just in case I’m out.”
I was alone, tense on the couch waiting to drag myself to the reunion
dinner. The house quiet both soothed and drove me crazy. Kayla was gone all
morning and well into the afternoon. I slept in fits and starts, walked aimlessly
across the property, and finally showered and dressed much too early. I
couldn’t sit still, getting up every five minutes to look for her car. When I
heard it I ran to the window to see it nose around the driveway and coast to a
stop at the barn. She got out and swung the barn door wide. She went inside
and reappeared with gardening tools and began to work in the garden. By
craning my neck I could just make her out on her knees digging. Clouds
thinned enough to expose patches of blue in the pre-dusk sky. She worked
until the light faded.
She was surprised to see me. “How lovely you look. The dress becomes
you.” Her jeans were dirty at the knees and her canvas shoes were scuffed with
black earth. She toed them off as she wiped her hands with a rag which she
stuffed into her back pocket.
I managed a wan smile. “I feel anything but lovely.” I told her about the
dinner. Once again it was too easy. She cocked her head and listened as if I
were the only person in her life, and my problems the only thing that mattered.
When I finished she stood there a moment, then smiled.
“I expect you’ll be fine. Be yourself. No one can fault you for that.” She
left the room and returned with two glasses of wine. She handed me one and
our fingers brushed. She sat close and raised her glass. “To new beginnings.”
She smelled of fresh earth. I watched her over the rim of my glass and
wondered again what Mavis told her about me. Was she reassured now that I
posed no threat to her? Had she traded her tolerance of me for---what?
She put her glass on the table and turned. “I’ve wondered what it would
be like to kiss you”.
I couldn’t respond, couldn’t move. I sank deeper into the couch as if
trapped there. Her face filled my vision, pale stunning face, short copper hair
tousled damp, sea green eyes sparkling. Her words echoed as they did every
night drifting out across Axton County. My eyes were open but she closed hers
and rested cool fingers on my face. Her lips were warm melting on my eyes,
nose, corner of my mouth. Soft on my lips. They lingered forever. My pulse
thrummed and tingled with heat.
I didn’t recognize my voice. “What was it like?”
“It was delightful”.
I drove to dinner in hazy moonlight soft as Kayla’s lips.


5.

Arrowhead country club hadn’t changed. Mavis and Jon sat at the same
table in the rear of the dining room. It had been reserved for Oldyngs as far
back as I could recall. I steeled myself and moved to the table and leaned
down to kiss Mavis’ cheek. I turned and Jonathan stumbled to his feet.
“Caro.”
“Jonny.”
He hugged me and must have felt my body stiffen because he let me go
as if he’d been burned by the touch.
“Been a long time since anyone called me that, how long now, ten
years?”
I slumped into my chair, relieved, and looked at him at last. No mirror
image, no seeing my double. Hair a shade darker, longer, skin less pale. Facial
planes sharper, angular, no longer delicately feminine. Once matador slim
body bulkier with the beginnings of a belly. No one would mistake us for
anything but brother and sister, but we would never again be maternal twins
who looked eerily identical.
During dinner Mavis took control and tried to force interaction. I made a
reluctant attempt, but Jon ate little, drank a lot, and stayed silent and sullen.
Finally, Mavis sighed.
“Well, this has been enlightening, but I’m afraid I’m meeting someone.
Carolyn, would you drive Jon home?”
So much for something important she needed to tell us. I glared at her
but she ignored me and signaled the waiter for the check.
I drove with numbing dread and found myself parked in the familiar
circular driveway. The house loomed up in front of me. A mistake. I didn’t
want to be here.
Jon’s speech slurred. “Come in, come in, you missed the funeral, it was
grand, you wouldn’t believe the number of people there, but you don’t want to
hear that, right?”
I trailed him, heels clacking on parquet, eyes straight ahead on his back,
shoulders hunched against the house. I froze at the sight of the study door. He
swung it open and my legs wouldn’t move. He turned back to peer at me.
“Caro, it’s just a damned study.”
I saw myself as a little girl standing in front of that door for hours,
waiting for my father to come out, pressing my ear against the cold heavy oak
trying to hear something, anything. I couldn’t remember the sound of his
voice. He didn’t seem real to me. I wanted his love, his recognition, his
validation that I existed. On those rare occasions when I caught a glimpse of
him it was like seeing someone I vaguely recognized.
Jon took my hand and urged me inside. He was right. Just a study, old
leather chairs, paneled walls, floor to ceiling bookcases, liquor cart, fireplace. I
perched on the edge of a wing-backed chair close to the desk. Above the
mantel Morgana and Craig Oldyng gazed adoration at each other, as
disinterested in anyone or anything else as they had been in life. They stood
close, his left arm circling her waist, her hands resting lightly on his chest. It
must have been awkward holding that pose hour after hour. I couldn’t stop
looking.
Jon gave me brandy and I gulped the liquor and felt it burn. He leaned
against the front of the desk and blocked my view of the two strangers and
stared at me glassy-eyed, unfocused. Was he remembering? “Why did you
stay?” I asked.
 “Why did you go?” An accusation, a challenge.
“You know why. I had to leave, I couldn’t live that way anymore.”
“We had each other. I used to think that was enough to get us through
it.” I flinched under his condemning eyes. “Sure, I stayed. You know why? I
didn’t have the guts to get out.” He was breaking down.
“Jonny, I’m so sorry.”
He gulped the brandy and lurched toward the liquor cart. “Sorry hell,
don’t pity me damn you, I get enough of that from myself, and from Mavis.
Right now I’m getting drunk, you can stay and watch or you can leave.”
I left.


6.

Every morning after the show, breakfast. I had to be there. Kayla seemed
pleased to welcome me. It felt natural, as if we’d been meeting for years. She
sipped her tea, nibbled her toast. And I talked, reeled off the last ten years,
stations I’d worked at, day-to-day craziness filling my life so I wouldn’t have
time to think. I skimmed over Jody, hinted at and skirted my family problems.
She was patient, and listened and waited for me to open up and tell her more,
but she never asked. Those startling green eyes hypnotized me when the
weather was gloomy, but on sunny days she wore dark glasses, and that made
it easier not to confess everything.
Something was beginning. A delicate balance. Whenever I turned the
conversation to her I tried to be subtle about drawing her out, careful with my
questions. I longed to know her yet was afraid of knowing too much.
“I’m amazed at the number of calls you get.”
“It’s quite incredible the number of people awake at that time.”
“What do they talk about?”
“Oh---everything. Some love the music, some don’t like the music,
some talk about their lives and hopes and dreams, some complain, some just
want someone to listen to them, I imagine.”
“And you listen.”
“I don’t mind, really.”
“And your opening, is that for them?”
She smiled, remembering, and I had to smile too. “The very first night I
went on the air I was terrified. I sat at the microphone frozen, the clock ticked
one second closer to midnight, and another second, and I had no idea what to
do. I’d begged your aunt for the chance and she finally relented. The time slot
had been open for years. Someone would come to the station and set up the
machine to play canned music and sometimes they’d forget to come back and
change the tapes, or the machine would break down and there would be
nothing but dead air. Actually, I had that very job for a time until I started
badgering your aunt. She was quite reluctant but took pity on me and gave me
a month’s trial. So there I was with no engineer and six hours to fill and I was
petrified. Suddenly it came to me, I actually heard the words in my head and I
spoke them and---” She laughed. The richness sent a shiver along my arms.
“The rest, as they say, is history,” I said.
“Indeed.”
After the long breakfasts I wanted nothing but sleep, but Kayla seemed
driven by some restless energy, not anxious to go home. One morning on
impulse I followed as she turned left out of the parking lot going eastbound.
She drove aimlessly down Route 59, through Bandireo, West Oak Falls, Oak
Falls and Painted Bridge, and turned around at the county line as if some
invisible barrier stopped her. She drove westbound through the same towns,
past the diner, through Setonsville and Axton, and slowed at the opposite
county line and u-turned again. I followed through the morning, back and
forth, forty miles each way. At noon, exhausted and puzzled, I finally broke
away and drove back to the farm. She kept going.
The next morning I asked before I could stop myself. “Do you ever
sleep?”
“Not very well, I’m afraid. Short naps seem to be sufficient.”
“Why do you drive all day?” She gave me a sharp look. I blushed. “I’m
sorry, I shouldn’t have followed you. It was stupid.”
She hesitated but didn’t seem angry. “Driving relaxes me.”
“Kayla, I hate to say this, but you’re a little strange.”
“Only if you look too closely.”
In those first weeks I saw a pattern emerging between us. Two things
about Kayla struck me. She left few openings to draw her out, but she stayed
focused on me, quick to sense my moods. It was unnerving.
“You seem out of sorts today.”
I still brooded about Jon and dreaded the weekly dinners at Arrowhead
where we tried to pretend we were a family. “I can’t connect with anything
here. My brother hates me. My aunt means well but she doesn’t understand---”
She reached across the table to grab my wrist and made me wince. “You
have to try, you mustn’t lose them.” Her face was stern, but she looked
through me at something else. She let go. I rubbed my wrist. She recovered
and shook off whatever vision she’d had. “They’re family, after all.”


7.

Twilight was magical, rising moon floating above wispy fog rolling in
from the river across the field. From a lawn chair I watched Kayla drive the
riding mower into the barn. She emerged in her slow balletic stride. She wore
an old sweatshirt with the sleeves gone, ragged cutoff jeans, no socks, laceless
canvas shoes. Her bare arms and legs sheened with perspiration and damp hair
clung to her forehead shiny with moon reflection. She smelled of clover and
fresh cut grass.
I sipped wine, feeling giddy. She sipped hers, rested the glass on the
table, and moved behind my chair. Fingers danced along my shoulders and
neck, cool, kneading gently but firmly.
“You’re so tense.”
“Oh god, don’t stop, don’t ever stop.”
The kiss was a memory blocking out the old ache, but nothing remotely
like it had happened since. I wasn’t sure it did happen. She laughed low in her
throat and worked my muscles. I slumped and felt tightness drain away. My
body was liquid, radiating heat. I closed my eyes and floated.
She murmured close to my ear. “I must shower, I’m terribly gritty.”
Her hands were gone, leaving me tingling where they’d touched. My
pulse slowed. Darkness surprised me with its swiftness. Light fog sprinkled
mist on me. After a long while I shivered and rubbed my arms and got up. I
licked my lips to bring back her taste. It was time to take my lips up to my
lonely bedroom. Touch them to find traces of her. I turned on unsteady legs
toward the house. Something made me look up. Kayla was framed in the small
bathroom window, soft light behind her, hair damp, bare breasts shadowed.
She looked down at me unwaveringly and then disappeared.
I took the glasses of wine and walked to the house. Inside stillness
whispered. Table lamps cast faint light and more shadow. I mounted narrow
stairs and moved up in a daze, down the hallway past my room to the end
where light spilled from the partly open door. Kayla stood at the foot of the
four-poster bed toweling her hair. I froze. She was naked, bathed in lamplight
and shadow, breasts rising and falling with her breathing. Her legs were
parted, bare flesh where pubic hair should have been.
“You left your wine.”
It was odd to watch her move toward me as if I was outside the bedroom
looking in. From a distance she took the offered wine glass and tilted her head
back to drink it all, her throat a lovely curve. She put the empty glass down on
the dresser and took mine and set it next to hers. Her eyes never left me. I saw
my suit jacket fall to the floor, then my blouse. I heard the snap of front clasp.
My breasts swelled under her touch, nipples encircled by her lips aching as
they stiffened. Skirt and half-slip slid down to pool at my ankles. Kayla made
a disapproving noise.
“I detest pantyhose.”
“I’ll never wear them again.”
She dropped slowly to her knees dragging my panties with her. “So
lovely.”
I felt her hands gently cup my bottom and saw the top of her head lean
into me. Warm breath parted my thighs. And now I was in the room, my cries
echoing in my ears.
In her bed I plummeted down, breath and pulse slowing as aftershocks
faded. I reached to draw the sheet up but she stopped me. “Don’t, I want to
look at you.”
I blushed. She turned, pressing her breast to mine, fingers trailing over
my stomach. Close, so close I was drowning in green eyes. “Tell me about
your parents.”
I hesitated. Her fingertips left a wake of heat on my skin. I wanted to tell
her everything, to dredge up everything locked away for years. It was too easy
with her fingers skimming. So I told her how much my parents were in love.
Oblivious to the rest of the world when they were together. Jon and I didn’t
exist. Sometimes it seemed that they looked at us as if trying to remember who
we were. We grew up relying on each other, outsiders in our own home. We
used to tell each other we were real. We mattered. Then my mother died. As
usual I was in the library trying to get their attention. She turned to him with
this surprised look on her face, said his name and collapsed. It was so unreal.
Something in her head burst. My father was never the same after that. He went
to work, he was chairman of the Victorian Studies department at Axton, and
he came home and went into his study and disappeared from our lives. When I
left home he wished me well but never asked where I was going or what I was
going to do. I escaped but left Jon behind. I betrayed him.
My confession tasted bitter. Kayla brushed my hair back and kissed my
tears and my mouth. “Nonsense. You did what you had to do.”
“I just wanted them to love me.”
“I’ll give you love.”
It wasn’t until I got dressed for work, sated, her body imprinted on mine,
that I realized she hadn’t told me she knew my father.


8.

Mavis asked me to go with her to the doctor. Behind the stoic calm she
was terrified. He was thorough, explaining patiently, slowly. They’d known
each other for years. Difficult yes, but he had every reason to feel cautious yet
positive. We found it early, now everything depended on Mavis’ attitude.
Chemotherapy would sap her strength, she’d lose her hair, no matter. She must
concentrate on her will to recover.
At Arrowhead Jon was shocked out of lethargy. Mavis seemed to enjoy
getting his attention. No wig for her, she’d wear colorful turbans, bright red,
pink, hunter green. She’d get to Arrowhead once a week by god if we had to
carry her in. I’d run the station if she couldn’t, piece of cake, I’d done this
before, bigger stations than WAXT.
“We’ll get you off that midnight slot.”
“No, it’s fine, I can handle both.”
“So Kayla March isn’t the monster you thought she was?” Amused.
“I have no problem with Kayla.”
“You’d be the first in a long while,” Mavis said.
I noticed that Jon was a sickly gray. He tossed back his drink and
excused himself. We watched him weave his way to the restroom.
“What’s wrong with him?”
 Her face was expressionless. “Too much to handle. His aunt is mortal.
His sister comes home after ten years. And I imagine he has his demons too.”
“What else?”
She raised her glass. “Now that a family tragedy has brought you
together, you can find out.”
I had the feeling she was enjoying her illness more than we were
dreading it.


9.

How did Kayla endure the dreams? If mine put me in black moods, they
were nothing compared to the sheer horror she must have gone through.
The house was oddly quiet, the kind just before something goes wrong. I
stood inside the door listening. The phone shrilled, ten rings, and stopped. I
couldn’t move. Dread silence settled again. Then the scream shattered the air,
its echo rolling through the house. I stumbled up the stairs, raced down the
hallway and slammed into Kayla’s room. The bed was empty, a tangle of sheet
and covers. She sat huddled on the floor under the window, naked and
sobbing, wide eyes staring.
“Kayla what’s wrong!”
Violent spasms shook her. I ran to her and knelt and held her. She
sobbed. I held her tighter. Was it hours before she shuddered, squeezed her
eyes shut and went limp in my arms? Her voice was hoarse from screaming.
Now she whispered.
“They kept moving away I ran and ran---couldn’t catch up couldn’t see
their faces---pleaded and begged them to take me back---there was the room
the door slammed I got inside but they were gone---the closet door swung
open she was hanging there turning, turning her mouth was open her eyes her
eyes were open looking at me accusing me---they were laughing at me loud so
loud but I couldn’t see them only her eyes staring and accusing---.”
She moaned and the hair at my neck prickled because it pitched up to
what I thought would be a scream, but it subsided into quiet weeping. I helped
her to her feet and over to the bed.
“Lie down and I’ll go make some tea.”
She clung to my arm. “Don’t leave me!”
“It’s all right, we’ll go together and you can make sure I do it right.”
I got a robe from her closet and put it on her and led her down the hall
like an invalid, and down the stairs into the kitchen. I watched her as I made
tea. She was docile, listless. Tears streamed down her agonized face and
dripped onto her hands clenched into fists on her lap. I took her hand and
carried the mug of tea and led her to the living room and sat her down on the
couch. She wouldn’t let go. I hated the familiar silence between us, afraid she
might drift back into the horror she’d seen if she didn’t talk.
“No wonder you have trouble sleeping.”
 The voice of a frightened little girl whispered. “My night terrors---I
never know when they’ll come.”
“Kayla, you should get some help.”

“No help, there is no help.”
The utter finality stopped me. Kayla curled up in my lap, legs drawn up.
I stroked her hair, her wet cheeks. The tea grew cold. Whenever she shuddered
I held her close, calming her, feeling inadequate. She dozed. I dozed too,
aware of her weight, aware of the slightest movement. I promised myself not
to sleep. Stay alert. I woke in a panic. No weight, no presence. Kayla stood in
the doorway haggard, drained. She was dressed.
“I have to do my programme.”
“Kayla, let me call someone, you need rest, the hell with the show.”
She cried again. “Please don’t take that away from me, it’s all I have.”
Later as I sat in the booth she leaned into the mike and I wondered if her
audience heard the same lost sound in her voice I heard.
For three days time stopped. We did the show. She took calls and
listened. At breakfast she stared out the window behind sunglasses. At home
she was listless, sitting outside all day, staring out past the field. My presence
didn’t register so I left her alone, but kept her in sight through the window.
Another show, another breakfast, another endless day of silence. I had no idea
what to do for her, how to help her. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing her
that way again. And then on Sunday morning Kayla smiled an embarrassed
smile and took my hand across the table. She was beautiful again, under-eye
smudges faded, drawn down lines in her face smoothed out, green eyes clear
and bright.
“I must apologize for putting you through that, I’m so ashamed.”
I squeezed her hand hard. “Kayla, don’t ever be ashamed. I care for you.
I want to help. Promise me if it happens again and I’m not here, you’ll call me,
please, you shouldn’t be alone.”
“I promise.”
She was lying.
“Now, what shall we do today? Have you ever been to Oak Falls? We’ll
have a picnic.”


10.

Moonlight striped the bed and our bodies. Cool breeze fluttered the
curtains but I felt only Kayla’s heat. Mouth on my mouth, breasts flattened
against mine, length of her pressed against me. Her hips thrust and circled and
ground into me. I opened, flowering.
“Oh Kayla please please.”
“Patience my love, have patience.”
She held my arms high and clasped my wrists together in surrender and
moved faster and smothered my cries with her mouth, her tongue, and
shuddered in echo to my heaving spasms.
Spasms that went on and on, long into the moonlight.
The phone rang. Rang. Annoyance flickered across Kayla’s face but she
continued reading.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?”
“No.” She was irritated.
“It might be important.”
“Insistent perhaps, but not important.”
Definitely insistent. Calls came over a period of days, hour after hour,
then stopped for weeks. She never answered. Like so many things about her, it
nagged me. Had some deranged listener somehow gotten her unlisted home
number? Or was this something else? I couldn’t explain my feeling that the
caller was someone far away. But she wouldn’t discuss it. One more thing that
added to her mystery.


11.

I woke to find her dressing for work. In the lamplight she looked
unearthly, ghost-like. Exhausted, I struggled to a sitting position.
“Go back to sleep. I’ll come by after the show and pick you up for
breakfast.”
“But---”
“Carolyn, you need rest. You’re running the station and sitting in the
booth all night. Your aunt needs you healthy.”
I hated the shrillness in my voice. “Should I find another place to live?
Am I crowding you?”
She strode back to the bed. I thought she was going to hit me but her
face changed. She caressed my hair and brushed lips against mine. “Never
think that,” she whispered. “Never.”
I snuggled deep into her lingering scent and drowsed until her radio
voice brought me back. She was right. I’d been pushing myself hard. When
the music started I got up and slipped on her robe, hugging it close. I
wandered through the house, room after room, searching for some clue to her.
I was careful. I opened drawers and closets and peered inside, disturbing
nothing. No photographs, no papers, no letters, no sealed packages. Nothing
about her, where she came from, why she came, just nothing. Had Mavis
called her anonymous?
Downstairs the phone rang. I hurried to the living room. Who was it? All
I had to do was pick up the phone. Someone wanted her. Someone from her
past? After the usual ten rings it stopped.
Her book of poetry lay on the end table next to the couch. I picked it up.
It was well used. I paged through it and recognized phrases and lines from
college poetry courses. I riffled pages looking for something, anything. I
flipped the last page, frustrated. The spine of the end cover was cracked and
separated, something tucked into the gap. I slid a photograph out. The back
had one word scrawled in faded pencil. Cecily. I turned it over.
A young girl slouched in a wing-backed chair in three quarter profile,
right side facing the camera. It was an indolent pose, erotic. Her bare arms
rested on the chair arms, hands bent at the wrists over the edge. Her right leg
was straight, heel on the carpet. Her left leg was bent, raised, heel resting on
the edge of the chair. She wore a wide brimmed hat with a dark band around
the crown, and a lacy chemise that ended at her belly. The ties were undone
and her left breast was visible in the gap of the chemise. With her legs splayed
her wispy pubic hair showed in the hollow between her legs. The hat brim
bent enough to shadow the upper part of her face. I couldn’t quite see her brow
or her eyes, but her nose and the curl of her lips and chin looked vaguely
familiar. Her hair was pale and short, curling down behind her ear to her neck
from the hat brim. I leaned into the cone of light from the lamp and brought
the photograph closer. I stared and stared until my eyes watered.
Whoever Cecily was, she reminded me of someone.


12.

The river drifted by, lazy, cool in the noon sun. We watched it, sheltered
by the willow tree on the rise at the end of the property. Kayla leaned back
against the trunk and I burrowed deeper into her lap. Her fingertips traced
paths over my face as if they were memorizing me.
“I have to get back to the station.”
“How is she?” She stroked my neck, my throat.
“Cranky. Miserable. Same old Mavis. The chemo tires her but she insists
on coming in to the office and she shows up at Arrowhead every Friday night
wearing those god awful turbans.”
She laughed. “I just know she’ll survive this.”
“Do you miss London?” I held my breath.
She stiffened, drawing her hands back. I raised my head, twisting around
to look at her, but she was on her feet brushing the back of her skirt. She
moved away, closer to the water.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”
“London is quite lovely this time of year, you can’t know how lovely
until you’ve actually experienced it. Someday you must visit, take a holiday
there, at least two weeks, a month if you can manage it. I assure you, you
won’t be disappointed. If you like, I can make out an itinerary for you, all the
marvelous places to see.”
“If we go together, you won’t need to, you can show me yourself.”
She turned. The sunglasses hid her eyes but I knew they were as sad as
her mouth.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. I’m in exile, you see.”


13.

Sundays were ours. The weekdays were frantic, time in the office or
with Mavis at home going over station business, interminable Friday dinners.
There were stolen moments if Kayla wasn’t out driving back and forth across
Axton county or working in her garden or mowing five acres, or if I wasn’t
trapped in Mavis’ office late into the night wrestling with charts and lineups
and listener complaints. But Sundays were ours. We lingered over tea and
looked at each other and smiled secret smiles. We let the anticipation build for
the day ahead, and the night. What might we do today, picnic at Oak Falls,
stroll through the mall, drive into Painted Bridge to see the stately homes,
wander through the county fair in Setonsville, or lock ourselves in the house
and lock the world out and read poetry or listen to music?
She undressed me and pressed me down on her bed. There was a
rainbow of silk scarves in her hand, red, yellow, blue, green. She raised my
arm and knotted the silk at my wrist, knotted the other end to the bedpost.
“I want to tease you.”
I couldn’t answer, and that was answer enough.
She fastened my other wrist to the top post, then tied my ankles to the
bottom posts. She stood looking down at me, so serious, and nodded her
satisfaction.
“Take your clothes off, please.”
“For now you’ll have to use your imagination.”
I raised my head, looking down at my body. My nipples were already
erect, my legs parted. When I brought my gaze back she held a feather.
“Hey wait a minute!”
It was a foot long, wide, narrowing to a tapered, pointed tip. She sat on
the bed, drawing it across my throat, along my shoulders, up and down my
arms. I squirmed, tugging at the scarves. The feather moved to my chest,
circled my breasts, circled tighter and tighter and brushed my nipples.
“Oh god Kayla stop!”
“I’ve only just begun, darling.”
I ached with arousal. She spun the feather over and over and just when I
couldn’t stand it any longer, slid it down over my heaving belly and lower to
my pubic thatch and along the insides of my thighs. I held my breath as the
feather moved higher, gasping as it found my lips. She stroked. I felt myself
opening. She dragged the length of the feather down and I bucked my hips and
thrust up at it. The feather glistened with my wetness.
Then I felt it enter me and I cried out, moaning, gasping for breath.
“Kayla no more please!”
She wasn’t listening. She drew the feather down the crease. I felt it
pierce and the fiery sensation and then the twirling, and I was arching off the
bed. She was deft, moving it from front to rear. Everything was swollen, ready
to burst, sensations building and building, my whole body a jangle of
sensation---
And then she stopped. I collapsed deep into the bed, chest heaving.
“I think I’ll start mowing now. You’ll wait for me, won’t you, darling?”
“Damn you, you can’t leave me like this, don’t!”
But she was gone, her throaty chuckle echoing in the room.
I twisted, yanked at the scarves, yelled at her, cursed and yelled some
more. When I heard the mower start I yelled louder. My body was on fire,
every inch so sensitive the light breeze from the window made me tingle. I
forced myself to think of other things, Mavis and her battle, Jon and his
demons, my life in limbo. I couldn’t bring Jody’s face into focus but the
shadowed face of the girl in the photograph kept flashing like neon.
It seemed like hours, days, until she stood in the doorway, stripping off
her clothes.
My voice was raspy from yelling. “Oh you bitch, I’ll make you pay for
this!”
She grinned, untying my ankles. “I look forward to it, but for now---”
She climbed onto the bed and moved up and lowered her head. Her
mouth engulfed me. I closed my eyes but the explosion flashed with a
brilliance that lit up the room. I finally tore one of the scarves from the
bedpost and found her head and pressed it harder against me and cried out in a
long unending wail.


14.

I looked up from Mavis’ desk and shoved the chair back and ran down
the hallway and out the door. Something was wrong. Fog shrouded the parking
lot. I couldn’t see the hills across the lake. It was eerily like my connection to
Jon when we were growing up, a sense that I could feel his thoughts, his
agony. I drove too fast, fog clearing then thickening to hold me back. The
house looked normal, riding mower just visible on the edge of the field, VW
tucked in the barn. I ran to the porch and found the door unlocked.
Kayla slumped on the couch, ravaged. Her hair was disheveled, eyes red
rimmed and puffy, robe unbelted. She stared at the familiar horror.
“Dammit Kayla, why didn’t you call me?”
The terrified little girl voice chilled me. “Why can’t they forgive me---
why do they hate me---was I such a terrible person, was I so evil---I never
meant to hurt---I didn’t---why did they abandon me?”
“Who, Kayla, who did that?” I gripped her shoulders and shook her,
trying to make her focus.
She looked through me, her voice a hypnotic singsong. Her eyes were
wide and glassy. Her father’s name was Colin March. Quite handsome, touch
of gray at the temples, every bit the English gentleman. Her mother was
Abigail. Kayla couldn’t imagine a more beautiful woman. She used to sit and
stare at her mother for hours, making her uncomfortable. A brother Robert,
five years Kayla’s junior, and a sister Amanda, six years younger, a delightful
girl. Grandmother and grandfather March, and uncles and aunts and cousins.
The March family could trace their lineage back hundreds of years.
Suddenly she gripped my blouse and whispered in a rush as if to get it
out before someone overheard. “They banished me, turned their faces away,
they couldn’t bear even to look at me, they wouldn’t speak, never said
goodbye, not even that---”
She wept. I held her long into the afternoon. For the next three days she
was dead to the world except for her beloved show.


15.

Mavis seemed to gather all her reserves for the weekly dinners. She
radiated strength. I had the feeling she was directing it at me.
“I want you to promise me something.”
“What?”
“Talk to your brother, get this thing between you straightened out.” I
shook my head, stubborn. “Carolyn, can’t you see what’s happening? He’s
withdrawing from life, he makes excuses for not being here with us but I know
damned well he’s locked up in that house drinking himself into a stupor.”
“Let’s concentrate on getting you well and running the station.”
“We’re doing that. That’s why you’re here, why I wanted you back.”
She reached across the table and took my hand. Her steely gray eyes softened.
Her face relaxed. I could see the resemblance to my mother. “Someday the
station will be yours. You’re an Oldyng. I’ve always believed you were the
best of us. Help him, Carolyn.”
I blinked away tears. “I’ll talk to him, I promise.”
She looked at me a long time, her love for me obvious and
overwhelming. Why had I never guessed it before this? At last she nodded and
sighed and sat back. The familiar Mavis Bane Zachry was back, shrewd,
probing, determined to have her way.
I smiled. “You want something else.”
“I had a call from John Boswell.”
“Who?”
“Kayla March’s lawyer, or solicitor as he puts it. He complained that she
never answers her phone, he’s been calling her for months.”
“I thought you said he called you for updates.”
She nodded. “Well now he’s calling her and getting nowhere. What’s
going on out there?”
I shrugged. “You know Kayla.”
“No one knows Kayla. Living with her and working with her, I imagined
you might be the one to break through.”
“I don’t work with her anymore, and I’m trying to run a radio station, I
don’t spend all that much time in the house. Look, she keeps to herself and I
respect her privacy.”
“Aren’t you just a little curious?”
I thought about the dreams and the photograph. “No,” I lied.
Mavis looked tired and irritable. “Take me home now. And tell your
strange roommate to answer the damned phone when it rings.”


16.

Kayla knelt on the bed and pressed her fingers into my shoulders.
“You’re so tense, Carolyn, you must learn to relax.”
“You relax me.”
Her lips trailed down my back and my spine and over the swell of my
buttocks. “I’m delighted that your aunt is getting well. Please tell her that she’s
in my prayers.”
“She’s a tough old bird.”
She lay on top of me, spreading warmth over my skin. “Too much?”
“No, I love the feel of your body on mine. Kayla, she’s annoyed. She got
a call from a John Boswell complaining that you won’t answer your phone.”
“I see.” She lay still on me. I couldn’t feel her breath. “Well then, I shall
have to remedy that, she shouldn’t be bothered by such mundane things.”
She lulled me into a hypnotic stupor and gently stroked my neck, her
lips close on my shoulder, her soft murmur resonating through me. “Are you
getting on with your brother?”
I sighed. “It’s complicated, too much between us, too much time and
distance, I’m not sure we can ever get back, not sure I can. But Mavis wants
me to.”
“Tell me.”
Her voice was a key to unlock my soul. I was just another caller,
anonymous, she anonymous behind me. This was what she did every night,
drawing them out, non-threatening, listening. She shifted away from me, off
me, but close, fingers stroking. Listening. I closed my eyes and told her
everything.
Light seeped from Jon’s partly open door, flowing diagonally across the
carpet to merge with mine. The connection between us. Suddenly his door
swung wide and he darted out, a quick flash of pale skin and white briefs,
moving left away from the bathroom. I got out of bed and crept into the
hallway. Another spill of light came from our parents’ room. Jon was flattened
against the wall, his head angling toward the gap in the doorway. I hurried up
behind him and whispered fiercely.
“Are you crazy?”
“Shhh!”
He grabbed my hand. His was damp with sweat. “Oh god, look at
them.”
 I peered around his shoulder. My mother squatted naked in front of
father, his head thrown back, eyes closed. Her hands circled his erection and
she moved her head back and forth on him. His penis emerged from her
mouth, slick and bloated and impossibly huge, almost to the glans, and
disappeared again as she moved her head forward. Jon squeezed my hand
painfully. His briefs hung loosely around his slim hips and I could see the
bulge strain at the front. Father let out a groan and pulled away, bending to
help my mother up. He turned her around and urged her onto the bed. She
climbed up and leaned forward, arms propping her, buttocks raised, legs
parted. Her breasts sloped downward, full and heavy. Her dark nipples were
swollen. He moved behind her, standing, and gripped her hips. He flexed his
legs and his penis slid under her and plunged inside. I heard her breath
whoosh out as she shuddered and began to thrust backward. He moved faster
and harder, until their merging bodies blurred. Over their grunts I could hear
Jon’s labored breathing, and felt my blood roar in my ears. At last father
stiffened and cried out, and mother let out a low wail as she shuddered and
collapsed on the bed.
I tugged Jon’s arm and dragged him away, shoving him toward his room
and pushing him inside. I pushed again and he stumbled across the room and
collapsed on his bed. “What’s wrong with you, do you want to get caught?”
“Oh god, did you see them they were so---”
He was staring at me and I realized that my nightdress was sheer
enough to see through. I crossed my arms over my breasts, wincing at the
tingle through my nipples. Jon sat on his bed, his bulge prominent.
“Did it excite you?”
“You’re excited enough for both of us.”
“Oh I hurt, Caro.”
“I’m getting out of here, you do what you have to.”
“No don’t go, please.”
He lay back, tugging his briefs down. Red faced, he held my gaze and
began stroking himself. His eyes dropped to my body.
“Please, Caro.”
I lowered my arms and leaned back against the door. The nightdress
clung. I watched him watching me, his hand moving faster and faster, heard
him cry out as he arched his body and exploded.
And there were other nights, nights when he seemed to know what was
about to happen. He would slip into the hallway and I would follow and we’d
watch everything. The air would be heavy with the scent of sex and we’d run
back to his room, and Jon would lie on the bed and lock his fevered gaze on
me, and sometimes I’d lower my nightdress to let him see my budding breasts,
or raise it to let him see the rest of me, because god help me I just couldn’t
stand that strangled cry of please Caro please, and I’d watch him watching
me, watch fascinated, hypnotized, while he covered his mouth to keep from
crying out as he climaxed---
 Kayla was gone when I woke. In the distance the mower coughed and
sputtered. Had I dreamt it? I slipped on her robe and went downstairs. In the
kitchen I brewed tea, half awake, feeling somehow out of sync with time and
life. Had I really confessed? Had I fallen asleep before I blurted out the sordid
details? Was she disgusted with me?
The mower stopped. Silence and dusk blanketed the house. Kayla came
in sweaty and cheerful.
“Ah, just what I need.”
She poured a cup and sipped, watched me over the rim of the cup and
licked her lips. I held my breath and waited for judgment.
“You’re getting rather good at this, perhaps you were British in another
life.”
I understood then. She would never judge. She collected others’ secrets
and absorbed them, but buried her own under the comfort of her silence. She
was a listener, not a teller.
She put down her cup. “Will you join me in the shower? And let me
make love to you?”


17.

Mavis wouldn’t let up. With her mortality in doubt she focused on what
was left of the family. We were the last of that family, she insisted, and we
shared the responsibility for keeping it together, whatever our differences. She
had no intention of prying, but we had to bridge those differences and put
them aside. Jon was rudderless, drifting through life. He needed something, a
wife perhaps, to anchor him, friends, a sister who cared.
I promised again.
Jon was drunk and careful not to show it, with slow, exaggerated
gestures, overly precise speech to mask the slurring, and slightly out of focus
gaze. He sat at his desk, swivel chair tilted left so he could see the portrait. He
kept raising his glass to it, toasting our parents without words.
I poured brandy because Jon sulked when I first refused, but I took one
sip and set the snifter aside. “Mavis thinks you’re becoming your father, an
uncommunicative recluse.”
“I am my father’s son, following in his ghostly footsteps. Did you know
they’re considering me for chairman of the Victorian Studies Department at
thirty-one? That’s five years earlier than the illustrious Craig Oldyng. You
think he’d be proud, Caro, or would he just nod his head and drift off to
dreamland?”
“Is that really what you want, to be like him?”
“What I want, what I want, why not? He had it all, prestige, stature in
the community, the love of a beautiful woman, god how she loved him! You
saw it, night after night, remember?”
I shook my head to dislodge the image. “There’s love out there for you
Jon, there’s someone for you, you’re a wonderful person. I can’t believe you
haven’t met someone in all this time.”
He laughed and slugged back the brandy and wiped his mouth and
stared down into the snifter. “Met someone, oh yeah, you think mother was
beautiful, but you know don’t you, she’s so beautiful it hurts to look at her,
right? And that voice, I thought it was phony but it’s not. I swore I’d never
listen to her again, I don’t want to hear that voice but I still listen every
damned night, you understand? She even made me forget about you, about us,
I thought I was free---”
My heart stopped. “What are you saying, Jonny?”
He looked at me with wistful sadness in his tear filled eyes. “She called
me Jonny too, how did she know? I must have told her only you called me
that. I told her everything, hey, you live with her, you run the damned station,
she works for you, you can order her to love me, tell her what a great guy I
am, you’re my sister you owe me, dammit!”
Numb, I got up. The room spun. My heart beat again. “Go to sleep,
Jon.”
His shout slammed into my back. “Go to hell, Caro!”


18.

The sun rode hot in a bright blue sky. I jerked the wheel and skidded to a
stop, bumping the VW and rocking it. The air was heavy and still. I saw Kayla
outlined against the sky down by the river and left the car door open and
walked along the line of trees, past the fenced in plots and up onto the slope.
She turned, sunglasses protecting those dazzling eyes, copper hair shining,
hands deep in the pockets of an open throated summery dress that floated
around her bare calves. She was barefooted. Her breasts moved unrestrained
under the dress. She turned smiling but the smile disappeared as she saw my
face.
“You screwed my brother, didn’t you?”
“Crudeness doesn’t become you, Carolyn.”
“You screwed my brother and then you broke his heart and in the whole
time we’ve been together you never said a word, another of your damned
secrets!”
She turned toward the river, head bowed. “I haven’t seen Jon in years,
perhaps two or three times accidentally since we---parted. We haven’t spoken
in all that time. When you and I first met I sensed something familiar about
you but I suppose I disregarded it. When it finally dawned on me, we were
already---close, and I didn’t feel it would serve any purpose to bring up the
past.”
“Familiar? Something familiar? Kayla, Jon and I have the same name,
we look almost alike, the only difference is gender! Was that it, you had one
and it was fun so you decided to have the other too? Did I remind you of him,
did you ever get us mixed up in your head? Maybe you were collecting
Oldyngs. Did you seduce my father too?”
She turned back to face me and removed her glasses and squinted
against the brightness. Her eyes held mine and her voice was a whisper
crackling in the still air.
“Is that what you believe?”
“Or maybe I just remind you of Cecily.”
I might have hit her. She flinched with the pain. I wanted to hold her and
take it all back but my rage took control.
“Believe? What the hell is there to believe? You know what I believe,
Kayla? You’re alone and you want to be alone and you deserve to be alone.”
She searched my face a long while, and then put the glasses on and
turned back to the river. “Yes, I imagine that’s so.”


19.

I stopped listening to her show. Unlike Jon I didn’t want to hear that
voice curling into my dreams. I avoided the diner. I kept to my room when I
wasn’t at the office but it didn’t matter. Kayla was rarely there during the day
and if I heard her car pulling in I waited until she was working in the garden
and I left. One night after staying as late as I could at the station I opened the
door just as the phone rang. The caller must have been as surprised as I when
Kayla picked up the phone after one ring. I watched her hunched forward,
tense, listening, murmuring. I couldn’t see her face but her body was rigid.
And then her voice raised above the house quiet, very British. “You needn’t
bother, I shan’t be here.” She hung up and her shoulders slumped. I hurried to
my room.
I had no idea how long Jon had been standing there, his back to the
closed office door. He looked as if he had been on a week-long drunk.
“Caro, Is Mavis all right?”
“She’s fine. Maybe you should ask her, maybe go see her and pretend
you really care.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s an Oldyng family trait, not being fair.”
“Caro, I’m sorry. If I hurt you, if I drove you away because of what
happened---”
I slammed my hand on the desk, making him jump. “Just tell me one
thing, was dad sleeping with her too?”
He looked at me, astonished. “God no, there was never another woman
after mom died, you know that. She was lost here, she had no one, he just
wanted to help her, maybe he was trying to make up for all those years he
neglected you.”
“What crap! And how did he make it up to you, did he give her to you?”
Jon shook his head, resigned. “She’s so easy to love, isn’t she?”
 My voice was sharp. “I don’t love her, I never loved her, it was just sex,
the sex was good, right Jon?”
“Sure, Caro.”


20.

On Monday night I had a late dinner with Mavis and then did some
work I’d brought from the station. I fell asleep on the couch, exhausted. Mavis
shook me awake. I focused on her grim face and her finger pointed at the
radio. There was crackle and low hiss of dead air. I looked at the clock. Five
minutes after midnight.
“What’s going on over there?”
I shook my head.
“Well find out. John Boswell called here tonight. Her father is dying and
wants to see her. Boswell is flying here tomorrow to bring her back.”
Studio B was dark except for blinking phone buttons. I cued something
and checked the headphones and ignored the incoming calls and dialed out.
No answer. I hung up and stacked the albums for the rest of the show and sat
in her swivel chair. Every fifteen minutes I dialed again. Between calls I
listened to her music. The phone buttons blinked all night. Six o’clock came
faster than I expected with my mind numb.
With autumn, dawn broke later. The house was dark, barn closed, VW
gone. The door was locked, the key still in the planter. Inside I stopped to
listen to the eerie quiet that comes with emptiness. I moved through the rooms
looking for anything to suggest that someone had actually lived here. Upstairs
was just as empty. In her bedroom the dresser drawers and closets were bare. I
stared at the four-poster bed, remembering the mornings and afternoons and
evenings of long slow lovemaking. Had it all been a dream?
I lay down and tried to sense her presence, any trace of her, her scent. I
squeezed my eyes shut and willed her to appear, propped up on an elbow
looking down at me. Shimmering dark copper hair, deep sea green eyes, lips
slightly parted in a secret smile, sloping breasts with faun colored, firmly
hardened nipples, flat tummy and swelling hips, smooth pubic mound,
impossibly long shapely legs, a wash of creamy paleness everywhere.
I ached with wanting.
I searched for her. I drove to the Setonsville airport. The red VW was
nowhere in the parking lot. I followed her obsessive route through the county,
along the narrow streets of Painted Bridge, up through the picnic grounds at
Oak Falls, back to the diner, through the mall, every stop I could remember.
All morning I drove, back and forth, and finally went back to tell Mavis that
Kayla March had never been real.


21.

 Something in Boswell’s very proper British voice irritated me. I resented
the way the sound pushed my Kayla dreams back to the edge of my memory.
Mavis gave me an expectant look. Her turban was as black as my mood.
“Anything?”
“I did her show last night and I’ll probably have to do it again tonight.
I’ve got a station to run. I don’t have time for this. I know a hell of a lot less
about Kayla March than Mr. Boswell does.”
He was balding and portly and impeccably dressed. He stood up and
bowed slightly as Mavis introduced us. He offered his card with his name and
his law firm in London, telephone and fax numbers in raised letters. I took it.
“Do you have any idea where Kayla might be?”
“She’s gone and I don’t think she’s coming back. She didn’t come to
work last night. I went to the house this morning. Her things are gone.”
His shoulders slumped at my bluntness and Mavis gave me a sharp look.
“Ah, I see, most distressing. Tell me, do you know her well?”
My harsh laughter startled them. “Nobody knows her. She’s been here
for ten years and nobody knows her. They’ve heard her voice on the radio, but
maybe it’s their imagination, maybe they’re so lonely they made up someone
to talk to after midnight. Do you know her Mr. Boswell, I mean, can you
honestly tell me that Kayla March exists?”
“I assure you,” he said frowning, “that she does indeed exist. Ten years
ago I accompanied her here and personally made provisions for her well-
being.” He looked at Mavis. “Perhaps I should make some discrete inquiries at
the local hospitals and the airport. I must admit, I’m at a loss as to how to
proceed.”
“You could contact the police,” Mavis said.
“She hasn’t been missing long enough,” I said.
“I’d prefer to keep this as quiet as possible.”
“Ah yes, there’s always that. Keep those secrets.”
He looked at me. “Miss Oldyng, I implore you, if you know anything at
all---”
Mavis had had enough. “Carolyn, take Mr. Boswell to the Marchwell
house and anywhere else he thinks might help. I’ll take care of station
business. Mr. Boswell, call me if you need anything else.”
We were both silent under her icy stare.


22.

Boswell was deep in thought. He paid little attention to the drive. I
parked by the barn and let him study the place he’d brought Kayla to ten years
ago. Did he recognize it? Did he remember what it had been like then?
He removed his homburg as we walked to the front door and said
nothing when I took the key from the planter and unlocked the door. Inside, he
looked at the phone and then at me. I gestured.
 “Feel free to wander around. Her bedroom’s at the end of the hall
upstairs, mine’s across from it. You won’t find anything. She even took the
book of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. There was a picture in the back. A young
girl named Cecily. I’ll wait in the kitchen.”
He paled. It didn’t take him long. I heard him move around as I had
earlier, probably opening the same drawers and closets and checking every
room. When he came back he looked like he’d been on a long hard trip, and he
lowered himself slowly into a chair and took out an ornate pillbox.
“Might I have a glass of water, please.”
I got him a big glass and waited as he took two pills and placed them on
his tongue and drank. He sat very still, as if waiting for a signal from his body.
At last he sighed.
“Her father is dying. I ask you again, I beg you, if you know---”
“Mr. Boswell, there’s no conspiracy here. My aunt asked Kayla to let me
live here when I came home because for my own reasons I couldn’t live with
her or in my own house. Kayla agreed. I met her for the first time when I got
here. I wasn’t here when you dropped her off in the middle of nowhere. My
aunt told me my father took an interest in her while she was at Axton, and my
aunt hired her to work at the radio station on my father’s recommendation, and
my brother was her lover for a time, but none of that has anything to do with
me. I thought we were---friends, but she didn’t tell me anything about you or
about why she was leaving.”
“You---care for her.”
I said nothing.
“I imagine she’s still quite bitter.”
“Bitter? Why would she be bitter, Mr. Boswell?”
If he was aware of my sarcasm he didn’t show it. A terrible sadness
seemed to weigh him down as he talked. He stared at the glass as if I weren’t
there.
Scandal. The very word sent chills through upper class British families,
the March family no exception. John Boswell had been Colin March’s close
friend since childhood, the March family lawyer for years, family friend, best
man at Colin’s wedding, Kayla’s godfather, a benevolent uncle figure to the
other children.
When Kayla enrolled at university, her best friend Cecily enrolled too.
They had been inseparable since they were girls, and it seemed natural for
them to room together. Weekends were spent at one or the other’s home. How
long they had been lovers no one knew, but when the headmistress found them
together all hell broke loose. Both families acted swiftly and mercilessly. What
no one anticipated was Cecily’s reaction. Kayla came back to their room to
gather her belongings and found Cecily hanging from a crossbar in the closet.
There was a note blaming Kayla for everything.
It was left to John Boswell to take care of the details of Kayla’s
banishment. Colin March and Craig Oldyng had met years before at a
conference in London. Apparently they got along well because they kept up a
correspondence. Boswell didn’t know if Craig Oldyng knew anything about
the scandal, and didn’t ask. On his client and good friend’s instructions he
accompanied Kayla to America and settled her in the house and arranged for
her to enroll in Axton College. Craig Oldyng took care of the details.
Boswell’s law firm handled all her expenses. He called her monthly to keep
track of her, and at first she eagerly accepted his calls, begging for family
news. Boswell told her only what the family allowed, which was little. As for
reconciliation his hands were tied. He would do whatever he could, but she
would have to be patient. She stopped asking, and eventually refused to
answer the phone. Her exile was complete, and final.
Boswell sighed again.
“Did they ever ask about her?”
“Each month after my call to her I would report to Colin. That became
rather difficult after a time, given the fact that she refused to take my calls. I
began calling your father, and when he passed on, your aunt, to make discrete
inquiries, and they were most helpful in keeping me abreast of her status.”
“Ten years. And they never called her or wrote to her or flew over here
to see her. My father or my aunt would tell you, oh yes, Kayla’s still alive, and
you’d pass it on to her father and that would take care of your responsibility
until the next report.”
He looked away. I shook my head in disgust. “So now the great man is
dying and wants her to come home. Were you supposed to sneak her in at
night so no one would suspect? Whisk her off to jolly old England? Does he
still have the strength to tell her one last time what a disappointment she’s
been, or was the rest of the family going to do that so he can die at peace with
himself?”
“You can’t possibly understand---”
“Understand? She has nightmares, Mr. Boswell. She sees Cecily
hanging in the closet pointing a finger at her, she sees her family running away
from her, turning their faces away, laughing, she wakes up screaming, she’s a
zombie for two, three days, she never sleeps, she takes little naps when she’s
too exhausted to stay awake, and even then she keeps waking up because she
never knows when the nightmares will come again. She has nothing and no
one, she plays music on the radio and her listeners call her and they tell her
every little detail about their miserable lives and she listens and listens, six
nights a week, midnight to six, and then she drives around all day, drives
around aimlessly, or she sits in the house and stares at nothing, that’s her status
Mr. Boswell, so you can go back to London and tell the March family that
she’s being well and truly punished.”
“She has you.”
“Not any more, the March family took that away too! Tell them there’s
nothing left to take!”
I fought the tears and gripped the counter until my hands hurt. Boswell
got up and came toward me but I backed away. “I’ll take you back to your
hotel and then I’ll look for her. I won’t find her but I’ll look. Until midnight
because then I have to do her show. And I’ll look for her tomorrow too.”
“I must leave for London tomorrow morning.”
“Have a safe trip.”


23.

Winter will be harsh. It was a short, nasty autumn and now Axton
County is bracing itself for a bad one. I talk to John Boswell once a month. He
calls when he knows I’ll be here but still seems surprised when I answer the
phone. We bring each other up to date which amounts to very little. Colin
March died while Boswell was tied up in traffic leaving Heathrow airport.
Boswell still grieves for his old friend. The March family grieves too. He says
little else about them.
I’m not sure what Mavis or Jon makes of this. Right now they seem
willing to accept my odd behavior. It’s an Oldyng family tradition to leave
things unsaid. We still have dinner every Friday night at Arrowhead and the
conversation is livelier, less strained. Jon isn’t drinking himself into oblivion
and was just named acting chair of Victorian Studies. In the spring he expects
the board to make it permanent. He’s dating someone, a plain mousy
professor-scholar who teaches Dickens at the college. They’re devoted to each
other. She looks nothing like Kayla March. She looks nothing like me. Mavis
is back at the station full time, feeling marvelous and ornery, her hair slowly
growing back. The gray buzz cut is very chic. I have the smaller office next
door to hers but I spend little time there.
During the day I work in the garden, getting it ready for spring, and I
familiarize myself with the mower and tend the two plots by the river, and I
drive aimlessly from one end of Axton County to the other looking for a
battered old red VW. I find that I don’t need much sleep. I bought a book of
Emily Dickinson’s poems and I read and listen to music and sleep in the four-
poster bed.
At night I let myself in and walk down the hall to Studio B and stack up
the night’s selections and watch the clock moving toward midnight and watch
the phone console for the first blinking button and lean into the hanging mike.
“This is Night Images, the show for those of you who understand how
the world changes at night. I know you’re out there.”
I cue Sinatra, saloon ballads, wee small hours things.
The buttons blink.
Yes my love, I know you’re out there, and maybe you’re listening, and
maybe some night you’ll call, and someday you’ll come home.




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