Black House

She begins to sing the chorus of Ty’s lullabye again and he can’t stand it. "Judy, no," he says, going to her through the strewn minefield that was, only last night when he came in to give Ty a good-night kiss, a reasonably neat little boy’s room. "Stop, honey, it’s okay."

For a wonder, she does stop. She raises her head, and when he sees the terrified look in her eyes, he loses what little breath he has left. It’s more than terror. It’s emptiness, as if something inside her has slipped aside and exposed a black hole.

"Ty’s gone," she says simply. "I looked behind all the pictures I could . . . I was sure he’d be behind that one, if he was anywhere he’d be behind that one . . ."

She points toward the place where the Ireland travel poster hung, and he sees that four of the nails on her left hand have been ripped partly or completely away. His stomach does a flip-flop. Her fingers look as if they have been dipped in red ink. If only it was ink, Fred thinks. If only.

". . . but of course it’s just a picture. They’re all just pictures. I see that now." She pauses, then cries: "Abbalah! Munshun! Abbalah-gorg, Abbalah-doon!" Her tongue comes out — comes out to an impossible, cartoonish length — and swipes spittishly across her nose. Fred sees it but cannot believe it. This is like coming into a horror movie halfway through the show, discovering it’s real, and not knowing what to do. What is he supposed to do? When you discover that the woman you love has gone mad — had a break with reality, at the very least — what are you supposed to do? How the hell do you deal with it?

But he loves her, has loved her from the first week he knew her, helplessly and completely and without the slightest regret ever after, and now love guides him. He sits down next to her on the bed, puts his arm around her, and simply holds her. He can feel her trembling from the inside out. Her body thrums like a wire.

"I love you," he says, surprised at his voice. It’s amazing that seeming calmness can issue from such a crazy cauldron of confusion and fear. "I love you and everything is going to be all right."

She looks up at him and something comes back into her eyes. Fred cannot call it sanity (no matter how much he would like to), but it is at least some sort of marginal awareness. She knows where she is and who is with her. For a moment he sees gratitude in her eyes. Then her face cramps in a fresh agony of grief and she begins to weep. It is an exhausted, lost sound that wrenches at him. Nerves, heart, and mind, it wrenches at him.

"Ty’s gone," Judy says. "Gorg fascinated him and the abbalah took him. Abbalah-doon!" The tears course down her cheeks. When she raises her hands to wipe them away, her fingers leave appalling streaks of blood.

Even though he’s sure Tyler is fine (certainly Fred has had no premonitions today, unless we count his rosy sales prediction about the new Hiler roto), he feels a shudder course through him at the sight of those streaks, and it is not Judy’s condition that causes it but what she’s just said: Ty’s gone. Ty is with his friends; he told Fred just last night that he, Ronnie, T.J., and the less-than-pleasant Wexler boy intended to spend the day "goofing off." If the other three boys go somewhere Ty doesn’t want to be, he has promised to come directly home. All the bases seem to be covered, yet . . . is there not such a thing as mother’s intuition?

Well, he thinks, maybe on the Fox Network.

He picks Judy up in his arms and is appalled all over again, this time by how light she is. She’s lost maybe twenty pounds since the last time I picked her up like this, he thinks. At least ten. How could I not have noticed? But he knows. Preoccupation with work was part of it; a stubborn refusal to let go of the idea that things were basically all right was the rest of it. Well, he thinks, carrying her out the door (her arms have crept tiredly up and locked themselves around his neck), I’m over that little misconception. And he actually believes this, in spite of his continued blind confidence in his son’s safety.

Judy hasn’t toured their bedroom during her rampage, and to Fred it looks like a cool oasis of sanity. Judy apparently feels the same way. She gives a tired sigh, and her arms drop away from her husband’s neck. Her tongue comes out, but this time it gives only a feeble little lick at her upper lip. Fred bends and puts her down on the bed. She holds up her hands, looks at them.

"I cut myself . . . scraped myself . . ."

"Yes," he says. "I’m going to get something for them."

"How . . . ?"

He sits beside her for a moment. Her head has sunk into the soft double thickness of her pillows, and her eyelids are drooping. He thinks that, beyond the puzzlement in them, he can still see that terrifying blankness. He hopes he is wrong.

"Don’t you remember?" he asks her gently.

"No . . . did I fall down?"

Fred chooses not to answer. He is starting to think again. Not much, he’s not capable of much just yet, but a little. "Honey, what’s a gorg? What’s an abbalah? Is it a person?"

"Don’t . . . know . . . Ty . . ."

"Ty’s fine," he says.

"No . . ."

"Yes," he insists. Perhaps he’s insisting to both of the people in this pretty, tastefully decorated bedroom. "Honeybunch, you just lie there. I want to get a couple of things."

Her eyes drift closed. He thinks she will sleep, but her lids struggle slowly back up to half-mast.

"Lie right there," he says. "No getting up and wandering around. There’s been enough of that. You scared poor Enid Purvis out of a year’s life. You promise?"

"Promise . . ." Her eyelids drift back down.

Fred goes into the adjoining bathroom, ears alert for any movement behind him. He has never seen anyone in his life who looks more bolt-shot than Judy does right now, but mad people are clever, and despite his prodigious capacity for denial in some areas, Fred can no longer fool himself about his wife’s current mental state. Mad? Actually stark raving mad? Probably not. But off the rails, certainly. Temporarily off the rails, he amends as he opens the medicine cabinet.