Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

Sybil tried to summon forth a memory, an image at least, of her mother. Melanie. Twenty-six at the time. Eyes... cheekbones... pale wavy hair. A ghostly face appeared but faded almost at once. Sybil sobbed involuntarily. Her eyes stung with tears.

“—sensed that you, dear Blake — is your name Blake, really? — are one of these. A ‘conduit of emotion’ — of finer, higher things. Yes, yes! My intuition rarely misguides me!” Mr. Starr spoke as, hurriedly, excitedly, he sketched Sybil’s likeness. He was squatting close beside her, on his haunches; his dark glasses winked in the sun. Sybil knew, should she glance at him, she would not be able to see his eyes.

Mr. Starr said, coaxingly, “Don’t you remember anything — at all — about your mother?”

Sybil shook her head, meaning she didn’t want to speak.

“Her name. Surely you know her name?”

Sybil whispered, “Mommy.”

“Ah, yes: ‘Mommy.’ To you, that would have been her name.”

“Mommy — went away. They told me—”

“Yes? Please continue!”

“—Mommy was gone. And Daddy. On the lake—”

“Lake? Where?”

“Lake Champlain. In Vermont, and New York, Aunt Lora says—”

“ ‘Aunt Lora’—?”

“Mommy’s sister. She was older. Is older. She took me away. She adopted me. She—”

“And is ‘Aunt Lora’ married?”

“No. There’s just her and me.”

“What happened on the lake?”

“—it happened in the boat, on the lake. Daddy was driving the boat, they said. He came for me too but — I don’t know if that was that time or some other time. I’ve been told, but I don’t know.

”

Tears were streaming down Sybil’s face now; she could not maintain her composure. But she managed to keep from hiding her face in her hands. She could hear Mr. Starr’s quickened breath, and she could hear the rasping sound of the charcoal against the paper.

Mr. Starr said gently, “You must have been a little girl when — whatever it was — happened.”

“I wasn’t little to myself. I just was.”

“A long time ago, was it?”

“Yes. No. It’s always — there.”

“Always where, dear child?”

“Where I, I — see it.”

“See what?”

“I — don’t know.”

“Do you see your mommy? Was she a beautiful woman? — did she resemble you?”

“Leave me alone — I don’t know.”

Sybil began to cry. Mr. Starr, repentant, or wary, went immediately silent.

Someone — it must have been bicyclists — passed behind them, and Sybil was aware of being observed, no doubt quizzically: a girl leaning forward across a stone ledge, face wet with tears, and a middle-aged man on his haunches busily sketching her. An artist and his model. An amateur artist, an amateur model. But how strange, that the girl was crying! And the man so avidly recording her tears!

Sybil, eyes closed, felt herself indeed a conduit of emotion — she was emotion. She stood upon the ground but she floated free. Mr. Starr was close beside her, anchoring her, but she floated free. A veil was drawn aside, and she saw a face — Mommy’s face — a pretty heart-shaped face — something both affectionate and petulant in that face — how young Mommy was! — and her hair up, brown-blond lovely hair, tied back in a green silk scarf. Mommy hurried to the phone as it rang, Mommy lifted the receiver. Yes? yes? oh hello — for the phone was always ringing, and Mommy was always hurrying to answer it, and there was always that expectant note to her voice, that sound of hope, surprise— Oh, hello.

Sybil could no longer maintain her pose. She said, “Mr. Starr, I am through for the day, I am sorry.”

And, as the startled man looked after her, she walked away. He began to call after her, to remind her that he hadn’t paid her, but, no, Sybil had had enough of modeling for the day. She broke into a run, she escaped.

8. A Long Time Ago...

A girl who’d married too young: was that it?

That heart-shaped face, the petulant pursed lips. The eyes widened in mock-surprise: Oh, Sybil, what have you done...?

Stooping to kiss little Sybil, little Sybil giggling with pleasure and excitement, lifting her chubby baby arms to be raised in Mommy’s and carried in to bed.

Oh honey, you’re too big for that now. Too heavy!

Perfume wafting from her hair, loose to her shoulders, pale golden-brown, wavy. A rope of pearls around her neck. A low-cut summer dress, a bright floral print, like wallpaper. Mommy!

And Daddy, where was Daddy?

He was gone, then he was back. He’d come to her, little Sybil, to take her in the boat, the motor was loud, whining, angry as a bee buzzing and darting around her head, so Sybil was crying, and someone came, and Daddy went away again. She’d heard the motor rising, then fading. The churning of the water she couldn’t see from where she stood, and it was night too, but she wasn’t crying and no one scolded.

She could remember Mommy’s face, though they never let her see it again. She couldn’t remember Daddy’s face.