Evil Eye Read Free Page A

room and seeing them.
    Once, after her father had died, she’d happened to see her mother—forlorn, hesitant, standing just inside the doorway of her bedroom, staring at something in the palm of her hand which, as Mariana approached, she’d quickly hidden in her fist, thrust into a pocket of her rumpled bathrobe.
    Pills, Mariana supposed. She’d pretended not to see.
    And now it was a shock to Mariana to discover herself so — weak.
    Yet she was determined to tell relatives that she was fine. She did not need their help, she was fine.
    Like a zombie, barely functioning only when she was in the presence of others, Mariana had lived in her parents’ house for several weeks, having taken a leave of absence from the Institute. There was so much to do, so suddenly—the list of “death duties” was endless—and she had so little energy with which to do it. And when finally she returned to the Institute, her soul had seemed to have drained from her body. When she forced herself to come to the Institute, to sit at her computer in her carrel as she’d done previously, with such enthusiasm, now she was unable to work; she was unable to concentrate; she avoided her colleagues, her new friends, and stayed away from Institute seminars, for the effort to speak to others was too great. Her thesis adviser spoke of her situation to the director of the Institute, who summoned Mariana to see him at once.
    She’d thought He will tell me to quit. He will see I am hopeless.
    What a relief this would be! Eagerly then Mariana would follow her mother, as her mother had followed her father. All this seemed premeditated, utterly natural.
    Certainly, Mariana couldn’t complete her first-year project by May 15, she would tell the director. Nor did she see much point in requesting an extension because at the present time, she didn’t see much point in completing the project.
    How insignificant Mariana’s work seemed to her now, what had been so thrilling to her before her father’s death! She’d come to the Institute with the intention of examining archival materials relating to the films of Ida Lupino in the 1940s and 1950s: Lupino, a Hollywood actress, but also one of the first American women film directors. In the Institute archives were drafts of screenplays, personal notes, journals, letters, countless photographs and snapshots. But Mariana no longer had energy for research; the effort of examining stacks of faded typescripts and handwritten letters and pictures held together by frayed rubber bands, all of this quasi-precious material related to individuals dead for decades, was too depressing. Her discovery was that this first, gifted woman director was a pioneering feminist whose films depicted the Male as the demonic noir figure, and not, as usual, the Female—but even this discovery seemed trivial to her now, in the face of her terrible loss.
    When Austin Mohr saw Mariana hesitating in the doorway to his office, looking as if she were about to faint, quickly he rose to his feet and came to her. “‘Mariana’—is it? Come in, please.”
    He’d heard about her parents, he told her. He offered his condolences.
    Immediately he said of course she could have an extension through the summer at least, to complete her project. That was understood: there was no need for her to file a formal request.
    Mariana was stunned. She had not expected such a sympathetic reception.
    She wasn’t pretty—she wasn’t sexually attractive. She’d never thought so.
    And now in the aftermath of her parents’ deaths her skin was deathly pale and her cheeks thin, her eyes raw-looking, bloodshot.
    Her dark chestnut hair, which was usually wavy and glossy, falling past her shoulders, was limp, wan, in need of shampooing. Her fingernails were broken and uneven and ridged with dirt—her clothing had grown too large for her, unflattering on her lanky