Candles Burning (39 page)

She was smiling at me. If she had been angry or suspicious earlier, there was no sign of it.

“Merry Christmas,” she said, and uncurled the fingers of her free hand.

Two AA batteries rested in her palm.

Hastily I ripped the paper from the box and tore it open, to see the transistor radio that the batteries would power.

The guests all laughed and applauded.

“I'm not going to listen to that hurdy-gurdy day in and day out,” Mama said. “You hear me, Calley?”

All too clearly, somewhere in my inner ears, as if she were sticking pins in them.

Miz Verlow winked at me.

I remember nothing else that was given me that Christmas, except for the sweater and watch cap that Mrs. Llewellyn had sent. It seems to me that there were no real toys—suitable for my age, I mean. No dolls, no children's books, no records of children's songs, certainly nothing as extravagant as a bicycle. My memories of later Christmases with the same guests, though, assure me that what I received were make-do tokens, like something a parent might pick up at an airport notions kiosk on the way home from a trip, after having forgotten to obtain a real souvenir: a fresh pack of cards from the Slaters, probably one of the several that they always brought with them, a secondhand science-fiction novel from Dr. Keeling, a little cheaply framed watercolor seascape from Mr. Quigley, a chocolate Santa Claus from Father Valentine.

Mama always told me that we couldn't afford Christmas presents. Every year I made something in school for her—a paper ornament, paper angel, a sachet made of a scrap of cloth and filled with the pine needles and rosemary that were commonplace on the island, or a newspaper mâché pot painted with primary colors that began to flake off as soon as the paint dried.

It was always Miz Verlow who gave me something that I wanted, and other gifts that I needed. Sometimes I thought that I loved Miz Verlow more than I did Mama, or even wished that she was my mama, instead of Roberta Ann Carroll Dakin. Of course, I always felt guilty for loving her more than Mama, and wishing such a thing. I feared her more than Mama too, for as I grew, I began to perceive Mama more and more as a paper tiger.

That Christmas, that first Christmas, I unhooked the paper cranes from the fake tree and smuggled them to the linen closet, where in a very high, hard to reach corner, one that I nearly brained myself climbing to, I stashed them in the box that had held the sweater and cap from Mrs. Llewelyn. If I kept those cranes that once had been playing cards, if I had the right candle, I might be able to ask more questions of my great-grandmama Cosima. If I ever felt brave enough. I wished that if she had to speak to me, she would do it without hocus-pocus, like all the other whispering or chittering voices that I heard. Of course I worked mightily to ignore them but now that I knew her voice by name, I would recognize it. Of course. How could I be so stupid? She had spoken to me first by way of introduction. The proof would be when I heard her voice again, and knew it for hers.

And then, oddly, or perhaps not oddly, given what I have learned, the visitation of my great-grandmama, my vigil and my visitor and what she told me that Christmas, went out of my head. I remembered it only in dreams. When I dreamt it, I promised myself to remember when I woke but then, did not. It took a great many dreamings before I did. Before I remembered that I was supposed to
listen to the book
.

MERRYMEETING'S operation and upkeep took an enormous amount of work that Miz Verlow made every effort to keep unseen. Nothing upset guests like unreliable plumbing, while at the same time the finest pipes and fixtures in the world would be tried to their utmost by a succession of paying guests. After she lost a reliable plumber to a freak lightning strike at a church picnic, Miz Verlow cast about, trying several other local plumbers. She was dissatisfied with all until she found Grady Driver.

First, though, she fired his daddy. On his very first call to Merrymeeting, Heck Driver managed to bust a pipe and ruin a wall, not from incompetence but because the Co'Colas he drank one after another, complaining of the heat, were about half cheap rum. The ruination of guest-room wallpaper by the leaking pipe in the bathroom next door was a predictable consequence. Miz Verlow took Heck Driver to task; he cussed her out, and she not only fired him and declined to pay him, she told him she was going to bill him for the repairs.

An hour after Heck Driver stumbled out, leaving his tools where they lay, and drove uncertainly away, his rusted-out van returned with a mere boy at the wheel. I knew him from school: Grady Driver, Heck's son, excruciatingly shy and chronically dirty. He had been sent home repeatedly with nits and been held back a couple times, so even though he was a couple years older than me, he was in the same grade.

Grady knocked at the kitchen door and asked to speak to Miz Verlow.

When she came to the door, he apologized for his father's error, using a formula he had by heart.

“My daddy sent me to beg pardon, Miz Verlow, and not hold it agin him on account of he come out sick to start, from havin' ate bad fried fish last night, but not wantin' to let you down, and maybe I could clean up the mess for you and pick up his tools.”

Miz Verlow was in the doorway with her arms crossed under her bosom.

“I will excuse your lie on grounds of your understandable desire to defend your daddy. However, Mr. Driver was drunk. You are too late to clean up, as my maid has already done so, and it requires a competent plumber to repair the broken pipe. But you may retrieve his tools.”

“Hit were an accidence, Miz Verlow,” insisted Grady.

Miz Verlow had rolled her eyes. “Enunciate, young man. Accident! It-was-an-accident.”

Grady swallowed hard and repeated after her. “It-was-an-accident.”

“It was not an accident,” Miz Verlow said.

Grady looked confused. He was built like Roger, long-limbed and gangly, but poorly nourished for his frame, with a stolid expression on his face that people often took for vacuousness or backwardness of intellect.

“True accidents are surprisingly rare. Most of the events that people call ‘accidents' are entirely predictable. Time and again, close examination of the so-called ‘accident' reveals incompetence, fraud or drunkenness, or any combination of those faults, as the real cause. The only ‘accidental' aspect of the mess your daddy made was the fact he did it here, because I had the random bad luck to have hired him today.”

Grady had passed from confused to stunned and back to confused again.

Miz Verlow threw up her hands. “Get your daddy's tools!”

I'd been lurking about the kitchen to see what I could see and hear what I could hear. When Miz Verlow vacated the doorway, and Grady stood hesitant on the threshold, I hauled him inside.

“I'll show you,” I told him.

He followed me up the backstairs and down the hall. Cleonie and I had mopped up and wiped up and even tidied the tools into Mr. Driver's toolbox but we could not fix the pipe. Miz Verlow had turned off the water to the bathroom and so it was unusable.

To my surprise, Grady made a thorough examination of the scene. Then he took some of his daddy's tools and went to work. Needless to say, I was fascinated, not only by Grady's bold advance upon the problem, but also by what he did. In a quarter of an hour, he had the miscreant pipe repaired and asked me to show him where the water was turned off and on. Once the water was back on, the bathroom was operational.

Then I required Miz Verlow to cover her eyes and let me guide her to the scene, whereupon she opened her eyes on a clean, functional bathroom, and a grinning, though still regrettably unwashed, Grady Driver.

“I kin fixt that wall, Miz Verlow,” Grady said, “you got you sum plastern paste.”

Miz Verlow shook her head in disbelief.

“Young man, you amaze me. You'll have to come back to fix the wall. I'll have the materials on hand tomorrow.”

Grady packed up his daddy's tools again.

Miz Verlow watched him for a moment, sighed, and went away.

I tagged after her all the way to her office. She looked at me inquiringly and I held out my hand.

“He done a good job,” I advised her.

She pursed her lips. “You know better grammar than that, Calley Dakin.”

I corrected myself, “Yes, ma'am, he did a good job.”

She opened a desk drawer, the one where she kept petty cash. I watched her fingers hesitating and then lunging and plucking out a bill. She thrust it at me.

I grabbed it and raced out, catching Grady stowing his daddy's toolbox in the van. Just as Miz Verlow had thrust the bill at me, I thrust it at Grady.

He looked at the five-dollar bill in amazement, scratched his head, and grasped it.

“Much oblige,” he said, summoning all his dignity as a substitute adult.

“Hey,” I said, “you got nits?”

Immediately he was another kid again and disgusted with me.

“Hey,” he said, “you fly with them ears?”

“Hey, that's original, how many times you s'pose I've heard it? My ears come attached to me. You get bugs in your hair from not washin' it.”

“I ain't got bugs!” He climbed into the van and slammed the door. “I ain't got bugs!”

By way of underlining my superiority, I crossed my arms and watched him as he drove away. He probably did have bugs again, scratching his head like that.

I went straight inside and washed my hair.

DRAWN by the growl and beat of the engine, I raced up to the crest of the dune to see it: A black-and-cream Corvette was speeding toward Merrymeeting. Maybe Mrs. Mank had traded her Porsche. I had no burning desire to see Mrs. Mank but the Corvette commanded my attention. When I reached the parking area, its engine was ticking down. The driver was next to it, taking off his sunglasses. He squinted at me and smiled.

He was one of the FBI agents who had interviewed Mama over and over at Ramparts. He had considerably less hair than he had had then, but I knew him nonetheless, and would have known him anyway once he spoke.

“Howdy, Miss Dakin,” he said. “Why are you hiding under that big hat?”

I didn't answer his question. I had more important things on my mind.

“I know you.”

He laughed. “You are sharp. I believe you were all of seven years old the last time I saw you. You done some growing.”

“You ain't wearing your FBI suit.”

He shook his head. “Even FBI agents take vacations, sweetheart. Your mama at home?”

I didn't want to tell him. What if he had come to arrest us, and his Hawaiian shirt and chino pants were just a costume to make me think he was on vacation?

“Not saying anything, sweetheart, you might as well be saying yes,” he told me.

I got sassy with him. “You're smart for an FBI agent.”

He winked at me. “I'm too big to spank. But you're not, not yet.”

“I am eleven-gone-on-twelve,” I informed him, “and I am way too big to spank too.”

He chuckled and then asked, “Miz Verlow at home?”

I saw no harm in promptly answering, “Yes'r.”

“Show me the way,” he said, with a little bow.

I bowed back, extending my hand toward the front of the house.

He followed me around the corner and along the verandah and up the steps to the front door.

Miz Verlow was in her little office, with the door open. She stood up at the sound of our footsteps on the verandah and emerged into the shadowed foyer.

“Is it Mr. O'Hare?” she asked.

“All day,” he said.

Miz Verlow extended her hand and he grasped it.

“Welcome.”

“Pleased, ma'am.”

“He's an FBI agent,” I told her.

Miz Verlow cocked her head quizzically.

“My day job,” Mr. O'Hare said. “Miss Dakin and I are old acquaintances.”

Merry Verlow's smile disappeared.

“I had understood you to be a guest.” Her tone was guarded.

“I am. I am on vacation, ma'am.”

“I won't allow any disruption, Mr. O'Hare.”

“There won't be any,” he said. “I am here for personal reasons only. You must be aware that the investigation into the Dakin case has long been closed.”

“Indeed. Nevertheless I must ask your promise that you will not trouble any member of this household on the subject.”

“You have it,” Mr. O'Hare agreed. “Call me Gus.”

“He asked me if Mama was home.”

Miz Verlow looked at each of us in turn.

“Yes, I did,” he admitted easily. “I won't deny that I wish to see Mrs. Dakin again.”

Miz Verlow looked to me again. “Calley, bring your mama here, please.”

I shot off to the small parlor. Even if I had not been able to hear the television, I knew that Mama was watching it. It was time for
Queen for a Day
.

Mama was not pleased to be summoned.

“It's important,” I told her.

Pouting and muttering, she put out her cigarette and followed me to the foyer.

Miz Verlow and Mr. O'Hare stood as I had left them, and I knew that neither of them had said a word while I was fetching Mama.

“Mrs. Dakin,” said Mr. O'Hare.

Mama stopped dead. Her eyes widened in alarm and one hand fluttered toward her throat.

“Gus O'Hare,” he said. “We met in unfortunate circumstances.”

Mama nodded. She was rigid, fighting the urge to flee.

“Forgive me, Mrs. Dakin, I never thought ill of you and, in fact, you have been in my thoughts in a good way ever since. I happened to learn that you were here. I had vacation time coming and I wanted to see you again. To tell you that I never thought ill of you.”