Child of a Rainless Year (18 page)
Read Child of a Rainless Year Online
Authors: Jane Lindskold
“Where to start?” I said aloud. “The bedroom. Mother entertained in her parlor—in her bedroom, too, I guess, but I think if she had anything special to hide she would have hidden it in her bedroom. Fewer excuses for anyone to go in there.”
I was rather surprised to realize I was hunting for something hidden. I even wondered if one of the silent women had whispered a suggestion in my ear, but that was ridiculous. Of course I had to be looking for something hidden. If it had not been hidden, if it was apparent, then the police would have found it. I had read through both Chilton O’Reilly and Aunt May’s accounts of the investigation, and the police really had seemed to want to find the missing Colette Bogatyr.
I’d never asked the silent women for anything before, but I decided I would now. I started by removing the dust covers from the furniture, talking aloud all the while.
“I’d really much rather search than clean, but there’s no way I can do much searching with this place such a mess. I need to put in some laundry and get dinner going. If I could have a little help up here …”
I let the words trail off, suddenly feeling completely foolish. Even so, I finished stripping off the dust covers in both the bedroom and the parlor. I carried them downstairs and added a few to a load of laundry. Then I went to the bathroom I had been using, and, after rinsing off yet again, I gathered the rest of my laundry and took it downstairs. There I determinedly did chores I really did need to do, including answering some e-mail from friends back East. All the while I wondered what—if anything—was going on upstairs.
Of one thing I felt fairly certain. The silent women were very good at what they did, but they could not do it without tools. There was a utility closet upstairs, well stocked with everything, but if they needed the vacuum …
I took my laundry outside to hang—I’ve always preferred the smell of sheets hung out of doors. When I did so, I shut the kitchen door very firmly behind me and tried not to listen.
This was easier than you might imagine. Afternoon was merging into that wonderful lazy time that isn’t quite evening but that has left the business of the afternoon behind. After I hung the laundry, I wandered the garden, looking at the flowers and enjoying the soft brilliance of their conversation. Then I circled the house, feeling a great deal of pride in the expanded paint job. A neighbor saw me and came over to chat. A bird feeder needed to be filled. Only after that was done did I venture back inside.
I went up the stairs two at a time, eagerness now overwhelming my earlier dread. Would my experiment have worked?
It had. Neither the parlor nor the bedroom were what anyone could have called “clean,” but the nose-tickling welter of dust was gone.
“Thank you,” I said, not feeling in the least foolish about speaking to what was stilt—to all appearances—empty air. I had unqualified evidence that someone—or someones—was there and willing to help me. “I really do appreciate it. I have dinner on now, but afterward, I’ll come up and start going through things.”
It turned out that I didn’t. Domingo dropped over, wanting to chat about the day he’d spent with my borrowed crew fixing a section of porch that had chosen this inopportune time to collapse. It had been quite a job, and I think he needed to wind down. I certainly did.
When I went upstairs that night, I was aware of the rooms across the hall, cleaner now, and awaiting my inspection. If I’d been a kid of twenty, I suppose I would have torn over there immediately, but I wasn’t. My bones were tired from a morning painting and a highly stressful afternoon. Whatever Mother had left—if she had left anything that had not already been found—had waited for forty years. It could wait another night.
Does color hold a power that makes us want to remove its brighter and bolder forms from such serious settings as boardrooms and lecture halls? And, if so, just what power does color have?
—Patricia Lynne Duffy,
Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens
Turned out it had to wait more than another night. The next morning Domingo and his crew were back on the job, working on a Saturday to make up for the time they’d taken off. I was needed to offer my opinions on what colors a certain rather bizarre frieze of bat-winged dragons should be painted.
I’d gotten as serious as Domingo about this, but unlike him, I didn’t need to dummy up models on a computer paint program. A handful of paint color sample slips combined with a good long stare at the design element in question and I started seeing the way the painting should be done. “Seeing” isn’t quite the right word for it, but I don’t have another. “Hearing” almost comes closer, but if I was hearing the description, it wasn’t linear. It was almost more like looking at a frame of a well-drawn comic strip, narration and action coming at you all at once, but here, of course, if there was any dialogue it was between me and Phineas House.
These weren’t simple descriptions, either. Nothing like, “Do the body in metallic blue and the wings in that pea green.” No, I’d get an entire image, right down to the highlights and shadows. I’d know if it would take an undercoat to get the right color or a wash to manage the shadows.
The first couple of times I saw how a segment of the house should look, it scared me. But I couldn’t escape the feeling that to do it any other way would be a disaster, so I took notes. It was a laborious process, and Domingo drifted over about halfway. I don’t remember when he took over the writing so I could concentrate.
After a while, I stopped thinking about what was going on. I convinced myself that it wasn’t all that different from when I was working on a painting or mosaic. I’d envisioned those before starting, too, done my rough sketches and then refined them.
Eventually, the workmen simply accepted me for an extraordinarily difficult to please client, but since I was paying well and regularly, and Domingo was perfection as a foreman, no one complained. They went about scraping old paint, sanding wood smooth, puttying, priming, and, in the case of the most skilled, doing detail work. I had told them I didn’t mind if they played music, and most of the painting was done to an ebullient mariachi soundtrack.
Domingo, though—I had the feeling that he actually had a sense of what I was doing. A couple of times he even muttered the color before I said it out loud, but he always waited for my narration before making any notes. I remembered how he had spoken of the house being “unhappy” in its white-on-white paint, and wondered if he’d seen it adorned in its new colors.
When we finished the design for the last dragon, I headed inside to grab a cup of coffee and go upstairs. The calendar was hung near the coffeepot, and as I wiped up drips I saw what I’d written neatly on today’s square: “Lunch. Hannah. Maria’s Cafe.”
I glanced at the clock. As was usual when I was involved with Phineas House, I’d lost track of time. It was past eleven now. I had time to dab off the inevitable spots of paint and change into a clean clothes. I chose a pretty aqua broomstick skirt with golden-brown highlights, and a coordinating blouse. My necklace was strung from some of my finds—rather like a charm bracelet in the round. I’d made the earrings from leftovers. In Ohio I’d looked exotic and bohemian. In New Mexico, I fit in just fine.
Nervous about the impression I should make on this woman I hadn’t seen in so long, I fussed over my hair longer than I should have. Happily, Las Vegas wasn’t very large, and I’d been in town long enough to know my way around most of the typical traffic bottlenecks.
Casting a forlorn glance in the direction of my mother’s bedroom door, I ran up the stairs to my room.
“I’ll be back,” I promised. “Just a few hours more.”
Just as time had changed me, it had done its work on Hannah. The image I’d carried fixed in my mind was of a girl of my own height, a bit heavier in build, with straight brown hair worn in pigtails, one of which was usually a little askew. The woman who rose from a booth toward the back of the cafe was quite different.
I was the taller now, she the slimmer. However, there was a lot of strength in her as I discovered when we shook hands, then impulsively embraced. Obviously, being a nurse is not a job for the weak. Hannah’s brown hair was cut in a neat, short style that read “easy care” while escaping being in the least dowdy. Her gaze was warm, and I knew instinctively that she was the type of caregiver who heard a lot of confidences.
That made me feel good, because on the ride over I’d resolved to do some confiding.
“Mira, Mira, Mira,” Hannah said as she slid herself back into the booth. “You look good.”
“Thanks. You, too.”
The waitress came over and took our drink orders, then left us to peruse the menus. While we did so, we continued the catching up we’d begun on the phone. Hannah, it turned out, had been married once, right out of college, divorced soon after, and had remarried.
“We’re both in medicine, which everyone will tell you is exactly the wrong thing to do,” she said, “but it works for us. We know exactly what the other is talking about, and about erratic schedules. His folks and sister live in Albuquerque, and take over more than their fair share of running the kids to soccer practices and things. It sounds like hell, but actually it works.”
“Your family,” I said, “I mean when we were kids—always seemed in constant motion. I remember how it fascinated me when I’d come to visit.”
Hannah grinned. “Constant motion is right. I was the youngest and felt like the duck on the end of a long string—and just like when you play crack the whip, the one at the end flies the farthest. I think that was one reason I liked you. You had this quiet to you.”
“I don’t think I ever spoke three sentences in a row,” I said with a rueful laugh.
“No,” Hannah disagreed. “That’s not what I meant. I didn’t know the term then, but today they’d call it being centered. All the rest of us were running here and there, and you’d just watch out of those calm eyes and I’d know you were soaking it all up. Somehow, having you there made it all more real.”
The waitress brought our food. Enchiladas and a salad for me, and an incredibly stacked club sandwich cut into fours for Hannah. Hannah picked up one corner of her sandwich and studied me while taking a bite.
“You still have some of that,” she said when she finished chewing. “It must come from being an artist. That’s what the paper said you were—an art teacher, right?”
“That’s right, but I wouldn’t call myself an artist.”
“Well, unless you’ve changed since we were kids, I would. I remember how incredibly quickly you learned to draw and paint. One class you’re handling a crayon like you’ve never seen one, three weeks later you’re doing pictures with shading and dimension. It was like magic.”
I grinned. “I didn’t think anyone but Mrs. Little had noticed me and the crayons.”
“I did. I was dreadfully snoopy in those days. Only way to keep ahead of all those older brothers and sisters. Still am.” Her expression held a friendly challenge. “So, what brought you back to Las Vegas? I know the basics—we talked about them on the phone. I mean, what has brought you back to stay?”
“I’m not staying,” I said automatically, though I wasn’t sure I was speaking the truth.
“Really? My mother told me that you’re putting a lot of work into the old house.”
I must have looked surprised, because Hannah went on.
“You haven’t started mingling yet, but when you do, you’ll know soon enough. Las Vegas is a small town. It has its groups and factions and all the rest, but you know that old saw about six degrees of separation?”
“You mean that everyone is no more than six people away from knowing everyone else?”
“Right. Well, in Las Vegas, you’d better narrow that to two or three. My mother plays bridge with one of your neighbors a street over. She actually swings by Phineas House on her way to their biweekly games. Initially, she didn’t connect the lady from Ohio with my childhood friend, but the newspaper article made her remember. Until then, she hadn’t even been sure it was the same house. That neighborhood has changed a lot in forty years—and I never came to play there. You always went to our house.”
“My mother,” I said, a trace more heavily than I had intended, “did not encourage any guests other than her own.”
I determinedly ate a forkful of enchiladas, then went on.
“Hannah, I remember your mother pretty well. I bet that ever since she made the connection she’s been, well, remembering about my mother.”
“Gossiping, you mean?” Hannah said. She bit her pickle wedge in half, but didn’t seem the least offended. “You’re remembering her right. She always did love to speculate on what other people were up to, and your mother, well, she was a colorful figure.”
“The thing is,” I said, finding this hard to say, despite my earlier resolve, “I don’t really remember my mother all that well. I was only nine when Mother vanished. My memories are all of a towering figure in sweeping skirts. I have no adult perspective in which to view her … and I want one, even a gossipy one.”
Hannah nodded and finished the pickle. “I can see that. You’ve just lost the woman who was your real mother, and now you’re confronted with the property of the woman who bore you. In the one case, you’re so close to grief you don’t even know how much it’s pressing you down. In the other, you don’t know what to feel.”
“That’s clearer than I could ever put it,” I said.
“I talk a lot,” Hannah said, “but I listen, too. You do a lot of listening when you’re a nurse, and you’re close to death and dying—or fear of death and dying—every day. Even those who specialize in obstetrics or pediatrics can’t get away from it.”
“Well, whatever the reason, you understand better than I do why I need to know about my mother—about Colette. The newspapers cover her disappearance, and a bit of back story but there’s nothing to tell me what she was like.”
“Like?” Hannah frowned. “My memories are a child’s, too, and what my mother has said is largely hearsay, and, quite honestly, somewhat malicious.”
“Even so. I’d like to hear it.”
Hannah went after another corner of her sandwich with a thoughtful silence that pretty much demanded I finish some of my enchiladas. When she spoke, she lowered her voice.
“Mira, I’m going to start with the worst thing I heard. If I don’t, then I know you’ll sense I’m holding back. I’d rather work up to it, but …”
My stomach twisted, but I managed a smile. “Go ahead. I swear I won’t go storming out of here in a huff.”
“Okay.” Hannah drew in a deep breath. “My mother said that talk was that your mother was insane—mentally unstable. The gossip was she had been brought to Las Vegas and spent time in the state mental hospital—you know that’s here, don’t you?”
“I didn’t, actually, but go on.”
Hannah studied me for a moment, apparently decided that I meant what I said, and continued, “Well, my mother said that your mother had trouble with her parents. My mother hints that this problem was pretty serious. I think she doesn’t know the details. Anyhow, Colette’s family couldn’t deal with her and finally had her institutionalized. The treatment was successful—at least to a point. Afterward, Colette was permitted something like what we’d call ‘residential placement’ today.”
“You mean she could live ‘off-campus.’”
“Basically, but my mother said that she’d heard that Colette had to stay near enough to the State Hospital so that if she started to slide again, they could get her into treatment again.”
I thought about this. Could those mysterious “trustees” have been my mother’s as well as mine? I shook my head, refusing to believe the theory, even if it did explain a lot.
“Phineas House does not seem like your typical residential placement,” I said. “If I understand correctly, it’s been in the family for generations—and there was certainly no one there looking after her. She ran the place.”
“I believe you,” Hannah said. “I’m just reporting nasty gossip.”
“Right.”
The waitress came by, and by silent consent Hannah and I each ordered dessert and coffee. When it came, we lingered over it as Hannah went on.
“Anyhow, the theory that your mother was mentally unstable covered all the bases very neatly. It explained why she dressed as she did, some of her odd habits, and her …”
Hannah pinked lightly and swallowed a mouthful of double-chocolate cake.
“Apparent promiscuity?” I said. “I remember my mother’s boyfriends.”
Hannah relaxed. “That’s right.”
“Anything in your mother’s cornucopia about my father?”
“Now that’s an odd one,” Hannah admitted. “Best as Mother recalls, your mother went away for about a year. When she came back, she came back with an infant—with you. That’s also when she started using ‘Mrs.’ and gave out that she had been widowed, but interestingly, she kept her maiden name—and went on with her habits. Apparently, there was a lot of gossip, but nothing definite. The charitable said she must have been married and after her husband’s death returned to familiar grounds.”
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