Child of a Rainless Year (38 page)
Read Child of a Rainless Year Online
Authors: Jane Lindskold
I laughed. “It’s funny how something that started out as a useful tool became a symbol of restriction, but let me tell you, some of those earlier garments were cages. My mother—Colette—had me wearing corsets before I had anything to corset. I’d forgotten that until just now. Girdles weren’t much better. It’s all part of the same thing. Somehow a man can be a man, grey hair, beer belly, lines all over his face, and that’s just getting ‘distinguished.’ In a woman it’s ‘letting herself go.’ Pisses me off.”
“I can see why,” Domingo said, “maybe more so now that the same impossibilities are being applied to men. Big muscles.” He crooked an arm I knew was very strong, but no Popeye lump bulged forth. “Bad attitude, but, when needed, sensitivity and artistic sense.”
Domingo gave an exasperated snort, then went on. “We have severe gang problems here in Las Vegas. Gangs create a whole other set of expectations, especially for the boys. One reason I like to keep my nephew Enrico around is I want him to see that there are choices. His father is a college man, a lawyer, member of the state legislature from time to time. If Enrico rebels against following his father’s example, then he can see that there is no shame to working with your hands. But I still worry about the drugs—and the money that comes with drugs. My family is comfortable, but not rich. Evelina and her husband need to say ‘no’ very often.”
It was my turn to slide a hand across the table, and I did this now. I won’t deny it. My fingers tingled at the contact, the way they should when you’ve crossed a divide, but I felt more pleasure at how automatically Domingo’s fingers wrapped around mine, accepting the comfort.
“I’ve taught for years,” I said, “and there are versions of the same problems in Ohio. The town where I grew up is more prosperous than Las Vegas, though certainly not rich. Young people must contrast realistic expectations versus the dreams the media feeds a hundred different ways every day. Domingo, in some ways, we had it easier.”
“I think so,” he agreed, and as he said it, I remembered that he’d worked beside his father when he was a boy. “But I have distracted you with my stories of Sabrina. You were going to tell me why you are so … heightened … when you consider using cosmetics.”
“It’s just something I saw when I was small,” I said, almost apologetically. “You know Colette was a great belle. One day I sneaked into her room when she was making up. I think it might have been the first time I’d ever seen her without any cosmetics on, and, well, it frightened me to see her ‘real’ face. She was much paler than you’d believe, and every feature was carefully constructed from the foundation up. Even her hair was colored that beautiful shining black. I suspect that without the dye it was as drab as mine.”
Domingo didn’t try to pretend that my not-blond, not-brown, not-really anything colored hair was anything else than what it was, and I liked him for it.
“And this frightened you?”
“It did. I remember thinking that she was using magic, that the colors were more than mere cosmetics, they were a transformation.”
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe they were?” Domingo said. “I don’t mean then, I mean now, now that you know so much more.”
I blinked at him. “I don’t understand.”
“You know this house is not just a structure. You have spoken with ghosts. You are waited on by spirits. Your ancestors were thought to be witches. From there, the idea that maybe your mother worked some sort of transformation in front of her mirror does not seem impossible to me.”
“It’s just a kid’s memory,” I protested.
Domingo shrugged. “Maybe so, but one that has literally colored—or uncolored—your life, and Mira, you are very sensitive to color.”
“I guess,” I said, unconvinced, or, more honestly, unwilling to be convinced. There is only so much weirdness one can take all at once. Here Domingo was asking me to make yet another great mental leap.
Again I remembered the image of a couple of teenagers playing with a Ouija board. I wondered if, for all my certainly the night before that it wasn’t so, maybe that’s exactly what Domingo and I were, except instead of being teenagers we were two middle-aged, never married people, focusing on anything at all to avoid facing our attraction to each other—and the fact that for all that both of us had our past attractions, none of them had ever gone anywhere. Or at least not as far as love and marriage, a house and a couple of kids.
I took one more look at my now cold breakfast, decided I couldn’t face it, and pushed back my chair.
“I’m going to call Mr. Hart,” I said. “You can listen to my side if you want.”
“How about I clean up the kitchen?” Domingo said. “I think you deserve some privacy.”
So I went off into the library, picked up the extension, and hardly believing what I was doing, dialed—the phone was old enough to have an actual dial—a number I had copied from a vision in a kaleidoscope.
I more than half-expected to get one of those annoying noises phones make to punish you for dialing a number that isn’t in use. The other half of me expected to be told I’d dialed a wrong number, so when I said, “May I speak to Michael Hart?” and the voice at the other end said, “This is Michael Hart,” a long moment went by before I could say anything.
“This is Mira, Mira Fenn.”
“Mira Fenn!” A small pause, then Mr. Hart said, “So, you got my number.”
I realized he was hedging, waiting to see if I’d gotten his number in some other way. I could have, I realized. It might even be on some of Colette’s paperwork, or maybe he was registered with some trustees’ organization or the like. For a moment, I considered saying something like “That’s right. I got your number from the Internet.” Then I remembered drinking beer with a ghost in a tavern that quite probably didn’t exist, of being caught by the hands of women who also might not really exist, and I knew once again that the time to run away back to the mirage that most people called reality was over.
“Yes. I was looking through one of Colette’s kaleidoscopes.”
I stopped there. Mr. Hart was going to have to give me more than he had given Maybelle Fenn when I was a girl.
“I see,” he said after a long pause. “You were doing more than just looking—you were seeing. So, you’re at Phineas House?”
“That’s right. I’ve been here all summer. My parents—the Fenns—were killed in a car crash earlier this spring. I’ve taken a leave of absence from my job while I set several matters straight.”
“I’m sorry about the Fenns,” Mr. Hart said, and he sounded as if he genuinely did. “I always liked them.”
“I am, too,” I said. “You trustees did well by me when you set me up with them, but I think it’s time I learned more about what happened when my mother disappeared. You know, don’t you?”
“Not precisely. I have suspicions, yes. But I don’t know.”
“And how much of your suspicions are you willing to share with me?”
He answered with a question of his own. “Are you planning to keep Phineas House?”
“Possibly. Probably, even. I like it. I’ve had it painted. You won’t recognize it when you see it.”
“Oh.” A long silence, long enough that I was fretting that I’d called him long distance, then Mr. Hart said, “I think we need to speak in person. I will need to see what arrangements I can make. Are you willing to wait on your, uh, explorations until we talk?”
“It depends on how long you want me to wait.”
“No longer than the middle of next week. I will come to you there, in Las Vegas.”
“I’d offer to put you up,” I said, “but I think until I know you better …”
“Certainly.”
Oddly, the fact that he didn’t try and reassure me that he meant me no harm or tell me that he was an old man now actually did reassure me.
“I’ll call you some time tomorrow,” Mr. Hart said, “and tell you when to expect me. Please, until then, take care. If you could find my note, you are closer to things that—well, a car is not dangerous if you know how to drive it, but if you do not know, and climb behind the wheel when the engine is running … Do you understand me?”
I thought about my exhaustion last night, about nearly falling off the ladder, about other times since my return to Las Vegas when I had felt detached from the world around me, and, oddly, I did understand.
“I think I do,” I said. “Not everything, but enough that I can wait until Wednesday.”
“Wednesday or before,” Mr. Hart assured me. “I will speak with you tomorrow. Thank you for calling me.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, and hung up the phone.
I walked back into the kitchen to find Domingo polishing bacon grease off the stove top.
“Michael Hart is coming here. He’ll be here by Wednesday, if not sooner. He asked me not to do any more experimenting until then.”
“Did you agree?”
“I did.”
“Do you trust him?”
“I don’t know.” I sat on the edge of my chair, twisting my fingers in and out of each other in a nervous basket weave. “Maybe he asked me to delay so he could set something nasty in motion, but I keep remembering that my mother’s trustees were the ones who got her out of the madhouse, that my trustees found me Aunt May and Uncle Stan. I feel like I should at least try a meeting.”
“Will you meet Mr. Hart here?”
“I think so,” I said. “Whatever Mr. Hart has going for him—and he must have something, or he couldn’t have left me that message where I found it—I think that Phineas House is on my side.”
“So what now?” Domingo asked.
“I guess we wait,” I said. “Mr. Hart said he’d call tomorrow.”
“I have a better idea,” Domingo said, taking my hand and drawing me up. “It’s a beautiful day. Why don’t we go for a drive, or maybe a hike. I can show you the trail up Hermit’s Peak or something.”
I let Domingo draw me up and stood almost within the circle of his arms.
“Let’s go, then. Meet you in the garage in ten minutes.”
“Why ten minutes?”
“I need to put my hiking boots on,” I said.
The Hopis have six directional colors which are as follows: Yellow refers to the North or Northwest. Blue-green refers to the West or Southwest. Red refers to the South or Southeast. White refers to the East or Northeast. All the above colors taken together refer to the Zenith or up. Black refers to the Nadir or down.
—Harold S. Colton,
Hopi Kachina Dolls
Mr. Hart called late Monday after we were back from hiking and said he would be able to get to Las Vegas by Tuesday afternoon. I offered to drive to Albuquerque and pick him up at the airport—after all, it was a two-hour drive, and while he probably wasn’t decrepit, he certainly wasn’t young either.
“I have already made arrangements for transportation,” he said. “But thank you. Would you like to come to my hotel?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like you to come to Phineas House and see what I’ve done with it. You say you’ll be here in the afternoon. Why not come over when you’re recovered from the trip, and we’ll talk over dinner?”
“Very well. I’ll call you when I get in.”
So it was that late on Tuesday afternoon I was keeping myself very busy in the kitchen making preparations for dinner. I’d picked up some chicken and had it marinating, intending to cook it on the grill.
Domingo had oh-so-casually mentioned that he was going to Evelina’s house that afternoon to help Enrico finish his project for the fair, and that he’d probably stay for dinner. I was grateful for his tact, since the garden was shared territory between us, but at the same time sorry that my one and only ally wouldn’t be near.
To go with the chicken, I was making an elaborate pasta salad. I’d found tricolored twists at the grocery store, and was adding bright red peppers from the garden. They were sweet-hot, not too spicy, I hoped, for a Minneapolis palate. I figured if they worked for my Ohio one, they should for Mr. Hart.
By early evening, the green salad was made, and I’d stirred the pasta salad and put it aside to marinate. I was just coming in from checking the grill when the front doorbell rang. I rinsed my hands, put aside the dish towel I’d been using for an apron, and went to admit Michael Hart.
Michael Hart didn’t look anything like I’d imagined. He was in his seventies, fairly short, his mouse-grey hair cut short to demonstrate textbook perfect male-pattern baldness. In comparison to Domingo and his painting crew, who’d made up most of my male companionship of late, Michael Hart was soft and pudgy. His handshake felt like unbaked bread sticks, but the gaze of his pale-blue eyes was direct and penetrating. His body might be soft, but he definitely was not.
“Come in,” I said. “Thank you for coming all this way on such short notice.”
“You’re welcome,” Michael Hart responded, stepping over the threshold and looking about the foyer with assessing interest. “I am glad to meet you at last.”
“Then we never met?” I asked, taking his tailored windbreaker and hanging it on the mirrored coat-tree.
“We did not,” Mr. Hart said. “I was the youngest of your trustees. The most senior member of that particular triumvirate, Renaldo Pincas, was the one who interviewed you. He died many years ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, rather automatically.
I was trying hard to remember which of the stream of adults who had questioned me after my mother’s disappearance Renaldo Pincas might have been. I thought it might have been a very thin older man who had fascinated me not because of the questions he asked, but because of the elaborate network of brown liver spots on the backs of his hands. The fact that his questions had had more to do about me and my needs than with Colette made me think Mr. Spotty, as I had privately named him, had been my trustee, not a police officer. If he had told me so, the word had meant nothing at the time.
Mr. Hart was looking at me with a touch of bemusement, and I realized that my reverie had made me ignore my role as a hostess.
“I have dinner cooking,” I said. “Would asking you to come sit with me in the kitchen be too informal?”
“Not at all,” Mr. Hart replied with touching gallantry. “The food smells wonderful. Grilling? I thought so. You do your own cooking, then, no servants?”
“No cook,” I hedged, not quite ready to bring up the silent women. I had a feeling that Mr. Hart didn’t need to be told about them. He probably knew more about them than I did.
As I led the way to the kitchen, it occurred to me that my dinner guest, for all that he looked like an out-of-shape lawyer, was quite likely an accomplished sorcerer.
Once I’d settled Mr. Hart with a tall glass of iced tea garnished with mint from the garden, I went out and turned the chicken I’d already started grilling. Somehow, I’d known Mr. Hart would be on time, and when I came in, I reported that dinner would be ready to go on the table in about ten minutes. Unlike with Domingo, I hadn’t felt comfortable with the idea of dining with my trustee informally at my kitchen table, and so had set two places at one end of the formal dining room table.
Needless to say, when I’d gone to wash it, I’d found the crystal and china was already spotless, and the silver polished to a soft, moonlit glow. If I ever gave up Phineas House, I was going to have lifelong nostalgia for the silent women.
Mr. Hart and I chatted about his trip in from Minnesota as I carried the side dishes out to the dining room. I brought the chicken in from the grill last, so we could enjoy it while it was still snapping hot. I was washing the inevitable smudge of grease from one wrist when Mr. Hart commented:
“You are very little like Colette, Ms. Fenn. I think she would be astonished to see what her daughter has come to be.”
“No doubt,” I said, a trace curtly, picking up the tray of chicken and leading the way into the dining room.
“I didn’t mean that as an insult,” Mr. Hart said, settling himself into the indicated chair with the slight fussiness of a robin settling onto the nest. “Nor did I mean to indicate that Colette would necessarily be disappointed. I think her lack of practical competence frustrated her. It may even have been why she was so hard on the … servants. Employers most often are when they realize how they need those who, ostensibly, are in their debt.”
“I wonder if the silent women knew that,” I said, thinking aloud, as I’d fallen into the habit since Phineas House seemed to listen.
“The ‘silent women’?” Mr. Hart said, a slight chuckle underlying his voice. It was not mocking in the least, but instead avuncularly amused. “Is that what you call them?”
“Ever since I was a child, that’s how I’ve thought of them,” I said, and, as if our discussing them granted permission, from the kitchen came the muffled sounds of the remaining mess from cooking being cleared away. “I knew they talked among themselves, but they barely ever talked to me.”
“They feared you, I suspect,” Mr. Hart said, serving himself the largest chicken breast with the air of a man who likes his food, and is certain he will enjoy what is set before him. “They feared Colette, and since you were so young, they would have seen you as her extension.”
“Not hard to do,” I said bitterly, “since that is how she seemed to see me.”
If I had hoped Mr. Hart would say something to ameliorate this harsh image of Colette, I was disappointed.
“Colette was a … difficult woman, but she had some reasons for being so. Mira—may I call you Mira?”
“Please do,” I replied.
“And if you would call me Mikey, I would be grateful. I know I am an old man, now, but ‘Mr. Hart’ still evokes my father to me, and he was a formidable man.”
“But, ‘Mikey’?”
Mr. Hart grinned. “Ridiculous, perhaps, but a childhood nickname I never shed. There were many Michaels in my family—heritage of a dominant patriarch in the person of my grandfather. Later, wherever I went, I seemed to encounter other Michaels who had taken the more respectable diminutives, or the dignified Michael. At least, I escaped Mickey, and attendant references to the mouse, a thing for which I am eternally grateful.”
I found myself liking my dinner guest more and more. I’d prepared myself for someone rather like Chilton O’Reilly but stuffier, and with no childhood fondness to bridge the gap. I found this affable, doughy man quite amusing, and I was certain he was not putting on an act. The silent women would never have manifested if Phineas House didn’t think well of Mikey Hart.
“Mikey it is,” I agreed, and sliced into my own chicken with a great deal more appetite than I had anticipated.
“Well, Mira,” Mikey said, “as I was about to say before I ran off on that last tangent, I’d prefer to discuss this entire matter in something vaguely like chronological order. I don’t mean I won’t tell you about your mother if you wish, but so many of the things that shaped her are related to earlier history. Marvelous chicken, by the way, and is the recipe for the pasta salad your own?”
“Thank you. Yes, it is. I can copy it for you if you’d like, though Domingo’s garden contributed a great deal to the flavor.”
I could see that any conversation with Mikey Hart was often going to run away into tangents. I no longer marvelled at his telling Aunt May about Queens of Mirrors and Mistresses of Thresholds. It now seemed a miracle that he hadn’t still been there when Uncle Stan came home for dinner. I decided I’d need to bring us back onto topic, or doubtless Mikey would be asking me was Domingo suitable as a caretaker or where the garden was or even what we were growing in it.
“I’ve done some research,” I said. “I know a lot more about my immediate family history at least. I’ve even come across the rumors that Colette was responsible for her father’s death.”
“Did Domingo Navidad tell you that?” Mikey asked.
“No, actually …” I trailed off, took a sip of wine to cover my nervousness, and went on, “it was the ghost of Paula Angel.”
Mikey’s response was nothing I could have anticipated.
“Pablita did always like Colette,” he said. “I think she saw her as another rebel against the unfair, male-dominated system.”
“And was she?”
“No, Pablita was …”
“I don’t mean Paula Angel!” I said, not quite shouting, but coming close. “I mean Colette Bogatyr, my mother.”
Mikey blinked owlishly with surprise, but as he helped himself to a third piece of chicken, I don’t think I had offended him.
“Colette was … possibly a rebel, but she was also, quite honestly, less than completely sane and quite probably a parricide.”
“But you,” I fumbled for the right words, “or rather, her own trustees, they got her out of the insane asylum. Why would they do that if Colette was both insane and dangerous?”
“Because if they didn’t, Colette would have left on her own accord. In fact, she had been doing so for years. The trustees merely put her in the position of being able to lay legal claim to Phineas House.
“I’m confused,” I said, my elbows on the arms of my chair, my face in my hands.
“Well, it is easier to understand if I start at the beginning,” Mikey said without reproof. “It’s just that it’s such a difficult beginning, and entails explaining things that have nothing to do with Colette—at least not with her personally.”
He had finished the third piece of chicken, and though he looked longingly at the pasta salad, seemed prepared to make a valiant effort to resist fourths.
“I have dessert,” I said, “and the silent women seem to have anticipated me and turned on the coffee. I made decaf, but I can put on caffeinated if you’d like.”
“My doctor says I should cut back on caffeine and rich foods and get more exercise,” Mikey replied. “Needless to say, I don’t listen. However, your company is sufficiently stimulating that I can do without caffeine.”
I smiled at the compliment. “The evening is lovely, and normally I’d suggest we take our dessert outside, but since I have a feeling that what you need to tell me shouldn’t be overhear … .”
“Yes, that is probably best,” Mikey said. “Tell me, is Domingo Navidad still living on the property?”
“In the apartment over the carriage house. He’s been a gem. Lately, he’s concentrated on getting the exterior paint job done.”
“I noticed it,” Mikey said, with almost incredible understatement ; you’d have to be blind—and possibly deaf—not to notice that paint job.
“I won’t ask if you like it,” I said, grinning, “because I fear that what we’re considering calling the ‘Fairground Midway’ style is probably an acquired taste.”
Mikey rose, nicking one more pasta twist out of the salad. “It is an individual style, and says a great deal about you—more than that you are an art teacher. However, don’t ask me what, because that would take us back to telling the story inside out.”
“I have some suspicions,” I said. “Like I said, I’ve been doing some research. Why don’t we take the coffee and dessert tray into the living room? Then you can start telling me what you’ve come so far to tell.”
And the silent women can get on with tidying up. I suspect they might manifest for the purpose of frowning at me if I dared clear the table with our first formal dinner guest in the House.
Once we had settled in, I tucked my feet up under me—something else Colette never would have done. She might have done a Cleopatra lounging upon her gilded divan routine for one of her lovers, but never just tucked bare feet up under the hem of a loose silk skirt.
Mikey indulged in both a brownie and a cookie, but he was more focused now than he had been before.
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