Fadeaway Girl (6 page)

I had sat myself down on the curb outside of the Moomas' house (although I didn't know which Moomas, as there were so many of them). Baskets of petunias and pansies hung along the porch roof, looking thirsty. Then I got up and walked on, kicking pebbles.

Mrs. Louderback's house was called “Traveler's Rest,” which I thought especially appropriate for a fortune-teller. As if finally you could stop trying to fix your own messed-up life and let something else take control. Of course, it didn't actually work that way for me, but then I thought (being philosophical), just look at my life; how could it?

The woman who opened the door to me lived here with Mrs. Louderback and was always silent and grim. I thought she was bad-natured and wondered why Mrs. Louderback let her be the door greeter. Maybe she thought that if one of her clients could be discouraged from coming because of this woman's peevishness, well, maybe that person's fortune was already set in stone and no turning over of cards would change things.

Inside, the house was very cool and shadowy. I was led through the living room full of dark lion-footed furniture to a small room off the kitchen. It was in the kitchen that fortunes got told, and this small room was a parlor, a waiting room.

There were two other people there who looked to be mother and daughter. The young one might have been my age, and was dumb-looking. Say what you will about me, I am not dumb-looking. This girl sat with her head against her mother's shoulder and stared at me. I was never a person to hide from a stare; I stared back. She did not move an inch, and her eyelids did not flutter. She stared and stared.

The mother just flipped the pages of a
Ladies' Home Journal,
flipping, not reading, as if she were mad at the magazine for its uselessness. She was unaware of her staring girl, certainly. I was about to get up and go over and ask the mother if she knew her daughter was dead, when the door opened and a middle-aged woman walked out and crossed the room woodenly and left without looking at anybody or anything. I wondered if Mrs. Louderback hypnotized people and left them to find their own way home.

“Emma, hello.”

Seeing I was next, I got up from my chair. But I felt some reluctance to go on. I didn't know what it was I wanted.

The kitchen smelled of recently baked bread. It was a very neat and clean kitchen. There wasn't a mark on the white counters, and the white enamel stove looked as if it had just come from the new Sears outlet.

Mrs. Louderback started placing cards in a row and the first was (yes, there he was) the Hanged Man.

“This does not mean bad news,” said Mrs. Louderback.

It would to me if I were hanging upside down. I nodded and waited for the next card.

Orphans in a Storm. “Here they are again. Don't tell me
they're
okay.”

She laughed, briefly. “It depends on what you think is ‘okay.' ”

“For one thing, not having to tramp through snow and rain in ragged clothes.”

Mrs. Louderback grew thoughtful. “But they may be moving toward something brilliant.”

I hoped this was not a cue for God to walk onstage. I changed the subject. “Last time we were talking about the Slades' baby being kidnapped. You know, from the Belle Ruin.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what I think? I think maybe the baby wasn't even there. At the Belle Ruin, I mean. They just wanted people to believe it was.”

Mrs. Louderback looked astonished. “But why would parents do such a thing?”

“I don't know. To make sure people thought baby Fay was alive at that time. And remember, the baby's nurse wasn't with them. They said she was sick. They said their baby was sick too, maybe to keep people from insisting on seeing her. What if the parents had to account for the baby's absence for some reason? Now if Fay was
allegedly kidnapped,
well, that would sure account for it.”

Mrs. Louderback was looking at the cards but I don't think she was seeing them. Then she said, “This Spiker girl, the babysitter. She said she left the room and was gone for twenty minutes talking on the phone. When she returned, the baby was gone and Morris Slade was in the room.”

I nodded. I thought Mrs. Louderback was doing awfully well in remembering details for a person her age.

She continued: “There's a problem there, isn't there? How would the kidnappers know she'd leave? And be gone long enough to get up that ladder and out again? You'd almost have to say it was arranged beforehand.”

I slumped in my chair, hardly knowing what to say. I'd never thought the phone call was planned. “But how could it have been arranged beforehand unless Gloria Spiker was in on it? And not just Gloria, but her friend. For she did talk to a friend for twenty minutes. The operator confirmed it.” A conspiracy? That was even more exciting.

“Could the kidnappers have been watching the room? Perhaps with binoculars? And see her leave?”

“Maybe. But she might have just turned around and come back.” It looked as if I should go to Cold Flat Junction and talk to Gloria Spiker Calhoun again to try and see if she was telling the truth.

“Now, Emma, we really should get back to you.”

I frankly thought we
were
back to me.

“This Orphan card keeps coming up. This is the third time.”

Actually, it was the fourth, but I wasn't going to dwell on that. “Well, there are ten orphans that Miss Landis—that's Miss Louise Landis—do you know her? She's from Cold Flat Junction.”

Mrs. Louderback pursed her lips, thinking. She was never one to toss out answers without thinking about them. “No, I don't believe I do.”

“Anyway, as a treat for them, she brought ten orphans to the Hotel Paradise for lunch.”

“How thoughtful.”

I frowned. It had been my idea, actually. But not out of thoughtfulness. It was more like a bribe, the lunch, and I also threw in a performance of
Medea, the Musical
. “Those orphans weren't much like these, though.” I had my chin cupped in my hands on the table, getting a different view of the cards for no reason. “They had terrible table manners.”

“That's too bad. I expect your mother went to a lot of trouble for them.”

My
mother
went to trouble? I was the one who nearly had to horse-whip Will and Mill into doing the performance. I said, poking the card, “Of course these Orphans aren't real; they just stand for something.”

“What might they?”

I shrugged and shook my head. I was sitting back now and looking at the ceiling. I wondered if I was avoiding something. I thought of the Devereau house across the lake that in the fog seemed to float like a tall gray ship. I thought of the misty pond near the Belle Ruin, where the deer came almost like phantom deer to drink. I thought of the Girl. Then I said, “Sometimes I wonder, How can you tell the difference between what's real and what's not?”

I didn't expect Mrs. Louderback to come up with
the
answer—you know, the one that solves all problems, past, present, and future. But I certainly didn't expect her to say,

“Maybe you can't.”

I
forgot my two-dollar contribution on the way out, which was probably why Mrs. Louderback's housekeeper or whoever she was gave me an extra-stern look, although on her face it was hard to tell the difference from her other looks.

Maybe my hand that was now feeling the dollar bills hadn't wanted to let go because Mrs. Louderback hadn't told me anything that made me feel better, and was there any other reason to pay a person?

I kicked an empty Nehi can for a while down the road and then over to the curb when I saw a car coming. It was a buttercup yellow Chevy convertible, much bigger and fancier than Ree-Jane's white one, and it was driven by Scarlett Bittinger. I liked her because she was so much competition for Ree-Jane, who, of course, hated her.

Scarlett honked the horn and waved to me as she sped by. It was nice having someone her age treat me as if I was visible. Around her neck was a vivid green chiffon scarf that was raked by the wind, and as it sank from sight, I imagined Scarlett, in a night of wind and rain, on a dark road, and the scarfjust whipping over her face, blinding her, and the car going over an incline, busting through the white safety guard, and away.

I hoped that wouldn't happen to her. But it did give me an idea for Ree-Jane's Christmas present: a chiffon scarf. I would describe how pretty Scarlett had looked in her scarf, driving her yellow convertible.

After crossing the highway, I walked up the hotel drive, the one in the rear, wondering what was going on in the Big Garage, and if they still had Paul in there. Paul's mother, who was our second dishwasher, was kind of slow. She forgot Paul a lot of the time. I could understand why.

I cut around the cocktail garden, which looked as if the Baum party had been there. Half-empty glasses were scattered about and napkins balled up and tossed anywhere. There was a wreck of an hors d'oeuvre plate sitting on the table.

I could see light through chinks in the Big Garage and walked over that way. Mill's piano was going full speed ahead, and I heard loud laughter and talk and a high-pitched squeal that probably came from Paul. At my knock, all of this noise stopped so suddenly you'd have thought the night had swallowed it. It made me feel like not waiting around for Will to come to the door and do his who-are-you? act.

I walked back toward the hotel and along the stone path to the rear door that led up to my room on the third floor. I met up with the hotel cat going from somewhere to somewhere and held the screen door for him in case he'd like to come with me. But he was far too busy. He did pause, though, to look up at me before he went on. I wished I had some business to take care of that made me that determined to do it.

I heard voices drifting back from the front porch and the hyena-like laugh of Helene Baum, so I figured that the dinner was over and now they had gathered for more drinks on the porch. Mrs. Davidow always counted her own self into any dinner party if she knew the people at all. So if places were set for ten, it could end up eleven, with Lola squeezed in between the others.

There was music too. Maybe Ree-Jane's phonograph had been carted downstairs. I sat on the bottom step, my skirt pulled over my knees like a tent and my chin resting on my knees. “Tangerine” was playing.

I remembered how I had sung this at the club along the Tamiami Trail and at the Roney Plaza. Rather, how I had pretended to sing it, since I hadn't been invited along on the trip to Miami Beach. And it all seemed so long ago. I couldn't understand why, as they'd come back from Florida hardly more than a week ago.

I trudged up the steps like a person going to her doom. I told myself to stop being so dramatic, but it still had a kind of doomish feel to it.

In my room was a toy chest that I didn't open often, as I thought I was getting too old to play with stuffed animals and certainly dolls.

There had been a big argument going on over my toy chest—still was, I supposed, for Ree-Jane hadn't got it yet. Lola Davidow wanted me to give it to Ree-Jane to keep her things in it.

“What things? I'm keeping
my
things in it.” It seemed to me that was a reasonable question although I admit I said it in a lofty way.

Mrs. Davidow's mouth worked in that way she had when she wanted to deliver a squelching comeback: lips bunching, relaxing, bunching again; mouth opening and shutting, saying nothing. It was like the characters in the cartoons we saw at the movies before the feature came on.

I said to her that this chest had been mine since I was a baby. Her mouth finally worked and she told me I was just being selfish.

Then Ree-Jane limped in (I like to picture her with a gimpy leg or even a clubfoot) and called me selfish too.

“What do you want it for?” I said. “Do you have a dead body you want to stuff in it?”

“Don't be stupid.”

“I'm using this chest.”

“It's just junk you've got in there.”

“How do you know? Have you been in here looking around?”

“All you've got in that chest is kid stuff.”

“I know. I'm a kid.” That was the second time lately I'd allowed myself to be categorized that way. I hoped it wouldn't become a habit. “Anyway, I haven't got anyplace else for my mice to live.” I scratched my head as if I were really thinking.

“Your what?”

“Mice. There's a mother and father and she has babies. You want to see?” I lifted the lid.

Ree-Jane dragged her foot off, muttering.

What was all this? If she really needed a chest like mine with its chipped and faded pink paint, well, her mother had plenty of money to buy one. She'd bought into the Hotel Paradise a few years ago and owned half of it. Maybe that was why she thought I should let go of my toy chest—because she owned half of it.

And why would Ree-Jane want to be associated with a toy chest, especially mine?

I knew my mother would probably be along soon, for both of them would complain to her about my selfishness. All my mother wanted to do was keep the peace.

I opened the chest and looked inside, feeling now that all this stuff was of a value no one could guess. It might as well have been full of diamonds and rubies. There was a ragged doll—not a Raggedy Ann, but just plain ragged. Her hair was patched and one ear was missing. I felt sorry for her, mostly because I couldn't remember when I'd last played with her. I couldn't imagine playing with her now, although I wasn't above getting a gauze square for her ear, as ears bleed a lot.

As I took out one item after another, it struck me how much this chest was like Mary-Evelyn Devereau's toy chest in that old house across the lake.