Giovanni's Gift (28 page)

Why? For one, I missed Helen anew, despite any warnings Henry might have made about such feelings, and it seemed to me if I left, only to change my mind and return—I knew this is what I'd do if I ran away—she'd have every right never to speak to me again. I didn't want that. I didn't care about warnings and threats. She had been abandoned enough in her life, I thought, and had no need to experience it once more, not at my hands. For another, I had a growing if uneasy sense of compassion for Edmé, though just what motivated this I couldn't articulate. And for yet another, I knew that there remained someone with whom I must speak, sooner rather than later. I was too enmeshed now. There was no driving away from this. Only Willa Tate could tell me who Willa Richardson had been, back in the days when she and Giovanni Trentas made their bond, and she and Henry Fulton made theirs.

“Curious that Willa would stay with somebody like Tate,” I said, and as the words left my mouth I could feel Helen subtly stiffen. Her unclothed arms and legs were woven around mine in a warm tangle of sheets and blankets. Though the sky was still dark outside her bedroom window, I figured it must be nearing morning. “What's her story?” prompting her, after she moaned by response to my remark.

“Come on sweet let's don't talk now just sleep,” she blurred.

I closed my eyes, kissed her forehead, which was already pressed against my lips, inhaled the exquisite smell of her, and held her close as I tried to clear the question from my head. She caressed me in a dreamy way, again relaxed, and I listened to her breathing slow, then deepen, until it was apparent she was asleep again. How I wanted sleep, too, but the harder I tried, the more it eluded me. A perfect silence reigned throughout her house, and in that peacefulness I began to worry in a manner possible only at night—a kind of strew of disconnected cares came parading by—while at the same time I marveled at where I was, and who lay here with me flesh on flesh. Henry's claim that I didn't know Helen rose like a specter to haunt me; as much as I might want to disagree with him, of course his claim resonated with truth. Here I was, finally sleeping with this young woman, trying to sleep, anyway, in her house filled with her objects—her vases, furniture, bric-a-brac—and those of her mythic father. Henry was not wholly wrong. I didn't know her, except in this tenebrous way.

At some moment, I discovered myself in a subcellar I didn't recognize, and seated nearby was my mother, who was speaking with me, though I couldn't quite see her face in the wispy shadows. She was worried for me, concerned about my
sick shoes,
as she put it, uneasy about how worn their soles had become and that my toes were exposed from the leather having been eroded by the bad weather, or something of that sort. I assured her, my mother who sat there prim, with her knees together under a print dress of black vines on a white ground, her hands folded gently in her lap, assured her not to worry about my shoes, that I was fine and my feet weren't so very cold. Though I knew I was dreaming, nevertheless I continued to scold myself for remaining unable to sleep, and for a time I must have drifted back and forth from half-conscious wakefulness to light dreaming, until I did awaken, hours later, with the sun in my eyes and Helen no longer in my arms.

Given her penchant for disappearing, it wouldn't have surprised me if I'd gone downstairs to find Helen had left a note on the table and taken off for the day. She was in the kitchen, however, of all things whisking eggs. Espresso stood in a Mellor pot, blacker than the ripest fig—strong coffee such as I had not drunk since leaving Italy. Toasted English muffins lay in a basket under a cloth. Fresh grapefruit juice. She turned, set down the bowl of eggs, embraced me, smiled her rare smile that was nothing less than a crucible of brilliant, warm light, and said, “Scrambled or some kind of fall-apart
faux
omelette. Those are your choices.”

“This is a side of you I don't know.”

“Which is?”

“The domestic Helen.”

“I'm
very
domestic.” She smiled again, and poured the eggs into a pan. “What was so important you were trying to wake me up in the middle of the night, anyway?”

“Nothing,” as I poured coffee. Barefoot in my jeans and untucked shirt in Helen Trentas's kitchen, I thought to telephone Edmé to let her know I was all right, but imagined she knew precisely where I was. The most unpleasant, curious feeling of having triumphed over Henry passed through me. “I was just wondering about Tate and Willa—you never talk much about her, you know.”

“You woke me up to say that?”

“I thought you were awake.”

Helen carried the pan to the table, served the scrambled eggs. They smelled of olive oil, rosemary, sage. Giovanni's legacy. Like that pesto Edmé and I'd made. If Giovanni Trentas had never become friends with Henry all those years ago, would there be rows of brave basil plants in the Ash Creek garden?

“You already know what I think about Tate. As far as Willa goes, she was always closer to my father than to me. She's been kind to me over the years, sometimes kinder, more generous than I could understand, really.”

“Nothing wrong with kindness, not in this world.”

“I guess sometimes she would dote on me too much, and it made me feel uncomfortable, like she might expect something in return. But I'm afraid that's the way I am. You give me something freely and there I'll be, looking it over for the strings attached. I'm the kind of person who if you give me a gift horse I'll look it right in the mouth. Not my best quality.”

“Maybe she just was being nice to you to help your father, you know, since he was left to raise you himself.”

“No doubt. But it made me suspicious.”

We sat side by side, and I held her hand, so that we each ate breakfast with our free hands. “Did she ever ask you for anything in return?”

Helen said, “Willa? No, never.”

“You're paranoid, then. Simple as that.”

“Master of the obvious.”

“Well. Just remind me never to give you a horse.”

“Speaking of which, look at this,” and she lifted away one side of her white robe to reveal a bruised thigh.

I touched it gently, said, “Jesus.”

“Got rammed into the stockade yesterday. It never happened to me before. I don't know what got into the horse I was working with, but he'd never been skittish before.”

“Did it hurt last night?”

“You mean, when we? no, nothing hurt last night. Last night was wonderful. I bruise more easily than most. Another bad trait.”

“I hadn't any idea you had so many bad traits.”

“Deal with it,” she smiled.

There were times when I was unable to distinguish whether I was being teased or provoked by Helen, but this wasn't one of them. She fed me a piece of toasted muffin spread thick with marmalade, and I said, in the ridiculous way lovers prattle, “I'll deal with it.”

The subject of Willa came up once more, after breakfast. What Helen said was that she had to watch herself, in fact, and refrain from feeling competitive with Willa in mourning Giovanni's death. “Everybody in the small circle who knew him was sad, of course”—not mentioning Tate, who I imagined did not share in the grief—“though your uncle seemed more grim than sad, I thought. But Willa, she was grieved beyond any of us. I remember thinking, Listen, he's
my
father, let me do the crying. Crazy, eh? As if there isn't plenty of room for all of us to cry oceans of tears. She loved him, that's all.”

“You ever see Willa yourself?”

“She keeps a horse. Tate owns the stables where I work.”

“Of course,” I smirked. “Pajarito?”

“Pajarito, yes. I see her there on Thursdays every week, like clockwork, and sometimes we talk and sometimes we don't, and that's about it.”

“You know what I think?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you ought to let her be your friend.”

She said, “By the way, you didn't want to talk last night about why you showed up here in such a state, what happened to your hand. But maybe you can tell me now—what were you doing?”

“Helen, you'll just be mad at me. Don't ask.”

“I won't be mad, promise.”

“We had another night visit up at Ash Creek. I got knocked down in the dark by somebody. He actually climbed onto the roof, if you can believe it.”

“What for?”

“The usual. To hammer at their rest, punish them, my aunt and uncle. Somebody'd already been over at the studio, and done a good job wrecking Henry's projects. You wouldn't believe how maniacal he was after he found out in the morning. He wanted to blame some of this on me, and I'll tell you, we made up in the afternoon, but I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to stay there.”

She sat looking at me, waiting for more, even as I sat waiting for her to say something, perhaps invite me to stay here with her if need be (did I want this? no, not really, not yet). Breaking the silence, she said, “Why would any of this make me mad?” She seemed visibly disquieted, although her voice carried her words along very smoothly.

“I didn't call Tate; Tate called me, and asked me to come meet with him.”

“And you did?”

“He didn't give me the chance to accuse him of anything, not really. He accused and exonerated himself before I hardly had the chance to get in a word edgewise.”

“Does he know about us?”

“He knows about
everything.
He's the ultimate Argus. He must have a spy in every bush. I kind of hate him and respect him at the same time.”

“Respect him?”

“The same way you respect a snake.”

“That's fear combined with common sense, not respect. Did he say anything about me or my father?”

“Nothing about you. But he did say that he, meaning Tate himself, was innocent of anything having to do with your father. In fact, he implied that Henry wasn't so innocent, and that I should ask him, or something along those lines.”

We sat again in silence, and prompted perhaps by the word
lines,
I reviewed that surveyor's map in my head, then dismissed it, furled it up and tossed it imaginatively into one of the drawers of Tate's leather-topped desk. It was I who broke the silence this time.

“Let me ask you, why would the night visitors leave a note behind with the words
Tell the truth
on it?”

“First of all, who's supposed to be telling the truth?”

I deliberated whether to dig myself in any deeper by breaking my promise to Henry not to discuss that note with anyone—though hadn't he said not to discuss it with Edmé? I couldn't remember anymore. “Henry,” I said. “I guess that's who it was left for.”

“What's he supposed to tell the truth about?” and as she said these words, I could sense she was pondering whether or not to let
me
in on something she knew in this regard. The downward glance of the eyes, chewing at the corner of her lip.

“This is where my knowledge comes to a dead end,” I said, then ventured, “but I think you know more than you're saying. Is that true?”

Helen surprised me with her composed “Yes.”

“And?”

“It's just that Tate told me—”

“Why believe anything Tate says?”

“—Tate
showed
me a deposition in which Henry told a somewhat different story about the death than what he told me.”

“How'd he get his hands on a deposition?”

Helen shrugged. “You're the one who said he knows everything. But Henry makes me furious how he thinks that just because he can disappear into his little studio and build his fantasy utopia and live up there at Ash Creek, he gets to be excused from any responsibility in the world by simply declaring himself absent from it. The world will always find its way to your doorstep, no matter where you live. He ought to know that. The deposition gave a story that wasn't all that different, but just different enough. Henry's been like a godfather to me all my life, but he's always managed to keep himself at a distance. He's always been loving whenever we're together, but still, I couldn't believe he could tell me that there might have been foul play involved, then turn around and tell Noah it looked like an accident. I think it drove him crazier that the police were crawling all over his precious mountainside for those couple of days than it did that my father was gone. Sometimes I just want to go up to him and scream, Fuck you, right in his face. I know that Tate wants him off that land, and that there's bad blood between him and Tate, always has been. So it doesn't surprise me Tate would try to implicate him. But I also know that though he couldn't have committed that murder, he probably understands exactly what happened up there that afternoon in the gorge. And he won't tell.”

With this, she began to cry. I sat there dumbfounded at the sight of Helen Trentas weeping, her hazel eyes darkened as I reached out to comfort her and, as I did, realized that within the space of less than a day I'd witnessed Helen and Henry both weeping, the two people least likely to display such emotion of anyone I had ever known.

Money. For weeks I had done my damnedest not to worry about it, but perhaps having seen such a dramatic display of it in the form of Tate's mansion in the mountains, maybe even witnessing how Helen lived, not ostentatiously but certainly in comfort, made me aware of what a derelict I'd become. The word
slacker
continued to resound in my head. When I left Helen's I noticed that a button was missing from the cuff of my shirt. Even the dream of my mother, her concern about my shoes, regathered some strength as I started the jeep—my uncle's jeep, the jeep registered to someone who was not altogether happy with me: Lord, it all came together in a bundle of sudden anxiety. I parked near the bank building, another property no doubt mortgaged by Graham Tate or else owned by him free and clear, passed beneath its great round clock into the lobby, and sat with a young assistant manager, who helped me open an account. I wrote a check that closed out what little was left of my balance, and filled out the necessary forms for my savings to be wired from the bank in Rome to my new account here. The sums transferred were even smaller than I might have guessed. I, who'd already considered myself, shall we say, unprosperous, realized I was in fact quite broke.