Hallow House - Part Two (20 page)

"I'm getting as bad as old Stan," Marie mumbled as she slumped onto her bed. "Feel like this is my last chance to tell you about Delores. Your mother." She shoved herself up onto one elbow. "You call Vera mama and maybe that's best. Delores wasn't born to be anyone's mother. That poor damned Sergei." Marie lay back against the pillows. "Help me get these slippers off, that's a good girl."

After she obeyed, Johanna lingered uneasily by the bed, held against her will by the mention of those two names so rarely spoken--Sergei and Delores.

"Hand me that glass from the stand, Marie ordered. "I believe I'll have a little nightcap."

Johanna did as she was told.

"One thing about your father--he's not a stingy man. I'd've made him a better wife than Delores, but what's done is long over." Marie raised her head and took a sip from her glass. "I know what you're thinking when you look at me. But I was pretty when I was young. Prettier than you, if the truth be told. Didn't do me much good, did it? Adele told me years ago that life would be easier for me if I accepted being a leftover, passed over like she and Theola were. But I never could. Why should I?"

She finished the glass and handed it to Johanna who set it back on the stand.

"Don't stare at me with those big gray eyes of yours. You were a strange baby and you're still fey, a changeling. I sometimes wonder if Delores took her baby into that room upstairs and exchanged it for something else. For you."

Johanna backed away, beginning to be afraid of Marie's drunken ramblings. The bedside lamp was the room's only illumination and the corners were filled with shadows that moved and shifted at the edges of her vision. She hated shadows.

"I'd betted be g-going," she stammered.

"There's more," Marie mumbled. "Got to tell you more..." Her eyes closed.

Released, Johanna all but flew into the hall. When she passed the twins' bedroom, their door was ajar and she heard them talking. Needing something to erase Marie's words from her mind, she stuck her head in the room. "Want some company?"

They readily agreed. The sight of them sitting on the rug playing a card game brought her back from the shadowy places Marie's ramblings had evoked. The twins irritated her sometimes, just enough younger to be annoying, but she loved them and knew she was safe with them.

"We've been trying to guess cards again," Naomi said. "Katrina's still the champ." Her voice was rueful, since she expected to be first at everything.

"Is something the matter?" Katrina, always perceptive, asked. She seemed to sense emotions even when you tried to hide them.

"I was listening to Marie," Johanna said.

"Oh, her." Naomi's voice held contempt.

Katrina shivered. "Just now I got the most awful feeling. Like I had on that night when you got so sick, Johanna, I never told anybody then except Naomi. I wonder if I should tell this time?"

"What's there to tell?" Naomi asked. "It's not like anyone's going to believe you. I do, 'cause we're twins, but..."

"Something terrible's going to happen," Katrina insisted.

With Katrina upset, Johanna decided being with the twins wasn't going to make her feel any better. "I'll be in my room," she told them and left.

After closing herself in her room, she turned on the radio to try to lose herself in music. "...loveliest night in the year," a tenor sang, making her sigh.

She was getting into her pajamas when the news came on. "In Korea, another strike on Pyongyang by United Nation planes..." She clicked the radio off. Supposing the Korean War didn't end soon? Would Brian have to go when he turned eighteen?

Johanna sat on her bed disturbed at the thought of Brain leaving her, going where she couldn't go. Having him away at camp was bad enough. She loved other people besides Brian, but he was the only one she really trusted.

Naomi laughed at her because she had to have a light burning in her room all right. Not just a night-light, but a lamp. Brian didn't laugh--he understood, just as he understood everything about her.

She tossed and turned for a time, at last falling into an uneasy sleep. Her dreams were nebulous, unfocused. Strange shapes seemed to mime actions just beyond her grasp. She knew they were there but not who they were or what they did. Shadows.

Some one shook her. Frances? Was it time to get up already? Johanna opened her eyes to darkness. Her light was out! The bed seemed to be shifting under her and, when she tried to sit up, she was thrown back against the pillows. She screamed. No one was in her room and yet the bed shook and she could hear the clatter of falling objects hitting the floor. She screamed again, too frightened to move.

A circle of light danced in through the door. Flashlight. "Quickly, Johanna," her mother ordered. "Get downstairs. It's an earthquake."

Johanna scrambled from the bed and grabbed her mother's hand. By the time they reached the head to the stairs, the shaking had stopped. The hurried down the steps to where John stood in the foyer with another flashlight.

"Get away from the chandelier," he warned. "The dining room's safer."

The dim light of pre-dawn filtered through the dining room curtains. Naomi and Katrina were huddled together with Frances. The servants clattered in from the kitchen wing, Irma and the two new maids, Conception and Ethel. Feeling the floor glide under her feet again, Johanna clung to her mother.

"Stay calm everyone," her father urged. "Earthquakes don't last long. I think the worst of this one is over and the house is still standing. We'll be all right."

Talk burst out, everyone voicing relief.

"I'll make coffee," Irma declared. "I'm not going back to bed, you can be sure of that."

Someone pounded on the front door. John opened it to Pedro, who'd taken Jose's place.

"Barn is okay," Pedro said. "Stables okay."

"Come on in. We'll all have breakfast together. By the time we're done it'll be light enough to check for damage inside and out."

The dawn breakfast was uneasy at first, with the servants not accustomed to eating with the family in the dining room.

"Worst quake I've ever felt here," John said. "How about you, Pedro?"

"Si. Bad one. Like the Indians tell about up there." Pedro waved a hand toward the mountains. "
Ochenta--"

"Eighty, he means," Conception murmured.

Pedro flashed her a quelling glance. "Si, eighty years ago, Indians say mountains fall."

John nodded. "The Owens Valley quake in 1872. From what I've heard, a very bad one that even affected House--that's where the crack in the living room ceiling came from." He looked along the table, frowning. "Didn't Marie come down?"

Vera's hand flew to her mouth. "Oh dear Lord, I forgot about Marie."

Chapter 33

The earthquake survivors around the dining room table glanced at one another. No one had questioned, or noticed, Marie's absence until John asked where she was.

Frances rose. "I tried Marie's' door, but she had it locked and didn't answer when I called to her. I was in a hurry to get the twins downstairs, so I didn't persist. God forgive me, I thought the poor soul was drunk, like always, when the truth is she may have been lying there hurt."

"There's no key to the lock on Marie's door," Vera said, getting up to join Frances. "She didn't mind because she never locked her door."

John and Pedro followed the women up the stairs, with the children trailing behind. Johanna, Naomi and Katrina watched apprehensively as the men, unable to push the door open, brought axes to hack through it.

"She's dead," Katrina whispered. "I told you someone would die."

Johanna shook her head. "You just aid something awful would happen."

"After you left the feeling got worse and I told Naomi I could sense death, too," Katrina told her.

Naomi nodded in confirmation, eyes frightened.

As her father shoved his way into Marie's room through the demolished door, Johanna edged closer, not wanting to see inside, but knowing she must. Adults never wanted to tell you anything and that was worse than not knowing. Biting her lip, she peered through the shattered panels.

John and Pedro were lifting a fallen highboy from the floor, setting it upright again. Underneath was a tangled mass of clothes--no, not only clothes... Johanna felt her mother's hands on her shoulders, leading her away.

"This is no place for you," Vera said. "Take the twins downstairs into the library and shut the door. She released Johanna and gave her a little push. "Go. Do as I say."

"Marie's dead, isn't she?"

"There's nothing anyone could have done to save her. The door was jammed by the quake and she couldn't get out. Now take the girls downstairs. Katrina is a white as a ghost."

"What happened?" Naomi demanded after they were alone in the library,

"One of those tall dressers fell on Marie and killed her," Johanna said. She felt sick and not at all eager to talk about the accident.

The electricity was still off, so she crossed to the desk and turned on Daddy's new little radio that worked on batteries.

",,,measured 7.7 on the Richter Scale, making this a major earthquake," the announcer said. "Reports are coming in of railroad tunnels destroyed and some heavy damage in Tehachapi. Several persons are feared dead..."

Johanna walked away from the man's voice, from the twins, out of the library, out the front door, down the porch steps and into the sunlight. She headed for the stable, but stopped abruptly when she an immense rift in the earth between her and the outbuildings. As she stared in awe at the crevasse, the earth under her feet heaved several times in what she knew was an aftershock and, to her amazement, the rift closed part way, leaving a long crack.

Looking back at the house, she told herself safety lay nowhere. The Quake had killed Marie and maybe others in the towns. She thought of Brian in the mountains and prayed he was safe. But he had to be. It came to her then that, since his mother was dead, he'd be coming home for the funeral. But how could she rejoice in his homecoming, with such a reason behind it?

She took a deep breath and, stepping across the crack, made her way along the path among the pines to the grotto of St. Francis. She sighed with relief to see the saint still stood with the owl perched on his shoulder. Everything would be all right. Whatever the reason, Brian would be back at Hallow House.

With the series of continuing aftershocks, they talked and lived earthquakes all summer. Brian didn't return to camp after his mother's funeral, but Johanna was less happy than she'd thought. One day in the middle of August she sat by the pool with Naomi, watching the others swim and feeling completely out of sorts.

"I don't know why we had to stop having a tutor and start private school," she muttered. "Why couldn't Mama leave well enough alone?"

"I like school better," Naomi said unhelpfully. "It's fun." She gestured at the kids in the pool. "We've got lots of friends now."

"I know." Johanna's words were morose as she watched Sue splash water at Brian and heard her squeal happily when he dove in pursuit.

Glancing down at the two piece swimsuit she worse, Johanna grimaced. It was rosy pink, a color her mother insisted became her. Yet she had to more or less agree. The suit fit her well and made the most of her modest curves. The trouble didn't lie with the suit, but with Sue, whose yellow swimsuit barely contained her lush figure and contrasted brightly with her red hair.

"Sue's pretty, isn't she?" Naomi commented.

"Flashy, anyway."

"Why do you ask her here if you don't like her?"

Johanna didn't answer/ How could she explain that if she didn't respond to Sue's hints for an invitation, then Brian might. If he did invite Sue to go swimming, then maybe he'd also start asking her to do other things with him. Horseback riding. Tennis. And, when Kahweah Academy started classes in the fall, there'd be the dinner dances.

As it was, when Sue came to Hallow House to swim, Johanna made sure to include Cheryl as well. Though not as striking as Sue, Cheryl was pretty with her blue eyes and blond hair. Really blond, not the nondescript light brown Johanna felt her hair to be. Cheryl vied with Sue for Brian's attention--two seemed less of a threat than one.

Just when everyone thought all the minor quakes were over, the worst of the aftershocks came on August 22. The big crack in the front yard, partially filled in, closed completely. That night John suffered a mild heart attack.

Apparently Kevin had been urging him to retire and take it easy, because several weeks later, Johanna overheard the two of them talking in the library.

"Damn it, I'm only fifty-two," her father said. "Too young to retire."

"What does age have to do with it?" Kevin countered. "Why not think about passing on the responsibility for overseeing the business to somebody competent? You'll have to do that sooner or later anyway."