No Dark Valley (20 page)

“Here's your paper,” Patsy said, handing it to Celia. “I picked it up for you.” Celia thanked her and tossed it onto the couch. She had been in such a hurry to get to tennis practice this morning that she hadn't brought it in and then hadn't even noticed it when she came home later. She was ready to cancel the subscription anyway. Even though she still did a little writing for it from time to time, the Derby
Daily News
bored her.

The couple looked to be close to Celia's own age, the woman a little on the plump side but with shiny dark hair, perfectly straight white teeth, and enormous glamour-girl eyes. Patsy was introducing the couple in her slow, ponderous way, but Celia's mind was in such a state that all she caught was the woman's first name—Kimberly. The woman glanced up at the man and then cocked her head and smiled down at the baby, shifting into the silly kind of talk adults use with babies. “And this is baby Madison. Can Madison give the nice lady a smile?” Celia barely noticed the man except that he was tall. She tried not to look at the baby, but she couldn't help it. Madison—girl or boy, Celia couldn't tell at first—suddenly let out a string of gibberish, most of it unintelligible except for the last two words, which were very clearly “my ball.” The baby appeared to be well over a year old, probably walking by now, which Celia hoped her parents wouldn't let her do inside her apartment.

Celia nodded and introduced herself by first name only. She didn't offer to shake hands, and neither did Kimberly, who was busy pulling the baby's hood back and smoothing its dark hair, which had a tiny white bow clipped in it. So evidently it was a girl. Celia looked away. This was all she needed today. It came to her suddenly that this was the first time a baby had ever been inside her apartment, at least a real baby. Her dreams didn't count.

“Go ahead and look around,” she said. “I'm watching something in the kitchen.” And she turned and left them.

She stood for a moment against the kitchen counter with her eyes closed, then filled the sink with sudsy water and slowly set about washing up the things she had used to make the macaroni and cheese. Breathe in and out nice and slow, she told herself, and they'll be gone before you know it.
And don't look at her anymore!

As they proceeded through the apartment, she heard most of Patsy Stewart's commentary: “So Milton added this closet here to get rid of the wasted space” and “These are all new windows.” And a few seconds later, “We found this carpet at a close-out sale, and Milton laid it by himself. It's made in these big squares so you can replace just one if you stain it.” Then, “Lots of apartments only have showers, but Milton wanted a tub down here. He did all the plumbing himself.”

Patsy was clearly enjoying herself, reciting all the wonderful things she and Milton had done to make the apartment nice, plus the added bonus of getting to look around and see how Celia was keeping things up. Celia had wondered before if Patsy ever took sneak peeks at the apartment during the day while she was at work. She had to admit that she herself would be tempted to do that if she owned a house and had a renter.

The woman, Kimberly, responded enthusiastically to everything Patsy said. “Oh, how handy!” “Yes, that's very nice.” “What a great idea!” “We ought to think about doing this, Bruce.” “You don't even feel like you're in a basement down here!” While they were still back in the bedroom, she heard Kimberly say sharply, “No no, don't touch!” and the baby started crying. “Oh, happy day,” Kimberly said. “I hope she didn't break it.”

Celia thought of all the things in her bedroom that could be broken. She hadn't heard anything fall over, though, and no sounds of glass breaking. On top of her bureau she had a clay figurine of an old Chinese man fishing. Maybe the baby had somehow grabbed the fishing pole, a tiny thing as slender as a toothpick, and snapped it in half. A baby certainly could break that. Or maybe she had knocked the whole figurine onto the floor. On the bedside table next to Celia's most expensive lamp, the one with the porcelain base and hand-stitched shade, was a beautiful sculpture of a nude couple embracing. Surely the baby hadn't broken either of those. Those would have made a loud sound.

Curious and a little worried, Celia quickly dried her hands and started toward the bedroom, only to find the others coming out into the living room again. She saw that the man was now carrying the baby, and Kimberly was holding a silver necklace in both hands, examining the clasp. “She still loves to play with my jewelry,” she was saying to Patsy. “She broke my best gold chain last week.”

“Maybe you ought to quit wearing it until she outgrows it.” This was offered by the man. Typical of a man, Celia thought. Practical as the day is long. Always ready with a suggestion to fix any trouble.

Celia pretended to be checking the thermostat, relieved that it wasn't anything of hers that had gotten broken. While they went into the kitchen to look around, she went into the bedroom to stay out of their way. “Milton found this countertop in a Dumpster over at a construction site,” Patsy said. “It was brand-new, but it must have been what was left over. It fit perfectly in here. And all the cabinets came from one of our neighbors. She was remodeling, so she gave us these, and Milton just repainted them.”

Kimberly laughed. “Sounds like Milton ought to have one of those home repair shows on TV. Maybe he can help us out, huh, Bruce?”

With hardly a breath, Patsy forged ahead. “And we got a good sale on the refrigerator. It had a dent on the side that's against the wall, so they marked it down two hundred dollars. It has an ice maker, too.” It occurred to Celia that Patsy was talking louder than she usually did, probably to make sure that Celia heard it all and would be filled anew with gratitude and admiration for all the talents her paragon of a landlord possessed.

Finally, after Patsy pointed out the second door into the bathroom, the one off the tiny hallway next to the kitchen, they were done. They came out of the kitchen into the living room, and Celia came out from the bedroom. The man, still holding the baby, stopped in front of the first oil painting Celia had ever bought and stared hard at it—a small still life including a vase of delphiniums, a pincushion, a wine jug, a string of beads, and several pine cones, all artfully arranged on a brilliant blue cloth. Celia wished he would step back a little. She could imagine the baby swinging out a fist and knocking the painting off the wall. Or spitting up all over it, though the baby looked a little too old to still be doing that.

Kimberly smiled at Celia and extended her hand. “You don't know how much we appreciate this,” she said. “I sure hope we didn't mess up your schedule.” Celia assured her they hadn't. “We're anxious to get started on this basement project,” Kimberly continued. “My husband has to travel a lot, so we like the idea of somebody living in the basement.”

Celia felt a prick of irritation. She hated it when women referred to “my husband” right in the presence of the man himself. Why didn't she just call him by his name. Bruce, wasn't it? “My husband” sounded so proprietorial, as if the woman wanted to remind any single women present that this man was already claimed, rubbing it in: “I have a man, but you don't.”

She glanced up at the man, noticing for the first time that though he also had a nice smile and a head full of thick dark hair like his wife, the skin on one side of his neck and jaw was red and shriveled. She saw also that one of his hands bore the same scars. Celia wondered if he'd been in a fire and whether it had happened before or after he and Kimberly had met.

“Nice art you've got,” he said, waving a hand around at the walls. “Lots of good stuff.” Celia nodded and thanked him. At least he appreciated good art. And really, aside from the scars, he was a nice-looking guy. She looked at Kimberly. Except for the fact that she was considerably heavier than her husband, the two of them actually looked enough alike to be brother and sister. Funny how that so often was the case with married couples.

“You know,” the man went on, looking back at the painting and pointing to the blue cloth, “that's the same blue you get when you react a copper ion with ammonia solution. Copper ammonia complex ion—that's the name for it.”

Kimberly laughed. “Can you tell Bruce was a science major?”

There, at least she used his name.

Bruce smiled again. “Well, not exactly, but I did take a lot of science and math.” Then he looked right at Celia and said, “You can get some beautiful colors in the lab. The barium salts usually make green, and strontium is a crimson red. Sometimes the copper goes to a pale blue instead of the royal blue like in that painting.” With his free hand he pointed to the wall and started gesturing. “If you can picture the periodic chart, see, all the elements in the middle will make colors. The ones stacked on the sides will be clear. It's really—”

Kimberly broke in. “Hey, Bruce, we need to go and get out of this poor woman's hair. I'm sure she has more important things to do than stand around listening to you talk about the periodic chart.” She held her hands out to the baby. “Here, Madison sweetie, come to Mama. Let's go home and get you to bed.”

“My husband travels a lot, too,” Patsy said. Such a remark, so ill-timed as to be irrelevant, was typical for Patsy.

But Kimberly touched her shoulder sympathetically and said, “Well, after we move in, we can sit around together and feel sorry for each other.” Just then the baby reached up and touched Kimberly's earring. “Oh no, you don't, you little rascal, you,” Kimberly said, catching her hand. They thanked Celia again and headed out the door.

“I've got to make up a test tonight,” she heard Bruce say to Kimberly right before she shut the door behind them. Celia wondered briefly what kind of job he had that would involve both traveling a lot and making up tests. Maybe he did training sessions for some corporation or chemical tests for a research lab or something.

“Oh, happy day,” Kimberly said. “Another late night.”

Oh, happy day
. Evidently it was a pet phrase of Kimberly's. One of Celia's aunts used to say the same thing. She was pretty sure it was Aunt Molly, though it could have been Aunt Bess. Or maybe it was both of them. Anyway, she knew for a fact that it used to make her grandmother mad to hear it. Her lips would get that same disapproving pucker as when Celia let loose with a bad word. It had always been Grandmother's opinion—and that's all it was, an opinion—that any phrase borrowed from the Bible and used carelessly was equivalent to taking the Lord's name in vain. And she had extended this “conviction,” as she called it, to include words from hymns. As if the words to all those silly hymns were inscribed on the stone tablets Moses brought down from Mount Sinai!

“O Happy Day” was somewhere close to the back of
Tabernacle Hymns
. Celia remembered that much, along with the fact that it was on the left side of the page, at the bottom, under “Just As I Am,” the hymn they used to sing at the end of every service at Bethany Hills Bible Tabernacle while the pastor begged, cajoled, and wheedled for one more soul to come forward and repent, sometimes stopping between stanzas to tell awful stories of people refusing to come, then stepping outside to get mowed down and killed instantly.

“O Happy Day” was a short hymn the way it was printed on the page, but it had a couple of repeats in it. A phrase from one of the stanzas came to her now as she stood there leaning against the front door: something about “this blissful center, rest.” Rest sounded like a good thing to Celia, but something she knew would never be hers in any permanent sense.

As she turned and walked slowly back toward the kitchen, she tried to think of another song to drown out this one. What was that one she had heard so many times on the golden-oldies radio station on her way to and from work? “I can't see me lovin' nobody but you for all my life . . .” But she couldn't think of what came next, and once again a line from “O Happy Day” took over: “Nor ever from my Lord depart, with Him of every good possessed.”

Of every good possessed
—that was a joke. She often felt possessed all right, but not of anything good. Her grandmother used to talk about people who were demon possessed, had even used those words in connection with Celia's friend Ansell one time. Celia had laughed at her then, but later she found out a demon really could get inside a person's head. It was a demon called guilt. It could make you see and hear awful things, especially at nighttime. And it could take up residence inside you and torment you for years and years.

The hymn rolled on relentlessly, now the chorus: “Happy day, happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away.” Celia stopped in the middle of the kitchen and stood very still. She closed her eyes and pictured her mind as a big computer screen. She imagined herself clicking on
Tabernacle Hymns
, then dragging it to the trash can and hitting Empty Trash. In school she had always been grateful for such a good memory. It helped with all the mindless memorizing that had to be done for tests. But it sure had its downside, too. How could it be that she hadn't thought of a certain stupid hymn for almost twenty years, yet here it was, playing through her mind note by note, word by word?

She opened the oven to check on the macaroni and cheese. It was starting to bubble up around the sides, but the timer still had several minutes to go. She went back to the living room, turned the television on again, and restarted the movie. She sat down on the sofa and watched as Elizabeth comforted her sister Jane in her bed at Netherfield. Somehow, though, the movie had lost its appeal for right now. She knew what would come next, and what would come after that, and somehow she wasn't all that interested anymore. After all, this wasn't even a real story about real people.