Specter (9780307823403) (15 page)

“I don’t think she’d mind, unless it put a strain on the others in the house.” I move away from the blasts of chilly air coming from the window unit.

“We can shut the door,” Julie answers, and quickly turns the dial on the air conditioner to the off position. The motor grinds and sputters to a halt. The silence is a blessing.

“What a good idea, Julie!” I smile at her, and she smiles back.

It’s funny how sometimes you can be so tired you go past the need to sleep, like a clock that’s been wound so tightly the mainspring twangs loose. I lie on the bed in the quietness of the room, staring at the little bumps and marks in the plaster on the ceiling. If I talk to Dr. Lynn—
when
I talk to Dr. Lynn. What do I say? I have to think it out, so there will be no time wasted. The accident. The near accident. The man Julie saw. The glass duck she destroyed. The apartment. Her treasure box.

Her treasure box.

I’m not a snoop. At the same time I tell myself that this is an emergency situation. There may be something in that box that gives the answers. Should I ask her to show me the contents? She won’t do it. She was very careful to let me see only the picture of her father. She said there was more to show me, but it wasn’t the right time. Suppose I ask her if now is the time?

Suppose I find the treasure box and look for myself?

Off the bed. Barefoot, and the braided rug is stiff under my toes. Where would she put it, and why do I feel so guilty?

I check the chest of drawers first. Quiet. Not a sound. Slowly. Carefully. Ease it open. Feel around through her things.

Nothing in any of the drawers. No point in checking my own. What about the closet? It must
be in the closet. Wait—under the bed. The braided rug scratches my cheek. Nothing there. Too obvious. I should have known.

There isn’t much in the closet. How could she have hidden it? It couldn’t be in this room. It’s not behind the guitar. Where is the box?

As I back out of the closet, I realize something isn’t right. There’s a strange smell. Gas!

I open the door. Tendrils of the invisible odor creep through the hallway. Run! Don’t breathe! Throw open the front door! Wide! And the kitchen door! It’s the oven! It’s on and wide open! I turn it off and scream, “Julie! Where are you?”

She’s in one of the plush chairs, staring at me. “Julie! Get out of here!”

I pull at her arm, and she stirs. We choke and cough as I drag her out of the house, down the porch steps, and onto the lawn. Thank God for the breeze! It’s much stronger, scudding blue-black clouds ahead of it.

“What do you think you were doing?” I shout at Julie.

“I was making some lunch for us.”

“With the gas on full, coming out of the open oven?”

Her lip curls out again in a gesture that’s familiar to me now. “I put some cheese slices on the bread, and put them on the broiler. Then turned the oven on to broil. That’s all.”

There is the drip, drip of the air conditioner in the living room window. The drops slap the wooden
porch. “You turned off the air conditioner in the living room, Julie. Did you turn off the one in Mrs. Cardenas’s bedroom, too?”

The wind pushes in sudden spurts against my back. It carries the sharp fragrance of rain.

“I liked the quiet,” Julie says. “It was nice in our bedroom with the air conditioner off, and I wasn’t hot. Air conditioners in windows make a lot of noise.”

“Julie, have you ever turned on an oven before?”

“Of course. Lots of times. Sometimes when no one came home, I made bread and cheese for myself. All you do is just turn them on.”

“You must have used ovens with automatic pilots or electric ovens. Didn’t you smell the gas?”

“Something smelled funny, but I didn’t know what it was.”

How can she look so innocent? She must be innocent. Surely she wouldn’t— “Don’t you know you could have killed us?”

She opens her mouth wide and wails, and I find myself hushing her, comforting her. “I know you wouldn’t do it on purpose, Julie. I know.”

The wind taps my back with a low bough from the crape myrtle. “I’ll open most of the windows. This wind will help clear the air. You sit here on the porch. Right here. Okay?”

“Okay,” Julie repeats. She huddles on the top step. I enter the house, throwing open all the windows except those with air conditioners attached.
Having both doors wide has already helped, and the wind is a bonus.

The house comes to life. The curtains rise and quiver. Papers from the living room table ruffle to the floor. The nearly empty napkin holder is knocked off the kitchen table with a clatter. I stand in the doorway, staring at the oven. There is the open broiler with two slices of cheese-covered bread. Julie was telling the truth.

Julie, who was sitting in the doily-draped chair, eyes staring as I ran into the room.

I lean against the wall, cold to the bone. Cold bones. Cold body. Cold mind. The cheese and bread are props. If Julie had thought they were broiling, she’d be in the kitchen watching them, wouldn’t she? Cheese melts and browns in a hurry, burns in that extra instant.

I’ve been asking questions and avoiding the answers. Face it. I’ve looked at the scars on Julie’s body, heard about the scars on Julie’s life, and told myself, poor Julie, poor Julie, there is nothing wrong with Julie’s mind.

Now I’m frightened. Should I tell Mrs. Cardenas what I think? No. She wouldn’t understand this any more than I do. I’ve got to talk to Dr. Lynn. But what should I say? Are my suspicions enough?

“Can I come in now? It’s starting to rain.” Pitiful little voice, begging to be forgiven.

“Then we’d better get these windows down,”
I say. “You can help me.” I hurry to each room, yanking sashes in place and fastening them. Julie works with me, a helpful nine-year-old. We leave open gaps in two of the porch windows and the window over the kitchen sink to suck in the coolness of the rain-washed air.

The red plush lion’s mouth is scratchy-soft, and I drop into it, stretching my legs and curling my toes. Julie comes to stand in front of me.

“I’m hungry, Dina. I want some lunch. Will you teach me how to make the oven work?”

“Let’s try some of Carmen’s
empanadas
instead,” I tell her. “I don’t smell any more gas in the house, but I’d rather wait awhile to light the oven.”

Now is the time. There are some answers I need, and I want them before I talk to Dr. Lynn. “Julie, why don’t you bring me your treasure box? You said there were some things in it that you wanted to show me. I’d like to see them, and we can talk about them.”

“I’m hungry,” Julie says. And in the same matter-of-fact voice she adds, “My box is in another secret place. Even if you look and look, you’ll never be able to find it.”

The rain is a squall that pounds and passes. Mrs. Cardenas comes home after it has gone. “We sat it out in the parking lot,” she says. “I had to hear all about the problems Angie’s daughter Nina is having with her husband. It wouldn’t be so bad, except everybody knows the story, and I heard it first from Carmen.”

Blue slips into sharp little corners. Watching me slantwise, watching and waiting.

“Did everything go all right today? Well, it must have. I see you turned off the air conditioners when it cooled down. Good for you. Did you have enough for lunch? I forgot to tell you, there’s some chocolate ice cream in the freezer section.”

She has answered her own question, but I feel I must say something. “We had a little trouble with
the oven,” I tell her. “The pilot light wasn’t on, so there was gas in the house. We opened all the windows and aired it out.” I wish I knew more about psychology. Right now I think Julie needs stability, and Dr. Lynn would know how to help her, not Mrs. Cardenas. My suspicions would only frighten Mrs. Cardenas.

“
¡Por supuesto!
I should have shown you how to light the pilot,” she says. She begins to unbutton her blouse as she moves toward the hallway. “Let me change clothes, and we’ll get dinner started. Who wants to peel potatoes?”

“I do,” I answer.

Julie says, “I’ll watch.”

So she wants to be near me. Good. It will help me keep watch over her.

And so it goes through the rest of the day and on into the evening. We read the first chapter of
Tom Sawyer
, and she seems interested until she notices it’s time for cartoons on television, and she insists that we watch them together. She’s my tag-along, and after dinner she sits on her bed and watches me brush my hair. I think it’s at least half an inch longer.

I take out what is left of the tiny bottle of the perfume I got for Christmas and dab it on my neck and wrists. I don’t know what good it will do. The spicy tomato-onion fragrance of the stew Mrs. Cardenas cooked for dinner has blanketed the house. It overpowers the perfume.

Mrs. Cardenas pokes her head in the doorway.
“You look very pretty in that yellow dress, Dina. We can take it in around the shoulders and back, but for now it doesn’t matter. Girls look pretty in dresses. Dave will like how you look tonight.”

“Dave is just a friend,” I tell her.

She giggles. “Sure he is, and I hope there’ll be lots of Daves in your life.
Sea lo que sea
, it’s nice for a girl to have boyfriends who put pink spots in their cheeks.”

She leaves to answer the telephone, but she is soon back. She looks at me questioningly. “Dr. Manning is on the phone for you, Dina. She says she’s returning your call.”

“Thank you,” I say. I don’t look at Julie.

I go into her bedroom and pick up the phone. I feel as though everyone in the house was listening.

“I got your message, Dina. Is everything all right?”

“I’m sorry to bother you. I told Alice it wasn’t important. I—I just wanted to talk to you.”

“How is everything going with Mrs. Cardenas?”

“Fine. She and her husband are very good to us.”

“And Julie?”

Not a sound. They can hear every word I say. “How is Dr. Paull? Are you still dating him?”

She pauses. “You didn’t call to ask about my personal life. Do you need to talk to me, but you can’t right now?”

“Yes.”

“Is it something urgent?”

“I don’t know.” I have to get the answers first. When I talk to Dr. Lynn about Julie, I want to be fair. I want all the facts in place, not just suspicions. I know there are too many people who come to the hospital for help, too few people to help them. Julie should have the best help possible.

“I’ve got a pretty heavy load for the next few days,” she says. “Maybe Thursday you could call me, or try to come by the hospital. But if you need to see me before then, don’t hesitate to phone. Will that work out for you, Dina?”

“That will be fine,” I answer.

As I finish the call, it’s as though the house breathes again. There are footsteps in the hall, and Mrs. Cardenas is telling Julie that Carmen’s children are going to come to play on Saturday.

I join them.

“Well, Dina,” she says, “how was Dr. Lynn?”

“We didn’t chat much. She just asked how everything was going, and I told her fine.” She’s looking at me intently. So is Julie. What else do I say? “She’s dating Dr. Paull.”

“Everybody knows that,” Mrs. Cardenas says.

The ache at the back of my mind becomes words. “I wish she had told me she’d take me back to the home to visit again.”

“Ahhh. That’s it.” Mrs. Cardenas’s arm is around my shoulders. “You’re homesick,
Niñita
. That I can understand. But I’ll try to make you a happy home here.”

The doorbell rings, and she propels herself away from me and down the hall, calling, “That will be Dave.”

Julie hasn’t said a word. She is the little cat, staring, staring.

“Mr. and Mrs. Cardenas are kind. This will be a good place to stay,” I tell her. One last sweep with the hairbrush.

“For the rest of your life,” she says.

Oh, dear. I haven’t time. I can hear Dave’s voice and Mrs. Cardenas’s treble punctuation. “Julie, I tried to explain to you about what Dave and I said. I thought you understood.”

“Dina! Dave is here!”

“Julie, I have to see Dave now.”

Julie, without a word, hops off the bed and walks ahead of me down the hall.

“Hi,” Dave says to her. He smiles at me.

“The evening is so nice,” Mrs. Cardenas says. “You young people go out on the front porch. It’s too stuffy in here.”

“Stuffy?” Mr. Cardenas says, peering over the top of his newspaper. “Then why don’t you turn on the air conditioners again?”

“Be quiet, Carlos,” she says.

Mrs. Cardenas opens the door. Dave and I go outside, Julie with us.

“Julie,” Dave says, “I bet there’s something you want to watch on television.”

“I want to be with you and Dina,” she says.

“Not this time,” he says.

“Let her stay, Dave.” She’s so small, so much alone.

But Mrs. Cardenas has noticed Julie’s absence, and the door opens. “Julie,” she says, “I’m making popcorn for Carlos. Come and help me.”

“Popcorn?” Mr. Cardenas says. “You know I can’t eat popcorn with these teeth!”

Mrs. Cardenas has pulled Julie inside, and the door closes.

“Sit down,” Dave says quietly. He pulls the two chairs together. “I thought of something.”

I wish I could see his expression, but the porch is mottled in black and moonlight, and Dave’s face is in darkness.

“Last year our high school put on the musical
Oliver
,” he says. “You know
Oliver
, don’t you?”

“I saw the movie years ago, but I hated it. I hated the way the children had to live. I never liked Dickens.”

“Don’t you remember? The bad guy in the story was Bill Sikes.”

I gasp. “And the woman who loved him—wasn’t her name—?”

We say it together. “Nancy.”

“Wait a minute!” Memories are rushing back. “And she sang a song—”As Long As He Needs Me”! Oh, Dave! That’s the play Julie’s mother was in, and she took the part of Nancy!”

“When was this?”

“It must have been years ago. Julie says when she was little, her father took her to see the play.”

“What if there was something between her mother and the guy who played Bill Sikes? What if Julie just kept thinking of him as Sikes?”