The Color of Light (18 page)

Father John called when I was in the kitchen getting us each a fresh cup of coffee.

“McGumption,” he said, “My stalwart cook, Larry, is still MIA. I could use some help with lunch today. Sorry for the short notice, and I know you have things to do, but I was hoping you might be able to give me a hand.”

“I would, Padre,” I said. “But there is just too much going on here this morning for me to leave. Why don't you call Kevin Halloran? Tell him I said he should help you. It'll do him good.”

“Fine idea,” he said. “Fine idea.” He did not, and would never, say a word about why he thought so, but I knew. Kevin could certainly have used some of Father John's wise counsel, or just a good listener, as long as the price to pay wasn't a string of Hail Marys and Our Fathers; Kevin had fallen away from the church long before I had.

With her friends due in from the Oakland Airport at any time, Susan and I retreated to the dining room. She helped me move a stack of boxes someone had set on top of the access hatch to the gravity heater under the house so that the inspector coming Tuesday could get at it. Then we sat on the floor in front of the sideboard she was taking and sorted out its contents. She was interested in the old linens. There were tablecloths, napkins, runners, and doilies variously embellished with crocheted edges, Madeira work, embroidery, ladder-stitched hems, hand-painted or silk-screened flowers and bucolic scenes. Some had come down through Mom's family, some from Dad's, and some my parents had acquired during their fifty-eight years together. Neither Susan nor I had any idea what came from where, and it didn't really matter. As we went through them, taking turns making selections, we got caught up on family and each other.

“I always loved Max,” she said, setting aside hand-crocheted antimacassars I didn't remember ever seeing before—too fussy for Mom's taste, and mine. “But he's awfully young to be your uncle. Is there a story?”

“A short one,” I said. “When Dad was in college, his mother died. A year or two later, my grandfather married again, a younger woman, and they had Max. When Max was about ten, his parents died in an accident on an icy road. And Max came to live at our house.”

“You and I weren't around yet, were we?”

“No. Mark and Emily were just toddlers, I think, and they were fourteen years older than me. Max was like their big brother, but he always made them call him Uncle. Me, too, when I finally showed up.”

Susan folded a linen tablecloth and matching napkins into a box. “I was sorry Bob and I couldn't come out for Emily's funeral. I was abroad somewhere, working on a project.”

“Your mom and dad came,” I said. “It was good to see them. But to tell you the truth, my parents were so numb that I doubt they noticed who was there and who wasn't. They were burying their second child, and it's just not supposed to happen that way for parents.”

“No it isn't.”

Odd though, that before I thought about Mom and Dad at Emily's funeral, an image of Bart Bartolini at his wife's service flashed behind my eyes.

My sister lay locked in a coma for several years before she decided to die. I think that all of us who loved her suffered through the worst shockwaves of grief at the beginning, when she was shot, so that by the time of her funeral, though we were all sad because the inevitable had at last occurred, there was more than a little relief that her ordeal, and ours, was at last over.

It had been very different when Mark died in Vietnam. For weeks, maybe months, after the news of his death came, my parents moved through space and time as if they were deaf and blind tourists from another place floating among us in their own fragile bubble. They didn't always hear me when I spoke to them, they answered questions I never asked. From moment to moment they forgot where they were and what they had been doing. Dinner burned on the stove. And Max slept on the floor in my room until the worst was over.

That somnolent, semi-coherent state they were in is the way I remember Bart after his wife died. It would have been as pointless for the police to interview him then as it would have been to ask Mom to recite the Gettysburg Address after Mark died.

“Maggie?” Susan rubbed my hand. “I'm sorry. Talking about Emily made you sad.”

“No.” I sat up straight and took a deep breath. “I'm just very ready to be finished here.”

The four book club friends arrived in a flurry of excited conversation. All those female voices brought Max inside.

It took a few minutes to sort Ann from Angie and Jean from Maureen:

“The baby in the seat behind me cried through the entire flight.”

“I love this house. It reminds me of my grandmother's.”

“Is that a Stickley chair?”

“It was so humid when we left home, and it is so lovely here. What a relief.”

Max, ever the charmer, was in his element. “We have the advantage of that great big offshore air-conditioner,” he said, responding to the comment about the weather. “What you need in Minnesota is an ocean.”

They laughed, and he loved hearing it. They were all, like Susan, smart, attractive career women. They had met many years earlier, when they worked in the marketing department of the company that made sticky notes, and stayed friends. Two of them, Jean and Maureen, still worked there, though the other three had moved on. As a group, they felt right at home when they saw all the furniture festooned with little pastel paper squares.

“I'm tempted to call my boss and offer him a new marketing angle for the product,” Maureen said when Susan explained my labeling system. “If he goes for it, Maggie, you'll get a finder's fee.”

“I wouldn't turn it down,” I said. She was kidding, I wasn't.

Ann and Angie, who dealt in antiques, declared Dad's chair-side table to be too valuable to leave behind. Who knew what abuse the tenants might heap upon it? I had already decided to take it with me, but hadn't pulled off its blue note. I was taking the chair and its mate, and it had occurred to me when Susan brought my attention to it that the table belonged with them; I would somehow make space for the three pieces in my home workroom.

There was a discussion about a rocking chair in the sun porch that Mom said her great-grandfather had made. The experts agreed that the rocker was very old, quite plain, worth little, and absolutely charming. It was labeled for transport to Minneapolis.

During the upstairs foray, the dragonfly brooch caused some excitement and a lively debate about its age and market value. I heard the front doorbell, gave the brooch a last fond glance, and went down to see who was there.

Gracie Nussbaum greeted me by pinching her nostrils together. “What is in that Dumpster, dear? Something you found in the back of the freezer?”

“It does smell ripe,” I said, ushering her inside. “The refuse people promised they would pick it up today.”

She pressed her cheek against mine. “How's it coming over here?”

“We're almost to the end, Gracie,” I said. “We're just waiting for the trucks to come and haul away Susan's things and Mom's piano. I know, I think, what's going home with me. When all that's cleared away, we're ready for the cleaning crew and then University Housing's walk-through.”

“What a relief it will be for you to have it done.” She turned toward the stairs when she heard the women's laughter. “Is Susan upstairs?”

“She is.”

“If you'll excuse me, dear, I'll just go up and say hello.” On her way up the stairs, she glanced back at me. “You should call your mother.”

I heard a truck out front and opened the door to see who it was. I called up the stairs to Susan. Her hauler had arrived.

Despite the advice offered by five women executives, the hauling crew made short work of strapping protective quilted pads around Susan's pieces and loading them all onto a pallet that was set on the truck's hydraulic back gate. When everything was arranged on the pallet, the load was tightly cocooned inside heavy plastic wrap. Susan signed the bill of lading, and watched to make sure that her pallet was correctly and securely labeled. Before they closed the truck's big door, she slipped the crew chief some cash and offered an admonition about her expectations for a safe delivery.

After a few near misses with the Dumpster and the flower borders, the truck was on its way down the street. There was a collective sigh and a moment of silence.

“Mission accomplished,” Jean offered with a grin.

“Thank you for everything, cousin.” Susan wrapped an arm around me. “We'll collect our bags and get out of your hair now.”

“Stay for lunch?” I asked.

“Thanks, but we really should get on the road,” Maureen said. She turned to Gracie. “Where do you live?”

“Just a couple of blocks over,” Gracie said. “My bag is all packed and ready to go.”

I laughed. “Have you signed on as tour guide, Gracie?”

“No dear, I'm just a hitchhiker. Your mother is driving up to San Simeon this afternoon to meet us. She wanted to visit with Susan. The change in plans made that much easier for her. And she didn't need to talk very hard to persuade me to come along.”

“Oh” was all I could think to say. Mom didn't need to clear her plans with me, but I admit that I felt quite left out of the loop. I was tired. A few days on the coast would have been a welcome break. Not today, though. But soon, very soon. I managed what I hoped was a smile. “Have fun.”

Gracie took my arm as we all walked back into the house. “Your mother would have called, dear. But you know how you dig, Maggie. She simply does not want you to delve further into Tina Bartolini's private life. And it is private, you know. After all these years, can we let her memory rest in peace?”

“You sounded like Mom just then, Gracie.”

“I tried my best to.” She wagged her finger at me. “Why do you dig so, Maggie, dear?”

“I've given that some thought, Gracie. I think it's because I always knew that people were keeping secrets from me. And on some level, I knew the secrets were about me.”

“Did you?”

“I'd have to be deaf and blind not to.”

Apparently that was a good enough answer for her. She smiled up into my face and patted my cheek. “Promise me two things, dear?”

“Maybe.”

“Promise me you will call your mother right away. And promise me that this time you won't grill her about events she feels are best left buried.”

As I watched Susan go upstairs for her bag, I thought about something she had said earlier. Some secrets are too big to be kept forever. I thought it was also possible that some secrets were too big to be revealed.

“Maggie?” Gracie gave my arm a squeeze to get my attention.

“Maybe,” I said.

Max carried Susan's bag to the six-person van they had rented for the trip. A “mommy van” Angie called it.

“I wish I could be of more help to you,” Susan said, taking my arm as we walked toward the van. “This is such a big job. But I think I can be most useful now by just getting out of your way.”

“You've helped more than you know,” I said. “I enjoyed the little time we've had. Now, go have a wonderful time.”

“You will try to join us by the end of the week?”

“I'll do my best,” I said.

Max handed her into the van. After we waved good-bye, Max, with a heavy sigh, said, “God, would I love to be in that van.”

“Call Susan. They'll turn around and come back for you.” I told him Mom and Gracie were joining the party and he might as well.

“Nope.” He draped an arm over my shoulders and pulled me against him. “I promised Jean-Paul I won't let you out of my sight until he gets back tonight.”

“He'll be here soon enough. If you want to go, then go.”

He shook his head. “Even if he hadn't asked, I'd be staying. You and Casey are all the family I have left, kiddo. Nothing happens to you on my watch. Besides, we have work to do.”

I pulled away enough to look up at him. “You're not going to start sleeping on my bedroom floor again, are you?”

The question took him aback. “You remember that?”

“I do,” I said. “Something Susan said this morning reminded me. Why did you do that?”

“I don't know, exactly,” he said with a little shrug, releasing me. We walked back inside, away from the smelly Dumpster. “It was probably more for my sake than yours. After Mark died, I didn't want you to wake up in the night feeling sad and alone. I wanted to be there if you needed me.”

“Uncle Max, Susan asked me why you're so much younger than Dad. It occurred to me that when you lost your parents, you were about the same age my friend Beto was when his mother died.”

He thought for a moment before he nodded. “Pretty close, yeah.”

“I don't know very much about what happened to your parents.”

He knuckled my head. “You weren't around yet, squirt.”

“Max, after they died, did you sometimes wake up feeling sad and alone?”

“That was some conversation you and Susan had,” he said, trying to pull off a scowl but failing. “But, yes, sometimes I did. I thought I had plenty to be sad about. You know, strange room, new town, new school, Mom and Dad gone, living with my big brother. But Al and Betsy just folded me into their household like I was one of their own. Mark and Emily were little pains in the ass and I fell in love with them. It all felt very normal very soon.”

“I suppose I should thank you for softening the ground around here so that when Dad got me away from Isabelle and brought me home, Mom didn't toss me out on my ear.”

“Yep, you were exactly what Betsy needed all right, one more little pain in the ass to bring up.”

The piano mover came. The three-man crew locked Mom's beautiful instrument onto a triangular steel-frame dolly, wheeled it out the front door and lowered it off the porch on a portable hydraulic lift. I asked the crew boss, a giant of a man named Hong, if I could pay him to also shift some furniture out to the garage for me.