With an Extreme Burning (8 page)

It would have been, would be, so much easier if he still believed. And what made it even harder was that he wasn't sure why he didn't, or just what it was that made him lose his faith.

He was in the garage, working on the sideboard, when he heard the car come up the hill and swing into his driveway. Now, who was that? Cecca? Yesterday he'd as much as invited her to stop by whenever she felt like it. He put down the router he'd been using, went out through the side door.

Not Cecca—Jerry Whittington. Dix felt a small letdown. Jerry was a good guy and he meant well, but he had a tendency, like Eileen Harrell, to be pushily cheerful, as if he thought it was his mission in life to infect others with his viral sunniness. They had been friends for over three years, since just after Jerry moved to Los Alegres from Washington State, and his upbeat disposition had been easy enough to take before the accident. The past three weeks, though, Jerry had made a crusade out of trying to cheer him up, drag him back into their circle of mutual friends and activities. Mostly Dix resented the hands-on intrusion. He knew the dangers of prolonged, solitary grieving and he had no intention of succumbing to them. He needed time, that was all. He just couldn't seem to make Jerry understand that.

“ 'Morning,” Jerry said. “Hey, what're you doing in those clothes? It's ten o'clock.”

“Working in the garage.”

“Well, hurry up and change. We've got an eleven o'clock tee time.”

“Golf? I'm not up to a round of golf.”

Jerry had a way of squinting lopsidedly when he was bemused. “Why'd you change your mind?”

“I didn't. What made you think I wanted to play?”

“Didn't you get my message?”

“What message?”

“The one I left on your machine. Yesterday afternoon.”

“No. I was out most of yesterday and I haven't gone near the phone since.”

“Oh. Damn. I thought it'd be a good idea for you to get out, get some fresh air and a little exercise. When you didn't call back, I went ahead and set up a foursome with Tom and George.”

“Jerry, I'm sorry. But I just don't feel up to it.”

“Do you a world of good.”

“I don't think so, not today.”

Jerry gave him a long, probing look. He was a couple of years Dix's junior, trim and sinewy from all the golf and tennis he played. Electric-blue eyes and craggy blond good looks that kept him well supplied with female companionship. You might take him, as Dix had the first time they'd met, for someone in an outdoor trade: builder, engineer. In fact he was a CPA. And a good one; he'd saved the Mallory's several hundred dollars in taxes last year. He was divorced and lived alone. The divorce, which must have been painful because he wouldn't talk much about it, was the reason he'd moved to California. The reason he'd picked Los Alegres, he claimed, was that it was a town with fewer CPAs per its population than any other he'd found. Jerry was nothing if not practical.

“You holding up all right?” he asked.

“More or less. Don't I look it?”

“A little ragged around the edges.”

“I didn't sleep too well last night.”

“Any particular reason? I mean … well …”

“I know what you mean.” He had no intention of telling Jerry about the tormentor; theirs was not the serious, confiding kind of friendship. For that matter, he wouldn't have felt comfortable confiding in any of his male friends. Maybe that was why he'd blurted it out to Elliot last night: Elliot invited confidence. Today, though, he wished he hadn't. Talking about it hadn't done him any good, had it? “No, no particular reason,” he said. “Just a bad night.”

“You eating regularly? Look a little thin.”

“Thin, hell. I'm as fit as you are. I told you how I got rid of the pot belly I was growing.”

“Hundred laps a day in the pool, right.”

“Hundred and fifty.”

“I'm impressed. If this country ever forms a Senior Olympics swim team, I'll write you a letter of recommendation.”

“Thanks a bunch.”

“But you still need to get out into the world again, see your friends, take up the old pursuits. Sure I can't talk you into at least nine holes today?”

“I'd rather not, Jerry. Maybe next weekend.”

“Next weekend you've got another date.”

“Oh? What's that?”

“My place, Saturday afternoon anytime after four. I'm hosting a pre-Labor Day barbecue. Sound good?”

“Well …”

“Eight or ten friends, that's all. Cecca, Owen, Tom and Beth, George and Laura, Sid and Helen, probably Margaret Allen. I wanted Ted and Eileen to come, too, but they won't be back.”

“Back?”

“From Blue Lake. You did know they were going away?”

“No. No, I didn't.”

“Left this morning. Coming back next Monday.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Day before you start teaching again, right? School starts on the seventh?”

“Early this year, yes.”

“How do you feel about getting back into the classroom?”

“Good. I'm looking forward to it.”

“That's the attitude. College kids are full of life. Stimulating to be around.”

“Very.”

“So you'll come next Saturday?”

“If I feel up to it, I will.”

“Anytime after four, like I said. If you're not there by five, I'll come up here and haul you down bodily. I mean it, Dix. Ropes and handcuffs if necessary.”

Dix managed a smile. “All right, you talked me into it.”

“Good man. Well, I'd better get a move on. If you feel like company later on, drive over to the club. We should be done hacking divots by two. Late lunch, drinks, whatever.”

“Maybe I'll do that,” Dix lied.

When Jerry was gone, he returned to the sideboard. Another two or three days and he would have it fitted, bonded, sanded, and ready for primer sealing and then staining. It had become important to finish it as soon as possible, but at the same time to make it as perfect as he was capable. When he was done and satisfied with it, it would mark both an ending and a beginning: Then, finally, he felt he would be through grieving and ready to start living again.

Heat and hunger drove him into the house at twelve-thirty. He made himself a tuna salad sandwich, opened a beer, ate sitting at the kitchen table and with some appetite. As he carried his empty plate to the sink, he noticed the blinking light on the answering machine. Three blinks now—three messages. He hesitated, then leaned over and pressed the playback button.

The first message was the one from Jerry about the golf date. The second was from a school acquaintance of Katy's who lived in San Francisco and who said she'd just heard about the accident and oh, Dix, dear Dix, she was so dreadfully sorry, if there was anything she could do, wouldn't he please call her back right away. Dix had met her once, years before, and could barely remember what she looked like. He didn't bother to write down the number.

The third message—

“Go look in your mailbox,” the tormentor's voice said.

That was all.

Now what? Come onto the property, put something in the mailbox? Christ. Virtually no risk of anybody seeing him if he skulked up Rosemont in the middle of the night. Trees and shrubs screened off the nearest neighbors, and the mailbox was down at the foot of the drive, invisible from up here unless you were standing out on the parking area in front of the garage.

What, though? Written calumny? Lies cut and pasted out of newspapers and magazines?

Dix went out and down the drive, forcing himself to walk at a normal pace. The mailbox was the rural kind, mounted on a pole. He dropped the front lid, bent to look inside.

A little box, about six inches square. Plain white, sealed with filament tape.

He removed it gingerly, held it for a few seconds—it hardly had any weight—and then shook it. Faint rattling. Unease began to build in him. Throw it in the garbage, he thought, don't open it. Instead, his legs carried him straight uphill and into the house. He slit the tape with a knife, lifted off the lid.

The box was stuffed with cotton, a thick wad of it. When he pinched up the wad between thumb and forefinger, something fell out and clattered on the drainboard. Its twin dangled from the cotton, glinting in the sunlight that burned down through the kitchen skylights.

Earrings.

White jade teardrop earrings with a tiny sapphire set into each hammered gold clip. One-of-a-kind pair, made to order by a jeweler in Santa Rosa four years ago.

Earrings Katy had been wearing the night she died.

SIX

It was five-thirty when Cecca drove up Rosemont Lane and turned into the Mallory driveway. She hesitated as she got out into the thinning afternoon heat, wondering again if she should have called first. But Dix's message had been as urgent-sounding as it was succinct: “I need to see you right away. Call or come up to the house—please, Cecca. I'll be home all day.” He hadn't left the time of his call; it could have been anytime after noon, when she and Amy had left for the tree farm. Monthly Sunday meal with her folks—“dinner,” Ma called it, even though they sat down at the table promptly at two o'clock. Ritual, but usually a pleasant one. Not so pleasant today though. The heat, and Pop's wearying new litany of complaints: getting old, useless, couldn't use his hands because of the arthritis, couldn't even get an erection anymore (this in front of Amy, who'd thought it was funny), might as well die and get it over with. And he was only sixty-eight! And now this urgent message from Dix, with the distraught edge to his voice. She couldn't imagine what had prompted it. Something else for her to worry about, no doubt, whatever it was. Sometimes she felt like an emotional sponge, soaking up other people's problems as readily as she soaked up her own, absorbing and then squeezing them out as if they
were
her own. “Why do you care so much about other people?” Chet had asked her once, seriously—a legitimate question coming from him, because the only person he cared about was himself. “I was born with a Mother Teresa gene,” she'd said. It was as good an answer as any.

She rang the doorbell three times without getting a response. She went to the garage; he wasn't there, but his Buick was. Out by the pool? She made her way down the side steps and around onto the rear terrace.

She heard him before she saw him. He was in the pool, swimming laps in a kind of frenzy: head down, eyes shut, arms and legs pummeling the water into a froth. Not really swimming, she thought as she watched him; it was as though he were trying to rid himself of some inner turmoil. It added to her feeling of concern. The man struggling in the pool wasn't the Dix Mallory she knew—the gentle, controlled one. Even Katy's death hadn't altered those qualities; he'd been the same man at the funeral and downtown yesterday. What could have happened to change him so radically in twenty-four hours?

He didn't realize she was there until she moved to the pool's edge and shouted his name. Then he stopped beating the water, caught the lip, and lifted himself out. He stood beside her, dripping, round-shouldered with fatigue, working to get his breathing under control.

“Amy and I were out at the farm,” she said. “Didn't get home until a little while ago.”

“Thanks for coming.”

He reached for the towel draped over one of the outdoor chairs. Cecca could see the strained muscles rippling in his arms and legs as he dried himself. And noticed, in spite of herself, how trim he looked in his swimsuit, the flatness of his belly.

“How long have you been in the pool?” she asked.

“A while. Too long, probably.”

“You look exhausted.”

“That was the idea.”

“Dix, what is it? What's happened?”

“In the house. I've got something to show you.”

He led her inside. Upstairs in the living room he said, “I'll go put on some clothes. Make yourself a drink if you want one.”

“No. Unless you do …”

“I'd better not.”

Waiting for him, she prowled the room. It was the first time she'd been there since the accident, and it felt odd. Katy's house, Katy's pride and joy—a legacy now. Blue and white decor, lots of crystal and cut-glass accessories, all chosen by Katy to her tastes. Her paintings on the walls, the huge dominating one she'd called “Blue Time”: rectangles and rhomboids in various shades of blue, splotches of white, three little dollops of yellow. Abstract Expressionism. She'd thought Jackson Pollock was the greatest of all American painters. Yet her own work was more in the style of Mark Rothko, whom she'd also admired—simple, sensuous color shapes rather than explosions of color. Rothko had once said that his paintings were façades, telling little but just enough about his perception of the world and his own life. “It's the same thing with my paintings,” Katy had been fond of saying. “Façades, little snippets of the real Katy Mallory.” And when someone had asked her what the snippets were, a wink, a grin, and: “That's for
you
to figure out, sweetie.”

Cecca had always liked this room, the house, but today it depressed her. Her mood, coupled with Dix's. She sat down on the blue brocade couch. She was staring out through the tall windows, watching a small plane circle for a landing at Los Alegres Airport across the valley, when Dix came down from the bedroom.