by Jill Barnett
Cale Banning stood with his older brother in the hallway of a strange house, in a strange neighborhood, waiting to meet a stranger—the grandfather he’d never known he had until a few hours ago. Their suitcases and toys were piled up in the hallway, stacked in a hurry and looking as confused as he felt. He tugged on his brother Jud’s shirt. “How come I don’t remember this grandpa? Why wasn’t he ever around? Didn’t he like us?”
“Who knows?”
Cale stared at their things and thought they looked like they didn’t belong there.
Jud sat down on the stairs, his elbows on his long skinny legs, his hands hanging between his knees. “I remember his car,” he told Cale. “I saw it drive away from the house a few times.”
“Did you ever see him?”
“No.”
Cale searched the hollow room for something familiar. High on the wall above the staircase was a window of colored glass, like in church. “Look up there.”
“I saw it,” Jud said distractedly. “It’s one of Mom’s paintings.”
Cale studied the painting hung near the stained-glass window; it was huge. Once, when he’d asked his mother why she painted so big, she told him large canvases had bigger things to say, and he wouldn’t understand until he was older, so he should ask her again when he was Jud’s age. He looked at Jud. “Do you know why Mom painted big pictures?”
“No.”
“It’s supposed to say something.” Cale studied the colors of red and blue, green and yellow slashed across the painting above him. Her studio had never been off-limits. She usually smelled of something called linseed oil and her clothes were covered in paint splotches that made about as much sense to him as the paintings did. But inside her studio, the two of them would drink bottles of Coca-Cola, eat egg salad sandwiches and Twinkies, and she would talk to him while she painted with huge, long strokes of color that involved her whole body and seemed to make sense only to her. As she stood back and away from her work, she told him there were messages in art about life and the way people thought and felt, that sometimes the messages were hidden, secrets only some had the eye to see, but the soul of the artist was always there if anyone chose to look close enough.
“Jud? What does a soul look like?”
His brother looked at him. “You’re weird.”
Cale sat down and rested his chin in his hands. “I miss her.”
Jud didn’t say anything, but slid his arm around him, so Cale leaned against his shoulder, because if his parents were really dead, then Jud was all he had left.
When he glanced up, a man stood off to the side. His father’s father was tall and looked a little like his dad. But his hair was a mix of blond and brown and gray. He was looking at him with an unreadable expression. Cale straightened. “Why did you bring us here?”
Jud stood up so fast it was like he had a fire in his pants.
But their grandfather remained silent.
Why didn’t they know him? Why didn’t he say anything? Why did their mom and dad have to die and leave them with no one but him? Cale wanted to hit something, maybe this grim-faced man who stood away from him. “How come I don’t know you? Are you really my grandpa?” Cale took a step.
Jud grabbed his arm and hauled him back. “Stay here.”
“You’re Cale,” his grandfather said finally.
Cale stood in the taller shadow of his brother. “Yes.”
“And you’re Jud.” His grandfather shook his older brother’s hand as if he were a grown man, but didn’t offer to shake Cale’s. “Come with me,” he said to Jud, then went out the front door with Jud following.
Cale was his grandson, too, so he ran after them, dogging his brother, who was beside their grandfather. Cale ran past both of them and turned, half-running backward in front of his grandfather. “Where are we going?”
“To the garage.”
“Why?”
“I want to show your brother something.”
He wanted to show Jud but not him. “What?” Cale asked.
His grandfather kept walking.
“What do you want to show him?” Cale stayed ahead of him because he was afraid if he stopped now his grandfather would walk right over him. “You don’t like me,” Cale said.
His grandfather looked at him. “Does it matter if I like you?”
“Yes,” Cale said.
“Why?”
“Because you’re my grandfather. It’s your job to like me.”
He laughed then. “Good answer, Cale.”
For just a second, Cale thought his grandfather might like him after all.
“What makes you think I don’t like you?”
“You won’t talk to me.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“So you think that you have to do something wrong for someone to not like you?”
Cale knew sometimes people had no reason at all not to like you. “I don’t know,” he answered truthfully.
“Think about it, and when you have an answer you can knock on this door and tell me.” His grandfather turned to Jud, holding the door open. “Come inside, son.”
Jud disappeared inside.
When Cale tried to sneak a peek, his grandfather blocked the doorway. “What if I told you that I like Jud because he’s the oldest?”
Cale stood stick-straight, arms at his sides, like soldiers in tall red hats who guarded queens and refused to show people what they were feeling.
“Answer me,” his grandfather said. “What would you say to that?”
“I would say that you’re a stupid old man.”
His grandfather’s expression didn’t change. “Perhaps I am,” he said finally, and closed the door in Cale’s face.
Cale lay in bed, listening for silence in the hallway. A tree outside the window moved in the wind as he laid there, his heart beating in his ears, his breath sounding loud and hollow beneath the covers. His brother was all the way down the hall in the house of a man who said they were supposed to call him Victor. Not Grandfather or Grandpa. Victor.
When only silence came from the hallway, Cale bolted from the bed and went straight to the closet. He carried an armload of clothes back to the bed, pulled up the covers, then socked them a few times so the lump looked like him sleeping.
His grandfather’s bedroom was at the end of a long, dark hallway on the second floor. The double doors were slightly open and a shaft of bright light cut across the wood floor. Cale followed the sound of Victor’s voice coming from inside. His grandfather was yelling on the phone.
“What the hell do you mean you can’t get the paintings? What auction house? Where?”
Cale stopped two feet from the door.
“Tell them they aren’t authorized to sell. Those paintings belong to the family. Screw the contract! You’re my attorney. Stop that sale. Hell, if you have to, buy them all. I don’t care how much it costs. I want every last painting.” His grandfather slammed down the phone, swearing.
Cale waited until he saw Victor walk into his bathroom, then moved quickly toward Jud’s room and slipped inside.
Jud sat up on his elbows. “What do you want?”
“Can I sleep here?”
“Have you been crying?”
“No. I wasn’t crying,” Cale lied.
Jud lifted the blankets. “Come on.”
Cale ran over, jumped in the air, and rolled into the middle of the bed.
“Move over, you hog,” Jud said, shoving him.
“I’m not a hog.” Cale stared up at a black ceiling, worried that tomorrow would be as bad as today and yesterday. He pulled the covers up.
A second later the light came on, bright and blinding, and Victor stood in the doorway. “What are you doing in here?”
Cale felt instantly sick.
“Never mind,” he said in the same angry voice he’d used on the phone. He crossed the room and
pulled off the covers.
Jud looked too scared to say a word.
“In this house, we sleep in our own rooms.” Victor pulled Cale up, put his hands on his shoulders, and marched him to his own room, where he flipped on the light and paused before he pointed at the lump on the bed. “You know what that tells me?”
I’m in trouble. But all Cale said was, “No,” in a sulky voice.
Victor threw back the blankets. “It tells me that you knew damned well you were supposed to stay in your own bed.”
Cale didn’t admit anything.
“You are eight and I’m a lot older. There isn’t a trick you can pull I won’t see through.” He threw the clothes into a corner. “Now get into bed.”
Cale crawled in and lay board-stiff his eyes on the ceiling.
“Do you want the light on?”
“No,” Cale said disgustedly and jerked the covers up over his head as the light went off. He could see through the white sheet.
His grandfather filled the doorway, backlit from the hall light. “Banning men don’t need anyone, Cale. We stand on our own.” He closed the door, and the room went black.
Jud awoke to a sound like someone beating trash cans with a baseball bat. By the time he reached the window, the neighbor’s dogs were barking. It was after midnight, and misty fog hovered in the air. Cale lay sprawled in front of the wooden garage doors, two metal trash cans lids next to him, one of them spinning like a top, the barrels rolling down the concrete driveway toward the street. His little brother had tried to look in the high glass panes of the garage doors. Jud opened the window and called in a loud whisper, “Are you nuts? Get back inside. Hurry up!”
Cale sat up, rubbing the back of his head. “I want to see the red car.”
“Moron! It’s the middle of the night.”
“I know, but he won’t let me see it. He won’t let me talk to you or sleep with you. Besides, he’s asleep.”
“I was asleep, but someone woke me up making more noise than a train wreck.” Their grandfather stepped out of the shadows and walked toward Cale. There was a threat in the way he moved.
Jud leaned out the window “Don’t you hurt him!” His grandfather looked up, frowning. “I’m not going to hurt him.”
“How do we know that?” Jud yelled. “We don’t even know you!” He raced down the stairs. By then the chauffeur was outside his room over the garage, dressed in pajamas and carrying a shotgun, and Cale glared up at Victor with a stubborn look on his face . . . one that was exactly like their grandfather’s.
“Don’t hit him,” Jud said.
“I’m not going to hit him,” his grandfather said in an exasperated tone. He looked down at Cale. “Do you think I’m going to hit you?”
“I don’t care if you do.”
“This is all your fault,” Jud said. “You should have shown him the car, too.”
The chauffeur came down another step. “Mr. Banning?”
“I’ve got it, Harlan.” His grandfather sounded tired. “Go back to bed.”
The chauffeur turned back up the stairs.
“Harlan, wait! You—” Victor pointed a finger in Cale’s belligerent face. “Apologize for waking him up.”
For a moment Jud thought Cale was going to say no. The silence seemed to stretch out forever, then Cale faced the chauffeur and didn’t look the least bit apologetic when he said, “I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“It’s all right, son.” Harlan went back upstairs, leaving the three of them standing silently.
“So, Jud. You think I should show Cale the car?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” Victor took a key from the pocket of his robe, unlocked the door, and held it open. “Go inside, both of you, and look all you want.”
In a flash of brown, Hopalong Cassidy pajamas, Cale slipped under Victor’s arm and Jud followed. The MG was low and lean, its chrome sparkling. The tan top was folded down and the glass in the headlamps picked up the reflection of too-bright overhead lights. You didn’t see that kind of car anymore, except in old movies. It was square, with running boards, tan leather seats, and a red paint job that made it look like a miniature fire engine.
“Wow!” Cale walked around the MG, then put his hands on his knees and made a face in the side mirror, then more faces in the polished chrome grille. He was just a little kid with his pajamas buttoned wrong and leaves from the driveway sticking to his back and spiky hair, which looked as if it were angry.
Their grandfather leaned on the fender. “I bought this car for your father.”
Jud didn’t know the MG had been his dad’s. He could only picture his dad behind the wheel of that old two-tone Ford. But something wild had lived inside his father, like the red car.
“Jud.” His grandfather opened the car door. “Get in.”
He slid into the soft leather seat and placed his feet on the pedals. His little brother crawled into the passenger side, chattering, cranking the window up and down and punching the door locks, while Jud just held the steering wheel in both hands and stared out the low chrome-edged windshield, trying to feel something familiar: a sense of his dad, whatever was left behind—if anything was ever left behind after someone died. A strange kind of hunger came over him, sharp and intense: this car belonged to him. He wanted this car more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life.
Beside him, Cale was up on his knees, bouncing and gripping the seat back. “Someday I’m gonna have this car. I’m gonna be just like my dad and drive it everywhere.”
Jud shot a quick look at his brother, then up at the old man, who was watching him with an unreadable expression. Jud turned back around. No, little brother. No. This car’s going to be mine.
4
Kathryn paid the driver and got out of an orange cab that smelled like dirty ashtrays. Laurel ran up the front steps of Julia Peyton’s home, an English Tudor gabled house with leaded glass windows, stone chimneys, and lush gardens flanking a downward sweep of sheared lawn.
“You’re late, Kathryn.” Julia stood at the front door dressed in heels and pearls. “I expected you before lunch.”
“The movers took longer than I’d thought.” Kathryn snapped her purse closed, annoyed at herself for automatically making excuses.
“Grandmama! Grandmama!” Laurel jumped up and down. “We’re coming to live with you!”
“Yes, you are. Come give me a hug.” Julia opened her arms and Laurel ran into them.
Kathryn turned to look back down the hill at the tail end of the cab as it disappeared around the iron gates. In the distance, a metallic sheet of water spread out to the cloudless blue horizon, broken only by a green hump of land called Bainbridge Island and the snow-dusted Olympic Mountains. Puget Sound. This is the place where eagles drift by. A line from one of Jimmy’s songs. Too many lines came to her now, not just as song lyrics—but the words gave a timelessness to his thoughts and proof he had once lived.
With a loud hiss of air brakes, a green-and-yellow Mayflower moving van turned up into the driveway. It was done, she thought.
“Come along now, Kathryn. There’s so much to do.” Julia disappeared inside with Laurel still chattering excitedly.
Unmoving, Kathryn clung to her handbag with both hands and stared up at the imposing house where her husband grew up, and where now her daughter would do the same. In the useless days since Jimmy’s death, nothing had changed the feeling that she was trapped between him and their child. Trapped. She felt it now. She had no home anymore. She had no husband. Laurel was here. Julia was here. Some part of her must still be here? That’s what she told herself.
Kathryn put one foot in front of the other and said, “I can do this.”
Within two weeks, the tension between the women in Jimmy Peyton’s life could be cut with a knife, and Kathryn, who didn’t handle conflict well to begin with, was quickly losing her will to fight Julia.
The first incident happened when Kathryn unpacked Jimmy’s framed records. Just looking at the
m tore her apart, so she put them in a box and sent them up to the attic, only to come home a day later to find them displayed in the front entry hall, where everyone could see them the moment they stepped through the door. Crying, she hid them under her bed. At dinner that evening—meals that nightly consisted of Jimmy’s favorites—Julia confronted her.
“You took down Jimmy’s records.”
“Yes.”
Her mother-in-law angrily chain-smoked through dinner, until the silence was thick as cigarette smoke and sitting there became unbearable. Kathryn stood. “It’s time for your bath, Laurel.”
“Let the child have dessert.” Julia dropped her linen napkin on her plate and slid a bowl of ice cream in front of her granddaughter.
Kathryn sat down again and stared at the heavy gold draperies on the windows. Underneath them were pale sheers covering the glass panes. She felt as invisible as those sheers.
“Johnny Ace’s family gave his records to a museum,” Julia said.
“The records should go to Laurel someday.”
“Laurel will know they’re important if they’re hanging in the entry.” Julia’s voice was clipped. “I took down a Picasso and the Matisse.”
Later that night, Kathryn rehung the records, then walked to her bedroom, closed the door, and lay there staring at nothing and feeling everything. From then on, she came in the house through a side door or the kitchen.
Between the time she had agreed to let their downtown apartment go and their actual move, Julia had redone Jimmy’s bedroom for Laurel, but the adjoining playroom remained untouched from Jimmy’s childhood. A few nights later, Kathryn walked in on Julia with Laurel in her lap while they looked at old slides through a viewfinder.