Dark Places In the Heart

by Jill Barnett

  “Come sit with us, Kathryn. I don’t believe you’ve ever seen these photos.”

  “Come, Mama. Come here. Daddy had a red tricycle just like mine.”

  Already Laurel sounded like Julia. Come here. Come with me. Come there. Come. Come. Come.

  So Kathryn looked at photo after photo, each one drawing a little more of the life from her. She didn’t tell Evie when they talked on the phone that night, because she didn’t want any more stress. These days she folded so easily under pressure. But she slipped the rental section of the Sunday morning paper under her arm and in the quiet of her bedroom began to circle the ads.

  On the sly the next week, she looked at a small house in Magnolia with a backyard and a view of the sound, and she came home later than she’d planned and rushed right to the kitchen to make Laurel lunch. On her way to find her daughter, Julia stopped her. Kathryn tried to escape. “I’m taking Laurel a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

  “It’s one o’clock. She’s already eaten. I gave her a ham salad sandwich.”

  “Laurel doesn’t like ham.”

  “Of course she does. It was Jimmy’s favorite.” Julia took the plate from Kathryn and set it on a nearby table. “Come. I have something to show you.” She led her out through the back of the house, past the new swing set and jungle gym, to a break of cedars that bordered the back lawn. Julia stopped. “Look, Kathryn.”

  Between those trees was a small building, a miniature of the big house. Julia handed her a key. “Go inside.”

  What Kathryn had assumed was a playhouse for Laurel was a large open room with shelves along the walls and a deep work sink and tiled counter under a wide front window.

  Julia leaned against the counter, her hands resting on the rim. “You can see Laurel’s play area from here. And from that long window. I thought we could put your wheel there. The kiln is around the corner so this room won’t get too hot. And that refrigerator is for the clay.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” And Kathryn didn’t. “This is wonderful.”

  “Good.” Julia cupped a hand around a match, held it to the cigarette hanging from her lips, then tossed back her head and exhaled smoke. “I know coming here wasn’t easy for you. I wanted you to know I’m glad you’re here.” For a raw instant, Julia stared at her with the expression of an animal caught high in a tree, staring down at the hunter and his gun. “Enjoy it.” Julia turned and left.

  The studio of Kathryn’s dreams couldn’t have been any better. Light and warmth came through the window; the tiles were gleaming, the room pristine, still new, no earthy smell of damp or baking clay. The walls were white, stark, and clean, without a trace of life. As she stood there, her past was wiped out, her future hauntingly empty.

  But something else haunted her. She looked back to where Julia had just stood and realized she understood her mother-in-law’s terrified look. Only that morning Kathryn had seen it in the mirror.

  Over the next few days, Kathryn stopped reading the rental ads and Julia stopped telling her what to do and how to feel. Kathryn was dressing after a shower when she heard Laurel singing. It sounded like she was jumping on the bed next door.

  Kathryn ran into the hallway. “Laurel! Tell me you are not jumping on your grandmother’s bed.” She entered Julia’s suite for the first time.

  Laurel was bouncing jubilantly on her grandmother’s silk-dressed bed and chanting, “I love coffee, I love tea . . .”

  “Stop it!”

  Laurel looked at her midbounce.

  “She’s fine, Kathryn.” Julia came out of her bathroom, rubbing cold cream on her face. “I told her she could jump on it.” Her robe matched the room, which was a clean soft white. Even the furniture, including a dressing table in one corner and a hi-fi in the other, was painted white, and the suite was luxuriously decorated from the carpet and the bed linens to the silk draperies on two long, mullioned windows that looked out over the water. Between those long windows was a five-by-eight-foot canvas of bold colors, contemporary, like most of Julia’s art. Kathryn felt the blood drain to her feet.

  “It’s impressive, isn’t it?” Julia used a tissue to wipe the cream off “There’s another over the bed.”

  Kathryn faced the bed where Laurel was still jumping.

  “The artist is Espinosa. I bought them a while back. Their value must be rising, although Lord knows I paid enough for them to begin with. The gallery called a week ago. The artist died recently and her family has been trying to track down all her pieces. The canvases fit so perfectly in here I don’t think I want to sell them. I decorated the whole room around them.”

  Kathryn found her voice. “Do you know who that artist is?”

  “Rachel Espinosa. A Spanish artist.”

  “She was married to Rudy Banning.”

  “Banning?” Julia sat down. “Banning?” There was a hollowness to her voice and her skin was gray. She looked up at Kathryn. “He killed Jimmy. Rudy Banning killed my son.”

  “Rachel Espinosa Banning died in the same accident. She had an art show that night. Didn’t you see the newspapers?”

  Julia shook her head. “I couldn’t read them. I didn’t want to read them. I was afraid to read them.”

  “She and her husband left the show arguing. He lost control of the car.”

  “My God.” Julia stood. “My God . . .” She walked into the bathroom and shut the door.

  Kathryn was left to stare at the paintings, first one and then the other, until they all blurred together and she couldn’t see them anymore.

  Later that night, Kathryn awoke from the throes of a nightmare and sat up, startled at the sound of Jimmy’s music playing so loudly from the next room.

  Laurel came to her bed. “Mama. The music’s too loud. Make it stop.”

  Kathryn tucked her in. “Stay here. I’ll ask Grandmamma to turn it off.”

  What the hell was Julia thinking? She rapped on the door. “Julia?” Inside, she froze. Her mother-in-law stood on the bed, a long kitchen knife in her hand, the painting slashed from one corner to the other. “Julia!”

  Calmly, she sliced down the other side and faced Kathryn, then stepped down to the carpet. “I don’t want them in this room. In this house.” Julia started toward the other painting.

  “Wait! Don’t.”

  “I need to destroy it. They destroyed my life. They killed my son.”

  “You said the family wants the paintings.”

  “They do.” Julia looked so small and lost and confused, not like someone capable of setting your teeth on edge. She merely looked half there.

  “Then don’t destroy them. To never sell them back is the best revenge.” Wicked words, she knew, but that made saying them all the better. “Never sell them.”

  Julia looked from the knife in her hand to the other painting on the wall. She took deep breaths and wiped at her tears with the sleeve of her silk robe, then handed Kathryn the knife. Kathryn put her arm around her. “It’s okay.”

  “Nothing will ever be okay again.” Julia started crying and leaned against her, no longer hard as stone but frail and brittle as shale.

  “Come with me,” Kathryn said. “You can sleep in one of the guest rooms tonight. I’ll have the paintings removed tomorrow.”

  “I’ll never sell them. You’re right, Kathryn. We will never sell them.”

  Part II

  1971

  * * *

  We often make people pay dearly for what we think we give them.

  Marie Josephine de Suin de Beausac

  5

  Newport Beach, California

  * * *

  The soil was rich in this Golden State, dark as the oil pumped up from its depths. Bareroot roses planted in the ground bloomed in a matter of weeks, and every spring the lantana tripled in breadth, filling the narrow property lines between homes where every square foot was valued in tens of thousands. Roots from the pepper trees unearthed backyard fences, and eucalyptus grew high into the blue skies, like fabled
beanstalks, shooting up so swiftly the bark cracked away and fell dusty to the ground. If you knelt down and dug your hands into the dirt, you could smell its fecundity, and when you stood up you might look—or even be—a little taller.

  Billboards sold everyone on growth, and the coastal hills swelled with tracts of housing because people hungered for a false sense of peace from the Pacific views. Newport was not the small resort enclave it had once been, with new restaurants now perched on the waterfront, housed in everything from canneries and beam-and-glass buildings to a grounded riverboat. Luxury homes stood on most lots, which had been subdivided into smaller shapes that couldn’t be measured in anything as archaic as an acre. At the entrances to entire neighborhoods, white crossbars blocked the roads and were raised and lowered by a uniformed security guard in a hut, a kind of cinematic image that brought to mind border crossings and cold wars. But the guard wasn’t there to keep people out; he was there to keep prestige in.

  The Banning boys grew into young men here, tall and athletic, golden like everything in California. Thirteen years had changed who they were, now brothers separated by a demand to be something they weren’t. They wanted to win. They had everything, except their grandfather’s approval.

  As soon as the opportunity arose, Victor Banning had bought the homes on either side of him, torn them down and renovated the Lido house until it spanned five lots, encompassing the whole point. The place had three docks, boasted a full basketball court and seven garages.

  Today, Banning Oil Company was BanCo, involved in everything from petroleum by-products, fuel, and manufacturing to the development of reclaimed oil land. Annually listed as a Fortune 500 company, it was the kind of proving ground hungry young executives clamored to join.

  Hunger wasn’t what had sent Jud Banning to work for his grandfather the previous May, when he’d graduated from Stanford Business School in the top five percent with a master’s in corporate finance along with degrees in business and marketing. Expectation sent him there, Victor’s idea of natural order.

  Every summer since the start of high school both Jud and his brother had worked for the company in some capacity—mostly peon. But a career working for his grandfather wasn’t the golden opportunity Jud’s grad school buddies imagined. For as much as the house and business had changed, Victor hadn’t. He was still difficult and demanding. Nepotism didn’t feel like favoritism when Victor Banning was the one doling it out.

  It was early spring now, a time of year when the morning marine layer seldom hung over the coast, so the sun glinted off the water and reflected from the glass of waterfront homes across the isle; it soaked through a wall of windows on the water side of the Banning home. The dining room grew warm, sunlight spreading like melted butter over the room and over Jud Banning, who was sound asleep at the dining table.

  He sat up, suddenly awake. And just as on the last three mornings, the housekeeper stood over him holding a carafe of coffee. He glanced around the room, a thread of panic in his voice. “What time is it?”

  “Early.” Time was either early or late in Maria’s eyes. Days, weeks, and months were noted only if they held religious significance—Ash Wednesday, Lent, the Assumption of Mary. You could ask her when the steaks would be done and she’d tell you how to butcher the cow. She had come to work from Mexico as cook, housekeeper, and nanny two days after Jud and Cale arrived, and thirteen years later she was still the only woman in an all-male household. She set the coffee and a mug down with a meaningful thud. “You fall asleep here every night, Jud. Papers everywhere.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “Mr. Victor is coming home today. You want him to see you like this?”

  “He won’t. The board meeting is today.”

  “Beds are for sleeping. Desks are for working. Tables are for eating.”

  “I’ve never eaten a table,” he said, deadpan. She merely looked at him, so he changed the subject. “I won’t be here next week. I’m going to the island with Cale tomorrow.”

  “That boy.” She shook her head and headed for the kitchen. “He never comes home.”

  “He’s busy with school.”

  “He’s busy with the girls,” Maria said and disappeared around the corner.

  Jud could hear the sound of Barbara Walters’s voice on the Today show coming from the kitchen TV, a sign he wasn’t late. Under the charts and graphs, notes, and P&Ls piled on the table he found his watch; it read seven-fifteen. He slipped it on and ran both hands through his shaggy hair. He didn’t cut it, just to annoy Victor. Unlike Cale, Jud kept his revolts on a more subtle scale.

  Around him were weeks’ worth of paperwork, but stacked on a nearby chair were glossy black presentation folders with his proposal ready for board approval. Today was the first Friday of the month, and the board meeting would begin as always at precisely 10 A.M. From the moment he’d been able to negotiate with another supplier, he knew this was a winner of a deal. It would cut the proposed cost for new oil tankers by over two million dollars, a figure he expected would bowl them over.

  So an hour later, he came down the stairs whistling as he tied the knot in his new tie, then shrugged into his suit coat and stopped by a mirror for a quick look. Tugging down on his cuffs, he said, “Old man, have I got a deal for you.”

  A few minutes later Maria met him at the door. “Take Mr. Victor’s newspapers with you.” She dumped them on the box of folders he carried and opened the front door for him. “It’s Good Friday. You go to church.”

  “Sure thing.” He hadn’t been in a church since his college roommate got married.

  The static, machine-gun racket of an air compressor came from the garages, where there was room for seven cars, plus a full maintenance bay and workshop. Harlan had his head under the hood of Victor’s silver Bentley. Three sports cars were parked in the small bays on the left side. A ’59 Porsche 1600D roadster, a ’63 Corvette convertible, and a Jaguar XJE. All of them belonged to Cale. All of them were bright red. But his brother never drove any single one of them with the regularity of a favorite. No matter how many expensive red sports cars Cale bought, none would ever be a replacement for their dad’s MG.

  The MG was parked in the fourth bay, gleaming like California sunshine because Harlan was a man who truly loved cars. Every Banning automobile ran to its capacity as a finely tuned machine, engine smooth, body always washed, and the chrome and tires polished.

  Jud opened the driver’s door, dropped the folders on the floor, and threw his briefcase on the passenger seat. He opened the trunk and tossed the newspapers inside, the Los Angeles Times, the Examiner, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Register, the Daily Pilot, and the San Diego Tribune. He didn’t understand his grandfather. If you’d read one paper, hell, you’d read ’em all.

  Harlan lifted his head out from underneath the Bentley hood and grabbed a rag from the back pocket of his gray work coveralls. He spotted Jud, frowned, and glanced at an old Banning Oil Company clock on the back wall, then switched off the noisy compressor. “You’re leaving early. Your grandfather’s plane isn’t coming in until nine thirty.”

  “I need to be there early.”

  But Harlan’s expression said what every Banning employee knew. No one did any board business before Victor arrived. Harlan stuffed the rag in his pocket and went back to work.

  Jud let the engine warm up and backed out, waited for the electronic gates, tapping the steering wheel impatiently before he honked the horn twice and sped away.

  The Santa Ana headquarters for BanCo occupied the top seven floors of the Grove Building, a glass, metal, and concrete structure that took its vanilla name from the old orange groves that had been plowed under to clear the building site. From Fifth and Main, towering glass buildings bled from one mirrored image into another, looking nothing like farmland. Sound carried up from the nearby freeways, the constant hum of cars along Interstate 5, and the air had an energized buzz, a swarming sound of human activity that hung above busy street
s at lunchtime and after five.

  On the fifteenth floor, no traffic noise came into the boardroom as Victor Banning sat in front of his unopened proposal folder and listened to Jud talk.

  “I know Banning has never dealt with Marvetti Industries,” Jud said. “But I’ve met with them and found their tankers to be top of the line.”

  Victor heard the word “Marvetti” and stood up. “This meeting is over.” A pointed pause of absolute silence existed for a nanosecond, then the board members dropped their folders and fled the room like rats from a sinking ship.

  Jud stared at him, red-faced. “What the hell was that all about?”

  “We’ll talk in my office.” Victor headed for his private office.

  Silently, Jud followed him inside and shut the doors. “Okay. What’s going on?”

  Victor took his time. He sat down at his desk, a large, impressive piece of rectangular furniture that put space between him and everyone else. “You tell me.”

  “Tell you what? You cut the meeting off in the middle of my presentation.”

  “To stop you before you made a complete fool of yourself.”

  Immediately Jud’s hackles went up, his body language stiff and all too readable. Sometimes Victor forgot how young he was. By the time Victor was twenty-five, he’d learned to be ruthless, how to protect his ass and his business. He had a wife and child at home and he worked eighteen-hour days with single-minded purpose.

  “I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself. Do you think I don’t know how to make a presentation?” Jud drove a hand through his goddamned long hair. “Shit . . .”

  “You’re standing knee-deep in shit right now with this Marvetti deal.”

  “Marvetti’s company has the rigs ready for purchase. We don’t have to wait for Fisk to reinforce their tankers. We don’t have to order the tractors separately. With Marvetti, it’s all one deal and the tanker reinforcements have already been done. All at a cost that’s a third less.”