by John Saul
“Why doesn’t Miss Edna want people to come out here?” Christie asked as Diana began helping Esperanza Rodriguez, who had been working in the kitchen all morning, pull a series of dishes out of the refrigerator. As she waited for an answer Christie stole a spoonful of potato salad and ate a deviled egg.
“Oh, she’s just tired,” Diana replied. How could she explain her mother’s attitudes to a nine-year-old? Should she say that her mother was a snob who thought she was better than anyone else, or should she try to explain that Edna was just getting old? But Edna wasn’t “just getting old”—she’d never wanted anyone in the house, not, at least, anyone from Amberton. Even today she’d drawn the lines clearly. If Diana insisted on having a lunch here, Edna would allow it, but it would have to be outdoors. Even for a funeral Edna would not have her home invaded by the townspeople.
“She doesn’t like me, does she?” Christie asked.
Diana stopped what she was doing and looked at Christie, who was staring up at her, her pale blue eyes large and frightened.
“It’s not that she doesn’t like you,” Diana said carefully, searching for the right words and wishing she knew more about how to talk to a child. “It’s just that she’s not used to you. It’s been a long time since I was a little girl, and she’s forgotten what little girls are like.”
Christie shook her head. “She scares me,” she said. “She doesn’t like me, and she scares me.”
Diana sat down at the table and pulled Christie onto her lap, while Esperanza, who was quietly listening to their conversation, kept working. “How does she scare you?” she asked.
“I—I’m not sure,” Christie stammered. “I guess it’s the way she looks at me.”
“How does she look at you?” Diana pressed.
Christie thought for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper. “Like she wishes I was dead.”
Diana’s breath caught, and in the depths of her mind she again heard the haunting sound of a crying child. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Esperanza crossing herself.
“No!” she said sharply. “She doesn’t wish you were dead. She doesn’t wish that at all. I know it!” She lifted Christie off her lap and stood up, as if trying to shake off the sudden fear the child’s words had caused her. She glanced around the room, searching for something to do, something that would make her forget Christie’s words. She could feel Esperanza’s eyes on her, and that only made her even more nervous.
Suddenly there was a knock at the back door, and Diana turned in confusion, her fear of a moment ago turning into an odd sort of panic for which she knew there was no reason. Her hands went to her hair, smoothing it. I’m all right, she told herself. I’ve got to be all right.
“Come in,” she called. The door opened, and Joyce Crowley appeared, her arms filled with a cake box and a large brown bag.
“Hi! I thought you might need some help, and I brought along a few things, just in case.” She stepped inside, let the door slam shut behind her, and, never having been in the Amber house before, looked curiously around the big kitchen, with its enormous range, three ovens, and walk-in refrigerator. “God, I wish I had something like this in my house.” She set her packages on the table, then faced Diana. Her cheerful grin faded and was replaced by a frown. “Are you all right?” she asked, “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“I’m fine,” Diana said. “Tired, I guess.”
Joyce nodded. “That’s why I’m here—I figured you could use some help. Where do you want all this stuff?”
“Outside,” Diana told her. As Joyce’s frown deepened she felt compelled to make some explanation. “It’s such a pretty day, and mother thought—”
“’Nuff said,” Joyce cut in, winking at Diana. “Whatever Lola wants, as the old song says. Right?”
For the first time in three days the tension in Diana broke. Though they had known each other for years, they had never been friends, but suddenly she felt close to Joyce. “I wish it could be different,” she said softly. “I really do. But I guess you know how it is.”
“The whole town knows, Diana,” Joyce replied, her voice gentle. “So we’ll have the reception outside. Who knows? It could start a whole new tradition!” She turned to Christie, who was standing unobtrusively against the sink, and smiled.
“Would you like to help us out?”
Christie nodded automatically, though she was still thinking about Miss Edna. There had been something in Diana’s voice—she wasn’t sure what—that had made her even more frightened of the old woman. But, try as she would, she couldn’t think of what she might have done that would make Miss Edna hate her. Halfheartedly she began carrying out Joyce Crowley’s instructions.
With Christie helping, the women began taking the plates of food out to the backyard, where a picnic table had stood for years, unused until today. And then the people came, and as Diana listened to them offer Christie their condolences, she began to wish that they had stayed away, that they had left her alone with the little girl she was already thinking of as her own. But she hid her feelings and made herself smile at each of them.
Esperanza Rodriguez moved adroitly through the crowd, listening to the gringos chatter among themselves, doing her best to clean up the mess as fast as the whites could make it. She spoke to no one, only nodding and smiling when she was occasionally spoken to. She knew what they were talking about—Señor Lyons, and how he had died. But none of them knew the truth, and even if they had asked her, Esperanza wouldn’t have told them, for they would only have laughed at her again.
In the clump of aspens that flourished behind the Amber house, the children were sitting together, and Esperanza drifted over to listen to them. Children, she had decided years ago, had a lot more sense than their elders. They listened to the old stories and understood that things were not always as they seemed. One day, perhaps, she would tell them the story of the lost children, and then they would understand why they must not play near the mine.
But today was not the day, and Esperanza merely listened to the children talk.
“There’s no such thing as water babies,” Jay-Jay Jennings was saying. “My father says that’s just a legend the dirty Indians talk about.”
“They’re no dirtier than you,” Steve Penrose told her. “And they’re sure not as fat!”
Jay-Jay leaped to her feet, her face red and her fists clenched. “You take that back, Steve Penrose!”
“Make me,” Steve said, grinning up at her. Jay-Jay glared at him for a moment, then burst into tears and ran off to find her mother. “She sure is a crybaby, Steve commented when Jay-Jay was gone.
Kim Sandler shrugged. “Who cares? I can’t stand her.” Then she looked eagerly at Jeff. “Did you really hear them?” she asked.
“Well, we heard something,” Jeff said slowly. For the fourth time he tried to describe the strange sounds he and Steve had heard a few nights before, but as Christie approached he fell silent.
“Hi,” Christie said. Her friends looked at each other nervously, and she wondered if they’d been talking about her. Then Kim smiled at her.
“Are you going to live here now?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Christie said uncertainly. She sat down and picked a blade of grass. “I guess so.” Then: “I wish I didn’t have to, though.”
“Why not?” Susan Gillespie asked, her head cocked in a way that was habitual with her, as if she were never quite sure of what she was hearing. “Don’t you like it here?”
Christie wasn’t quite sure what to say. Though she was frightened a lot, she didn’t want to sound ungrateful toward Diana. Then she remembered the things she’d heard about Miss Edna before she had gone to live with the Ambers. “Miss Edna scares me,” she finally admitted. “It seems like she’s mad all the time.”
“She’s just cranky,” Jeff told her. “Like Mrs, Berkey.”
“Jay-Jay thinks she’s crazy,” Susan put in.
“And I think Jay-Jay’s crazy
,” Steve said. “Maybe we should sic the water babies on her.” All the children laughed except Christie, who looked puzzled.
“What are water babies?” she asked. The children, suddenly embarrassed, and wishing they hadn’t talked about what might have happened to Christie’s father, fell silent. Christie looked from one of them to the other.
“What are water babies?” she asked again, but before anyone could answer her, Esperanza Rodriguez stepped into their midst, leaned down, and took Christie’s hand. Pulling the little girl to her feet, she looked severely at the other children.
“The babies are something children should not even talk about,” she said severely. Then she led Christie away. The rest of the children, left alone, stared at each other nervously. For the first time it occurred to each of them that maybe—just maybe—the water babies might be real.
Bill Henry was the last to leave, and when he offered to help Diana clean up, she told him it wasn’t necessary.
“Because of Edna?” he asked.
Diana nodded. “It was a nice day, and I’m glad everyone was here, but I’m sure you noticed Mother wasn’t what you could call the life of the party.” She paused, remembering how Edna had sat silently in the shade of the willow, nodding curtly to anyone who spoke to her but making no effort to make the townspeople feel welcome. Instead her blue eyes had gazed stonily into the distance, and she seemed to be off somewhere in her own mind, as though she had shut out what was happening around her.
Diana shook her head as if to dislodge the memory, and when she spoke, her voice was bitter. “Wouldn’t you think she could have at least said hello to everyone? Would it really have been so hard for her?”
“She’ll never change. But she’s going to have to talk to me, at least for a few minutes. Or, anyway, she’s going to have to listen to me.”
Diana met his eyes, then turned away to look across the yard to the chicken coop, where Christie was crouched in the dirt, watching a batch of newborn chicks scratching for gravel.
“If’s about her, isn’t it?” Diana asked, her voice dull.
“Yes.”
Diana turned back to Bill. Her voice was filled with the new determination that he was not used to. “I won’t let her become a ward of the state.”
“A ward of the state?” Bill repeated, puzzled.
“Mother says that’s what she is, unless she has some relatives, which she hasn’t. Elliot told me. That’s one of the reasons we were friendly, I think—neither of us had any family. Except I have Mother, of course.” Her glance flickered toward the house, to the second floor, where Bill could feel Edna standing behind a window, watching them.
“Maybe we’d better go in and have a chat with her.”
“Shouldn’t Christie be there?”
Bill hesitated. “I think you and your mother ought to decide what you want to do, first.”
Diana shrugged. “Mother already knows what she wants done. She wants Christie sent away. And I think Christie knows it—she as much as said so.”
“It might not be that easy for her,” Bill said. “Not if you’ve got guts.”
Diana looked at him, her eyes suddenly eager. “Bill, what are you saying? What’s happened?”
“In his will, Elliot named you guardian.”
Diana’s eyes widened and she stepped bade slightly, her heart racing. “My God,” she breathed. Involuntarily she turned to gaze at Christie once again. When she spoke, her eyes remained riveted to the child and her voice was low. “Are you sure? There’s no mistake?”
“I’m sure. I’ve read the will—it all seems very clear, and very legal.”
“But he never said anything to me. Never even mentioned it. And he hardly knew me.”
“Maybe he was afraid you’d refuse,” Bill said gently. “It’s a big responsibility. And as for not knowing you, maybe Elliot knew you better than you think.”
At last Diana’s eyes left the child, and she faced Bill Henry once more. “Did you say it would be a responsibility?” she asked, For the first time in years Bill saw her face truly light up. “Bill, having Christie for my own is the biggest joy of my life.” She turned away from him and began walking resolutely toward the house.
Edna Amber was waiting for them in the parlor. As Diana came in, followed by Bill, she looked coldly from one to the other.
“I saw you look up at my window,” she said. “I know you’ve been talking, and I presume it has something to do with me.”
“Not directly, Mother,” Diana said.
“But indirectly?”
Diana chewed at her lower lip for a moment, then instinctively turned to Bill for help.
“It has to do with Christie Lyons,” he told Edna. He saw the old woman stiffen. “Diana has been appointed her guardian.”
“Appointed? Appointed by whom?”
“Her father,” Diana said, her voice taking on a maliciously triumphant tone. “Bill just told me. In his will, Elliot asked that I be named Christie’s guardian if anything happened to him.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Edna snapped, “Why would he do that?”
Diana sagged into a chair like a punctured balloon. “I—I guess he thought I was the best one to do it,” she said lamely.
“Well, he was wrong,” Edna stood up, went to her daughter, and placed her hand on Diana’s shoulder, but when she spoke, it was to Bill Henry.
“Of course, you know the very idea is unthinkable.”
“To whom?” Bill asked, not bothering to conceal the anger he was feeling toward the old woman.
“To everyone,” Edna stated as if it should be obvious. “Diana, with a child?” She snorted her con tempt. “Impossible!” Her hand fell away from Diana’s shoulder, and she went back to her couch, as if the matter were closed. Silence hung over the room while Diana stared at her mother, her face reflecting the confusion of feelings that was churning inside her. But when she broke the silence, her voice was filled with renewed determination.
“I’m sorry, Mother, but I’m not going to refuse to do it.”
“Then I shall simply have to refuse for you.” Edna turned to Bill Henry. “Diana cannot possibly accept the guardianship,” she said. “I want you to notify the authorities and have them come and get Christie. Tomorrow would be best, I think.”
Bill glanced at Diana, who was now on her feet, her fists clenched, her face pale. Before she could speak, he went to her and put a gently restraining hand on her arm.
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Miss Edna,” he said. “The decision isn’t yours to make. Lyons appointed Diana Christie’s guardian, and unless she refuses, the courts will follow his instructions.”
“Against my wishes?” Edna’s eyes glared dangerously.
Bill smiled, enjoying the old woman’s discomfort. “Unless you have a compelling reason why Diana shouldn’t be made guardian, I don’t think you have a say in the matter at all. It’s up to Diana.”
“I see,” Edna said. “Very well, Dr. Henry. You’ve told us what you had to tell us. Now, if you don’t mind, I think we’d like to discuss this between ourselves.”
Diana stood up. Her voice, though shaking slightly, was still strong. “There’s nothing to discuss, Mother.” Then: “Bill, will you come out with me while I tell Christie?”
“Wouldn’t you rather do it by yourself?”
Diana grinned at him crookedly. “One thing Mother’s right about—I don’t know much about having a child. But I’ll learn. For right now, though, I may need some help, and I could use your bedside manner. Okay?”
“Sure.” Suddenly he wanted to say something to Edna Amber, something to soften her defeat, but as he looked at her, he realized that if she were defeated, it didn’t show in her face. For a second his eyes met those of the old woman, but he quickly broke away from her furious gaze. He followed Diana out of the room, pulling the door shut behind them. A moment later there was a crash as Edna Amber vented her rage on a crystal vase. As she heard the shatter of glass D
iana’s only reaction was a tightening in her jaws.
6
Edna Amber woke promptly at five o’clock in the morning, as she had every morning for fifty years. Ordinarily she would have propped herself up and spent the next hour reading, but this morning she left her bed immediately and laboriously climbed the stairs to the third floor.
She paused outside the nursery, listening, then unlocked the door and silently let herself into the room. On the daybed, Christie lay sleeping, her arms akimbo, her hair half hiding her face. Edna stood over the bed, looking down into the peaceful face. The past had come back to haunt her, and she was suddenly afraid.
It was hard for her to believe that this tiny child had the power to destroy her, yet she knew it was true. An impulse seized her, an impulse to lift her cane and smash it down into the sleeping face, to wipe away forever the soft blue eyes that reminded her so much of Diana when she had been the same age. But she wouldn’t let herself do it. The child, after all, had done nothing. It was Diana who was to blame, Diana who was insisting that they bring the child into the little world that she had so carefully constructed for them. But in the end it was going to be the child who suffered. One way or another, she knew this child would leave her house.
Her lips tightening with determination, Edna turned away from the sleeping child and returned to her own room. An hour later, when Diana brought a pot of coffee up to her, Edna was propped up in her bed, a book open on her lap. She set the book aside and smiled at her daughter.
“I suppose I ought to apologize for the vase,” she said. Diana looked at her warily. “Oh, don’t worry—I’m not going to,” the old woman went on. “I suppose I’ve forgotten how, if I ever knew. But I don’t like fighting with you, Diana. I never have.”
“Then let’s not fight,” Diana replied.
“You know as well as I,” Edna went on, as if Diana had not spoken, “that I can’t let that child stay here. Don’t you?”
Diana suddenly felt tired. It was going to start again and go on all day. And the next day, and the next. How long? Until she gave in? But she had always given in to her mother. This time she wouldn’t.