Candles Burning

by Tabitha King

  He was one of the FBI agents who had interviewed Mama over and over at Ramparts. He had considerably less hair than he had had then, but I knew him nonetheless, and would have known him anyway once he spoke.

  “Howdy, Miss Dakin,” he said. “Why are you hiding under that big hat?”

  I didn’t answer his question. I had more important things on my mind.

  “I know you.”

  He laughed. “You are sharp. I believe you were all of seven years old the last time I saw you. You done some growing.”

  “You ain’t wearing your FBI suit.”

  He shook his head. “Even FBI agents take vacations, sweetheart. Your mama at home?”

  I didn’t want to tell him. What if he had come to arrest us, and his Hawaiian shirt and chino pants were just a costume to make me think he was on vacation?

  “Not saying anything, sweetheart, you might as well be saying yes,” he told me.

  I got sassy with him. “You’re smart for an FBI agent.”

  He winked at me. “I’m too big to spank. But you’re not, not yet.”

  “I am eleven-gone-on-twelve,” I informed him, “and I am way too big to spank too.”

  He chuckled and then asked, “Miz Verlow at home?”

  I saw no harm in promptly answering, “Yes’r.”

  “Show me the way,” he said, with a little bow.

  I bowed back, extending my hand toward the front of the house.

  He followed me around the corner and along the verandah and up the steps to the front door.

  Miz Verlow was in her little office, with the door open. She stood up at the sound of our footsteps on the verandah and emerged into the shadowed foyer.

  “Is it Mr. O’Hare?” she asked.

  “All day,” he said.

  Miz Verlow extended her hand and he grasped it.

  “Welcome.”

  “Pleased, ma’am.”

  “He’s an FBI agent,” I told her.

  Miz Verlow cocked her head quizzically.

  “My day job,” Mr. O’Hare said. “Miss Dakin and I are old acquaintances.”

  Merry Verlow’s smile disappeared.

  “I had understood you to be a guest.” Her tone was guarded.

  “I am. I am on vacation, ma’am.”

  “I won’t allow any disruption, Mr. O’Hare.”

  “There won’t be any,” he said. “I am here for personal reasons only. You must be aware that the investigation into the Dakin case has long been closed.”

  “Indeed. Nevertheless I must ask your promise that you will not trouble any member of this household on the subject.”

  “You have it,” Mr. O’Hare agreed. “Call me Gus.”

  “He asked me if Mama was home.”

  Miz Verlow looked at each of us in turn.

  “Yes, I did,” he admitted easily. “I won’t deny that I wish to see Mrs. Dakin again.”

  Miz Verlow looked to me again. “Calley, bring your mama here, please.”

  I shot off to the small parlor. Even if I had not been able to hear the television, I knew that Mama was watching it. It was time for Queen for a Day.

  Mama was not pleased to be summoned.

  “It’s important,” I told her.

  Pouting and muttering, she put out her cigarette and followed me to the foyer.

  Miz Verlow and Mr. O’Hare stood as I had left them, and I knew that neither of them had said a word while I was fetching Mama.

  “Mrs. Dakin,” said Mr. O’Hare.

  Mama stopped dead. Her eyes widened in alarm and one hand fluttered toward her throat.

  “Gus O’Hare,” he said. “We met in unfortunate circumstances.”

  Mama nodded. She was rigid, fighting the urge to flee.

  “Forgive me, Mrs. Dakin, I never thought ill of you and, in fact, you have been in my thoughts in a good way ever since. I happened to learn that you were here. I had vacation time coming and I wanted to see you again. To tell you that I never thought ill of you.”

  Miz Verlow made an odd noise in her throat.

  Mama smiled faintly.

  “I did not come here to be a pest,” Mr. O’Hare continued. “I would be pleased to spend my few days of leave in this lovely place and have the pleasure of a few words with you, as few words as you might choose, Mrs. Dakin. If you wish me to go away at once, I will.”

  Mama smiled slowly. “That seems fair.”

  “All right then,” Miz Verlow said briskly. “Let me show you your room, Mr. O’Hare.”

  Gus O’Hare gave Mama a little bow and a little nod in my direction, and set off after Miz Verlow’s wake.

  Mama rolled her eyes at me. I covered my mouth. We both tiptoed back into the television room, where Mama turned the television back on and reached for her cigarettes.

  “I’ve made a conquest,” she whispered to me, and giggled. I couldn’t help giggling too.

  “He drives a Corvette,” I told her.

  “Oh my! Admit it,” she went on in a low voice, “he’s kind of cute.”

  It wasn’t what Mama said or how she said, so much as I was just old enough to grasp, at last, that Mama might one of these fine days remarry.

  Mama had always attracted men. It was entirely expected that many of Miz Verlow’s male guests cast an appreciative eye in her direction. However, most of Miz Verlow’s guests were couples. The few single men who came to Merrymeeting were rarely what Mama would consider eligible.

  To my relief, Mama had previously displayed great tactfulness toward both her married admirers and the occasional single one. It would not do to have anyone’s wife alarmed, nor would Miz Verlow tolerate even a flavor of scandal. So Mama never accepted a compliment from a married man without turning it back toward his wife, and her flirtations with single men were as chaste as Doris Day’s—at least under Miz Verlow’s roof and within sight and sound of Merrymeeting. Miz Verlow was too cynical, I am sure, to expect virtue; she only wanted the conventions observed, and a decent hypocrisy.

  I was ignorant, of course, of sexual behavior and sexual tension, and had yet to see the primness of the times for the ludicrous charade that it was. But I was not too young to have seen Mama in action, charming men and women both into doing whatever it was she wanted them to do. I was young enough to feel very little threat and not much more interest in the first two or three single men who showed interest in Mama. Nor had I forgotten that we were bound to the island. Guests must sooner or later depart. In any case, the earliest flirtations were brief.

  Mr. O’Hare continued to behave with a distinct courtliness toward Mama. He hastened to hold her chair for her at dinner, and took a chair next to her. He did not force his conversation on her, but with a strict Southern mannerliness, spoke as much to Miz Llewelyn, on his other side, as he did to Mama, and to Mr. Llewelyn, opposite him. His interest in birds seemed unfeigned and informed, without being too expert, which pleased the Llewelyns. He tried to draw Mama into the conversation about birds, describing various ones that he had seen, all of them quite common and recognizable to her, doing things that struck her as remarkable: crows that untied strings and purple martins that outsmarted squirrels at birdfeeders and that sort of thing.

  Mama ate up the attention, of course. At the same time, she assessed Mr. O’Hare closely. He was aware of her appraisal, yet remained cool and unflappable. He did not resort to preening, which would have made him ridiculous, nor did he refer in any way to the previous acquaintanceship. Miz Verlow observed approvingly.

  Occasionally Mr. O’Hare spoke to me, addressing me as Miss Calley, and with the warmth of an old family friend. He asked after my schooling and activities, and expressed delight at my interest in birds. My wariness softened.

  He asked Mama to watch the sunset on the beach. Seeing them rise from their chairs on the verandah, Miz Verlow came to the kitchen, where I was at the sink.

  “Calley,” she murmured, “Mr. O’Hare is taking your mama to watch the sunset. You had better scoot into the tall grass
and eavesdrop. I’ll be waiting in my room for you to report back.”

  Miz Verlow had never asked me to spy on anyone. I did not hesitate, however; Mama was going beyond our sight in the presence of a man authorized to arrest people.

  Forty-eight

  MIZ Verlow was waiting for me on my return. She put her finger to her lips as I slipped past her, at the door into her room.

  “He pointed out stars to Mama,” I reported breathlessly, “not that Mama could see them but she pretended to.”

  Miz Verlow indicated a coffee thermos and a pair of cups on a side table, between her rocking chair and a straight chair. I took the straight chair and she settled into the rocker.

  “He thinks Mama is innocent and was done out of Daddy’s money.”

  Miz Verlow sighed.

  “She believes him,” I said.

  “But you don’t,” Miz Verlow said.

  “Mama believes what she wants to believe. I don’t believe him, exactly. I believe that she is innocent or she wouldn’t need to believe him.”

  Miz Verlow started and sat back, grasping the arms of the rocker.

  “Well, well,” she muttered.

  “He hasn’t got any proof,” I continued, scornfully, so Miz Verlow would not think that I was disappointed.

  She let go of the arms of the rocker and rocked back very slightly.

  “Can’t prove a negative,” she said vaguely.

  It was an interesting way to put it but I would have to wait until later to think about it.

  “Mama asked him if he knew anything about Ford. He ducked it. I think he does.”

  “What does he want, exactly?” Miz Verlow asked.

  “He says he wants to restore her good name and get Ford back for her and see her as happy as she should be.”

  Miz Verlow chuckled. “A perfect gentle knight.”

  I heard it as “night.”

  She picked up on my confusion at once. “Knight with a K,” she clarified for me. “He wants to carry her away on a white horse, like a fairy-tale princess.”

  I guessed that was a way of saying that Mr. O’Hare had fallen for Mama.

  Miz Verlow dismissed him. “He’s a fool.”

  She poured me half a cup of coffee and we sat together in contemplative silence.

  Finally she said, “I never want to catch you eavesdropping on me.”

  I put my cup down. “Sometimes I caint help it, Miz Verlow.”

  She nodded. “Let me put it this way. I never want to discover that you have overheard me and then repeated it to someone else.”

  Immediately I wondered why and if I did, what she might do about it.

  “Don’t try me, Calley,” she said, as if she could read my mind. “Go on to bed now.”

  Mama was not in the room we shared. I found her in the small parlor, with Mr. O’Hare. They each had a glass of bourbon on the rocks, and a glow about them. I pretended that I had come to kiss Mama good night.

  I was in my pajamas, ready to do Mama’s feet, when she came up to bed. She kicked off her shoes and sat down on her vanity stool to unbutton her garters, freeing her stockings so that I could roll them carefully off her feet.

  “Gus O’Hare,” she said, as if the name made her feel warm. “What a terribly nice man. Of course, I knew it already—never mind, I don’t want to think about that horrible time.”

  In the morning I was on the beach before the sun rose, along with the Llewelyns and Mr. O’Hare and two other guests who wanted to watch birds.

  Mrs. Llewelyn had given me one of her old bird guides, and that morning I carried it in a pocket of my overalls. She knew that I had had an even older Audubon guide, once upon a time, but no longer carried it about. Wrongly deducing that I had lost it, she waited until she thought I was old enough to do a better job holding on to one, and then gave me her hand-me-down. I was glad to have it. I had others, left by other guests, but would not make her feel stupid by telling her so. In fact, I still had that older one, but I had conceived the idea that it was so old, that touching it, never mind opening it, would cause it to fall apart.

  As we moved slowly and quietly through the tall grass to the crest of the first dune, I fell into step with Mr. O’Hare.

  “Mama likes you,” I told him, as softly as I could.

  He glanced at me, pleasure lighting his face.

  “I like her. I like you, Calley.”

  “You don’t know me,” I replied. “Maybe you won’t like me so much if you get to know me better.”

  He paused to give me a questioning look.

  “Where’s my brother, Ford, Mr. O’Hare? What’s he doing?” Mr. O’Hare grasped the binoculars that hung around his neck and looked away at the sky, scanning it.

  “He’s gone to school. A very good school.”

  “Doesn’t he care anything about Mama?”

  Mr. O’Hare looked down at me. His face was grave. “Your brother has come to believe that your mama was responsible not only for your daddy’s death but the death of your grand-mother, Mrs. Carroll. I am not sure that he will ever forgive your mama.”

  Then he raised his binoculars to his eyes.

  I did not tell Miz Verlow that Mr. O’Hare knew anything about my brother, Ford. I had too many questions of my own that I hoped to have answered.

  Why did Ford blame Mama for Mamadee’s death? Even if Mama had killed Mamadee, I doubted Ford would have considered it unforgivable. He never had any more love for Mamadee than I did. It was Mamadee who doted on him, and all he ever did for her was yank her strings for what he wanted.

  Of course if Mama had something to do with Daddy’s murder, that was unforgivable, but in order to believe it, Ford must have some knowledge that I did not. I supposed it was possible. On the other hand, Ford was a Carroll and therefore profoundly untrustworthy.

  Mr. O’Hare stayed two weeks at Merrymeeting, courting Mama. He took her to dinner at Martine’s and the Driftwood, and to the dog-track and to the movies. Mama wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about including me, but Mr. O’Hare also took both of us to Goofy Golf and the Famous Diner. That was all it took to make me think Gus O’Hare was Jesus Right Christ on a Popsicle stick. Mama would have slapped me if I’d ever used that expression. Having heard it on the playground at school, I was entranced with it, and anxious to find an application for it. Gus O’Hare fit it fine.

  Forty-nine

  MAMA sprawled facedown like a limp starfish, on a webbed chaise. Her one-piece green bathing suit, cut low in the back, had the straps undone to expose all of her shoulders to the sun. I finished oiling her back and moved down to the backs of her legs.

  I asked her, “Mama, is Mr. O’Hare coming back to see us?”

  “Not us, Calley,” she answered, her voice bright with a malicious smugness. “Mr. O’Hare is coming back to see me. Grown men do not interest themselves in girls your age. When he does come back, I had better not see you hanging all over him the way you do.”

  “I never,” I muttered at Mama’s green-clad fanny.

  “Don’t talk back to me.”

  “No’m,” I agreed. “Mama, do you ever miss Daddy?”

  There was long silence, so long that I thought that she had decided not to answer. She reached under the chaise, where she had placed an ashtray, a lighter and her pack of Kools. She fired up a cigarette, poking the butt through the weave of the chaise to suck at it.

  Then she said, “Baby, I can hardly recall his face. It all seems like a nightmare that happened to somebody else.”

  Lines from a movie or a novel or a television show, perhaps one that I had even watched with her. Some Loretta Young thing maybe.

  “I remember what Daddy looked like,” I said, “and the sound of his voice. Want to hear it?”

  “No,” Mama snapped. “I don’t. I don’t know what I did to deserve you being so mean to me. I haven’t had the easiest life, you know?”

  I could argue that point too. I could have said that since Daddy’s death, she had not gone h
ungry or worked a single day for wages, let alone volunteered to lift a pinkie, or had the choice of wearing a pair of hand-me-down ill-fitting shoes or going barefoot, as Grady Driver did.

  “Does Mr. O’Hare ever talk about Daddy—?”

  Mama interrupted me. “He does not. Why would he want to talk about all that old unpleasantness?”

  I dropped the suntan oil in the sand next to her.

  “I caint imagine,” I said, in Mama’s voice.

  Mama rolled over and sat up, nearly losing her cigarette in the process.

  I stepped back out of her reach.

  “If I could, I’d slap your mouth!”

  She was too indolent to make the effort. I turned my back and strolled away, leaving her to burn, one way or another.

  Gus O’Hare did return, for the long Labor Day weekend. Mama made sure that no opportunities occurred for me to be included in their outings. Then Gus proposed we all go to the drive-in. Mama resisted awhile, but fearing that she was in danger of appearing to be intransigent, finally gave in. A Southern Lady, of course, must never be perceived to be unreasonable to a suitor.

  Mr. O’Hare borrowed Miz Verlow’s black Lincoln. I was assigned the backseat, and a pillow and a blanket, so that I could go to sleep when I was sufficiently weary. The first movie, Tiger Bay, could not start before dark, and that didn’t happen until nearly nine. I managed to stay awake for the whole thing, though I remember very little of it now. I remember Hayley Mills and I remember wishing Hayley were my name instead of Calley. The next movie was The Absent-Minded Professor. I dozed off.

  Their voices drew me to the surface of wakefulness.

  Gus: “You must worry about Calley.”

  Mama made a noncommittal noise.

  “Must be tough for her, her ears. I think they’re kind of cute but I bet she gets plagued by the other kids.”

  “The world’s a tough place. She’s gone have to be tough to survive in it.”