Candles Burning

by Tabitha King

  Miz Verlow went through a little routine of being so attentive to one guest that she didn’t notice Mama until she turned around at the kerfuffle of commotion and saw Mama getting her ear sucked by Colonel Beddoes. Mama had to swat him down mockingly, to keep her dignity in front of Miz Verlow.

  Mama went out again with Colonel Beddoes after supper and it was late when she returned but I was still awake. When I heard her, I went to her room and knocked.

  She had left the door ajar, which meant that I should come right in. She looked at me in her mirror, where she was sponging off her makeup.

  “My feet are killin’ me,” she said. “Show me your hands.”

  I held them up so they were visible in the mirror. Then I picked up a bottle of her hand lotion and helped myself. My nails were fine but my skin was dry.

  “That’s expensive,” she said, “don’t waste it.”

  She had a cigarette burning up in an ashtray on the vanity and a glass of bourbon breathing pleasant airs. I picked up the cigarette and took a drag.

  “Buy your own,” she snapped.

  I took a sip out of her glass of bourbon too.

  “Calley!”

  I dropped onto her bed, kicked off my sandals and flopped back.

  Mama stopped to suck on the cigarette and knock back some bourbon. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

  I didn’t say anything. She finished with her face, tied the sash of her negligee, took her cigarette and bourbon and went off to the bathroom for a quarter hour. I used the time to open her pocketbook and help myself to a twenty and then I turned down her bed for her.

  Mama came back, glass empty, cigarette stub no doubt flushed down the toilet.

  She handed me the glass and arranged herself on the bed. As I opened the jar of foot cream, she gave a great melodramatic sigh.

  “It was hell,” she said. “You cannot imagine.”

  I held her feet in my lap. Her new tits poked up the bodice of her negligee proudly. Her eyelids bore very thin but still visible red scars, and other scars were exposed behind her ears, where she had tied back her hair to do her face.

  I worked the foot cream into her feet methodically.

  “But,” Mama said, reaching for the pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the night table, “it was worth every damn cent and every damn miserable moment.”

  She went into some detail about the miserable moments, which were more miserable for her than anyone else who ever experienced them. When I was finished with her feet, she was still talking. I closed the jar.

  She paused to take a hit on her cigarette.

  “Good night, Mama,” I said, leaving her with her mouth open, words ready to spill out and no one to hear them.

  I closed the bedroom door gently.

  IT was Miz Verlow’s custom to sort the mail when it arrived, usually right after breakfast. Then she would give it to me to distribute. As a rule, her guests received very little mail; they were short-term residents, after all.

  In the years that we had been living at Merrymeeting, Mama had received only communications from Adele Starret, an occasional postcard or note from some guest with whom she had struck up an acquaintanceship or, even more rarely, a billet-doux from a boyfriend. It was more common for me to receive mail, for I shared the interests of so many of our longtime guests. Not only notes and postcards arrived with my name on them, but books and records and tapes, and even the occasional feather, dried flower, or packet of seeds.

  The day after Mama returned, Miz Verlow handed me a letter for her. She handed me that envelope with a curtness with which I was now familiar. Miz Verlow ignored me most of the time, since my last visit to the attic, but sometimes it was obvious that she was extremely displeased with me. I made an early decision to ignore any reaction from her, and stuck to it.

  The envelope was lovely thick stock, with a Paris, France, postmark on it and no return address on it.

  Mama was drinking coffee and doing her nails on the verandah. Once upon a time, she never would have done her nails in public or even semi-public. Miz Verlow frowned in Mama’s direction when she handed me the letter. She said nothing but I could see that she was steamed at Mama about doing her manicure on the verandah.

  I took the envelope to Mama, who looked right through me, and waved one hand in the air to dry her nails as she studied the envelope.

  “Paris, France,” she said loudly, in case any other guests were in earshot. “Well, I caint imagine.”

  Mama wrinkled her nose. She didn’t want to ruin her nails. “Open it for me, Calley.”

  I sat on the edge of the railing and slit the envelope open with my oyster knife. A single, folded sheet of the same heavyweight stock filled the envelope tightly. When I shook the folded sheet flat, a photograph dropped free. I caught it with my free hand. It was a black-and-white snapshot of a handsome young man on a sailboat, one hand on the rigging.

  Ford. I knew him at once. Grown up, or nearly so, but still Ford.

  With the snapshot in one hand, I read the letter aloud:

  Dear Mama,

  It has taken me a long time even to start to find you. Obviously as a mere child, I could hardly do it. As soon as I could, I began to search for you. Now I know that you are still alive, and where you are, I can hardly wait to see you again. I will shortly return from junior year abroad. It is not my desire to intrude upon your present life. Please come alone to meet me at the Ford automobile agency in Mobile at 3 in the afternoon of the seventeenth of August.

  Your loving son,

  Ford

  P.S.

  Let me assure you that if you feel any shame at abandoning me, I know now why you did, and understand it, and forgive you.

  Tears ran down Mama’s taut face. I handed her the snapshot. She took it with trembling fingers. Wiping her eyes frantically, like a child, with the back of one hand, she stared at the picture of Ford.

  “Ford,” she whispered, “my baby.”

  Her eyes closed and she kissed the snapshot.

  I let the envelope fall to the floor of the verandah. As silently as I could, I slipped away.

  The young man in the photograph was of the age that Ford would be now. It was a shiny new snapshot. My first impression that the young man was, in fact, Ford seemed convincing evidence in itself of the authenticity of the photograph.

  All that rummaging that I had done to find Ford had been a waste of time.

  He had not mentioned me.

  Of course, Mama would be more important to him.

  I was curious to meet him again, grown up and all, but now there was no particular urgency. Mama would have what she thought was her due, Ford, and access to the fortune that she thought should have been hers. She might very well not marry Tom Beddoes, if Ford took against it.

  Understandably, Mama was caught up in the realization of her dreams and desires. So much all at once—not since Daddy died, had so much come her way.

  I felt as if a knot had been slipped. Maybe the last knot. What a marvel. Unanswered questions blown away like a dandelion head on a puff of breath.

  I had a million dollars, plus one, in a safe place. Not the linen closet. That had been the most temporary of arrangements. Leaving was going to be easier than I had thought.

  Sixty-four

  THE waxing moon hung overhead like a scimitar raised high for the decisive blow. The night was too sultry to sleep inside. Even on the beach, I did not sleep, but sprawled on my blanket staring at the sky. Mrs. Mank’s Benz hummed in the distance along the road to Merrymeeting.

  I sat up and hugged my knees and waited. I heard a mouse rolling grains of sand under its paws as it streaked from one sheltered place to another.

  Mrs. Mank came over the dune and walked toward me down the beach.

  “It’s time to go,” she said.

  I nodded. “Before we do, I want to ask a question.”

  Irritation sharpened her features.

  “Why was Daddy murdered?”

&
nbsp; “I have no idea,” she said. “What a peculiar thing to ask me.”

  “You should have said because he had the bad luck to fall into the hands of two criminally insane women.”

  She took a sharp breath.

  “Are you accusing me of complicity?” Her voice rang with incredulity and anger.

  I looked past her, at the Gulf waters sprinkled all over with moonlight. I didn’t answer her.

  Instead, I asked, “Don’t you want to ask me a question?”

  Her expression settled into passivity.

  “I may have to wrack my brains,” she said sarcastically. “All right. What’s the latest word from the dead?”

  I smiled at her. “Justice.”

  She flinched as if I had slapped her.

  “And who are you?” she asked. “Judge and jury?”

  “No. I’m Calley Dakin, and my daddy was murdered in New Orleans in 1958.”

  “That’s the past,” Mrs. Mank said. “His life ended. Yours did not. You have to live the rest of it.”

  “Why in hell do you care?” I asked, in a near whisper.

  She smiled crookedly. “I don’t care. I want to know what you hear.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t act as if you were simpleminded, Calley Dakin. You hear what no one else does. It might have driven you insane. I’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to protect you while you were growing up. I’ll tell you a secret, shall I? But not until we’re in Brookline.”

  This time I was not going to refuse, even if I had to go to Brookline, Massachusetts, first.

  I rose slowly, gathering my blanket. I folded it with care. Mrs. Mank stood by, watching me.

  Merry Verlow stood by the Benz. I walked passed her without a word and went into the house and up the backstairs. Mama’s door was closed, of course. I went into my crookedy-room.

  From the shelf over my bed, I took the old bird guide. On the spine it read:

  National Audubon Society

  Field Guide to

  Eastern Land Birds

  Just as it had when I took it out of my overalls pocket after listening to it on the beach. I was confident that the flyleaf was inscribed Bobby Carroll. I listened intently but the book was silent. Setting it aside, I stripped off a pillowcase and threw some clothes into it, and my lunar notebook, the old bird guide and Calliope’s locket. I looked out my little window, at the view that I had seen when I first came to Merrymeeting. Every drop of water in the Gulf, every grain of sand on the beach, every molecule of air, was different and yet, it was all the same. Things change, but only into themselves.

  Downstairs, outside again, and I went to the passenger side of the Benz and opened the door. Miz Verlow and Mrs. Mank kissed each other on the cheek.

  I tried to take in the house all at once. It was shabbier. It creaked more in the wind and the verandah floor was splintery.

  Mrs. Mank slipped behind the wheel as I closed the door on the passenger side.

  Miz Verlow bent to wave at me, a small wave, and the swiftest quirk of a smile. There was something embarrassed in that smile. Merry Verlow knew that the secret I was going to learn would change everything and would do her no credit. She nodded and stepped back from the car.

  “Go to sleep,” said Mrs. Mank, “we’ve a long way to go.”

  Sleep? Not hardly.

  I settled back in the seat to watch the Gulf as we sped along. Just past midnight, the dark insubstantial as the shadow, it was the time of night that always has felt least like night to me: neither night nor day but a suspension of time altogether. Water and sky surged into one black liquid pulse, the glisten of the moon like the blink of a bird’s golden eye.

  When the turn came, away from the Gulf and toward Pensacola, I looked back. The black water of the Gulf was already no more than a distant dark glimmering horizon.

  Artificial light increased steadily as we left the island. Pensacola slept with open windows in the heat. Placid streetlight defined the leaves of trees and glistened on pavement. As the Scenic Highway climbed the western side of Escambia Bay, again, I looked back. The Causeway arched to the clot of darkness gridded with light that was Gulf Breeze, and the similar shape of Pensacola Beach beyond. Santa Rosa Island loomed as an uneven ghostly slash, pocked scarcely with lights and splotched with inky black vegetation, between the Gulf and the bay.

  I didn’t know where I would be when the sun rose. I only knew where I wasn’t going to be. Nor did I know how long I might be away, but I did not expect to be very long. I would return; I had money to collect.

  I felt stuck in the summer night like a bug in amber. In the silence between Mrs. Mank and myself, the clock in the dashboard of the Benz became notably loud.

  Mrs. Mank shifted upward and the Benz surged. My stomach lurched and the forward motion pressed me back into the seat. The dashboard clock tsked loudly at me.

  klikitpikitlikitrikitklikitstikitlikprikitlikitwikitwikit

  tell you a secret

  secret unshine

  otongotongotongoton

  unshine secret secret secret

  don’t make me tell don’t you tell secret hell sunshine

  see the cold moon sees me seize the dark sun seas me

  calliopecalliopecalliopecalliope

  I opened my eyes into a dazzle of oncoming light. I was blinded. And I saw. The light passed through me and was all around with a great noise that pushed and pulled at every cell of my body, like the slipstream of the wings of an enormous bird passing by. There was no heat in the light, and no cold, only its vibration resonating in the small dark space where I bowed my head over my knees.

  I woke again, with a small jolt and the sensation of falling. My mouth was open and dry as if I had eaten a ghost, and its corners were damp with spittle. Mrs. Mank was only inches from me across the gearbox. The headlights splashed enough light back off the tarmac to show her like a shadow.

  I thought: I am a shadow to her too.

  I said, “I know a secret too.”

  Her gaze whipped right.

  “Daddy told me, Daddy told me what you did, Daddy told me why!”

  Mrs. Mank gasped as if she were running very hard. Her eyes were on the road again, her body crouched over the wheel as if to spring right through the windshield.

  I closed my eyes.

  Sixty-five

  ROLLING gently over gravel, the Benz chuckled and cackled as if it were amused. My eyelids felt glued shut. The effort it took to open them had that protest of lashes tearing out.

  The light was morning soft, and the world around was drunkenly green. A yawn forced its way out of me, and the flavor of all that fresh green washed into my mouth and lungs. My cells seemed to suck it up. I wondered if I would be green when next I looked in the mirror.

  The Benz came to a seemingly inevitable stop, and settled heavily on the gravel. Mrs. Mank sighed as if she had made a great effort. I looked toward her, and met her gaze. It was calm and confident and more than a little smug.

  I wanted to slap her face.

  Some fierce glint must have shown itself in my eyes because she flinched.

  “Calley,” she said, “I’m trying to give you the world.”

  That was the secret?

  “I don’t want it,” I said, without thought, and with plenty of adolescent pout in my tone.

  “You have no choice,” she said. “Debts have been assumed and must be repaid.”

  “Not by me.” I opened the car door and unfolded myself from the Benz.

  Inhaling lovely cool green air, feasting my eyes on the flawless depth of green lawn, I strolled away from the Benz to face the house squarely. If any question had risen in my mind that Mrs. Mank was very wealthy, the house in Brookline answered it definitively. It didn’t have a name the way a Southern house would, but the double front doors opened wide onto a high-ceiling hall, and in that hall stood a grand piano. Not a baby grand, a grand.

  I went straight to it, opened it, and let my fingertips caress each key
reverently.

  Mrs. Mank spoke over my shoulder. “It’s not going anywhere, Calley.”

  And I wasn’t, at least not right away. I wanted to explore. Mrs. Mank chose to behave as if I were going to go along with her plans, despite my defiance in her driveway. It was an attitude that Mama would have been right at home with.

  The no-longer-quite-young man who had opened the doors as the roadster stopped in the drive came in with my bindle—my pillowcase. Mrs. Mank greeted him with the name Appleyard, and casually told him my name. Appleyard was an ugly man who wore a neat beard to cover acne scars. His eyes however were as beautiful as any I ever seen, the shade of violet once associated with the eyes of Elizabeth Taylor.

  I was shown to the room that was to be mine, a room with its own bathroom, and an east-facing balcony with a tiny table and chair for civilized morning coffee. An assortment of new clothing hung in the closet or was folded in the drawers of the dresser. I liked the clothes that Mrs. Mank or one of her minions had chosen for me. For the first time in my life I did not feel like an orphan in a thrift shop.

  The bathroom was furnished luxuriously as well, with the biggest bathtub I had yet to encounter, along with a walk-in shower. A terrycloth bathrobe sat folded on a stool by the tub. From soap to knickers, everything that I could conceivably need was provided.

  So this was what it was like to have something.

  The first thing that I did was drop my clothes and shower. After, when I sat at the vanity and picked up the comb, I thought: This is how Mama feels, like a grown woman. Tugging the comb through the tangles of my hair, I was surprised to see a fistful of my hair on its teeth. I went on combing, out of curiosity, and in a few minutes was looking at myself, entirely bald, in the mirror.

  Mrs. Mank was unperturbed.

  “It will grow back in,” she declared.

  She took me out after we breakfasted and bought me a copper-penny-colored wig, in a dramatically asymmetric style. For me, the extremes of fashion in the sixties are divided between Space-Age Stewardess and Thrift Shop Halloween Costume. My new wig belonged to the first category. Though Mama had accepted the Jackie Kennedy variant, Space-Age Stewardess Married To Airline CEO, she would have been horrified by the color and unfeminine style of the wig as too too, to say nothing of being inappropriate for a young girl still in school. The wig amused me almost as much as it did Mrs. Mank and Appleyard.