“Fathers don’t always come out fairly after a divorce,” I said quietly. “Not any more than mothers are necessarily right, just because they’re mothers.”
He heard me as if from a distance, and said nothing.
The quiet of the desert closed around us. Only the horses, neighing and stomping, and the boys’ laughter made a tiny core of sound in the midst of a great silence.
Jason said, “Would you like to ride a little way into the desert?”
I shook myself out of a depression that had taken hold. “I’m not much of a rider, but I’d like to try.”
My jeans and sturdy shoes would serve, and I was boosted into a saddle. Jason mounted his own palomino—a real beauty—and led the way out. The boys were having so much fun they hardly noticed our going. They would be safe with Mr. and Mrs. Sanchez.
The western saddle was comfortable, and the mare they’d given me moved smoothly. There was something exciting about sitting in a saddle above the world, and being borne along by an animal instead of an indifferent machine. For a little while trouble couldn’t touch me. Not even Jason’s silent disapproval could touch me.
Away from the shelter of the ranch the wind blew steadily. It always blew out here in the desert, Jason said, though this was a calm morning, comparatively. Sand foamed around the horses’ hooves in little eddies, but didn’t rise in the air, as it could in a real storm. For the first time it was possible to see the desert in a way that a moving car never allowed.
“We’ll just go a little farther,” Jason said, “so you won’t get too sore.”
He rode easily beside me, moving as one with a horse that seemed aware of his slightest touch. My feeling of elation grew—a feeling that was purely physical—and I was happy to indulge it.
“There used to be large bands of wild horses roaming all this area,” Jason said. “You can still hear coyotes sometimes at night, though unhappily the horses have been hunted out. Up in the mountains there are a few bighorn sheep left, but they’re wary of men. Men are the marauders. Too many, too brutal, too careless—spoiling the land wherever they go.”
The word he had used caught my ear because his sister had used it to me just yesterday. Why had she asked if I were a “marauder”? The thought intruded on my lighter mood, and I tried to thrust it away.
We were riding toward a nearby rock formation that rose like a miniature mountain ahead of us, and when we reached it Jason helped me to dismount. After we’d tethered the horses to a mesquite bush, we climbed the rough rock to the top, where we could look out across the sand in all directions. For a little while even Jason’s prickliness seemed to subside.
Since we were so different, and came from opposite backgrounds, I found it surprising that there were moments when I felt almost comfortable with Jason Trevor. As though—and this was a startling thought—we were more alike than we were different. The air hadn’t cleared between us, but at least friction had lessened for a little while, and we could feel at ease with each other.
He pointed into the distance. “That’s where the San Andreas Fault goes through. You can hardly see it from the ground, but from a plane, or from the mountains, it makes a ruled line straight across the desert where the fracture cuts through. Some of the mountains around here were pushed up because of the Fault. Not that we have many real earthquakes. The last bad shake just east of Palm Springs was in 1969.”
There had been predictions of new quakes along the Fault, but Californians seemed to live rather casually with their earthquakes, putting out of mind what couldn’t be helped. The way East Coasters lived with the threat of hurricanes. A submerged uneasiness that it was better not to look at too often.
In the west the Little San Bernardinos rimmed the horizon, as bare and burned-out in appearance as the moon. The distances seemed endless, and I found a human need to focus on what was near and tangible. From a clump of mesquite a quail made its chuckling sound, and the marvelously clear air was aromatic with growth that I hadn’t known existed on my trip by car through the more western desert.
“This is a good time of year,” Jason said, sounding relaxed and peaceable now. “Not as beautiful as spring, when everything blooms, but the mountains have stopped radiating heat, and everything revives, including those of us who live here. It’s still early in the season, so the tourists haven’t appeared in full force yet.”
“I don’t have much of a sense of the life in Palm Springs,” I said. “Monica lives in a rarefied atmosphere of her own.”
Amiably, he tried to explain. “There are all sorts of levels. So many different and extreme lifestyles. The rich and the tourists come here for playtime living. Or for retirement. Most of those who come in from outside to build expensive homes have made it big somewhere else. It’s not a competitive place like Los Angeles. All those movies you admire have their source in a lot of bloody infighting that takes place somewhere else. With an eye on the dollar, and the hand sometimes in the till. When somebody like Cliff Robertson blows the whistle, he’s put into limbo for years.”
“But good movies are made.”
“In spite of, maybe. I don’t put down the creative people, the dedicated writers and directors and actors. A number of them hold to their own vision. They can leave competition behind when they come here to soak up the sun. Though that’s make-believe too—as though the rest of the world ceased to exist. There can be a lot of heads in the sand here in the desert!”
“What about you?”
“I belong to the working types who put down roots and like it here. Some of us even stay through the broiling summers because the desert gets under our skins and this is where we want to make our lives. People stayed here the year-round even before air conditioning.”
“There’s a wonderful feeling of space,” I said. “I even like all the sand colors. But the desert’s awfully big, and sometimes it scares me.”
He smiled again. “It’s not a kid’s sandbox. I suppose it takes a certain toughness to survive, and it can be pretty savage at times. There are still sidewinders—rattlesnakes to you—though they’re small and nocturnal, and they avoid people. Then there’s the wind. Even though a lot of the valley is cultivated now, the earth can rise into the air and bury everything. Winds that tunnel down through San Gorgonio Pass blow it our way. San Gorgonio’s the big mountain standing up there north of Palm Springs. Farther south, at the end of the Santa Rosas, there are wastelands and real desolation. Moon country. You’ll see it when you fly over by the southern route.”
I could almost like him in this expansive mood. He held out his hand and we started down from our rocky summit, his grasp firm and impersonal.
“I suppose you know about that secretary of Monica’s?” he asked as we reached the ground. “The one who killed herself years ago?”
“Peggy Smith? Yes, of course. I found that bust she did of Aunt Monica in the museum.”
Jason pointed again. “It was right at the end of these rocks that her body was found. They say she brought Monica’s gun with her and drove out here deliberately to kill herself. Her car was nearby. Of course Linda’s obsessed by anything that concerns Monica Arlen, so she’s talked about it. There’s some gossip for you.”
He was baiting me again, but I didn’t rise to the challenge. Monica’s curious hint that perhaps Peggy Smith’s death hadn’t been suicide returned to me at the sight of the very place where she had been found.
Jason boosted me into the saddle again, and we rode back to the ranch. A long-ago death had reached out to touch the present, and we were silent all the way.
The rest of the morning was spent in a leisurely fashion that suited me well. At lunch Mrs. Sanchez’s beans and rice were devoured with enthusiasm by two hungry small boys. Everything could seem almost “normal” out here. This simple ranch life seemed far happier than life at Smoke Tree House. Yet the need to return to the mountain was always there at the back of my mind. However pleasant this escape, it couldn’t offer us the security we needed right
now. Gack, the man in the blue Chevy, would grow doubly watchful, since we’d given him the slip this morning.
For a little while I’d been able to stop thinking about what had happened in the pool, but it had happened, so that even Monica’s fortress had been breeched. Nevertheless, we would have to go back, and if there was an enemy within the walls, then I’d have to deal with that too.
After lunch, when I suggested that we’d better start home to Palm Springs, Jason vetoed this calmly.
“I’ll drive you back at sunset,” he said. “There’ll be an early moon over the desert tonight, and you have to see our best attractions if you’re going to write about us.”
Even though his words were faintly derisive, he seemed good-natured enough. Perhaps this day in the open had relaxed him too.
He had work to finish at his desk in the library-study, and he asked if I would mind.
“I’ll find something to read,” I said, and followed him into a big room with a touch of the Spanish in its dark furniture, and of the Indian in colorful rugs and wall hangings. I liked the spacious room with its whitewashed walls, doors that opened onto the wide porch, and books everywhere.
I found myself contrasting Jason with Owen, who hated to read. Owen always demanded center stage, and someone else’s attention on a book irritated him. All my writings had been done when he was out of the apartment. Owen’s angers were always explosive—he never held anything back. In Jason anger could run still and deep, though it hadn’t seemed directed against me today. I no longer considered him arrogant, as I’d done at first. Now I understood why he was angry, and why he’d been critical of me.
I studied titles along a bookshelf and smiled to discover a similarity in our tastes. He too liked Adam Hall and Le Carré. There was even an early Stephen King that had given me shivers. But he read a lot of other things too—books about the Middle East, and China. A volume on South Africa that I’d found fascinating and disturbing. Clearly, Jason didn’t live with his head in the sand.
I finally selected something on desert animals, and settled down in a corner of the room. Once, after I’d been reading for a while, I looked up to find Jason watching me speculatively.
“Linda said you weren’t sure you wanted to come here today,” he said.
“That’s right. At first I didn’t want to come. Not after Linda told me about your wife and daughter. I could understand how you’d feel toward me, though there didn’t seem to be any way I could defend myself. I don’t mean that I haven’t done things I’ve regretted and been wrong about. But it isn’t the way you probably thought.”
“Why did you change your mind?” His tone seemed casual.
“I wanted Keith to have the trip. Besides, I kept getting indignant whenever I thought of how you’d condemned me without a hearing. I suppose I wanted to stand up for myself, in spite of what you thought. Now it doesn’t seem to matter much, though perhaps it will again. Why did you ask me to come?”
“I’m not sure. Mixed reasons. Maybe I thought—oh, never mind.”
“Perhaps you wanted to speak up for my husband’s viewpoint?”
This time he laughed openly, naturally. “Maybe you’re right. Neither of us can help being prejudiced by our own experiences. So it could be safer if we avoid explanations and accusations. Look—if you need to go to Desert Hot Springs for your research, I can drive you there.”
The sudden offer was a truce, but I wondered if a truce was what I really wanted. A truce meant that we’d put aside our points of disagreement and not talk about dangerous topics. It meant only a postponement of facing the real issues. For right now, I accepted that.
“If you would really drive me somewhere, there’s a town in the mountains that I’d like to visit—Idyllwild. Monica doesn’t want me to meet the couple she used to know who live there. So I can’t ask Linda to take me. Yet I really need to talk with them both, if I’m to write honestly about Monica.”
“Honestly? That usually means somebody’s going to get hurt.”
A truce might be difficult, after all.
“Look, Jason,” I said, “I can’t work if I have to analyze myself and my motives every inch of the way. I need to go into this with an open mind and not set up barriers. If I’m to develop insight, if I’m to find my own viewpoint, I can’t worry about who might be hurt. I don’t even know that yet. All I’m after is to discover as much as I can learn. Enough so I can take sides.”
“Between Arlen and Scott?”
“If necessary. Of course I’d like to be on Aunt Monica’s side. But sooner or later I must understand what happened in the past. So much hinges on that.”
“After all this time, isn’t that a trivial question?”
“Not to me it isn’t.”
“Who do you want to see in Idyllwild?”
“Nicos and Alva Leonidas. Both were old hands at Monica’s studio in her great days. Linda wants me to write her kind of book—glowing with praise for Monica’s achievements. That’s fine, but I have to find the woman as well as the actress. There’s a great deal of material about the actress, but I’ll have to hunt for the woman. The best way to do that is through her friends and enemies.”
“All right,” he said. “I know their restaurant in Idyllwild—the Lindos. So I’ll take you there. You can bring the boys again, if you like.”
“Thanks, but I’d better not take Keith away from the house too often. Even though we managed this today, it might not work next time. Owen won’t stop at anything when he goes after what he wants. He can be—dangerous.”
“That sounds melodramatic.”
Anger leaped in me again, taking me by surprise. I’d thought myself so calm.
“Yes—it is melodramatic. Last night someone tried to drown me in Monica’s swimming pool. It was very melodramatic.”
He swung away from his desk. “What are you talking about?” So Linda hadn’t told him.
I related the whole thing as quietly as I could. I didn’t want terror and fear to rise in me again, but they came anyway. I had to hold on to myself hard in order to finish the story.
Before I was through, he came to sit near me, clearly shocked and concerned. “You can’t stay up there any longer,” he said when I paused. “We’ll find some other place—”
“What other place? Monica’s house is still safer than anywhere else. I can’t believe that your sister is mixed up in this, and I have to stay there for now. If it was Ralph, he can be guarded against. I never thought I wouldn’t be safe going up to the pool—with Monica’s walls all around. I was wrong.”
Jason got up and moved restlessly about the room. This time I’d convinced him, and I was grateful for his concern. But there wasn’t anything he could do for Keith and me right now.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” he asked. “I sensed right away that something was wrong.”
“What was the point in telling you? I meant to leave that to Linda. Until you said I was being melodramatic.”
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid we haven’t understood each other very well.”
I wasn’t sure we did now. “Please go on with your work. I’m all right. And I’m very glad you brought us out here today.”
“I won’t be much longer,” he said and returned to his papers. Though now and then he looked over at me rather doubtfully.
I read on absently about the desert wood rat, which preferred human belongings to trim his nest. And I learned that since date groves had been established in the area, raccoons had come down from the mountains, extending their range. I wished I could care. Now that I’d stopped holding away the memories of last evening, I kept feeling hands around my ankles, pulling me under the water.
In the end, I gave up trying to read and took my book back to its shelf. A framed photograph on the bookcase caught my eye and I picked it up, realizing it must be Jason’s daughter. A bright-faced little girl with long brown hair looked out at me trustingly in the color print. I put the picture down and turned to find Gwen
’s father once more watching me.
“She’s beautiful,” I said, and could find no easy words to express what the sight of Gwen’s picture did to me.
“She belongs here,” Jason said grimly.
What if I repeated the same thing he’d said to me? What if I asked if his child’s mother wouldn’t miss her daughter a great deal if she had to give her up? But I couldn’t speak the words. I was willing to make an intuitive leap that he couldn’t make toward me and to believe in his “truth.”
“My daughter is why I’m on leave from my regular post at the museum just now,” he said. “I take out classes now and then, and work on free-lance projects. That way I can leave for any part of the country at a moment’s notice. I have a good agency looking for her, and I’ve made several futile trips so far, but lately we’ve come a little closer.”
“To snatching her back?” I asked.
Anger was hot in his eyes, but he said nothing. There was nothing more I could say, and I wandered outside, where the boys were chasing each other around the house, whooping exuberantly. I was lucky. I had Keith, and he was beginning to sound like any normal, obstreperous little boy. It had to stay that way. I knew how Jason felt, but the rights and wrongs were no longer as clear-cut as I’d thought.
The rest of the afternoon slipped by quietly, and around four o’clock Jason said he would drive us back. With the sun going down beyond the western mountains, Mt. San Jacinto stood black and massive against a golden sky. The promised early moon sailed over the desert, and its beauty held an aching quality for me. I hated to return to the tensions of Smoke Tree House and the new threat it now held for me, but that was where reality waited—a reality I had to face. Jason’s quiet ranch was only part of a fantasy I mustn’t think about. It had no meaning for the future, no substance or connection with the frightening possibilities that faced me. I’d had enough of building my life on make-believe, and I mustn’t indulge that weakness again.
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