The Shade of My Own Tree

by Sheila Williams

  “No, that is too early,” the woman stated firmly. “It must be after dark.”

  “OK … then, eight o’clock? I think the sun should be going down by then,” I added facetiously. What was she? A vampire? I would come to regret that thought.

  “Eight o’clock will be fine. I will be there. And it is on Burning Church Road in Prestonn, that is right?”

  I confirmed the address and thanked her for calling.

  Dana Drew was her name. Interesting. Maybe the reports of Miss Garbo’s death had been exaggerated.

  She showed up at eight o’clock sharp driven by a chauffeur in a large Mercedes with tinted windows. The car was so black and shiny that it looked like patent leather. When Dana Drew stepped out of the car, I wondered if it was too late to tell her that the apartment had been rented.

  She made the Goths I had seen around the art school look like they were Catholic school students. Aside from red lipstick and fingernail polish, she was dressed entirely in black. Only her skin was white.

  Her black hair hung to her waist. She was wearing a black T-shirt, slacks, and high heeled mules. Her silver chain belt had a miniature pair of handcuffs hanging from it. Interesting. There were interlocking Cs on her black quilted shoulder bag and sunglasses. Expensive.

  She looked like a gumbo of Morticia Adams and Ozzy Osbourne with a sprinkling of Elvira thrown in.

  “I’m Dana Drew,” she said. It was nearly dark, but she did not take off her sunglasses. Scary.

  “It’s, uh, nice to meet you,” I said, shaking her hand. I led the way to the coach house, Miss Drew’s heels clicking on the stone walk. Her chauffeur, a nondescript man of average looks, height, and weight, followed quietly behind us. He was also dressed in black and wearing sunglasses. Dana did not introduce him.

  They didn’t stay long. There were only certain things that Dana was really interested in. She glanced around the huge room, checked out the bathroom, and made sure that “the shades didn’t let any light in.” She tested the “integrity” of the floors. (I made a mental note to ask Jack Neal about floor integrity the next time I saw him.) She was interested in soundproofing. When I told her that there was only a garage on the first floor, she seemed relieved. I could only wonder what kind of music she would be playing.

  The rest of the time was spent signing the lease. She paid in cash. I watched her count out the security deposit and two months’ rent in tens and twenties. The money came from a black briefcase that her chauffeur brought from the car. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  “I’ll move my things in Tuesday night,” she said in her deep voice.

  “That will be fine,” I said, trying not to gawk as she counted out the last twenty-dollar bill. My curiosity was eating me up. “Uh, what do you do, Dana?” I asked. On the application, she had written “Self-employed.”

  Dana adjusted her sunglasses with one touch of a long bloodred-painted fingernail.

  “I am a sculptor,” she said.

  And I’m Queen Elizabeth, I said to myself.

  The black car disappeared silently into the night like a panther wearing socks. Despite the cash that was soon to make its way to my bank account, I had to wonder what I had gotten myself into.

  Gloria, who had come out onto the porch to smoke a cigarette, watched the car retreat into the early-summer darkness.

  We had declared a truce, Gloria and I. We would probably never be the best of friends, but we weren’t going to fight like pit bulls, either. Just a few border skirmishes here and there. She often had a clear-eyed view of things, and I smiled at her one-liners. Her initial comment about Dana was a classic.

  Gloria took a drag on her cigarette and shook her head.

  “If she ain’t a pro, she’s on the waiting list,” she said.

  I busied myself with my untied sneakers.

  “She says that she’s a sculptor,” I said matter-of-factly, remembering the length of Dana’s beautifully manicured nails.

  “Yeah, right,” said Gloria.

  I looked up and we chuckled together.

  Two evenings later, around seven o’clock, Gloria, Troy, and I watched from the porch when the moving van carrying Dana’s things pulled up the driveway. First we stared. Then we exchanged glances. Finally, we dashed into the house, falling all over one another (and Bear, who had, as usual, parked himself across the threshold of the front door) like the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera to get cigarettes, iced tea, and a bowl of popcorn. Dana Drew’s arrival was a performance we did not want to miss.

  First, there was the moving van itself.

  A semitrailer rig pulled up and it was, like Dana’s clothing, completely black, no moving company logo on the trailer, no signs or lettering on the cab. Gloria and I looked at each other, both of us thinking the same thing: Hmmmmm.

  Troy’s reaction was what it usually was when things interested him.

  “Cool,” he said, his eyes wide with curiosity.

  Nor were the movers’ uniforms helpful in satisfying our curiosity. They were also unmarked except for generic name tags: JOE, BILL, JOHN, GREG.

  And Dana’s “stuff”?

  Nearly everything was in large brown boxes. Unlabeled boxes. Some of them were huge. Others were much smaller. Two black leather chairs, which were too oddly shaped to fit into a box, were carried in separately. Our eyes widened when we saw them. They looked like something used for persuasion purposes during the Inquisition.

  Not that we were being nosy or anything, but it was such a lovely evening for porch sitting. And in Prestonn, as in most small towns, porch sitting has been elevated to an art form. There is skill involved, and a degree of subtlety is needed.

  It takes real skill to be able to sit in a lawn chair or on a stoop, sip a cold drink, and appear to be preoccupied with a newspaper, book, or conversation while taking in every detail of whatever is going on next door or across the street.

  Outright staring is rude. To lean or even sway toward the conversation that one wants to hear is unacceptable. To yell outright across the street or driveway? A punishable offense.

  Gloria and Troy were seasoned porch sitters and I was impressed. Troy, as young as he was, knew the rules like an expert. He busied himself with a game while his mother smoked a cigarette and appeared to be perusing a magazine. I was fiddling with Wells’s dog harness, the citronella candles, and a make-believe mosquito bite on my leg and positioning the bookmark in my latest book club selection. I have to keep busy when porch sitting or I am always found out. We all appeared to be very occupied with our own pursuits.

  Nothing could have been further from the truth.

  Our eyes were glued to each and every box and crate that came out of the black moving van.

  One of the crates was over six feet long, two feet deep, and oblong in shape. It looked suspiciously like a coffin.

  My nose twitched. Gloria glanced across the porch at me with a gleam in her eyes.

  “Did you see that?”

  “Cool,” Troy commented under his breath. He didn’t even look up. “I’ll bet she’s a vampire.” He was thrilled.

  I couldn’t stand it anymore. I strolled over to one of the movers who was writing something on a clipboard. I strained my eyes trying to see if there was a company name on the top of that piece of paper.

  “Hello?”

  The man put his pen down and smiled. He tucked the clipboard safely under his arm. Darn.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “I, uh, is Miss Drew with you?”

  The man shook his head.

  “No, ma’am. She’ll be over later this evening. We’re just dropping off her things.”

  His answer was not encouraging.

  Sure, I had run a credit check. But what good is that? Does it tell you if your new tenant is a high-priced prostitute or if a she sleeps in a coffin during the day?

  The owl hooted. Wellin
gton barked in reply as if to say, “Cut that out!”

  Now I not only had bats in the belfry but a vampire in the coach house. So much for creating a peaceful haven of normalcy.

  Everybody had a theory about Dana Drew.

  Gloria, as usual, didn’t mince words. We caught a glimpse of my mysterious tenant carrying a long tubelike container into the apartment. We exchanged glances.

  “That look like a kiln or some clay to you?” Gloria asked sarcastically.

  “Nope.” What else could I say?

  “She’s a pro,” Gloria said matter-of-factly, turning her attention back to the begonias. “Sculptor, my ass.”

  Troy was just as sure that Dana was a vampire. I had to admit that his case was a good one: black clothing, pale skin, only nocturnal appearances. Lately Troy had taken to exploring the house carrying a little notebook, pencil, and magnifying glass. He was looking for a secret room and buried treasure. Sometimes, he was gone for hours and then he’d just appear from around a corner or jump out of a closet. He was trying to find out if Dana had a sleeping space in the house. Lordy!

  Whatever he was up to, he was usually behaving himself. For that, I was grateful.

  Bette’s meticulously drawn eyebrows knit together as she listened to the story about my tenant and her affinity for an all-ebony wardrobe and interior decorating scheme. It was the decorating that bothered Bette the most. As she was a woman of many colors, the black-on-black color scheme offended her personal sense of style.

  “I’ve studied interior design at the art school. Black this and black that doesn’t sound like anything I ever heard about. And I’ve tried to keep up with the New York and LA trends and also that new Arizona Southwest fusion style. This sounds like neo-modern Gothic dungeon to me. Where’d you say this gal was from?”

  Bette’s solution to my problems was like Jack’s: to run a background check, of sorts. With a huge network of family that included two sons, four brothers, three sisters, and hundreds of nieces, nephews, and cousins, Bette knew everyone worth knowing.

  “If she’s from anyplace around here, I’ll know it,” she said with satisfaction, jotting down information in her bulging planner. “I’ll call my ex-husband in Frankfort; he’s in the legislature there.”

  I frowned.

  “I thought your ex-husbands were in Atlanta, Knoxville, and Cleveland.”

  “Three of ’em are.” She scribbled something into her notebook, then reached for her cell phone. “The fourth one is in Frankfort.”

  Fourth?

  “How many times have you been married?”

  She gave me a belly laugh.

  “Hon, let’s just say that the county domestic relations judge and I are on a first-name basis. I make Elizabeth Taylor look like a girl at her first prom.”

  Bette was too much.

  “But these days, Bette, why on earth get married? Why not just take a lover? Or move in together?”

  Bette almost dropped her two-ton Louis Vuitton on her Jimmy Choo’s.

  “Why, that’s the most improper thing I’ve ever heard!” Her indignation was as fake as her Bambi-length eyelashes.

  That comment came out as “Y that’s the most im-propah thang A’ve evah hurd!”

  “B’sides,” she added with a wink as she delicately tapped out a telephone number. “When you get married, you get a lovely diamond engagement ring that you don’t have to give back! Hello?… Templeton! How are you, sweetheart?… Fine, fine.…” As she talked, she waved her rose-tipped fingers at me, tapped the four carats’ worth of diamond studs in her ears, and gently lifted the car headlight–sized diamond pendant that dangled from a chain that hung around her neck.

  “Temp, I would luv to chat with you ’bout old times, but I’ve got a showin’ in about fifteen minutes, darlin’, and I’m runnin’ late.… What?… I’m still partial to that red teddy, too. Now listen, hon, I need a favah.…”

  Deliver me from red teddies.

  It was only 5:30 in the afternoon when Jack Neal proposed his Dana Drew theory, so the subject in question was nowhere in sight. She only showed up after the sun went down and then only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of her on Saturday evenings. Late. Like one o’clock in the morning late.

  Jack sipped the soda that I had brought him and glanced up at the now black-curtained windows on the second floor of the coach house. He was keeping me company while I scraped a particularly hideous baby-poop yellow wallpaper fragment from the dining room wall. He had been “in the neighborhood” and thought that he would stop by and deliver the historic register info he had copied for me. Jack Neal lives a half hour away, so his being “in the neighborhood” was fiction. A fax or E-mail would have been more efficient. But I was glad to see him and (OK, I’ll say it) flattered that he had taken the time to stop. Even though I wasn’t thrilled with his Dana Drew theory.

  “Is she growing mushrooms or what?”

  “She, uh, works best with most of the natural light blocked out.”

  “Oh,” he said. He looked confused. “Is she a photographer?”

  “Nooooo … she says … she’s a sculptor.” I coughed. “She’d like to put a kiln in.”

  “Bullshit. What kind of sculpture is she doing?” He pointed to the odd-looking shades that Dana had installed over the weekend. “I think she’s got a meth lab in there. You said that she paid in cash money.”

  Meth lab?

  “Yeah … but lots of people pay cash these days.” I would have to do better. I wasn’t even convincing myself.

  Jack gave me another look that said, Bullshit.

  “I have a buddy who works for the sheriff’s department. He owes me a favor or two. Do you want me to call him?”

  “No, no, I’m sure it will be all right. Her credit check came back fine. In fact, it was perfect.”

  “I’d still be careful if I were you. There’s something that’s not quite right about that woman. All that exclusively nocturnal activity.”

  “Maybe she’s just a night person,” I said optimistically.

  Jack gave me a look that said, Get real.

  Then, out of the blue, he asked me to dinner. I was so surprised that I stared at him with my mouth open.

  “Uh, you mean …,” I paused as I struggled to find the right words in English, as opposed to the gibberish that was pouring out of my mouth. “Dinner? With you?” I stammered. “I don’t eat dinner,” I finally said with some authority.

  Well, that was a really stupid thing to say, my conscience scolded me. He can look at you and tell that you haven’t missed many meals lately, especially dinner. What’s the matter with you?

  Jack smiled and offered a polite response.

  “Oh, I didn’t know that. Do you eat lunch?”

  Yes and breakfast and afternoon snacks, too, my conscience commented acidly. Not to mention Dove bars and buttered popcorn.

  “Yes, I do,” I managed to spit out. I was suddenly too nervous to look at him. I busied myself with a glob of wallpaper paste that had become troublesome. “Actually, I do eat dinner.” I didn’t know what else to say. I felt as if I were twelve years old.

  “Oh. Great. Sorry.” Now it was Jack’s turn to be at a loss for words. He probably thought I was a nut. “I’d like to take you out sometime. Nothing fancy. But we could have a good time.”

  He paused and looked at me, an uncertain smile on his face. “That is, if you’re sure that you do eat dinner.”

  I nodded, wiping the paint chips off my nose with the back of my hand as delicately as I knew how.

  “I would like that,” I admitted to myself as much as to him. We actually set a date two weeks in the future. And I stopped scraping long enough to watch him climb into his huge SUV and drive away.

  A date? Me? Why would he want to go out with me? Especially the way I looked today! A pair of khaki shorts that were ten years old an
d a T-shirt that Imani had threatened to throw away because it was so raggedy. Sneakers older than the Keds label, and the crown jewel, a lovely navy bandanna wrapped around my head. I looked like who-did-it-what-for-and-don’t-do-it-again.

  Since I’d left Ted I had thought about a lot of new experiences, but they had been fairly mundane: living without a black eye, sleeping peacefully through the night, not being cursed at or verbally demeaned. I hadn’t figured on dating.

  I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t even divorced yet. Why was he asking me out?

  My conscience had no patience with me at all.

  Why me?

  Why not you?

  I stood there for a moment stupidly reflecting on why a nice-looking man who seemed to have it going on would ask me out when a flash of blue caught my eye. I saw Gloria making her way through the garden, yelling and obviously looking for something.

  I needed a break from the dried paste and peeling wallpaper, so I headed outside.

  “Have you seen Troy lately?” Gloria was squinting in the strong sunlight. “I’m taking him to a cookout tonight. I’ve been looking for him for fifteen minutes.”

  “He’s not in the house,” I told her then, watching her expression change from mild frown to near panic. “But I haven’t been upstairs in a while. I’ll go look.”

  “I don’t know where he could have gone!” She sounded really worried. “He was over by the shed one minute; the next minute, he wasn’t.”

  But no sooner had we stepped into the front hall than Troy appeared. Out of nowhere. His cheeks were flushed and his shirt was filthy, a combination of mud, twigs, cobwebs, and grass stains. He smelled.

  “Hi, Mom!” he said a little too brightly.

  Gloria was so glad to see him that she forgot to be mad.

  “Where did you go? I was calling all over the place for you!”

  Troy’s eyes were alive with excitement.

  “I was in my secret tunnel,” he told her, barely able to keep still. He looked at me. “I’m digging for pirate’s treasure.”

  I ruffled his hair.

  “Whew! You look and smell as if you were digging for worms!” My hand was now black with what looked like soot and spiderwebs. Yuck.