Mason's Daughter

by Stone, Cynthia J

  At the studio we crossed through the doorway together. A very tall, slender woman with dark hair walked toward us, and I was fascinated by her jewelry, which jangled and swayed as she glided across the floor.

  “You must be Sally,” she said. “I think we’ll have a good time together.” She squatted in front of me until our eyes met. Hers twinkled like black diamonds. “I hope you’ll tell me about yourself and share some of your creative ideas with me.” A smile played on her lips. “You’re quite imaginative, I can already tell. What’s your favorite color?”

  Her voice sounded kind and mysterious at the same time, but I heard something new. She was the first adult who had ever been curious about me. All at once, I wanted to hug her, leap into her lap, tell her a joke to see if I could make her laugh, show her my bedroom and my new black patent leather Mary Janes for Sunday, snuggle against her in the front seat of the car, demonstrate my back flip from the diving board, bring her daisies from the garden, give her a cherry off the top of my banana split. Maybe she would let me untie her ponytail and braid her long black hair, or try on her African wooden necklace with the carved giraffes and elephants and her shiny red leather pumps with the silver buckles.

  Aunt Mary tucked her brown purse under her arm and placed her hand in the middle of my back to nudge me forward. “Sally, this is Mrs. Pierce.”

  The enchanting goddess stood up and my head tilted back to keep my eyes on her face. Her red lips parted into a wide smile, casting a net, and I was caught in it. She winked down at me. “Sweetheart, you may call me Angelique.”

  The hour passed too quickly and I couldn’t wait for my next lesson. Like a turtle in the sun, I warmed to her compliments, as Angelique hung my weekly drawings around the studio.

  One day my assignment was to draw a portrait of my family, at home or in the park. Since we all had never gone to the park together, I decided the use the upstairs sitting room as my scene. I drew Mother lying down on her sofa to one side of the pink marble fireplace. In a chair across from her, tucked in a gray lap robe, Aunt Mary read a Bible, while I lay on the floor in front of the hearth with my sketchpad open. I used my medium blue pencil to copy the striped wallpaper pattern. In her white apron, Mrs. Gussmann stood in the corner holding a tray with teacups. Outside the big picture window, Clyde waved to us from our small private airplane. The sky behind him was light blue, with streaks of yellow. Everyone was smiling.

  When I showed Angelique my finished drawing, she inquired about each person as if I had painted a masterpiece for the Louvre instead of awkward lines and circles. She asked how I knew about the museum, and I told her Aunt Mary, Mother, and I went there last summer when Daddy had business in Paris. We had to come back early because Mother got sick, but Daddy stayed a few weeks longer.

  Angelique adored my choice of colors and declared I was a natural at design. I told her about Clyde’s gold front tooth and huge skinning knife he keeps hidden inside his leather boot, and she said she’d like to meet him some day, as long as I am with her for protection.

  With a giggle, I assured her that Clyde wouldn’t hurt anyone. I skipped over the part about Mother’s black moods and Aunt Mary’s sickly condition, but described them as very pretty in different ways, one blonde and the other brunette.

  She squeezed me around the shoulders and claimed I had a terrific artist’s eye and sense of perspective, very advanced for my age. “But where’s your father? Shouldn’t he be somewhere in your picture?”

  I ran my fingertips over the paper, careful not to smear the lines, and touched each face. “No,” I say. “Daddy’s not home.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know.” I closed my sketchbook. “He’s gone.”

  Brett Kennedy must read the disbelief in my eyes. “Please don’t blame me for realizing a profit. I had no idea I was participating in family treachery.”

  My head throbs with jumbled thoughts. Someone knocks. His next appointment, an attractive coed, opens the door and pokes her head inside. “Oh, excuse me,” she says.

  He holds up his hand in her direction, thumb and fingers spread out to indicate five minutes.

  When the door clicks shut, I shiver as if awaking from a trance and reach down to retrieve the book and papers. With my free arm, I push myself to my feet.

  “By the way, I’m very sorry about your husband. I read about it in the papers afterwards.” Brett Kennedy shakes my hand as he limps forward and guides me to the door. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  The slow walk to the car gives me time to sift the information, and my frustration grows. On the way home, I long for the peace of my greenhouse, but my mind won’t stop struggling to comprehend all that happened. The feud between Big Jack Edwards and Nate Wallace started before I was born, but why did my father find it necessary to push their enmity to a higher level? Big Jack’s holdings wouldn’t amount to a drop in the ocean of my father’s fortune.

  I try to make sense of Big Jack’s fury. Bad enough for him to work for my father during the last year. When Big Jack suspected his son had plotted behind his back, he offered the whole operation to Kennedy to punish him. But Jack hadn’t known that Kennedy would sell to Nate, and he didn’t deserve his father’s retaliation. Despite Angelique’s suggestion, Jack had nothing to do with my father after all.

  No wonder Big Jack doesn’t want me digging up the past, the old hypocrite. His legendary temper went too far, and he made sure Jack suffered. How did he think Jack took it when he learned that his own father had sold the family business, including the store where he worked, out from under him?

  My arms lock and the car nearly swerves off the road. Now I know a plausible reason for Jack to have killed himself. How will I ever explain this mess to Colton?

  CHAPTER SIX

  By the time I reach my house, I still can’t figure out exactly what Jack knew and when. If my mother intends to assist me, I need a signal from her soon.

  The morning’s coffee left in the pot isn’t worth drinking lukewarm. After a few minutes on the burner, it bubbles, hot and ready to pour into one of Grandmother Mason’s china cups.

  On my kitchen table, I spread out the same materials from yesterday. Starting over with a fresh No. 2 pencil, I flip to a clean sheet on the yellow legal pad and scrawl three names across the top: Big Jack and Jack on either side, separated by Brett Kennedy in the center. It makes sense to draw the first arrow from Jack to Brett Kennedy. My husband must have felt both desperate and disappointed at Kennedy’s rejection. How else could he have wrestled free of his father’s domineering authority?

  I place a large ‘X’ through the center of the arrow. According to Kennedy, the next move belongs to Big Jack, with his sudden desire to sell fueled by rage. I sketch another arrow from his name to the professor. That link also receives an oversized ‘X,’ based on Kennedy’s lack of interest.

  Frowning, I raise the china cup to my lips and blow steam from the coffee’s surface. After a sip or two, I pick up my pencil again and twiddle the eraser against the tablet. My stomach rumbles, and I glance at the toaster on the counter. Two forgotten bread slices have gone stale. My reflection in the stainless steel appears dark and blurry, even when I shift from side to side.

  Under Kennedy’s name, I write ‘Nate Wallace’ and circle the block letters, as if my pencil can restrict his influence. My father already possesses a vast empire of self-made wealth and power; he doesn’t need Big Jack’s piddling one.

  My heart wants to whisper that my father did it for me, but I dismiss the emotion. Years of estrangement cement the wall between my father and me. He will not lift a finger to help me and I will never ask him. Even Mother’s divine meddling cannot soften me.

  Instead of an arrow, I draw a question mark between Brett Kennedy and Nate Wallace. I fan the pages of the lease agreement until I find when Kennedy finalized his purchase of Big Jack’s enterprise: March 19, 1975, the very day Jack died.

  Jack, why couldn’t one of you
r cockamamie schemes have turned out? It would have meant so much to you.

  I want the earth to spin backwards, to carry me through time and space to last year on that Tuesday. I will assure Jack it doesn’t matter what his father thinks of him or how abusive he becomes. I will pour the whiskey down the drain before he drinks it and wait past midnight in the garage until he turns off the engine before letting him close the door. I will stand guard over him, protect his life and his future, do what he can’t do for himself. I will overlook his weaknesses, forgive his debts, and forget his faults.

  I will stop treating him with disdain and indifference.

  Instead, hostility has now settled in like extended family that won’t leave. Big Jack and my father feuded, but Big Jack should have known Nate will always win. Jack pounced on what appeared to be an opportunity to cut the ties with his controlling father, and somehow it backfired.

  Now I let anger give me energy and purpose, and I feed it in return. Almost like it can climb up into my lap and eat off my plate.

  After I draw lines between Kennedy’s name and Big Jack’s, add pointed end caps, and write last year’s date under it, the arrows look lopsided. Ah, yes, connect the professor to my father.

  Yet my diagram seems incomplete. I squint and reach for my coffee. When I pick it up, the handle comes right off. Not in pieces, but intact. The cup drops, without breaking, onto the pad of paper and spills coffee all over what I wrote. Each name disappears under a sea of dark liquid.

  I dash to the sink for some paper towels and blot as fast as I can. As I jostle Jack’s appointment book to safety, it falls open to the page with my father’s phone number, three days after Jack’s suicide.

  With a wince, I realize what is missing from my diagram, now drowned in coffee. I should draw a line between my husband and my father, but I don’t know where to place the arrow tip. Did Jack call Nate after he learned about the second purchase, or did my father contact him earlier? Perhaps Jack hoped my father could somehow rescue him from Big Jack’s retribution. Could that have been Nate’s intention? What passed between them on Jack’s last day?

  Maybe Jack didn’t commit suicide after all, but only one person can help prove it now. If I want my father’s help, I will have to ask for it.

  Reeling, I head for my greenhouse, but before I’m halfway across the yard the phone rings and I return to my kitchen. The clock’s face shows two forty-five, too early for the boys to be finished with photo club. When I pick up the receiver, Judith’s voice screeches even before I place it to my ear.

  “Sally! Can you come down to the police station right now?”

  “Why? What’s wrong?” I hold my breath.

  “It’s Colton and Max. They’ve been picked up for shoplifting.”

  I hang up the phone. Surely, I told her I’d be right there, but I can’t hear anything over the loud humming in my ears.

  THE CAR RADIO PLAYS Freddy Fender’s “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights,” but I clamp my jaw shut and flick the switch. Better to ride in anxious silence than be reminded of past mistakes.

  Inside the police station, Judith Cromwell lounges on a long wooden bench against the wall in the lobby. The room is quiet, the office empty.

  “What happened?” I stand in front of her and wait.

  “I haven’t talked to the James Gang yet. We’ll find out when Charlie gets here.” She shakes her head and stifles a giggle. “What possessed them to act so stupid?”

  “Why are you laughing? On the phone you sounded upset.”

  “No, just in a hurry. I don’t have time for this foolishness. I’m considering signing us all up for a nudist camp because I can’t get the laundry done.”

  I laugh.

  “Seriously. You don’t know what washing a hundred pounds of smelly clothes every other day is like.”

  How would I know? She doesn’t hear me sigh.

  “I had to leave Maddie with her grandmother because Meredith is still at school. What could they be accused of shoplifting? Max isn’t big enough to hide anything under his shirt.”

  Even seated, I am eight inches taller than Judith. Curly red hair wafts from her head like a flag, and her laughter is loud enough to summon taxis. I feel a twinge of envy that Judith and her husband Charlie remain in love, more than any couple I know. I like Judith for her stubborn refusal to take life in Mason’s Crossing too gravely, probably because her ‘people’ aren’t from Texas. She isn’t weighed down by any expectations springing from tradition and heritage.

  “This behavior has to stop,” I say, “but I can’t get Colton to listen to me.”

  “I’m sure it’s harder without Jack.”

  “Actually about the same. Jack preferred to play catch with Colton rather than make him do his homework.”

  “Most of the time, I have to be the bad guy, too.”

  I massage my temples. “Who’s back there with them?”

  “Officer Avery. And the shop owner, I think.”

  I stand up and pace a few steps. When the door at the entrance springs open, Charlie Cromwell bounds through it like a Labrador puppy. Our mothers were cousins, but it still irks me that he kept his distance at Jack’s funeral. It wasn’t like Jack died of the plague.

  “Where are the ring-tailed tooters now?” he asks, grinning.

  Judith’s guffaw startles me as if she stuck me with a pin. “In the interrogation room,” she says.

  Maybe they have reason not to treat this stunt seriously, but I don’t.

  “Looks like Mike drummed confessions out of them,” Charlie says, pointing behind us.

  Judith and I turn to watch our sons emerge from the back hallway. Max’s whole body trembles, while Colton coolly saunters across the room. Towering between them, Officer Avery escorts them to the swinging gate at the far end of the counter. Released into our custody, he announces with a stern voice.

  Max bolts past me into Judith’s outstretched arms and bursts into tears. “I’m so sorry,” he wails, as both parents stroke his hair and pat his shoulders. “We didn’t mean to break anything.”

  When Charlie puts his arm around them and all three ruddy foreheads meet in the middle of their family circle, I spin around to face the others. Expressionless, Colton stands quietly next to Officer Avery.

  Max’s sobbing is the only sound for a few moments, until a smallish man standing behind the officer clears his throat.

  Avery glances over his shoulder. “Oh, yes,” he says. “The damages.” He places his hand, like a paddle, on the back of Colton’s neck and steers him toward me. The other man follows, clutching a tall shopping bag. Broken glass clinks with every step.

  “Gee, I’m sorry, Sally,” Mike whispers. “I know you don’t need any more trouble.” He shifts his gaze to Colton as he squints.

  I feel the color rise to my face like a wave of fever and my palms start to sweat. “Colton, what do you have to say for yourself?” I hope the firmness in my voice is obvious. “I think you owe this gentleman an apology, don’t you?”

  “Sorry, sir.” His voice might as well be a recording.

  Max raises his head from Judith’s shoulder and chimes in, “We didn’t mean to break your vase.”

  “It’s art glass,” the shop owner says. “From my gallery.”

  The sobbing recommences as Max gurgles an explanation through his tears. “We were playing catch with it. We weren’t really gonna steal it. Were you, Colton? Tell him.”

  At that moment, I lose my grip on my purse and it lands on the floor with a thud. All eyes shift to me, but I can’t utter a word.

  Mike rescues me. “Nah, these boys aren’t thieves. They just have a peculiar notion of fun.” He holds up his forefinger and gestures for Max to come stand next to Colton. “Now, you two, listen up.”

  Judith and Charlie unwind Max’s arms and give him a gentle push forward. He snivels and wipes his red nose on his sleeve. When he sidles next to Colton, the top of his head reaches the same level as my son’s shoulder.

&nb
sp; Mike explains the settlement. Both parents will pay Mr. Donatello right away for the value of the broken vase. He won’t file any charges because of their youth and status as first offenders.”

  I can’t believe my ears. What will happen to Colton for his second offense, should there be a serious one? Or his third? I never want to enter Mike Avery’s police station again as long as I live.

  Mike gives a fleeting look toward the Cromwells and me, and then glares at the boys. “We’re gonna chalk it up to high spirits and bad judgment.” He shakes his head, the way a lion would ruffle his mane. “But you’re not off the hook. Come Saturday at nine, you boys report for work in the alley behind Mr. Donatello’s shop. You’ll sweep and haul trash and do whatever he wants until the place is spotless.”

  When we nod, he turns to the gallery owner. “Now, Mr. Donatello, why don’t you go ahead and shock these parents with the price of your vase . . . er, art glass?”

  Reading the bottom line on Mr. Donatello’s invoice feels like a punch on the jaw. My half of the debt exceeds what I spend on gas and groceries in a month.

  “Mr. Donatello, may I speak to you privately?” I take a few steps toward the corner of the lobby.

  I ask the owner to accept a small payment now and work out terms with me for the balance. At first, I detect a slight hesitation on Mr. Donatello’s part, but a nod from Mike smoothes the deal. Another rescue. Does he ever climb down off his white horse?

  Before she got too sick, my mother expressed her fondness for Mike Avery. She believed he would become mayor of Mason’s Crossing someday. Has she decided to work her juju through him?

  Mr. Donatello departs the police station with his shopping bag of art glass shards in one hand and Charlie Cromwell’s check for the full amount of their share in the other. Colton holds the door open as Charlie and Judith carry a limping Max through it, then he follows all three of them to wait outside.