She knocked on Flora Redmond’s door. If it were anyone but Flora, Teresa might have walked on in, yoo-hooing in a casual way, but Flora didn’t invite that kind of friendliness. Flora answered the door in blue cotton pants, a floral knit top shirred over the bodice, silver hair immaculate. A small gold heart dangled on a slender chain around her neck. She wore tiny gold earrings in pierced ears. Teresa had dressed for this occasion, traded in her usual sweatshirt, blue jeans, and sneakers for a plaid blouse, tan pants, and loafers. Still, she felt frumpy in Flora’s presence. Her hand traveled to smooth her wiry hair.
“Please,” Flora said, “come in,” her voice like whispers in a heavy fern wood.
Flora motioned toward a cream-colored couch. Teresa brushed at the seat of her pants before she sat. Hard telling what glop might have been on the upholstery of their van.
“Would you care for something to drink? I could brew some tea,” Flora said.
“Just water. If you have ice, that’d be great.”
Teresa wanted Flora out of the room so she could look around without seeming to pry. It had only been three months since Will died. Normally, Teresa would recommend waiting a year before making a decision to sell, but Flora was finding it difficult living on her own.
Teresa jotted notes on her yellow pad—couch, two chairs, a recliner, two lamps, a coffee table, an end table. An old upright piano in the dining room. Except for the iron lung in the front bedroom (which everybody in town knew about thanks to Glenda Barrenhorst, the welcome wagon hostess), all these furnishings were as ordinary as corn flakes. She’d expected, what? Something exotic. Telling, at least. Will and Flora had turned up in Reach late in life. Married. No children. No relation in these parts. When asked, they’d said only that they wanted a quiet life. There were rumors, of course. The most popular ones involved sordid crimes, not murder or assault but something crafty and lucrative, embezzlement maybe. Offshore bank accounts. Some folks said they’d been part of a cult and ran away under assumed names. Or they’d worked for the FBI or the CIA and were in a witness protection program. They had to be running from somebody or something. Otherwise, what were they doing in this backwater town?
Flora returned from the kitchen, set a glass on a ceramic coaster on the end table, then sat in a wooden chair with a needlepoint cushion. “All of this”—she swept her hand around the room—“will have to go. I’ll have limited space in my assisted living apartment.”
Teresa sighed. “The piano will be a tough sell. And the iron lung, but I’ve an idea for that.”
“I’ll have to take the lung,” Flora said quietly.
“Really?”
“I sleep in it. Every night. Rebound effects from childhood polio.”
Teresa scribbled a caustic note to herself. How could she have been so stupid? She thought polio was a thing of the past, like dial phones and leisure suits. She’d assumed the lung was a prop, a sentimental relic or a conversation piece, like a planter she once saw made from an elephant’s foot. She spoke without looking up from her tablet. “Where will you go?”
“I thought Denver.”
Teresa wanted to ask, why Denver? Why not Lincoln? Or Albuquerque? Or Toronto? If nobody cares—a terrifying thought—how would you decide where to spend your last days?
“You want everything else sold at auction?”
“Yes, all but the paintings.”
Teresa raised her head from the pad. “Paintings?”
Flora’s hand fluttered near her throat. She picked up the tiny heart and ran it back and forth on the slender chain. “I need help getting them crated and sent.”
“Where?”
“I’ve donated two to the University at Lincoln. The others, three others, will be sold at a small gallery in New York.”
With some effort, Teresa managed to work the hinge of her jaw and close her gaping mouth. She reminded herself to breathe. She knew how to act matter-of-fact about the damnedest things—pet graveyards in basements, rooms bursting with clutter, kitchen cabinets crusted with moldy food, gun cases shot full of holes, pictures with people’s heads cut off. But really? First, the iron lung. Now this? She wet her lips and answered in her most professional voice. “Of course, Flora. We’ll do anything we can to help you. Are you a collector?”
Teresa thought that was the proper word. Collector. Someone who could afford to buy important works of art. Her mind worked at lightning speed. Was it Flora or Will who bought up these paintings? And where were they? Why hide them? Were they bought as investments to hide ill-gotten gains?
“No, oh no,” Flora said. “Nothing like that.” Her hand fluttered again, inspecting the folds of her bodice. “These are minor works. Hardly a ripple in the art world.”
“Oh.” Teresa sagged. Not van Gogh, then. Or that crazy artist who flung dots on a canvas. She and Otto watched a film about him not long ago.
“Anyone I’ve ever heard of?”
“No. I’m sure not.” Flora stood.
Teresa stood, too, not sure what to do. They’d hardly made a dent, and she was being dismissed. She hadn’t seen the paintings. She couldn’t even look up their worth on the Internet if she didn’t know the artists’ names.
Flora smiled. “I tire easily.”
Teresa narrowed her eyes. “Of course.” No arguing with that line. Crafty. Teresa made a mental note not to underestimate Flora.
Flora walked her to the door. Once through on the other side, Teresa turned. “You do still want us to handle your sale?”
“Of course, dear.” With that, Flora shut the door in Teresa’s face.
Teresa sped home with the news hot under her tongue. She couldn’t wait to tell Otto; this was better than a movie. She supposed she’d tell Warren, too, but she already knew what he’d say. So what? We aren’t going to make anything off paintings being sent to New York. Warren wouldn’t recognize a good story if it bit him in the ass. When those Shackleton sisters died, he hadn’t cared one bit when it was revealed that they weren’t sisters after all but instead two women who’d lived together and shared the same bed. People thought he was discreet, but Teresa knew the truth. Warren just didn’t pay attention to the details of people’s lives. Numbers and sports were Warren’s language, and little else interested him.
She walked into a familiar scene when she got home. Warren had Otto trapped at the kitchen table. A big man, he leaned over Otto like a looming crane. A bowl of strawberry ice cream melted on the table. “Son, if you want to be respected in this town, you got to go out for football.”
Warren had been riding this horse since school let out in May, trying to goad Otto into playing football in ninth grade. Warren had been a star fullback. Watching, Teresa’s stomach hurt.
“Dad, I don’t want to play football.”
“Just go out. Make some friends. Be part of the team. One of the guys.”
Otto snorted. Teresa winced. “Hey, you two.” She kept her voice light.
They ignored her.
Otto stared into his bowl of pink soup. “I’m not gay, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Warren stood back, surprise on his face. They’d never spoken about it, but hadn’t they both wondered? She secretly thought Otto’s life might be easier if he were gay. Wouldn’t gay people stand a better chance of appreciating his artsy ways?
Warren looked away, out the window. Frustration oozed out of his ears. He raised his big fists and dropped them. “I want you to have friends. You have to get along with people.”
Otto raised his head, a sneer curling his lip. “Like you and Mom?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Sucking up to everybody so they’ll give you their business.”
That did it. Warren yelled about kids and respect and how his old man would have decked him if he talked like that. He yanked Otto to his feet. The plastic bowl clattered to the floor upside down, speckling the white linoleum with pink goo. Otto stood with his fingers in his ears, singing la-la-la and being
the irritating little shit he turned into whenever his father was around. Teresa wedged herself between Warren and Otto, placed her hands on Warren’s chest, shoved with all her might until finally Warren said, “Christ almighty,” and stomped out. She cringed when she heard the back door slam, waited for the roar of his pickup, squeal of tires, before she turned to Otto.
Her son, the creative genius, stood itching his crotch with his right hand. His curly dark hair looked matted, unwashed. Circles draped under his eyes, because he spent half the night surfing the Internet. He had hundreds of Facebook friends and none in the flesh. She wanted to smack some sense into him. His father was right. This kid didn’t stand a chance in the real world. What was to become of him? She saw her son’s future laid out clearly. Helpless, begging for pennies in a subway station. Penciled drawings of cartoon cels taped to walls of a cardboard box where he spent his nights. Cold. Alone. She shuddered.
“Mom?”
She heard him calling to her, but she couldn’t get past the winter snowstorm in her head. She stooped to pick up the upended bowl. Ice cream glued her fingers together.
“Mom, why are you crying?”
She wiped her nose with the back of her clean hand. Snot streamed across it. “No more movies.”
“Mom?”
Gently, she set the bowl on the table and stepped around the puddle to pick up a dishrag off the sink. On hands and knees, wiping the floor, not looking at her son, she said, “I got other things to do on Friday nights.”
“C’mon, Mom. He’ll get over it.”
“No. I mean it. Find a friend. Go out. Get drunk. Give us a reason to ground you.”
“You know I’m not like that.”
Her heart hurt, squeezed like hamburger in a press. She sat back on her heels and forced herself to look at her boy’s contorted face. “Son, I’m not sure what you’re like. Are you?”
Teresa got through that sleepless night by making a list of what she’d do to help Otto get normal. She could sense him sitting up, working the Web.
#1. Curtail his computer time.
#2. Make him get a haircut.
#3. Buy him some clothes that aren’t black.
#4. Invite the Jergensons over; they have a son his age.
#5. Give up Friday night movies. Don’t talk about movies. (She stopped to wipe her face with a tissue. Blew her nose.)
#6. (She cringed, but wrote.) Back Warren’s plan to get Otto into football.
After that, she fell back on her pillow, exhausted.
A week later, Teresa stood in front of Flora’s paintings. They didn’t look all that special. Slashes of color, thick and pulsing and oddly disturbing. Five canvases in all. Two hung on common nails in the back bedroom, where Will had slept. The other three Flora dragged out of a closet. Nothing special about the framing either, white mats, white metal.
“Will wouldn’t let me sell these.” Flora wore tan slacks today, a peach and green floral shirt. “He switched them around every few months. He said he couldn’t take looking at more than two at a time.” A small ripple that might have been a laugh caught in Flora’s chest, made her cough.
The signature on every painting was the same. Flora. No surname. For a brief moment, Teresa considered that there must be some other Flora, someone this Flora had been named after. How could this genteel, quiet, elderly woman have painted these slashing, angry, vibrating, highly sexualized paintings? That one looked like a vulva staring right at her. Teresa averted her eyes.
“Well,” Teresa managed. “My goodness. I had no idea you were so, so”—she waved her hand in circles and finally sputtered—“accomplished.”
Flora smiled. Her lips smiled. The rest of her face remained inscrutable. “Let’s have a cup of tea, shall we, dear?”
They sat at Flora’s dining room table. Teresa waited while the tea was steeped, poured, the chocolate cookies plattered. Lace tablecloth over oak, the teapot blue and white china. A ceiling fan hummed. Outside, the June temperature had climbed over ninety degrees. Teresa fanned herself with her yellow tablet.
Flora lifted a steaming cup to her lips. “I’d just as soon you not tell anyone, dear.” Then, she sipped.
“Oh.” Damn. Teresa had been halfway out the door, planning how she’d carry this message home, to the beauty parlor, to the bakery, to the vestibule of the First Baptist Church. She could make hay out of Flora’s story: Mysterious Artist Reappears. They’d get a whole lot more traffic for the auction, not to mention what could happen to the prices if the bidding got competitive. She hadn’t told Otto and might not have even now, given her recent resolution to steer him onto a normal path. But gosh, not to be able to breathe a word? “Why all the secrecy?”
Flora shifted her weight in her chair. Her gaze floated out the window, seeing past the lace curtains. “Will and I came here to get away from all that. It wasn’t part of this life.”
“I see.” Teresa did see, reluctantly. Flora wasn’t her first client with secrets. “Can I ask . . . why did you stop painting?”
“I suppose I didn’t need it anymore. My health was declining. The fumes from the paint . . .” Flora waved her hand dismissively. “And Will came back into my life.”
“Back?”
“We’d known each other as children. I lost track of him for a while. A good long while. Neither of us had married. He came to a showing of mine in Chicago. My last showing, as it turned out.”
Flora poured herself another cup of tea. She took milk and sugar. Teresa, who hated tea, took hers straight, lifted the cup to her mouth and managed a tiny sip. The silence stretched out between them. Just when Teresa had almost given up hearing any more, Flora sighed and said, “When I was twelve years old, I found out that my mother had been raped.”
Good God, Teresa thought, but she said nothing.
“I found out because Billy—we called him Billy, then—walked me home one day.” Flora’s voice went on, in fits and starts. She spoke in such an undertone that Teresa had to lean forward to hear.
Billy had red hair and freckles. He could make people laugh. He got invited to parties. Flora never did. Flora had lank brown hair, and it wasn’t cut in what others called a style. When it got too long, her grandmother hacked it off with a pair of scissors, all in one hunk.
One day, Billy followed her after school. She forgot to lie about where she lived and just kept walking because they were talking about art. Billy had been places, Spain where Picasso painted, and France. He had seen van Goghs and Monets. Billy’s family had money. By then, they’d reached the corner of her block.
“I have to go, Billy.”
“Okay. Is this where you live?”
She pointed to the third house, the one with the broken fence, collapsed steps.
“See you tomorrow.” Then he grinned and took off in the opposite direction. She watched him go for a while, and then went home. Grandma grabbed her arm the minute she was inside the door.
“What do you think you’re doing, you little shit?”
“Ow. You’re hurting me.”
Grandma dragged her to the kitchen and plopped down in a chair, still holding onto Flora’s arm. She bent it in a way that hurt. Gouged her thumb into Flora’s tender flesh above the wrist.
“Ow. Ow.”
“Stop sniveling. I’ll hurt you more than that if you start whoring around with boys.”
“He walked me home. That’s all.”
“You’re just like your mother.”
“Leave my mother alone.” Flora could make her voice hard against Grandma if she needed to. She was almost as tall.
Grandma levered her arm until Flora sat in the chair next to her. Grandma leaned into Flora’s face, big yellow teeth and sour breath. Flora thought of the witch in Hansel and Gretel, but immediately felt guilty because her grandmother had sacrificed her youth for her and her mother.
“Your mother got pregnant when she was seventeen.”
“I know that.”
“She followed your uncl
e Cyrus to the roller skating rink. Somebody was bothering her, so she left. She said Cyrus’s friend, Joe-Joe, raped her in his own backyard.”
“Mom was raped?”
“Oh, there was a trial and everything. The defense attorney said it was Aletha’s fault. She sashayed around those boys, wiggling her hips. She got pregnant, and then she had you.”
“My dad was a rapist?”
“You just watch yourself, young lady, or the same thing could happen to you. Boys only want in your pants.”
Flora squirmed. Grandma still held her arm like a vise. “Not Billy. He talks about art.”
“Hah! He doesn’t give a flying fart about art. And if you don’t get that, I’ll have to lock you in the house for the next ten years.”
Grandma’s eyes were focused and sharp, beady, penetrating through Flora’s skin.
Flora looked down. “Can I go now?”
“No more Billy.”
Flora nodded.
Flora stopped talking. Her face had lengthened, the corners of her mouth drooped. Teresa stood, put her hand on Flora’s shoulder. Then Teresa gathered up all the cups and saucers, the plate of cookies, and carried them to the kitchen. She stood for a while looking out the window above the sink. Petals had fallen off a peony bush, cushioning the ground pink. A solitary fly buzzed between the window and the screen.
When Teresa had composed herself, she went back to the dining room. Flora sat, cradling her forehead in her hands.
“I’m sorry. If it’s too much . . .” Teresa could see that Flora’s whole life had been too much. “I’ll let myself out.”
Teresa stopped to breathe on Flora’s front stoop. Though the days were long in summer, she was surprised to find the sun still shining.
At home, tensions ran high. Otto didn’t so much move through his days as slam through them. Doors, plates on the counter, shoes on the porch, books on the floor. Wherever he could make a statement. At night, propped against the headboard in their room, Teresa and Warren whispered about their son.
In Reach Page 16