He dove for the hidey-hole, reaching up and pulling the top down as quietly as he could. There had been no time to put the perfume exactly where he had found it. Would she notice? He didn’t think so. She wasn’t very tidy.
He heard her enter the room and realized that the scent of the perfume would be strong. Would she notice it? He crawled up the tunnel to be safe. If she opened the trapdoor, she wouldn’t see him, unless she actually jumped down inside. The thought of her doing that made his heart beat so hard against his chest he was sure she would hear. He crouched there, scarcely breathing. He couldn’t leave through the storm door without making too much noise, so he waited, listening. He heard a thump and another thump. Her running shoes. She was stripping after her run. He closed his eyes tightly, seeing her in his mind’s eye. And he felt as though he might not be strong enough to hold himself together at all. She was humming, out of tune. Then he heard her leave the room, and in a moment he heard the sound of the shower. He turned to leave, and as he crawled up the tunnel to the door, he was shaking like a leaf.
Mavis was outside when he arrived home, out in the bedraggled patch of weeds near the kitchen, which had once been a vegetable garden. As he crossed the yard toward the house, he wondered if she was going to do something with it.
“Want a hand?” he asked.
She turned and he saw that she was smoking. She didn’t usually smoke except when Waylin was around. He looked but there was no truck.
“I was thinking of cooking up some of this madder,” she said, kicking lazily at a knee-high weed that had overrun the garden where she was standing. “You can make a good dye from it, I hear.”
Her meaning was not lost on Cramer.
“Course, I’d need some medium to actually make it into paint,” she said. She was going to go on, but she suddenly screwed up her nose. “What the heck is that?”
Cramer backed off. He stunk of Trouble. “I’ve got to change,” he said.
“What are you up to?” she called after him, but he headed into the house and up the stairs. He shoved the reeking T-shirt in the back of his closet. Then he headed to the shower, where he scrubbed himself so hard he was sure he was losing a layer of skin.
He dried himself off, wrapped a towel around his waist, and opened the bathroom door. Mavis was there, leaning against the wall across from the bathroom door.
“My, my, what an odor,” she said.
He headed toward his room, with her marching right behind him.
“Who is she, Cramer? Come on.” Her voice was teasing. “Don’t keep me in the dark, sunshine.”
“There isn’t anyone,” he said. And he closed his door on her. She knocked. Christ, why wouldn’t she leave him alone!
“I’m getting dressed!” he said.
“Well, when you get dressed, come on downstairs. I want to talk.”
“Mom, it’s not-”
But she cut him off. “I want to show you something,” she said. “If you’re not too busy.”
He took his time. Tried to think of what he was going to say, how he could explain away the scent. What was it she wanted him to see? Shit. He checked under his mattress. The picture of Mimi was still there, so it wasn’t that.
The first floor of the house was just the one room really, with the wide, deep porch converted into Mavis’s studio. Mavis was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs when he finally emerged from his lair. She turned toward the room, expectantly awaiting his attention. She glanced back at him and then again at the room.
Her paintings. She had put her paintings on display around the place. There were nine or ten of them, sitting on chairs, leaning against the window jamb, the latest-he supposed-sitting on the easel. He relaxed. She just wanted his opinion.
“Oh,” he said. “Wow. Great.”
“Really?” she said. “Are they really great?”
He looked again. Sometimes she needed more encouragement. He understood that. He had learned how to talk to her-learned from The Artist’s Path. There was a quote there about the spark of uniqueness that is carried through you into action, and under no circumstances must one ever try to block it. This was called the quickening. It was scary sometimes. When Mavis was painting, her eyes flashed with a different kind of energy-good energy, like a car running clean, like a computer humming. And when she was happily tired, the light in her eyes was a soft thing you could come close to. But when the quickening arose, you paid attention and responded to every need, every whim.
“Well?”
He looked hard at the paintings, feeling her agitation growing-almost smelling it. Made it hard to think straight. There was that first one, which was so rich-writhing with energy. There were a couple more like that-bursting with colors, the line work strong. But as he scanned the little show, it was as if the lights were dimmer everywhere else in the room. Each canvas was duller, as if its battery was running low. There were more shades than tints. Less pure color. He could see that, but could he afford to say it?
There was a quote in The Artist’s Path. “My vanity wants your lies but they are poison to my soul.”
“Well?” said Mavis. She was rubbing her hands together nervously. They were spotted with paint. Blotched with paint she had not bothered to clean away.
“Some of them are real good,” he said, reluctant to limit his praise but afraid of lying to her.
“Oh,” she said, her voice tense. “But just some of them?”
He could feel himself being drawn into the trap. But there was no way to avoid it. He swallowed hard. “Some are… darker?”
“Darker? And what else?”
He hated it when she did this. She was like the worst teacher in the world, fishing for an answer he didn’t have, an answer she wasn’t going to like if he found it.
“There just seems to be more, you know, like, spirit in the… in those…” He pointed weakly toward the first painting and the other two that shared its intensity.
“Ahhh,” she said. “Very perceptive.” Then she grabbed his arm and dragged him toward the picture on the easel. The paint was still wet in patches. Just finished-if it was finished. He had no idea. It wasn’t anything. Just a mass of conflicting patches of color, subdued color: browns mainly and grays. A yellow seam livened up the canvas, but it was thin; he could see the canvas through it. Looked as if someone had pissed on it. He sure wasn’t going to tell her that. He glanced at the worktable and saw the wreckage of paint tubes and plastic jars, empty, lying on their sides.
Her point was pretty obvious.
“What about this one?” she said, her voice as thin as the stream of yellow on the canvas.
“You’re out of paint,” he said, tired of the game she was playing.
“Very good!” she said, and started clapping. “Three cheers for the art critic.”
“Mom,” he said softly, but it was no use.
“Congratulations to the boy too busy with his little smelly games to help his mother when she needs him the most.”
“I’ve been trying-”
“His mother who is working her fingers to the bone to find her way back to the good place where the art happens and the success happens and the happiness happens.”
“I will get you the money, honest, I-”
“Oh, good. When? When I’m dead?”
“Don’t say that.”
“Dead? You don’t want me to say ‘dead’?”
He tried to leave but she held on to him, dug her fingernails into the flesh of his forearm until he winced.
“I will die, you know,” she said, her voice tremulous. “Cramerthis is what makes it possible to live.” She threw out her arm to indicate the meager handful of paintings displayed around the room. “Without it, I’ll just rot away. That what you want?”
“No.”
“Because I’m this close,” she said. “This close!”
He peeled her hand away from his arm. “Stop it,” he said.
“Oh, I’ll stop, all right,” she said. “I ha
ve stopped, thanks to you. You want some ordinary mommy who drives into work at the Wal-Mart. Is that it? Is this your way of making me pay?”
“Shut up!” he said.
And the force of his voice stopped her, frightened her. It frightened him, too. He’d never yelled at her.
“I do have a plan,” he said. “ I have a plan. It’s hard to do anything while I’m working, but I’ve…” How was he supposed to put it? “I’ve talked to someone,” he said.
“Someone?” she said. “Is she the one who stinks like a whorehouse?”
Cramer’s hands curled involuntarily into fists at his side. And his face must have looked fierce, because Mavis backed off, lowered her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I… I didn’t mean…”
She walked over to the easy chair and sat on the arm, her back to him, looking out at the sunshine. Very slowly, he regained his composure, but his voice was shaky now.
“I’ll get your money. I don’t want to discuss it till I know more. Okay?”
She could have given him something then: a thankful smile, a little slack. She could have acknowledged what he said in some small way. Was it so much to ask for? But there was nothing. When she looked at him, her eyes got kind of lost, as if she wasn’t seeing straight.
“I should… find out in the next few days,” he said. “Believe me, you’ll be the first to know.”
Her eyes found his, but there was nothing in her gaze but disappointment. No. It was worse than that. There was nothing in her eyes but disenchantment.
He turned to go. Stopped when he heard her clear her throat but didn’t turn around.
“You’ve changed,” she said. “Yelling at your mother like that. I don’t hardly know you anymore.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mimi slept in late. It was eleven before she stumbled into the kitchen, where Jay and Iris were sitting with the remains of toast and orange juice and a school yearbook open in front of them.
“Iris is trying to find my stalker,” said Jay.
Mimi leaned over Iris’s shoulder as she flipped the pages. She got to the end with no luck.
“Told you,” said Jay. “He was a figment of your imagination.”
Iris shook her head. “No, it’s what I said last night. He wasn’t remarkable in any way. I thought maybe the yearbook would jog my memory.”
Mimi helped herself to coffee, which was all she could face. She had a headache, a serious one. She didn’t drink much normally, and last night had not been good for her. She wandered out to the screened-in porch and stared out at a gentle rain, felt the cool of it on her face. It helped a little.
Rain without exhaust fumes. Strange.
What was she supposed to do? She needed to get Ms. Cooper-that much was certain. But then what? Her laptop was out at the snye. Clean clothes were out at the snye. She would have to go and yet she didn’t want to. She leaned her head lightly against the screen. She didn’t want to do anything. She heard Iris giggle about something Jay has said. She wanted to go home. No. Yes. Hell.
Der ungebetene Dritte, thought Mimi. That’s what I am. It was something her German grandmother used to say: the uninvited third.
Then Jay came out on the porch. “You okay?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she said.
“Do you want me to rescue the car?”
“I guess,” said Mimi. “We don’t want Bob the traffic guy to have a conniption fit.”
Jay chuckled. He had a good-sounding chuckle. He seemed more relaxed. Self-satisfied, she thought. Lucky man. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll drive you.”
She turned to go, then stopped and shook her head. “You know, a walk might do me good.”
So she walked into town in the rain, with a borrowed black raincoat of Jo’s and a very large black umbrella. It took half an hour, and by the time she got there, the rain had stopped. The sky was moving again; clouds were scudding-wasn’t that the word for it?
Ms. Cooper looked shiny and new, as if maybe Bob had taken her to the car wash. The note, however, was still on the windshield, bleeding ink, indecipherable.
By the time she had driven home, there were even blips of sunshine, which helped to revive her spirits. But when she pulled into the driveway, Jay and Iris were on their way out. Iris was just about to phone her. They were going over to somebody’s-did she want to come? But she didn’t feel like it. It would probably be someone else who was happy, and she wasn’t sure she could take that.
When they were gone, she realized that she didn’t feel like hanging out at the big house, either, or driving forty minutes to the snye. So she decided to take the kayak and head upstream. That would clear her head, she thought. And even though the wind was high, it wasn’t cold and looked to be going her way, even if the current wasn’t. Battling the elements seemed a good choice for the afternoon. It would take her mind off her headache, if not her mind-ache.
She didn’t want to take her purse in case she flipped the kayak. She was halfway up the river before she remembered her precious canister of mace.
The trip upstream wasn’t bad, under the circumstances. She hugged the southern shore and took her time. Soon enough she reached the reedy place just beyond which there was the slightest hint of a bay, though you’d never know there was a sly small stream at its mouth. Tentatively, she nosed her craft into the tall weeds. And they parted before her.
“I’m the New Age Moses,” she muttered. “In a flashy Kevlar basket.”
She ducked, felt the soft willow tendrils trail across her back. Then she was in the open again, and there was a channel here, deep enough to navigate, as long as she stayed in the very center. It was magical, even with a hangover. She stopped to look down, saw tiny fish darting in the dappled light. She sat up again and glided on the still green water. Trees dripped on her. She looked up and felt tiny cold splashes on her face.
There was no wind back here, only a distant whisper of the weather out there in the real world. She had passed over into a dream of stillness, of filtered, green light, glossy with a night’s worth of rain.
She rounded a bend and sniffed. There was a stench in the air. She remembered it from before, but it was worse this time, possibly because of the rain. And now she remembered what Jay had told her. All along the shore were tangled thickets of carrion flower. Thorny, green-stemmed, with heart-shaped leaves and beautiful blue berries. The stink attracted flies, apparently, which acted as pollinators.
Just what perfume’s supposed to do, she thought.
She dug her paddle in deep and scooted through the thicket. Rounding the next bend, she saw the bridge up ahead; there was a black half-ton parked right in front of it.
She dug the blade of her paddle into the sand and stopped her forward progress. She held her breath.
She saw no one around.
Quietly she pulled herself back until the kayak was invisible from the bridge. She hoped. She hid behind a veil of willow, listening and waiting.
A man appeared on the house side of the bridge. He was maybe in his fifties, but tall and wiry in shapeless farmer’s pants tucked into tall rubber boots that shone with water from fording the snye. He wore a faded shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing formidable forearms. His nose was hooked, under a craggy forehead, bristling with a healthy mat of gray eyebrows. His hair was thin, a gray sheen over the sun-dried dome of his skull. He had his hands in his pockets, and he was looking around, as if he had heard something.
With her hand grasping a thin branch of willow, Mimi inched her way back farther still, wishing the damn kayak wasn’t so damn bright.
Then suddenly there was a rustling in the thick bush beside her, and from out of nowhere a dog appeared and started barking at her like crazy, its whole body shaking with excitement.
“Clooney?” shouted the old man. “What is it, girl?”
And Clooney, a hound of some kind, took those words as command enough to splash through the stream to Mimi’s side, barki
ng even louder.
Leaning away from the dog, Mimi lost hold of the branch and then of her balance, and before she knew it, the kayak flipped. She screamed and went under.
“Come!” shouted the man, who was splashing toward her, right down the middle of the snye. “Come here, girl!”
Clooney obediently abandoned her catch and bounded through the water toward her master, while Mimi struggled to get her legs out of the kayak.
“Jesus H. Christ!” she shouted.
“Lordy, Lordy, what have we here?” said the man as he reached down to offer her a hand. She clambered to her feet without him, soaked and swearing a blue streak, which only made the dog bark all the louder and dance around on the shore.
“Lordy, Lordy,” said the man again. There was a hint of laughter in his voice, which only made Mimi angrier.
“What the fuck are you doing here!” she shouted. Then she slipped on a rock and ended up once more in the drink.
“Whoa, hold on, lass, hold on,” the old fellow said, reaching out again to give her a hand. She slapped his hand away and was content, for the minute, to just sit there up to her chest in the snye.
His hand was huge and gnarled and strong. He wouldn’t budge, so she took it, reluctantly. Soon enough she was on her feet, sopping, undamaged, but seething mad.
She had swallowed some water and started coughing. The man, who was still holding her arm for support, now smacked her on the back, until she was able to free herself from him and stumble a few feet away to the bank.
Meanwhile, the man had grabbed the dog by the collar. Clooney was wagging her tail and looked anything but dangerous. She was a hunting dog, Mimi suspected, the color of a kindergarten kid’s paint palette, muddy gray-brown, and with splotches that looked like they had been finger-painted onto her pelt.
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