Graven Images

by Jane Waterhouse

  I shaded my eyes against the sun and looked over at the seawall, imagining a network of hidden caves in the rock, and a line of shiny little Volkswagens, parked end to end.

  THREE

  Blackmoor arrived in the Rover. He got out carrying a small leather duffel in one hand and the birdcage in the other. Moments later, a van rounded the drive.

  The cockatoo squawked, “Takeyourhat? Takeyourhat?”

  “I thought I might get some work done while I’m here.”

  “No problem,” I replied faintly, watching as the moving men began to unload the first batch of crates and boxes. “Let me show you around.”

  He followed me through the front door of the guest house. “It’s really just this room.” I gestured toward the cathedral ceilings. “I’d thought about putting a pool in here, which accounts for all the windows.” Ben had removed the shutters so there was an unobstructed view of the ocean. “You’ll have plenty of natural light.”

  The movers staggered in with a huge hunk of marble.

  Blackmoor watched me, watching them. “It’s been years since I thought of sculpting stone. I suddenly feel inspired to try again.” His voice was flippant, but the look in his eyes made me start to sweat.

  At the door I said, “Why don’t you come over to the house for dinner tonight? Meet all the hostile troops.” He laughed. “No, really. I’m serious.”

  “I am too,” he told me.

  Jack, a tad overdressed, arrived early with flowers and wine. Blackmoor came after, with the bird. Cilda and Jack, the welcome wagon from hell, stared insolently as I bumbled my way through the formalities. It was a relief when Temple came bounding down the stairs, her hair still damp from being washed.

  “Hullo,” Blackmoor said. “I’m Dane.”

  I watched them devour each other’s faces. Or at least that’s what it looked like to me. Temple put her arm out for the cockatoo. “What’s his name?”

  “He doesn’t have one. Or, at least if he has, he hasn’t told me.” Blackmoor was one of those people who didn’t alter his voice when speaking to children. I should have remembered that.

  “Oh, but you have to name him!” The cockatoo hopped onto Temple’s wrist, cocking its head at that improbable angle.

  “I’m afraid if I did, I might become attached to him,” he said. I thought of the expression on his face when he discovered the bird, shivering on the snow-covered branch of a tree the night the Mill burned. He obviously didn’t know when he was attached.

  They sat on the love seat, Temple, Blackmoor, and the nameless bird. I recognized the look on her face, the acute way in which she was listening to him speak; but I was seeing it for the first time from the outside. The way he must have seen me.

  Across the room, Jack sent out sullen semaphores; Cilda’s busy anger billowed out of the kitchen like an approaching cold front. But, starboard, on that sofa, everything looked sunny.

  “Could I name him, do you think?” Temple asked.

  Blackmoor considered for a moment. “You could. But whatever you decide should be between you and the bird.”

  She broke into peals of childish laughter. At the sound I immediately tripped into action, topping everyone’s glasses with more of Jack’s wine.

  FOUR

  The next morning I stopped by the guest house early. The door was ajar. “Hello?”

  Blackmoor had already set up a worktable, and most of his tools were unpacked. It looked as though he’d been at it late into the night. “Anybody home?” I stepped toward the center of the room, wary of the bird.

  On the table lay a sheaf of papers. I thumbed through them quickly. They were pencil sketches of a nude female torso, shown from several angles. A highly sexual energy charged each bold line. I felt suddenly ashamed, as though I’d stumbled upon someone’s secret stash of pornography.

  I walked over to the window. Just beyond the seawall, I caught a glimpse of Temple, barelegged, in a tiny foam-fringed wave of water, her hair blowing. Blackmoor stood next to her.

  They appeared to be laughing.

  “Hey.” Blackmoor waved from the beach. His jeans were rolled up, like they’d been that first day.

  Temple ran up to me. “Do you know what? Dane says I look like my grandmother. That I have her eyes.”

  “Does he really?”

  “Can I sleep over at Emory’s tonight?” She grabbed my hand and spun me around in a dizzy circle. “Can I? Can I?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Awesome!” Temple immediately started sprinting back toward the seawall.

  I yelled, “Make sure to leave a number—”

  “It’s on the corkboard,” she called back, “up in my room!”

  Blackmoor said, “That’s a very beautiful young woman.” His voice was barely audible over the sound of the surf. We fell into step together. “I was wondering if you might like to share a pizza and a bottle of wine with me tonight? Seeing that you’ll be on your own.”

  “Okay.” I added, “There are some questions I want to ask you, anyway.”

  We parted company at the guest house. I walked to my office, sensing him standing there, in the open doorway, his stare tracing a warm, meandering fingertip down the small of my back.

  Jack was still sulking. Since we’d kissed that night, he’d been making a concerted effort with his wardrobe. Today he wore a thick wool sweater in a shade of deep emerald that brought out the green in his eyes. I felt a sudden surge of tenderness. “Hey, mister.” I touched him lightly on the shoulder.

  He spun around in his chair. “You and I have to talk,” he said. “About Blackmoor.”

  And then the phone rang.

  It was 10:17 on Jack’s digital desk clock, and the men from Coastal Engineering had just started up the bulldozer. I would remember the sound of the machinery later, pinning it, specifically and forever, to that particular moment in time.

  FIVE

  Dudley’s longtime secretary, a large red-faced woman named Miss Eggert who’d looked middle-aged at twenty-four, and had simply gotten more florid and hunched as the years passed, retired from the firm when the Great Man first went off to Portugal. This voice was unfamiliar to me.

  She introduced herself as Lindsey from Quinn, Nash, Loughlin and Verdun; she was calling because Mr. Quinn just had a heart attack in his office.

  In the half-second of dead space on the line, I realized I’d already lived this moment in my imagination. Only, there, I was scanning the Times when the headline leapt out—

  PROMINENT ATTORNEY DUDLEY LONIGAN QUINN

  DEAD AT THE AGE OF—

  Or, there’d be a knock on my door, and some clean-shaven messenger boy out of an old black-and-white film would crow, “Telegram for Miss Quinn!”; and I’d see those stark, block letters: FATHER DEAD IN PORTUGAL STOP.

  Father dead in…? Stop. I heard myself ask, calmly, “Is he alive?”

  “Oh, yes,” Lindsey responded, obviously glad to be the bearer of at least this much good news. “They took him to Columbia Presbyterian.” I wondered who they were. A lengthier silence loomed. I was on the verge of asking, out of real confusion, why I’d been called; and then I realized.

  There wasn’t anyone else. Geoff was dead. Dulcie was dead. Even the faithful Simone was somewhere in the south of France, comfortably married to an old man with a useless title. Who knew about the others? Dudley Quinn III, man of a thousand friends and a million acquaintances, knew no one intimately enough to invite to his possible demise.

  “I want to drive you,” Jack said.

  I shook my head. “No, this is something I have to do alone.” The corny line triggered a couple of frames from the old, imagined scenario: FATHER DEAD IN PORTUGAL STOPYou stop, I ordered myself. Your father is alive and well in Columbia Presbyterian. By now he’s holding court in some posh hospital suite, surrounded by a bevy of admiring doctors and horny nurses, drinking vodka and tonics and telling tall tales.

  Cilda sat motionless on the bed while I packed. She
should be going instead of me, I thought. He loved her. The childishness of this sentiment, and my Freudian slipping into the past tense angered me. “I wouldn’t worry,” I said coldly. “He’s too ornery to die.”

  I dialed Country Day and asked the secretary in the office to get Temple out of class. A few minutes later, her voice came on the line. “Mommy…?”

  “It’s all right, sweetie,” I quickly assured her. “Your grandfather’s had a mild heart attack, and I have to go see him in the hospital, that’s all.”

  A rush of air drummed against the earpiece. Temple was crying. “I got scared. I thought maybe—”

  Maybe what? Maybe something happened to me? I realized that, no matter how hard I’d tried to shield her from it, the ever-lurking presence of danger—a side effect of my career in true crime—had touched my daughter. Changes would have to be made, and soon. I cradled the receiver against my shoulder. “There’s nothing to worry about, honey. I’ll call you tonight.”

  “Tell Grandpa I hope he feels better,” Temple said softly.

  “I will.” I’ll tell this man, whom you have no memory of ever seeing, and who never once, in all the years since you were born, has even so much as sent you a Christmas present or a birthday card, that his granddaughter is concerned about his health. And if that doesn’t break his damaged heart, then they better take a look inside. Maybe it’s already been surgically removed.

  I said, “I love you,” and Temple said it back. The words put little clouds under my feet, floating me out into the driveway, toward the car.

  Jack jogged over as I was tossing my suitcase in the trunk. “I booked a room for you at the Mayflower.” He opened my door. “Call me as soon as you know something?” I nodded.

  “I want to be there for you,” Jack said. “Through this.”

  “I know you do.” Backing the 190 out of the drive, it occurred to me that I hadn’t left word with Blackmoor to cancel our dinner. I saw him in the window of the guest house, a dark, faceless figure, watching me pull away.

  I checked into the hotel. A light, cold rain had begun to fall, making it difficult to get a cab. It was almost four o’clock by the time I reached the hospital. There could be no more stalling—like it or not, I was faced with the situation I’d most hoped for, and feared, throughout my whole life. I was going to be alone in a room with my father. And he would not be going anywhere else anytime soon.

  The woman at the reception desk informed me that Quinn, D. L., was in ICU, and directed me toward the elevator banks. For a moment I considered making a detour into the gift shop to buy some flowers. It would postpone the inevitable a few minutes longer, and give me something to do with my hands once I got inside the room. I pictured setting the arrangement on a table near his bedside, while Dudley beamed, Honey, you shouldn’t have.

  It didn’t scan, even in my imagination.

  The nurse on duty was small and chesty. A name tag—E. ROSA, R.N.—was pinned halfway down the white slope of her bosom. When she spoke it dangled like a daunted climber, clinging to the side of a mountain. “Mr. Quinn’s condition is stabilized,” she told me. “We’ll be keeping him here for the next several days so we can monitor his vital signs.”

  “But he’s going to be okay?”

  “He’s in very good hands. Dr. Chuska is the best we’ve got,” the nurse said sympathetically, not answering.

  “Is the doctor here now?”

  “You just missed him. But you might catch him at the end of his rounds, in say, an hour.” I left a note. Then I turned toward the metal door marked icu.

  “Last room on the left,” Nurse Rosa directed. “We ask that you observe the fifteen-minute time period so as not to tire the patient.”

  “No problem,” I said primly. Fifteen minutes with my father would be a lifetime record.

  He was sleeping, mouth slightly open. They’d removed a bottom dental bridge, so his lower lip had shriveled against the gum. His skin was the same translucent color as the plastic nosepiece feeding oxygen into his nostrils. The hospital gown exposed arms on which muscles hung like grapefruit in netted bags. His breath came in shallow gasps, blipping onto the screen of the heart monitor.

  Otherwise, I might have thought he was dead.

  It occurred to me that I should touch him. Press his hand, or brush his forehead with a kiss. The closest I could come was a pat to the edge of the bed where his feet poked up under the thin cotton blanket. There was a long pause in the beeps on the heart monitor. I held my breath—one…two…three…four…five…six.

  Another jagged peak appeared on the screen.

  In the corridor, doctors were being paged over the intercom. Nurses walked by, their soft-soled shoes squishing on the clean tiles. Dudley’s irregular breathing roared over these life sounds. Around me, walls melted whitely into the floors, sheets into the pale hair and face of my father. Every time I moved I felt as if I were disturbing the room’s ozone layer of Lysol. The sweet, acrid smell of old flesh filled the air. I needed to get out…

  I found a pen and a scrap of paper in my purse. “Dear Dudley,” I would write. “Sorry to have missed you, but I didn’t want to disturb you when you were resting peacefully—”

  Resting peacefully. Rest-in-peace. R-I-P. Blip…blip…nothing.

  The flat mountain ranges tracking Dudley’s heart snaked off the monitor, winding around my throat, cutting into my trachea. I’d started to breathe in sync with the bleeps, but there was no rhythm; and I was inhaling when I should be exhaling.

  Surely fifteen minutes had already passed.

  I’d forgotten to check my watch before coming in. They really should have a timer on the wall. Better ask the nurse. Get some fresh air. Breathe a breath without a bleep.

  I had my hand on the doorknob when the soft voice murmured, “What…have you been doing with yourself…Garner?”

  Caught, on the verge of a clean getaway. “How are you feeling?” I managed to ask.

  Dudley raised one eyebrow, disdainfully. There ought to be a rule about that, I thought. They ought to test their sarcasm levels before admitting them.

  “I mean—” Something was caught in my eye, a speck, a granule, a particle of dust. I tried to blink it away. “Are you in pain?”

  “This whole scene pains me.” He flailed one stringy arm, straining it against the IV. “I’d always thought I’d go out with more style.”

  I moved closer to the bed. “You probably will. When you finally do.” He turned away from me. “Plenty of people have heart attacks. They’ll just figure out which part isn’t working right, and fix it, that’s all.”

  “Don’t be an asshole, Garner.” Dudley dropped his head back into the pillow as though suddenly bored.

  E. Rosa, R.N., opened the door, her bust entering first like the prow of a ship. “I need to take your father’s readings, Miss Quinn,” she said crisply. “There’s a waiting room for the families at the end of the hall. You can stay there until the next visiting period.”

  I would have been out like a shot if I hadn’t heard him call my name.

  “See if you can rustle me up some scotch, will you, darling?” His smile was weak, but wicked.

  “Yeah, sure,” I replied.

  Once out in the hallway, I had to stop myself from breaking into a run.

  SIX

  I ran the tap in the rest room, making a cup out of the coarse brown paper towel the way I used to in grade school, with the nuns. Only a little water stayed in the bottom of the funnel, warm, with a smoky taste, but it did the trick. I began to pace. In the waiting room, people were pacing, too—only slower, more aimlessly, as though unfamiliar with the workings of their own feet. They looked anxious and scared.

  Not angry, like me.

  “Don’t be an asshole, Garner,” he’d said. He always said. But this time there was no audience around to appreciate it. No houseguests. No hangers-on. Just Dudley and me. I stared at my reflection—my hair caught up in a classy Katharine Hepburn topknot, tailored silk s
hirt buttoned up to the throat.

  I loosened my collar, and took out hairpins, one by one. Then I smiled brilliantly into the mirror. “Nurse Rosa strip-searched me and confiscated the scotch,” I said out loud.

  “Nurse Rosa strip-searched me and confiscated the scotch.”

  “No matter.” Dudley smiled lecherously. “It’s quite obvious where she keeps her stash.” We lapsed into the inevitable silence. I picked at a small strand of thread on the strap of my purse.

  The bed had been raised slightly. Dudley looked like a walk-and-talk doll tethered to a battery pack. The heart monitor bleeped and peaked. I pulled a chair over to him. “I need to ask you something.”

  “My will is in order,” he said. “Everything goes to you.”

  “I don’t want your money.”

  “Well, then give it away.”

  “You’re not going to die.”

  “Don’t tell me what I’m not going to do.” He started to laugh but it caught, bringing on a dry spasm of coughing. The monitor went wild. The bleeps were so loud I felt sure any minute the door would be broken down by a fleet of people in white wheeling in that machine that hot-wired hearts. And he will die. And I will never know.

  I looked out into the empty corridor. Where was E. Rosa, R.N., anyway? On a break? What about the other nurses? Were they all on breaks? How could they allow breaks in ICU? Didn’t they realize a patient might expire while they were out, drinking a Coke, taking a pee?

  The coughs subsided, slowly, and when he spoke again, there was a new softness to his voice. “What is it you want to ask, Garner?”

  I walked slowly toward the bed. “I was right, wasn’t I?” My voice sounded hoarse, like his. “Dulcie did it, didn’t she? She killed Charlie, and convinced Ben Slater to take the blame.”

  Dudley stared at me. This time when the laughter came it was harsh and bitter. “You…” He struggled to sit up on the bed. “You…!” His effort to right himself was awesome. I didn’t try to help. I was pinned to the floor.