Under the Skin

by Vicki Lane

  Giles fell silent and looked toward the man on his right. Gloria had particularly noticed the deeply tanned, wiry man in hiking shorts earlier—hard not to when he had brusquely declined coffee and cookies. “White sugar is poison to me, and caffeine is an addictive drug. I’m very particular about what I put in my body!”

  Upon which he had waved aside an offered chair and, moving to Giles’s right-hand side, had crossed his sinewy legs and sunk effortlessly to the Oriental carpet, there to assume a full lotus position. He had not responded to friendly overtures from the others as they moved about in search of seats but had closed his eyes in apparent meditation. Now, obedient to Giles’s glance, he spoke.

  “I’m Xan—that’s X-A-N. I moved to Asheville from Sedona about five years ago. My main interests are a healthy lifestyle and sacred geometry. This weekend I hope to gain deeper understanding of some past influences on my life …”

  He looked up at Giles. “Is that enough?”

  Giles reached out and patted the waiting Xan on the shoulder. Almost, thought Gloria, as if he were saying Good dog. But rather than speak, the medium looked at the next participant and nodded.

  “Me?” The shy-looking woman perched on the edge of one of the Windsor chairs, borrowed from the dining room for extra seating, started when Giles’s gaze fell on her. “Oh, I see, we’re going around the room. This way. Widdershins.”

  She moved one hand in a counterclockwise circle, let out a nervous giggle, and clasped her hands together. “Okay, seriously now. I’m Ree … from Raleigh. I work in a bank but I’m very interested in the paranormal and … and all kinds of psychical stuff. My friends got together and gave me this weekend as a gift for my fortieth birthday. And I …” She paused, evidently at a loss, then brightened and concluded with a triumphant smile, “I hope to broaden my horizons this weekend.”

  The introductions continued. The henna-haired Charlene was a student of tarot seeking to broaden her horizons as well. Originally from Pittsburgh, Charlene was now living with her husband and her four shih tzus in Fairview, a community near Asheville. Sandy from Wisconsin proved to be a recently retired librarian and a mystery buff, looking for a different sort of vacation.

  Now Giles was looking at her and Gloria found herself unexpectedly tongue-tied. The mild gaze held her and she took a deep breath.

  “I’m Gloria from …” Suddenly she didn’t want to say Tampa, and settled for a lame “… from Florida. I’m looking for … I’m looking for answers.”

  A brief smile flickered across Giles’s face then his attention turned to Elizabeth.

  Gloria tensed, hoping Lizzy wouldn’t do one of her typical sarcastic speeches. It would be so embarrassing if—but no, Lizzy was saying, in soft and rather un-Lizzy-like tones, “I’m Elizabeth and I live here in Marshall County, over near Ransom. I came for the weekend to be with my sister … but I wouldn’t mind some answers myself.”

  After Elizabeth came Dawn and Steve—owners of a bed-and-breakfast in southern Alabama, here on a sort of working holiday.

  “Dawn’s into this New Age shit, excuse my French.” Steve gave her partner’s leg a gentle slap. “And I thought it might be something we could run at our place.” She shot an appraising look at Giles. “No offense meant, Mr. uh …”

  “None taken, I’m sure.” Giles’s eyes twinkled but his face remained serious. “I’ll try to make the weekend worth your while.”

  The last of the circle was Len, a sixtyish man with thinning gray hair pulled back in a wispy ponytail. A tie-dyed T-shirt with the dancing skeletons of the Grateful Dead logo was stretched across a substantial paunch. He too wore shorts. Inwardly, Gloria had summed him up as yet another of the aging hippies who seemed to infest the area. Her jaw dropped slightly as Len described himself as an executive with Microsoft—on a sabbatical and hoping to satisfy a long-held interest in spirit communication done via computer. He was just launching into a story of some strange cybercommunication that he’d had with the late Jerry Garcia when there was the sound of a bell, the hurried steps of the innkeeper in the hallway, the door opening and more footsteps.

  All eyes were on the arched doorway as a slim figure in baggy jeans and outsized shirt burst through and stood, looking from one to the other of the circle. His—or was it her?—head was bandaged with just a few strands of dark hair showing at the back. The strangely androgynous face bore a puzzled frown which dissolved into an angelic smile as Giles stood and beckoned.

  “Master,” the newcomer panted, leaning against the elaborate woodwork of the doorframe. “Master Giles, I’m here. I’m Joss.”

  “An interesting assortment of people in this … workshop.”

  Gloria watched as Elizabeth studied the lavish bowl of fruit that sat on the small table between the two chairs. Here come the snarky comments, she thought. But Elizabeth just yawned and muttered, “Do I dare to eat a peach?” as her hovering hand came down and selected a plump specimen.

  “I don’t see why not, Lizzy. They’re all organic and perfectly ripe. I have to have my fruit before bedtime and I specified—”

  Elizabeth grinned and waved off the assurances as she took a bite. “It’s delicious, Glory—a nice idea for a little something before bed. If I can just keep from getting juice all down my front …”

  Gloria stepped into her bathroom and returned with a terry hand towel. “Use this, for goodness’ sake.” She studied the assortment and, choosing a plum and a small cluster of green grapes, settled in the other chair.

  “It seemed to me,” she began, “that the men were much stranger than the women—that hippie type—what was his name?”

  “Len? The guy with Jerry Garcia in his computer?” Elizabeth reached for a plum. “He seems nice enough but computer people are another breed altogether. And what’s his name, Xan with an X—Mr. Fruits and Nuts—I bet he’d like to come along for a fruity organic nosh—you should have invited him up, Glory.”

  Glory recognized the wicked grin as a bit of sisterly teasing and relaxed a very little bit. If they could just get comfortable with each other, without the constant sparring … The secret she’d kept all these years was going to have to come out this weekend and she owed it to Lizzy to tell her first—before sharing it with a roomful of strangers.

  “… and speaking of strange, what about the male-to-female ratio? Three men—well, four, counting Giles—to seven women? Are women just more interested in this … stuff? Or are they more adventurous? Or do they just have more free time?” Elizabeth slipped off her sandals and wiggled her toes.

  “Four men?” Gloria frowned at her sister. “Giles and Len and Xan: That makes three. That Steve person isn’t a—”

  “Glory, I know that—but that crazy-looking one who showed up late is. Joss is a guy. You wanna bet?”

  It was just what she had hoped for, Gloria thought. They had moved from the elegant but not particularly comfortable chairs to the big walnut bed and were propped up with the pillows against the headboard, chattering and gossiping like a couple of teenagers. Maybe if there hadn’t been the age difference. Three years seems like nothing now but back then … and Lizzy started school early and Mama kept me back that year I had rheumatic fever … We were hardly ever at the same school at the same time. And she had her friends and I …

  Still there were some happy shared memories: the family trips to the beach … Lizzy was chuckling over the recollection now.

  “Do you remember the time we saw a sign for a restaurant that had boiled shrimp? It said ‘Peel ’em and eat ’em’ and for some reason we both thought that was the funniest thing in the world. We bounced up and down shouting ‘Peel ’em and eat ’em! Peel ’em and eat ’em!’ over and over till Mama reached around and smacked me.”

  “I remember that! Do you remember the sign on a motel … the ‘Welcome Inn’—”

  Elizabeth threw her head back, choking with laughter. “And we said ‘Well, come in!’ all the rest of the way to the beach. Lord, no wonder the first thing Mama
did when we got there was to fix herself a stiff drink …”

  The mood shifted abruptly as both remembered the almost invariable sequel to Mama’s stiff drink in the afternoon. From the corner of her eye, Gloria could see that Elizabeth’s face had gone solemn. Gloria reached out and squeezed her sister’s hand.

  “I’m sorry, Sissy,” she whispered. “You always got the worst of her temper. I wish …”

  Elizabeth returned the pressure and managed a small smile. “It’s in the past, Glory. It took a long time but I think that Mama and I finally understood each other a little better in the last years of her life. And when … when Sam died, it really came home to me how Papa’s going away must have changed everything for her. Even though he fixed it so there was plenty of money, she really didn’t deal with being alone very well. And because I took after Papa … I guess I was a constant reminder of the man who’d abandoned her.”

  Papa. The mystery man. Mama wouldn’t talk about what happened but her bitterness had been a daily companion, an unseen member of their little family.

  “Lizzy, in all these years, have you ever heard from him? Mama never ever mentioned him and I didn’t like to ask …”

  Elizabeth’s grip tightened and she slowly shook her head. “Never the first word. For all I know, he may be dead.” After a long moment she asked, “Do you remember him at all? You were only four when he left.”

  “I think I must—there weren’t any pictures of him but I think I remember a big man with blue, blue eyes and dark hair. He rode me on his shoulders. But that’s all. You must have a lot more memories of him.”

  “I do.” Elizabeth’s voice was hoarse. “He … he was … my hero. I thought he could do anything. And then … one day he was gone.”

  There was another long silence as the two women sat side by side on the big bed, holding hands and staring into the past.

  Finally, gathering her courage, Gloria began, “Lizzy, I need to tell you about when I married Arturo …”

  Chapter 16

  Midnight Revelations

  Friday, May 25

  Where am I?

  Something had awakened me—had there been a cold draft? Had I imagined that sound of low hopeless sobbing? Opening a bleary eye, I was completely confused to see dim half-light and the wallpaper of my bedroom at Gramma’s house—the refuge of my youth.

  I lay still, waiting for reality to reassert itself, studying the well-loved old pattern and expecting it to dissolve into the familiar windows of my own bedroom. When, however, it showed no sign of vanishing I shut my eyes again.

  You’re still in the dream—it’s just done one of those quantum jumps that dreams sometimes do. Relax and go with it …

  In the dream I’d been having, I was deep in conversation with Gramma, sitting next to her in the big comfy chair that was our special place. The worn copy of Gene Stratton Porter’s Freckles lay open on her lap but she had paused in her reading aloud to answer my question … my question … what was my question? Something about Gloria.

  Gloria.

  In a dizzying readjustment of reality, I sat up and looked around. Not my room at Gramma’s—long lost, miles and years ago—but a room in the Mountain Magnolia. What time was it? Just barely daylight, according to the light beyond the window.

  The clock on the bedside table said 5:43. I groaned and lay back down. And then I remembered last night. My sister … my poor little sister …

  “I wish you’d been around back then, Lizzy,” she’d said. “You could have helped me be stronger. But of course, in the end it didn’t matter so much.”

  The pre-bedtime chat was Gloria’s idea and it had been wonderful. We had giggled and carried on like girls at a slumber party. Like sisters, in fact. But then the shared good memories led to the subject of our father—our father which art … where? And when there was nothing I could tell her about the man she has only the faintest recollection of, Gloria dropped her bombshell.

  “You weren’t around when I married Arturo. And by the time you came back, it was over. How much did Mama tell you about me and Arturo?”

  I had tried to remember. It hadn’t been much. The whole Arturo thing had been just a tiny detour in the path Mama had mapped out for Gloria—the path to marriage with the right sort of man. The right sort, it went without saying, was a fellow WASP—a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, preferably of a Good Family, and necessarily wealthy. Gloria had been (and still is) a beauty and I had known that Mama had several eligible young men in mind as potential suitors for Glory.

  But then, fate, bad luck, hormones, or some toxic combination thereof took control. Seventeen-year-old Gloria, off to the University of Florida for her freshman year, fell madly in love and before that freshman year was over, she had eloped with a decidedly dark and probably Roman Catholic engineering student from Colombia.

  “What did Mama tell me?” I had hedged, trying to edit out some of the worst of the language and accusations—those venomous late night phone calls, fueled by far too many stiff drinks. “Well … she thought that Arturo had taken advantage of your innocence and had probably married you to get his citizenship. She said that she had ‘friends in high places’ who’d hinted that Arturo might be part of one of those drug cartels … That was the main reason she was so insistent the marriage be annulled.”

  I felt that chill draft again and pulled the bedspread up around my shoulders. Last night’s sisterly chat had covered the rocky ground of many lost years and I had seen a side of my little sister I’d never even guessed at.

  As I’d finished my meager little recitation of the case against Arturo, I’d been appalled to see tears trickling down my sister’s cheeks.

  “Glory! I’m sorry … I had no idea that you still had any feelings for him. I had the impression that you were relieved … you certainly seemed happy enough when you married Ben’s dad—”

  “That’s not why I’m crying, Lizzy,” she had said, shaking her head and twisting at the little heart on a chain that she so often wore around her neck. I had suddenly realized that she’d worn that same simple little trinket for years and years—a rather un-Gloria thing to do—and for the first time wondered if it had some sentimental value.

  “Did Arturo give you that?” I had said it as gently as I could and was startled when she let out a bitter laugh.

  “Not exactly. Let me go blow my nose and I’ll tell you the part Mama left out.”

  In spite of the mild May morning, I shivered under the covers, going back over the story Glory had told me—the secret she’d kept all these years.

  She’d returned from the bathroom in complete control of herself and, in an almost emotionless voice, had traced the events of 1973, the year I’d been too busy with Sam and school and my own happy life to come home for a visit.

  Arturo Rodriquez had been an assistant in her Spanish lab. Handsome and charming, he had gone out of his way to help her and they had begun dating in the fall of ’72. By December she knew she was pregnant and Arturo had insisted they get married right away, fearing that her mother might force her to get an abortion.

  “He was right; when she found out, that was exactly her reaction,” a dry-eyed Gloria told me. “We went to Georgia one weekend and got married just before the Christmas break. He wanted to come home with me, to be with me when I told her but I was afraid … I knew how she’d be. So he stayed in Gainesville and I went home. I thought if things got too bad—and I knew they would—at least I could look forward to going back early so Turo and I could celebrate the New Year and our new life together.”

  A new life.

  “Gloria,” I ventured, “what happened when you told Mama you were pregnant?”

  “Well, of course she pitched a fit. Then she went and made a bunch of phone calls and came back and told me she’d fixed everything and that we’d be going in to her gynecologist the next Monday. ‘You’re not very far along,’ she said. ‘This early it’s nothing, just a D and C—no worse than a bad period.’ ”


  “So you went,” I said, knowing the hold Mama had always had over Gloria.

  “I did not! But I didn’t argue. I just got up early the next morning before she was awake and drove back to Gainesville, back to Turo. He had the funniest little apartment—a converted garage behind a house and right on an alley. There was a little hand-painted sign over the door that said Chalet in the Alley. It was so tiny that the bathtub was in the middle of the kitchen, covered by a wooden top …”

  Her voice had trailed off. Her face was frozen into a beautiful expressionless mask. “But when I got there he was gone. I hadn’t called—he didn’t have a phone. And the apartment was a wreck—drawers pulled out and things thrown all around. When I went to the landlady to ask what had happened, she said that some men from the government—Immigration or Narcotics or something, she wasn’t sure—had come that morning and taken Turo away. They had said that he was here illegally, that he was suspected of drug trafficking.

  “I asked if I could use her phone to make some calls before I went back to tidy up the apartment and she just frowned at me and said the lease was with Turo and she wanted me off her property. It was clear she was terrified. So I found a phone booth and called everywhere I could think of. I finally found a lawyer who would see me right away.

  “I had to take a room in a motel—and I was there for a couple of weeks while I waited for this lawyer to find out something. I was running low on money and knew that by the time I paid the lawyer, I wouldn’t have enough for my next semester’s tuition.

  “When he finally called to tell me that Arturo Rodriquez had been deported to his native Colombia, I was beaten. Worry and sadness and morning sickness had worn me down. I’d maxed out my credit cards and all I could do was to crawl back home.”

  Gloria’s words had cut deep. To think that I’d never …

  “Glory, why didn’t you call me? I could have … we could have …”

  “I called and the phone just kept ringing … over and over. Later I found out that you were with Sam’s family for the holidays. So I went home to Mama.”