Maria lighted creamy white candles in candlesticks of pewter and the flames dispelled the gloom a little. We did not wait for Eleanor, but were served tacos with a delicious meat filling, though a little hot with chili for my taste. There was Spanish rice and sopapillos—those pillowlike puffs of thin bread, which I especially enjoyed.
We were halfway through the meal when Clarita, who sat at the end of the table facing the door, gave a sudden cry and put her napkin to her lips. Sylvia stared at the door, turning so white that I thought she was going to faint. From where I sat, Juan’s chair blocked the door, but I saw the grim look on Gavin’s face, saw him push back his chair.
Juan, made aware by behavior around the table that something was happening behind him, twisted about and stared toward the door. A lithe figure in dark blue moved into view, and I saw the tight suede trousers, trimmed down the sides with tarnished silver buttons, the short jacket ornamented in white braid and embroidery, a white sombrero topping the whole—and I saw something else. Where the face should have been beneath the rolled brim of the sombrero, was a blue mask, its features formed of silver and turquoise, the mouth rounded in an “O” that seemed a silent scream.
Clarita cried out—a single name, “Kirk!” and covered her face with her hands.
Sylvia said harshly, “Don’t be silly—it’s Eleanor!”
The figure in the charro costume pranced a little, sweeping the sombrero from her head in a bow, whirling about the table as she showed herself off.
I could hear the screaming when it began, and I covered my ears to shut out the terrible sound. I didn’t know until Gavin came around the table and shook me gently by the shoulders, that it was I who screamed.
“Stop it, Amanda, stop it. You’re all right,” he said.
Juan spoke for the first time. “Take off that mask, Eleanor. You are upsetting Amanda. What is this prank you are playing? What are you trying to do?”
Eleanor flung aside the sombrero and unfastened the mask, laying it on the sideboard. Her own face was a mask in itself—a mask of heightened excitement and cruel curiosity.
“What do you remember, Amanda? What do you see?” she urged me tensely.
Before Gavin could move to stop her, she came around the table and knelt beside me in her tarnished silver and leather.
“Look, Amanda, look!” she whispered, and pointed to the breast of the jacket. There were dark stains across the heart, brownish where they touched white braid, and the material had been broken by something that had left a scorched hole.
I had stopped screaming, but I was trembling so desperately that I clung to Gavin to keep my hands from shaking, and I buried my face against his heart. He held and soothed me gently, and there was a silence all around the room. Clarita was the first to break it.
“Oh, wicked, wicked!” she cried to Eleanor. “Sometimes you are as wicked as he was.” And I knew she meant Kirk. I had never before seen Clarita angry with Eleanor.
Sylvia pushed back her chair and walked out of the room, without a look for anyone, as though she had need to recover privately. Only Eleanor and Juan continued to stare at me, with Gavin there beside me, holding me to him, smoothing my hair, whispering softly to calm me. I clung to him and wept, not caring who saw me, or what they might think.
“You have outdone the Cordovas,” Juan said at last to Eleanor. “I suggest that you go and get into your own clothes. Then have Maria wrap those things in a parcel and bring them to me. They must be disposed of. I did not know they had been saved.”
“My mother saved them,” Clarita said in a choked voice. Now she was watching me too, weighing what she saw with a look as dark as Juan’s.
Eleanor paid no attention to Juan, still playing her cruel role. “I remember, if you don’t, Amanda, though I didn’t see what happened. Kirk was wearing this very charro outfit when he came to meet Doro on the hillside that day. I’d seen him in it before at fiestas, and I saw him that day, too, when they carried him up the hill afterwards. I saw the blood, just as you did, Amanda, but I didn’t go to pieces over it the way you did.”
Her eyes were bright with defiance of her grandfather, of Gavin, of all of us. She snatched up the sombrero and put it back on her head, taunting me, and when I closed my eyes against the sight, I could still see, vividly, that figure with the great sombrero on its head, and the turquoise mask covering its face. But I knew it was Kirk I was seeing, not Eleanor. Kirk ripping the mask from his face and dropping it to the ground, so that it fell beside me. I could almost hear him speaking to my mother, threatening her. Yes, I could remember the voice—rough and threatening. And I could almost see her frightened face. She was crying out, “No, no!” as she struggled with an adversary. There was a blast of sound and I saw the dreadful, staining blood, heard the crash of her body, falling endlessly. Afterwards everything went blank and I could remember only that I was sitting on a bench with the blue mask in my hands, staring at that terrible cottonwood tree which seemed to my young eyes the spirit incarnate of evil.
Gavin was holding a water glass to my lips. I sipped weakly and the vision faded. Sylvia had made a supreme effort to recover herself and she returned to the dining room. Her hands drew me away from Gavin, her voice whispered to me softly.
“Let it go, Amanda. Don’t try to bring everything back.”
I wanted only to continue clinging to Gavin, but he had stepped back, to leave me to face Sylvia’s ministering. When I put a hand to my face I found it wet with tears, and I felt exhausted.
Eleanor was still there, still prying and intent. “You’ve remembered, haven’t you, Amanda? Tell us what you saw!”
Weakly, I moved my head from side to side. “No—it nearly came clear, but not completely. I can remember Kirk. I can remember my mother’s fright. But nothing else—nothing.”
Someone sighed as if in deep relief, and when I opened my eyes I saw it was Sylvia. But it was Eleanor I must look at now. Look at and recognize. Because now I knew. I knew why I’d sensed familiarity in the photograph of Kirk Landers. His picture had looked like Eleanor in this very mood.
Strength began to flow through me, and I pushed Sylvia away. Eleanor and Kirk—why? I stared at Juan and at Clarita, and I saw vestiges of resemblance to Eleanor there. But Kirk had not been related to the Cordovas at all. Or that was what Sylvia had told me. So why?
Juan had not moved from his place and now he spoke down the table. “Perhaps you will feel better, Amanda, if you finish your lunch.”
I looked with distaste at the food on my plate, and Clarita rose from her place. “I will get her some soup from the kitchen.” She spoke without liking for me, without sympathy, though she would minister to me.
Eleanor, still defying her grandfather, slipped into her chair at the table and began to eat hungrily, still dressed in Kirk’s Mexican charro costume, with that dreadful powder burn and the brown stains on the front. But now Juan had recovered his own inner power and this time when he spoke to her his voice crackled.
“You will eat nothing more until you have changed your clothes,” he told her. This time she did not dare to disobey. Her defiance melted and she slipped from her place like a scolded child and ran out of the room.
Clarita returned shortly with a cup of heated broth, and I drank it gratefully. Eleanor came back as I finished, changed into her own slacks and blouse.
Gavin said, “I’ll take you home now, Amanda. You’ve had enough.”
“Then I’ll come with you!” Eleanor cried.
“No,” Gavin said. “You will not.”
Juan looked at Sylvia, and she said, “I’ll drive back with you, if I may, Gavin.”
He nodded to her shortly, and we went out to the car. At the table Juan, Clarita and Eleanor sat like images, watching us go.
This time Gavin placed me next to him in the car, and Sylvia sat on the outside.
“Juan is furious,” Sylvia said nervously. “He wants you to stay with Eleanor, Gavin. He won’t stand for—for you and Aman
da. You’ve floored us all, I must say.”
I knew they had seen plainly how I felt. It was my own fault, my own weakness. And I didn’t seem to care.
“There’s not much he can do about it,” Gavin said grimly.
“He can fire you.”
“If he wants to. But he still needs me.”
I knew I should murmur something about being sorry, apologize for giving my feelings away so thoroughly, but I didn’t want to. I leaned my head against Gavin’s arm as he drove, and once he reached over to stroke my cheek, so that I knew he wasn’t angry with me. I loved him so much that I couldn’t bear it. Yet when we had driven a few miles in silence, I knew there were things I had to ask.
“I know now why that picture you showed me of Kirk seemed familiar,” I said to Sylvia. “He looks like Eleanor.”
“Kirk?” Gavin sounded surprised. “I’ve never thought that. But then, I can’t much remember what Kirk looked like.”
“You’re imagining it,” Sylvia said with a lightness I couldn’t believe in. Whatever the truth was, Sylvia knew.
“Was Juan Kirk’s father?” I asked bluntly.
Gavin exclaimed and Sylvia seemed to choke on the words she’d been about to speak. “Oh, no, no, of course not!” she cried.
“Then why did Kirk have the Cordova look?”
“He didn’t have!” Sylvia insisted heatedly. “Not at all, Amanda!”
I paid no attention. “If he did inherit it, then Kirk and my mother might have been half brother and sister,” I said.
Sylvia shook her head vehemently. “You’re going down a completely wrong road. There was nothing like that. Kirk was my stepbrother.”
“Then tell me the truth,” I said.
She only shook her head again, denying knowledge of anything, denying my claim that Kirk had the Cordova look in his face.
I went on, thinking aloud. “If Doroteo had wanted to marry Kirk and he was really her brother, then Juan couldn’t have allowed that, could he? What if it was Juan who came along that hillside? Juan who killed Kirk?”
“And pushed his favorite daughter down the bank?” Sylvia was derisive.
“What if Clarita lied about what she saw from the window?” I went on. “What if she has protected her father all these years?”
“Don’t!” Sylvia cried. “Amanda, don’t. Juan was ill that day. Katy had put him to bed. But if you want to know something, Clarita was never anywhere near that window from which she claimed to be looking. All her avowals to the police were false.”
I turned my head to stare at her, and so did Gavin. Sylvia was looking straight ahead at the highway that rushed toward us, with the rooftops of Santa Fe in the distance, and the mountains rising beyond.
“Are you making this up?” I asked.
Once more she had turned as pale as she’d been when Eleanor came prancing into the dining room in Kirk’s costume.
“I’m not making anything up. Paul saw her that day. He saw her outside the house where she couldn’t have seen a thing on the hillside. And she’s been lying ever since.”
I remembered that Sylvia had earlier given away the fact that she and Paul had not come to the picnic together that day.
Gavin asked the next question, “Then why didn’t Paul go to the police with what he knew?”
“He chose not to. He was sorry for Clarita. She’d gotten over her young crush on Kirk by that time, just as Doro had. It was Paul she was in love with, and she’d begun to see Kirk through Paul’s eyes. She knew he was thoroughly bad.”
I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. It was as if a picture I had been looking at for some time had suddenly shifted in character, and all the recognized brush strokes now meant something new and different.
I couldn’t bear to think about it any more. Far ahead the snow crests glistened in the sun and I remembered what it had been like to be up there among the peaks last night, alone with Gavin. How clean and pure the snow had seemed under the moon. How clear and simple love had seemed then. Now it was neither. Yet somehow another corner had been turned and Eleanor had put herself outside of Gavin’s consideration. I wondered what she would do now. She might be amusing herself with Paul, she might be eager for a divorce, yet I had the suspicion that she would not easily release to a rival something she had once owned. If Gavin loved me, she would hate me for that very fact.
I could cope with nothing more. I let myself go limp, forced my mind to empty. No one spoke in the car, though now and then Gavin threw me a concerned glance. There was no strength in me to reassure him. Eleanor’s prank had wrung me out emotionally and all my ability to think and feel had been washed away. I was numb, and I didn’t want painful sensation to return.
When we reached the empty house, Gavin held me close for a moment that might have been comforting if I could feel anything, and then turned me over to Sylvia. She came up to my room with me and offered to stay for a while.
“I’ll be all right,” I assured her. “I just need to be quiet and—and catch my breath.”
In a way, Sylvia was more disturbed than I in this unfeeling state. She moved restlessly about the room, and I had the sense that she didn’t want to go home to Paul right away. In fact, she admitted this after her third round of the room.
“Paul will want to know everything that happened, and I—I don’t want to talk about it. What Eleanor did was dreadful. She believes it will drive you away and still help Paul with his book if she can stir things up, but I don’t think they should be stirred up. Forget about today, Amanda. Let it be.”
This was the old song that Sylvia was forever singing, and I wondered at her deep concern.
“I haven’t any other choice,” I said. “I’m very close—but I’m not there. And until the fog clears completely, there’s nothing I can do.”
She stopped her pacing and stood beside my bed. “If it does clear, what will you do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “How can I even guess? I suppose I’ll go to Juan if what I remember clears my mother.”
“I’ll tell Paul you can’t remember,” Sylvia said. “I’ll tell him not to pay any attention to Eleanor.”
I closed my eyes, only wanting to be alone, and in a little while she went away. When her steps had stopped echoing on the stairs, I lay quiet on the bed, listening to silence. After a time it was broken by the arrival of the other three. I heard Clarita helping Juan to his room, and when I got up and looked out the window, I saw Eleanor running across the patio toward the Stewarts’ gate, and I knew she was losing no time in talking to Paul.
When I lay down again, I managed to fall asleep, and I didn’t waken until Rosa came up my stairs bringing a tray Clarita had sent up to me. It was a simple meal of soup and cheese and fruit, and I managed to eat it, as I could not have done a full dinner. When Rosa came to take the tray away, I lay down again, more awake now, more alive, yet still unsure of what it was I must do next.
The room darkened, and the light in the patio came on, throwing a slight radiance against one window. I lay in the dark and thought of Gavin and wished myself into the future, when all problems might be solved and I could be with him for good. If that time ever came. The present returned to me sharply when I heard Juan calling my name.
When I went to open my door, I found him at the foot of the stairs, his back to the lighted room, so that I could not see his face.
“Come down to me, Amanda,” he said softly.
A deep breath gave me a semblance of courage, and I went down the steps. Whatever I expected in the way of chiding did not come.
“I want you to do something for me,” he said, and held out a ring with two keys.
I took them from him, my look questioning.
“There’s no one else I can send,” he told me. “I’m too weary to walk down there tonight, and my eyesight can’t be trusted. I want you to check the collection for me.”
“Check the collection?” I echoed.
“Yes. We’ve been a
way most of the day. I always look at it immediately after being away. I want you to be my eyes this time. I want to know if everything is all right.”
“But I won’t know if anything is missing,” I objected. “I should think Gavin—”
He gave me a dark look. “Not Gavin. It isn’t necessary to check everything. There is just one thing that matters—the Velázquez. I want to make sure it is safe. I have worried about it all day.”
“But someone nearby would have heard the alarm if it sounded, and you’d have been told.”
“Not necessarily. Don’t argue, Amanda. Just go out there now. And then come to me in my study.”
I looked reluctantly at the keys in my hand. “All right, I’ll go.” At least it was something that he didn’t mean to lecture me now.
“You remember? The burglar alarm key first. Then the other. And when you come to me, follow the passage from the patio, so no one will see you. The door is open.”
I nodded, and he turned back toward his room, leaning heavily on his stick, as though all his strength had been used up in our day’s excursion.
I let myself out to the patio through the living-room door. No one was about, and I turned down the flagged walk to the building with its peaked redwood roof. Using the keys in proper succession, I let myself in the door.
With curtains drawn as always, it was very dark inside. I found a switch at the right of the door and turned on the indirect lighting. Scenes of Spain sprang to life along the walls, but I paid no attention to them, walking rapidly toward the alcove at the back. There I touched the switch that lighted Velázquez’s painting of Doña Inés.
It took only a moment to assure me that the picture was safe. I stared at that strange, indented face of the stunted woman with the dog at her feet, then turned off the light and returned to the main room. As far as I could see, nothing had been disturbed. There seemed to be no vacant places on the walls, or on any of the shelves which held carved figures and ceramics.
Once more the painting of Doña Emanuella caught my attention and I stood before it, trying to see in that bright face with the sulky mouth the image of my mother. If only she had lived. Not Emanuella, but Doroteo. She had cared about me as Grandmother Katy had cared about her daughters. As my father had cared about me. None of the other Cordovas would serve. I had been seeking a mirage to expect anything from them.
The Turquoise Mask Page 25