by Jan Burke
Everyone in the place was staring at us by then. The librarian said, “I don’t understand—”
“They’re family,” Rachel said, as if that explained everything. She took hold of my elbow and began steering me out the front door.
“He’s not going anywhere,” she said calmly, moving toward the parking lot.
“In the mood he’s in, he just might back over your sedan,” I said.
“Naw,” Rachel said. “That pickup truck looked new. And he won’t want to mess up that purple paint job.”
“You don’t know—”
We heard a loud bang.
“—the Maguires,” I finished, just before we heard the second bang.
12
Rachel’s legs are a little longer than mine, but I do a lot of running, so I was around the corner of the building first. Travis was stepping out of the pickup, looking shaken. Rachel started shouting in Italian—what I understood of it made me pray all other Italians were out of earshot. But anyone who didn’t speak the language could read the gestures.
The right front side of the car was not looking good. The wheel stood at a crazy lopsided angle, antifreeze was puddling onto the asphalt, and the headlamp was history. The pickup had surprisingly little damage. Its rear bumper was scraped and dented.
Travis stared at the car and his truck, as if he had only just awakened and found unexpected chaos. Rachel bounded over to him and grabbed him by the shirt collar, shoved him off balance and smacked his back up hard against the camper shell.
“No! Don’t hurt him!” I shouted. She gave me a sharp look that said I just might be next, but let him go. She turned away from him, put her hands on top of her head, clenched her teeth and closed her eyes tightly, as if trying to contain an explosion.
He slumped a little, but otherwise didn’t move. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m terribly sorry. I’ll pay for the damage.”
She opened her eyes. “You’re goddamned right you will!”
“I will! I will! Every cent. And I’ll—I’ll take you wherever you need to go—rent a car for you. Whatever is necessary. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
I could have told him that I knew what came over him and that it runs in the family, but just then Ms. Galvan opened the back door of the library. “Oh, no!” she said. “Is anyone hurt?”
“No, no one is hurt,” I said. “We were in such a rush, afraid we’d miss my cousin. We stupidly left the car here and of course Travis—er, Cosmo—didn’t see it.” Rachel was glaring at me, but I went on. “Is there a good body shop nearby?”
Throughout the process of arranging for the car to be towed, nobody seemed to want to do much talking. Travis was still shaken, and didn’t make much eye contact with me. I was fine with avoidance. I certainly didn’t want to follow up this scene with the news I had to give him.
Rachel was probably thinking about that, too. Even though he had just battered her car, she seemed to make an effort to be friendly.
This began while we followed the tow truck to the body shop; on the way over, she apologized for being rough with him, and asked if she had hurt him. He shook his head.
“No? Well, you’re either made of steel or you’ll be feeling it later.”
He smiled and said, “I’m not made of steel.”
She laughed.
At the body shop, Travis looked over the loaner cars and told the shop owner that he would rent something for Ms. Giocopazzi elsewhere. It was decided that elsewhere would be in Las Piernas; if we were up in Los Angeles much longer, we’d hit the evening rush hour. Evening rush hour is also about four hours long. Travis offered to drive us home. “I’ll buy you a late lunch there, too,” he said, although only to her. “It’s the least I can do.”
We got into the pickup, all of us in the front seat. Rachel took the middle. Before starting the engine, Travis curled his fingers tightly on the steering wheel, leaned over and spoke directly to me for the first time since trying to take leave of me in the library.
“How much?” he asked.
“How much what?”
“Look, your friend Ms. Giocopazzi is being very decent about all of this, so I owe it to her to at least hear you out. You might not get what you came for, and I’m sad to see that Patrick Kelly’s children aren’t as proud as he was—not that I ever had any great admiration for your stiff-rumped old man, but at least he did have pride.”
I swallowed a little of mine along with a retort about someone else’s admirable old man and said, “Forgive me, Travis, but I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“How much?” he demanded.
Rachel said, “Travis.”
He looked at her.
“You’re about to make a Clydesdale-sized horse’s ass out of yourself— for the second time in less than two hours. It’s kinda amusing to me, because your cousin here gets herself in trouble the same way you do—she’s a hothead, too.”
“I’ll fight my own fights, thank you very much,” I said.
“See what I mean?” she went on. “But what I’m trying to tell you is, Irene isn’t here for your money.”
“Is that what you thought?” I said to him, outraged. “You thought I came up here to borrow money? From someone I haven’t seen in over twenty years? Of all the—”
“Irene—” Rachel said.
“If it’s true that you aren’t after money,” Travis said, “then I’m sorry. Perhaps I jumped to a conclusion.”
“No perhaps about it,” I said.
“Then why are you here?”
I hesitated. “Because—”
“Not now,” Rachel said firmly. To Travis, she said, “Drive us back to Las Piernas. You know where Mary Kelly lives?”
He thought for a moment. “Irene’s great-aunt? The one who drives the Mustang?”
“Yes.”
“Not exactly. I haven’t seen her in over a dozen years. Is she the one who needs money?”
“For godsakes,” I said, “nobody wants your damned money.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong about that,” he said.
“Well, Aunt Mary doesn’t. I don’t. Rachel doesn’t want more of it than will be needed to fix her car.”
“Mary asked Irene to find you,” Rachel said, holding a hand up to silence me. “It wasn’t easy, and—well, I think we should go to Las Piernas, to Mary’s house, and we can explain it there.”
“All right,” he said, starting the motor. “But now you’ve really piqued my curiosity.”
That was enough to shut me up. At least for a few minutes. Until Travis said, “Rachel, Irene did warn you that you’re accepting a ride from the bastard son of a murdering bigamist?”
“Oh, for pitysakes—” I began, but Rachel elbowed me.
“I’ve heard something of the family history,” she admitted. “Maybe I should hear your version, though.”
He smiled again. “I’ll warn you ahead of time—I’m a liar. Being my father’s son, what else could you expect—right, Irene? That’s why I went into storytelling—a gratifying way to use my natural abilities.”
I thought of taking a different tack, of telling him how much we had enjoyed watching his storytelling performance, but I saw him look over at me, trying to see if he had riled me. There was something smug about that look. I started watching cars again.
I heard him laugh. “Should I begin at the very beginning?” he asked.
“Sure,” Rachel said.
There was a moment’s silence.
“Once upon a time,” he began, “a long, long time ago, in the time of our fathers’ fathers, there was a rich old king who owned a kingdom of sugar, a magical land of green fields and blue skies.
“The king loved his queen, who had given him a fine son. The king said, ”I have everything in the world a man could want. Rich land, a beautiful wife and a fine son.“ But then the king began to worry, began to fret in the way so many of us do when everything is going well. ”What if my wife sh
ould leave me? What if a dragon should take my son? What if my fortune should be lost?“
“Nothing could ease his sense of foreboding. Even when his wife announced that they would have another child, he only worried. He worked harder and harder—for he was a hard-working king, not one of the lazy sort of kings who sit about on big thrones all day. Soon he had a great deal of money in the castle, and said to the queen, ”Now I can protect you and our children from anything.“
“A little brown sparrow dared to speak up and say, ”Your highness, this life is hard. Nothing can protect us, except God in a good mood.“
“The king had no love of sparrows, and certainly did not want to hear them talk. He shooed this one from the castle. Some believe that sparrow cursed him as she flew away, but others simply believe that God had a mood swing.
“Whatever the cause, tragedy struck. Shortly after giving birth to their second son, the queen died. The king was nearly inconsolable, saying ‘Just as I feared! My queen has left me!”
“In his grief, the king only worked harder. As his children grew up, the first son became a strong, brave young man, who pleased his father in every way. The second son was weak and bitter, and had a stone where his heart should have been.”
“Do these young princes have names?” Rachel asked.
“Name them, if you’d like,” he said.
“The younger one should be Horace DeMont,” she said.
“And the older?”
“You’ll have to tell me.”
“Richard,” he said. “Prince Richard. And like another Richard before him, he was lionhearted. He chafed at his father’s protectiveness, and was something of a daredevil, and even learned to fly airplanes. He married a beautiful princess from the east, a lively woman who understood him, and he brought her to live at the castle. She was a good woman, and for a time, seeing his son’s happiness, the king forgot his grief.
“Prince Horace became jealous, for he was already in the habit of looking about the castle and thinking of how much he would like to sit in this chair or own that painting when the old king died. He did not like the idea of sharing these things with the new princess, and complained about her frequently. The king tired of this, and banished him from the castle, giving him a home in another city, and telling him to stay away.”
“Huntington Beach?” I asked.
“Yes. In those days, that part of the world was far away from the castle. But over the years, the land began to shrink and shrink and shrink, and it’s much closer now.”
He was quiet for a time, and I wondered if he would go on, or if my speaking was enough to bring an end to the tale. But then he said, “The king’s worries were soon to begin again. A Great War was being fought in Europe, and Richard volunteered—enlisted in the fight even before his country did.
“While Richard was in France, his wife came to the king and told him that she was expecting a child. The king at once sent a message to Richard, to tell him of this wonderful news, but poor Richard was slain before the message could reach him. He had died a courageous death, but the king found little comfort in that, saddened that a dragon had indeed taken his son.
“Horace now asked his father to welcome him home as his only remaining son, and to remove the princess. This angered the king, who cut Horace out of his will. He saw to it that the princess had the best of care. He was overjoyed when the princess gave birth to a little girl, and was especially pleased when she named her new daughter Gwendolyn, after his late and much beloved queen.
“Again tragedy struck, and there are those who will tell you that this one disordered the old king’s mind. The king and the princess traveled to the east, so that the princess might see her family, and to show them the fair Gwendolyn. And while they were there, a plague struck, the worst in five hundred years.”
“The influenza epidemic?” I asked.
“Yes. Do you know about it?”
“Not much,” I admitted.
“Twenty-one million people died because of it—more than twice the number killed in World War I. So many died in Washington and Baltimore, they ran out of coffins.”
“Sounds as if you’ve studied about it,” I said.
He smiled. “My father told me about it. He lies about a great many things, of course, but I checked up on this.”
His use of the present tense was not lost on me, or on Rachel. We exchanged a look of dismay.
“Oh, I know a son shouldn’t speak ill of his father,” Travis said, misreading it, “but I know you’ll hardly blame me, Irene.”
“Forget about that,” Rachel said quickly. “I want to hear the rest of the story you were telling. They went back east and caught the flu.”
“Yes. All three of them. But despite his age, the king survived, and despite her youth, Gwendolyn did as well. But the poor princess did not. Heartbroken, the king left the east as quickly as he could, and came back to his castle. He loved Gwendolyn, but his protectiveness of this new little princess became extreme. He rarely allowed anyone else near her. A few governesses, a housekeeper or two.
“She grew into a woman, but since her grandfather believed all men to be fortune hunters, he did not allow her into their company. He forever saw her as much younger than she was. She did not mind this protection; she had known it all her life. She was extremely shy of other people, most especially men.
“But one day, when she was outside, sitting in her garden, she saw a big snake sleeping in the sun. Frightened, she cried out, awakening the snake. But a boy who was working nearby heard her, and hurried to help her. He removed the snake from the garden, then went back to see if she had been bitten or harmed in anyway. She told him she was not, but even though he was only twelve, he could see the princess—whom he thought quite silly—was shaken.
“The boy began to tell her a story, one that made the shy princess laugh, and when he had finished, the princess asked him to tell her another. He told her one, and then another, and so it went, until the boy’s brother—who was much older than the boy—called to him that it was time to go.
“She begged the boy to return to her, and he did. When the king died four years later, the princess was very lonely, and soon married the only male who had ever formed an attachment to her.”
He paused, then said, “There are those that would tell you that she was safer with the snake, and maybe they are right. But they do not think, perhaps, of the boy being only a young man of sixteen, and of her, however shy, being over forty. Perhaps it was the boy who would have been better off with the snake.
“What is certain, however, is that one should not ignore the advice of sparrows, for everything the king most feared came true.”
We had reached Las Piernas by then and he asked for directions. I made a decision. He didn’t like me much, and the easiest thing would have been to take him to Mary’s house, to leave everything on her shoulders.
“Take the next exit,” I said, ignoring Rachel’s look of surprise.
I was as much a Maguire as I was a Kelly. It was time to stop letting my father’s prejudices ruin any chance of getting closer to my cousin. I just hoped God found that funny enough to laugh himself into a good mood.
13
I was surprised when we were able to find a parking space in front of the house; it was the only one available on our block. We live near the beach, and at that time of year, as the weather was warming, the crowds were showing up.
I took Rachel aside and gave her the keys to the Volvo, asking her to give me some time alone with Travis. She hesitated, then relented. She told me to give her a call if I needed help. When he saw that she was leaving, Travis protested that he had promised to pay for a rental car, but she told him not to worry about it. “Just spend some time getting to know your cousin,” she said. “You might find out she’s not so bad.”
He made a face that looked like the warm-up for a sarcastic reply, then caught her disapproving glance. “Will we see you later?” he asked.
She promised
she’d be back.
I stalled for a while, introducing him to our pets, showing him the house, feeding him lunch outside on the patio. The dogs took a liking to him and lay on the lawn, watching him. Cody reserved judgment, and busied himself rolling around in a patch of mint that Frank had planted for him.
I answered Travis’s questions about Frank, Pete and Rachel, none of which seemed to be designed to elicit more than small talk. He steered the topic of conversation away from himself, so I stopped asking questions, too anxious about coming up with a way to break the news about his parents to worry much over his reticence. I decided I would make a determined effort to discover more about him later. For the time being, I tried to learn what I could from what he chose to ask me. I suppose I learned more from what he didn’t ask.