Hotel Paradise

by Martha Grimes

  In the next half-hour or forty-five minutes, several different species of butterfly glided over to check me out, some of them lighting, as the Spring Azure had done, on a tall blade of grass or pussy willow. I wondered what the tiny ones were, the clouds of pale yellow ones tinier than my little fingernail. It was hard to think of Dr. McComb killing and sticking pins in these specimens because of what he had written and the way he had written it.

  And then I saw a large white butterfly dip, bank, curve around, and come to rest not far from me. I held my breath as I leaned closer, carefully, to see if its wings were riddled with tiny holes. No, it was just one of a variety of white butterflies. I stood and watched, not once bringing the pool skimmer or sieve into play, and knew I wouldn’t, not if I stood here all day, for it just didn’t seem right, somehow. The butterfly just rested there, unaware that I had its fate in my hands. Actually, it probably wasn’t in all that much danger; I never have been well coordinated.

  As I looked away from the butterfly and over the lake toward the Devereau house, I thought I surely must be seeing things.

  For there she stood, the Girl. Away across the lake. She stood there in that dawn-colored dress with her moon-colored hair as if she were simply looking out over the water in the same way I was. As if she were looking at me. I dropped the net and the sieve in the water and actually rubbed my eyes. But when I looked again, she was still there, only farther back, half-hidden now in a little stand of ash and drooping white willows. In a way, she blended with them. Finally, she turned and walked back towards the house. I could see her for only a few steps, for the trees hid her. How long did I stand there looking at the opposite shore and the Devereau house? I don’t know. I did not see her again.

  In a way I was glad that I was nearly late for breakfast and that it was time to get back to the hotel dining room and go through the boring round of butter plates. It was one of my prebreakfast chores to carry the bowl of butter pats around and jab each with a fork. The butter was ice hard and always stuck to the prongs, and I’d have to shake to loosen it—jab and shake, jab and shake. At times I would sooner have got the butter out of the cow.

  Oh, but then, of course, there were the corn cakes and eggs over easy to cheer me up as I plodded the hard dirt road. As I walked along in the blue-gray of seven o’clock, it was cool, almost cold, almost fall weather. And with fall, there would be buckwheat cakes! My mother’s buckwheat cakes are beyond my power to describe. But I can see them in my mind’s eye—brown-veined, crispy-edged, and just the right degree of sour.

  I am not Catholic or of any particular creed, but I cross myself whenever I think of those buckwheat cakes.

  FIFTEEN

  I kept the butterfly box, which I’d made from a small carton that once held Hunt’s tomato sauce, for I had gone to a lot of trouble making the plastic-covered window, and I might be able to use it for something else.

  After two helpings of corn cakes and a pitcher of maple syrup at breakfast, and several extra meatballs with my spaghetti at lunch, I decided I needed the exercise and walked the two miles into town and out the other side of it, on the road that led to the golf course and country club. The Sheriff had said that Dr. McComb lived on Valley Road, and that is where I headed.

  I had called him before lunch to make an appointment to see him, telling him I wanted some information on butterflies, and he had sounded really nice. The minute I mentioned my mother and the Hotel Paradise, he had sounded truly delighted to see me, for he remembered me as a baby. I hoped that I wasn’t going to be compared, at my present age, with how I was as a baby. Babies never seem to live up to their reputations.

  On the other side of La Porte, I took Red Bird Road for about a half-mile until I came to a fork, where Valley Road began on the left. I passed only one dwelling, not a house, but one of those mobile homes made permanent by building a couple of steps and putting up an awning and plastic goose families. There were no real houses along Valley Road, not until the end of it, where Dr. McComb lived. His name was painted in white on a mailbox that sat atop a wooden pole.

  The house resembled ones I’d seen in travel books about England. It had no porch at all, so that the land came right up to the door, which was surrounded by tall grass and lavender-blue gladioli, and the house looked as if it had sprouted right up from the ground. It looked a little mysterious, the sort of place Nancy Drew might stumble on when she was nosing around at dusk with her flashlight.

  I walked up a path overgrown with grass and my favorite weeds—Queen Anne’s lace and puffballs—and knocked on the door. I waited for some time, but no one answered. Dr. McComb had told me to come any time today, so I was sure someone was at home, unless he’d got to be like the old people in Weeks’s Nursing Home who couldn’t remember what they’d said five minutes ago. Eighty was pretty old; even the Sheriff agreed with that.

  I knocked again, harder, and found the door opening. Should I walk in? Yes, I should, for he had probably left it open for me. He must be around, somewhere, out of hearing range.

  Inside it was dark, the way the Orion movie house is dark; out of the shadows I had to blink up the shapes of chunky chairs and shawl-covered tables. It was chilly, too, much chillier than it was outside, where the sun was like a spotlight. It was almost as if I had walked from one season into another, spring into autumn. I preferred autumn; I always had. Summer had so much effort about it—all of that shouting on the beach, or smashing at tennis balls; or the big lake beyond La Porte churning in the wakes of speeding boats; or the flowers by the hotel porte cochere standing tall and bright, and birds swerving and screeching, and bees as loud as buzzsaws. Everything exaggerated, soundwise, colorwise. Everything exhausting, right down to sunsets streaming colors like flags. In the house here it was quiet and cool, and I was grateful.

  Still, I wondered about such a reduced temperature for a man as old as Dr. McComb. Miss Flyte and Miss Flagler always seem to need to have their living quarters several degrees warmer than was common, and like to say their blood’s thinning out. They wrap themselves in sweaters and shawls, and Miss Flagler on some days even opens the oven door “to take the chill off.” Secretly I envy them their warm and muffled life, for it is saturated with stove smells, of molasses and dough and that wonderful bitter dipping chocolate that often perks on one of the burners.

  Often I just sit, cocoa in hand, my eyelids drooping, and with the cat on the low shelf above me gently chewing my hair. Sometimes I even doze off, my chin dropping onto my chest. Once my hand slid the cocoa cup from my lap and spilled the cocoa all over Miss Flagler’s linoleum. The two of them just pooh-poohed my embarrassment and my apologies, saying it wasn’t any trouble, heavens to Betsy, it was only old linoleum. It’s strange, I think, for me to enjoy these teatimes. For it’s “no place for a twelve-year-old” (the voice of my mother) who “should be ‘out’ ” (the voice of Mrs. Davidow, sending me to any place I didn’t want to go) “making friends my own age” (the voice of Ree-Jane).

  It’s as if I were doing something shameful in enjoying the company of these old people. I wonder about all of the ones in Weeks’s Nursing Home, where I sometimes go to take a cake or Parker House rolls that my mother has made for them (my mother being quite charitable). I know that some of them are miserable, for they weep; some are angry, for they shout; but there are others who seem content to sit and stare out of windows. These have the settled look of fallen and heaped leaves and appear to me, in their thin robes and slippers, to be almost comfortable, and I imagined myself leaping into their laps as I might have leapt, when I was younger, into a great pile of leaves. These were only fancies, and probably dumb ones, for everyone told me how pitiable these old people were and how dreadful it would be to grow old and have to go live in Weeks’s Nursing Home. I could certainly understand why Mrs. Davidow wouldn’t want to, because I never see any bottles of Southern Comfort or Gordon’s gin around. I said to Mrs. Davidow one day when she was driving us to the nursing home to deliver my mother’s cake
s and rolls that I didn’t see why there shouldn’t be a cocktail hour at Weeks’s Nursing Home. It would make a lot of them a lot happier, and what difference did it make if you were a raving alcoholic at age ninety? And we drove on, in almost jolly fashion, to talk about how brilliant it would be for some of the patients there; how Helene Baum’s mother-in-law must be missing her old fashioneds before dinner (for she certainly wasn’t missing Helene, said Mrs. Davidow, and we laughed fit to kill), and how much more elegant Ruth Baum would look with a tumbler of bourbon in her hand.

  Around Dr. McComb’s dark living room I drifted, dry and leaflike myself, touching things just to touch them: the lace antimacassars, the silver-framed photos collected on a side table, the dark wood of the doorframe and the piano, the fringed silk shawls, the heavy drapes, the wallpaper itself, which was cool and damp, patterned with wide bands of leaves. Yes, it was an autumn room, no doubt of it, and I felt as I did in Miss Flagler’s kitchen, or walking through the candle forest of Miss Flyte’s shop, I felt we were all those drifting leaves, slowly falling, settling. I plunked a few keys with two fingers; I played the first bar of “Clair de Lune,” which was all I’d learned in my piano lessons with the local teacher. I’d take lessons for a few months, then stop; then I’d start up again a year later. I never learned anything more complicated than a few bars of “Clair de Lune.” After my piano playing (which I hoped might bring Dr. McComb—where was he?) I moved over to have a good look at a tray of milk and doughnuts set beside the easy chair. I sat down—sank down, really, in cushions that felt stuffed with clouds. I looked at the plate and decided it had been left either for Santa Claus or for me. I picked up a doughnut, studied it, decided it was store-bought (not that that was a sin), and used it as a sort of binocular, the hole serving as lens, for looking through at the portrait on the far wall. It was a grim-faced woman who looked like she’d really give them hell if she ever landed up in Weeks’s Nursing Home. And she didn’t look like she needed a drink, either.

  I munched the doughnut around the edge and the white powdered sugar sifted down onto my shirt front. Then I had a drink of milk and polished off the doughnut. The other one was cinnamon, and I decided to save it in case I might be here for a few days waiting for Dr. McComb.

  I dusted the powdered sugar from my shirt and wondered if maybe this offering of food might be a trap—not for me, but for Dr. McComb’s archenemy—and that it was poisoned. This was really arsenic powder I was flicking from my chest. I decided that if the sugar doughnut was poisoned, I might as well eat the cinnamon while I still had my wits about me, and started in on it, with sips of milk in between chews. I thought perhaps this was Dr. McComb’s way of letting me know he’d be late and to make myself comfortable. It was very unusual for an older person to go to this kind of trouble for a child. Dr. McComb must fit into the category of Miss Flyte and Miss Flagler, then. Sitting in that cloudlike chair and with two doughnuts and a tall glass of milk inside me, I began to feel sleepy. It wasn’t until a hand was on my shoulder that I realized I must have fallen asleep.

  The hand that shook me awake, and pretty roughly too, was at the end of a long black sleeve that did not belong to Dr. McComb, for it was a woman’s face that I looked up at. The face was sharp with nose and cheekbones, and the black hair strained back from it into a coil, as if it, the hair, were responsible for the backward tilt of the head. This face looked down at me disapprovingly, to say the least. Its expression was not exactly angry, but very fierce. I thought maybe they were her doughnuts and milk I’d just eaten.

  “Oh. Hello,” I said, rubbing my face awake.

  But she did not answer; she kept her lips sealed together and her hands clasped in front of her waist. She was wearing a black dress that looked as if it would really appeal to Aurora Paradise. It reached nearly to the tops of her black shoes and had a high neck. A smothering sort of dress.

  She took the chair opposite me as if she were settling herself down for talk, unpleasant as that might be.

  Since she still said nothing, I began. “I’ve come to see Dr. McComb. He knows I’m coming.” I was a little defensive.

  She didn’t answer, she just turned to look at the fire as if I hadn’t spoken, as if I weren’t there at all. Then I thought, Well, maybe she’s totally deaf, but I decided that wasn’t the case when the clock struck and she turned towards it, listened to it take forever to chime the hour of three, and then turned her gaze back to the fire. There was nothing I could do except to join her in watching it.

  Who could she be? No one, not the Sheriff nor anyone had mentioned Dr. McComb had a wife or a sister. She could be a housekeeper. But would a housekeeper just sit down in the living room like this in the presence of a stranger? Yet, she fit the role of housekeeper; she looked like Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca. Acted like her, too, as if I were the new mousy person come to stay and she was jealous as all get out. I ran this script through my mind but didn’t get anywhere with it, because I was me, and I was twelve, and no one was going to be jealous of a twelve-year-old, much less me. So we sat and stared at the fire. At one point she picked up the poker and gave a half-burned log a few quick jabs and then sat holding the poker beside her like a cane. I would have preferred she put it down, but she didn’t.

  And then, as if her whole mission in life was just to come in and wake up any strangers that might be hanging around the living room—she left. She just rose, smoothed her skirt, and walked out without so much as a glance in my direction.

  I sat still in my easy chair, frowning. I couldn’t imagine what I was to do. Go away, probably. I was just sighing myself out of the chair preparatory to doing this when an old man appeared in the doorway. Dr. McComb, it must be. At least I hoped it wasn’t any more of his relatives.

  “There you are! I was wondering.”

  He was wondering? But I didn’t argue because I was really glad to see him. “Hello. I’ve been sitting here. I didn’t know where you were.”

  “Henhouse,” he said, looking around and patting his pockets as if he were searching for new-laid eggs.

  He wasn’t as old-looking as I expected. If Dr. McComb was eighty or more, he was in awfully good shape. He was about medium height and build and had white hair and a moustache and a complexion that was fine and petallike, of the sort I was used to seeing in Weeks’s Nursing Home.

  I was suddenly embarrassed by my appearance. I was conscious of my skirt being too long, long like an old lady’s, and my brown “corrective” shoes being too big and chunky. And since Dr. McComb was a doctor, I suspected he could see into me, see all of my organs floating around in whatever murky liquid they lived in, and see through my eyes to my brain and figure out my little butterfly scheme.

  Dr. McComb smiled, though, and greeted me as if he had known me a long time. I quickly told him about the white butterfly I’d seen. And I told him I’d read his article (which was very good, I added), and that I often went down the road to the lake, for butterflies were my main hobby, and when I had seen this particular butterfly I wondered if it could possibly be the one called White Lace. After I told him all of this I was out of breath. I talk hard and fast when I’m lying.

  He asked me a couple of questions, thought over my answers, and then said, almost sadly, no, he didn’t think so, that the one I’d seen sounded like—and he said a long Latin name that I couldn’t understand.

  “Oh,” I said, pretending I knew exactly what that was, and trying to sound disappointed.

  “If you’re a collector too, you might want to come with me now.” He looked back through the open door. “There’s a painted lady out there I’ve been tracking. I’m sure you’d like a glimpse of it. I’ve got a net you can use, too.”

  Outside, his smile implied such confidence in my being as interested as he was, that I felt ashamed of myself, and accepted the butterfly net with more enthusiasm than I felt. I followed him through the square of bright light framed by the side door and out into the backyard. But it couldn’t really be called a “yar
d.” For one thing, there were no visible boundaries—the weedy land stretched away as far as the woods. Except for the area right outside of the door, through which a rude path had been worn, there was no sign of any pruning, mowing, or cutting ever having been done. Even the grass beside the door was shin-high; when we got twenty feet farther, it was up to my knees, then nearly to my waist. I had the sensation of walking from dry land into deeper and deeper water.

  In among the other weeds were masses of verbena, black-eyed Susans, coneflowers, Queen Anne’s lace, thistle, in addition to all of the small and large fruit trees, oaks, and drooping willows.

  “We don’t cut the grass or trim the hedges or deadhead flowers here; we wouldn’t want to disturb the butterflies’ habitat, or the birds’ either. So we leave the vegetation alone. Over there’s the bright patch, see? I’ve got my nectar plants in there; I’ve got my Indian blanket, my verbena, and my butterfly bush. They like weeds, too—milkweed, joe-pye weed—”

  “Like Queen Anne’s lace,” I said, knowledgeably. Had Ree-Jane done me a service? Even if she had, she’d never meant to.

  Dr. McComb nodded, wiped his neck with his handkerchief. “Mostly I’ve got nectar plants.”

  “How do they drink?” Then I realized too late that was something I should know, given they were my “hobby.”

  “They taste through their feet.”

  Well, I couldn’t help it. I just whooped. I thought maybe he was kidding me, but he said no, no, that was the absolute truth. Through their feet. I looked down at mine. What if it was my feet that got to taste my mother’s ham rolls and cheese sauce? Or the Angel Pie? My feet instead of my mouth? For once, I was pretty sure God knew what he was doing.