• • •
It was vegetation all right. Now I’d progressed inward to where the buffalo and blue grass, the vines and weeds were just about to my chin, and one patch—more butterfly bushes?—into which I’d stepped too quickly, was almost over my eyes. As I stood thrashing about at the tall stalks that grazed and tickled my face, I heard Dr. McComb call to me.
“You there? Hey?”
I thrashed around a bit more and held the net up above my head, like a flag. I emerged, if not into anything like a “clearing,” at least into growth that wasn’t higher than my waist.
“There you are! Find anything interesting?”
I hadn’t been looking for anything, but I didn’t want to sound unemployed. After mentally racking my brain, calling up a quick succession of colored plates from my library book, I said—tentatively, of course—“I thought maybe I saw a Ghost Brimstone.”
He snorted good-naturedly. “Around these parts? I don’t think so. You see those down in South America, mostly.”
Trust me to pick the wrong country. “I only said I thought.” I was getting peevish.
We had moved forward through this jungle and were now walking slowly along a dirt path. It was only about a foot wide but it looked like civilization to me. I made several sweeps with the butterfly net, awfully grateful to Bunny Caruso that she’d given me some experience. I probably looked pretty well-trained the way I could flick my wrist and whoosh the net around.
A few stops and starts farther along, I said, “When I was at Spirit Lake—”
“Ssssshhhh!” Dr. McComb stopped, squinted into the hazy distance, his rather thick white eyebrows making a little shelf when I looked at him in profile. Since his ssssshhhhing was loud enough to wake the dead, I didn’t see why he bothered. And anyway, butterflies didn’t have ears, did they? They couldn’t actually hear, could they? He started whispering, the barest murmur. “Look along the path there amongst the marigolds. About two o’clock from where you stand. That’s a Little Wood Satyr, bet you anything.”
“Ummmm,” I said. That was pretty noncommittal.
“What do you think? Is it?”
I managed to nod and shake my head almost simultaneously. Fortunately, the butterfly spread its wings and made a drowsy exit, giving him a better look. No, he decided it was not a Little Wood Satyr, thus relieving me of declaring it one thing or another.
“They patrol, you know.”
“Who does? You mean Little Wood . . . ?” I managed to have a coughing spell.
“For females.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, so I mumbled agreement. We moved along in silence then, for a few feet. Above the dogbane patch, hundreds of tiny butterflies, white and yellow and no bigger than my fingernail, floated in such an unbroken cover they might have been white mist and yellow fog.
“Look at them all!” I exclaimed.
It was Dr. McComb’s turn to say “ummmm.” Then, “Dainty Sulfurs, maybe.”
I marveled at the cloud of Dainty Sulfurs.
“It’s the milkweed that grows out here. They love that.”
“I guess there’s none of that stuff around Spirit Lake, is there?” I said, prompting him. “At least, I’ve never seen any at Spirit Lake.” But he said nothing, just stood there looking sleepily at the blanket of butterflies, and I went on: “Did you go to Spirit Lake again to look for the White Lace?”
“Umm. Several times.”
“It’s too bad they let the lake get so run-down, isn’t it? It’s kind of swampy now; well, you’d know that, if you’ve been there lately.” Again, he didn’t answer. I looked at him, the way he stood on the walk, stock-still and hoped he wasn’t going into a coma. “I saw pictures of Spirit Lake like it was a long time ago. Forty years, maybe. When it wasn’t so overgrown. There was a boathouse. Well, there still is, but it’s mostly a ruin.” He didn’t comment. “Yes, it’s mostly in ruins now. Oh, I guess you could still take one of the boats out. The boats are still there. But I guess they’d spring a leak.” He blinked and blinked his eyes slowly as I talked, leaning a little into the dogbane, as if he might pull them towards him, the butterflies, like a coverlet, and just lie down there and go to sleep. “There’s a house the other side—”
“Devereau,” he said suddenly, and to my surprise, as he slowly brought his net around, skimming air. There was a beautiful specimen, rose and lavender and the deepest blue, poised on a hollyhock, that I hadn’t even seen. He’d been tracking it with his eyes. But it flew off just as he was about to bring the net down on it. He sighed, heavily.
“Gee, that’s too bad. That’s really too bad.” Now, of course, I’d have to pump the Devereau talk up again, like a deflated balloon. This was work. Dr. McComb stood staring into the blue-gray distance, braced for a sighting, a discovery. I really wasn’t sure why I had to be so cagey. Why, if I wanted information, didn’t I just flat-out ask for it? Maybe I thought that if there was information I shouldn’t have—that is, some kind of knowledge that my mother or others thought I shouldn’t have, then I was obliged to weasel it out of people. “It’s a nice house, the Devereau house, only it’s gone to seed. I wonder why no one lives there now. It looks like no one’s lived there for, oh, maybe forty years.” I glanced at him to see if that number got a reaction. But he hadn’t flinched, or moved from his combative, hunter’s stance, net held to his side like a shotgun, as if he meant to shoot them instead of net them.
I was trying to think of another approach when he surprised me by saying, “Probably because of the Tragedy.”
My eyes opened wide. I was thrilled, stupefied nearly, by such a direct reference to the death of Mary-Evelyn and even more by its being so named: the Tragedy.
“The Tragedy?”
“Little girl drowned.”
“She drowned? How?”
He turned now to look at me. His round glasses were suddenly stabbed by rays of sunlight and transformed to silver discs. “She was your age.”
Involuntarily, I stepped backwards, feeling my legs crowding into briars and raspberry patch. The air that had seemed so thin, clear and blue, thickened. All of the tiny sounds—cicadas, crickets, gently sowing grasses—came together, thrummed.
I started to say, “My—” but my throat was thick too, my vocal cords stiff and strained. The field, the henhouse, the weeds and flowers, and Dr. McComb himself all seemed to have shifted in some weirdly sinister fashion. He was still looking at me, the discs of his glasses like bright ice. I thought the only person I had ever seen look friendly even behind black-mirrored glasses was the Sheriff. I swallowed, hard. I wished he was here.
But just as quickly, the day tilted back, righted itself as Dr. McComb shoved his glasses atop his head and snapped up his binoculars. “Ah!”
The backs of my legs, my calves, felt laced with bramble and thorny pricks as I moved out of the patch to hear Dr. McComb swear softly that, no, it was only a common cabbage white. I was glad; pursuit of the rare variety would have meant working up the death of Mary-Evelyn all over again.
“You said she was drowned?” I had to remind him.
He nodded.
I chewed the inside of my mouth. “Gee, and she was only twelve?”
Dr. McComb nodded, but said nothing else, until after a few moments he said, “Well, time for a cup of java. Want some?”
Disappointed as I was that I couldn’t keep the subject going, still I was pleased that he thought I was old and sophisticated enough for coffee. “Sure,” I said, with a “why not?” shrug.
We retraced our steps to the house, he whacking absently at tough, brown stubble; me, thinking over how to reintroduce the subject of Mary-Evelyn. I followed along towards the kitchen door, a door whose sill was lost in another tangle of vines and Queen Anne’s lace, as if this end of the house was sinking into the soft earth.
Retreating from the dense sunlight of the thickets and fields into this cool, shadowy room—the kitchen—I had to squint things into existence once again. The
aluminum-handled refrigerator door, the white enamel stove on its curved legs were identifiable in the gloom. But other objects—like the kitchen table, the ladder-back chairs—I had to blink up, finally, to make them out. I came up with big chests and a small one, and an old icebox, and against the far wall what I think was called a Welsh dresser, on which I could see rows of plates and cups, and as my eyes adjusted to the kitchen’s grayness, I saw they were the Blue Willow pattern.
I was sitting on a stool by the white kitchen table as Dr. McComb puttered around, getting out the Pyrex coffee maker, measuring water and Maxwell House. And in this kind of dim, dull light, where objects were not clear-cut, but the lines of things were muffled, like sounds, I had the jolting thought that I would never find a proper place, a place that was my place, and that I could look and look and I could settle down here and there, but it would all be only a dream. This shocked me, absolutely, because the Hotel Paradise had always been “my” place—my family’s, and my family was, of course, mine. I belonged to it. But now I didn’t feel I belonged to it or to any place, even though I had always walked the dusty old roads of Spirit Lake and the two-mile highway into La Porte, and I wished right now my shoes were held down by mud, thick hands of mud fastening me down. Earth holding me to earth.
But look! Look how easily the hands unclasped, how easily the Davidows had come and laid claim to it all—my hotel, my walks and roads, my past. My present.
Was that possible? I heard the refrigerator door open and shut. No, it wasn’t. None of that belonged to the Davidows any more than to me. That moment outside when Dr. McComb had turned his bright, icy spectacles on me, I thought now that inward eyes, not mine, were picking up something on another wave length and that I had resisted this, shoved it back because it was too frightening, had swept some knowledge away like cobweb paste in front of my eyes. For some reason, all of this brought to mind the old store in Spirit Lake. Not Britten’s, not the bustling one that everyone bought at, but the small dark one on the other side of the village, more of a ramshackle house really, owned by an old lady who must have decided she could earn a living by selling basic supplies—nothing fancy like Britten’s, with its separate meat counter (and even a butcher, one of the Brittens), or its big see-through crates of cookies, or its glass-topped counters of penny candy. No, this old store was dark and spare, its shelves nearly empty, just some cans of soup and beans. The brightest thing in it was the rows of Wonder bread. The loaves shone in their white wrappers. Shadows and gloom and glimmering Wonder bread.
And then I thought of Ree-Jane’s bright lipstick, her crayon-colored clothes (faded colors by the time I got them), and that party dress my mother had made for her, yards of tulle with rainbows of sequins tossed all over it. And I wonder now, does life really need all of that cheap, bright adornment? Or is it better to have the plain, spare room with its ghostly Wonder bread?
I heard thunder gathering in the distance, and in a moment drops of rain slapped the roof. At the window, light drew down like a blind and nearly vanished altogether, leaving the kitchen in greater gloom, and yet increasing my feeling of well-being. I did not quite understand why, rain and shadows generally being associated with sadness and misery. So to think better, I looked down at the floor. I’d have closed my eyes, only Dr. McComb would have asked me, “Why’ve you got your eyes closed?”
I let him move about the kitchen, whistling under his breath, as I thought of the henhouse, the chickens ganged up inside, pecking, ruffling feathers, or sitting fatly on straw, maybe laying an egg or two (however they did this), despite the rain now belting the rooftops and the thunder really bellowing. Weather didn’t give them cause for comment. Rain, sunlight, ice, spring. I guessed the chickens noted it and acted accordingly. I bet they didn’t even bother to leave the dirt yard and go in. Without even thinking how stupid the question was, I asked Dr. McComb.
“Some do, some don’t,” he answered, setting down empty mugs and a plate of brownies. Then he moved off again to the stove.
This struck me as both a sensible answer and a sensible mode of behavior. You got in out of the rain or you didn’t, depending on how you felt about rain. Dr. McComb had apparently taken my question as matter-of-fact and answered in kind.
I turned to the window, squinting rather than looking straight, for in that way I could project better what was in my mind, which was filling up with weather. The old store, the kitchen gloom, Spirit Lake: they all shared something. There was a secret hidden in them, some secret of lostness. I saw the Girl. I thought of her that way: the Girl. Through my half-shut eyes, I saw Spirit Lake, the rain pocking its gray surface, the wind ruffling its edges, rocking the carpet of water-lilies.
The Girl.
I saw her standing there on the opposite shore, just standing, arms straight down at her sides, her hair that strange color of the moon. Her dress was very light, glimmering like the enamel stove here in the corner, or the Wonder bread in the bare store. She had been sitting on that railroad platform, too, empty-handed, except for the small purse clutched in her fist. And then again on the sidewalk in La Porte, in her flower-sprigged cotton dress: nothing but what she held in one hand. It was as if she had no possessions at all; and far from seeming sad to me, it struck me that nothing held her down to any time or place. She seemed weightless.
“Are you in a trance or having a fit or what?”
I jumped at Dr. McComb’s voice. “Huh?”
“Your eyes are squinted shut and your lips are moving. Here, have a brownie.”
He shoved the brownies toward me. They were very rich-looking, dark dollops of icing in their centers. “I was just thinking,” I said coolly, looking for the brownie with the most icing. But Dr. McComb grabbed it first.
“Huh!” The grunt sounded as if he didn’t believe me. He poured coffee into the thick white mugs. I would have liked the Blue Willow cups better, but probably they saved that china for special occasions. Yet, I doubted that there were many “special occasions” celebrated in the McComb house. That brought back to mind the strange woman in the living room. Where had she gone? Who was she? I did not ask, because I didn’t want to leave the Devereau business, but even more because I figured if Dr. McComb wanted her noticed or mentioned, he’d do the mentioning himself. Maybe she was an embarrassment to him. Maybe he didn’t even know she was around. That sounds crazy, but I’ve come more and more to suspect people just wander around and into your life (or your house) without prior notice, that they just pop up on the walk or in your doorway. A face at the window—whose? Life is just so disorganized and crazy it hardly bears saying.
I didn’t really want to mention the Girl, but I remembered his reply to the chicken question and decided he could probably be trusted not to ask me the usual one million questions that grown-ups generally reserve—“What makes you ask that?” “Why do you want to know?” “Who told you that? Did anyone tell you that?”—for any kid asking anything the least bit unexpected.
“Did you ever see anyone over at the Devereau house on Spirit Lake?”
He shook his head. He was eating around the edges of his brownie, saving the icing for last.
“Well, I did.”
“You did?” His old forehead pleated neatly in surprise. “But how’d they get around to that house? Must have had to cut through all of that undergrowth.”
I sipped my coffee and added another two spoonsful of sugar. “Well, someone did.”
“What was he doing?”
“She. Nothing. Just standing there.”
“Maybe it’s one of the real estate agents.” He frowned.
“I don’t think so.”
But he wouldn’t let the idea go. “Maybe it’s that bum Henderson. Only, you said ‘she.’ ”
The nice thing about Dr. McComb was that he didn’t tell me I hadn’t seen anyone. Nearly any other adult (except for the Sheriff and Maud) would have told me that I probably saw something else and just thought it was a person. A cow, maybe?
Dr.
McComb was still talking about the real estate agent. “That bum Henderson got back there a couple years ago in his goddamned Cherokee Chief and hacked out a kind of path because he was looking to sell it. What a shyster, what a slime bucket! Ought to lock up people like that. You know him?”
I shook my head and sort of flowered in the light of his assumption that I was capable enough to have had dealings with La Porte slime buckets. And to listen to swear words without flinching.
He polished off the icing-middle of his brownie, licked his fingers, slurped some coffee. Then he went searching around the kitchen and came back with a dish and a half-smoked, shredded cigar. He started to light up, stopped, said, “Mind if I smoke?”
As if I were used to people asking me if I minded—no one ever had in my living memory—I casually waved my hand in a “go right ahead” gesture. I was interested in the last brownie on the plate, but didn’t want to be a pig. He pushed the plate toward me. I took it and munched.
Thoughtfully, watching the smoke eddy around him, he said, “Wonder who it was. This woman, you said?”
“Yes.”
“What did she look like?”
For some reason, I didn’t want to say. I frowned. Why didn’t I want to tell him? “She was too far off to see—I mean, enough to tell her features.”
He smoked. I ate the rest of my brownie. The silence was pleasant, like the little silences in Miss Flagler’s kitchen. The clock ticked. There was no cat, though. Then I said, “Maybe she’s a Devereau.”
Dr. McComb said, “Haven’t been any around here since that inquest. Sisters all left. And they must be dead by now.”
“Rose wouldn’t be. She was young then.”
He frowned as if he didn’t much credit that idea. “Rose Devereau. Yes, I do vaguely remember her. Rose Souder, her name used to be.” His frown deepened. “So how do you know about her?”
“My great-aunt Paradise was telling me about her.”
Dr. McComb gave a sort of sighing laugh. “Aurora Paradise.”
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