Dios Mio, but she hated coming into Jade’s quarters. It smelled of moldy poodle fur and old-lady sweat, and it made Carmen sick to see all those horrible dead dogs. All of them were some shade of white, ranging from ancient yellow to moth-eaten gray. One, its fur slowly tearing away in hideous clumps, reclined on top of the old Zenith TV, its glass eyes catching and reflecting the light cast by the lamp on the table by Jade’s padded rocking chair. Carmen didn’t remember its name any more than she remembered the names of two dozen other dead dogs that filled the apartment, but Jade knew all of them. Carmen suspected she identified them by the “lifelike” poses the taxidermist had tortured them into for all eternity. It was a sin against God.
The woman went through more poodles than ever should have been allowed into the world to begin with. They all died in strange accidents, and Carmen held the secret belief that crazy old Jade did them in when the mood struck, then forgot all about it. The last death, a little less than six months ago, nearly proved it. The dog had peed all over Jade’s bedspread only hours before Carmen had opened the dryer and found its stiff, dead body, along with half a roll of fabric softener sheets.
Horrified, she’d put the carcass in a garbage bag outside the back door, intending to have Hector dispose of it, but before long she saw Jade handing it over to the kid from Seymour Taxidermy. A month later, the creature reappeared, its leg in an eternal lift. When Jade was mad at her, Carmen would find it poised over the pair of slippers she kept by the back kitchen door. Normally, though, the old woman liked to have it stand over a bowl of dusty silk philodendrons she had in her bathroom.
Tired of listening to Jade’s incessant baby talk, Carmen cleared her throat. “We have to talk about Ricky and his family,” she said sternly.
“It’s my house.” She sniffed. “Richard wasn’t nice to his aunt Jade, so he can’t visit. You can tell him that for me.”
“Listen, Mrs. Ewebean, this isn’t your house. It belongs to Ricky. He’s just been kind enough to let you live here, so if you want to stay, you better treat him nice. Otherwise he’ll send you away.” Saying those last words felt so good that Carmen had to bite her tongue to keep from listing off all the reasons Ricky might kick her out. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Ooh, Mister Poo is kissing his mommy, yes he is!” She kissed the dog back, square on the muzzle, then put her nose against the other one’s face. “Stinkums, Stinkums, Stinkums, that’s your name, uh-huh, yes it is. And do you know why, Stinkum-winkum, do you know why? Because you used to poot so bad when you was just a wittle bitty boy. Cute wittle puppy poots, that was you.”
Carmen crossed her arms, thoroughly sick of the senile old crone. Why don’t you die? Put me out of your misery! “Jade Ewebean!”
That got the puta’s attention. Her nostrils flared and her watery green eyes flashed as she glared at Carmen, her hands stiff in the poodles’ fur. “How dare you talk to me in that tone of voice!”
Carmen stepped forward until she was looming over Jade, her stare so fierce that the old bitch didn’t say a word. “Now, you listen good, because I’m only gonna tell you this once more. This house is Ricky’s. If you’re not nice to him, he’ll send you away, and I’ll say good riddance.”
“Well, I nev—”
“Be quiet.” Madre de Dios, help me. before I strangle her with my bare hands! “Listen. He’s gonna have his two kids with him. His teenage daughter is going to be sad about leaving her friends, and his little boy is gonna feel lost in this big old house. So you’re gonna be just as nice to them as you are to Ricky.” She paused, savoring the bomb she was about to drop. “And you’re gonna be nice to his cat, too.”
Jade’s nose curled as if she were smelling something bad. “Cat?” She stood, sending squealing poodles tumbling to the floor. “Cat?” Her voice rose an octave.
Carmen smiled like the Madonna herself. “A nice cat,” she said serenely. “Maybe it will catch some of the mice we got running around in the walls.”
“He can’t bring a cat in here. Who does he think he is?” Jade sputtered with anger, little flecks of foam at the sides of her mouth.
“He’s your landlord, that’s who he is, and if those nasty little dogs of yours chase that cat even once, you’ll be very, very sorry.” Placing her hands on her hips, she added, “I always protected Ricky from you, and now I’m gonna protect his whole family from you. And that includes his cat.”
“He can’t—”
“Yes he can. He can do whatever he wants, and you better give him some respect. You remember how you treated him? Always teasing him, always making fun of him? Punishing him for being afraid? You remember that, Tia Puta?” Carmen felt like she might be foaming a little herself. She’d held this back for years, and now it poured out like water. “You remember how mean you were to him? Well, you better hope he’s nicer to you than you were to him.”
“Get out,” Jade said without much fire. “Get out.”
Carmen turned on her heel and walked through the archway into the living room, then pulled the triple-fold birch doors closed behind her.
She moved quickly through the dining room, pausing to flick a speck of dust from a blue vase in the center of the table. Tomorrow, before Ricky’s arrival, she’d fill it with giant marigolds from the garden, his favorite flower ever since she’d explained to him that in Mexico, people believed that the flower could keep them safe on El Día de los Muertos, when spirits roamed the world. “Ricky.” She whispered the name with fondness and dread, and wondered how he’d changed over the years.
In the kitchen, Carmen poured herself a cup of coffee and sat heavily at the kitchen table, her thoughts turning back to Jade Ewebean. It had been a month since she’d told Jade about Ricky coming home, but the old woman acted like she didn’t remember. Carmen suspected that the forgetfulness was an act, an excuse to fly into a rage every time her nephew was mentioned. Jade feigned senility and helplessness whenever the mood struck, but in truth, the woman forgot nothing. That wasn’t to say Jade wasn’t crazy as a loon, because she was, and had been for years. Living in this house with nothing but poodles and ghosts to talk to had taken its toll.
It all served to make the woman impossible, and Carmen hoped Ricky would remove her immediately. Her and her dogs, living and dead. She hoped Jade wouldn’t upset Ricky too much.
He’d always been such a timid boy, and she hoped he had found his courage in the years away from the house. On the phone he sounded like a fine, strong man, though she thought she detected a telltale trace of hesitation when he spoke of the house.
To be honest, Carmen was surprised he was coming back at all.
Something skittered in the wall, a chipmunk or perhaps a rat. The sounds always chilled her and made her think of the way Robin would race through the secret passages on his hands.
The door separating Jade’s apartment from the laundry room and kitchen was ajar, and Carmen could hear her talking to herself. She did that frequently. Carmen crossed herself and whispered a spell her uncle had taught her—one that, like marigolds, protected you from the spirit world.
It wasn’t regular old-lady talk, not senile ramblings, but insane babbling that was always the same. She talked to Ricky’s dead twin, saying obscene things, dirty things, sometimes moaning and giggling like a schoolgirl. Sounding as if she were having sex. Hearing that over and over was what made Carmen nervous. Robin was dead, but she thought that perhaps his spirit continued to walk the halls and roam the passages within the house. “Madre de Dios.” She crossed herself again.
11
July 15
The drive across the desert from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Santo Verde, California, had taken five stressful hours. Between Shelly’s sullen silence, the cat’s yowling, Cody’s manic good cheer, and Rick’s own doubts about the intelligence of moving back, it had, in fact, been hell on wheels. But now, as he pulled past the open iron gates and up the long, long driveway into the veritable jungle surrounding the Piper family elep
hant, Rick had to smile as Cody oohed and ahhed as if he’d never seen a tree before. Of course, he hadn’t seen that many.
Rick noticed that the front grounds were more overgrown than ever. After parking the car next to the stone path that led to the house, he thought that he might enjoy doing some of the work himself.
“Look, Daddy!” Cody cried in his ear. “Lemon trees! Can we make lemonade?”
“Sure, we can do that.” Farther up the driveway, past the garage and outbuildings, Rick saw a slice of the modest citrus grove behind the house. The trees were lushly green, some laden with lemons, most with still-greenish oranges. Rick knew the Zapata cottage was nestled within the trees, but he had little memory of the back otherwise. He’d rarely entered the grove, because the crush of trees, even in broad daylight, had frightened him.
“Can I pick some lemons?”
Rick turned to look at his son. “Later, okay?”
Cody nodded, his attention focused on unbuckling his seat belt. “Okay!” In a flash, the boy, eyes bright with excitement, was out of the car.
“What a dump,” Shelly observed as she opened her door. “This place is a wreck.”
“We’re going to fix it up,” he told her as he stood and stretched. The cat yowled from his carrier on the backseat. “All right, already.” Ignoring the cat’s accusing glare, Rick pulled the cage out and set it on the ground at his feet.
“This is cool!” Cody cried, and took off at a tear up the long driveway. A moment later, he was back. “I like it, Daddy! I’m gonna look at the front yard now.”
“Don’t go near the pond,” Rick called after him. “It’s dangerous.”
“I won’t.” The boy disappeared down a shady pathway.
“It sucks,” Shelly countered. “It’s filthy and I want to go home. Now.” She put on her little-girl face. “Please, Dad? I could go live with Dakota and Lil. I want to go home.”
“We are home,” Rick said firmly. “You’ll love it. It just needs a little paint.”
“Like a million gallons,” she said, already reverting to her I’m-a-teenager-and-I-hate-you voice.
“Hush,” Rick said softly. Shelly was wrong—it wouldn’t take a million gallons; twenty or thirty would do the trick. The stucco, once a pale peach, had faded to the color of unwashed flesh, and the formerly white trim was dirty gray and peeling. He wondered if the interior was as bad. Over the years George McCall had repeatedly told him the place needed fixing up, but Rick hadn’t wanted to hear it because there wasn’t enough money in the estate account for renovation of the house or yard. Frankly, he’d gone out of his way to ignore this place, hiding his head in the Las Vegas sand every time the subject of the house came up.
Now he’d have to do something, and he thought it might be fun to do some of the work himself. My poor wallet. Fixing up the place should raise the property value enough to make it salable if he decided he just couldn’t stand living here.
The neighbors would be pleased. They probably hated the Pipers at this point. Fortunately, the house couldn’t be seen from the street, but the overgrown foliage that hid it probably horrified the owners of the huge Victorians, Tudors, and haciendas that lined Via Matanza. Those houses had perfect paint and perfect yards, not a blade of grass out of place, while he had an award-winning collection of shaggy bushes and award-winning weeds.
He picked up the carrier and started toward the house, his heart thumping unreasonably hard. “Come on, Shel,” he said, and reluctantly the girl dragged her feet behind him.
Wildflowers exploded in the beds lining the walkway, and the grass was very long, making Rick recall that while the neighbors had their lawns mown once a week, Piper grass demanded cutting two or three times a week. Grandfather always said it was because the greenjacks lived here.
Rick forced the thought away, his gaze falling on the koi pond a hundred feet in front of the house. It was full of dark green water, and lilies floated on its scummy surface. A memory, so vague that it consisted only of the smell of cold, swampy water and an overwhelming feeling of dread, made him stop walking. What? What happened there? He shivered, despite the heat, relieved that memory wouldn’t come.
“Dad?” Shelly asked sullenly. “You got a problem?”
“No,” he said as he realized he was standing in the shade of the old oak. The gnarled wood rose out of the ground, twisting and knotted, a trunk so thick, it would take three people to ring it with their arms. Rick had hoped that the tree wouldn’t seem so huge now that he was grown, but it was even bigger than he remembered. Staring at the trunk, he recalled his old fear of the tree, recollecting the cold terror he felt whenever its upper limbs scratched against his bedroom window on the second floor. The window was dark behind the leafy branches, and he found that he felt no fear now. Pleased, he wondered if he’d feel the same way after sunset. Yes, he told himself forcefully, I will.
“Let’s go inside,” he said as Cody ran up. He took the key from his pocket.
“Where’s that housekeeper you said we get?” Shelly asked. “Where’s your aunt?”
“Carmen took Aunt Jade shopping. They won’t be back for hours.” I hope.
The black iron handrail flanking the steps leading up the wide front porch jiggled when Rick grabbed it. The art of reattaching metal to stucco, or whatever was beneath it, was a mystery to him, but he felt sure he could figure out how to do it. In all honesty, it sounded like fun. Maybe this is what the nesting instinct feels like, he realized with amusement.
The top step was loose, too, he noted as he stepped onto the wide wooden veranda. A moment later he noticed a frayed wire on the porch light and that the doorbell was broken. The house was definitely going to be a challenge. At least the heavy, dark door, arched and adorned with black iron fixtures that made him think of the Spanish Inquisition, appeared to have nothing wrong with it. He inserted the key and pushed the door open.
The house exhaled a pleasant, nostalgic breath of lemon wax and cinnamon potpourri, though the underlying odor—poodle—was nowhere near as pleasant.
“It’s big!” Cody said, running into the middle of the room and turning in circles. “It’s got stairs!”
Smiling, Rick found that the living room looked eerily as he had remembered, only older, tireder. The dark green wool carpeting had been cleaned within a thread of its life, and many of the same pictures decorated the walls, including his parents’ Robert Woods prints and Jade’s horrid big-eyed children and dog prints—poodles, of course—from the sixties. The portrait of Grandfather Piper that used to have the place of honor above the reclining chair had been removed, and he wondered where it was. It had been the only decent piece of art in the house. In its place was one of the hydrocephalic children with hyperthyroid eyes holding an equally deformed poodle in a beret.
From his carrier, Quint let out a bloodcurdling yowl. “You said it, cat. These pictures have got to go.” In fact, it was all going to go, he decided, and if Jade didn’t want to hang the big-eyed children in her room, he’d toss them in the trash. The little U-Haul trailer he’d towed behind the car contained a half dozen exquisitely framed Edward Hopper prints as well as a few carefully chosen original pieces by relative unknowns who also captured the dark Americana feel Rick had first discovered in Hopper’s work. He liked the darkness at the edges, the bright, sunshiny houses with inhabitants staring uneasily off into the shadows and woods, as if they were waiting for
something
to emerge.
Piper, he told himself with a little chill, you’re twisted But he felt so good that he didn’t mind. Here he was, standing in the place he feared most in the world, and he was thinking about painting and redecorating. It made him feel like he’d broken free of a set of chains he’d worn all his life.
The van would arrive with his furniture next week—not a lot, but nice, and it would fit in here—and he could buy whatever else he needed. Happily he envisioned polished wood floors with Navaho area rugs. With paint and plaster patch, a level a
nd a sander, he’d scour away the bad memories. He’d rip away the bad things, like the forest green carpet that reminded him of grass in shadowed woods and the heavy, dark draperies that matched. He’d get white vertical blinds, put them under light nubby drapes, lined to keep the darkness out at night. And the sun out in summer, too. I’m not afraid! He was very nearly giddy.
The thick swirled plaster on the living room walls was dirty and yellowed, as was every other wall in the house, he assumed. No one had painted since his parents died—and it was obvious that even Carmen’s deadly bucket of TSP couldn’t get rid of the years of tobacco yellow from Uncle Howard’s nasty little Tiparillos.
God, I’d forgotten that. He had a sudden clear image of Uncle Howard tilted back in a white metal chair, feet up on the front porch railing, a fifth of Jack Daniel’s sticking out of his crotch. Little brown turd, don’t I love you, that’s what he sang to his Tiparillo, as he sat out there getting meaner and meaner. When it got too cold, he’d come in and do the same thing in front of the TV, tilted back in the recliner. Howard would croon to himself and watch the fights, grabbing whoever walked by and demanding this, cussing that, taking an occasional punch.
He used to pretend to be asleep when Uncle Howard was drinking.
Surprisingly, he was glad to have this memory. It seemed so . . . so normal. An abusive drunken uncle made more sense than little green men flitting around in the trees.
“Dad?” Shelly asked impatiently. “Dad?”
He looked at her. “Yeah?”
“Jesus, you’re always telling me that I space out. You—”
“Don’t be rude.”
She glared at him, and he had to remind himself how unhappy she must be. He said no more, but it didn’t lessen his desire to lock her in the closet until she was ready to leave for college.
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