by Lara Parker
“It’s fine,” said Liz gently. “Here, lie down. I’ll get you a cold cloth.” Jackie lay back and closed her eyes. The world was spinning. She felt something cool on her forehead before she passed out.
A few moments later, after Liz cleaned her up and combed out her hair, and apologized for giving her whiskey, Jackie found herself sitting up in bed listening to the older girl spill out her heart.
“What should I do?” asked Liz. “I just got out of one ridiculous marriage and Daddy won’t let me marry again so soon. Quentin works for him, and Daddy needs him, but for some reason forbids me to even be seen with him. He won’t tell me why.”
“He’s probably protecting you,” murmured Jackie, thinking of her own mother, who was critical and disapproving of David.
“He’s protecting his fortune. He doesn’t want it squandered, and he wants me to go on the stage. He even disapproves of the talkies. Can you imagine?”
“You’ve been in movies?”
“Yes, and it’s ever so much fun. You could do it. Have you done any plays? They always want girls from the stage who can speak well.”
Jackie looked at Liz’s perfect pert profile. “You don’t want to give that up, do you?”
“I want to be with Quentin. Have you any idea? The hunger here…” And she rubbed the lower part of her stomach. “But we must marry!” There were tears in her hazel eyes. “Oh, I am so in love.” She sat on the bed and took Jackie’s hands. “Have you ever had a great love? No, of course not. You’re much too young. But it will happen to you, that’s certain, because you are so beautiful, and then you will remember what I told you, and you will know how I feel.”
She reached for a small box on her dressing table and extracted a pleated piece of paper that she unfolded as she sat on the edge of the bed. “Listen to this,” she said, and began to read in a quivering voice.
My Dearest Elizabeth,
Nothing is more painful than the hours spent away from you. They are like years. Run away with me. Tonight! After we take the whiskey to the cemetery. We can catch the train to New York and then we will find a liner to Paris. I cannot live without you. I will do everything in my power to make you happy. Marry me and become mine forever.
Liz stopped a moment to catch her breath before she continued in a hushed voice.
I long to press my lips to yours, to feel your sweet body in my arms. No other woman in the world exists for me. I must spend my life at your feet. Even if I could not touch you I would still worship you from afar. I would kill for you. I would die for you.
Your adoring Quentin
Jackie was stunned. “That’s beautiful … I— I can’t imagine…”
“You have to help me, Jackie,” Liz said in a hushed voice. “Tonight, after the whiskey is hidden, we will trade dresses. You can wear the yellow cloche and when we return to the party, from a distance, everyone will think you are me.”
“I could never do that!”
“Yes, you must! Quentin and I will take the Doozie to the train station. Daddy will be off at his Klan meeting. He will never know. Say you will help me. Please! Please?”
Jackie felt her will was not her own. All she heard were the words “Take the Doozie.” David had said the most important thing was that they stay with the car. It was their only way back home. But she was sinking deeper into this world of glamour and recklessness. Where was David? She should find him before he became too worried. They were no closer to finding the painting than when they first arrived. She had been certain that was why they had been sent here. For the first time she wondered if they were stuck in the past and what would happen to them if they never got back.
* * *
The two girls ran out into the yard where a crowd was already gathered. At the far end of the lawn workers had constructed a wooden platform that supported a glass cabinet about six feet high. It was filled with water. A banner tied to the trees read, THE WORLD FAMOUS HOUDINI’S CHINESE WATER TORTURE TRICK. As Liz dragged Jackie through the crowd, she heard several people whispering among themselves.
“Does someone have an ax just in case there is an accident?”
“He’s too large for the trick. Houdini was a small man, and double-jointed.”
“Don’t worry. It’s an illusion. He’s not really in the water.”
A photographer appeared, lugging a black box camera and flash gun, anticipating a couple of fine shots of the performance. When he saw the two pretty girls in the crowd, Liz and Jackie, in their shimmering dresses, he said, “Hey dollies, look over this way!” They turned and posed cheek to cheek, their faces alive with excitement, and the gun flashed. He made them an exaggerated bow.
“Don’t forget to send Daddy a copy,” Liz cried as he disappeared into the crowd.
Up on the stage the magician whirled off his bathrobe to reveal a tan one-piece bathing suit that flaunted every sinew of his muscular anatomy, even the curve of his private parts. Liz giggled, but Jackie was distracted, searching the crowd for David.
Then, after the magician was shackled and bound in a straitjacket, the helpless man was lowered into the cabinet headfirst until the water splashed over the sides, and the lid was screwed on tight. He thrashed about, heaving his body, trying to jerk himself loose.
Jackie felt her heart speed up. The scene was bizarre, like a variety show that was a mockery of the party. The band was playing something jarring, discordant.
Baby face. You’ve got the cutest little baby face.
Where was David? She had been sure she would find him when she came back outside. Surely he was anxious about her by now. She looked back at the magician still twisting his body in the cage. She felt she must do something to save him. But she was helpless to break the glass. Something stood between her and the world, something that filled her with dread.
She approached the stage and looked into the man’s terrified eyes. All around her the crowd shouted derisive insults and laughed contemptuously. She turned to see faces contorted by scorn, mouths open in ugly ridicule. “It’s all a fake!” they screamed.
Then coming from far down the road the sound of police sirens caught the crowd by surprise, and one by one they turned their heads away from the magic show to search for the cause of the alarms. A wave of trepidation seemed to wash over the entire audience, tearing their collective attention away from the magician and his plight. Murmuring and glancing at one another in concern, they moved off in pairs and groups of three and four to circle the house, until only a few remained to witness the end of the trick.
Liz broke out of her trance and said, “Oh, no. Don’t tell me. The fools!” under her breath, then turned to Jackie and whispered, “I’ve got to find Daddy.” She grabbed Jackie by the hand and cried out, “Come on. Hurry.”
Jackie saw a line of black Model A police wagons lining the driveway, at least six or seven, with the cops spilling out of them, all carrying pistols or tommy guns, and several policemen with megaphones shouting, “All right, everybody. This is a raid. Stay where you are and nobody will get hurt. Nobody leave. You are all under arrest.”
* * *
David heard the commotion and ran to the terrace. He saw the police surrounding the lawn, guns raised and voices blaring. “Halt! This is a raid! Everyone back inside the house!”
Horns were blasting and people screaming, and all David could think was that he had to find Jackie. He wondered where she could be in the streams of people and cars moving past the front of the house. Then he remembered the view from his room in the tower, how it afforded a panorama of the driveway, the great lawn, and even the sea. He raced for the stairs, climbed them two treads at a time, and in seconds he was standing at the door outside his own room.
But it would not be his room. And there was a strange humming coming from inside. He tried the door only to find it locked. Exasperated, he jiggled the handle before he noticed a key hanging from a hook on the wall. Whoever was in there had been locked inside.
After using the key, he
opened the door a crack and took a look. At first he was startled by the odor of linseed oil and turpentine. Then in the dim lamplight coming through the windows he was able to make out rectangular objects stacked in twos and threes against the walls; they were paintings, most of them in dark colors.
Close to the windows, his back to the door, sat an old man at work before an easel. He was humming a tuneless melody in a dry, ragged voice. He wore a soiled gray shirt, and his long tangled white hair fell below his shoulders. Now David remembered what the gypsy had said. He lives in the tower.
“Excuse me,” said David. The man did not turn but stopped humming and held his brush poised over the canvas, listening.
“Charles Delaware Tate?” said David. “Are you the artist Charles Delaware Tate?”
“You bring food?”
“Uh, no, I didn’t. Sorry.” David could see the portrait on the easel of a young man with long black hair seated in front of a bowl of apples. The drawing was skillful, especially the eyes, the most finished part of the sketch; the eyes and the apples both gleamed with an internal source of light, and both seemed surprisingly realistic until he realized he had seen it wrong. The man’s face was a skull, and the eyes were hollow. David felt the hair rise on the back of his scalp.
“What do you want, boy?”
“Mr. Tate? Please excuse me for interrupting your work, but … but I need to ask you something.” David looked around at the paintings, still lifes of commonplace objects such as books, coins, rocks or shells, or fruit and flowers, all so real they might have still held their fragrance. There were other paintings as well, images where the black oil paint was still damp, paintings of skulls with the Devil’s eyes.
Far below, the din of horns, sirens, and shouting through megaphones provided a surreal accompaniment to the scene in the shadowed room.
“Listen,” said the painter. “They are at the gates!”
Then Tate returned to his work as if David were not there, dipped his brush to his palette, and lifted the tip to the canvas. He began to hum again, or to breathe out loud, a mournful raspy sound. David gathered his courage to speak.
“Mr. Tate, I wonder whether you still have the portrait, well, actually, the second portrait you made—oh, I guess it was a long time ago—of Quentin Collins? You see the first one has been destroyed by time and the weather, and I think—”
“It has lost its magic!”
The artist dropped his brush and made a long gurgling sigh, like an animal choking. “Ah, I knew he would be careless.” Then he slowly turned to look at David. The boy gasped and stepped back. The painter’s eyes were opaque and silver blue, covered with a dense membrane. He was blind!
David struggled to speak. “Mr. Tate, if you do still have the painting, it would be great if I could have it. You see, a girl I know needs to find it. I know it sounds strange, but the one we found is so torn and eaten by rats—”
The painter uttered a gasp, “My … masterpiece.”
“Yes. That’s right. I know.” David felt helpless. “I— I don’t have money to pay for it, but just believe that it is … that it would make someone very happy—ecstatic, even.”
“Did you lock the door? Because they are coming!”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Who?”
“They want my paintings for the walls of their tombs!”
David didn’t know how to answer. “Yes, I … I know artists from the early days, like Egypt, painted still lifes to bury in graves.” He was babbling. Trying to hold the painter’s attention. “I guess they painted objects the dead might carry with them into eternity.”
“Aaaah, you have it!” The painter became animated. “A still life for the afterlife. For that I sold my soul.”
The painter rose and walked slowly toward a heap of canvases in the far corner of the room. His body was hunched with age, and his white hair was like dry hay, flaring out from his head; he resembled a mythological creature more than a human being. His long ragged robe dragged on the floor and his feet made no sound. When he reached the stack of paintings, he mumbled to himself and traced each frame with shaking fingers as he folded them back. Then he stopped and said, “Aaaah,” staring into space. Slowly he tugged one of the canvases loose, and lifted it out. David’s heart bolted.
It was Quentin, not as a young man—not as young as the man in the library—but still strikingly handsome, in a dark blue morning coat with a ruffled white jabot.
“Is this the one you want?”
“Yes,” David said, “That’s Quentin. Oh my God, that’s it!”
The artist carried the painting to the window and placed it on the sill. His voice when he spoke was like singing, moving up and down the scales. David wondered whether he was nearly deaf as well. “Once I painted portraits,” he said, “until I lost my sight. This one was the last.”
“Will you part with it?”
“Why? It is worthless. It is not finished.”
“Still … I would like to have it.”
The painter sighed. “Sometimes something in the world is so beautiful it brings sadness instead of joy. Like a flower, its beauty breathes but for a moment and then is gone. Loss of beauty can break a heart.” Then the painter dropped his head and said so softly David could barely hear, “I loved him.”
David waited, not knowing how to answer.
After a moment the painter cried out, “Tell me. Is it there? All the life of the gutter? All the depravity?”
“No. He is quite handsome, actually.” And then David saw something disturbing. “Except for the eyes,” he said. “The eyes are dark. No, I can see the lashes. Quentin’s eyes are closed.”
The painter gazed inwardly, deep in thought, before he reached again for his brush. Then he said, almost as an afterthought, “Ah yes, I remember now. The eyes are closed. Perhaps he sleeps. What do you think?”
“I … I think he sleeps, yes.”
“You do know an artist cannot create the same painting twice. And he was not worthy of my gift. So, this time I made a little improvement. I did not want him to see the squalor he wandered through. But then I am blind myself, you see. So, I was not able to … finish the painting. It does not matter. See how beautiful is the paint!”
“Yes, it is quite fine.”
“Here is Quentin in a moment of fleeting perfection, preserved for all eternity. Still, it will not break the spell.”
“The spell?”
“Yes, the curse of the full moon. Isn’t that what you want, boy?”
David stood for a moment bewildered, not knowing what to do. He watched the old man settle onto his stool and hunch over his canvas. Over the painter’s head he could see the great lawn that stretched to the sea, the vista he had looked out upon so often when he was a boy.
He walked to the window and looked down, hoping for a glimpse of Jackie. Many cars were driving hurriedly, their headlights flashing and horns blaring. Then, to his surprise, in the dark part of the road, he saw the gypsy’s wagon moving slowly away from the house. It was painted with moons and stars and patterns of many colors beneath an arched roof with a delicately carved border. Magda was in the wagon seat holding the reins of a brown draft horse, a steed with a heavy mane and shaggy fetlocks. The gypsy’s gold bangles glinted in the light of the many lamps, and then she turned and looked up at the window. She seemed to catch his eye for an instant, because she nodded and smiled.
David turned back into the room. The painter was absorbed with his work, and he did not seem to remember that David was there. Stealthily, David crept toward Quentin’s portrait, then, holding his breath, he quietly lifted it from the easel and, carrying it close to his hip, tiptoed to the door. Just as he was making an exit the painter said softly, “Take it, if you must. But the portrait is worthless. It is not signed.” Still, David clung to his treasure, unable to believe his good fortune, and slowly closed the door behind him.
* * *
Jackie heard the harsh shouts of police demanding cooperation, but
they seemed to have only unleashed general hysteria with frantic couples clinging to one another as they ran for safety, and partygoers racing for their cars and starting their engines. A yellow Rolls pulled out first, braked, then turned in a circle only to sideswipe a beautiful blue Cadillac before crashing head-on into a black Ford. The roar of engines starting up was mixed with the commotion of horns blaring, brakes squealing, and fenders being smashed.
Jackie looked back in time to see the face of the magician staring out of his cage. His bulging eyes were open now, and his face was a grimace of pain, but his struggling had ceased. He hung motionless, frozen in death, while his assistants crawled over the cage, trying desperately to remove the bolts.
“Hurry,” shouted Liz. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
The next moment they were dashing up the back stair behind the kitchen, and they ran down the hall to a room guarded by two men snoozing on their chairs. They roused as Liz pushed by them and burst in the door.
“Daddy! Daddy, it’s the cops. You have to leave.”
The man who turned his head to observe their entrance was a distinguished gentleman with silver white hair that fell in a wave over his brow and lifted above his ears in a halo. Jackie thought she had never seen a man so handsome, or so intoxicated. He had the look of a matinee idol or a silent film star. His eyes were intensely black, his gaze dramatic, and his entire demeanor one of confidence that must have been the result of a strong physique and a powerful personality. A half-empty bottle of whiskey sat on the desk in front of him and he held a glass in his hand.
“Good evening, my dear,” he said in a melodious voice slurred with drink. “It is always such a joy to see you.”
“Daddy. It’s a raid. The police are here. They’re going to arrest everybody.”
“Calm down, dolly, and don’t you worry your pretty little head about a thing. Baxter assured me that he would give me plenty of warning before he moved in. What the hell do I pay him for?”
“It’s not Captain Baxter, Daddy. It’s the FBI. They’re driving sheriff ’s cars, the one with the white shield on the side.”