Shadow Notes

by Laurel S. Peterson

  It took me a minute. Then, suddenly, light. “Mary Ellen Winters.”

  “She’d be the one.”

  “She’ll tear me to bits.”

  “We’ll patch you up.” Richard shrugged. “Anyway, you have nothing better to do.”

  Chapter 4

  Mother was detained by the police overnight, so the next morning I met Bailey at the police station. There had been an eyewitness, a police officer, which gave them more of a case than I’d anticipated. Bailey had taken her retainer from my hot little hand, saying, “You can’t be a party to my conversation with her, and I can’t allow you to see her before they talk to her again this morning. They might want to speak to you, and you need to keep your stories separate.”

  “But—”

  “You can see her when we’re done.”

  Bailey and I had been friends once, but competition interfered. We couldn’t both have the prizes we’d wanted: highest SAT score, lead in the school play, soccer team captain. Sometimes I really missed her; I missed having women friends. It seemed like a long time since I’d had any.

  Bailey left me cooling my heels in the lobby, while she and her tight, gray, pinstriped self clicked down the hall on spike heels. Every cop in the place peered after her. I settled myself as comfortably as I could into one of the orange molded plastic chairs that lined the vestibule, and tried not to picture Mother locked in a concrete room with no windows.

  At ten o’clock in the morning, station activity amounted to people crisscrossing the lobby, some in uniform, some not. I let their monotonous circling and patter and the sleepy heat put me into a half-dream about Mother and me running in circles with buckets of water trying to extinguish a fire. I was startled awake by a deep voice.

  “Miz Montague?”

  I nearly slid from the chair as I looked up into a pair of topaz eyes.

  “Your mother is ready to go. May I show you the way?”

  I shook my head a little to clear out the dream. “What happened to Bailey?”

  “Your lawyer’s gone.”

  She left me snoozing in the lobby of the police station. Nice. We could talk about that when her bill arrived. He led the way, allowing me to be diverted by his incredible, uh, shoulders. They filled out a taupe wool suit that looked custom made. No wedding ring on his left hand. His black hair curled tightly around a dark skull, and a thin rim of bright white shirt gleamed between the dark skin of his neck and the collar of the suit. I imagined he was a detective, since he wasn’t wearing a uniform—and what a nice detective package it was. Then I chided myself. Checking out the guy who jailed my mother wasn’t cool. I distracted myself by wondering if it was a challenge to be a black police detective in this oh-so-white town.

  Mother sat at a table in a gray box of a room. The one door contained a small window threaded with wire through which I could see the guard. I sat down opposite her. Even after a night of questioning, she remained regal. The only sign that all was not well were her eyes, which seemed pinched, as if she’d rubbed them after cutting up jalapenos. “Clara.”

  “Mother.”

  “Thank you for calling Bailey.” The thaw was akin to flake ice. Not solid, yet still ice.

  “Of course. What evidence do they have?”

  “None.” Her right shoulder moved up a quarter of an inch and then down again, her version of a shrug. “Some meaningless fingerprints. I handled the fireplace poker the last time I visited Hugh; I’m better at keeping fires going than he is.”

  “And the witness?” We stared at each other. I had never known what she was thinking. Then I remembered Paul’s suggestion that I ask her. What I really wanted to know was whether or not she had had an affair with Hugh, but I didn’t ask that. “What’s going on, Mother?”

  Finally, she said, “You must be very careful, Clara.”

  I spread my hands out in front of me to make the universal gesture of what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about.

  She looked away. “Fire.”

  “Fire? Are you kidding? Because of some poker—”

  “Talk to Paul.” She wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  I remembered my dream in the lobby and got a weird little shiver. I ­wondered if I should tell her about it, but I didn’t feel like listening to her dismiss me yet again. I had accepted the fact that she would never acknowledge my intuition. But now I had to try to reach her across the divide my dreams had created.

  “Mother, I—”

  “Thanks for coming,” she said.

  “Have they arrested you?”

  “No, but I assume they will shortly. The witness took a photograph, Clara.”

  “What? Did you go to Hugh’s last night?”

  “No.” Her shoulders sagged a little, then straightened, as if the ice in her spine had melted and refrozen. “But someone wants it to look that way.”

  “You think you’re being set up? Who would do that?”

  But she refused to say anything more. I couldn’t do anything else, at least not here. The guard asked if I needed help finding my way out and I told him no. Big mistake. It took me ten minutes to find my way back to the lobby, but that could have been more about my confused state of mind than the layout of the police station.

  Blood coated Mother’s hands, clothes and face. Blood-glazed bone poked through the skin of her knees. She tried to crawl, using her elbows to pull herself toward me. Red varnished her face. As I watched, it grew and spread, as if it were alive. It flowed from her eyes like tears, down her body, reaching across the dead space between us…

  I’d woken myself from this dream four times tonight, pain like electric shocks radiating across my chest. Even when I forced myself awake, it took several minutes before the pain eased, and, if I fell back to sleep, the dream picked up where it left off. At three a.m., exhausted and panicky, I turned on the light and sat with my arms wrapped around my knees until the sun crept over the horizon.

  I slumped down to the kitchen in my white flannel PJs and made coffee, doctored it with sugar and real cream, and took it into the solarium, where I curled into a settee and stared out through the floor-to-ceiling windows to wake up. The dreams often left me feeling both drugged and anxious, as if I’d taken a sleeping pill and couldn’t quite shake the effects. The dreams before my father died had caused insomnia, anxiety, and finally panic attacks. It wasn’t a state I wanted to return to.

  Outside, a gentle hill sloped to a pond just skimmed with ice. Once, when I was ten, my mother had held a skating party for me and four of my friends. Mother rented skates for the girls who didn’t have any, and when we had had enough of giggling and falling on our butts and tramping through the snow, she set us up in the solarium with a hot chocolate party, complete with new stuffed animals, gingerbread cookies, tea sandwiches, perfect little cakes with icing, strawberries and flowers, and a new fairytale book for each of us. I still had the book. Come to think of it, she’d even gotten the editor to sign them for us. It was the only memory I had of her doing something for me that wasn’t coldly practical.

  I wondered what had happened to those girls. They could still be living around here, married to stockbrokers or IT specialists or hedge fund traders or wannabe politicians. After all, that’s the kind of girls we were, after we went to graduate or law school. Had to have the education, even if we never did a thing with it. Like me. All my education and I’d never put it to use.

  And if I stayed? If I somehow persuaded Mother to let me help her and our relationship became more of what I wanted and less of what I remembered, what then? Would Ernie want me as a working partner in my father’s business or did he prefer me as a silent one? Would I even want to commit myself to a “real” job? Would Mother even want me to stay?

  Then what drifted through my befogged mind was that, no matter what I did, Mother wouldn’t like it. Even that idyllic afternoon was colored with the faint stain of
disapproval—for what I couldn’t remember. If I stayed to help, she would be angry. If I left, she would be angry. If I talked to her friends, she would be angry. If I didn’t do anything, she would condemn me for my laziness. And that gave me a lot of latitude.

  I had always wanted her to accept my gift. She never had, so I’d gone through life defensive. Now, a bit of that defensiveness fell away. I would use my gift, because it was the right thing to do, and maybe because it would help me know her. Knowing her mattered to me. Father was gone. We only had each other. Most of all, I needed to know if she had the intuition, too. I’d long ­suspected she did, but if so, she’d kept it a state secret.

  Knowing who we were, how those genetic connections played out in me, would make me feel less alone in the world—and maybe her, too. My talking to Mary Ellen Winters would jeopardize my finding out, but I couldn’t see any other way forward.

  Mary Ellen was Mother’s age, which made her about fifty. The last time I’d seen her, seven or eight years ago on a surreptitious visit to Richard and Paul’s, she’d looked good—buff from lots of time at the gym and on the masseuse’s table. She liked designer clothes, Thierry Mugler and Prada, things that only looked good on women who seemingly hadn’t eaten for the last three months.

  Her hair was streaky blonde, her hands free of rings. Hadn’t she been married? I wondered what had happened to him. Wasn’t he a doctor of some kind? No, that wasn’t quite right. I’d met him at one of my mother’s parties, maybe one of the summer ones. I seemed to remember sails and blue water. Had she rented a boat and sailed us all around for twilight cocktails or something? Why would we have been invited? Maybe it was a party like the fête, where everyone got invited whether you liked them or not.

  Hugh told me Mary Ellen was working on her brother’s campaign, and, in the murky back of my brain, something buzzed about her and the local Women’s League. Mary Ellen would have the inside scoop on my mother and Hugh’s relationship and would gloat over any misery in Mother’s life. The tricky part would be convincing her I wasn’t on some conniving mission from my mother—if I could get her to talk to me at all.

  Thirty minutes later, I was dressed in Mother’s pink Chanel suit with a pair of patent leather boots. If you were going to meet the enemy, it was best to wear camouflage—not that I didn’t love Chanel suits. I tossed a cashmere pashmina over my shoulders, grabbed the Land Rover keys and hoped I was doing the right thing.

  Paul said Mary Ellen manned the phones at the Women’s League headquarters on Mondays, the perfect place to beard the bear in her den, or something like that. I pulled into the League parking lot at noon, in time to see Mary Ellen tripping out in her Uggs and miniskirt. Not very appropriate wear for a fifty-year-old fashionista. She must be having a bad day.

  I called to her. She turned slowly, red-rimmed eyes focusing with trouble. She looked like she’d stayed up all night partying. “Clara.” Her voice was flat. “I heard you were back. What do you want?”

  “I’m looking for a cause.” I smiled my most winning smile. Years of practice learning those social skills Mother demanded.

  Her shoulders slumped. “I don’t have time for your mother’s games today. Go home.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Her head, which had swiveled toward her car, swiveled back toward me. “What?”

  I felt as if we were playing who’s-on-first. “I understand you had a crisis the night of Mother’s fête. I’m good at putting out fires, thought I could help with Andrew’s campaign.” I smiled. “Lots of time as an administrator.” Exaggeration for a good cause.

  She looked briefly disconcerted, then recovered. “You’re a Republican?”

  I shrugged and felt four generations of liberal Democrats fly over me with their wings of death.

  “Constance would never approve.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I need lunch. Come.” She gestured toward her alarmingly clean BMW. I wondered if she kept the chauffeur in the trunk to polish it between drives. She beeped, the car unlocked. Stepping carefully around the ice patches, I opened the passenger door and slipped into the smell of new leather and systematic betrayal.

  She drove with assurance. It was a standard transmission, and she moved from gear to gear without hesitation, sensing what the car needed and when to give it. Within a matter of minutes, we pulled up at an elite restaurant down by the water where, it was rumored, local businessmen and lawyers met their mistresses for lunch. Mary Ellen, it seemed, had a standing reservation. The maître d’, a slender, olive-toned man—the color of all the service personnel in this town—took us immediately to a window table.

  Without asking, she ordered us two Bombay Sapphire martinis, straight up with olives, and the maître d’ left us to look at the menus and the view. I didn’t usually drink at lunch; staying awake for the rest of the day was a problem, and it was a worse problem when one hadn’t slept much the night before, still felt slightly out of it, and needed all one’s wits to pull off a con. When the waiter returned with the drinks, I asked for a large glass of water and prayed for the best. Mary Ellen lifted her gin in a silent toast and drank half of it down.

  She said, “I recommend the duck, the Caesar salad with chicken and any of the fish dishes, especially the scampi.” By the time the waiter returned to take our order, she’d finished her drink. She ordered the scampi and another martini. I ordered the Caesar salad.

  “So,” she said. “You’re still rebelling, is that it? And you’ve come to me because I’m the sure-fire way to get back at your mother. Never mind that she’s locked up for murder, being gone for fifteen years isn’t enough rebellion for you?”

  Her sharpness stung. Had I been merely rebelling all this time? I considered it self-protection, not some extended adolescent tantrum. I put part of the truth on the table. “I want to know about my mother and Hugh. She won’t tell me. I also need employment, and if it’s something my mother doesn’t approve of, maybe it will annoy her enough to get her to open her mouth.” Which appeared to be sewn shut with braided titanium fishing line.

  “The girl has guts.” She laughed again, with a little meanness. “But really, Clara, why would I help you? Having her locked up in jail is amusing. And what’s in it for me, aside from pissing off Constance? I haven’t had any trouble doing that for the last thirty years.”

  The waiter brought her second martini. She took a long sip, but not as big as the first one. I looked out at the water. The clouds had lowered again, and whitecaps skipped across the tops of the slate waves. I felt more than saw Mary Ellen swing her UGG-fitted foot rhythmically, in sync with the muted music issuing from speakers above our heads. I thought of the blood on Mother’s hands in my dream. I couldn’t be fainthearted.

  I smiled that good society girl smile again. “But what a betrayal to have her own daughter working for the woman she hates the most. Can you really top that, Mary Ellen?”

  Her lips pinched together, probably to keep her from shrieking yes. She leaned across the table, her eyes feverish and bright. “I’ll tell you about your mother on one condition. You give as good as you get.”

  I hedged because she would expect it, and to recover my breath at her malice. “I’ve been gone for fifteen years.”

  Her eyes glittered. “You know enough. I promise you.”

  “Fine. But the deal comes with sponsorship into the Women’s League and invitations to your parties, as well as that job with your politician brother and his campaign.”

  “Want a plaid headband, too?” she mocked. She tapped one long nail on the table. “You don’t know what you’re asking, Clara. Some secrets should stay buried, and there are people in this town who will do whatever it takes to make sure they do.”

  My heart flip-flopped in a moment of self-doubt. What if I didn’t really want to know what Mother had hidden all these years?

  The waite
r arrived with our meals, setting them carefully in front of us, wiping the edges of the plates of imagined bits of stray food. He bowed slightly and left, but not before Mary Ellen ordered her third martini. I asked for more water. I hadn’t even lowered my drink to the level of the olives, and already I felt woozy. Mary Ellen enjoyed her food and ate all of it—unusual for a woman of her skeletal shape—sopping up the extra sauce, or perhaps the gin, with bread. She seemed to have forgotten what I’d asked and chatted casually about a garden club open house planned for Christmas and her family’s upcoming post-holiday trip to Vail. Only when we’d made it to double espressos and chocolate mousse (for Mary Ellen—I couldn’t eat that much) did she finally say, “Agreed.”

  Our conversation had gone so far afield since my initial demands that it took me a minute to figure out what she was referring to, which might also have been influenced by my finishing the martini and her droning voice. She must have seen my confusion, because she said, “Friday at noon, my house. Women’s League planning meeting for the Christmas Bazaar. We need lots of slave labor, since the event is less than two weeks away. You can interview Saturday evening at my brother’s campaign fundraiser. I’ll put in a good word for you—you do have some skills, don’t you?”

  I described my employment history.

  “Good. The money’s a pittance, but it’s not like you need it.” She sniffed and waved at the waiter for the check. I started for my wallet, but she said, “Oh please.”

  I tried one last time through the fog in my head to get information. “Were my mother and Hugh having an affair?”

  She looked at me with what seemed like pity, if it were possible for her to feel such a thing. “Of course. For years.” She leaned across the table and tapped that long, red nail on the table again. “Broke it off not long ago, though. I don’t think Hugh was happy about that. I heard he kept coming around. Somebody told me Constance was thinking about getting an order of protection.”

  “You ‘heard’? ‘Somebody told you’?”