When we finished the design for the last dragon, I headed inside to grab a cup of coffee and go upstairs. The calendar was hung near the coffeepot, and as I wiped up drips I saw what I’d written neatly on today’s square: “Lunch. Hannah. Maria’s Cafe.”
I glanced at the clock. As was usual when I was involved with Phineas House, I’d lost track of time. It was past eleven now. I had time to dab off the inevitable spots of paint and change into a clean clothes. I chose a pretty aqua broomstick skirt with golden-brown highlights, and a coordinating blouse. My necklace was strung from some of my finds—rather like a charm bracelet in the round. I’d made the earrings from leftovers. In Ohio I’d looked exotic and bohemian. In New Mexico, I fit in just fine.
Nervous about the impression I should make on this woman I hadn’t seen in so long, I fussed over my hair longer than I should have. Happily, Las Vegas wasn’t very large, and I’d been in town long enough to know my way around most of the typical traffic bottlenecks.
Casting a forlorn glance in the direction of my mother’s bedroom door, I ran up the stairs to my room.
“I’ll be back,” I promised. “Just a few hours more.”
Just as time had changed me, it had done its work on Hannah. The image I’d carried fixed in my mind was of a girl of my own height, a bit heavier in build, with straight brown hair worn in pigtails, one of which was usually a little askew. The woman who rose from a booth toward the back of the cafe was quite different.
I was the taller now, she the slimmer. However, there was a lot of strength in her as I discovered when we shook hands, then impulsively embraced. Obviously, being a nurse is not a job for the weak. Hannah’s brown hair was cut in a neat, short style that read “easy care” while escaping being in the least dowdy. Her gaze was warm, and I knew instinctively that she was the type of caregiver who heard a lot of confidences.
That made me feel good, because on the ride over I’d resolved to do some confiding.
“Mira, Mira, Mira,” Hannah said as she slid herself back into the booth. “You look good.”
“Thanks. You, too.”
The waitress came over and took our drink orders, then left us to peruse the menus. While we did so, we continued the catching up we’d begun on the phone. Hannah, it turned out, had been married once, right out of college, divorced soon after, and had remarried.
“We’re both in medicine, which everyone will tell you is exactly the wrong thing to do,” she said, “but it works for us. We know exactly what the other is talking about, and about erratic schedules. His folks and sister live in Albuquerque, and take over more than their fair share of running the kids to soccer practices and things. It sounds like hell, but actually it works.”
“Your family,” I said, “I mean when we were kids—always seemed in constant motion. I remember how it fascinated me when I’d come to visit.”
Hannah grinned. “Constant motion is right. I was the youngest and felt like the duck on the end of a long string—and just like when you play crack the whip, the one at the end flies the farthest. I think that was one reason I liked you. You had this quiet to you.”
“I don’t think I ever spoke three sentences in a row,” I said with a rueful laugh.
“No,” Hannah disagreed. “That’s not what I meant. I didn’t know the term then, but today they’d call it being centered. All the rest of us were running here and there, and you’d just watch out of those calm eyes and I’d know you were soaking it all up. Somehow, having you there made it all more real.”
The waitress brought our food. Enchiladas and a salad for me, and an incredibly stacked club sandwich cut into fours for Hannah. Hannah picked up one corner of her sandwich and studied me while taking a bite.
“You still have some of that,” she said when she finished chewing. “It must come from being an artist. That’s what the paper said you were—an art teacher, right?”
“That’s right, but I wouldn’t call myself an artist.”
“Well, unless you’ve changed since we were kids, I would. I remember how incredibly quickly you learned to draw and paint. One class you’re handling a crayon like you’ve never seen one, three weeks later you’re doing pictures with shading and dimension. It was like magic.”
I grinned. “I didn’t think anyone but Mrs. Little had noticed me and the crayons.”
“I did. I was dreadfully snoopy in those days. Only way to keep ahead of all those older brothers and sisters. Still am.” Her expression held a friendly challenge. “So, what brought you back to Las Vegas? I know the basics—we talked about them on the phone. I mean, what has brought you back to stay?”
“I’m not staying,” I said automatically, though I wasn’t sure I was speaking the truth.
“Really? My mother told me that you’re putting a lot of work into the old house.”
I must have looked surprised, because Hannah went on.
“You haven’t started mingling yet, but when you do, you’ll know soon enough. Las Vegas is a small town. It has its groups and factions and all the rest, but you know that old saw about six degrees of separation?”
“You mean that everyone is no more than six people away from knowing everyone else?”
“Right. Well, in Las Vegas, you’d better narrow that to two or three. My mother plays bridge with one of your neighbors a street over. She actually swings by Phineas House on her way to their biweekly games. Initially, she didn’t connect the lady from Ohio with my childhood friend, but the newspaper article made her remember. Until then, she hadn’t even been sure it was the same house. That neighborhood has changed a lot in forty years—and I never came to play there. You always went to our house.”
“My mother,” I said, a trace more heavily than I had intended, “did not encourage any guests other than her own.”
I determinedly ate a forkful of enchiladas, then went on.
“Hannah, I remember your mother pretty well. I bet that ever since she made the connection she’s been, well, remembering about my mother.”
“Gossiping, you mean?” Hannah said. She bit her pickle wedge in half, but didn’t seem the least offended. “You’re remembering her right. She always did love to speculate on what other people were up to, and your mother, well, she was a colorful figure.”
“The thing is,” I said, finding this hard to say, despite my earlier resolve, “I don’t really remember my mother all that well. I was only nine when Mother vanished. My memories are all of a towering figure in sweeping skirts. I have no adult perspective in which to view her … and I want one, even a gossipy one.”
Hannah nodded and finished the pickle. “I can see that. You’ve just lost the woman who was your real mother, and now you’re confronted with the property of the woman who bore you. In the one case, you’re so close to grief you don’t even know how much it’s pressing you down. In the other, you don’t know what to feel.”
“That’s clearer than I could ever put it,” I said.
“I talk a lot,” Hannah said, “but I listen, too. You do a lot of listening when you’re a nurse, and you’re close to death and dying—or fear of death and dying—every day. Even those who specialize in obstetrics or pediatrics can’t get away from it.”
“Well, whatever the reason, you understand better than I do why I need to know about my mother—about Colette. The newspapers cover her disappearance, and a bit of back story but there’s nothing to tell me what she was like.”
“Like?” Hannah frowned. “My memories are a child’s, too, and what my mother has said is largely hearsay, and, quite honestly, somewhat malicious.”
“Even so. I’d like to hear it.”
Hannah went after another corner of her sandwich with a thoughtful silence that pretty much demanded I finish some of my enchiladas. When she spoke, she lowered her voice.
“Mira, I’m going to start with the worst thing I heard. If I don’t, then I know you’ll sense I’m holding back. I’d rather work up to it, but …”
My stomach twisted, but
I managed a smile. “Go ahead. I swear I won’t go storming out of here in a huff.”
“Okay.” Hannah drew in a deep breath. “My mother said that talk was that your mother was insane—mentally unstable. The gossip was she had been brought to Las Vegas and spent time in the state mental hospital—you know that’s here, don’t you?”
“I didn’t, actually, but go on.”
Hannah studied me for a moment, apparently decided that I meant what I said, and continued, “Well, my mother said that your mother had trouble with her parents. My mother hints that this problem was pretty serious. I think she doesn’t know the details. Anyhow, Colette’s family couldn’t deal with her and finally had her institutionalized. The treatment was successful—at least to a point. Afterward, Colette was permitted something like what we’d call ‘residential placement’ today.”
“You mean she could live ‘off-campus.’”
“Basically, but my mother said that she’d heard that Colette had to stay near enough to the State Hospital so that if she started to slide again, they could get her into treatment again.”
I thought about this. Could those mysterious “trustees” have been my mother’s as well as mine? I shook my head, refusing to believe the theory, even if it did explain a lot.
“Phineas House does not seem like your typical residential placement,” I said. “If I understand correctly, it’s been in the family for generations—and there was certainly no one there looking after her. She ran the place.”
“I believe you,” Hannah said. “I’m just reporting nasty gossip.”
“Right.”
The waitress came by, and by silent consent Hannah and I each ordered dessert and coffee. When it came, we lingered over it as Hannah went on.
“Anyhow, the theory that your mother was mentally unstable covered all the bases very neatly. It explained why she dressed as she did, some of her odd habits, and her …”
Hannah pinked lightly and swallowed a mouthful of double-chocolate cake.
“Apparent promiscuity?” I said. “I remember my mother’s boyfriends.”
Hannah relaxed. “That’s right.”
“Anything in your mother’s cornucopia about my father?”
“Now that’s an odd one,” Hannah admitted. “Best as Mother recalls, your mother went away for about a year. When she came back, she came back with an infant—with you. That’s also when she started using ‘Mrs.’ and gave out that she had been widowed, but interestingly, she kept her maiden name—and went on with her habits. Apparently, there was a lot of gossip, but nothing definite. The charitable said she must have been married and after her husband’s death returned to familiar grounds.”
“I can guess,” I said, whacking the hard lump of my ice cream with the bowl of my spoon, “what the uncharitable said.”
“And that’s about all I know,” Hannah concluded.
“That’s all about Colette the woman,” I said. “What about the girl? I haven’t found anything yet about where she went to school, her parents, all that—and, no, she never talked about any of that to me.”
“I can ask,” Hannah said, “but Mother has never said anything specific, none of that ‘Now I know Maria who went to school with her and she said that …’ I do think Colette was local, but maybe she was educated at home.”
Hannah’s expression filled with compassion. “When we were kids, I thought your father had died. I figured your mother was odd because she was weighed down with sorrow.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “If so, I never saw it, and a constantly changing string of boyfriends is hardly the way to mourn.”
“I don’t know,” Hannah said. “They say that widowers who were happiest in a first marriage are the most likely to remarry. Maybe it’s the same with widows—only most women outlive their spouses and don’t exactly find a ripe crop of new prospects waiting around. Your mother was young and beautiful. It would have been different for her.”
Hannah’s tone became dreamy as she went on, “That string of boyfriends could have been part of her endless search for a man who could live up to her memories of the man she had lost.”
“And she dumped each one,” I said, putting my white china coffee mug on the table with a thump, “as he failed to measure up? I suppose.”
“Well,” Hannah said. “It’s a nice alternative to my mother’s version.”
“True.” I rubbed my temples, feeling exhausted. “I just wish I knew more. Being here has been good for me. I’m actually adjusting to the idea that Aunt May and Uncle Stan won’t be there in Ohio when I go back—for a while I realized that’s how my subconscious was trying to jolly me along. Work on Phineas House has been absorbing, but I don’t know what to do next.”
“Let it go,” Hannah suggested. “Come up to Albuquerque next week on my day off. We’ll run the kids to a game or something, catch up, go to the zoo …”
“Maybe,” I said, but both of us knew my tone meant “probably not.” “When do you come back to see your mother?”
“I usually make it here about twice a month,” Hannah said. “She has a friend who drives her down to Albuquerque on one of the off weeks.”
“Maybe next time you can come over and see Phineas House,” I said. “I’ll give you the tour.”
“I’d like that.”
We exchanged e-mail addresses, and I insisted on settling the bill. When we went our separate ways in the parking lot, I felt good. Meeting with Hannah all these years later could have been disastrous, but it had actually been fun. She was nicer than I remembered, and I wondered if some of my mother’s elitism had made me see Hannah and her family as rather “below stairs.”
I also had the possibility that Colette had been in the State Hospital to check out—but I only would if nothing else panned out. I didn’t know much about my mother, but of one thing I felt certain, for all her self-absorption, she had been coolly, even terrifyingly, sane.
But maybe my thinking so was simply proof that I was becoming as crazy as she had been.
When I got back to the house, I stopped to chat for a moment with Domingo and admire the advancing work on the dragon frieze.
“Want to have a hand?” he asked.
For a moment I was tempted, but I shook my head resolutely.
“Maybe tomorrow. Today I have to get some things done inside.”
“I’ll save it for you,” Domingo said, “when we have the base coat on.”
“Thanks.”
“By the way,” he called after me, “you look very nice.”
I waved a hand in acknowledgment, but I was pleased.
Inside, I changed out of my blouse and skirt, and into a pair of my collection of increasingly disreputable jeans and tee shirts. I’d never been one of those slovenly artists—the influence of both of my mothers, I guess—and I made a mental note that I needed to go shopping.
Right now, Phineas House was folding itself around my mind. Even though some of the windows were open, I hardly heard the workmen’s music or the occasional street noise. There was nothing but that room across the landing. My fingers found the key on its ring as surely as if I’d opened the door dozens of times before.
I was unsurprised to find the suite elegantly tidy, smelling warmly of wood polish and wax. The curtains had been cleaned of dust and tied back, but the blinds were drawn, retaining privacy. Today’s painting was going on over on another side of the house, so I felt no reservations about pulling up the blinds and letting in the afternoon light. I slid open a few windows, enjoying the fresh air.
“Clean windows, too,” I said aloud. “I’m impressed. I wonder if you ever sleep?”
I went into my mother’s bedroom, and again opened windows. I found that the bed—where yesterday the mattress had been naked beneath the dust sheet—had been made up. I peeked beneath the thick quilted bedspread—gold tissue embroidered with white swans—and found only a mattress pad.
“I see,” I said. “Not anticipating company, just putting somethin
g between the mattress and dust. That’s a good idea. I hadn’t thought about it, but then it’s dustier here than in Ohio.”
Carpets that yesterday had been rolled were now spread out in their accustomed places. I stood in the center of the largest and forced myself to look where Colette’s portrait hung. As I expected, the enshrouding dust cover was gone, the frame with its glinting mirror inclusions clean and polished. Yet ornate as was its setting, Colette’s image dominated it all, even as her personality had dominated her surroundings in life.
She stood tall and regal, one hand resting gracefully on the edge of a table. The painter had chosen a three-quarter angle that showed Colette’s arrogant head on that long, slender neck in profile, the shining dark hair up in an elaborate arrangement in which jeweled pins glinted. Her gown was shown in full, the flaring skirts in-cut to reveal shimmering inner layers. She looked like a young queen from a book of fairy stories.
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