Child of a Rainless Year

by Lindskold, Jane

  For whatever reason, Domingo didn’t say the things most people would have. Instead, he asked, “And you believe what Paula Angel said?”

  “I think I do,” I said. “I might even be able to get Colette’s records, if the hospital has kept them for so long. I don’t know whether she killed her father, but the woman I knew would have been capable of making such a claim. She was the most coolly confident person I have ever met—and she enjoyed inspiring fear.”

  “How,” Domingo phrased his question very carefully, “did she claim to have done it?”

  “Paula didn’t say. My grandfather …” I swallowed hard, for this was the first time I had spoken aloud the intimate connection to myself. “My grandfather broke his neck in a fall down the front staircase. Colette claimed responsibility.”

  “Did she say she pushed him?”

  “She was supposed to be locked in her room at the time, being punished for some infraction. I suppose she could have gotten out. Children are more clever about this than their parents like to admit. However …” That lump was back in my throat, but I forced myself to speak around it. “Paula told me something else. She told me that my mother was a throwback to those of her ancestors who built Phineas House—people she called ‘witches’ and ‘brujos.’ The House was somehow connected to their …”

  I couldn’t say “magic,” and so concluded rather lamely, “To their abilities.” Then, “Why am I telling you this?”

  “I think because this is not the type of story you could not tell,” Domingo said, “and because you know I know Phineas House and might believe you just a little.”

  “And do you?”

  “I know the House is not just a thing of wood and paint and nails, but I wonder, maybe it is because I have cared for it for so long, but I wonder, is it evil?”

  “If Colette used it to kill …” I said, shaping the words carefully, thinking frantically, Why did I confide in Domingo of all people? He was the House’s caretaker long before I formalized the agreement. How could I have forgotten that?

  Domingo’s next words were not precisely reassuring. “I have a gun, several guns, and I know how to use them very well. If I take a gun and shoot someone, is the gun evil?”

  I forced a laugh. “‘Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.’ Is that what you’re getting at?”

  “Maybe a little,” Domingo said. “But more. Was Colette a kind mother to you?”

  “No. I told you. She liked having people fear her. I was no different than anyone else in this.”

  “So if she was like that as a child, and if she had some sort of association with Phineas House, then if she used it to do harm to someone she hated—and children can hate with such simple purity—then the House is no more evil than if she had found her father’s gun in a drawer and used that.”

  “So she was evil,” I said, anger tightening my voice. This was my mother we were talking about, after all, never mind how she had treated me.

  “Evil? Maybe. Maybe insane. Maybe merely a child with a child’s urges and too much power.” Domingo’s voice was very calm, very level. His arm was still around my shoulders, but I could feel he wondered if he should take it away. “I did not hear this story Paula Angel told, but if Colette was a throwback, then maybe her parents were not comfortable with her. It is often the case when a child is different.”

  There was something in that last sentence that caught my heart. All of us feel one way or another that we’re different. Certainly I had, especially in my youngest years, before the Fenns took me in and ensconced me in comfortable normalcy. I had the feeling that Domingo had always been viewed as a little different. I remember how Mrs. Morales at the real estate agency had spoken of him, “a bit of a fool.” Did everyone see him that way? Some thinking him a touch retarded, an idiot savant. I’d been comfortable with him because I’d known too many artists, but not everyone would have been.

  “Yes,” I said. “I can see that. Colette was different. Paula made sure I knew that. Maybe she didn’t start out so detached and self-centered, but how her parents treated her could have started her that way, and all those years in a mental institution, surrounded by people who viewed the world askew … . That could have finished it.”

  “I think, too,” Domingo said, “that being taken from Phineas House would have been very hard for her. It isn’t … human … maybe isn’t even intelligent … . I don’t know what I’m trying to say, except that it can make one feel welcome, and for a child to be torn from what might have been her only friend and ally …”

  I nodded. “Yes. She was young enough that a favorite toy or doll would have seemed as real as most adults, and Phineas House could respond in its fashion.”

  I had brought my gaze back into the immediate area that Domingo and I shared, watching, if I watched anything, Blanco’s circling about the garage and driveway, reading smells with ceaseless fascination. My real anchor had been the arm around my shoulders and the soft voice in my ear. Now I raised my gaze again to the House’s painted facade, and bit my lip, forcing myself to repress a shudder.

  “Domingo, I’m afraid to go in there. What if the House is still my mother’s ally? What if the reason I was drawn here was on her business? I’m afraid. Afraid that some board will rise and trip me in the night or that the tap water will scald me or … I think I’ll sleep at a motel tonight. There’re certain to be vacancies.”

  “Stay here,” Domingo said. “I have a spare room. It is even clean. One of the workmen was staying with me until he earned enough to take a room at a boarding house.”

  I thought about it. If I left, even to go as far as a hotel, I wondered if I would have the courage to come back. I knew the temptation would be there come morning to keep running. I knew I couldn’t make myself go into the House tonight, but come morning it might be easier.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll take you up on that offer.”

  17

  The house of every one is to him his castle and

  fortress, as well for his defense against injury and

  violence as for his repose.

  —Sir Edward Coke,

  Semayne’s Case

  INSIDE THE LINES

  The next morning, I returned to Phineas House. I think I knew that I would as soon as I agreed to stay at Domingo’s rather than a motel—and, equally, I knew that if I had stayed at a motel, I would have turned the truck for Ohio and what passed for sanity the next morning.

  I’d decided, and in deciding, decided more than merely whether or not I was going to go into a certain structure again. I’d decided to face—and possibly to embrace—whatever heritage that house represented. It was a heady, frightening, and somehow wonderful decision.

  I think Domingo saw my decision in my eyes when I came out from his spare room after putting back on my clothing from the day before—I’d washed my face and such, but had figured I could shower in my own house. The night before, Domingo had loaned me a tee-shirt to serve as a nightshirt (I didn’t bother to explain I usually slept nude) and his robe so I could slip out to the bathroom in relative decency during the night.

  There’d been a curious intimacy hanging the spare toothbrush Domingo had given me next to his own, to using his soap, and a worn washcloth that was twin to the one already on the rack. Somehow, it felt even more intimate than if, overwhelmed by nerves and strangeness we’d tumbled into bed together. That would have been sex. This was a confirmation of friendship, of shared secrets, a promise to protect.

  I could see that Domingo felt that new intimacy, too, but with the larger problem of Phineas House and all it represented, he didn’t have to talk about it. Instead, he poured me a cup of coffee and slid a plate with a blueberry turnover on it toward the seat at the other side of his small kitchen table.

  “So. You’re going back into the House,” he said. “Want me to come with you?”

  “Not this time,” I said. “I need to make sure … I mean, if it’s going to be my home as well as my house
, I can’t be afraid of it. Right?”

  Domingo didn’t try to dissuade me. When I had needed a strong arm about my shoulder, he’d been quick to offer, but he also seemed to understand that too much protecting can make the other person incapable of action.

  “Just remember what I said last night. Don’t blame the House for how it may have been used.”

  “I won’t,” I said, though I knew it wouldn’t be easy.

  I was already making mental excuses why I shouldn’t use the front stair, but stick with the servant’s staircase in the back. Intellectually, I’d realized that at least one person must have died in a house that old, but it was another thing entirely to know exactly where someone had died—and that they had died by violence.

  I had worked my way through one cup of coffee and was almost done with my turnover when Domingo asked, “Mira, do you know anything about your family? From what …” He hesitated, but pushed on, “Paula Angel told you they have been in this area for a long time. Were they Spanish?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, “or if so, not precisely so. I read in one of the books you loaned me that the early settlers were not solely Spanish.”

  “Not in the least,” Domingo agreed, “though many of my relatives who would like to view themselves as pure Spanish don’t like what our own records show. The Spanish crown was quite happy to hire mercenaries of many groups. Indeed, the very C. de Baca to whom the Baca land grant was given was probably of Basque descent, not Spanish.”

  “Isn’t that just about the same?” I asked.

  Domingo gave a lazy grin, “The Spanish might like to think so, but the Basques think differently. They have their own distinct language—a language that may be the oldest in the world. Some of their customs are unique as well. They were great sailors, and many of the Spanish ships probably had Basques among their crews.”

  “Do you think my ancestors might have been Basques then?” I asked, surprised and curious.

  “No, though it is indeed possible. I just mentioned them because it is one example of many where the Spanish colonists were not all so Spanish.”

  “I don’t look very Spanish,” I said, thinking of my all too familiar reflection. “Too fair, too thick. I used to wonder if I were German, perhaps, or Irish, for all my mother’s first name is French and her surname is Russian.”

  “But you mentioned that Colette’s mother was not of Phineas House’s line,” Domingo said. “Perhaps she was of French descent.”

  “Quite possible,” I said. “I’m really going to need to look at records. Paula Angel indicated that Colette was born in Phineas House. That should be a start. Perhaps other members of her family were also born there.”

  “Let me do the research,” Domingo said. “I know people, both at the archives and the various libraries. I also read Spanish as well as I do English.”

  “And I read it not nearly as well as I do English,” I said. “But why do you want to do this?”

  “Because, Mira, you came here looking for your mother. You cannot find her, nor can her vanishing be traced in any of the usual ways. Paula Angel’s story has opened that which is, shall we say, unusual. It cannot be ignored.”

  “But what about the painting?” I said, grasping at straws, though, in all truth, I did not want to spend hours going through archive documents looking for the names of ancestors I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “Tomás can be foreman today,” Domingo said. “Most of the painting is moving along very well. The crew will work well, even without me. They are quite pleased that their work is going to be shown in the newspaper.”

  “Lord!” I said slapping myself on my forehead in astonishment. “I’d forgotten about that. I feel like I’ve lived a dozen lives since we made that appointment.”

  “In a way, you have,” Domingo said. “So, will you accept my offer?”

  “I will,” I agreed. “And I’ll raise your archives by one family library. Last time I was in there, I was mostly looking for paperwork directly related to Colette and her disappearance. It’s time I looked into whatever else is there.”

  “Bueno,” Domingo said.

  We looked at each other, and I wondered if either of us had the courage to say more about friendship, about intimacy. We might have, but the arrival of the painting crew put an end to that. I walked downstairs, hoping I didn’t look as unshowered and unkempt as I suddenly felt, and Domingo came with me. None of the crew exchanged even a sly look.

  As I walked back to the House I felt thoroughly sad that I was now so old and so unattractive that I could be found alone in a man’s house early in the morning and not even raise an eyebrow.

  Phineas House felt no different when I walked in through the kitchen door, and that was difference enough to make me stop. I’d learned so much since, dear lord, was it only since yesterday afternoon? Late afternoon at that. My interior landscape had changed. I guess I figured the exterior should too.

  “And you should be used to changes by now, Mira, my dear,” I said out loud to myself. “That’s about all you’ve had since May.”

  And even before, I finished silently, not trusting those words to the listening House. Alice Through the Looking Glass—but in my case it was out of Wonderland and into Reality. Now it looks like I’m heading back to Wonderland.

  Odd as the thought was, it cheered me. I ran up the front stairs defiantly, probably right over the place where my maternal grandfather had tumbled to his death. Showering refreshed my spirits. I went into the kitchen, poured myself a tall glass of cold water, and carried it with me into the library.

  I’d always talked to myself, and had always thought that the habit was probably a result of being an only child—and one who had been fairly solitary for the first years of her life. Now, as I looked around the book-lined room and heard myself saying, “Lord, there’s a lot of stuff here. Where should I start?” I wondered. Did I really talk to myself or had I developed the habit because in the peculiar entity of Phineas House, there had always been someone to listen?

  It was an interesting and captivating insight, but when nothing extraordinary happened—none of the silent women came gliding in to offer guidance, no books pushed themselves off the shelves to drop significantly onto the floor—I started scanning the titles on the shelves. For the sake of method, I began at the far right side of the desk, and worked my way around, using a convenient three step ladder I’d found tucked at the end of a row of shelves when necessary.

  The first group of books focused on history, not just of this area, but worldwide. The breadth of interest expressed would have done a college library proud: just about every time period and nation was represented. The depth of coverage wasn’t very good: this was a history survey, not a seminar. History merged almost imperceptibly into philosophy and theology, the two shelved together as if whoever had arranged these books hadn’t seen much difference between them. Then came books on languages: dictionaries and primers, as well as linguistic studies. There was a selection of poetry, with the emphasis on narrative epics, but almost no novels.

  I couldn’t resist browsing at first, but as the collection moved into science and mathematics, my interest waned. It wasn’t that I didn’t like these subjects—it’s amazing how often art overlaps science—but I was becoming overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information. Even just scanning the titles began to become too much. I started scanning for categories, looking for where topics shifted. The organization was idiosyncratic—Dewey of the Decimal system or whoever put the Library of Congress’s catalog together would have had fits—but there was an internal logic I could almost follow.

  For that reason, when I found a large Bible shelved separately from the rest of the books dealing with religion—even away from other translations of the Bible—I felt my heart skip a beat. This might well be what I was looking for.

  I pulled the fat, leather-bound volume down from the shelf, sat on the stepladder, and opened the volume to the front. As I had half-expected there
was a family tree printed there, and someone had filled in many of the names and dates. At the very bottom was one word, written in what I recognized as my mother’s handwriting, followed by one date: “Mira” then the year of my birth.

  I traced up to where my parents were listed, thinking that at last I was going to learn who my father was. However, Colette had remained coy. “Nicolette Bogatyr” born in 1928 was listed as my mother, but where my father should be listed, the line was blank.

  Frustrated, I traced up to Colette’s parents, my grandparents. Both names were given here. My grandfather was Nikolai Bogatyr. His wife was Chantal Lowell. Colette had been their only child.

  The same could not be said for the next generation back. Nikolai had been the middle of three children. His older sister, Pinca, had died when she was in her early twenties. His younger brother, Urbano, had survived both his siblings. I noticed that Colette’s handwriting had entered the year of Urbano’s death, but that another—possibly Nikolai’s, possibly someone else’s—had entered the names and dates of birth.