Child of a Rainless Year

by Lindskold, Jane

  Domingo almost disappointed me. His brown eyes got very wide, and I saw the doubt in them. Then he shook his head, not in disbelief, but as if disbelief was a physical thing he could shake from him.

  “¿Verdad? Well, if you say so, then so it must be. I wonder why you saw it now, there, up on a ladder. This is not a good place for visions.”

  Because, I thought, I was on a ladder, neither on the ground nor in the air—liminal space, of a sort. And because I was staring into the borders between the white trim and the turquoise paint, trying to get it right. And maybe most of all because Phineas House now knows I know more than I did, and maybe it tried to show me something.

  I said none of this aloud. Aloud I said, “I’m not completely sure, Domingo. I have some theories, though. Can I invite you to dinner tonight, here, at the House? It’s going to take some telling, and I’d rather not do so in a restaurant. I also have an experiment I’d like to try—one that definitely can’t be tried in a restaurant.”

  “I will come,” he said promptly, “on one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “No more ladders for you,” he said sternly. “Not today, maybe not for several days. I do not like how dying of broken necks seems to run in your family. I would prefer you not do so as well.”

  “Deal,” I said. “Can I drive a car? I want to go to the grocery and pick up a few things for dinner.”

  “You can,” Domingo agreed, “but better. Let me have one of the men drive you. I think we will need more paint thinner to deal with that paint splatter, and maybe even more rags.”

  “No need to worry about rags,” I said. “I’m not sure that a square inch of fabric was ever thrown out in Phineas House. I have plenty, but I’ll accept a driver—and gladly.”

  In fact, I admitted sheepishly to myself as I trotted upstairs to change out of my overalls, I think I was hinting that I needed one.1 wonder if Domingo caught that, too. It would be like him.

  After running errands, I went inside and busied myself with mindless domestic tasks. I’d decided on a nice baked chicken and herbs, with a side of brown rice and a big salad. Usually, I didn’t like using the oven in the summer, but the new model I’d bought was so well-sealed that it released very little extra heat.

  I juiced fresh lemons and made lemonade. I picked vegetables from the garden and worked on a salad. I forced myself to concentrate hard on every task at hand, a little afraid I might go slipping off again.

  Domingo showed up when the chicken was about five minutes from being done, a pastry box in one hand, Blanco bounding at his heels. The chicken smelled wonderful, and you don’t have to take my word for it. Blanco rose on his hind legs and danced in front of the oven door like somebody or other before the Tabernacle.

  “I hope you don’t mind that I brought him with me,” Domingo said. “He can go out into the garden if you like.”

  “Blanco is fine with me, but chicken isn’t fine with dogs, at least the bones aren’t.”

  “Blanco lives to believe he will be fed table scraps,” Domingo said. “I think it is very good for everyone to have a dream.”

  “And I,” I said, reaching into a cabinet and pulling out a box of what I knew were Blanco’s favorite treats, “thought I might have another guest for dinner.”

  We grinned at each other like a couple of kids, then I gave Blanco a few treats, and motioned Domingo to a seat at the kitchen table.

  “I hope you don’t mind eating in here. We could have done the whole grand dining room thing, but it seemed ridiculous for two.”

  “I like sitting here,” he said. “You can look out at the garden. Did you eat here when you were a little girl?”

  “No,” I said, getting out a bottle of wine. I’d gotten a red, even though I knew it’s supposed to be the wrong type for chicken. I’d always found the rich color sustaining. “I either ate in the dining room or—most of the time—in my nursery. That had a window that looked over the garden, too, but my table wasn’t there. The garden window was in the bedroom part.”

  “The window that has the tigers and bramble roses around it,” he said, accepting with a nod of thanks the glass of wine I handed him. “I remember.”

  “Funny,” I said, putting my own glass down on the counter so I could pull the chicken from the oven. “I never knew what was there. The house was painted mostly white when I was a girl. It did nothing to show up the details.”

  “Perhaps that was the reason why,” Domingo said reasonably. “Not everyone would like to live in a house that looks like it belongs on a fairground midway—or would if it was covered in flashing lights.”

  “Please, no,” I said. “The bright colors are nice, but flashing lights … I don’t think the neighborhood association would agree.”

  “Don’t worry,” Domingo said. “No one has suggested it.”

  I brought the chicken to the table in the bright amber Pyrex dish in which it had been cooked. A matching casserole dish held the fluffy brown rice, and a large salad was in the red bowl from the Fiesta ware set. I’d set my place with blue, Domingo’s with green. It made for a colorful, but surprisingly harmonious, assemblage.

  “It’s sort of uncivilized,” I said, “but the best topping for the rice is the drippings from the chicken. There are all sorts of herbs in there, plus onions, and garlic.”

  “It smells wonderful,” Domingo said, “and not uncivilized at all.”

  We made it through dinner on small talk about cooking and our childhoods, but my near fall that afternoon and what I’d promised to tell him hung over the conversation. As I snapped on the coffeemaker and cleared away the worst of the mess from dinner, I launched in to my account.

  “The reason I nearly fell today,” I began, “I had a vision of my mother—my mother riding off on the day she disappeared.”

  Over coffee and blueberry pie, I told Domingo everything I had seen, stressing again how detailed the vision had been. Then I backtracked, explaining about liminal space, and how I’d been reading about it just before I came out to paint.

  “I suppose that could have put me into a suggestible frame of mind,” I said.

  “Very likely,” Domingo agreed. “If I understand what you are saying, that is. You are saying that you had a vision because the possibility of seeing between spaces had been put into your mind.”

  “Essentially, yes. You see, the one thing I hadn’t told you was how I happened to be reading that section this morning. It’s well ahead of where I was, in a different journal even. The night after I got so scared, when I came out of the shower, the journal was waiting for me on my pillow, open to that page.”

  Domingo cocked an eyebrow at me. “Do you think I had anything to do with that?”

  “No, I don’t. I locked the back door when I came in, so I know it wasn’t one of the painters either. I think it was Phineas House herself who did it, the House or one of her agents. I’m not sure which, and I’m not sure just how much free will the silent women have.”

  “Silent women?”

  I told him about them, about how they were the reason the House was so sparkling clean these days. How they had been there when I was a child, and how after I’d been back for a while they had reappeared.

  “I don’t see them very often,” I concluded, “but there’s no doubt they’re here. This place is spotless. My bed is made for me. They don’t do laundry or cook, but I wonder if they’re just being polite. In my mother’s day they were physically visible to everyone who came by. Your father and you probably saw them.”

  “There was a day,” Domingo said, “not long ago, when I heard the vacuum cleaner running when you weren’t home.”

  “That was probably one of them,” I said. “They’re not above using modern methods to do their work.”

  “So they’re not ghosts, not insubstantial,” he said.

  “I don’t know if they’re ghosts or not,” I said. “I don’t know what they are. I just have a feeling they’re connected somehow to the House an
d its care.”

  “That would explain,” Domingo said, “why there were so few problems when the House was closed. I mean, dust accumulated, but there were no vermin, no major damage. I inspected the place, but I did very little to the interior.”

  “I thought of that,” I said. “Accumulating dust might have seemed like a wise move to the House, though I have the distinct impression she is well … house proud?”

  We shared an uncomfortable laugh at my pun, then I went on.

  “I’ve been learning a lot, but obviously Phineas House felt I was missing something important. How she knew that what I needed was in Aunt May’s journal …”

  “Maybe one of the silent women read them,” Domingo said practically. “If they can use cleaning appliances, well, certainly they can handle a book. Are you sure the silent women are extensions of the House?”

  “No, I’m not,” I admitted. “Maybe the relationship is symbiotic. The silent women keep Phineas House clean in exchange for something. I don’t think they’re enslaved to the House. The little touches, like the sprig of lavender on my pillow, go above and beyond servitude.”

  “And they were here in your mother’s day,” Domingo said, thoughtfully.

  “Yes.” I hesitated. “But, Domingo, I don’t think they liked her. In fact, I know they were frightened of her. That makes me wonder … Did Phineas House like my mother? I’ve thought she must have, based on what Paula Angel said, but now I’m wondering.”

  “We cannot know,” Domingo said, “until we better understand the House and whatever heritage has come to you through it. Certainly, you inherited more than real estate.”

  “True,” I said, “and I have a thought about that. Do you remember I told you that Colette was holding something in her hand in the vision?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I think I know what it is. Are you done with your dessert? Would you come upstairs so I can show you something?”

  Domingo nodded twice by way of answer, but as we cleared the last dishes away, he looked down at Blanco’s hopeful face.

  “But I think Blanco needs to go out into the garden. I will carry the chicken bones out into the trash, but that will not keep him from looking.”

  I brought out another dog biscuit. “Consolation prize, then.”

  Blanco went outside happily enough, and I couldn’t blame him. The evening was lovely. The air in the garden scented with roses. I would have rather sat out there myself, but what I had in mind needed light.

  When Domingo returned, we filled our coffee mugs and went upstairs.

  “I want to show you something I found in my mother’s suite,” I said. “I could have brought it down, but I want you to see exactly what I found.”

  Mother’s room was as immaculate as the silent women could make it, but nothing could make it inviting to me. I still felt like a trespasser. One of these days, I was going to have to make some redecorating decisions. Domingo followed me, his manners so perfect that I didn’t even feel uncomfortable with the fact that I was taking him into a bedroom—well, maybe I felt a little overaware.

  The better I knew Domingo, the more I was sure that if things had been different I would have already developed a massive crush on him. As it was, I couldn’t decide whether or not I was glad that he was the one person in whom I could confide all this weirdness. On the one hand, it brought us closer, but on the other the peculiar intimacy made it impossible for me to tell whether any other kind of intimacy was possible.

  Or something like that. All I knew was that I was very glad that my mother’s room and the towering canopied bed where she had taken so many lovers did not seem at all tantalizing to either Domingo or myself.

  “Over here,” I said, taking him over to the vanity. “Drag a chair over. I want you to see things basically like I found them.”

  First I opened the drawer where the kaleidoscopes were hidden. Domingo was satisfyingly impressed both with the secret drawer and the treasure it concealed. He had too refined an eye for beauty to dismiss these as mere toys.

  I handed him one to look through, deliberately not picking from the cabalistic seven. For all I knew, each of these was symbolically linked in some way, but of those I was certain. The one I had handed Domingo had an octagonal barrel adorned with stained glass patterned like a bouquet of purple iris. The object case at the end contained shifting pieces of jewel-toned glass in many of the same tones. I wondered if they were scraps left over from making the barrel. It seemed likely.

  After making appreciative sounds at the patterns, and looking with a trace of innocent longing at the rest of the collection, Domingo tilted his head thoughtfully.

  “Beautiful, yes, but I don’t think that this is all you have to show. Nor do I think you are just showing them to me because you think they might be worth something to collectors.”

  “Right,” I said. “I’m not going to put everything back in yet, but let me close that drawer for a moment, and open the one on the left.”

  I did so, and Domingo shifted his chair around to view the array of teleidoscopes.

  “Similar, but not the same,” he said. “What’s this? One is missing.”

  I’d put back the teleidoscope with which I’d been playing earlier that day, and now the drawer looked pretty much as it had when I’d first opened it.

  “That’s right,” I said. “One is missing, and what I saw in Colette’s hand in my vision looked remarkably like the missing piece.”

  Domingo nodded, “So, you think that what Colette was holding in the vision was a kaleidoscope?”

  “A teleidoscope, actually,” I said. “Take a look through this one, and you’ll immediately see what I mean.”

  Domingo did so, holding the end toward the light and exclaiming in delight.

  “Wonderful!” he said. “That is amazing. The lamp shade, the wallpaper, even a bit of the rug.”

  He moved the teleidoscope, casting the end here and there, chuckling almost involuntarily at the array of images. When he lowered it, he was smiling.

  “The kaleidoscope, that was lovely, but this is a marvel. The whole world becomes a picture—a bit art deco in style, perhaps, through this one, but marvelous.”

  “I like it, too,” I said. “I’ve had that one in my room and have been viewing the room through it. Try the carpet. The pattern broken into patterns is really something else.”

  Domingo did so, then tried a few other things. When he caught Colette’s portrait in the lens at the end, he lowered the teleidoscope and studied the portrait instead.

  “But why would she take a teleidoscope with her on a carriage ride? Was she going to wait for someone and wanted something with which to amuse herself?”

  “In my vision, I saw her driving the gig and looking through the teleidoscope,” I said. “Now that I think about it, she reminded me of a sea captain looking through a telescope.”

  Domingo was neither slow nor stupid. “This is related to what you were telling me about liminal space, isn’t it? The teleidoscopes take our normal world and shape it into patterns. You think she had some way of using those patterns to find something?”

  “That’s it,” I said. “Mother had a thing about mirrors.”

  “Really?” Domingo said, looking around the room. “I would never have guessed this.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him and continued shaping my thought. “Mirrors are integral to how both kaleidoscopes and teleidoscopes work. I think it’s all related somehow. I don’t know exactly how, but I thought I might experiment.”

  “Experiment with the teleidoscopes, using them to locate liminal space, see what visions they bring?”

  “Exactly. Would you be willing to stand by?” I said. “Last time I had a vision I nearly fell off a ladder. I don’t think anything like that is going to happen here, but I want to be careful.”

  “I will stand by,” Domingo said. “Only, if it is at all possible, can you speak aloud what you see? I understand this may be too distracting, but I wo
uld like to know.”

  I shrugged. “I can only try. If it’s too distracting, I’ll tell you.”

  “Fair,” Domingo said, leaning back in his chair and extending the teleidoscope to me. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  I took the teleidoscope and tried to get comfortable in the vanity’s delicate little chair. It took a little shifting, but I managed. Then I held the teleidoscope to one eye and closed the other. Not wanting to complicate this with images of Colette, I focused instead on the carpet. The patterns were lovely, but I didn’t see anything unusual. Belatedly, I realized I’d forgotten my promise to Domingo and started talking.

  “You’re right about the patterns being almost art deco. I wonder if any of those designers actually used teleidoscopes for inspiration. I think I’ve read about their doing that.”