Child of a Rainless Year

by Lindskold, Jane

  I was tired enough to agree, leaning back in the leather chair in the office where we’d been working. When I heard the soft clink of a glass onto the coaster on the desk, I said, “Thank you,” without opening my eyes.

  “You’re welcome, Mira,” said a soft, female voice.

  I opened my eyes quickly enough to see one of the silent women leaving the room. She used the door, just like any person would. Was that habit or necessity? I didn’t seem to have the energy to worry about an answer.

  Dinner, which we had at the Landmark Grill in the Plaza Hotel, did a great job of restoring my energy. Over dinner, Mikey and Domingo carried most of the conversation, discussing home repairs and restoration, mostly. Mikey’s hobby was carpentry, and I enjoyed listening to the two men talk. They did so without the one-upmanship that is so common in man-to-man conversations among near strangers, each feeding the other’s tale with one of his own.

  After a while, I started participating, for although I hadn’t done much renovation work until I came to Phineas House, I was a builder in my own way. We chatted through dessert and coffee. Then Domingo, after glancing at me and assuring himself that I was no longer on the verge of collapse, suggested we go for a stroll around the Plaza.

  “There are some very interesting buildings there,” Domingo said. “I worked on a few.”

  Mikey agreed, though I suspected that a stroll around the Plaza area would be just about his limit. He really was in astonishingly bad shape, but I put that down to living where the weather was cold enough to make Ohio seem tropical. If you didn’t like winter sports, just how much exercise could you get?

  Domingo gave his tour-guide spiel much as he had done for me, though with more attention to specific details of structures rather than to local history. I trailed behind, enjoying seeing the buildings again, my gaze scanning the Plaza for a structure that shouldn’t be there.

  I found it. The windmill overlaid the gazebo and other structures, complete in every detail, but translucent. Paula Angel sat on the base, swinging her long legs beneath her ruffled skirt. Without saying anything to the two men, I walked over to her, marvelling that as I did so everything became more solid, so that by the time I reached the ghost’s side, the modern Plaza was less substantial than the windmill’s rough wood.

  “Hey,” Paula said. “Walking out with a couple guys. Not too bad.”

  “Not too bad,” I agreed. “How are you?”

  “Making do, making do. Not a hell of a lot changes here, y’know. I drift.”

  “Drift on over to my place some time,” I said. “You’ve got to get bored here. I could use some girl talk.”

  “Girl talk is about guy talk,” Paula said with a laugh. “You gotta guy you can’t figure out?”

  “Something like that,” I admitted, “but mostly I remembered what you said about being bored. You helped me out with what you told me about my mother. I guess I wanted to help you in return.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Paula said. “Hey, the fat guy. He looks familiar, but I don’t know why. He been around here before?”

  “He has,” I said. “Seems to know you. Calls you Pablita, not Paula, though.”

  She narrowed her eyes, her lips curving in a sensuous smile. Then she laughed.

  “I remember that one. Mikey, he called himself. Fat kid. Shy with the girls. I told him a few things. Tell him to come visit some time.”

  “I will,” I said. “I’d better get back before they miss me.”

  “Oh, they miss you,” Paula said. “One more than the other, I think.”

  She laughed again, mocking, wicked, innocent, and faded away wherever ghosts go when they’re not where you can see them.

  Thursday, Mikey suggested that I practice with the Jupiter kaleidoscope. I was hesitant.

  “Success seems like a strange thing to augur for,” I protested. “Abstract. At best I keep imagining one of those Magic Eight Ball toys: ‘Answer cloudy, try back later.’”

  “Well,” Mikey said. “That would be useful, wouldn’t it? I doubt you’ll get anything so clear.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s why I’m not sure that I’m up to it. Something more concrete would be easier.”

  “Like your true love’s face?” Mikey asked mischievously, fingering the copper case of the Venus kaleidoscope. I’d polished it since my initial discovery, and now it glowed as warm and welcoming as a lover’s kiss.

  I made inarticulate sounds of protest and Mikey laughed.

  “Relax, Mira. I was only teasing. Honestly, love is probably the first thing anyone ever augurs for. Did you ever think about how many little rituals there are for it—from pulling petals from a daisy to those intricate games that involve counting the letters in your name and rearranging them to find the initials of your future sweetheart’s name? I bet the first question you ever asked one of those Magic Eight Balls was whether some fellow liked you.”

  “I think it was about whether I’d passed an exam,” I fibbed. “Still, we weren’t talking about auguring for love, but for success. How would I scry for something so tenuous?”

  “If it were me,” Mikey said, “I’d find some very precise way of phrasing the question in my mind, then I’d look into the kaleidoscope with the intention of seeing the answer as a visual image.”

  “You do it then,” I said, childishly stubborn.

  Mikey laughed and shook his head reprovingly. “I told you, Mira, you are more likely to learn something than I am.”

  I drummed my knuckles lightly on my forehead as I considered this. What, after all, did I have to lose?

  Certainty that you will find out what happened to Colette, came the answer, drifting from the depths of my subconscious. If you don’t get an answer, you will fear that success is beyond you. If you do … well, then you’re committed.

  I turned the kaleidoscope in question over and over in my hands. The outer case was pierced tin through which gold shone softly. I recalled that the colors within were dominated by azure and blue, that little figures of lightning bolts were mixed in with the more usual gems and irregularly shaped pieces of glass. It hadn’t hurt me to look through it then. Certainly, it couldn’t now.

  “Okay,” I said. “I apologize for being difficult. I’ll give it a try.”

  “Thank you, Mira,” Mikey said seriously. “Actually, I prefer your reluctance. Usually, when I tutor someone in these arts my problem is the reverse—too much eagerness, too little thought.”

  Tutored others? I thought. Of course he has. Didn’t he say that these talents are inherent in almost everyone, but that they can run stronger in families? He’s a descendent of Aldo Pincas, too, so obviously he has gifts that he could pass on to his own children and grandchildren.

  I raised the kaleidoscope almost to my eye, then lowered it again as I thought of a question.

  “Mikey, would I have managed to learn these things if I’d never come to Las Vegas?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not. Much would have had to do with your frame of mind. Frankly, as long as you were blocking yourself artistically, I think you would have blocked yourself in other ways, too. If you had ever let go and expanded your potential, I suspect you would have found yourself taking a lot more unexpected shortcuts or having insights into things. Whether you would have realized you were employing liminal space to do this or not …”

  He shrugged.

  “I might have just ended up one of those ‘wise’ people,” I said, “or maybe lucky in my finances and relationships, except it wouldn’t have been luck at all.”

  “And you might not have always had true visions,” Mikey said. “There are all sorts of edges out there, and not all of them are the edges between what might happen and what will, some are simply between mights.”

  “You’re making my head ache,” I said with a laugh.

  “So look through the kaleidoscope and see what you see,” Mikey said. “Give yourself a rest from questions.”

  I lifted the kaleidoscope, and
this time I did as Mikey had commanded. I relaxed, studying the shifting images, looking as I had learned to do for the unique element amid the shifting multiplicities. As I did so I repeated over and over in my mind: “I want to find out what happened to Colette. Will I succeed?”

  Amid the drifting lightning bolts I found one that wasn’t like the others. I focused in on it, watching as it grew within my line of sight. The others had been represented like jagged lines, longer top to bottom as lightning bolts rain from the skies. As I focused on this one, it drifted onto its horizontal axis, the jagged length transforming into a road that jolted violently across a dark landscape.

  Then, even as in my dream of a few nights before, the roads multiplied: two becoming four, four eight, eight sixteen, sixteen thirty-two, thirty-two sixty-four. Each road was the violent blue-white of a lightning strike in a summer storm, each seared my retina with a vivid black afterimage, so that the jagged roads multiplied even more.

  I struggled to focus in on one road, the road I thought was the original, watched as it stretched on to the horizon. I realized that this road and its multiplicity of fellows were curving slightly downward, each jagging back and forth, back and forth, but bending slowly and almost imperceptibly down. Before it happened, I knew what they would do.

  The roads joined again at a hub an infinity of distance below their point of origin, the whole pattern forming an enormous globe, fit together puzzle-piece tight, puzzle-piece perfect, fusing into one eye-achingly blue-white ball and its dark afterimage. The roads went nowhere but to themselves, to their source.

  The image held for a long moment, then either I lost my concentration or the show was done, for the twin globes vanished and I was again watching the shifting patterns of gentler blue and white mingled into pretty mandalas ornamented with stylized lightning bolts.

  “So what did it mean?” I asked Mikey after I’d taken two aspirin, and told him as precisely as I could what I’d seen. “Yes or No?”

  “I’m not certain,” he said somberly. “Iconography is very personal, but usually there are enough common symbols that I can interpret visions. This one started out clearly enough. You saw a road, but that multiplying … you say you saw something similar in a dream?”

  “I did. Colette and her gig going down a bunch of identical roads.”

  “Did they end up in a globe in that dream?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember clearly. Something about a hub and a void. That’s it.”

  “And we probably shouldn’t make too much of it, either,” Mikey said. “After all, the last time anyone saw your mother she was driving her gig down a road. It makes sense you’d dream of her.”

  “And this vision, the one in the kaleidoscope,” I asked.

  “I’d guess that it means that there are still too many options left undecided for a clear vision of success or failure. You could try scrying to refine the options … .”

  “Not now,” I said. “Maybe later. My head hurts and my eyes feel like I really did stare into a lightning storm. Mikey, can you bear with me if I just go take a nap?”

  “Certainly,” he said.

  “Mikey?” I asked, my voice sounding like that of a very little girl.

  “Yes.”

  “When do you have to go back to Minnesota?”

  “Not until after Saturday at least,” he assured me. “After that, we’ll talk.”

  Friday morning I woke early, probably because Thursday’s afternoon nap had extended into the evening. I’d crawled out of some very vivid dreams into that cloudy, foggy state that’s so annoying because you’re neither awake nor really asleep. I’d managed to awaken enough to thud down the hall to the bathroom.

  When I staggered back into my room, I had found a tray at my bedside containing an array of perfect invalid food, including English muffins and thick strawberry jam. I smeared half of one muffin with butter and jam, and as I was chewing my first mouthful I had noticed two neatly folded notes on the tray next to the teapot.

  One was from Mikey, telling me he’d gone back to his hotel, and that I could phone him if I woke up and wanted company, but that I should sleep as much as I wished, that he could easily entertain himself. The second note was from Domingo, offering to run any errands I might need taken care of, and urging me to take it easy.

  Half an English muffin had been almost more than I could handle, and after rinsing away the worst of the stickiness with a conveniently placed glass of water, I apologized to my teeth—I simply couldn’t make the trek back to the bathroom again—and crashed back to sleep.

  So it was that Friday morning I awoke after something more than twelve hours of sleep feeling bright-eyed and energetic, though with a mouth that tasted awful. The tray had been removed, but the tumbler of water had been refilled. This I drained in a couple of large gulps. The inside of my mouth still tasted like the death of all strawberry factories.

  I rose and headed for the bathroom, marvelling that the same trek had been nearly impossible to manage the night before. I sang as I showered, dressed in a bright patchwork skirt and green blouse, and headed downstairs to make coffee. Domingo wouldn’t be by for breakfast for hours yet—if at all.

  Over bacon and eggs—cooked by me, though I thanked the silent women for their service the night before—I caught up on my e-mail, rapid-firing messages off to various friend, including Hannah in Albuquerque. I’d mentioned earlier that I was planning to go to the State Fair with Domingo, and she’d suggested we pick a day and meet up. It sounded good to me, almost as good as her casual assumption that Domingo might be more than a handyman playing local guide.

  After I’d sent off the messages, I found myself thinking about Domingo. My thoughts had a copper tinge, and I knew why. Today was Friday, and the reigning kaleidoscope was the copper-mirrored one dedicated to Venus and matters of love.

  I walked upstairs with steady purposefulness. I knew how to use the kaleidoscopes now, and I even had a suspicion that asking a question about my love life wouldn’t drain me as had inquiring after Colette. This was simple and straightforward, surely. There would be one of two answers: Yes or No. I supposed that if Domingo himself wasn’t sure about his feelings there could be a “Maybe,” but even that wouldn’t be too bad.

  The kaleidoscopes weren’t in the upper parlor where Mikey and I had been looking at them the day before. I found them back in their secret compartments, neatly locked away. I wondered if Mikey had done it, or the silent women. Somehow I thought Mikey had. For all that he knew so much more than I did, he was very polite, even respectful, as if the mere fact that I had inherited Phineas House was a matter to respect.

  I slid open the right hand drawer and looked down at the kaleidoscopes. All were there, each in its correct place. My hand drifted toward the copper casing, moving slowly, so I could see my fingers reflected in the shining metal.

  I stopped a few inches short of picking it up and stood there in that attitude long enough that I became aware of the wood creaking as the House warmed with the rising sun. Then I straightened, leaving the kaleidoscope in its place.

  Using it to inquire after Domingo’s feelings wouldn’t be right. It would be too much like spying on him, worse really. If I peeked in his window, all I could see were details of his exterior life. Using the kaleidoscope would be like peering into his heart.

  I went down the kitchen and set up a fresh pot of coffee. Then I wandered out into the garden. The early morning chill was giving way as the sun rose higher, but all the plants continued in their early morning freshness. Without volition, my fingers found something daisylike growing among one of the borders. I plucked away the petals one by one: He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not.

  The last petal was torn in two or perhaps it had partially been eaten by some bug. I stared down at it feeling dismay all out of proportion to what I was seeing. I was still looking at the partial flower petal when I heard the gate open and Blanco’s yap of greeting.

  I crushed
the flower into my palm and moved quickly—though whether to greet Domingo or to hide what I had been doing, I don’t know.

  “Good morning,” I said brightly. “Let me run inside and turn on the coffee.”

  25

  However, researchers discovered that not only did synesthesia take different forms within the same family, but that even when it took the same form—colored letters, for example—the colors perceived varied greatly from one family member to another.

  —Patricia Lynne Duffy,

  Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens

  INSIDE THE LINES

  Mikey called while Domingo and I were on our second cup.

  “How are you feeling, Mira?” he asked.

  “Much better. Sorry about pooping out on you yesterday.”