Child of a Rainless Year

by Lindskold, Jane

  Now I remembered the question that I had carried with me into the golden mandalas and I asked aloud in pure amazement, “That’s my father? I don’t believe it!”

  The golden light went ruddy, as if flushing with anger, but then paled again into more comfortable hues. The photo in the frame changed, showing the same man in successive images, each slightly older than the last. The man’s hair receded, his figure broadened, his expression grew sterner and more selfconfident. He wore glasses or the vague expression of someone who is accustomed to glasses but has put them by for vanity’s sake.

  The photos were never candid, and always focused on the head, so that I could see little of the man’s costume, but from what I could see, it always remained formal, the style old-fashioned. The photos themselves seemed old-fashioned, though I was pressed to say why. Good photography is something I admire, but have never pursued, perhaps because I so much enjoy creating with my hands.

  Then abruptly, the sequence ended with a picture that showed this man—my father—no older than maybe forty, and I was willing to bet younger than that. I continued to stare at the frame, and the golden light obliged by beginning the sequence once more. This time I garnered a few more details, including a strong sense that the man’s hair was probably dark blond or light brown, that his eyes were also light, grey maybe or pale blue.

  After this second showing, the frame lost cohesion, its browns, blacks, and greys breaking into minute particles that dispersed into the surrounding golden light until they were lost. Then the blizzard in which I had so joyfully ventured began to cohere and solidify, becoming again the sunflake mandalas, and I was aware again of my body sitting on the window seat, my feet curled beneath me, my back leaning against the wooden window alcove.

  I lowered the kaleidoscope, too confused to even feel tired. Mikey set down the book he had been reading, an action that made me feel certain I had been walking amid the sunflakes for a long while.

  “Well?” Mikey asked. “You were entranced for quite a while—well over an hour. Except for two things, you said very little.”

  “What did I say?” I asked, carefully setting the kaleidoscope on a nearby table and rising. I was certainly stiff enough to have been sitting motionless for an hour or more.

  “The first thing was mumbled,” Mikey said, “but I caught the word ‘father.’ The second was rather more clear. You said in complete astonishment ‘That’s my father? I don’t believe it!’ Then you fell silent again, right up until now.”

  I walked over to where a pitcher of iced water, the ice nearly melted now, had been set on a tray. I poured myself a tumbler full, taking delight in the deep reds of the glass, using them to draw myself back into a world other than one filled with golden light.

  Mikey waited with astonishing patience, but then he probably had experience with this disconnected feeling, the feeling that nothing around you is as vivid as the images moving in your mind’s eye.

  “I saw,” I said at last, “a picture frame, and in it the image of a man in his mid-twenties.”

  I described the man as best as I could, including in my description how, after I had expressed doubt the image had shifted, showing the same man at various ages.

  “You say the images stopped when he was maybe forty?”

  “Forty or a bit younger,” I concurred. “I thought forty at first because he seemed so, well, stolid. The second time through, I looked more carefully. He had lines on his face, at the corners of his mouth and near his eyes, one between his brow, but none of them were at all deeply graven. They were almost protolines, showing where he would have deep lines in another ten years. Know what I mean?”

  Mikey nodded, touching his own face where habitual expressions were deeply etched. “I do indeed. Now, remember, sunscreen and moisturizers are modem obsessions. A man of your mother’s generation not only wouldn’t have had access to them, he probably would have shunned them as unmanly if he did. Then there’s the question of lighting. Photographers didn’t always have access to bright lighting. The man in the pictures might have been older than you think, the lines on his face recorded more softly than today’s unforgiving cameras are likely to do.”

  I shook my head. “You’re right, Mikey, but I think I’ve got the age right. It’s just a feeling, which isn’t much to go on, but still …”

  Mikey’s nod acknowledged the potential validity of my feelings. “I wonder why you were shown static images rather than the man himself.”

  “You know perfectly well why,” I said, “but are too kind to say so. Obviously, the man is dead. My guess is that the first image was from the year I was bom—remember I asked to see ‘my father’ not Colette’s husband or lover—and that would be the year he became my father. Only after I protested did the other images appear, almost like annual shots right up until the year of his death.”

  “I don’t suppose,” Mikey said, “you recognized him.”

  “No,” I started pacing, aware even as I did so that my body ached with a preternatural fatigue. “I didn’t. I’ll tell you something else that puzzles me even more than that. He didn’t seem at all Colette’s type.”

  “Type?”

  “You’d know if you’d seen the pictures,” I said, “especially since you knew Colette. This man was stiff, stuck-up, self-absorbed. You could tell from how he looked at the camera, from how, except for a couple of pictures, he didn’t wear his glasses. Colette’s lovers—and I remember a good number of them—were all, not playboys exactly … dandies, young gentlemen about town, men who knew how to have a good time and liked doing so in the company of a pretty woman. The man in this picture looked like he’d try to be dignified while eating birthday cake.”

  “Maybe Colette’s experience with him,” Mikey hazarded, “turned her away from the serious types, especially if he rejected her when he learned she was pregnant.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “It makes as much sense as anything. Mikey, why is it whenever we find an answer, it just raises more questions?”

  “Because you haven’t answered the question that’s at the heart of this,” Mikey said, his expression kind but stem. “You came here to find out what happened to Colette, and that question remains unanswered. I admit, I thought that your father had something to do with it, but if he died young …”

  “Those photos seemed to span about ten years,” I reminded Mikey. “That’s long enough for him to have had something to do with Colette’s disappearance.”

  Mikey nodded. “You’re right. You were nine when she vanished, weren’t you?”

  “That’s right.” A strange thought came to me then. “Do you think he—my father—was killed by Colette and she fled to escape the consequences?”

  “It’s possible,” Mikey said. “It’s also possible that he died trying to do something to Colette, or even that he kidnapped her and then died and for some reason—amnesia maybe—she never returned. Let’s not place the blame for his death on her. It might be a coincidence.”

  “I’m fine with that,” I said. I’d paced back in the direction of the window seat, and now I sunk down onto the cushioned surface once more. “Mikey, I’m beat, but I’m also not going to wait another week to ask after Colette. Maybe a person isn’t included in ‘lost articles,’ but I have to try.”

  “What do you want to do?” Mikey asked.

  “It’s past lunchtime,” I said. “Let’s get something to eat. That sandwich I had earlier is less than a memory. Then I’ll take a nap. If I haven’t gotten up by, say, four, you promise you’ll wake me?”

  Mikey nodded. “I promise. That will leave eight entire hours for you to experiment with before Saturday’s mirror falls inert—and even time for a dinner break.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’m so tired I could fall asleep right now, but I’m going to make sure I eat something.”

  “Want a tray in bed?” Mikey asked.

  “No. I’d fall asleep in my sandwich.” I patted back a yawn. “Come on.”

  As we m
ade our sandwiches, I had a thought.

  “Mikey, you knew Colette far better than I did. Maybe you’d recognize the man I saw.”

  “I might,” Mikey said, smearing enough mayonnaise to explain his girth on a slice of dark rye. “But I’m reluctant to use the kaleidoscopes. They have been working for you—I’d hate to …” He piled sliced turkey on his bread, searching for the right term. “Uncalibrate it. That’s the best word I can come up with. If we don’t get anywhere this evening, I promise to try. Sunday’s kaleidoscope might work. Certainly this man is a ‘great person’ in our current difficulty. Tuesday’s might work, too, if he was an enemy of your mother, and perhaps of you.”

  The sandwich tasted wonderful, as if my body was soaking up the nutrients and singing hosannahs as it did so, but even so I was almost too tired to think.

  “Okay. I see your point. Can you keep yourself busy for the next couple of hours?”

  “Certainly,” Mikey said. “There are any number of novels here, and I’ll probably call my wife and bring her up to date.”

  “Good,” I said, forcing myself to my feet. The idea of putting my head down on the table was beginning to seem too attractive. “Remember, if I’m not up by four, you’ll wake me. Promise?”

  “Promise,” Mikey replied solemnly. “I promise.”

  Mikey not only kept his promise, he had put together another meal, one more substantial than sandwiches and chips.

  “This violates,” I said, laughing as I lifted a forkful of breaded chicken in a rich butter and cream sauce to my lips, “every diet out there. And did you have to make a cheese sauce for the broccoli?”

  “There is devil’s food cake for dessert,” was Mikey’s response, “with or without ice cream if you prefer. I spoke with my wife about your problems with exhaustion, and she suggested the menu. I,” he added with complacency, “cooked it though.”

  “It’s good,” I said, “very good, and it hits the spot. Tell me, is your wife … I mean does she …?”

  “Have an awareness of liminal space?” Mikey completed for me. “A little. We met when I was in law school and she was taking teaching courses at the same university. The lecture halls were in the same building and we both had a tendency to arrive early.”

  “A teacher?” I asked. “What was her subject?”

  “English: grammar and reading. Like you, she taught at the grade school level, so she learned to be a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. She’s retired now, of course, like I am.”

  We talked a bit about Mikey’s family, and then Mikey said almost awkwardly. “I called Domingo for help because I wasn’t sure I could find the grocery store. He asked after you, and I filled him in. He wanted you to know he’s thinking about you, and wishes you well.”

  “Thank you,” I said, then grew guarded. “You didn’t tell him anything else, did you? Like about fires?”

  “Nothing,” Mikey said, making a “cross my heart” gesture over his chest. “He did ask more about the Pincas family, though, and I filled him in where I could. I don’t know a great deal about Fernando’s branch. My interest has always been with Amerigo’s.”

  “Makes sense. How’s he taking it? I mean, finding out he’s sort of related to Phineas House.”

  “Fairly well,” Mikey said. “Actually, I think the information was something of a relief. He’s felt a connection to the House for so long, finding there was a reason was a good thing.”

  “He’s not … well, envious that I own it, not him?” I hated to ask the question, but there was no avoiding it.

  “I don’t think so,” Mikey said, “but then I wouldn’t be the one he’d tell, would I?”

  “You being my trustee and all,” I said. “No. I guess not.”

  When our early dinner was completed and the kitchen tidied, if not cleaned, we adjourned to the front parlor again. I felt good. If the morning’s experiment had been a disappointment in many ways, it had at least banished my fear of using the kaleidoscope.

  “Ready?” Mikey asked.

  “I’m going to ask,” I said by way of reply, “to have the answer to what happened to Colette. I think that’s better than searching for her as if she’s a lost shoe.”

  “Good idea,” Mikey said. “Since no one but Colette knows why she rode out that day, that certainly qualifies as a secret.”

  “No one but Colette,” I said, raising the kaleidoscope to my eye, “and whoever she was going to find—if it was someone, not someplace she was seeking.”

  “True,” Mikey said, and the single word echoed and reechoed in my ears as I let myself sink into contemplation of the slowly moving golden mandalas.

  I lost myself in their shifting beauty, moving deeper among them until they turned like pinwheels on all sides.

  “What happened to Colette?” I asked. “What is the secret of her disappearance?”

  The pinwheels spun around me, faster and faster, until I could hear the buzz of their edges against the wind. Their patterns vanished, replaced by isolated blurs of golden light that surrounded me like a host of miniature suns. Then the individual suns exploded, their lights overlapping, washing me in a golden tide, overwhelming me.

  I closed my eyes, but the light penetrated my eyelids, permeating every cell of my body, searing my optic nerves with a shrill ecstatic cry before ebbing. When I dared open my eyes again, I thought I would be blind, but my sight was perfectly clear. I was standing at the edge of a dirt road, and a stylish gig I knew very well, drawn by a familiar bay horse was coming down the road in my direction.

  Colette, teleidoscope in hand as if she had just been peering through it, held the reins.

  I stood there on the side of the dirt road, shifting my foot when a bit of gravel dug into my instep. My gaze greedily devoured every detail of the woman driving the gig, finding her both like and not like I remembered her.

  One difference was so obvious I almost laughed aloud for not expecting it. Colette was shorter than I remembered. It was hard to judge for certain with her seated, but I guessed she was no taller than my adult self. She also looked younger than I recalled, but, again, that made sense. She had been in her midthirties when she had disappeared, almost twenty years younger than I was now.

  Other things were precisely as I recalled them: her elegance, her grace, her haughty arrogance, the angle at which she carried her head, the piercing sharpness of her gaze. There was something else that niggled at my memory, something I could not lay hold of, and I let it go, captivated by the moment.

  Colette was drawing closer now. I could hear the squeak and jingle of harness leather. I thought I could catch the scent of Colette’s perfume even over the odor of horse sweat, but that was almost certainly my imagination.

  I glanced down at myself. I was dressed in the clothes I had put on after my nap: a loose ankle-length skirt in a silver-shot green, a scoop-necked cotton tee in pale grey. I’d put on earrings, long dangling ones strung from freshwater pearls and jade beads, but no other jewelry. My feet were bare.

  I knew Colette. Those bare feet alone would be reason not to acknowledge me, but a style of dress that in the late fifties would have been defined as bohemian at best would also mean her gaze would pass over me as if I were nothing more than a lizard sunning myself on a rock. Colette was not one to nod to passersby.

  I must speak first, that was clear, but what could I say? What should I call her? Certainly not “Mother.” If I was indeed intercepting her on the day of her disappearance, her only child was nine year’s old. At best she’d think me flippant, at worst some inmate gotten loose from the mental hospital.

  “Mrs. Bogatyr!” I said as the gig drew closer. “Mrs. Bogatyr! I have a message for you.”

  Colette raised the teleidoscope to one eye, I thought to look at me, but the slow scan of the crystal sphere passed over me as if I wasn’t there.

  Angered at this rudeness, I called again, raising my voice to be heard over the steady fall of Shooting Star’s hooves.

  “Mrs. Bogatyr! I
need to speak with you. It’s very important.”

  The gig drew abreast, but Colette did not pull up the horse, did not slow in the least.

  “Mrs. Bogatyr! Colette! Mother! For heaven’s sake, listen to me!”

  No pause, but in the gig’s shining metal trappings, I saw the truth. I cast no reflection. I wasn’t there except as an observer.

  I should have known. Mikey had confirmed my deduction that the kaleidoscopes were meant for scrying, and scrying was watching, looking. It was nothing more. The gypsy did not slide into the world in her crystal ball. I was not Alice, gone through the looking glass.