“Well, at least as far as women were concerned,” said Liza, taking a bite of an onion bagel. She and Sherry kept a supply of bagels in their freezer: Sherry was addicted to bagels and Starbucks coffee.
Sherry sighed. “Ah, yes, the separation of art and soul. That’s a rich topic. Think of all the great writers—and painters—who were real shits.”
“The correlation of one’s work with one’s personality is tenuous at best, I would think,” said Liza.
“Ah, yes.” Meredith wiped a dribble of milk off her chin. “But the work gives some indication of how the psyche functions. There are patterns which persist within people, things which remain more or less constant. I liked your work, by the way,” she said to Liza. “It really is Southern gothic, but with a twist. I love the character of the mother in that one story . . . what’s the title?”
“ ‘Perennials’?” said Liza.
“Right. Is that based on your own mother?”
“More or less. I’ve exaggerated a little, but not much.”
Meredith nodded. “That whole thing about wearing white gloves whenever she goes out is great. I guess that’s a real Southern thing, huh?”
Liza shrugged. “I guess. I think maybe it’s more generational—and class, too. My mother was very into the old-Virginia-family thing, being upper class and all that.”
Sherry smiled and ran her hand along Liza’s neck. “And look how low you’ve sunk; you’re shacked up with a Polish-Jew dyke. Your mother would roll over in her grave.”
Claire was a little embarrassed by the intimacy of Sherry’s gesture, and her eyes roved around the room. Sherry’s paintings were all over the walls of Liza’s cabin: bright, primary colors in cheerful designs, amusing paintings of cats, all of it fun and accessible if not particularly groundbreaking.
After breakfast, Claire accompanied Meredith from one studio to another, viewing finished and half-finished pieces. Two Joe’s work consisted mostly of sculptured animals—clay, wood, and occasionally bronze. There was a raw unfinished power to his work, and he told Claire that it sold very well in the Southwest. He had a dealer in Sante Fe who regularly sold thousands of dollars’ worth of his sculptures.
“She markets me as a ‘Native American’ artist,” Two Joe said as Meredith ran her hand along the smooth flanks of a rearing bronze mustang.
“I like it,” she said. “Your work is really good.” She sighed. “I wish I could afford it.”
“Thank you, Lightning Flash,” Two Joe replied solemnly, but Claire could see the corners of his mouth twitching.
Next they visited Gary Robinson’s studio. Gary wasn’t there—he and Billy had taken Billy’s car into town to run errands for Liza—but he had given them the key to both studios. Claire wondered why Gary had the key to Billy’s studio.
As they roamed Gary’s immaculate, tidy studio, sunlight filtering through an overhead skylight, Claire studied his use of form and style. Not surprisingly, she thought, his paintings were a series geometric designs, precise and mathematical and as rigidly structured as a Bach partita. To Gary, color was secondary, Claire could see; design was everything. There was beauty within the formality of his work, Claire thought, but it was cool and controlled, the effect carefully calculated, reflecting a deep desire for order and precision.
Billy’s paintings, on the other hand, were wild and flowing, with swirling colors out of a psychedelic nightmare. They appeared to be an uncensored expression of his subconscious, an unleashing of pure id upon canvas. His work was raw and exhilarating; the brush strokes swelled with impatience and passion, with all the energy of a runaway train. Claire felt a little dizzy as she stood before one large sprawling painting of reds and ochers that pulsated in every direction, as though they wanted to escape from the confines of the canvas.
Claire looked at Meredith, who stood, chin in her hand, head cocked to one side, contemplating the painting. “The title on this one is interesting,” she said finally. “Marieke. Sounds like someone’s name . . . an old girlfriend, I wonder?”
“Well?” said Claire. “Any clues there, you think?”
Meredith sighed and shook her head. “I’ll tell you one thing: I wouldn’t have thought Billy had it in him.”
“It is a little surprising, isn’t it? They seem almost—well, out of character for him.”
“Ah,” said Meredith. “Characters exist only in plays. People are much more complex—or, as I always say, contradiction makes the man.” She did a cartwheel across the floor, then brushed her hands off. “Shall we go have lunch? I’m starving.”
Claire laughed. “You frighten me sometimes, you know that?”
Meredith shrugged. “I frighten myself. It’s not easy being a genius, you know.”
Claire laughed again. “No, I don’t suppose it is.”
A little before five Claire went to the kitchen to take inventory and realized she was out of just about everything. After getting permission from Sergeant Rollins to go into town, she went to find Liza, who was bent over her garden weeding tomato plants. It seemed to Claire that her friend was spending more and more time in the garden; perhaps it was her way of dealing with death, working to make things grow.
“I’m going into town, you want to come?” she said to Liza, who paused in her weeding, sweat dripping from her face.
“No thanks. I want to finish this.”
Claire walked around to the front porch, enveloped in a haze of afternoon sun. Katydids chortled harshly in the bushes nearby. Meredith had fallen asleep on the couch, her book lying across her thin chest. Sherry sat in the old brown armchair reading.
“You want anything in town?” Claire said to Sherry, who yawned and stretched her muscular brown arms.
“No, I don’t think so . . . oh, wait; how ’bout some cigarettes?”
“Cigarettes?” said Claire. “I didn’t know you—”
Sherry shrugged. “I don’t usually, but the stress is getting to me. Don’t tell Liza, will you?” she added in a low voice.
“What brand do you want?”
“Sobraines.”
“The same brand Camille uses.”
“I know, I know. I bummed a couple off her and grew to like them.” Sherry dug a crumpled five-dollar bill from her shorts. “C’mon, be a pal; what do you say?”
Claire took the money. “Okay, but you know how Liza feels about smoking.”
“I know, I know; her dad died of lung cancer.” Sherry rolled her eyes. “I’ve heard it all a million times. Don’t you start lecturing me, too.”
“Okay.” Claire pointed to Meredith, who lay on her back snoring softly, her skinny limbs flung in every direction, all elbows and knees. “Keep an eye on her while I’m gone, will you?”
Sherry nodded. “Sure.”
Claire stuffed the money in her knapsack and headed down to the dirt parking lot where her old Mercedes sat alone under a shedding maple tree. The driver’s-side door creaked when Claire opened it; the car’s rusty joints were full of the stiffness of old age, and it groaned and complained like an old woman.
She slid into the driver’s seat, carefully avoiding the place where the upholstery was ripped, the springs underneath exposed. The interior smelled musty and damp from all the recent rain, and Claire opened the window to let in the cool mountain air as she turned onto Camelot Road. She thought about the artists and their work. . . she had half expected to see a portrait of Maya in one of the studios, aging like the portrait of Dorian Gray. Well, there was no such portrait, and even if there were, it wouldn’t have saved Maya.
Claire hung her arm out of the window and felt the cool breeze on her skin. The speckling of sun through the tree leaves was hypnotic. The air was sweet, and once again she was reminded of her childhood summers on the lake. The thing she missed most living in the city was the smell of the air—the clear, sharp smell of the woods. In the city there were just too many people and cars and dogs and restaurants; even in Central Park there were too many competing smells. But up he
re, where trees outnumbered people by far, the air smelled as she remembered it from childhood. It was for her the smell of pure summer days stretching on into one another like perfect pearls strung on an endless necklace, from a time in her life before she realized that all summers must end.
As she rounded the turn toward Rock Hill Road, Claire’s right foot felt for the brake pedal. At first she thought she had missed it entirely, because her foot hit the floor of the car. She glanced down and saw to her horror that she had indeed hit the pedal but that it hadn’t caused the car to slow down. She groped for the parking brake and pulled hard, but there was no response. In an instant she realized the situation: she had no brakes at all. It was at that moment the thought came to her: This is deliberate; someone is trying to kill me.
As the big car rolled down the hill gathering speed, Claire knew she had to think quickly. She remembered the time the brakes had gone soft on the Volkswagen Beetle she had in college, and remembered driving to Chapel Hill downshifting whenever she had to slow the car.
But the Mercedes was a much heavier car—and it was not a manual transmission. She gripped the handle of the automatic transmission and shifted into the middle gear, the one meant for climbing hills. The old diesel groaned and heaved; she heard a grinding sound coming from the transmission, and the car jerked to a slower speed. Claire took a deep breath and pulled the lever into the only gear left—“low.” Again the car jerked and slowed its pace but it was still rumbling down the hill toward town. She thought about shutting off the engine, but that would leave her without steering. She was now less than a quarter of a mile away from the T-junction at Route 212.
Claire considered the options: turn the car off the road into a tree and brace for the impact, or continue down onto Route 212 and pray she wouldn’t be broadsided by oncoming traffic. That seemed the less sensible alternative: Route 212 was a main road in this valley and there was not even a yield sign on it for the cars speeding by at sixty miles an hour on their way to Bearsville and beyond.
She thought about rolling out of the car like in the movies, but that was both dangerous and irresponsible: she didn’t want to leave an out-of-control car, and she was probably safer staying in it. She looked around: there were fields to her left, but they were bordered by fences and by a deep ditch alongside the road. To her right was a shallower ditch and woods. Ahead, she could see the red-and-white stop sign at the bottom of the hill.
Taking a deep breath, Claire turned the car off the road and into the woods, toward a grove of white birches. As the car left the road and skimmed over the ditch, she wrapped her arms around her head and closed her eyes.
She heard the leaves and bushes rattling on the doors as the Mercedes crashed through the underbrush, and then the dull thud as its front end hit a tree. The jolt was stronger than she expected. In spite of her attempt to protect herself with her arms, she felt her forehead hit hard against the steering wheel. Her shoulder harness did its job, though, and the big car shielded her from the impact.
Claire opened her eyes and put her hand to her forehead. A large bump had already formed, and the skin was tender. Dazed, she opened the door and got out to assess the damage. She walked stiffly around to the front of the car. The hood was slightly dented, but the heavy old Mercedes had stubbornly resisted any extensive damage. Her mechanic’s words rang in her ears: “Best car to be in during an accident—protect you well.” Her mechanic was Russian and spoke in broken English and she suspected he had connections to Russian gangsters in Brighton, but she trusted his opinion when it came to cars.
Claire stood for a minute looking at her car. The ground was damp and wet leaves clung to her ankles. A solitary crow cawed in the distance, its harsh cry breaking the stillness. The silence was strange after all the commotion. Claire opened the back door and sat down on the backseat. Her head throbbed; she felt the bump and it seemed larger than before. Suddenly the contours of her own head were foreign. She leaned over the front seat and inspected her forehead. The bump was centered between her eyes, and ringed with red and purple.
She remained sitting for several minutes, trying to think what she should do next while the woods began to come alive once again: the animals frightened by the sound of her car crashing through the underbrush were now returning to inspect the odd creature that had so abruptly invaded their territory. The old car sat among falling leaves and dead twigs, steam slowly rising from its radiator, a beached leviathan, harmless as an old shoe.
The animals seemed to realize this: a pair of chipmunks scurried across the ground and perched on a dead log just a few feet away from where Claire sat, chattering loudly at her. A catbird sat in a tree branch just above her, nattering noisily, scolding her for disturbing its peace.
“All right,” she muttered. “It’s not my fault, you know.”
Just then she heard the sound of a car coming up the hill. She got up and headed toward the road, and recognized Evelyn Gardner’s natty little red sports car. The car jerked to a halt and the driver’s-side door was flung open.
“Oh my God,” Evelyn said, leaping from the car. She was elegantly overdressed as usual, in a grey linen jacket over a creamy silk dress, stockings, and black pumps. For some reason, seeing Evelyn so blithely, obliviously overdressed cheered Claire up. “What on earth happened to you?” Evelyn said, her heels clicking on the road as she rushed over.
Claire hesitated. “I lost control of the car and hit a tree.” She looked at Evelyn to see her reaction, but all she could read in her face was concern.
“That’s a nasty bump.” Evelyn touched Claire’s forehead gently. “Here, let me take you to a hospital.” She opened the passenger-side door of her car and helped Claire in.
“I’d just like to go back to the house,” Claire said, fumbling with her seat belt. She only just noticed that her hands were shaking, and she dropped the buckle as she tried to fasten it.
“Here, let me help you.” Evelyn reached over the stick shift. As she did, Claire caught a whiff of perfume. She wasn’t sure, but she thought it was “Obsession,” familiar from magazine samples. Evelyn’s long crimson fingernails were perfectly manicured, not a nick or a scratch on the smooth red surface. It occurred to Claire that these did not appear to be hands that would tamper with a brake cable, but . . . she didn’t know whom she could trust anymore, or even if she could trust her own observations. When Evelyn asked how she lost control of the car, she mumbled something about the steering.
Evelyn seemed satisfied with this response. She put the car in gear and started up the hill. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to a hospital?”
“No, I just want to go back to Ravenscroft.”
“But you have a head injury; it could be a concussion or something.”
Claire shrugged. “It’s only a little bump.”
“All right,” Evelyn replied, putting the car in third gear. Claire looked in the rearview mirror and saw a grey suede coat lying across the car’s tiny backseat. She didn’t know much about fashion, but she could tell Evelyn’s clothes were expensive.
“We can send Marcel back to get your car,” said Evelyn. “Does it start?”
“I don’t know,” Claire replied. Her head was beginning to pound. She just wanted to take some aspirin and lie down.
They reached the house just as the police were changing shifts. One patrol car was pulling away as another took its place. “Here, let me help you,” Evelyn said as Claire unbuckled her seat belt. She came around to the other side of the car and helped Claire climb out, holding her elbow while Claire pulled herself up out of the bucket seat. It was no easy task; the car was low to the ground and Claire felt her knees buckling underneath her.
“I’m okay, thanks,” she said, walking unsteadily up the front path to the porch. She remembered the first night she had walked this path in a terrific thunderstorm . . . it seemed so long ago now.
There was no sign of anyone downstairs. As she and Evelyn walked toward the kitchen Claire could hear
the rat-a-tat-tat of Camille’s typewriter upstairs. The kitchen empty.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Evelyn said as they stood in the big empty kitchen, the late-afternoon light falling through the curtains onto the pots and pans hanging over the stove. Claire put her hand to her head. The bump was surprisingly hard, as though she had just grown an extra bone in her forehead.
“You should put ice on that,” Evelyn said, pulling open one of the refrigerators and rummaging through the freezer. “Here.” She pulled out an ice tray. “I’ll just wrap some of this in a towel.” She pulled a clean dish towel from the drawer and wrapped a few cubes in it, twisting the end tightly before handing it to Claire. “You wrap the ice in plastic to keep it from leaking, but I always think the wetness is soothing.”
“Thank you,” said Claire. “You did that very well.”
“I used to be a nurse,” Evelyn replied. “Just an LAN—licensed practical nurse—but I worked the trauma wards and got good at handling injuries. And head injuries shouldn’t be treated lightly. Are you sure you don’t want to get that X-rayed?”
Claire shook her head. “No, I’d really rather not. Thanks anyway.”
Evelyn sighed, concern written on her large, handsome face. “I’ll call Marcel to go get your car, then.” She pulled a cell phone out of her black Gucci bag.
“Actually, I’ll take care of it,” Claire said quickly.
“Oh, it’s no trouble,” Evelyn replied, her bright red nails poised over the phone.
“I—uh, have a mechanic I can call,” Claire lied.
“Oh, all right.” Evelyn shoved the phone back into her bag. She glanced up at the wall clock over the stove. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an appointment with Liza over at her place.” Claire wasn’t sure if her voice had taken on a cold edge or if she was just imagining it.
“Thanks so much for the ride,” Claire said.
“Oh, it was no problem at all; I’m just glad it wasn’t more serious. That’s a steep road,” she added, fishing around in her bag for something. “I’ll check on you on my way out,” she said, heading for the back door.
Who Killed Dorian Gray? Page 23