Garden of Thorns

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  The same traffic junction where Pamela Galliard died, too intent, maybe, on the antiquity she was studying?

  Queen Eleanor was Eleanor of Castile, Edward I’s consort. She had died in Nottinghamshire in 1290, and her grieving husband had ordered a cross erected at every place her body rested on its mournful journey back to London. Crosses that were supposedly modeled on a walrus ivory crucifix carved in Winchester in the eleventh century, Queen Eleanor’s most prized possession. The Eleanor Cross had survived incredible vicissitudes to complete the set of artifacts in Regensfeld. How tragic that it was now gone.

  Hilary pulled out another book, Medieval English Iconography. Sure enough, the index listed “Galliard, Pamela”. Among the list of articles under the historian’s name was one described in commendable academic-speak, “An exploration of the iconography of the Eleanor Cross (properly a crucifix), as reflected in the surviving memorial crosses at Geddington, Hardingstone, and Waltham Cross. With a consideration of the authenticity of the replica at Charing Cross in London. Abstract; ms. unfinished. Photographs and drawings from Regensfeld inventory 1923.”

  There was one of the photographs, smeared and faded with age. Hilary turned the book to the light, the better to see an elongated ivory crucifix richly carved with Biblical figures supporting an ivory Christ. His body seemed heavy, pulled down toward mortality, its pain heartbreaking. And yet, juxtaposed with the upward-reaching arms of the Cross, its anguish became redemption. The crucifix was a glorious work of art, fully deserving Pamela Galliard’s attention. Whether it had been worth her death was another matter. No wonder Jenny didn’t care for Vasarian. His inquiries after her mother must feel like the equivalent of fingernails screeching across a blackboard.

  Hilary leaned against the edge of the desk. Dolores had hired Vasarian to search for the Cross. Nathan and Hilary had assumed he’d have to wait until he’d returned the other artifacts to Germany before he picked up the Cross’s very cold trail—six artifacts in hand were more important than one that might no longer exist, after all. But Vasarian had found the trail in Fort Worth.

  Well no, not the trail, just a half-obliterated footprint. Small world, though, to locate both Jenny Galliard and Nicholas Vasarian in the same town, associating with the same family. As soon as she got back to Fort Worth, Hilary resolved, she’d ask Nathan’s opinion about it. If she respected anything, it was Nathan’s opinion. Closing the book, she chose several more and turned away from the desk.

  The bedspread was smooth and crisp. The stuffed animals sat in a row, their beady eyes glittering in the ceiling light. The light had been on that night. Hilary had been sitting at the desk in her flannel nightgown, researching a term paper due after the holidays and feeling smug she was doing so well in her freshman year in college. Ruth and Norman had shut themselves away. Ben had been watching television in the den, sulking after losing yet another job. Everett and Olivia had gone out to a Christmas party—after making it very clear that Ben wasn’t invited. Canned laughter had muttered in the distance like the thunder of an approaching storm.

  Hilary shrank against the desk, holding the books protectively against her chest. The kernel of horror and pain in her stomach cracked and sent out a sickly tendril of memory.

  She had looked up at Ben’s sudden appearance. He had a lean and hungry look, not from too much thought but from too little contemplation. His hollow eyes glittered and his nose ran—allergies, he kept saying. But now, after a campus drug abuse program, Hilary realized with a start that he’d been snorting cocaine. “Pattycake, come watch TV with me. I’m lonely.”

  “Sorry. I have to study.”

  “It’s Christmas. You don’t have to study over Christmas. Come on, Pattycake, come sit with me.”

  “No.” Sitting with him meant squeezes and embarrassing off-color jokes. And she hated that nickname. Ben was pitiful, like a child trying to get attention.

  “Then just give me a little kiss. Come on….”

  Bewildered, she tried to push him away. It wasn’t until he’d pulled her from the chair that she grew more frightened than annoyed. “Come on, come on, give me a kiss.” He took a kiss, his hand knotted in her hair, fouling her mouth with Everett’s best bourbon. She fought in earnest then, but with berserk strength he pinned her to the bed. Terror overwhelmed her, and she screamed. He seized a stuffed bear and pressed it over her mouth. When he ripped her open and impaled her, her cry of agony was muffled by the toy.

  Stunned, her mind amputated from her body, she went limp. He grunted against her, crushing her, murmuring words in her ear she’d never heard before. When at last he crawled away, she lay trembling uncontrollably, staring upward at each individual plaster nodule in the ceiling. Chill air blew from the vent across her torn body. The front door slammed. A car roared away. The laughter of the sitcom jeered at her. Her fingers clutched the bedspread so tightly that when rational thought came crashing back, she had to consciously loosen them. Weeping with pain and humiliation, Hilary cut her nightgown to shreds and threw it and the teddy bear into the trash compactor. She put her bedspread through the washing machine and lay in a tub of steaming water so long her fingertips puckered.

  If she looked closely at the spread, she could still see the stain of blood amid the roses. She could taste the stench of alcohol and sweat and feel the tickle of damp plush against her skin. Even now she could feel Ben’s body crushing and stabbing. That night her adolescent romantic fantasies had been incinerated as surely as a flower by a flame thrower, leaving her with a psychic heartburn that only Mark had cared enough to soothe.

  She grimaced, forcing shut that kernel in her stomach. Mark’s apartment smelled of fresh roses. He had the confidence to be gentle.

  Hilary turned. Olivia stood in the doorway. “You should have pretended nothing happened,” she admonished. Her words were slurred, her eyes glassy with the prescription tranquilizers that had taken the place of alcohol.

  “I did pretend nothing happened, didn’t I? But I hurt so bad—the bladder infection, the laceration—I had to see Dr. Mehta. He was perceptive enough to realize I hadn’t volunteered to be mauled. He was the one who told you, who made you call the police. I was a good little girl.” Hilary stalked off down the hall, past Gary’s room still full of baseball bats and model cars, his letter jacket draped over the desk chair.

  Olivia followed her daughter to the guest room, her slippered feet shuffling. “I always pretended Ben never touched me and told me dirty jokes.”

  “What?” The books plummeted from Hilary’s arms onto the bed.

  “He kept reminding me we weren’t really brother and sister. He liked to hug and kiss me and put his hands on my—well, on me.”

  “Mother, that’s corroborating testimony! The case against him would’ve been stronger if the police knew he’d been harrassing you, too!”

  “No, no, no,” Olivia said. “You don’t understand. Men always talk to an attractive woman that way. It’s normal.”

  Feeling dizzy, Hilary insisted, “No it isn’t! And it has nothing to do with being attractive. That’s the criminal blaming the victim, evading his own guilt.” At the trial, Ben had evaded Hilary’s anguished look—why? why?—and presented to everyone else a stubborn not-my-fault expression. Everett had looked like Mr. Toad playing Winston Churchill. Olivia had hidden behind a wide-brimmed hat, mortally embarrassed.

  Now tears rolled down Olivia’s sunken cheeks; suddenly she looked old and frail. “It’s a terrible thing, to get yourself…” She’d never been able to say “rape”, and it had no juvenile euphemisms. “I kept trying to be respectable, but still Ben touched me. I wanted you to be above that kind of thing. What did you do to make him do it to you?”

  She turned away, crying, hiding her face in shame. Hilary had never seen her mother cry. Once she’d thought it was because Olivia didn’t want to ruin her makeup. Now she knew that admitting to fear or sorrow or anger was for Olivia an unaffordable luxury. Hilary choked back her retorts. You raised me f
rom birth to be pretty, docile, and dumb—is that asking to be raped? You know what he was, and still you left him alone with me?

  “TV, movies, magazines,” Olivia gasped, “are filled with nothing but sex and filth these days. I tried to rise above it. I tried to bring you up that way. I tried.” Her “I failed” hung twisting silently in mid air.

  Awkwardly Hilary went to her mother and embraced her. In her entire life she had never heard Olivia utter the word “sex”. She couldn’t think of a reply that didn’t require a lecture on psycho-sexual stereotypes. No doubt Olivia approached the marriage bed with the same sense of duty and distaste she approached a bathroom that needed to be cleaned. That was not surprising, with Everett waiting in that bed. He’d been raised to fear and deride any “feminine” characteristic such as compassion or tenderness.

  She heard the voice of the counselor again: “Mrs. Chase, just because the trauma occurred several years ago doesn’t mean Hilary should be over it by now. Some victims take a lifetime to recover.” She didn’t like being a victim. She didn’t like her family victimizing each other.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Hilary managed to say at last. “You didn’t either. It’s over now. It’s finished. Let it go.”

  Olivia inhaled raggedly and pulled away. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired, upset over your father. I’ll be all right tomorrow. Go to bed, baby. Forget I ever said anything.”

  “Mother….” Hilary stood, her arms empty, watching Olivia weave her way down the hall and into the master bedroom. And it was the master bedroom. “Good night, Mother,” she called.

  Olivia would be all right tomorrow. For the millionth time she’d have denied everything. If that’s what it took for her to face her life, so be it. She, too, was hurting. Hilary couldn’t hate her for that. She shut the door and pressed her aching shoulders against it.

  The older she got, the more she sympathized with the adult knack for selective ignorance that had once infuriated her. It wasn’t always pretension; sometimes it was self-preservation. And yet pretending nothing happened all too often meant retreat, leaving wounds untreated and festering. It’s not over, she thought. I haven’t yet let it go.

  In the last forty-eight hours, she’d looked at her parents as though she’d never seen them before. Maybe Nathan’s ability to see things from a different perspective had rubbed off on her. Maybe she’d learned something from another dysfunctional family, the Coburgs, who where as knotted into their patterns as the Chases into theirs.

  The old patterns could be broken, new stitches tried, different designs juxtaposed. Hilary couldn’t change Olivia, Everett, and Ben, but she could change herself. She could leave this house and go home, whether home was in a conservation lab, in Mark’s arms, or in some place she didn’t yet know.

  The clock beside the bed read ten-thirty. Hilary wondered whether Mark could sense her emotion across the miles. But no, she shouldn’t expect too much of him. Neither should she expect too much of herself. She couldn’t hate someone hurting as badly as she was.

  Slowly the vise squeezing Hilary’s head loosened. She left the doorway, picked up the scattered books, and packed them away.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mark leaned against the frame of the open tower window. The early morning air was fresh and cold, doing more to clear his head than the scummed cup of coffee he’d left on the table. Arthur’s notebook was gone, and his old chair seemed more derelict than ever. Surely if Mark turned around, he’d see the old man sitting there, staring into the dawn. Jenny had said she’d sensed a presence in the study. Mark’s shoulder blades contracted as though tickled by the tip of a knife. He didn’t turn around.

  Light rose in the east behind him and lapped at the western sky, turning it from gray to pink to a delicate robin’s egg blue. The shadow of Osborne House clotted from the darkness below him. Beyond it grass and trees sparkled, polished by the diamond dust of the sleet. Human figures moved from sun to shadow, slamming doors and exchanging muted shouts. Yellow tape was looped from oak to oak to seal off the crime scene.

  They could tie as many yellow ribbons as they wanted around those trees, Mark thought, but Nathan Sikora wasn’t coming back.

  Patrol officers had arrived within five minutes of his call and discovered the front door closed but unlocked. They had called more uniformed officers and an ambulance. The paramedics never bothered to open their first aid kits, but summoned the coroner and the homicide squad. Following hot on their heels came the reporters.

  By two a.m. a variety of investigators had set up bright lights in the parlor and entrance hall. At two-thirty Mark had opened the case of the grandfather clock and stopped its pendulum. “Thank you,” Jenny told him, the first words she’d uttered to him since her weary “Right” just before he’d called the police.

  A little after four, two morgue attendants had trundled away a sheet-draped form. Mark and Jenny had watched from the kitchen door, clutching cups of coffee that tasted like a high-school chemistry experiment and leaning studiedly away from each other. Graymalkin remained under the bed.

  Beside the window Mark straightened and sandpapered his fingertips on his unshaven cheeks. Last night his desires had been bewilderingly complex. Now they’d been pared to the minimum. He wanted a toothbrush, soap and hot water, and clean clothes. He wanted to wake up from this nightmare, but it went on and on.

  Footsteps sounded behind him. A police officer stood at the top of the stairs. “Detective Zapata would like to talk to you, Sir.”

  “Yeah.” Mark shut the window and allowed the officer to herd him through the study, along the hallway, down the back stairs, and into the kitchen. The room was bleak, stuffy with stale Chinese food and the acrid reek of carbonized wood. Every knife, from small parers to huge carving blades, lay along the counter, glittering like shark’s teeth.

  A couple of investigators were working over the bed in Jenny’s bedroom, damn them. Or damn the killer, rather. To expose that delightful hour to public scrutiny was like putting Hilary’s Giotto in a plastic frame…. Oh God. Hilary. She’d liked Nathan, Mark thought. She’d liked me, too.

  Rosalind Zapata was sitting at the table, inspecting a printout. Her glossy black hair was pulled back into a bun, not severely but loosely enough to leave a flattering fullness around her face. The ruffles of her blouse peeked less flirtatiously than defiantly from beneath a sober navy suit. Even her features were a compromise, an intellectual forehead over eyes as satiny brown as a greeting card child’s, softly curved cheeks and chin surrounding a mouth held so steady it was a straight line. The toes of her no-nonsense shoes barely touched the floor.

  The first officers on the scene had asked Mark and Jenny a few basic questions: Who were they? Did they know the dead man? As soon as Zapata arrived, she’d asked for their names, addresses, and occupations, and verbally put them in a holding cell until later. Despite her diminutive size—or perhaps because of it—her firm voice and compact gestures left no doubt that she was In Charge here.

  Jenny sat opposite the detective, her elbows planted on the table, her head sunk into her hands. Mark pulled out the chair next to her and lowered himself into it. The door opened and admitted Zapata’s partner, Frank Yeager. His face was reddened by the cold, his blond hair ruffled by the breeze. A big man with the narrow blue eyes and heavy jaw of an Aryan recruiting poster, he looked like Preston Baker’s negative image.

  What a pair, Mark thought with a covert glance from Zapata to Yeager and back. Whoever assigned teams downtown had not only an eye for balance but also a sense of humor—unless their pairing was due to simple alphabetical proximity. Zapata was perhaps a year or two older, but neither could be much over thirty.

  “Have you notified the owners?” asked Zapata.

  “I finally raised some Foundation flunkey,” Yeager replied. “He said since nothing was stolen he’d call Mrs. Coburg when it gets to be a more reasonable hour.”

  “Oh no, we mustn’t wake Mrs. Coburg up just because someone
was murdered in her parlor.”

  Mark would’ve applauded the detective’s sarcasm if he hadn’t been much too tired to care. Nathan had sat in this very chair, his glasses gleaming with goodwill. Something small, cold, and hard plunked in the pit of Mark’s stomach, and he clenched his jaw until the muscle crawled in his cheek.

  Yeager pulled out his notebook and sat down at the end of the table. “They’re still picking up all those pictures in the parlor. Do you want them? And what about that sweater?”

  “Run everything through forensics,” Zapata told him. “I want every print on those photographs identified. I want to know who that sweater belongs to and how it got here.”

  The men from the bedroom carried their attaché cases toward the front of the house. A little gray face peered around the door frame, ears crestfallen, whiskers quivering.

  Zapata told Jenny, “There’s a British consulate in Dallas, if you’d like to contact them. We can appoint a lawyer for you.”

  “Are you making an accusation?” Jenny asked.

  “No. But don’t leave town.”

  An edge to Zapata’s voice made Mark visualize her rolling siege engines up to Jenny’s raised drawbridge. But Jenny didn’t have anything to hide—only a prude would accuse her even of sexual indiscretion. She couldn’t be a suspect. Zapata was taking the precaution of questioning them separately and she’d see that their stories dovetailed. Jenny’s private nature simply wouldn’t admit that self-revelation defused suspicion.

  She said, “I have work to do here. I won’t be leaving. Now, if you don’t mind….”