Not in Time

by Shawna Seed

  Genevieve stood and dutifully wriggled out of her jeans.

  “Oh Lord, Gen. You have got to buy some new undies.”

  Genevieve zipped the skirt “No one’s going to see my underwear.”

  D put her hand on her hip. “You know what those undies say? Those undies say you aren’t even trying.”

  “I think we’ve established that I’m not really trying, D.” Genevieve looked over her shoulder at the mirror. “I can’t wear this. My butt looks huge.” Genevieve stepped out of the skirt and put her jeans back on.

  D burrowed deeper into the closet. “What about Julien?”

  Genevieve flopped back on the bed. “What about Julien?” She arranged some of the pillows behind her. “Why do you have so many pillows?”

  D tossed an armful of clothes on the bed. “You do realize that every time we talk, 80 percent of it’s about Julien, right?”

  Genevieve smoothed the fringe on a pillow. “That’s because art history bores you, and I don’t understand pharmaceutical sales.”

  D waited. She loved to talk, but she also knew the value of well-placed silence.

  Genevieve wilted. “I don’t remember the last time I met somebody this interesting, and funny, and nice and...”

  “And who made you think ‘mmm-mmm, I want me some of that?’ ”

  Genevieve nodded and scooted over to make room for D on the bed.

  D slapped Genevieve playfully on the knee. “So what are you going to do now?”

  “Honestly? Nothing. It would just be too weird.”

  D tossed a pillow at Genevieve’s head. “Wrong answer. So far wrong, you can’t even see right from where you are.”

  Genevieve rolled onto her side and propped herself up on one elbow. “This is an important job. I need to concentrate. I can’t be acting like I’m 13.” She flopped onto her back again. “This is hopeless.”

  “Why is it hopeless? I’ve seen the guy, Gen, and yeah, he’s hot,” D said. “But he’s not out-of-your-league hot. And in Vegas, he was clearly very into you.”

  “Was he into me in Vegas? Now it’s like that never happened,” Genevieve said. “He’s different now.”

  “Sure he’s different. There’s a chance for something real now. Do you flirt with him? You have to give him something to work with, you know,” D said patiently, as if she were talking to a 10-year-old.

  D got up to put the rejected skirt back in the closet. “Gen, at some point, you have to get over Post Pete Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

  “I am over it, D.”

  “Could have fooled me,” D said. She flashed her most wicked grin. “You know, the best way to get over a man is to get under one.”

  “D!” Genevieve flushed bright red.

  “Gen, you know I love you. But I do not want to be sitting here when we’re fanning ourselves through hot flashes still trying to motivate your butt,” D said. “Get out there and take a chance! You’re like one of those football teams that runs it into the middle of the line all the time. Open up the offense, girl! Play to win! Don’t just play not to lose!”

  “Defense wins championships,” Genevieve said solemnly.

  D laughed. “Seriously, Gen, we’re getting to the age where everybody’s a little dinged up. It doesn’t matter as much as you think.”

  “I don’t know, D, you don’t seem too dinged to me.”

  “Well, I’m not doing so good on having four kids, am I?” She pulled a blue blouse off a hanger. “Maybe I should’ve stuck with genial-but-otherwise-useless Lanny.”

  D was such a relentless optimist, it had never occurred to Genevieve that she spent any time on regrets. “You really think about him?”

  D tossed the blouse at her. “Try that on. Maybe I’ll only have three kids or two or whatever. It’s too early to give up. You hear me?”

  Genevieve buttoned the shirt D gave her. It was a deep shade of blue, almost purple, and had a low neckline. “I hear you,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m liking that,” D said. “The color is great with your eyes. It just hangs on me, but it really shows off that cleavage of yours. Now, I’m thinking you need a push-up bra with that.” She looked hard at Genevieve. “Please tell me you have a push-up bra.”

  Genevieve examined herself in the mirror. “Too sexy for work.” She started to unbutton the shirt, then stopped and buttoned it again.

  She turned to D. “Isn’t it?”

  Genevieve left D’s at 10 the next morning, carrying away the blue shirt and lots of advice, much of it unsolicited.

  It took Genevieve little more than an hour to hit the vast emptiness of the North Texas plains. She’d neglected to pack CDs, so she found a country radio station and soon was singing along, even with songs she’d never heard before. She felt like she was slipping back into her childhood.

  At noon, she pulled up at her father’s house, a nondescript brick rancher on a nondescript street. They’d moved in after her mother died, and even though Genevieve lived in the house for 10 years, she had no real affection for it. It was just a house.

  The door opened and a spaniel came bounding down the porch stairs, followed by her father. “Hi, honey. I’ll get your bag. Ranger! You let her be!”

  Genevieve studied her father for signs of age, but he looked fine – tall, broad-shouldered, fit. He hugged her. “Sure is good to see you, Genny.” He even smelled the same as ever.

  He hefted her suitcase and slammed the trunk shut. “How was the drive?”

  “It was fine.” They’d been having this conversation ever since she left for college.

  He ushered her into the house and took the suitcase to her bedroom. “I went ahead and carried the cedar chest in here,” he said. “Light’s better.”

  He shooed the dog out of the room. “Go on Ranger, git!” Her father lingered in the doorway. “Do you want some lunch? I could fix us sandwiches.”

  “Lunch would be great,” she said.

  They sat in the kitchen and made small talk about the aging remnants of the McKenna clan over turkey sandwiches on wheat bread, washed down with iced tea.

  Eventually, her father stood to clear the table. “I imagine you want to get to your project. I’ll clean up.”

  Genevieve’s old room was less cluttered than it had been when she was growing up, but otherwise looked much the same. Lavender walls. White curtains with a lavender floral pattern on the lone window.

  Genevieve pulled a pillow onto the floor and settled next to the cedar chest. The lid creaked as she opened it, and its distinctive smell filled the room.

  She pulled out a handmade, dark-green sweater. Did her mother knit? Genevieve closed her eyes, trying to picture her mother wearing it, but came up empty. She held the sweater to her nose, but all she smelled was cedar.

  How could she have so few memories of her mother? There ought to be more than sitting on the sofa in a rectangle of late afternoon sun, looking at art books.

  Next up was a plastic garment bag, bunched up at the corners to fit into the chest. Inside was the ivory lace sheath dress her mother had worn to be married.

  Under the garment bag were photo albums. The first held pictures from her parents’ small wedding and their honeymoon in New Orleans. Another had photos of their first house, her mother in maternity clothes.

  Genevieve was dismayed when she surveyed the next layer – a high school diploma and yearbooks. Was there nothing from the year away at college?

  A knock startled her. Her father stuck his head inside the room. “I need to go to the hardware store, Genny. I’ll put the dog out so he doesn’t bother you.”

  Stillness settled over the house. Genevieve went back to her work.

  She lifted out a stack of books. Anne of Green Gables. Black Beauty. She opened My Friend Flicka. It was inscribed, “For Grace. Christmas, 1959.”

  She was near the bottom of the chest now. A pair of white gloves. A blank postcard of the Alamo. A battered shoebox, its lid held in place with a rubber band.

 
That was it. The chest was empty.

  Genevieve took the lid off the shoebox. Then she sat back on her heels and sent a silent “thank you” to Christine.

  The first thing in the box was a photo of her mother and Christine, arms wrapped around each other, surrounded by fall foliage. There were letters from her grandmother, addressed to her mother at college. And, at the bottom of the box, two 5 x 8 notebooks.

  Genevieve wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but she wasn’t prepared for what she found in the notebooks.

  There were no dates and no organization. Her mother had jotted down fragmented thoughts, sometimes just one or two words.

  Familiar but not. Why do I know a painting I have never seen? From a book and I just don’t remember?

  Make a sketch next time, right away.

  Genevieve sighed in frustration. She’d been foolishly hoping the notebooks would explain everything, something like: Oct. 1, 1968: A professor told me the most fascinating story about a family in Paris.

  “Genevieve, you’re an idiot,” she said aloud.

  Below the note about making a sketch, her mother had started to draw a head. She had put a lot of effort into getting the mouth right; Genevieve could see the eraser marks.

  He says I look like girl in the painting.

  That sounded familiar. What had Christine told her? One of the regulars at the cafe in town told her mother she looked like something from a painting.

  Again last night. Christy noticed. Where was I she says.

  Where was I????

  Here was something else that made sense to Genevieve. Christine had said her mother was sometimes gone in the middle of the night.

  But her mother didn’t know herself where she had gone?

  The next page gave Genevieve a jolt.

  Must go, he says. No choice.

  Do I dream these things? No. Real.

  Her mother had underlined the last word so heavily that the paper had torn.

  Genevieve turned the page and dropped the notebook as though it were on fire.

  She was looking at a sketch of Julien.

  But wait. This was a sketch of an adult. Was Julien even born in 1968? How could that be?

  She picked the notebook up with shaking hands and examined the sketch. The man had Julien’s eyes, but the nose was different – broader than Julien’s. The mouth was off, too.

  Genevieve thought back to the day they had sorted through old photos from Paris and realized that the man in the sketch wasn’t Julien.

  It was his uncle, David Lazare.

  But David Lazare had been dead for decades when her mother drew this. How could her mother have sketched him?

  From a photo? But where would she have seen a photo?

  Genevieve traced the line of David’s mouth.

  I’m crazy, she thought. Just like her.

  A wave of heat convulsed her body. The light in the room grew very, very bright, and then it began to fade.

  A dark room, the wood floor smooth beneath her. She feels, rather than sees, a shift beside her. Someone else is here. Panicked, she tries to rise. A hand rests on her arm. Be calm, it seems to say.

  She hears voices, somewhere far below. They are indistinct at first. They come closer. Sharp, guttural. German.

  The grip on her arm tightens. Footsteps are coming closer.

  Her heart hammers in her chest. Sweat springs up on her face, under her arms.

  The footsteps pause, then click away. The voices become indistinct.

  She exhales, and so does the person next to her.

  The hand remains on her arm. Time passes – impossible to say how much. Ten minutes? An hour? She doesn’t know.

  Scudding clouds, the moon breaks through, the room is bathed in light. She knows this room.

  The man leans close to her ear and whispers one word: “Neuschwanstein.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  A dog barked insistently, and Genevieve opened her eyes.

  She was sitting on the floor of her old bedroom, the contents of the cedar chest spread around her.

  She stood and stretched. Her legs were stiff. How long had she been sitting on the floor? The light in the room had grown dim. The winter sun was nearly down.

  She walked into the hall. It was quiet inside, but she could hear the dog outside.

  Genevieve went to the kitchen and looked out the window. Her father was in the fenced yard, playing fetch with Ranger.

  She opened the door and stepped out. “Hey, Dad.”

  Her father pulled the stick from the dog’s mouth. “There you are. Where’d you go?”

  Genevieve was puzzled. “What?”

  The dog was jumping, trying to pull the stick from his hand. “I poked my head in when I got back from the store and you were gone. Your car was here. Figured you went for a walk.”

  The back of her neck prickled, and she shivered.

  “I think I’d better get a sweater,” she called over her shoulder as she went inside.

  Genevieve walked into her bedroom, shut the door and leaned against it.

  She hadn’t been in this room when her father opened the door earlier?

  What had Christine said? Her mother would be gone in the middle of the night, and she wouldn’t say where?

  Because she didn’t know where, just as Genevieve couldn’t say where she’d been – only that she’d been somewhere. It didn’t feel like sleepwalking or a dream or a hallucination. It felt real, just as her mother had written in her notebook.

  Did that mean she was mentally ill, like her mother?

  Suffering the same delusions her mother had? What were the odds of that?

  What about the pendant in her apartment? And the handprint on her arm?

  Those were real.

  What if her mother wasn’t mentally ill? What if this was something else entirely?

  She heard her father’s footsteps in the hall. “Genny? I thought maybe we’d go get a steak,” he said. “Do you still eat steak after you’ve been in California all this time?”

  Genevieve stepped out into the hall and tried her best to smile. “Of course I still eat steak.”

  At the restaurant, Genevieve was preoccupied with thoughts of her mother. There was so much she wanted to ask her father, but she didn’t want to reopen old wounds. And she didn’t want to worry him. He’d had enough of that in his life.

  After they ordered, her father set his reading glasses aside and looked at her. “Christine seems to think we need to talk about your mother. Is that why you’re here?”

  Genevieve sat back against the hard wooden booth, stunned. It was unlike her father to be so direct. She hardly knew where to begin.

  “Did you ever hear her talk about people named Lazare?”

  This was not a question her father expected. He shook his head. “I don’t know that name. Who are they?”

  “That’s the family I’m working for. Christine said Mom talked about them when she was at college.”

  “I’m not going to be able to help you much there,” he said. “I didn’t know your mom until she came back here. She never talked about college.”

  “What did she talk about?”

  The waitress delivered their salads, giving her father time to consider her question.

  “She’d get interested in something. A painter. An author, anything. She’d read all about them. She’d want to know their whole story. Some people found that strange. I liked that. Most people just pay attention to what’s right in front of them.”

  “What was it like when she was getting sicker? Did she ever go off somewhere, and you didn’t know where she’d gone?”

  “Not that I remember. Now, during the day, while I was at work, I don’t know what all she did.” His tone became urgent. “Do you remember her leaving you alone?”

  “No, I don’t remember anything like that. Did it happen?”

  Relief eased across her father’s face. “Not that I know of,” he said. “Your mother worried about i
t a lot, though. She was afraid that she’d lose track of you, I guess.”

  “What exactly was wrong with her? I’ve never known.”

  “The doctors couldn’t ever agree,” her father said. “It’s not an exact science, like diagnosing cancer or something. I know at the very beginning, when she left school, they told her folks she had grandiose delusions.”

  “When she was getting bad, did she know something was wrong with her?” Genevieve asked. “Was she scared?”

  Her father put down his fork. “Your mother was scared every single day. Some days weren’t as bad as others, but nothing I could do or say ever made it better.”

  He looked tired, and Genevieve regretted that she’d brought it up. But she needed to know.

  She stared at the table, trying to think how to ask the question. “Do you think that’s why she did it, so she wouldn’t have to be scared anymore?” She glanced up, almost afraid to see her father’s reaction.

  “Genny, I know what the police said, what everyone thinks. But a part of me has always had a hard time believing your mother set that fire,” he said.

  “The medicine they had her on, it dulled her.” He stopped and rubbed his weather-beaten hands over his face.

  “She had a lawn chair out there, and she’d put the door down when it was cold, sit out there with that old stray cat. I didn’t want her smoking in the house, didn’t want you around it. The garage wasn’t safe, though. I had rags and paint out there. Gas for the mower. Sometimes, I wonder, well, maybe she just dozed off, and it went up before she had a chance to get out.”

  Genevieve had spent more than 25 years thinking her mother committed suicide. This was the first she’d heard that her father harbored any doubts.

  “You think it was an accident?”

  “Oh, Genny, I don’t know.” His voice cracked. “Maybe I just want to believe that, because it’s easier.”

  “You never said anything,” Genevieve said. “Well, nobody ever said anything about her.”

  “Folks said you’d do better if I just let you get over it,” her father said. “Everybody said, ‘Let it alone.’ ” His voice lowered to a hoarse whisper. “And I just felt so guilty, you know, because it was my fault.”