The Color of Light

by Wendy Hornsby

  “That was a long time ago,” I said.

  “For you maybe.” Looking up at the house, she repeated, “For you.”

  “Good to see you, Evie.”

  She stood inside her open car door, chin on fists resting on the car’s rooftop.

  “Maggie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Our childhood wasn’t always like a dance in an opera, was it?”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “I mean, Beto’s mom, bullies—well, Larry—boys who always wanted...” She looked down the street toward the house where her family had lived. “But we made it, didn’t we?”

  “So far,” I said, repeating one of Mike’s expressions. “So far.”

  Chapter 5

  The rest of the afternoon, I sorted and boxed books. By the time the shelves in Dad’s study were empty, the sun was low in the sky, my nose itched from dust and my arms ached from lifting and stacking heavy boxes. I left a hefty sampling of books on the shelves for the tenants because it seemed to me that a house isn’t furnished unless there are good books. The rest were sorted into three waist-high zones, one each for the public library sale, the University Library Special Collections, and books I wanted to keep.

  The day was still warm, and there was an hour or so of daylight left, so I poured myself a glass of wine, piled some of Beto’s cold ziti into a bowl, and went out to the backyard to eat in the fresh air. I took a seat at the long plank table under the grape arbor where my family always ate summer meals, and called my mom. I was feeling a bit adrift in the swamp of my childhood and wanted to hear her reassuring voice.

  “What progress?” she asked.

  “Some.” I told her about the visit with Evie Miller Sanchez.

  “Should I remember her?” Mom asked.

  “The Millers lived two doors down from the Jakobsens.”

  “Oh, sure. They moved away years ago.”

  “Anyway, after Susan has chosen what she wants and I’ve carted off the things I’m taking home, Evie will come back for another look.”

  “Thank you for taking care of it all, dear; I was having nightmares.”

  “It’s manageable,” I said. “The interesting part has been seeing the old crowd again. After college, I’d come home to see you and Dad, but I never made a point of looking up anyone except Beto.”

  “You never stayed around long enough,” she said. “Maybe if you’d gone to high school with the others, you’d be more interested.”

  “Somehow I doubt it,” I said. “Kevin Halloran dropped by.”

  I heard Mom chuckle. “I knew where this conversation was headed before you called, Margot. I spoke with Gracie just after you left her place. She told me that Beto wants Kevin to look into his mother’s murder, and that you have some questions for me about Trinh.”

  “Trinh?”

  “Tina Bartolini,” she said. “She anglicized her name. I got used to calling her by her own name when we were working with the refugees.”

  “Gracie seems to think you were her closest friend, Mom. But I don’t remember that.”

  “I don’t know that I was her closest friend, but we did spend quite a lot of time together.”

  “Working with refugees?”

  “That, and before,” she said. “Your dad and I met the Bartolinis at church when they first moved in; you kids were just toddlers. Bart told your dad that Trinh felt out of place, very lonely, didn’t speak the language. I helped her enroll in English classes at the community college and invited her to bring Beto to the parish playgroup with us. She met the other mothers, Beto met the other kids. We went to Father John’s scripture study together.”

  “I thought Mrs. B was Buddhist.”

  “Culturally, privately she was,” Mom said. “But nominally she was Catholic. For very practical reasons, when Vietnam was under French rule Trinh’s grandfather, who was a highly placed bureaucrat, had the family baptized. He sent his daughters to be educated by French nuns just as his grandfather had sent his sons to study with Mandarin scholars. The survivors adapt, don’t they?”

  “I remember Father John giving a blessing at the Bartolinis’ ­Hungry Ghosts celebration every summer. And I also remember him standing back when the hungry ghosts were offered bribes to stay away.”

  Mom laughed. “A man has his limits.”

  “You’re missing the hungry ghosts this weekend,” I said.

  “Probably for the best,” she said. “Bart seems to think I’ve already passed over into the next realm. God only knows what the man might do if I showed up in the flesh. Honey, you’ll have to burn offerings on my behalf this time.”

  “For any ghost in particular?” I asked.

  I heard what sounded like a stifled sob and wished I could unsay that careless remark. Of course, I thought, there was someone in particular she wanted remembered: my dad.

  “Sorry, Mom. A dumb thing to say.”

  “No. It wasn’t.”

  She took a deep breath and what she told me next was not at all what I expected.

  “Margot, people assume that Trinh became dependent on me because I reached out to her. But the opposite was true. I needed her help more than she ever needed mine.”

  I never thought about Mom needing help from anyone. She always seemed so competent in everything she undertook. So in charge. Curious, I asked, “What did you need her help with?”

  “Where to begin?” She took a moment to decide that before she began to tell me. I leaned back, looked across the yard that had given her and Dad so much happiness, and listened.

  “You know, dear, that your father and I were deeply opposed when your brother, Mark, enlisted in the army with the intention of serving in Vietnam.” I was very young, but I would never forget the night Mark dropped that bombshell on our peacenik parents. “When Mark was killed over there, I was so angry and so bereft that your father began to worry about my sanity. I was ready to go to Washington to take out that huddle of sanctimonious old bastards who perpetrated the damn war.”

  “I remember, Mom,” I said. “But you worked your way through it, you came back to us.”

  “Thanks in no small part to Trinh,” she said. “My son died in a place I knew nothing about, among strangers. We received a flag-draped coffin with about twenty pounds of scorched flesh and bone sealed in a plastic bag with a new uniform, neatly folded, inside. But most of my boy was still in a jungle, unburied, unidentified. If I could have, I would have gone over there and found him and brought him home.

  “Father John took me by the hand and walked me down to Trinh’s house. He asked her to describe Mark’s resting place for me, to tell me all about the people who were around him. And she did; she was wonderful. She told me about her own family and what the war had done to them. It was helpful, but it wasn’t until later, when the war collapsed that I was able to put my grief in perspective and get on with life.”

  “Why?”

  “The floodtide of people who came in,” she said. “Do you remember?”

  “You brought a family home with you. I remember sharing my clothes.”

  “Most of the families in the parish took in a refugee family that summer,” she said with a laugh. “That was Father John’s doing: ‘Say three Hail Marys, take in a family and sin no more.’”

  “Sounds like Father John,” I said.

  “Yes. But what Trinh did was far more important,” she said. “She took me with her to the refugee camp in the Presidio—a huge tent city. There were so few services, and so many people who came over here with nothing. We were able to help, to really help. It was the best therapy in the world for me. I couldn’t do anything for Mark, but I had something to offer people who got snagged in the same fuckup.”

  “Language, Mom.”

  She laughed.

  I said, “Mr. B told me that some people took out their anger about Vietnam on his wife.”

  “Some people are idiots,” she said. “Even among the refugees Trinh helped there were people who resented he
r for the comforts of her life, or for who her father was or was not. Some people need enemies.”

  “Did she have enemies?”

  “Trinh? I wouldn’t think so. But she may have inherited a few. You know, dear, the sins of the fathers...”

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “Which reminds me.” She went through a list of instructions for disposing of Dad’s research notes. She finished with a non sequitur: “Did you know that Father John is back in the parish again?”

  “I heard.”

  “He’ll probably say a blessing at the Bartolinis’ party Saturday. Just to be on the safe side, will you ask him to say a rosary for your brother?”

  “Sure.” I started to say she could ask him herself. Instead, I asked, “Mom, what happened between you and Father John?”

  “The right to choose.”

  That was explanation enough.

  “Gracie said something about your piano.”

  “Yes.” She suddenly sounded enthusiastic. “I want to ship it to Ricar­do’s studio instead of your house.”

  “Sure.” Ricardo, my former roommate’s father-in-law, was a retired high school music teacher. When his son and daughter-in-law, Roger and Kate, built their home in a canyon near my own home, they also built two casitas—little houses—one for Roger’s parents and another for his grown children from his first marriage. Out of self-defense, Kate and Roger had added a sound-proofed music studio at the back of their property for Ricardo, whose music indeed made a joyful noise. I asked Mom, “What’s up?”

  “I told you how much fun I had teaching Ricardo’s piano students when he and Linda were out of town.”

  “You did,” I said. “Are you planning to take on students of your own?”

  “Just a few, yes,” she said. “Ricardo offered me the use of his studio; we’ll work out a schedule. But beyond that, dear, Kate and Roger made me an offer that I did not refuse.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “No, not all. In fact, the opposite,” she said. “Margot, Kate and Roger offered me the second casita.”

  “For piano lessons?”

  “No, dear, to live in.”

  “Good God,” I said. “Gracie will think you’ve been sucked into a cult.”

  “If I have, it’s a lovely one,” she said, laughing. “And now, dear, you won’t have to worry about me being alone. I know that the reason you have resisted starting your film project about Isabelle’s family is that you did not want to leave me alone while you were off shooting in Normandy.”

  “The reason I haven’t started the film is that the network has not approved funding.”

  “Then call your Uncle Max and have him light a fire under those network people as he always does. And go to Normandy. I know it’s what you want to do.”

  “I’ll work on it.” If only it were that easy.

  When Mom had her mind made up, it was pointless trying to argue with her. The truth was, though my producer had approved the Normandy project, the network goons had not. And maybe would not. Even my Uncle Max, who was both my lawyer and my agent, had not been able to budge them this time. The issue, I was beginning to understand, was not the project, but me.

  When we said good-bye, I gathered my dishes and headed back inside, thinking, tomorrow is another day.

  I washed my glass and bowl and went upstairs to try on Mom’s black dress. It draped, it twirled, it fit quite well; the knit fabric was accommodating. Mom, who is taller than I am, had to wear flats with the dress. With heels, the length would be just fine for me. I had a dress to wear Friday night.

  Mom owned a small collection of family jewelry that she left behind for my cousin Susan and me to divide. Other than the ruby earrings that Mom still wore—the matching necklace had gone to someone else a generation earlier—there was nothing of significant monetary value in the lot. Because I had no genetic or legal relationship to Mom or her family, I had qualms about keeping for myself anything that had come from her side of the family, even though Mom had scolded me to get over my reluctance.

  From Isabelle, my late bio-mom, I had already inherited some very nice and very old pieces of jewelry that I appreciated for their beauty, but that had no significance to me; I never knew Isabelle. On the other hand, there were several things that I remembered Mom wearing on special occasions, and that made them precious to me. But sweet, warm memories did not change my opinion about rightful ownership.

  The best piece rested inside a flat red leather box; a late nineteenth-century brooch shaped like a dragonfly. It was big, nearly three inches from wingtip to wingtip, but it weighed almost nothing. The body and wings were little more than open platinum filigree studded with bright gemstones: garnet, opal, tourmaline, zircon, peridot. I knew it was the signature on the back that made it valuable, and not the materials it was made from. And for me, all of its value was in its association with Mom. When she wore the rummage-sale black dress, she wore the brooch pinned high on her shoulder, as if the dragonfly had just landed there and was about to take off again. To a kid—me—it was magic.

  I decided that the dress and the brooch would have at least one more outing together. I carried the red leather box and the dress into my old bedroom thinking that I could easily shop for shoes in Berkeley in the morning.

  When I had put the dress away, I returned to Mom’s room and began bagging clothes and boxing books. It only took a short time before her bed and the floor next to it were clear. Packing is the easy part; the hard part is shifting the stuff from place to place. Six trips down the stairs and into the garage later, the clothes and books were packed into the bed of Mike’s pickup truck, ready to be delivered in the morning.

  Tired after a long day, I poured myself another glass of wine and curled up in one of the big leather chairs in Dad’s study—I was keeping the chairs—to watch Casablanca for the umpteenth time. Just as Ilsa was telling Sam to play it for her, “for old times’ sake,” there was a great banging on the front door. I set my wine aside and went to the entry hall to see what the racket was.

  Through the glass panels on the front door, under the porch light, I could see a woman, red in the face, seemingly the worse for drink, pounding hard enough to rattle the windows. I don’t know if she could see me in the darkened foyer as clearly as I could see her, but she obviously saw some movement. She screamed, “Maggie, you bitch! Kevin, come out here!”

  That’s when I knew who she was.

  I pulled out my phone, found Kevin’s number, and hit Dial.

  When he answered, I said, “Your wife is on my front porch.”

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Banging on the door, calling for you. Where are you?”

  “On my way over. Sorry.”

  “Should I open the door?”

  “Definitely not.” He coughed. “Maggie, do me a favor and go back inside. Don’t watch.”

  “If you say so.” But I was concerned that Lacy might hurt herself, so I slipped into the shadows and watched her from a side window. After a few minutes she wore herself out and slumped down onto the porch with her back against the door, and wept.

  Kevin arrived shortly after that in his unmarked police car, argued with her for a moment before he took her by the upper arms, set her on her feet, and marched her down the front steps and strapped her into the front passenger seat of his car. Before he got in on his side, he looked back at the house, searching for something he apparently did not find.

  I stood there in the dark, feeling like an intruder into a very private world as the taillights of Kevin’s car faded into the night. I now knew who had been in the room with Kevin when I spoke with him on the phone that afternoon.

  Chapter 6

  Out of habit, whenever I visited my parents, I slept in my old bedroom, though there was nothing left of me, or of mine, in that room. Long ago, my single bed was replaced by a double, the walls were painted and new curtains were hung. It was only when the lights were out and I lay there in the dark that I fel
t I was back in a familiar place.

  Light from the street, interrupted by the leaves on the trees in the backyard, made the same blue-gray lace on the ceiling, framed by the skewed, angular shadows of the windowpanes, as always. I fell asleep listening to the usual lullaby of night sounds: a neighbor’s dog, the occasional car or a back door closing, the creaks and groans of the old house settling, wind through the branches of the sycamore below my open window.

  Sometime, deep in the night, I jolted awake, aware that something in the rhythms of the night had been disturbed. I sat up in bed and listened, heard nothing, but got up anyway, feeling uneasy. Ever since my daughter was tiny, I have always slept with the bedroom door ajar so that I can hear the house. I can’t sleep otherwise, especially when I am alone. Barefoot, I tiptoed to the door and peered out into the hall. The hall was lit only by street light coming in from the window at the far end, but I could see that no one was there.

  Dad, for his own peace of mind, had placed a mirror in the stairwell positioned so that he could see the downstairs hall all the way to the entry and the window in the front door without going down the stairs. I crept along the side of the hall, avoiding the squeakier center, until I could see into the mirror. There was still no sound, but I could see a disturbance in the pattern of shadows coming from the door to Dad’s den; someone was in there. When I heard what sounded like a drawer being slowly opened I slipped into the nearest bedroom, my brother Mark’s, and dialed 911. In a whisper, I gave the dispatcher my address and told her that someone was inside the house. She told me to stay on the line and to stay upstairs, out of sight. I told her I would stay out of sight, but I needed to hang up so that the intruder wouldn’t hear the phone or see brightness from its screen. She was protesting when I turned off the phone and dropped it into my pajama pocket.

  I waited to see if I had already alerted the intruder before I went back out into the hall where I could see into the mirror again. Shadows shifted along the floor outside Dad’s office as someone moved about inside. Suddenly, a narrow shaft of bright light flew out through the gap between the doorjamb and the door’s hinged edge, showing me, roughly, where in the room the burglar was; near the desk.