Fire and Rain

  Carmen reached down to turn off the tape player where it rested on the black-and-red oriental rug. “It must have been frustrating, losing touch with her like that,” she said.

  “It certainly was.” Barbara rearranged the empty cups on the tray and stood up. “Do you have a few more minutes?” she asked.

  Carmen looked at her watch. “Yes.” Her flight wasn’t until later that evening.

  She followed Barbara upstairs to a room the older woman used as an office. Barbara showed her the numerous pictures of Al and David that graced her desk and a scrapbook of articles on the state’s program for unwed mothers. Then, from the back of a dusty album, she pulled a yellowing, faded color photograph. The young blond woman in the picture grinned at the camera as she held the hands of a tow-headed toddler who seemed to be taking his first steps.

  “Beth and Robbie,” Barbara said.

  “That’s Robbie?” Carmen asked, stunned. She scanned the child’s features, hunting for some resemblance to Jeff Cabrio, but finding little. “He was so blond.”

  “Oh, yes. And Beth’s hair was natural. The envy of all of us at the home.” Barbara slipped the picture out of the small black corners that held it in place and handed it to her. “I’d like it back when you’re done with it,” she said, and Carmen nodded.

  She walked Carmen downstairs again. At the front door, she took her hand, squeezed it. “If you do see Robbie, please tell him I’d adore hearing from him. Tell him I’d give anything to know how his mother’s doing.”

  WHILE WAITING FOR HER plane at the Newark airport, Carmen used her earphones to listen to the tape of her interview with Barbara. She took notes on a yellow pad balanced on her knees, trying to decide what pieces of information she would pass on to her audience the following day and what she would save until later. She would need to decide on the tone of her report, as well. That was becoming a real dilemma. The cynical approach had worked at first, but it no longer seemed to fit the information she was discovering about Jeff. The facts she’d learned so far could only elicit compassion for him, and if she were moving toward uncovering his possibly criminal past, she couldn’t risk making him into an object of sympathy.

  Toward the end of the tape, she listened again to Barbara’s description of Beth’s tearful good-bye and sudden disappearance. Maybe Carmen could focus on that unexplained, apparent escape Beth and her family had made, an early allusion to Jeff’s life as a fugitive. But she would need further verification of that story before she could use it. She didn’t even want to use it. The truth was, she had found herself rooting for Beth Cabrio and her son as Barbara recounted their tale. She’d felt nothing but sympathy for their plight.

  Carmen turned off the recorder and removed the earphones from her head, then looked at her watch. Still another hour. She rested her head against the wall and closed her eyes, thinking.

  Beth had been a young girl, fighting the heartache of her family’s rejection and the practical battle of physical survival for herself and her child. She’d fought that battle inelegantly, perhaps, but with strength and vitality and determination. She’d been tough. Very tough. Carmen wanted to meet her. She wanted to know that Beth had found a peaceful existence in middle age, that she had no fear of whatever hardship life might hand her next. In some way that Carmen couldn’t explain even to herself, she felt Beth Cabrio’s struggle almost as keenly as if it had been her own.

  20

  MIA WAS ALWAYS WAITING. She awoke in the morning, and if Jeff wasn’t her first thought, he was no further away than her second. Sometimes he was in her dreams. Once she dreamt that he was kneeling in the yard where she had seen him with the tarantula, and when he stood up, he was holding the tarantula on his arm, staring at it eye to eye.

  She was waiting for the daytime hours to run their course so she could be with him, because in the five days since they’d listened together to the coyotes, he seemed to seek her out. It wasn’t her imagination. When he called Chris’s office, he spent so long with her on the phone, that once she forgot to put the call through. He could talk about anything. Anything except himself. When she asked him questions, she geared them carefully toward his cottage, or the cat, or the promised rain.

  They ate together at night, Mia purposely changing her routine so that she didn’t begin cooking until nearly sunset, when she knew he would be home. He was no longer working into the dark hours of the night, and he didn’t even pretend that his early arrival at Sugarbush was an accident. He’d come over, the cat tagging along, and eat Mia’s steamed vegetables as if they were filet mignon. On one occasion, he brought over his own set of vegetables and made her eggplant stuffed with rice and spinach, assuring her the recipe contained not a drop of fat. “Although,” he said, “you sure look as if you could use some.”

  She began to hope that Rick was wrong, that Jeff wouldn’t succeed in producing rain, at least not any time soon. He would have to stay in Valle Rosa, wrestling with the problem for months. She began to relish the breath-stealing heat, the crackling dry leaves of the scrub oaks and the scent of newborn fires, all symbols of the drought that kept him close.

  After dinner she would work with her clay or on the design of the fountain, while he’d sit on the sofa with the kitten at his side, a pencil in his hand, and his usual pile of papers resting on his lap. Occasionally she’d catch him watching her, his smile open and genuine, and she’d return to her work with a delicious warmth inside her and a telltale wash of color in her cheeks.

  Sometimes they would talk, sometimes not, but she was surprised by the ease she felt sharing parts of her life with him. She told him about Glen—not everything, of course—but about how he had taught her sculpting, how he’d called her Sunny, and a little bit of how she’d loved him.

  “And why did it end?” Jeff asked her, leaning forward on the couch, the intensity in his eyes almost too much to bear.

  “I can’t talk about it,” she answered, and he smiled.

  “I understand that feeling.”

  He returned to his own work, and she wished he hadn’t let her off the hook quite so easily.

  Her fantasies pulsed with new life. Maybe he would stay in Valle Rosa so long that she would have her reconstructive surgery. Or maybe he would have to leave, but he would tell her—trust only her to know—where he was going, and she could find him after the surgery. But then, reality would settle over her like a suffocating cloud of smoke. She would remember Glen. She would remember her mother, and she’d explore her right breast gingerly, reluctantly, terrified of finding something that would set her back that much further.

  At ten o’clock on the fifth night after they’d taped the coyotes, Mia turned on the television to watch the news. Jeff, sprawled on the couch, barely glanced up from his work until the anchor with the patent leather hair introduced Carmen and her North County Report. Jeff raised his head then, setting his pencil on the coffee table, and folded his arms across his chest.

  There was something magical about Carmen on television. The color in her face was vibrant; her eyes were huge, dark and exotic. Ordinarily, Mia enjoyed simply looking at her, but tonight she picked up Jeff’s tension, and stilled her hands on her clay.

  “More information now about Valle Rosa’s mystery man, Jeff Cabrio,” Carmen began. “News Ninehas learned that Mr. Cabrio was the illegitimate son of a very young homeless mother who lived in or near Newark, New Jersey, and who struggled to keep her son fed and clothed.” While Carmen spoke, a photograph of a blond girl and a toddler appeared behind her. Jeff sucked in his breath and sat up on the sofa.

  “Once in school,” Carmen continued, “young Jeff Cabrio’s brightness was at first misinterpreted, and he was held back a grade. Later though, his superior intelligence was recognized and he skipped two grades.”

  “Three,” Jeff said quietly. “Get your goddamned facts straight.”

  Mia looked at him as the camera swept back to the anchorman. Jeff’s cheeks had reddened; a vein pulsed at his temple. Suddenly
, he raised his fists and brought them down hard on the table. “Where the hell is she getting this stuff?” He was on his feet, papers flying. The cat leapt away from him onto the floor, then up to the window sill. Jeff ran his hands through his hair. “Where did she get that picture? I’ve never even seen it before.”

  “Is she… I mean, is what she’s saying… accurate?”

  “Close enough. Accurate enough to tell me she’s got a source. She’s got a bead on me.”

  Mia leaned back in her chair. “What does it matter? Do you honestly care what people think? Do you think anybody gives a damn if you were illegitimate or—”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Well, what is it then, Jeff?” she asked gently. “What are you so afraid of?”

  He walked across the room to the window that faced the dark adobe. “Don’t ask, Mia, all right? I like that you don’t ask me questions.” He turned to look at her. “I like sitting here with you in the evening. It reminds me of… “ His smile was sudden. Small. Wry. He turned back to the window again. “It’s just comforting, and I find that I need that sort of comfort more than I expected. I need other people more than I thought I did. Please though, don’t ask me questions you know I can’t answer.”

  “I only want to console you,” she said, “and I don’t know how to do that because I don’t understand—”

  “She’s going to do me in, bit by bit. I should get out of here. Out of Valle Rosa.” He rubbed his hand slowly across his chin, his eyes never leaving the window. “But I’m so close. And it’s going to work.”

  “Maybe you should just leave Sugarbush,” Mia said, panicked by the thought of him leaving Valle Rosa altogether. “There must be someplace else you could live. Chris could—”

  “No. As long as I’m in Valle Rosa, I need to stay here. Carmen Perez is one scared woman, and her fear makes her very dangerous, but as long as I’m living on her property, no other reporter can get to me. It’s symbiosis, pure and simple. She protects me from other predators, and in exchange she gets to feed off me. It won’t be much longer. I only wish I knew who her source is.” He shuddered. “I don’t know what she’ll say in her next report, or the report after that.”

  He stared out into the darkness, and Mia saw the real-life image of her sculpture—Jeff and the bas-relief of a window—in front of her.

  “What do you mean, she’s scared?” she asked. “What is she afraid of?”

  “Losing,” he said. “Losing everything she’s worked for.” He turned to face her. “She could unveil me now, Mia. She has enough knowledge, enough power, that if she wanted to, she could move in for the kill. But she’s playing some sort of game. Did you see the gleam in her eyes?”

  Mia nodded, but Jeff had already turned back to the window. “She loves this,” he said. “And it’s really my own fault.”

  “How is it your fault?” She wasn’t following him at all.

  “I told her where I was born. I told her in a cryptic way, and I never thought she’d be able to figure out all of this”—he waved toward the television—”from that little piece of information.” He sighed. “Maybe I wanted her to. Maybe I’m sick and tired of running.”

  Running from what, she wanted to ask, but knew better.

  Jeff walked to the sofa and gathered up his papers. The cat came running when he called him, and he reached down to pick him up. He stopped behind Mia’s chair as he was walking toward the door. Leaning over, he slipped his arm across her chest from shoulder to shoulder, surprising her. He touched his cheek to the top of her head, and she stiffened at the weight of his arm on her breast. She could feel her heart beating against the prosthesis.

  “See you tomorrow,” he said, letting go. “Dinner will be on me.”

  Mia didn’t let out her breath until he had closed the door behind him. She listened to his footsteps on the porch, and in a moment she heard his own cottage door open and close. Then she looked down at the sculpture on the stool in front of her. Right now it was nothing more than clay over an armature, a vaguely human form, the head and face a smooth, featureless sphere that gave nothing away. She hadn’t yet settled on an expression, an emotion for him, but she knew that in the next few days she would begin to shape the clay, to carve it, until its secrets gave way bit by bit beneath the patient, careful touch of her hands.

  21

  JEFF STOPPED CARMEN AS she was pulling out of the Sugarbush driveway the following morning. She didn’t notice him until he pounded on her right front fender to get her attention. She’d been imagining her next step in researching his life, and it jarred her to see him in the flesh. He had started to seem almost like fiction to her.

  He came around to her side of the car and motioned for her to roll down the window.

  “You’re putting people in danger,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The people you’re getting your information from. You’re putting them in jeopardy.”

  “Why, Jeff?” She turned off the ignition and leaned her arm on the window sill. “Why would talking to me cause a problem for anyone, with the possible exception of you?”

  He looked tired. He hadn’t shaved yet this morning; fine lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes. She tried not to feel sympathy for him.

  “Just keep in mind that it could,” he said. “Although I suppose that wouldn’t make much difference to you.”

  “If I honestly thought I was hurting innocent people, of course I would care.”

  “Sure you would,” he said. “Where did you get that picture you showed on the news last night?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t say, Jeff, but I learned a lot about your mother from the person who gave it to me. She sounds like a very impressive woman. I’d like to meet her.”

  Jeff stared at her so hard she had to look away, out to the cottages.

  “Well,” he said, “I’ll have to have the two of you over for dinner sometime.”

  She ignored his sarcasm. “Where does she live?”

  “Go to hell, Carmen.” He started to walk away from the car, but turned back after a few steps. “You’d let me stay here for free, now, wouldn’t you?” he asked. “Just to have exclusive access to me?”

  She smiled. “I’ve got to get to work,” she said, rolling up the window again. “Have a good day.”

  As she pulled out of the driveway, she gritted her teeth in self-disgust. God, she could be a bitch! Had she always been this haughty, this self-righteous? And what if he was right? What if she was putting people in jeopardy in a way she didn’t yet understand? She wouldn’t want harm to come to either Barbara Roland or the elusive Beth Cabrio.

  More likely, though, Jeff was merely attempting to throw her off the trail. He’s on the run from something, she reminded herself as she negotiated the curving road above the nearly empty reservoir. Law-abiding citizens don’t adopt an alias and move from town to town. They don’t use a motel as the address on their driver’s license. And they don’t con desperate people into believing they can do something that is clearly impossible.

  PLAINFIELD, NEW JERSEY. FROM her desk at News Nine, in the large, open room she shared with a dozen other News Nine peons, Carmen spoke with directory assistance. She was trying to track down any Cabrios living in that city. There were none. There were ten numbers under the name Watts, however, and she tried them all. No one knew of a Jefferson; no one recognized the name Beth Cabrio.

  The Christmas card had only been postmarked Plainfield, Barbara Roland had said. Maybe Beth had gone out of her way to make certain the card was sent from a town other than the one in which she was living. Still, it was a place to start.

  She called directory assistance once more and got the names of all the elementary and junior high schools in Plainfield. Over lunch, she pondered the list, trying to figure out what to do next. How old had Jeff been when he moved to Plainfield? Surely he’d only been in elementary school, but that particular list of schools was formidable, and she didn’t
know how to begin to track down a student who might have attended one of them nearly thirty years earlier.

  There were only two junior high schools, though, and she decided to tackle them in alphabetical order.

  After lunch, she called the number for Hubbard Junior High. Summer school was in session, and the receptionist who answered the phone tried to persuade her to call back in September, but Carmen was persistent. She wanted to speak with the librarian, she said, and no, it didn’t matter if it was the “summer librarian.” The receptionist finally put her through.

  The librarian, though, was no more agreeable. Carmen asked if she would mind looking through the yearbooks for the years Jeff might have attended Hubbard to see if the name Robert Blackwell appeared in any of them.

  There was a long pause before the librarian responded to her request. “You’ve got to be joking,” she said finally. “You think I’ve got nothing better to do with my time? It’s summer session and these kids are wild.”

  Carmen spent a few futile minutes trying to persuade her. Finally the woman agreed to give her the names of the class presidents for the five-year stretch Carmen had targeted as the dates Jeff would most likely have attended the school.

  She hung up the phone, frustrated. Now she had a list of names as well as a list of schools. Great. She dialed directory assistance again, searching for the numbers of the class officers and wondering how likely it was, that after twenty-some years, any of them would still live in their hometown.

  But one of them did, it seemed. One woman who had blessedly not changed her name. President of her eighth grade class, Gail Evelyn Vidovich. The phone was listed under Gail E. Vidovich. Surely there couldn’t be two women by that name.

  Carmen took the telephone number home with her and tried calling Gail Vidovich late in the evening, New Jersey time.