Dorothea talked easily of the trip down. As she talked she began to see how one might frame Ricky sitting there: his dark clothes, the furry gray corduroy of the couch, the pale skin of hands and face, the bright Afghan lapping a pink and vermillion corner over his rail of a thigh. She could feel her hand jump with the impulse to paint him just as he was, quietly dying in the mellow afternoon light.
How would you show the pain that his medication controlled? How would you show the distance he had traveled lately, all unwilling? Sometimes now his eyes would take on a remote and shuttered look that it hurt her heart to see.
For the moment, however, he was attentive and interested. “Sounds as if she still hasn’t made up her mind, then.”
Mrs. Garcia’s job was to speak with all the parties involved and then advise the Children’s Court attorney whether to bind any or all of the young Cantus over for trial as adults. Alternatively, she could recommend a hearing in the judge’s chambers that would result in some form of probation. Dorothea had been arguing all along for that.
“She admitted today that I baffle her completely.”
“Because you’re the only one to have been physically injured, but you aren’t howling for blood,” Ricky said, nodding. “She must find you utterly inexplicable.”
“This time she went so far as to suggest that I may be suffering from something they call ‘hostage syndrome,’ where you start identifying with your captors. She’s no fool, Ricky. The first time we talked, she asked me about my kids, whether any of them had ever been in trouble with the law. Today, she suggested pointblank that I see in Roberto something of my own younger son in his more wayward, draft-dodging days.”
“Poor woman,” Ricky observed calmly. “She hasn’t a chance in hell of working out the truth, has she?”
“Not unless I tell her. I have a feeling that she’s not much on mystic revelations and such, so I’m not going to.”
The radio whispered a banal, familiar theme. She got up. “I’m going to put something on the phonograph. One more hearing of the ‘Bolero’ and I’ll turn into a pillar of salt. Any requests?”
He murmured, “You’ve got some late Hayden quartets there, I believe.”
In the kitchen the phone rang and Claire answered. She uncomplainingly fielded the calls — not so many of them now, thank goodness — from news and media people, friends, sympathizers, critics, nuts of the extreme right and left, members of civil rights and ethnic or minority rights groups, law students, prophets, politicians.
Ricky cocked his head in the direction of the kitchen. “Mrs. Garcia’s secretary calling, no doubt,” he observed with amusement, “to make an appointment for your next discussion.”
Dorothea groaned. “I hope not. She also quizzed me about whether I’d been in communication with the Cantu kids or their mother. Undue influence on a sentimental old mommy could explain me, I suppose. I assured her I’ve been avoiding any such contact for exactly that reason.”
“Well, what do you think of Roberto’s chances?”
“The best I can persuade myself to think on any given day,” Dorothea said grimly. “I’m doing all I can for him, but he hasn’t made it easy. And some of the other kids’ parents are out for blood, believe me — among other things, it looks as if Mary’s school is going to be shut down even if they don’t get sued to blazes. I must admit, I find it hard to figure out how you put a dollar value on what we all went through.”
“For some of them, I imagine the experience was valuable,” Ricky said, “although I wouldn’t say such a thing aloud to anyone but you.”
“I know. I can’t very well tell Joni Reed’s mother that I’m not very impressed that the kid has been having nightmares ever since. Joni missed the worst of it thanks to her own quick-wittedness, which should be worth something to her self-esteem.”
Ricky said, “Do you think another statement from me might be of help?”
Dorothea shook her head. She yawned. The codeine did that to her sometimes. “You’ve done more than your share, love. And the Cantu kids have a few other things going for them. The results of the Pinto Street investigation are helping tremendously.”
A complex case was being built against the fraudulent developers who had tried to steal Pinto Street and against the police who had answered the riot-call. It had recently come to light that one of the developers, a Mr. Bickford, had a friend in the police department who had been acting for the developers in various ways, most of them having to do with the distortion or suppression of information. The whole thing stank higher and higher and promised a sizable battle in court down the line.
“I do have my doubts sometimes,” she admitted. “I can’t deny that Roberto has the makings of a real thug. But he could become any number of other things, couldn’t he? I don’t want to try to write his romance for him. It may turn out a good deal grubbier and smaller in scope than I hope for him, but whatever it is, it’ll be his.”
“I believe you’ve come to like Roberto,” Ricky said.
“Oh, I don’t know. Youth is attractive, kids themselves are. Their easy bafflement. Their amateurish defenses and tremendous vulnerabilities. I’ve had kids of my own. I’m not proof against any of it.”
“I have none,” Ricky said, thoughtfully drawing the fringes of the afghan through his fingers. “And I’m not either.”
“And another thing. I remembered something the other morning, something I normally don’t think much about. Do you know what I did when I left Jack? The last thing I did? I went out into the garage — I’d been slipping out there to make prints whenever I could find time — and I tried to heave my old printing press over. I couldn’t take it with me — I had no place of my own at that point — so I tried to destroy the thing. I couldn’t budge it, of course; it weighed more than I did. But damn, I tried!” She stopped, thinking back to that dank work-space with the fluorescent bulbs she had installed herself to have light to work by.
“I confess, the connection escapes me,” Ricky said.
“I was angry. I was furious. Angry with myself for having put it off so long, afraid I was starting too late, you see? That I would never catch up and make a serious career as an artist. And afraid to leave, too. I was just boiling with rage and fear, Ricky. I’ve never felt that way since, not even when Nathan left — not until that evening when Roberto and I ended up shouting at each other and he smashed my lamp. He reminded me of what that kind of anger feels like when it breaks free; and what those feelings are like to live with, bottled up inside. I think he’s been living with feelings like that for a long time. I guess I understand him a little better, remembering that, than I’d like to. So I can’t just write him off, can I?”
“You can,” Ricky said, “if you want to.”
Dorothea leaned back. “Then I guess I don’t want to.”
The phone rang again and Claire called, “Mom? Did you want to speak to George?”
Ugh. No. But it had to be done. Ricky gave Dorothea the victory sign as she headed for the kitchen.
While she talked to George on the phone, she leaned against the wall, watching her daughter making a stack of thin French crepes for tea. This soothed her, and she needed soothing, for she had to calmly, steadily, and repeatedly tell George that no, he would not be allowed to come out early, ahead of the scheduled mob, and show his personal big-wigs the wall. No. No. No.
But you must, he said, but, but, I can do so much for you, my friends, my contacts, important people, I’ve told them all about you, I could have arranged a tremendous event for you, at least let me improvise, let me, let me.
No. Dorothea stayed with it, noting with surprise the racing of her heart. She wondered if she had made it clear to Ricky how valuable it was to her to have remembered how to be really, cleanly, knowingly angry and to act on it, a debt of sorts owed to Roberto. Saying no to George felt good: thrilling, because fear was being denied its absurd, obscure power. Not that she had a great deal of choice. If she were to hang up, that would be
George’s excuse to drive out and continue the conversation here.
No, she said, again, watching Claire’s slender body doing its crepe-dance at the stove. No. You and your friends can come out with everyone else, or not at all. And if you do try to sneak out to the beforetime, I will raise such hell that your name will be black, stinking, volcanic mud in the art world forever after, my lad. Yes. I mean it. Over and over.
In the end, he hung up in a huff. Dorothea let out a sigh of relief.
“Way to go, Mom,” Claire said. She knew all about this. She was the one who had handled the invitations to the first viewing of the wall.
Dorothea arranged lacy-edged crepes on an ornate silver tray that Claire had brought down for the purpose and polished. “You’ve got to show me how to make these things before you take off again.”
Claire flashed her a quick, taut smile and rolled a new skin of batter swiftly around the pan. “Arthur called again yesterday, did I tell you?” The younger and sweetly prodigal son. “While you were out walking. He’s upset to have missed you again. He thinks you’re ducking him. You know how sensitive he is.”
“We’ve all survived Arthur’s sensitivity this long,” Dorothea replied testily. “I suppose we can get through this bout as well. It would be so much better if he’d just accept the fact that it’s all going to set itself right without him, that’s all.”
Arthur had to stay with the latest of the string of rock groups he had been managing. He worried, it seemed, from this or that hotel room between gigs, between tokes.
Bill, the older boy, handled things differently (always had). He’d sent a telegram from Tokyo, and there had been one exhaustive, efficient phone call in the middle of the night. He would come and see her when he got back. His mother’s assurances that she was well, that things were in hand, that Claire was here to help, had satisfied him. No doubt he thought that was a daughter’s proper place and duty, though Claire would mince him for saying so.
“Okay,” Claire said, switching off the gas, “that should be enough to hold you.”
She carried the tray inside and set it on the table in front of the couch. Dorothea followed, admiring her daughter’s style, proud to show her off a bit to Ricky.
“Teacups for only two?” Ricky said. “You’re not eating with us, Claire?”
The edge in his tone surprised Dorothea. Even more surprising was Claire’s sudden frowning confusion. She still looked about six when she knit her brows like that — only then she’d had bangs — and poked out her lower lip.
She said, “I can’t stay, really. My editor wants to talk some more about the article, maybe expansion into a series. She’s calling me soon, down at the Willis’s. I’ll see you both later.”
And she tossed off the apron, grabbed her suede jacket, and fled.
“Dope,” Dorothea said, trying to chew one of the crepes before it dissolved ethereally in her mouth. “These are delicious, and she’s too thin. Did you ever see her when she was in her teens? Plump as a partridge, and now look at her.”
“She’s afraid,” Ricky said.
“What?”
“She’s afraid. Of me, of the damned cancer.”
“Oh, Christ.” Dorothea set the coffee pot down and stared at the beautiful spread of food. “Are you sure?” But she knew. Of course Claire wouldn’t eat here or sleep here. She was scared of somehow picking up the cancer from plates and utensils Ricky had used. She was afraid of breathing air that had been tainted by his tainted lungs.
“It’s nothing new,” Ricky said. “I’ve seen it before.”
“I’m sorry, love,” she said.
“Don’t be so sorry that you let the crepes go cold. You’re right, they are delicious.”
Ricky heard Dorothea crying and took his morning juice to her room. She was sitting up in her bed and crying full-heartedly, noisily, and wetly into her hands.
Well, he thought, Frank had said this kind of thing was to be expected after what she’s been through. He wondered if there had been other outbursts. At least he could be moderately sure this wasn’t about himself.
He knocked on the door-frame. “May I come in?”
Blubbing and blotting away with the sheet-hem, she nodded.
He padded over in his pajamas and slippers and stood looking down at her. One way or another, he thought, we are managing to squeeze in nearly everything we might have had in a lifetime together, including this. My, doesn’t she look a mess, poor girl.
“What’s it about, do you know?” he said.
“I woke up drowning,” she said, blotting her eyes with two handfuls of bed sheet. “You’d think everybody died, instead of just poor Mars!”
“A glorious victory doesn’t cancel out a very well-earned, even celebratory stress reaction.” He sat down on the bed and hugged her against his side, taking care not to put pressure on her strapped ribs. There was no place within reach now to set the juice down. Ah, well. Funny thing too, how no juice he had tasted since could approach the wonderful cool sweetness of the glass that Blanca had brought him on that terrible night. “You’re making the sheets all wet.”
“Laundry tomorrow anyhow,” she said, her face muffled in his shoulder. He loved the feel of her sleepy, loose weight against him, all trusting and helpless. At least at moments like this he could feel himself in some sort of authority, a sensation increasingly hard to come by for him these days.
“I think,” he said, “you miss your ghost.”
At this, she began to laugh as well as cry and ended up gulping down hiccups.
“Careful,” he said, “or you’ll have orange juice in your hair.”
“Poor ghost,” she said, relaxing against him as the weeping fit passed. “So terrified, and trying to terrify me too, for my own good. The funny thing is, it wasn’t about the details of history at all — all that good stuff you dug up for me in the books I brought you. It was about the effect of those terrible, bloody times on a weak soul. He was frantic to justify his own cowardice, which was all over and done-with centuries ago. It was sad.”
“You think you’ve truly made peace with him, then?”
“Well, to start with I stopped trying to fob him off on you,” she said ruefully. “Once I recognized him as mine, everything changed. He was then, and this — all of us, those scared, angry boys — this was now, and I — my modern self — I could choose to do things differently. So I did, because he’d taught me what I needed to learn. That’s what I take from all this. I hope it’s enough to let the judge dry up and blow away now, like any ghost who’s made an effective delivery of his message.”
“Well, it’s the damnedest ghost story I’ve ever come across; very twisted, Dorothea, and shockingly unconventional.”
“But satisfying,” she said. Then, with a grin she added, “So how about it — the two of us could come back as Peruvian archaeologists or Chinese astronauts next time and go exploring together. What do you think?”
“Reincarnation!” He snorted.
“He was me, Ricky, as I was in a former life,” she said earnestly. “I’m sure of it. What have you got against the idea, anyway?”
“It’s such a tearoom gypsy notion,” he said irritably, pulling away from her and propping himself against the headboard of her bed. “All beads and incense and Madame Arcati shenanigans; or else a lot of pseudo-eastern mystical solemnity! And either way it’s belittling, don’t you see? So damned — convenient. Death’s a lark, not to worry, back again sucking your bottle before you can say Jack Robinson!”
She smiled. “My own feeling has always been, ‘What, you mean I have to come back again? I’ve just managed this time by the skin of my teeth, next time might be worse!’ But when I recognized him — God, Ricky, it was the creepiest moment of my life, I swear. I thought, it’s me, and oh you poor creature. Even though he didn’t look exactly like me — it was that difference that threw me at first — I didn’t have a doubt in the world.”
“How, not exactly like? Blue-jawed? Hair
y-eared?”
Dorothea burrowed past him to dig a tissue out from under her pillow. “Move, come on.” She blew her nose. “The main difference was that his eyebrows were spiky and tangled, like a cartoon wizard’s.”
“A lot of old codgers have wizard-eyebrows,” Ricky said. “A barber can singe them or wax them flat for you, to make you look younger. Your ghost needed a better barber.”
“Don’t get all sniffy just because you didn’t figure it out first. Who in the world could have guessed? Our cultures don’t even recognize the phenomenon as real! What tickles me about the whole affair is the way it shows that people are too narrow in their thinking about reincarnation — trying to confine it to bloodlines and physical inheritance. When you think of it, there’s no good reason why a non-physical transfer like the reincarnation of a soul should have the least connection with your particular family tree.”
Ricky rubbed at the nape of his neck. “So we have to keep coming back and doing the same things over until we get it right, like having to endlessly repeat a grade in school? I think I’d prefer Hell, thanks.”
“Not repeat, exactly,” she said slowly. “Just — come at a similar problem from different angles until you see your way through it because you’ve grown a little older and wiser. Maybe that’s how you come to know that you have grown; and that it’s time to move on.”
“Here’s to that thought, then,” he said, lifting his juice glass to her. “I think we could all use that kind of opportunity, one way or another.” And then, because she looked so small and warm and red-nosed with weeping and because he missed her horribly across the foot-and-a-half of space between them, he put the glass down and held out his hand. “In the meantime, would you mind very much if I just lie down here and hold you for a little?”
That afternoon Dorothea did her own driving. Brillo and her knapsack of tools and supplies rode in the back of the truck. She regretted giving up the slow, thoughtful stroll to the wall, the rewards of the gradual approach, but Ricky was weaker than he had been. And there was no more reason to avoid laying a tell-tale wheel track along the arroyo.