Fatal Impressions (27 page)

“Maybe he
wasn’t
seeking sex—maybe it was a gay bashing,” Coleman said.

“It’s awful no matter how it happened. Let’s don’t talk about it anymore. Are you going to Grendle’s auction tomorrow? They have a lot of junk, a few nice things, and one fabulous print—a rare Toulouse-Lautrec. It has to be on Bain’s list,” Dinah said.

“I’m going in the hope Bain’ll turn up. But before the auction, I’m meeting Simon Fanshawe-Davies. I wish I knew more about him. Do you know a Renaissance art expert who could fill me in on Simon’s background, and his relationship with the Ransome Gallery? I don’t know if he’s a partner, or what he does there.”

“Several of my graduate school classmates specialized in the Renaissance, but they mostly work in Europe. I’ll see who I can find. Do you want to have lunch after the auction?”

“Sure, what about the Red Dragon? I’ll make a reservation.”

“Okay, see you at Grendle’s.”

You’ll also get the opportunity to see Coleman and Dinah in an entirely different light when you get a glimpse into their childhoods in
Angels
, coming from The Story Plant on July 15, 2014.

Set in small-town North Carolina, it tells of orphaned cousins who discover each other and believe that angels are watching them and guiding them through their most important moments. Seven-year-old Dinah has been blessed with a loving grandmother and great aunt. Five-year-old Coleman has not been so lucky. But now that the two have been united, the wonders of the world begin to reveal themselves.

Touching, thoughtful, and rewarding,
Angels
is a treasure.

Here is an excerpt:

I knew in the back of my mind I had a cousin Coleman, but I just put the knowin’ away like you do when something doesn’t seem real, or is like a storybook, kind of half-real. So I was ’mazed when Miss Ida told me Coleman was comin’ to live with us. Seems like all the folks around here have big families but us. “Us” is just my granny—I call her Miss Ida ’cause that’s what everybody else calls her—and my great-aunt Polly. I love Miss Ida and Aunt Polly to death, but I’d have liked having a mama and daddy and a brother, and ’specially a sister. I had prayed for a sister, and I was about to get me one. My heart near ’bout jumped out of my chest, I was that excited.

Miss Ida said Coleman could stay in my room with me, and we should get it ready, so we all went upstairs to look at it. It’s a big room with a fireplace, and at the back of the house, so you can see the Good Hope River from the windows. But there’s not much furniture: a big ol’ white-painted bed, saggy in the middle; a beat-up wooden chair by a table where I do homework; a chest of drawers; and a wardrobe for hanging clothes (our house is so old it doesn’t have closets). Thin white curtains, yellow from being old; a white crocheted spread, made and mended by Aunt Polly; a bare wood floor and blue walls, faded by time and the sun. In winter, the room smells like wood smoke, but now I can have the windows open and let the breeze and the sunshine in, and I can smell the pine trees, and the lavender we put in the linen closet with the sheets. “We can both sleep in that big bed,” I said, thinking how we’d talk late at night.

“You can keep each other warm in winter,” Miss Ida said.

Maybe, but that’ll take some doin’. Our house is freezin’ in the winter, and all of us suffer from the cold. “And keep each other company when we have bad dreams,” I said.

Aunt Polly frowned and pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Are you still having bad dreams, honey?”

“No, ma’am,” I fibbed. “But Coleman might, being strange and all.” I make it my business not to worry Miss Ida and Aunt Polly with my bad dreams, unless I wake ’em up crying—that I can’t help. They have plenty of troubles, without me adding to ’em.

“Dinah, why don’t you go all over the house, and look in every room and see if you can find anything to pretty up the room for Coleman?” Miss Ida’s eyes were shining and her cheeks were pinker than usual; she was that happy about Coleman. But it was wishful thinking I’d find a scrap or jot in our house to make the room pretty. All you see in the empty rooms upstairs are mice tracks and dust bunnies. I don’t like going in those rooms. They smell like mothballs and old, old dust. If there’s ghosts in this house, that’s where they are. I don’t really believe in ghosts, but those rooms are sad and lonesome, and make me want to cry.

Our house is named Four Oaks, and in olden days, it was part of a big plantation. I’ve seen pictures of it when Miss Ida was a little girl, and the house looked grand. It’s run down now and showing its age. Two of the big ol’ live oaks it’s named for are dead and gone, but the other two are doing fine and look mighty pretty with the Spanish moss hanging all over ’em. There’s tall magnolia trees in front, too, and if you don’t look too close and notice the peeling paint, the outside of the house is all right.

But every room is as naked as a jaybird, except the few we live in. I didn’t remind Miss Ida of that. Miss Ida believes in miracles, and Coleman comin’ is a miracle, so if Miss Ida thinks furniture and pictures and rugs and such might appear, maybe they will.

If I had my druthers, some clothes would turn up. I don’t know how we’re goin’ to dress Coleman. I have just enough clothes to stay clean, and everything Aunt Polly and Miss Ida own is old and worn out. But I know the Lord will provide.

I didn’t bother to traipse through all those empty rooms, but I did what I could for our bedroom. I swept and dusted till the floor and the furniture were spankin’ clean, and I picked some of the pink roses growing on the pasture fence and put them in a jar of water on the dresser. When I finished, the room smelled like a flower garden.

It was a good thing, too, because Coleman stank like William Greenhill, our neighbor’s billy goat. I never saw or smelled such a dirty child. She’s a little bit of a thing—I’m way taller than she is—and her hair was so matted and dirty I couldn’t tell what color it was, or her skin, either. When she opened her eyes wide, I could see they were green, but the rest of her—well! I was sure if we washed her in the tub, she’d turn into a mudpie. I thought we should put the hose on her first, but I didn’t say a word. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

“Polly, you go run a bath for Coleman. I’ll see to supper. I expect you’d like a bath before we eat, wouldn’t you, honey?” Miss Ida’s voice was real soft, like she was tryin’ not to spook a bird. Did she think Coleman was scared? Coleman didn’t look scared to me. I’d have called her hopeful looking, like a sparrow waiting by the bird feeder for crumbs.

Coleman smiled up at her. “Yes, ma’am,” she said.

Oh, good. She might look and smell like a piglet, but somebody’s taught her manners. Aunt Polly and Miss Ida set a lot of store by manners, and it would be easier on us all if she was good with the “pleases” and “thank-yous” and “ma’ams.” Aunt Polly is still schoolteachery, and she’ll be telling Coleman enough without havin’ to teach her manners, too.

“Dinah, please go fetch Coleman one of your nighties. Y’all left so fast you came off without any of Coleman’s clothes, didn’t you?” Miss Ida said to Miss Laura Byrd, who was waitin’ to talk to her.

“Yes, ma’am, Miss Ida. And we didn’t take time for her to bathe either—we just drove and took naps beside the road,” Miss Laura said.

None of us believed Coleman had anything to leave behind, but it was polite to pretend she did. We didn’t want to shame her by lettin’ on we knew she had nothing but the rags she stood up in. Miss Laura and Miss Ida went in the kitchen, and Aunt Polly and I took Coleman upstairs to the bathroom. We filled that big ol’ tub to the brim and didn’t worry for once about wasting hot water or soap or shampoo.

Coleman stripped off and climbed in. Aunt Polly gave her a wash rag, and Coleman scrubbed and scrubbed.

She cleaned up real good but for being so skinny. You can see all her bones. She’s the same color as me—sort of pink—’cept she has a bunch of purple bruises all over her. (It took a while before she told me how she came by those bruises—Gloria was a drinker, and a mean drunk with it, and hit Coleman when she could catch her. I hated hearing it.) The big surprise was Coleman’s hair: it’s yellow as a dandelion, and curly as a lamb. When Aunt Polly went downstairs to tell Miss Ida we were ’bout done and fixin’ to come to supper, I reached out and touched Coleman’s hair—I couldn’t help it, it was that pretty.

She smiled up at me and said, “I put ditch dirt on it. I heard that Gloria tell a man a yeller-haired girl was easy to sell, so I made it look ugly as I could. I didn’t think much of that Gloria, but I might’ve landed in a worse place if she’d sold me. An’ that’s why we didn’t stop to clean me up—she’s probably lookin’ for a yeller-haired white child.”

I felt sick to my stomach thinking about somebody selling Coleman, but I didn’t say a word. Aunt Polly came back and dried Coleman off, being real careful ’round those bruises. She towel-dried Coleman’s hair, and brushed out the tangles, and pulled the nightie over Coleman’s head. I have two nightgowns, and I’d washed and ironed my best one for her when Aunt Polly told me Coleman might have nothin’ to sleep in. It was way too long, but we tied it up with an old ribbon ’round her waist and rolled up her sleeves. Aunt Polly wrapped a shawl around her to keep her from getting chilled after the hot water and the steam in the bathroom, and we went down to thank Miss Laura for bringing Coleman home. Miss Ida asked her to stay to supper, but she said Aunt Mary Louise was expecting her, so we thanked her again, and Coleman gave her a big goodbye hug.

It was such a special night, we’d set the dining room table where we have Sunday dinner, and I’d put roses in a vase in the middle. I said the blessing: “God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for this food. And thank you, God, for bringin’ Coleman home.” Everybody said “Amen,” and we commenced supper.

Coleman ate like she was starving—I never saw such a hungry child. I was hungry too, but seein’ Miss Ida and Aunt Polly watching Coleman, I almost forgot to eat. They’re in their fifties, but Miss Ida is older than Aunt Polly. They say she was a great beauty when she was a girl, and to my way of thinking, she still is. Her hair is cotton white and hangs to her waist when she lets it down to brush it. But she mostly wears it piled on her head, puffed up around her face, with a knot on top, like a picture I saw of what teacher said was called a Gibson Girl in the olden days. Her eyebrows are black, and she has soft brown eyes, and a rosy face she powders every day with a big puff and face powder that smells like lilacs. She wears starched shirtwaist dresses in light colors—pink, lavender, blue—and even faded and worn as they are, she always looks nice. She pulls on an old cardigan sweater of the Judge’s in the cold months, and Aunt Polly makes patchwork aprons and smocks for her to wear over her dresses when she’s cooking. She wears thick hose even on the hottest days, and white nurse’s shoes, ’cause she’s on her feet in the kitchen so much.

Folks say Aunt Polly was the plain sister, born to be an old-maid schoolmarm, and her clothes are kind of schoolteacherish—starchy shirts and droopy skirts and lace-up shoes. But her smile could charm a bobcat to eat out of her hand. She wears her hair like Miss Ida’s, but hers is streaky gray and black. Her eyes are brown, too, and she wears glasses—Miss Ida maybe should wear ’em, but she just uses hers for reading the newspaper—and Aunt Polly’s are always slippin’ down. Most of the time both of ’em look so tired and worried, I forget how pretty they are. But watching Coleman eat, and knowing she’s home to stay, they were all smiles, and pretty as a picture.

When I turned to my supper, it was ’bout the best I ever ate. Miss Ida is famous for her cooking, and there was a gracious plenty, ’cause Miss Ida and I had put the little pot in the big pot for Coleman’s homecoming. We had fried chicken, and green beans, and corn, and stewed tomatoes—all we’d canned last summer—and biscuits and butter. Miss Ida had said we should kill a chicken and clean out the pantry; there’d never be a better time for a feast. I thought so, too, but both our ol’ freezer and our pantry are gettin’ to look like Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. Miss Ida says we must trust in the Lord; He’ll show us what to do about food.

Miss Ida is best known for her desserts, especially cakes, and she’s teaching me. For Coleman’s homecoming, we’d fixed everybody’s favorite: chocolate fudge cake with chocolate pecan frosting. The pecans come from our own trees, and I shelled and picked out every one. That cake smelled so good baking I could hardly wait to get at it, and Miss Ida let me scrape the frosting bowl. Me and Coleman had two pieces each.

Coleman ate ’til I thought she’d  bust, and I b’lieve she’d have kept at it till breakfast, but for being so sleepy. When she nodded off, and her head ’bout fell in her plate, Aunt Polly picked her up and toted her off to bed.

After I helped Miss Ida clean up the kitchen and wash the dishes, I went upstairs, brushed my teeth, put on my other gown, and climbed in bed beside Coleman. After all that scrubbin’ she smelled like violet talcum powder. The rose scent was still in the room, too, and the lavender of the sheets, and the pine tree smell coming through the windows—I breathed it in and listened to the frogs croaking, and the river talking to itself, and a whippoorwill calling way off. When I said my prayers, I thanked the Lord for sendin’ me a sister, and for our good home.