I sat staring at this entry, wondering how I could have missed Aunt May’s unhappiness. Had she perhaps come to terms with things by the time I was adjusted enough to my new life to notice? I started leafing back through that journal, reading the entries that I’d skipped earlier because they dealt with something other than my mother and me.
Maybe because I’d been doing so much housecleaning, the details seemed very real. The dusting, laundry, “hoovering,” the cooking, eternal cooking. Later I found an entry noting she’d decided I might as well learn to wash up after dinner: that “Mira had better get used to the idea there are no servants
here.
” Subsequent entries noted how often Aunt May went down and had to wash some pot over again, or get the spots off of glassware. Apparently, Uncle Stan—a man I had always thought of as easygoing—could be a domestic tyrant. The knowledge made me uncomfortable.
I found some comfort in other of Aunt May’s entries. At least Uncle Stan didn’t think appliances were appropriate Christmas or birthday presents. He bought her jewelry or books. He always took her to dinner, and sometimes to lunch as well. They went out to movies and the occasional play. There were hints that they had a good sex life.
Even so, Aunt May had felt imprisoned by the expectations imposed on her gender and her social class—that tier of the middle class that cares so much about what other people think. I began to see her interest in religions and odd customs as the huge rebellion it must have seemed to her.
“Poor woman,” I said aloud, as I put the journal back in its place in the metal box. “Aunt May, wherever you are, thanks for letting me stretch my wings. I don’t think I ever realized how much you had to work against.”
It seemed to me that there was a rippling smile in the air. When I turned out the bedside light and settled in to sleep, I felt a relief from the sorrow that had dogged me, almost unknowing, without relief, from the day the phone rang and I learned that my true mother was dead.
Chilton O’Reilly had been right. News was slow this time of year, and the
Optic
was more than happy to run a couple of stories about me. We decided to start with the “return home” one, so early the following week, Chilton came over to Phineas House.
I was in the kitchen setting up a pot of coffee when one of the painters called down from his scaffold, through the open window, “Señora Mira, a car has stopped.
Uno viejo está aquí.
”
“Thanks,” I called back. As I went to open the front door, I made a mental note that Chilton and I might want to discuss anything sensitive somewhere away from an open window. But then, what sensitive matter might we discuss? I pretended I didn’t know, but the question came to my lips almost as soon as we’d exchanged our greetings.
“Tell me, Chilton,” I said, “why didn’t you answer my mother’s letter?”
“Your mother? Mrs. Bogatyr never wrote me.”
“Not Colette,” I said, “my adopted mother, Maybelle Fenn. Apparently, she wrote you about a year after I came to live with her, asking for details about Colette Bogatyr’s disappearance.”
Mr. O’Reilly looked surprised. “I never got her letter. Did she write care of the
Optic
?”
“I imagine so. That’s the only address she would have had. She notes that she wrote at least twice. As far as I can tell, she never got an answer.”
“Are you sure she wrote me, not another reporter, or the editor?”
I nodded. Aunt May had made carbons of her letters. I’d found them in a large envelope wedged into the metal document box alongside the journals.
Chilton looked sincerely embarrassed. “Mira, I don’t remember receiving either of those letters, and I’m sure I would have remembered hearing from the woman who was taking care of you.”
Now it was my turn to look embarrassed. “Actually, Chilton, Aunt May didn’t mention that. She represented herself as a sociology student doing work on why women abandon their families.”
Chilton’s expression became quizzical. “Now, why would she do that?”
Even as I shaped an answer I thought would work, I found myself thinking,
Because in a way that is what she
was
interested in. She loved Uncle Stan and me, but there was a part of her that wanted to abandon it all and have a life of her own
.
Aloud I said, “Because she thought no one would tell her anything if they knew who she was. Apparently, the trustees for my mother—that is Colette Bogatyr’s estate—were pretty cryptic about the circumstances surrounding her disappearance.”
Chilton coughed a dry laugh. “They had to be, didn’t they? They didn’t have much to tell, and who would want to admit that? But, Mira, believe me, I never heard from Maybelle Fenn—or from a sociology student either. I’d remember that, too. I would have been thrilled to be part of a research project of any kind. I was young, eager, and very determined to make a difference.”
He looked sad, then, as if wondering if anything he’d done had mattered in the least.
“I wish I knew where those letters went,” I said, but I didn’t push the matter further. To do so would be to come straight out and call Chilton O’Reilly a liar—that, or accuse him of being part of a conspiracy to conceal what did happen to my mother. I didn’t think he was a liar, and if he was—or had been—part of a conspiracy, I didn’t think accusing him of such would do any good. It might well do harm, because then he’d know I had reason to suspect there
was
a conspiracy, and if he was part of it … .
I shook my head as if I could clear the confusing tangle of thoughts that way.
“I’ve made coffee,” I said, “and there’s iced tea, orange juice, and some pop.”
“Coffee would be great,” he said, and followed me back into the kitchen.
Once we’d poured and doctored, I suggested we sit in the living room.
“I’ve put a lot of time into getting it cleaned,” I said, “and I’d enjoy showing it off.”
He agreed, but I noticed him glancing toward the closed door of my mother’s library/office as we went past. Interesting. Had he been in there at some point?
We seated ourselves, me on the sofa that until recently had served as my bed, Chilton on a high-backed chair. I’d placed a coaster on the table nearby, and as he rested his coffee cup on it, he smiled at what else was there.
“My favorite candy,” he said. “That’s not easy to find this time of year.”
I grinned back. “I lucked into some at one of the general stores. I can’t swear it’s not stale, but the bottle was sealed.”
He took a piece, and nodded his approval.
“Good,” he said, his words slightly distorted by the candy tucked in the corner of his cheek. “Now, I prefer to take notes as I do an interview, but I’d also like to run a tape. That way I can double check my notes if necessary.”
“No problem,” I said. “What do you want to know?”
He started by asking a bunch of questions for which he already knew at least some of the answers. I guessed he was making sure he had his facts straight. Then he moved into other things: my art, my teaching career, my impressions of Las Vegas now as compared to what I remembered.
The process took a while, and I warmed our coffee a couple of times before we were done.
“That’s far more than I’ll ever be able to use,” Chilton admitted as he folded his notebook closed and pushed the Stop button on the tape recorder. “However, I prefer to have rather more than less. This way, if there’s a followup story, I’ll already have some of what I’ll need. Now, one more favor. Can I have a quick walk through the house—and maybe around the outside? It’ll let me better plan what to do with the photographer when we do the other piece.”
I rose, nodding. “That would be fine, but I haven’t gotten to even half the rooms. I’d rather we restricted ourselves to the ones I have done. Certainly, you’re not going to be able to run more than one or two pictures in any case.”
“True enough,” he agreed, but I had the impression he was disappointed. I didn’t let that change my mind. The way he had looked at the door of my mother’s office had made me uneasy.
I began the tour with the room in which we stood, took him through the dining room and kitchen, down into the cellar, then up to the room in which I was currently sleeping. I made a point of showing off details like the cedar-lined linen closet and the elegant—if outdated—fixtures in the bathrooms. When he asked to see a room that hadn’t yet been cleaned up—for contrast, so he claimed, I showed him the music room.
I hustled him outside before I had to flat-out refuse to show him the library or front parlor—the latter still a work in progress. We walked slowly around the house, looking up at the intricate carvings adorning the facade. Domingo came down from his ladder, and took over the tour, proud as if he’d done the original construction himself. If a few of the workmen made a point of keeping out of the reporter’s way, none of us were so impolite as to comment.
At last, Chilton departed, leaving me feeling an odd combination of jazzed and exhausted. Domingo seemed to sense my mood.
“Have you had something to eat?”
“Not since breakfast,” I admitted.
“And that was a sweet roll,” he said.
“I’ll go in and make myself a sandwich,” I said, glancing at his watch and noticing that it was well past one.
“Better,” Domingo said. “Tomás went out for burritos earlier, and there is half of one—beef and bean—hardly touched. Take that. It’s in my refrigerator.”
I wanted to refuse, suspecting I was stealing his dinner, but the fact was a cold sandwich sounded completely unappealing, and I didn’t have the energy to make something more complex. I accepted his offer, and took the Styrofoam box back to my own kitchen. As part of my orgy of appliance buying, I’d gotten a nice microwave at a very good discount. Soon, the burrito, and a good-sized portion of Spanish rice and refritos were steaming on a brilliant green Fiesta ware plate.
As I ate, my energy returned, and along with it a sense of resolution. I needed to stop putting off going into my mother’s rooms—and into the library as well. Doubtless the police had been through both with great care, but there might be something in which Colette’s daughter would recognize significance where a stranger would not.
I nodded sharply to affirm my decision, and fragments of my reflection nodded with me from mirrors and polished pot bottoms. Determined not to delay, I set my plate in the sink, unwashed, mentally promising to take care of it later.
I went to my room, changed into my housekeeping clothes, and stood, indecisive on the upper landing. What first? I decided on the library. I’d been allowed in there. It had even been my schoolroom for a time. I didn’t think I’d feel quite so much like I was trespassing.
The door was locked, but I had the key. It turned without difficulty. Aware that my heart was beating ridiculously fast, I stepped over the threshold into the dark-paneled confines.
The closed space smelled of old books, dust, paper, and, oddly, given how long it had been since any cleaning had been done in there, furniture polish.
I was right in my guess that the police had been in here—not that the place had been torn up or anything. It was actually very tidy, but the tidiness was the wrong sort of tidiness. It wasn’t Mother’s sort of tidiness. There was another clue as well.
Wherever possible, mirrors had been turned to face the wall. I imagined some dutiful sergeant sent into the library to methodically go over correspondence, old bills, any record or bit of written material that might give some indication of who my mother’s associates were, who were the people with whom she was in communication.
He’d sit there at the desk, an older man, responsible, but not very energetic, going through file folders and stacks of unanswered letter. He’d feel a bit voyeuristic about the job, and every time he looked up, he’d see his own reflection in a half-dozen or so mirrors, his expression guilty and hangdog. Finally, he’d push back from the desk, get to his feet, and, moving with deliberation around the room, start turning the mirrors over so they faced the wall.
Where he couldn’t turn them over, he’d find something to cover them. One was covered with a crocheted lace doily, another with a knitted afghan, a third with a shapeless garment that—after some investigation—I realized was a man’s cardigan, probably the sergeant’s own. I wondered why he’d never retrieved it.
The image was so vivid that I found myself wondering if it was something I had actually seen. Had I been lurking in some corner of the room? Perhaps I’d been in the front parlor, peeking through a partially opened door, using the mirrors to expand my range of vision as I had learned to do from spying on my mother.
I had no memory of doing this, but then my memories of those days immediately following the realization that my mother had disappeared were all very vague for me. Likely I’d been in shock. I know I’d entertained a strange notion that I, too, would vanish now that my mother was gone—not through anything as immediate and real as kidnapping, but by fading away, melting as a snow angel does, retaining the form of the person who pressed it into the drift, the edges blurring until all that is there is a hole, and then even that is gone.