Read Child of a Rainless Year Online

Authors: Jane Lindskold

Child of a Rainless Year (8 page)

“Then this is a college town?”
Mrs. Morales gave an eloquent shrug, “Not really. Many residents are associated with the schools in one way or another, but ranching is still common. Tourism is important. Many residents work in the arts.”
“You should be on the local tourist board,” I said.
“I am,” she replied with a smile. “Not only because I am in real estate. This town is my home and my family’s home, and I would like to see it thrive.”
Mrs. Morales saw me glance at the wall clock and rose. “I can pay on the way out. I see you are eager to be going.”
A few twists and turns took us from the more modern city into a neighborhood where Victorian-style houses predominated. Some were in excellent condition, newly refurbished and brilliantly painted. Others were lived in, maintained or not according to the resident’s needs. A few were flat-out wrecks.
Mrs. Morales directed me to turn down one street after another until we arrived at a curving cul-de-sac, the centerpiece of which was a house I both did and did not remember.
Probably because of memories of this very house, I had always liked Victorian architecture. When I had bought a home of my own, I had even considered a refurbished Victorian, but all the houses I had looked at seemed somehow lacking. Now, staring through my windshield at the towering structure in front of me, I understood why.
The house was built in the Queen Anne style, but in it the excesses of that already excessive style had been taken to extremes. Phineas House had towers and porches, ornately carved balustrades, latticework, and enough gingerbread to make Hansel and Gretel swear off sweets. Every possible style of window seemed to be represented: bay windows and oriel windows jutted outward at various levels; lancet windows stretched tall and narrow; roundel windows marched round and fat. There didn’t seem to be a single roof built at the same level as any other, and they were shingled in various shapes of cut slate.
Moreover, quite unlike the photo that had been sent to me, the entire house was painted in a multiplicity of colors—colors that managed to be harmonious even as this crazy quilt of adornment managed to be harmonious. The dominant shade was a warm evergreen that shouted out in contrast to the brilliant blue of the cloudless New Mexico sky, but every other color in the rainbow was represented as well—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet—those and many of the subtle hues that fall between.
“Oh, my,” I said softly, getting out of the truck without looking for possible oncoming cars. I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off that amazing front facade. “Oh, my.”
Mrs. Morales got out of the truck as well. After a long, entranced moment, I became aware of her voice and realized she was talking, but not to me.
I shook myself free of my fascination, and found Mrs. Morales was speaking with a lean Hispanic man whose thick, brown-black hair was just starting to show grey. His sun-browned skin was grooved with enough deep lines that I knew he wasn’t young, but he moved with a contained energy that contrasted oddly with the ebullience of the small white dog that danced about his heels. I knew instantly from the mingled expression of pride and apprehension on the man’s face that this must be Domingo Navidad, the caretaker of the house.
He seemed to feel no need for introductions.
“What do you think?” he asked when he saw me looking at him. His accent was much like that of Mrs. Morales.
“Amazing,” I replied, “and like but yet not like what I remember.”
“It was grey,” he said bluntly, “with a little dull pink around the doors. It didn’t like it, so over time I listened, and this is what it wanted to be.”
Now it was Mrs. Morales’s turn to look apprehensive, but I had known too many artists to find such talk at all strange. This was no different than how a sculptor might talk about finding the shape of something within a piece of wood or stone.
“I see,” I replied. “I agree with the house. It looks better this way.”
Both Mrs. Morales and Mr. Navidad relaxed, but they immediately stiffened at my next words.
“I don’t remember the yard being so very large,” I said. “Weren’t there houses on either side?”
“And one around the back,” Mrs. Morales agreed. “Old wood, not too well-maintained, and this is a hot, dry climate.” She gave an eloquent shrug. “Fire takes them quickly.”
“All of them?” I asked astonished, “and this one untouched? And no one bought the land?”
“Not all at once,” Mrs. Morales said. “The fires happened over maybe twenty years, and, no, the land didn’t sell. This neighborhood is even now not the best, and then it was far less desirable.”
“But someone is maintaining the lots,” I said, suddenly aware of the summer heat kicking up from the asphalt and moving toward the shade of one of the towering elms.
“I do,” replied Mr. Navidad. “Did Mrs. Morales not tell you? The land goes with the house now—the way it once did. The entire makes up a piece shaped rather like a fat half-moon. When some past owner sold the lots, the center was kept, but the back and sides were let go.”
I registered this, turning slowly side to side to inspect the property. My first impression had been that Phineas House was the centerpiece of a cul-de-sac. Now I revised it. It
was
the cul-de-sac, the only house that faced the curving street. All the other structures but one faced onto other streets, and the dissenting structure was one I remembered—the carriage house, which even in my childhood had already been adapted to serve as a garage and storage area.
Without my consciously noticing our progress, we had all moved to stand in the shade now, some feet closer to the house.
My gaze had centered again on the front facade, and I had trouble wrenching it free, even though I knew my abstraction must seem rude. My eyes sought among the twists and turns, finding all sorts of carvings among the gingerbread trim. I was sure I saw lions and wolves. A leopard stretched to scratch his claws into a newel post, his long, lean body making a post for the porch rail. Faces peered out of brackets and from the tops of newel posts.
Yet for all these carved eyes, the house seemed blinded. I longed to wrench open the shutters, take down the boarding that protected the doors, but such would need to be done carefully—and probably I should only do it if I planned to take up residence.
I realized the other two were staring at me. I made myself remember what we had been talking about, then voiced a question. “Are you saying that I own the other lots?”
“They were offered at a fire-sale price,” Mrs. Morales said. Her tone tried to make a joke of this, but failed. Whereas Mr. Navidad and I were fascinated with Phineas House, she was clearly uncomfortable with it. “Your trustees allocated money to purchase it, feeling the structure would be best preserved that way. Property taxes here are comparatively low, especially for undeveloped lots.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “The house looks much better this way. I remember it seemed cramped before.”
“So I remember, too,” Mr. Navidad said.
I looked at him squarely for the first time. “Have you lived in this area long, then?”
He smiled. “I have lived in Las Vegas all my life. My father was a groundskeeper here in the days of your mother. I helped him, then took over from him when he retired. Keeping this house has been my life’s work.”
“Where do you live?” I asked, startled by his passion.
Mr. Navidad pointed. “The carriage house is there. After the fires, the trustees wanted someone to live near. I agreed to refurbish the upper storage area into an apartment in return for paying no rent.”
“A good idea, having someone living on the grounds,” I said. Suddenly, that sensation of being two people—this time the woman I was and the child I had been—washed over me. I felt vaguely nauseated. I wanted to believe the feeling had its source in the summer heat or all the driving I had done, or even the unusually spicy meal I had eaten for lunch, but I knew there was something else going on.
“I need to check in to my hotel,” I said, now as eager to be away as I had been to arrive. “Mr. Navidad, may I have your phone number? I will call and arrange to tour the grounds—tomorrow, I think. Right now I am very tired.”
“By all means,” he said. He pulled a business card from his wallet. “Here. My cell phone and my home phone. I do work other than here.”
He looked anxious, as if he thought I might choose to fire him for negligence.
“Fine. Fine.” I said, stuffing the card into my pocket. “I’ll call, maybe tomorrow morning—make an appointment.”
I nearly ran to my truck then, and Mrs. Morales scampered to follow. She insisted on staying with me until I had a room at the hotel, then I dropped her at the real estate office. After our earlier easy affability, we were both strangely silent. It was as if there were things we both knew, but couldn’t discuss.
Back at the hotel, I unloaded what I needed from the truck, then covered my scavengings with an old blanket. I focused singlemindedly on what must be done before businesses closed for the day—arranging for the electricity and water to be turned on, checking what it would take to get phone service reactivated. I decided to wait on the gas until I was sure whether or not I’d be moving into the house. I certainly wouldn’t need heat in summer, and hot water and cooking could wait.
I showered, dined in the hotel restaurant, and went back to my room. I desperately wanted to sleep, but sleep would not come. The television seemed more banal than usual, and although the evening was cooling down nicely, I found I was reluctant to leave the security of my room.
Almost without volition, my hand reached for the volume of Aunt May’s journal I had been reading, and I opened it, letting my bookmark fall unheeded to the floor.
Since I don’t want Stan to find out what I’m doing, I guess I’m going to need to rely on the mail, but who do I write? If I write the local police will they answer?
Probably not. The investigation isn’t that old. But what if I told them I am Mira’s guardian, and I am interested for her sake?
No. Bad idea. I don’t know who reports to the trustees. Stan would be furious if he thought I was doing anything that would risk our keeping Mira. Be honest with yourself, M., you’d be furious, too.
Okay. No police. Not yet, at least. Who then? Newspapers? Good idea. I’ll find out what the local papers are. Then write asking for appropriate articles. Yes. That will give me some names, maybe. Someone I can write.
But how do I do this without getting people wondering? Represent myself as family? No. They might already know—must know that Colette had no immediate family. Mira told us there were reporters when she left to come Idaho. Okay. Not family. What then?
Doing research. That’s safe. For what? A college paper? Represent myself as a graduate student? Sure. Sociology. Good. I can do that. Would a graduate student use school stationery? Probably not. I can get away with good bond paper. Letters had better be typed. No problem. I can use Stan’s typewriter.
“Dear Editor, I am a graduate student in Sociology, doing research into the question of …” of … women who run away? No. Disappearances? Maybe. Think that one over for a bit. Think about what to say next.
“Someone told me …” Too conversational. “I was informed regarding …” No, sounds too stiff. “I was told that a woman named Colette Bogatyr disappeared from your town a bit over a year ago. I am interested in any stories you have regarding this disappearance.”
Should I offer to pay them for copies? I’d better check with our local paper and find out what their policy is. That’s better. My allowance is only going to go so far. I can use some of Stan’s paper, but I’ll need stamps and envelopes. Should I even give this as a return address? I usually get the mail, but what if Stan’s home? He always looks at return addresses, and he’d wonder. Okay. I could have them sent to Betty’s, but that would mean telling her or she’s going to think I’m having an affair. And if she let something slip!!!
Okay. That means a P.O. box. I don’t think they cost much. And going to the library and seeing if they can help me find out the name of the local newspapers. Should I just check Las Vegas? No, better check Santa Fe. That’s not too far, really. Maybe even Albuquerque. That’s farther, but it’s the closest really big city. I mean, Santa Fe may be state capital, but as I recall it’s pretty dinky.
It’s good to have a plan.

 

The Ideal Queen Anne … should be so plastered with ornament as to conceal the theory of its construction; it should be a restless, uncertain, frightful collection of details, giving the effect of a nightmare about to explode.
—Gelette Burgess, quoted in
Daughters of Painted
Ladies
by Elizabeth Pomada
I was still thinking about Aunt May’s search when I drove over to Phineas House the next morning. She’d really sweated over the letter she’d sent to the various papers. The journal was filled with rough drafts. Her interests and enthusiasms had been so broad that all the time we’d known each other I’d never really thought about what it must have been like to be the product of only a high school education. Aunt May had never even worked outside of the home. She’d gone from high school to being married—and married for a long time without children.
She’d had to type each letter out individually. There’d been no word processor with which to manufacture multiple copies, and in her fear of seeming ignorant, she’d permitted herself no cross-outs. She’d even had to go out and buy more paper and a new typewriter ribbon because she was afraid Uncle Stan would notice.
She kept saying that the reason she didn’t want him to notice was because she thought he’d be angry that she was violating the terms under which they’d agreed to take me in, but I had a feeling it was something more. The fact was, as much as she loved him, this was a time and place when men came home and were waited on—and their wives didn’t question this. I had vague memories of how Uncle Stan would come home from work, change out of his suit, then sit and read the paper while Aunt May put the finishing touches on dinner. Afterward, she’d clean up—or I would, when I was a bit older—and he’d go back to his paper, or to watching something on TV.
I felt a bit angry in retrospect. Hadn’t Aunt May been working all day, too? Even with those much vaunted “modern labor saving appliances” she was still responsible for an awful lot—and she didn’t take many shortcuts when it came to meals.
This didn’t put me in the best of moods when I pulled my truck up in front of Phineas House—
my
house—and Domingo Navidad came strolling around the side to meet me, acting for all the world as if he owned the place. As before, his little white dog followed him, bouncing in a rocking rhythm that made the mere process of moving forward a game.
Mr. Navidad was holding a mug of coffee in one hand, and with his free hand he opened the gate in the waist-high wrought-iron fence that bordered the front yard.
The fence was, like the rest of the place, completely and wildly overdone, rioting with vines and leaves. There were creatures hiding in the tangle. I remembered being fascinated with the fence when I was a child, but I hadn’t been encouraged to linger out front, so my inspections had been quick glimpses, guaranteed to increase interest rather than otherwise.
I paused now to look at the fence, revelling in making this man wait on my pleasure. The majority of the iron had been painted a glossy black, but details had been highlighted very subtly in dark green and, just occasionally, in gold or cream.
I located a face set in the left panel of the gate. I had particularly liked this detail when I was a child—partly because it seemed so alive and partly because its leering expression scared me that little bit that small children enjoy. Back then the face had been the same flat black as the rest of the iron. Now the eyes had been highlighted with white, so they seemed to be alive and watching me. The face’s leer seemed mocking.
“Lady of the Manor?”
the lips said, moving to show a carnivore’s long teeth.
“What right do you have to be so proud?”
The imagined reprimand made me ashamed of my bad manners, and I tried to make up for my coolness with a smile I knew was a bit too hearty.
“Good morning, Mr. Navidad. I apologize for my lack of greeting. I simply had to stop and look at the fence. You’ve done a marvelous job maintaining it.”
Mr. Navidad smiled and continued holding the gate open for me.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I think I get too absorbed in the details, like on this fence. Before you praise me to the heavens for my diligence, there is a confession I must make.”
“Confession?”
“It is easier to show,” he replied, and motioned me around the right side of the house.
I followed him without a word. The morning was still cool, holding nothing of the heat of the previous afternoon. The heat would come, however. The weather had been the primary topic of conversation that morning in the hotel restaurant. Apparently locals dined there as well as transients. As I took polite shelter behind my newspaper, I had heard frequent mention of the “monsoons.” That sounded very tropical to me, and I’d made a mental note to ask what they were talking about.
For now, I enjoyed the relative coolness of the morning, a coolness that increased as we moved into the shade of the trees that surrounded the house. The elms kept a courteous distance from the towering monstrosity, but I knew from experience that their shade was very welcome.
Mr. Navidad led me to a point from which we could see the side of the house clearly, then motioned upward.
“You see,” he said, and I did.
The paint job that adorned this side of the house was an illusion—a clever one, but an illusion nonetheless. The wildly ornate designs of the front facade only carried back as far as they could be clearly seen from the street out front. The carved details were still there, but had not been picked out in the same meticulous glory.
It was not that the structure was not well-cared for. Monochrome evergreen paint covered most of the siding. In a few places, mostly railing or window frames, details were painted in lighter shades. The wood beneath was well-protected. The paint was reasonably fresh. There was no peeling or cracking. The house was healthy—but it wasn’t alive.
“Oh,” I said. “I see.”
“It helps,” Mr. Navidad said, as if we were picking up in the middle of a longer conversation, “that you own the extra lots to either side and to the back. It makes it easier. Even so, I am embarrassed. I should have done more.”
Struggling for a reply, I realized that for Mr. Navidad this
was
a conversation we had had before. He must have been rehearsing how to explain his perceived negligence to me from the moment he heard I was coming to Las Vegas.
“You have done a good job,” I said. “I saw the budget you were given when Mrs. Morales reviewed the paperwork with me. It was hardly enough to supply paint and labor for the most routine of cover jobs.”
“Maybe in Ohio, yes,” he agreed, his gaze sliding from the house to my face and back to the house again. “Here. Well, here sometimes labor can be cheaper—if you know who to talk to, yes?”
I understood he was talking about illegal immigrants and didn’t press the question.
“But cheap labor wouldn’t be able to design the color scheme for the detail work,” I said. “You must have spent hours.”
Mr. Navidad smiled and spoke with a quiet honesty that touched my heart. “I did, señora. I took many pictures with a telephoto lens. My nephew is very good with computers and he scanned them into a computer. Then I used what is called a paint program to try different colors. ¡
Milagroso
! Have you used one of these?”
I nodded. “I’ve never liked them as much as I do real colors, but for something on this scale … It would save a lot of paint.”
We stood, staring at the house together. Mr. Navidad’s little white dog circled each of the trees, sniffing as enthusiastically as if he hadn’t seen them probably every day of his life. I heard a jay scolding the dog, then Mr. Navidad spoke very softly.
“I tried the colors, señora, and sometimes I liked what I saw, but mostly I listened, and let the house tell me what
it
liked. It took more time, yes, but I think it is worth it.”
We walked slowly around the house trailed by the little white dog. We didn’t say much, but our silence was not uncomfortable. I felt as I had done when I had shared a model with other artists, my concentration intensified by my awareness of another person looking at the same thing.
The back garden that I remembered playing in as a child was still there, its fieldstone walls creating a sanctuary within a larger space. Roses spilled over the walls in cascades of pink, white, and pale yellow.
Once again, Mr. Navidad held a wrought-iron gate open for me, and this time I passed through with a murmur of thanks. I glanced around the walled garden with interest. The green patch that had been my refuge was still there, as were an array of fruit trees neatly pruned to the fit the space or espaliered against sections of the wall. The herb garden was where I remembered it, and so was a flourishing young vegetable patch.
“Yours?” I asked.
Mr. Navidad nodded. “It is a good place. The walls give some shelter from the wind and the little animals. The ground gets watered from run-off—when we have rain.”
Something in how he paused before the final phrase reminded me of the conversations I had heard that morning in the hotel restaurant.
“Is this a droughty year, then?”
“Very bad,” he agreed. “We are all waiting to see if the monsoons will come. There is much concern.”
“Monsoons? I thought those only happened in the tropics.”
“It is what we call our seasonal rains. They come in the late summer, less so in the winter. Depending on where you are in the state, most of your rain will come in only two times of the year. It is very serious indeed when the year is rainless.”
Rainless. The word rung in my ears as if spoken in my mother’s voice, but Mr. Navidad’s expression was bland. Did he know the importance of what he had said?
I couldn’t ask. It would mean saying too much about things I was still uncertain about myself. And what could I say? “My mother claimed that there was no rain the year I was born”? Even if he had heard some such thing why was it important? There were probably more drought years than wet in this climate.
To cover my discomfort, I led the way out of the walled garden, using the matching gate on the far side of the yard. We finished our slow patrol around the house, and by then I had collected my courage.
“Mr. Navidad, I would like to see the inside of the house. The electric company told me the power should be on by now, but I’ve brought some flashlights. Would you advise me which door might be best to open?”
His expression was strangely vacant for a moment, almost as if something had distracted him, but he pulled his gaze back to mine.
“I would have said the kitchen door,” he replied. “That is the one I use when I go in a few times a year to make certain that the roof is still sound and no pipes have broken—things like that. But I think the House would be happier if you came in through the front door. The kitchen door is not one for a homecoming such as this.”
I forced a smile, unsettled by this tendency to personalize the house. I knew that this manner of speech originated in his being a native speaker of Spanish. Spanish pronouns personalize, give genders even to inanimate items. The tendency to speak of things as if they are alive often slips over. Mr. Navidad was too fluent in English to talk like some stage Mexican,
“The house, she is happy to have you, sí, señora,”
but still the Spanish flavor was there. That was all there was to it.
“Very well,” I said. “I’ll go to my truck and get the flashlights and a few other things I brought along. I don’t doubt you have a crowbar we can use to get the boards off the front door.”
“I do indeed,” he said. “I take them off to make sure moisture has not leaked beneath—when we have much moisture, that is.”
“Truly,” I replied, “you are the most diligent of caretakers. I’ll meet you around front in a few minutes.”
Getting the door open was as easy as Mr. Navidad had promised it would be. We stood there in the shade of the porch staring at the double-paneled door.
“Usually,” the caretaker offered, “I only open the one side.” He motioned toward the right panel. “It is enough and more to admit a man.”
I looked at the door. The knobs were shaped like leering gargoyle heads. They were duller than I remembered them being, but doubtless, one of the silent women had kept them polished.
Once again I found myself contrasting the differences between my upbringing here and in Ohio. In Ohio there had been no servants, only occasional “help” before a big party and that, more likely than not, had been someone from the church who would be given a “gift” rather than paid outright.
I never remembered the silent women being paid. For that matter, I had no memory of them ever leaving the house except on a specific errand. Where had they lived? Had they had families? Tantalizing thought … Were any of them still alive and in the area? Could I find them and ask about my mother? Who else might I find and question?
“Señora?” Mr. Navidad’s voice, politely inquiring, brought me back to myself. “Would you like me to open the door for you?”
I shook myself as his little white dog might have done.
“Sorry. Woolgathering. There are so many memories here.”
Without further hesitation, I laid a hand on the knob. It was surprisingly stiff, refusing to turn. I thought it might have rusted in place. Then, belatedly, I remembered the ring of keys Mrs Morales had given me. Blushing, I shook out one labeled “Front door.” It was slightly larger and heavier than the others on the ring, and turned the old lock easily.

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