The Jewelry Case (12 page)

Then, upon closer examination she was rewarded to find her little white house mentioned in a footnote. The structure had been acquired by Esther's uncle, Borys Perleman, she learned, who had immigrated from Warsaw in 1914 and ventured west as a peddler. He and his wife had settled in River Bend in 1920, where they opened a drygoods store. The home, the author added, was a particularly good example of the Queen Anne style, as was the larger structure constructed next door.

That was it. Once more, there was no mention of jewels, or a family legend of a beautiful ancestress courted by a Russian nobleman.

With a feeling of disappointment, Paisley put the book back and wandered outside. With more time to kill before the play rehearsal, she walked down the block and found herself passing by the senior center again, where the clarion voice of a bingo caller drifted through the open window.

Outside, the two white-haired men were still at their chess game, looking as if they hadn't budged since the last time she passed by.

The tall one with the red suspenders sensed her presence first. His head jerked up, and he winked at her. "I have a feeling my luck is about to change, Hugo. Pull up a chair, young lady, and I'll show you how an expert plays this game."

Paisley pulled up a chair. Soon she was old friends with Hugo and Walter, and was even talked into playing a game with the winner, which she lost with humiliating speed. With more finesse than Shirley, they pried out the same information about her background and plans for the summer, and she found herself opening up more than she had before. In turn they regaled her with reminiscences of Jonathan and his increasingly evident musical prodigy. Both claimed to have predicted his success first.

"Interesting family, the Perlemans," Walter stated, nodding his white-bearded head for emphasis. "All of them were musical, but everyone knew Jonathan would make it big. I gave him his first job, you know, down at the gas station." He chuckled. "Truth is, he wasn't much help. Always ignoring the customers while he studied his music scores under the counter. Had to let him go after a couple of weeks. But he didn't care. He'd already got news of his scholarship to Julliard in the mail. Never looked back."

"Jonathan was the biggest thing to come out of River Bend," Hugo agreed, hooking his thumbs under his suspenders. "We get tourists from as far as Sacramento wanting to see where the maestro grew up. Then they stay for the apple pie at Rosie's Diner. Course, we don't get anywhere near the number that go to resort towns like Calistoga or Napa. Too far out of the way. But any extra traffic helps."

"People come to see where Jonathan grew up?" repeated Paisley, touched by the news. Jonathan had never shown much interest in his home town. He hadn't known, or cared, how much the residents followed his career or the pride they took in his success. Now she wished that she'd encouraged him to visit once in a while.

"Now, looky here," Hugo said sternly, looking at Walter over the top of his spectacles. "No sense reminding this young lady of her loss. I apologize for my friend's thoughtlessness, Mrs. Perleman. I know this must be a hard time for you."

She shook her head. "Call me Paisley. And it's okay. I'm fine." Oddly, it was true. She could think of Jonathan without a stab of grief and anger. Perhaps it was a sign that she was starting to heal. "Tell me about Esther," she said, to change the subject. "Did you know her well?"

"'Course we did." Hugo settled back in his seat, his expression softening. "Everyone around here did. Not just because it's a small town, either. Esther liked to join things. She was always in the middle of everything, putting in her two cents and getting things done. She was the original pint-size dynamo." He chuckled reminiscently, and Paisley wondered with a stab of surprise if the two had enjoyed a flirtation while Esther had still been alive. She had never thought of that side of Esther before.

"Did she come to the senior center often?" she asked, trying to picture Esther playing chess or bingo.

Walter shook his white head. "Nope. She didn't have time to hang out with 'old' folks. I don't think she thought of herself as a senior citizen. If she dropped by, it was to serve lunch, organize activities, or try to get everyone to buy tickets to that play she put on every year. Most of us would go, partly to support her, and partly because it was usually a hella lotta fun."

Hella? Paisley blinked at the odd phrase, then remembered Jonathan had used it once or twice. It was a Northern California regionalism.

"The kids always seemed to get a kick out of it, too," Hugo pitched in, pushing his hat back to reveal a high pink forehead. "Not a lot to do, in a town like this, as you can imagine. It kept 'em out of trouble. She kept the plays going until her first stroke a year and a half ago. That's when she went to live at the senior home, up on route 70."

Paisley had forgotten that Esther had ended her days in a full-care facility. The thought dampened her mood, which had risen during her conversation with the two men.

"Don't worry, it's a nice place, as far as those kind of facilities go, and it wasn't as if she didn't have friends up there." Walter spoke reassuringly, as if he sensed her thoughts. He looked over at Hugo, scratching his ear. "Georgiana's been up at Sunny Acres for a couple of years now, too, hasn't she?"

"Why, yes." Hugo nodded vigorously, his head bobbing up and down as if it were on a spring. "Talked to her just last Thursday. It was her birthday. Ninety-one years old and doesn't look a day over seventy! Still pretty as a peach."

Walter swung his white head back in Paisley's direction. "Georgiana was a good friend of Esther's," he explained. "We've known each other since grammar school. If you have any questions about your husband's great-aunt, she's the one to ask."

"I will," Paisley promised, and, remembering the time, got to her feet. "Sorry to run, but if I don't get going I'll miss rehearsal, and Shirley will bite my head off."

"Come back and see us some time," Hugo said. "Maybe you'll have better luck next time."

The men gallantly half-stood, legs creaking, and lifted their golf caps as she left. She waved good-bye, wishing she could have stayed longer. Their conversation promised to be more entertaining than watching an off-tune, incomplete rendition of
The Pirates of Penzance
. Consoling herself with the thought that Shirley owed her big-time, she reluctantly turned her steps toward River Bend High School.

#

New or old, all high schools smell alike, even when they have been recently abandoned by their students for summer vacation: sweaty locker rooms, greasy remnants of cafeteria food, industrial-strength cleaning solutions, dusty textbooks, and Axe cologne melded into one nostalgia-inducing odor. It had been five years since Paisley had set foot in a high school, but the scent and the ringing sound of her footsteps as she walked down the empty, recently waxed corridor brought back a mix of memories.

Her love of opera at the Oklahoma high school from which she had graduated had not exactly branded her as "cool." Music and drama teachers had been predictably supportive, but not until she had started winning competitions at the conservatory had she gained confidence and pride in her soprano voice, so unexpectedly powerful pouring from her small frame.

The school auditorium was easy to find: she merely followed the loud, high-pitched chatter that spilled out into the hall. A sign hand-scrawled in black sharpie on notebook paper had been taped to the door: "Stay Out - Rehearsal!!!!" Ignoring it, she took a deep breath and let herself in.

A group of teenage girls in tank tops and denim shorts sat on the stage, all long hair and long limbs, swinging tanned legs while simultaneously chatting with each other and texting on their cell phones. Gangly boys sporting that year's fashion in bizarre haircuts clustered like ants around an oversized box of donuts. Raising the average age considerably was a tall, thin woman with a crepey throat and steel-gray hair who was playing arpeggios on a battered black piano in spite of the pandemonium around her. A few other adults ran around frantically, trying to create order from the chaos. One of them was Shirley.

Paisley waved, and the red-haired bookseller gave her a distracted nod in return. A few moments later, she hustled up, panting. "Bad news. I just got a call from our music director. She's having contractions."

It took a moment for Paisley to understand. "Oh, she's pregnant?"

Shirley nodded, her normally cheerful face showing lines of stress. "The baby's not due for two months, but the doctor has ordered bed rest. I hate to ask this, but do you mind filling in for her for today? I mean, you have the right background, right?"

Paisley shrank back. Watching as a detached observer was one thing. Actively participating was another. She opened her mouth to tell Shirley this, but all that came out was "Uh
….
"

"Thanks, Paisley." Shirley shoved a sheaf of music into her arms. "We're doing a full-cast rehearsal of the Finale of Act I today. Normally I wouldn't dream of asking you to do this, but since it's an emergency.... You do know the songs, don't you?"

"I've heard it, of course, but…."

"I knew I could count on you." Shirley was gone, and a gaggle of teenagers began to drift toward Paisley, looking at her expectantly. She looked at them, feeling panicked. She hadn't been around so many high school students since … well, since high school.

"I ... uh... hello, everybody."

"So what do you want us to do?" A pretty blond wearing a ponytail drummed her fingernails on the edge of the stage while waiting for an answer. Paisley recognized her as the waitress from the café on Main Street, although she looked far different in shorts and a spaghetti-strapped tank top than she had in her striped uniform and frilly apron. The elderly piano player swiveled and waited, knobby fingers curved expectantly over the keyboard.

"I guess we'll run through it once or twice. Here, pass out these scores." Paisley unloaded them on a nearby brunette and rubbed her sweaty palms on her jeans, trying not to look nervous. Jonathan had been the conductor, not her. But in a way, Shirley had been right: Paisley was no novice in this setting. Reminding herself of this, she raised her voice and put steel in it.

"All right, everyone. Onto the stage." She would get back at Shirley later for putting her on the spot like this, Paisley decided. Fortunately she was familiar with the score, having starred in a production in Nebraska while studying at the conservatory. That was shortly before she had met Jonathan, she remembered with that old pang inside her chest.

The cast straggled onto the stage, and Paisley quickly realized the pregnant musical director had not worked on blocking. Or if so, everyone had forgotten it. She spent the next ten minutes shuffling cast members around on the stage until the arrangement of characters worked smoothly. Then she realized the Pirate King was missing.

Someone eventually found him in the lighting booth, reading a car magazine with his feet propped on the equipment and polishing off the box of donuts. The boy came and took his mark with bad grace, wiping powdered sugar from the corner of his sulky mouth. He lacked charm or stage presence, but at least he could hit the right notes most of the time--which was no doubt why Shirley had cast him as the Pirate King.

At Paisley’s nod, the elderly piano player obligingly struck out the melody, and she winced as the students faltered through the "Oh Men of Dark and Dismal Fate." The lead actors, of course, were the best singers of the lot. The pretty blond with the ponytail had the part of Mabel. That girl had potential, Paisley thought, tapping her foot thoughtfully in tie to the music as the entire company launched into the next song. With some one-on-one time, she could pull a decent performance out of her.

Except, of course, Paisley reminded herself firmly, she was only helping out today.

Then, of course, there were the hopeless ones, the kids in the chorus who couldn't carry a tune in the proverbial hat. One couldn't kick them out, of course: for a production like this, as many warm bodies as possible were needed to fill the stage. Paisley admired Shirley for scraping together a respectable-sized cast from such a tiny town. The feat was nothing short of miraculous.

As the rehearsal continued, she noted the students' strengths and weaknesses and thought, maybe, the worst singers could be used to comic effect. That tall gawky kid with the wispy beard and awkward gait, for example. He could be the head policeman....

She spent the next few hours like a drill sergeant, running the performers through vocal exercises, making them repeat the trouble spots over and over, and separating them into sections to practice their parts together. Finally she brought them back together to try it again together. Her raspy voice was too weak to bark directions, but someone found her a microphone, and sipping frequently from a bottle of water, she managed to get through the day.

Before she realized it, rehearsal was over.

"'Bye, Mrs. P," one of the boys said, a cheerful redhead wearing a Stanford T-shirt, as he picked up his backpack and strolled toward the exit. "See you around, huh?"

"Bye," she said automatically. "And please, call me Paisley."

As the rest of the students began to trickle away, chatting in small groups, singing snatches of the song they had been rehearsing, and giggling, she found that she hoped the play would turn out well. Really, the actors only needed some tweaking: a suggestion here, a correction there... The potential was there. She felt like a master painter who, seeing a student's struggling efforts, couldn't resist picking up the paintbrush and correcting a crooked line on the canvas.