Deal to Die For

by Les Standiford

  “I’m all right,” she said, brushing by him. She was ready when she entered the cottage this time. Although some of the pent-up heat seemed to have escaped through the open doorway, she held her breath as she made her way across the room, intent on reaching the air conditioner before her resolve gave out. She randomly punched unlabeled buttons on the ancient wall unit until it finally groaned into life, then stood there, her face close by the dusty vents until the air that issued was cool against her cheeks and she felt that she could breathe again.

  She heard the sound of the latch closing and turned to see that Gabriel was inside now, holding his undertaker’s pose by the doorway. “I might be a while,” she said. “It’s all right if you want to wait in the car.”

  He answered with a shrug, his heels moving a fraction wider as if he’d settled into a position of rest. Although the room was gloomy, he was still wearing his sunglasses and she found herself revising her image as she regarded his massive, inscrutable form: not an undertaker so much as a palace guard. So be it, she thought. Despite his oddness, it was not the worst thing in the world, having someone with her in this dreadful place.

  She found her way into the tiny kitchen, glanced about. There was a green-flecked Formica table with one matching chair, a gas range with a chipped top, an incongruously new refrigerator beside it. The counter held a toaster, a blender with a cloudy glass container, an empty plate with a few crumbs scattered on it.

  Paige moved to the sink, splashed some water on her face, rinsed the sour taste from her mouth, dried herself on a dish towel that carried the scent of old food and grease. She felt her stomach start to rise and turned back to the tap quickly, rinsed her face again, let the water drip from her chin this time until she found a roll of paper towels tucked under one of the wooden cabinets.

  There was a small window over the sink that gave a view out onto a back porch, a smaller version of the type that served as an entryway to the front of the house. She could see furniture stacked out there, a mahogany bed frame, a matching dresser, a chest of drawers, all of it carrying heavily carved rosettes and scrollwork that she suspected were really molded of plastic. There was a pale green sofa with a matching easy chair upturned on top of it, along with a Naugahyde recliner, its webbing frayed and dangling. A sheet of milky plastic that she supposed had covered the couch and chairs had worked loose and had come to rest against the screening, where a corner of it flapped in a listless breeze like a signal from a lost and dismal world.

  Paige gripped the edge of the counter, fighting for strength. There had been times, years ago, shortly after she’d left home, when she was still struggling for parts, still wondering where her next month’s rent was going to come from, still wondering what on earth a little girl from Florida was doing thousands of miles from home, pretending to be a grown-up actress in the most ruthless town on earth; those were times when, friendless and essentially alone, she’d felt a similar desolation and despair. But she’d been young then, and even in her darkest moments she’d been buoyed by the mindless optimism of her youth, by the gut-level understanding that she was following her dreams.

  But what on earth, she wondered, was going to get her through this? Staring out at that pathetic clutter of furniture that constituted her mother’s “personal effects,” she felt suddenly depopulated, abruptly and utterly defenseless, as though everything that might have lent her strength or comfort had been taken.

  Then something happened. She felt a wetness growing at her hips and glanced down at the counter, where she saw that water she’d spilled from the tap had collected in a pool. If she hadn’t been standing up against the countertop, it might have simply dripped on over the edge to the floor. As it was, however, she stepped back from the sink to stare at the broad band of wetness that had wicked up from the counter into the fabric of her khaki slacks.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” she hissed, snatching another wad of paper towels. She was well into blotting herself dry before she realized how much better she felt.

  Anger, she thought, remembering the same buoyant moment she’d felt earlier, in the car with Gabriel. She vowed to make a note this time. If anger was the tonic it seemed to be, then she was going to stay pissed off for a very long time. She wadded the towels, tossed them into the sink, and strode back through the ruin of the living room, her jaw set. Her pants were going to dry, she was going to get through this, and she was going to find out once and for all if there was any truth to what her sister had said.

  She cast Gabriel a dark look as she passed, but whether or not he registered it was impossible to tell. For all she knew, he was asleep behind those obsidian lenses.

  She tried the tiny closet near the entrance, found it empty except for a raincoat, a faded golf umbrella, and a nylon wind-breaker with a wrinkled hood slung over its shoulder. She swung the closet door back and moved down the musty hallway that led off the main room toward the back.

  The first door she tried led into what must have been Barbara’s bedroom. It was a small room, as airless as the rest of the house, but a window gave onto a pleasant if shadowy view under the spreading branches of the huge ficus in the front of the place. She struggled with the window crank, wondering if the thing were locked somehow, until she put both hands on it and the panes sprung loose with a popping sound.

  The rush of air, warm as it was, made being in the room just bearable. She stood at the foot of the bed, noting the inexpensive floral spread, the mismatched rug, the pale green paint on the walls. No paintings, no prints, no posters. A chest of drawers, a small dressing table on spindly legs, exactly two small bottles of perfume—one Opium, one Charlie—on a mirrored tray, a tiny clock radio blinking 12:00 in frantic repetition. Set in motion by the breeze from the window, a flotilla of dust balls jittered over the hardwood floor beneath the dressing table.

  Paige shook her head, trying to imagine bringing a man into this room, but the notion seemed impossible. She moved to the dressing table and pulled open its single drawer to reveal a scattering of cosmetics and makeup tools.

  She turned away and opened the closet, which had the same musty smell that seemed to pervade the entire house. As she surveyed Barbara’s wardrobe, surprisingly stylish in contrast to the decor around her, Paige wondered idly how long it would take the odor to disappear once you’d put something on and left the place.

  In the top drawer of the dresser she found some costume jewelry and a silver bracelet with a chunk of turquoise that she remembered as a favorite of their mother’s. There were also a few hints that Barbara had not lived an entirely nunlike existence: there was a diaphragm in a plastic case that had gone yellow with age and a small box of condoms that advertised the benefits of exotic colors. Tucked under a stack of scarves she came across a photograph of Barbara smiling, almost slinky in a red cocktail dress, her hair done in a French twist, clutching the arm of a distinguished-looking older man in a white suit. The two of them were standing on a pier that stretched out over the water toward a glorious sunset somewhere. On the back of the photo, her sister had scrawled something in pen: “Thornton and Jezebel, Key West,” along with a date.

  Paige hesitated—“Thornton and Jezebel,” she wondered, her eyes misting over, then put the photo into her purse. She scanned the rest of the drawers quickly: panties, stockings, and socks in one, T-shirts and shorts in another, a sheer nightie all alone in the last that sent a vague wave of shame through her when she held it up to the light. She replaced the garment and left the room, sure there was nothing she was looking for in here.

  The doorway across the hall led to a small bath, where Paige was surprised to find the same oxblood-colored fixtures that graced her hotel room. How could such a color have ever been popular, she found herself thinking, wandering on down the hall to the last door.

  This one led to a second bedroom that seemed to have functioned as a storeroom. There was an exercise bike set up before the window that gave out onto the withered backyard, but the seat of the
thing tilted forward at an unlikely angle and there was a coating of dust on the handgrips. The rest of the room was buried under a welter of boxes, each of them labeled in scrawled felt-tip pen, the same hand that had scrawled the note on the back of the photo. There were several labeled “Books—Mom,” and a number of others that said “Linens—Mom.” Also “Bric-a-brac—Mom,” “Bath Stuff—Mom,” and two that said “Kitchen—Mom,” one with an oily stain spreading ominously up its side.

  Beneath the box labeled “Bric-a-brac” was another that said simply “Papers,” and Paige decided to try that first. She eased the “Bric-a-brac” box to the floor, her teeth going on edge at the sound of broken china jiggling inside.

  The “Papers” box was heavier than she expected, and it almost fell from her hands as she wrestled it to the floor. The thing had been bound up with multiple layers of packing tape, and Paige bent her thumbnail double trying to pry it open. She was sucking her injured thumb, cursing herself silently, when she spotted an old butter knife lying on the windowsill.

  The tape gave easily before the knife and she lifted the flaps to find the source of much of the weight piled on top: six thick copies of the North Beach Panther, the high school year-book, one for each of the three years she and her sister had done time in that place. Paige piled the books aside. Under no circumstances, she thought. Under no circumstances whatsoever.

  In one large manila envelope just beneath the annuals was a clutch of insurance policies in her father’s name, all of them long since redeemed or canceled. Why on earth would you keep such things, Paige wondered, tossing the policies aside. In another envelope, she found a wad of warranties and instructions for an array of lawn tools and household items, including a bicycle that Paige remembered getting for her twelfth birthday. Fighting a wave of sadness, she tossed that packet aside as well. There was a folder full of contest entry stubs and tickets: Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes, new home giveaways from the local papers, car and boat raffles, none of which had ever borne fruit; and another envelope crammed to overflowing with old photographs, many of which Paige could remember flipping through as a girl: there was the same set of black-and-white snaps of her mother and her father on a cross-country jaunt they’d taken before they had children. Paige didn’t have to look to remember: her mother in shorts and halter top, her hair done up in a modified Aunt Jemima scarf, holding on to her handsome father’s arm in front of the Washington Monument, the Statue of Liberty, Niagara Falls, Mount Rushmore, the Grand Canyon. The first time she’d seen the old snapshots, she’d been overwhelmed with the romance of it all. Her beautiful mother and her perfect father living out the ideal life. The photos had seemed to embody everything a girl might want, at least in her innocent, post-toddler’s mind. But that was before things had started to happen. The terrible, unspeakable things.

  Paige felt a chill take her, despite the heat that filled the room, and she hurriedly shoved the photographs aside, looking for the next find. That seemed to be it for the keepsakes, however. She stared down in disappointment at the newsprint that lined the bottom of the box, then scanned the rest of the stacked-up boxes for hints of other memorabilia, but unless her sister had been less than systematic in her labeling, Paige had scanned the sum total of what paperwork her mother deemed worthy of saving.

  Jesus Christ, she thought. Her mother could save phony giveaway certificates and instructions for plugging her goddamned vacuum into the wall, but when it came to her kids there was nothing but some high school annuals, the testaments to the dumbest parts of their lives. She couldn’t believe it. Surely there was more here somewhere. She’d find it if she had to go through every box, sort through every piece of insignificant trash that marked her mother’s time on this earth.

  She stood up then, feeling the stiffness in her legs from the unaccustomed posture, and gave the emptied box in front of her a solid kick of frustration. Instead of flying over the pile in front of her as she’d expected, however, the box barely moved. She tapped the side of the box again with her toe, then rocked it with the pressure of her sole.

  An awfully heavy cardboard box, she was thinking, at the same time she realized that this particular carton was different from the others. It was much sturdier and apparently older than the others, its fibers crumbling away at the edges of the flaps. The faded logo stamped on the side touted the virtues of long-vanished Ipana toothpaste. There was a picture of a beaver holding a toothbrush aloft beside the logo, and suddenly the ridiculous jingle of her youth was running through her mind: “Brusha-brusha-brusha, it’s goooooo—d for your teee—eeeth!”

  As Paige bent down again, she saw something else, something that her sister’s heavy scrawl, “Papers-Mom,” had nearly obliterated. There, in dim ballpoint that had faded almost to nothing, was her mother’s neat script: “Things to keep,” it said, and Paige reached inside the box, realizing that what she had taken for an old newspaper laid in to line the bottom of the box actually formed a kind of divider.

  She carefully removed the yellowing newsprint and glanced at the headlines. An ancient Miami Daily News, with nothing of particular importance to note, she thought, “IKE TO KHRUSHCHEV: BALONEY!” Then she noticed the date on the masthead and realized it had been published on her sister’s birthday. Beneath that paper was a copy of the New York Times, dated nearly five years earlier. Fighting still raged in Korea. President Truman defended his dismissal of Douglas MacArthur. And though it said so nowhere in those pages, on that day, Paige Cooper, now Nobleman, had been born.

  Paige lay the papers aside carefully, noting that her hands were trembling. There was one more moldering newspaper in the box, another issue of the News, but neither the date, somewhere in between the date of her birth and her sister’s, nor anything on the front page—“KEFAUVER HEARINGS OPEN,” “BOY WAITS FOR PASTOR TO LEAVE, KILLS DAD”—meant anything to her. She lay the third paper aside, meaning to scan it more thoroughly later, and turned back to the box.

  With the newspapers removed, a faint aroma, some ancient sachet perhaps, rose from the objects on the bottom of the carton. She found two pairs of bronzed baby shoes, her sister’s and her own, and two framed certificates from a beauty salon in Miami Beach, each with a lock of hair pressed behind the glass, attesting to the fact that she and her sister had in fact had their first cuts. Inside a yellowing envelope with a return address for a Dr. Earle Conaway of North Miami Beach, she found a paid receipt for “Delivery, baby girl: $120.” Her heart had begun to thud by the time she realized that the date was wrong—the delivery referred to would have to have been her sister’s.

  She put the receipt aside, pawed through the rest of the loose papers there, looking for some similar envelope, but though she went through them twice, there was nothing. There were a pair of slim baby books with cardboard covers, one for her and her sister, each with the pertinent details filled in: date and time of birth, city—Miami for herself, North Miami Beach for her sister; their height and weight, hair color and eyes; the requisite entries for first word, first step, etc., along with a few photos, of birthday parties, beach trips, new puppies, and the like. To her mother’s credit, each book seemed equally well kept.

  Paige sat back on her heels with a sigh. Why was she doing this to herself? She could see the proof of the matter before her: the four of them at some tourist trap in Central Florida, posed behind a silly cutout sign that made them all appear to be buxom bathing beauties: her and her sister, her mother, and her father, Paige with her father’s dark features and her mother’s fair hair, Barbara with her mother’s round face, the same pinched look passed from mother to younger daughter already. This was a family, Paige told herself. Or at least it had been. Why had her sister said otherwise?

  She flipped the books shut and added them to the pile she’d begun with the newspapers, then scanned the few things that were left. Two baptismal certificates, one Presbyterian, the second Methodist, marking a cataclysmic argument between her parents that Paige could sti
ll remember; two kindergarten registration forms (Paige could still feel the splinter she’d picked up, sliding on her bottom across the wooden floorboards of that cavernous room—her first day at school and her mother had had to come take her to the doctor to have it removed); she rubbed the back of her thigh absently, eyeing the two official envelopes that remained. She’d known they were there, of course, had spotted them right off. Both bore return addresses from the Dade County Department of Public Health; both had been cut neatly open; both held bulky paperwork that edged its green engraving out of their pouches.

  Paige felt her mouth go dry as she reached for the first. She checked the postmark to be sure, then withdrew her sister’s birth certificate, scanned all the pertinent data, which matched precisely with everything Paige knew. She returned her sister’s paperwork to its envelope, then reached with trembling fingers for her own.

  She held her breath as her eyes flew over the entries: “Certificate of Live Birth”…Paige Lee Cooper…October 31, the year correct…the name of the attending physician, not Doctor Earle Conaway but one Emma Kane Rolle…the place Rolle’s office on Flagler Street, far to the south, near the city’s center, an “emergency birth,” at 12:15 A.M., all that information typed in smudged lettering, as if the typewriter keys had been made of fur…and then, added in pen, in the same hand that had signed the certificate, she found what she had been looking for: “Father: Bertram Wayne Cooper, 27, Salesman/Auto,” “Mother: Loretta Rose Richardson,” as if in those days it was taken for granted that mothers had no other occupation worthy of mention. She read and reread the entries until they were burned into her consciousness. Strange that she’d never known the doctor who delivered her was a woman. And odd that she’d never heard about the “emergency” nature of her birth. Paige shook her head. Hadn’t her mother always referred to “taking her home from the hospital”? Or was that something Paige had simply imagined? In any case, here was the proof she’d been looking for. No reason to have doubted the foundations of her very existence. No reason at all, Paige.