Fadeaway Girl

by Martha Grimes

  I realized these were stupid thoughts and extremely unsympathetic. I should learn to be more sorry for people who didn’t have the great advantages I had, like my mother’s chicken pot pie, which I think was on tonight’s menu. It wasn’t thin and watery like Banquet frozen; my mother’s had big chunks of chicken in it.

  I’d discovered a rubber band between my chair cushion and the arm and was about to snap it across the room when the door opened and the blind lady, Miss Jo, came out of the kitchen. A ton of adrenaline got dumped around my insides.

  “Emma!” said Mrs. Louderback, sounding surprised, as if she hadn’t seen me fifteen minutes ago. I was busy watching Miss Jo maneuver around a footstool in her path. I could have got up and moved it, but I thought it was probably better to let the handicapped fend for themselves. It was certainly more interesting.

  I jumped out of my chair and went into the kitchen, still unsure as to how to approach the subject of the kidnapped—rather, the non-kidnapped baby. Mrs. Louderback had known the Woodruffs, for they had spent summers here in Spirit Lake. They owned the biggest house around; it sat on four town lots.

  I stared at the deck of cards sitting neatly in the center of the table, keeping its secrets.

  “Well, Emma,” said Mrs. Louderback, sitting down across from me and pushing back a wisp of hair. “How are you today? You sounded a little distraught over the phone.” She rearranged the cards, cutting them like a casino dealer.

  “No, I’m okay.”

  She turned over a card: the Two of Cups, in which I had no interest at all. The cups just reminded me of having to wait on tables at dinner.

  Next came—I just knew it!—Orphans in a Storm. Though it wasn’t called that.

  Mrs. Louderback shook her head. “They really do seem to follow you around.” We pondered the card. “I think you must have a longstanding problem.”

  “Well, this card isn’t helping me solve it.”

  “No, but I suppose you could say solutions lie within us.”

  That was bad news. “I don’t see it lying inside them.” I tapped the card. “They didn’t bring the wind and weather.”

  “You know, they’re not really orphans; it isn’t really a storm.”

  “Then what’s all that snow flying into their faces?”

  I thought she could have told me that before. Maybe Miss Jo couldn’t, but that was all the rest of us had—our eyes, ears, noses, and mouths.

  Mrs. Louderback said, “Do you believe everything you see?”

  “More than I believe everything I don’t.” I hoped she wasn’t going to bring up God and angels and all the rest. I had a hard enough time with Father Freeman.

  “What I mean is, how do you interpret what you see?”

  I wondered if I had come to the right place after all. I said, “If I see a cat walking by the door, then my mind sees, you know, a cat walk by the door.”

  She nodded and reached behind her to a blue cupboard and pulled out a book. She leafed through it and turned it around so I could look at it. I’d seen this trick-picture several times: the vase and the silhouette of two faces, depending on what your eye did with it. Mine went back and forth between vase and faces. Before she could ask the boring question, I said, “It’s either a vase or the outlines of two faces.”

  “That’s right. Which do you see?”

  “Both.”

  She shook her head. “Not both at once. I don’t think the eye can take both in simultaneously.”

  Suddenly, I thought of the artist and his Fadeaway Girls: there was the red coat of one becoming part of the red background, or the white coat of another girl melting into the snow. You had to supply your own lines for the missing sections of coat.

  “Yes, you can.” Maybe someone my age should not directly contradict an adult, but I didn’t want to fool around with that. “Did you ever see covers of magazines with illustrations of Fadeaway Girls?” When she shook her head, I described them. “You can see it all at once, the background and the girl. It’s because the girl is part of the background. If you see what I mean.” I looked at her hard, eyes narrowed, as if I could force my images of the Fadeaway Girls into her mind.

  But she only shook her head again.

  It was up to my mind to tell my eye—or was it the other way around? This was too complicated. “I keep seeing this girl—” I hadn’t meant to say it; it just popped out. “Remember? I told you.” Had I?

  “A girl? No, I don’t recall that.”

  “She keeps turning up where I am. Here and in Cold Flat Junction.”

  “You don’t know who she is?”

  “No.” But I thought I did, didn’t I? She was Fay Slade, wasn’t she? Wasn’t there evidence to point to that? “She could be the Slade baby—I mean the baby that disappeared twenty years ago. The one that was allegedly kidnapped.” Mrs. Louderback had known the Woodruffs and Morris Slade back then.

  “But the baby was kidnapped and no one around these parts ever heard anything after that. Why do you think it’s her?”

  “Because she looks like Morris Slade, or pictures I’ve seen of him. She looks like Rose Devereau Queen too. Because she and Morris looked alike; they could have been twins, the way they looked, only Rose would have been a lot older than Morris.”

  Mrs. Louderback looked doubtful. “I don’t know, Emma. You’d think, if it was the Slade girl come back, she’d make more of an effort to find out what had happened, wouldn’t you?”

  Of course, that seemed true. “Then who is she? Why would she keep turning up where I am?”

  “Don’t our eyes sometimes deceive us?”

  I sighed. “People always say that if they can’t explain a thing.”

  She smiled a little. “I expect you’re right.” She was laying out three more cards.

  I didn’t know why, since the first three hadn’t done much good.

  First was the moon, or a sliver of it, and two big pillars, and wolves, or I guess they were. Then—I just knew it!—the Hanged Man, and after him the Three of Cups, not more interesting than the two of them.

  “The Hanged Man,” I said.

  She riffled the cards a little, back and forth. “It’s a long, complicated story, you know. The Fool is sometimes considered the Hanged Man. Now, the Moon—the Moon controls the Fool. He walks a watery path and that becomes a river. He’s left with either staying with the wolves and hunting with them or taking his chances in a little boat; that is to say, on his ability to row a boat.”

  She looked at me; I looked at her.

  “You’re saying I’m the Fool?”

  She riffled the cards again and smiled. “Well, are you?”

  24

  Miss Flagler was arranging items behind her small bow window in the Oak Tree Gift Shoppe. The things she sold, like the silver pillbox she had just placed between a tiny baby’s bracelet and a little silver frame, were very small. The shop itself was so narrow that no more than two people could have stood in it shoulder to shoulder. Miss Flagler herself was proportioned like the shop, tall and thin as the edge of the silver frame.

  The bell over the door jingled when I entered.

  “Emma! You’re just in time. Miss Flyte is on her way here for tea.”

  “On her way” sounded as if the person were coming from distant blocks away, when actually Miss Flyte’s shop, Candlewick, was separated from the Oak Tree by only a narrow alley. Two side doors faced each other across the alley, and it was by these doors that Miss Flyte and Miss Flagler visited each other for morning coffee and afternoon tea.

  Tea, I thought, was an excellent idea, as I had walked the two miles from Spirit Lake rather than contend with Delbert, because I wanted to think. I hadn’t thought of anything helpful.

  I followed Miss Flagler through a curtained alcove and into her kitchen. Tea was already steeping in the big brown pot, covered with an embroidered cozy. A wonderful smell was coming from the oven.

  Her cat, Albertine, jumped up on the table and from there to a shelf abov
e the chair I always sat in. Miss Flagler unhooked a pot holder and pulled a tray of sticky buns out of the oven.

  Just as she did this, Miss Flyte entered through the alley door. She said hello to both of us, looking happy to see me. I don’t know why they liked having me around, a twelve-year-old, but they did.

  Sitting in my chair now, I felt Albertine’s soft paw selecting a strand of my hair to chew on. Albertine really liked my hair.

  As I surveyed the sweet buns for the ones with the most nuts and caramel, Miss Flyte asked if that Wednesday’s paper would carry my next installment. It had been two weeks since the last one.

  I cut my bun in two and said, “I hit a snag in the story.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “Well, I’m trying to describe my state of mind when Isabel Devereau forced me into that rowboat.” As if I could ever forget. “You recall, she had a gun.” I shouldn’t have to remind anyone of this.

  Miss Flagler put her cool-looking hands to her warm-looking cheeks. “Awful, how awful it must have been.”

  Not as awful as you might think, what with the fame it had brought. But then their interest turned to Will and Mill’s next production. Which was pretty irritating.

  “Is it to be another musical?” asked Miss Flyte.

  “Maybe. They haven’t got it together yet. There are a lot of loose ends.” I didn’t mind Will being famous; I just didn’t want him to be more famous than me, or famous at the same time.

  “Well, they’ll straighten it out, I’m sure. That brother of yours can do anything.”

  Except walk from the Big Garage to the kitchen for his breakfast. “I think maybe it’s deliberate.”

  Twin frowns confronted me.

  “What’s deliberate?” said Miss Flagler.

  “Loose ends.” I pondered this, since I didn’t know what I had meant. Then I thought of something. “I think sometimes Will doesn’t really want to solve a problem.” I was, of course, talking about myself.

  Miss Flyte was an especially intelligent person, so I thought she might come up with something helpful.

  Miss Flagler spoke first. “Why on earth would he deliberately hurt his own project?”

  “Well, I can think of one or two reasons,” said Miss Flyte, stirring her tea.

  Good. Let’s hear them. Albertine pawed up another strand of hair to chew on.

  “One could be he’s afraid that this play can’t be as successful as the last one, so he’s stalling.”

  No. Will and Mill afraid of anything but maybe a grizzly bear coming through the door with their dinner tray would surprise me.

  “Or,” Miss Flyte continued, “perhaps he’s worried it will be even better and then he’ll have to keep turning out productions that are always stunning.”

  No to that too. Will is not nearly as happy to stun people as I am. He’s happy with applause, but that’s because he’s such a ham. For lingering celebrity he doesn’t care.

  Miss Flyte went on: “Or maybe he doesn’t want it to end.”

  What? That caught my attention.

  “Once I had a friend, Zelda Bittner her name was, who had several novels sitting around that she’d read most of but never finished. I mean, she’d be twenty pages or so from the end and just snap the book shut. And some of the books she really liked. Two of them she’d even read nonstop until those last twenty pages and she just quit. What really surprised me was that some were mystery novels, and that meant she didn’t get to the solutions!”

  I said, “Then did she finally? Did she read the endings?”

  “No. She died.” Miss Flyte picked up her cup of tea as if she hadn’t just said what she’d said.

  “Oh.” Miss Flagler fell back in her chair as if she’d been pushed. “She never did find out.”

  Miss Flyte nodded. “She never did, no.”

  “What did she die of?” I was trying to be practical. The death might have been what they call lingering; if that was the case, she could have read the endings. Or even, say, if the doctor had told her: “I’m sorry, but you have only two or three weeks, Zelda.” (I liked the name and considered telling people it was my middle name and I’d like to be called by it from here on in.)

  Of course the dying Zelda would first have to spend time going around telling friends and family the news, and maybe writing a quick will if she didn’t have one, but then she could collect all of her books and read the endings.

  “She had a stroke,” said Miss Flyte.

  I said, “You mean she was struck down dead immediately?”

  “Well, she went into a coma before she died.”

  “Did she come out of it at all? Even for a little while?”

  “No. You know what a coma is like.”

  Sometimes, looking at Ree-Jane, I thought I did. “I mean, not even for”—I calculated how long it would take to read twenty pages—“fifteen minutes?” If she was a fast reader.

  Miss Flyte shook her head, looking at me with a small and lofty smile, as if she were just becoming aware I was dim. I shrugged as if I really didn’t care about all of those unread endings wasting away. I didn’t want to appear overly concerned, but I had to know, and asked, “Didn’t you see any of these books? I mean, don’t you know even one?” I tried to match her lofty smile, but I think I just looked like my nose was stuck in the air.

  “Let me think.” She thought. “Yes, there were several of Agatha Christie’s.” She pondered. “She especially liked Miss Marple.”

  If I asked which ones, I would sound much too interested. “Was there a church funeral? And did people get up and talk about her? About Zelda?”

  “Yes. It was quite a large funeral. Her family did say words about her. Why?”

  “Nothing.” I was thinking it could have been a good opportunity to read an ending—in the church or over her grave.

  Of course, I did not say this.

  “Agatha Christie was an enormously interesting person, I’ve always thought,” said Miss Flagler. “She disappeared, you know.”

  My eyes might have been on stalks the way I swiveled them toward Miss Flagler. “Disappeared?”

  “Yes, it was in the baths at Harrogate. That’s in Yorkshire, I believe. It was quite a big scandal. Then she just, well, reappeared, and to this day no one knows exactly what had happened.”

  I sat there trying to take this in as Albertine chewed on my hair. In a little while, I left. Albertine didn’t like that.

  I needed a chocolate milk shake now.

  25

  Shirl was sitting on her stool behind the cash register, smoking. She had been to the Prime Cut to get her hair done, but the only way you could tell was that a little hair had been feathered over her forehead. The stylist at the Prime Cut always did that, but it was a waste of time, for the feathering lasted only a few hours and then it blended into the rest of the frizz.

  Shirl grunted a “Hello” at me. I said “Hello” back and managed to ignore Helene Baum, the doctor’s wife, who was standing before the glass pastry case deciding which pie or cake to buy. She gave me a sour look, which I pretended not to see, and I walked behind her and the customers at the counter.

  Maud was giving coffee refills all along the counter, where the cups were lined up like my mother’s dinner plates, each plate waiting for a spoonful of something, and that reminded me of a communion service at St. Michael’s. I seemed in a religious mood today. Maybe I was about to be saved; I hoped not.

  I waited for Maud and this gave Dodge Haines and Bubby Dubois an opportunity to be funny. Bubby said, “Anybody else made you walk the plank lately?” He hit the counter with the flat of his hand and laughed like crazy and got the mayor beside him going as if being forced off a dock into a rowboat at gunpoint was just the funniest thing they’d ever heard. I looked at Bubby Dubois, at his sandy lashes and hair like meringue, slicked up and coming to a little point near his forehead, and didn’t answer. I wished Maud hadn’t come along at that very moment, as I’d have liked to go on not answeri
ng.

  “Hi, hon,” she said. “ Want a Coke?”

  “A chocolate milk shake, please.” I made a point of putting a dollar on the counter, though I knew Maud would give me one for free. But I could see Shirl up on her stool, smoking and watching, and Shirl never gave anything for free, unless she was in a really generous mood, which she hardly ever was.

  The milk shake can jittered away, then stopped. Maud poured the shake into a ribbed glass into which she plunged a straw. The milk shake looked really thick and I knew she’d added extra ice cream. I took it back to the last booth, which always had a RESERVED sign on it. It was for the Rainbow’s employees. I especially liked the booths; they were dark wood and so high-backed that you couldn’t see people coming unless you leaned a little toward the aisle.

  I had drunk the milk shake halfway down when Maud slid into the seat across from me. Right away I put the question to her: “Here’s a kind of problem. Say you’ve got three people who are friends. A, B, and C. You’re C. B tells you something about A that you find hard to believe. What’s the most obvious way to find out the truth?”

  She looked puzzled and got the pack of Camels from her pocket. “Ask A, I guess.”

  “Yes. If C doesn’t, but instead goes all the way around Robin Hood’s barn”—one of my mother’s favorite expressions—“to find out the answer, I mean like asking other people who might know but might not—then what does that tell you about C? Anything?”

  Maud lit up a cigarette, exhaled a stream of smoke, and said, “Maybe C thinks A’s feelings will be hurt?”

  “But what else?”

  Maud smoked and thought. It occurred to me then that all this A, B, C stuff was just another of my roundabout ways and that a lot of people would reach across the table and strangle me. So I told her what Miss Flyte had said about not wanting to know the answer.