Painted Truth

by Lise McClendon

  I cleared my throat. “I don’t know, Carl. It’s been over for a long time. But if it’s honesty you want, I have to say it’s possible a part of me still cares.” I heard him get up and move to the window. I was examining the paddling calluses on my hands. “You must have girlfriends you still care about.”

  In the window the reflection of his face on the glass was unreadable. Outside, the night faded into purples and midnight blues. An alpenglow from the Tetons rose in the north, challenging the stars.

  “She was on the force,” he said. “When I was a rookie. I was just out of the navy and full of it. She was a couple years older than me. She taught me a lot. We were partners for a while, until the lieutenant found out about us.1’

  “That you were lovers?”

  “She was married. We weren’t lovers. Not the way you mean. But I loved her.”

  “What happened?”

  “Somebody started sending her flowers and candy. At first it was secret, then somebody found out and made a big joke about it at the station.”

  “It was you?”

  He nodded. “I couldn’t help it, I guess. I was young, and stupid.”

  “And you loved her. I think it’s sweet,” I said.

  “She didn’t. Neither did her husband, who was a sheriff’s deputy.” Carl came back to the couch and plumped a pillow. His face held resignation and sadness.

  “Is she still married?” I asked softly.

  He shook his head. “She died. Last year.” I waited while he regained control. “Just before Christmas. She wasn’t even on duty, just helping break up a domestic dispute.”

  “She was shot?”

  “She lived about forty-eight hours,” he said. He swallowed and looked me in the eye. “So that’s my sad story.”

  “It’s awful. Especially the part about her not loving you back.”

  His black eyes flashed. “I didn’t say that,” he said angrily.

  “0h.” I rubbed my forehead. How had we gotten started on this, anyway? I was sorry Carl’s love had died, sorry that it had never worked out, sorry that Paolo was leaving me. But what good did it do to reexamine old loves, to pine for what had passed and would never be again? I felt my heart swell for a moment for the crossed signals and lost opportunities of love. For the unrequited, the untouched, the hopeless. Why was I moping about Paolo? Did I still love him?

  Carl got up to flip the record. I slouched in the chair, a headache forming between my eyes, radiating up from my cracked septum. The silence, until the music started, was deafening.

  CARL LEFT EARLY the next morning to meet Pete at the Snake River again. We had slept side by side in my bed, afraid to touch each other, treating the other like a fragile piece of glass likely to shatter if moved. We didn’t want to be moved. We had been moved by previous lovers and look where it got us. So we lay still, staring at the old plaster ceiling until the sheer weight of our eyelids dragged us down into sleep.

  The new Tantros were the buzz of the morning. Paolo could hardly quit talking about them. He called up several clients he knew were interested, even though I told him they were not for sale.

  “Never mind, never mind,” he said, the consummate salesman. “We’ll just wet their whistles.”

  “You mean make them drool,” I said.

  “All over themselves.” He grinned.

  Eden finally got up about ten and stumbled down to see the new paintings. She had been out late, with Pete, I assumed.

  Her hair was wet, dripping on her shirt. “Jesus, Alix. Man, oh man.” She stood in front of the paintings, sweeping a bothersome customer out of her way with a hand. “Do you mind? Oh, this one. It’s my favorite. What’s it called?”

  “Winter Glass,” I told her. “It’s something, all right.”

  Winter Glass exhibited all of Ray Tantro’s extraordinary talents. There was snow, ice, sky, river, and prairie, all swirled into a mirage of light and color that gave the feeling of both

  intense passion and frozen death. It was a curious piece that drew you in to examine tiny fragments of color, delicate lavenders and dots of cerise and built-up reds and browns in the barren trees. Then it pushed you out again to revel in the joy of its composition.

  “These are even better than the ones the old lady had,” Eden said. “Way better.”

  I couldn’t agree with her. They were similar, done at nearly the same time with the same verve and intensity. But Esther’s were just as wonderful.

  “Where did they come from?”

  “The cousin, Wally Fortney. Did you ever meet him?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I never met anybody in Ray’s family. Until we went down to his mother’s.” She bent closer to Gloria. “What are you going to do with these?”

  “They’re to go to the Met in New York. It’s a fitting tribute to Ray, don’t you think?”

  “He would have liked that.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the paintings.

  “And of course now that he’s dead, the prices will shoot up,” I said, watching her.

  “Yeah. These are probably worth—what? Fifty, sixty thou?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Everybody’s kind of waiting to see what’s going to happen with his prices.” I paused, examining Field at Noon with its golden hay and cloudless sky. “Of course, if he’s not dead, Wally’s collection won’t be worth as much.”

  Eden frowned at me. “But he is dead.”

  I shrugged. “What if it wasn’t him?”

  She shivered. “Shit, Alix, you’re crazy. Of course it was him.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Sure, I’m sure,” she said, crossing her arms, her brown eyes clouding.

  “How tall was he, Eden? You knew him.”

  “How tall? I don’t know. Everybody’s taller than me.” She closed her eyes, remembering. “Five ten, eleven.”

  I stared at her. “How tall do you think I am?”

  She looked at a spot even with my bangs. “Five ten, I guess. Why?”

  “Nothing.” She obviously was no judge of height. I was five ten in high heels. “I’ve got to make some calls,” I said, backing away. “You going out for coffee?”

  “You want some?”

  I told her to bring me a latte and headed toward my office. Today was the day I told Martin Ditolla the bad news. But when I dialed his number I got his answering machine. I left a message that we needed to talk and hung up, relieved but also guilty that I once again managed to avoid the inevitable.

  IN THE EVENING, before we ate, Carl lifted my mountain bike from its dusty closet and down the stairs. We rode double, he pedaling, standing, me on the seat with legs splayed, to Danny Bartholomew’s and borrowed his bicycle. Then we rode through town, past the new hospital toward the Elk Refuge. The dirt road was deserted except for the occasional hikers enjoying the evening air.

  We didn’t talk. We watched the bluebirds dance in the tall grass, darting and catching the night’s insects, their azure feathers like indigo ink against the yellowing grass. Down in the marsh a great blue heron stood like a statue, one leg bent. An owl hooted high in the rocky hills and a hawk circled. A ground squirrel sat up and watched us pass in the gravel and dust. The light faded in the west. The mountains turned into mysteries of darkness, tombs of color. My legs felt useful and strong, and I stood up high on the pedals to catch the scents rolling down from the evergreen-and sage-covered foothills before we stopped and turned back toward civilization.

  AT TEN O’CLOCK that night the charred alley door of Timberwolf Arts was creased by icy moonlight. Illegally parked cars lined the alley, with parking a scarce commodity at high summer. Moving around a Subaru with two bikes on its roof, I turned the knob on the once-blue door. It was locked, dead-bolted.

  “What did you expect?” Carl said, arms crossed. He didn’t like this, had said so emphatically at our late dinner. We were not treating each other so carefully anymore. Since his day on the river and our bike ride, we had mellowed. At least Carl had
forgotten about our mutual pains enough to tell me exactly what he thought of my nosing around in other people’s business. “This is not the same as rifling a glove box.”

  “Eden has permission to enter, doesn’t she? She’s the owner. I’m her friend, mentor, and all-around do-gooder.” I rattled the knob and gave the door a little shoulder action. “You can stay outside if it bothers you.”

  “You don’t even have a damn flashlight, Alix.”

  “Yes, I do.” I fished in my backpack for a moment and held up the penlight. “You coming?”

  He frowned, the blue moonlight giving his face a fierce look. “It would be nice if you had a key.”

  “Keys are for the uncreative. Besides this door is old, half burned, and about to fall off its hinges.” On cue we both checked the hinges. The door had warped away from the frame to the point that the hinges were visible through a large crack.

  “You hold the light,” Carl said, extracting a Swiss army knife from his pocket. In a moment he had loosened the hinge pins. I found two scraps of wood to use to knock them out. I told him he would make a good second-story man and he smiled, a little. We were inside, propping the door back up, in five minutes.

  “Now what, Sherlock?” Carl whispered, standing behind me, his hands on my shoulders. This place stinks like rotten drywall.”

  “Yeah, I know. Upstairs, Watson.” I moved toward the stairs, bouncing the tiny beam of light off the charred floors, the stack of damaged Tantro canvases still piled in the corner where I’d left them beside the sagging plasterboard and dirty piles of trash, twisted lamps, and soggy debris. From the quick look of the first floor it looked like nothing had been touched since Scanlon and I were here the day after the fire.

  “Are the stairs safe?” Carl asked, stomping down hard on the step behind me. Scanlon, the fire inspector, had told me the second floor could be unsound. We were about to find out.

  “I’ll let you know,” I said, pointing the flashlight at each riser and tread. They were covered with a tight, gray carpeting that looked water damaged but intact. The stairs rose from the middle of the room, a straight open staircase with a wrought-iron banister, the kind used on porches. As my head rose above the ceiling level of the first floor, the gloom thickened. A heavy smoky smell hung in the air.

  As Eden had so tactfully pointed out, her apartment was bigger than mine. It had south windows too, three of them across the length of the main room. All three stood empty of their glazing, naked to the night, with a view of the flat tar roof of the building next door, which was littered with broken glass, shingles, and trash. Unlike my apartment, the stairwell led directly into her living room with no door closing off the private quarters from the gallery below. Probably against fire code, this omission had no doubt fanned the fire, creating a funnel of oxygen up the stairs.

  An eerie purple glow hung over the upturned wooden chairs, the wrecked sofa, and dishes piled on the counter and broken on the floor. An ethereal white dust covered the floor with chunks of plaster everywhere. It took a minute to realize the glow was the result of cracks in the exposed lath ceiling letting in moonlight. The roof—and the attic—were gone.

  Carl stared at the ceiling. “Holy Mary. What happened up there?”

  “Explosion. Vaporized gas.” I took a step into the apartment, but Carl held me back.

  “Better look around first with the light. You don’t want to step into any holes.”

  I checked the floor rapidly with the light, thinking about the tin ceiling on the floor below. As far as I could remember it was intact. A rug lay in a twisted heap under the coffee table. An ashtray filled with cigarette butts had been beautified by the plaster snow. I headed for the bedroom. “You look around out here, there’s more light.”

  “Wait a minute. What the hell are we looking for?”

  “A closet with some paintings. Something about Ray Tantro. Anything about the fire.”

  Carl grunted his displeasure as I stepped into the bedroom. Eden had furnished it with a twenties bedroom set, curving headboard, dresser, and bedside tables, inlaid with wood, veneered in a fashion that hadn’t endured. The fire had been minimal in here, yet the windows facing the square had been blown out. Someone had stapled clear plastic over them. Through the plastic the moonlight was watery and weak.

  The bedcovers lay in a heap, the pillow still indented with Eden’s head. The other pillow on the double bed also had an indentation. The dresser was a small three-drawer unit with a mirror attached. I opened the jewelry box on the top. Inside three pairs of earrings and a cheap beaded bracelet lay in two compartments. The rest was empty.

  The dresser drawers showed Eden wasn’t much into clothes. Six pairs of worn-out underwear, two white shirts, an orange and a black one, a couple pairs of shorts, a pair of faded jeans. I zipped open my backpack and stuffed them all in. At least she’d have some clothes that fit.

  The girl really needed shoes. I opened the closet, a walk-in with parallel racks, very roomy for an apartment. The beam of the flashlight shone off the empty hangers. No art in here. Down on the end hung a dirty trench coat and a long evening dress made of velvet with lace at the bodice. I’d never seen Eden wear it and wouldn’t have been caught dead in it myself. On the floor sat a pair of Birkenstocks that predated the sexual revolution; I put them in my backpack. A last look at the floor revealed matching heels for the evening dress. I abandoned them with the gown.

  The shelves of the closet were stacked with boxes. I pulled one down and found a jumble of old clothes in it. Another held a stack of photographs that Eden must have developed herself, if fuzzy focus and chemical spots were any clue. The last box was heavy, long, and skinny and held, of all things, a croquet set.

  After a final peek under the bed I found Carl in the kitchen, his hand on the refrigerator handle.

  “Find anything?”

  “Darkroom.” He pointed at a door near the bedroom. “Lots of chemicals, I’d guess. It burned pretty bad in there. There might have been some paintings.”

  “Things are pretty scorched out here.” The sofa cushions revealed springs and blackened stuffing. “The bedroom’s all there. Just the windows blown.”

  “I was going to check the fridge,” he said, hesitating.

  “Don’t”

  “Why not?” He had his policeman look on again even though he wore baggy jeans, Patagonia T-shirt, and cowboy boots. I was finally getting used to that mustache.

  “It’ll be rank. They turned off the power a week ago.” I had smelled that left-the-fridge-unplugged odor before. Once was enough. “Did you look around in here?”

  “Not yet.”

  We started opening cupboards. “Just dishes. Cereal boxes. Regular shit,” Carl said.

  “What’s not here?”

  “Huh?”

  “What’s missing?”

  “Oh.” He looked around the kitchen, taking the penlight from me, searching the countertops. “No coffeemaker, no toaster, no electric can opener, no dirty rag in the sink, no Cuisinart, no garbage can, no microwave. Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes, Watson. That’s what I mean.”

  WE WALKED ACROSS the square in the moonlight, dragging our shoes through the grass to clean the plaster dust and ashes off the soles. I had the backpack slung on my back and my eyebrows knit together. What we’d found, or hadn’t found, in Eden’s apartment was on my mind.

  I always prided myself on my judgment of people’s characters, like a colored aura around them. I could sometimes smell the foul odor of deceit, although this wasn’t very accurate. But at least I should have seen, should have known that Eden hadn’t been straight with me.

  The moon was just past full, waning into the starlit sky. A cool breeze rattled through the elms as we reached the other side of the square and paused to let the stagecoach cowboys spray down the horse manure in the street. The odor was fragrant and alive with hay. Carl wrinkled his nose as I unlocked the front door of the gallery.

  Just inside the f
ront door of my apartment, we stopped and listened. Now an old Emmylou Harris album was on the turntable, turned down low. A single candle burned on the coffee table, its vanilla fragrance cloying. The kitchen clock ticked.

  But the most conspicuous noise was from my bedroom. The door was closed but the sound of springs squeaking in a suspiciously rhythmic manner, as if keeping time with Emmylou, was unmistakable.

  “I feel like Goldilocks,” I said. “Somebody’s screwing in my bed.”

  “You mean the three bears. Goldilocks is beating the mattress and I’d lay money her name starts with an E. At least she didn’t break any chairs.” He sat down on the couch and propped his feet on the coffee table next to the candle. “Sounds like ol’ Pete got lucky. This is better than renting a video.” He grinned.

  A wail rose from behind the door. “Jesus Christ.” My whisper wasn’t as soft as Carl’s, and he hushed me. “This is my apartment, for God’s sake. If I want to curse, I’ll curse.”

  Not that my cursing made any difference. The bedsprings continued their lament, Eden sang along, Pete began to grunt. It was better than renting a video. All the sound effects were in place.

  I opened my backpack and dumped Eden’s clothes and shoes into an unceremonious heap on the floor by the kitchen counter. It wasn’t a big heap, I noticed again. I hung up the pack in the closet and poured myself a glass of wine. The smell of soot clung to my fingers as I sipped, leaning against the counter, waiting for the climax of the bedroom movie.

  Eden and Pete went together, in loud, exultant doggie yelps, straight out of a Joy of Sex exercise. I felt like having a cigarette. Carl gave me an I-know-what-you’re-thinking look.

  We didn’t wait long before one of them came out. I had my money on Eden, naked, prancing to the bathroom, maybe singing a Beach Boys ditty like “I Get Around.” But Pete came first, strutting across the short hall, bare-assed, into the John. Eden emerged a minute later, in my split yellow chenille bathrobe. She had her head down, belting it, as she stepped into the light.

  With a long sigh of contentment she lifted her head. The pile of clothes caught her eye first, then she saw me by the kitchen counter and Carl on the couch.