Rainbow in the Mist

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  Rainbow in the Mist

  Phyllis A. Whitney

  For Audrey Bershen, who said I would listen when I was ready, with loving thanks for years of friendship and guidance

  1

  Christy gripped the wheel of her car with a tension she hadn’t been able to release in this entire daylong drive. Anxiety was needless, since only one person was aware that she had left Long Island, or knew where she was going. Yet the feeling of tightness between her shoulder blades persisted—as though an invisible hand reached for her.

  It was like her dream, where there was always a follower . . . She must leave this behind her now. In a few more miles she could stop running and pour everything out to Nona, as she’d never been able to do with her mother. Nona believed in the existence of evil, while Lili didn’t. That was only one of the differences between her mother and her aunt.

  When Christy phoned, Nona had simply said, “Come!” and Christy had responded in joyful relief. There was no need to let her mother know where she would be, since they’d hardly talked in months. The basic disagreement between mother and daughter was hurtful but couldn’t be helped. Christy knew she must follow her own path and not listen to Liliana Dukas. Besides, if Lili wanted to know where she was, she would find her—instantly.

  As the road climbed through Virginia’s beautiful Nelson County, high ridges rose ahead tinged with the hazy blue that gave the mountains their name. In the light of late afternoon, lower hills, crowding in, were delineated by shadow lines in their deep folds. Already she had the feeling that these blue-green arms would surround and conceal her, keep her safe—even from herself. The season was spring and she could start anew.

  Her Aunt Nona was the true mother who had raised and nurtured her ever since Christy had been a small child and Liliana Dukas’s destiny had taken off on a surge of publicity—notoriety!—that had made her world-famous. These days Lili was in demand for talk shows and conferences everywhere, attracting thousands of devotees. As a mother, she had provided her one child with an intense, almost devouring love (whenever she was around), but the wider demands that engulfed her life caused her to forget much of the time that she had a daughter. Or so it had often seemed to Christy. Lili’s “voices” told her that her destiny was to help the world, and apparently they didn’t worry about the needs of one sometimes resentful little girl.

  At twenty-eight Christy still shrank from her mother’s fame. Lili had always used her maiden name of Dukas, so Christy could hide behind Loren, her father’s name, even though he had left them so long ago. One regret in Christy’s life was that he had died before she could ever get to know him. Lili would never talk about Kenneth Loren, or about her other husbands, and Nona had been almost as reticent.

  While Nona Dukas had never married, she had gained a quiet distinction of her own, and she’d dropped the family name early on. For herself she’d chosen the curious name of “Harmony” with which to sign her paintings. From her aunt, Christy had received a restrained, undemonstrative love that had nevertheless been a rock to depend upon in her growing years—as she must depend upon it again now.

  Nona’s no-nonsense approach would enable Christy to relax, rest, be free of the terrible demands that had been placed upon her in recent years. She had never told Nona exactly what had happened to her in these last two years—though Lili had known immediately and had wanted to take part—to “help.” It had been necessary for Christy to stand up to her mother and demand to be let alone. Unexpectedly, Lili had listened and tried to respect her daughter’s wishes. Christy was sure that when Nona knew all that had happened she would give her full support to whatever course her niece decided to follow. There’d be no need to struggle any more, because she knew what that course must be.

  Of course Lili had always hoped that the miraculous gift her Hungarian mother had possessed would manifest itself in her daughter. When the first hint of it had appeared in the year when Christy was five, Lili had been tremendously pleased and excited. From the first, however, Christy had hated the gift and wanted only to reject it. She’d always disliked the name she had been given at birth—Chrystal. A name her mother still used. Crystals were a part of Lili’s life, not Christy’s.

  She would never forget that first searing flash of premonition that had warned her about her darling Puddles. She had seen with horrible clarity the moment when the little poodle had been struck by a car, and she knew exactly where it had happened. Her mother listened to every tearful word and drove her to the blind curve that Christy’s vision indicated. Even as Lili tried to comfort her daughter, she had exclaimed over this evidence that the family talent had reached into another generation. But why, Christy wailed, why couldn’t she have seen ahead of time what was going to happen, so that Puddles could have been saved?

  For years after, her doubtful gift had let her alone, and she had tried to block out any thought of it. She had found work that pleased and satisfied her. Although she had no brothers or sisters, since Lili was too busy to raise a family, and was usually between husbands anyway, Christy grew up loving children. She had a special sympathy for the small ones, and since she loved books as well—Nona had seen to that—it had seemed natural to combine the two and become someone who put books into the hands of children.

  The library she worked for on Long Island discovered that she was especially good at telling stories to groups of the very young. Her own small person never overwhelmed them, and they loved the way her brown eyes could widen dramatically; loved the feathery tricks her eyebrows played to make them laugh. A wide mouth that she’d always thought too big helped because it was expressive, and her voice was soft but very clear, and filled with cadences that seemed to hold and entrance a young audience. Of course all the marvelous children’s books at the library gave her ammunition. For Christy, words always came first and she loved to say them aloud, so her listeners could relish the author’s language.

  The library system quickly recognized her special magic, and she’d been sent around to tell stories wherever small children gathered to listen. The work had been satisfying, and she didn’t mind in the least that her mother thought it was all a waste of the “real” talents she should have been developing.

  Christy had been delighted when Nona, using the name of “Harmony,” did the illustrations for a favorite recent picture book by Rose Vaughn, entitled The Little Red Road. The author, a close friend of Nona’s, had died recently, and Christy felt sad because there would be no more wonderful, Nona-illustrated stories from her pen.

  Charlottesville was behind her, and the four-lane highway that rose into the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains led closer to the turnoff. Now the hills were an irregular, wooded jumble all around, and she liked the surprise views that appeared at every turn. Nona had explained that after Christy left the main road she must look for a Baptist church sign and then a green dumpster that would mark the gravel road winding through the hills to the small community called Redlands, where Nona had built her home two years ago.

  Christy had wanted to visit her aunt before this, but it had never worked out. Not until this last disaster had struck did she know that she must disappear, escape, sever all ties with terrible recent events. She was thankful that Nona didn’t ask her to explain over the phone.

  Her library director had seen Christy’s need and let her go immediately and without question. She had understood what was happening—and simply cut the red tape. This woman was the one friend who knew where Christy had gone, and she would never give her away. Whether it would ever be possible to return to Long Island was a decision for the future—perhaps when she had healed a little and recovered her equilibrium. For now, she m
ust be away from any settled area where violence was prevalent and her clairvoyance all too active. At Redlands there would be nothing to awaken it, and she could let her awful experiences flow away into the past. The Virginia foothills of the Blue Ridge would be peaceful, quiet. She knew from her aunt that only a handful of families had been drawn together here by the beauty of the Redlands area and a desire to be away from cities. Though they came from different places, they were bound by a common affection for the beauty of the land and the protection of bird and animal life, as well as that of the plants and trees that shared the countryside with humans.

  After turning into the widespread acres occupied by Redlands, the road narrowed and changed from pavement to gravel as it climbed steep curves and opened into a high, rolling valley of sloping meadows where cows grazed. Forested hills and higher mountains enfolded the deep cut of the valley.

  “When you come to the ‘Y’ in the road,” Nona had directed, “you take the right fork. The second driveway on your right is mine. I’ll be watching for you.”

  The second driveway had been recently topped with gravel that was a little loose near the road. Christy took the turn carefully, avoiding deep red ditches on either side. The afternoon was still bright and sunny and the dogwood trees in the valley retained some of their white plumage. As she got out of the car and stretched luxuriously, she wished she could have seen their full blooming.

  Nona’s house reached along the top of the ridge, and from the front appeared to be all on one floor, its gray roof shingles framed by two big oak trees on either hand. A low deck of red planks followed the angular turns of the house beneath an overhang that would shield the many windows from summer sun. The pitch of the roof was broken by a gentle rise toward the front edge that imitated the mountain cabin roofs she’d seen on the drive from Charlottesville—except that this wide roof carried two tiers of solar panels, shining like silver in the sun.

  More notable than the roof at the moment, however, was the man who straddled the ridgepole, securing some sort of metal device in place. He stared down at her openly without smiling, intent upon her every move. His look seemed to hint at caution toward strangers. A big man, with wide shoulders, he sat with his long legs dangling down each side of the roof. His face, already tanned by the sun, was angular in its planes, his black hair ruffled by the wind. He was dressed entirely in gray—slacks and shirt and scuffed boots.

  “Hello!” Christy called up to him. “I’m Christy Loren, Miss Harmony’s niece.”

  He tipped his head toward her in a nod but didn’t speak, and having satisfied himself in that single long stare, he went back to his work, whatever it was.

  Christy took her suitcase and small zipper bag from the car trunk and stepped up on the deck. Three full-length glass doors, spaced well apart, offered access to the house. She could look through the nearest one to a service entrance floored in red tile. Undoubtedly a place to scrape off red mud when it rained. Farther along, set at a jutting right angle that faced her, the next door opened on the kitchen. She needed to go no further, as Nona came through at once onto the deck.

  She looked as she always did—tall and spare, with bones that seemed to protrude in awkward places, though somehow they’d always offered a small child a comfortable place to cuddle. She wore jeans and a western shirt with red embroidery against blue denim. Short boots covered her long thin feet, and her stride as she came toward Christy had not shortened in the years that had carried her into her sixties. Lately, since her hair had turned gray and thin, she’d taken to covering it with a flowered scarf wound about her head, the ends flowing over one shoulder. What was good enough for Louise Nevelson and Georgia O’Keeffe was good enough for Nona Harmony, as she often said. A final touch—long turquoise earrings—danced as she moved her head. In some strange way, as Christy had often noted, no matter what she wore, Nona always created her own fashion and lived it with panache.

  A smile lighted her face warmly, and she held out her arms to her niece with an embrace that was hard and quick. Christy caught the lemon-grass scent of verbena that she wore, which had always been comfortingly familiar to sniff.

  “Come inside,” Nona said. “My coffee has just stopped perking.”

  A little of Christy’s burden flowed away and she was able to laugh for the first time in weeks. Nona always claimed that the family “gift” had passed her by—“Thank God!”—but nevertheless, she knew to the instant when to put on the coffee, and few visitors ever took her by surprise. She could stop in mid-sentence, when no one else noticed anything, and remark, “Somebody’s coming.”

  The angled doorway opened into a red-tiled kitchen and dining area. A bay of windows encompassed the view of mountains, meadow slopes, and distant clumps of forest. Now that the brown of winter had been cast off, new green-softened the land, with red earth showing through wherever grass was thin or a dirt road wound through. An oval table had been set before the window bay, and a galley kitchen cut off at right angles to the dining space.

  Nona took Christy’s suitcase and bag and put them out of the way. “Leave your stuff there for now, and later I’ll show you your room downstairs. We’re on two levels at the back because of the steep hill. There’s a bathroom down the hall if you’d like a wash. I’ll pour our coffee and then you can tell me everything.”

  It was like Nona to sense at once what ought to come first. There would be no chitchat about her trip or her health before they got to the main topic of why she had come. Christy paused only to ask about the man on the roof.

  Her aunt answered carelessly. “That’s Victor Birdcall. He’s putting up lightning rods for me. Did he give you his silent once-over?”

  “I think he did.”

  “Pay no attention. He plays make-believe Indian sometimes, though I think the blood is diluted a bit by now. Hurry and come back.”

  Christy hurried, liking the spacious bathroom with its gray tile floor and blue fixtures. When she returned to sit in the window bay opposite her aunt, the view had already changed with the light as the sun dropped toward the mountains—a view so still and peaceful that Christy began to feel more relaxed than she had in months. There, was so much sky out there above sloping pastures that even the mountains were dwarfed.

  “It’s popped up in you again, hasn’t it?” Nona said, and smiled. “No, dear, I’m not psychic. But I don’t know anything else that could upset you so badly. The one or two times it’s hit me, I fell apart. Luckily I could always manage to close off the avenue, and I’ve been safe from it most of my life.”

  “I wish I knew how to do that,” Christy said. Even though the whole thing churned inside her, ready to pour out, she hardly knew how to begin—or even where the beginning was.

  Nona saw her hesitation and offered a side road. “Why haven’t you ever married?” she asked bluntly. “I’ll bet plenty of men have been after you.”

  A spark flashed in Christy’s eyes. “Not plenty. A few. But I don’t know about love—that’s never happened for me, really. Men like to look after me—I’m such a little thing, they think I’m helpless! They want to put me in a pocket, keep me for a pet—and I won’t have any of that. Of course when they find out what I can do they run like rabbits. Besides, I’d never marry after Lili’s terrible example. Three marriages, and not one of her husbands could take it! She’s never talked about the first one—she just clams up. And you’ve never been willing to tell me much either. Not even about my father. You get that remote look in your eyes and I don’t dare push.”

  Nona sighed. “I never wanted to prejudice you against your mother. Because of the critical way I sometimes felt, I knew what would come through.”

  “It came through anyway. So tell me now. Maybe it will help me understand—other things.”

  Nona always drank her coffee black, but now she stirred as though the liquid were full of sugar and cream. When she put down her spoon, it was with an air of su
rrender.

  “All right. I’ve put it off too long. That first marriage of your mother’s—they were only kids. She hadn’t been called then, and I guess she really fell in love. It took that first man a year to find out about her, and then he skipped for his own sanity. Left her for an older woman who was quite ordinary and gave him the mother he wanted.”

  “My father came next?”

  “Yes. Ken was okay. I liked him, and I think he tried to stick it out. He loved you very much as a baby. I’ve told you that, at least. When Lili found herself, as she calls it, she said he couldn’t take it either. Though he didn’t leave her for another woman. He left because she scared him. Who wants to live with someone who knows what you’re thinking before you do?”

  “She’s not that good!” Christy protested.

  “They only needed to think she was.”

  “But the third man must have known all about her?”

  “Sure. He was in the ‘business,’ as he called it. But you see, no matter what they say about her, Liliana Dukas is real. She’s radiantly real. You can almost see the light around her. But he was a fake, and out to use her to make money. She can go silly in the head about men and doesn’t foresee a thing. But when she found out what he was up to, she divorced him. I don’t think she’ll try marriage again. But that’s enough of Lili. It’s time to talk about you. Aren’t you happy in your library work?”

  “I love it. I want to go on doing what I like, and I’m really pretty good at it, Nona.”

  “But there’s something you haven’t shared with me. I’ve sensed it every time we’ve talked on the phone, and I’ve felt it in your letters—the holding back.”

  “I know. Thanks for not pushing me. I thought I could work through what was happening by myself, but it kept getting worse—more powerful and more frightening. This time I nearly cracked up.”

  “Then it’s time to talk. I’m always good for listening.”