"Almost finished with the first?"
"Close."
"It's on the second shelf from the top in the bookcase near the window."
"Thanks."
Later, Megan waved good-bye as Carl rowed downstream toward the town. Carl hadn't noticed that the first journal still sat on the small boulder near the water. Megan walked over and picked the book up, shoving it between her elbow and rib cage so that she could jam her hands into the side pockets of her jeans. She walked up the path, taking a detour where the hyacinth smell was strongest. She found the mound. It appeared drier and dustier. After clearing a spot for herself in the grass, Megan sat and read.
By noon, she was famished. Carl hadn't returned as yet. She went down by the river to peer into the horizon, but saw no rowboat making its way back home. Assuming that he would miss lunch, Megan went back up to the house to prepare her own meal.
As she climbed the steps, she noticed a small nest on the tree limb overhanging the house. Two little heads bobbed up and down, chirping out their request for food. Megan placed a hand over her own stomach.
"I know how you feel," she said as her stomach's growling joined the chorus of chirps.
An adult bird descended on the nestlings, delivering their predigested lunch.
Megan, who had dabbled a bit in art while in school, was suddenly filled with the need to sketch this tender scene. But without paper or pencil . . . Wait, she thought, she had noticed that one or two of the sketch pads in the box in the bedroom were half empty.
Megan pulled open the screen door and rushed to the closet. She reasoned that Carl would never notice the missing sketch pads. It was probably too painful for him to go through the material contained in them.
After retrieving the two pads with the greatest number of empty pages, Megan folded up the box. She could sketch not only the nest, but also the garden. Maybe even get Carl's mother to pose for her. She was curious to see what that woman looked like under all that garb she wore.
28 - Ted
Carl slowly rowed downstream, enjoying the solitude. Megan was quite gullible. He had lied about being sterile. True, he had not fathered any children that he knew of, but he also had no reason to believe he was sterile. She might be the experimental subject he had longed to attract. If she was pregnant, how long would the process last? Would it be slower because two lives were giving themselves up to save him? But if she left, how would he know whether she was pregnant or not? Would she attempt to re-contact him to share the decision about what to do with the child? That was the last thing he wanted; after all, that might get others involved. Her father was dead, and she didn't get along with her mother, but she did have friends.
Perhaps female friends who could take her place. What was he thinking? It was becoming much too complicated. The simplest solution was to try to talk her into staying. Offer her the yellow house, rent-free. Ah, yes!
Carl brought himself back to reality. She's not going to want to leave your bed, especially if she's pregnant. Carl thought of her rotting body next to him. No, he couldn't bear to have death so near on a constant basis. These thoughts triggered off his memories of Beverly. He was very near her house now. Should he stop and pay another visit? Making love was probably out of the question after his hedonistic morning, but he could look in on her and measure how much longer she had. He had felt no weakening inside his own body, no indication that her time was near the end; yet he was drawn to the rental house. Drawn by the dream of Beverly whole. However, only fragments of the woman were left. Bits and pieces held together by a will that refused to pass on, maybe even by a confused soul that didn't expect the early demise.
He had promised to pray for Beverly when it was time to dispose of her remains. Out of respect for her, he would mouth the useless words, but Carl was not religious. He believed the end was final. The white lights that were part of near-death experiences were nothing, just flashes sparking inside the brain before the blackness fell. Beverly had expressed agnostic views. Carl laughed, thinking that now she probably was a believer in a Supreme Being.
That's the way it was so many times when people were close to death. When he had been told that he was terminal, friends tried to preach to him, to pull him into a religious fold, whatever it might be, so that he could die a more peaceful death, patiently sitting in a pew at church or acknowledging the last rites of some drab zealot.
He looked toward the trees and saw the vague outline of the yellow house, standing quietly, looking empty and abandoned.
Did Beverly believe she had been deserted, discarded by the man she loved? It was tempting to stop. He had not reacted this way with the other women. It had been easy to leave them behind. Beverly was different. Carl shook his head. He loved her. After all the womanizing years he had spent prior to his disease and after, he finally had fallen in love, or at least cared for someone.
The rowboat was motionless in the water. Carl, holding the oars, had dropped his fists between his thighs, mesmerized by the bright yellow of the house under the rays of the sun. His love was there, dying his death. Carl shook out the tension from his shoulders, lowered the oars, and settled them back into the water. He had to go into town and be back early enough to work in the study. He didn't want Beverly to have sacrificed in vain.
As the rowboat moved through the water, Carl tried to envision Megan. Had he missed any of her essential markings or scars? The photographs, once developed, would help with her overall general appearance, but often a blemish or slight defect might go unnoticed by the lens.
Ravens squawked above a cluster of trees, zeroing in on the carcass waiting to be picked. Above ground or below ground, the scavengers eventually get you, Carl thought. He spat out his distaste for the birds into the river.
Perspiration soaked the back of his cotton shirt, reaching up to mingle with the wetness already spreading out in his armpits. His white linen trousers were wrinkled. Like a magnet, the linen had attracted the bit of dirt and oil coating the inside of the boat. His muscles flexed easily under the thin layer of clothing. Dark brown sandals sat on the board across from Carl waiting to be fitted onto his bare feet.
Up ahead, someone called his name. It was the widower Morgan's ten-year-old son, Ted. Carl was always generous with the boy, taking him into town to buy a toy or piece of clothing that the boy needed. It was the least Carl could do after the boy's mother had wasted away mysteriously. That was the last and only time Carl had allowed his secret to be displayed in public. If that happened too many times to women Carl dated, either on the sly or in public, he was sure he would find the sheriff hounding him.
"How are you doing today?" Carl asked as he moved in to shore.
"Okay." The boy sounded sullen. Often his father would disappear for a day or two on a drunken binge. Ted's old man had lost his job six months after his wife's death. The town tolerated his reprehensible behavior because of the boy and the hideousness of the mother's death.
"You have breakfast this morning?"
"Wasn't hungry."
Just as Carl had thought; the kid's useless father was gone again.
"I have to pick up some things, but you know, I got awfully hungry rowing today."
"Yeah?"
"Would you like to join me at the diner for some lunch?"
Ted nodded enthusiastically.
"Then let's go."
Carl secured the rowboat, then took Ted's hand.
The child's hand was small, with slivers of flesh for fingers. After his mother died, Ted had steadily lost weight until he had stabilized into a scrawny child. Carl had briefly thought of sketching Ted when he was plump and while the mother was decomposing, but Carl had liked the boy. About the only child he had liked. Mainly because the boy was quiet and shy enough to keep what he saw to himself.
The child must have been aware of the afternoon visits to his mother, Carl knew, yet he was sure that Ted had never spoken of them before or after her death, either to his father or anyone else. The kid didn't lo
ok like either of his parents, and knowing the mother the way he had, Carl believed it was quite possible that his father was not the man she had married. Carl viewed Ted as an orphan to be comforted.
"Why don't we kill two birds with one stone? I have to pick up some groceries, so after we eat why don't we both do our shopping for the week."
"Dad doesn't like"
"Tell him family dropped them off."
"But they don't like Dad."
"They still like you, don't they?" When they bother to see you, he said to himself.
"Aunt Bea dropped by last week. Didn't stay long, though; Dad was in a bad mood."
Dad was drunk, Carl silently corrected, as he usually is.
Ted continued his story about Aunt Bea's visit while they walked down the street toward the one and only diner in town.
By late afternoon, Carl was waving good-bye to Ted as his rowboat made its way upstream, with the pane of glass precariously tied across one end of the small vessel. Underneath the glass Carl had laid out the groceries he had bought for himself and Megan. Ted had been curious about the amount of produce Carl was buying. Sharp for a kid, thought Carl, but it hadn't been difficult to divert the boy's attention by stopping at the candy shelves. Ted now had enough food to last the rest of the week. By then, maybe his family would visit again or perhaps Carl would stop back in town. Anyway, Carl was confident that the boy wouldn't have to share much of the food with his old man, since Carl had also placed a couple of bottles of scotch in the kitchen cupboard. That would be sufficient for the father's dinners. Carl didn't want the widower sober and asking questions.
The rowboat floated deep in the water. Carl rowed slowly so that he wouldn't cause any splash. Smoothly the oars worked the river.
He hadn't planned on returning home so late, but he could never ignore Ted. Neither could he turn away from the sight of the yellow house that was almost camouflaged by the trees. He gaped, knowing he would not see Beverly, but was unable to accept that as a fact.
He realized with a start that the boat was moving in the direction toward which he was looking. Carl quickly corrected the swerve of the boat and moved on toward home and Megan.
29 - Revenge
Beverly had spent the day waiting. She gave up hope when the sun's rays no longer made her skin hiss when she drew close to the window. Megan wasn't coming today. Would she ever come again? Had she disobediently told Carl about seeing his so-called mother? Beverly couldn't fathom what a scatterbrain like Megan would do.
Beverly closed the slats on the living-room window. There wasn't anything to see now that the sun was retiring for the night. Her dark robe clung to her decaying flesh as she walked back to her bedroom, where she pulled open the curtains on the French doors. She was tempted to unlock those doors and throw them wide for the rats to tumble through, allowing them to feast on her. Yet she couldn't bring herself to do that, not because of cowardice, but for the sake of revenge, which she knew existed somewhere. She had thought to use Megan for that purpose, but if the young woman didn't return, she would have to find another way.
Was it a sob that heaved her breast? Beverly wondered. No, she wouldn't say ''if" Megan would return. Megan would come back because of curiosity, and mainly love. Love for a man who would destroy her.
She looked out through the glass of the French doors and saw several rats sniffing nearby. They dodged a mazelike trail through the grass, then stopped like stone statues, with only whiskers vaguely twitching.
"I'm here, guys, but you'll have to wait, because I've got another rat to deal with before you fellows can have me."
Beverly took hold of the doorknob and lowered herself gently down to her knees and prayed. Not for mercy or forgiveness, but for retribution.
30 - A Request
After helping Carl install the new windowpane, Megan spent the evening preparing a late-night candlelit dinner, which paid off by keeping Carl from his work. Instead he was warm, almost tender, in the way he spoke to her and catered to her own sexual needs.
That night she slept blissfully next to Carl with the sketch pads she had selected squirreled away under the mattress. Her plan was to encourage Carl's work and sneak off with the rowboat by ten o'clock.
She didn't have to make any attempt to carry out her plan, however, since Carl rose before her, leaving a note on the kitchen table informing her that he was not to be disturbed while he was working.
"Please, Carl, could you be any less eager to wish me a good morning?" She sighed as she crumpled the note and threw it into the trash. "A quick breakfast, then off I go," she continued with forced brightness.
Megan poured some cereal flakes into a bowl and doused it heavily with skimmed milk. Using a paring knife, Megan toppled chunks of banana into the bowl. By the time she had finished, the coffeepot had perked. Hardly tasting the food, Megan finished her breakfast, then left the plates in the sink and made for the study.
Leaning an ear against the door, Megan could hear nothing. She wanted to knock and call out "Have a good day," but his note had been so curt that she didn't dare.
Instead, Megan returned to the bedroom and slipped the sketch pads from their hiding place. Both were still perfectly flat, since they had been squeezed between the box spring and a heavy mattress.
"Now to sneak out without being seen," she whispered.
In the kitchen she put some fruit, cheese, and bread into a brown paper bag along with a diet soda. She found several freshly sharpened pencils in a drawer. She was hesitant about leaving the breakfast dishes in the sink, but figured it wouldn't matter since they were piled on top of Carl's, so she assumed he wasn't fastidious about these things. Megan tiptoed out of the kitchen, past the study, and toward the front door. Once outside, she started to charge down the path, feeling like a sneak thief.
She didn't feel comfortable until she climbed the path leading to the yellow house. The slats on the jalousie definitely moved; that was no trick of the sun. The old woman must have been waiting for her to come. Megan waved, even though she wasn't sure if the woman still stood in the front room or had already gone around back to the garden.
As she got closer, she noticed a medium-size bag of fertilizer on the top step. When she reached to pick it up, she saw that it was covered with dew from the night before. Oh, no! She probably waited all day yesterday for me, the poor dear, Megan thought guiltily.
Thinking she could make up for the delayed visit by offering to sketch the elderly woman, Megan tightened her hold on the pads, which she held between her body and left arm. One of the pads started to slip as she awkwardly rounded the house, fertilizer firmly gripped in both hands.
"Hi," she called out as the pads fell to the earth just outside the garden gate. Megan shifted the bag into her left arm so that she could unlatch the gate. She pushed it open with her healing knee, remembering the wound only after a twinge of pain.
"I'm back."
At first Megan could not see the elderly woman. The French doors were open, but no one seemed to be there. She caught a glimpse of a black leather hand grasping the side of one of the doors.
"It's me. Megan. The one you left the fertilizer out for," she called, wondering whether the bag had indeed been left out for her. What if the old woman was senile and couldn't remember people she talked to from day to day?
"Megan, I was afraid you weren't coming back." There was true fear tightening that hoarse voice. "You didn't tell Carl about me, did you?"
"Of course not. He's busy working in the study on some important project of his today, so I crept away to see you. Your son really gets involved with his work. It's impossible to distract him. I guess you're proud of what he does.
"I haven't had a chance to see any of his photographs as yet." Megan blushed a bit, thinking about what those photographs would contain. "But I'm looking forward to seeing some soon." This wasn't a lie. Megan had never seen herself photographed in the buff before and wondered how she would compare to some of those centerfolds she had s
een.
"He took pictures of you?" The old woman seemed to be wheezing badly.
Megan hesitated. Could his mother guess at what had happened? Then again, her son was no child, and Megan had already admitted that she was staying at his small house.
"Yes. Maybe he'll develop them today while I'm gone."
"I'm sure he will," the woman said wisely. "He likes duplicating the women around him."
What a strange way of putting it, thought Megan, but she was old, and all this photography business may have seemed unusual to her.
"Ma'am?"
"Call me Beverly, please."
"Beverly, would you like me to work on anything in particular today?"
Beverly's hand motioned toward the cluster of hyacinths.
Megan had many questions to ask Beverly, but she decided to work in the garden first while the morning was still cool. Beverly withdrew into her home, leaving Megan to work at her own pace.
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