It only took a half hour before the studio was back to normal—or at least as normal as it ever got. It was still a mess, but an organized mess, as Izzy always liked to put it.
“I should get back to the island,” Cosette said when they were done. “Rosalind will be worrying about me. I didn’t tell her where I was going.”
“How will you get back?”
Some of Cosette’s normal bravado had returned. “Oh, don’t worry about me. I’m in and out of the city all the time.”
“Well,” Izzy said dubiously. “If you promise to be careful ...”
“I’m always careful,” Cosette began; then she looked around the now-tidied studio. “Well, almost always.”
Izzy couldn’t help but laugh. She walked over to her worktable and picked up an empty sketchbook and a couple of pencils.
“Here,” she said. “Take these.”
“Really?”
“Really. I want you to practice your drawing. If you need any help, just come and see me.”
“I’d rather be able to just do it,” Cosette said.
“Wouldn’t we all. Do you want some paints as well?”
“Oh no,” Cosette told her, clutching the sketchbook to her chest. “This is wonderful.” She hesitated for a moment, then added, “You won’t tell Rosalind, will you? She’d be so disappointed in me.”
“I won’t tell her,” Izzy said.
“Oh thank you!” She gave Izzy a quick kiss on the cheek. “You know, you’re not at all like John says you are.” And with that she seemed to spin like a dervish and whirl out of the door.
Izzy stood in the middle of the studio, regarding the door that Cosette had left open. It swung back and forth before it finally settled in a half-ajar position. “I wish John realized that,” she said softly.
XVIII
September 1978
Early in September, Izzy ran into Rosalind while on a sketching expedition in Lower Crowsea. She’d been out all morning trying to get a few good views of the old fire hall for one of her Crowsea Touchstones paintings when she spied the numena across the street. Rosalind noticed her at the same time and crossed over to join her at the bus-stop bench where Izzy was sitting.
“I wish Cosette had your discipline,” she told Izzy.
“I take it she’s not practicing.”
Rosalind smiled. “She feels that she should be able to do it immediately and since she can’t, why then she’ll never get it so why bother trying?”
“I was hoping she’d come by again to show me what she’s been working on. I offered to help her.”
“I know you did. She was so excited when she came home from her last visit.” Rosalind sighed. “But by the next day she’d torn the book up, thrown the pencils away and was busy making a giant bird’s nest with Paddyjack.”
“Well, it’s not something you can force someone to do,” Izzy said. “You either have the desire and drive, or you don’t.”
Rosalind nodded. “But it’s so frustrating because I know how badly she wants to be able to do it.”
Izzy put a hand on her knee. “Don’t worry. She’ll settle down with it when she’s ready.”
“I wonder.”
“Would you like to take home another sketchbook in case she decides she does want to try it again?”
“No. If she wants to that badly, let her come back and get it from you herself “
They sat quietly together for a while, enjoying the crisp September weather and watching the people go by. As they sat there, Izzy wondered if people could see both of them, or did they only see her, talking to herself?
“You haven’t seen Rothwindle lately, have you?” Rosalind asked after a few minutes had gone by.
Izzy shook her head. “I hardly see any of them anymore. Just Cosette a couple of weeks ago and Annie still comes to visit, of course, but that’s about it. But now that I think of it, Annie was asking about her, too. Why, were you looking for her?”
“I wanted to ask her to come stay with us on the island for a little while. I know she’s happy in the city, but apparently she’s become such a hermit of late that I’ve been worrying about her.”
“Maybe she’s met another gargoyle. Kathy’s always saying that some of them wake up once the sun sets and they go wandering. She even wrote a story about it.”
“I hope that’s all it is,” Rosalind said. “She’s such an innocent—like Paddyjack is. I’d hate for her to have gotten in with the wrong crowd.” Izzy had to smile. “You sound like a mother.”
“I feel like a mother sometimes,” Rosalind said, returning Izzy’s smile, “but I don’t mind. I like feeling needed. Useful. And speaking of which,” she added, rising to her feet, “I should finish the rest of my errands.”
“Well, if I hear from her, I’ll tell her you were looking for her,” Izzy said.
Rosalind smiled her thanks and wandered off down the street, her features creased with uncharacteristic worry lines. Izzy closed her eyes and pictured My Darling ‘Goyle, the painting through which the gargoyle had crossed over. Where had Rothwindle gone? she wondered.
XIX
November 1978
“You’ve got quite the collector interested in your work,” Albina told Izzy a few weeks after the Crowsea Touchstones show had closed.
Once Izzy had gotten past the flurry of excitement and work that had gone into the opening of the Newford Children’s Foundation, the rest of the summer and early autumn had proceeded at a perfect, lazy pace for her. She painted in her studio, with Annie for company as often as not, and went out sketching on location, visited with or was visited by Rushkin and Tom Downs and her other friends, and spent all sorts of time with Kathy when Kathy wasn’t busy writing. The two of them often spent evenings at the Foundation, sorting clothes and doing the behindthe-scenes work so that the counselors could concentrate on their clients. The only thing lacking in Izzy’s life was a romantic relationship, but even that wasn’t enough to spoil the sense of peace that had settled over her. So many of her friends were single that it didn’t seem odd for her to be that way as well. They filled up the holes in each other’s lives and managed to pretend, most of the time, that they didn’t need anything else.
That the Crowsea Touchstones show had done so well simply seemed to fit into the natural progression of positive events that made up this particular year of her life. Kathy would tease her about it sometimes, but it wasn’t so much that she was becoming blase about her success as that she wasn’t really paying attention to it. So when Albina brought up the idea of a serious collector of her work, Izzy couldn’t quite seem to muster up much more than an idle curiosity in the subject.
“How so?” she asked after taking a long sip of the tea that Albina had brought along on her visit to the Kelly Street studio.
The two of them were sitting in one of the disused rooms in the old factory building that the various tenants used as sitting rooms because their studios, like Izzy’s, were usually too much of a mess. The windows here gave out upon a long view of alleys and backyards, with office complexes rising up behind them in the distance. Albina poured herself another cup of tea from her thermos before she replied.
“Well, he’s been buying one or two of your works from every show—and they’re always the most expensive ones.”
“Don’t tell me,” Izzy said. “Let me guess. He’s a doctor, right?”
Albina shook her head. “A lawyer, actually, although I think he’s buying the work for a client, so maybe you’re right. It could be a doctor.”
But Izzy wasn’t listening to her anymore. A deep stillness had settled inside her at the word lawyer.
“What ... what’s his name?” she asked in a voice gone soft.
Albina smiled, unaware of the change in Izzy. “Richard Silva,” she said. “Of Olson, Silva and Chizmar Associates. You asked me about them before and I couldn’t remember the name, but I’ve cashed so many checks with their name on it by this point that I’d be hard put to forget it now.
”
The stillness deepened inside Izzy.
“And the paintings he bought?” she asked.
Her worst fears were realized as Albina began to name the pieces. Each title was of a painting of one of her numena. All of John’s old accusations came flooding back into her mind and she had nothing to say in her own defense.
How could you? she wanted to scream at Albina. How could you let him buy them all? No wonder Rushkin hadn’t been worried about her having her own studio and working elsewhere; he’d found another way of acquiring her numena. But the words remained stillborn because she realized that Albina wouldn’t know what she was talking about. There was no way Albina could screen all buyers to make certain they weren’t Rushkin. All Izzy could do was stop offering them for sale, or stop painting them altogether.
The pain deepened inside her when she realized that one of those paintings had been My Darling
‘Goyle. Oh, Rothwindle. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have betrayed the gargoyle like this? No wonder John would have nothing to do with her. She was just as irresponsible as he’d warned her not to be.
“Is something wrong?” Albina asked, finally picking up on Izzy’s change of mood.
Izzy looked at her, but there was nothing she could say.
“No, I’m just feeling moody. I think I’m premenstrual,” she added, by way of explanation.
“There’s something to be said for menopause,” Albina told her. “It’s the one aspect of growing old that I don’t regret.”
Izzy found a polite smile, but it never reached her eyes. All she wanted now was to be alone with her grief and her anger. The latter was directed as much at herself as it was at Rushkin. How could she have let herself fall under his sway again when she knew, she knew he was not to be trusted?
It seemed to take forever before Albina finally left to go back to the gallery.
XX
It’s not your fault,” Kathy said when Izzy told her that evening. “You couldn’t have known.”
It was what Izzy wanted to hear, but she knew it wasn’t true. She sat at the kitchen table, hugging her bunched-up jacket to her chest, and looked across the table at Kathy through a shimmering gauze of tears.
“But that’s just it,” she said, mournfully. “I did know. I should have realized that Rushkin was a real danger to my numena and that he wouldn’t give up so easily. John warned me about it and I saw Rushkin kill my winged cat. I saw him try to kill Paddyjack.”
“I thought you’d told me you’d dreamed that.”
“I did,” Izzy said. “But no matter how much I want to pretend it didn’t happen, I know it was a real dream—like looking at a movie of something that was actually happening, except I was in it at the same time.”
Kathy reached across the table and took one of Izzy’s hands in both of her own.
“I just feel so sick,” Izzy went on. “When I think of how nice he’s been, how much I’ve been enjoying his company, and all along he was feeding on my numena behind my back ....”
“Wait a minute,” Kathy said. “Is this still Rushkin we’re talking about?” Izzy nodded.
“But I thought you weren’t seeing him anymore.”
“I wasn’t planning to. It’s just, oh, I don’t know. I kind of fell back into a relationship with him. I’d stop by his studio, he’d stop by mine. It was all so harmless and friendly. I was learning so much ....”
“It still wasn’t your fault,” Kathy said. “You don’t have any control over what Rushkin does.”
Although she knew she deserved to be held to blame—she was to blameIzzy was grateful to Kathy for refusing to hold her responsible for what had happened.
“But I should have believed John,” she said. “It’s just that I didn’t want Rushkin to be what John told me he was.”
“When you want things to be different from how they are,” Kathy said, “it’s sometimes easy to convince yourself that they are.”
Izzy nodded unhappily. “But I won’t risk any more of them. From now on, all I’m painting are landscapes, cityscapes, skyscapes—anything except for numena. If I want people in a painting, I’ll do real-life portraits.”
“You can’t do that,” Kathy told her.
“What am I supposed to do? If I paint more of them and bring them across, it’ll just put them into danger. I’d have to keep the paintings all locked away here, or in my studio, and what’s to say he won’t find a way to get at them anyway? He got to the paintings I did at the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio and stole away their vitality without ever laying a hand on them.”
“That you know of “
Izzy shook her head. “No, it was snowing that night. If he’d been in the studio, I would have seen his tracks outside. There would have been some sign of disturbance.”
“So there’s a risk,” Kathy said. “But we’ve had this conversation before. There’s always a risk in life. We take our lives in our own hands just walking across a street.”
“But those are our lives. I can’t be responsible for theirs as well. I can’t seem to protect my numena, so it’s better that I don’t bring them across in the first place.”
“Which leaves them trapped there forever—wherever ‘there’ is.” Izzy gave her a puzzled look.
“What are you saying?”
“From those of your numena that I’ve met,” Kathy said, “it strikes me that they’re happy to be here.
That you’ve taken them from some place that’s not as good as what we have here and given them a new lease on life.”
“We don’t know that their world is so terrible. We don’t know anything about it at all. They don’t even seem to be able to remember what it was like themselves.”
“Maybe they don’t want to remember,” Kathy said. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s not like it’s a novel theory or anything. Some people embrace their traumas, but a lot more just put them out of their minds and pretend that they never occurred. Selective amnesia. Half the time their subconscious handles the chore for them and they’re not even aware of sealing the bad memories away.”
Izzy felt uncomfortable at the idea, though she couldn’t have explained why. It was just that, as Kathy spoke, she seemed to feel shadows shift inside her, deepening and intensifying.
“I think you owe it to your numena to continue bringing them across,” Kathy went on. “They chose to make the passage here. Granted, it’s not safe here, but it’s not safe anywhere—maybe especially wherever it is that they come from.”
“But—”
“You have to remember that they’re not unhappy to be here. Just look at how John was. Without you, they’ve no hope at all.”
“And when they die? When I can’t protect them and Rushkin gets to them? I can’t stand the idea of carrying around the weight of more of them dying.”
“Don’t sell the paintings,” Kathy told her. “Don’t make any more of them for public consumption.
Keep them safe. Here, or in the studio. Rent a secure storage space if you have to. But you’ve got a gift, ma belle Izzy, and I don’t think it was given to you capriciously.”
“No, it was given to me by Rushkin so that I could feed his needs.”
Kathy shook her head. “All Rushkin did was teach you how to use a gift you already had. Why do you think he was drawn to you? You were already capable of bringing numena across; all he did was show you how.”
Showed her how, Izzy thought. And pretended to be her friend. Pretended to care. But then he’d turned around and betrayed her trust, leaving her with a huge hole in her life.
“I don’t know if I can,” Izzy said.
“You have to,” Kathy said. “There’s no one else to help them across.”
“Except for Rushkin,” Izzy said.
Kathy nodded. “But remember what you said he’d told you about angels and monsters? It stands to reason that, being the way he is, he can only bring across monsters. Someone has to balance things out and allow the angels to cr
oss over as well.”
“Why doesn’t he just feed on his own numena?”
It was a terrible thing to say, Izzy knew, but she couldn’t help herself. At least if Rushkin fed on his own, he’d be responsible, not her. Her own numena would be safe.
“Maybe he can’t,” Kathy said.
Izzy nodded slowly. Of course. Why else had he plucked her off the street and taught her what he had? He’d merely been sowing seeds for future harvests. The thought made her feel nauseated and a sour taste rose up from her stomach.
“I think I feel sick again,” she said.
“I’ll be here for you, ma belle Izzy,” Kathy assured her.
Izzy knew it was true. And it was that, more than Kathy’s arguments about the numena needing her in order to come across, that had her begin painting them again a few weeks later.
This time she didn’t confront Rushkin the way she had before, though she couldn’t have explained why. Whenever the thought arose, it was accompanied with an uneasiness that left her feeling tense and irritable. Instead, she simply stopped going by his studio and refused him admittance to her own. The fact that he made no comment on the sudden change in their relationship only confirmed her belief in his culpability.
She questioned the new numena that she brought across and they all professed gratitude to her for her giving them passage into this world, but they didn’t keep her company. None of the numena did anymore. Not even Annie.
XXI
February 1979
When she got the news that her father had died, Izzy didn’t feel a thing. She sat in the kitchen, phone in hand, listening as her mother explained how he’d had a heart attack while doing the morning chores, and it was as though she were hearing about the death of a stranger. She’d stopped going out to the island almost three years ago, and while she’d spoken to her mother on the phone in the interim, her last visit to the island was also the last time she’d talked to her father.
She’d always thought that her success as an artist would make him change his attitude, that he’d be proud of all that she’d accomplished, but if anything her success had worsened their relationship. They’d had a huge blowup that night, after which she’d packed her bag and walked down to the pier, rowing herself over to the mainland. From there she walked to the highway and hitchhiked back into the city.
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