The Sugarhouse Blues

by Mariah Stewart

  She went inside, took the key for Cara’s car off the hook, and rinsed her mug before going back out.

  “I won’t be long,” Allie called to Des as she walked to the driveway.

  It was a twenty-minute drive from Hudson Street to the shopping center that was Allie’s destination. She parked outside the store, which had yet to open, and read email for twenty minutes until she saw the front door swing open.

  “You’re an early bird.” The middle-aged man wore a light blue shirt with a name tag that read HOWARD. “Something we can help you with?”

  “Your sign says you can match any paint color.” She’d noticed it in the window when she’d stopped on what had become her twice-weekly vodka run to the state liquor store four doors down.

  He nodded. “Yes, ma’am, we can. That’s our specialty. Sets us apart from every other paint store in the valley, even those big-box stores.”

  “Who’s the best person on your staff when it comes to matching color?”

  “You’re looking at him.”

  “How ’bout very old paint from very old chips?”

  “Depends on how much I have to work with.” His smile told her he was up to a challenge. “Show me what you’ve got.”

  Allie followed him to the back counter and took the paint chips from her bag. Sliding them across the smooth wood, she said, “I need each of these duplicated as near perfectly as you can get.”

  An eyebrow raised, he studied first one, then another. “You’re not giving me much to work with here.”

  “Sorry. It’s the best I could do.”

  “Never let it be said I don’t love a challenge.” He rubbed the back of his neck for a moment, then reached for one of the bags.

  “Let’s see what we’ve got here.” He gestured for her to wait while he disappeared into the back room. When he returned, he held what looked like a large cell phone. He held it up and asked, “You know what this is?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s a spectrophotometer.”

  He seemed pleased as he removed one of the blue paint chips from its container. “Know how it works?”

  “On a very elemental level. I know that you put the chip inside, then flood it with light and the light gets reflected inside where the color is analyzed.”

  “Right. There’s a filter in here that reflects out every color except the color of the sample, and converts that remaining color to an electronic signal that goes to the computer software in here”—he tapped the spectrophotometer—“and formulates the exact amount of pigment you need to make the match.”

  Allie smiled. “That was the short version, right?”

  “More or less.” He smiled back as he set the chip in place. He hummed as he worked, at one point asking Allie, “You know you can buy these for home use nowadays, right?”

  “I do. But I’ve heard they’re not as accurate as the professional models.” She pointed to the one he was using.

  “That’s my understanding also.” He saved something on the screen, then removed the chip and returned it to the bag he’d taken it from.

  “You got a reading?” She craned her neck to see.

  “Uh-huh. Let’s see what else we got.” He ran the second chip, then the third. By the time he’d gone through each of the chips, Allie was all but jumping up and down with excitement.

  “You got them all.” She was beaming, and had to restrain herself from throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him.

  “I got something for each one. Let’s do a printout and see how close we’ve come.” He glanced across the counter. “How much of each were you looking for?”

  Allie considered how many of the prototypes she was going to create before she actually tried her hand painting on the ceiling.

  She held her hand up, showing the size of the containers she wanted.

  “That much, eh?” he teased.

  “If these work out the way I think they will—the way I hope they will—I’ll be back for more.”

  “Deal. I’ll mix them up for you.”

  “You wouldn’t know where I might find an art supply store somewhere around here, would you?”

  “There’s a shop over in High Bridge on Main Street right off the campus by the college there. Althea College—know the place?”

  “I do.”

  “Nice school. Sent my youngest boy there. Had an ROTC scholarship. He’s over in Iraq now, paying back those four years the government paid for over here.”

  She paid for the little sample jars and thanked Howard profusely for the time he’d spent with her.

  She was in such an upbeat mood, she turned the radio up full force, found an eighties station, and sang at the top of her lungs—something she rarely did—all the way into High Bridge.

  Like the paint store, the art shop opened late on Sunday, so she walked around the small college town, which was so like every other small college town she’d ever seen. Handsome shops for gifts and books, an upscale food store and a discount market, a pricy boutique and a thrift shop whose windows overflowed with summer merchandise. She stopped for take-out coffee at a preppy coffee shop, and wandered across a leafy town square, imagining how excited Des would be—how amazed she’d be—when Allie showed her how the work on the ceiling could be done. Would be done.

  She finished her coffee and went into the now-opened shop, purchasing the brushes and the paper she would need. Tucking the bag under her arm, Allie went back to the car and headed for Hidden Falls, her outlook as sunny as the day was shaping up to be.

  She saw an opportunity to save the day, and she was taking it. It just might even help rejuvenate her relationship with Des.

  “Desdemona, you just wait till you see what your big sister has up her sleeve.”

  * * *

  Des sat on the edge of her bed, the box containing the letters between her father and the mysterious J in her hands. She’d put off showing Allie, but more and more, as she and Allie seemed to grow a little closer, she felt increasingly that she was holding something back that Allie had the right to know. She hadn’t seen Allie since she’d brought back Cara’s car that morning, but she was pretty sure she was in her room.

  Des knocked on Allie’s door, the box still in her hands.

  Allie came to the door but held it open just a crack.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Now?” Allie frowned.

  Des nodded.

  “Can it wait?”

  “Not really.” Afraid of losing her nerve, Des pushed the door open all the way and went into Allie’s room. She walked around the bed and sat on the wing chair near the window.

  “Do make yourself comfortable.” Allie stood at the side of the bed and pulled the light summer spread over the mattress. “What’s in the box?”

  Des opened it and took out the sheaf of letters. “Cara found these in the carriage house. Read this one first, then this one.” She handed over the letter from J before the one their father had written.

  Allie opened them, first one and then the other, her only reaction being one raised eyebrow. When she’d finished, she handed them back to Des.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised, Des. We already figured out Dad was a horndog of the first order.”

  To Des’s eye, Allie seemed more distracted than upset over this revelation.

  “Nice way to talk about your father, Allie.”

  “What would you call him? To hear even Barney tell it, he nailed everything that moved in this town.”

  “She never said that,” Des protested.

  “That’s what she meant when she talked about what a ladies’ man he was, how the girls in Hidden Falls lined up for him.” Allie shrugged. “So what’s the big deal with this J person? You act like it’s news. Like it’s something to be upset about.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you that he was doing this even when he and Mom were just starting out? They hadn’t even gotten married yet, they were getting ready to
run off together, and here’s evidence he had another girlfriend, one he claimed was ‘the best girl he ever knew.’ That doesn’t bother you?”

  “No, because I’m not surprised by anything he did. Now, if that’s all . . .” She moved toward the end of the bed as if to dismiss Des.

  “Allie, maybe Mom knew. Maybe that’s why she was the way she was.”

  Allie’s laugh was harsh and quick. “Des, Mom was the way she was because she was a self-centered narcissist who never did a damned thing that wasn’t in her best interest. I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew Dad was cheating on her but didn’t care as long as he got her to Hollywood and helped her to become a star.”

  “How could you even say such a thing?”

  “Oh please. Don’t tell me that never occurred to you.”

  “No. That was the time they were supposed to be in love.”

  “ ‘Supposed to be,’ ” Allie said sarcastically. “Maybe because it was getting Mom where she wanted to go.”

  “You think she didn’t really love Dad, that she just used him?”

  “Des, when did Mom ever show any compassion or caring for anyone, even Dad? She pushed you into something you didn’t want, she pushed me aside. And eventually, I think she pushed Dad right into Cara’s mother’s arms. So if you’re expecting me to mourn the death of this fairy tale, that they were in love and set off for Hollywood, two crazy kids chasing a dream with stars in their eyes, no thank you. Not buying it.”

  Allie glanced at the bed, then moved a bag that was on top of the spread, as if covering something up.

  “What’s that?” Des noticed a swatch of color under the bag.

  “What’s what?” Allie’s eyes shifted to one side.

  “That stuff under the bag.” She rose from the chair and put her hand out to move the bag. Allie grabbed her wrist to stop her, but not before Des saw several sheets of paper half hidden by the spread and partially under the bag.

  “What is that? It looks like the pattern from the ceiling in the theater.”

  “That’s exactly what it is.”

  Allie’s expression, just moments before one of annoyance, changed completely. She was almost beaming as she pointed to the chair and told Des to sit back down.

  “I wasn’t going to show you any of this until I had it down pat, but since you’re here and you already saw it . . .” Allie’s excitement was visible, and growing as she drew the stack of paper from its hiding place and held up one sheet.

  “This is the design from the domed section of the ceiling, where the pattern just begins to arch.” She held up a second sheet. “And this is the section of that sort of geometric ray that comes out from the center. And this one is—”

  “Wait, Allie, where did these come from? Where did you get those sketches?”

  “I made them. And they’re not exactly sketches, they’re actually tracings of the intact sections.” Allie held up the rest of them, one by one.

  “What do you mean, you made them? How did you make them?” Des reached out and a confident Allie handed the stack to her.

  “I climbed up the scaffold and traced undamaged sections that corresponded with the areas that were damaged, so that I—”

  Confused, she held up her hand. “Wait. Stop.” Des wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “You climbed to the top of the scaffold?”

  An obviously proud Allie nodded. “I did.”

  “That has to be . . . oh my God, I don’t even know how high that ceiling is.” Des’s palms began to sweat at the very thought of it. “How could you have . . . weren’t you . . .”

  Allie laughed. “I was scared out of my mind, I’m not gonna lie. It was about the highest I’ve ever been off the floor, but I kept telling myself, Don’t look down, don’t look down. And I made it. All the way to the top.”

  “What’s the point? I don’t get it. Why’d you do that?”

  “I did it because I had to. It was the only way to get . . . look.” Allie took the tracings back from Des and spread them out on the bed the way they might appear on the ceiling. “Most of the patterns are pretty much geometric in shape, right? So I figured if we had tracings, we could re-create them exactly.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not following.”

  “I traced the patterns so I could paint them on the missing sections of the ceiling.” She held up the bags of paint chips. “I took scrapings to a paint store and had the colors matched. See, here’s the peacock blue from the dome, and here’s the—”

  “You have to be kidding. Are you delusional?”

  “About what?” Allie looked up.

  “You’re not an artist, Allie. We need an artist—a real artist—and you are not one.”

  Allie stared at her sister, the color draining from her face. “I can do this, Des,” she said quietly.

  “No, you can’t. This is a historic building we’re dealing with. A real artist created that masterpiece on the ceiling and a real artist is going to repair it.”

  “Des, I studied art for years. I used to paint, I know how to—”

  “No. You’re an amateur. What’s the most you ever painted? A few still lifes back in college? A mural on your daughter’s bedroom wall? Allie, you could totally ruin that ceiling.” She shook her head. “We’ll find someone else.”

  Allie was still staring, her expression going darker, her eyes narrowing.

  “Des, may I remind you that we don’t have the money to hire someone who has the kind of credentials you’re talking about?”

  “Then we wait until we do. But we don’t send an amateur to do a pro’s job.”

  “Des, I honestly believe I can do as good a job as anyone else.”

  “Based on what?”

  Allie exploded. “You know, we have a problem here, and I have the solution. I’ve thought it out carefully, I’ve worked out every little detail. I would think that you would be supportive and at the very least, you’d say, ‘Allie, that’s a great idea. Way to think out of the box.’ Or at the very least, ‘It wouldn’t hurt to try.’ ” She took a deep breath. “But instead you come in here and tell me how incompetent I am, and how I don’t have any talent and—”

  “I didn’t say any of those things.”

  “That’s what you meant, though. That I don’t have the talent or the ability. Just like I didn’t have the talent or ability to have a bigger role on your stupid TV show.”

  “That wasn’t my decision and you know it.”

  Allie continued as if she hadn’t heard. “You could have taken my part, could have stood up for me, asked them to give me a bigger role, but you didn’t. And you’re not doing it now. I’m asking you to believe in me, to give me a chance to show you what I can do. What I know I can do. But you’re so negative where I’m concerned and have been all my life.”

  “None of that’s true!” Des protested.

  “All of it’s true.”

  “It isn’t. I never felt like that about you.”

  “Then prove it. Support me on this. You’re my sister, Des. You should have my back.”

  Something that had built up in Des for more than twenty years poured out in a rush. “Don’t talk to me about having your back. When I needed you to have mine, you looked the other way.”

  “When did you ever need me, Des?”

  “When Brandon . . . when Brandon . . .” The cold began in her chest, then spread throughout her body. She hardly realized she was crying.

  “Brandon? Brandon Whitman? What’s he got to do with anything?”

  Tears rushed down Des’s face, and in her panic, her throat began to close. “When he . . .” she managed to gasp out.

  “When he what? What are you talking about?” Still obviously angry with Des for shooting down her plans for the ceiling, Allie stood with her hands on her hips. “Wait, let me guess. He tried to kiss you? He tried to kiss everyone. It was the big joke on the set. Everyone knew it.” She threw up her hands and all but yelled, “What has that got to do with anything?”
r />   When Des found her voice, she whispered through tears, “He tried to rape me.”

  Allie’s mouth dropped open. She blinked as if she hadn’t heard correctly. “He . . .”

  “Tried to rape me. While the rest of you were talking about how cute he was, what a fun guy he was, he came into my dressing room and locked the door and tried to rape me.”

  “Des, you never said . . .” Allie’s face was white with shock. “You didn’t tell anyone?”

  “I tried to tell you!” Des sobbed, her entire body shaking with rage.

  “Des, if you had told me he’d tried to rape you . . .”

  “I did try,” she insisted.

  “Did you say, ‘He tried to rape me’?”

  “I didn’t know what words to say, Allie. I was twelve years old and terrified. And everyone thought he was so cool. And what was I going to say? This guy who was the big draw for the show—my stage big brother—the guy they’d brought in to draw preteen girls to tune in every week to boost the ratings, the guy whose father was one of the biggest stars in the universe.” She stood, shaking, her words uneven. “What was I supposed to do? Who would have believed me, even if I’d had the nerve to tell someone?”

  “Oh, Des . . .” Allie’s eyes began to fill with tears. “Oh, honey, I am so, so sorry.”

  “So don’t talk to me about having your back, because when I needed you, you didn’t have mine.”

  Slamming Allie’s door behind her, Des rushed blindly across the hall and sought refuge in her own room from the nightmare she’d tried to wipe from her memory and deny for more than two decades.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Des stood with her back to her bedroom door and tried to will herself to stop shaking. Admitting out loud what had happened took her back to that day, to the confusion and the fear and the feeling of being frozen, unable to move, when Brandon’s hands had held her wrists and pinned her body down. In retrospect, she could have screamed, she could have kicked, but as a twelve-year-old who’d no experience with people who meant her physical harm—especially someone she had liked and trusted—she’d gone mute. When the director’s assistant had pounded on the door to let her know her presence was required ASAP, Brandon had flashed one of his friendliest smiles, placed a finger to his lips, and whispered “Shhhhh” before releasing her.