“I’ll leave you now,” she whispered. “I hope you come and see us again.” Then she kissed me. I tried to offer my cheek, but she wasn’t interested in cheeks. She got her mouth against mine and began to do elaborate, provocative things. I suppose I could have pulled away from her, but it would have involved a struggle. I told myself that it would have been more unseemly to struggle than to submit. (I’m not sure I was telling myself the truth.) In any case, I submitted. My mind found the experience unpleasant, but my body disagreed. Verity was close enough to me to know what was up with my body (so to speak), and she was encouraged. She got a little too enthusiastic, though, and somehow she got her hand under the back of my shirt. It was a counterproductive move. Her hand was still about the temperature of the air outdoors, and I pulled free of her as soon as she touched me. She smiled at me and said, “There was a Brewster on the Mayflower.” Then she turned and left.
I rearranged my clothes and went toward the sitting room. I was about to call out and ask if anyone was home, when I saw that someone was. Evelyn Coleridge, Joanne, and Gwendolyn were seated around a small round table in front of the fireplace. They had their eyes closed, and they were holding hands. Although I hadn’t had much experience with such things, it seemed to be fairly obvious that there was a séance in progress. I was not pleased. It didn’t matter to me if Evelyn Coleridge wanted to perform little occult exercises by herself or with consenting adults, but she didn’t have a right to involve my daughter in the game, even if Joanne might have had talents in that area. But despite my anger, I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt the séance. My hesitation wasn’t inspired by politeness as much as by fear of what effect an interruption might have on people who were concentrating so intently.
I stood in the shadows and watched the proceedings. The three participants sat quietly smiling, as though they were sharing a pleasant dream. Joanne and Gwendolyn were radiant, their unflawed faces showing an attentive repose you don’t often see in children of that age.
The house was quiet enough so that I could hear the faint shush that resembles the sound of distant wind, but which I understand is actually the sound of one’s own blood circulating. And then I heard a creaking of the floorboards in the upper story of the house. I knew that houses tend to make little sounds of their own, but somehow I was certain that this creaking was caused by someone’s footstep. I looked at the séancers, who seemed to be settled in for a nice long session, and I decided to creep upstairs and see who the stroller might be. I wasn’t thinking in terms of discovering a ghost. I just thought, as I had from the first time I entered the house, that Sara was present.
I moved as quietly as I could up the stairs. I discovered that stealth wasn’t one of my talents. I tried walking on my toes, and then on my heels, but I couldn’t avoid making a fair amount of noise. It wasn’t enough noise to disturb Mrs. Coleridge and the girls, but if there really was anyone on the upper floor, they would certainly have heard me. I continued to hear creakings in the floor above me, and as I reached the top landing there was a click that could have been the sound of a bolt being gently closed. I decided there was no use trying doors. But the door of Sara’s room was open, so I went in.
I stood looking around in the dim light. There didn’t seem to be any sign that anyone had been in the room since I had left it earlier. But then I noticed something I didn’t remember seeing before: there were a few large, white-matted photographs resting on a bedside table. I didn’t have to go any closer to know that they were my portraits of Sara—the ones I had given her in return for sitting for me. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to find them in the house. Sara could have left them there before she went to Europe. Or she could have mailed them to her mother.
What was odd was that they hadn’t been on the table a couple of hours earlier. But there was no reason Mrs. Coleridge couldn’t have taken them out while I was away with Verity Palmer. So there was probably no mystery about the situation.
Before I could do any more snooping, I heard voices from below. I kissed one of the portraits of Sara, put it down, and moved quickly out of the room and down the stairs. Joanne, Gwendolyn, and Mrs. Coleridge were still sitting around the table, but now they were leaning back and talking, and there was a lighted candle in the center of the table. I went to the front door and opened it. Then I slammed it and pretended I was just coming in from outside.
“Is anyone here?” I said, feeling—and probably sounding—idiotic.
“Mr. Brewster? We are having a little chat,” Mrs. Coleridge said.
Joanne said hello to me, but I obviously wasn’t the most important thing on her mind. She was flushed, and her eyes were wet, although she didn’t seem to have been crying. There also seemed to be something odd about her mouth. I moved closer to her and saw that there was a dark spot on her lower lip. The spot looked quite a bit like blood.
“Did you cut your mouth, sweetie?” I asked her.
She slipped into her wide-eyed, telling-a-fib expression. “No, Daddy.”
I couldn’t exactly work up any indignation, when I had just tried to get away with my own little deception. But I wasn’t sure what Joanne’s deception was. If she hadn’t cut her mouth, what had happened?
Joanne put her fingers to her mouth, then held them out and looked at them. They were smeared with traces of blood. She put them back in her mouth and sucked them clean. “Gwendolyn cut her finger,” she said. “And I kissed it to make it well.”
I looked at Gwendolyn’s hands. The left one had a handkerchief wrapped around the index finger. I looked for something she might have cut herself on—a knife or some broken glass. On the table next to her right hand was a long hatpin that had a pearl on one end of it. The thing that bothered me about it was that its point was blackened, as though it had been held over the flame of the candle that burned in front of her. My suspicious and rapidly tiring mind concluded that little Gwendolyn had deliberately punctured a finger after sterilizing—probably on Mrs. Coleridge’s advice—the hatpin. Charming.
I suggested that it was time we took our leave. I thanked Mrs. Coleridge for her hospitality, and Joanne and I got ourselves together. As Mrs. Coleridge opened the door for us she said to me, “Gwendolyn wants very much to have you do a photographic portrait of her. I think it would make a splendid Christmas present for her parents. If you could return next Saturday with your camera equipment and do such a portrait, I should be happy to pay you your usual fee, Jonathan.”
I hesitated. Joanne looked up at me and said, “Please, Daddy. Gwendolyn is my best friend in the world now.” The girls were holding hands.
I still didn’t know what to say. I settled for “I’m not sure what my schedule is next weekend, Evelyn. I’ll try to make it. I’ll drop you a line during the week and let you know.” Joanne didn’t look too pleased with my waffling reply. But, wisely, she dropped the subject and contented herself with presenting Gwendolyn with a long, emotion-laden kiss. Evelyn Coleridge shook my hand. The gesture wasn’t exactly laden with anything, but there was a little more pressure involved than I had expected.
An hour before that, I might have been pleased to encounter a sign of friendliness in this reserved woman, but after the episode with the hatpin, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to win her approval. I wondered what her part had been in the mysterious doings that somehow managed to get traces of Gwendolyn’s blood on Joanne’s lips.
And what were the mysterious doings? Was Childgrave one of the villages that turn out in fiction to be inhabited by vampires? As I looked at Mrs. Coleridge’s complexly human expression I doubted whether it was anything that simple.
Chapter 11
Joanne slept during the drive back to Manhattan, and I kept only as much of my mind awake as was necessary to prevent us from becoming traffic-accident fatalities. I didn’t do much thinking, but I did manage a little feeling. I felt as though I had been on a long jo
urney in a foreign country; a really long journey. I had difficulty recognizing things. I was puzzled by little patches of multicolored lights that kept looming up out of the dusk as I drove. I was almost in Manhattan before I realized that they were Christmas-tree lights; something that usually irritated me, as each year they showed up earlier in less appropriate places. But now I found them comforting. It was more important for me to see something familiar than something tasteful.
When I reached the Hudson River and saw the row of substantial apartment houses along Riverside Drive, I had to remind myself of exactly what I was seeing. These thousands of rooms were lighted by electricity and were centrally heated. They were inhabited by people who were more interested in business lunches than séances; who measured history in fiscal years and not in circles of centuries. I was back in my own world, yet I felt as out of place as I had felt in Childgrave.
Joanne didn’t have that glad-to-be-home feeling either. “I don’t like it here,” she said.
“We’re back in New York, sweetie.”
“I like it in Childgrave. Can we go and live there, Daddy?”
“Maybe. But why do you like it there?”
“I like all the little girls.”
“But you only saw one little girl.”
“I mean the others.”
“Which others?”
“The ones I saw when we played our game with Mrs. Coleridge.”
“When you held hands around the table?”
“Yes. I saw lots of little girls. They want me to live with them.”
“But they weren’t real, Joanne. They were just make-believe. You like make-believe things now, but pretty soon you’ll be grown up, and you won’t like those things anymore.”
“Mrs. Coleridge is grown up, and she likes them.”
“Some grown-ups keep acting like children. People make fun of them and call them crazy.”
“Is Mrs. Coleridge crazy?”
“I didn’t say that, sweetie. But some people might think so.”
“Is Ms. Abraham crazy?”
A good question, I thought. If I had to say whether Mrs. Coleridge had a firmer grip on reality than Joanne’s daycare teacher, I don’t know what my answer would have been. While I was considering the matter, an idiot of a driver swerved into my lane. I hit the brakes and thanked consumers’ action for safety harnesses. So, the world is full of crazies. Joanne had made her point, and I didn’t answer her question.
I thought a little distraction was in order, so before I returned the car to the rental agency, I drove around midtown to show Joanne the Christmas displays. We had a little discussion about Christmas presents, but my strategy backfired. Joanne wanted to spend Christmas in Childgrave.
I suddenly felt the need of a lot of alcohol or a little counseling. Fortunately, I got both. When Joanne and I got home, Nanny Joy said Harry Bordeaux wanted me to telephone him. I made the call and found that Harry was faced with a solitary Saturday night. He and Lee had planned to spend a sensual evening at home together, but she was called out of town on business at the last minute. Harry had the ingredients for a dinner for two—featuring some cut of pork that only a few people knew about—and he asked me to help him dispose of it. “Casting his swine before the churl,” he said. I told him I’d be delighted to drop by. I not only needed to share his view of the world, I needed to escape the wrath of Nanny Joy, whom Joanne had given a little account of our journey. Joy had stopped speaking to me after reminding me that I had broken my promise not to take Joanne to Childgrave. I reacted the way I usually react when someone points out a weakness in my character: I started reviewing my accuser’s failings. That doesn’t make for a pleasant evening, so I headed gratefully for Harry’s apartment.
Harry was wearing a quilted apron over lime-green corduroy. His apartment smelled like a garlic press.
“Hi, Harry,” I said. “Your apartment smells like a garlic press.”
“Very perceptive of you, dear boy. Our menu has a Provençal theme tonight in your honor. No effete subtleties to puzzle the sinuses.”
“Thanks a lot.”
Harry handed me a substantial glass filled with amber liquid and ice. “Japanese bourbon,” he said.
“Seriously?”
Harry brought the bottle. The label looked serious enough, and it announced Japanese bourbon. “I thought you might like to try a nip,” Harry said. Then he giggled. “A Nip, Jonathan.”
“Yes, Harry.”
The bourbon was better than Harry’s joke. I settled into an ingenious arrangement of leather cushions and took larger than usual swallows of the bourbon as Harry shuttled back and forth between me and the kitchen. He talked mostly about how busy Lee had been lately, and although he didn’t say so directly, I gathered his marriage was undergoing a bit of a strain. I waited until we had done away with dinner (garlic soup, something-de-porc, potato-and-cheese pyramids, watercress salad, and hard chocolate filled with soft chocolate) before I mentioned my midday excursion.
By that time Harry was pouring calvados (I forgot to mention the two bottles of wine that accompanied the dinner), and my tongue had thickened and my eyes had narrowed.
“I need some advice,” I said.
Harry was paying more attention to his cigarette than he was to me. He didn’t allow himself to smoke between courses, and by the end of a long meal he always had to do a little stint of chain-smoking to catch up. “As always, I’m at your command, beer . . . dear boy,” he said.
“I took Joanne to meet Sara’s mother today.”
“Uptown or downtown?”
“Not everyone lives in Manhattan, Harry.”
“She doesn’t live in Brooklyn?”
“That’s part of the problem. She lives in a little village upstate—a highly unusual little village. They don’t have electricity.” I wasn’t organizing my thoughts very well. Harry was looking at me quizzically. I was going to start my saga again, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. Instead, I said, “They don’t have telephones.”
Harry stopped looking puzzled and started looking angry. “My God,” he said. “You took a child to a place like that?”
“She likes it there, Harry. She wants to live there. That’s part of my problem.”
“Let’s start again, Jonathan. Where is this place, and how did you find out about it?”
I explained about my first visit, leaving out some of the more unusual details. But when I described the second visit, I mentioned the séance and the fact that Joanne had started seeing imaginary people again. Instead of sharing my concern, Harry looked delighted.
“Marvelous,” he said. “You can do some more Spectral Portraits.”
“But that’s not the point. The point is whether any of this is good for Joanne.”
“Well, you don’t have to go and live in this place, Jonathan. Just go there and do a few portraits. Then you can go up by yourself once in a while to see if Sara shows up.”
“I think Sara might be there now. I got that feeling.”
“You think she doesn’t want to see you?”
“I don’t know what to think. If she is there, she doesn’t want to see me. But her mother wanted me there—and wants me to go again next week to take some portraits of a little girl.”
Harry raised his arms and wiggled his hands for a few seconds—his gesture of impatience. “Jonathan,” he said, “either you’re forgetting to tell me something or you’re addled. There’s no problem whatsoever. You go there next weekend without Joanne and you take some photographs—as many as you can. You send a few of the prints to Sara’s mother and you give me the rest if they’re spectral. Then you ask Mom to let you know when she hears from Sara. You have a merry Christmas and a prosperous new year back here in the metropolis.”
“But Joanne wants to g
o back there. She wants to live there.”
Harry’s arms went up again. “You’re the daddy, Jonathan. You do what you think is best for Joanne. That’s why we have children—to avenge ourselves on the poor judgment and tyranny of our own parents by imposing our own poor judgment and tyranny. Don’t try to beat the system, dear boy. Joanne will despise you one day if you don’t require some sacrifice of her now.”
I couldn’t follow Harry’s pseudologic. Then he tilted his head and resumed his look of puzzlement, and I realized he was as muddled as I was. I smiled. “Harry,” I said, “there are a couple of illustrators in that town, and they have an agent here in the city.”
“Lee has done that. But I refuse to.”
“Refuse to what?”
“Take clients who don’t have a phone.”
We had some more calvados and said things that I don’t remember clearly. The odds are they were silly. But as I was leaving, Harry said: “Jonathan, no one knows what’s right or wrong.”
“There is no right or wrong?”
“No, no. You’ve got it wrong. There is a right and wrong. It’s just that no one knows what it is.”
“You’re right, Harry. Thanks for the dinner.”
I tottered out into the night.
Nanny Joy was still up when I got home. There was something odd about her, but at first I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then I realized that she wasn’t listening to music. I got ready for more talk about morality. My tongue was a little more controllable than when I had left Harry’s, but my brain seemed to have collected a few more ounces of lint.
Joy was sitting in a love seat, but there wasn’t much love in her eyes when she looked up at me. I sat down beside her. “I don’t want you to be unhappy,” I said.
“You don’t pay me to be happy, Mr. B. You pay me to take care of your daughter.”
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