Daughter of Regals

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  And as her brother’s hands had worked that clay, Kristen’s fear had grown out of it. His new pieces were indeed darker, images which chilled her heart. She used to love his work. Now she hated it.

  I could have stopped then. I had enough to go on. And she wasn’t the one I’d been sent to help; that was obvious. Maybe I should have stopped.

  But I wanted to know more. That was my fault: I was forever trying to swim against the current. After all, the impulse to “open up”—to do darker, more “honest” work—was hardly evil. But the truth was, I was more interested in Kristen than Reese. Her eyes were full Of supplication and abashment. She felt she had betrayed her brother, not so much by talking about him as by the simple fact that her attitude toward his work had changed. And she was still in such need— Instead Of stopping, I took up another of the hints she hadn’t given me. Quietly. I asked, “How long have you been supporting him?”

  She was past being surprised now, but her eyes didn’t leave my face. “Close to ten years,” she answered obediently.

  “That must have been hard on you.”

  “Oh, no,” she said at once. “Not at all. I’ve been happy to do it.” She was too loyal to say anything else. Here she was, with her life escaping from her—and she insisted she hadn’t suffered. Her bravery made the backs of my eyes burn.

  But I required honesty. After a while, the way I was looking at her made her say, “I don’t really love my job. I work over in the garment district. I put in hems. After few years”—she tried to sound self-deprecating and humorous—”it gets a little boring. And there’s nobody I can talk to.” Her tone suggested a deep gulf of loneliness.

  “But it’s been worth it” she insisted. “I don’t have any talent Of my own. Supporting Reese gives me something to believe in. I make what he does possible.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. She had made the whole situation possible. Grimly, I kept my mouth shut and waited for her to go on.

  “The hard part,” she admitted finally, “was watching him grow bitter.” Tears started up in her eyes again, but she blinked them back. “All that failure—year after year…..” She dropped her gaze; she couldn’t bear to look at me and say such things. “He didn’t have anybody else to take it out on.”

  That thought made me want to grind my teeth. She believed in him—and he took It out on her. She could have left him in any number Of ways—gotten married, simply packed her bags, anything. But he probably wasn’t even aware Of the depth Of her refusal to abandon him. He simply went on using her.

  My own fear was gone now; I was too angry to be afraid. But I held it down. No matter how I felt, she wasn’t the person I was here to defend. So I forced myself to sound positively casual as I said, “I’d like to meet him.”

  In spite Of everything, she was still capable of being taken aback. “You want me to—?” She stared at me. “I couldn’t!” She wasn’t appalled; she was trying not to give in to a hope that must have seemed insane to her. “He hates being interrupted. He’d be furious.” She scanned the table, hunting for excuses. “You haven’t finished your coffee.”

  I nearly laughed out loud. I wasn’t here for her—.and yet she did wonderful things for me. Suddenly, I decided that it was all worth what it cost. Smiling broadly, I said, “I didn’t say I needed coffee. I said you needed to buy it for me.”

  Involuntarily, the corners of her mouth quirked upward. Even with the handkerchief clutched to her face, she looked like a different person. After all she had endured, she was still a long way from being beaten. “Be serious,” she said, trying to sound serious. “I can’t take you home with me. I don’t even know what to call you.”

  “If you take me with you,” I responded, “you won’t have to call me.”

  This time, I didn’t need help to reach her. I just needed to go on smiling.

  But what I was doing made sweat run down my spine. I didn’t want to see her hurt any more. And there was nothing I could do to protect her.

  The walk to the place where she and her brother lived seemed long and cruel in the heat. There were fewer cars and crowds around us now—most of the city’s people had reached their destinations for the day—and thick, hot light glared at us from long aisles Of pale concrete At the same time, the buildings impacted on either side Of us grew older, shabbier, became the homes Of ordinary men and women rather than Of money. Children played in the street. shrieking and running as if their souls were on fire. Derelicts shambled here and there, not so much lost to grace as inured by alcohol and ruin, benumbed by their own particular innocence. Several of the structures we passed had had their eyes blown out.

  Then we arrived in front of a high, flat edifice indistinguishable from its surroundings except by the fact that most of its windows were intact. Kristen grimaced at it apologetically. “Actually,” she said, “we could live better than this. But we save as much money as we can for Reese’s work.” She seemed to have forgotten that I looked worse than her apartment building did. Almost defiantly, she added, “Now we’ll be able to do better.”

  That depended on what she called better. I was sure Mortice Root had no end of money. But I didn’t say so.

  However, she was still worried about how Reese would react to us. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked. “He isn’t going to be on his good behavior.”

  I nodded and smiled; I didn’t want her to see how scared and angry I was. “Don’t worry about me. If he’s rude. I can always offer him some constructive criticism.”

  “Oh, terrific,” she responded, at once sarcastic and relieved, sourly amused. “He just loves constructive criticism.”

  She was hardly aware of her own bravery as she led me into the building.

  The hall with the mail slots and the manager’s apartment was dimly lit by one naked bulb; it should have felt cooler. But the heat inside was fierce. The stain up to the fourth floor felt like a climb in a steambath. Maybe it was a blessing after all that I didn’t have a shirt on under my coat. I was sweating so hard that my shoes felt slick and unreliable against my soles, as if every step I took were somehow untrustworthy.

  When Kristen stopped at the door of her apartment, she needed both hands to fumble in her purse for the key. With her face uncovered, I saw that her nosebleed was getting worse.

  Despite the way her hands shook, she got the door open. After finding a clean handkerchief, she ushered me inside, calling as she did so, “Reese! I’m homer’

  The first room—it would’ve been the living room in anybody else’s apartment—was larger than I’d expected, and it implied other rooms I couldn’t see—bedrooms, a kitchen, a studio. The look of dinginess and unlove was part of the ancient wallpaper and warped baseboards, the sagging ceiling, not the result of carelessness; the place was scrupulously kempt. And the entire space was organized to display Reese’s sculptures.

  Set on packing crates and end tables, stacks of bricks makeshift pedestals, old steamer trunks, they nearly filled the room. A fair number of them were east; but most were clay, some fired, some not. And without exception they looked starkly out of place in that room. They were everything the apartment wasn’t—finely done, idealistic, painless. It was as if Reese bad left all his failure and bitterness and capacity for rage in the walls, sloughing it away from his work so that his art was kind and clean.

  And static. It would have looked inert if he’d had less talent. Busts and madonnas stared with eyes that held neither fear nor hope. Children that never laughed cried were hugged in the arms of blind women. A horse in one corner should have been prancing, but it was simply frozen. His bitterness he took out on his sister. His failures reduced him to begging. But his sculptures held no emotion at all.

  They gave me an unexpected lift of hope. Not because they were static, but because he was capable of so much restraint. If reason was the circumference of energy, then he was already halfway to being a great artist. He had reason down pat.

  Which was all the more surprising b
ecause be was obviously not a reasonable man. He came bristling into the room in answer to Kristen’s call, and he’d already started to shout at her before he saw I was there.

  At once, he stopped; he stared at me. “Who the hell is this?” he rasped without looking at Kristen. I could feel the force of his intensity from where I stood. His face was as acute as a hawk’s, whetted by the hunger and energy of a predator. But the dark stains of weariness and strain under his eyes made him look more feverish than fierce. NI of a sudden I thought, Only two weeks to get a show ready. An entire show’s worth of new pieces in only two weeks. Because of course he wasn’t going to display any of the work I could see here. He was only going to show what he’d made out of the new, black clay Mortice Root had given him. And he’d worn himself ragged. In a sense, his intensity wasn’t directed at me personally; it was just a fact of his personality. He did everything extremely. In his own way, he was as desperate as his sister. Maybe I should have felt sorry for him.

  But he didn’t give me much chance. Before I could say anything, he wheeled on Kristen. “It isn’t bad enough you have to keep interrupting me,” he snarled. “You have to bring trash in here, too. Where did you find him—the Salvation Army? Haven’t you figured out yet that I’m busy?”

  I wanted to intervene; but she didn’t need that kind of protection. Over her handkerchief, her eyes echoed a hint of her brother’s fire. He took his bitterness out on her because she allowed him to, not because she was defenseless. Her voce held a bite of anger as she said, “He offered to help me.”

  If I hadn’t been there, he might have listened to her; but his fever made him rash. “Help you?” he snapped. “This bum?” He looked at me again. “He couldn’t help himself to another drink. And what do you need help—?”

  “Reese.” This time, she got his attention. “I went to the doctor this morning.”

  “What?” For an instant, he blinked at her as if he couldn’t understand. “The doctor?” The idea that something was wrong with her hit him hard. I could see his knees trying to fold under him. “You aren’t sick. What do you need a doctor for?”

  Deliberately, she lowered her hand, exposing the red sheen darkening to crust on her upper lip’ the blood swelling in her nostrils. He gaped as if the sight nauseated him. Then he shook his head in denial. Abruptly, he sagged to the edge of a trunk that held two of his sculptures. “Damn it to hell,” he breathed weakly. “Don’t scare me like that. It’s just a nosebleed. You’ve had it for weeks.”

  Kristen gave me a look of vindication; she seemed to think Reese had just showed how much he cared about her. But I wasn’t so sure. I could think of plenty of selfish reasons for his reaction.

  Either way, it was my turn to say something. I could have used some inspiration right then—just a little grace to help me find my way. My emotions were tangled up with Kristen; my attitude toward Reese was all wrong. I didn’t know how to reach him. But no inspiration was provided.

  Swallowing bile, I made an effort to sound confident. “Actually,” I said, “I can be more help than you realize. That’s the one advantage life has over art. There’s more to it than meets the eye.”

  I was on the wrong track already; a halfwit could have done better. Reese raised his head to look at me, and the outrage in his eyes was as plain as a chisel. “That’s wonderful,” he said straight at me. “A bum and a critic.”

  Kristen’s face was tight with dismay. She knew exactly what would happen if I kept going.

  So did I. I wasn’t stupid. But I was already sure I didn’t really want to help Reese. I wanted somebody a little more worthy.

  Anyway, I couldn’t stop. His eyes were absolutely daring me to go on.

  “Root’s right,” I said. Now I didn’t have any trouble sounding as calm ass saint. “You know that. What you’ve been doing”—I gestured around the room—”is too controlled. Impersonal. You’ve got all the skill in the world, but you haven’t put your heart into it.

  “But I don’t think he’s been giving you very good advice. He’s got you going to the opposite extreme. That’s just another dead end. You need a balance. Control and passion. Control alone has been destroying you. Passion alone—”

  Right there, I almost said it: passion alone will destroy your sister. That’s the kind of bargain you’re making. All it costs you is your soul.

  But I didn’t get the chance. Reese slapped his hand down on the trunk with a sound like a shot. One of his pieces tilted; it would have fallen if Kristen hadn’t caught it. But he didn’t see that. He jerked to his feet. Over his shoulder, he said to her, “You’ve been talking to this tramp about me.” The words came out like lead.

  She didn’t answer. There was no defense against his accusation. To catch the sculpture, she’d had to use both hands, and her touch left a red smudge on the clay.

  But he didn’t seem to expect an answer. He was facing me with fever bright in his eyes. In the same heavy tone, he said, “It’s your fault, isn’t it. She wouldn’t do that to me—tell a total stranger what a failure I’ve been—if you hadn’t pried it out of her.

  “Well, let me tell you something. Root owns a gallery. He has power.” He spat the word as if he loathed it. “I have to listen to him. From you I don’t have to take this kind of manure.”

  Which was true, of course. I was a fool, as well as being useless. In simple chagrin I tried to stop or at least deflect what was coming.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’ve got no business trying to tell you what to do. But I can still help you. Just listen to me. I—”

  “No,” he retorted. “You listen. I’ve spent ten years of my life feeling the way you look. Now I’ve got a chance to do better. You don’t know anything I could possibly want to hear. I’ve been there.”

  Still without looking at his sister, he said, “Kristen, tell him to leave.”

  She didn’t have any choice. I’d botched everything past the point where there was anything she could do to save it. Reese would just rage at her if she refused—and what would that accomplish? I watched all the anger and hope drain out of her, and I wanted to fight back; but I didn’t have any choice, either. She said in a beaten voice, “I think you’d better leave now,” and I had to leave. I was no use to anybody without permission; I could not stay when she told me to go.

  I didn’t have the heart to squeeze in a last appeal on my way out. I didn’t have any more hope than she did. I studied her face as I moved to the door, not because I thought she might change her mind, but because I wanted to memorize her, so that if she went on down this road and was lost in the end there would beat least one man left who remembered. But she didn’t meet my eyes. And when I stepped out of the apartment, Reese slammed the door behind me so hard the floor shook.

  The force of his rejection almost made me fall to my knees.

  In spite of that, I didn’t give up. I didn’t know where I was or how I got here; I was lucky to know why I was here at all. And I would never remember. Where I was before I was here was as blank as a wall across the past. When the river took me someplace else, I wasn’t going to be able to give Kristen Dona the bare courtesy of remembering her.

  That was a blessing, of a sort. But it was also the reason I didn’t give up. Since I didn’t have any past or future, the present was my only chance.

  When I was sure the world wasn’t going to melt around me and change into something else, I went down the stairs, walked out into the pressure of the sun, and tried to think of some other way to fight for Kristen’s life and Reese’s soul.

  After all, I had no right to give up hope on Reese. He’d been a failure for ten years. And I’d seen the way the people of this city looked at me. Even the derelicts had contempt in their eyes, including me in the way they despised themselves. I ought to be able to understand what humiliation could do to someone who tried harder than he knew how and still failed.

  But I couldn’t think of any way to fight it. Not without permission. Without permission, I co
uldn’t even tell him his sister was in mortal danger.

  The sun stayed nearly hidden behind its haze of humidity and dirt, but its brutality was increasing. Noon wasn’t far away; the walk here had used up the middle of the morning. Heatwaves shimmered off the pavement.

  An abandoned car with no wheels leaned against the curb like a cripple. Somebody had gone down the street and knocked over all the trashcans, scattering garbage like wasted lives. Somewhere there had to be something I could do to redeem myself. But when I prayed for help, I didn’t get it.

  After a while, I found myself staring as if I were about to go blind at a street sign at the corner of the block. A long time seemed to pass before I registered that the sign said, “21st St.”

  Kristen had said that Root’s gallery, The Root Cellar, was “over on 49th.”

  I didn’t know the city; but I could at least count. I went around the block and located 20th. Then I changed directions and started working my way up through the numbers.

  It was a long hike. I passed through sections that were worse than where Kristen and Reese lived and ones that were better. I had a small scare when the numbers were interrupted, but after several blocks they took up where they’d left off. The sun kept leaning on me, trying to grind me into the pavement, and the air made my chest hurt.

  And when I reached 49th, I didn’t know which way to turn. Sweating, I stopped at the intersection and looked round. 49th seemed to stretch to the ends of the world in both directions. Anything was possible; The Root Cellar might be anywhere. I was in some kind of business district—49th was lined with prosperity—and the sidewalks were crowded again. But all the people moved as if nothing except fatigue or stubbornness and the heat kept them from running for their lives. I tried several times to stop one of them to ask directions; but it was like trying to change the course of the river. I got glares and muttered curses, but no help.