The Mountains Bow Down

by Sibella Giorello

The hot tub jets were on high and ribbons of heat rose from the bubbling water, climbing over the balcony until the wind swept them away. The producer’s hair was a damp black cap over his reddening face.

  “Mr. Sparks,” I said, “we’re sorry for the financial hardship placed on you by detaining Mr. Webb. We’re willing to release him for work purposes, provided he’s monitored by the ship’s security.”

  Sparks flinched. Then scratched his ear. He was clearly surprised, but he said nothing and gazed past us to the patio door. Larrah stepped out. She was barefoot and dropped her white robe to the deck, offering a delicious shiver before slowly making her way to the water. Her bikini appeared to be three cocktail napkins strung together with fishing line. I glanced at Jack. Studiously, he watched the rocky shoreline across the water.

  “Honey,” Larrah said to her husband, “your dad called.”

  Sparks groaned.

  Standing on the platform, Larrah swirled her toes in the frothy surface and showed off an anklet decorated with black pearls. In her hand, she carried an iPod, and though she gave another shiver, she seemed in no hurry to get into the warm water. “He wanted to tell you not to forget you’re helping him set up tonight.”

  “Why would I forget?” Sparks cursed. “I’m not the one with Alzheimer’s.”

  She gave a barely perceptible shrug, then continued her slow descent. Twice she glanced over, making sure Jack was watching. He wasn’t. And neither was Sparks, who was rolling his head side to side, loosening some kinks in his neck.

  Jack asked, “What’s happening tonight?”

  “My dad’s part of this convention.” Sparks threw his hands up, scratching his head. He splashed water on his wife. She squeaked. He didn’t seem to notice. Or care. “They meet every other year, get together and talk about their collections. This year was a cruise to Alaska.”

  “Your father’s a phillumenist?” I said.

  He turned toward me, suspicious.

  Since Larrah told me, and I didn’t want to get into a battle, I said, “Just a guess. I’ve seen the caps. It’s hard to miss them.”

  “Yeah, 227 of those guys came on this trip.” He scratched his shoulder. “You know what they do?”

  “Collect matchbooks.”

  “Huh.” He evaluated me. “Nobody ever knows that.”

  Jack smiled. “Smart girl.”

  “But her idea for filming is stupid. And I already promised to help my dad tonight.”

  “You always do this,” said Larrah, finally settled in the water. “You cram too many things into one thing. Your dad has to take the cruise, so you decide we should film a movie on it too. You’ve always got too much going on.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Remember Sherman’s wedding in Brentwood? You scheduled a conference call during the reception because you said it was all just small talk anyway. Then Sherman asks you to give a toast and where are you? On the phone.”

  “That was an accident.” He tugged at his earlobe.

  “And our Oscar party, when you combined it with—”

  “Are you done?”

  “I’m just saying.” She grabbed the iPod resting on the edge of the tub and stuck in the earbuds.

  He watched her for a long moment. Jack cleared his throat. Sparks was still fuming when he turned to us.

  “Martin Webb can’t direct. Not like that. On a good day he’s a nervous Nellie. I’m not about to waste time and money putting him behind a camera with security breathing down his neck. And the whole shoot’s already been ruined because for some reason you guys”—the hands shot up again, pointing at us—“want to believe somebody killed Judy Carpenter.”

  “It wasn’t a suicide,” I said.

  “So you keep saying. But what makes you an expert—because you know what a phillumenist is?”

  “No, because the medical examiner in Anchorage says it’s not a suicide.”

  “Oh, okay. Some yahoo from the Arctic Circle. Probably not even a real coroner. Like that dumb woman they had up here as governor.”

  Jack gave a cold, cold chuckle. It sounded like a sheet of ice when it begins to crack. Reaching into his sportcoat, he pulled out Ramazan’s photo, the cruise ship employee ID.

  “Have you seen this man?” Jack asked.

  Sparks wiggled his sausage fingers, refusing to come closer. Jack leaned forward, placing the laser-printed photo in his wet fingers. The ink began to run.

  “Should I know him?” Sparks asked.

  “Have you ever seen him?” Jack asked.

  Shaking his head, Sparks handed the photo to Jack and pushed himself back into the roaring jets. “Let me guess,” he said, speaking more loudly over the noise, “you think he killed Judy.”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “Because you two need to blame somebody, and that guy looks foreign. That’s a bonus. You Feebs can make it look like you’re fighting terrorism instead of hassling people.”

  Behind us, the sliding glass door opened. An elderly man took one tentative step out, wearing a baseball cap for the Phillumenists of Philadelphia. I suddenly recognized his face. He was the man we saw in the medical clinic, the one who picked up some missing medicine from Nurse Stephanie. His face had the same worried expression, but his clothing had changed quite a bit. He wore a quilted red vest decorated with matchbooks that flashed like metallic Boy Scout badges.

  The man nodded at us politely, then turned to Sparks.

  “Lysander,” he said, “you’re coming to help me tonight?”

  “Yeah, Dad. I’ll be there.”

  “Chinese Palace, Deck Six.” His father glanced at Larrah.

  She was singing softly, eyes closed, tunelessly crooning to herself. He looked back at his son. “You really think she can watch your mother?”

  “Dad, room service and television. What could go wrong?” Sparks tipped his head toward us. “But if you’re worried, maybe these nice folks from the FBI will babysit for you.”

  “FBI?” Mr. Sparks looked even more worried. “My wife doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s got Alzheimer’s, she didn’t mean to take those—”

  “Dad.” His son held up a hand. “No, Dad, no. It’s not about that. It’s okay. I’m sorry. I’m kidding. Everything’s fine. I’ll see you tonight.”

  His father’s face had filled with an unspeakable sadness. For his wife, and perhaps for the fact that he didn’t understand what just happened and why we were here. Giving an obedient nod, he slid the glass door closed. My heart pinched. His worry reminded me of my mom. As he walked across the living room, I could see the matchbook covers flapping as if waving good-bye.

  “What?” Sparks asked.

  I turned around. He and Jack were looking at each other.

  “Oh that.” Sparks shrugged his hairy shoulders. “It wasn’t federal. My mom stole some stuff from a store in Ketchikan. And Juneau. It’s this stupid thing with her memory. Sweetest woman in the world turned into Mrs. Sticky Fingers.”

  Jack nodded, suddenly sympathetic. “My uncle started hot-wiring cars.”

  “Yeah?” Sparks actually looked interested.

  “He was a mechanic,” Jack said. “A total gearhead. Back in the seventies he built his own electric car, way ahead of his time. But two years ago he took a hit on the head and the next thing we know he can’t remember our names and he’s stealing all the cars around the neighborhood and taking them for joyrides. Takes them, then gets lost. The cops kept bringing him home.”

  “That sucks,” Sparks said. “My mom didn’t get hit on the head, she just got weird. Like, she stuck all the silverware in her purse the first night on the ship.”

  Larrah yanked out her earbuds. “Is this about your mother? What did I tell you? I told you she’d be trouble.”

  “Are you done?”

  She stuck the buds back in.

  Looking somewhat mollified by Jack’s sympathy, Sparks said, “Hey, look, I appreciate the offer about Martin directing. But I already promised
tonight to my dad.”

  For all his obvious flaws, Sandy Sparks seemed like a devoted son. Even Larrah admitted that. If I’d reached up right then, I could’ve touched the plank in my own eye.

  “And besides,” Sparks said, “I already found a new director.”

  “Really?” Jack said. “That was fast.”

  “The kid who runs the second camera. He graduated from my alma mater, San Jose State. When you guys hauled Martin off the set, he rushed over to say he’s always wanted to direct, yada, yada. And he doesn’t even want more money.” He shrugged. “So there you go. I don’t need Martin. Are we done?”

  “One more question,” Jack said.

  “One, then I gotta go.”

  “‘Lysander’?”

  Sparks grinned, then stood and worked his way to the stairs. His back hair was flattened to his skin like a pelt. Taking a towel on the rack next to us, he rubbed himself down.

  “My dad’s a classical kinda guy. Back in Philly, he taught Greek and Latin. He named me Lysander. My sister got saddled with Persephone. We call her Percy.”

  “Philos, adelph,” I said. “Seems like an ideal place for teaching Greek.”

  Jack said, “What?”

  “Philadelphia,” I said. “The name’s got Greek roots.”

  Sparks gave me that look again, part fascinated, part disgusted by nerd knowledge. “Right, city of brotherly love,” he said. “How about Lysander, can you peg that one?”

  “The Spartan general who defeated the Athenians.”

  “Right.” He wrapped the towel around his girth. “And Persephone?”

  “Daughter of Zeus and Demeter. Kidnapped and forced to live in Hades.”

  “You got it. And my sister spends every minute staying out of hell.” His next words were sneered. “She’s a Christian.”

  “Heaven forbid,” Jack said.

  Sparks laughed, thinking the joke was for him.

  But Jack winked. The joke was for me.

  “Hey,” Jack said. “You mind if we stop by tonight?”

  Sparks turned. One hand held the towel, the other was reaching for the door. “That’s cool. Sure. Come on down.”

  “Great,” Jack said. “I mean, how many times does a person get to meet real live phillumenists?”

  Chapter Thirty

  I was standing in the buffet line, trying to decide between chocolate cake with raspberry filling or carrot with cream cheese frosting.

  Both, I decided, putting them next to the plate of salad. I looked over at Jack. “You want to explain why we’re going to the phillumenists’ convention?”

  His tray only held salad. “I didn’t like the way Sparks looked at Ramazan’s picture.”

  I added a plate of broiled halibut with butter, lemon, and cracked black pepper. “How did he look at it?”

  “I’m not exactly sure.” Jack shook his head at the server who offered the fish, then slid his tray toward the roast beef carving station. He took two thick slices with au jus. “I asked if we could come tonight to see his reaction.”

  Nodding at the next server, I accepted chicken cordon bleu. Melted Swiss cheese and ham peeked from the glistening golden meat. “You think he recognized Ramazan?”

  “I don’t know if it was recognition,” Jack said, staring at my tray. “But he stared at the face for a while. It wasn’t his usual brush-off.”

  I thought back to that fateful morning, when I showed Sparks that blue bracelet. His face was blank, I remembered. Unlike the actor. “And what about Milo?” I asked.

  “I’ll see him later tonight. I still think he’s just a sloppy drunk who is—”

  “Who is giving the best performance of his life.”

  Jack shrugged. “I won’t rule that out. But consider this. The director hates Milo and the feeling’s mutual. So why does Marty have stones hidden in his jacket that match the ones in that jewelry box?”

  That jewelry box.

  At the thought, my wolflike hunger vanished. For three seconds. Regaining fortitude, I pressed forward to the pasta section and selected a generous serving of cheesy lasagna and a plate of spaghetti Alfredo. Jack declined the pasta and followed me to the bread section where four dinner rolls and twice as many pats of butter joined my tray. When I lifted the thing, my shoulders almost locked.

  “Harmon, you’re going to eat all that?”

  “Actually,” I said, “I’m hoping for some help.”

  At the elevators outside the Salt Spray, I pushed my elbow into the Down button, then glanced back into the restaurant. Jack was sitting alone at a table for two, gazing out the window. The early evening light had a happy childlike quality, that golden feeling of sun and cold water and mountains so unspoiled and untouched by man, that we seemed the first to see them. As he stared out at the passing beauty, Jack kicked off the mean black shoes that made him limp and wiggled his toes. There was no pouting. No taking up his right to blame me for the mess we were in, and before I could stop it the thought licked across my mind: DeMott wouldn’t be this nice, especially if he had to eat alone.

  I stared down at the heavy tray. Plates were wedged beneath more plates, like some visual demonstration of tectonics. Subducted lasagna, metamorphic Alfredo, dinner rolls rimming the tray like a chain of volcanic islands, complete with butter-pat lava. When the elevator dinged open, four women stepped out, each wearing an Alaska-themed sweatshirt. The best was “Moose me yet?”

  Inside the elevator I propped the tray against the handrail and pushed the button for Deck Four. The infirmary. The ten-floor descent took seven stops. Everybody was heading to dinner, nobody got on alone, and each offered my caloric allotment expressions that ranged from curiosity to pity. The last couple exited at Deck Six, the level with the Italian trattoria, and when the door closed and the elevator dropped again, my mind drifted back to the Greek myth of Persephone, descending into the underworld.

  It was a story that captivated my imagination from an early age. Both impossibly scary and perfectly plausible, the myth involved a lovely maiden who was kidnapped by the ruler of the dark underworld. After Persephone is taken, her mother grieves, walking the earth, waiting for her return. Persephone is finally allowed to leave, but only for a short while. The pattern repeats annually, and the Ancient Greeks used the myth to explain the seasons. Spring life when Persephone leaves Hades, autumn death as she returns. But as I carried the food-laden tray into the clinic, I felt something uncomfortable, that sensation that precedes sudden and unpleasant realizations. I suddenly knew why that myth captured my imagination.

  My mother’s worst episodes plunged her into some dark and cavernous territory. And while she was gone, her family waited for her return.

  But another element, even more disturbing, hit me as the automatic doors to the clinic whooshed open. Persephone was the daughter. But our roles reversed in these dim hours and here I came bringing food, nurturing the lost child, trying to lure her back into the light. And I was trying everything. When my mother felt good, she ate nothing but health food. Which explained my choosing salad and broiled fish. But when the chasm opened, she craved comfort food. Cake. Lasagna. Bread and butter. Like ballast anchoring her to the world above.

  I rested the heavy tray on the circular reception desk. My shoulders burned from the weight. Nurse Stephanie was on the phone.

  When she hung up, she looked at the tray and said, “Did you ask Dr. Coleman if she can eat that?”

  “No.”

  “He just upped her medication. She could be nauseated.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “No. Somebody’s already in there.”

  I stood at the edge of the door and saw Aunt Charlotte sitting on the edge of the bed. Her bright silk clothes looked even more colorful against the room’s white sterility. When she looked over, I waved. She gave no response and turned back to my mother. Squeezing her hand, promising she would come back, my aunt walked from the room, pushing me out of the way and pulling the door closed.

  “S
he doesn’t want to see you,” she whispered.

  Behind me, Nurse Stephanie clucked her tongue.

  I looked over at her. She picked up a file from the desk, feigning interest in the medical forms. Aunt Charlotte grabbed my hand, leading me into the next room. It looked identical to my mom’s. White. Disinfected. Lonely.

  “She’s afraid,” my aunt said.

  “I know, that’s why she’s here. So she can feel safe again.”

  “No, she’s afraid of you.”

  “Me?”

  “You’ve committed her to an asylum.”

  “This is an infirmary.”

  “She says you’re after her money.”

  “What money?”

  “I had the same thought.” My aunt gave a slow shake of her head. The amber hair was dry, brittle. “David was a great man, but he never cared much about money. Or the FFVs.”

  First Families of Virginia, the Colonial settlers who became British burgesses, then Revolutionaries, and later Confederates whose precious bloodlines were tracked by Richmond’s ruling oligarchy. David and Charlotte Harmon’s blood ran straight back to Jamestown. Mine didn’t. Not unless adoption counted. And in that cloistered circle of status, it didn’t.

  “If it weren’t for you, your mother would be in the poorhouse,” Aunt Charlotte said. “Where she got this idea about money, I don’t know. But she said you kicked the boarder out of her house. Wally? Was that his name?”

  I sat down on the empty bed. The crisp white linens were stretched over the mattress tight as straightjackets. Closing my eyes, I leaned forward and tried to breathe. Wally Marsh had lived with us for several years in the big house on Monument Avenue. He was like family. Unlikely family—a rail-thin photographer with a chip on both black shoulders. But Wally was among the loyal few who waited for my mother’s return from the dark underworld. Last December he died, and in the aftermath, I chose to tell my mother that he decided to move out, find his own place. Another lie. Another deception. Another attempt at protecting her. And now something cinched around my lungs like a lariat. I lied to protect myself. My heart accelerated with the thought, running to escape.

  “Raleigh? Are you all right?”