A Stranger in My Grave

by Margaret Millar

  He realized now how true this was. He’d died a little more each day, each hour, of the past week, and there was still a long way to go.

  He blinked away his tears and rubbed his eyes with his knuck­les as if he were punishing them for having seen too much, or too little, or too late. When he looked up again, Daisy was coming down the street, half running, her dark hair uncovered and her raincoat blowing open. She appeared excited and happy, like a child walking along the edge of a steep precipice, confident that there would be no landslide, no loose stones under her feet.

  Carrying the landslide and the loose stones in his pockets, he got out of the car and crossed the road, head bowed against the wind.

  “Daisy?”

  She gave a little jump of fright, as if she were being accosted by a strange man. When she recognized him, she didn’t say any­thing, but he could see the happiness and excitement drain out of her face. It was like watching someone bleed.

  “Have you been following me, Jim?”

  “No.”

  “You’re here.”

  “Ada told me you had an appointment at—at his office.” He didn’t want to say the name Pinata. It would have made the shadow moving behind the window too real. “Please come home with me, Daisy.”

  “No.”

  “If I have to plead with you, I will.”

  “It won’t do the slightest good.”

  “I must make the attempt anyway, for your sake.”

  She turned away with a skeptical little smile that was hardly more than a twist of the mouth. “How quick people are to do things for my sake, never their own.”

  “Married people have a mutual welfare that can’t be divided like a pair of towels marked His and Hers.”

  “Then stop talking about my sake. If you mean for the sake of our marriage, say so. Though of course it doesn’t sound quite so noble, does it?”

  “Please don’t be ironic,” he said heavily. “The issue is too important.”

  “What is the issue?”

  “You don’t realize the kind of catastrophe you’re bringing down on yourself.”

  “But you realize?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then tell me.”

  He was silent.

  “Tell me, Jim.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You see your own wife headed for a catastrophe, as you put it, and you can’t even tell her what it is?”

  “No.”

  “Does it have anything to do with the man in my grave?”

  “Don’t talk like that,” he said harshly. “You have no grave. You’re alive, healthy—”

  “You aren’t answering my question about Camilla.”

  “I can’t. Too many people are involved.”

  She raised her eyebrows, half in surprise, half in irony. “It sounds as if there’s been some giant plot going on behind my back.”

  “It’s been my duty to protect you. It still is.” He put his hand on her arm. “Come with me now, Daisy. We’ll forget this past week, pretend it never happened.”

  She stood silent in the noisy rain. It would have been easy, at that moment, to yield to the pressure of his hand, follow him across the street, letting him guide her back to safety. They would take up where they left off; it would be Monday morning again, with Jim reading aloud to her from the Chronicle. The days would pass quietly, and if they promised no excitement, they promised no catastrophe, either. It was the nights she feared, the return of the dream. She would climb back up the cliff from the sea and find the stranger under the stone cross, under the seamark tree.

  “Come home with me now, Daisy, before it’s too late.”

  “It’s already too late.”

  He watched her disappear through the front door of the build­ing. Then he crossed the road and got into his car, without look­ing up at the shadow behind the lighted window.

  The noise of the rain beating on the tile roof was so loud that Pinata didn’t hear her step in the corridor or her knocking at the door of his office. It was after seven o’clock. He’d been chasing around after Juanita and Fielding for three hours until he’d reached the point where all the bars, and the people in them, looked alike. He was feeling tired and irritable, and when he looked up and saw Daisy standing in the doorway, he said brusquely, “You’re late.”

  He expected, in fact wanted, her to snap back at him and give him an excuse to express his anger.

  She merely looked at him coolly. “Yes. I met Jim outside.”

  “Jim?”

  “My husband.” She sat down, brushing her wet hair back from her forehead with the back of her hand. “He wanted me to go home with him.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I found out some things this afternoon that indicate we’ve been on the right track.”

  “What are they?”

  “It won’t be easy or pleasant for me to tell you, especially about the girl. But of course you have to know, so you can plan what to do next.” She blinked several times, but Pinata couldn’t tell whether it was because the overhead lights were bothering her eyes or whether she was on the point of weeping. “There’s some connection between the girl and Camilla. I’m pretty sure Jim knows what it is, although he wouldn’t admit it.”

  “Did you ask him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he indicate that he was acquainted with Camilla?”

  “No, but I think he was.”

  She told him then, in a detached voice, about the events of the afternoon: her discovery of the check stubs in Jim’s desk, the call from Muriel about Fielding, her talk with Adam Burnett at the dock, and finally her meeting Jim. He listened carefully, his only comments being the tapping of his heels as he paced the floor.

  He said, when she’d finished, “What was in the letter in the pink envelope that Muriel mentioned to you?”

  “From the date I know it could have been only one thing—the news about Juanita and the child.”

  “And that’s what motivated his trip up here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why four years after the fact?”

  “Perhaps it wasn’t possible for him to do anything about it at the time,” she said defensively. “I know he wanted to.”

  “Do anything such as what?”

  “Give me moral support, or sympathy, or let me talk it out with him. I think the fact that he didn’t come when I needed him has been bothering him all these years. Then when he finally settled nearby, in Los Angeles, he decided to satisfy his conscience. Or his curiosity. I don’t know which. It’s hard to explain my father’s actions, especially when he’s been drinking.”

  It’s even harder to explain your husband’s, Pinata thought. He stopped pacing and leaned against the front of the desk, his hands in his pockets. “What do you make of your husband’s insistence that he is ‘protecting’ you, Mrs. Harker?”

  “He appears to be sincere.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But why does he think you need protection?”

  “To avoid a catastrophe, he said.”

  “That’s a pretty strong word. I wonder if he meant it literally.”

  “I’m sure he did.”

  “Did he indicate who, or what, would be the cause of this catastrophe?”

  “Me,” Daisy said. “I’m bringing it down on my own head.”

  “How?”

  “By persisting in this investigation.”

  “Suppose you don’t persist?”

  “If I go home like a good little girl and don’t ask too many questions or overhear too much, presumably I will avoid catas­trophe and live happily ever after. Well, I’m not a good little girl anymore, and I no longer trust my husband or my mother to decide what’s best for me.”
/>   She had spoken very rapidly, as if she were afraid she might change her mind before the words were all out. He realized the pressure she was under to go home and resume her ordinary life, and while he admired her courage, he doubted the validity of the reasons behind it. Go back, Daisy baby, to Rainbow’s End and the pot of gold and the handsome prince. The real world is a rough place for thirty-year-old little girls in search of catastrophe.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said with a frown. “It’s writ­ten all over your face.”

  He could feel the blood rising up his neck into his ears and cheeks. “So you read faces, Mrs. Harker?”

  “When they’re as obvious as yours.”

  “Don’t be too sure. I might be a man of many masks.”

  “Well, they’re made of cellophane.”

  “We’re wasting time,” he said brusquely. “We’d better go over to Mrs. Rosario’s house and clear up a few—”

  “Why do you get so terribly embarrassed when I bring up any­thing in the least personal?”

  He stared at her in silence for a moment. Then he said, with cold deliberation, “Lay off, Daisy baby.”

  He had meant to shock her, but she seemed merely curious. “Why did you call me that?”

  “It was just another way of saying, don’t go looking for two catastrophes.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “No? Well”—he picked up his raincoat from the back of the swivel chair—”are you coming along?”

  “Not until you explain to me what you meant.”

  “Try reading my face again.”

  “I can’t. You just look mad.”

  “Why, you’re a regular face-reading genius, Mrs. Harker. I am mad.”

  “What about?”

  “Let’s just say I’m a sorehead.”

  “That’s not an adequate answer.”

  “O.K., put it this way: I have dreams, too. But I don’t dream about dead people, just live ones. And sometimes they do some pretty lively things, and sometimes you’re one of them. To be any more explicit I would have to go beyond the bounds of propriety, and neither of us wants that, do we?”

  She turned away, her jaws clenched.

  “Do we?” he repeated.

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s that. To hell with dreams.” He went to the door and opened it, looking back at her impatiently when she made no move to get up. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve frightened you.”

  “I’m—not frightened.” But she hunched in her raincoat as if she had shrunk during the storm, the real one on the other side of the window or the more turbulent one inside herself. “I’m not fright­ened,” she said again. “I just don’t know what’s ahead for me.”

  “Nobody does.”

  “I used to. Now I can’t see where I’m going.”

  “Then you’d better turn back.” There was finality in his voice. It was as if they had met, had come together, and had parted, all in the space of a minute, and he knew the minute was gone and would not return. “I’ll take you home now, Daisy.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. The role of good little girl is better suited to you than this. Just don’t listen too hard and don’t see too much. You’ll be all right.”

  She was crying, holding the sleeve of his raincoat against her face. He looked away and focused his eyes on an unidentifiable stain on the south wall. The stain had been there when he moved in; it would be there when he moved out. Three coats of paint had failed to obscure it, and it had become for Pinata a symbol of persistence.

  “You’ll be all right,” he repeated. “Going home again might be easier than you think. This past week has been like—well, like a little trip from reality, for both of us. Now the trip’s over. It’s time to get off the boat, or the plane, or whatever we were on.”

  “No.”

  He turned his eyes from the wall to look at her, but her face was still hidden behind his coat sleeve. “Daisy, for God’s sake, don’t you realize it’s impossible? You don’t belong in this part of town, on this street, in this office.”

  “Neither do you.”

  “The difference is, I’m here. And I’m stuck here. Do you understand what that means?”

  “No.”

  “I have nothing to offer you but a name that isn’t my own, an income that ranges from meager to mediocre, and a house with a leaky roof. That’s not much.”

  “If it happens to be what I want, then it’s enough, isn’t it?”

  She spoke with a stubborn dignity that he found both touch­ing and exasperating.

  “Daisy, for God’s sake, listen to me. Do you realize that I don’t even know who my parents were or what race I belong to?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Your mother will.”

  “My mother has always cared about a lot of the wrong things.”

  “Maybe they’re not wrong.”

  “Why are you trying so hard to get rid of me, Steve?”

  She had never before called him Steve, and the sound of it coming from her made him feel for the first time that the name was finally and truly his own, not something borrowed from a parish priest and tacked on by a Mother Superior. Even if he never saw Daisy again, he would always be grateful to her for this moment of strong, sure identity.

  Daisy was wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. The lids were faintly pink, but unswollen, and he wondered whether a really powerful emotion could have caused such dainty and restrained weeping. Perhaps it had been no more than the weeping of a child denied a toy or an ice cream cone.

  He said carefully, “We’d better not discuss this anymore tonight, Daisy. I’ll take you back to your car.”

  “I want to come with you.”

  “You’re making this tough for me. I can’t force you to go home, and I can’t leave you alone in this part of town even with the door locked.”

  “Why do you keep referring to this part of town as if it were a corner of hell?”

  “It is.”

  “I’m coming with you,” she said again.

  “To Mrs. Rosario’s house?”

  “If that’s where you’re going, yes.”

  “Juanita might be there. And the child.”

  A spasm of pain twisted her mouth, but she said, “It may be a necessary part of my growing up, to meet them both.”

  19

  Memories—how she cried before you were born, day in, day out, until I wished there were a way of using all those tears to irrigate the dry, dusty rangeland. . . .

  She had taken the children to the Brewsters’ house and left them without explanation, and Mr. Brewster, who was crippled and liked to have company while he watched television, had demanded none. On her return trip she avoided the lighted streets, using shortcuts across backyards and driveways, hunched under her umbrella like a gnome on night business. She was not afraid, either of the dark or its contents. She knew most of the people in the neighborhood stood in awe of her because of the candles she burned and the number of times she went to church.

  The thin walls of poverty hold few secrets. Even before she reached the porch, she could hear Juanita slamming around inside the house as if she were looking for something. Mrs. Rosario shook the water off her umbrella and removed her dripping coat, thinking, Maybe she’s got it in her head that I am spying on her again, and she is looking for me all over the house, even in places I couldn’t pos­sibly be if I were a midget. I must hurry. . . .

  But she couldn’t hurry. Weariness dragged at her legs and arms, and ever since the scene with Juanita in the afternoon, there’d been a sickness in her stomach that didn’t get worse but wouldn’t go away. When she’d fed the children t
heir supper, she had eaten nothing, just sipped a little lemon and anise tea.

  She let herself quietly into the house and went to the bedroom to hang up her coat. With Pedro’s help she had taken the broken door off its hinges and carried it out to the backyard, where it would lie, with other damaged pieces of her life, to warp in the rain and bleach in the sun. Next week she and Pedro would go to the junkyard and hunt for another door until they found one almost the right size. They would fix it up with sandpaper and a little paint. . . .

  “Next week,” she said aloud, as if making a promise of improve­ment to someone who’d accused her of being slovenly. But the thought of the long trip to the junkyard, the grating of sandpaper, the smell of paint, increased her nausea. “Or the week after, when I am feeling stronger.”

  Even without the door, the bedroom was her sanctuary, the only place where she could be alone with her grief and guilt. The can­dle in front of Camilla’s picture had burned low. She put a fresh one in its place and lit it, addressing the dead man in the language they had used as children.

  “I am sorry, Carlos, little brother. I yearned to see justice done, out in the open, but I had my Juanita to think of. Just that very week you came here, she had been arrested again, and I knew wherever she went in this town from then on, she’d be watched; they’d never let her alone—the police, the Probation Department, and the Clinic. I had to get her away where she could start over and live in peace. I am a woman, a mother. No one else would look after my Juanita, who was cursed at birth by the evil eye of the curandera masquerading as a nurse at the hospital. Not a penny did I touch for myself, Carlos.”

  Every night she explained to Carlos what had happened, and every night his static smile seemed to indicate disbelief, and she was forced to go on, to convince him she had meant no wrong.

  “I know you did not kill yourself, little brother. When you came to see me that night, I heard you telephoning the woman, telling her to meet you. I heard you ask for money, and I knew this was a bad thing, asking money from rich people; better to beg from the poor. I was afraid for you, Carlos. You acted so queer, and you would tell me nothing, only to be quiet and to pray for your soul.