Mother Nature

by Sarah Andrews

  And like my grandmother’s, Mrs. Karsh’s kitchen smelled wonderful. There was a stew simmering on the stove. I began to salivate.

  In the fuller light of the kitchen, I got a better look at her. She was perhaps sixty-five, gray-haired and already a bit hunched, but the remnants of an aristocratic prettiness still played around her face; something in the bones that curved just so under smooth but sagging skin. Behind a pair of bifocals, her gray eyes had a dreaming, unaffected quality that was rather lovely, and spoke of an intelligence given to private contemplation. The effect was appealing, almost alluring, in a way I hadn’t expected in a woman of her years. She was dressed in practical clothing and wore no makeup, again traits I had always found comforting in my father’s mother.

  “Please sit down,” she said, gesturing toward an oak chair with the kind of pressed-wood design that Sears Roebuck sold from their catalog in the early part of the century.

  I settled on the chair, nestling into its faded red gingham cushion, and looked around. The room had a forlorn, yellowed look to it. The stove from which that seductive aroma wafted was a stocky gas model with bullnosed corners and heavy cast-iron grates over the burners. The refrigerator was a small thing that probably dated back to the fifties, and the cabinets were plain painted wood, no frills of molding or hardware. There was no dishwasher. Everything was tinged with the dirt that accumulates over decades of use without repainting. The place might have been altogether depressing, except for a fiery splash of bright red geraniums that grew beneath the window, and that wonderful smell of stew.

  My first thought was that Mrs. Karsh had no money, but the large size of the house and the extensive pasturelands argued wealth. So why the frugality? Were this woman’s assets all invested in the land, or was she just accustomed to her surroundings, and disinclined to change them? I wondered what the rest of the house was like. Peering through the doorway into the dining room, I saw old furniture and dust. Only one narrow pathway across the hardwood flooring showed signs of foot traffic, this leading to a staircase beyond.

  She lives in this kitchen, I decided, and glancing through another doorway, spied a narrow bed with a yellow chenille spread. Mrs. Karsh’s hand went up to her breast. I glanced away, embarrassed that she had seen me staring. My eyes came to rest finally on a plate of store-bought oatmeal cookies on the table next to a crumpled paper napkin and a partially filled mug.

  “Would you like some tea?” Mrs. Karsh asked awkwardly, gesturing toward a teapot that sat snugged up on a trivet over the pilot light on the stove.

  “Please,” I said, immediately wishing I had turned her offer down. Mrs. Karsh got up and reached the teapot down in front of me and moved slowly toward the cupboard, where she meditated over the small array of crockery. She selected a yellow cup and saucer, studied each at length, lining them up carefully with the correct slice of her trifocal lenses and running a thumb around the edges, then exchanged the saucer for another with no chips, the unconscious motions of a woman most usually alone. She placed the cup and saucer on the table in front of me, never looking directly at me, as if she were setting a place for someone who had not yet arrived.

  I poured the tea. It was hot enough to set up a wisp of steam, and when I picked up a pitcher of cream that was near my place, I found that it was still cool and sweating, as if it had been taken from the refrigerator shortly before my arrival. I took a sip. The warm liquid radiated comfort through my body, intensifying my appetite.

  Mrs. Karsh eased herself into a chair across the table from me, shifting around a bit as if to take the pressure off an uncomfortable joint. Then she pushed the plate of store-bought cookies my way and settled back, interlacing dry fingers over a plastic place mat. Her face came to rest in a polite smile.

  How I longed to take one of those cookies. They looked hard and sweet, the kind that are stamped from a mold, each exactly like all the others. My mind played little greedy tricks on me, rationalizing that, broke as I was, every crumb could be important to my continued survival. I forced myself to concentrate on business, averting my eyes to the mug and crumpled paper napkin that had been left by the third place mat on the table. I noted that the mug had an inch of tea in the bottom, and the cookie crumbs that lay scattered around the napkin, and wondered who had been sitting there before I came. Mrs. Karsh? No, there was another teacup by her place, beyond a clutter of condiments and miscellaneous kitchen table incunabula. A fine new leather-bound notebook rested by the uninhabited place, conspicuous in its expensiveness. It lay open to a page of notes, a couple of diagrams with arrows and circles, the first showing how a $40,000 gross monthly income would be divided to address circles labeled “Bank,” “Trust,” and “RConst.” From this last there was another arrow leading to “DK.” The second diagram was the same, except that “Bank” had been replaced by “W-A,” and “DK” got a bigger piece of the pie and “W-A” got a smaller one. I took all this in at a glance and looked away, as Mrs. Karsh clearly stiffened as my eyes rested on it. A moment later, she slid a hand across the table and quietly closed the notebook.

  Clearly I was not the first person to pay a call on her that evening. Stringing together the few clues present on the table, I surmised that her earlier caller had been a man (she had chosen a mug rather than a teacup), and that he had left not long before I had arrived (the tea was hot and the cream still cold). Had it been the big man I saw by the gatepost the day before, or perhaps the little one who had fetched him back to the house? No, I couldn’t see either of them owning such a fine notebook, or for that matter sitting to tea and cookies.

  I looked up. Mrs. Karsh was watching me, her gaze retreating the moment she saw me looking. I cleared my throat. “Thank you for seeing me, Mrs. Karsh,” I began.

  Her fingers tightened their grip on each other, and she tilted her head at a patrician angle.

  I said, “I’m trying to find out what I can about Janet’s death. It will help the family in their grief,” I added piously. “The man at the firehouse said you phoned in the report, so I thought you might have been the one who found her.”

  One hand rose to her breast, and she shook her head slowly from side to side, a ruminative, habitual gesture. Mrs. Karsh lowered her gaze to her place mat. “Oh dear, yes … a terrible thing to lose a daughter.”

  “I can see that this was difficult for you,” I suggested.

  “What?” She looked up.

  “We were talking about the morning you found—”

  Mrs. Karsh’s voice suddenly grew firmer and more businesslike. “Excuse me. Yes, I telephoned to the firehouse. My handyman found the—your friend on his way to work that morning, and I phoned and then went down to see if there was anything I could do. Of course, there wasn’t,” she concluded apologetically.

  “Your handyman?”

  “Yes, Jaime. Jaime Martinez. Won’t you have some more tea? Or a cookie?”

  I caved in and took a cookie, chewing ravenously. “What time was it when the—ah, she was found?” I asked, wondering why no one had noticed Janet’s body earlier.

  “You’re hungry,” she said, suddenly agitated. “I, ah, have stew on the stove.”

  “Oh, no, I’m fine! Really. Thanks anyway,” I replied, clutching my hands together under the edge of the table to keep them off that plate. “Ah, what kind of a morning was it?”

  Mrs. Karsh’s gaze wandered again, perhaps following a mote of dust floating in the air of the quiet room. “Jaime comes at six-thirty, so I suppose it was about then, perhaps a little after. That morning the fog was particularly thick.”

  Morning fog. A standard occurrence. So visibility had been limited. Motorists would have been concentrating on the road, not its edges; and at that hour, it would have barely been getting light.

  “What time does the fog settle in along this valley?”

  She looked studiously at her hands and spoke quickly, as if trying to hurry toward the end of our interview. “Usually by nine or ten. Always by midnight. Unless it’s
not coming. Occasionally it’s clear, you see.”

  “Ah. And the man who took the photographs. When did he arrive?”

  Mrs. Karsh looked straight at me, her eyes politely blank. “Man?”

  “Yes. Taking photographs.”

  Mrs. Karsh smiled the bright smile of a child who has just remembered a right answer under pressure of embarrassment by Teacher. “You mean the police photographer.”

  “No, someone else. Someone who took pictures before the area was cordoned off. He must have had a police scanner, to arrive so early.”

  “Oh, ah—yes, that man.”

  “Did you know him?”

  A pause. “No.” Her hand returned to her breast.

  Had I asked a wrong question again? “Ah. But you did know Janet?”

  Mrs. Karsh’s gray eyes turned opaque. “Yes.”

  I began to feel irritated at the way she seemed to be avoiding my questions, but at the same time I felt badly, like I was goading the poor woman. Plunging forward, I asked, “Socially?”

  “Well … she rode her bike out this way, you see.”

  “I see,” I said ironically, because I didn’t. I waited, willing her to elaborate.

  She didn’t. Her inward stare began to intensify, drawing her entire body inward, like a bug curling up against attack. Her eyes going dark, she said, “I’m sorry, but you see, I have a slight headache.”

  “Perhaps I should go,” I offered; wondering why I was being so compliant. Either this woman was totally unaccustomed to company, or she knew something she did not want to report.

  “Yes, I suppose that would be best.”

  As she said this, I was surprised to find how disappointed I felt. I didn’t want to leave, I wanted to stay and eat cookies and sip tea. Not only was the kitchen a comfortable place for someone with my memories, but there was something intriguing about Mrs. Karsh, perhaps a hidden spark of passion as suggested by those red geraniums and the rich cooking. It gave her a fey quality that appealed strongly even through her reticence, like the faint light of a fairy floating out of reach over the heath that draws an Irishman toward a cliff. “Could I come back another day? I’m working tomorrow. I’ve been hired by Janet’s old company,” I said, clinging to the conversation. “But perhaps the next day?”

  “Janet’s company?”

  “Yes, HRC Environmental.” I waited. When she said nothing more, I prompted, “Saturday?”

  “Saturday? No, I won’t be here Saturday.”

  “How about Sunday?”

  “Oh, Sunday I’ll be helping the boys at the firehouse.…” Her voice trailed off like that fairy light dissolving into the mists.

  “I’d like to come back sometime when Jaime is here, too.”

  She closed her eyes, like that headache was starting to really clamp down on her.

  “When’s Jaime here?” I asked.

  “Oh, only very early mornings. Then he goes to work in the vineyards.”

  “Really? I thought I saw him down by the road yesterday around eleven A.M.”

  She rose to see me to the door. “Jaime checks back some days when there isn’t much work,” she said, pushing the door open.

  Something nearby outside caught her notice. Her spine straightened. Her eyes came suddenly alive and her dry lips spread into a strange smile.

  I stepped past her into the dim pall of the porch light, squinting to get my eyes used to the darkness as quickly as possible, but it wasn’t difficult to see what had caught her attention. The big, hulking man who had watched me from the gatepost was lurking in the shadowy doorway of the tank house.

  I gripped the porch handrail.

  Even in this dim light he stood out harsh and menacing, and at this close range, frightening. He was big, well over six feet tall, around two hundred fifty pounds of soft yet powerful flesh. His hair was thinning on top but long and stringy at the nape, where it was pulled back with a knotted string. The whiskers on his face grew in a rough, unkempt pattern around swelling cheeks. Enormous grubby hands clenched malevolently, pawing the air in slow, hypnotic circles. His eyes were sunken pools in a face contorted with a toxic mixture of fear and hatred, and right now they were aimed straight at me.

  Mrs. Karsh broke the silence. The entire quality of her voice had changed, transformed from fading reticence to a rich, melodious, almost theatrical tone. It wrapped unctuously around me, drawing me into an unexpected, unnerving intimacy. She said: “This is my son, Matthew. Matthew’s just been in his playroom, haven’t you, Matthew? Matthew dear, this is Emily. Emily is a friend of Janet’s.” She smiled, “You remember Janet, don’t you?”

  Matthew’s enormous fingers flared hungrily. Was he remembering her, or thinking of me? I in turn was gripped with feeling, a toxic mixture of fear and guilt. Something about Matthew was terribly familiar, and not just because I had seen him before.

  He didn’t speak.

  I didn’t speak, either. I couldn’t. Something had frozen my vocal cords, something old as death. Something that unhinged my mind, hurling it into a dark and primitive place. In this space of darkness, I began to worry. I worried that I couldn’t move, wouldn’t speak or cry out if I needed to. My ears began to ring. Watching those ugly, clenching hands maul the air between us, I could see them closing around Janet’s throat, hear her gasp for air, twist, shudder, and die, her neck now limp and broken, her tender skin mottled with enormous, hideous bruises.

  Suddenly light bathed the scene, bright and dancing. Matthew drew back into the doorway like a spider retracting his fat body from sight. The light bounced, swung wildly. The sound of a large engine broke into my awareness and groaned closer. Someone was driving up beside the house, pulling up alongside the little blue truck. I could see the vehicle now out of the corner of my eye, a big, high-clearance truck, making mine seem small as a toy. A man stepped down out of the cab and walked over to my little blue truck, leaned down and stared into the cab, cupping his hands around his face to cut the glare on the glass cast by his headlights. After some moments, he turned and joined us.

  He was a man of advancing years, yet still startlingly handsome, almost beautiful. He stood tall and straight and magnificent, like a proud adolescent posing in front of a mirror. He enjoyed a full head of perfectly white, lushly wavy hair that glowed regally in the truck’s headlights. He wore khaki slacks, heavy work shoes, and a twill shirt in a brilliant turquoise blue, as bright as his eyes. As he joined us at the stoop, he bestowed on us a self-satisfied smile, examined me with interest, and said, “Hello again, Dierdre. Evening, Matt. Who’s this?”

  I looked at Mrs. Karsh. In the moment of his arrival, her shoulders had slumped forward and her smile had collapsed to a small crimp. Gone also was the vibrancy of her tone as she said: “Val Reeves, Emily Hansen.”

  Val stepped forward and gripped my hand in both of his, like the Pope bestowing a blessing. His hands were warm, and I was surprised to discover that they had the dry feel of my father’s, though not as rough with calluses. I looked more sharply at him. Was this a man who worked with his hands? He widened his smile into a showy grin, displaying a row of even, perfectly white teeth, and stared deeply into my eyes as if he’d mislaid something of a personal nature inside my head. “Emily,” he pronounced, and then, apparently satisfied with his performance, he turned back to Mrs. Karsh. “Dierdre, I left my notebook on your kitchen table.”

  “Oh, certainly, Val. I saw it there after you left. Go right on in.”

  After Val Reeves passed into the house, I glanced back over to the door of the tank house. Matthew Karsh was gone.

  Gone, and yet I felt his presence; an almost tactile reverberation of his mass. It hung in the doorway like an anomaly of gravity, heavy and frightening. And the enchantment that had played between mother and son stretched across the dooryard to me like the thick, unlovely web a black widow spins.

  I heard the screen door close behind me. Mrs. Karsh’s voice came to my ear, once again rich and low, for my hearing only: “Be care
ful going out. People drive fast on that road at night. You could get hurt.”

  9

  Sleep eluded me until the small hours. I lay awake in the darkness in that unfamiliar bed, unable to shake the thought that this distorted son of a fading woman might be Janet’s murderer. My suspicion made no sense: one so billowing with malice and so proximal to the crime would not have escaped the Sheriff’s notice. A creature like that would have drawn detectives like flies to dung, and if he were guilty, I couldn’t see anyone so rudely constructed staying together through even the mildest interrogation. Interrogation is a hideous pressure; I know, having been questioned as a witness. I felt like confessing to a crime I hadn’t committed just to get out of the chair they’d sat me in. The Sheriff’s detectives would have turned the screws and squeezed a confession out of a Matthew Karsh like toothpaste out of a tube. Within minutes. But they hadn’t.

  On the rare occasions that I managed to clear Matthew Karsh and his mother from my brain, I found that fickle organ veering off into more personal problems, fussing over the job I had to do in the morning, or where to go for Christmas. Concern over filling Janet’s shoes was just stage fright, but why anxiety over Christmas should badger me on this particular night, I could not fathom until I recalled how fully Mrs. Karsh’s kitchen had pricked a nostalgia for my grandmother Hansen’s, where we had always gathered for Christmas when I was a child.

  Christmas. Grandmother Hansen was long dead, and now so was my father. I imagined that Elyria would be preoccupied with Joe Finney this year, and I couldn’t go home; spending the holidays on the ranch alone with my mother was out of the question.

  Well, there was Aunt Frida’s. Hadn’t Elyria said she was somewhere in California? How had I lost track of her, after Uncle Bert died? I wasted further mental energy trying to imagine why Frida had left Wyoming, giving up a perfectly good horse ranch. And even more odd, come to think of it, was the fact that she hadn’t come to my father’s funeral. Between abortive attempts at counting sheep, I thought of phoning Frida, even searched the local phone book for her number, but didn’t find one. I cursed myself for having been so quick in my fear and outrage with Elyria that I hadn’t taken down the number when I’d had the chance.