She picked up her purse, and I could tell she didn’t want to speak about it anymore. That she didn’t want to speak with Claude at all.
“Can I think about it?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said. “You have a couple weeks before he’s transferred.”
Deputy Mike escorted her to her car, and I watched through the curtains in the front room as they paused to speak, and he held the door open for her. He followed her blue Honda in his black-and-white cop car, down the hill.
It was strange to be alone in the house. I recalled the first time I had been left alone, the day Claude had taken my mother and Alex to a luncheon meeting without me, and now I knew why that luncheon had been important and why I hadn’t been allowed to go. What had Claude asked Alex to do at that luncheon? Make friends with the rich kids? Scope out their wealthy parents?
Walking through the first floor, I trailed my hand across the bare walls. The art pieces Claude collected had been removed. Inside the darkroom, it looked as though a tornado had passed through. Men in uniforms had removed the resalable equipment, including the camera Claude had bought for Christmas. They had dismantled the drafting table and boxed up any supplies that hadn’t already been opened. But I didn’t let that stop me.
My photographs were scattered throughout the room. They’d gone through all of them, but except for the two photographs Claude had hidden away in the rolltop desk, they hadn’t found anything of interest. I sorted them by subject: a box of Alexes, a box of Dahlias, a box of Claudes.
I turned the pages of Photo Development: The Art of Image Manipulation until I reached the section at the back titled “Kitchen Sink Photography.” How to create without a camera, without a proper darkroom, with what you had lying around, with what was left over when everything was taken away.
IT TOOK A WEEK BEFORE Deputy Mike called to arrange the visit with Claude. During that week, I worked in the darkroom without telling my mother what I was doing.
On the chosen day, I stood in a splash of sunlight in her bedroom, brushing my mother’s hair until it gleamed, like she used to do for me. She sat in front of her vanity mirror, her head jerking back each time I brushed from the scalp. Her hair flowed fine through my fingers into waves. She watched me through the mirror, an unlit cigarette in her hand. Once again, she had no fire to light it with.
“Maybe I should quit,” she said, toying with it.
I twisted her hair up, a little clumsy, my fingers fumbling over the hairpins, but the twist stayed put. When I finished she leaned forward, turning her head from side to side, reaching for her face powder and makeup brushes.
“You don’t think I can take care of us without Claude, do you?” she continued, spreading concealer across her cheekbones, down her nose, like an artist priming her canvas. I had a sudden memory of that day in the car when we ran away from our old life, and how much makeup she’d worn over her skin. I hadn’t wanted to see the bruises underneath. She had no bruises now, none on the surface. “You’ve barely spoken since the arrest,” she said. “You spend all of your time in that darkroom.”
I went to her closet and picked through her dresses the same way I picked through what words to use. “I’ve been working on something,” I said, choosing a blue dress that I liked because the fabric was soft and shimmery. “Do you want to see it?”
She took the dress, then nodded. I went down to the darkroom and retrieved the collage I’d finished that morning using parts of her notebook, photograms made with exposed photographic paper, and photographs developed with a cardboard box enlarger. When I returned, she had dressed and was inserting a bluebell earring into each ear. I set the collage in front of her.
“Let’s get in your car, pack it up the same way you did that day we ran away, and just go,” I said as she put down her makeup brush and picked up my creation. “We don’t have to tell anyone. Just get in the car and go. We can get an apartment, someplace small but with lots of windows for the sun to shine through, for the moon to find us during the night. I’ll go to school while you work, and sometimes you’ll draw and sometimes I’ll take pictures.”
I could see this future reflecting back at me through her reflection in the mirror, expanding ever backward.
“Am I the woman in this story?” she asked, touching a picture of herself used in the center of the collage.
“Only if you want to be.”
She set the collage down, then took my hands, turning them over to expose each palm as if she could read the lines there, the length of my life, the loves I would have, the heartbreaks.
When she stood, she asked, “How do I look?”
“Perfect.” I zipped up the back, careful not to catch her skin.
She slipped her feet into high-heeled shoes, then gathered her handbag and made her way down the lonely stairs.
I navigated the streets for her, a map open on my lap and an address scribbled on a sheet of paper with Deputy Mike’s handwriting. We drove the Honda, the Mercedes having been taken away along with everything else.
She put the car in park in front of the Santa Clarita Sheriff’s Station. It looked exactly the same as it had that morning when Deputy Mike had brought me there. Claude was inside, held until his arraignment. With her lips pressed to a thin line, she looked at the flat, brown bricks, the tree overhanging with its spring-green leaves blooming in the breeze, folded her hands on her lap. We hadn’t had time to polish her nails.
“Ready?” she asked.
Letting go of a held breath, I nodded.
The cool breeze scurried dried leaves past our feet. I trailed behind as she maneuvered through the other cars parked in the visitors’ lot, singular and alone in the shade of the trees that towered over her. She walked toward the building, pausing at the front door before entering.
The “Wanted” poster of Audra Rose, with the long scar down the side of her face, still hung on the wall of the sheriff’s station’s wall. Maybe no one had caught her yet. Or maybe they had simply never taken down the poster. In my previous visit, I hadn’t noticed the recessed fluorescent lighting that buzzed just within the range of human hearing.
It took a few minutes for Deputy Mike to be summoned. He stopped when he saw me standing next to my mother and beckoned her over.
“Are you sure about her going with you?” he asked, indicating me.
“He’ll want to see her,” she said. “I thought—” She swallowed. “He cares for her.”
A muscle at the side of Deputy Mike’s jaw twitched. He seemed to weigh the different options, uncertain which choice to make.
“He’s not the same man you knew,” said Deputy Mike. “Not even the same man from just a week ago.”
I could tell she wasn’t entirely certain about my joining her either. “I want to go with you,” I begged.
“Maybe you should wait out here.”
“No, I don’t have to see him, but don’t leave me out here.” I didn’t want to wait in the lobby with only Audra Rose’s poster for company.
“Can she wait with you?” my mother asked Deputy Mike.
He nodded. “Rosie, wait here, and I’ll come get you.”
They left me in the reception area. I didn’t want to sit, didn’t want to go outside, so I stood with my hands drawn into fists, listening to the clicking of a keyboard from the reception desk and the murmurings of the radio dispatch.
The door that my mother and Deputy Mike went through had a window in its upper half. I could see into the larger room, where officers and plainclothes individuals crossed back and forth. At the other end of the room, I saw my mother behind a glass window, sitting at a table. She was touching her mouth in that way of hers, staring straight ahead. She wanted a cigarette. She wasn’t alone. Across from her sat Claude.
I pushed the door open and crossed the room, taking a moment to search for Deputy Mike, but I couldn’t find him, until I stood in front of the window. I wondered if this was one of those magic one-way windows they had in television cop shows.
A hand squeezed my shoulder, and I glanced up to see Deputy Mike.
“I was just coming to get you,” he said.
“Are you listening to them?” I didn’t think they should. It seemed sneaky and unfair.
Deputy Mike studied my face, searching for something, before coming to a decision. “This way,” he said, and led me to a door to the left of the observation window.
The room was unlit, but a light came in from a big window that looked into the room where my mother and Claude sat. There were other men and women watching, and someone said something to Deputy Mike, but I turned my attention to the window and the sad, awkward picture it showed.
Claude’s hair hung lank around his face, and he seemed thinner. Or maybe it was just the way he sat with his arms pressed close to his body and his shoulders curved inward. He wore what looked like hospital scrubs, with a short-sleeved tunic, the letters S.C.S.S. stenciled on with black dye, his bare arms pale, almost yellow tinged in the fluorescent light.
How long had they been sitting like that, silent and still, filling the little room with great big bubbles of unspoken conversations?
“Isn’t it illegal for you guys to listen to them?” There should be lawyers present, but that wasn’t why I asked. This scene, this strange, painful meeting between a husband and wife, should have been private. It was like watching the aftermath of a love scene, the bitter morning after.
“They both know they’re being watched,” said Deputy Mike, and I tore my eyes off of Claude to look up at him. “Mr. Fisk denied representation for the meeting; he wanted it like this. He knows that anything he tells her will be relayed to us.”
I went back to observing Claude. He barely moved. He used to fill an entire room with the force of his attention. Now none of his bursting, blustering energy remained.
Finally, my mother spoke, her voice distorted through the microphone. It didn’t sound like her.
“Do you need anything?” she asked.
Claude didn’t answer. She put a hand down on the table between them. With the tip of her finger she started tracing a pattern on its surface. A circle. Then petals. Then a stem, a leaf.
“They said you wanted to speak with me?” she insisted. “I brought Rosaura with me today, but they didn’t think it was a good idea for you to see her.”
Another slight flicker behind Claude’s eyes, but he didn’t say anything.
“She wants to see you,” said my mother.
There was a slight narrowing of Claude’s eyes, and I wondered if he believed her.
She took a small, defeated breath. “Are you ever going to speak?”
“What are you planning to do?” he asked, and everyone in the observation room shifted. I gripped the cold metal frame around the window.
My mother seemed stunned for a moment. “I don’t—” she started. Then, “Now you’re concerned?”
“Of course I’m concerned. I care about you. And Rosie. I plan on taking care of you.”
“The same way you’ve taken care of us all along? No, I don’t think so.”
“I won’t be in here forever. We’re still married. I’m still your husband. You look beautiful in that dress. I bought it for you, didn’t I?”
My mother grew very pale. “We don’t need you. I have a job now. We’ll be fine.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” he said, his voice flat.
She pinched her lips together. “I think I’d better leave.”
“Hey,” he said, and smiled. “I’m sorry. Don’t mind me. It’s just this place. It gets to you. When I get out, we’ll be good. They might even give me house arrest so I won’t be gone long. Take care of things for me, please? Take care of the house. Don’t forget the garden. And those fishes. No one ever remembers the fishes. They’ll starve if someone doesn’t feed them. You keep feeding them for me, okay? You keep them.”
Her brow wrinkled. She must have been thinking the same thing we all were thinking, that he was delusional.
“Tell me,” Claude said before she could respond, and for the first time he moved, his chair scraping against the floor. “Did you put Alex up to it?” he asked, and once again his voice was a deadly calm. “You can tell me. I won’t be angry.”
The door to the interrogation room opened, and a couple of officers entered. Claude had gone stone silent again, let the officers force him to standing, turn him so they could put handcuffs on.
“I’m sorry,” he said to my mother as they pulled him through the door.
I ran out of the observation room as two officers led Claude away. At the same time, Alex and his mother entered from the door leading to the reception area. There was no way for any of the policemen to block Claude’s view. He saw us both but focused his attention on Alex, straining against the officers’ hold. Deputy Mike barked orders and Claude was led through another set of doors. They had to drag him because he wouldn’t move. He kept his eyes fixed on Alex until the last moment.
Everyone spoke at once. Deputy Mike continued to yell, angry that no one had thought to check before allowing Catherine Craig and Alex to enter. My mother asked if we could leave.
“I was promised this wouldn’t happen,” said Catherine, furious.
I used the commotion to creep to the edge of the room. When Alex saw me, he smiled with one corner of his mouth. I could barely breathe, afraid to get too close. He held out his hand and I took it, felt the warmth of his skin as if he touched every inch of my body.
“Hey,” he said, but I couldn’t hear him over the noise.
I inched a little closer. There was so much to say and ask: Where was he living? Could I call him? Was he happy now? But all I said was, “You okay?”
“What do you think?” he asked, in his typical way of answering with a question. But he smiled again, and I guessed that was all the answer I was going to get. His mother said his name and I dropped his hand as if it burned. In the next moment she led him away, and they both disappeared into a different room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
When my mother and I reached the house, she parked the car in the driveway. Someone had spray painted “LIAR” underneath the white-frosting windows in big, black letters with paint dripping from the letter R as if it bled from a wound. I wished for my own can of spray paint so that I could add “CHEAT” and “THIEF” to make the scene complete. Also “I WANT TO FLY AWAY” and “WHERE ARE YOU?”
Let’s go, I thought, let’s drive away. Let’s fly.
Maybe she heard me. With her hand on the ignition, she shifted in her seat, no longer pale. And smiled.
We started packing. I got to keep my clothing and Alex’s bike and the beanbag chairs. My mother went through the remaining furniture that hadn’t been carted away, deciding which pieces she wanted to keep, which ones would be left behind. The first floor grew crowded with boxes.
A few days after Claude’s cryptic comments at the sheriff’s station, a team came out to examine the fishes in the fountain. I learned they had a name: koi. And, because of their age and coloration, they could sometimes be valued at thousands of dollars. Claude’s fishes, three in total, had not been well taken care of. At least not recently, although they had managed to survive. I hadn’t even realized the fishes were real, let alone that they needed caring. Collectively, the fishes were valued at a few thousand dollars, not enough to make any great difference. Along with everything else, experts had taken the fishes away to be re-homed.
I stayed by the fountain after the men left. The surface of the water dimpled with skittering bugs and water plants growing over the side. No longer concerned with slimy things or bug-eyed fishes, I dipped my arms into the cool water. Ripples spread in widening circles, and I closed my eyes, imagining what it would feel like to be underwater in the slick slime, hiding in the muck, to have my lungs filled and unable to breathe. Peaceful. Beautiful, with the world above always out of reach, always a dream, moving in the ripples.
When I opened my eyes, the reflection of my father’s ghost swayed n
ext to mine, with the blue sky dancing behind us and the roof of the house dipping in and out of view. I had wondered if the ghost would appear again, uncertain if I wanted to see him or not.
“You’re here,” I said.
“Yes,” he answered. Instead of starting with a story as he’d done before, he waited for me to speak, knowing that I had questions to ask him. I swallowed, staring down at his rippling reflection.
“Why’d you do it?” I asked. “Why’d you kill yourself?”
It was the one question I had wanted to ask that I had never been brave enough to ask before. My mother had told me what happened leading up to his death, but only my father could answer the question of why. Why had he done it?
He turned his head so his reflection in the fountain showed his open, unhealed wound. It was all I could see.
“She ran away. She took you and left. I don’t remember getting my gun, don’t remember driving. Not until I got to this house and I saw her hiding behind him. I pointed my gun at his big ugly face. He was telling me to calm down and she was crying. She expected me to kill her. It was in her eyes. I said to Claude, ‘I’m going to take everything from you.’ ”
I squeezed my eyes shut, remembering the gunshot echoing through the house. What should I say to my father’s ghost? That his careful, diligently plotted revenge on Claude had been successful? That soon my mother and I would leave this house forever and never return? That I loved him?
This was the ghost’s revenge, to bring about Claude’s demise, bring pain and confusion to my mother. This was his plan all along, a carefully woven double cross. My father had gambled on Claude and had lost everything, and now Claude would lose everything. Not only Claude, but so many others as well. Myself, my mother, Tina and her family. The ghost hadn’t cared about collateral damage.
“Are you satisfied yet?” I asked. “Are you done?”
He bent close to speak. “I know where he keeps his money, his hiding places. I’ve always known. The desk, under the carpet on the third floor, and the fountain.”
All the air whooshed out of my lungs, and I turned toward him, toward my father, but he was climbing into the fountain. Slowly, he sank below the water.
The Cake House Page 27
