A Thief in the House of Memory

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  “It arrived in late November.”

  “Last fall?”

  “From California.”

  He read the title. “What I Can.”

  Dec flipped over the CD. There was another picture. Lindy standing in a field with a guitar in her hand and the sea in the background. It wasn’t her old guitar. This one was blue, the same blue as the shard of sea beyond the yellow grass. The same blue as her eyes. She looked worn down. There was a handwritten song list.

  He stared at Birdie, not understanding.

  “A friend of hers produced it,” she said. As if that explained anything.

  “This is great,” he said, wanting it to be so and knowing it wasn’t. “Why didn’t you show it to me before?”

  Birdie pressed her lips tightly together. Dec clutched the CD in both hands and stared at it, willing his mother to speak to him. Then Birdie handed him something else — a cream-coloured envelope.

  “This came in March,” she said.

  He didn’t want to take it. He had a powerful sense that there was nothing in it he wanted to hear. She prodded his arm with it until, finally, he snatched it from her. He held it for a long moment before opening it.

  It was handwritten but it wasn’t Lindy’s hand — someone named Anna. He held the letter near the light and started to read. He didn’t get far.

  Lindy was dead.

  There were other words on the cream-coloured page but that was the only one he took in. Dead. But then he had already half guessed that from the strange look in Birdie’s eyes.

  “Lindy sent the CD to me,” said Birdie. “Not to Bernard, not to you. She sent it to the salon. I don’t even know how she knew about the salon. But she did.”

  Dec tried to give her back the letter. She wouldn’t take it. He put it on the desk. Then he got to his feet, in case she tried to take back the CD. Wasn’t that what she was telling him? That it was hers? That she had something over him, over all of them?

  “This Anna — she was the one who produced the album. They were friends, I guess. She must have got the salon address from Denny. They kept in touch, Denny and Lindy. I guess we all know that now.”

  Dec was only half listening. Who cared? What difference did it make? Lindy had cut an album and died all in a couple of minutes. He stared at the cover. A moment ago it had seemed like a gift. Now it was a casket. A tiny transparent casket.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I didn’t tell anyone. Not about the CD, not about her dying.” Birdie took in a deep breath and then gave it back to the still room. “And not about the other letter, either.”

  Again she reached into the pocket of the cardigan, and Dec wondered how deep those pockets were, how many more sorrows she was going to dig up.

  This letter was on the same stationery, but the writing was Lindy’s, and the envelope was addressed to Bernard Steeple. Dec peered at Birdie in disbelief.

  “What can I say?” she said. “The damn thing arrived on a Monday. About a year ago. A Monday. The one day of the week I’m home. By sheer luck — if you can call it that — I was the one who went out to get the mail that day. I knew who it was right away, soon as I saw the handwriting. Maybe I’d always expected it. Anyway, I told myself it was fate that I should be the one who found it first.” She looked down. “Read it,” she said, as if tired of making any more excuses.

  The letter was dated August 3. Dear Bernard, it started. I hope you’re sitting down! Dec couldn’t read any more. “Just tell me,” he said wearily, folding the letter back up and shoving it in the envelope.

  “She was looking for money,” said Birdie. “She had a chance to make this CD and so she was hitting up Bernard. I was so mad, I didn’t know what to do. She said she’d been sick, in the hospital a couple times, but she was doing okay and this project was her one big chance to grab onto her dream.”

  “So it wasn’t just about money.”

  “She didn’t spell it out, Dec. I didn’t know how sick. All I knew was that here she was, again, out of the blue, looking for something.”

  Dec stared at Birdie. “She was your best friend.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Was she asking for a million dollars?”

  “No. And it wasn’t the money, anyway. Bernard’s money is his business. I didn’t tell him because I was afraid. Afraid that if he got that letter, he’d go to her.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I did know it, inside,” she said, poking herself in the chest. “And what I learned tonight only proves I was right.”

  “It doesn’t prove anything,” said Dec, shaking his head sadly. “You didn’t trust him.”

  She squinted at him through eyes swollen half shut with crying.

  “Look who’s talking about trust,” she said. Dec looked away.

  “Oh, don’t listen to me, Dec,” she said. “It’s Lindy. Trust gets kind of tied up in a knot where she’s concerned. I’d trust your dad to the end of the world, except when it came to her. Anyway, when the letter arrived last August, I told myself, if she doesn’t hear from him, she’ll try again. But she didn’t. Then when the CD arrived, I figured, well, that’s that. She found the money some place else. Great. I didn’t feel so guilty. I told myself I saved Bernard a lot of heartache.” She looked straight at Dec. “You read that letter from Anna and try to imagine how guilty I felt when I learned the truth.”

  They sat, the two of them, in the glow of the little lamp on the desk. An antique flying saucer. The future as it was imagined in the past.

  Some time passed. The night moved a little farther along the path to day.

  “Did you tell him tonight?”

  She shook her head.

  “So why are you telling me?”

  “I needed to talk to someone,” she said. “Whatever the consequences. I couldn’t go on feeling like this. Jealousy is an evil, evil thing. There’s no excuse for what I did. But, if you can believe it, I was thinking about your father, too. And you and Sunny.”

  “That was kind of you.” He couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

  She smiled wryly. “I watched you cry your little heart out after Lindy took off. You probably don’t remember. I tried to comfort you. I tried to comfort Bernard. About the only one I made any progress with was Sunny. Then, bit by bit, you accepted that I was here to stay and we figured out how to get along. We have gotten along, Dec. And, bit by bit, your dad came around, too. I couldn’t bear the thought of Lindy getting her claws in him again.”

  Birdie sighed. She put her hands on her knees and laboriously climbed to her feet. Whatever guilt she might have unburdened, she was weighed down with still more.

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  She shook her head. “Whatever you want.”

  “Is this supposed to be our little secret? Because I’m sick of secrets.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “So?”

  She held her hands out at her sides. “I honestly don’t know. Tell your dad if you like. I don’t care.” She headed towards the door. She stopped and leaned against the door-jamb. Then she turned to look at him. “You’re a good kid, Dec. I know I let you down. All I can say is I’m sorry.”

  Dec was too worn out to speak. She left, and after a moment he followed her to the door. From the railing he saw her shadowy figure cross the entrance hallway and leave the big house. He listened to her car drive off, listened until it was out of earshot. And he wondered just how far she would go.

  What I Can

  THERE WAS ANOTHER picture of Lindy inside the liner notes. She was sitting, leaning against a tree in her suede jacket with the eight-inch cowgirl fringe. There was a cigarette between her lips and she was writing something. Under the picture was a little poem and the play list:

  This is how I got here, this is who I am.

  Don’t always do what’s smart or good,

  Just do the best I can.

  He read the play list.
<
br />   Killing Me with Kindness

  No Room to Grow

  Wildcat Love

  The Boy I Left Behind

  Sunshine

  Troubled Me

  Out of Eden

  The Way of Stone and Sorro

  Anna

  The Water Is Wide

  He couldn’t see her face in the picture — it was lost in smoke. It was the jacket he found himself thinking about. He remembered playing with the fringe of it. He remembered how soft it felt. He remembered tracing the Indian embroidery with his finger.

  He lay down now in his big red shoe of a childhood bed, with the map-of-the-world comforter pulled over him and his head resting against her picture.

  Watch

  HE FOUND A stepladder in the basement. He climbed up to the bust of Plato and carefully — oh, so carefully — laid the statuette on its side. He reached into the cold emptiness of Plato’s neck, up into the cavity of his bronze head. There was a little pocket there, made, as far as he could tell, out of paper and glue. There was nothing in the pocket. He hadn’t expected there to be.

  When Dec went down to Camelot, the Beetle sat in its customary spot in the driveway and Birdie was asleep on a couch in the living room, Sunny was stretched sideways right across the master bed, and his father was scrunched up in Sunny’s frilly four-poster, presumably driven there by hard little feet. It was as if the storm of the night before had swept the whole family up and distributed them higgledy-piggledy all over the place. But no one had travelled farther than Dec.

  Dec made himself breakfast. The sun poured in like honey on his toast and made his orange juice glow like some thing with a current running through it. He made a big pot of coffee. He didn’t drink coffee but he had a feeling others might need it.

  He couldn’t explain it, but he felt good. He had found his mother last night. Found her and lost her all in a matter of minutes. Then he had slept deeply and dreamlessly, or so he thought. But leaning against the counter looking out at the crisp yellowness and lush greenness and electric blueness of early June, he wondered if maybe he had been dreaming after all. For he had the strangest feeling, that Lindy had come to him, all played out and not angry any more, and tucked him in one last time. He felt somehow that he had her permission to let her go. After all, she had died a long time ago, really. He had grieved her passing when he was still living in the room with his name on the door. He had built her a boat to carry two when she was not there to sail it any longer. He had missed her and gotten over it.

  The smell of coffee wafted through the house, and Birdie stirred from her nest of blankets in the living room. He heard her swear. He heard her fingernails clicking as she scrabbled on the coffee table for something. Her cellphone. He heard her talking to Kerrie, asking if she would open up the salon. By the time she had punched the Off button, Dec was standing in the living-room entranceway with a cup of coffee.

  “I figured you might need this,” he said.

  She seemed almost shy, pulling a blanket across her, as if he had never seen her in her old cotton nightie.

  “Thank you,” she said, avoiding his eyes. A stiff wing of her hair sticking out at a weird angle distracted her, and she cursed again. She grabbed a fistful of it. “This is going to require major surgery,” she said. He was glad to hear her sound like the Birdie he knew. Chewbakka with bedhead. Maybe last night had just been a bad dream. Or maybe he had travelled even farther than he thought. She hefted herself up off the couch. She took the coffee from Dec with a grateful nod.

  “Life goes on,” he said.

  She drove him to school. She placed a freshly picked spray of lilac in the little vase on the dashboard of the Beetle. She had new country on the stereo. Someone was singing about what you have to do to fix a broken heart.

  “You were asking your dad about a missing yearbook,” she said, when they were on the road. “I took it. I was showing Sunny some pictures of her mom and I happened to glance at the stuff kids had written on the autograph pages. There was something of Denny’s I didn’t want Sunny to see.”

  Dec understood. One more little mystery cleared up. And now it was his turn.

  “I think I know what happened to Dad’s watch,” he said.

  Birdie glanced sideways at him with a puzzled look on her face.

  “His father’s watch, I mean. The one he wore on D-Day.”

  “I know what you’re talking about, Dec. I just have no idea why — of all the things you might have on your mind this morning — you’re thinking about an old watch.”

  Dec wasn’t sure he could explain why the watch was important. He only knew that it was, somehow. It explained things that he had no other way of understanding. Who his mother was, who his father was.

  “I think Lindy stole that watch and hid it inside Plato’s head,” he said. “There’s a little pocket there, I found it this morning. I think that’s what Denny was after when he fell. She must have told him it was really valuable, or something.”

  Birdie still looked a little anxious. “You’ve lost me.”

  “It was her idea of a joke,” he said. “She liked to play jokes on Dad. He probably told her that his father’s old watch was the most precious thing he owned. I can see him saying that. And so one day when she was really mad at him, she hid it — hid it where he’d never find it.” He paused, swallowed. “Just to hurt him.”

  There, it was out. Dec rolled down the window and took a deep breath of country air. He rolled the windows back up.

  “How do you know all that?”

  “I don’t. And no one will ever know. It’s totally a guess.”

  Birdie shook her head a few times. “I’ve got half a mind to phone up Clare Mahood and tell him your story. You know what that dipstick had the nerve to say at the inquest? He accused your father of killing Runyon in a jealous rage and making it look like an accident. Can you believe anything so nuts?”

  “Boy,” said Dec. “Go figure.”

  “I know,” said Birdie, laughing. “Talk about ridiculous.”

  Silence descended on them, leaving them both lost in their own private thoughts. Dec’s thinking was particularly tangled. Plato had turned out to be the key to everything. But not in the way Dec had suspected — or feared. He wished Sunny had never put the idea in his mind that Plato might have been on the hall table instead of in its usual spot. She had been wrong and had helped to set him down a treacherous path. He didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to talk any more, except that there was one thing he needed to say. One thing he needed to get out right away before he had any second thoughts, even though they were pulling up in front of the school.

  “It would probably be a good idea if you told Dad about Lindy,” he said.

  She pulled over to the curb and turned off the radio. “Honesty is always the best policy,” she said. But she said it the way a person might say having a molar pulled out with pliers is a good idea.

  “Well, it’d save a lot of hassle, don’t you think?”

  She frowned. She had her perfect pencil-thin eyebrows on again, and she raised one of them expressively. “You think?”

  “Yes,” said Dec, decisively, looking straight ahead. “Then Dad won’t have to worry about getting an annulment.”

  A Poem for Deaglan

  THERE WAS A LETTER for Dec in the post-office box. For Deaglan, actually, which was the Irish spelling of his name. Vivien was full of surprises.

  in this silence-challenged cafeteria

  you sit alone in a room of your own.

  are there pictures on the walls in there?

  is that what you are frowning at

  or why you smile, sometimes, a far away smile?

  i want to knock on your door and say, mister

  look at this

  the sun is shining golden on that girl’s barrettes

  that man is painting his house apricot

  the little boy in the sage green sweater has a brand new

  trike

 
; the world has ended — i know, i know, i know

  but hey — there’s another one!

  Pick-up Sticks

  THERE ARE TIDAL pools and great green strands of kelp and driftwood dry as bone. So much driftwood, like giant pick-up sticks. His dreaming eye focuses in on the driftwood; it begins to tremble. An earthquake, he thinks, but then the logs start to drift up into the air, as if someone has filmed a truckload of logs being dumped off the cliff, and then reversed the film. He watches the logs dancing, and then realizes that he is their choreographer. In no time he has himself the skeleton of a wild and wonderful house suspended above the sea. He looks it over from every side with a dream-builder’s eye, sees how it might work, how it fits together. He snaps off a whole roll of dream photos, which develop in the darkroom of sleep.

  Dec scanned the cliff in the magazine and copied it. He wondered how far it was from where his mother had lived. His mother had talked about California all the time. It was one of her dreams. He had forgotten that, but then she had so many dreams. He had forgotten a lot, but it wasn’t a careless kind of forgetting. When she left, he had gathered together everything of hers he could and shoved it down hard into a secret box, locked it and thrown away the key. And then he had found the key and opened up the box. There was more in there than he bargained for.

  Sunny knocked on his bedroom door.

  “It’s not locked.”

  She came in wearing powder blue shorts and a white T-shirt stained pink with popsicle juice. He showed her his drawings and explained how they worked. There were thin wooden poles and steel cables and floors suspended between them open on every side to the air.

  She listened intently and scoured the drawings but with ever growing perplexity. Her hair was in braids and Dec could see the hearing aid in her right ear. The earaches had stopped, which was great, but he would miss the way she talked, as if half her words were capitalized. It had made everything she said seem so urgent.