Candles Burning (51 page)

Long moments later, I had not found my way. I crouched by one of the portholes and sucked at the air coming in through the screen, and berated myself for failing to bring water with me. And breadcrumbs, or white stones, anything to have used for a trail.

The candle's tiny flame breathed a little larger. It would very soon gutter in its own melted wax.

“I listened to the book,” I said in a mutter. “A fine kettle of fish it's gotten me into.”

Making myself breathe easy and concentrate, I listened closely, but Ida Mae did not speak. I listened hard enough to hear the babble beneath the water of the Gulf but no voice I knew emerged from it. I slid my fingertips into my overalls pocket to touch Calliope's locket, half-expecting some magic from it. But there was none, except the skin smoothness of the gold at the tips of my fingers.

Heat rises. Hot as it was on the floor, it was not as hot as it was at my full height. I crawled, awkwardly, what with having to hold the candle in one hand. The book bumped against my flank as if to remind me it was there.

Stopping in a crouch, I put the candle on the floor and took out the book.

As I held it in my hand, it said, speaking again in my own voice:

My forefinger, I thought, the one I burned in a candle flame the Christmas morning when I was seven.

So I stood up, shoved the book back into my pocket, picked up the candleholder with my left hand, and pointed my forefinger. It failed to sting or redden. I turned slowly, until it did. And it did. It felt just as if I was shoving it into the flame of my homemade candle in the cobalt-blue candleholder. A doorbell
caw-caw
ed far away. The sound came from my pocket, so I knew it was the book.

I moved in the direction that my finger pointed. The way was far from clear. I had to go over low things, and between things, and around things, and then point my finger again until the pain of burning confirmed the direction.

The beams as they sank toward the eaves forced me into a stoop and then a crouch. I could smell dead meat again. Finally I was on my knees, and the footlocker was in sight, against the low wall of the eave. It was not the same one, I told myself. The one that had contained the ransom had had plenty of headroom above it. A padlock was on the floor, open, no key in sight.

The closer I crept to the footlocker, the more the stench gagged me. The tongue of the footlocker hung loose. With one quick movement, I lifted the lid and flung it back. I let myself fall back in reaction to my own forward force, so there was some space between the footlocker and me.

The candle was just at hand. Its flame all but floated on the transparent melt of its wax. Lifting it slowly so as not to smother it by a sudden rush, I drew closer to the footlocker, close enough to hover the candle over the open footlocker. The bottom looked a long way down. The Calley effigy was sprawled there, with Betsy Cane McCall obscenely between her legs.

Unbidden, the thought was suddenly in my mind: I should set the rag doll aflame, and use it for a torch, to spread fire at every corner of the attic. When the house was on fire, someone would unlock the attic door. The rag doll looked up at me with its stony eyes. The flame of the candle raised a light in each one, and a tiny reflection of me. Its eyes pled with me; it so wanted to burn.

Bent over the open footlocker, I lowered the candleholder. A tiny unsteadiness in my hand spilled a clear hot drop of wax upon the rag doll's face, where it became a cloudy tear splat.

I moved the flame to her hair, which flared at once. The sudden flare of fire stung my hand like a whip. I dropped the candleholder into the footlocker. The hot melted wax spattered over the blackening rag doll, feeding the fire. Sooty black smoke bloomed from the flames. The rag doll writhed. It looked like a blackbird on fire. Poor Betsy Cane McCall blackened and fumed too; as it melted her polyvinyl mouth seemed to gape open, her eyes to widen, until she appeared to be screaming.

I dropped back onto my heels, then jumped up and kicked the footlocker with my bare foot. It felt as if I had busted every toe. But the force of my kick drove the footlocker back against the wall, and the lid dropped down, pinching a billow of smoke into my face. It was nasty and black, that smoke, and I got a mouthful of it that made me cough and wretch.

I crouched nearby, watching the footlocker, to see if it would catch. When it seemed as if at least an hour had gone by, though I knew it was only ten minutes or so, I ventured to open the footlocker again. Of course doing so released another cloud of the foul smoke right into my face. More coughing and gagging, this time until tears ran down my face. I knuckled the tears and smeared wet soot around my face.

After a moment or two, I could see into the footlocker. Fire out, starved of oxygen. The cobalt candleholder sat in the black mess at the bottom of the footlocker, like an unpolished gem in a tar pit. Like my own heart, sooty and hard, but unmelted. I felt no fear any more of the rag doll or the footlocker. I dropped the lid again.

When I stood up, I looked up, searching out the center beam of the attic. Once I was under it and could look in either direction, I followed it to the attic steps. I coughed a lot while I made my way.

Impulsively, I gave the light pull chain a yank, and all the lightbulbs came on. I could have done that before, when I brought the ransom money to the luggage, but had not, what with realizing that I had left the door key in the padlock. I might have had clear vision, if only I had done the simple and obvious thing: Try the light chain again.

There was only one way to turn the lights on, and that was the pull chain. I had not heard its distinctive catch and click, never mind anyone who might have pulled it. Knowing that it had not been the fuse still left me without answers that mattered.

I backed down the steps, with the canvas suitcase bumping on each step after me. When I tried the door, it was still locked. I used the oyster knife. It worked and I swore I would never be without it.

It was only midday, I realized, as I emerged into the hallway. I heard the sound of dinner from the dining room. The best place to temporarily stash the money, I decided, was in the linen closet. That highest shelf, where the Christmas decorations were stored, and no one ever ever looked, that was the place. In a few moments, the ransom was hidden, and I had gathered clean clothes and was locked in the bathroom.

The sight of myself in the mirror made me laugh until I cried again. I looked like a charred owl. I jumped into the shower to cover the noise I could not stop making.

When I went down the backstairs to the kitchen, Perdita was arranging dessert plates.

“I'll do those,” I said.

She watched me do one to make sure that I did it right, and then she wrinkled her nose.

“I smells burnin'. Bin smellin' least a quarter hour. Nothin' boil over, though, nor burn on neither.” The outrage in her voice made it clear that Perdita would not allow boil-overs or burn-ons.

I sniffed the air and shook my head in puzzlement. “Maybe somebody's campfire on the beach.”

“If it is, Lawd save whomsoever be eatin' that mess!” Perdita said.

Miz Verlow did not seem to notice, perhaps because so many of the guests just then were smokers, and the smoke was always wafting in from the verandah. She did give me several puzzled glances, as if she could not quite remember who I was.

I heard her in the attic that night. She went straight to wherever she was going and stood there for a long moment.

And then, very clearly, she said, “It's too late, Calliope Dakin.”

MAMA came home with a new pair of tits. Her jawline was ten years tighter. Her eyes had acquired a slight and sexy tilt, like Barbara Eden's, while the shadows under them had disappeared. The suggestion of Barbara Eden was entirely deliberate; Mama was rigged out in billowing gauzy harem pants and a form-fitting short jacket that was meant to serve up her décolletage like a tray of meringues, and did.

She sashayed into Merrymeeting still wearing her sunglasses, so she could casually whip them off. She had to check the effect in the mirror in the foyer and on anyone who might be standing there looking. Everyone was, given she had timed her arrival for the cocktail hour, when the guests gathered to knock back a few drinks before supper.

Several of them were regulars who knew Mama. They knew that she was different but only a few of the women could have said how. Fewer of the guests were new; Mama had the greatest effect on them. One of the younger men even made a low whistle—very low and very short and ending in an odd, smothered yelp, as his wife stomped down on the toe of his sandaled foot.

Colonel Beddoes, bringing in Mama's suitcases, missed the byplay. He passed the luggage off to me to take up to Mama's room, freeing himself to put an arm around Mama's waist and nuzzle her ear.

Miz Verlow went through a little routine of being so attentive to one guest that she didn't notice Mama until she turned around at the kerfuffle of commotion and saw Mama getting her ear sucked by Colonel Beddoes. Mama had to swat him down mockingly, to keep her dignity in front of Miz Verlow.

Mama went out again with Colonel Beddoes after supper and it was late when she returned but I was still awake. When I heard her, I went to her room and knocked.

She had left the door ajar, which meant that I should come right in. She looked at me in her mirror, where she was sponging off her makeup.

“My feet are killin' me,” she said. “Show me your hands.”

I held them up so they were visible in the mirror. Then I picked up a bottle of her hand lotion and helped myself. My nails were fine but my skin was dry.

“That's expensive,” she said, “don't waste it.”

She had a cigarette burning up in an ashtray on the vanity and a glass of bourbon breathing pleasant airs. I picked up the cigarette and took a drag.

“Buy your own,” she snapped.

I took a sip out of her glass of bourbon too.

“Calley!”

I dropped onto her bed, kicked off my sandals and flopped back.

Mama stopped to suck on the cigarette and knock back some bourbon. “I don't know what I did to deserve you.”

I didn't say anything. She finished with her face, tied the sash of her negligee, took her cigarette and bourbon and went off to the bathroom for a quarter hour. I used the time to open her pocketbook and help myself to a twenty and then I turned down her bed for her.

Mama came back, glass empty, cigarette stub no doubt flushed down the toilet.

She handed me the glass and arranged herself on the bed. As I opened the jar of foot cream, she gave a great melodramatic sigh.

“It was hell,” she said. “You cannot imagine.”

I held her feet in my lap. Her new tits poked up the bodice of her negligee proudly. Her eyelids bore very thin but still visible red scars, and other scars were exposed behind her ears, where she had tied back her hair to do her face.

I worked the foot cream into her feet methodically.

“But,” Mama said, reaching for the pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the night table, “it was worth every damn cent and every damn miserable moment.”

She went into some detail about the miserable moments, which were more miserable for her than anyone else who ever experienced them. When I was finished with her feet, she was still talking. I closed the jar.

She paused to take a hit on her cigarette.

“Good night, Mama,” I said, leaving her with her mouth open, words ready to spill out and no one to hear them.

I closed the bedroom door gently.

IT was Miz Verlow's custom to sort the mail when it arrived, usually right after breakfast. Then she would give it to me to distribute. As a rule, her guests received very little mail; they were short-term residents, after all.

In the years that we had been living at Merrymeeting, Mama had received only communications from Adele Starret, an occasional postcard or note from some guest with whom she had struck up an acquaintanceship or, even more rarely, a billet-doux from a boyfriend. It was more common for me to receive mail, for I shared the interests of so many of our longtime guests. Not only notes and postcards arrived with my name on them, but books and records and tapes, and even the occasional feather, dried flower, or packet of seeds.

The day after Mama returned, Miz Verlow handed me a letter for her. She handed me that envelope with a curtness with which I was now familiar. Miz Verlow ignored me most of the time, since my last visit to the attic, but sometimes it was obvious that she was extremely displeased with me. I made an early decision to ignore any reaction from her, and stuck to it.

The envelope was lovely thick stock, with a Paris, France, postmark on it and no return address on it.

Mama was drinking coffee and doing her nails on the verandah. Once upon a time, she never would have done her nails in public or even semi-public. Miz Verlow frowned in Mama's direction when she handed me the letter. She said nothing but I could see that she was steamed at Mama about doing her manicure on the verandah.

I took the envelope to Mama, who looked right through me, and waved one hand in the air to dry her nails as she studied the envelope.

“Paris, France,” she said loudly, in case any other guests were in earshot. “Well, I caint imagine.”

Mama wrinkled her nose. She didn't want to ruin her nails. “Open it for me, Calley.”

I sat on the edge of the railing and slit the envelope open with my oyster knife. A single, folded sheet of the same heavyweight stock filled the envelope tightly. When I shook the folded sheet flat, a photograph dropped free. I caught it with my free hand. It was a black-and-white snapshot of a handsome young man on a sailboat, one hand on the rigging.