Cast a Pale Shadow (6 page)

But that luck was the last of it until now. He'd had difficulty picking up the traces of his life again. Cole Baker's identification led him back to an unremembered apartment in Grand Rapids. The ring that held his car keys had a key that opened the apartment's door as well. He'd poked around assembling the clothing and belongings he recognized in the closets as his own.

But he couldn't stay there. He had the uneasy feeling that this Cole Baker lurked somewhere nearby, waiting for a chance to pounce and maybe try to steal his soul away this time instead of just his driver's license and his car. He would not allow himself to think further than that, to puzzle out the link Cole Baker had with his life. He mingled so intricately with his memory, his madness, and his nightmares that finding Cole Baker might mean losing himself. And Nicholas did not want to chance that.

So he packed up and left that place, taking with him a roll of money found in a drawer -- probably Baker's but let him try to prove it. It wasn't much anyway, just enough to pay an installment on his hospital bill and tide him over until he found a job.

He also took the portfolio of photographs and the cameras. They were shared possessions, Baker's and his own, as difficult as that was for him to rationalize. There was nothing rational about it, so it was best not to think on it too long.

Nicholas had himself purchased two or three of the cameras, though it was impossible now to remember which ones. He used them all. And at least half the photos in the portfolio were his. He favored people as his subject matter, portraits and candids. Cole Baker seemed to prefer landscapes and still lifes. Nicholas admired his skill with the interplay of light and shadow, something he had never had the patience to master. Neither of them had lost his soul to Polaroid yet. But maybe it was just the lack of funds that saved them.

The portfolio was like a trophy between them, captured and possessed for a season or two, then returned to the new victor without malice. Baker never harmed the portions of the collection that were his, and Nicholas kept intact those that were Baker's. He took care when using it for a job interview to de-emphasize Baker's work, leaving the best of it behind. He didn't want to get a job on the strength of a talent he didn't have.

He worked his way to St. Louis this time before Baker's pull on him had diminished to the point where he felt safe. There had been a couple of meaningless jobs until this one, which, while not exciting, allowed him to use his knowledge of photography a bit. He looked forward to the customers who asked him to critique their photos and give suggestions on how they could improve them. But they were the exception. Most just plunked down their money and hurried off with their envelopes of prints and new rolls of film.

It was evidence of the emptiness of his existence that customers of any kind were the highlight. Nicholas craved love and human contact, and for all he told himself that avoiding them would also mean avoiding the heartache and torture that came after, he found the craving overwhelming at times.

It was this yearning that drew his attention to the girl he now knew was called Trissa. She transferred busses each afternoon on the corner outside the camera shop, one of a dozen or so college girls who did so.

Trissa was a standout from the first. She stood apart literally, mostly holding herself away from the other girls, her beauty wreathed in brittle loneliness. Like Cynthia's. Like Janey's. She needed him. He knew that from the very start.

It had quickly become a pattern for him to delay the dusting of the window display until three forty-five, about the time when the girls would arrive at the intersection on their first bus. Dusting was a duty that required little concentration yet could be drawn out limitlessly, depending on the punctuality of the second bus.

The few minutes he spent watching over Trissa each day provided the fuel for his imagination. He could save her from whatever sadness kept her so aloof from the others. He could make her smile.

Each evening after work, Nicholas boarded the bus that followed Trissa's route and rode it all the way to the end. He studied the schedule and map he had taken from the rack behind the driver's seat, and carefully walked the streets back to the camera shop. At each intersection, he turned and squinted at the map under the streetlights, looked up and down the cross streets and tried to listen for her with his mind.

Maybe he would catch a glimpse of her at a lighted window. Maybe she would pass him on her way to the corner grocery or the mailbox or walking her dog.

Or maybe she transferred from that bus to yet another and she was still miles away from him.

It didn't matter. He felt so much closer to her than he did when he was home. He felt so much warmer walking on a street she may have walked. Sometimes when he reached the camera shop again, he found he did not have the will to climb into his car and drive the lonely distance to his rented room. Instead he would turn and retrace his steps to the end of the line and back again.

Trissa

In his new blue suit and maroon-striped tie, Bob Kirk whirled Edie onto the dance floor, aware of every admiring female glance turned his way. He was a looker and he knew it and it made Trissa ill to see how her mother basked in his glow. She regretted allowing herself to be recruited as coat check girl for this event. But she had thought the cloakroom would be out of the way and quiet enough to let her read. There was a test on
Silas Marner
on Monday and she was only on chapter four.

Instead, she found her outpost to be in a direct line with the dance floor and the ringside table where her parents polished their public veneer for all their friends and fellow parishioners. Bob Kirk had been the chairperson this year and had steered his committee to what appeared to be a rousing success, despite a raging thunderstorm. The bar was booming, the band was lively, the decorations were perfect, and they probably would make just enough profit to top last year's which would look good in the Sunday bulletin next week.

That Bob Kirk is a whiz of an organizer, people would say. He sure knows how to put on a good show, they would comment, with more truth than any suspected. You must be real proud of your old man, someone was bound to tell Trissa. Yes, real proud, she would lie with a smile that was as good a show as any he could put on.

There was a time when it hadn't been a lie, but that was so long ago now that Trissa was surprised she remembered it. Once upon a time, she had felt lucky to have such a handsome daddy, so tall and dark and warm voiced. She used to love placing her little white-gloved hand in his for their Sunday march up the aisle to their favorite pew. She would try to match his shiny shoes stride for stride and grin smugly back at Lonny who escorted their mother.

She would have the aisle seat again. She would have the pleasure of snuggling between the carved oak of the pew on one side and her Daddy's strong arm on the other. Lonny would be stuck on the end between their mother and a stranger. The little bells at the offering had a hollow, sweet sound in her special little niche, and her Daddy would slip his arm around her and glide her off the smooth wooden seat to her knees beside him, her nose just clearing the back of the bench in front of them. After church, they would go home and while her mother cooked a big Sunday dinner, she and her Daddy would pull out his old portable record player, spin his favorite 45's and dance in the living room. She only remembered happiness with her father's touch back then. It was so long ago.

Trissa was five when things changed. Her cousin Rita came to stay with them that summer. Rita was fourteen, old enough for Trissa to be awed by and young enough for Lonny, at twelve, to have his first crush on. She remembered being intensely jealous of Rita and feeling guilty for it because "Poor Rita, her mother is filled with cancer, just filled with it", and whatever that meant, Trissa knew from her mother's hushed voice, it was very, very bad. Rita's father, who was Edie Kirk's black sheep brother, had long since departed the scene. "Off to Australia. Opportunities are limitless there, you know. He'll send for Rita when we can get in touch with him."

Rita wore lots of makeup, shiny blouses that bulged at the buttons, and pencil slim skirts. Her hair was a mass of black curls and her mouth was always moving, whether chewing Doublemint Gum or chattering endlessly about the parade of boyfriends she had left brokenhearted in Kansas City. She smoked and made no effort to hide it and could match coffee drinking and gossip with her mother cup for cup and tidbit for tidbit. Rita confused the boundaries Trissa placed between adult and child, and Trissa did not know how to treat her. As it turned out, it was a confusion others in her family struggled with as well.

After Rita came, Trissa no longer scrambled out of bed early while her parents slept on Saturday morning to spend a cozy few hours nestled against Lonny while he read to her from his comic books. On the first Saturday after Rita, Trissa awoke to find that she had stolen her place. Rita and Lonny lay sprawled in their pajamas and robes on the living room floor taking turns reading the dialog in the characters' voices. Trissa stayed for a while to listen, but it just wasn't the same.

But it was Rita's effect on her father that shattered Trissa the most. As if it meant nothing at all, Rita waltzed down the aisle on Sunday next to him and sat her tight-skirted bottom in Trissa's special place on the pew.

It was Rita who plopped herself on the front seat on her daddy's regular weekend outings to the hardware store. Trissa was relegated to the back. Forgotten were Trissa's lessons on the names of all the hammers and saws, and Trissa would just whisper them to herself as she tagged along behind. "Ballpeen, claw, tack, framing, sledge. Keyhole, jig, coping, crosscut, hack." Someday her father might care again that she remembered them.

He never did. As the summer of Rita wore on, Trissa quit going with them at all and found what comfort could be had in her dolls and roller skates. It was the latter's betrayal that snapped the last thread of trust she had in her daddy.

On a summer evening when her mother had gone to Ladies Guild, Trissa and her skates had a tangle with the curb and her knees and elbows paid the price. Whimpering softly, she ran to find her father. Maybe he would have a kiss to spare to make them better. She heard his muffled laughter in the old sewing room that Rita had been given as her bedroom. Behind the closed door, she heard Rita's voice as well. Later Trissa would learn of the green-eyed monster but she would always picture jealousy as red. It was in a red haze of anger she heard Rita pleading, "Please, oh please. Yes, that feels so good," and her father's warm, rumbly "Rita, my baby, my baby."

The sidewalk burns on her knees and elbows became as nothing to the hate that had scorched through Trissa's heart at that moment. Trissa was her daddy's baby, not Rita. Not Rita! Prepared to scream that challenge, she pushed the door open. She didn't understand what she saw there. She couldn't. She was so confused that it hurt. Her daddy didn't see her at all, but Rita turned her head and smiled at her, a smile that said "
He's mine. He's mine now. And you can't have him back. Never.
" Trissa shut the door and ran.

After all these years and all the times her father had disappointed her, she was surprised how much she still hated Rita. But Rita was only fourteen then. For all her adult ways, she was no older than Trissa had been when she regained her father's attention in a way she never wanted. Rita was a child, just a child, and maybe not to blame at all...

"Silas and Eppie. Silas and Eppie," she scolded herself and bent her head over her book once more.

Alone in the house after the dance, her parents out seeking further entertainment, Trissa was determined to put aside her memories. What good did they do her? The only thing she could control was the future. By just the light over the sink, she sliced some cold roast beef and made a sandwich, tossed a handful of potato chips on the plate beside it and poured a glass of milk. Meal enough for the few moments she could spare away from her book. She had to get good grades on this test. If the future was to be hers to control, she couldn't chance failing her freshman year.

Anxiety from just considering the possibility tied a knot in her throat that made her look at the sandwich in horror, its whiteness swimming like a blank page on an exam. Suddenly, she was not sure if she would be able to fill in even one answer. Abandoning the sandwich and milk, she took the chips, an apple, and a paring knife to her room. Cutting the apple into slivers, she alternated bites of it with the chips, sweet and salt to keep her alert, as she sprawled across the bed with her books and notes.

The bed was a mistake, and soon Trissa slipped into a sleep of fitful dreams. The dreams wove sounds of the waking world into their fabric so that when she heard her father's footsteps in the hall, she dreamed they were Professor Edwin's coming to collect her test paper.

"But I'm not finished. I need more time," Trissa told her in her dream.

"That's a shame," Professor Edwin said shaking her head and frowning. "You should have studied harder. You should..." Professor Edwin's voice trailed off and was replaced by Bob Kirk's slurred bellow.

"Teresha Marie, God dammit, wake up! Do you think I pay good money for food so you can let it rot on the sink? I'll teasch you to--"

Startled awake, with the wisps of her dream still clinging like cobwebs, Trissa clambered to her feet. But her father hovered closer than she expected, blocking her path, and she stumbled into his chest.

Suddenly, she felt his strong grasp on her arms, clinging as much to steady his own drunken instability as her clumsiness. He held her tighter than necessary as if loosening his hold might allow her to float away from him.

Her mind flashed a vivid memory of herself as a child, held tight then lifted and tossed, giggling and breathless, into the air, free falling through space to be caught, safe and warm in her daddy's arms, then tossed again. High, so high she thought she would touch the ceiling, then down, down, falling. She trusted him to catch her back then, so long ago now, so long ago. "Daddy, I..."