Death of an Artist (5 page)

Marnie had not been able to fault her. She had done the same thing at that age. The tall man with the strange walk who had approached her counter that day in Macy's had come to a dead standstill when he heard her talking to her customer. As soon as the customer departed with her purchase, he had rushed to the counter.

“Indiana!” he had said. “Me, too. A farm near Indianapolis. Where was your home?”

“Near Muncie,” she had said, taken aback by his evident happiness, his wide smile, his eagerness.

“What time do you get off? I'll wait for you. Just talk. I want to talk to someone from Indiana.”

He was there that day, and every day for the next nine, and on the tenth day she left New York with him to go make a new life on the West Coast, a distant place that she had only the vaguest idea about. They were married in Las Vegas, and eight months later Stef was born.

During those ten days she'd learned that Ed had been in the navy for twenty years. He still had his sea legs, he told her. His folks had died while he was at sea, and his uncle Oscar had begged him to come to Oregon to help out with his fishing business. Oscar owned three fishing boats, he was getting on, and he wanted Ed, a sailor, to take over the business one day.

Marnie sipped wine with a soft smile on her face. She had not dared tell her mother a thing for a long time, not that Ed was nearly twenty years older than she was, that he had been a sailor, that she got pregnant before a wedding, none of it. Ed had treated her like a delicate, rare china doll from day one until he died twenty-two years later. She never told her mother that, either, but said merely that he was good to her.

But Stef had brought home her young lover, and that had made a difference. Marnie and Ed had felt great sympathy for the boy, so out of his depth, so bewildered and frightened, but she knew it would not have changed Stef if he had stayed. Her daughter was what she was, beyond the power of young love to change. Frankie, Frank now, had become the head of the design department in a big ad agency in Los Angeles, and he had supported Van through the years, was still helping with her medical education. After she went to college in Portland, he had visited her often, but he had never returned to Silver Bay. Van was fond of him.

Marnie and Ed had worried about Stef from the time she was an infant. Counselors and doctors had diagnosed everything from manic-depressive to a sociopathic personality. Now they had new tag words, Marnie thought: hyperactive, bipolar, attention deficit, narcissistic, egotistical … They had tried tranquilizers, which Stef had refused to take after one or two times. She had not been able to paint, she had complained. Talk therapy had been fine with her, she liked having attention focused that way, but it had not changed anything. Stef was what she was. And that was that.

The thought was followed quickly by another that was more disquieting. Stef would call Dale. After her boy lover left her, no man had been allowed to set the agenda again. Stef decided when he would go, whether just a live-in lover or a spouse. Stef made that decision. This was not over yet.

Marnie hated that Stef believed that Marnie had deliberately usurped her place with both Van and Josh, but she could do little about it. Marnie had filled a vacuum. The first time Van had come over to spend the night, she had been carrying a small Barbie overnight bag and asked, exactly the way Josh had asked, if she could sleep there. When Van found herself pregnant, she had come to Marnie to weep and tell her about it. Stef still didn't know who the father was, although Van had confessed to Marnie that he was married, a doctor, and her instructor, and that she had loved him. She had broken it off, although he had wanted to keep her in a separate apartment, his second family, she had said, weeping. He had set up a trust for Josh. She promised to tell Josh when he was mature. He would need to know his genetic heritage, she had said, weeping in Marnie's arms.

Marnie sighed deeply, drained her wineglass, and rose to go check on Stef. Her bedding was a jumble almost past straightening out, and she had not yet slipped into the deep sleep that would finally overtake her. Marnie sat in a chair near the bed for a long time wondering about the glitch in Stef's brain that refused to be quieted all day and for much of the night. Nothing had ever been found in tests, but something refused to yield until utter exhaustion set in.

It was late when Marnie finally left the rear house to enter her own house. Tipper had long since buried his bone and was more than ready to leap onto her bed and settle down. And so was she, Marnie thought tiredly. So was she.

 

4

O
N
F
RIDAY
AFTERNOON
Tony and Dave stood back from the two chairs they had finished that week. The chairs glowed with a soft shine and were smooth as satin to the touch. Tony nodded approval and said, “They're good.”

Dave grunted. Tony had given up trying to interpret Dave's grunts, which could mean anything from deep disapproval to equally deep satisfaction.

That time it seemed to mean satisfaction. The chairs had been finished weeks earlier than Dave had expected, and no outsider could have told where his work left off and Tony's started, although he knew, and he suspected that Tony did, too. Dave went to the back storeroom and returned with two old blankets.

“We'll wrap them and stow them in the truck,” he said. “In the morning I'll take them in to Willoughby.”

After they secured the chairs in the truck and they were once again in the shop, Dave glanced around and started to move toward his bench.

“I'll straighten up,” Tony said, and Dave grunted again.

He went to the door, paused there, and said, “You do good work, Tony. See you Monday.”

It was the first time Dave had acknowledged that, Tony reflected, and said, “Thanks.”

One of their longer conversations, he thought when Dave had left and he was alone in the shop. Their talk about the work didn't qualify as conversation, and there was absolutely no small talk, no gossip, nothing else. He had quickly become used to Dave's tuneless hum, white noise, and again and again Tony had been so concentrated on the work itself that conversation would have been a nuisance, no matter how little real attention it demanded.

Now and then he strolled through town after he closed up the shop, and people nodded, and gradually the nods had been accompanied by a word or two. Several times he had gone down to the Sand Dollar Inn for a beer and chatted with the bartender Bill, meaningless chatter that people did with a bartender. And once Chief Will Comley had come in and sat next to him at the bar. In the next hour Tony had listened to nonstop talk and had come away knowing a brief history of the town and many of its residents. He had learned that Bill was married to Molly Barnett, who worked for Marnie in the gift shop, that Molly's sister had five daughters who helped out there from time to time. Beverly the librarian played piano at a nonsectarian church in Newport and read a book a day, or so she claimed. Will talked about coast storms and landslides, the city council that didn't do squat, how Silver Bay was safe from clear-cutting up the mountain because all that property up on the ridge past Marnie's house was a retreat for Catholic priests. They never appeared in town, but now and then a dark minibus went to Portland, likely to take someone to the airport or bring a new priest to the retreat. They went to Newport for supplies, and only one of them ever talked. A vow of silence or something, Will had said with a shake of his head. But they kept that land safe from the loggers and landslides up there. “God's ways,” he said, “are mysterious.”

Will looked like a cherub, Tony thought, with round, smooth cheeks, double chins, even dimpled fingers, but Tony suspected Chief Will was shrewder than he appeared. He looked over strangers who entered the restaurant or bar almost exactly the same way Tony did. He assumed that Will had looked into Tony's past, his record, had called his captain to check out this particular stranger who had come to be hired by his friend Dave.

Will had suggested that much during that one-hour course in history and biography. “Must seem awfully tame around here after working so long in New York,” he had said, nursing a stein of beer.

“Relaxing,” Tony had said.

“I guess you need some relaxing, what you've been through and all.”

Tony laughed and did not respond.

Will got around to mentioning Stef. “She's a wild one. Her hair color changes the way some people change their shirts. Red, blue, green…” He shook his head. “How a good woman like Marnie ended up with such a daughter is one of those mysteries, I guess. Marnie's a fine woman, and Ed was a good man, dead twenty-five years now. We all thought Marnie would find another husband. She was a real good-looking woman, still is, but I guess trying to keep the lid on Stef was enough of a job for her, that and running the shop. Then it looked like Stef's daughter would be like her mother. Vanessa, but she goes by Van. Van and Stef, what kind of names are they for women? She came back with a little baby and no man, but she straightened herself out and is fixing to be a doctor. Stef's never without a man, if you know what I mean. One at a time, you've got to give her that much, but she doesn't stay alone very long. Soon as she boots out that Portland dude, probably she'll come after you. New man, unattached, right age. You'll see. Folks say she's a real good artist. Me, I don't know about art, so I couldn't say one way or other.”

The monologue would have continued into the second hour, Tony suspected, if he hadn't said he had to be going. He left Will talking to the bartender, who was paying little or no attention. On the way to his apartment Tony regretted that he had not picked up one of the cards with the name and address of the gallery where Stef's art was on display. Her painting of Newport Bay had impressed him, and he wanted to see more of her work.

That Friday after Dave left, Tony cleaned the shop and stood for a moment considering whether he would return after he had some dinner. With all of Saturday and Sunday at his disposal, there was little point in working that night, he decided. Back to the apartment, maybe watch a movie on TV, read, relax. For the first time in his adult life, he had time to make such decisions and feel good about them. That was a gift he had never expected to receive, and he was grateful for it. He was sleeping well, a deep, restful sleep, with no traffic noise, no airplanes overhead, no middle-of-the-night emergencies, no difficult investigation eating away at him day and night. His hip still ached, but not constantly and not with the intensity as months before. His knee seldom was a problem. This place was turning out to be exactly the right place, as if all his life it had been here waiting for him, possibly calling him, and he had been deaf and blind.

He was ready to leave the shop when the door opened and Stef walked in. He knew who she was the minute he saw her, before she said, “Hello, Tony. I'm Stef.”

“If you're looking for Dave, he already left.”

“I know. I saw him drive home. I'm looking for you. I want to show your box in Marnie's shop. Dave said it's up to you.”

“Where your painting is? In that display?”

She nodded. “I'll change it Monday, hang something else, show something else. I want your box in the group. I like it.”

“Thanks.”

She looked garish with pink hair, her lips exactly the same hot pink, too much eye makeup. Every fingernail was a different color, the full spectrum of color. She was wearing slim jeans that accentuated her thinness, and a bulky, black sweatshirt that somehow seemed to emphasize it. Her wrists were nearly skeletal, as were her hands. He watched her silently as she moved about the shop touching the tools, the lathe, and stopped in front of his bench, where he had covered a piece he was working on with a beach towel. She pulled it aside, glanced at him, and said, “That's yours, isn't it?”

He nodded. It was a tabletop with a tulip inlay pattern. Parts of the slender inlaid stem bulged slightly.

She touched it. “What's wrong with it? It's too big or something.”

“Drying. It will shrink and I'll smooth it down the rest of the way.”

She replaced the towel and looked at him. “How can you make wood bend like that? Why doesn't it break?”

“I soak it until it gets pliable.”

“I wondered how you did the box. It's beautiful. How much is it?”

“Not for sale.”

She nodded. “Good. Art isn't a commodity, a product priced by the pound.”

“I was very impressed by
Newport Bay
. That's a beautiful painting. Where is your work on display?”

“It isn't.” She was moving toward the door. “You didn't answer my question. Can I include the box at the shop?”

“Yes.”

“I'll change things on Monday morning. Get ready for spring break, a lot of visitors. Drop in and have a look later.” She opened the door, then turned again to face him. “Come by the house tomorrow after you get through here. I'll give you a private showing.”

“Okay,” he said after a moment.

“The rear house, not the other one. That's Marnie's. I'll have her over, too. Time for you to start socializing or something.” She left as swiftly as she had come, and he leaned against the bench and laughed softly. Stef, the wild one, he thought, didn't beat around the bush.

*   *   *

H
E
LOCKED
UP
and walked toward his apartment a few blocks away, but then veered off to take a side street another block to the motel access road. Across it he had found a way down to the shoreline, basalt rocks that were almost like deliberate stairs, and he descended it that sunny afternoon. Here was a little beach, no more than ten feet from the cliffs to the water when the tide was out, and gone when it was in. But he didn't intend to go down all the way, only to a point where he had found basalt ledges, perfect for sitting in sunshine, protected from the wind, which seemed almost as constant as the incessant waves. The ledge was sun warmed, welcoming, and he sank down to contemplate waves breaking against a twenty-foot-high cliff, no more than thirty feet away, the southern barrier to the minuscule beach. Sea and cliff were engaged in a battle the cliff was destined to lose in time.