SUMMER of FEAR (32 page)

I told him an innocent girl was being framed, along
with an innocent—in this regard, anyway—father. I told him that Parish was
abusing his power with a skill and depravity that challenged the imagination.
Chester said no.

I told him, as I flew through the traffic on
Interstate 5, that I was helpless against Parish and his official standing,
that only an honest and genuine member of the law-enforcement community could
provide true resistance to Parish's outlandish— but effective—machinations.

"I
can't and won't," said Chester.

Amber yanked the phone from my hand and pleaded an
eloquent case to Chet. It might have been the best acting in the world, but I
knew that Amber was as serious now as I had ever seen her, that her desire to
see Alice's murder redressed was tied intimately with her own desire to believe
that she, Amber Mae Wilson, was capable of loving someone other than herself.

Chet must
have said no.

Amber literally slumped against the door, her eyes
searching my own in obstinate disbelief.

"I'm sorry," said Chet Singer. "I'm
very, very sorry."

Then he hung up.

During the silence that followed, I could feel the
engine beneath me, the tires on the asphalt, the wind outside the glass, and
the continuing speechless scrutiny of Amber Mae Wilson. The suburbs crept by on
either side of the freeway, and I noted that most of the lights in most of the
houses were on, discouragement to the Midnight Eye, and wondered how many
fingers rested inches from how many triggers, how many new dead bolts had been
set and reset and reset again, how many nightmares were ending in abrupt and
sweat-drenched lurchings, how many fatigued eyes were fixed drowsily on
paperback books or scanning the relief of acoustic ceilings in lamplight, how
many children were sleeping in the beds of their parents while mother and/or
father wondered dimly just what had got wrong in a county that had once
promised prosperity, security, a nominally bright future.

"Where have you been?" I asked.

"That is not your business."

"Then here's something that is. It's time to cut
the shit, Amber. You sent two thugs to scare Grace back into your power. You're
holding money over her. You ought to see what they’d to her. She's scared to
death of you."

"I had no idea," she answered quietly,
"that Grace's caparity for delusion had reached such heights."

"Well, now you know."

"Could you please tell me who these thugs
are?"

"Cute. You hired them, so tell me."

"I hired a licensed private investigator to
inform me my own daughter's whereabouts
and...
habits. I hired him to see if he could find the netsuke Grace took from me. I
hired him to tell her in no uncertain terms that she was on the verge of being
written out of her trust—
because she refused even to acknowledge me as a
person, let alone as her own mother!"

Another long silence, then Amber said, quite flatly, "May I tell
you a story about when I was young?"

"It's a little late for stories."

Amber's fist smacked into my shoulder, then my thigh, then landed
squarely on my jaw. I kept both hands on the wheel. She hit me on the ear, then
the jaw again, then brought both her hands into play, tattooing the side of my
face with sharp blows. I finally steadied the wheel with my left, then
backhanded her with my right, a swat that landed squarely on the side of her
face and sent a fleshy report through the car. She hesitated, slugged me hard
on the shoulder again, then backed against the door, crying quietly.

"I will not be held responsible for Alice," she said. "I
will not."

"Fine."

"You must realize, Russell, that Grace is lying about almost
everything."

"She is most definitely not lying about the burns on her
feet."

"Burns?"

"Continue, Amber."

For the next twenty minutes, Amber built her case against our daughter:
Grace had learned to lie while learning to talk; she had never answered to
anyone but herself; she was self-serving, evasive, and capable of small malice;
she had increasingly lived in a "dream world" since the age of four
or five; she talked to "characters" who were not visible-, she invented
tragic histories for nonexistent friends; she spun tales of classmates and
neighbors engaged in preposterous behavior that Amber, upon investigation, had
rarely found to be true; she seemed to derive almost as much enjoyment from
being caught at a lie as from getting away with one.

"She can change the truth faster than I can
change expressions, Russ."

"I wonder where she learned to do that."

"Go ahead. Believe her. It's a game where she
forces a choice. But I've been down this road enough times to know where the
curves are."

"And you will not be held responsible."

"You've become cruel, Russell."

"I go with my strengths."

I sped down the interstate, the suburbs still
sprawling every direction as far as the eye could see. As far as the Midnight
Eye could see, I thought. What a hell this place had become,

"I'm not trying to exonerate myself, Russell.
I'm just trying to tell you there are explanations for what I did
in...
another life." "What did
you do
in the other life?"

"For one thing, I ignored my own
conscience."

"And Alice was a place for you to start."

Amber was silent for a long moment. "Yes. Yes,
she was. You know, I was always so ashamed of her. One of the reason I left
home at sixteen was so I would never have the time become like her. And now,
Russ, when I say those words, I feel small and foolish and terribly selfish
again."

Her daughter's mother, I thought, but did not say it.
"What was so bad about her?"

"Nothing that I can see now, but then, when I
was a little girl,
well..."

"Well what?"

Amber breathed deeply. "I don't know how it
happened but since I was very small, my family frightened me. They seemed
like... like...
imposters, or beings from
another planet.

Fultz. What a
crude and backwoods name. Alice was two years older than I. Daddy was a roofer,
always covered with asphalt that stuck in the cracks of his fingers and never
went away. Mom took in cleaning. She had this dress I remember, a cotton/ poly
shift kind of thing with vertical stripes of green and pink, and a little pink
tie at the top, and gathered short sleeves that pinched her arms tight. It was
always clean. She wore it all the time, it seemed. I hated its ugliness, its
shapelessness, the way it made her look aged and hopeless and unattractive.
Alice wanted to be like Mom. She'd help with the washing and ironing. She'd
wear the same kind of dress. They both liked wearing those fake leather sandals
that have a band over the toes and a sole that wears out and slaps against your
heel when you walk. So,
slap-slap-slap,
Alice and Mom going from the
washer to the drying line,
slap-slap-slap,
Mom and Alice going back to
the porch when the wash was hung. And the way Mom held the clothespins in her
teeth, fanned out like wooden cigarettes, and Alice, of course, chomping her
own collection,
slap-slap- slap,
back to the ironing boards. One time I
remember sitting in the shade of the porch and watching them. They were side by
side at the clothesline, moving the pins from their mouths to the clothes. Mom
was heavy by then, and Alice still very thin, but I swear I could see my
sister's posture becoming old even then, and she couldn't have been much more
than twelve. I had a magazine on my lap, a
Cosmopolitan,
I believe, and
on the open page before me was a picture of a woman and her daughter running
across a street in Paris, the mom holding down her hat, the daughter swinging a
tiny shiny purse, both of them smiling and the men in the cafe looking most
appreciatively after them. And I knew I would be that woman—one of those
women—someday. This may sound like a vanity beyond vanities, Russ, but when I
held a good heavy magazine in my lap as a girl and I smelled the smooth paper
and looked at the attractive print and saw those advertisements, I simply knew---I
understood
that was where I belonged. I was positive. No
slap slap-slap.
I remember I cried then because I was so far away from Paris. And Russ, I'm
crying now when I think about what a rotten brat I was, and when I think about
Alice. How could anyone do that to her? She was an innocent, Russ. I flew her
out to try to begin again, to become the sister I never was, and got her
killed."

"What were you going to do with her?"

"Love her! Treat her well. See if she or Mom and Dad or anybody
needed anything. Start over! Jesus, Russell, is that so hard to
understand?"

"How many of her boyfriends did you steal?"

"Shit on you, Russell."

"I imagine one was enough. One, Amber? One special guy of Alice's?"

She slapped me again, quite hard.
"He
tried. I wouldn’t. It
doesn't matter."

"Is that why you couldn't trust your own daughter when she got
older? Because your sister didn't trust you?"

She looked out the window for a long time. "There maybe some truth
in that."

"How much truth?" "None of your
business how much. What you need know is that I'd become proud of her. She
turned out pretty by the pictures she sent me, although she was poor and never
found a good job. And you know something? In the last few months, I'd begun to
feel proud of all of us. Proud of our poverty, proud of the ugly dresses, proud
of the fact that we were what we were. And what I wanted more than anything was
to help Alice and tell her what a fool I'd been, and that I was proud I be a
Florida Fultz. The last job she had was in a bowling alley cocktailing out by
Orlando. I was feeling damned proud to have a sister who was humble enough to
cocktail at a damned bowling alley. I believed there was a lot I could learn
from her. I wanted
her...
forgiveness."

By then, Amber was sobbing again. "And you know what made the
change begin? Grace did. I looked back on our lives and I looked at all the
fancy schools I dragged her in and out of, all the expensive tutors, all the
elaborate meals in European capitals, all the attention we got, all the travel
and excitement and money, money, money, all the paparazzi and covers and
suntans and rubdowns and mud baths, and I couldn't remember one moment when we
did anything like stand by a clothesline with pins in our mouths, just doing
something together because it had to be done and making the best of it. I
actually asked her, at one point, not to call me Mother. To call me only Amber.
I lost Grace, Russell, more than you did. There was a point when she leveled
those brown eyes of yours on me and I saw that she had distanced herself, that
she feared me the same way I feared my own mother, and she was gone for me. The
only thing I could think to do was hold on harder, keep her closer. Didn't
work. Do you know that for the last six months she's never once returned a
call? I do not exist for her. It breaks my heart."

It was my turn then for silence. Her words seemed so alien, her voice
so, well, genuine. "Thanks for the updated Fultz family bio," I said.
"The last I was told, Daddy was a banker and Mommy a beauty queen."

"It...
it was easier to believe an appearance."

"So what appearance was it that let you keep me away from my own
daughter when she was a girl?"

"Oh, Russell, no."

"If you're coming clean, include me."

She sighed significantly, perhaps a tad histrionically. "The idea
of my daughter being brought up sheltered and conservative in boring old
Orange County. Surrounded by dull, conventional, materialistic people.
Inexperienced, untraveled, unsophisticated. Gad, I sound bad. But I wanted her
to be a true princess in this world."

"Unpolluted by a common sheriff's deputy hauling down twenty-six grand
a year."

"Yes."

"But you married Martin Parish, who later in life thought highly
enough of you to try to kill you."

"Marty was interim. A way to get you out of my
life."

"Damn."

"I know."

I thought for a moment. "Well, thanks for saying so. I suspected it
was that, but it clarifies the stupidity of the whole notion to hear you admit
it."

"Pound away, Russell. This is your big
moment."

"How come nothing real is ever good enough for
you'

"I've always considered it a fault of
mine."

"You can make up only so much before your head hits the brick wall
of what is."

"I know that now. And Russell, for what it's worth, my head hurts
awful bad."

"You still haven't answered my first question. Where were you
yesterday, last night, and today?"

Amber shook her head. "Gad, Russell. I met with my attorney to
rewrite my will. Does that meet with your approval"

"It didn't take a day and a half."