Warpaint (18 page)

“Good God. I'd better talk to the police.”

Meg glanced around. “Are you safe here? They just fined her, is all – maybe we ought to call the police now.”

“I know Evelyn. She won't come here.”

“That's good. Still oughta call the cops. Man, I could sure use a smoke.”

“Why don't you? I'm sure I'll be here another hour at least. Or more.”

“Left them at the barn.”

“Take mine – pack's in the car. I'm going to quit anyway.”

Megan gave her a quizzical look. “You are? Why?”

“It's going to sound silly –”

“Silly? It's smoking that's silly. And a bad habit, but I've never been able to quit. I'd worry more about that crazy ass woman –”

“The thing is, Meg, I never smoked before I started riding. C.C. thinks I have a death wish. But that's not it. That's not it at all, and Evelyn showing up today settles it.”

“What? Why?”

“Because she's threatened to kill me before. Don't worry, I
will
call the police – my point is, I don't want to die. I don't have a death wish. But I think I've been trying, in some weird way, to reconnect with my mother – my mother's people. Tobacco was sacred to them, and so is the horse. But my mother was –” she hesitated, then chose the American name “– part Chippewa, and they were fishermen mostly, and even if they did use tobacco, they also harvested wild rice and corn and maple syrup. Beaver, deer, wolves, the elk, the deer, the moose, and dogs mattered to them, not horses. But Mom taught me really very little about her – my – heritage. She wanted me to grow up white like my father, be an American. And I did, more or less. But I guess it's gotten to me, that loss of someone she was, and of a way of being. It's been gathering inside, like rain –”

“You!” said Meg, tugging gently at Quiola's toe. “You are darn right, that is one very silly reason to start smoking. My excuse is no better, though. When I was thirteen, I just wanted to look cool.”

Quiola laughed. “Go on, then, sneak out of here for a smoke! Don't worry about me. Evelyn is crazy, but she wouldn't dare come in here. I'll be fine.”

 

♦

 

With the top of her borrowed, bright yellow, brand-new VW bug down, C.C. drove at a fair clip up the two-lane Route 6, snaking out across quiet empty woodland of Cape Cod to Provincetown. It was early summer, 1989, and C.C. was in high spirits, exhilarated by the fine day and the unusual prospect of a whole summer in P-town. She hummed to herself as the warm, lively air whipped her hair about her face.

The woods grew sparse as the highway dipped toward the harbor town, and the tang of the sea, now close at hand, grew sharp. She took 6 only so as far as Howland, then steered the beetle down to Bradford; she was to take possession of an old house that her friends, Pete and Mark, two writers, owned and had lent to her for the summer – they were on an anniversary trip to Florence. The house sat on the corner of Priscilla Allen and Bradford, a two-story white clapboard with hunter green shutters and trim, the front lawn wholly given over to a mass of variegated wildflowers, honeysuckle, cornflowers and Queen Anne's lace. Turning the bug onto Priscilla Allen, she bumped into the sandy driveway behind the house, and parked near the detached garage. She checked the time: ten a.m. Quiola's ferry wasn't due – but then she glanced up sharply into the rear-view to see someone sitting on the back stoop of her borrowed house, curled up inside a striped woolen blanket of yellow, red and orange. The person stirred, stretched and before C.C. had time to register anything like surprise, Quiola's dark eyes had found her own in the rear-view mirror.

“What the –” she said, nearly throwing herself out of the car.

Quiola grasped the wrought iron railing and pulled herself to her feet, yawning. She slipped the blanket off her shoulders. Dressed in a sweatshirt, blue jeans and Converse sneakers, she looked like a kid.

“Heya!” she called.

“What are you doing here so soon?”

“I couldn't wait. I had nothing to do, no one to see in Boston, and – I just didn't want to stay there – it's too full of memory. This is better. I've never been out to the Cape before. Never got around to it, when I was in college.”

“How long have you been waiting?”

“I took the ferry over last night, found a nice place to eat and, you know, wash up, then I came here.”

“Here? For the
night
?”

“It was mild, and the stars are good company.”

“Apart from how uncomfortable concrete is, weren't you afraid?”

“Of what? Local strays?”

“You could put it that way, I guess.”

Quiola followed C.C. inside the house. “You are too much! I was on private property, and this town is hardly full of mean streets. Wow, this is nice,” she said, glancing around as C.C. switched on the overhead to show an old-fashioned kitchen, white with blue trim and blue rose wall-paper. The room opened, through an arch, to the living room in which dark-oak bookshelves of books dominated.

“I've only been here once before,” said C.C. “Mark and Peter bought it after Peter's novel became a finalist for the PEN Faulkner Award, and he got that two book contract from FSG, remember?”

Quiola nodded. “Yes, of course I remember. I went to the congratulations party in the City. Besides, it's where I met Luke.”

“That's right. But – Quiola, you must be stiff as a board from a night on a porch, and I bet you could use a bathroom?”

“Well – now that you mention it –” and so together they found the first floor bathroom, set off the front vestibule. While Quiola tidied up, C.C. went back outdoors for her luggage and Quiola's duffel, which she'd been using as a pillow.

Vagrant
, thought C.C. happily,
little vagrant
. She lugged the duffel inside to Quiola, who was peering at a glass-fronted bookshelf.

“So much Faulkner,” she said.

“Mark's idol. What have you got in this bag, stones?”

“No, but I stuffed a whole summer into it. Where should I put it?”

“That depends on where you want to spend the nights.”

Quiola's face went still, her dark eyes became, if possible, darker. “I thought we'd already settled this, C.C. You know that just because Luke isn't here doesn't mean I'm well, available.” She put the duffel back down. “I'll leave, if I must. I can turn around and go back home –”

“– to a man.”

“Yes. Back home to my husband. I was dating a man when you first met me, a thousand years ago, now, don't you remember? Do we have to do this again? You know I wouldn't have agreed to come – not if we were going to have to go all through this again. I cannot be who you want me to be – I'm not who you've dreamt me, I never was. You made me up, while the real live me wasn't looking!”

“I love you,” said C.C. simply. “I always have, and I always will.”

“Christ.”

“But it's true – you can't tell me you never loved me. I won't believe it!”

“Don't shout at me.”

“I'm not shouting. I guess I just can't –”

“– believe me?” Quiola shook her head. “But you know Luke! How can you think I'd lie to him? I tell him everything. He trusts me. We trust each other.”

“You lied to me once before.”

“No, I didn't. I never lied – I just, well, I just left things out – for a while. I thought we'd done with this, years ago! Evelyn was a mistake, a terrible, terrible mistake, C.C., and I'd give everything,
everything
, to have not made it. But I did. How many years do I have to
beg
you to believe me?”

“Luke's not a mistake, then.”

Quiola stared at her ex, her face flushing. “No. If that's what you were hoping, then I'm truly sorry. You should have told me. And I think, now, that I should leave.”

“Don't go. It's all right. Let's find you a room.”

“I think I should go,” she repeated.

C.C. took a deep breath, and then let it out, visibly deflating herself. She perched on the arm of an armchair, and smoothed back her hair. “Please don't leave. I'm sorry. You're right, I shouldn't have, it's not fair of me. Not fair to Luke, either – he trusts me, too. So please, I'm offering my apology. It won't happen again.”

“Why can't you just let me go?”

The older woman closed her eyes and laughed unhappily. “Love.”

“C.C., I love you. You know that. But I'm in love with –”

“– Luke, and have been, for some time. Yes, I know it. I saw it. I do believe it, even if part of me just won't behave. But I will. I'll be an adult. I'll behave.” She opened her eyes. “Let's go upstairs.”

“I don't know – maybe it would be better if I did leave. I don't want to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you, even when I left for Berkeley, but I was so young. I just had to – I don't know. I felt I had to break away, I had to find out who I was – not the Quiola you'd made.”

“But I didn't make you up, love. I'm not that inventive.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, sadly, I do. That's the strangest part – I know very well, but then I see you again, and my heart misbehaves me.” She stood. “Come on, let's try to forget it. I promise to be a good girl. Lord knows the both of us could use a quiet working vacation, which is what this is. A quiet. Working. Vacation.”

Quiola picked up her duffel, and the two women went upstairs, talking of other things, of friends and family, of Liz, of safe, shared things, deliberately cordial again. After exploring the two-story extent of their summer retreat, they walked up to Pearl Street and into Provincetown Arts Center – C.C. had been asked to teach a three-week painting workshop there. As they meandered into the pebble-stone courtyard, Quiola said,

“I don't suppose you might have mentioned my work to –”

“No. I can't do that. I told you I couldn't. That's not the way this place operates, or at least I'm not going to make it operate that way, and besides, I did finagle you some studio space.”

Quiola averted her eyes quickly, nodding as they approached what looked to be a door to an office, but turned out to be an auditorium. No one was there, so they went back to the bright, sunlit yard again, this time running into a resident who located for them the main office. And all that morning, as C.C. and she were introduced, given a tour, shown the workshop rooms, the studios, the grounds, Quiola smiled, and was silently polite. No one asked her much of anything, and she assumed C.C. had merely informed the Center that she'd arrive with a friend, rather than with someone who had an MFA from Berkeley and was a Native artist to boot, although she never presumed on her lost heritage, and rarely shared it with anyone. She'd never told Evelyn, thank God. She'd never told Liz Moore, even though Liz lived in the land of her birth and of her mother's people.

Despite her silences, though, Quiola thought she was, after all, someone whom the Center might, perhaps, maybe just might be interested in, despite her lack of fame, but no, because C.C. would not speak the words for her, would not give her those professional words that might have unlocked a few doors, and neither would she speak those words for herself. She had her pride, and she would not seem a beggar.

I'll work
, she thought grimly,
I'll just keep working, as Luke says – it's the process, not the outcome, I don't need to sell, to be celebrated, I just need to live and to work, and that's the chance I have this summer. I don't have to teach, I don't want to sell myself, I can just be and work.

 

♦

 

Rose carried her infant daughter tucked close to her heart in a thick cotton sling of her own devising, snug, safe as she could make the child as she hiked out across the sheer lake rock, making her way toward what whites called the Witch Tree, Manido-Gree-Shi-Gance, spirit-little-cedar, the ancient conifer that grew tough and tenuous from the crevices of the rocks above the Lake, her thick yet spindly root-legs clenched, running bare over the rock, grasping what little earth she could find. The lake wind was up, and Rose knew Kitchigami would be howling. Already the bitter breath of winter had eased; small golden marsh flowers unfurled along the banks of rivers and streams. Moose would mate, and the air would be sharp with love.

To plan to leave Grand Portage had been easy for Rose, but actually leaving, this was where the pain began – she'd had no idea the pain would start inside like this, a shredding that tore first at her throat, tightening it, trapping her inside. If she wasn't careful to keep mending herself, she'd blow away into a thousand pieces and who would nurse Quiola, bring her strong into the world? Not her own mother, Marjorie, who hung in the past like a full moon unwilling to wane. Not Marjorie Otter, who had brought Rose here to this very spot when she'd been ten, to leave an offering to the mandigo. Not the Marjorie Otter who'd forced her daughter to fast at thirteen, who taught her primitive nonsense as knowledge. Primitive rituals, magic, pagan idiocy – it all embarrassed her, at Catholic boarding school and she'd prayed to Our Virgin for release.

Yet here she was, bending to it again, taking her own girl to the spirit-little-cedar, asking for the medicine to help her do this thing, leave and become what she wanted her daughter to be when she grew – strong, alone, free of the past.

C.C. stepped into Quiola's bedroom and kissed her damp forehead. Drugged up on codeine, awkward in her plexiglass cast, Quiola didn't move. C.C. gave the cat a quick chuck under the chin, and left. She pulled a cashmere cap over her baldness, buttoned up her coat, and taking her satchel with her, went out the door, leaving the Carriage House in the quiet, chilly gray dawn. Moby started up smooth, and she backed the car out of the icy drive. The frozen neighborhood was tranquil, silent, the sky overcast as she drove toward Meig's Point, stopping once to snap open her satchel, remove a handful of stamped letters and drop them inside a postbox.

Deprived by distance of Montauk Point, she took Meig's as her consolation prize that morning. Raised beside the Sound, she'd grown up on its beaches, depended on it to be there, waiting, patient, quiet under each successive winter sky.
At least the water
, she told herself,
is still the Sound
. Pulling into the wide, empty lot, she parked; if she were home, she'd be grinding coffee beans, perhaps tasting the caviar she'd bought, attending to Amelia's little demands or stepping down to the “shed” and the smell of oil paint and linseed oil…her cell phone rang, but she let it go as she undressed in the front seat of her creaky white behemoth. Naked, hairless, her flat, knobby-scarred chest dimpling from the cold, she wriggled, clumsy about the steering wheel, back into her coat. A little breathless, she checked the time. Her cell phone rang again. This time, she answered.

“Liz.”

“Ah, thank goodness. Where are you? You sound like you're in a tin can.”

“I am. I'm in the car.”

“At this hour?”

“Needed a ride, that's all. Is something wrong?”

“I just wanted to hear your voice, Charlie. We haven't spoken in a few weeks, and I'm an old woman. I could pop off at any minute. Why haven't you called?”

“I guess I haven't felt much like talking.”

“I see. How is Quiola doing?”

“Ah, the damn fool broke her wrist. Fell off the horse. She's all right otherwise. But I don't know if it's hit her yet – it's her right wrist, so no work for her, unless she can train her left hand.”

“Oh, my. She'll go nuts.”

“I would. But she's a tough cookie. She'll get through it all right.”

“And are you, Charlie? Getting through?”

“Getting through? I am. Yes. Don't worry.”

“You aren't a tough cookie, you know – never were. Stubborn, but not tough.”

“No,” breathed C.C. “I'm glad you called. I didn't realize it, but I needed to hear your voice, too. It gives me courage. But I have to go now.”

“All right. Please take care.”

“I am – bye,” and she folded the phone shut, setting it on top of her pile of discarded clothing. When she opened the car door, the wind sliced right through the coat, but still she felt warm. Grabbing her satchel off the car floor, locking the door, she turned into the wind and walked against it, head bent to keep the sand out of her eyes, cross the boardwalk to that little sheltered nook, half hidden but open to the sea, the same nook where Quiola had gone to recover from her drunk. For a little while she sat huddled there, watching the infinite variety of water. Then she opened her satchel for a brown pill bottle and water. Popping the top off, she cupped all the pills in her palm and downed them with swallows of water, one by one until she couldn't see straight and then, quick, she “shed” the winter coat and lunged into an awkward dash to launch her scarred, diminished body at the cold December Sound with a ferocity only a lover could muster, an ardent arrow of human fury, shot at the frozen heart of a winter sea.

 

♦

 

Quiola woke. She struggled to sit, unused to the drag of the cast on her forearm. For a minute she sat staring like a zombie, thinking,
damn drugs.
Amelia, jostled from her warm spot, jumped down from the bed and when Quiola got up, followed her into the hall, needling in and out between human legs.

“C.C? You awake?”

No answer. Yawning, Quiola went back to her room, and gingerly shrugged into a robe using her one good hand and teeth to tie the belt, then shuffled down the hall to C.C.'s bedroom and knocked. Nothing. She knocked again; opened the door. The bed was made, the room tidy, empty.

Downstairs she found a note on the kitchen counter, next to the coffee pot.

 

 

Amelia mewed, pawing at the free-hanging ends of the terry-cloth robe.

“Stop it, cat,” said Quiola as she turned the coffee pot on, put a slice in the toaster-oven and went to get that morning's
New York Times
, waiting for C.C. to come home, but by lunch, she knew something was wrong. She tried C.C.'s cell, left a message, called the police (who could only say to call back in twenty-four hours) called Megan and then Peter and Mark and then any friend she could think of (except Liz; no need to bother her so far away) but everyone said soothing things like maybe C.C. just wanted some time to herself, wasn't she upset about the show? Or maybe she'd gone Christmas shopping, you know, or to the library, or perhaps she had an appointment she'd forgotten. By suppertime, Quiola called Ted.

 

 

“We had such a nice dinner together –” Quiola said and cleared her throat. “I mean of course she was tired, but happy. The next morning, when she was gone so early like that, I believed her note, she had errands to do, you know, getting ready for the holiday –”

“Quiola, you couldn't have known,” said Liz firmly.

“Maybe –”

“No. Not even guessed. I know she was fine. I spoke to her myself that morning.”

“You did? She seemed okay, didn't she? I mean, the night before, we talked about normal stuff, like should she bother with a garden next spring and so on, though she kept saying to me ‘what a tickle I've got in my throat' when we both knew it wasn't just a tickle. They found Moby in the parking lot, just above Meig's Point. It was all so deliberate. She'd contacted the Hemlock Society. No botch-job for her.”

“She was always thorough. One last installation performance.”

“Oh, Liz how can you –”

“You know I'm right. Those letters she sent that morning only proves it.”

“I can't open mine. I just can't bear it. Why would she do such a thing?“

“As you said, she was deliberate. How's Ted handling it?”

“Bastard.”

“You too? My, my, what has that boy done now?”

“He's contesting the will. I'm just glad Nancy and Tom aren't alive to see this.”

“I wouldn't worry. I'm sure he won't get far.”

“So the lawyer says. In the meantime, I'm going through her work. She was wrong to feel so badly about the show. Kempton & Shelf want more.”

“Of course they do, now they do. Be wise, my dear, for Charlie's sake. Be wise and make the most of this. Remember, suicide sells.”

“That's just gruesome.”

“It may be gruesome,” said Liz. “It's also the truth.”

 

♦

 

“Just what is it with you?” C.C. asked Ted, both of them home on Montauk for the holiday season, 1956, she from Smith, he from his first year at Yale Medical school. He'd been picking at her all day about every little thing. Now as they hung bulbs and ornaments on the tree in the living room, he'd just told her she had no idea –

“…how to make a tree look balanced.”

“Is that what they taught you at Amherst?”

He moved the little star she'd just hung to a higher branch. In the next room the phonograph played Nat King Cole's ‘The Christmas Song', a rich, muffled soundtrack for their argument.

“God, you are conceited,” she said, snatching the little star and putting it back where she'd first hung it.

He stared at her.

She put her hands on her hips.

“I learned a lot at Amherst,” he said.

“Bet you did.”

He shook his head, took the little star off the branch again and hung it as high as he could reach. The tree was a seven and half-footer; Ted was six foot one and C.C., a foot smaller than he.

“You bastard,” she muttered.

“What kind of language is that for a young lady?” said Nancy, standing at the threshold of the room, with a tray of four cocoa mugs.

“Oh, Mother,” said C.C. “Ted's being impossible.”

Nancy put her tray down carefully on the coffee table. “Ted?”

“I'm trying,” he said, “to make the tree look nice. Balanced.”

Nancy eyed the half-dressed fir. “Balanced?”

“See? Mom doesn't care!”

“Of course the tree needs balance,” said Ted. “Something around here does.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” asked C.C.

“Nothing.”

“Well, I think the tree looks fine,” said Nancy. “Where's your father?”

“He went to fetch the Gaineses from the station.”

“Bother,” said Nancy, frowning.

“No kidding,” said Ted.

“His cocoa will get cold,” said Nancy, still frowning. “Here, you take your cups. I'll put ours back in the pot, keep it warm.” She picked up the tray. “I guess I'll split mine with Liz, if she wants some.”

“She won't. Too sweet, said Ted.”

“Is it?” asked Nancy, looking at the remaining mugs on the tray. “I'm sorry.”

“It's fine,” said C.C. “Just right.”

“Hmm,” said Nancy as she headed back to the kitchen.

“Why'd you tell her that? This is the way she always makes it.”

He shook his head. “Never mind.”

“Like I said – what is it with you?”

“Nothing! Nothing.”

“You sure are being –”

“Look,” he said, putting his mug down. A drop of hot chocolate jumped to the tabletop. “I just want a little normality around here, okay? Just a normal family, a nice normal Christmas – like ‘Father Knows Best.'”

“Mom makes hot chocolate, Dad picks up aunt and uncle from the train, sissy and brother hang ornaments on the tree. How much more normal could you get?”

He glared at her. “She's not my aunt. Not yours, either.”

C.C. rolled her eyes. “She might as well be, by now.”

“Well, she's not. And I'm tired of her. Why can't she and Paul stay in Beatnikville and leave the rest of us alone? Crazy old woman.”

“Ted!”

“What?” He picked an ornament out of the storage basket and pulled away tissue paper. “Ever since I can remember, Liz Moore has been nothing short of a lunatic.”

“She's Mom's best friend.”

Ted shrugged and hung the green and red bulb on a branch.

“Without Liz, I don't think Mom would have –”

“Don't, Charlie. Just don't.”

“Don't? But –”

“But nothing. Mom and Dad – all of us – would have been better off if Liz Moore never set foot over the threshold. She's a menace.”

C.C. sat down slowly on a flowered ottoman. “How so?”

“She as jealous as one of her damn cats. For a start.”

“Jealous? Of who?”

“Dad. Tucker. You. Me. Anyone who Mom might love.”

“Oh, that's ridiculous.”

He shrugged again. “Tuck was her favorite.”

“Lizzie's?”

“No, dumbhead, Mom's. And don't tell me you couldn't feel it. After Tucker – Mom was destroyed. I swear she couldn't even see me, like I was a ghost.”

“That's why I'm saying, Liz helped –”

“Oh you would take her side, wouldn't you? Creep. But you always liked that witch and I guess people like you have to stick together, huh?”

“People like –?”

“You know. Perverts.” He flushed.

C.C.'s face whitened. “That's what you think.”

“That's what I know. I told you, I learned a lot at Amherst, especially about you ‘girls' at Smith. As a doctor, I know it's a mental disease and all, so I feel sorry for you – but not for your so-called auntie. I figure maybe she's the reason you're the way you are, always being here, and you taking lessons from her. Maybe she converted you.”

“That's crazy.”

“Is it? How come you've never had a boyfriend?”

“Liz is married to Paul. Or did you forget about him?”

“He's an old drunk. Mom won't be offering him any cocoa, that's for damn sure. Bet she's got the whisky poured.”

“Ted.”

“What?”

“These people are our friends –”

“Not my friends,” he said and snatched another ornament out of the basket, but the tissue tore and the ornament, bare, rolled from his grasp to break with a clean glassy pop on the hardwood floor.

 

♦

 

Alone one cold dawn, at the same hour C.C. had left the house for the last time, Quiola took a large, woolen blanket she'd found in the cedar chest of the “shed” out into the yard, poured coffee from a cafetiere and finally opened C.C.'s posthumous letter. In the envelope she found a miniature acrylic, just a sketch, suggestive; on the back, the words “Vixen – essence of Quiola” and the sketch of her own dark features had the quickness of a carnivore, a slight cunning, playful smile.