Warpaint (5 page)

“A dentist's chair?” said Quiola as they stepped into the place. It was late afternoon by then, April sun sliding through blinds to pool in slats on the linoleum. The place was scrupulously clean, one wall lined with photos of past work, one hung with an old-fashioned wood oval mirror. The woman who greeted them, heavy-set, dyed blonde, redolent with tobacco, laughed.

“Vintage dentist 1950s,” she said. “Kinda puts you in the mood.”

“For what?” asked Quiola.

“For pain,” said C.C.

The tattoo artist nodded, taking C.C.'s brand-spanking new baldness in stride. “Something like that,” she said. “I encourage clients to think of the tattoo as less painful than your average root canal. Hi. I'm Kate. Am I doing both of you, or just one?”

Impulse jumped up Quiola's throat. “Both.”

“Now wait a minute –” said C.C.

“Guess you two didn't discuss this.”

“It's all right,” said Quiola. “It'll be fun.”

“Fun for me, at least,” said Kate. “So. What would you like, and where?”

C.C. chose a delicate blue and yellow crab design, and had it put just above the curve of her right ear, a totem for her battle against cancer. As the needle whined high to low, inking color into flesh, C.C. fought tears, grit her teeth, while Kate dabbed blood; meanwhile, Quiola drew free-hand the sleek undulating silhouette of a river otter at play and had the artist put it just above her heart, near her right shoulder. Kate's daughter watched with an intense, interested stare.

“This is nice,” declared Kate, when she was through. “People sometimes choose the oddest things. But these – I like them both. Can I keep the otter for my collection?”

“Absolutely,” said Quiola.

“And you've got your care instructions? Good. Nurse your tattoo, and it will be beautiful for a lifetime.”

“Amen,” breathed C.C. She stared at the blue crab in the mirror, a raw wound still, beaded with fine drops of her blood. “I'll beat you,” she whispered. “I'll beat you, damn crab.” She raised her voice. “Quiola? I'm
ravenous
. Let's grab a bite at the York, and let the bald lady scare the pants off some fresh college kids.”

 

♦

When Paul Gaines asked Liz Moore to marry him, out on Montauk Point, five years after the War had ground to its bitter, horrifying end, she told him about what sometimes happened to her – another reason, perhaps, that Tom Davis's friend Al Kronen named her witch. She'd always treated what she called her “limited insights” lightly, but felt if she agreed to be his wife, Paul ought to know.

“Like this,” she said to him, snapping her fingers. “Out of nowhere, I get this clear glimpse of some event. Not a full story. Never that. Just a snapshot image with an odd sensation, like déjà-vu, but whatever it is hasn't happened yet.”

“A woman's intuition,” he said. “is a precious thing.”

She didn't respond. They were in her Long Island studio, on a fine, sunny afternoon. He'd hocked a few things to make the cost of the diamond, so he was feeling good about himself, sacrificing for his woman and all that jazz. But as the silence grew long between them, he began to worry a little.

“Premonitions,” he said at last. “I've had them, too.” He held her long, thin hand in his stained, rough fingers, kneading hers gently.

She smiled at him, but it wasn't pretty, no, no it was a cat's smile. She touched the diamond with her forefinger. What she saw was not premonition. What she saw would be. This limited view was the reason she had never run away from anything in her life – well, except from her father. But that had been another matter.

Anyway, since her insights always came true, why run? For her, the idea of luck or chance had died one Minnesota winter, out in the snow near the Temperance River. She'd been seven and had seen her first limited view; at sixteen, she'd left and never looked back until age caught her by the heels and dragged her, step by step, up to the river and the North Shore of Lake Superior, but by then her parents were dead and besides, she'd always known she'd return home, to her people, the land of her birth. That, too, she'd seen.

But on the day of her betrothal, standing in her studio by the sea in 1950, with the sun streaming on her hands and face, and Paul so ardent beside her, all she said was,

“Of course everyone has had a premonition.”

He smiled. He had a goofy, lop-sided smile made sillier by his twice-broken healed-flat nose, a boxer's nose. Ten years her senior, nearly a foot shorter, Paul drank. Everyone knew he drank. But Liz Moore married Paul Gaines, knowing his ways, because she also knew he would take good care of her, and just then she wanted his care.

One June day, Paul borrowed an old, old Model T from a neighbor, filled it with gas and drove it down to the justice of the peace; they picked up the Davises along the way, to bear witness, and C.C., who was thirteen, to serve as ring-bearer, flower girl and bridesmaid all rolled into one excited teenager. Liz cut down an armful of wild flowers – Queen Anne's Lace, daisies, cornflowers – for herself and her guests, and after the ceremony, as they drove back from town, she wove a crown of flowers for her bridesmaid. Crammed into the studio, they celebrated; Paul popped the cork and sloppily served everyone; Nancy vanished only to reappear with a white-iced wedding cake, complete with the bride and groom atop a tiny dais.

That stiff-armed wedding-cake couple still stand, in all their wedded bliss, on C.C.'s desk, battered by years of rattling around from one of Lizzie's junk drawers to the next, until C.C. had asked after it. Paul Gaines, goofy smile, paint-rough hands, a gentle and foolish man, had left them all a mere decade into the marriage, an alcohol-induced heart attack. He'd been just sixty.

“Who let this woman die?”

Theresa Wong, C.C.'s surgeon, stormed out of the operating room, looking for someone to blame. But there was only Quiola, who wasn't the person the doctor wanted. She wanted a reprehensible family member who'd been derelict enough to let a mother, sister, wife, daughter, aunt or cousin skip her yearly mammogram, which would have certainly prevented –

“– the first tumor from getting so large. But I get in there and what do I find? The first one, the size of a baseball, that's bad enough but there's a second, smaller one, hiding behind the first. X-rays didn't catch it. I had to remove a sizable portion of her chest wall muscle to be sure to get it all. She'll need physical therapy. Why didn't this woman see her doctor on a regular basis?”

“I don't know,” said Quiola, her voice mild, flat. She gave Theresa Wong a searching look and the surgeon, still in scrubs, pushed the green surgical cap back off her forehead. “A case like this, I'll give her
maybe
two years at best. The only thing I'm certain about is that I got all the affected tissue. Where is the family? Hasn't she got any?”

“Her mother has Alzheimer's. Her father is dead.” And she didn't know what to say about Ted. She'd urged C.C. to call him, but no. She thought about calling him herself, but hadn't the nerve. She knew he had sons, but since C.C. had given up on the whole business of family after her mother began to forget everyone, Quiola wasn't sure what the right thing to do would be. Dithering, she finally called Belinda, Ted's latest wife: at least Ted would know what was going on. The ball was in his court, now, and it looked as if that's where it would stay until it had bounced itself to a roll, and rolled away.

“God,” said the surgeon. “Look, I'm sorry, but your friend will need help. She's going to be weak, in pain –”

“She'll have help. Mine. When can I see her?”

In fact not immediately, but when she was finally allowed to sit beside C.C. in recovery as the effects of the anesthetic wore off, she became as stolid as a rock, and tried not to look at where the blanket flattened, on C.C.'s breastless left side.

Only half aware, C.C. kept removing the pulse-clip the nurse had attached to her middle finger. Every time she got it off, the heart-monitor went blank, sending a frantic OR nurse swishing through the privacy curtains, at first with alarm, then with annoyance. But C.C., unable to process a scolding, just kept at the clip until the nurse gave up and took the thing off. Quiola said nothing until the nurse left. Then she leaned over and gave C.C. a pat on the hand. “Good for you. Teach 'em a thing or two.”

When C.C. finally came fully around, she turned into a groggy nuisance. “My mouth's like cotton,” brought her a sippy cup, “It's ten degrees in here,” brought her an extra blanket, “It hurts,” gave her a painkiller, but “I'm hungry,” had to wait until the staff were sure she wouldn't give the meal back to them in an altered state.

Theresa Wong breezed in sometime in the late afternoon, checking chart and sutures, making quiet pleased noises, but Quiola could still see the steel of futility glinting in the eyes of kindness, a fury for which she had no answer, no aid.

Later, C.C. told Quiola that she had begun to come out of the anesthesia long before they wheeled her to recovery. Disoriented, she'd found her limbs indifferent to half-hearted command. For several decades, or so it seemed, she'd lain there, helpless and thirsty. Had she been forgotten, left to die in that dim room? Her back ached. She couldn't hear anything and the cold quiet began to prey on her. Although she had a blanket over her and not a sheet she wondered if she'd died.

“I've only been to a morgue once,” she said, propped up in the guestroom bed. Before the operation, she and Quiola had moved all her necessaries down from the shed's loft to the guest-room; it seemed easier for a post-op, with a bathroom close to hand, the kitchen near.

“Why did you visit a morgue?” asked Quiola, pouring a mid-afternoon green tea because the temperature had dropped. When she checked the weather, they were predicting snow. Neither Quiola nor C.C. believed the forecast until the sky blanched white and the mercury started falling.

C.C. winced, shifting her position. Her sutures pulled, and had begun, as stitches will, to itch. “My father had to identify a woman who'd been murdered in Montauk. Her name was Eva Kevechion, workingwoman, a housemaid. My parents had her in, before I was born, to help out. She'd been battered to death. Dad took us kids with him. To toughen us up, he said. It was awful.”

“Tea's ready.”

“Thanks,” said C.C., taking her cup, her mind still in the past.

“Dad was afraid he'd coddled us too much, after – after what happened to Tucker.”

“Your brother?

“Yes. Coddle me?”

“I try. But you know very well, I'm not much of a nurse.”

“Fiddlesticks. You've been peachy – besides, when we first met, you
were
a nurse.”

“Nursemaid,” replied Quiola, stirring her tea. “Nursery maid.”

“A ‘live-in
au-pair
' is the way you put it, back then.”

“Why not? Sounds better than baby-sitter, and I wanted to impress you.”

C.C. laughed. “As you did. Ah, yes.”

“Stop teasing.”

“Why? You know you did. And you hated the baby-sitting.”

“I didn't hate it as much as I said. What I learned was how not to be a mother.” She paused, then added, “After caring for Geoffrey, I knew I never wanted to be one. Even if I was good at it.”

“See? I told you. I'll be back on my feet faster than Dr. Wong thinks.”

“Look!” Quiola pointed out the window. “Look. Snow. In May.”

And so it was. Fat, late flakes as big as goose down were spiraling down from the whitening sky, aloft on the soft of the evening air.

 

♦

 

A different, warmer spring, in 1979, Quiola, newly graduated from college, had answered this ad:

 

 

It sounded ideal: she had been working a time-flex internship at the Riverbed Press in Cambridge, and now needed a place to live plus food, because the internship didn't pay and she was out of the dorm. Either she'd have to take a second job or – but the Nelsons hired her to care for their baby, who, it turned out, had yet to arrive from–

“Peru. The adoption is almost final,” said Mrs. Nelson, a tall, Scandinavian-pale brunette, with sharp features and blue-gray eyes. “We're flying down next week to pick him up. We'd like you to move in as soon as you can.”

“Geoffrey. We've named him Geoffrey,” added Mr. Nelson. He was equal in height to his wife, thinner if possible, which made Quiola feel short and plump. “We're very excited. We think you'd be the best for him – your references are so good, and you seem so…suitable.”

Quiola nodded, unsure what ‘suitable' meant, in Herbert Nelson's mind. But when she took one look at the baby, she knew: Geoffrey was clearly a mixed-blood. Quiola didn't know much about Peru, but she did know those dark, “Indian” eyes. When she held him, her own skin-tone seemed browner, to match his gold.

“He was a beautiful boy,” said Quiola to C.C. that snowy, post-op night. C.C. had insisted on getting out of bed to sit in her now-favorite seat at the dining table, where she could see the crocuses, still bright with spring life, even as the snow gathered.

“Who was?” asked C.C.

“Sorry. The baby I played nursemaid to, when I was an
au-pair
.”

“Yes? Most babies are beautiful.”

Quiola cut C.C. a sharp glance.

“All right, all right. Forgive me, O honest one, some babies look like bald, wrinkled men. And who am I to say? I never wanted one.”

“Me neither.”

“And why not? What was it about that baby that scared you off?”

“Oh, C.C. don't. You've never asked me that, and I've never asked you.”

“No,” mused the older woman. “But you've made me curious.”

“When I was younger, I got asked the baby question often enough, didn't you?”

C.C. waved her hand. “Of course. Mother was worst. ‘When will you give me grandbabies, Charlotte?' Thank god Ted ponied up. Got me off the hook.'”

“So?”

“So, I'm
still
curious. Didn't your mother badger you?”

Quiola sat down on the couch and folded her arms. “No. In fact, she didn't. She disliked motherhood, and hoped I'd escape. I'm not saying she was a bad mother –”

“No, you never have said anything of the sort. Sang her praises, in fact. I would've liked to have met her.”

“She was frail.”

“That wasn't the reason, though, was it? You never told her, did you? That we were lovers.”

“No, I never told her.”

In a moment, C.C. said, “I understand.”

“I knew you would.” She shut the muted television off. “We have snow. I don't believe it. A week ago, it was August.”

“I hope the crocuses make it.”

“Geoffrey,” said Quiola, as if there had been no break in their talk. “Such a beautiful, loving boy. A good baby, though he wasn't at first, but how could you blame him? He had infections. He'd been circumcised in a hurry, shot up with vaccinations and brought to the states. Mrs. Nelson didn't know what to do with him, so she just handed him over to me. He wasn't even a month old, and it was my job to feed, bathe, diaper and dress him, play with him, be his mother – until his adopted one came home from work, at three in the afternoon.”

“That's not right.”

“No it wasn't,” said Quiola. “Nothing was right, for Geoffrey. I found out that the Nelsons got him through a broker. South American babies, they were all the rage in the early eighties, remember? Wealthy Americans want infants, not children. The Nelsons bribed a judge in Peru with wine and a case of Cuban cigars. What, I thought, would the big blond Nelsons tell their short, dark-eyed, dark-haired son about himself? But they were spared the trouble of explaining.”

“Quiola –”

“You knew they fired me?” she went on, heedless. “Because Mrs. Nelson comes home and Geoffrey doesn't want to go to her. He'd grip me and scream. I'd been giving him
me
for the first months of his life, what did she
expect
? I turned him against her, she said. How? By mothering the child. When you asked me should I like to travel with you, Mrs. Nelson had just fired me. I was both angry, and relieved. I had no place else to go. Even the internship was falling apart. And then, of course, there was you.”

C.C. made a little, reminiscent laugh. “I was smitten. And you! You were so hard to seduce. Never quite worked so hard in my life, getting you, you little fox.”

“You mean otter, don't you? Anyhow, I was terrified. I'd only been seduced for the first time that January, by that blond editorial assistant, David. I was a late bloomer. And as you well know, confused.”

“Ah. I don't remember the man. Only you. So, so – electrifying.” She shifted her weight. “Do you regret it? Do you regret loving me?”

“How can you ask such a thing?”

“You left, after all. And then there was Luke –”

“But you know why I left! And I admit, I made mistakes; Evelyn was one of them – not Luke, though. Don't, C.C. Please. Must we go over old ground again?”

“These are strange days. For one thing, it's hard to get used to my maimed body, and I know it's hard for you, too. For another, I've decided to unlearn silence.”

“Then you should call Ted.”

“Oh, no. Some silence is worth keeping.”

The telephone rang. Both of them stared at it, until Quiola picked up the line. It was Lizzie. After a few minutes of polite chat, Quiola handed Liz over to C.C. who, clearly pleased, took the call in her bedroom, for comfort's sake.

About a half-hour later, as Quiola made sure C.C. was settled for the night, C.C. asked, “Did you keep up with your beautiful Peruvian boy? Did you ever find out what happened to him? He'd be, let's see, in his twenties now.”

Quiola sat down on the end of the bed, and massaged C.C.'s feet through the quilted comforter. “He's dead. The
au-pair
they hired after me was convicted of manslaughter. It was in the paper. She beat the boy to death for crying.”

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God –”

“It was awful. I blamed myself for a while but –”

C.C. couldn't hear the rest. Instead she heard the sirens she'd never really heard; blinked at smoke she'd never seen; put her hands over her face, as if the heat of a long-ago fire would scorch her eyes and lashes.

“C.C, what is it? What's wrong?“

“Tucker. Oh, Tuck.” She groped for Quiola's hand, caught it. “We'd gone to Gramma's, Ted and me, we weren't there! If only we'd been home – the house caught fire, you see, and poor Tuck was so badly burned, just a little boy, my baby brother –”

“Oh C.C – I knew he'd died but now how!”

“How could you, when I never said, I know. I know. It was just before Christmas in 1947 – you see why
Series B Three
haunted my parents so? A burning child…her way, I guess, of dealing. She'd loved him like he'd been her own. I think that's why she took me up, you know, instead. After. But I've never talked to her about it. Can't.”

“You just said you wanted to unlearn silence –”

C.C. groaned. “Sure, yeah, right! But you know damn well we
both
have a remarkable capacity for it!”