Hotel Paradise (15 page)

And then, as if her whole mission in life was just to come in and wake up any strangers that might be hanging around the living room—she left. She just rose, smoothed her skirt, and walked out without so much as a glance in my direction.

I sat still in my easy chair, frowning. I couldn’t imagine what I
was to do. Go away, probably. I was just sighing myself out of the chair preparatory to doing this when an old man appeared in the doorway. Dr. McComb, it must be. At least I hoped it wasn’t any more of his relatives.

“There you are! I was wondering.”

He
was wondering? But I didn’t argue because I was really glad to see him. “Hello. I’ve been sitting here. I didn’t know where you were.”

“Henhouse,” he said, looking around and patting his pockets as if he were searching for new-laid eggs.

He wasn’t as old-looking as I expected. If Dr. McComb was eighty or more, he was in awfully good shape. He was about medium height and build and had white hair and a moustache and a complexion that was fine and petallike, of the sort I was used to seeing in Weeks’s Nursing Home.

I was suddenly embarrassed by my appearance. I was conscious of my skirt being too long, long like an old lady’s, and my brown “corrective” shoes being too big and chunky. And since Dr. McComb was a doctor, I suspected he could see into me, see all of my organs floating around in whatever murky liquid they lived in, and see through my eyes to my brain and figure out my little butterfly scheme.

Dr. McComb smiled, though, and greeted me as if he had known me a long time. I quickly told him about the white butterfly I’d seen. And I told him I’d read his article (which was very good, I added), and that I often went down the road to the lake, for butterflies were my main hobby, and when I had seen this particular butterfly I wondered if it could possibly be the one called White Lace. After I told him all of this I was out of breath. I talk hard and fast when I’m lying.

He asked me a couple of questions, thought over my answers, and then said, almost sadly, no, he didn’t think so, that the one I’d seen sounded like—and he said a long Latin name that I couldn’t understand.

“Oh,” I said, pretending I knew exactly what that was, and trying to sound disappointed.

“If you’re a collector too, you might want to come with me now.” He looked back through the open door. “There’s a painted lady out there I’ve been tracking. I’m sure you’d like a glimpse of it. I’ve got a net you can use, too.”

Outside, his smile implied such confidence in my being as interested
as he was, that I felt ashamed of myself, and accepted the butterfly net with more enthusiasm than I felt. I followed him through the square of bright light framed by the side door and out into the backyard. But it couldn’t really be called a “yard.” For one thing, there were no visible boundaries—the weedy land stretched away as far as the woods. Except for the area right outside of the door, through which a rude path had been worn, there was no sign of any pruning, mowing, or cutting ever having been done. Even the grass beside the door was shin-high; when we got twenty feet farther, it was up to my knees, then nearly to my waist. I had the sensation of walking from dry land into deeper and deeper water.

In among the other weeds were masses of verbena, black-eyed Susans, coneflowers, Queen Anne’s lace, thistle, in addition to all of the small and large fruit trees, oaks, and drooping willows.

“We don’t cut the grass or trim the hedges or deadhead flowers here; we wouldn’t want to disturb the butterflies’ habitat, or the birds’ either. So we leave the vegetation alone. Over there’s the bright patch, see? I’ve got my nectar plants in there; I’ve got my Indian blanket, my verbena, and my butterfly bush. They like weeds, too—milkweed, joe-pye weed—”

“Like Queen Anne’s lace,” I said, knowledgeably. Had Ree-Jane done me a service? Even if she had, she’d never meant to.

Dr. McComb nodded, wiped his neck with his handkerchief. “Mostly I’ve got nectar plants.”

“How do they drink?” Then I realized too late that was something I should know, given they were my “hobby.”

“They taste through their feet.”

Well, I couldn’t help it. I just whooped. I thought maybe he was kidding me, but he said no, no, that was the absolute truth. Through their feet. I looked down at mine. What if it was my
feet
that got to taste my mother’s ham rolls and cheese sauce? Or the Angel Pie? My feet instead of my mouth? For once, I was pretty sure God knew what he was doing.

•   •   •

It was vegetation all right. Now I’d progressed inward to where the buffalo and blue grass, the vines and weeds were just about to my chin, and one patch—more butterfly bushes?—into which I’d stepped too quickly, was almost over my eyes. As I stood thrashing about at
the tall stalks that grazed and tickled my face, I heard Dr. McComb call to me.

“You there? Hey?”

I thrashed around a bit more and held the net up above my head, like a flag. I emerged, if not into anything like a “clearing,” at least into growth that wasn’t higher than my waist.

“There you are! Find anything interesting?”

I hadn’t been
looking
for anything, but I didn’t want to sound unemployed. After mentally racking my brain, calling up a quick succession of colored plates from my library book, I said—tentatively, of course—“I thought maybe I saw a Ghost Brimstone.”

He snorted good-naturedly. “Around
these
parts? I don’t think so. You see those down in South America, mostly.”

Trust me to pick the wrong country. “I only said I
thought.”
I was getting peevish.

We had moved forward through this jungle and were now walking slowly along a dirt path. It was only about a foot wide but it looked like civilization to me. I made several sweeps with the butterfly net, awfully grateful to Bunny Caruso that she’d given me some experience. I probably looked pretty well-trained the way I could flick my wrist and whoosh the net around.

A few stops and starts farther along, I said, “When I was at Spirit Lake—”

“Ssssshhhh!”
Dr. McComb stopped, squinted into the hazy distance, his rather thick white eyebrows making a little shelf when I looked at him in profile. Since his
ssssshhhh
ing was loud enough to wake the dead, I didn’t see why he bothered. And anyway, butterflies didn’t have ears, did they? They couldn’t actually
hear
, could they? He started whispering, the barest murmur. “Look along the path there amongst the marigolds. About two o’clock from where you stand. That’s a Little Wood Satyr, bet you anything.”

“Ummmm,” I said. That was pretty noncommittal.

“What do you think? Is it?”

I managed to nod and shake my head almost simultaneously. Fortunately, the butterfly spread its wings and made a drowsy exit, giving him a better look. No, he decided it was not a Little Wood Satyr, thus relieving me of declaring it one thing or another.

“They patrol, you know.”

“Who does? You mean Little Wood . . . ?” I managed to have a coughing spell.

“For females.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, so I mumbled agreement. We moved along in silence then, for a few feet. Above the dogbane patch, hundreds of tiny butterflies, white and yellow and no bigger than my fingernail, floated in such an unbroken cover they might have been white mist and yellow fog.

“Look at them all!” I exclaimed.

It was Dr. McComb’s turn to say
“ummmm.”
Then, “Dainty Sulfurs, maybe.”

I marveled at the cloud of Dainty Sulfurs.

“It’s the milkweed that grows out here. They love that.”

“I guess there’s none of that stuff around Spirit Lake, is there?” I said, prompting him. “At least, I’ve never seen any at Spirit Lake.” But he said nothing, just stood there looking sleepily at the blanket of butterflies, and I went on: “Did you go to Spirit Lake again to look for the White Lace?”

“Umm. Several times.”

“It’s too bad they let the lake get so run-down, isn’t it? It’s kind of swampy now; well, you’d know that, if you’ve been there lately.” Again, he didn’t answer. I looked at him, the way he stood on the walk, stock-still and hoped he wasn’t going into a coma. “I saw pictures of Spirit Lake like it was a long time ago. Forty years, maybe. When it wasn’t so overgrown. There was a boathouse. Well, there still is, but it’s mostly a ruin.” He didn’t comment. “Yes, it’s mostly in ruins now. Oh, I guess you could still take one of the boats out. The boats are still there. But I guess they’d spring a leak.” He blinked and blinked his eyes slowly as I talked, leaning a little into the dogbane, as if he might pull them towards him, the butterflies, like a coverlet, and just lie down there and go to sleep. “There’s a house the other side—”

“Devereau,” he said suddenly, and to my surprise, as he slowly brought his net around, skimming air. There was a beautiful specimen, rose and lavender and the deepest blue, poised on a hollyhock, that I hadn’t even seen. He’d been tracking it with his eyes. But it flew off just as he was about to bring the net down on it. He sighed, heavily.

“Gee, that’s too bad. That’s really too bad.” Now, of course, I’d have to pump the Devereau talk up again, like a deflated balloon. This
was work. Dr. McComb stood staring into the blue-gray distance, braced for a sighting, a discovery. I really wasn’t sure why I had to be so cagey. Why, if I wanted information, didn’t I just flat-out ask for it? Maybe I thought that if there was information I shouldn’t have—that is, some kind of knowledge that my mother or others thought I shouldn’t have, then I was obliged to weasel it out of people. “It’s a nice house, the Devereau house, only it’s gone to seed. I wonder why no one lives there now. It looks like no one’s
lived
there for, oh, maybe
forty years.”
I glanced at him to see if that number got a reaction. But he hadn’t flinched, or moved from his combative, hunter’s stance, net held to his side like a shotgun, as if he meant to shoot them instead of net them.

I was trying to think of another approach when he surprised me by saying, “Probably because of the Tragedy.”

My eyes opened wide. I was thrilled, stupefied nearly, by such a direct reference to the death of Mary-Evelyn and even more by its being so named: the Tragedy.

“The Tragedy?”

“Little girl drowned.”

“She drowned? How?”

He turned now to look at me. His round glasses were suddenly stabbed by rays of sunlight and transformed to silver discs. “She was your age.”

Involuntarily, I stepped backwards, feeling my legs crowding into briars and raspberry patch. The air that had seemed so thin, clear and blue, thickened. All of the tiny sounds—cicadas, crickets, gently sowing grasses—came together, thrummed.

I started to say, “My—” but my throat was thick too, my vocal cords stiff and strained. The field, the henhouse, the weeds and flowers, and Dr. McComb himself all seemed to have shifted in some weirdly sinister fashion. He was still looking at me, the discs of his glasses like bright ice. I thought the only person I had ever seen look friendly even behind black-mirrored glasses was the Sheriff. I swallowed, hard. I wished he was here.

But just as quickly, the day tilted back, righted itself as Dr. McComb shoved his glasses atop his head and snapped up his binoculars. “Ah!”

The backs of my legs, my calves, felt laced with bramble and thorny
pricks as I moved out of the patch to hear Dr. McComb swear softly that, no, it was only a common cabbage white. I was glad; pursuit of the rare variety would have meant working up the death of Mary-Evelyn all over again.

“You said she was drowned?” I had to remind him.

He nodded.

I chewed the inside of my mouth. “Gee, and she was only twelve?”

Dr. McComb nodded, but said nothing else, until after a few moments he said, “Well, time for a cup of java. Want some?”

Disappointed as I was that I couldn’t keep the subject going, still I was pleased that he thought I was old and sophisticated enough for coffee. “Sure,” I said, with a “why not?” shrug.

We retraced our steps to the house, he whacking absently at tough, brown stubble; me, thinking over how to reintroduce the subject of Mary-Evelyn. I followed along towards the kitchen door, a door whose sill was lost in another tangle of vines and Queen Anne’s lace, as if this end of the house was sinking into the soft earth.

Retreating from the dense sunlight of the thickets and fields into this cool, shadowy room—the kitchen—I had to squint things into existence once again. The aluminum-handled refrigerator door, the white enamel stove on its curved legs were identifiable in the gloom. But other objects—like the kitchen table, the ladder-back chairs—I had to blink up, finally, to make them out. I came up with big chests and a small one, and an old icebox, and against the far wall what I think was called a Welsh dresser, on which I could see rows of plates and cups, and as my eyes adjusted to the kitchen’s grayness, I saw they were the Blue Willow pattern.

I was sitting on a stool by the white kitchen table as Dr. McComb puttered around, getting out the Pyrex coffee maker, measuring water and Maxwell House. And in this kind of dim, dull light, where objects were not clear-cut, but the lines of things were muffled, like sounds, I had the jolting thought that I would never find a proper place, a place that was my place, and that I could look and look and I could settle down here and there, but it would all be only a dream. This shocked me, absolutely, because the Hotel Paradise had
always
been “my” place—my family’s, and my family was, of course, mine. I belonged to it. But now I didn’t feel I belonged to it or to any place, even though I had always walked the dusty old roads of Spirit Lake and the two-mile
highway into La Porte, and I wished right now my shoes were held down by mud, thick hands of mud fastening me down. Earth holding me to earth.

But look! Look how easily the hands unclasped, how easily the Davidows had come and laid claim to it all—my hotel, my walks and roads, my past. My present.

Was that
possible
? I heard the refrigerator door open and shut. No, it wasn’t. None of that belonged to the Davidows any more than to me. That moment outside when Dr. McComb had turned his bright, icy spectacles on me, I thought now that inward eyes, not mine, were picking up something on another wave length and that I had resisted this, shoved it back because it was too frightening, had swept some knowledge away like cobweb paste in front of my eyes. For some reason, all of this brought to mind the old store in Spirit Lake. Not Britten’s, not the bustling one that everyone bought at, but the small dark one on the other side of the village, more of a ramshackle house really, owned by an old lady who must have decided she could earn a living by selling basic supplies—nothing fancy like Britten’s, with its separate meat counter (and even a butcher, one of the Brittens), or its big see-through crates of cookies, or its glass-topped counters of penny candy. No, this old store was dark and spare, its shelves nearly empty, just some cans of soup and beans. The brightest thing in it was the rows of Wonder bread. The loaves shone in their white wrappers. Shadows and gloom and glimmering Wonder bread.