Hotel Paradise (41 page)

The mattress wasn’t rolled up on this bed; it was covered with a pale-yellow and white chenille spread, drawn up and tucked neatly beneath the pillow as if someone expected to sleep in it tonight, or soon. Not even the mice had got to the spread, though I would have thought the design of interlocking circles of white tufts would look pretty tasty to mice. I hesitated to go through Mary-Evelyn’s things. I guess I knew how furious I’d be if someone did that to me. But this was the only bedroom that still looked a little lived-in, and since there were a few articles still sitting on the top of the white dresser—a brush, a mirror, a bottle that might have held some kind of perfume—I thought there was a possibility I would find something helpful.

I was right, too: the drawers still held things like underwear, rolled-up socks, pajamas. There were no T-shirts or shorts, but there were several carefully folded blouses of very fine cotton, white eyelet, and even some lace at the collar. But aside from the clothes, the drawers held no secrets, such as diaries or pictures or anything. I shut them and went to the wardrobe. The clothes inside were still in excellent condition. Pine chips on the hangers and the strong odor of camphor also might have held off the mice and moths.

There was a plaid woolen skirt and soft pastel sweaters and dresses. What dresses! They were unbelievably elegant, and I was used to the Europa dress shop, too; I knew what I was talking about. Many’s the time I’d had to be the audience for Ree-Jane modeling the latest fashion, with her unnatural gliding step and her hands bent stiffly at her wrists or on one hip as she twirled around, stopping, posing, smiling artificially over her shoulder. I was also the cheering section for Mrs. Davidow, though she didn’t walk around in Ree-Jane’s show-offy way that made me want to throw up; she merely stepped smartly from the dressing room, turned this way and that before the mirror, yanked her girdle down and made various adjustments. The point was, I had seen the most expensive, exclusive garments within a hundred miles of the hotel being modeled and purchased and heard long conversations between Heather Gay Struther and Mrs. Davidow about bias cuts, gores, tucks, and pleats. Enough to know really good sewing when I saw it. And I was seeing it now, as I held out the tiny-pleated skirt of a pale yellow dress, accordion pleats that would lie perfectly flat and neat until the wearer of it moved and then the skirt would swirl about.
There was another one of a beautiful shade of greenish blue, very plain except you could see how well it was cut, and the material was petal soft. There were eight such dresses, ranging from the plainer green one to an incredibly fancy party-dress of ice-blue taffeta, down the front of which marched an intricate row of buttons and loops of the same material. I fingered the materials of each of these dresses and thought it must be the finest of its kind: the rose-gray wool, the deep blue velvet were so
melting
; the smooth taffeta the color of the delphiniums that encircled the garden at the front of the hotel.

I picked out the plainest one, the green one that looked most me, removed my T-shirt and cotton skirt, and slipped it on over my head. Over the bureau was a mirror that I tilted to see all of me that I could, and I looked quite nice. I bent closer to the mirror to see what the green (which was the shade of one of Mrs. Davidow’s liqueur bottles) did for my eyes. It made them much greener. Once, I had told Maud my eyes must be shrug-colored, for every time I asked someone what color my eyes were, the person would just shrug (“Oh, I don’t know . . . blue? green? brownish?) and shrug again. Maud had said this was absolutely ridiculous; anyone could see my eyes were “hazel” and extremely pretty. It was a relief to know this. And it was true my eyes changed color depending on what color I was wearing. Although, since most of my clothes were T-shirts, and white ones, my eyes didn’t change much. Now they looked really green from the dress. I stood back, admiring myself, picked up the brush, and ran it through my hair. Even my hair lost that “tan” look, looked blonder with this green dress on. Of course, I have always pretended I don’t care about clothes, which is what it was—pretending. I would be teased unmercifully if I ever let on I did care. Clothes are for girls Ree-Jane’s age. And size, and looks, and model walk. For someone who can show them off. I know I’ve been told
that.
I looked down at the green dress and smoothed the skirt, which was cut on the bias so that it flared at the bottom. It was the kind of dress I might have had if anyone had ever bothered about my clothes.

Then it struck me, as if for the first time, as if I’d never known it before (which I always have, but only on the thin top layer of my mind), that I was not even to
consider
having such a dress. Not this one, not any of the ones in the Europa. And I wondered: Why? Why was I not even to think about standing in one of the Europa’s dressing rooms, pulling the little curtain across the space and trying something
on? Why, for my birthday, couldn’t Mrs. Davidow and my mother have put their heads together and then told Heather Gay Struther to keep an eye out for a dress for me on one of those “buying” trips she did? I couldn’t answer these questions. So I decided to keep the dress on for the short time I was here in this house. Or maybe I would try
all
of them on. I was wringing my hands, working myself into a snit, and then decided it would take up too much time to have one, or to try on all the dresses. Instead, I went over to a chest that sat at the foot of the bed. It was also painted blue and looked very much like my own worn pink toy chest, which I didn’t use anymore, of course, but looked in occasionally only to check the contents to make sure Ree-Jane hadn’t been messing with them.

The chest, too, was almost full. There were stuffed animals (some moth-eaten and mouse-chewed); game boards; puzzles of nature scenes, like “Winter Wonderland” or “Flowers-A-Bloom,” which were pretty sickening; several dolls. I checked the games, found Monopoly and my all-time favorite, Mr. Ree. I sat cross-legged on the floor (being careful of my dress) and opened the board, which displayed one floor of a big house, showing all of its rooms as if the roof had been sliced away and the players were looking right down on them. Tucked neatly in the box were the round tubes on which little molded heads could be fitted. These were the people the players became. Then there were the tiny weapons—knife, gun, axe, rope—which would fit into the tube. It was the cleverest game I had ever seen, the one with the most intricate design. There were also three sets of cards: one for each of the six characters, one for each murder weapon, and one called “refreshment” cards. These had colorful pictures of cakes and drinks and sandwiches on them—another reason why I like this game.

I fixed the little heads to the tubes and lined them up and sat looking at them all. It is no wonder this game is popular, for it has the feeling about it of a family living in a house. Even though the people here aren’t all that closely related, still, they all live together comfortably, until, of course, one of them decides to murder another of them and Mr. Ree has to be called in. I picked up each of the tiny weapons and placed them in my palm, studying them. The only thing I hadn’t considered using to kill off Ree-Jane was an axe, and that was because of the gruesome mess and the blood probably landing on me. I sat there humming and imagining the rope around her neck and her twisting in the wind; I could hear her gasp and choke as the
poisoned cup of something fell from her hand and her face turned blue; I could hear her scream as the knife went into her back. It was pleasant, sitting there with the rain on the roof and thinking these thoughts.

But I finally put the weapons aside, rested my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands, and studied the people: Mr. Perrin. Miss Lee. Aunt Cora. Niece Rhoda. Butler Higgins. Beatrice. These names are quite wonderful, but Niece Rhoda is my favorite. Niece Rhoda is too sweet-looking to be the guilty party, too pretty to murder anyone. It disturbs me to think she might get herself murdered. I took out the character cards, wishing the Woods and Mr. Root were with me so we could play a game.

Humming again, I put the top card, Mr. Perrin, in front of his tube and head. The next card was Artist George—but there was no Artist George tube or head. I looked through the box and found no sign of him. I wondered if he’d fallen out of the box to the bottom of the chest, so I took out enough of its contents to see what was down there, to feel around for him. But I couldn’t find either the head of Artist George or his tube body. That was disappointing. It meant the family wasn’t complete. And then, turning up the cards, something surprised me enough to forget the missing Artist George.

Each of the other four cards had another face pasted over the card face. Cut out of what looked to be a photograph was the face of one of the Devereau sisters (Isabel, maybe, though I couldn’t keep them straight) smack over Beatrice. And over Miss Lee was the face of one of the others. The third sister had been carefully cut out and pasted over Aunt Cora. And there was a fourth glued over Niece Rhoda. This cutout was very pretty and very blond. I could only suppose this was Rose Fern Devereau.

I had seen her three times. I mean, I had seen her likeness. The face looked exactly like the girl on the platform in Cold Flat Junction. The girl walking down Second Street. The girl who watched from the other side of the lake. The Girl.

It really took my breath away. Of course, the face in the photograph downstairs resembled her, but younger; and here, shorn of the other faces ranged around her, the face of Rose Devereau shone out, its white-blondness as near identical to the Girl’s as could be. I got up, went over to the bed, and, being careful not to muss the dress, lay down, holding the Niece Rhoda card in my hands, staring at it and
wondering, frowning in thought, yet my mind blank except for the recollection of the Girl. I looked from the face on the card to the face in my mind: on the railway platform in Cold Flat. On the sidewalk in town. Across the lake. It was like looking at slides.
Click. Click. Click.

I lay the card facedown on my chest and folded my hands over it. I looked up at the ceiling and the swimming pattern there of shadow and light made by the reflection of the rain tracking down the window-panes. I was tired, or my mind was, with all of this searching and thinking. The rain came down in that pleasant, monotonous way that rain does sometimes, as if it hadn’t anything better to do with its time. It was restful, despite my mind’s turning and turning with thoughts of the two faces, or the one. As I stared upwards at the whirlpool of shadowed light, I felt hypnotized. Once Will had tried to hypnotize me by getting me to stare at a spot on a white ceiling. Will had read a book on hypnosis and naturally chose me as his practice victim.

Will had failed, but the swirling rain pattern was succeeding: I felt myself being slowly drawn into the swirl up there as if all sorts of nagging, ordinary thoughts were falling away—annoyances and busyness, such as Mrs. Davidow’s awful bursts of temper, Miss Bertha’s demands, salads waiting to be made, Vera’s cuffs and apron crackling starchily. As all of these were blowing away like the filaments of thistles borne off on my breath’s currents, leaving only the thistle core behind, I felt my own central self being pulled toward the center of the wavering lights on the ceiling. And I felt that all of the filaments were little lies, distractions, and not part of that central self. Into this clear place up there would float, on and off, the face of the Girl. I must really have been hypnotized (I thought), for I grew sleepier and sleepier, sleepy with all of this wondering. I felt I could lie here forever, hypnotized or entranced. I scarcely noticed the cold of the house, though my arms were completely goosebumped. It was the sort of still cold which (I had heard) ghosts cause, the sort of cold where there are no drafts, no air currents to stir and chill a person. But I do not believe in ghosts or that houses are haunted. I am afraid of a lot of things, but not that. I am too practical. Also, I have never been sure ghosts were ever anything to fear: I held more with the notion they were sad and sadly haunting places they could never leave because of that sadness: on a stairway, or in a library, or by a window looking always out to sea. To tell the truth, I wouldn’t have minded at all if Mary-Evelyn’s ghost had come here and we could play a game of Mr. Ree.

I thought of all the dresses hanging in the wardrobe and realized I could come here to the Devereau house whenever I wanted, every day, if I chose to, and put on one of those dresses. I could wander around, I could play with the things in the toy chest, I could sit on the windowsill and watch the lake, I could even bring sandwiches and Orange Crush over. Why, I could even bring blankets and sleep here. No one would notice at the hotel what I was doing after dinner was over and all the guests went away. Then what floated into the white spot on the ceiling up there was an image of my mother’s candied yams, the ones with pecans crumbled on top, that she served with baked ham, and I decided I was not hypnotized and could get up.

Which I did, and sat yawning on the edge of the bed, still holding the card with the glued-on picture. I realized I had been just dreaming away about myself and forgetting the mystery of Rose Devereau and Ben Queen’s girl, Fern.

I got up, slipped the dress over my head, and carefully returned it to its hanger, buttoning the top button to secure it there. I left the room and went downstairs. The rain had stopped and the sun come out, suddenly brilliant on the water. The phonograph standing beside the door to the porch was the sort that sits in its own wooden case and has a handle you turn to make it go. I pulled open the little door set in the mahogany case and found some more old records. They all seemed to be in French, and I recalled my mother or Marge Byrd saying the Devereau sisters were extremely well-educated and spoke foreign languages. I slipped one of the records from its sleeve and cranked up the phonograph. The needle was pretty old, for the music came out scratchy for a while and then settled into some really sad-sounding song with a background mostly of violins. I opened the inner door to the porch (for there was still a screen door) so that the woods around could have the treat of a little music. For a few moments I wandered about the room, looking at horsehair chairs and sofa and footstools and still searching for photos or diaries, though not quite so intently since I had found the Niece Rhoda card.