Murder Never Forgets (14 page)

“Now,” I ask, after he has dispatched the Jelly Belly, “how are you feeling?”

“I’m feeling good. Why do you ask?”

“It wasn’t too bad at the hospital?”

“It was okay.” He sounds slightly irritated. “Perfectly okay. That doctor is an interesting man.”

I fluff up his hair, which is flyaway textured, like an angora sweater. “You’re tougher than you look.”

“Of course I am,” he says complacently.

I take this as a go-ahead sign and climb up after his pastel picture of the beach, which I’ve stored flat behind some archaeology books. First I stand it up against a chair back and admire it. Really, it’s a fine picture—beach, light-washed with setting evening sun, three architectural rocks in the background, figure angled on the beach, tied with gold bindings. Eye of Horus down there in the corner. “Sweetie, let’s talk about this picture.”

“I can do better,” he announces solemnly, examining as if he’s passing judgment on someone else’s work of art. “I
have
done better. In Egypt everyone complimented me on my drawing. Even your mother, and she was discriminating.”

Great, I think, he remembers Constancia; he’s tracking. That little bit earlier about the sunset didn’t amount to anything.

“Daddy,” I say, “for this picture, where is the viewer?”

I almost expect him to go art-historian on me and tell me I’m the viewer and I’m here in his bedroom, but he doesn’t do that; he points to the picture’s foreground, “There’s a culvert somewhere.”

I get one of those cold chills of recognition that my philosophy teacher at Santa Cruz liked; she called it a
frisson
. “And you were in the culvert?” I ask, careful to keep the
frisson
out of my voice, because any sign of excitement may shut him down.

“I didn’t tell anybody,” he says. “I thought I better not.”

I announce neutrally that caution is always good, and he says, “I like to trust people. I think I can trust you.”

“Of course you can.” I hear myself being especially phony.

But my answer satisfies Daddy who gives me a sweet inclusive smile. “Not telling is important. But when the spirit is weighed, it’s asked if it has committed sins of omission or commission. The inability to trust is a sin of commission.

“That is a bad kind of sin,” he adds solemnly.

I pick up the cue. Maybe repetition is called for. “Well, you can trust
me
.”

“She spoke to me, you know. She said I should be careful.”

I warn myself to go very slow here. No
frisson
is allowed. Anyway, he’s probably talking about one of the aides. Or Mrs. Dexter. Or me. “
Who
spoke to you, Daddy?”

He looks at me sideways, as if I’ve said something I shouldn’t. He says, “Oh, no.”

“You said the woman spoke to you?”

“Well, my dear, there are different points of view . . .”

“But somebody spoke. You just told me.” I’m handling this badly.

He’s feeling threatened; his shoulders go up, his chin goes down. He turns his back slightly. “Well, I believe there was something. A shadow. I have trouble. Trouble remembering, you know.

“Carly,” he adds, “it’s quite complicated.”

“That’s all right.”

But it isn’t all right. He starts to fidget, the kind of moving around that involves swinging a foot and shifting shoulders. He won’t look at me. “The trouble is with the sunset.”

He makes the kind of arm-motions you make when you recite, “‘He saw it in the place in which it was. Do not stay on the road until evening, thinking you are sure of the houses.’

“Demotic Literature, British Museum,” he identifies.

I want to shake him. We’re completely off the track now, quoting Demotic literature.

I turn back to the picture, straightening it where it teeters against the scalloped mahogany chair back, “Now, Daddy, listen. Please. Where in this landscape were you?” I put a finger on the margin. “Here? Or here?”

“‘Should you hide and then let yourself be found,’” he intones, his expression flat-faced. “‘Should you leave and then return to the place where it was.’”

I think, oh, hell.

And suddenly he bolts up and stands with his back to me, shoulders straight, head tilted. He looks as if he’s waiting to recite to the windowpane.

“Father,” I try.

No answer. Little stubborn figure with its back turned, shoulders in that position that looks as if they have a wire hanger inside them.

I want to put my head in my hands, and then I want to swear interestingly and colorfully, and after that, if you can have three such impulses so fast and connected, I want to tell an absent Mrs. Dexter,
Okay, perhaps you were right
: he just wants to recall his glory days of Egyptian archaeology. Of course he needs to do that, he’s an old man who knows he’s on his way out, his light is dimming. He’s failing, my own father is failing. Maybe it’s the word
failing
, which I’ve almost said aloud, but at this point I stop this mental keening and drama and ask myself, “Carla, have you been listening at all? Did you notice anything about these quotes? Do they make any kind of sense?”

Well, they don’t make much sense.

But there’s something there.

Something about location, and words like, “in the place where it was,” and going back to the same place.

I tell myself I’m an idiot.

Those nights near the Valley of the Kings, waiting for the Coffin Lid Tomb to be reopened, we sat around a little fire in our Luxor trailer camp. It was cold after sunset, at Qena camp, we sat around the fire, cooking our imported American foods, hot dogs and marshmallows, and reciting poetry and playing a game. The game was to invent a situation to go with the Egyptian poems we’d been saying to each other. Daddy and Robbie were very good at this, but I was okay, too. I knew some poetry then. I fish around now in my memory.

“‘Great man free of baseness,’” I start intoning; this bit is Demotic also, but later period, translated into English by some German lady. “‘Do justice, oh, praised one. When I speak may you hear.’”

My father says, “Ah.” Then he turns away from the window and repeats, “Ah,” looking more or less at me, which is an improvement.

“‘Rudder of Heaven beam of earth,’” I continue. At first you feel foolish sounding like this; it seems grandiloquent. And then the rhythms get you, and you decide everyone should speak that way all the time. “‘Guider to port of all who founder. Learn the Constitution of the Sky.’”

Not a bad motto,
learn
. My father seems to think so, too. He half-smiles, one of those salutes with the eyes. He sits down on the window seat and says, “‘He is sad at the sorrow of your
ka
.’”

I remember when he and Robbie had a discussion about that line. The German lady, whose English may not have been that great, translated it, “He
abhors
the sorrow of your
ka
,” but Robbie and Daddy were sure the correct translation was not
abhors
but
grieves at
. “Grieves, in an intensive, strong form,” my father had said, biting the end off his hot dog.

“Daddy,” I tell him now, feeling inspired, wondering why on earth it has taken me so long to get this far, “will you lead me to the spot?”

He nods, as if he’s been waiting for this. “Lead you. You want me as a guide?”

“Yes.”

“I will take the path, and you will follow?”

“That’s right.”

“And no part of that is telling, is it?” he asks.

“No, it’s not telling.”

“We will go up the path one by one,” he suggests, and I agree, “Yes.”

He smiles. “Why, of course, my dear. I would be happy to lead you.

“I enjoy the role of guide. Being a guide will be enjoyable. You will follow along and climb when I climb.”

This must be what he wanted me to ask for all along, but he couldn’t say it. Or couldn’t figure out what he wanted. Maybe he promised somebody something? A not-saying promise? I’m on the verge of putting all this into a question, and then I don’t.

He’s happy now but not exactly relaxed. He would like to set out on this trip immediately.

“It isn’t far,” he says. “You won’t need a sandwich.”

I have to slow him down; the outside grounds are full of the sheriff’s helpers measuring distances and searching for bits of rope or wire or whatever it is they look for, and decorating the bushes with festoons of yellow DO NOT CROSS tape. They would be very, very interested in any excursion my father and I made. But he’s not impressed when I tell him we should wait; it’s only when I say I’m really tired and want to take a nap that he responds, “Oh, my dear. Certainly. I demand too much. I understand about your feeling tired. I also will lie down for a few minutes.”

He pats my shoulder and says, “That was a delicious little candy you brought me,” and offers his cheek for a kiss.

 
 
I turn the television on low so he can either look at it or ignore it just as he chooses and give him a kiss, “See you later, administrator,” and head off down the hall to my broom closet to brood.

Actually, I’m getting pretty fond of my plasterboardlined cubbyhole with the IKEA bed. That bed is a good one, and it’s the first absolutely brand-new bed I’ve ever had in my life. It still has those intrusive little NEW MATERIAL. DO NOT DESTROY THIS LABEL tags.

I prop the pillow on end and squeeze my backbone against it and pull the quilt high. I need to do some serious thinking.

I try to manage this sequentially, but I’m not good at that. The thoughts keep crowding in in a messy mixture.

Here’s thought
numero uno
: My father keeps walking into the middle of this situation, whatever the situation is.

Item: Mona is dead. And Daddy found her. Well, Daddy
and I
found her. Of course, that could be accidental.

But, item: Mona had Daddy’s address down her bra. Could that set of numbers also be accidental? They couldn’t. Could they be someone else’s personal numbers? No. I took too many logic courses at Santa Cruz to believe in random events like that. Also, I took one stat course, at which I did abysmally, but got enough out of it to know that statistically that number cannot be anyone else’s number. It’s his. Or, ours. His and mine.

And, further item: My father saw another murder. Which so far is confined to his head. Well, to his head, his memory, his consciousness, his pastel picture. He’s been trying plenty to publicize it. And now it’s part of my consciousness, because I believe in it now.

Two murders have happened along this same little random plot of seacoast.

Are they related? Of course they’re related,
estupida
. How much of your life have you lived elsewhere without even one single murder?

And finally, the accidents.

Mrs. Dexter’s accident seems the most dramatic because I saw it happen, but there are the other ones that I have simply heard about: the lady out the window, the beauty parlor fire, and then something about a gas heater. Dr. Kittredge says he’s really worried. He says this is far too much accident for an organized place like the Manor. He says the integrity of the Manor is threatened.

I decide not to get into wondering about Dr. Kittredge and Mrs. Sisal and the suspects I’ve lined up for the role of who could have done all these things. I’ll stick to the tangle I have now. The tangle of the murders, the numbers, the accidents. Like a Jackson Pollock painting or one of those intolerable messes I used to scramble up in my sewing kit with a mixture of red thread, green thread, black thread, and, especially, invisible thread. Aunt Crystal would open the sewing-kit lid, pull out this ridiculous snarl, and get truly cross. “I know you don’t like to sew, but you don’t have to be so obstreperous about it.”

I try to move my mind on to something peaceful. Susie. I get up and dig out a lined yellow pad and a ballpoint pen. I’m going to write Susie a letter. She’ll love that. Susie adores special attentions, and a letter from me is, believe it or not, special. I don’t do it very often, not that I’m not good at writing. I am very good, but what I find hard is the process that I’m performing now: getting together paper, pen, envelope, stamp, and then sitting back and thinking it out. And then, for God’s sake, getting it into the mailbox. “Hello, dear Susie,” I start out.

“Okay, Superman,” I tell my father, “let’s go for our walk.”

“I will lead,” he specifies. “You will follow.” He’s thrilled. He’s been waiting all afternoon to get this started. But the sheriff’s people have only just bundled into their cortege of black-and-white vehicles and departed for the town of Green Beach, leaving the downstairs living room littered with ballpoint pens, plastic cups, and crumpled wads of notebook paper.

Outside, the yellow DO NOT CROSS tapes are still up, marking the path that leads to the Mona-discovery area as out of bounds.

Daddy surprises me by understanding the purpose of the yellow tapes. “We don’t want to go there, anyway,” he says, and squeezes my hand. “I am pleased, my dear, that we are doing this.”

Every now and then I really get it, how much this last year of not remembering and not managing has hurt him. It was a year that yelled, “out of control,” all the time. This comes out when he talks the way he does now, so proud and pleased, about leading and following. He’ll get to be in front, and someone else will follow, and he will be Dr. Edward Day, archaeologist, Reinhold Lecturer, Head, Department of Near Eastern Studies, once again.

Hey, I think, I love you a lot.

He starts off now across the Manor gardens, his torso energetically crisp, but his body canted forward. He’s following a course north, past the kitchens and the garbage can enclosures, beside the steam plant and the compost heaps, the nonscenic route that leads beyond the recycling bins. “Nobody walks here,” he says. He gestures, “Does it look like Egypt?”

Sure, Daddy, right. It looks like the parts of Egypt that don’t get onto the tourist posters. Except that, in Egypt, those cardboard boxes would have been co-opted the minute they appeared and made into a village of houses with Hefty-bag roofs.