No Dark Valley (15 page)

The Madonna, a more modern-looking version than the ones in Baroque and Renaissance paintings, was looking down so that her face was shadowed. Her long hair fell loose about her face and shoulders, and the neckline of her blue dress draped down in soft modest folds. She looked far more natural and unfettered than most Madonnas Celia had seen in other paintings, whose strained expressions often suggested they might be wearing uncomfortable undergarments. One hand of this Madonna was poised an inch above her baby's face, and her lips were slightly parted, as if she had just breathed, “Oh!” It was remarkable to Celia how a face could emanate pure joy without even the hint of a smile. Unlike other stiff, primly posed Madonnas in all the other paintings down through the ages, this one was not at all aware of herself. She was past smiling.

And the baby—the utter sweetness of the baby! He was wrapped in something dark crimson, and his small face was illuminated. His lips were open also in a tiny O of wonder as he gazed up at his mother. It didn't seem like a smart thing for the artist to do, drawing both mouths in puckered little circles that way, but it worked. You looked at those two mouths and couldn't imagine either one being otherwise.

Not that Celia actually saw any of this now. She was seeing it all in her memory. With the feather duster, she dusted off the frame first, then kept her eyes fixed on the top left corner as she lightly dusted the picture itself. When she picked it up by the wire to move it over by the door, she realized she was gritting her teeth. Relax, she told herself, it's just a picture.

She had meant to set it with its face against the wall next to the door, but at the last minute she turned it around. And then, as when passing a car accident, the perverse impulse to look where she knew she shouldn't forced itself upon her, and she stepped back and saw the whole thing. She didn't mean to and certainly didn't want to, but she did. For a moment she stopped breathing. There it was, exactly as she had remembered it, except even more beautiful. She wondered if anyone else had ever looked at a single piece of artwork and both loved and loathed it the way she did this one.

This is my punishment, she thought, but then quickly revised it. This is
part
of my punishment. Her punishment was far greater than this one Madonna picture. She was certain, though, that this piece would never sell, that though it might be leaving the gallery for now, it was destined to return, then remain there to haunt her forever. It was God's way of penalizing her for her sin. Whether it was stored away on the top shelf or hanging in plain view or even temporarily away from the premises, it would always be there, whispering to her.
Remember, remember, remember
. As if she needed a piece of art to help her remember.

So, okay, take a good hard look at it, she told herself now. Maybe if you look at it long enough, the effect will wear off. But she suddenly thought of all the warnings she had heard about not looking at the sun during an eclipse. It might seem harmless, but it could burn a hole in your retina. Nevertheless she stepped closer to the Madonna, knelt down, and looked right at it. She could see all the separate dots of color that made up the different parts. She had never noticed that the light around the baby's head was actually a collection of small, irregular flame shapes. She wondered if Craig knew about the flaming tongues in the Bible, signifying the coming of the Holy Spirit.

“Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above”—the words and tune leapt into her mind for no good reason but were quickly obliterated by the distant sound of a baby, one she had heard only days ago, in another woman's cart at the grocery store. Only one baby this time, not dozens of them, thankfully, and not crying, as they so often were in her dreams, but a single baby making waking-up noises—sleepy murmurs and small sucking sounds.

She stood up, turned the painting around, and slowly moved to the table to sit down. Sometimes she sat here in this same chair to eat when she came to the gallery early or stayed through supper, but food was the last thing on her mind right now. She saw the letter she had left there earlier, the one from the lawyers, and she stared at the envelope as she tried to breathe. She thought of the phrase “sole inheritor” and how it had made her laugh only an hour or so ago. And wasn't that also the way life went? One minute you felt like laughing, and the next thing you knew you were crying.

They had told her all those years ago that she was doing the wise thing, that bringing an unwanted baby into the world was wrong, that someday when the timing was right, everything would be fine. They hadn't told her about the dreams, about the sounds she would hear and the feeling of hands tightening around her neck and fists being punched into the pit of her stomach.

And then she heard the chime of someone entering the front door of the gallery. She could have predicted that if she'd been quick enough. As usual, just when you most needed to be alone, someone showed up.

8

Each Earthly Joy

“You here, Celia? It's just me.” Celia recognized the voice, and her heart sank. She felt like hiding under the table. Boo Newman ran the gift shop two doors down from the Trio Gallery, and she never seemed to have enough to do since she had hired a girl to work afternoons. Now she visited up and down the strip mall, taking up everybody else's time. Jack Upton down at the State Farm Insurance office had told Celia that Boo had spent an entire hour at his place one day the week before telling him all about her pets—a menagerie of assorted cats and dogs and even a myna bird named Agrippa—and their many talents and physical maladies. She had finished the first hour of her visit and started on her second when a client had come into the State Farm office. Jack had told Celia he wanted to jump up and kiss the ground the man walked on.

Boo was really a harmless woman and good-hearted, but she could wear you out with her words and her simpleminded way of looking at everything. Her real name was Iona, but her father had nicknamed her Boo when she was a baby because she was born on Halloween. She told this to everyone she met, usually more than once.

Celia quickly went to the sink and splashed some water on her eyes, then dabbed them dry with a paper towel and went out into the gallery. Boo was standing in front of Tara Larson's
Tumult
piece, which had sold two days earlier, as Celia had known it would. The buyer lived up on Glassy Mountain in a new house with twelve-foot ceilings, and he had told Celia he needed something “huge and wild and earthy to fill a wall in the den.” He hadn't batted an eye at the price, had even jokingly offered her more if she'd let him take it home with him right then instead of having to wait till the show came down.

Boo Newman was standing with her hands on her very large hips as she looked at
Tumult
, and when she saw Celia come into the room, she shook her head and said, “I know exactly what you're going to tell me, but I'm going to speak my mind anyway. That is the
strangest
thing I've ever laid eyes on! I think Tara's art is getting downright evil-looking.” She lifted one pudgy hand and waved it around. “So there, I guess I've proven all over again how out of step with the times I am, but I can't help it. I simply can't feature living with something like
that
hanging on your wall. I don't know why she can't paint real pictures of things people can recognize!” She pointed to the red dot on the wall beside the painting. “But somebody evidently doesn't agree with me. I see you sold it. Just think of what you could do with that much money!”

Celia didn't have the energy to carry on the same conversation with Boo that they'd had so many times before, so she just smiled and shrugged. “Everybody's got his own tastes.” There was no reasoning with Boo; her idea of great art was the newest Precious Moments figurine.

Boo sighed and walked to the chair by the desk, the typical sign that she was settling in for a visit. She sat down gingerly, tilting herself a little sideways so she could wedge herself between the slender chrome arms of the chair. Once ensconced, her thighs spilled over and pooched out under the arms of the chair like two well-stuffed pillows. More than once Celia had imagined Boo trying to stand up too fast, the chair clamping onto her broad backside and coming with her.

Boo slipped her shoes off, then looked down at her puffy ankles. “I don't think those pills are doing me a bit of good,” she said. “The doctor told me I'd see some difference right away, but I still feel as bloated as I ever did.” Bloating was a frequent complaint of Boo's, and Celia had often been tempted to ask if the doctor had ever suggested she start exercising and go on a diet.

Celia didn't move toward the desk. She knew there was no way she could sit here and listen to this woman right now, and she felt bad for letting her get seated, for not having spoken up sooner. “I'm kind of busy in the back,” she said. “I'm trying to reorganize some things and get ready for the new show next month. Sorry.”

She knew she wouldn't be pressured for specifics, and she could be glad for that. Another good thing about Boo was that she didn't get her feelings hurt easily. Although Celia knew she would have had the most sympathetic of ears had she chosen to confide in Boo Newman, who unlike a lot of talkers was also a good listener, she didn't dare tell her the truth:
I need to go sit still for a while and try to erase the picture of the Madonna from my mind
. Boo loved talk shows where people told all their secrets and cried about them in public. She often shared the stories with Celia in great detail.

Boo was already putting her shoes back on, scrambling as much as a woman of her size could be said to scramble, trying to disengage herself from the armchair so she could be on her way. “Well, I needed to stop in down at the frame shop anyway to see if Ursula ever got that man's prisoner of war certificate framed. It was the
real
thing, not a duplicate. The man took it right from the German POW camp office when they were liberated. Went right in and ransacked the drawers and found it, then brought it all the way back home to Plum Branch, South Carolina, and had it in a scrapbook all these years.” She stopped at the door and gave Celia a cheery wave. “It has his fingerprint on it, and you should see the size of that man's thumb!”

Boo opened the door, then stopped again. “Oh, wait, did I tell you Desi is pregnant? That's what I was meaning to tell you the other day when I stopped by and you were on the phone.” Desi, short for Desiree, was the girl who worked for Boo in the afternoons. She had a tangle of jet-black curls piled messily on top of her head and wore blue, green, and bronze fingernail polish to match whichever color of eye shadow she was wearing that day.

Celia felt something twist inside her. “Is that so?” She pretended to straighten a painting on the wall next to where she was standing.

“Yes, but she says she wants to keep working if I'll have her.” Boo shook her head. “There used to be a time when women didn't parade around in public when they were pregnant, but it's a different world now. Girls these days, they work right up till the day the baby's born.” She opened the door. “Of course girls used to be married to the fathers of their babies, too.” In earlier visits at the Trio, Boo had already covered at length the subject of Desi's cohabitation with a car mechanic who dropped her off at work every afternoon in a black Corvette with orange and yellow flames painted along the sides, its pulsating rock music jiggling the little suncatchers on the gift shop window.

“She hasn't told
him
yet,” Boo said. “She's afraid he's not going to want her to have it.” Right before she closed the door all the way, she added, “Desi wants the baby, though. She told me she's been cheating on her birth control pills for the past three months.”

Finally she was gone. Celia fled to the back room and sat down again. It would always be this way, and she knew it. There would be no escape, ever. At any moment somebody could say something or she might see or do something that would bring it all back. The reminders would always be there, coming loose and crashing down on top of each other like a giant rockslide. She stared at her hands and remembered how they had trembled that day fourteen years ago when she had gone to the clinic, paid her money, and signed the papers. Well, no, they hadn't actually started trembling until after she had signed the papers, when they led her from the waiting room to another room in the back.

She remembered how cold the room was and how she couldn't quit shivering for days afterward. She had never asked anybody if that was normal—if everybody had that same deep-down frozen feeling in their bones. No one had warned her about the cold. She had been a graduate student at the time with a part-time job at a newspaper in Dover. A friend had driven her to and from the clinic, and she had stayed home from classes and work for three days, wrapped in blankets but unable to get warm. Right in the middle of summer, too.

And no one had warned her about this part of it, either—the smothering feeling she got every time she saw a mother with a baby, even a
picture
of a mother with a baby, or heard about someone getting pregnant or saw a pregnant woman or a new mother in a store. No one had told her about the dreams she would have almost every night for the rest of her life, all those babies she would see swirling around in her head, dead babies that should be silent but were instead emitting horrible wails.

No one had warned her that she would need to lay in a supply of pills to drug her into a dreamless sleep when the nights got especially long. Nobody at the clinic had bothered to tell her that she would look at children differently from that day on, that she would keep up with how old hers would have been, that she would feel an ice pick in her ribs whenever she saw a child that age.

She often found herself studying other women at the mall or in grocery stores, even clients who came into the art gallery, and she would wonder which of them had a secret like her own hidden away inside. At times she imagined she could spot the women who did have such a secret by a particular look in their eyes, but she had no way of knowing if she was right. If she happened to make eye contact with one of these grave, wistful-looking women in an aisle or a parking lot somewhere, she would fight the urge to touch her hand and say, “How long ago was yours?” or “Were the dreams especially bad last night?” She might pull up beside someone at a stoplight, take one look at her face, and think, “I know, oh, believe me, I
know
.”