Shadow & Soul (32 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The director of the park board asked Faith to say a few words, but she was completely unprepared for that, so she had to force herself to take the portable mic thing he held out to her. It whined painfully until she pulled the mic away from the amp. Then she turned and smiled at the crowd.

Well, ‘crowd’ was a bit generous. ‘Gathering,’ maybe. There were about fifty people standing around, a lot of them families with children. But it was Memorial Day weekend, and there were lots of other people in the park who might make their way over eventually. They’d made a little event of it, with a couple of clowns doing face-painting and making balloon animals, a busker with a banjo, and a snack truck serving hot dogs and ice cream.

Faith cleared her throat and made herself speak into the mic. “I don’t really have much to say. I’d rather just open the playground and let the kids in. But I am grateful that Mr. Wilson and the rest of the park board invited me to create the piece that will welcome kids to play.” She looked over at Michael, who was holding Tucker and beaming at her. “Since I started working on this commission, I got a family of my own, and I’m really happy that a little boy I love so much is going to get to play here on the very first day. So thank you.” There was a smattering of applause as, feeling awkward, she handed off the mic to Mr. Wilson.

Then the child who’d won the grand-opening poster contest got to cut the ribbon, and everybody went into the playground.

Faith watched as children immediately went to the twenty-foot-long snake created out of old parts and began climbing on it.
Oh, please nobody get hurt
, she muttered to herself. She’d done her research, her due diligence, taken every precaution. But as Tucker climbed up, hooking his hand into the snake’s eye, Faith’s heart went pitty-pat. This was what it felt like to be a mother, she realized. Fear and pride and love, all at once, blended into a single, inexpressible emotion.

She wondered if her mother had ever felt this way for her.

~oOo~

Bibi took Faith’s hand, lacing their fingers together, and they went through the lobby, Bibi’s ubiquitous high-heeled boots clacking on the terrazzo tile.

Sera had been right—this facility really was nice. It was arranged more like a hotel than a hospital, with high-end tile and carpet on the floors, nice wallpaper, sleek brushed-nickel fixtures. The rooms of Margot’s wing were furnished like elegant hotel rooms, all the medical equipment discreetly tucked away in armoires and cupboards.

The staff was friendly and attentive, and the doctors seemed conscientious and, as far as Faith could tell, well qualified.

The residents who were strong and stable enough, mentally and physically, were taken on regular outings. It was mainly what Faith thought of as old-people stuff: gardens, museums, the Butterfly House, things like that. But they occasionally went to matinees at the little local repertory theater, too.

The facility itself offered classes and programs and had a stunning native plant garden as well as little plots that the residents could cultivate themselves. Margot, an avid, lifelong gardener, spent a lot of time working on her little private garden.

Faith’s image of her mother doddering around in a circle on a bare patch of yard had proven unfounded. She felt better knowing that Margot wouldn’t be spending her life in some bleak box, dwindling into nothingness. Michael didn’t share her concern, or even understand it, and she wasn’t sure how to explain it to him.

Yes, in all of Faith’s memory, her mother had been uninterested in her at best and hostile to her at worst. But she hadn’t really minded or even noticed until Sera had moved away. So there were years of her childhood in which Faith’s feelings about her mother were mainly affectionate. Birthdays hadn’t been forgotten, school events had always been attended, Faith had never really wanted for anything. Margot hadn’t hugged her or talked to her much, but Faith had had her daddy, and that had been plenty.

But when Sera had gone off to college, Margot had had only Faith to notice, and, Faith had finally come to understand, what Margot had noticed was that her husband loved their youngest daughter a whole lot. She’d been jealous of that bond, and in her jealousy she’d tried to drive Faith down. Faith and Michael had finally given her the wedge she’d needed—hence the satisfaction in her eyes that day. Michael called the glint he’d also seen ‘victory,’ and Faith couldn’t disagree.

But while that understanding of Margot made Michael hate her more, it made Faith pity her more. And that, her man simply did not understand.

That was okay, though. He didn’t need to understand. They were good and whole, and Margot was here, in a decent place. Faith would visit her regularly until and unless doing so caused her mother too much stress. That didn’t seem likely; Margot hadn’t recognized her daughter in all the weeks she’d been here. Her degeneration seemed to have slowed a little, but she most often seemed to think it was about thirty-five or forty years earlier—when she and Blue had been just a new thing, and she had still been working. In porn.

Her primary nurse, Shirley, had told her and Bibi that Margot’s most frequent sense of who she was made for some interesting scenes, in her room and elsewhere. Faith herself had come upon her in the garden one day, naked and draped over a bench, thinking she was doing a photo shoot. But no one seemed especially scandalized, not here in the dementia wing.

Today, she and Bibi found her in the commons, wearing a heavy sweater and leggings, despite the one-hundred degree day. She was curled prettily on a comfortable sofa, reading an old issue of
Cosmopolitan
. The center kept magazines, in library-style binders, from a wide range of eras available because, Shirley had explained, patients often found current periodicals confusing and upsetting. Dementia, specifically Alzheimer’s, was the kind of disease one could fight only so much. After that, the best care dictated that patients should be allowed the world they needed, to every extent that was possible. Issues of
Cosmo
with Cindy Crawford on the cover were definitely possible.

Margot’s decline had been fast—or maybe it had only seemed fast because she had been so careful, for as long as she was able, to hide what had been happening to her. Faith remembered the first time she’d gone into her mother’s house. All those Post-Its, reminding her to do things that most people did almost as readily and mindlessly as breathing.

It must have been terrifying for her to know she was losing her mind, to sit alone in her house and feel it happen a little more every day.

Yes. She had sympathy for her mother. Karma or not, Faith didn’t wish an end like this on her.

“Margot, baby, how you doin’ today?” Bibi sat on the sofa at her side and patted her leg.

Margot closed her magazine with a sigh. “Oh, Beebs. Wow, you look tired, honey. Everything okay?”

This was a common question; Bibi, while gorgeous and youthful for sixty-one, looked a lot older than Margot thought she was.

“I’m a little tired, is all. But I asked about you.”

“I’m good. Bored. I’ve been waiting for fucking
ever
for them to get set up in there.” She looked up at Faith. “Hi, honey. You working this one, too?” She scanned Faith with an appraising eye, taking in her jeans and camisole. “Chaz is gonna give you no end of shit for wearing a bra, girl. You should take it off now, and hope the marks fade before your call. You’re new, huh?”

“Um.” Faith wasn’t sure how to respond. Margot had never mistaken her for a starlet before. Usually, she just smiled and introduced herself. Once, she’d tried to send her off to score some coke for her.

Bibi jumped in. “She’s not workin’, Margot. This is Faith. She’s a real good friend of mine.”

Margot smiled. “Faith. That’s a beautiful name. I love names like that—that are a thing you want your baby to have. Like Serenity. If I ever have a little girl, that’s what I’m gonna name her. I bet your mama wanted you to grow up having faith in the world. That’s a nice thing.”

Bibi met Faith’s eyes and gave her a sad smile. Faith’s throat had constricted so tightly it ached. Pinching her arms, she blinked and swallowed, trying to make enough room for words to come through. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s a nice thought.”

~oOo~

“It’s so…brown. Everywhere.”

“It’s June, babe. And it’s the desert. There isn’t any other color.”

“Which is my point, I think. This far out? Are you sure?”

“It’s fifteen miles from the clubhouse. That’s nothing. There’s eight acres here. We could fix up the fences and get Tucker a cow. Or a goat. Maybe some chickens. I could build a coop. And I’ll tear down that old barn and put a new one up. And I could build you a shop first thing—right there.” He pointed to a bare stretch of rocky dirt. It was all a bare stretch of rocky dirt, but he pointed in a particular spot and hooked his arm over her shoulders. “View of the mountains.” He took a coaxing tone with that last sentence.

Faith looked around. Nothing but scrub and dust as far as she could see—until the horizon, where the San Bernardino Mountains rose up, still with just the barest cap of snow at their highest peaks. The sky was a vast, unbroken expanse of cerulean blue. She had to admit there was something beautiful in the near-perfect emptiness.

“Studio,” she grumbled, unwilling to admit that there was a remote chance she’d consider this.

He grinned, seeing that remote chance anyway. “Studio, right. Not a shop. Sorry.”

Faith stepped out of his hold and turned back to the house. Very remote chance. “God, Michael.”

“But it could be great. Look at that porch. I can build the garage exactly the way I want it. I know it’s rough inside, but…”

“Rough? Holes in the walls. Exposed subfloor. Only one bathroom, and somebody stole all the fixtures. They probably carried all the copper out in the bathtub.”

His grin faded away. “Faith. I can’t afford much. But I can work hard, and I can do almost everything that needs doing. What I can’t do, somebody in the club can do. You know they’ll all help. I know you see what things could be, not what they are. It’s like you’re trying not to see what this could be.”

She was, and she didn’t know why.

They’d had no luck finding anything in town. Part of it was their finances, which weren’t dazzling. Michael had some savings, but Faith really didn’t. What she’d earned from the playground commission would cover a down payment, but otherwise, she’d been living like most artists lived—feast or famine, and more famine than feast.

Madrone was a pretty expensive place to live, and Michael didn’t want to raise Tucker in the kind of neighborhood there that they could afford to buy in. She agreed, of course. She was still living in her mother’s house, taking care of Sly and the kittens, but that was ready to go on the market. Michael hadn’t wanted to move Tucker more than once, so they had stayed with Hoosier and Bibi. They’d thought it would be just a couple of weeks. But Michael had gotten custody of Tucker six weeks earlier, and they were nowhere nearer to a real home solution.

Until Michael had come over and picked her up, wanting to show her what he’d found. Now they were way out near Joshua Tree, looking at a foreclosed property that had been on the market so long that the ‘For Sale’ sign was hanging by a single hook, and the agent hadn’t even bothered to come out with them. He’d actually given Michael the code to the key box over the phone—which had seemed insanely reckless until they’d gotten out here and realized that there was nothing left to fucking steal. No copper wiring or pipes, no appliances, nothing.

Even taking into account the theft and vandalism, it was a house that looked like it had never been loved. No one had ever been happy to live here.

The exterior of the ranch-style house seemed intact, if uninspired. Putty-colored stucco, an indifferent asphalt-shingle roof, a long, Western-style porch across the full front. Somebody had built out the garage to be two more bedrooms. That expansion, according to Michael, had been done well, with solid HVAC and good insulation.

She sighed. “You’re right. I can’t get over the lack. But okay, let’s go through again, and show me what you see.” She held out her hand, and he took it. First he kissed it, and then he led her back into the house.