Summer Of Fear (18 page)

“I think she’d look fine,” I said. “Her dark coloring would be a good contrast to Mike’s blondness. She could wear something springtimish—like that pink dress I made.”

“Well—maybe. That dress was pretty on her.”

“Think how soulfully she and Mike could look at each other,” I said, trying to keep the irony from my voice. “They wouldn’t even have to act. It would be natural.”

“There’s that, of course. Okay, you’ve convinced me.” Mother accepted the idea. “There won’t be any problem getting them together. Mike’s out in the living room right now, and Julia was just asking if she could help me with anything. I’ll march them out into the backyard and go to it. I’d like to get them with leaf shadows across their faces.”

“She might not want to do it,” I said. “She might be shy.”

“She’ll get over that,” Mother said. “Anybody in this family has to be prepared to act as a model when needed. You know that—it’s a rule of the house!”

She left the room, and I got up and got dressed and made the bed and let a little time go past as I washed my face and did my eyes and fooled around with my hair. When I left the bedroom at last I did not go outside but went instead up the stairs and into my room which was now Julia’s and over to the window where I could see down into the backyard. They were out there. Mother had her camera on a tripod, and Mike and Julia were standing together over by the elm tree, I could not see Julia’s face but I could tell by the rigidity of her stance that she was not happy with the situation.

I almost laughed out loud.

So much for you, Cousin Julia, I thought joyfully. You’re caught at last! Now all I have to do is wait until Mother develops the film and then show her the paragraph I read last night.

I could see the words, sharp and black in my mind’s eye, as clearly as though they were on the printed page: “There is a superstition, widely held among believers in magic, that a witch cannot be photographed.”

The laughter stayed with me, joyous and triumphant, until I was halfway down the stairs when there leapt into my mind another paragraph I had recently read. It was in Mary Carncross’s letter:

“My brother Dick saw your picture in the yearbook and he wants to be the one to meet your plane!”

It was all downhill the rest of the day.

Of course, there wasn’t much of the rest of the day left. I went into the kitchen to get something to eat to represent breakfast and lunch combined, but my stomach was so knotted up that I couldn’t face the sight or smell of food. Nor could I force myself to go into the backyard to watch the picture taking. If I could I would have gone to my room and thrown myself across the bed to weep, but I had no room to which to go. The moment I had emerged from my new sleeping area, Bobby and two of his friends had gone in to work on model planes.

So I made myself a glass of ice tea and sat down at the kitchen table and let the sick disappointment sweep over me. There was nowhere left to go either physically or mentally. All the doors were closed.

It had all seemed so perfect! For the first time that summer everything had seemed to fall into place! I had been so sure that at last I had an answer, a method of exposing Julia for her true self! Now the memory of one short sentence in a letter from a girl I didn’t even know had ruined everything. There was no way I could get past it—if Mary Carncross’s brother had seen Julia’s picture in a school yearbook, then Julia could be photographed.

The pictures Mother was now taking would turn out. More than that, they would probably be beautiful. Did this prove that I was wrong all along, that Julia was a perfectly normal seventeen-year-old girl whom I had horribly misjudged?

No, I thought. It didn’t prove that. The book had not stated that witches could not be photographed, only that there was such a superstition. The very word “superstition” implied a belief in something that was not true. The more I thought about it, the more I carne to realize that I had been carried away and in a surge of desperation had jumped to an illogical assumption. Professor Jarvis, in his description of witchcraft, had never suggested that there was magic involved in the sense that there was in children’s fairy tales. His explanation had accentuated the more scientific explanation of witchcraft as the utilization of the mind force to make things occur as desired. Beyond this, he had not gone. And there could be no scientific explanation for the belief that a witch could not be captured by a camera.

So now I was back where I had started, further back, really, because then at least I had had the will to struggle to find a solution. Now, after the rise of hope and the crushing defeat, I felt too emotionally exhausted to attempt another move. Let her go, I thought wearily. Let her do what she wants to do. Nothing she does now can be any worse than the things she has already done. And yet there was the professor. I could not accept defeat and leave him forever in his present state. Could I bargain with Julia, perhaps? What was it she wanted? If I knew, I might be able to make her an offer in exchange for the professor’s release. But what did I have to offer her? She already had everything—a place in our family, an inheritance from her parents, a boyfriend—two, in fact, if you included Peter—a wonderful best friend, Carolyn, and now, for all I knew, a budding career as a magazine model.

I drank my ice tea and stared at the table top. Outside the kitchen window summer was at its glorious peak. The sky rose blue and clear and cloudless beyond the rose covered fence and hummingbirds whirred dreamily about on the far side of the window screen and the sunlight splashed heavy and golden across the table and turned my tea glass to amber.

The longer I sat the more upset I became.

After a while Mother came through the kitchen carrying two rolls of newly exposed film.

“Goodness,” she exclaimed, “are you just sitting here doing nothing?”

“What does it look like?” I said shortly. “Is there a law against doing nothing?” The words came out snappish and horrid, and I saw Mother wince as though she had been slapped, and I didn’t care. At this point I didn’t care about anything.

“There’s no law,” Mother said, “but, my gosh, Rae, you slept all morning and you know I’m trying to get caught up on my work so we can go to Santa Fe tomorrow. You might have stirred yourself to do something around the place like washing the breakfast dishes.”

“I didn’t eat breakfast,” I said. “Why should I do the dishes? Why can’t wonderful Julia do them?”

“She can,” Mother said, “and she’s going to, bless her. And as for you, you can come along to the darkroom and help me with the printing of the doll house story. I want to get those pictures into the mail first thing in the morning and I need to be able to get them spotted tonight.”

“What fun,” I said, but I got up and followed her out to the garage and into the little room where she spent so many hours of her time.

I had started helping her with her printing when I was twelve and we now had a routine so well established that we never even bumped into each other in the darkness. As we entered the room Mother dropped the film she was carrying into the “hold” box, marked a wall pad with the notation “J & M or AM.
GRL
.” and started rummaging through her negatives for the doll house series. I mixed fresh developer in one of the flat plastic trays, dumped out the smaller tray of stop bath, which had turned the color of wine from having sat too long, and refilled it, being careful not to splash any of that particular chemical on my skin. I had done that on several former occasions and found it painful.

“Okay?” Mother asked. “Ready to have the lights off?”

“Yes,” I said. She flicked the switch by the door and the room went into a darkness slightly relieved by the yellow safe-lights which sent out enough of a glow to function by but would not wreck the photographic paper. I took my position at the chemical trays and Mother at the enlarger. She inserted a negative and began to sharpen the focus. When she had it right she clocked off the enlarger light and put a sheet of paper into an eight-by-ten holder and pushed the button to expose it. Her hands danced about for a few seconds, shading some areas, directing more intense light onto others. Then she took the paper out of the holder and handed it to me. I put it into the developer tray and stood, agitating it gently, while the picture began gradually to appear upon the paper. When it had developed to the right degree I lifted it with tongs and dropped it into the stop bath, which kept it from continuing to grow darker, and then into the rapid fixer which would secure the image so that it would not fade.

At first we worked in a strained sort of silence. Then, gradually, as I moved through the steps of the long familiar process, I felt my tension beginning to fade. The little room became a world of its own with Mother and me the only occupants. The years seemed to slide backward, and I could remember what it had been like to be twelve and happy.

Mother handed me another picture to run through, and as I took it from her our hands touched.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have been so rude there in the kitchen. You were right. I should have done the dishes.”

“It wasn’t that,” Mother said. “I mean, the dishes aren’t that important. It’s just—Rachel, what is it that’s happening between us—all of us? You seem so angry all the time, so apart from us. Are you jealous of Julia?”

“No,” I said. “No.”

“Then what?”

“I’ve tried to tell you,” I said, “Over and over again, I’ve tried to make you listen, and none of you will. I thought for a while I was going to be able to prove it, to make you listen, and then I found I couldn’t after all. I was frustrated, and I took it out on you, that’s all. I said, I’m sorry.”

There was a moment’s silence as Mother changed negatives. Then she said, “I told you there’s something I want to get you in Santa Fe tomorrow. I think it will make you happy. It may make a difference in the way you feel about things.”

“I don’t need a present,” I said.

“You tell me when you see it. If you don’t want it, then we won’t get it.”

“All right.”

“We should start early,” Mother said. “It’s an hour’s drive, and my appointment with the editor is for ten. That means we can do a little shopping before lunch and afterward we can drive up to the outdoor opera house. I’m sure Julia’s never seen anything like it, and the mountains around Santa Fe are so totally different from the Ozarks.”

I froze, the tongs in my hand, a picture held in the air halfway between two trays. My voice came out in a kind of croak.

“Julia’s coming with us?”

“Why, certainly. She’s very excited about it.”

“But you said—” Slowly I lowered the photograph into the proper tray, trying to keep my voice steady. “You said it would be us, just you and me. That it would do us good because we were so upset about the professor.”

“I never said we wouldn’t take Julia. Why, honey, she’s as upset as we are! She may not have known him long, but she evidently formed a very strong attachment during the few conversations they had. Besides, she’s never been in Santa Fe. She’ll love seeing Canyon Road and some of the other wonderful places.”

“If Julia’s going,” I said, “then I’m staying home.”

“Rachel, don’t be ridiculous!” Mother exclaimed in exasperation.

“I mean it. I’m not going to spend a day cooped up in the car with Julia, no matter where we’re going. That’s why I moved out of the bedroom, because I couldn’t bear to be with her. You know that.”

“I thought that a day together doing something pleasant might draw you girls closer,” Mother said. “Rae, please try. Make an effort to be gracious and loving. Julia is such a fine young person—”

“Julia’s a witch!” I cried. “A witch! Can’t you see it? Can’t any of you see past your own noses?” I slammed the tongs down onto the edge of the tray and turned to face my mother. I could not see her face clearly in the dim light. I did not have to see it. I knew how she looked when she was upset, her mouth held tight to keep it from trembling, the freckles standing out like dark splotches against her pale face.

“She put a spell on Professor Jarvis!” I told her. “He didn’t have a stroke, or if he did, it was Julia who made him have one! He knew she was a witch and he was going to talk to you about it! Julia was afraid you would listen to him and so she put him out of the way!”

It was a last frantic try and it did not work. Could I really have thought that it would? Was there any reason that Mother would listen now to what she would not hear before? And yet, for an instant, I had thought she might. In this little room where we had worked so closely together on so many occasions, where we had held conferences and shared our thoughts and feelings, it had seemed just faintly possible that we could find each other again.

But that was not to be.

“I think you’d better go,” she said.

“Go? Where?”

“Back in the house. Out in the yard. I don’t care where, as long as it’s someplace where I won’t have to listen to crazy accusations about my sister’s child. I don’t care whether you like your cousin or not, Rae; you can learn to get along with her regardless. I loved your Aunt Marge very much, and Julia is all that’s left of her, and it tears me to shreds to hear you slander her so cruelly.”

“But, Mother—” I began miserably.

“Please, no more!” She was turned away from me now and I could tell by her voice that she was trying not to cry. “Just go along, Rae, please. I can finish the printing by myself.”

“All right,” I said.

I waited until she put the paper into a light-proof container and then I opened the door and stepped out into the garage. I pushed the door closed behind me and stood there wondering what to do next. Then, because there was nowhere else to go, I went into the house.

The kitchen smelled of roasting chickens. Julia had evidently started dinner. From the voices in the den I knew that Dad and Peter were both home from work and that Julia was with them. From the far end of the hall I could hear Bobby and the other airplane-makers going strong in the back bedroom; somebody was yelling something about “revving up the engine.”