The Uninvited (10 page)

“I do believe you’re blushing,” said his mother.

“I am not blushing,” he said.

“Yes, you are. Why, maybe I
should
get that old canoe down from the shed and follow you one of these days. See what kind of trouble you’re getting into.” He looked out toward the creek. Saw a kingfisher skim the surface. Mavis poked him in the ribs. “I hope whoever she is, you won’t be bashful about bringing her home.”

“Mom.”

“Or too proud,” she said, her voice teetering a bit now. It didn’t take much to deflate her.

Cramer wished there was something he could do to drive her demons away. “I promise
when
there’s a girl, you’ll be the first to know.”

She gave him a hug. “‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,’” she started to sing, her voice muffled in his shirt. She swayed back and forth, trying to lug him around with her on a dance on the uneven shore. He held on to her lest she slip off the bank into the water. Something was up.

She must have sensed what he was thinking, because she pulled away and held him at arm’s length. She was still smiling to beat the band.

“You think your mother’s gone cuckoo on you?” she said.

“No, Mom—”

“It’s okay, Cramer, honey,” she said, and then she tipped her head back and laughed out loud. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay!” She looked into his face, her own suddenly composed and sober. “I know how difficult I can be,” she said. “I’m not famous for being levelheaded.”

“Mom—”

“And I know that if it weren’t for you, I’d’ve been toast a long time ago.”

“Ah, Mom, it’s not like—”

“Shhh! Yes, it is!” she said, gently pounding his chest with her fists. “You really are my knight in shining armor.”

He swallowed hard, proud and self-conscious.

Then she smirked and said, “Come on. I want to show you something.”

The painting stood on the easel, still wet in patches but remarkable in its energy. His mother didn’t speak. She just let him gaze upon her work.

It was an abstract piece, all in lavenders and ochers and blue-veined greens, so that it looked like a garden seen in a cracked but bright mirror. Cramer didn’t know much about art, but he knew this: the painting before him contained all of the excitement and enthusiasm and sparkly-eyed optimism that his mother had revealed to him down by the stream.

“It’s so good,” he said.

“Do you think?”

“I know!”

“Oh, honey,” she said. “I do, too. ‘I have found the key to my courage locker,’” she said. He recognized it as a saying from
The Artist’s Path,
and he had to admit it was true. This painting
was
courageous—it seemed to shout at him across the room.

“Now I know why you’re so happy,” he said. And she squeezed him tightly and pressed her head against his chest as if trying to smother a scream or stop herself from bursting into tears.

“It’s back,” she whispered. “I am recovered.”

“I’m so proud of you, Mom,” he said, drinking in her excitement.

Then she pushed him away again, though she held on to his hands tightly. Unconsciously, he rubbed his thumb along the scar on her left hand. Then he stopped himself, lest it set her off. But she seemed happily oblivious of her painful past. She gazed at the painting, the way he’d seen people in movies gaze through the window at a baby in a maternity room. Then she looked up into his eyes. “There’s more where that comes from,” she said confidently. “I mean it.”

“That’s good news,” he said.

She turned around to give the painting her complete attention. “We’ll be rich again,” she said, and laughed because they had never been rich, but they had once been happy, for a while.

“I know it,” he said.

“There’s just one thing,” she said.

He could hear the hesitation in her voice. He braced himself.

“I’m going to need more paint and more canvas,” she said hurriedly. “A lot more paint, a lot more canvas.”

He didn’t speak for a moment. Hardly breathed. She felt the change in him. She turned. “It will be worth it,” she said.

“I know.”

“I’ve made a list,” she said. “I phoned the supply place in Ottawa.”

“Good,” he said, not wanting to lose her.

“Five hundred dollars ought to cover every­thing,” she said. “For now.” She held his eyes for a moment longer, then her gaze skittered away.

“Okay,” he said quickly, not wanting to let her down. “I’ll handle it.”

“Of course you will,” she said. Now she looked up at him again, and her eyes went all coquettish, the way she’d get with Waylin when she wanted something from him. She rubbed Cramer’s upper arms, squeezing his biceps. “God, when did you ever get to be so strong?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. His mind was reeling.
Five hundred bucks,
he thought. Where would he ever get five hundred bucks? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he would.

“You can count on me,” he said.

Her smile softened. She shook her head in amazement and respect. “Whoever that girl is I smell on you, she is one lucky lady.”

He didn’t bother to argue with her. Kind of liked the idea that there could be a girl—a lucky girl—who was his alone.

CHAPTER TEN

J
AY SAT IN BED LISTENING
to Gabriel Zouave’s
Sang-Froid
on his iPod, reading the score along with the music. The oversize manuscript was propped against his knees. He had seen the premiere, heard Zouave talk about it. Jay dreamed of writing something this good—this big. But right now all he wanted was for the music to take him away. He did not want his mind to wander. Did not want to think of Mimi down the hall.

There was a knock on his door. He paused the iPod, instantly felt a panic attack coming on. He waited. The knock came again, softly. He glanced at his alarm clock: 11:45. It would be her. She’d want to talk about what happened. About the video footage: her own image on her own camera captured by an unknown watcher.
His
unknown watcher. Had to be. It seemed fatherhood wasn’t the only thing he and Mimi shared.

He wasn’t sure he could face this right now. But it surprised him, bothered him that only half an hour after saying good night, how much he wanted to see her again.

“Jay?”

He let out his breath. It was only Mom. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved.

“Enter.”

The door opened and there was his kind mother in her terry-cloth robe and sheepskin slippers.

“Am I disturbing you?” she said. He had to laugh.

She gently closed the door behind her, crossed the room, and sat on his bed. She patted his foot, under the comforter.

“That a good read?” she asked.

“Yeah, a real thriller,” he said. He held up the score so she could see the cover. She took it, looked at the open spread, and shook her head. “I can’t imagine how you do it,” she said.

He shrugged. “I can’t imagine how you take out somebody’s tonsils.”

“Tonsils are a piece of cake. But reading all these parts. And you actually hear it in your head, don’t you?”

Jay pointed to his earphones.

“I know, but you do read scores. I’ve seen you.”

Jay placed his iPod on the bedside table. “Zouave told me the only time music was ever perfect for him was when he read it. No one’s flat; no one plays too loud. Perfect balance. Perfect harmony.”

His mother nodded in an abstract way, as if perfect harmony was something she didn’t see a lot of at the clinic. She handed him back the score. There was a shift in the expression on her face. He closed the score and dropped it to the floor beside his bed.

“Pretty weird night, huh?” he said.

Lou nodded. “You might say.” She brought her hands together in her lap. “I thought I should tell you I phoned Marc.”

Jay wasn’t sure what he had been expecting her to say—something about Mimi, no doubt. “Really?” She nodded. “You know how to reach him?”

She nodded but with her chin pulled in as if this wasn’t quite the response she had expected. “He’s at the same number I reached him at when you wanted to use the house on the snye for band practice, back in high school. He still pays property taxes on the place, which means he’s on the township roll. Jo found his address and phone number easily enough.”

Jay thought about the balding man in the shades. He imagined him in the same café, as if that was where he lived, with a glass of wine in one hand and a phone in the other, talking to Lou.

“What’d he say?”

Lou folded her bathrobe over her knee. “Well, he was a bit surprised.”

“That makes a whole bunch of us.”

“He remembered that he had given you permission to use the house but that it was a long time ago. Seven years, I told him. He also knew you’d gone out west to school.”

“How’d he know that?”

“I wrote him,” said Lou.

“Jesus! So you two are like buddy-buddy and I don’t even know about it?”

“What do you think, Jay?”

That was the sixty-four-million-dollar question. What was he
supposed
to think? “My father suddenly crash-lands right in the middle of my life via this pretty much grown-up daughter—aka my half-sister—and now I find out my mother is all palsy with the guy.”

“Nonsense,” she said.

“Mom!”

“Keep your voice down, honey. There is one very tired, equally discombobulated young woman down the hall trying to sleep.”

Jay didn’t need reminding.

“Marc and I are anything but palsy-walsy. I have communicated with him precisely twice in the last umpteen years—three times, counting tonight: once, back in … whatever it was … 2000?—when you were in tenth grade—to ask if you could use the house on the snye for the band; then once again to let him know you’d graduated from high school, summa cum laude and valedictorian of your class. Bragging rights. And tonight to let him know our present situation.”

Jay didn’t dare speak. He could feel words as sharp and belligerent as sticks and rocks piling up behind his teeth. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was so angry about; he just was.

“He’s fine about you being there, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

That helped a little. But not much. It had been a very long time since Jay had thought of the house on the snye as belonging to anyone else but himself. Now it was as if his hold on the place was being threatened from every side.

“What about her?” he said, nodding toward the spare bedroom.

“That’s for you two to decide—you and Miriam.”

“Who?”

“That’s what Marc called her. He thinks it’s up to you guys how you deal with this. And I agree.”

Jay crossed his arms, leaned back, and banged his head a couple of times against the backboard. “I dunno, Mom. I can just barely wrap my head around
having
a sister. But sharing a place with her?”

His mother smiled sympathetically. “Marc thinks there might be something she’s running away from.”

“What? She rob a bank?”

Lou shrugged. “More personal, I’m guessing. He wouldn’t say. Or didn’t know.”

“Or didn’t care,” said Jay.

He looked away, knowing his mother would be regarding him attentively and wishing she wouldn’t. Her hand was still on the comforter, stroking his foot. He slid it out of her reach. She didn’t speak and eventually he glanced her way again.

“What is it?” she asked.

“What do you think?”

She shook her head. “It’s not
just
Mimi. Something’s up. Something’s been bothering you for a while.”

Jay rolled his eyes. “Like my life, for instance?”

Lou smiled.

“You think that’s funny?”

“No,” she said. “I would say your life was pretty good.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“You’re going away in just a couple of months. Back to school. You’re going to love that.”

“I know. Of course I will. And I am a fortunate child. Believe me, I do realize that. You know I do.”

“But?”

“But…” He couldn’t tell her what was going on up at the snye. He could talk to Lou about almost anything, but not this. Not something she might see as threatening. And it was threatening, though he didn’t want to see it that way.

“You take life very seriously, Jay,” she said. “It will always be a bit of a burden for you. But I wouldn’t be much of a mother—let alone a doctor—if I didn’t know that something’s been on your mind for a while now.”