The Uninvited (14 page)

The artist and his brilliant student would move to New York, according to the love story. He would go first and find them a place. She would follow. Except there was a glitch: by then she was pregnant. How proud Marc was, she told Cramer. How happy. But she mustn’t tell anyone who the father was, Marc warned her. It might get back to Louise, and there would be big trouble. Legal trouble. It could ruin everything. Oh, she understood. The last thing Mavis wanted was trouble, when she was this close to a dream come true.

And so she waited.

At first Marc could only find a tiny one-roomed place; the prices in New York were outrageous. It was a wonder he could find anywhere at all. And this place was definitely not big enough for two people, let alone a new baby. But things were going well. He would get a bigger place.

And so she waited.

She didn’t talk—didn’t tell a soul. Grew fat with child. Kept the child’s father her special secret. Not that she was often in Ladybank, anyway. She was living up in Chester’s Corner back then. Didn’t need to go to town hardly at all. Had the baby at the hospital in Smiths Falls. No birth announcement in the
Ladybank Expositor,
though she was dying to share her joy with the world.

And she waited.

And waited. And he stopped calling. And he never came for her. But still she waited, until the day when she didn’t even know where he lived anymore.

A love story.

Cramer had Googled Soto a few times, back in high school. It had shocked him to find the man. He had half expected the artist was imaginary. But there he was, a big shot, just as Mavis had claimed. Mostly there were pictures of his paintings, articles from newspapers and magazines. But there were a few photographs of the man himself, too, the best one appearing in a profile on his gallery’s website. He was a smooth man with glossy black hair. His eyes were as blue as Cramer’s own eyes. It was eerie. Cramer didn’t like him, didn’t like his chiseled, smug face, his liar’s smile. He wondered whether he should download any of this stuff to show Mavis. They didn’t have a hookup out at the house. He decided not to. She had spent so long a time forgetting the bastard, it would be cruel. Cramer didn’t check up on Marc Soto after that. By then Waylin Pitney had started coming around, and that was more than enough to deal with.

Until he saw Mimi heading out to the snye with Jay, it had been four days since Cramer had seen her; it might be four days before he saw her again. But he thought about her all the time, especially when he was working out. Four sets, fifteen reps. Upright rows, lateral raises, flies and pullovers, curls and squats. Chin-ups to bulk up his lats, bench presses for his pecs, bent-over raises for the deltoids. Lunges, hack squats, triceps curls, wrist curls, reverse wrist curls. He piled on the weight, expanded his circuit. But he wasn’t bulking up for Waylin Pitney anymore.

Cramer woke up. Thursday morning, 11:00
AM
. He’d managed five hours sleep after getting back from the plant, but Mr. Pretty expected him at the store by one. Despite the lack of sleep, his mind felt wonderfully clear. He wasn’t angry anymore—didn’t want to be—pushed it aside. For one thing, she was staying. Mimi was obviously moving in. There was a bad side to that—namely, Jay—but at least she was still near. He lay there, his hands folded behind his head. Last night the shift manager had talked about getting him on full-time at the plant. Full-time meant security, and maybe he could parlay that into a loan. He’d talk to Hank Pretty about it. This money-for-Mavis thing would work out fine, without stealing stuff.

He listened. There was no sound downstairs. His mother must have gone out. That was another encouraging sign. She was getting out more, getting some air, going for walks up the road or down to the creek. One day she walked all the way to the old bridge at the very end of the Upper Valentine, or so she said. Quite a hike. But she looked better for it, stronger. He wouldn’t tell her about getting full-time just yet. He’d surprise her.

He listened again. Then he dug the silver-framed picture of Mimi out from under his mattress. She and her friend on a beach somewhere, their arms around each other, their sandy cheeks pressed together, smiling at the camera. “Jamila and Mimi, summer ’06” was written in gold across the bottom of the picture. He groaned softly, closed his eyes, and pressed the picture to his heart.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Y
OU CAN HAVE
the bedroom,” said Jay.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. That way if I decide to stay over, I can work at all hours of the night and not bother you.”

She nodded. “Thanks.” She had thought the same thing herself.

“And you’ve got your desk in the front room,” he added.

“Right.” She grinned at him, felt awkward about him making all the decisions. She had never had to negotiate about who had what when and where. She was a spoiled brat and she knew it, but then so was he. This was so strange. She was moving in with a guy, and yet she wasn’t really. Not a
guy
-guy.

“I’ll help you with the mattress,” she said. And so they hefted his bedding upstairs and flopped it in a corner. That was when she saw the stones. They were lined up on the windowsill of the gable, but she hadn’t noticed them that first day up here; there had been too much else going on.

“These rocks are famous,” she said, picking one up and turning it over in her hands.

“You recognize them?”

She nodded. “The sketches in the guest room?”

Jay looked impressed. “You don’t miss much.”

“Actually, they’re even more famous than your guest room. There are paintings, too,” she said. “Humongous paintings.”

Jay looked skeptical.

“Utterly humongous,” she said, proud of her father, despite herself. “Twelve feet square. Seriously!”

Jay took one of the stones from her and looked it over.

“The paintings are pretty abstract,” she said. “More color-field stuff than really representational. But you’ll recognize them when you see them.”

“When I see them?”

She made a face. “Well, you’re going to visit me, aren’t you?”

“Hadn’t gotten that far,” he said. “But yeah, of course.”

“There was a retrospective at the Whitney a couple years back,” she said, putting the stone she was holding back down again. “There was this stupid column in the
Herald:
‘Soto Gets His Rocks Off!’”

“Ugh.”

Then Jay’s attention had drifted to the windowsill, and he looked concerned all of a sudden.

“There’s supposed to be nine,” he said.

Mimi counted. Eight. There
were
supposed to be nine; she knew that. Then they looked at each other, and she stroked his arm because his face had gotten sad again, bent out of shape over a missing stone.

“It could have been gone for a while,” she said.

“Oh, that makes me feel much better.”

Mimi set up the desk right where her father’s desk must have been. It was in the big room, under the left front window, with a view of the snye, looking as pretty as a picture on a corny calendar. She could tell a desk had been in this spot—that her father had looked out at this same view—because the paint was faded above a certain line on the wall. Even though no one had lived in the place for over twenty years, it was as if there was still a shadow of him, his presence in this house. But that wasn’t all. Scrawled on the wall beside the window, above where his desktop must have been, there were phone numbers, written in ballpoint pen or pencil or Conté or charcoal—some numbers with names or initials, some without. Some retraced and darker than others—the hand busy while the ear listened. There was no phone line any longer.

It amazed Mimi how energetic her father’s writing was, even in such a mundane endeavor as scribbling down a phone number. But then, any mark making was serious to her father. There were also flurries of his very recognizable doodles. She stared at the wall—almost a piece of art itself. An art supplier in Ottawa, a framer in Richmond, a gallery in Montreal. There was even a 212 area code. She phoned it on her cell to see who it was. Caprice! So he had already made the connection with his present gallery way back then. It was a mini history—a connect-the-dots bio. The writing on the wall!

Tuesday and raining.

Eleven days since she arrived; almost a week since they took up residency. Except that only Mimi was in residence right now. Jay had stayed at the snye for the first three nights. Nothing had happened. Nothing
bad
had happened! Well, a famous rock went missing, but somehow she was sure that must have happened before. Jay had been back and forth since then, and she’d stayed in town at the Pages’ on the weekend. And nothing bad had happened. Whoever had been stalking the place and leaving mementos of his visits had made no appearance, as far as they could tell.

“Guess I scared him away, huh?”

“You are pretty scary,” he said.

They were old friends. Week-old friends.

But Jay wasn’t here now, and he wouldn’t be back until Thursday. He’d come by that rainy morning in Jo’s Honda to tell her he was driving to Toronto to pick up his girlfriend.

“Your what?”

“Iris. Iris Xu. She’s at school in Toronto.”

“And when were you going to tell me about Iris?” Mimi had said, her arms crossed like some jealous high-school coed.

A crack appeared in the edge of his smile. “You’re kidding, right?”

She wasn’t kidding. She couldn’t believe this hadn’t come up. A girlfriend?

But getting her wits together, she said, “Of course I’m kidding. It’s just the little-sister thing. You know. ‘Uh-oh, what’s he up to now, la-de-da.’ That kind of thing, you know.”

But of course he didn’t know what kind of thing. Neither of them did. They were only children.

Only
children.

That’s what they had grown up thinking, anyway.

She would meet Jay and Iris at Conchita’s in town Thursday evening for drinks. He’d phone when he was back to confirm. So now she was really alone.

“How far away is Toronto?”

“Just beyond the edge of the world where everything falls off into the Great Turtle’s mouth.”

She wished she hadn’t asked.

Mimi stared at the screen of her computer. She was using Final Draft, screenwriting software that took all the work out of formatting—almost wrote the screenplay for you. Almost. You’re in a scene with two people? The software knows it; as soon as you push the Return key after writing a bit of dialogue, it automatically centers the name of the other person in the scene. You type Z—it knows who you mean.

ZORBA

INT. OFFICE AT UNIVERSITY—DAY

ZORBA

Her cell phone rang again. “Let me go, let me go, let me go!” She was beginning to hate “Bohemian Rhapsody.” She checked the caller, didn’t recognize the number; she didn’t answer. If it was Lazar calling from some booth, she had to shudder at his uncanny timing.

EXT. PASTORAL SETTING—DAY

SASHA steps into the stream, bends down, and lowers her screaming cell phone below the water. She holds it there until it stops
.

She pushed the laptop out of the way and flopped her head onto the desk. She closed her eyes and listened to the rain. There was a drip somewhere inside she didn’t have the energy to deal with. She checked that it wasn’t directly over her bed. Then she went upstairs and checked on Jay’s computer, his instruments. Everything was fine. She sat for a moment and picked up the fat electric guitar. She had learned a song once, from Jamila. She tried to recall the chords. But then the cell phone rang. Again.
Shit.

Jay was right. She should get a new one. She’d been here long enough; there was a place in town, but she kept putting it off. Why? Because she
expected
Lazar to stop. She
expected
him to get the message—to give up. To do the right thing. To act his age! That was part of it. Why should she be turning her life upside down because this supposedly mature—
way
mature—man couldn’t take no for an answer? But it was more than that. She knew at some point she would have to pick up; she would have to have it out with him. But not until she was good and ready. And she wasn’t ready yet. She was frightened of Lazar Cosic, and she didn’t want him to know that, didn’t want her voice to betray her.