No Story to Tell (22 page)

“Is that why you phoned me?” she prodded. “Just to tell me that?” She managed to coax casual into her voice, but she was like someone who, having tasted a new delicacy for the first time, suddenly realizes they cannot live without a second bite.

“You’d probably really like the way I look right now,” she teased playfully. “I had to run to catch the phone and I never had time to get dressed.”

She felt a little race of panic as she released this half-truth, but it was short lived, alleviated by the real power she felt imagining him imagining her. Listening carefully, she waited to catch his reply until finally it came to her not in words, but in a slow pulsing sensuality that began to seep back to her across the line. She closed her eyes and breathed it in as if it were a stream of loving caresses and soul-searching kisses. She was about to offer more of herself when a scattered spray of words stopped her cold.

“Are you lonely?”

“Lonely?” she repeated defensively. She blinked her eyes as if casting off a daydream. “I’m not lonely. Why would you think I’m lonely?”

They were not the words she had been expecting and no more fit into her moment than an elephant into a canary cage. Yet even as she denied their truth, loneliness began to emerge all around her as if it had always been there but as faded and dingy and unnoticed as the wallpaper. Unobserved and unobtrusive until somebody turns on the light and makes a point of imprinting its unmistakably dismal existence onto your brain.

Victoria pulled Bobby’s coat tighter as these new feelings began to focus around her. She would not have described herself as lonely because to her this feeling was normal. She had never felt any other way. Always lonely. Always alone. She put her feet on the floor and sat up straight. It annoyed her to be forced to see herself in this light. She preferred to think of herself as a loner: someone who chose not to waste her time in the gossipy presence of the other wives, someone who was comfortable in her own space. Not lonely. Not alone. Not these strong, desperate, glaring words that illuminated her back upon herself.

“I should go now,” she whispered flatly, shocked to find the caller already gone and the line dead. Pulling her knees up to her chest, she buried her head and began to cry as if she had just received news of the death of an old friend.

Victoria glanced quickly behind her as she grappled with the mangled ring of keys Pearl had given her. Her hands trembled visibly as she searched for the long-unused one that would unseal the ballroom doors. She was irritated by her nervousness. It wasn’t as if she were doing anything wrong, she chided herself. Bobby knew full well what her plans were for the studio. They had discussed it again just the night before. Vehemently. Now, standing alone outside the massive double doors of the ballroom, she began to wonder if she shouldn’t have considered his objections a little more seriously.

Fumbling the key ring, she accidentally scraped the ornate carving beveled into the thick oak panel of the left door. A sprinkling of filigreed gold fell to the burgundy carpet. Rubbing it invisible with her foot, Victoria suddenly became aware of the complexity of the doors. Over the years she must have walked right past them hundreds of times. But, she had never really paid them any attention, saw them without seeing them. The way someone who grows up in the shadow of a mountain may never truly encounter its raw majesty.

That seemed impossible to her now as her eyes explored the imposing and intricately carved doors. They rose at least three feet above her head. Even with both her arms stretched out, she would not be able to encompass their span. Stained a depthless indigo, the carvings in the raised panels had been brushed with a now-crackled and flaking gold. Sturdy brass hardware held the doors firmly in place.

Her fingers toyed with a long, jagged key. Even without looking she knew it was the brass one that would unlock the door. She hesitated, her mind raging with a searing question: Who was she to open these doors? Who was she to disturb these hopes and dreams and fears, so silently sealed away? The carefully carved pictures on the door captivated her as she vacillated between expectation and anxiety. Demure ladies in kimonos, ferocious dragons, snowcapped mountains, a collage of symbols she could not understand.

The key slid easily into place, but she could not turn her hand. She felt paralyzed. Suddenly, she wanted the whole crazy idea of the studio to disappear. She thought about sliding the key back out. She could return it to Pearl. Say the room was unsuitable. It was too big. That it would be impossible to control the children in such a large space. It would be pandemonium at least and chaos at best.

She would simply tell Bobby she had changed her mind. Not that the idea couldn’t work, as he insisted, just that she didn’t feel like pursuing it yet. And Elliot. She felt an unexpected rush of rage course through her. Why had he even suggested such a thing in the first place? He knew nothing about her. She hadn’t danced in years. Not really. Not since she’d come home from the failed dance audition, thrown her shoes in the basement, buried her albums and pictures in a bottom drawer and hissed to her mother that she never wanted to dance again. Even to herself it had been a surprise how perfectly able she had been to alienate herself from the only thing that caused the blood to course through her veins. She had felt she had no other choice. Bassman had stolen far more from her that night than he would ever know. Her dignity, yes. But far worse was that without the protection of her arrogant facade, he’d managed to expose her to herself.

Her eyes lingered on the gently spiked motif in the center of the door. A flower: foreign, mystical. Certainly not anything that could ever survive in Hinckly’s inhospitable climate.
A lotus flower,
Victoria thought, surprised she could identify it. She wondered at the workings of the mind, how it could hold so many random bits of information, able to dislodge and float them forward at seemly obscure, unimportant moments.

Her thoughts turned to Lily. Fresh, beautiful, innocent Lily. Her protective affection for the child puzzled her. She felt her hand turn the key. She knew she turned it not for herself. She turned it for Lily. For a promise made which she felt compelled to keep.

The door slid open easily. As if it had been merely awaiting her decision. A gust of damp, musty air escaped past her like a desperate sigh. She wondered again how many half-lived dreams had been sealed up behind these doors. For a moment she again faltered, then the sound of someone entering the lobby coaxed her quickly forward. Sliding inside, she closed the door behind her and was instantly encased in darkness.

Keeping her hand on the cold doorknob, the sound of her shallow breathing filled the room with a rapid, audible pulse. Shadows evolved into shapes. Gloom hung as tangibly as the tattered blankets nailed across the tall windows. She was surprised to discover the room was not expansive at all. A dividing wall, unpainted and none too straight, had been slapped up somewhere over the years, consuming at least half of what had once been a palatial space. The room was suffocated with boxes, crates, bottles, jars, bed frames, sagging mattresses, broken televisions and bent bicycles. Partially used rolls of silver duct tape littered the floor. Like the elephants’ elusive graveyard, Victoria realized she had just solved the mystery about what Bud did with the copious amount of stuff he was constantly dragging home from the dump. Sinking onto a broken-backed chair, she pulled her knees up to her chest and closed her eyes.

A soft tap on the door startled her upright, hands swiping hastily at tears. She held her breath, heart thundering as she stood transfixed, eyes riveted to the doors, willing them not to open. Another tap, firmer this time, then a sliver of sharp light shot in at her. She froze, praying the darkness was capable of transforming her into just another piece of inanimate junk. Her lungs strained wildly for air. She allowed herself a thin whisper of breath as the door opened wider, and a silhouetted figure stepped toward her.

“Hey, you in here?”

“Um . . . ya. Hi,” she ventured, voice gravelly with emotion. She barely suppressed a giggle as Elliot flinched ever so slightly.

“Jeez! Scared me. Didn’t see you there. What are you doing standing in the dark anyhow?”

“Well . . . I don’t know where the light switch is.”

“Has to be around here somewhere,” he murmured, hands already sweeping over the wall like quick black spiders. “Here.”

Victoria ducked her head as a tight snap brought the room to life. The addition of light did little to brighten her mood.

“There, that’s better,” Elliot congratulated himself. “Oh. Maybe not. Wow,” he whistled an exhalation. “This place is a bit of a disaster.”

“No argument there,” Victoria agreed wryly.

“I saw your car out front. Thought I’d stop in and see how it was going. Rumor around town has it that you’re going to turn the ballroom into a dance studio. That true?” He grinned over at her expectantly.

“It was. Until I came in here and discovered it’s Bud’s dumping ground for his dump treasures.” She hated the thin scrape of her voice. The way her words so easily extinguished the playfulness from his face.

“Ya,” he frowned as he surveyed the piles of debris. “It’s going to take quite a bit of work, that’s for sure. He’s quite an interesting old character, Bud, isn’t he? You should see some of the things he’s got welded together back of his garage. He’s actually pretty clever in some ways. How you figure he manages to get all this stuff back here from the dump with just his bike?”

Victoria shrugged. Discouragement was stealing over her thoughts as she looked around the room. So, Bobby would again be proven right. Maybe the studio had been a stupid idea after all, she thought. And rising thickly on the tide of her disappointment, she was surprised to feel an enormous sense of relief.

“This will make a fantastic studio, though. Won’t it?” Elliot offered, edging his way through the maze, stopping to flip open a box, thumb through a magazine.

“Would have.”

He ceased his rummaging. “What do you mean, would have?”

“It’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?”

“Not to me, it isn’t.”

Victoria sighed and nudged a basketful of ratty towels with her foot.

“Well, obviously I can’t have a studio in here. Look at this place, Elliot.”

“You want me to look at it? Okay, Victoria. I’ll look at it. And then I’m going to do you the profound favor of telling you exactly what it is I see because apparently your vision is still impaired by the darkness.”

Victoria started to object, but he softened his remark with a wink. Swinging around theatrically, he opened his arms expansively and silently surveyed the room. She grinned nervously at his antics, half fearing he was going to break out in song.

“What I see is twelve-foot ceilings iced with moldings as ornate as hoar frost on a wintery window. A delicate center rosette giving flower to an exquisite crystal and brass chandelier, which will once again sparkle after it is unburdened from decades of dust.” He pointedly ignored her amusement as she looked up at the bare light bulb dangling from the center of the yellowed ceiling. “Oh, and look over here,” he continued, as he leaned over to her, gently took her hand and guided her toward the shabbily draped window. Picking up half of a broken crutch from the floor, he swooped the tired blanket aside and revealed a rather ornate but filthy window.

“Have you ever seen such a resplendent Gothic arch? And do I have to note how incredibly rare it is to find such masterful stained glass outside of a cathedral?”

He grinned down at her, releasing the blanket and handing the crutch to her with great flourish. Moving quickly, he scooted several items away from the center of the room and gestured to the floor.

“And, just in case you were not sufficiently impressed by all that opulence, have a look at this.”

Victoria shook her head and laughed as she glanced at the floor.

“No, you have to look at it.”

“I am looking at it.”

“You have to really look at it. Up close.”

Victoria held his eye until she realized he was actually quite serious. Bending over slightly, she again looked at the floor. Slowly, it began to dawn on her what Elliot was trying to get her to see. The floor, although abused and water stained, was a lovely oak parquet.

“This is perfect, Elliot! This would make a perfect dance floor!”

Victoria laughed wondrously. It was as if Elliot had created a different world by the mere force of his enthusiasm. They stood grinning at each other for a long moment, their eyes sparkling with excitement before Victoria felt compelled to look away. She wondered if he had any idea of the strength of his charm.

She surveyed the wreckage of the room again slowly, her mind flipping between Elliot’s vision and the reality staring her in the face.

“Your brother is right. You really can dream a castle up out of an outhouse, can’t you?”

“I consider it a gift, thank you,” he smiled, stepping directly in front of her, placing his hands softly on her shoulders as he held her with his eyes. “Okay, so you want to tell me what you see now?”

“Elliot, I. . .” she stepped back, unnerved by a sudden urge to slip her arms around his waist. She felt both frightened and intrigued by the casualness of his touch. With him it was as if the traditional, unspoken boundaries that should have prevailed simply ceased to exist.