Bad Desire (12 page)

She didn't immediately return to the house. While it was still light outside, she walked back through her garden to the potting shed, looking for something to do with her hands. It was late in the evening, too late to do any real work in the garden, so she settled on sharpening the tools she would use the next morning. Deeply troubled, she stood at the worktable, turning the blades against the old grindstone and thinking about the woman she had become. Kind and considerate? No. More a hard, judgmental old woman who kept her feelings to herself.

Suddenly Rachel Buchanan began to cry. Her pent-up emotions struck her in waves—feelings of fear and failure and the senselessness of it all. Disappearing sparks flew from the wheel. So often now when she and Sheila tried to talk, it was as if their hearts were giving forth only some remnant of a language they had once known and now had forgotten. She knew that Sheila was older now, separating from her, and she was certain, too, that behind the scenery, behind everything, loomed Henry Slater. She wept hard and bitterly, until finally she had to force herself to stop.

I don't want to hurt her, Rachel thought. God, give me the strength to do this.

Had Sheila stayed home that evening, Rachel would have talked to her about Henry Slater. It was something she continually fretted about—debated back and forth with herself. She didn't believe in being secretive with her granddaughter and yet, at the same time, she didn't want to put wicked thoughts in the child's head either. Rachel knew how tempting, how irresistible the forbidden could be. She found herself in an unbreakable dilemma. I'm damned if I do, she thought, and damned if I don't.

The need to end it, to expose him and destroy his fascination with Sheila, pressed down on her as never before. If only she could vent these feelings, yet she had kept them bottled up inside her, waiting until the arrangements had been made to send Sheila away. Now they nearly were: all that remained was to send the tuition for Sheila's summer classes at St. Francis Academy outside Los Angeles and the girl would be effectively removed from any immediate threat. Tonight, she had decided that it was time for Sheila to be told. She wanted to explain to her what she had done and why, to warn and protect her and arm her with the knowledge of what was certainly going to come from Slater's attentions. It would be ugly, she thought, but it had to be done. And yet, until she could sit down and talk with Sheila, all this stewing about things produced nothing but pain. Tomorrow, Rachel thought, when she comes home, I'll tell her everything.

It was a little after eight o'clock that evening when Marjorie Sanders called, wanting to go over the preparations for the garden show at the annual Founders Day picnic. Rachel had known Marjorie Sanders for forty years and they talked for nearly an hour. As the conversation was winding down, Marjorie said, “Rachel, are you sure you're all right?”

“Yes, I'm fine,” Rachel told her, but without her usual zest. There was a pause on the line. “Why do you ask?”

“I don't know,” Marjorie said. “You don't sound quite up to par. I've noticed it all evening.”

“I'm tired,” Rachel said, and suddenly her voice sounded crushed with exhaustion, ragged and old and halting.

“My God, Rachel, what's the matter?”

“It's just …” There was a long silence. “There's been something going on …” Again her voice seemed to trail away as if her mind was pulled elsewhere. “There's something going on that I can't talk about.”

“Is someone else there?”

“No … no, it's just me.”

“Then what is it? Surely you can tell me. Is Sheila in some kind of trouble?”

“No …” This was said in a voice so faint Marjorie could hardly hear her. “I'm taking care of it.” Rachel was whispering now. “I tried to strike a bargain with the devil himself.”

Marjorie insisted that she go on. “Is this—you know—boy-girl trouble?”

“No, Marjorie, not in the way you mean.” Rachel knew she had said too much; she regretted having said anything at all. Her resolve had weakened, and for a moment, she had needed to vent the truth. Now it was better to leave the entire matter alone before it got out of hand. “Everything's all right,” Rachel assured her at last. “It's just this fear that gets into me sometimes.”

“Are you certain you wouldn't like some company? I could come over.”

“Don't be silly,” Rachel said, recapturing some of her old energy. “It's after nine o'clock. Don't worry, Marjorie. All I need is a good night's sleep.”

“All right,” her friend replied, “but I'll call you early tomorrow.”

There was a fog the next morning, a dense fog that blanketed the entire neighborhood. Looking down from the crest of the hill, the fog was like a gray churning sea, broken here and there by the roofs of houses and the bowers of trees. The red tile roof of the Buchanan house seemed to float and bob idly on the white void like a disabled ship. Not a light was burning in any of the houses.

In the east, dawn was breaking over the mountains. Among the Atlas cedars, the air was cool and fresh. Henry Lee Slater looked at his watch. 5:45. The fog below obscured the landmarks but he had walked the hillside and he knew it well. The terrain was wild pasture. Down across the face of the hill, an overgrown gully edged with saplings and rock ran down to a point near Rachel's garage. That was the route he would take this morning.

He pinched the burning red tip from his cigarette and crushed it into the ground with his shoe. Between his fingertips, he twirled the thin paper sleeve until the shreds of tobacco had emptied and were carried away by the wind. Then he put the filter into his pocket. When he rubbed his palms together, they were damp. He cupped his hands and blew into them, then he pulled the hood of his gray sweatshirt up over his head and tied the drawstring.

Clad in the colors of the morning, faded blue and fog gray, Slater began his descent.

Out above the high treetops, a white barn owl dipped its oarlike wings and swooped silently through the dawn. Rachel loved to wake up to these splendid spring mornings. To her, anyone who slept through the early hours of a day like this one was a wastrel and a no-account. Dreaming their lives away, she thought. All around her, even through the fog, she could feel the world budding and turning green—it was like the first day of creation and she couldn't wait to be outside in the pure new air. Among all her neighbors, she alone stood awake and ready to meet the day.

Thinking, Sheila, you really must see this fog, she started across the bedroom. She was still wiping the sleep from her face before she remembered that her granddaughter wasn't home. Rachel shook her head at herself for forgetting. Then, a fragment of a song ran through her mind; after a moment she remembered its name, “Harbor Lights,” and she was humming as she went down the hall toward the bathroom. The joists of the house moaned softly beneath her feet.

Rachel shed her nightclothes and hung them on the hook behind the door. She dashed cold water on her face and reached for a towel. Blotting the water away, she caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror. Old, she thought, getting too old, going blind in one eye. Life's little infirmities. As she quickly combed her hair she worried that she would one day go completely blind. She had already had one cataract operation. But then the morning awaiting her was too inviting to spend time grumbling about herself. Quit it, she thought.

She put on her work clothes: a bulky pink sweater, a faded print dress, and comfortable leather shoes so old they were cracked at the creases. Rachel headed toward the stairs. But she wanted to fill the house with the fresh air, so she detoured into Sheila's bedroom to open another window.

She wasted no time, going through the room and raising the window at the side of the house. As she passed the foot of the neatly made bed, she caught sight of the large pom-poms of red and black crepe paper and Sheila's cheerleading outfit, fresh from the cleaners, hanging in its plastic bag on the closet door. The vanity table was overflowing with lipsticks and nail polish, makeup and cologne. Once this same table had held a little girl's tin kitchen set; a brightly painted miniature sink, a stove, refrigerator, two small chairs and the set of play dishes she had bought for her granddaughter on Christmas—all of it stored away now in the attic, still good as new. Rachel pushed the memory to the back of her mind. There would be time this afternoon to think about everything. She went downstairs.

The sunlight this morning was split in two—above the fog ceiling, it was a magnificent day; beneath and inside the fog, the light was like putty. A white gloom pressed against the downstairs windows and the air was chilly; the slightest sound seemed to ring in it.

In the kitchen she measured four tablespoons of coffee into the tin cylinder and set the old percolator to brewing. She looked at the clock. Almost six. Marjorie had said she would telephone this morning. And, Rachel realized, Sheila might call before coming home. Surely neither would telephone before seven, but once she was outside, she could easily lose track of time. With the house closed, she wouldn't hear the telephone ringing in the kitchen. The window above the sink faced the back garden; Rachel pushed it open and felt the morning dampness on her face.

That's better, she thought. She took down a frayed straw hat that hung on a nail in the broom closet and set it firmly on her head. Letting herself out the back door, Rachel crossed the screened-in porch and stepped into the narrow strip of yard.

The morning glowed; the fog seemed to capture the light and make it opalescent. The garden was silent. Rachel followed the cobbled pathways, knowing the way by heart; the fog swarmed and parted before her like smoke in a dream to reveal the edge of a trellis, a post, her prized cabbage roses ready to burst into flower. Each took shape and drifted forward as she made her way past them. The door to the potting shed was wreathed in mist; when Rachel opened it, the old hinges squealed sharply. She felt her muscles contract. Suppressing a shiver, she went inside the small dim box of a room.

A window at the back of the shed let in light. On the near wall, the many ribbons and medals she had won for her roses sparkled in the gloom. Placing a basket on her arm, Rachel began to collect the things she would use this morning: a pruning knife, with its small curved blade, a pair of long wedge-shaped shears for the larger vines and stems, a trowel to transplant strawberry runners, a ball of rag strings, which she had cut and rolled herself. She pulled on dun-colored cotton gloves and carried the basket out of the shed.

The brick walks ran foursquare and in an X to a central circle around the rose arbor. Every morning she invariably found herself standing before her cherished cabbage roses. They always came first. In 1940, when she had come to Rio Del Palmos to marry Charles Buchanan, she had brought five suitcases packed with everything she owned and a fruit jar of water-soaked cuttings from her mother's rose garden in Connecticut. Only the climbing cabbage roses had survived and she cherished them.

Heavy with buds, they towered over her. Some of the oldest branches were nearly as thick as her arm. Charlie had helped her build an arbor for them, and the shoots and runners had interwoven with the wood lattice until they were inseparable. Always in need of repair, shored up year after year, the trellis walls now teetered dangerously to the side, but in a few weeks, at the height of the season, as if to defy gravity, a grotto would rise from the earth, a grotto made of rich green leaves, black thorns and roses the size of saucers—Rachel Buchanan's famous bloodred Connecticut roses.

Under the withered thatch, the ground was still damp from the recent spring showers. Weeds sprouting up at the bases of her rose bushes came loose easily, roots and all. Rachel hardly noticed the passing of time.

She had cleared the undergrowth from three of the thorny beds and was tying up some of the trailing climbers when she remembered she had left the percolater on. “My coffee!” she gasped. Stripping off her gloves and dropping them into her basket, she ran through the fog for the house.

Rachel crossed the screened-in porch, threw open the door and burst into the house. Grabbing a pot holder, she snatched the percolator off the burner, swung it toward the sink and put it down. She laid her straw hat aside and blew out a long-held breath.

From the cabinet, she took down a cup and saucer and heard a small but distinct noise at the opened window behind her. She looked over her shoulder but saw nothing unseemly. It must've been a branch, she thought, brushing against the windowpane. Through the fog outside the window, she could just barely make out the tiny white privet flowers that lined the side of the house.

Shame on you, she thought, shame on you for being such a scaredycat. She poured herself a cup of coffee. In the corners of the room the shadows wavered like disturbed water. A twig snapped and she couldn't stop herself: again her eyes searched the open window. No, nothing. Only the fog. And the luminous morning light. Nothing at all. It's this fear that gets into me, she thought. She rubbed at the prickling of her arms.

Holding the full cup in both her hands to warm them, she walked back outside. The sun had begun to burn through the fog; it stood in a layer now, waist high above the ground. The heavy perfume of honeysuckle drifted from a neighbor's yard. Across the driveway, she noticed that the Malcolmsons' kitchen windows were still dark. It was such a rare morning that if she had seen their lights on, she might have gone over, tapped on their door and said, “Have you ever seen the like?” I ought to wake them up, she thought mischievously. It'd be good for them. She smiled to herself as she imagined them in their pajamas and robes, just waking up, sleepy-eyed over breakfast. Rachel drank the last of her coffee, set the cup on a porch step to take inside with her later and turned back across the yard.

Every blade of grass was slick with dew: here and there the precise symmetry of the moisture was broken and ruffled like fur brushed the wrong way. Something had passed through here. The trampled patches formed a disjointed trail, leading from the side of the porch to the garden. She thought, That's what I heard through the kitchen window.