Daughter of Light (11 page)

“Oh?”

I laughed to myself, thinking about how much they had told me about Naomi Addison, but I did consider that they told me those things because she and I were to share a bathroom, or because they weren’t all that fond of her.

“I teach English literature and composition at the Adams School for Girls. I’m in my third year there.
I was born and brought up in Boston. Attended Boston University. My family used to come to Quincy for weekends often, and I fell in love with it when I was only twelve, I think. Always knew I wanted to live here someday.”

“What age do you teach?”

“Tenth to twelfth grades. The age of wild hormones,” he added, but he blushed before I could, not that I would have. “I was told that if I could survive them, I could teach anyone anywhere.”

“You were told right.”

“And you’re from?”

“The West Coast,” I said. “We traveled about a bit.”

“What brought you here?”

I thought about being silly and saying “a jet plane,” but I smiled instead and told him I had discovered it in a travel magazine.

“Well, it takes a lot of courage to just pick up and start someplace new, especially someplace like Quincy, which I imagine is quite different from where you’ve been.”

“Sometimes we don’t have much choice but to be courageous.” I glanced at my watch. “I don’t mean to be abrupt, but after the day I’ve had, I think I need a little rest. I want to be up for the other guests and Mrs. Winston’s special dinner celebration.”

“Oh, sure.” He smiled. “I guess we have plenty of time to get to know each other anyway.”

“Have no fear. It won’t take much time to get to know me. I haven’t done all that much yet,” I said.

My reply took him by surprise. He tried to hold on
to his smile, but I could see he was a little speechless. I wasn’t all that used to shy men. Ava used to say they made her stomach churn. She didn’t have the patience for them. Whether I wanted to admit it to myself or not, I shared some of that with her.

I finished my wine, put the glass down, and stood. He rose immediately.

“See you at dinner, then,” I said.

“Yes, yes,” he replied as I started out.

I was going to lie down for a while. Everything had happened so quickly, I did feel as if my thoughts were jumbled and floating like snowflakes in a Christmas snow globe. In less than a day, I had found a new place to live, a job, and a possible pool of new friends, including two young men who were obviously eager to get to know more about me. I had a great deal yet to do, of course. I needed to complete my meager wardrobe and get familiar with the city. Always lingering at the edges of my thoughts would be the question of how long I would stay there. Would something soon happen to drive me on? Would I find it impossible to be anything other than a fugitive? Was this idea of starting a new life in a new place so impossible that only someone as desperate and foolish as I was would even attempt it? How long could I keep all of my secrets, anyway?

This was the first time since I had arrived in Quincy that I could stop to think. Without the clatter, the activity and chatter about me, my mind sank softly into the pool of darker memories, still quite vivid. On top of that, I couldn’t help but imagine poor Buddy returning from the bathroom and seeing that I was gone. He probably
first thought I was in the bathroom and waited hopefully, but when I didn’t emerge, he might have asked someone who was going in or who had just come out if I was in there. When they said no, he would have charged out of the restaurant and looked frantically toward the car and then all around the parking lot. If there was ever anything like cruel kindness, this was it; this was what I had done to him.

I could picture him trembling, believing that my sisters and my father had caught up with me and scooped me away. How frantic and frustrated he must have felt. What was he going to do, run to the police to tell them a tale that competed with a television horror movie? He probably wouldn’t be able to get a patrol car up to the house. He might not remember where it was himself, anyway. Even if he had found the courage and gone up there himself, he would find nothing. I was confident of that. All he could hope for was that I would call him, if not soon, someday, but that was something I would never do.

Now that I was seemingly safe for a while, I had to remain vigilant and paranoid. Had I seen a vision? Was the old man a Renegade? If I confronted one during my normal daily activity, would I have the power developed in me to sense him? A part of me didn’t want these powers. I couldn’t pick and choose from the list of skills and insights that made Daddy and my sisters so extraordinary and powerful. I had to accept it all, give myself up to the genes raging angrily within me, demanding that I permit them to mature and be who I was meant to be. How dare I challenge the fates?

But challenge them was what I was determined to do. Somehow, some way, I would be different. Surely there was some avenue of escape, some secret antidote that Mrs. Fennel, Daddy, and my sisters knew but had kept from me. I had only one goal in life now, and that was to find it.

I was so lost in these thoughts that I didn’t hear the first few raps on my bedroom door. They grew louder, almost like pounding.

“Yes?” I called. I rose quickly from my bed and opened the door. The woman standing there had to be Naomi Addison.

Daddy used to tell us that a divorced woman, especially a recently divorced woman, had a certain desperation in her face. I so enjoyed those evenings when we sat at his feet and listened to him describe the people who populated the world outside. He never came right out and referred to them as our cattle, our livestock, our garden of vegetables, but there was little doubt that he saw them that way most of the time.

“No matter how justified she is in placing blame for the failed relationship on her ex-husband, she can’t help but feel not only a sense of failure in herself but also renewed deep insecurity. How did she miss them, all those failings in her man? Will she miss them again in another? There are women out there who have been married two, three, even four times. Is it always the man’s fault? Can that be? They have to wonder, even though they would never admit such a thought to their friends.

“And what about those friends? Can they trust them
now? Do they see accusation in their faces? Can they hear the insincerity in their words of support? Are they talking about her behind her back? It’s endless when you fail, because even if you can support and justify blaming it all on him, you can’t escape the fact that you missed it, chose him, and put yourself in this world of failure.

“So, there is this look of desperation in their eyes. I mean to say this is true for the men, too. They’re just as insecure about themselves, despite the bravado. You want to recognize the desperation and the insecurity in the people you meet, my lovelies,” Daddy had told us. “It will make you superior and far more confident, which is what you should be, what you are.”

Naomi Addison wore too much makeup, I thought. She was one of those women who thought that if they put a stronger bulb in their socket, they would seize the attention of eligible men and wash out the competition. Her torturous, painful hunger to satisfy her need to be loved again was not unlike Daddy’s thirst, I thought. Maybe that was what revolted me about her more than anything.

“God, get a life,” I wanted to say. “Don’t grovel and plead with your sexy clothing, lustful eyes, and voluptuous body to get yourself a new companion, who most likely will bring you back to the altar of divorce you now flee.”

If she would wash most of the heavy makeup off her face, take the brassy gold color out of her natural light brown hair, wear less ostentatious jewelry and bras and
dresses that didn’t exaggerate her nice five-foot-seven, nearly hourglass-perfect figure, she just might find someone substantial. But that thought left me the moment she opened her mouth. Her voice was thin, whiny, and nasal with condescension.

“I’m Naomi Addison. I understand we’re sharing the bathroom,” she began. “I understand you’ve been here at least twenty minutes. Does that mean it’s mine now? I need a good half hour before dinner.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I just lay down for a moment after returning from work and lost track of time. I need about five minutes.”

“Five minutes,” she said disdainfully. “What can you possibly do in five minutes?”

“Get cleaned and refreshed,” I said.

She twisted her mouth. Her lips looked artificially boosted into fullness and ballooned a little when she curled them. There was something about the color of her eyes that suggested tinted contacts, maybe designed to make them seem bluer.

“Where do you work?” she asked, solely out of curiosity and not friendly interest.

“I just started as Ken Dolan’s secretary at the Dolan Plumbing Supply Company, mainly—”

“Ken Dolan’s secretary? You mean, his private secretary?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Her expression softened instantly. Then she smiled. “I would have applied for that if I knew the difference between a computer and a commuter.”

Figuring that was her best effort at a joke, I smiled.

“Well, I really don’t need as much time as I said. You take ten, fifteen minutes. I’ll be fine,” she said.

“I won’t be that long.”

“Don’t worry about it. Nice to meet you. I look forward to getting to know more about you.”

“Likewise,” I said, and closed the door so she wouldn’t see me giggling. Could anyone be more obvious? Surely she was hoping to get me to say something complimentary about her to Mr. Dolan. I’d have to remind her that the one with the most influence on him was Mrs. Winston, but more important, after knowing Ken Dolan for only a few hours, I could easily predict that he would never involve himself seriously with a woman like her. I wouldn’t be the one to tell her, but something told me I wouldn’t have to.

I hurried into the bathroom to shower. I would take only five minutes. She could take all day if she liked.

It wouldn’t make any difference if winning Ken Dolan’s affection through his aunt’s recommendation was her sole purpose this night or any night.

At least for a little while, it was a relief to think about the sorry state of someone else’s life instead of my own.

But I knew that wasn’t something I could do for long. Every crawling shadow outside my bedroom window was ready to remind me.

And they would.

I could see that Mrs. Winston and Mrs. McGruder were surprised that Naomi Addison was not the last guest to arrive at the dinner table. Apparently, that was her modus operandi. She thought it was important to make a grand entrance, but that night she obviously wanted to have the seat next to me. Mrs. Winston sat at the head of the table, and she had placed me to her right, across from Jim Lamb on her left. He had just gotten up to pull out my chair for me when Naomi arrived.

“Good evening, everyone,” Naomi sang, and she waited for Jim Lamb to pull out her chair, too.

“Thank you, Jim,” she said. “And where’s our Mr. Brady? On another road trip?”

“Right here,” we heard.

Martin Brady sauntered in, wearing the sort of wide, deep smile on his round, plump face that Daddy used to call synthetic. “For some people,” Daddy had said during one of his lectures at dinner, “a smile is almost a part of their uniform, especially salesmen. The secret is to look into their eyes. Do they look like they are lit by
sunshine or neon bulbs? Is it the smile of a mannequin or a man?”

I supposed that for the rest of my life, however long that would be now, I would rely on the fruits of Daddy’s wisdom, which he handed out to us so freely and eagerly. I would never forget how happy it made him to see us listening so attentively and absorbing everything he said so eagerly. We had the hunger because we instinctively understood that there were all kinds of starvation. We would always have a thirst for knowledge, especially the knowledge that Daddy eagerly imparted to us about people.

When you thought about it, understanding people was probably the most challenging of all things to understand. You could read and study science and math. There were rules applying to them that were true today, yesterday, and tomorrow, but people were often too unpredictable. Whom had I met other than us who could quickly adjust to someone’s mood, taste, and inclinations? We were blessed with insights and perceptions. We could see through false faces, feel quickened heartbeats, and seize upon the fears people possessed. These were powers I wanted to keep, but could I do that and give up that which was our true essence?

“Don’t fret, Mrs. Addison. I’m here for you,” Mr. Brady continued, somewhat boisterously. I glanced at Mrs. Winston and saw her displeasure. You didn’t have to be one of us to read the way Mrs. Winston felt and thought about something. The way she would twist her lips, raise her eyebrows, tweak her earlobes, or narrow her eyes spoke volumes to me. She was one of those
people Daddy had said were born with a layer of medieval armor. They were impervious to criticism and couldn’t care less what other people thought of their opinions or reactions.

“I love their arrogance,” Daddy had said. “They have the blood of royalty—rich, thick with history, and sprinkled with what makes something eternal and true.”