Erased From Memory (27 page)

My mother is perfectly recognizable. It’s her from my childhood. She was—I guess I’ve said this before—a beautiful woman. She had blond hair, which she kept short. She had straight classic features. She never wore makeup.

If I rack my brain long enough, I can figure out which picture this shot of her was cut from.

Right now I want to comfort my dad. I tell Sunshine thank you, good work, great of you to be so observant, and send her off to her next client. Then I sit down on the bed beside my dad and start talking. “That was a fake picture, Daddy. Someone made it to be mean. The picture is a lie. Constancia isn’t really there. Constancia is not being hurt.”

He twitches at my mother’s name, but otherwise doesn’t react.

“Do you understand, honey? She’s all right. Constancia isn’t there, she’s not the person in that picture. They took a photo of somebody being hurt and they pasted my mother’s face on it. Nobody is doing those things to her.”

Again, the only part of this speech Daddy reacts to is the name of his ex-wife. I think for a minute and decide that he always called her “Constancia,” not “Connie.” I sit stroking his arm and saying, “She’s all right, really; Constancia is all right.”

After a while I start singing it. This feels very foolish but I do it anyway. The tune I choose is “The Wheels on the Bus.” “Constancia / is all right, is all right / Constancia is all right.”

It’s a long time before I get a reaction, which happens suddenly: “You seem very sure of that.”

And in a minute he is sitting up and asking reasonable questions.

“What is that a picture of, then? Who could have done such a thing? Where did they get a photo of your mother?”

He moves to sit straight and rubs his eyes. “Do you know, Carla, I don’t think about her very much. I would have said I don’t remember what she looked like. Is that possible?”

I say, yes, it’s possible.

“But I believe I dream about her . . . Dreaming is a problem. Sometimes I’m not sure whether I have dreamed an experience or actually done it.

“I think I must have loved her,” he adds after a minute. “Is that possible, too?”

I say, yes, possible. I advance the opinion that people’s emotions are unchartable. My father is upset and I am upset, which makes me sound like his Sunday school teacher.

We try to probe the question of how he got the picture—did he find it? Did someone hand it to him?

He thinks it may have been slipped under his door, but he’s not sure. “I seem to have forgotten everything this morning until now. Is that possible, too, Carla?”

Oh, my, yes. Bad show.

I take the rest of the day off and settle down to watching television, side by side with my dad. We watch
Antiques Roadshow
and
Spongebob Squarepants
and the children’s show where they teach you the alphabet. In between times I canvass the hall to see if anyone has noticed a stranger who might have put an envelope under Daddy’s door. But nobody has.

 
 
“Someone who would do that would do anything,” Mrs. La Salle says. “I don’t want to scare you, Carla. But be real.”

Chapter 21

And now my father is missing.

I am in pursuit, driving much too fast down the bends and jerks of ocean-hugging Highway One. And I am very upset and very scared.

“Well, naturally; we knew he would take off.” This is Mrs. La Salle’s comment this morning when I show her his empty bed. The bed is sketchily, inadequately remade, the way it would be if he himself had pulled the covers up after getting out of it. Sunshine says, Uh-uh, she doesn’t think he had breakfast this morning, though maybe he grabbed a popover, y’know? She didn’t see him. Susie says, “Oh, the dear man, the pull of freedom was too strong.”

How would the pull of freedom get him from the Manor to the museum, where I’m sure he is?

A telephone call to the museum produces an automated voice describing Egypt Regained’s celebration today of
Dr. Scott Dillard’s Amazing Discoveries
. Tickets are hawked. I can’t get through to a human being.

Of course my father is there. In the middle of it all.

 
 
He doesn’t drive and has no money but he’s a bear with transportation problems. Remarkably inventive. My aged parent can station himself out in the middle of any road and look sad. And get a ride. Or he can borrow busfare from an indulgent stranger. And even figure out the schedule. Or there are taxis. There are even people like Egon who might come and get him, if Daddy could remember Egon’s cell phone number. Oh, hell.

On the other hand, maybe he went to the hospital to get his calcium shot.

Once last year he called an ambulance. If you announce in a quavery voice that you are eighty-six years old and feel bad, they will come for you.

I drive somewhat faster.

 
 
In Conestoga I decide against a detour to the hospital. Yes, I am worried about his copper sulfate level and his need for a calcium shot, but I’m more worried about the note I found in his inexpertly made bed:

 
There are indentations in the paper. Something has been attached with a paper clip.

A flying visit to the hospital to consult about poison wouldn’t help; I have no idea what Marcus sent him from the other world.

I don’t even want to think about this; I just want to act fast. I’m glad neither Susie nor Mrs. La Salle could come with me. I need to work unimpeded.

There are exactly two people who know enough about my dad’s situation to have written that note, which is computer printed in an imitation script. Scott Dillard is one such person and Egon Rothskellar is the other. I get a moment’s clutch in the belly remembering how good it was to kiss Scott Dillard. Leaning against the shiny stainless steel machinery in Egon’s kitchen.

Scott has the brains and knowledge and drive for anything. He wanted to get my dad and me out of the museum. He probably knew about my dad’s marriage to Constancia. He probably knew her. He’s involved to his chin in plots and schemes.

And he’s smart.

Another thing. Oh my God. I haven’t wanted to think about this, because I kind of liked him. But Rita’s death? Scott was at our table in the Best Western. I walked away, out to the ladies’ room with Rita. She had her back to him, the perfect target.

I told myself I could see him the whole time, out of the corner of my eye. Well, could I?

And Egon wasn’t even there at the Best Western. Bunny says he was at the museum. They were both at the museum, prowling around, trying to figure out who was stealing the doodads.

Egon’s been doing some evil things to my dad, and he’s not long on brains. But people don’t get jailed for stupidity.

Egon is stupid; Scott is smart. Somebody at the museum has been killing people. Two people: Marcus, Rita. And now somebody has it in for my father.

Somebody smart. What was the matter with me, necking in the kitchen with a guy that I knew in my heart might, just might . . .

If I drive any faster on this road, I will project myself off the cliff and into the blue Pacific, which lurks there to my right, utterly beautiful, utterly dispassionate.

Let’s plan ahead. What I am going to do now? I will enter the museum through the main door. Right away, I’ll start looking for my father in all the museum nooks and crannies: his own Edward Day Room, upstairs in the pottery and artifact rooms, restrooms, closets. I will also watch out for Scott. When I see him, I’ll . . . I’ll figure that out later.

I’ll look downstairs in the crypt.

I have to slow down; there’s more traffic now, all headed toward the museum.

Finally I’m at the gas station and church in Homeland and turn inland on the gravel road that leads to Egypt Regained. And right away I’m part of a small traffic jam. One of a line of vehicles waiting to see
Dr. Scott Dillard’s Amazing Discoveries.

 
 
Ten minutes into a slow creep, I drive my car up onto the verge and abandon it, nose pointing into the weeds. Then I start toward the museum on foot.

People in the cars that I pass wave at me. They don’t seem to mind waiting; they’re in a holiday mood. Amazing Discoveries probably involves Mummies. And Treasure. Maybe something about Eternal Life. These are the wonders people come to Egypt Regained in search of. Certainly they’re worth waiting for.

I want to push these people out of my way. Stupid moon-faced dopes, lounging in their big cars, getting in my way when my dad is settled in some corner, curled up in agony, coughing his guts out.

It takes me fifteen minutes to reach the end of the gravel driveway. There’s a big pileup of traffic there with a youth in a red visibility vest signaling
stop
,
go
, and
proceed
at the SUVs, Chryslers, Cadillacs. Under his red vest he wears his long white Arab outfit.

I circumvent him and his traffic and quick-step for the entrance. Daddy was okay last week about the copper sulfate and didn’t eat it even though he was instructed to do so. But will he be sensible this time? I send him a mental message:
Darling, Marcus didn’t really write that note. You know he didn’t.

Now I’m at the entrance door. Please, goddess, don’t make me stop and make chit-chat with Bunny. The folksy exchange about me, about my dad, referred to as Pop, about that place where we’re staying—what do we call it—some manor or something?—and how are things there?

I think I’m going to throw up.

Thank God no Bunny guards this entrance. Just one of the Harouns, who recognizes me and lets me in ahead of the line.

And inside is a battle area. Some of it is organized, some of it not. The organization happens in haphazard queues, one group waits for a lecture, one has lapel buttons for a tour, banners overhead advertise, AMAZING DISCOVERIES. CELEBRATION AT 2 P.M. People shove and drop things and buy books.

There is no sweet old white-haired gentleman.

People are sitting on benches, fidgeting, gossiping. They think things are funny. Maybe they’re waiting for the Celebration, maybe for lunch. A smaller sign, pointing up the stairs, announces, BUFFET UPSTAIRS. 12 NOON.

I circle and elbow, poke into corners, squeeze around sturdy ladies in lavender pantsuits, invade the book sales alcove. I get called down, “Sweetheart, take it easy, we’re all in here together, right?” I wriggle into the Edward Day Room.

I go upstairs, disregarding people who yell at me that the buffet isn’t until noon.

Back downstairs I try Egon’s office. It’s sturdily locked.

I scan each face. Anybody halfway sensible-looking gets asked, “Have you seen . . . ?” I’m looking for a small, erect, white-haired man. He wears a tweed suit and, probably, a vest. He is very gentle-appearing.

 
 
Do you know that sixth sense that tells you when your hunch may be right? Well, I don’t have it. But finally I stand still and review the places in the museum to search, and there’s only one I haven’t hit. The crypt. And that’s kept locked.

Daddy liked that crypt.

“Hey,” I address a Haroun who looks familiar, “do you know my dad? Dr. Edward Day?”

“Hey, yeah, sure.” The Haroun seems grateful to be addressed by a fellow human being. “Sure I know your dad.”

The Haroun surveys me, friendly. “You’re his daughter, right, Dr. Day’s? Didn’t you go to Santa Cruz?”

I am definitely going to throw up.

The Haroun also went to Santa Cruz, but he was four years behind me. In spite of the clot in my throat, I talk to him. Maybe my father isn’t here at all. Maybe he’s not full of poison. The minute I tell myself that, my stomach clenches, bruises my ribs, starts to invade my throat.

I should have checked with Tallullah at the hospital. Don’t they have a universal poison antidote? One that works on anything?

I should have shipped my pride and called Rob. He’s a doctor.

I should have slept on my dad’s window seat this whole last week. What’s wrong with me, pretending the Manor’s safe? Anybody can get in there. There are side doors, back doors, basement doors. It’s a leaky Victorian mansion. There are French floor-to-ceiling doors. Oh, Christ.

“Hey,” says the Haroun, surveying me closely, “you all right?”

No, I’m not all right. I examine him. “What’s your real name?” He brightens up. Probably he thinks, poor guy, that I’m making get-acquainted gestures.

He’s not one of the blond crew of Arab attendants; he has dark hair and dark eyes and a lively expression and he looks more Berkeley than Central Valley. He says his name is Walt. “You gonna pass out?”