Specter (9780307823403) (12 page)

“There’s a zoo?” Now she is really interested.

“It’s in a different part of the city, but we’ll go there sometime, too,” Dave says.

I can’t help but yawn. The excitement that has kept me going begins to dissipate, and I feel like a portable cassette with its battery level sliding downward.

Dave is smiling at me, over Julie’s head. “Good night,” he says. “I’ll pick you both up tomorrow afternoon around two.”

Julie stands and takes one of my hands, helping me to my feet. “Good-bye,” she says formally.

“Good night,” he answers.

Julie tugs me into the house, but I turn to watch him drive away.

We say good night to Mrs. Cardenas. Her eyes glitter, reflecting the blue and white light from the television screen. “Julie, what are you doing out of bed?” she asks, but without waiting for an answer, she says to me, “Did you have a good time with Dave?”

“Yes. It was fun.”

“He’s a nice boy.” She looks as pleased as if she had put him together with her own hands. “Oh, what a nice evening!” she says, and turns back to watch Cary Grant murmur something clever to Sophia Loren. Down the hall I can hear the snuffles and sputters as Mr. Cardenas dreams and snores.

I wish I could talk to Holley Jo. I would love to tell her about Dave. I will. Right now, before the evening has begun to blur, I’ll write her a letter. If I can’t talk to her before we fall asleep, then I’ll write my thoughts. Once in the bedroom, I put on my nightgown and begin to look through the drawer for my box of stationery.

“What are you doing?” Julie asks. She pokes her head out from under the blanket.

“I’m looking for my stationery.”

“What for? You aren’t going to write a letter in the middle of the night.”

“Oh, yes, I am.” I turn to look at her. “Did you see my box of stationery? It’s pink, and it has some pink and white envelopes and paper in it and a bundle of my letters from Holley Jo and some other friends.”

“No.”

“You helped pack my things, and you put them away. You must have seen the box. I don’t own that much.”

“Maybe it got left accidentally at the hospital.”

She is staring straight into my eyes, and I know she’s lying. For an instant I am so furious with this
child that I want to scream at her, but I clench my fists and try to think. If she deliberately left the box at the hospital, they’ll find it and keep it for me. And if she didn’t, then it’s probably somewhere here in this room. And if she threw it out, there hasn’t been a trash pickup, so it would still be in the trash can. I can search for it tomorrow. Why would she do a thing like this? I know she’s jealous of Dave. Is she even jealous of Holley Jo and my past life?

Back to the check of drawers.

“Hey! That’s my drawer!” She jumps out of bed and runs to my side. But I have found my stationery box under her clothes, and I pull it out, holding it over her head.

She pushes the drawer shut, then turns and marches back to her bed as though her feelings had been deeply hurt. “I tried to put everything away by myself,” she says. “If I got something in the wrong drawer, it’s not my fault.”

“Why did you do this?”

“Do what?” Her gaze is clear blue.

There’s no point in pursuing it. “I’m going to write a letter. If the light bothers you, just roll toward the wall. It won’t take long.” I know my voice sounds colder than I mean it to be, but I can’t help it.

The mood is broken. I sit cross-legged at the center of the sagging mattress, the box balanced on my lap, a sheet of paper on it.
Dear Holley Jo
. I look at the words, the only words on the paper.
I can’t write. I’m even having trouble thinking straight. There’s so much I want to write you, Holley Jo, and I can’t. I want to tell you about Dave, but I keep looking over at the other bed, and there is Julie, lying on her back, staring straight ahead without blinking. It makes me blink just to think of someone not blinking. It makes my eyes feel itchy and start to water. Holley Jo, there is a lot I don’t understand about Julie. She’s had some awful things happen to her, and maybe that’s the problem. What problem? I don’t know. I don’t understand what I’m thinking, so how can I write it? I only wanted to tell you about this guy, Dave, but all those other thoughts have me too mixed up to write. I look again at the words I’ve written:
Dear Holley Jo
. Not much of a letter.

I slip the paper and pen inside the box, lean down and put it on the floor. “Don’t ever touch this box again,” I tell Julie.

Tears are running in little streaks into her hair and her ears. She hasn’t made a sound. I didn’t realize she was crying. “What I’m trying to say, Julie, is that the letters in this box mean a lot to me, and I don’t want anything to happen to them. You understand, don’t you?”

Julie gives a loud snuffle and her eyes close. “I told you I just got mixed up when I tried to put everything away. It wasn’t my fault, and you didn’t even say you were sorry.”

The yellow lamp is harsh, and the fading bruises on her arms are still there—blotches that remind
me how much she is hurting. “All right, Julie. I’m sorry there was a misunderstanding. I’m going to turn out the light now, so we can sleep.”

“Good night,” she says.

In the morning Mrs. Cardenas serves another big breakfast. Then she announces it’s time to get ready for Mass. “Nobody has to go,” she says. “But it would be nice. After all, it is the Lord’s day, and you don’t have to be Catholic to go to Mass.”

“She makes everybody go to Mass,” Mr. Cardenas says.

His wife ignores him. “In a family it’s a good thing when everybody goes to church together. You see, I’m not telling you to go. I’m just saying it would be nice.” She cocks her head like a fat little robin as she looks at me. “Dina, did you ever go to Mass in a Catholic church?”

“No.”

“Well then,” she says, “you don’t know what it’s like, how beautiful it is, and you won’t know unless you go.”

How do I explain to her that I’m blank inside, that I tried to pray and I couldn’t? “Please,” I say. “I’m not ready yet. Not now.”

She gives me a long look, then nods. “Okay. Not just yet. How about you, Julie? Want to come with me?”

“I want to stay with Dina,” Julie says.

Mrs. Cardenas sighs. “Then it’s up to you and me, Carlos.”

He leans on the table and pushes himself upward
from his chair. The wood creaks, and he says, “That’s my knees complaining they’re getting too stiff to kneel.”

“Going to church is good for stiff knees.”

“She is trying to make me holy,” he says to me.

“You’re much closer than you used to be,” she says.

“Maybe it’s not going to church that’s doing it. Maybe it’s old age.”

“Hurry up, old man,” she tells him.

“I’ll take care of the kitchen,” I say. I carry the plates nearest me to the sink and rinse off the runny yellow egg yolk that paints the rims.

Julie comes to the sink, too, and nudges me out of the way. “I said I’d do the breakfast dishes.”

“We can do them together, and make the beds, and then read the comics in the newspaper.”

“You’re supposed to rest.”

“I just got up. I’m not the least bit tired.” I smile at her. “Come on, Julie. Let’s work together.”

“All right,” she says, putting the dishes she is holding into the sink. “And then you can write your letter.”

But the letter doesn’t get written. In just an hour Mr. and Mrs. Cardenas return, and there are preparations for dinner and everything anyone said at the party to retell in detail. Mrs. Cardenas is still hung over with happiness.

Dave comes at two, just as he had promised, and we climb into his father’s car. Somehow Julie ends up between us.

“
Hola
,
señorita
,” he tells her.

“Is that Spanish?” she asks.

“Yes. Wouldn’t you feel less crowded in the backseat?”

“No,” she says, and she folds her hands primly in her lap.

Dave smiles at me over Julie’s head, and I feel a rush of joy in this special day that belongs to me.

Dave has a nice smile and a nice profile. I memorize it with quick, secret glances as we drive through the older part of the city and the downtown area. Finally we park in a wide lot near the Hilton Hotel.

“The river is to our right, but we’re going to La Villita first,” Dave says. “A glass blower there makes little animals. I think Julie would like one.”

Julie perks up. She chatters about a glass blower she saw at the beach once when her father took her, as we cross the street and head into a narrow passageway paved with cobblestones.

Dave is telling us about the history of this early center in San Antonio, but I am watching the people and the shops. The area is filled with tourists.

“The glass blower first,” Julie says, as I stop to look at a pottery display in a nearby window. Someone takes my hand, but it’s not Julie. The fingers are long and firm, and I like the feel of them.

I see that Dave has Julie by his other hand. He has moved between us. Across the way a tall, stocky man with dark hair is watching the three of us, and
I automatically smile at him. This is a day for smiles.

If he smiles back, I don’t notice because Dave is saying, “Right in here, Julie,” and fishing some change from his pocket to pay the ten cents admission.

We edge past some plump women who are leaving the store, gingerly carrying well-wrapped purchases, and enter an ice-and-diamond-spangled world. There are blown glass figurines of all sizes and shapes lining the walls and hanging from the ceiling. Ships in full sail, ballerinas, skittish horses, leaping porpoises—

“This is fantastic!” I tell Dave.

Julie adds, “Oh! Look at the merry-go-round!”

“Tell you what, Julie,” Dave says. “I’d like to buy you anything in the store, but I haven’t got that much money. Over on this tray are a lot of little animals, and I can afford one of those for you. Take your pick.”

Julie is delighted. She chooses, changes her mind, and chooses again until she has decided on a small, pink dog. “I never had a dog,” she says.

Dave has picked something else. He pays for the purchases and puts mine in my hand. “A duck,” he says. “A very soft-bellied duck.”

We leave the store laughing in our own world, not noticing that Julie has stopped on the bottom step, until we nearly stumble over her.

“Watch it!” Dave says, catching his footing and grabbing my arm.

“Sikes!” Julie whispers, and she clutches my skirt. “That man looking in the window, with his back to us, is Sikes!”

Before I can react, she begins to run into the crowd, back toward the street. “Dave!” I cry. “Catch her!”

A policeman is standing on the next level. Should I yell for help? No. My mind is trying to think while my feet are running toward him.

He turns. “What’s the matter?”

My words gulp and gasp and spill into each other. “There’s a man. His name is Sikes. Please come with me.”

I lead, and he follows quickly. It isn’t far. The shop is here—no, there. At the window. But he’s gone.

“Oh, no! He was a big man. Tall, with dark hair. His back was toward us. He must have seen me run to you for help. He’s—”

The door of the shop opens, and a woman comes out, her wide-brimmed straw hat flopping at every step. The man follows her. It’s the same man who had been watching us earlier.

“It was hot in the sun,” he complains. “I thought you were never going to make up your mind.”

“That’s him,” I tell the policeman. I don’t have to go toward him. He and the woman walk right into our path.

“Just a minute, please,” the policeman says, and they stop. The policeman looks at me.

I glance wildly around for Dave and Julie, but
they aren’t in sight. “I—there’s a little girl with us. She—well, she was afraid of this man. She said his name was Sikes. William Sikes.”

“For goodness’ sakes!” the woman says. She squints at us and retreats behind an overlarge pair of sunglasses. “That’s not our name. It isn’t even close.”

“I’ll show you my identification,” the man tells the policeman. He pulls out a wallet, and the policeman studies it. I wish I were any place in the world except right here.

“Dina!” I am so glad to hear Dave’s voice. He comes through the crowd, pulling Julie after him. She looks at me as though I had betrayed her, and she’s trembling. “I don’t want to see him, Dina!”

I take her other hand. “Look, Julie. This is the man you ran from.”

She stares at him and shakes her head. “He isn’t Sikes.”

“He’s the man who was looking in the window. You just saw his back. You made a mistake.”

Other people have stopped to watch the scene. I feel like a fool, trying to apologize, to explain. There is really nothing I can explain. I wish the man and his wife would help me, but they’re annoyed. They walk away.

The policeman shrugs and goes back to the spot where I had found him. He isn’t curious, and I’m thankful for that. How do I explain someone like Sikes?

Dave has a hand on my shoulder. “Calm down,”
he says. “Julie just made a mistake. No one got hurt.”

“I want to go home,” Julie says.

“But we haven’t been to the river yet. And whoever you thought this guy was, he wasn’t.” Dave pauses. “Does that make sense?”

“I know that man wasn’t Sikes,” Julie says, as she stares at the clusters of people who are strolling past us. Her fingers grip my hand so tightly it’s painful.

“I wasn’t looking at that man,” Julie adds. “I was looking at Sikes.”

“Who is Sikes?” Dave asks me later, so I tell him Julie’s story.

“That’s weird,” he says. He leans back on the thick pad of grass under Mrs. Cardenas’s crape myrtle tree. The tree is dotted with hard little gray-green balls that in a few weeks will relax and become fragile pink flowers.

“Her story is possible,” I tell him. “Mrs. Cardenas thinks Julie’s parents were running from something or someone. I wonder if they were running from Sikes.”

“Do you think he’s following Julie? Or does she just imagine that she sees him?”

I pull at a broad strand of grass and smooth it between my fingers. “Dave, I’ve even wondered if Sikes was a real person. But he must be. The things
she’s told me she couldn’t make up. And she does have those marks on her back and bruises on her arms.”