The Uninvited (34 page)

There was nothing he wanted from here. Well, almost nothing. In the kitchen, he found a blue velveteen bag with a yellow string to close it. A bottle of Seagram’s whiskey had arrived in that bag many years ago, but now all it held were a handful of silver spoons that had belonged to his grandmother. He chucked them out and went back up to his room to recover what it was he would take with him. He felt a sense of urgency, as if this house, like everything else around him, was on the verge of sinking. He found the stone and, under his mattress, the picture of Mimi. He wrapped it in a facecloth and placed the two objects in the little blue velveteen bag. Then he stepped back out into the storm.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

M
IMI CHANGED INTO DRY CLOTHES
and threw her sopping tracksuit into the bathtub. The rain clattered on the tin roof, and she wished that the fireplace worked. She brushed her hair in the bathroom. It was after five; Jay wouldn’t be long now. Then the knock came at the kitchen door.

She stood stock-still, suddenly panic-stricken, although she had been hoping for him to come. Cramer. It had to be Cramer.

The knock came again, louder, more insistent.

She was sure she’d seen the last of Peters. When he had dropped her off, he had not so much as glanced at her. He had looked like what he was: an old man.

So, Cramer then. Had he been up there at the end of the road? Had he heard her little speech? Had he read her letter? Was she ready for this?

She opened the kitchen door and was shocked to see a woman there, not old, but hunched over as if she were, her elbows pressed tightly to her sides, her face bowed, as if she were still out in the slashing rain.

“Good grief,” said Mimi. The woman looked at her, imploringly.

“Come in,” said Mimi, taking her by the arm.

She was shaking violently, drenched, injured. Her hair was flattened against her skull by the rain. A pink stain, high on her cheek, proved to be blood seeping from a head wound. Her eyes bled mascara.

She was wearing a flimsy baby-doll, which, plastered to her skin, revealed a body that was shapely but too old to be dressed this way. And the finishing touch to this apparition was a large pale blue leatherette handbag slung over her shoulder, as if she’d been caught in a downpour while shopping at the mall.

Mimi helped her to the table. “I’ll get a towel,” she said. And she did, a big one, but it was ridiculously inadequate. The woman was soaking head to toe, shaking violently and sobbing by now. “Hold on,” said Mimi, and dashed to her room. She came back with the comforter from her bed and wrapped the woman in it.

“Thank you,” the woman mumbled.

“What happened?” said Mimi. “Did your car break down?”

It was hard to tell whether the woman was nodding or just shivering.

Mimi took the towel and started gently drying the woman’s hair, careful of the head injury. Déjà vu. This place was turning into a hospital for head cases! The woman didn’t wince. Perhaps she was too cold to notice. Mimi stopped and peered into her eyes. “Would you like something hot to drink?”

The woman nodded. Mimi dropped the towel on a chair and went to fill the kettle. She put it on the stove top and turned on the burner.

“There,” she said, turning back to her guest. Her guest who was now holding a gun.

“Hello, Mimi,” she said.

Mimi stepped backward, recoiling from the sight of the gun.

“Don’t move,” said the woman. Her voice was still shaky, but her hand, surprisingly, was not, and there was way too much resolve in her eyes to take any chances. Mimi slowly raised her hands.

“What are you doing? How do you know my name?”

The woman didn’t speak right away. She seemed to convulse from the cold, but her aim didn’t falter much. Her eyes were green but bloodshot. So bloodshot that Mimi wondered if there was internal bleeding.

“We’re going to make a phone call,” the woman said.

“A phone call?” said Mimi.

The woman nodded, then shuddered again, so hard Mimi hoped the gun would shake right out of her grasp. It didn’t and Mimi found herself staring at it. She’d never seen one up close. The barrel didn’t look more than four inches long. It was bluish black. The nose was snub and in its center was that darker blackness.

“I need dry clothes,” the woman said, trembling.

“Okay,” said Mimi. “I’ll get something.”

“Don’t move!” the woman barked. “Didn’t you hear me?”

“Yes,” said Mimi. “Yes.” The woman’s face was distorted with anger. “Take it easy,” said Mimi.

The woman stood, slowly, clutching the comforter closed at her throat with the same hand that held the handbag. She waved Mimi forward with the gun. “We’ll go together.”

Once in the bedroom, Mimi got to her knees and looked through her suitcase for something warm. A sweatshirt, cotton pajama bottoms. Meanwhile, she closed her hand over the knitted holster with the mace in it. She glanced at the woman, who looked around the room distractedly. Mimi managed to slip the canister into the pocket of her hoodie. Then she got to her feet and held out the clothes to the woman. She was standing just at the threshold of the bedroom door, and her eyes surveyed the room as if searching for hidden cameras or something. No, it wasn’t that. There was an odd expression in her eyes and an eerie half smile on her face, as if there were pictures on the wall and the woman was delighting in the details. Then she seemed to remember where she was and returned her attention to Mimi. She waved the gun in a way that suggested she wanted Mimi to back up into the corner. And as Mimi backed away, the woman dropped the comforter and, leaning against the lintel of the doorway, began to slip on the pair of pants under her wet dress.

“I don’t have anything valuable,” said Mimi.

“Oh, yes, you do,” said the woman. She was by now trying to tighten the drawstring of the pants but couldn’t do it with only one shaky hand. She carefully lowered her gun hand, though not her eyes, and tried again to pull the drawstring tight with two hands, but she was trembling too much.

“Can I help?” said Mimi. She wasn’t exactly sure why. Part of her said stay as far away from this madwoman as possible. But part of her said make nice. Make very nice. And what was it Pacino said in
The Godfather
? “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

The woman stared at her, and Mimi had the feeling that she—this woman—was seeing her and not seeing her at the same time. As if Mimi was in some other dimension that the woman had to concentrate very hard to keep in view. She nodded and waved Mimi forward, until she was standing directly in front of her.

“No fooling around,” said the woman, and placed the cold nose of the gun against Mimi’s temple. Mimi closed her eyes. But her fingers found the ties and pulled them together, carefully into a knot. Then the woman pushed her away, and Mimi retreated to her corner.

Now the woman reached with her free hand behind her back and undid the zipper of her dress, sloughed it off her shoulders, and let it fall to the floor. She picked up the sweatshirt and managed to slide into it, one arm at a time, only losing sight of Mimi for the split second that her head was lost in the neck hole. She smoothed the terry cloth against her wet skin.

“Are you … are you Sophia Cosic?” said Mimi.

“Who?”

“Nothing,” said Mimi.

The woman looked derailed. Then she seemed to come back to her senses, what she had of them. “My name is Mavis. Mavis Lee. Ever heard of me?”

Mimi shook her head. She knew it must be Cramer’s mother—the one who had lost her way on the Artist’s Journey. But pleading ignorance seemed the best bet. “I didn’t think you would’ve,” said Mavis. “But your father has, all right.”

“Pardon?”

“He might have forgotten me, but he sure won’t ever forget again.”

The look in the woman’s eyes was triumphant and clearly fanatical. Mimi felt faint. She leaned against the wall for support. It was all coming clear to her. M.L.—the initials and phone number on the wall in the other room. Her father’s lover and Cramer’s mother. Which meant … No. No way!

Mavis must have seen something of what was going on in Mimi’s head. She nodded. “Now you get it, don’t you, honey? Huh?” Mimi didn’t move a muscle. “He’s all I have left of Marc,” said Mavis. “That Page boy—oh, he’s got the world on a string, hasn’t he? And you—the same thing—everything money can buy. What’d my Cramer ever get? Nothing. Nothing! Marc Soto left us nothing.”

“Mrs. Lee—”

“Don’t call me
missus.
I’d be a
missus
if your father had done the right thing.”

“Mavis, you’re not the only person my father ever left.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“No. I just mean he left my mother as well.”

The woman sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “But he didn’t leave
her
penniless, did he?”

“He didn’t leave her a thing,” said Mimi. But the news only surprised Mavis for a second or two, before she recovered whatever insane sense of purpose she had come here with. She had been hovering at the doorway; now she entered the room, the fingers of her left hand gliding along the wall as if the room was in darkness and she had to feel her way into it. Again she looked around, and now Mimi understood that she was lost in memory. But she snapped out of it pretty quickly as she drew nearer to Mimi. She leaned her shoulder against the wall, lowering the gun, but holding it in two hands in front of her.

“I saw you out running,” she said. “Wondered who you were. Then I realized you were the same girl as in the picture Cramer had stuffed under his mattress.” Her eyes glinted. “I sniffed it out. It was wrapped in a T-shirt that reeked of your perfume.”

There was a low rumble of thunder. The storm was moving away. The rain went on unabated, but in the moment the thunder died, Mimi heard something. A car? Jay?

“What is it?” said Mavis.

“Nothing,” said Mimi, too loud.

Silence filled the space between them. Maybe the noise had only been wishful thinking. But she suddenly realized that she needed to keep Mavis talking. “Cramer had a picture of me?”

“You and some other rich bitch. I decided I’d better do some snooping,” said Mavis. “A mother likes to know what her boy’s up to. It didn’t take me long to find out. I’ve been here before.” She looked at Mimi, nodding, waiting for her to respond.
Play dumb,
Mimi told herself. The woman glanced again at the corners of the room. “I was here often enough,” she said.

“Mavis, I don’t know—”

“Shut up!” Mavis wiped her nose again, this time with the back of her gun hand. She looked nervous, suddenly, and Mimi didn’t think she wanted Mavis nervous.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I couldn’t quite figure out how he was getting in and out. Cramer, I mean. So, when the time was right, I found my own way in.” She nodded her head toward the window. Jay had replaced the glass, but Mimi still found broken pieces of it now and then. “And that’s when I found that movie camera of yours. Took it home to look it over. And there—there he was, older and losing his hair, but I recognized him, all right, even with the shades. Recognized the smile. The lying smile.”

“Does Cramer know?”

“Who knows? The boy’s not himself. I guess I’ve got you to thank for that.”

“But does he know about him and me—about us being—”

“I said I wouldn’t know what he knows,” Mavis shouted. “He doesn’t know his own mind anymore. Or who his mother is. Or what’s right or wrong.”

She stopped and made a face as if she’d just bitten into something bad.

“What about the guitars?” asked Mimi. “Was it you who took Jay’s guitars?”

Mavis shrugged. “Distributing the wealth a little. Those guitars are long gone.”

There was another noise. In the shed? Mavis didn’t seem to notice. Mimi spoke up in any case, but not so loudly this time as to create suspicion. “Why are you telling me this? Why are you here? What is it you want from me?”

“We’re going to make a phone call,” said Mavis, as if it were going to be fun—a party game.

“You said that. But I don’t understand.”

“We’re going to phone your daddy,” she said. Then she slid along the wall toward Mimi, stopping an arm’s length away. “We’re going to find out how much he thinks his pretty daughter is worth.”