Warpaint (17 page)

Shivering, her bare scalp itchy under an expensive wig she wore for the “event,” C.C. hugged her camel-hair coat close, and leaned against the concrete front of the gallery, near the modest sign of Kempton & Shelf. Streetlight caught the few soggy flakes, but the night felt profoundly dark to her. A car rounded the corner, headlights swept the walls and asphalt like a spot might hit a stage and if she made a dash, there'd be a shriek of breaks as the car slammed – but no, the car was Moby and it rolled to a harmless stop. Sighing, she shoved herself off the wall, opened the passenger door, and got in.

“I think,” said Quiola, as she turned up the heat, “the ‘event' went well.”

C.C. rested her forehead against the window, watching but not seeing the city in motion. “What an idiot I am.” She found a Kleenex, wiped the lipstick off her mouth hard, took the lipstick tube out of her pocket and chucked it in the plastic garbage bag hung round the stick. “First time and the last time I'll ever wear the stuff. No wonder Mom called it warpaint. I felt like a POW back there.”

“But it was a fine opening –”

“Now you sound like Mom – ‘just be gracious, darling, and seem happy.' How many times I heard that piece of wisdom! I wonder if Liz has any idea how – how – how fucking humiliating –” she coughed, the whole chilly horror of the polite crowd she'd just left squashing her, as if in cahoots with the Crab. “I just want to go home. That fiasco was worse than being buried alive. I want to forget the whole mess.”

“Buried alive? At Kempton & Shelf? I'd give my eye-teeth for a fiasco like that.” She lurched the Volvo suddenly, roughly, around a pothole.

“Are you trying to kill us? Go ahead, be my guest.”

A black silence icier than that winter's evening took over, but when Quiola pulled Moby up the Carriage House drive, C.C. was asleep, snoring ever so softly into her wig, which had slipped sideways to hang indelicately from the bald ridge of one ear.

 

♦

 

Sitting on a high stool at her kitchen island, Nancy Davis frowned. “Let me see…you can take the…no, wait. You can take the girl out of the kitchen but… dang…it's an old saying. I just can't remember it.” She gave her daughter a mute appeal for help.

“That's all right, Mom, I can't remember it either. Never was good with sayings and jokes. Can't ever remember the punch line.” She handed her mother a peeler and a potato. “Help me get them done?”

“Oh sure, sweetie. I like potatoes.”

“I know you do.”

“What kind are we having?”

“Mashed. I just told you.”

“You did? No you didn't.”

“Never mind, Mom.”

“All right, darling. You'd like these peeled?”

“Yes, Mom.” C.C. wiped her hands on her white chef's apron, and opened the oven. Cinnamon and clove wafted into the room. “Pie's doing nicely, “she said and turned around to find her mother peering at the peeler as if it were a device of startlingly new technological invention.

“Mom? Could you peel the potatoes?”

“I – I don't remember how to use this thingie,” she said sheepishly. “Maybe we could just boil them?”

“Mom, we're having mashed –”

“Well, then, why didn't you tell me so?”

“I just –” C.C. shook her head. “Never mind.”

“Honestly, if you don't tell a person –” Nancy put the peeler down on the island with a sharp rap. “Your father will be ashamed of you.”

C.C. drew in her breath, then let it out gently.

Nancy got up and walked toward the living room, calling Tom's name. C. C. followed after her. The living room, dimly lit, was empty and Nancy stood in the middle of that domestic emptiness with a puzzled look on her face. “Where's your father? I just left him five seconds ago in here with the
Times
. Honest to Pete that man can vanish when he wants to! Tom!” Her voice grew sharp with irritation. “Tom!”

But instead of her husband, Quiola appeared at the archway to the hall, her shoulders wrapped in a wool shawl, her hair a nest, her sleepy face concerned.

“What's going on?” she asked.

“Charlotte!” said Nancy, slowly seating herself in the wing chair Tom used to favor. “You didn't tell me we had company! And where's your father gone?”

Quiola glanced sharply at C.C. who said, “He's gone, Mom – remember?”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“Out,” said Quiola as she sat on the couch near Nancy. “He's gone out for a bit – a little walk.”

“I see. I'm sorry, do I know you, dear?”

Quiola put out her hand. “Quiola Kerr – I'm a friend of C – of Charlotte's.”

“Delighted!” she said, and turned to her daughter. “How nice!”

“Yes, it is. Tell you what, why don't you sit here for little while – I'll get you some tea. Quiola can help me finish dinner.”

Nancy lifted her feet onto an ottoman, shifting deeper into the chair. “Would you dear? I feel a little tired just now.”

Quiola took off her shawl and draped it over the older woman's knees. “There you go – I think it's a bit chilly in here, don't you?”

“Oh, I don't want to take your –”

“That's fine. I can get a sweater.”

“I'll be right back with the tea, Mother.”

Nancy closed her eyes. “Don't rush on my account.”

Quiola followed C.C. into the kitchen, and whispered, “You're right – she's getting worse. But she seemed so – lucid last night.”

C.C. filled a teakettle with water. “She can go a week normal, and then she has, I don't know, a spell like this – but she's never forgotten about Dad before – why did you tell her he'd gone out?”

“I heard her calling for him – that's what woke me. And she sounded so sure he was in the house.”

C.C. shook loose leaves from a tin into a tea caddy, screwed it shut. “I wonder if she'll notice when he doesn't come back – ever. A day nurse isn't going to be enough. I'll have to look around at homes or hospice. Poor Mom. I'll have to talk to Ted.”

Quiola wandered over to the kitchen island, sat on the stool where Nancy had been, picked the peeler. “He knows how she is?”

“He knows. The nurse keeps us both up to speed.”

“Does he know I'm here?”

“I certainly haven't told him. It was good of you to come up from the City for the weekend, Quiola. I should've said so last night – I really appreciate it. How's the apartment working out?”

“Fine. I really love the place. And well – I've met someone.”

“That didn't take long!”

“I knew you'd be upset. Let's talk about it later.”

“No, no,” said C.C., checking on the tea. “If you mentioned her at all, this one's serious. So? What's her name?”

“His name is Luke. Luke O'Connor and he has asked me – what's that noise?”

“It's Mom. Mom?” She went back into the living room to find Nancy crying in a hopeless, helpless way. “Mom – what's wrong?”

Nancy blinked, and rubbed one eye, then unrolled the tissue stuffed inside her sleeve and dabbed at her tears. “I'm sorry,” she said, with an attempt at a deprecating laugh that failed. “I was just thinking about your brother.”

“Ted? Why? I know he doesn't see you as often –”

“No, no, not Ted. I was drifting off to a nice nap when I just saw his little face as he was that morning, you know, in the kitchen in his jammies, blond curls all tousled, and his nose all red – you remember he was just getting over a cold? He looked so near that I reached out to give him my tissue, like I did that morning so he could wipe his face, and then I guess I woke up – and remembered. Oh! I don't want to remember that, Charlie. I don't want to remember
that
!”

C.C. put her arms around her mother's shoulders, and said, “It's all right, it's all right. You don't have to.”

 

♦

 

The morning after C.C.'s so-called fiasco of an opening at Kempton & Shelf, schoolmaster Splash saw the devil – literally, in Quiola's mind – and shied. One minute she was posting easily down the fence line, feeling, as she shouted to Megan, “– what you mean by Splash carrying me, doing the work,” and the next minute she saw a shape leap toward her, and then the sudden arch of Splash's painted neck, a roll of white in the eye and all of the power of the animal surging. She made an instinctive grab for the bucking strap, missed and for a suspended moment saw her own legs in the air as she was ejected into pure space – then hit the sand like a catapult stone. The world contracted to noise and a wracking arching weight crushing her chest; dimly she felt other people at her side, and hoof-beats vibrating the earth until Megan's voice pierced the chaos with, “Take it easy! Quiola! Do you hear me?” which somehow helped to calm her, bring her back from the moon of shock to the fact that her wrist was throbbing, her face was bloody and she couldn't seem to breathe or focus.

“Wind knocked out of her.” That was a man. Not Mike – who?

“Where's Splash?” asked Meg. “Who
was
that crazy woman?”

“Mike's got him penned, but he can't get near him. Horse is full of steam – never seen him like that. That woman scared him but good.”

“Fool, running at a strange animal – where did she go? What's she doing on my farm? Call the police.”

“She all right?” That was Mike. He touched Quiola's wrist. “It's beginning to swell. Better wrap it –” and that's when she blacked out.

When she came to, she was in an ambulance, strapped down, wholly immobile, with a paramedic beside her. “Ah, hello. Welcome back. Your blood pressure's finally rising a bit – I got all your information from your teacher, and we're on our way to –”

“I know,” said Quiola. “I know exactly where we're headed. St. Matthews.”

“Okay, so where does it hurt?”

“My wrist, here, my right side –”

“You been riding long?”

Quiola tried to laugh but her ribs hurt too much. “No, not long.”

And then the journey became a series of repetitive questions about pain. Her face was still plastered with blood and sand from the arena and she felt tiny grains worming their way down her boots, her neck. Everything and everyone moved very fast around her immobility until suddenly she was alone in a dim emergency room, her butt burning from a shot – “like a massive upload of aspirin” said the nurse – her face mercifully wiped clean, her arm laid on a pillow resting on her lap, like it was a fragile tiara.

Now able to breathe again, she stared at the ceiling, when the door creaked open, and, almost shyly, Megan's face peered in.

“Meg! What are you doing here?“

“Hi, honey.” She sat down on the institutional metal and foam pad chair beside the door. “I followed the ambulance here in your car, with your gear and all – I wanted to make sure you were all right. What did they say?”

“I've broken my wrist. X-rays soon.”

“Hurry up and wait.”

“Yeah. Do you have your phone? I should call C.C.”

Megan unclipped her cell from its holster. “This should be fun.”

“Exactly.” But the “fun” was postponed when no one answered either at the house, or on C.C.'s cell. Quiola left calm messages, trying to sound as matter of fact as possible. Handing the phone back to Megan, she asked, “Can you stay a little longer? I can't tell you how comforting it is, to have someone familiar near.“

“In the hospital? Oh I know. You stay in the horse business, you are bound to end up on the inside of a cast, sooner or later. Anyway, I've canceled the rest of my day, and plan to drive you home. My husband can come fetch me, at your house, if that's all right with you?”

“Miss?” said a young technician. “Sorry – but I'm here to take you for x-rays.” The young woman glanced at Megan. “It should only take a few minutes.”

Meg nodded and within five minutes Quiola was wheeled away as a desperate loneliness inhaled her, and although the techs – all of them women, all of them young – were kind, the pain in her wrist sliced through medication, and she began to dry-heave so badly the red-head ran for a plastic bucket just in case. The techs kept apologizing to her, but she seemed to hear them on some kind of excruciating time delay, so that it wasn't until she was being wheeled away from the dark x-ray room with its massive machinery and whirring cha-thunk operation, that she mustered enough will to say, “It's all right.”

Returned to Megan limp and throbbing, Quiola managed a weak smile.

“They beat you up back there?”

“Kind of. I can't imagine what that would've been like without pain meds.”

“Make sure the doctor gives you something for tonight.”

“Yeah. Say, Meg, what happened back there with Splash – is he okay?”

“Just goes to show there is no such thing as a bomb-proof horse. You know Splash – he's so calm. But that crazy-ass woman came running at him, waving, of all things, a crow-bar and as I've always told you, he still has the mojo in him.” She shrugged. “He's a horse. Horses are flight animals. He flew and didn't bother to carry you out of the danger zone. He was all hot, too. We had God's good own of a time calming him, and when Bob finally did, he stood there heaving and shivering.”

“Bob?”

“My old trainer – he just happened to be on the farm today. Good thing, though. He's dealt with just about every kind of horse accident that can happen. He called 911, and the police, who caught that woman. Charged her with trespass.”

“Did anyone recognize her?”

“Not around here. Name's Evelyn Porter.”

“Evelyn? But it can't be! She's in California.”

“You know her? Quiola, that's serious. That woman had a fucking crowbar! I mean, she said she just needed some help with her car but since when –”