A Stranger in My Grave (7 page)

“I guess so,” he said heavily. “I guess that's a start.”

“One day there was even snow on the mountain peaks. A lot of the high school kids ditched classes to go up and see it, and afterwards they drove down State Street with the snow piled high on their fenders. They looked very happy. It was the first time some of them had seen snow.”

“Daisy.”

“Snow in California never seems real to me somehow, not like back home in Denver, where it was a part of my life and often not a very pleasant part. I wanted to go up and see the snow that day, just like the high school kids, to make sure it was the real stuff, not something blown out of a machine from Hollywood. . .. The year of the frost, you must remember it, Jim. I ordered a cord of wood for the fireplace, but I didn't realize what a lot of wood a cord was, and when it came, we didn't have any place to store it except outside in the rain.”

She seemed anxious to go on talking, as if she felt she was on her way to convincing him of the importance of her project and the necessity for carrying on with it. Jim didn't try again to inter­rupt her. He felt with relief that Adam had been right: the whole thing was impossible. All Daisy had been able to remember so far was a little snow on the mountain peaks and some high school kids riding down State Street and a few dead jasmine bushes.

7

Your mother has vowed to keep us apart at any cost because she is ashamed of me. . . .

 

The next morning
, between the time Jim left and Stella arrived, Daisy phoned Pinata at his office. She didn't expect him to be there so early, but he answered the phone on the second ring, his voice alert and wary, as if early calls were the kind to watch out for.

“Yes.”

“This is Daisy Harker, Mr. Pinata.”

“Oh. Good morning, Mrs. Harker.” He sounded suddenly a lit­tle too cordial. She didn't have to wait long to find out why. “If you want to cancel our agreement, that's fine with me. There'll be no charge. I'll mail you the retainer you gave me.”

“Your extrasensory perception isn't working very well this morning,” she said coldly. “I'm calling merely to suggest that I meet you at your office this afternoon instead of at the
Monitor- Press
building.”

“Why?”

She told him the truth without embarrassment. “Because you're young and good-looking, and I wouldn't want people to get the wrong impression if they saw us together.”

“I gather you haven't informed your family that you've hired me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I tried to, but I couldn't face another argument with Jim. He's right, according to his lights, and I'm right, according to mine. What's the point of arguing?”

“He's bound to find out,” Pinata said. “Word gets around pretty fast in this town.”

“I know, but by that time perhaps everything will be settled, you will have solved—”

“Mrs. Harker, I can't solve a thing pussyfooting around back alleys trying to avoid your family and friends. In fact, we're going to need their cooperation. This day you're fixated on, it wasn't just your day. It belonged to a lot of other people, too—650,000,000 Chinese, to name a few of them.”

“I fail to see what 650,000,000 Chinese have to do with it.”

“No. Well, forget it.” His sigh was quite audible.
Intentionally audible
, she thought, annoyed. “I'll be in front of the
Monitor-Press
building at three o'clock, Mrs. Harker.”

“Isn't it usually the employer who gives the orders?”

“Most employers know their business and are in a position to give orders. I don't think that applies to you in this particular instance, no insult intended. So, unless you've come up with some new ideas, I suggest we go about it my way. Have you any new ideas?”

“No.”

“Then I'll see you this afternoon.”

“Why there, at that specific place?”

“Because we're going to need some official help,” Pinata said. “The
Monitor
knows a great deal more about what happened on December 2, 1955, than you or I do at the moment.”

“They surely don't keep copies of newspapers from that far back.”

“Not in the sense that they're offering them for sale, no. But every edition they've printed is available on microfilm. Let's hope something interesting will turn up.”

They were both exactly on time, Pinata because punctuality was a habit with him, Daisy because the occasion was very impor­tant to her. All day, ever since her phone call to Pinata, she'd been impatient and excited, as if she half expected the
Monitor
to open its pages and reveal some vital truth to her. Perhaps a very special event had taken place in the world on December 2, 1955, and once the event was recalled to her, she would remember her reactions to it; it would become the peg on which she could hang the rest of the day, hat and coat and dress and sweater and, finally, the woman who fitted into them.

The carillon in the courthouse tower was ringing out the hour of three when Pinata approached the front door of the
Monitor
building. Daisy was already there, looking inconspicuous and a little dowdy in a loosely cut gray cotton suit. He wondered whether she had dressed that way deliberately to avoid calling attention to herself, or whether this was one of the latest styles. He'd lost touch with the latest styles since Monica had left him.

He said, “I hope I didn't keep you waiting.”

“No. I just arrived.”

“The library's on the third floor. We can take the elevator. Or would you rather walk?”

“I like to walk.”

“Yes, I know.”

She seemed a little surprised. “How could you know that?”

“I saw you yesterday afternoon.”

“Where?”

“On Laurel Street. You were walking in the rain. I figured that anyone who walks in the rain must be very fond of walking.”

“The walking was incidental. I had a purpose in visiting Laurel Street.”

“I know. You used to live there. From the time of your mar­riage in June 1950 until October of last year, to be exact.”

Her surprise this time was mixed with annoyance. “Have you been investigating me?”

“Just a few black and white statistics. Not in living color.” He squinted up at the afternoon sun and rubbed his eyes. “I imagine the place on Laurel Street has many pleasant memories for you.”

“Certainly.”

“Then why try to destroy them?”

She regarded him with a kind of weary patience, as if he were a backward child who must be told the same thing over and over.

“I'm giving you,” Pinata said, “another chance to change your mind.”

“And I'm refusing it.”

“All right. Let's go inside.”

They went through the swinging doors and headed for the staircase, walking some distance apart like two strangers acciden­tally going in the same direction. The apartness was of Daisy's choosing, not Pinata's. It reminded him of what she'd said over the phone about not wanting people to see them together because he was young and good-looking. The compliment, if it was one, had embarrassed him. He didn't like any reference, good or bad, made to his physical appearance, because he felt such things were, or should be, irrelevant.

In his early years Pinata had been extremely conscious of the fact that he didn't know his own racial origin and couldn't identify with any particular racial group. Now, in his maturity, this lack of group identification had the effect of making him tolerant of every race. He was able to think of men as his brothers because some of them might very well be his brothers, for all he knew. The name Pinata, which enabled him to mix freely with the Spanish Americans and the Mexicans who made up a large part of the city, was not his. It had been given to him by the Mother Superior of the orphanage in Los Angeles where he'd been abandoned.

He still visited the orphanage occasionally. The Mother Supe­rior was very old now, and her eyesight and hearing were failing, but her tongue was as lively as a girl's when Pinata came to see her. More than any of the other hundreds of her children, he was hers, because she'd found him, in the chapel on Christmas Eve, and because she'd named him, Jesus Pinata. As the Mother Superior grew older, her mind, no longer nimble or inquisitive, chose to follow certain well-worn roads. Her favorite road led back to a Christmas Eve thirty-two years ago.

“There you were, in front of the altar, a wee mite of a bundle barely five pounds, and squalling so hard I thought your little lungs would break. Sister Mary Martha came in then, looking as white as a sheet, as if she'd never seen a brand-new baby before. She picked you up in her arms and called you the Lord Jesus, and immediately you stopped crying, like any lost soul recognizing his name called out in the wilderness. So we called you Jesus.

“Of course, it's a very difficult name to live up to,” she would add with a sigh. “Ah, how well I remember as you got older, all the fighting you had to do every time one of the other children laughed at your name. All those bruises and black eyes and chipped teeth, dear me, it became quite a problem. You hardly looked human half the time. Jesus is a lovely name, but I felt something had to be done. So I asked Father Stevens for his advice, and he came over and talked to you. He asked you what name you would like to have, and you said Stevens. A very fine choice, too. Father Stevens was a great man.”

At this point she always stopped to blow her nose, explaining that she had a touch of sinusitis because of the smog. “You could have changed the Pinata part as well. After all, it was just a name we picked because the children were playing the piñata game that Christmas Eve. We took a vote on it. Sister Mary Martha was the only one who objected to the name. ‘Suppose he is a Smith or a Brown or an Anderson,' she said. I reminded her that very few whites lived in our neighborhood, and since you were to be brought up among us, you would do better as a Pinata than as a Brown or Anderson. I was right, too. You've developed into a fine young man we're all proud of. If the good Father were only here to see you…. Dear me, I think this smog gets worse each year. If it were the will of the Lord, I wouldn't complain, but I fear it's just sheer human perversity.”

Perversity. The word reminded him of Daisy. She was racing up the steps ahead of him as if she were in training for a track meet. He caught up with her on the third floor. “What's your hurry? The place stays open until 5:30.”

“I like to move fast.”

“So do I, when someone's chasing me.”

The library was at the end of a long, elaborately tiled corridor. It was rumored that no two tiles in the entire building were alike. So far no one had gone to the trouble of checking this, but the rumor was repeated to tourists, who relayed it via postcard and letter to their friends and relatives in the East and Middle West.

In the small room marked
library
, a girl in horn-rimmed glasses was seated behind a desk pasting clippings into a scrap- book. She ignored Daisy and fixed her bright, inquisitive eyes on Pinata. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Pinata said, “You're new around here, aren't you?”

“Yes. The other girl had to quit. Allergic to paste, broke out all over her hands and arms. A real mess.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“She's trying to get workman's compensation, but I'm not sure it applies to allergies. Can I help you with anything?”

“I'd like to see the microfilm of one of your back copies.”

“Year and month?”

“December ‘55.”

“One roll of film covers half a month. Which half are you interested in, the first or last?”

“The first.”

She unlocked one drawer of a metal filing cabinet and brought out a roll of microfilm, which she fitted into the projection machine. Then she turned on the light in the machine and showed Pinata the hand crank. “You just keep turning this until you come to the day you want. It starts at December the first and goes through to the fifteenth.”

“Yes. Thanks.”

“Pull up a chair if you want.” The girl for the first time looked directly at Daisy. “Or two chairs.”

Pinata arranged a chair for Daisy. He remained standing, with one hand on the crank. Although the girl in charge had returned to her desk and was presumably intent on her work, Pinata low­ered his voice. “Can you see properly?”

“Not too well.”

“Close your eyes for a minute while I turn to the right day, or you might get dizzy.”

She closed her eyes until he said crisply, “Well, here's your day, Mrs. Harker.”

Her eyes remained closed, as if the lids had become calcified and too stiff and heavy to move.

“Aren't you going to look at it?”

“Yes. Of course.”

She opened her eyes and blinked a couple of times, refocusing. The headlines meant nothing to her:
cio and afl merged after twenty-year split. body of unidentified man found near railroad jungle. federal school aid plan backed. youth confesses dozen burglaries. bad weather may close air­port. seven hundred to participate in christmas parade tonight. crash injures pianist gieseking, kills wife. more snow predicted for mountain areas
.

Snow on the mountains
, she thought,
the kids driving down State Street, the dead jasmines.
“Could you read the fine print to me, please?”

“Which fine print?”

“About the snow on the mountains.”

“All right. ‘Early risers were given a rare treat this morning in the form of a blanket of snow on the mountains. Forest rangers at La Cumbre peak reported a depth of seven inches in some places, and more is predicted during the night. Some senior classes of both public and private schools were dismissed for the morning so that students could drive up and experience, many of them for the first time, real snow. Damage to citrus crops—'”

“I remember that,” she said, “the students with the snow piled on the fenders of their cars.”