AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD (19 page)

His mind drifted off into pleasant reveries.

Dwayne was downstairs in the basement, which he had converted years ago to a darkroom. While the weather was bad, so cold and rainy, he didn’t go out much. He preferred to stay safely indoors and work on his photography. Right now he was developing some pictures he had taken over the last few months. With all the excitement going on in the family, with Bobby’s unfortunate death and all, and then Aunt Irma’s illness, he hadn’t been able to escape into his darkroom as much as he wanted to. It was Dwayne’s refuge from the everyday world. Now he worked on, during this long winter afternoon, while outside the rain pattered gently against the bare tree trunks and turned the ground to mud. Dwayne puttered around his basement, happy and absorbed, his face a satanic dull red from the photographic light.

First he developed some prints that he had taken at a farmer’s market in upstate New York on a trip several months ago. The hearty-looking women with their piles of
pumpkins and winesap apples, the strangely shaped gourds, the sheaves of corn and bushels of tomatoes. He smiled as he looked at the photos. He worked in black and white because it was so much easier to develop, but for pictures like these, he wished he had been able to photograph in color. Particularly the one of that girl who sold the apples … he had almost gotten up enough courage to speak to her. Maybe next time. Dwayne was shy in general, and particularly shy around women, but he could ask someone out if he wanted to. That farm girl had had nice eyes, bright and sparkling and friendly. He looked at her picture and smiled. Yes, next time he would ask her out.

After that, he worked on some prints he had shot of a family dinner. There they were, all frozen in time. Irma and Bobby at the head of the table, with eyes only for each other. Dwayne smirked. He was not sorry that Bobby was dead. No, he was not sorry at all. Of course, it was horrible to die like that, but still … there was Sarah talking to Roger, her hands moving in an expressive gesture. Gertie was sitting at the foot of the table; she seemed to be concentrating on her food. Dwayne looked at the picture for a long time. This was his family, he thought. He was fond of everyone in it, with the exception of Bobby, who had never really been a member. He was lucky, he realized, hanging the print up to dry. Lots of people hated their families. He thought, considering that he wasn’t related by blood to any of them, that he was really very lucky.

He looked at the images of Irma and Bobby again, their faces turned toward each other. Really
very
lucky! he thought in a self-satisfied way.

A few days later, Snooky and Sarah were again sitting in the kitchen of Hugo’s Folly, having a companionable cup of tea. They were discussing Dwayne.

“He’s just like Roger,” Sarah was saying. “He gets these wild ideas, these speculations, and he’s always sure he’s
right. I can’t tell you how much money Roger’s borrowed from Aunt Irma over the years, and it’s gone—all of it. She supports him totally.”

“Terrible.”

“Yes. And Dwayne’s the same way—a head full of dreams. Right now he’s positive he’s the successor to Ansel Adams, with his black-and-white photography. The only problem is, he doesn’t have any talent.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. He’s not any good. And he won’t take any suggestions or hints, either. He simply tells me I don’t understand photography.”

“There’s nothing you can do about it, Sarah.”

“I know. I feel bad about it, that’s all. He’s going to have a rude awakening one of these days. Right now he’s doing nature photography—scenes and so on. For a while there, he was interested in abstract photos.”

“Abstract?”

“Oh, you know.” She shrugged. “Angles, edges, corners of things. He used to go into the woods and take pictures of tree bark from up close, half a leaf, a corner of a spiderweb. I thought it was ridiculous, but Gertie loved it and encouraged him. He went to Manhattan and took close-up shots of gravel on the sidewalk. And he used to go to Harry’s Market and take black-and-white photos of the produce—you know, piles of apples and grapes and oranges—until Harry told him to get moving, he was blocking the aisle.”

“No sympathy for artists,” said Snooky.

“No. Harry just wants to sell his stuff. He didn’t care for Dwayne taking photos of apple stems or whatever he was doing. God only knows.”

“Poor Dwayne. The misunderstood photographer.”

“Yes.” Sarah dabbled a finger thoughtfully in her milky tea. “The thing is, he’s not very smart, but he’s such a sweet person. I keep thinking there must be something he would be good at.”

“Why? There’s nothing I’m good at.”

“There’s lots of things you can do, Snooky. And you’re smart, too. You made a choice not to work. It’s different for Dwayne. He can’t afford not to.”

“Can’t he?”

Their eyes met. At that moment the back door, in the laundry room next to the kitchen, swung open with a bang. Somebody stomped in, heavy boots thumping against the floor.

Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Gertie?” she called.

There was no answer from the laundry room, just a lot of huffing and puffing.

“Gertie? Is that you?”

The vast bulk which was Gertie hove abruptly into view. “Of course it’s me,” she snapped. “Who the hell else would it be? Would somebody please help me with these damned boots?”

“You’re back early,” said Sarah with a worried frown as Snooky went to help.

Gertie collapsed on an ancient, rickety lawn chair that had come indoors sometime the previous summer, nobody knew exactly how, and taken up permanent abode next to the washing machine. She extended one enormously fat leg. “Yes. Nothing out there today. Decided to come home and get some rest.”

“Are you feeling all right?” Sarah gazed at her, concerned. Gertie went outside every day, fair weather or foul, and today was sunny and a bit warmer than it had been. “Are you okay?”

“ ’Course I’m all right. Just thought I’d come home and get some of my cataloguing done.” Gertie kept scrapbooks and boxes full of her collection of specimens. She lovingly listed them in an encyclopedic volume of notebooks which stretched back, stuffed full of her woodland observations, over thirty years. “I’m falling behind on it.”

“Oh. I see.”

Snooky pulled, and the left boot came off with a loud squelchy sound. Gertie grunted and extended her other leg. “Thanks. That’s better. Leave them out here to dry. The
woods are still all wet from that rain the other day.” She prodded the muddy boots. “Have to clean these someday. Oh, well. Can always put that kind of thing off. I’ll be upstairs if anyone wants me. Not that that’s too likely. Where’s Irma?”

“She’s in her room, taking a nap.” Sarah looked at her closely. Gertie’s face seemed suspiciously flushed. She was still breathing heavily. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“ ’Course I am. Don’t fuss. Can’t bear when people fuss. I’m fine.”

“I wish you wouldn’t go outside and push yourself so hard every single day, Gertie. It’s not good for you, you know. I worry about you.”

“Don’t be stupid, girl. I’ve been going out to the woods every single day since long before you were born.”

“I know, I know, but you could get hurt, or fall down, and you’d be out there all alone, with nobody to help you.”

“They’d find me. Oh, they’d find me, eventually. They found Bobby, didn’t they?” Gertie gave a nasty chuckle.

“Yes, but … well, that’s different.”

“Yes, it is. I’m not going to end up a cadaver in the woods, like Bobby. Not that there are going to be any more murders out there, anyway,” she added, wheezing slightly. “It’s perfectly safe … now.”

Snooky regarded her curiously. “How can you be so sure about that?”

“Because I keep my eyes open,” was Gertie’s stern rejoinder. “Most people don’t. I’ll be upstairs if anybody asks for me. See you later.”

And she moved off, wheezing and panting as she went.

Sarah had her head cocked, listening to the sounds of Gertie’s breathing as she went down the hall. “I don’t like it,” she whispered. “The way she sounds. She has high blood pressure and a heart condition, too, you know. She and Irma. It killed Uncle Hugo, years ago.”

“Mmmmph.”

“Don’t pay any attention to what she says about Bobby.
She’s always hinting around about him. She thinks she’s so observant, but she doesn’t know any more than we do.”

“Mmmm. Well, you’re probably right. More tea, Sarah?”

Out in the foyer, Gertie puffed her laborious way upstairs. She felt terribly short of breath; that was the real reason why she had come home so early. She had been striding through the woods, chasing down a white-breasted nut-hatch with her pair of trusty binoculars, when her heart had suddenly made a funny little skip and a jump, and she had been forced to sit down. Her face had gone all red and hot, and she had felt a little dizzy.

“It’s nothing,” she told herself now. “Didn’t sleep well last night—that’s all. I’ll be better once I sit down to do some cataloging. There’s that goshawk feather I found the other day …”

Gertie kept minute descriptions of her finds. The goshawk feather, a long gray fluffy one, was her proudest possession in recent months.

She pulled her bulk painfully upstairs and stood panting on the landing. All she could hear was the sound of her blood pounding and knocking in her ears, like the sound of the surf on a vacation she had taken once, in her long-forgotten youth. Even she had been young once, she thought now, without rancor. Even she had been young. She had taken that trip to the seaside with a young man that her parents had disapproved of. It had all been deliciously illicit and forbidden. They had stayed in a little hotel that had been converted from a lighthouse, in a tiny round room at the very top. In the morning, you could wake up and look out the window and see miles in every direction, out over the rolling expanse of sea. The gulls would come and circle, begging for bread—little beggars! she had thought at the time, amused—in their raucous voices. The young man and she had spent a great deal of time alone in that room, suspended in air and space, suspended in time, alone at the top of the lighthouse, with no company except for the sound of the sea and their own voices. How furious her father had
been when she got back. She remembered how he had lectured her, over and over. But it hadn’t made any difference. Gertie had always done what she wanted. She had been thinner in those days—not thin, of course, never truly thin, but she thought the present-day anorexic look was ridiculous and unbecoming. She had been plump and buxom and hearty, a young girl with a long braid of thick chestnut hair and bright blue eyes that grew luminous (although she did not know this) in the sea air, in the blue twilight at the top of the lighthouse turned motel. She had always done what she wanted. She was the one who had left the young man, who had told her he wanted to marry her. She no longer remembered why she left him. There must have been a good reason. She had left him, and gone her own way, which she had been following ever since. Thinking about it now, old and fat and monstrous, clinging like a wart to the top of the bannister, her blood thundering solemnly in her ears, Gertie felt no regret. She could not even remember his name. No matter. She had never really loved anyone except Hugo.

Hugo … and this house. The house that Hugo had built, how she loved it, even more than she had loved that airy, ethereal spire of a lighthouse. Everything in it was so much
Hugo.
She planned to have it to herself one day, although of course there was no hurry. No hurry at all.

Gradually her blood settled down to a muffled roar in the back of her head. She straightened up, wheezing, and went down the hall to her room, where her catalogs waited. She could hear them calling to her as she went … 
Gertie … Gertie … it’s been too long, Gertie … what about that goshawk feather, Gertie?… come to us, Gertie …

Invigorated by the call of the wild, Gertie strode briskly down the hall to her room.

“Gertie knows something,” Snooky announced to Bernard that afternoon when he returned to the cabin.

Bernard looked interested. He pulled a page out of the typewriter. “What?”

“I don’t know, but I know she knows something.”

“How do you know?”

Snooky related the conversation in the kitchen of Hugo’s Folly.

“I see,” said Bernard. He thrummed absently on the typewriter keys. “Interesting.”

“Of course, it could be nothing. Just Gertie showing off.”

“But you don’t think it is.”

“No.”

“What was Sarah’s reaction?”

“She told me afterward that Gertie doesn’t know anything, but I thought she looked a little upset.”

“Hmmm. Interesting.”

“Yes.”

“Any way we could find out more?”

“Well, I don’t think there’s much chance of Gertie opening up her heart to you, Bernard. Or me either, for that matter. She’s pretty close-mouthed about things.”

“But you’re sure she knows something?”

“Uh-huh.”

Bernard pondered this for a moment.

“I Ching,” volunteered Snooky.

“Excuse me?”

“I Ching. It’s a kind of Chinese oracle. You use it with sticks or with pennies. Maybe we should consult it.”

Bernard turned away.

“You’re so close-minded, Bernard. I had a girlfriend once who consulted the I Ching every day. She swore by it. She used to say that thought was meaningless; intuition was all.”

“May I say that I am not in the least interested in the sayings of one of your feather-brained girlfriends?”

“You may,” said Snooky, “but if you do, you’ll hurt my feelings.”

Over dinner that night, Bernard appeared abstracted. He grunted to himself and ate his food mechanically. Misty, at his knee, lifted up one paw to beg for food, but for once he ignored her.

Finally Maya leaned forward and touched his elbow lightly. “What is it, darling?”

“What is what?”

“What’s the matter?”

“Oh, nothing. Nothing. Just a few ideas rattling around in my head.”

“About your book?”

“No. Not exactly.”

Maya turned to her brother, who was staring down at the blue-and-white checked tablecloth. “What about you, Snooks?”