Bells of Avalon (4 page)

Chapter Five

Pacific Palisades, California

1949

Mrs. Gallagher cleaned, cooked, and gardened in the morning, which meant for awhile that Katie did the same. She learned to flavor pot roasts with sweet marjoram and celery salt, allspice and clove.   Heedful details were applied to every chore:  a pinch of soda to keep the cream from turning, lavender and rosemary from the garden to keep the moths away.  Katie learned it all, just as she had that first day— while Mrs. Gallagher had drifted like a ghost above her, spreading her uncanny song like perfume through the air. But by the time Katie had lived with the Gallaghers for a week and three days, what was uncanny about Daniel’s mother became simply bizarre.

They were small things at first, things she first ignored until they could no longer be denied. When she cried at night, too silent for anyone to have heard, Mrs. Gallagher always appeared to nestle in beside her until she fell asleep again.  One night she woke horrified to find she’d wet the bed through the sheets, something she couldn’t remember doing even as a small child.  Her panic turned from fear to embarrassment as she looked around the dark room.  But then she saw something she couldn’t quite understand.  She thought perhaps they’d been there all along, something unnoticed through the passing day.  But there they were, plain as anything.  She stood and walked to the dresser, each footfall calling up squeaks from the floor. She saw them clearly now: a set of sheets in crisp folds.  Next to them, a laundered set of her pajamas. Katie stripped her bed, muttering thanks when the mattress was still untarnished.  She balled the soiled sheets in her arms and traveled quietly down the stairs and into the laundry room. She piled the sheets and pajamas into the hamper next to the dry, single-tub washer. 

When she woke the next morning, the crumpled piles of sheets were no longer there.  She struggled through the morning in a state of mortification, waiting breathlessly for Mrs. Gallagher to make some note of it. She couldn’t bear the thought of those dramatic eyes pouring over her, asking the one question she couldn’t answer. The question she didn’t want to answer. How could she tell Danny Gallagher’s mother about the secret inside her. That burning pain in her stomach that came night after night? How she couldn’t urinate without the burning, horrible pain. They were oddities inside her that no one could understand—and no one would believe the cause for.   The day passed and Mrs. Gallagher said nothing.  It happened only once more—another night she’d gone to bed early with that horrible pain in her belly. She woke up and saw again the clean sheets folded on the chest of drawers.  That was the last time it happened, and Mrs. Gallagher never so much as cast a fretful look in her direction. The subject was scoured away—the same way Mrs. Gallagher scrubbed tarnish from the copper pots or currycombed the scales from codfish before plopping them into the pan. 

There were other things. Mrs. Gallagher cut the ingredients of every recipe in Katie’s favor: no nutmeg in the apple pie, no onions in the minced meat, no lemon in anything.  When the duress of her mind spurred her to count the cracks along the sidewalk or the cars lining the street, Mrs. Gallagher never interfered.  Most of all, when they worked in the garden against the morning sun, Mrs. Gallagher never left her alone—not to replace a gardening tool or pull compost from the shed.  One morning while Katie deadheaded irises past their blossom, her breath stopped as the phone rang out from the kitchen.  Her body paralyzed, she fought back tears before looking up. She looked at Mrs. Gallagher’s face, and her expression was something she’d never seen before—and something she’d not seen since.  Her eyes were spectral and edged with an unearthly knowledge.  Katie watched as her mouth slid from a concentrated pout—and then to sly half-smile.  Mrs. Gallagher held Katie’s eyes for several moments while the telephone’s bitter call continued to ring out in the morning air.  When it stopped, her eyes softened and her expression returned to placidity.  She wiped her brow before plunging her hands into the dark soil.  And then she said something very strange:  “Neither ship-shape nor Bristol fashion.” A very English phrase, something Katie swore she’d heard her father say when she was very young. They returned to the task at hand without speaking further, and the phone stayed silent for the remainder of the day.

In the afternoons, Katie sat from her window alcove seat and watched children come one after another for piano lessons. Young girls in velveteen skirts, churlish boys with books, and a few graceful girls of seventeen.  She liked to listen to their chatter and footsteps, liked to count them as they filed in. She liked the dissonant sound of amateur playing, followed by Mrs. Gallagher’s more fluid hand.  It was a peaceful way to put the world to bed as the sunlight softened and she picked garden dirt from under her nails. 

She thought sometimes of what Mrs. Gallagher would have looked like when she was her age, traveling to see the haggard fortune-teller, her dramatic eyes watching blocks of wood as they fell from a threadbare sack.  Maybe she’d have pulled her knees to her chest, just as she herself did when she was curious or afraid. She thought of her hair falling like a screen over her arms while the woman inspected the short-sighted blocks nestled in the dirt.

Four daughters, maybe five
.

Chapter Six

Pacific Palisades, California

1949

Danny came and went as he pleased, so long as he was home in time for dinner.  When they ate together, Katie watched him over the table as the soft light glanced off his cheeks and full bottom lip. The impression of how little she knew about him was most apparent then.  His boyish features were hardening. Had been, it seemed, from the moment she’d come to stay with them. There was little left of the boy who’d pulled her away from a monster with a slick, appraising look.

She was little more than a ghost to him, forever waiting at the top of the stairs as he complained about her from below. She dumbly realized this and squirmed at the remembrance of having once thought more of him.  Just a teasing boy who’d once tricked her into revealing her real name.  A boy with whom she’d been paired like a sock for interviews, parades, and drug store appearances for as far back as she could remember.  But she hadn’t really known that boy either.  She’d rarely spoken to him when there hadn’t been a script to pigeonhole their words. No interaction without direction.  That was, until their novel cuteness failed to sell tickets. Katie knew that time was coming like the ticking down of a clock.  She thought he knew it too. And judging by how quickly he’d shrugged off the hem of boyhood, she supposed he welcomed the end of their phony sweetheart team.  She wished that he didn’t hate her so much. Then again, she wished her father hadn’t died to leave her with a boy she barely knew, in spite of their make-believe history onscreen. 

He’d stood close to her while her father’s oblong coffin had been lowered into the ground. That day, she’d wanted him to say something, anything to her. But his only words after were for his mother: a barking complaint in that other language while he tossed off his jacket and flung it to the back seat.  He flung himself in after the coat and perched his feet against the back of her seat, revealing the stems of white dress socks. As their sedan rolled away, she took a last look at her father’s grave then glanced at a sunburst of palm fronds against the sky. Daniel’s body rustled in the backseat.

Tonight Daniel had stayed in the den after dinner, reading a magazine and idly listening to the radio. Mrs. Gallagher came down the stairs dressed in a silk dress with shiny Lucite buttons.  Her hair was pinned beneath a blue cloche hat, and the sloping shadow it cast over her face gave her an unused, supple look. Katie looked up from her seat on the floor, her eyes drawn to the large stone hanging from a chain on her neck. It was fat on her décolletage—like pooled oil, an underworld of green filaments shining through with her every move.  Without thinking, Katie rose to her feet and walked to the foot of the staircase. She touched the stone and it was warm on her fingertip.

“I’ve never seen a black one before, wherever did you get it?”  Katie murmured in awe.  Mrs. Gallagher gave her a skeptical smile, looking a lot like her son in that moment. Katie snatched her hand away before stiffening at the scoffing click of Danny’s tongue.

“Mom, I wish you’d stop wearing that. It stuns people dumb, makes them ask stupid questions. You really togged on the bricks, what’s the occasion?”

Mrs. Gallagher waved her son’s question away and looked at Katie.

“Oh, doodah, it’s not so very rare,” she smiled. “Daniel, come into the kitchen with me.”

He sighed and tossed away the magazine in his hands.  Clomping, as was his custom, he followed his mother’s sharp steps. Katie took her embroidery from the floor and sat on the sofa where Daniel had been. The room was quiet until the advertisements played out from the radio on hold from the
Screen Director’s Playhouse.

Halo, Everybody, Halo
Halo is the shampoo that glorifies your hair…
So Halo, Everybody, Halo!

A man’s warbling voice sang from the radio against the muffled sounds of male shouting from the next room.  She concentrated on her pattern, piercing and pulling her needle through the thick fabric. The voices ceased after several minutes, and Katie heard the familiar pull and bellow of the back door. After, there nothing but the radio touting the merits of Lifebuoy soap.

She was surprised when Daniel came back into the room, thinking him long gone.  His thick eyebrows moved together when he saw her sitting on the couch.

“Where is—”

“She’s gone to play mousel with that awful womens club,” he said, “or so she claims.” He pulled his jacket from a rack behind the couch.  Standing over her, he looked very tall, a grumbling giant in place of the boy he’d been. He pulled a roll of cash from his jean’s pocket and un-spooled the rubber band keeping the bills in place. He counted the money quickly, mouthing tiny numbers.

“Well, are you going to change or not?” he asked as he returned the money to his pocket.

“Change? Whatever for?”

“Max and Al’s folks are throwing a party at the Riv.  It’ll probably be boring as hell but there’s nothing else to do tonight.”

“What makes you think I’d go anywhere with you?”

“Nothing makes me
think
it—other than I’ve got orders to lock the house behind me with no one inside.  Ma said I’d get a regular chew-out if I went without you. So in my book, you can either come along, or sit in the garden with your needlework until she comes home.”

Sorry mister, I’ve my orders to fetch her, can’t go back empty handed now.

He smiled, looking like the delinquent gnome he’d been just under eleven weeks before.  She felt the snap behind her eyes, though softer this time. Her mind went walking, but only the very smallest part. Behind her eyes, she saw a horribly tinctured cartoon image. It was her, sitting amongst a garden of coneflowers. The dusky sky stretched out until forever, the colors so brilliant it could be nothing but painted celluloid.  Beneath her figure, she saw her father’s oblong coffin secured by a filigree of fine flower roots. Her hair glowed inhumanly gold. She wore her bobbin-lace jumper and white stocking costume. The costume that had come to feel like a nasty second skin.  Her cartoon face fell agape as a man wearing a flat-cap danced into the frame, his nimble legs looping in weightless dance steps. The shadows from their bodies cut from their physical truth and, to her horror, began to dance independently.  Their shadows met and swirled in risqué billows. She called her mind back before it grew worse. Her eyes blinked and looked down to her dungaree pants and plaid cotton shirt tied at the waist. Her saddle shoes were dull and scuffed, and she felt grateful for their honest homeliness.  She touched a strand of her hair, natural and straight.  In a groundswell of anger, she threw the embroidery hoop to the floor. It broke into two pieces.  She took a step forward and pointed her chin at him.

              “How you dare bully me? I may have to pretend to like you on set—but I’ve no mind for you away from it. I don’t want to be here anymore than you want me to, and I’ll go to hell before I’ll be seen anywhere with you off the camera.” She felt blood flush to her ears.

              He sighed and rolled his eyes as though she was an unruly child. Crouching down, he gathered the clump of thread and fabric in his hands.

              “Christ, blow a fuse, Katie. I was only joking,” he stood to his feet with the hoop in his hands, “look, you ruined it.”

He glanced at the immerging shape on the fabric. “What the hell were you trying to make anyway—a flower?”

She pulled the fabric from his hands. She looked at the crumpled red and black threading. “A ladybug.”

              The radio program cut out with a swelling of brass instruments. Katie tossed her ruined embroidery to the couch.

              “Look, Katie, you have to come with me.  She’ll nag me for a week if I leave you here.”

              “If you try to lock me outside I’ll scream.”

              “Jesus, Katie. You really thought I was going to lock you out to sit on the lawn all night?”

She plopped down to the sofa.

              “I don’t want to go anywhere with you,” she mumbled.

He lowered to her and clasped his hands together.  It was a casual, very grown-up gesture—as if they were two adults quarreling in the cozy bubble of his home.

But they were just teenagers, although she felt much older than that. That maturity had come with a price—a price that Danny could never understand. She looked at him, afraid to see the strange expression he shared with his mother, but there was only apology on the fringe of impatience. 

              “Gee, Katie, I said I was sorry. It was a joke.  How was I supposed to know you’d take it serious?” His face stiffened when his apology was met by icy silence.  

“
Look
,” he sighed, “you have to go with me or I’ll be in dutch with Mom for a week.”

She looked at him doubtfully.

             
I’ve my orders to fetch her mister.

              The radio continued to play in the background—now to the clomping baritone rhythm of
Ghost Riders in the Sky.

Danny rose to his feet and flicked off the radio.

“C’mon, Katie—
please
?”

She sighed but stood up.

              “I’ll go with you.  But once we get there, we part ways and you don’t say a word to me for the rest of the night. I’m not at your beck and call, Daniel Gallagher.”

              His eyebrows pitched up—then relaxed to smug indifference.

              “No you’re not, Katie Webb.”  The words were calm but deep in their distaste. She realized then that maybe he knew all about the price of maturity. Maybe his tumble into manhood hadn’t been as easy as she thought. It had been the same painful pull to a place for which they were both unprepared.

              “Hurry up and change if you’re going to. I’ll meet you out front,” he said. She watched him leave. Her body jumped, as always, at the squall of the kitchen door’s hinges.

Katie sighed over the few sad pieces of clothing in her closet. A sloppy-Joe sweater—two sizes too large, a pair of muslin pants of indeterminable color, a few jumpers in atomic prints, and the tattered shirts Mrs. Gallagher had given her to work outdoors.  She gave a half-smile when she spotted the white, pleated dress Mrs. Gallagher had bought her at Desmonds— only a week and three days before. She shuffled-off her shoes and garden clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor. She pulled the dress from the hanger and stepped into it with bare feet. Before leaving, she paused and looked down at her scuffed, knobby knees and thin calves. She stepped toward the dresser and looked into the small mirror sitting atop. She frowned at her murky blue eyes and reached for a white case of lip pomade, another gift from Mrs. Gallagher.  She smoothed a bit of the coral, waxy sheen over her lips and smoothed them together. She shrugged when it did little to improve the vitality of her face. She met Daniel at the foot of the staircase. They said nothing as he gestured her out the front door, then locked it from behind. 

“Why, what’ve you got there, Danny boy?” A man, cheerful in his inquiry, asked standing against the parked car in the driveway. The light was fading from dusk to dark but she could still make out the two boys in the back seat. A woman sat in the front, looking into a hand-held mirror and applying lipstick in a frenzied circular motion.

              “Why, it’s Katie Webb, of course.” Danny gestured as if to showcase her body standing next to his own.  The man squinted over the rim of his glasses.

              “Why it is Katie Webb isn’t it?  Irene!”  He snapped his head to the side as he called for his wife.

              “What?”

              “Irene, get yourself out here—it’s Katie Webb.”

              “What?” she asked again, but was already pulling herself from the passenger seat.  She didn’t bother to close the car door behind her.  Her blonde hair was piled on her head in the immovable curls of a doll. She clapped her hands and let out a cry of delight. 

              “Oh
it is
Katie Webb, well my
my.
” The charming twang of her voice put Katie at ease for a moment. The woman’s hands framed her face. Katie tried, unsuccessfully, not to flinch against the touch. Irene gasped then exhaled into a long sigh.

              “Look at this child’s
face
, Felix.”

              “Oh, I see it,” he crowed and lifted his hands to the air.