Cast a Pale Shadow (20 page)

"Aphrodisiac? Scallops and artichokes and celery?"

"Well, I was only trying to help. You can't get decent fresh oysters around here anymore."

Nicholas put his hand to his brow and said, "The check, Maurice, the check."

They wound up at Steak 'n Shake where they ordered fat, juicy patty melts and fries and Dutch chocolate malts.

"Oooff, I'm more stuffed than an artichoke," Trissa confessed when she drained the thick malt with a loud slurp.

"Oh, dear, and look what I saved you." Nicholas reached in his coat pocket and pulled out a clean scallop shell. "A souvenir fish dish. I thought we'd sip champagne from it later in our bridal suite."

"Do you think we dare? There might be some secret, potent powers still clinging to it."

"Secret, potent...? You heard Maurice?"

She nodded and took the scallop shell and put it in her purse. "Maybe you'd better tell me what happened at school. How did you manage with Miss Royal?"

They spent the rest of the evening and their ride home on safe subjects. He told her all about her missed assignments and the arrangements for making up her exams and how he had Miss Royal wound around his little finger. She described her day with Augusta and Beverly and Ruth. He laughed when she recounted her tantrum with Edmonds, admitting she had had more luck landing blows with him than he had.

They did not discuss the sleeping arrangements until they were confronted with the big empty bed and the extra pillows and blankets at the foot of it. Trissa avoided the issue by sneaking into the bathroom first while Nicholas set up his coffee pot. He took his turn when she emerged wrapped like a mummy in those god awful brown and yellow flannel pajamas.

When he came out in his own pajamas and a blue terry bathrobe, she was already asleep, curled under the blanket she had drug to the sofa. He picked her up, carried her to the bed, turned out the lights, and then went back to the sofa himself. He wrestled with the pillow and blanket until he found a niche where no springs poked his backside and the sags matched the contour of his shoulder and hip. He heard the rustling of the bed in the darkness and Trissa's bare feet as she padded across the floor.

"I will not put you out of your bed, Nicholas Brewer. And if you care to dispute that, I will kick you in the shin, too."

Nicholas sat up and saw her determined stance silhouetted in the dim glow of the bathroom night-light. Her hands were on her hips and she tapped her foot impatiently. "I'm fine," he said. "I just got comfortable."

"Come here and bring your stuff."

He put on his robe and gathered up his blanket and pillow and followed her. She fussed with the bed covers, turning down each side but struggling to keep the center of the bed untouched. She attacked the project with the precision of a practiced paper airplane folder, smoothing the sheets to knife-edged angles. "Now give me your blanket." She shook out the blanket and let it settle to the floor. Kneeling beside it, she carefully rolled it into a woolen sausage which she carried to the bed and positioned down the middle. "There," she said, blowing an errant curl out of her eyes with a little puff from her lips . "My side. Your side." She climbed into her side and pulled the covers up to her chin. "Come on. Come to bed."

"It's not exactly the Great Wall of China."

"That didn't keep out invaders either. It's honor that will keep us to our own sides. The divider is just there to mark the border."

"No man's land," he muttered. He untied his robe but decided to keep it on. Climbing in, he turned away from her to face the wall.

"Good night, husband."

"I think it best you don't call me that when we're sleeping in the same bed," he said, his voice oddly muffled. By the sleeve of his robe, she guessed.

"Sorry. Good night, Nicholas."

"Good night."

Silence sifted down on them. It was so still that he thought he could hear their hearts beating.

"Nicholas?"

"Yes."

"About my apprenticeship. Don't you think I'm due for another lesson?"

"Your apprenticeship?"

"You know. The kissing."

"Go to
sleep
, Trissa."

Chapter Eleven

Nicholas measured the corner for the second time and came up with different figures. Gritting his pencil so tightly between his teeth the paint flecked off onto his tongue, he frowned and measured again. The new numbers matched the first set, so he jotted them down on a scrap of paper. Tomorrow while Trissa took her makeup exams, he would meet Jack Sanders down at a Wharf Street warehouse and find a chest of drawers to fit this corner among Jack's cache of secondhand treasures.

Trissa would be surprised with the new chest. It and her record player, secretly rehabilitated by Roger, would be her reward for all her long hours of study to prepare for her exams. They needed the space, too. Augusta seemed to sense the moment when Nicholas emptied another drawer of his belongings to make more space for Trissa's rapidly expanding trousseau and she redoubled her efforts to fill that one as well.

"It's like playing paper dolls," Trissa had said. "'Here, try this one on,' she says. 'Now this would go with that.' And 'won't this be perfect with your eyes and hair?'." Nicholas took the hangers with the altered garments from her one by one as she told him this. "And if I say 'no, I can't possibly take more from you, Augusta' she gets this wounded look in her eyes and I have to give in."

She wasn't really complaining. In the three days since her arrival, Nicholas had not once seen the wistful look on her face that had haunted her daily at the bus stop. And though her bruises had reached that awful black and green stage, the sparkle in her eyes more than stole the attention away from them.

She had made herself a space in this makeshift family. Roger had spent two afternoons coaching her in geometry, drawing little diagrams with arrows and boxes to help her understand the flow of her proofs. Beverly had quizzed her on her world history until she could rattle off dates, places, and people without a slip. Even Hattie had contributed to the effort by expounding on the relative merits of the poetry of Walt Whitman, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and helping Trissa develop an outline for an essay question she expected to have on her American Literature exam.

Each day, Trissa's anxiety about her postponed tests diminished. To ease her tension further, Augusta had called a halt to the studies after dinner to stage a ceremony to bestow upon Trissa the official title of chambermaid, presenting her with a feather duster with a gold-painted handle as a symbol of her honorary duties. Now, with a designated role on Augusta's house staff and the neighborhood covenants followed to the letter if not the spirit, she could legitimately call it her home.

Tonight, when Nicholas left her to come upstairs to measure, Trissa was once again bent over her books, this time with Augusta drilling her on the periodic table. Each day it became easier to forget that this had not always been her home and this odd assortment of people had not always been her family.

The only thing that was not becoming easier was sleeping with her, or rather trying to sleep in the same bed with her. He wondered if he should be measuring the alcove for a set of twin beds. A physical chasm between them might do more for his peace of mind than the gopher mound she erected with that silly rolled blanket each night.

Trissa was too close and the woolen wall was too flimsy. Nicholas would get more restful sleep on the lumpy, sagging sofa. It was not that she violated his territory in any way. On the contrary, she seemed able to crunch herself into a ball as tiny as a hedgehog to sleep. She didn't snore, or toss and turn and jiggle the bed, or steal away all the blankets. She didn't eat crackers in bed, or talk in her sleep, or get up several times in the night to go to the bathroom. In short, Trissa had the most courteous habits a bed partner could have.

Except that she was too damn close.

Long after she was asleep, Nicholas would lay awake thinking about her. He listened to her soft, wispy breathing. He could smell her toothpaste and the Ivory soap she used to scrub her face pink. He tried to focus his thoughts on her ugly, flannel pajamas and the ratty terry cloth scuffs she wore around the room at night, but that did nothing to blunt his desire for her. She had marked her blanket boundary, spoke of honor, and then tortured him by asking for a kiss.

She had gotten her kiss the second night, but he insisted that it take place while they stood on two feet, well away from the bed. It hadn't helped. Afterwards, Trissa had been able to hop under the covers and fall rapidly and soundly to sleep. Nicholas had been left to stare at the wall and curse honor and kisses and self-made promises to take things slowly.

Surrounded by all her proxy parents, Trissa seemed more the child than ever to him, and he was determined to give her time to be one. He guessed that she had had little of that while she was growing up. She needed time to forget a father whose perverted attention had driven her to desperation. Such trauma could have made her dread any man's touch. That it had not, that she seemed to relish his kiss, that each seemed to hold more promise than the one before gave him reason to hope. He could be patient. Something so magical always takes time.

*****

Dr. Lorenzo Fitapaldi received the letter in his afternoon mail. As she did with all his correspondence, Phyllis, his secretary, slit open the envelope and placed it face down on his desk. He did not like to form opinions about the contents by glancing at the return addresses or the handwriting beforehand. He was not a man to make snap judgments. The letter was scratched on a bedraggled piece of loose leaf paper that looked as if it had been crumpled then smoothed flat so it could be written on with a blunt, soft pencil.

Dr. Fitapaldi:

I am writing to inform you of my new address should you need to get in touch with me about my father. Though I realize he is no longer in your care, I seem to have forgotten the name and location of the hospital where he resides. I hope you will not mind forwarding this information to the proper place. I am not certain how long it has been since I have seen him. Perhaps he is dead. Perhaps I am. The day has grown so dark that I can barely see.

Cole Baker

The words marched with rigid precision across the page, each block letter printed heavily, but they ended without completing Cole's stated purpose. He had not included his address.

Fitapaldi turned the paper over. The backside was filled with math problems, the numbers scribbled at all angles, somebody's scratch paper. The handwriting did not match the front. He lay the letter aside and took up the envelope. The printed return address had been blacked out with heavy strokes from the same pencil that had been used to write the note. Only Fitapaldi's address, hand printed by Cole, was legible.

Holding it under the strong bulb of his desk lamp, Fitapaldi inspected the return address. He could make out a few letters. Carefully, he rubbed over the pencil marks with an eraser, lightly so as not want to wear away the printing underneath. Squinting at it again, he was able to read "St. Andrew's Hos--" then something, something, " -- ghway Blvd." and on the next line, "St. Lou--" The rest was obliterated but it was enough. He pressed the button of his intercom and called for Phyllis.

An hour later he had some of the information he needed. Phyllis had called the state hospital and found that Duncan Brewer's condition was unchanged and that he had not had a visitor in over six months. She then called St. Andrew's Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. No, the hospital did not have a recent patient named Baker, but yes, there was a Brewer who was released on Tuesday, a Trissa Brewer, Mrs. Nicholas Brewer. Phyllis had had no luck cajoling them into providing an address, so Fitapaldi had called an old classmate from the University of Michigan who had worked at St. Andrew's for years, Richard Poe.

What Poe had to tell him was helpful but alarming. He remembered that particular case because he had been called in to consult. The attending physician suspected that the young woman's injuries were not accidental as she and her husband insisted. Poe had advised that the case be turned over to Social Services, and, apparently, the resident was mistaken because the woman was released without delay. Poe had not seen the woman or her husband, so he could not describe them. He promised to have the Social Services caseworker call him with the address of the patient.

Fitapaldi had nothing to do then but wait. It was just as well. He had two patients in crisis and could not leave town. This letter from Brewer, or Baker as he sometimes called himself, was puzzling but he could not allow it to override his responsibilities to his actual patients. Brewer had refused his help in the past. Maybe this plea was no more than it professed to be, a request for a clerical service, nothing more.

It was not terribly surprising that Cole would forget to provide the address. The man was so engaged in erasing the horrors of his past that the trivial details of the present sometimes slipped away from him. What did surprise him was that Cole would marry. He had always been a zealous isolate. Fitapaldi scanned the notes in Brewer's file to find the exact answer Cole had given him on his last visit when he had asked if there weren't anyone in his life who might care to see that he got help.

"Don't worry. No one ever gets close enough for that. I make sure of it. The victims of Duncan Brewer have ended with me. It is just that I haven't reached the convenience of being buried and forgotten like the rest. But that will come. Eventually."